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3,000 | Obama says U.S. cannot wall itself off from economic globalization | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that globalization is a fact that “we’re not going to be able to build a wall around” but that it was important to work to shape the process so that it benefits not just big companies but small firms as well. The U.S. leader, speaking at a news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, said the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being worked on has taken into account some of the weaknesses and criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement and sought to address those. | 1 |
3,001 | Japan's Aso says will seek U.S. understanding of TPP's benefits | TOKYO (Reuters) - Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday that Japan would seek the United States’ understanding of the strategic and economic benefits of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after President Donald Trump formally withdrew from the free-trade pact. Aso told reporters after a cabinet meeting that arrangements were being made for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to visit the United States and meet Trump, but that it was undecided who would accompany the premier. Fulfilling a campaign pledge to end American involvement in the 2015 pact, Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office pulling the United States out of the 12-nation TPP, which includes Japan. | 1 |
3,002 | U.S. House tax chairman proposes tweaks to tax-cut bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposed tax on $2.6 trillion in foreign profits held offshore by U.S. multinational corporations would be raised under an amendment offered on Thursday by the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives tax committee to his own tax-cut bill. Texas Republican Representative Kevin Brady called for raising the tax to 14 percent for cash and liquid assets and 7 percent for illiquid assets, up from his earlier proposal of 12 percent and 5 percent, respectively. The proposed increase would raise more federal revenue under the tax bill being offered by House Republicans, with Senate Republicans offering a separate bill. | 1 |
3,003 | U.S. lawmaker to introduce bill to broaden CFIUS mandate beyond security concerns | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Democratic lawmaker will introduce a bill on Thursday that seeks to broaden the powers of a U.S. government panel that reviews mergers for national security concerns, including giving it the ability to block a deal if it could cause job losses, but it faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House. According to a draft copy of the proposed legislation reviewed by Reuters, the multi-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) would be able to review a deal “to determine whether such transaction is of net benefit to the United States.” If the legislation passed, CFIUS would consider a proposed deal’s effect on employment, product innovation, and public health and safety, as well as national security, according to the draft reviewed by Reuters. It would also consider factors like whether a foreign company purchasing a U.S. company abides by U.S. rules concerning disclosure and transparency. But it is unclear whether the measure, which will be introduced by Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, has support from other lawmakers in the House. A spokesman for Republicans in the House Committee on Financial Services, which considered an earlier version of the bill in 2014, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Even if the DeLauro bill passed the House, there would need to be companion legislation passed in the Senate and then it would still need to get signed into law by President Barack Obama. There is currently no companion bill in the Senate, according to a source on Capitol Hill. DeLauro introduced her previous bill following the U.S. approval of China-based Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd’s $4.7 billion acquisition of pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc, but it never went to the full House for a vote. While the House bill does not target China specifically, it could have most implications for the country. In 2014, the last year for which data is available, CFIUS looked at more deals involving China than any other country for the third year in a row. It comes amid signs of increased concerns in Washington about a flurry of proposed takeovers of American companies by Chinese entities. Still, such sweeping legislation could be a tall order for the administration at a time of already tense Sino-U.S. relations. Earlier this month, 46 U.S. lawmakers, most of them Republicans, urged CFIUS to take a hard look at a bid by a Chinese company, Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group, to buy the storied Chicago Stock Exchange because of fears that the deal would give China access to the data of U.S. companies who use the exchange. In the past few weeks alone, CFIUS concerns have killed three proposed Chinese investments. On Tuesday, Western Digital Corp (WDC.O) said China’s Unisplendour Corp Ltd (000938.SZ) backed out of buying a stake in the U.S. company because CFIUS planned to probe it. | 1 |
3,004 | Turkey expects S-400 defense system from Russia in 2019: minister | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey expects to receive its first Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles in 2019, Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday, the first time Ankara has given a firm timeline for a deal that has alarmed its NATO allies. Turkey has been in negotiations with Russia to buy the S-400 for more than a year, a decision seen by Washington and some of its other allies in NATO as a snub to the Western military alliance. Giving the most detail yet on the deal to parliament s budget committee, Canikli said it called for delivery of two S-400 systems, but that the second one was optional. The deal has raised concern among NATO countries in part because the weapons cannot be integrated into the alliance s defenses. Ankara has said it had no choice but to buy the Russian missiles, because NATO countries did not offer a cost-effective alternative. Once these systems are received, our country will have secured an important air defense capability. This solution aimed at meeting an urgent need will not hinder our commitment to developing our own systems, he said. Relations between Turkey and Russia deteriorated sharply over years during which they backed opposite sides in the war in neighboring Syria, but have improved markedly over the past year. The countries are now cooperating on Syrian peace efforts. Canikli said Turkey was also in talks with the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium on developing its own missile defense systems, after signing a memorandum to strengthen cooperation between the three countries in defense projects. With the memorandum in question, Turkish, French and Italian firms have started cooperation to identify, develop, produce and use a more advanced version of the SAMP-T (missile system) in a common consortium, he said. Turkey aimed to bring talks with EUROSAM to a definitive end soon, he said, adding that Ankara aimed to finalize the deal by the end of 2017 at the latest. Turkey has been working to develop its own defense systems and equipment, and has lined up several projects for the coming years, including combat helicopters, tanks, drones and more. Canikli said Turkey received bids last Friday for the production of 500 Altay battle tanks, of which 250 are optional. Shares of Turkish commercial and military vehicle producer Otokar rose almost 3 percent following the news about the 7 billion euro ($8.24 billion) domestic tank project. | 1 |
3,005 | Spain's crisis re-ignited as Catalan separatists win vote | BARCELONA/MADRID (Reuters) - Separatists looked set on Friday to regain power in Catalonia after voters rejected Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s attempt to neuter its independence movement, instead re-igniting the country s biggest political crisis in decades. Spanish markets recoiled at a surprise result that is also a setback for the European Union, which must now brace for more secessionist noise as it grapples with the disruption of Brexit and simmering east European discontent. By risking a parliamentary election in the region, Rajoy appears to have made the same mistake that leaders including Greece s Alexis Tsipras, Britain s David Cameron and Italy s Matteo Renzi have made in recent years: betting that voters would resolve their troublesome domestic conundrums for them. For an interactive graphics package, click tmsnrt.rs/2AGBazV With well over 99 percent of votes from Thursday s election counted, separatist parties had secured a slim majority. Spain s stock market fell around 1 percent and the country s borrowing costs rose as investors bet the ensuing ramp-up in tensions with its richest region will hurt the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. Rajoy ruled out calling national elections over events that have weakened his authority, while both he and exiled separatist leader Carles Puigdemont said they were open for dialogue. But they offered no details and such calls in the past have failed to yield any solution. After several strained months that saw secessionists organize an illegal referendum on Oct. 1, and police confiscate urns to try to prevent it from taking place, the election result has done nothing to resolve the standoff either. The secessionists kept a majority, but it was reduced and they may have difficulty forming a government; and support for unionist party Ciudadanos has surged, but not enough to catapult them into power. The divisions are huge. It will take time to mend them and that should be the priority for all political actors, reconciliation within the remit of the law, Rajoy told a news conference at the government s Moncloa headquarters. With Catalonia accounting for a fifth of its economy, Spain had already trimmed growth forecasts for 2018, and the prospect of prolonged uncertainty worries business leaders. More companies leaving, less economic activity there - and worse for everyone, said the chief executive of a major listed Spanish company, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the tense climate of the independence debate. More than 3,100 firms have shifted their headquarters out of the region since October s referendum. Overnight hotel stays rose 2.1 percent in Spain in November but fell 7.3 percent in Catalonia, the National Statistics Institute said. Rajoy, who called the election after sacking the previous secessionist government, had hoped to mobilise hitherto quiescent supporters of union with Spain and deal separatism a decisive blow. Instead, his own party performed miserably, and the result raises the question of a return to power for Puigdemont, who campaigned from self-imposed exile in Brussels after Rajoy deposed him as Catalan president. Catalonia is back to square one, said Marco Protopapa, an analyst at JP Morgan, forecasting that tensions would quickly return between Madrid and an emboldened pro-independence camp eager to exploit the tactical advantage of a favorable election outcome . While Rajoy dodged questions about whether he would negotiate directly with Puigdemont, the Catalan politician said now was the time for dialogue between the two. We ve at least won the right to be heard, Puigdemont said, adding that he was open to returning to Spain if given guarantees that he could take his position as head of a potential new Catalan government. Currently he faces the prospect of arrest for his role in organizing the banned referendum. When the Catalan parliament declared independence after the referendum, Rajoy invoked constitutional powers to impose direct rule from Madrid. He promised to restore Catalonia s autonomy regardless of the election result, but could re-impose it if a new government again pursued secession. The EU s major powers, Germany and France, have backed his anti-independence stance despite some criticism of his methods at times. Meanwhile, Puigdemont s attempts to gain international support in Brussels have failed so far. He has called the EU a club of decadent countries for declining to mediate a solution. A German government spokeswoman on Friday urged reconciliation in Catalonia, adding that the Spanish constitution would have to be respected. Secessionists say Catalonia pays an unfair share of taxes to Madrid, but investors fear independence would knock the indebted region out of the EU and the euro zone by default. There is a huge effect on investment from abroad. As there s a lack of stability here, people who were investing here are going to other cities and other regions, said Rafael Prisco, commercial director in a real estate agent in central Barcelona that deals mostly with foreign clients. Europe now ends the year having struggled to build on the integrationist Emmanuel Macron s victory in the French presidential election in May. Germany faces months of political limbo, Brussels is mired in a nasty dispute with Poland s right-wing government and a far-right party has just entered the government in Austria. In Thursday s vote, Catalonia s separatist parties won 70 of the 135 seats, compared with 72 last time, with Puigdemont s Junts Per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) retaining its position as the largest separatist force. Ciudadanos (Citizens) won the most votes, but other unionist forces Rajoy s People s Party and the Socialist Party performed dismally. It s a bitter victory, said Paloma Morales, a 27-year-old student at a Ciudadanos rally. It means four more years of misery. | 1 |
3,006 | BREAKING: Republicans Embrace Trump’s Lies, Will Investigate ‘Campaign Surveillance’ As Part Of Russia Probe | On Sunday, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said that the House Intelligence Committee will investigate any alleged surveillance of political parties as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the election, according to The Hill. It s no surprise that Nunes is investigating alleged president Donald Trump s lie that Barack Obama had his phone wires tapped during the campaign. In late February, Nunes, who served as a member of Trump s transition team, resisted calls for his House committee to investigate alleged contacts between Trump associates and Russia. And now, he s going to investigate a baseless accusation from Trump in which the amateur president has offered no proof. Put a Benghazi in front of it, and former President Barack Obama will be investigated ad nauseum. One of the focus points of the House Intelligence Committee s investigation is the U.S. government s response to actions taken by Russian intelligence agents during the presidential campaign, Nunes said in a statement. As such, the Committee will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party s campaign officials or surrogates, and we will continue to investigate this issue if the evidence warrants it, he added.The Hill reports:The statement comes hours after White House press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted Trump s request for Congress to include his wiretapping claims in the Russia probe.A spokesman for Obama denied that the former president or any White House official ordered surveillance of the then-president-elect. It s also not within a President s power to order surveillance. It goes to a judge first and through the proper channels.Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recently joined ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in laying out the parameters for the investigation into Russia s cyber activities, including links between Russia and any U.S. campaign officials.It s well documented by U.S Intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an influence campaign in an effort to help Trump win the White House. And Trump won. Trump still sings the praises of the Russian leader who is known for having his critics murdered.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. | 0 |
3,007 | China offers support for strife-torn Venezuela at United Nations | BEIJING (Reuters) - China believes that the Venezuelan government and people can resolve their problems within a legal framework and maintain national stability, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Venezuelan counterpart at the United Nations. At least 125 people have been killed in four months of protests against President Nicol s Maduro s government, which has resisted calls to bring forward the presidential election and instead set up a pro-Maduro legislative superbody called a Constituent Assembly that has overruled the country s opposition-led Congress. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted democracy restored soon in Venezuela and warned that the United States might take additional measures to apply pressure on the oil-producing nation. China, a good friend of Venezuela s, has brushed off widespread condemnation from the United States, Europe and others about the situation in the country. Wang told Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza on Tuesday on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting that the two countries have an all-round strategic partnership, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday. China s policy towards Venezuela will not change, the report cited Wang as saying. China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and believes Venezuela s government and people have the ability to resolve problems via talks within a legal framework and protect national stability, Wang added. The international community should take a fair and objective stance and play a constructive role, he said. China and oil-rich Venezuela have a close diplomatic and business relationship, especially in energy. | 1 |
3,008 | Obama says disagrees with discrimination based on religion: spokesman | (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Barack Obama is heartened by the political activism he sees across the country and disagrees with discrimination against people based on their religion, a spokesman said on Monday. Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said the former president who left office 10 days ago “fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.” “Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,” Lewis said. He said Obama was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.” | 1 |
3,009 | Lawyer Ty Cobb to join White House to handle Russia probes | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The White House is hiring Ty Cobb, a veteran Washington lawyer with experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney to assist with Russia-related investigations, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday. Cobb has been a long-time partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells in Washington and represented people in government during the 1990s Clinton administration. Cobb did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for the law firm declined to comment. “We have no announcement at this time,” a White House spokeswoman said. A federal special counsel and several congressional panels are investigating allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential connections between Russian officials and the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. Moscow has denied any interference and the President has denied any collusion. The intelligence agencies said earlier this year that Russia sought to help Trump win the election by hacking private emails from Democratic Party officials and spreading false information. Cobb is expected to be an intermediary between the White House and Congress, as well as outside attorneys. Trump met with Cobb about the role last month, Reuters exclusively reported on July 3. Bloomberg News wrote about his hiring earlier on Friday. Cobb’s role is separate from Trump’s outside legal team, led by New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz. Constitutional lawyer and evangelical radio talk show host Jay Sekulow, Washington lawyer John Dowd, and Michael Bowe, a partner at Kasowitz’s firm, are all on that team. Cobb, who sports a handlebar mustache, is a distant relative of the famous early 20th century baseball player of the same name. Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, also of Hogan Lovells, who represented President Bill Clinton in the sexual harassment case filed by Paula Jones, said Cobb knew how to handle a crisis where politics and the law intersected. “Given recent developments, they really need him and need to listen to him,” said Bennett. In the 1990s, Cobb, 66, represented former Democratic National Committee fundraiser John Huang and former White House aide David Watkins, who was probed over the Clinton White House travel office. In 2006, Cobb also represented former CIA official Mary McCarthy, who was fired after she was accused of providing classified information to reporters. No charges were brought against McCarthy. Cobb graduated from Harvard University and earned his law degree at Georgetown. In the 1980s, he was a federal prosecutor in Baltimore, where he led a regional drug and organized crime task force. | 1 |
3,010 | Member Of Trump Team Resigns In Disgrace To Stop Media From Asking About This | A member of Donald Trump s presidential transition team has been kicked aside after he was caught spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory promoted on fake news websites. Michael G. Flynn, son of Trump s pick to be national security adviser, General Michael T. Flynn, will no longer be on the team and his official transition email has been shut off.The son of Lt.-Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Donald Trump s pick to be national security adviser, Michael G. Flynn, resigned from the Trump transition team Tuesday, CBS News Major Garrett reported.He offered his resignation when it became clear that he was becoming a significant distraction and his position helping his father was no longer tenable.Flynn the younger was given the distinct impression that his tweets on fake news had become problematic and the transition did not intend to expend the energy or political capital necessary to defend him.The son has repeatedly promoted and pushed the so-called Pizzagate conspiracy, in which conservatives created a false story around the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta and alleged that a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant was the hub of a child trafficking ring.Thanks to promotion by fake news sites, conspiracy theorists, and accounts like Flynn s Twitter account, a disturbed gunman recently went to the pizzeria and got off a shot while ranting about the Pizzagate conspiracy.When it was uncovered that Flynn had promoted the conspiracy, he argued that it was possible despite considerable evidence to the contrary that it might be true. He even got into a fight on Twitter with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who tried to explain to Flynn through a back channel that promoting this story was actually putting lives in danger.Fake news and conspiracy theorists have thrived with Donald Trump. Trump, who came to fame politically as a supporter of the birther conspiracy, has appeared on radio shows with conspiracy theorists and enlisted some of them as informal political advisers.Featured image via screen capture | 0 |
3,011 | Anti-Trump Protester Surrounded By Mexican Flags In CA: “If Trump Wins He’ll Be Dead Within A Week…Cartel Won’t Have His Bullsh*t” [VIDEO] | It was actually refreshing to see the cops fighting back against an unruly mob of Mexican flag carrying rioters in San Diego (Watch video HERE). It s interesting to see how little coverage the threats against Donald Trump s life are getting by the press. Could you imagine a LEGAL American Tea Party member threatening the life of Hillary? Do you think you d have to scour conservative news sources to find that story? No need to answer that Hundreds of protesters gathered outside a Donald Trump rally on Friday, chanting f**k Donald Trump and holding obscene signs including one that included a death threat against Trump should he win the presidency in November.The young protester held up a sign that read: If TRUMP wins He ll be DEAD with in A week The Cartel wont have his Bullsh*t. Protester outside Trump San Diego rally threatens Trump with death by cartel if @realDonaldTrump is elected pic.twitter.com/khqIm8Ro4h Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) May 27, 2016Mexican flags waved as the crowd flooded the street in front of the San Diego Convention Center, where Trump was speaking.Arrests were also made at the anti-Trump riots. Most of them appeared to be Hispanic. Will the media ever disclose how many of the people who were arrested are illegal aliens.Protester handcuffed outside Trump San Diego rally pic.twitter.com/qpMR3Jbskt Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) May 28, 2016At one point bottles were thrown at police, and in the course of the protests, several people were detained. Several pi atas depicted Trump, including one whose head had been severed in the street, with the rest just a crumpled bit of papier-m ch .Via: Breitbart NewsWhat you didn t see reported by the mainstream media was the ENORMOUS crowd of supporters inside the San Diego venue where Trump was announced to thunderous applause. It s no wonder the Left is freaking out about Trump. He is drawing tens of thousands of supporters in the bluest of blue states and they re coming because they believe in him. They re not coming because of the color of his skin or his promise to fundamentally destroy our nation, they re coming because they want to see America return to her greatness and they believe Trump has the ability to actually make that happen. What America didn't see much of! @realDonaldTrump's rally in Fresno, CA. w/ the MOVEMENT! AKA, #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/oETrL6M4A5 Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) May 28, 2016 | 0 |
3,012 | Conservatives expect changes in Medicaid in healthcare bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A large group of conservative lawmakers are close to approving proposed healthcare legislation, their leader said on Wednesday, after they were told to be hopeful that some changes they sought in the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled would be made in the bill. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the biggest group of conservatives in Congress, is “very close to signing off” on the Republican healthcare bill that would repeal Obamacare, Representative Mark Walker told reporters after the RSC met with Vice President Mike Pence about the legislation. Walker said conservatives were told “to be hopeful” that changes adding a work requirement for some Medicaid enrollees, and accelerating the end of an expansion of the Medicaid program, would be incorporated into the bill. | 1 |
3,013 | Spanish PM, in Catalonia, calls for big turnout at December election | BARCELONA - Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy urged Catalans to turn out in force in a December election to restore normality to a region buffeted by attempts to split from Spain. In his first visit to Barcelona since Madrid imposed direct rule on Catalonia and sacked its separatist leaders, Rajoy said the Dec. 21 election would safeguard the economy and stop companies moving out of the economically important region. We want a massive turnout to begin a new political era of tranquillity, normality, coexistence and respect, Rajoy told the Catalan wing of his conservative People s Party (PP). We must urgently bring back normality to Catalonia ... to reduce social tension and stop damage to the economy. Despite opposition to the early election imposed by Madrid as a way to resolve the impasse, the two leading pro-independence parties, PDeCAT of deposed leader Carles Puigdemont, and the ERC, have said they will participate. However, they failed to agree to run on a united ticket, potentially harming the separatist camp s chances of winning a majority in the regional parliament. The far-left pro-independence CUP party, whose support was key to Puigdemont s government, decided on Sunday to run in the upcoming election. Madrid s imposition of direct rule on Catalonia has widened a rift between political parties both in regional politics and at the municipal level. On Sunday, the party of Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau voted to break its pact to govern with the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), citing the latter s support for the application of direct rule. Some 54 percent of Spaniards evaluate positively Madrid s handling of the Catalan crisis, but only 28 percent of Catalans share this view, according to a poll for newspaper El Pais. On Saturday, 750,000 people marched in Barcelona to call for the release of separatist leaders from pre-trial detention. | 1 |
3,014 | Contrary to Trump Tweet, Senator Flake still undecided on tax bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Sunday that Senator Jeff Flake will oppose the Republican tax bill, but the senator’s office says he has not yet made up his mind. “Senator Flake is still reviewing the tax reform bill on its merits. How he votes on it will have nothing to do with the president,” a spokesman for the senator said in an email. That is contrary to an assertion made by Trump on Sunday in a post on Twitter. “He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is ‘toast.’,” Trump wrote of Flake on Twitter. Where individual Republican senators stand on the tax bill has become the focus of those trying to determine whether it will pass because Republicans control only 52 seats in the Senate. More than two Republican defections would likely kill the bill. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has already publicly stated he opposes the bill in its current form. The House voted last week to approve the tax bill with no support from Democrats and 13 Republicans defecting. Trump and Flake, both Republicans, have been critical of each other in recent months. Flake delivered a speech on the Senate floor in October during which he said Trump threatened the nation’s democracy. In the same speech, Flake announced he would not be seeking re-election to the Senate next year when his term expires. Trump has in turn been critical of Flake, saying he would not be able to win re-election. On Saturday at an event in Arizona, Flake was overheard on a nearby microphone talking with Mesa Mayor John Giles about Trump. “If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast,” Flake said, according to television station KNXV, whose microphone recorded him. Moore, who is the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama, has faced sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican leaders in Congress have urged him to drop out of the Dec. 12 special election. In his Twitter post on Sunday, Trump also suggested that Flake intentionally made those remarks in order to be heard. “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President,” Trump wrote on Twitter. | 1 |
3,015 | Researchers Used Doctored Pics Of Obama To Link Racism Directly To The Tea Party (STUDY) | It s always been obvious to people with half a clue or better that the hatred towards our president was more because of the color of his skin than anything he could possibly have done politically. Had a white man walked into the same mess and turned it around into hope for the future and a better country than the one he was handed, he d be Bill Clinton.A sociologist from Stanford University had the idea that the resurgence of racism in America didn t just coincide with the rise of the Tea Party, it drove it. That left a lot of analysts slack-jawed, wondering: What was this latent force that drove the emergence of this movement? said Robb Willer. According to The Washington Post:Willer speculates that one thing connecting these two political earthquakes might be white voters unconscious racial biases. In a series of psychological experiments between 2011 and 2015, he showed how hostility toward people with darker skin and perceived racial threats can influence white support for the tea party. He and his colleagues published a draft of a paper on their findings online last week some of the most direct evidence of the importance of race to the conservative resurgence during Obama s presidency.The experiment was simple. Two groups of people are shown images of celebrities that include a picture of the president, one with darker skin and one with lighter. The group that saw the dark-skinned Obama were twice as likely to support the Tea Party when asked afterward. Because of the color of a man s skin and nothing else. Willer s team didn t stop there, either. They moved on to see where else race played a major role and landed smack-dab on white privilege.The groups were given conflicting innocuous reports about the U.S. population and demographics. One report said the white people should hold a strong majority in this country for the foreseeable future and the other says whites will decline into a minority by 2060. The group that heard they were safely white-washed were far more likely to support the Tea Party. When all of a sudden the support of minorities looks like it will be key, support for the Tea Party plummets.All of this, every last bit of it, is due to racism. When the Tea Party stormed Washington DC in 2010, packing congressional offices with morons as far as the eye could see, their number one agenda, along with the rest of the GOP, was to stop President Obama from accomplishing anything. They failed, but the influence is still there. When Lindsey Graham stood in front of cameras and declared that his party had gone batsh*t crazy, he wasn t kidding.Featured image from Wikipedia altered by Rob Willer | 0 |
3,016 | Detained Reuters journalist wrote children's book on nature and absence | YANGON (Reuters) - At the end of an illustrated book written for children in Myanmar, a much-loved village teacher who has planted many trees and a beautiful garden tells his students that the time has come for him to leave them. Oh students, he says. I won t be here but you will still have the trees to give you fruit and shade and take care of you every year. So you will remember me and not be so sad. The author of The Gardener was Wa Lone, one of two Reuters journalists who were arrested in Yangon last week and accused of violating the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen some 650,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in the western state of Rakhine. They have not been seen for a week. The Gardener is one of a series published by The Third Story Project, a venture co-founded by Wa Lone that produces books in Burmese, other Myanmar languages and English and distributes them free to children across the country. On the project s website, Wa Lone says the aim was to promote tolerance and harmony in an increasingly multicultural and diverse world. Lack of understanding has led to conflicts between different communities and finally destroyed peace and stability, he wrote. I love every Third Story book because they address important issues for future generations. In Wa Lone s story, which also carries a message of the importance of protecting the environment, the teacher scatters seeds from his bicycle on the journey to school and years later they have grown into huge trees. He also plants a garden with his students and, there, he tells them stories. He leaves them one day to help another village, where all the trees had been cut down and there was no fruit, water or shelter for the people and animals. The last page of the story shows a figure in the distance and the words: The teacher said goodbye to his students and rode his old bicycle down the road toward the other village. | 1 |
3,017 | U.S. says it will take steps after Cambodia's dissolves opposition party | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States expressed grave concern on Thursday about the Cambodian government s decision to dissolve the main opposition party and said Washington will take concrete steps in response, according to a White House statement. As a first step, the White House said, the United States will end its support for the Cambodian National Election Committee and its administration of the 2018 national election. | 1 |
3,018 | Iraq threatens to resume military operations against Kurds | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces threatened on Wednesday to resume operations to capture northern Kurdish-held territory after accusing authorities there of delaying handing over control of Iraq s borders with Turkey, Iran and Syria. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday declared a pause in an offensive that began on Oct. 16 to take over areas claimed both by his government and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Abadi ordered economic and military retaliation against the KRG after Iraqi Kurds voted for independence in September in a referendum that Baghdad declared illegal. He said the truce was meant to allow Iraqi troops to deploy without hindrance in the disputed areas and at the international borders. Kurdish officials said on Tuesday they were willing to allow Iraqi oversight at the border but said the KRG had to remain in control of crossings into the Kurdish region. The Iraqi Joint Operations Command accused the KRG of using the talks to buy time in order to strengthen Kurdish lines. During the negotiations, the (Kurdish) region was moving its forces and building new defenses, the Iraqi statement said. We will not allow it; the federal forces are mandated to secure (the disputed) areas and borders. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters command accused Iraqi forces of massing weapons and threatening force to resolve domestic political differences. Iraq s entire land border with Turkey is located inside the Kurdish autonomous region, and has been controlled by the Kurds since before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraqis troops on Tuesday set up positions between the Turkish and the Iraqi Kurdish checkpoints at the Habur border crossing between the Turkish town of Silopi and the Iraqi town of Zakho. That meant vehicles crossing the border were subject to three checks. Control of the border area is of crucial importance for the landlocked Kurdish region. An oil pipeline runs from northern Iraq into Turkey, carrying crude exports which are the Kurds in principal source of funds. | 1 |
3,019 | German FinMin Schaeuble ready to head parliament: senior conservative | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s pro-austerity Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is ready to quit his job and become head of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives said on Wednesday, following Sunday s election. Schaeuble is deeply respected at home for his tight control of public finances since taking on the job in 2009, but is loathed in Greece and elsewhere in southern Europe for his insistence on tough austerity steps during the eurozone crisis. The pro-business, fiscally hawkish Free Democrats (FDP), a likely coalition partner for Merkel s conservatives, has said it wants to run the finance ministry in any new government. We are pleased that Wolfgang Schaeuble has agreed to become a candidate for the position (of president of the Bundestag), Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of Merkel s conservatives, said in a statement. The center-right CDU/CSU bloc will propose Schaeuble as their candidate for the Bundestag post at their next meeting on Oct. 17, Kauder added. The current Bundestag president, CDU lawmaker Norbert Lammert, is not up for re-election. Schaeuble, 75, has been confined to a wheelchair since being shot at an election rally in 1990. He is the longest serving member of parliament. (The story is refiled to amend word in parenthesis in paragraph 4 to make clear he will be proposed for job of president of parliament.) | 1 |
3,020 | U.S. to end protected status for Haitians in July 2019 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States in July 2019 will end a special status given to about 59,000 Haitian immigrants that protects them from deportation after a devastating 2010 earthquake, senior Trump administration officials said on Monday. The decision by acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke gives Haitians 18 months to return to their impoverished Caribbean country or legalize their status in the United States. Former President Barack Obama’s administration granted Haitian nationals in the United States so-called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for 18 months after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in January 2010, killing more than 300,000 people. The Obama administration extended the status several times after the initial designation. Duke decided to terminate the special status after a U.S. review of the conditions in Haiti found the country had made considerable progress, a senior official with President Donald Trump’s administration told a briefing. “It was assessed overall that the extraordinary but temporary conditions that served as the basis of Haiti’s most recent designation has sufficiently improved such that they no longer prevent nationals of Haiti from returning safely,” the official said. In May, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly extended the status for Haitians for six months through January 2018. At the time, Kelly told reporters that TPS “is not meant to be an open-ended law but a temporary law.” The decision to end TPS for Haitians is part of Trump’s broader efforts to tighten restrictions on immigration, and comes despite calls from even some fellow Republicans to continue the relief. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida published an opinion piece in the Miami Herald on Friday urging the administration to renew Haiti’s TPS designation for another 18 months, citing ongoing natural disasters, health epidemics and security issues since the 2010 quake. Duke in September ended protected status for citizens of Sudan as of 2018, but extended it for citizens of South Sudan through mid-2019. This month, Duke decided to end the status for Nicaraguan immigrants, but extended the program for Honduran immigrants until July 2018.. Thousands of Nicaraguans and Hondurans received the special status in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America. The Washington Post reported that Kelly pressured Duke to end the program for Hondurans, but Duke denied the reports. | 1 |
3,021 | French businesses seek clarity on Iran nuclear deal | PARIS (Reuters) - French businesses and foreign and finance ministry officials will meet next week as they work together to understand better the consequences of U.S. President Donald Trump s refusal to certify the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Multi-nationals Total and Peugeot are among the most high profile companies to have signed new deals since the accord that provided sanctions relief for Iran and dozens of smaller French firms have also moved in or are looking to tap the Iranian market. According to an invitation sent to companies by the Medef business group, officials from the foreign ministry, finance ministry and France s business office in Tehran will offer on Tuesday an analysis of the consequences of the non-certification by Trump of the accord. European capitals are determined to keep alive an accord that offered Iran an economic lifeline and the Paris government wants to know how its companies might react to the U.S. move. We re still assessing how firms are reacting to the Trump decision, but we are trying to not be overly alarmist with them, said a French diplomatic source. While Trump did not pull the United States out of the agreement, he gave the U.S. Congress 60 days to decide whether to re-impose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact agreed between Iran and six world powers. Despite a long history of commercial, political and social links with Iran that even saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in exile near Paris in 1979, France took one of the hardest lines of the six powers negotiating the nuclear agreement with Iran. Since the deal was agreed, however, France has manoeuvred to deepen economic ties with Tehran and has repeatedly said it believes Iran is fully implementing the nuclear accord. According to a notice on the Medef website, the discussion points include an explanation on the next steps at the U.S. Congress, the position of the accord s other signatories - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union - and the immediate consequences on companies already operating in Iran. | 1 |
3,022 | JUST IN: Mystery Surrounds Obama Appointee Judge Who Recused Herself From Fusion GPS Case Also Handling DNC Corruption in Awan Brothers Case | A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has recused herself from a second case involving Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS.Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, recused herself on Monday from a case involving a dispute over subpoenas issued for Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the dossier.This Obama appointee is like so many others controversial. Change.org has a petition calling for her impeachmentA SUPPORTER COMMENT OF THE PETITION: There is Clear and Present Danger, in our Government and to our Country. Judge Chutkin needs to do her duty, as Sworn by Oath, to let in ALL of the evidence pertaining to Imran Awan and Hina Alvi. As it stands today, 9/12/2017, Judge Chutkin is not doing her duty to protect the interests and lives of the Citizens of The United States. For this reason, I am standing with others, shoulder to shoulder, and calling for the Removal and Impeachment of Federal District Judge Tanya S. Chutkin. Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive accused in the dossier of hacking Democrats computer systems, has sought to subpoena Fusion GPS records and to depose its employees to find out more about the research firm s work on the dossier.Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed for defamation for publishing the dossier earlier this year. He denies the allegations laid out in the document, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele.Chutkan recused herself last month from another case involving Fusion GPS. The firm had filed suit against its bank, TD Bank, to keep it from complying with a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee, which sought Fusion s bank records.Chutkan presided over that case from Oct. 20 to Nov. 9. It was reassigned to Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. Since taking over the case, Leon has indicated that he plans to allow more transparency into the court proceedings involving the battle over Fusion s bank records. He has ordered several documents be unsealed and made public.Chutkan has presided over the case involving the lawsuit against BuzzFeed since Aug. 31. Her replacement is Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who assumed office in October.The reasons for Chutkan s recusals remain a mystery Chutkan refused to comment on the recusal but her work with a medical technology firm also represented by Fusion GPS could be the reason.In any case, this is yet another case of the Obama hand in just about everything that has to do with corruption and intel agencies.Read more: Daily Caller | 0 |
3,023 | U.S. condemns Venezuelan elections as neither free nor fair | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Monday condemned Venezuela s weekend gubernatorial elections as neither free nor fair and vowed to use its economic and diplomatic power to support Venezuelans in restoring democracy in the oil-exporting nation. We condemn the lack of free and fair elections yesterday in Venezuela. The voice of the Venezuelan people was not heard, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. As long as the (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro regime conducts itself as an authoritarian dictatorship, we will work with members of the international community and bring the full weight of American economic and diplomatic power to bear in support of the Venezuelan people as they seek to restore their democracy. | 1 |
3,024 | Malaysia's dissent on Myanmar statement reveals cracks in ASEAN facade | KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Dissent surfaced again in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after Malaysia disavowed a statement issued by the bloc s chairman, the Philippines, as misrepresenting the reality of an exodus of 430,000 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar. The grouping of 10 nations in one of the world s fastest growing regions has long struggled to reconcile conflicting interests in tackling issues such as China s claims over the South China Sea and the crisis facing the Muslim Rohingya. The Philippines, as chair, tolerates the public manifestation of dissenting voices, the Philippine foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday. The move showed a new level of maturity in pushing ASEAN s principle of consensus when dealing with issues affecting national interests, it added. Malaysia had made its position clear in several ASEAN meetings in New York, the ministry said, adding that it had to also take into account the views of other members, however. On Sunday, Malaysia disassociated itself from the ASEAN chairman s statement on the grounds that it misrepresented the reality of the situation and did not identify the Rohingya as one of the affected communities. Myanmar objects to the term Rohingya, saying the Muslims of its western state of Rakhine state are not a distinct ethnic group, but illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Senior diplomats and foreign ministers of ASEAN nations discussed the contents of the statement on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York before it was published, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Malaysian government sources said. No consensus was reached by the ASEAN foreign ministers, however, said two Malaysian government officials aware of the discussions. The chairman s statement released by the Philippines did not reflect Malaysia s concerns, said one of the officials, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. Malaysia has objected once before to a similar statement on the crisis in Myanmar s western Rakhine state, but Sunday s response was unexpected, as the grouping has an overriding policy of non-interference in domestic matters. Myanmar must halt atrocities which have unleashed a full-scale humanitarian crisis, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman urged on Sunday. Viable and long-term solutions to the root causes to the conflict must be found, he said in a statement. Malaysia s dissent, however, only reflects strained ties in ASEAN, said Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in the country s capital. What s truly exceptional here is not Malaysia s move to dissociate itself from the statement, he told Reuters. It s the failure of the Philippines to attempt to reflect the views of all ASEAN member states. In the statement, the foreign ministers condemned the attacks on Myanmar s security forces and all acts of violence which resulted in loss of civilian lives, destruction of homes and displacement of large numbers of people . More than 400 people have died and 430,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine, where an Aug. 25 attack on military and police outposts by Rohingya militants provoked a military offensive the United Nations calls ethic cleansing . | 1 |
3,025 | CATHOLIC BISHOP OUTRAGED Over Hillary’s ANTI-CATHOLIC BIGOTRY: Hillary’s A “Scheming, Robotic Liar With Lifelong Appetite For Power” [VIDEO] | Hillary s been using churches across America as a backdrop to promote the violent Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to pander for black votes. She proves every day how little respect she has for our religious institutions, the Christian community and more specifically, the Catholic church and it s backwards members. Will Catholics finally see the writing on the wall this election, or will they elect a woman who will unquestionably nominate Supreme Court Justices who are hell-bent on destroying our religious rights?Outraged by the anti-Catholic bigotry displayed in leaked Team Clinton emails this week, the powerful Philadelphia bishop blasted both President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for their efforts to undermine church teachings.In his weekly column for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Archbishop Charles Chaput Thursday demanded that Clinton repudiate the emails then added that he doesn t expect her to.Mocking the theme in the emails that Catholics are backward thinking for views on abortion, marriage and other core issues, Chaput wrote, Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails. All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful. Via: Washington Examiner | 0 |
3,026 | [VIDEO] WHY THE RACE WAR IS NOT REALLY ABOUT RACE IT’S “ANARCHY IN ACTION” | The left believes they are winning this war. Radical organizations funded by George Soros and other radical leftists are paying protesters to join anarchists in the war against America. This is a must watch debate with two conservative men who are unafraid to take on one of the mouthpieces of the left and call them out on their agenda.Steve Malzberg from NewsMax TV and Nomiki Konst, the radical executive director of the Accountability Project, joined Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit to discuss the Ferguson mobs and myths and Barack Obama s stellar record on race relations.Nomiki is a committed leftist and accused Donald Trump of being a racist. Steve Malzberg let her have it. We ended with a discussion on how Barack Obama destroyed race relations in this country. Enjoy.Via: Gateway Pundit | 0 |
3,027 | Ryan says tax reform could take longer than healthcare overhaul | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that tax reform will take longer to accomplish than repealing and replacing Obamacare would, saying Congress and the White House were initially closer to agreement on healthcare legislation than on tax policy. “The House has a (tax reform) plan but the Senate doesn’t quite have one yet. They’re working on one. The White House hasn’t nailed it down,” Ryan told an audience in Washington. “So even the three entities aren’t on the same page yet on tax reform,” he added. | 1 |
3,028 | Now We Know What This Top Republican Really Did To Children, And It Is SICK | Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was a sexual predator who attacked at least one child, a fact he covered up while leading the House of Representatives, two heartbeats away from the presidency of the United States.Court documents filed on Friday stated the disgusting details in cold, black and white text.Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million to a person the former House speaker sexually abused when the victim was 14 years old and Hastert worked as a high-school teacher and wrestling coach outside Chicago, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday.The court filing is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse of a 14-year-old.Hastert kept the behavior under wraps even as he worked his way up the political ladder, from the Illinois Legislature through Congress and into the Speaker s office.In October of 2015, Hastert plead guilty to breaking banking laws while trying to secure hush money to keep his abuse quiet. He is currently trying to avoid jail time, with his lawyers having the nerve to claim that his declining health and the public scorn he has received since the abuse came to light is punishment enough.Hastert was part of the Republican-orchestrated impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 that failed to remove him from office for an extramarital affair.Hastert became Speaker of the House in 1999, after Newt Gingrich stepped down due to Republicans losing seats in the 1999 election and the next in line for the office, Bob Livingston, also exposed for having an extramarital affair.It was widely believed that Hastert took his orders from then-Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the two soon worked together to smash existing House rules in order to get Republican advantages during his time at the top.His tenure lasted until 2007, by which time Democrats had taken over the House in large part due to a scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL). making advances towards teenage pages which was not acted upon quickly by Hastert, as well as the Iraq War.Under Hastert, the House operated under what was often described as a culture of corruption in which access and votes were traded for favors, sometimes outright bribes as in the case of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).But few were aware of just how corrupt the man who presided over it all, Dennis Hastert, really was.Featured image via Flickr | 0 |
3,029 | WHEW! AMB JOHN BOLTON Will Make Your Day With Just Two Words: “He’s History” [Video] | .@AmbJohnBolton on Obama legacy: He s history. We re just waiting for the calendar to turn. Any exec order he signs can be reversed #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/UOBwUS5K96 Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 4, 2017 | 0 |
3,030 | How Did An Illegal Immigrant Who Said She Wanted To Eat “White Invaders” Become A Lawyer In U.S.? | The new progressive American dream: An Undocumented, Unafraid, Unapologetic, Queer, Unashamed illegal immigrant, or lawbreaker who practices defending legal cases in our US courtrooms..She s in the United State illegally.She helped cause the immigration crisis happening right now that some are calling an invasion.And now, she s a lawyer.Prerna Lal, a radical leftist and self-described Undocumented, Unafraid, Unapologetic, Queer, Unashamed illegal immigrant who once talked about killing, roasting and eating white invaders bragged on her Twitter account that she s now officially an attorney here in the United States.Lal proves that in Obama s America, not only are there are no legal consequences for being a loud and proud illegal immigrant. Lal seems completely unconcerned about hopping back and forth across our borders at will. In another post on her Twitter page, Lal talks about going back home to her native Fiji.Lal also is one of the people responsible for the current massive influx of children and asulym seekers overwhelming our nation s borders.As reported on Breitbart News in September 2013, Ms. Lal is a respected, published immigration reform activist. She s a prominent Dreamer activist one of the young illegal aliens brought to the United States by their parents who are leading the fight for comprehensive immigration reform.Lal is one of the co-founders of the DreamActivist.org site that Breitbart News has reported gave illegal immigrants a lesson in how to lie about their immigration status. That tactic has commonplace now. Via: The brilliant Lee Stranahan | 0 |
3,031 | U.S. sticks to global transparency initiative after Congress repeal | WASHINGTON/OSLO (Reuters) - The United States remains committed to the “principles and goals” of the global transparency initiative to fight corruption in managing revenues from oil, gas and mineral extraction, it said on Wednesday. There were doubts about U.S. participation in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) after Congress killed the “resource extraction rule” that required companies such as Exxon Mobil to disclose taxes and other fees paid to foreign governments, such as Russia. The EITI, which was founded in 2003, and which the U.S. joined in 2014, sets a global standard for governments to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets, and for companies to report payments made to obtain access to publicly owned resources, as well as other donations. “The (U.S. Interior) Department remains committed to the principles and goals of EITI including transparency and good governance of the extractive sectors...,” Heather Swift, a spokesperson for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, said in an email to Reuters. Industry sources familiar with EITI implementation said the United States was already pulling out in all but name, but could formally remain a member until its progress assessment scheduled to start in April 2018. Azerbaijan left the group in March after the EITI board, chaired by Sweden’s former prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, suspended its membership over concerns about limits on civic freedoms. The EITI initiative was primarily aimed at developing nations and most of its members are in Africa. But Britain, Germany and Norway also joined, while France and Australia have also expressed interest. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and former Republican Senator Richard Lugar, authors of legislation encouraging U.S. participation in EITI, said withdrawal would harm national interests. “Such a retreat is a retreat from our values, which give America its strength and its moral leadership in the world,” they said in a joint statement. Jonas Moberg, head of EITI’s secretariat in Oslo, said the United States continued to be the part of the global initiative, but if it decided to leave, it wouldn’t be the end of the initiative, now being implemented in 51 countries. “Should the administration of President Trump decide to bring an end to EITI implementation, we are not concerned that it would be a decision followed elsewhere,” he added in an email to Reuters. The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), which represents 23 leading mining companies, has said companies that work in EITI member countries will still have to abide by strict disclosure rules, despite the recent U.S. legal changes. | 1 |
3,032 | Republican Strategist Calls Out Trump’s ‘Ball-Washer’ Supporters For Defending Russia | This is an epic rant that will enrage Trump supporters, and it needed to be said.Republican strategist Rick Wilson is not a fan of Donald Trump. He s a real Republican who takes Russian interference in our political process seriously.And on Thursday, he absolutely ripped Trump and his supporters a new one for continuing to defend Russia even as evidence piles up proving that Vladimir Putin helped Trump win. In fact, the CIA and 17 other intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered with the 2016 Election. But Trump and his supporters hate facts, which Wilson hit them with in force.1/ In the course of the 2016 campaign I don t know how many times I was called a traitor to America for not supporting Trump. Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20162/ Of course, these intellectual giants never bothered to understand the specific definition of treason. All opposition to Trump was treason Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20163/ What s closer to treason? Political opposition to a candidate, or siding with a hostile foreign power in the Intel war? Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20164/ Make no mistake; Trump and his lackeys, ball-washers and toadies today clearly demonstrated their allegiance is to Putin. Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20165/ This wasn t Obama playing a game. This was him responding to the IC s rising certainty and fury at the extent of Russia s meddling. Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20166/ Trump is getting sworn in. He s going to be President. If you are more concerned that his wittle feels are hurt that the truth of Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20167/ RUS intel services and leadership wanted Trump, hacked to help Trump, and have deep ties to him and his team then you re the ones Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20168/ flirting with disloyalty to the security of this country well beyond a political disagreement. Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 20169/ You believe in absurd, baroque conspiracy horseshit like Pizzagate, but can t conceive RUS leaders could seek to disrupt an election? Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 201610/ You buy into the wildest, darkest, lunatic theories ( Hillary is a pedophile cannibal! ) but ignore the conclusions of the ENTIRE IC. Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 201611/ You re accepting an ongoing, state-sponsored set of attacks on Americans, American institutions and American security because Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 201612/ you don t want Trump s presidency to have an asterisk next to it, like a ball player with a home run count fueled by steroids and HGH Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 201613/ Tough. It s already there. So here s my question for Trump defenders; how much RUS intervention in our elections is ok with you? Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 30, 2016Trump supporters just got chewed out for willingly being Putin s puppets. The only reason they are defending Russia is because their guy benefited from their meddling. If Hillary Clinton had won with Russia s help, Trump supporters would be singing a completely different tune. They would calling for endless investigations, urging trials for treason, and threatening Russia with war.Trump and his supporters are total hypocrites and they should shamed for life for surrendering the sovereignty of the United States and the integrity of our elections to a foreign power.Featured Image: Zach Gibson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,033 | One More Nazi Resigned From Trump’s White, House; Will Newly Pardoned Arpaio Replace Him? | Just days after Donald Trump advisor and avowed racist alt-right provocateur Steve Bannon was fired, another of Trump s White House Nazis is out.Sebastian Gorka was born in London but lived in Hungary where he worked with racist and anti-semitic groups. He resigned on Friday because Trump apparently hasn t been effective enough in Making America Great White Again. [G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are for now ascendant within the White House, Gorka reportedly wrote in a letter obtained by The Federalist. CNN confirmed the letter. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People s House, he continued. Gorka was seen as one of Trump s staunchest supporters, and often took to TV to rip the media s coverage of the administration.Source: The HillGorka is best known as one of Trump s spokespeople who creeps the hell out of people. Watch Samantha Bee tell you everything you need to know:Donald Trump s White House has had quite the day. He banned transgender people from the military. A Category Four hurricane is about to hit Texas, so Trump loosened regulations on federal flooding standards.In a week when Trump is challenged to prove to the nation that he s not racist, he pardoned Maricopa, Arizona former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of violating a court order to stop racially profiling people. Will Arpaio take Gorka s place?Why not? Trump clearly doesn t care if he s perceived as a racist. That s his base. In his surreal and overly defensive speech he gave in Phoenix this week, he once again brought up the border wall, an issue that Arpaio deeply cares about. Arpaio has long been a supporter of Trump and he s proven that he s willing to thwart the law, just like Trump.Trump and Arpaio aren t new to partnering. Arpaio assigned a fake posse to help in Trump s fake search for President Obama s real birth certificate.Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio would assign a five-man Cold Case Posse to probe the authenticity of Obama s birth certificate, he told Jerome Corsi, the former World Net Daily columnist and Ur-birther. When I get allegations brought to me by the citizens of Maricopa County, I look into the allegations, just like I am doing here, he said at the time.Six months later, Arpaio announced at a press conference that the long-form birth certificate was a computer-generated forgery. That s when Trump took notice. Within a couple weeks of Arpaio s announcement, Trump had printed out an Associated Press article about the charade and handwritten a note to the sheriff. It read:Joe Great going you are the only one with the guts to do this keep up the good fight. Donald TrumpSource: NY MagIn other words, look for Arpaio to be Trump s next hire. Perhaps Homeland Security, or like Gorka, terrorism advisor?Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images. | 0 |
3,034 | Temporary U.S. government funding bill hits snag in Senate | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly passed legislation to keep federal agencies funded until April 28 and avert government shutdowns at the end of this week when existing appropriations expire. By a vote of 326-96, the House passed the legislation that is now before the Senate where it has encountered opposition from Democrats who are upset over the refusal by Republicans to include a long-term extension of expiring healthcare benefits for retired coal miners and their families. Instead, the bill would continue the benefits only until next April. “I’ve never seen anything this callous in my life,” said West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. As a result, the Senate might not be able to vote on the spending bill until sometime this weekend, technically putting the U.S. government into a partial shutdown mode on Saturday. Flint, Michigan, which has endured a two-and-a-half-year struggle with lead-contaminated drinking water, would get access to a $170 million fund for infrastructure improvements and lead poisoning prevention under the bill. The stop-gap funding bill reflects the inability of the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the dozen regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30, 2017, freezing most spending at current levels. Congress was unable to pass them in part because of internal disagreements among Republicans on some of those measures and because Democrats held firm to an earlier budget deal that aims to restrain spending caps on defense as long as those caps were imposed on other domestic programs. Congress likely will end up arguing well into 2017 over spending priorities for the current fiscal year even as it must begin considering funding government operations in fiscal 2018. Congress’ delay in finishing its work also means that President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, will have some say in government spending priorities for the period of April 28-Sept. 30, instead of President Barack Obama. A provision is also embedded in the spending bill to make it easier for Trump to win confirmation of General James Mattis to be defense secretary early next year. Republicans demanded it to help Mattis get around a requirement that the defense secretary be a civilian for seven years before taking the job. Mattis retired from the military in 2013. The bill moving through Congress, as lawmakers try wrapping up their work for the year, contains $5.8 billion for waging military operations against the Islamic State worldwide. | 1 |
3,035 | New U.S. environmental chief says agency can also be pro-jobs | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that America need not choose between jobs and the environment, in a nod to the energy industry, as the White House prepares executive orders that could come as soon as this week to roll back Obama-era regulation. “I believe that we as an agency, and we as a nation, can be both pro-energy and jobs, and pro-environment,” Scott Pruitt said in his first address to staff. “We don’t have to choose between the two.” Critics of the agency have complained that regulations ushered in by former Democratic President Barack Obama have killed thousands of energy jobs by restricting carbon emissions and limiting areas open to coal mining and oil drilling. Democrats, environmental advocates and many of the EPA’s current and former staff worry President Donald Trump’s appointment of Pruitt signals a reversal in America’s progress toward cleaner air and water and fighting global climate change. Both Trump and Pruitt have expressed doubts about climate change, and Trump vowed during his 2016 presidential campaign to pull the United States out of a global pact to fight it. The Republican president has promised to slash environmental rules to help the drilling and mining industries, but without hurting air and water quality. Pruitt sued the agency he now leads more than a dozen times while attorney general of Oklahoma to stop federal rules. He did not mention climate change in his 12-minute speech at the EPA’s headquarters in Washington. He struck a conciliatory tone in the address, saying he would “listen, learn and lead” and that he valued the contributions of career staff. Trump is expected to sign executive orders aimed at reshaping environmental policy as early as this week. Those orders would lift a ban on coal mining leases on federal lands and ease greenhouse gas emissions curbs on electric utilities, according to a report by the Washington Post. They would also require changes to Obama’s Waters of the United States rule that details which waterways fall under federal protection, the report said. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the Washington Post story. Pruitt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week after contentious hearings that focused on his record as the top prosecutor of the oil- and gas-producing state of Oklahoma. Democrats had sought to delay Pruitt’s confirmation over questions about his ties to the oil industry. Some 800 former EPA staff also signed a letter urging senators to reject him, and about 30 current EPA staff joined a protest set up in Chicago by the Sierra Club environmental group. In Oklahoma, a state judge ruled last week that Pruitt would have to turn over emails between his office and energy companies by Tuesday after a watchdog group, the Center for Media and Democracy, sued for their release. The judge will review and perhaps hold back some of the emails before releasing them, a court clerk said. Nicole Cantello, a representative of the union that represents EPA workers, said that despite Pruitt’s record, she was hoping for the best. “One would hope that the administrator would learn about what we do and would then not treat as lightly the EPA’s mission and accomplishments, and what it is required to do under the statutes,” she said. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said it looked forward to working with Pruitt, the administration and Congress “on policies that will keep energy affordable, create jobs, and strengthen our economy.” | 1 |
3,036 | SUNDAY SCREENING: CIA Secret Experiments (2008) | 21st Century Wire says Every Sunday, our editorial team curates another documentary film for 21WIRE readers.This week: Although this is a mainstream and at times, a somewhat sensational depiction of CIA history, the film contains some extremely interesting information and insights regarding the US Central Intelligence Agency s covert program targeting members of the general public which employed the use of Class A and hallucinogenic narcotics in order to develop an array applied behavior science applications to be used in the manipulation of people and the extraction of information under duress. The film also introduces the prospect of RFK assassin, Sirhan Sirhan as a Manchurian candidate. These classified drug-based programs were developed during the height of the Cold War, and who knows how many other similar programs there were, and which one are still running today. Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE | 0 |
3,037 | BEST TWEET OF THE DAY | Why should armed civilians have to protect and defend our US military recruitment centers? Muslim terrorists have made it clear that they intend to target these brave men and women who defend our nation. Is it really too much to ask that we allow them to defend themselves?Civilians, with semi-automatic carbines, eating Chick-fil-A, guarding Marines. Up yours, @WhiteHouse. pic.twitter.com/o5FVTpSqeG Bob Owens (@bob_owens) July 21, 2015h/t Weasel Zippers | 0 |
3,038 | SHERIFF CLARKE CALLS OUT NFL For Latest Move That ‘Kicks Sand In The Face Of Fans’ [Video] | Sheriff Clarke has it right! The NFL wasn t listening to fans a year ago and they re still not listening. As the league sinks lower and lower in ratings, the powers-that-be have just doubled down and said they have no plans to mandate that players stand for our anthem. Clarke says that this latest announcement kicks sand in the face of fans We have to say he s right: @SheriffClarke"The #NFL continues to kick sand in the face of its fans"#NationalAnthemProtests#BoycottNFL #ColinKaepernick#NoFansLeft pic.twitter.com/CpIUVADk03 TRUMP ANOMALY (@ANOMALY1) October 14, 2017New York Post reported:The NFL said on Friday it has no plans to mandate players stand for the US national anthem, but will rather present a possible solution for how to end the controversial protests when it meets with team owners next week.Commissioner Roger Goodell, along with the head of the NFL Players Association, will meet with the owners Oct. 17-18 in New York, where the issue of player protests during the national anthem is expected to command much attention. Goodell has a plan that he is going to present to owners about how to use our platform to both raise awareness and make progress on issues of social justice and equality in this country, NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart said on a conference call.REMEMBER HOW THIS ALL STARTED ONE YEAR AGO:The kneeling all started with a protest against law enforcement! Do not forget that! This is in support of domestic terrorists Black Lives Matter! | 0 |
3,039 | BUSTED! Proof That Trump Jr. Meeting With Russian Lawyer Was A Set-Up…DNC Payoff? [Video] | Lou Dobbs goes after Fusion GPS and their connections to the DNC in the video below The evidence is clear that the Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer was a total set up by Fusion GPS Was the Hillary camp responsible? How involved was the Obama administration? Dobbs names several in the Obama administration who could have been involved in the set-up FUSION GPS LIED ABOUT KNOWING ABOUT MEETING:Fusion GPS responded in a statement: Fusion GPS learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it. Any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is false. BUSTED! MEETING BETWEEN FUSION GPS AND RUSSIAN LAWYER BEFORE AND AFTER:The co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, met with a Russian lawyer before and after a key meeting she had last year with Trump Jr. The contacts shed new light on how closely tied the firm was to Russian interests, at a time when it was financing research to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump.The opposition research firm has faced renewed scrutiny after litigation revealed that the DNC and Hillary Clinton s campaign paid for that research. Congressional Republicans have since questioned whether that politically financed research contributed to the FBI s investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign making Fusion s 2016 contacts with Russian interests all the more relevant.DNC MONEY FUNNELED THROUGH LAW FIRM TO FUSION GPS?The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. Bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom. Court records show email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair s presence together. They also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.Read more: Fox News | 0 |
3,040 | Buffalo Bills Coach Gives Donald Trump The Weirdest Rally Introduction Ever (VIDEO) | Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan has one job, to introduce Donald Trump at his rally in Buffalo, New York. But Ryan s rambling, creepy intro left the audience not knowing whether to laugh or cry.I fairness, Ryan did attempt to set dial expectations down to zero with the opening sentence of his speech, in which he warns: Obviously, we all know I m not a politician, I m not a public speaker. I m just a football coach. The crowd yells, screams and applauds in typical Trump-style frenzy He s just like us! Yeah! But then Ryan moves into the words longest, most meandering personal anecdote all to deliver a joke which raised little more than a trickle of laughter from the crowd. He went all the way back to the 80s, describing different players and a particular play. Ryan takes literally minutes to explain that his then team (the Generals) supplied the ball to a fullback instead of star running back, Herschel Walker, at the goal line.Trump owned the Generals at the time and called Ryan with a warning. The conversation went like this, Ryan said, working up to his pay-off The next time you give the ball to Maurice Carthon instead of Herschel Walker, you re fired! That is a true story. Because no one s tired of The Apprentice jokes yet, right?The grand conclusion to Ryan s speech was meant to be his reasons for endorsing Donald Trump. So hold onto your hats, here it is. He ll say what s on his mind, he said. You ll see people that want to say the same thing, but the big difference is they don t have the courage to say it. Donald Trump certainly has the courage to say it, That feels more like the entry-level requirement to apply for any job in the world the ability to speak. How will he attempt to sell Trump next? With the fact that he s potty-trained?Whelk the Trump rally was boring 11,000 folks to tears in Buffalo, Bernie Sanders was holding a 30,000-strong, energizing rally in Prospect Park over in Brooklyn. It was Hollywood actor Danny DeVito which delivered the introduction for Sanders, and it was somewhat different. I doesn t take a genius to see where the momentum is heading as the race for President heats up.Featured Image via Screengrab | 0 |
3,041 | Philippine lawyers ask Supreme Court to halt 'illegal' war on drugs | MANILA (Reuters) - A group of Philippine lawyers on Wednesday filed an injunction with the Supreme Court to try to stop President Rodrigo Duterte s bloody war on drugs, calling it as an illegal campaign that lets police kill and circumvent legal procedures. The government s directive for the fierce 15-month-old crackdown permits police to negate and neutralise targets, effectively granting them a license to kill suspected users and dealers, without gathering evidence or building a case, the lawyers said. A practice of compiling lists of drug personalities and encouraging citizens to anonymously provide names was tantamount to drawing up a hit list, the petition said. It called for judicial intervention in thousands of cases where Filipinos were killed by police. The present war on drugs being waged by the government is not going to stop illegal drugs, crime and corruption, Jose Manuel Diokno, chairman of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), told a news conference. (It) will only result in the killing of more and more people especially the poor. The petition comes as public scrutiny intensifies on Duterte s signature campaign, which he insists will not stop, regardless of the bloodshed. He says he is prepared to go to jail to protect Filipinos from crimes fueled by addiction. Duterte rejects criticism that his notoriously bellicose public remarks have been interpreted by some police as veiled instructions to kill drug users, with impunity. Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesman Dionardo Carlos said police welcome the filing of the petition before the Supreme Court . He did not elaborate. Though Filipinos are largely supportive of Duterte s iron-fisted approach, recent opinion polls indicate public doubts that his drugs war is above board and effective as the government says. Analysts say unease about the campaign has contributed to Duterte s ratings decline. PNP data shows 3,900 people have been killed in operations in which police say armed suspects violently resisted arrest. Duterte s opponents and activists dispute that and say executions and cover-ups are commonplace, which police deny. The petition by FLAG, which is comprised of around 200 pro-bono human rights lawyers, was filed on behalf of three people whose relatives were killed by police. FLAG has also represented two men who testified before the Senate that they were part of an alleged death squad that killed drug dealers and criminals at Duterte s behest when he was Davao City mayor, long before his presidency. Duterte dismisses the allegation as nonsense. The latest petition seeks to compel the PNP and the interior ministry to halt the campaign and wants killings to be examined by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), which would take charge of evidence, including guns that police say were used by victims. It said house-to-house visits by anti-drugs police followed unverified tip-offs from unknown informants and were not based on evidence. It argues police had no intent to persuade suspects to surrender and would kill anyone who refused to cooperate or denied involvement. The government s war on drugs is short-cutting the justice system by dispensing justice from the barrels of guns, the petition said. | 1 |
3,042 | Eyes on Odinga as Kenya election board CEO takes leave before vote | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s opposition leader Raila Odinga, who says he will boycott a presidential election re-run due next week, said on Friday he would announce a way forward the day before the scheduled poll, raising the possibility he might participate after all. At a memorial in western Kenya for opposition supporters killed in protests against the vote set for Oct. 26, Odinga told his supporters not to attack innocent people including people who support his rival President Uhuru Kenyatta. He did not comment on an announcement by the electoral board chief executive Ezra Chiloba earlier on Friday that he would take three weeks leave. Kenya is holding the re-run after the Supreme Court threw out the result of an Aug. 8 election won by the incumbent Kenyatta but disputed by the challenger Odinga. The opposition leader has refused to participate in the re-run, arguing that reforms were needed first to prevent fraud. The opposition has demanded Chiloba resign, and the announcement that he will not participate in running the vote suggests progress in behind-the-scenes negotiations involving Western diplomats and religious and civil society leaders. Uncertainty over whether Odinga will participate in the election and concerns that it may not proceed peacefully have left Kenya, a traditionally stable Western ally in an often chaotic region, mired in political crisis. The volatile build-up to the Oct. 26 vote has revived memories for Kenyans of ethnically charged violence that killed around 1,200 people after a disputed election in 2007, when Odinga also lost and disputed the result. Chiloba told Reuters that, in light of the opposition s demands, he was going on leave, and that all arrangements for next week s vote were in place. At least 45 people died nationwide in a police crackdown on opposition supporters after the August vote, including a six-month old baby struck on the head by a police baton. With Odinga yet to respond to Chiloba s decision to go on leave, diplomats said they were unsure what would happen next. The crystal ball is very cloudy at the moment, a senior western diplomat in Nairobi told Reuters. The situation is changing by the hour. The electoral board has said next week s election will go ahead. Odinga met its chairman Wafula Chebukati on Thursday and later told reporters that if there were serious consultations and serious reforms, the opposition could review its boycott. Chebukati had said a day earlier that he could not guarantee the election would be free and fair, citing interference from politicians and threats of violence against colleagues. A fellow board member resigned this week after fleeing to the United States, saying she feared for her life. The opposition has held near-daily protests demanding electoral reforms and the sacking of board officials. Police said on Friday four people were killed as a result of their interventions to stop demonstrations. Kenyatta has meanwhile urged Kenyans to come out in large numbers to vote, insisting the ballot be held. On Thursday, he snubbed an invitation to meet Chebukati, saying he would instead spend the time campaigning. In a speech in Nairobi on Friday, Kenyatta said the election must not divide the nation or push it to the brink. Disruptions of the vote by those who thrive in chaos and relish anarchy would not be tolerated, and security forces have been enhanced and appropriately deployed to maintain law and order , he said. | 1 |
3,043 | Highlights: The Trump presidency on March 12 at 8:42 p.m. EST | (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday: Aides to Trump attack the credibility of the nonpartisan agency that will analyze the costs of a replacement for Obamacare, as the White House seeks to quell opposition from many conservative Republicans. Two days before U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was fired, Trump tried to call the high-profile New York prosecutor in what a White House official says was an effort to “thank him for his service and to wish him good luck.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel is controlled and cautious, a physicist from East Germany who takes her time making decisions and has never relished the attention that comes from being Europe’s most powerful leader. Trump is a wealthy real estate magnate from New York who shoots from the hip and enjoys the spotlight. On Tuesday, they meet for the first time. When Trump unveils his budget for the 2018 fiscal year on Thursday, conservative Republicans will be cheering proposed cuts to domestic programs that would pay for a military buildup. But more moderate Republicans are less enthusiastic and worry they could be forced to choose between opposing the president or backing reductions in popular programs such as aid for disabled children and hot meals for the elderly. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn says the Federal Reserve “has been doing a good job” and the Trump administration respects its independence, even if the U.S. central bank raises interest rates this week. | 1 |
3,044 | BREAKING: IT’S “INDEPENDENCE DAY!”…HISTORIC UK BREXIT VOTE…UK To Leave EU Globalist Elite | A shocking victory 53% LEAVE 47% STAYIt was at three o'clock in the morning that it became clear that Leave would win https://t.co/23HHvtL3I9 John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) June 24, 2016Watch HERE to see the outspoken UKIP Party leader, Nigel Farage only months ago destroy EU elitist leaders, Germany s Angela Merkle and France s Francois Hollande on their willingness to open their borders to economic migrants and people who have no intention of assimilating in their countries.As results poured in, a picture emerged of a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north. A lot of people s grievances are coming out and we have got to start listening to them, said deputy Labour Party leader John McDonnell.With more than 16 million of an expected 30 million votes counted, the result was closely split, with the leave ahead by a few hundred thousand votes and remain underperforming analysts expectations. Few remain strongholds are doing better than expected, said John Curtice, a University of Strathclyde political scientist and BBC election analyst. There are far more places where leave are doing better than expected. It may be possible that the experts are going to have egg on their face later on tonight, he said.A vote to leave the EU would destabilize the 28-nation trading bloc, created from the ashes of World War II to keep the peace in Europe. A remain vote would nonetheless leave Britain divided and the EU scrambling to reform.The British pound plunged to a 31-year low on Friday as results in the country s European Union referendum gave the leave side a small but growing lead.The figures delivered a deep shock to financial markets, overturning earlier anticipation of a narrow victory for remain . The pound initially soared as polls closed and two opinion surveys put remain ahead and two leading supporters of the leave campaign said it appeared the pro-EU side had won.But it then suffered one of its biggest one-day falls in history, plummeting from about $1.50 to below $1.35 as results suggested a strong possibility the UK would vote to quit the bloc. As results poured in, a picture emerged of a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north.Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, has declared June 23 Britain s Independence Day . Via: UK Daily Mail Birmingham votes to Leave. Full results: https://t.co/4hLZofNaC7 #EURef pic.twitter.com/6m86YJwgSF BBC Election (@bbcelection) June 24, 2016 Here is a screen shot of the BBC s most recent polling results: For live updates, go here: BBC Nigel Farage had said even if the Leave campaign loses the referendum we will win this war . Nigel Farage is a BIG winner today!The UKIP leader said Eurosceptics had been dismissed as fringey and fruitcakes in the past but would attract around 50% of votes cast.While Remain might edge a win, he said: The Eurosceptic genie is out of the bottle and will not be put back .Of the EU, he said: If we do stay part of this union it s doomed it s finished anyway. The UK voted on Thursday in a referendum on to leave or remain part of the European Union.Outspoken UKIP Party leader Nigel Farage has won! The UK has voted to break free from the globalistVia: BBC | 0 |
3,045 | Trump would favor Senate rule change if Supreme Court choice blocked | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump would favor Senate Republicans changing voting rules to allow a simple majority of the Senate to approve his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court if Democrats block his choice, he said in an interview airing on Thursday. “I would. We have obstructionists,” Trump told Fox News, referring to possible use of the so-called nuclear option that would overturn Senate rules requiring 60 votes to overcome a procedural hurdle, or filibuster, for Supreme Court nominees. There are currently 52 Republican senators in the 100-seat chamber. Trump plans next week to announce his choice to fill the vacancy caused by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. His nominee could restore the decades-long conservative majority on the court. Democrats are seething over the Republican-led Senate’s refusal last year to consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the lifetime post, an action with little precedent in U.S. history. Trump told Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that he had made his choice. “I have made my decision pretty much in my mind, yes. That’s subject to change at the last moment.” Among the front-runners are three conservative jurists: Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Thomas Hardiman, who serves on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and William Pryor, on the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Tuesday, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump that Democrats would fight any nominee they consider to be outside the mainstream. Assuming all 52 Senate Republicans back Trump’s nominee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would either need to lure eight Democrats to his side or change the rules and ban the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. Despite the nuclear option threat, Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, which tracks judicial nominations, said in an email to Reuters that a Democratic filibuster “would still be far better than what Republicans did to Merrick Garland.” More than three years ago, Democrats used their then-majority in the Senate to ban filibusters against presidential nominees other than for the Supreme Court. The move came after Republicans blocked several key Obama nominees. Vice President Mike Pence told Republican lawmakers on Thursday that Trump would nominate a “strict constructionist” to the court, referring to the literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s text without regard to changes in American society. | 1 |
3,046 | CONSERVATIVE OFFERS $20,000 REWARD For Identity Of Anti-Trump Thug Who Sucker-Punched Elderly Trump Supporter [Video] | PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT RHE VIDEO BELOW:Several Trump supporters have been assaulted at rallies but this one is especially sickening. An elderly man gets sucker punched by a thug. A reward is being offered so look closely and hopefully we can nail this thug.We d also like to give a big shout out to the patriot offering the reward of $20,000:I m offering a $20,000 REWARD for the identity of the COWARD who sucker-punched this Trump Supporter in San Jose. RT pic.twitter.com/vJxoi26X4S Thomas Paine (@Thomas1774Paine) If you know anything about this, please report it immediately. When an Anti-Trump thug sucker punched an elderly Trump supporter, he never thought he would be caught on video and now there is a very big award for anyone who knows his identity.A 66-year old Donald Trump supporter was surrounded by Mexican thugs in San Jose whose mayor told police to stand down and let them riot and they followed him for two blocks as he tried to leave the Trump rally there.The man did not want his name released, but he suffered injuries to his right orbital (eye) socket, and required minor surgery.Well now a prominent conservative on Twitter is offering of a $20,000 reward to anyone providing the identity of the thug so he can release it online: | 0 |
3,047 | Exclusive: Trump pulled out of project in ex-Soviet Georgia to avoid conflict of interest - ex-partner | TBILISI (Reuters) - The Trump Organization pulled out of a $250-million real estate project in ex-Soviet Georgia to avoid a potential conflict with Donald Trump’s role as president, Trump’s former business partner in the project told Reuters. The Trump Organization declined to comment on the assertion that it quit the project due to conflict-of-interest concerns, and the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. Since winning election as U.S. president, Donald Trump has said he would take steps to ensure he had no conflict of interests with his business. However, he has given few details on how he will do that. Trump planned to give his brand name to Georgian developer Silk Road Group, to build a 47-storey residential tower in the Georgian Black Sea resort of Batumi, a plan he had announced during his visit to the South Caucasus country in April 2012. SRG and the Trump Organization announced their joint decision to terminate the project last week, but did not elaborate on the reasons. “The only reason (for project termination) was that Mr. Trump was elected as the U.S. president and could not continue business abroad as it would pose a conflict of interest,” Giorgi Ramishvili, SRG head, told Reuters in an interview. “I appreciate that the Trump Organization said in the statement that it had continued to hold our company and Georgia in the highest regard.” Federal law does not prohibit the president’s involvement in private business while in office, even though lawmakers and executive branch officials are subject to conflict-of-interest rules. Nevertheless, Trump has come under pressure from Democrats, and some of his Republican allies, to avoid any conflict of interests. Trump has said he plans to transfer control of his businesses to his oldest three children. Georgia will present the White House with a thorny foreign policy problem. A close U.S. ally seeking membership of NATO, it accuses Russia of propping up separatists in two breakaway regions on its territory. That could complicate Trump’s drive for friendlier relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Asked to comment on the reasons for pulling out of the Georgia project, the Trump Organization sent Reuters a joint statement with SRG announcing the decision but not giving a reason. Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, said the organization stood by its statement and declined to comment on Ramishvili’s assertion the deal was cancelled due to conflict-of-interest concerns. The Trump transition team, which typically defers to the Trump Organization on business issues, did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump Organization has canceled licensing deals in some other countries, including Brazil and Azerbaijan, but has not publicly cited conflict of interest concerns as the reason for those decisions. Ramishvili said his company, one of the largest private investment companies in the South Caucasus, would still go ahead with the Batumi tower project. He said his company was ready to invest not less than the $250 million that was originally planned. “It won’t have Trump’s name, but it may be called the Fifth Avenue Tower as it will look similar to the Trump Tower in New York,” Ramishvili said. Ramishvili said he believed Trump would “keep Georgia on his mind” during his presidency. “I’m sure that President Trump will always remember positive emotions that he had during his visit to our country, when he dubbed Georgia as one of the amazing places in the world,” Ramishvili said. “I’m happy that I’ve brought this iconic figure to Georgia and I’m sure that he will be a great president.” | 1 |
3,048 | U.S. officials try to ease concerns Trump may quit Iran deal | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Trump administration officials said on Sunday that the United States was committed to remaining part of the Iran nuclear accord for now, despite President Donald Trump s criticisms of the deal and his warnings that he might pull out. Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that Tehran is complying with the 2015 nuclear accord intended to increase Iran s accountability in return for the lifting of some economic sanctions. I think right now, you re going to see us stay in the deal, Haley told NBC s Meet the Press. In a speech on Friday, Trump laid out an aggressive approach on Iran and said he would not certify it is complying with the nuclear accord, despite a determination by the United Nations nuclear watchdog that Tehran is meeting its terms. The Republican president threw the issue to the U.S. Congress, which has 60 days to decide whether to reinstate U.S. sanctions. He warned that if we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated. So far, none of the other signatories to the deal - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Iran and the European Union - have cited serious concerns, leaving the United States isolated. In her Meet the Press interview, Haley said the United States was not saying that Iran was in breach of the agreement, but she raised concerns about its activities that are not covered by the pact, including weapons sales and sponsorship of militant groups such as Hezbollah. Haley said that other countries were turning a blind eye to these Iranian activities in order to protect the nuclear agreement. She said the United States needed to weigh a proportionate response to Tehran s actions on the world stage. The goal at the end of the day is to hold Iran accountable, Haley said in the interview, which mainly focused on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the nuclear deal is formally known. Haley and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hammered away at the need to address what they see as shortcomings in the two-year-old international accord while simultaneously placing pressure to rein in Iranian activities outside the scope of that deal. Tillerson, alluding to other signatory countries opposition to reopening the Iran pact, raised the possibility of a second agreement to run parallel to the existing one. Among the areas of concern he mentioned were its sunset provisions and Tehran s ballistic missile program. Haley also said the reason the United States was looking closely at the Iran nuclear deal is because of escalating tensions over North Korea s nuclear weapons development. What we re saying now with Iran is don t let it become the next North Korea. On Friday, Trump also said he was authorizing the U.S. Treasury to sanction Iran s Revolutionary Guards, and on Sunday Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was planning to move ahead. Mnuchin, interviewed on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures, said he has spoken about Iran with his counterparts attending World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in recent days. He did not provide any details on possible sanctions. U.S. Senator Susan Collins, appearing on ABC s This Week, noted that Trump could have taken a more extreme step by withdrawing from the agreement. But in words of support for Trump, the moderate Republican lawmaker said, Instead, he put a spotlight on two troubling deficiencies in the agreement, referring to a lack of limitations on Iran s tests of ballistic missiles and a pathway to developing a nuclear weapon down the road. While many U.S. allies strongly criticized Trump s decision not to recertify the Iran deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the move, saying the current terms of the Iran nuclear accord would allow it to have a nuclear stockpile within a decade. We cannot allow this rogue regime 30 times the size of North Korea s economy to have a nuclear arsenal, Netanyahu said on CBS Face the Nation. | 1 |
3,049 | quiz do you have what it takes to be yodas livein caretaker | email
calling all geniuses
general mills is having an open casting call for toprank positions and theyre looking for the best and brightest minds they can get on the back of select cereal boxes is a brainbusting puzzle that if solved could net you a highranking job at the prestigious fortune company
think youve got what it takes take a look below at the puzzle currently in circulation and see if you can demonstrate the cryptographic savvy to put you on general mills radar
what initially appears to be a wall of random letters is actually a fiendishly complex cipher designed to weed out everyone except the most highly intelligent individuals according to general mills somewhere in that mess of characters are words written in plain english
successful code breakers are encouraged to post their results on social media and tag general mills so that recruiters can contact them with additional instructions what happens after that is unknown with internet anecdotes suggesting everything from applicants being hired on the spot to another battery of tests that narrow down the field of elite candidates even further
if you figure it out let us know | 0 |
3,050 | SUNDAY SCREENING: 24 Hours After Hiroshima (2010) | 21st Century Wire says This week s documentary film curated by our editorial team at 21WIRE. By August 1945, the Allied Manhattan Project had successfully detonated an atomic device in the New Mexico desert and subsequently produced atomic weapons based on two alternate designs. The 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces was equipped with a Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortress that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. In August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAsnaEM_Q8U . Run time: 40 min Director: Pamela Caragol Wells Distribution: National Geographic ExplorerSEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HEREREAD MORE WWII NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire WWII FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@21WIRE.TV | 0 |
3,051 | WATCH SEAN SPICER Slam Hillary With Great Sports Analogy On Election Loss: “Look, I’m a Patriots fan…” [Video] | Sean Spicer gave Hillary Clinton a little dig when he used the analogy of the Falcons vs Patriots game to explain the election last year. You ll love this! It s in response to Clinton s ridiculous claim that the press and Comey were to blame for her loss (see below). She needs to just go away! It s somewhat sad that we re still debating that the president won in the fashion he did Amen to that!The Media Research Center recently published a study showing that 91% of the coverage Donald Trump received during his campaign was considered negative or hostile .Was it even necessary to prove that almost all of candidate Trump s media coverage was negative or hostile compared to Hillary Clinton s? For the most part, the media mocked anyone who even suggested Hillary had a part in the Benghazi attack that took the lives of 4 innocent Americans. They ignored and even laughed at the brave victims who came forward and publicly accused Hillary of enabling her sexual predator husband, while referring to her as a champion of women and girls . The media did everything in their power to push Hillary s email scandal to the bottom of the news pile, but were finally forced to address it when FBI Director James Comey came forward and announced his investigation into her unsecured email server that was being used for official State Department business.After several months of keeping a pretty low profile, Hillary is coming out with excuses about why she lost the election. The timing is a bit suspicious however after an inside account of Hillary s disastrous campaign was just released by an insider who wrote a tell-all book titled Shattered that offers a less than charitable view of the real Hillary Clinton.Watch Hillary in her latest video, as she hilariously blames the press for losing the election:Here s the second part of Hillary s appearance where she tells the crowd she was on her way to victory until FBI Director James Comey ruined it for her:Politico In addition to receiving far more network coverage, the networks spent far more airtime focusing on the personal controversies involving Trump, such as his treatment of women, than controversies surrounding Clinton, such as her email practices or the Clinton Foundation.For the study, MRC analyzed all 588 evening news stories that either discussed or mentioned the presidential campaign on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from July 29 through October 20 (including weekends). Of the total newscasts, the networks devoted 29 percent of their time to the campaign. The study did not include comments from the campaigns or candidates themselves, instead focusing on what the correspondents, anchors, expert commentators, and voters on the street said in order to try and hone in on any sort of slant from the networks.Though neither candidate was necessarily celebrated, Clinton largely just stayed out of the line of fire. Even when they were critical of Hillary Clinton for concealing her pneumonia, for example, or mischaracterizing the FBI investigation of her e-mail server network reporters always maintained a respectful tone in their coverage, the study found. This was not the case with Trump, who was slammed as embodying the politics of fear, or a dangerous and vulgar misogynistic bully who had insulted vast swaths of the American electorate. It doesn t really surprise me, I think most people got the sense that this was a hostile place for Trump, the establishment media, said Rich Noyes, director of research for the MRC. I would say looking at the big picture, the Trump campaign and to a lesser extent Republicans in general wanted this to be a referendum on Obama the Clinton campaign, the Democrats, once Trump was picked wanted this be a referendum on Donald Trump. Television news has for the past 12 weeks has been giving the Democrats the campaign they wanted. | 0 |
3,052 | WATCH: BIll Maher Noticed Something Really Disturbing About Trump’s RNC Speech | The internet went wild mocking Melania Trump this week. That is because of the fact that a large portion of the speech she gave at the Republican National Convention contained an entire section that was stolen from Michelle Obama s speech that she gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.As worthy as that speech was of mockery, Trump s speech was the one that was truly worthy of condemnation. Who better to do that than Bill Maher?During a monologe on Real Time, Maher lambasted the newly officiated GOP presidential candidate s speech. Did you see Donald Trump s speech? If that had been any darker it would have been shot by the police, Maher said.Maher went on to say that: He used the word violence a dozen times, the word murder a half-dozen times and that was just the part about Ted Cruz. I tell you, that was a rough speech. Maher mocked the brutal imagery that Trump used during his speech. We are a shining city on a hill where we will make our last stand against the zombies. And ISIS and illegal immigrants are coming to kill us all. The use of appeals to fear in order to move people to justify violent actions are nothing new at the RNC. However, this year the speeches were particularly disturbing because they were more overt .with their bloodlust this year. They should serve as a reminder of just how dangerous Republicans are. It is more important than ever to oust the GOP from power at every level of government. Trump s speech proved that.You can watch the monolog below in full.Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,053 | Former Equifax chief apologizes to Congress over hack | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former head of Equifax Inc (EFX.N) apologized repeatedly on Tuesday at a congressional hearing for the theft of millions of people’s personal data in a hacking breach, saying it took weeks for the credit bureau to understand the extent of the intrusion. Richard Smith retired last week but the 57-year-old executive led the company over the time of the hack, which Equifax acknowledged in early September. Late on Monday, Equifax said an independent review had increased the estimate of potentially affected U.S. consumers by 2.5 million to 145.5 million. In March, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alerted Equifax to an online gap in security but the company did nothing, said Smith. “The vulnerability remained in an Equifax web application much longer than it should have,” Smith said. “I am here today to apologize to the American people myself.” Equifax keeps a trove of consumer data for banks and other creditors who want to know whether a customer is likely to default. Smith said both technology and human error opened the company’s system to the cyber hack, which has been a calamity for Equifax, costing it about a quarter of its stock market value and leading several top executives to depart. A company employee failed to tell the information team a software vulnerability that hackers could exploit should be fixed, Smith said. Then, a later system scan did not uncover the weak point. Smith said he was notified on July 31 that “suspicious activity had occurred,” after security personnel had already disabled the web application and shut down the hacking. He said he only learned in the middle of August the scope of the stolen data. On Aug. 2, the company alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and retained a law firm and consulting firm to provide advice. Smith notified the board’s lead director on Aug. 22. That timing could help lift suspicions that three executives who sold stock on the first two days of August illegally used insider knowledge of the hack. Smith said the three “honorable men” did not know about the breach at that time. Smith deferred to the FBI on questions of whether the hack had been sponsored by a nation-state. “It’s possible,” he said when asked if the hackers were from another country. | 1 |
3,054 | Trump's Jerusalem decision could help militants: UAE's Sheikh Mohammed | DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital could provide a lifeline to militants after the setbacks they suffered this year, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has warned. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan also said that the UAE hopes that Washington would reconsider its decision. Trump s announcement has sparked widespread opposition across the Middle East, with many warning it could affect Washington s role as a Middle East peace broker. The U.S. move could throw a lifebuoy to terrorist and armed groups, which have begun to lose ground in the region, said Sheikh Mohammed, speaking to a delegation from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The comments were carried in a report on state news agency WAM published late on Saturday. Iraq on Saturday declared final victory over Islamic State after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, while the group is on the back foot in neighboring Syria, where an offensive backed by Russia has driven the group out of most of its strongholds. Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, to be the capital of a state they hope would be emerge from peace talks with Israel. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and regards the area as part of its capital. Sheikh Mohammed said Trump s unilateral decision violates U.N. resolutions, and urged Washington to reconsider its move and work basically in an effective and neutral manner to draft true principles for peace that serve all and realize development and stability in the region , according to WAM. Turning to Yemen, Sheikh Mohammed said the Saudi-led Arab coalition, which includes the UAE, remained committed to a political solution to end the war that began in 2015 when the Iran-aligned Houthis advanced on the southern port city of Aden forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile. But he said that any solution will also not be at the expense of enabling a military militia that operates outside the state authority and posing a direct threat to the security and stability of the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the region at large. | 1 |
3,055 | Trump, Bush and Cruz to be elbow-to-elbow at CBS debate | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly all the U.S. Republican presidential candidates will take the stage at CBS News’ televised debate on Saturday, with Donald Trump flanked by rivals Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, the network said. It will be the ninth televised debate for Republican candidates seeking to represent the party in the November presidential election amid a thinning field that once had more than a dozen candidates. The debate in Greenville, South Carolina, comes as the remaining seven candidates aim to gain momentum heading into the state’s primary on Feb. 20. CBS said front-runner Trump will take center stage flanked by Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, and Bush, a former governor of Florida, making for a potentially heated event between the three men who have had testy exchanges during the campaign. Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore did not meet the network’s criteria to be included, according to the CBS announcement. (Reporting by Susan Heavey and Megan Cassella) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage. | 1 |
3,056 | Not Paying Taxes Doesn’t Make Trump ‘Smart,’ It Makes Him A Shamelessly Un-American Freeloader | Trump, not surprisingly, took the bait during the first showdown between him and Hillary Clinton at the first presidential debate. He admitted to not paying income taxes (because it makes him smart ), and a recent bombshell report from the New York Times may confirm what we already know: he doesn t pay a time in federal income taxes because he, as a brilliant business man, lost almost $1 billion, allowing him to forgo paying federal income taxes for almost 20 years. However, because he refuses to release the rest of his tax returns, no one can confirm nor deny this.When you allegedly skip out on paying your federal income taxes (especially for 20 years), that doesn t make you a smart businessman, that makes you a shameless freeloader. When you skip out on paying your income taxes, you don t pay for:The list goes on and on. It doesn t matter what party one is from (that includes you, Al Sharpton), or how you feel about taxes, we all owe them and we all contribute to this great country called the United States. And to have a presidential candidate be smug enough to say that not contributing to these programs make him smart is an insult to the millions of business owners who play by the rules and pay their fair share. While even illegal immigrants pay $1.1 billion a year in personal income taxes (out of $12 billion overall), the Trump campaign and its merry band of deplorables still think he s done nothing wrong. Maybe he didn t do anything illegal, but just because something is legal doesn t make it right or ethical (we ve heard that for years from Republicans).And the last 18 years aren t the only times Trump has skipped out on paying his fair share. According to the Clinton campaign website, Trump payed zero, or nearly zero, in federal income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991, and 1993. So these 5 years, plus alleged 18 years from 1995 to 2013, means there have been at least 23 years Trump paid virtually nothing. Ask the middle class and lower class how much they paid in 23 years.So don t ever tell me Trump cares about our troops, vets or military ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about tackling the national debt ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about Social Security or our retirees. Because if he really, truly did, he wouldn t take his irresponsible budgeting and turn it into a personal gain for himself at the expense of the American taxpayers. If he truly cared, he would have stepped up and fulfilled his obligation to the country that has given him so much. People who have less than him (and who aren t even citizens) are giving more than he is.People from both sides do this. But the man is running as President of the United States. The other person? She pays her taxes. Go on her website, there s over 15 years of full tax returns on there.I might be able to look past Trump s skipping on taxes for over 20 years if he wasn t such a sleazy businessman. If Trump was actually charitable (when there isn t legal contingencies attached to it), I might be forgiving. If he actually paid his independent contractors (which he doesn t), I might look the other way. If he didn t decimate local economies with his mishandling of money (he s done that several times), this wouldn t be as big an issue.For decades, local communities and economies have been cleaning up the messes he s made with his destructive, greedy behavior. For decades, small businesses have closed up shop, resulting in thousands of job losses, because he refused to pay them what they earned. And all the while this has been going on, we the taxpayers have been subsidizing his tax free lifestyle while he makes billions more. That right there is what s at the heart of this it s not the fact that he used an unfair tax system to his advantage, it s that it s unethical, and it s un-American, and he puts on a facade of caring when everyone knows he d do it again in a heartbeat.There is no difference between Donald Trump and the common small town snake oil salesman, and his supporters are the townspeople being manipulated into believing what he did (and will continue to do) is actually good for them. It s amazing that the same people who complain about lazy minorities and working poor not paying their taxes are all of a sudden A-OK with this guy skipping out on paying billions in taxes for 23 years.Some people can t afford to pay their taxes. Some people misfile their taxes and owe back-pay. But you want to know the difference between these people and Donald Trump? In Trump s own words, these people don t have seven billion fucking dollars in the bank! That little zinger was said in 2011 at his Comedy Central Roast 2011, one of the years Trump wasn t paying federal income taxes, yet he had seven billion f-ing dollars in the bank. Good to know.The 2016 Republican Presidential candidate is officially the Freeloader candidate, and we re all paying for his smart business savvy. I hope it was worth it. And if you think Trump is going to eliminate this little loophole, knowing who his friends in business are, you ve got another thing coming to you.Featured image via Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images | 0 |
3,057 | Factbox: U.S. Congress aims to tackle debt limit, hurricane aid, fund government | (Reuters) - Financial markets have fretted about the fiscal situation in Washington, with deadlines looming in late September and early October to keep the U.S. government open and raise the debt ceiling. As Congress returned on Tuesday, aiding those affected by Hurricane Harvey and responding to President Donald Trump’s decision to scrap a program shielding immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation added to their already-packed agenda. Here is what you need to know about fiscal and other politically connected issues in play this month: The “debt ceiling” is a legal cap on how much money the U.S. government can borrow through bonds and other debt issued by the U.S. Treasury. It now stands at about $19.8 trillion, very close to the actual national debt. Once the ceiling is hit, Congress must raise it. If it does not, the government cannot keep borrowing. This matters because the government spends more than it collects in taxes and Washington continually borrows money to cover its bills. Legislation to raise the debt limit will need to be adopted by early October at the very latest. The Treasury, however, has said that Congress must increase the debt ceiling by Sept. 29. Since March, the Treasury has been using “extraordinary measures” to stave off hitting the ceiling and likely could be stave off default a few more weeks by using such extraordinary measures, analysts have said. If the debt ceiling is not raised and the government can no longer pay its bills, default would result, along with a likely downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. This has never happened before, but there have been some close calls. A standoff in August 2011 cost the country its top-notch bond rating from the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s and caused the most jarring two weeks in financial markets since the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. Congress is supposed to pass annual spending bills around the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30 to fund most of the U.S. government, but disagreements often prevent this. When that happens, lawmakers usually pass a temporary bill extending current spending levels with no changes for a short period. It is expected this will happen again at the end of this month, likely extending current funding levels into December. Congress returned from its long summer recess having only about 12 working days to pass a spending measure, probably a short-term patch, known as a continuing resolution, to keep the government open. If even a short-term patch cannot be agreed upon in Congress, or if the president decides to veto either a long-term or short-term spending measure, the government would shut down. The last time the government shut down was in October 2013 for about two weeks. In the 1990s, 1980s and 1970s, there were 17 shutdowns. Shutdowns hurt federal workers, rattle markets and shake confidence in the United States abroad, but they have done little lasting economic damage. The two move on separate tracks but could get tangled together as some analysts have said that Congress may try to tackle both issues at the same time, perhaps in a single piece of legislation. Passing an initial tranche of federal aid, expected to be about $8 billion, for individuals affected by Hurricane Harvey now tops the congressional agenda. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that raising the debt ceiling, keeping the government open and passing an assistance package for Harvey victims were three “critically important things” that Congress needed to get done quickly. There has been some speculation that Harvey aid could be tied to a short-term continuing resolution or a measure raising the debt ceiling, or that all three could be linked in some way. Separate from Harvey assistance is the National Flood Insurance Program, operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which expires on Sept. 30. The program provides insurance policies for homeowners that cover up to $350,000 in damages. Congressional disagreements over changes to the program, which operates in debt to the Treasury, have complicated plans to restructure the program in the past. It is not yet clear how Harvey, which will generate additional claims made to the cash-strapped program, will affect the timing and scope of its renewal. Trump on Tuesday scrapped an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, that protects from deportation those who were brought illegally to the U.S. when they were children. Trump has delayed implementation of his decision for six months, saying it would give Congress time to figure out a legislative fix that would affect almost 800,000 young people who participate in the program, known as Dreamers. It is not yet clear whether Congress will work to quickly pass a measure affecting the Dreamers or pursue a larger-scale overhaul of the immigration system. The chances that the Republican-led Congress will continue making a priority of repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law are slim after previous efforts ended in defeat. But important Obamacare-related deadlines loom. The Trump administration has been making Obamacare payments to insurers that reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-income Americans on a month-to-month basis and must decide before the end of September whether to make October’s payment. If it does not, Congress could step in to approve the payments with additional legislation. Related to but not a part of Obamacare is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, CHIP, a federal insurance program for millions of lower-income children and pregnant women that requires congressional reauthorization by Sept. 30. CHIP reauthorization is not typically contentious as the program receives bipartisan support. But lobbyists and industry officials have said any healthcare-related legislation has become more complicated in the wake of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace failure. Trump kicked off the new legislative session’s tax reform effort on Tuesday by inviting key Republican leaders to the White House. An outline of the plan being developed could come as early as the week of Sept. 11. Senate Republicans want to use a special process known as budget reconciliation to pass tax reform, because then they would only have to find a simple majority of 51 senators to pass it instead of the 60 votes that typically required in the 100-seat Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats. But to use this process, Republicans will first have to pass a 2018 budget resolution, which they so far have been unable to do. | 1 |
3,058 | Facebook Now Decides What Is Branded Fake News | 21st Century Wire says Facebook knows best?Facebook has begun its rollout of the Disputed Story tag, which allows only ABC News, FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, Snopes and Politifact to determine if a story is fake news .In the following video Stuart J. Hooper delves into the depths of the arrogance that Facebook is now exhibiting with this move, and how the failing mainstream media is only really interested in stopping their main competition the exploding alternative media scene.Watch the video here: READ MORE ON FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Fake News FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
3,059 | Trial of alleged ringleader of Benghazi attack begins in Washington | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors opened their case against Ahmed Abu Khatallah on Monday by telling jurors he orchestrated the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Khatallah has been awaiting trial since 2014, when he was captured by a team of U.S. military and FBI officials in Libya and transported on a 13-day journey to the United States aboard a Navy vessel. In his opening statement in U.S. District court for the District of Columbia, federal prosecutor John Crabb said Khatallah hates America with a vengeance and played a leading role in organizing the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Khatallah, he said, didn t light the fires and he didn t fire the mortars but you will hear he is just as guilty as the men who lit those fires. Khatallah, who face charges including murder and providing material support to terrorists, sat at the table wearing a white shirt and headphones that allowed him to hear an Arabic translation of the proceedings. Defense attorney Jeffrey Robinson denied that his client had anything to do with the planning of the attack. The evidence is going to show that Mr. Abu Khatallah did not participate in the attack, he said. Monday s session included harrowing testimony from Special Agent Scott Wickland, who described how he tried to get Stevens and State Department staffer Sean Smith to safety as they crawled on their bellies through thick, black smoke as fire engulfed the mission. At first I had my hand on the ambassador and we were crawling, he recalled. I was breathing through the last centimeter of air on the ground... and I am yelling to the other guys, Come on! We can make it! And within that 8 meters, they disappeared. Crabb, the prosecutor, also previewed some of the other testimony the jury will hear from witnesses who claim they heard Khatallah discuss his involvement in the attack. One witness, who was later paid $7 million to help the United States lure Khatallah to the spot where he was captured, will tell jurors he heard the defendant say he would have killed all of the Americans that night, Crabb said. Crabb also showed grainy video footage from the night of the attack with images of more than a half-dozen suspected associates of Khatallah. Khatallah appeared in one video as armed militia entered a room that held closely guarded maps and other records. Robinson said his client went to the mission only to see what was happening and warned people to steer clear of the gunfire. He also said some of the government s witnesses are people who lie. The trial, which resumes on Tuesday, is expected to last several weeks. | 1 |
3,060 | Russian Foreign Ministry says latest U.S. sanctions are 'grotesque' | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The latest U.S. sanctions imposed on five Russians and Chechens are grotesque and groundless, and Moscow will hit back with tit-for-tat sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed the new sanctions on the five people, including on Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, for alleged human rights abuses. | 1 |
3,061 | TUCKER CARLSON: How The Left Ruined My Alma Mater [Video] | Tucker Carlson and Jesse Waters both went to Trinity College Who knew! Carlson discussed the downfall of his college from a good college to a leftist indoctrination center Unreal! Please see our latest report on the professor who said let them f*cking die THE PROFESSOR WHO S BEEN A TRINITY FOR 20 YEARS SPEWING HATE SPEECH A Connecticut college professor has created a firestorm for calling white people inhuman a-holes who need to die following last week s shooting attack on congressional Republicans. Professor Johnny Eric Williams is a sociology professor! Who wants to send their child to Trinity College at $61,000 a year to have this jackwagon teach them? This is exactly how college kids are indoctrinated into hating their own race. This is sick and twisted!Trinity College s Johnny Eric Williams social media feed (his twitter feed is now set on private) after the June 14 shooting of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise included racial tirades and commentary calling on minorities to confront white people and end this now, a reference to an alleged system of white supremacy. It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be white will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemF ingDie, the associate professor of sociology said June 18 in a series of Facebook posts. The time is now to confront these inhuman assholes and end this now. The educational watchdog Campus Reform and The Blaze both reached out to the professor for comment Tuesday to no avail. Trinity College offered no statement regarding the professor s action. Instead, the Hartford institution reiterated its right on Facebook to remove comments that are deemed inappropriate, profane, defamatory, or disrespectful to users of the page and/or members of the greater Trinity College community. Mr. Williams Facebook page also featured an anonymous article on Medium accusing Mr. Scalise of being a racist and one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington. If you see [white people] drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each other: do nothing, a June 16 article by Son of Baldwin says. Let. Them. F-ing. Die. And smile a bit when you do. We included the link to Mr. Willians Facebook page but it appears as though he s set his page on private. He is in groups like Black Lives Matter on Facebook we re not surprised by that!Read more: Campus Reform | 0 |
3,062 | Federal Judge Just Gave Attorney General Jeff Sessions A Huge F*ck You | A federal judge just proudly gave Jeff Sessions the middle finger by approving Baltimore s police reforms even after the attorney general had voiced his opposition.The Justice Department began investigating the Baltimore Police Department in 2014 after news reports that they had paid out millions to settle upwards of 100 lawsuits over police brutality and misconduct. Following the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, the investigation intensified. The DOJ, which was still under former President Obama at the time, found widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory practices.Mother Jones reports: Earlier this week, Sessions ordered a review of all consent decrees between police departments and the Justice Department. Department lawyers asked the US district court in Baltimore to put off approving the consent decree for at least 30 days so the new administration could review it. I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city, Sessions said in a scathing statement. Make no mistake, Baltimore is facing a violent crime crisis. On Friday, US District Judge James Bredar told Sessions to go to hell, informing him that the time for negotiating the agreement is over. The case is no longer in a phase where any party is unilaterally entitled to reconsider the terms of the settlement; the parties are bound to each other by their prior agreement, Bredar wrote. The time for negotiating the agreement is over. The only question now is whether the Court needs more time to consider the proposed decree. It does not. According to Sessions, the agreement was put together in a rush at the very end of Obama s presidency and it looks like he is right. The final report was issued last summer but after Trump was elected, officials reportedly scrambled to get everything finalized, and for good reason. Because they managed to complete this particular task before Obama left office, Sessions hands are now tied.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
3,063 | PULITZER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR TONI MORRISON: “I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back” | The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012 had this to say when asked about racism: And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, Is it over? , I will say yes. Age hasn t dimmed the fire in Toni Morrison, 84. The unwavering voice of black America talks about her latest novel and what it will take for racism to be a thing of the past.Toni Morrison is, without a doubt, a world-class novelist. Her work as an editor, however, has received much less attention. Morrison worked at Random House for 20 years, leaving in 1983, just before she set out to write her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved.At her apartment in lower Manhattan, I ask her about the ways in which American literature has changed, and she volunteers that she had something to do with that . But she is not referring to her own fiction. I said, I can t march, I have small children, she tells me. I m not the marching type anyway. So when I went into publishing, I thought, the best I can do is to publish the works of those who are out there like Angela Davis, Huey Newton and the literature. And let it be edited by someone who understands the language, and understands the culture. Last summer Morrison came to the Hay Festival and made three appearances over three days. In the course of those conversations, she touched on this issue a number of times, spinning it out, examining it, not tub-thumping but the opposite, as if there were still nothing conclusive to say. The question of race, she reflected, is not static. You just have to swim in it for a bit .Since then, Eric Garner has been strangled by white policemen on Staten Island, Michael Brown has been shot by white policemen in Ferguson, Walter Scott has been shot by a white policeman in South Carolina. People keep saying, We need to have a conversation about race, she says now. This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back, Morrison says finally. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, Is it over? , I will say yes. Toni Morrison who was then Chloe Wofford grew up understanding none of this. In the small industrial town of Lorain in Ohio, where she was raised, the stories told by her Southern parents seemed unreal. Her father was a welder in the shipyards. Most of their neighbours were European immigrants, and in her high-school yearbook there were only two other black students.Had her father really witnessed a lynching when he was 14? Did they really have separate water fountains for white and coloured people in Georgia? It was only when she went to Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC, that she began to realise how things were. And off-campus, in the late 1940s, the city was segregated. She stole one of the wooden bars used to keep blacks at the back of buses and sent it to her mother as a grim keepsake.Morrison began to feel an affinity, a fascination. What emerged was a career-long project to in her words turn the gaze . She didn t want to write in order to persuade white people, as the abolitionists Frederick Douglass or Solomon Northup had. She wasn t interested in assuming a white person s worldview, like the mid-20th century writer Ralph Ellison ( Invisible to whom? she says of his famous novel The Invisible Man). She didn t want to join in the black power cries of screw whitey . When the revolutionary 1960s turned into the 1970s, she wanted to say, Before we get on to the black is beautiful thing, may I remind you what it was like before, when it was lethal? So she wrote from the point of view of little black girls in her first two books, of 17th-century slaves in Mercy, of a child killed by her mother to save her from suffering in Beloved. She combined the metaphorical stories of her grandparents with the facts on the ground, and arrived at what she calls imaginative resistance . To tell a tale, you have to pick up its pieces, she once suggested, comparing storytellers to Hansel and Gretel. Their momma doesn t want them. They leave a little trail. That trail is language. In words that are simple and cadences that are sometimes incantatory, through action that is both true to life and magical in its habits of thought, Morrison has conveyed a series of black perspectives, thrown her readers into a world they had not previously met in fiction, and realigned American history by choosing the people through whom it might be told.Via: Telegraph UK | 0 |
3,064 | Zimbabwe's Tsvangirai calls on Mugabe to resign | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday President Robert Mugabe should resign in the interest of the country after the military seized power. Mugabe is insisting he remains Zimbabwe s only legitimate ruler and has balked at mediation by a Catholic priest to allow the 93-year-old former guerrilla a graceful exit after a military coup, sources said on Thursday. In the interest of the people, Mr. Robert Mugabe must resign and step down immediately, Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, told a news conference, reading from a statement. | 1 |
3,065 | Trump foundation stops fundraising in New York state | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s charitable foundation has stopped fundraising in New York state, the state attorney general’s office said on Monday, weeks after the office warned that a failure to do so would constitute a “continuing fraud.” The Donald J. Trump Foundation also received an extension to file financial paperwork with the state, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office said in a phone interview. The Trump campaign said in a statement: “The Trump Foundation is cooperating with the Office of the NY AG in its investigation of the Foundation and, given the scope of the NY AG’s requests, is working with the NY AG to respond in a reasonable and timely manner.” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman warned the group last month that it was in violation of a state law requiring charitable organizations that solicit outside donations to register with the office’s Charities Bureau. The organization has been under increased scrutiny following reports in the Washington Post suggesting possible improprieties within the small-scale nonprofit organization. Trump’s campaign has suggested that the probe launched by Schneiderman, a Democrat, was politically motivated. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the Nov. 8 election, also has ties to a charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation. Trump has called it a “pay-to-play” operation in which the former secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, rewarded big donors to the foundation with political access. There has been no evidence that foreign donors to the foundation obtained favors from the State Department while Clinton headed the agency. While some donors were able to obtain meetings with her or senior State Department officials, Clinton has said the fact that they had donated to the foundation did not play a role in her decision to meet with them. | 1 |
3,066 | WATCH: Bill Maher Shuts Down Former RNC Chair’s ‘Bullsh*t Argument’ For Trump (VIDEO) | During a panel segment on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele tried to make a half-hearted case for a Donald Trump administration. The case was shut down instantly by Maher, who had initially asked Steele, What is the bridge too far? What is the point at which you say my country before my nominee? Steele responded by stating clearly that he is a Party man by any measure. He has served as not only the RNC chairman but also as the chairman of Republican committees at every level of politics. Maher jumps in asking Steele if that s the case, then is there really a bridge too far for him. Steele insists that there is and offers this argument: There is a bridge too far. I want to see and I ve been very clear about this since the beginning, I want to see Donald Trump make the kinds of steps I know he is a 70-year-old-man I know he isn t going to change. It s just not in the cards. Here s the rub. I philosophically cannot sit there and go Oh well, because I m so pissed off and cannot stand Donald Trump that I am going to fall in love with Hillary Clinton. That s just not where I am. Maher counters, saying, It s not about Donald Trump, it s about the policies he supports. Maher then goes on to say that he views this election as a referendum on decency, and calls Trump an indecent man. You can watch the segment below.https://youtu.be/3HWAil2XKoY?t=5sMaher is right there is nothing decent about Donald Trump, and by extension, the decency of those who support him is definitely called into question.Featured image from video screenshot | 0 |
3,067 | Trump Told FBI To Kill Stories About His Connections To Putin, They Said No | Quite a bit about the Trump presidency has been unprecedented the amount of hate crimes in the country, the number of white supremacists in the White House, the level of corruption Speaking of corruption, reports are now surfacing that indicate Trump is extremely worried about the numerous investigations into The Donald and his team s connections to Russia.A White House official revealed Thursday that chief of staff Reince Priebus contacted a top FBI official to dispute reports that members of the administration and Trump s campaign staff were in frequent contact with Russian operatives during the election. WDSU reports:The official said Priebus request came after the FBI told the White House it believed a New York Times report last week describing those contacts was not accurate. As of Thursday, the FBI had not stated that position publicly and there was no indication it planned to.The New York Times reported that U.S. agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and members of Trump s 2016 campaign team.Priebus discussion with FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe sparked outrage among some Democrats, who said he was violating policies intended to limit communications between the law enforcement agency and the White House on pending investigations. The White House is simply not permitted to pressure the FBI to make public statements about a pending investigation of the president and his advisers, Michigan Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said of the news.A 2009 memo from then-AG Eric Holder makes it very clear that the Justice Department is only to advise the White House on ongoing investigations when it is important for the performance of the president s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective. The FBI has not made a public statement regarding Trump and his team s Russia connections, but Priebus says that the top levels of the intelligence community have informed him that the allegations are not only grossly overstated, but also wrong. We didn t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to reports an admission that the Trump administration had violated the decade-old rule against such contacts.It is clear at this point that Trump and his friends are scared. Good.Featured image via Getty Images (Pool) | 0 |
3,068 | Guilty As Hell Paul Manafort And Rick Gates Enter ‘Not Guilty’ Pleas In Russian Collusion Scandal (TWEET/VIDEO) | The world is exploding right now due to the news that Donald Trump s second campaign manager, Paul Manafort has been indicted on a litany of felony charges by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort, as well as his business associated and fellow Trump campaign official Rick Gates have been taken into federal custody, but both have laughably entered pleas of not guilty to all kinds of high crimes including really shady stuff like money laundering and conspiracy against their own country.Of course, the Trump White House is in all-out nothing to see here mode. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent her entire Monday briefing lying through her teeth with regards to the Manfort and Gates situation. As if this weren t bad enough for Team Trump, a third person in their orbit has been charged as well, foreign policy adviser George Padadopoulos. It also seems that this gentleman may be flipping on Trump, because he was caught lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is a crime, and is being listed as a cooperating witness, according to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara:Special Counsel Mueller appears to have a cooperating witness, George Papadopoulos. That is significant. Time will tell how significant. Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) October 30, 2017In short, the entire Trump White House is in deep shit. Sarah Sanders can say all day long that this has nothing to do with Trump s campaign, and they had to go flipping it all back to Hillary, even though she is a private citizen:These people are unbelievable. All I know is that this will continue to get closer to Trump and his inner circle, and they ll be removed in due course. Hopefully, the snakes in that pit continue to turn on each other in order to save their own skins, and we can take our country back from these treasonous squatters.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
3,069 | FBI holding back information on Russia probes, Democrat says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey was tight-lipped when asked about investigations into any Russian meddling in the U.S. election on Thursday during a closed-door meeting in Congress, the leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee said. “At this point we know less than a fraction of what the FBI knows,” U.S. Representative Adam Schiff told reporters after Comey briefed the Republican-led committee. On Wednesday, Schiff said the committee would investigate allegations of collusion between Republican Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia as part of its probe into allegations of Russian meddling in the election. But he said the FBI had yet to give the panel a full intelligence briefing and they will call Comey back. “There were very large areas that were walled off, and those walls are going to have to come down if we are going to do our job,” Schiff said. The FBI did not immediately return a request for comment on Schiff’s remarks. Committee members questioned Comey for more than three hours about the scope of the FBI investigations and any individuals who may be the subject of any counterterrorism investigation, Schiff said. “The director declined to answer those questions. It was unclear whether that was a decision he was making on his own or a decision that he is making in consultation with the Department of Justice,” Schiff said. U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia tried to help Trump win the White House in November by discrediting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her party through cyber attacks. Appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Democratic former President Barack Obama in 2013, Comey became the center of controversy during the presidential campaign over his handling of an inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private computer server for government business while she was secretary of state from 2009-13. The White House has dismissed the controversy over ties to Russia as a scam perpetrated by sore losing Democrats. Moscow has denied the claims. Many Democrats said Comey’s decision to disclose that the FBI was examining a new trove of Clinton emails 11 days before the Nov. 8 vote helped hand Trump a victory. Comey has stayed on as FBI director under Trump. Trump fired his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after it emerged that Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence over contacts Flynn had with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office on Jan. 20. The Republican chairman of the committee, Representative Devin Nunes, told reporters there was still no evidence about any other contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. | 1 |
3,070 | Pro-Kurdish opposition leader's trial opens in Turkey | ANKARA (Reuters) - The jailed leader of Turkey s pro-Kurdish opposition was remanded in prison for at least two more months on Thursday at the opening of his trial on terrorism-related charges. Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) who has already been in detention more than a year, was not allowed to appear in court for security reasons and refused to take part via video link. The former human rights lawyer faces up to 142 years in prison in a case closely watched by rights groups and Western governments. The judge ruled he should be kept in detention until the next hearing on Feb 14. This trial bears all the hallmarks of a theater play. It s clear that this case was brought on orders. We demand an immediate end to this injustice, HDP quoted one of Demirtas lawyers as telling the court. The court ruled that Demirtas be kept in jail, in line with the prosecutor s demand. Demirtas was arrested on Nov. 4 last year, one of more than a dozen HDP lawmakers who were detained in a crackdown following last year s attempted coup. A crowd of several hundred gathered to show support for Demirtas in snowy weather outside the court near the capital Ankara. They joined hands and danced around small fires, singing songs in Kurdish. Demirtas is our honor, they chanted. Demirtas and other detained HDP members are mostly accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has conducted a decades-old insurgency in which 40,000 people have been killed. The group is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and Europe. All of the accused deny the charges. The HDP is the third-largest party in Turkey s parliament. The party s other co-leader, Figen Yuksekdag, also jailed pending trial on terrorism charges, was remanded in custody by an Ankara court on Wednesday. Demirtas is held in a jail in the northwestern city of Edirne. The case was to be held within the city of Ankara itself but was moved to the Sincan prison complex outside the capital, two days before the trial, because of security concerns. European parliamentarians, Western diplomats and rights group representatives attended the session in the small court room with a capacity of 120 people. The HDP said 1,250 lawyers sought to defend Demirtas. The HDP said in a statement the indictment largely consists of press releases and speeches Demirtas has made at conferences, panels and similar legal and political activities. The charges aimed at Demirtas included establishing a terrorist organization , spreading terror group propaganda and praising crimes and criminals . Authorities banned protests across Ankara province for the three days until Friday for security reasons after the HDP called for protests to mark the hearing of Demirtas and other party officials, the governor s office said in a statement. About 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended and roughly 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial since last year s failed coup. Rights groups and some Western allies say Erdogan has used the putsch as an excuse to quash dissent. The HDP says as many as 5,000 of its members have been detained. Erdogan says such measures were necessary given the danger represented by the putsch in which 250 people were killed. | 1 |
3,071 | NC Governor Robs Disaster Relief Fund To Hire Lawyers To Defend Trans Bathroom Bill | Can you put a price on bigotry? North Carolina Republicans just did. It s $500,000.North Carolina is a state precariously placed in the danger zones of both hurricanes and tornadoes. It s suffered its fair share of disastrous floods. It s warm enough to be a fertile ground for the mosquitoes experts warn could be spreading the devastating Zika virus. So it s more than just a little crazy that Republican Governor Pat McCrory announced that he would be robbing his state s own disaster relief fund to pay for the defense of his illegal trans bathroom bill.Led by McCrory, state Republicans have diverted half a million dollars from the state s Emergency Response and Disaster Relief fund and say they will use it to hire lawyers to fight tooth-and-nail against the federal government which has deemed the anti-trans bill known as HB2 unconstitutional. Considering how obvious it is that this violates the Civil Rights Act, the money will serve only to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.The law has already cost the state tens of millions of dollars in lost business, boycotts, and bad press. Adding the $500,000 is only going to make things worse. This is particularly dire because the fight against the Zika virus continues to go unfunded at the federal level. A recent bill proposed by Republicans to give some of the funds was shot down by Democrats after they insisted on including an amendment to defund Obamacare. The premise, to take away millions of Americans health insurance during the outbreak of a potential health epidemic was, to put it lightly, repugnant on every level.So rather than get serious at a state level, North Carolina decided to defund itself. It will now head into the eye of the Zika storm with a pitiable amount of money to combat it. Instead, they will pay for a few lawyers to ensure trans people are victimized for just a few months longer. If that doesn t say it all, I don t know what does.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
3,072 | Trump: U.S. will win appeal of judge's travel ban order | WASHINGTON/PALM BEACH, Fla (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said the Justice Department will win an appeal filed late Saturday of a judge’s order lifting a travel ban he had imposed on citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries. “We’ll win. For the safety of the country, we’ll win,” he told reporters at his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, shortly after the Justice Department filed a notice that it intends to appeal the order. Trump’s personal attack on U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle went too far for some who said the president was undermining an institution designed to check the power of the White House and Congress. “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump said on Twitter early on Saturday. Trump has said “extreme vetting” of refugees and immigrants is needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Throughout the day, Trump continued to criticize the decision in tweets. Late Saturday, Trump showed no signs of backing down. “The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and others that do not have our best interests at heart. Bad people are very happy!” he tweeted. As the ban lifted, refugees and thousands of travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who had been stopped in their tracks last weekend by Trump’s executive order scrambled to get flights to quickly enter the United States. The Justice Department did not say when it would file its appeal with the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals of the ruling made by Robart late on Friday that also lifted Trump’s temporary ban imposed on refugee admissions. The judge appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush questioned the constitutionality of Trump’s order. The three-judge panel that will decide whether to immediately block the ruling includes appointees of George W. Bush and two former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Trump’s tweets criticizing the judge’s decision could make it tougher for Justice Department attorneys as they seek to defend the executive order in Washington state and other courts, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, adding that presidents are usually circumspect about commenting on government litigation. “It’s hard for the president to demand that courts respect his inherent authority when he is disrespecting the inherent authority of the judiciary. That certainly tends to poison the well for litigation,” Turley said. U.S. immigration advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and International Refugee Assistance Project on Saturday in a joint statement urged those with now valid visas from the seven nations “to consider rebooking travel to the United States immediately” because the ruling could be overturned or put on hold. A U.S. State Department email reviewed by Reuters said the department is working to begin admitting refugees including Syrians as soon as Monday. It is unusual for a president to attack a member of the judiciary, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check to the power of the executive branch and Congress. Reached by email Saturday, Robart declined comment on Trump’s tweets. Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement Saturday that Trump’s “hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.” “Read the ‘so-called’ Constitution,” tweeted Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee. In an interview with ABC scheduled to air on Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said he did not think that Trump’s criticisms of the judge undermined the separation of powers. “I think the American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them,” Pence said, according to an excerpt of the interview. The court ruling was the first move in what could be months of legal challenges to Trump’s push to clamp down on immigration. His order set off chaos last week at airports across the United States where travelers were stranded and thousands of people gathered to protest. Americans are divided over Trump’s order. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed 49 percent favored it while 41 percent did not. Wes Parker, a retiree from Long Beach, California, held a sign saying “Trump is love” at the Los Angeles International Airport, and said he supported the tighter measures. “We just have to support the travel pause,” said Parker, 62. “If you were a new president coming in, wouldn’t you want what you feel safe with?” Rights groups, Democrats and U.S. allies have condemned the travel ban as discriminatory. On Saturday, there were protests against the immigrant curb in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and other cities. At the White House, hundreds of protesters chanted “Donald, Donald can’t you see? You’re not welcome in D.C.” The sudden reversal of the ban catapulted would-be immigrants back to airports, with uncertainty over how long the window to enter the United States will remain open. In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Fuad Sharef and his family prepared to fly on Saturday to Istanbul and then New York before starting a new life in Nashville, Tennessee. “I am very happy that we are going to travel today. Finally, we made it,” said Sharef, who was stopped from boarding a New York-bound flight last week. The Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday it would return to its normal procedures for screening travelers but that the Justice Department would file for an emergency stay of the order “at the earliest possible time.” Some travelers told Reuters they were cautious about the sudden change. “I will not say if I have hope or not. I wait, watch and then I build my hopes,” said Josephine Abu Assaleh, 60, who was stopped from entering the United States after landing in Philadelphia last week with five members of her family. “We left the matter with the lawyers. When they tell us the decision has been canceled, we will decide whether to go back or not,” she told Reuters in Damascus, speaking by telephone. Virtually all refugees also were barred by Trump’s order, upending the lives of thousands of people who have spent years seeking asylum in the United States. Friday night’s court decision sent refugee advocacy and resettlement agencies scrambling to help people in the pipeline. Iraqi refugee Nizar al-Qassab, 52, told Reuters in Lebanon that his family had been due to travel to the United States for resettlement on Jan. 31. The trip was canceled two days before that and he was now waiting for a phone call from U.N. officials overseeing their case. “It’s in God’s hands,” he said. | 1 |
3,073 | Kremlin-backed broadcaster launches French language news channel in wary Paris | PARIS (Reuters) - The Kremlin-funded Russian broadcaster RT was due to launch its French language news channel on Monday night amid heavy suspicion by the government and President Emmanuel Macron who has dubbed it an organ of propaganda . Macron has led official criticism of RT, formerly known as Russia Today , and openly accused it of sowing disinformation about him via its website and social media during the presidential election earlier this year which he won. RT has denied the allegations and RT France s chief executive Xenia Fedorova, speaking at the channel s new offices in a western Paris suburb, again brushed off criticism, saying that RT stood for news not covered by mainstream media . The channel was being cold-shouldered by Macron and the channel had still not been granted accreditation to cover news conferences inside the French presidential Elysee palace, Fedorova said on Monday a few hours before the channel was due to start broadcasting. There was just one example of when we actually managed to visit. That was actually during the Trump visit to Paris, she added, referring to the visit by the U.S. president last in July. A spokesman for the French government said last week that the current administration was concerned by encroachment on freedom of expression but highlighted that RT was owned by a foreign power. Fedorova brushed off the remarks, citing other well-known international news channels that receive public funding such as BBC World, France 24 or Al Jazeera. RT stands for news that are not covered by the mainstream media, she said. We will keep the platform (open) to perspectives and opinions that are either not covered or silenced. RT France has planned a budget of 20 million euros ($24 million) for its launch and aims to recruit a total of 150 people by the end next year. By comparison, BFM TV, France s number one news channel, started with 15 million euros and now has an annual budget of about 60 million euros. RT s first international channel was launched in December 2005. The network broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish and its programs are viewed by 70 million people in 38 countries, it says. The landscape for news channels is already crowded in France, with four round-the-clock local news channels. Unlike its rivals, RT will not reach all French households via the digital terrestrial television technology. Rather, it can be viewed only online or by subscribers of Iliad s broadband services. Bouygues Telecom is also due to distribute RT France from the end of next February. The two biggest French telecom operators, Orange and Altice s SFR Group, are still in discussions with RT France, the firms said, underscoring the low audience level that RT is likely to have in its first few days. Russia s international news outlets have come under the spotlight since 2016 after being accused of meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Russia has denied interfering in the election. In October, Twitter accused RT and Russian news agency Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) | 1 |
3,074 | Macron's ideas can bolster Franco-German axis: Merkel | TALLINN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the ideas of French President Emmanuel Macron for reform of the European Union on Thursday and said they could form the basis for intensive Franco-German cooperation. Macron offered a sweeping vision for Europe s future in a speech on Tuesday, calling for the EU to cooperate more closely on defense, immigration, tax and social policy, and for the single currency bloc to have its own budget. As far as the proposals were concerned, there was a high level of agreement between German and France. We must still discuss the details, but I am of the firm conviction that Europe can t just stay still but must continue to develop, Merkel told reporters before a meeting with Macron in the Estonian capital Tallinn. Merkel, who was speaking before a gathering of all EU leaders for a summit on Europe s digital economy, said that Europe had an interest in fighting protectionism and was looking to sign free trade agreements with other countries. She also said that Macron had made clear that Germany and France wanted to work closely on harmonizing corporate tax and insolvency law. I think that s very positive. I see a good basis in the speech of the French president for France and Germany to cooperate intensively in future, she said. | 1 |
3,075 | At least 65 media workers killed doing their jobs in 2017: Reporters Without Borders | BERLIN (Reuters) - At least 65 media workers around the world have been killed doing their jobs this year, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday. Among the dead were 50 professional journalists, seven citizen journalists and eight other media workers. The five most dangerous countries were Syria, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. Of those killed, 35 died in regions where armed conflict is ongoing while 30 were killed outside of such areas. Thirty-nine of those killed were targeted for their journalistic work such as reporting on political corruption or organized crime while the other 26 were killed while working due to shelling and bomb attacks, for example. It s alarming that so many journalists were murdered outside of war zones, said Katja Gloger, a board member of Reporters Without Borders. In far too many countries perpetrators can assume they ll get off scot-free if they re violent towards media professionals, she added. The organization said more than 300 media workers were currently in prison, with around half of those in five countries, namely Turkey, China, Syria, Iran and Vietnam. | 1 |
3,076 | North Korea soldier who defected regains consciousness, needs further care | SUWON, South Korea (Reuters) - A North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea in a dash across the border last week has recovered consciousness and is breathing on his own following two operations to extract bullets from his body, the hospital treating him said on Wednesday. The soldier, who requires further intensive care, is cooperating with treatment but is hesitant to speak and shows signs of depression, Ajou University Hospital said in a statement. | 1 |
3,077 | Tanzania investigates ex-minister days after he joins opposition | DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania s tourism minister ordered a corruption investigation into his predecessor on Monday, just two weeks after the former post-holder quit the ruling party and joined the opposition. Hamisi Kigwangalla, in charge of regulating one of Tanzania s most lucrative sectors, told parliament he had asked the anti-corruption watchdog to look into allegations of abuse of office by Lazaro Nyalandu. Nyalandu took to Twitter to deny any wrongdoing and called the announcement a smear campaign meant to stop anyone else jumping ship. He quit the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party on Oct 30 and joined the main opposition CHADEMA, citing rights abuses and a weakening of democracy in the east African nation. Rights groups have accused President John Magufuli s government of cracking down on opposition voices, something it denies. Earlier, the government threatened to disband an opposition-controlled municipal council after the body decided to stay in a pro-democracy organization that the country as a whole had left. The northwestern Kigoma Ujiji Municipal Council, run by the relatively small ACT-Wazalendo party, has decided to remain in the Washington-based Open Government Partnership (OGP) despite the central government s withdrawal. Tanzania joined the OGP in 2011 to promote transparency and accountability in government spending, but withdrew in July, saying it wanted to focus on participation in APRM, a similar peer review system for African governments. At the time it said it wanted to cut down on the time and paperwork involved in taking part in two initiatives. If they (the council) continue to communicate with OGP as they are doing now, the government will take stern measures ... which may include disbanding the municipal council. Don t force us to go there, Tanzania s Good Governance Minister, George Mkuchika, said in parliament. The leader of ACT-Wazalendo criticized the announcement. Forcing it (the municipal council) to withdraw... is unconstitutional because the central government is interfering in the affairs of local government, he said in a statement. | 1 |
3,078 | NO TOILET PAPER?! SOCIALISM IS IN ITS FINAL STAGES FOR VENEZUELA SO BYOTP | Socialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday . It s an extreme situation, says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared. Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without. Camacho says she refuses to buy toilet paper from the black market on principle. In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket, Camacho told Fusion. We don t want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don t have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper at a supermarket . Recently, Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband. So now Camacho s guests could potentially have their toilet paper confiscated before they even make it to the hotel. Shortages, queues, black markets, and official theft. And blaming the CIA. Yes, Venezuela has truly achieved socialism.But what I never understood is this: Why toilet paper? How hard is it to make toilet paper? I can understand a socialist economy having trouble producing decent cars or computers. But toilet paper? And soap? And matches?Sure, it s been said that if you tried communism in the Sahara, you d get a shortage of sand. Still, a shortage of paper seems like a real achievement.Read more: CATO | 0 |
3,079 | Are Trump Supporters Too Dumb To Know They’re Dumb? Science Says “Probably” | How the hell can anybody call themselves intelligent when they re supporting Donald Trump? It s a question that baffles people who are able to think critically, able to read and comprehend both history and current events, and able to see through Trump s thin fa ade of know-it-all-ism and deep into what he is an ignorant, narcissistic, and dangerous conman.Trump supporters not only don t see this, they re happy that there s someone running for president that thinks exactly like them. Take Melanie Austin, of Brownsville, Pennsylvania. She thought her beliefs about Obama being a gay Muslim from Kenya and Michelle being transgender were just fringe beliefs right up until she started hearing similar stuff from Trump and other right-wing extremists.Now she knows she s right about all of this. You can t tell her that she s ignorant and dumb if she can t figure this out for herself. You can t tell her she s delusional. You can sit there with her, and countless others like her, and present facts, figures, charts, studies, and more, all from the most reputable sources there are, and prove that her lord and savior is wrong, and you ll still get shot down.There s more to this than the problem of confirmation bias. Austin gets much of her information from fringe right-wing blogs and conspiracy sites, but that s not all of it. Many of Trump s supporters are seriously too dumb to know they re dumb. It s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it s an unshakeable illusion that you re much smarter, and more skilled and/or knowledgeable, than you really are.People like Austin labor under the illusion that their knowledge about things is at least as good as, if not better than, the actual facts. For these people, though, their knowledge isn t just superior it s superior even to those who have intimate and detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. Trump himself has exemplified this countless times, such as when he claimed he knows more about ISIS than even our military generals do.His fans simply take his word for it, and believe that because he knows, they know. They are literally incapable of seeing that they don t know.To be sure, the Dunning-Kruger effect is present everyone all across the political spectrum, and indeed, in every walk of life. We all overestimate our abilities and knowledge somewhere. However, the effect is especially pronounced in people with limited intellectual and social skills: [P]eople who are unskilled in [intellectual and social domains] suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. So basically, yes, it s possible to be too dumb to realize you re dumb.In four separate studies, people who scored in the bottom quarter on tests involving everything from humor to logic, and even to grammar, grossly overestimated where they thought they would score. They averaged scores in the 12th percentile, while their average estimate of their own scores was the 62nd percentile.The researchers attribute that huge discrepancy to a literal inability to distinguish accuracy from error. Or, to put it another way, those who are the most lacking in skills and knowledge are the least able to see it.Take the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks in 1995 and was caught rather easily. He thought he would get away with it because he rubbed his face with lemon juice, which is used in invisible ink. To test the theory that lemon juice would turn him invisible, he rubbed it on his face, took a Polaroid, and his face wasn t in the picture! So he thought he was safe from security cameras because he could make his face invisible.He was shocked when police caught him because of that, saying, But I wore the juice. He literally couldn t see the ridiculousness of that line of thought. David Dunning, one of the first to catalog the Dunning-Kruger effect (hence its name), has studied human behavior including voter behavior for decades. He penned an op-ed in Politico that explains why this effect is so pronounced in Trump s supporters: It suggests that some voters, especially those facing significant distress in their life, might like some of what they hear from Trump, but they do not know enough to hold him accountable for the serious gaffes he makes. They fail to recognize those gaffes as missteps. Again, the key to the Dunning-Kruger Effect is not that unknowledgeable voters are uninformed; it is that they are often misinformed their heads filled with false data, facts and theories that can lead to misguided conclusions held with tenacious confidence and extreme partisanship, perhaps some that make them nod in agreement with Trump at his rallies. Trump is completely inept, and his supporters are way too poorly-informed to know that he s inept, and too dumb themselves to know how dumb they are. That s why Trump s supporters are so sure they re smart and their president is smart that they won t listen to reason. The effect is strong in these people.Featured image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,080 | McConnell Just ADMITTED The NRA Must Approve Next Supreme Court Justice (VIDEO) | We could already make the assumption that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was making decisions off what the lobbyists in his back pocket are telling him to do, but now it has been confirmed, and in the worst way imaginable.McConnell is literally holding up the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because the NRA doesn t want him. He s keeping one of three branches of government from functioning as it should, because he wants to please the gun lobby over working for the American people.McConnell told Fox News: I can t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm in a lame duck session a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association, the National Federation of Independent Business that represents small businesses that have never taken a position on a Supreme Court appointment before. They re opposed to this guy. I can t imagine that a Republican majority Senate, even if it were soon to be minority, would want to confirm a judge that would move the court dramatically to the left. That s not gonna happen. This is just absolutely unacceptable, and hopefully McConnell is right. Hopefully the Republicans in the Senate will soon be the minority, and we can actually get Congress working for the people again, and not just for the lobbyists with the most money.Watch McConnell bow to the NRA here.Not @TheOnion Mitch McConnell told Fox News that the NRA must approve of the next Supreme Court justice. pic.twitter.com/3sl397RXZR Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 6, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,081 | Bahrain convicts activist's family members, militant suspects | DUBAI (Reuters) - A Bahrain court sentenced three family members of a prominent activist to jail terms on weapons charges on Monday, rights group the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said and accused authorities of using torture to extract confessions. In a separate case, Bahrain s Public Prosecutor announced on Monday that it had sentenced 19 unnamed defendants to prison terms for contacts with a banned party it says is backed by Iran and involved in militant attacks. The cases underscore how authorities in the kingdom is cracking down on perceived threats nearly six years after pro-democracy protests inspired by the Arab Spring were quashed with help from Gulf Arab neighbors. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, BIRD s head of advocacy, said his relatives were convicted based on confessions gained by torture and said the court was persecuting the family for his activism. Alwadaei s mother-in-law Hajer Mansoor and brother-in-law Sayed Nizar Alwadaei were each sentenced to three years in jail for planting a fake bomb, BIRD said, while his cousin Mahmood Marzooq was sentenced to a month and half for obtaining a knife. Representatives of the Bahraini government did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Alwadaei, who is based in Britain, said he believed the case against his relatives was motivated by his human rights work and especially a protest last year in which he took part against the attendance of Bahrain s king at a royal horse show in Britain. I was distraught to see my family suffer torture, persecution and interrogations about my activities ... I will not rest until they are freed, Alwadaei said in a statement. Bahrain, which has a Shi ite Muslim majority population and is ruled by a Sunni royal family, denies clamping down on dissent. The government, citing years of deadly bombing and shooting attacks against its security forces, says it faces a militant threat backed by arch-foe Iran. According to the prosecutor, a court sentenced eight defendants to life terms, nine to 15 years and two for ten years for conspiring with a foreign state and terrorist organisation working for its interests and receiving funds from it to carry out hostile acts and in order to harm national interests. Fifteen of the defendants had their citizenship revoked. The group it cited was the Islamic Wafa Movement, a political party that is banned in Bahrain and which authorities accuse of receiving money and support from Iran. A leader in Wafa, Murtada al-Sanadi, an exiled Bahraini cleric who was named by the United States this year as a specially designated global terrorist and appears to be based in the Iranian city of Qom. | 1 |
3,082 | Second federal judge blocks Trump's curbs on travel to U.S. | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A second U.S. federal judge has blocked parts of President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban on people entering the United States from eight countries, dealing another legal blow to the administration’s third bid to impose travel restrictions. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland, in a ruling issued overnight, said the policy as applied to six majority-Muslim countries likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on religious discrimination. He also ruled the ban ran afoul of immigration law. Trump’s ban would have taken effect on Wednesday but was blocked on Tuesday by a U.S. federal judge in Hawaii in a separate challenge. Together, the pair of rulings set up a high-stakes battle over the president’s executive authority that is expected to ultimately wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump’s latest order targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, as well as certain government officials from Venezuela. Neither of the court rulings lifts the restrictions on North Korea and Venezuela. In the Maryland ruling, Chuang questioned the government’s argument that the restrictions are needed until the affected countries provide more information on travelers to the United States. He cited various statements made by Trump, including his 2015 call for a “total and complete shutdown on Muslims entering the United States.” Chuang wrote that the president’s public statements “not only fail to advance, but instead undermine, the position that the primary purpose of the travel ban now derives from the need to address information sharing deficiencies.” The latest ban, announced last month, was the third version of a policy that targeted Muslim-majority countries but had been restricted by the courts. The Maryland case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents several advocacy groups, including the International Refugee Assistance Project. “Like the two versions before it, President Trump’s latest travel ban is still a Muslim ban at its core. And like the two before it, this one is going down to defeat in the courts,” said ACLU lawyer Omar Jadwat. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu said Hawaii was likely to succeed in proving that the policy violated federal immigration law. The White House called the ruling flawed and said it would appeal. Unlike the Hawaii ruling, the Maryland decision would lift the restrictions only for people with family connections to the United States. White House representatives had no immediate comment. | 1 |
3,083 | The KKK Leader The Media Said ‘Endorsed’ Hillary? Here’s Proof He’s Actually A Trump Voter | Fox News and other right-wing outlets are quivering with glee at the fact that a known Ku Klux Klan leader is endorsing Hillary Clinton. What they AREN T reporting though is this: the guy is actually a Trump supporter. This endorsement is really just an effort to paint Clinton as a racist and damage her brand and her campaign with the dark stain of open and obvious racist terrorism that is the KKK.The outrageous reason for California KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg to endorse the Democratic frontrunner? He thinks Hillary is a secret racist even to the point of being in line with the KKK s views. Quigg told the Telegraph of his Clinton endorsement : She is telling everybody one thing, but she has a hidden agenda. She s telling everybody what they want to hear so she can get elected, because she s Bill Clinton s wife, she s close to the Bushes. Once she s in the presidency, she s going to come out and her true colors are going to show. Border policies are going to be put in place. Our Second Amendment rights that she s saying she s against now, she s not against. She s just our choice for the presidency. So, in other words, this dude is trying to make people think that Hillary Clinton is a racist, immigrant-hating gun nut. Yeah, good luck with that Mr. Quigg. The thing is, though, Quigg s own words show that he isn t truly endorsing Hillary Clinton. In fact, here are his pro-Trump, pro- white power tweets that prove it:@realDonaldTrump You Sir are the only hope we have of getting WHITE AMERICA BACK! WE all will be voting for you! CHURCH OF INVISABLE EMPIRE Wm. Quigg (@GrandDragonCa) September 17, 2015@JohnKerry @StateDept Forget Kerry, America needs Donald Trump if we're ever going to get this Country BACK!!! Wm. Quigg (@GrandDragonCa) September 16, 2015This guys is clearly lying about his Clinton support. He s a Trump supporter through and through, and his reason for that is the fact that most of Trump s racist talking points are straight from the terrifying playbook of one of the world s most infamous and dangerous dictators, Adolf Hitler. This is nothing more than an effort to smear Clinton and make Black voters think twice about following her.Don t fall for this one folks. This guy is a dangerous racist who supports Donald Trump.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons | 0 |
3,084 | U.S. urges passage of Japan proposal to extend probe of chemical weapons attacks in Syria | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Friday urged passage of a U.S.-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution to renew an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria for one month. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, speaking to reporters in a briefing, said the United States was very disappointed in Russia s veto of U.N. Security Council action on the issue on Thursday. Russia separately on Friday rejected the one-month extension proposal crafted by Japan. | 1 |
3,085 | U.S. cyber bill would shift power away from spy agency | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would require the U.S. National Security Agency to inform representatives of other government agencies about security holes it finds in software like the one that allowed last week’s “ransomware” attacks. Under former President Barack Obama, the government created a similar inter-agency review, but it was not required by law and was administered by the NSA itself. The new bill would mandate a review when a government agency discovers a security hole in a computer product and does not want to alert the manufacturer because it hopes to use the flaw to spy on rivals. It also calls for the review process to be chaired by the defense-oriented Department of Homeland Security rather than the NSA, which spends 90 percent of its budget on offensive capabilities and spying. Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced the legislation in the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Striking the balance between U.S. national security and general cyber security is critical, but it’s not easy,” said Senator Schatz in a statement. “This bill strikes that balance.” Tech companies have long criticized the practice of withholding information about software flaws so they can be used by government intelligence agencies for attacks. Hackers attacked 200,000 in more than 150 countries last week using a Microsoft Windows software vulnerability that had been developed by the NSA and later leaked online. Microsoft President Brad Smith harshly criticized government practices on security flaws in the wake of the ransomware attacks. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage,” Smith wrote in a blog post. Agencies like the NSA often have greater incentives to exploit any security holes they find for spying, instead of helping companies protect customers, cyber security experts say. “Do you get to listen to the Chinese politburo chatting and get credit from the president?” said Richard Clayton a cyber-security researcher at the University of Cambridge. “Or do you notify the public to help defend everyone else and get less kudos?” Susan Landau, a cyber security policy expert at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that in putting DHS in charge of the process, the new bill was an effort to put the process “into civilian control.” The new committee’s meetings would still be secret. But once a year it would issue a public version of a secret annual report. The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | 1 |
3,086 | WOW! WASHED UP LIBERAL CHER Uses Tweet About France Terror Attack To Remind Followers She Once Won An Award There | Translation: I m so sorry for your loss but wanted to use this moment to point out I won an award for my acting in Nice!Literate translation of Cher s illiterate tweet: My broken heart (emoji translation) goes out to people of France. I was just THERE. France is the world s Treasure box (heart emoji). Spent MANY (misspelled in tweet) July s SIMCER70 s (not sure what that means). won Cannes (misspelled Cannes) Best Actress for Mask My goes out 2PPL OF FRANCE. I Was Just THERE. France is the worlds Treasure box Spent MANNY JULY S SIMCER70swon Canne Best Actress 4 mask Cher (@cher) July 15, 2016 | 0 |
3,087 | China's future actions could warrant forex manipulator label: Treasury nominee | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury would recommend China be considered a currency manipulator if Beijing began unfairly managing the yuan’s value, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury department, Steven Mnuchin, said on Thursday. Asked in a U.S. Senate hearing if he would recommend Trump formally designate China a currency manipulator if it started manipulating its currency again, Mnuchin said: “I would.” | 1 |
3,088 | Senior GOP Senator Says Trump Is Too Stupid To Collude With Russians | Amid allegations of Russian interference with our elections, Republicans are scrambling, trying to defend the leader of their party. The latest defense, which comes from Lindsey Graham and sort of from Paul Ryan, is that Trump is too stupid to collude with the Russians.After former FBI Director James Comey testified in front of Congress, that yes, Trump did ask him to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The best defense House Speaker Paul Ryan could come up with was that Trump is new at this. He simply didn t know it wasn t cool to pressure the head of the FBI. The President s new at this. He s new to government. So, he probably wasn t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He s just new to this. Pushed further by CNN, Ryan said, I m not saying it s an acceptable excuse. It s just my observation. He s new at government, and so therefore I think that he he is learning as he goes, Ryan said.Source: CNNTeenagers, try that argument next time you get pulled over while driving. On second thought, don t.Now, Sen. Lindsey Graham has taken that argument a step further and said that Trump is too incompetent to have colluded with the Russians. He doesn t believe he did anything wrong with the Russians and I tend to believe him, Graham said on CBS Face the Nation. He can t collude with his own government. Why do you think he is colluding with the Russians? Source: Think ProgressWhat Graham is ignoring is that the fact that Trump is incompetent is likely what made him the most desirable for Russians. Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman says this about Russian president Vladimir Putin s opinion on Trump:They re quite obviously playing Trump. They consider him a stupid, unstrategic politician. Putin is confident that he can manipulate Trump to his advantage, and he should be.In other words, Trump s a useful idiot to them?Exactly. The Kremlin is limited in their knowledge about what s going on in Washington, but they see the chaos and the confusion in Trump s administration. They see the clumsiness, the inexperience. Naturally, they re working to exploit that.Of course, Graham and Ryan know this and that s what s most dangerous of all. While Trump might be too stupid to know that he is a stooge, the Republican Party s cavalier attitude about the fact that Russia might have installed our incompetent Commander-in-Chief is perhaps the most treasonous part of all of this. | 0 |
3,089 | ‘Satanic Giants Built Stonehenge’ Is Now A Thing With Creationists (VIDEO) | There are times I want to just get up from my computer, walk out of my apartment, find a cave in the woods and live there until the human race inevitably wipes itself out. After reading about this Creation scientist expert s scientific bat-shit insane theory about how Stonehenge was built, I was two miles down the road before deciding it would just be easier to sit at home and wait for the end to come.In the meantime, I will torment you with the following:Televangelist Jim Bakker invited Dr. Dennis Lindsay on to his program on Wednesday to discuss Lindsay s latest discovery in the realm of Creation Science: the truth behind Stonehenge.Hold on to your hats: Stonehenge, it turns out, was built by giants who were created by Satan.Lindsay told Bakker that these giants were tools of the devil, who seeks to destroy Israel because he s out to destroy God s creation and his whole plan of redemption and contaminate the human race. Yes, I just deliberately inflicted permanent brain damage on you. No, you will never get those brain cells back. They re gone. Dead. Burned out for all time.After making my eyes bleed with this, it occurs to me that Creationists hate human achievement. The very idea that primitive humans could accomplish the wonders of Stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt infuriates them. Especially if they occurred before or independent of Christianity. These bible-humping freaks have a startlingly low opinion of humanity and would prefer to believe that giants and demons were responsible instead of human ingenuity and genius.Oh, and just to get in a bit of Muslim-bashing (because of course), he referred to the mosque on the Temple Mount (one of the most holy sites in Islam) as a squatter s hut because why stop at being a douche when you can go all the way to raging dickhead? Here s the imbecilic video via Right Wing Watch:The only upside to this entire story is that it made me want to listen to They Might Be Giants so there s that.Featured image via screen capture | 0 |
3,090 | The King Of Anti-Hillary Trolling Is A Near Billionaire Whose Company Was Bought By Facebook | If you ve spent much time on social media, you might notice that almost regardless of the subject, a string of anti-Hillary memes seems to just automatically show up. That s not a coincidence. It s all part of a highly coordinated shitposting designed by billionaire and Oculus founder, 24-year-old Palmer Luckey.Luckey is best known as a boy genius who invented his version of virtual reality goggles, called the Oculus Rift. Facebook bought Luckey s company in 2014 for $2 billion. Forbes estimates that he s worth about $700 million.The epicenter of his trolling seems to come from Reddit, where he uses the pseudonym NimbleRichMan. Luckey is a backer, likely the key backer of a pro-Trump 501(c)(4) charitable social welfare organization that s dedicated to backing Trump. If you think that sounds seriously sketchy, you d be right. According to the IRS, a 501(c)(4) is not supposed to have politics as its primary activity, and any politicking it does is not tax exempt. The Daily Beast published an expose on Thursday, which says in part:Nimble America says it s dedicated to proving that shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real, according to the company s introductory statement, and has taken credit for a billboard its founders say was posted outside of Pittsburgh with a cartoonishly large image of Clinton s face alongside the words Too Big to Jail. We conquered Reddit and drive narrative on social media, conquered the [mainstream media], now it s time to get our most delicious memes in front of Americans whether they like it or not, a representative for the group wrote in an introductory post on Reddit.People on Reddit aren t happy. In fact, the biggest pro-Trump subreddit, r/The_Donald, refused to believe that Luckey was NimbleRichMan, but Luckey insisted that he s just the money behind the idea and well, he did it for a lark because, you know, screwing with the future of the free world is fun! I ve got plenty of money, Luckey added. Money is not my issue. I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time. He prides himself on putting out memes that are so bad that even the Trump campaign wouldn t promote them.Before you think he s a Millennial who is still angry that Bernie Sanders didn t win, think again. He has zero problems with money in politics. The American Revolution was funded by wealthy individuals, NimbleRichMan wrote on Saturday. Luckey confirmed to The Daily Beast he penned the posts under his Reddit pseudonym. The same has been true of many movements for freedom in history. You can t fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any and all means. Luckey isn t just spending money on anti-Hillary memes. He s spending money to support Trump.As an early supporter of @Oculus this makes me sick to my stomach. This is the org @PalmerLuckey is backing Cc @TechCrunch @UploadVR pic.twitter.com/athqtwol7e Cody Brown (@CodyBrown) September 23, 2016This is a message from @PalmerLuckey, the founder of @Oculus. pic.twitter.com/CWlAA8ugMx Cody Brown (@CodyBrown) September 23, 2016Luckey has apparently been banned from Twitter, but that doesn t mean that Nimble America, along with the backing of white supremacist and Breitbart propagandist, Milo Yiannopoulos. They plan on releasing more memes and purchasing billboards.It s not clear if Luckey has maintained any sort of relationship with Facebook or if he has pull with the organization. Let s hope not. While 4Chan, who is responsible for many of the anti-Hillary paid trolls throughout social media, is also associated with r/The_Donald, there s no evidence, at this point, that Luckey is behind financing that movement. Stay tuned, though.Featured image via Bryan Steffy/Getty Images. | 0 |
3,091 | Obama Promises Huge Action In Hacking Scandal, Trump And Putin Are TERRIFIED (VIDEO) | At this point, it s no secret that Russia in a campaign directly spearheaded by Vladimir Putin himself hacked Donald Trump s political opponents for him (at Trump s request) and helped him use that information to secure victory against a clearly superior opponent. While it seems likely that Trump inexplicably will get away with his role, Putin and Russia may not get off so easy if President Obama has anything to say about it. I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing, Obama told NPR on Thursday, adding that some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be. The President (the last legitimate one if Trump has anything to say about it) did not go into more detail, but he seems to be ready to take action before he leaves office on January 20. Obama s options vary, ranging from sanctions to giving Russia a taste of their own medicine with a star-spangled cyber attack of their own. There are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the agencies. And so when I receive a final report, you know, we ll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations, Obama told NPR. But that does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign. Obama says that he has directly confronted Putin about the attack. Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it, he told NPR. Officials confirm that the President made Putin well aware of the many, many possible U.S. responses.An increase in sanctions or a cyberattack against Russia could be very, very big (potentially crippling, if done right) and incredibly uncomfortable for both Putin and his friend Trump.But here s the kicker even though the White House acknowledges that The Donald obviously was aware of and eager to take advantage of the hacks, unless something is done to stop Trump from assuming office any action we take is for naught. Trump, who once tweeted that he hopes Putin will be his new best friend, will be in a position to undo any sanctions or to stop any other U.S. reaction on day one.At this point, we as a nation need to turn to our electors whose one job at the moment is to ensure that a tyrant installed by a foreign power does not take office. If they fail us, may the various gods help us all.Watch the interview below:Featured image via screengrab | 0 |
3,092 | Putin, on Iraqi Kurdistan, says Moscow handles situation with care | MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia was exercising a policy of non-interference and using cautious rhetoric after the independence referendum in Iraq s Kurdistan in order not to explode the situation in the region. Putin, speaking during an energy forum in Moscow, also said that it was in no-one s interest to cut off oil supplies from Iraq s Kurdistan. | 1 |
3,093 | Saudi king receives Palestinian president Abbas | DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Riyadh on Wednesday and reiterated the kingdom s support for the Palestinian people, state news agency SPA reported. The king reassured the Palestinian leader that Saudi Arabia continues to support the right of Palestinians to an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, SPA said. The two leaders also discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories, it said. A dozen Saudi princes and officials also attended the meeting. Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said any decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached would inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. | 1 |
3,094 | A-LIST DEMOCRATS Attend Obama’s Last Taxpayer-Funded Gig At The White House [Video] | Via: TMZOlivia Wilde posed for a black and white selfie with partner Jason Sudeikis Yes, that s David Letterman looking LIKE HE JUST ROLLED OUT OF BED | 0 |
3,095 | massive marine park declared in antarctic ocean | re largest public pensions face trillion hole reply on october am fell at about the same time morality started falling takes a strong bond to stand down the attacks of the devil and his dark forces marriage is a commitment high on gods list one of the goals of the powers that wanna be is to break up families destroy marriage wipe out true love all in the name of controlthey turned this once great nation into a me first society totally opposite of gods commandswe are all seeing and feeling the results logged revand god shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed awaywho am i | 1 |
3,096 | donald trump is the candidate for americans not special interests | gentlemen i am filled to the brim with joy we have successfully thwarted the globalists plans to ruin americaweve fought against the big banks weve fought against the satanic pedophile elites and weve fought against the corrupt mainstream media
but the battle is not over yet we still have much to do if we wish to make america great again this will not be an easy fight for we will certainly face much resistance along the way expect the cucks and liberals to throw temper tantrums as their safe spaces come tumbling down expect the mainstream media to demonize the altright and expect the elites to do everything they can to stop us
they will not stop us thoughno we are far too powerful the wheels of truth do in fact turn slowly but alas they turn and they are growing in speed as we blaze towards victory here are four goals that we must achieve on our path to victory
dismantle the mainstream media
as more and more of us start to wake up the media will begin to sense thisin fact they already have have you wondered why theyve started to cover antihillary stories its because they realize that theyre losing credibility
the mainstream media is very well aware that theyre losing their chokehold on the american publics mind so in a last ditch effort theyre trying to seem unbiased do not buy into their liesits all a giant farce an attempt to regain their former credibility
over the next four years it will be extremely important to start dismantling these outlets its time to call them out for what they are start sharing altright stories on facebook and twitter get our message out there dont watch any mainstream media
dont buy mainstream magazines dont watch their news shows hell dont even pay for cable do everything you can to bleed their pockets dry
as more and more money moves away from the mainstream media it will naturally move towards alternative news sourcessites like return of kings info wars matt forney and danger and play will become the new media
dont expect this to happen at first however in one final cry before its gory death the media will proclaim that there is a new racist xenophobic enemy that helped donald get into office the altright
expect them to demonize us expect them to lie about us to scream and shout and to protest this is fine howeverfor we are antifragile the altright is in a very unique position
any and all hatred towards the altright will be a net win for us why its simple any publicity is good publicity a single mention of an alternative news site by the msm can and often does net us tens of thousands of new viewers
in other words if they ignore us we continue to grow in power if they attack us we grow even faster they cant win
drain the swamp
everything that weve done up to this point to get donald in office will be completely pointless if we dont drain the swamp this is our one chancewe have four years to do this
in order for us to bring about permanent change in this country we need to hold the cucks and libtards accountable for their actions anyone who pushed the proislam agenda rape culture or feminazi philosophy must be called out for the traitors that they are
the elites the corrupt bankers and the globalists must all be brought to light in order for us to bring about true change and to prevent a globalist dictatorship from happening in the near future we must ensure that at least of americans are aware of the elites conspiracy by the next election
this is a grass roots movement and it is growing in powerbut we must take away power from those who tried so hard to fight us now is the time to cause a ruckus and email your representatives now is the time to demand hillary be thrown in prison
every single person involved in hillary clintons private email server must be thrown in jail pedophiles and satanists such as anthony weiner and marina abramovic and traitors such as huma abedin and comey must be thrown in jail for their crimes
now is the time to clear out the murky watersto sift through the dirt and rotten garbage lurking below i believe that once all is said and done america will enter into a new age of prosperity the patriarchy will return
normalize straight males
for too long have men been oppressed by the very civilization which we created we have let the sjws and culture warriors back us into a corner but weve finally started to fight back
more and more men upon being exposed to the manosphere are starting to wake up and take the red pill were starting to realize as a nation that there is no reason to be ashamed of being white or being a man
once we start to dismantle the mainstream media and drain the swamp most of this should happen naturallyit was only through the artificial social engineering that being a white male became a crime
but we cant stop hereits time to start slowly redpilling our bluepilled friends the best way to do this is simply through osmosis dont try to convince them with logic because they did not arrive at a bluepilled position through logic they did so through emotion
simply be a beacon of masculinity be confident in yourself be assertive and dont cave into ridiculous hr requests or political correctness social pressures again once the mainstream media is dismantled and the manosphere grows in popularity our movement will gain strength exponentially
the normalization of males especially white males is essential for our culture to continuethe second that we started to become ashamed of our heritage and of our nationality was the second that the cucks started closing in we cannot give them an inch or they will take a mile
this is not to say that our country shouldnt accept immigrantsif they go through the legal process how did it get so far that it became socially unacceptable to shame illegal immigrants again illegal immigrants like i said it got this way due to an overwhelming amount of white guilt do not be ashamed of your heritage men
we have made a gigantic step towards national sovereignty with donald trump being elected as president and we cannot let this victory go in vain we must push onward and continue to normalize what is normal being a straight male white or note should be the norm not being a transgender greenhaired sjw
get the law on our side
as our grass roots movement picks up more and more steam i believe that the pressure we create will naturally push judges and lawmakers to change our corrupt legal system
first things first we must create laws that treat men and women as they should be treated too many laws are skewed in favor of women now that women have the right to work we must remove alimonyits ridiculous that men should have to pay a month to their exwives because she got used to a certain living situation
we must remove corrupt antimale divorce laws ridiculous hatespeech laws which infringe on our freedom of speech and ultimately sjw rape laws
i along with many other rok men have been falsely accused of rape its time to remove all of these ridiculous laws that make it illegal for men to simply talk to women and that were built into the system by the elites in order to wage war against men
the law should encourage freedom of speech the fact that twitter has not been held accountable for banning milo yiannopoulos is absolutely absurd information and social media platforms should be held to the same standards that the american people are
google needs to stop censoring search resultsand if they dont its time for us to create laws against this type of behavior allowing google to filter search results is like a regression back to medieval times for one entity to selectively edit our version of reality is unacceptable
most importantly judges and lawmakers that have taken bribes should be thrown in jailindefinitely anyone who took a donation from george soros or any other member of the bilderberg group should be imprisoned for crimes of treason
summary
we are on the path towards victory menbut it will not be without many hiccups the first thing that the mainstream media will do is demonize the altright but again this will only make us stronger it will expose our view points to a larger audience
expect it to get darker just before the dawn expect feminists sjws cucks and libtards to protest and scream and shoutbut it will all be in vain too many men are starting to wake up too many men are starting to see the lies that have been shoved down our throats and there is no going back
the next four years will be more important than ever our primary objective is to dismantle the mainstream media through natural means its time for them to be exposed as the liars that they are simply eliminating the msm will be most of the battleremember this is a war of information and when the altright starts to control the news there will be sanity
we must also focus on draining the swamp we must rid our corrupt political establishment of the people whove betrayed us we must normalize the family unit and white menno longer shall we feel ashamed of our gender or sexual orientation
then from here the laws must change remember this will not be easy there will be much resistance along the way but weve come this far weve beat all odds and elected trump as the president of our nationand its time to make america great again
read more are you on pace to reach your goals | 1 |
3,097 | Trump leans toward replacing Fed chief if he wins White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump would be inclined to replace Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen if he wins the White House despite supporting the U.S. central bank’s efforts to keep interest rates low, he told Fortune magazine. “I think she’s done a serviceable job,” Trump said in an interview published late on Tuesday, as the billionaire real estate mogul moved a step closer to becoming his party’s nominee with a resounding win in New York state’s Republican nominating contest. “I don’t want to comment on reappointment, but I would be more inclined to put other people in.” Yellen was nominated for the top Fed job by Democratic President Barack Obama, and began her four-year term in February 2014. Nominees need Senate approval, after which they are protected from political interference until their terms expire. In his interview, Trump said he “absolutely” backed efforts to diminish the Fed’s power and allow Congress to launch so-called “audits,” or outside reviews, of its policy decisions. He also backed away from his pledge to erase the more than $19 trillion in U.S. debt in eight years. Representatives for the Fed declined to comment on the report. Were Yellen to step down in 2018 after only one term, it would be the shortest Fed chairmanship since 1979. Since then, Fed chairs from Paul Volcker to Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernanke, Yellen’s predecessor, were reappointed by at least one incoming U.S. president. Trump said he favored the low interest rate environment and that raising rates would be a blow to the U.S. economy. Trump had accused the Fed in November of keeping rates low to help Obama, an assertion the White House rejected. “The best thing we have going for us is that interest rates are so low,” the New York billionaire businessman told Fortune. “If rates are 3 percent or 4 percent or whatever, you start adding that kind of number to an already reasonably crippled economy in terms of what we produce, that number is a very scary number,” Trump added. The Fed cut its key overnight lending rate to near zero in late 2008 and kept it there for the next seven years to help the economy recover from the financial crisis. It raised rates by a quarter of a percentage point last December, its first hike in nearly a decade. Trump told Fortune he would take advantage of lower rates to refinance the country’s debt and boost government spending on infrastructure and the military. The magazine will publish a full transcript of the interview later this week. He moved away from comments he made to the Washington Post earlier this month pledging to eliminate the national debt “over a period of eight years.” Instead, Trump told Fortune he could tackle a portion of it. “You could pay off a percentage of it, depending on how aggressive you want to be,” he said. “I’d rather not be all that aggressive. I’d rather not have debt, but we’re stuck with it.” Trump’s main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has said he would audit the Fed and move it to a rules-based monetary policy. Other U.S. presidential candidates, including Democrat Bernie Sanders, have also pledged to change the Fed. | 1 |
3,098 | Wounded Vet’s Mom Forced To Sell Rare Handwritten Letter From Obama Promising To Care For Son…To Pay For His Medical Costs [VIDEO] | It just doesn t get any worse than this. The idea that we aren t giving our veterans the best health care available is beyond the pale A wounded Veteran and single father of three suffered burns when he bravely crawled back into a truck fire to save two soldiers who eventually died.The Veteran s mother is now selling a letter she received from President Obama to help pay for his healthcare costs. David McKimmey is likely to lose his leg, the Washington Examiner reported.https://youtu.be/yJrEOFeZIjcThe letter from Obama written in 2009 promised the family of veteran David McKimmey to do everything we can over the next four years to support your family. McKimmey was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor for his heroic acts. The letter will go up for auction, the family says. Via: 911 | 0 |
3,099 | South Korea's Moon says cannot recognize North Korea as nuclear state | SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - South Korea will never tolerate North Korea as a nuclear state, nor will Seoul have nuclear weapons, President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday, as China pledged to work on denuclearization after setting aside a dispute with Seoul over an anti-missile system. The North Korea nuclear crisis will take center stage when U.S. President Donald Trump begins a trip to Asia at the end of the week and diplomacy has being ramping up ahead of that visit. A series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent months has raised fears about an armed conflict. Speaking to parliament, Moon said there can be no military action on the Korean peninsula without the South s consent, adding the government will continue working for peace on the peninsula. According to the joint denuclearization declaration made by North and South Korea, we cannot tolerate or recognize North Korea as a nuclear state. We too, will not develop nuclear (weapons) or own them, he said. Our government was launched in the most serious of times in terms of security. The government is making efforts to stably manage the situation it faces as well as to bring about peace on the Korean peninsula. China s foreign ministry said Beijing and Seoul will continue to use diplomatic means to address the Korean peninsula issue, after a meeting in Beijing between Lee Do-hoon, South Korea s representatives of stalled six-party nuclear talks, and his Chinese counterpart, Kong Xuanyou. Moon s remarks and China s statement came a day after China and South Korea agreed to normalize relations to end a year-long standoff over the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The installation of THAAD had angered China, which feared its powerful radar could see deep into China. South Korea s tourism, cosmetics and entertainment industries bore the brunt of a Chinese backlash, although Beijing has never specifically linked that to the THAAD deployment. North Korea s state media had no comment on the shift in ties between South Korea and China as of midday on Wednesday. It has not engaged in missile tests since mid-September or any nuclear tests since its biggest one early that month. A senior Blue House official had said warmer bilateral ties had seemed to come about from better trust in Seoul by Beijing, which has expressed concerns regarding possible additional deployments of a U.S. anti-missile defense system and military cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan. Earlier this week, South Korea s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa had said South Korea has no intention to join a U.S. missile-defense system in the region and would not host additional THAAD batteries. South Korea would not enter any trilateral military alliance with the United States and Japan, Kang added. The United States is deciding whether three aircraft carriers currently in the Asia Pacific will carry out an exercise to coincide with Trump s trip to the region, two U.S. officials said. Japan s navy is considering sending one or more ships to the exercise if it is held, a Japanese government source said. Trump s trip includes Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing but he will not go to the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the border of North Korea and South Korea, a senior White House official said. China s top newspaper, the Communist Party s official People s Daily, wrote in a commentary on Wednesday that China expected South Korea to take seriously its responsibility to protect regional peace now that they had set relations back on the correct track. The appropriate handling of the THAAD issue by China and South Korea can provide an opportunity for both countries to increase cooperation and communication on the peninsula issue, it said. But influential state-run tabloid the Global Times warned there would not be an immediate improvement in cultural and business ties, with South Korean firms having to make an effort to win back Chinese customers. Whether or not Chinese consumers buy South Korean products is not totally up the Chinese government, it said in an editorial. The rapprochement meant both countries were able to walk away with gains, said John Delury, professor at Seoul s Yonsei University. It is arguably Moon s first foreign policy breakthrough, giving South Korea s economy a boost and enhancing his geopolitical leverage by strengthening the relationship with China, said Delury. But Xi can also claim a victory - he made his point that Seoul needs to factor China s interests more seriously into its security posture, at least when it comes to things like missile defense that can alter the regional balance of power. | 1 |
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