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LOS ANGELES — When “Zoot Suit” first opened at the Mark Taper Forum in 1978, little about the production screamed hit. Much of the cast had scant acting experience. The story itself was a Brechtian take on a relatively obscure unsolved murder in 1942 Los Angeles its climax involved a humiliating assault on a Latino man by racist United States servicemen. Just a decade earlier, its writer and director, Luis Valdez, was creating short skits for audiences of striking farmworkers in the fields of the Central Valley in California. But audiences kept coming, and coming, selling out show after packed show. Fans came one week and returned with their families the next Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead is said to have seen the play 22 times. After running for 11 months to audiences, first at the Taper and then at the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood, “Zoot Suit” moved to New York’s Winter Garden in 1979, where it became the first Chicano theatrical production on Broadway. Mr. Valdez then directed a version, which was released in 1982. “We had no idea any of this would happen, man,” he said. “It was like this huge explosion. ” On Tuesday, Jan. 31, a revival of “Zoot Suit” begins its run at the Taper, kicking off the theater’s season. A fantastical reimagining of the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, in which 12 Latino youths were unjustly convicted by a biased judge, “Zoot Suit” features racist prosecutors and lovelorn kids, lively swing tunes and family squabbles. The infamous Zoot Suit riots, a series of racially motivated attacks against youths in the summer of 1943, figures in as well. Looming over it all is El Pachuco, a mythical trickster figure who can stop time and materialize wherever he pleases (think Prospero, but with a lot more panache) and “The Press,” a barking headline made flesh. The show is both a homecoming and a reunion. Four decades after its world premiere, Mr. Valdez, who is 76, is back as director. Daniel Valdez (Luis’s brother) and Rose Portillo, who in 1978 portrayed Henry Reyna and Della Barrios, the young lovers at the heart of the play, this time around play Henry’s parents. “I got kind of choked up the first time I heard those words all over again,” Daniel Valdez said. “Coming back to it is a little like coming home. ” In the intervening years, Latino playwrights, from Cherrie Moraga to Luis Alfaro, have made their mark on American theater. Karen Zacarias started the Young Playwrights’ Theater in 1995 in 2003, Nilo Cruz became the first Latino to win a Pulitzer for drama. Then there’s Miranda. But no other Latino play has had the cultural impact of “Zoot Suit,” not to mention its influence on generations of subsequent Latino playwrights. On a recent morning, the cast rehearsed a scene set in a Los Angeles dance hall. Several men wore trousers, long watch chains dangling from their belts the women sported tights and sneakers. The men were strutting, the women spinning, but when a rival gang arrived, colorful curses flew, then fists, and before you knew it, the switchblades were out. El Pachuco snapped his fingers, stopping time just as Henry was about to cut his rival’s throat. “That’s exactly what the play needs right now,” he said. “Two more Mexicans killing each other. ” The relevance of this scene in the Trump era isn’t lost on the cast and crew. Much of the play focuses on how are vilified in the United States as violent criminals and perpetual outsiders — “this ain’t your country,” El Pachuco tells Henry early on. “That was part of the reason I felt that I had to be in this production,” said Demián Bichir, the actor who plays El Pachuco. “There couldn’t be a better opportunity for the arts to respond to so much nonsense and ignorance and stupidity. ” (When not acting, Mr. Bichir, who is Mexican, is an American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for immigration rights.) For Luis Valdez, mixing the political and the theatrical is nothing new. Dressed all in black, his voice a rich baritone, he recalled the years that led up to “Zoot Suit. ” In 1965, he founded El Teatro Campesino, a theater troupe and “cultural arm” of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers. The group staged skits, which he wrote and directed, in halls and on the backs of flatbed trucks. After the troupe left the farm workers’ group in 1967, Mr. Valdez continued to write plays that examined the Chicano experience, including “Bandito!” and “I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges!” “I call him the father of contemporary Chicano theater,” said Jorge Huerta, who wrote the book “Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms. ” “Not only did he found the Teatro Campesino, the teatro inspired other teatros, an entire movement from the West Coast to the Midwest all the way to the Dakotas. ” In 1977, Mr. Valdez met with Gordon Davidson, who was the director of the Taper then, about creating something for its New Theater for Now series. He arrived clutching a pamphlet about the Sleepy Lagoon murder that he had gotten years earlier from David Sanchez, the founder of the organization the Brown Berets. “He essentially gave me carte blanche,” he said. Mr. Valdez set to work on the play, combining elements of Aztec mythology (Tezcatlipoca’s colors, for example, mirror El Pachuco’s zoot suit) prison letters from the defendants culled from U. C. L. A. Library’s special collections department and court transcripts. In one courtroom sequence from the 1982 film, a police officer testifies that pachucos have an “inborn” tendency for violence inherited from “the bloodthirsty Aztecs. ” “I took that from the transcripts,” Mr. Valdez said. “I didn’t invent that stuff. That wasn’t agitprop. ” “The Second Zoot Suit Riot begins,” an ad in a local newspaper declared in 1978. “That was probably hatched right here in this office,” Mr. Valdez laughed. “But there was a rush for tickets, so in that sense, it was a riot. A good riot. An artistic riot. ” The play helped start the career of Edward James Olmos, who played El Pachuco in Los Angeles and on Broadway, as well as in the film. Mr. Valdez soon shifted his focus to movies as well — his 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic “La Bamba” was both a critical and hit — but he’s still best known for “Zoot Suit,” which broke Los Angeles theater records for ticket sales during its first run. The Taper, which also hosted the world premiere productions of “Angels in America” and “Children of a Lesser God,” hopes to create a similar buzz this time around. Univision and Hoy sponsored a party at the theater to celebrate the first day of ticket sales, complete with dancers and live swing music. The AltaMed Art Collection in Los Angeles is lending art that will be on display in the theater lobby. Strong sales have prompted the Taper to extend the show’s run another week, through March 19 even after adding the additional shows, 35 high school groups remain on a waiting list to see special student matinees. “We do shows a year, and you can feel the excitement among the staff about having this show rehearse in our building,” said Michael Ritchie, artistic director of the Center Theater Group, which includes the Taper. “You can feel the buzz in the hallways. ” Those hallways aren’t far from many places, historic and infamous, brought to life in the play. Los Angeles’s Hall of Justice, where the young men were tried and convicted, is two blocks away flash points of the riots erupted in the area. “Some of the riots actually took place very near where we’re rehearsing,” Daniel Valdez said. “Temple and Main, right down the street. ” A big difference between this production and the 1978 one is the level of the cast’s experience. “In those days, there weren’t many Latinos looking for a career in theater, so we were working with a lot of actors,” Daniel Valdez added. “We had people who had never really been onstage. Now, watching the casting calls and the dance auditions, they’re absolutely amazing. ” The nationwide call drew 800 actors for 25 parts, and most cast members have backgrounds in film and TV. Mr. Bichir (“The Hateful Eight,” “Weeds”) a star in his native Mexico before coming to Los Angeles, was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the 2011 film “A Better Life” Jeanine Mason, a actor and dancer from Miami who plays Della, was the youngest competitor to win the Fox series “So You Think You Can Dance. ” Though the play was written in 1978 and set in 1942, Mr. Valdez feels its story is timeless, its themes part of an historical cycle. He traces lines from the internment camps to the Zoot Suit Riots, from Black Lives Matter to the vilification of Muslims. “And now the Mexicans are getting it again, thanks to Trump,” he said. “It’s like the closing of a complete circle. ” At a table reading between dance rehearsals, Mr. Bichir and Tom G. McMahon had questions for Mr. Valdez about how to tackle their roles as El Pachuco and the Press. In many ways, they’re more archetypes than people, jumping in and out of the action at will. The challenge, Mr. Valdez said, is finding the human in the trickster spirit. The play presents lots of similar challenges for audiences. “My play has the same relationship to a normal realistic play as a zoot suit has to a normal suit,” Mr. Valdez said. “It’s different. The lengths are longer. There’s more fabric. But it’s very cool! And I think that’s part of the appeal. ” | 1 |
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Mon, Oct 31st, 2016 at 12:20 pm Trump “refused 2 produce records sought by prosecutors for 6 months. Said under oath: Was destroying them whole time.” Share on Twitter Print This Post
Newsweek’ s Kurt Eichenwald has struck again, reporting that Donald Trump “refused 2 produce records sought by prosecutors for 6 months. Said under oath: Was destroying them whole time.”
The whole strategy, he writes at Newsweek in an article he swears was written before Comey’s announcement, was “deny, impede and delay, while destroying documents the court had ordered them to hand over.”
In 1973, he reveals, “the Republican nominee, his father and their real estate company battled the federal government over civil charges that they refused to rent apartments to African-Americans.”
Shortly after the government filed its case in October, Trump attacked: He falsely declared to reporters that the feds had no evidence he and his father discriminated against minorities, but instead were attempting to force them to lease to welfare recipients who couldn’t pay their rent.The family’s attempts to slow down the federal case were at times nonsensical. Trump submitted an affidavit contending that the government had engaged in some unspecified wrongdoing by releasing statements to the press on the day it brought the case without first having any “formal communications” with him; he contended that he’d learned of the complaint only while listening to his car radio that morning. But Trump’s sworn statement was a lie. Court records show that the government had filed its complaint at 10 a.m. and phoned him almost immediately afterward. The government later notified the media with a press release. […] Six months after the original filing, the case was nowhere because the Trumps had repeatedly ignored the deadlines to produce records and answers to questions, known as interrogatories….Finally, under subpoena, Trump appeared for a short deposition. When asked about the missing documents, he made a shocking admission: The Trumps had been destroying their corporate records for the previous six months and had no document-retention program. They had conducted no inspections to determine which files might have been sought in the discovery requests or might otherwise be related to the case. Instead, in order to “save space,” Trump testified, officials with his company had been tossing documents into the shredder and garbage.
So Trump can accuse Hillary Clinton of destroying emails – and he does, nearly every day – but only as a means of covering up and deflecting his own misdeeds in that regard.
“With false affidavits and ‘deny and delay” strategies,” writes Eichenwald, “Trump & his cos hid and destroyed records sought in court.”
Donald Trump is a world class liar and a man known for his deflection tactics, projecting his own guilt onto others. His Foundation in trouble? Point the finger at the Clinton Foundation. Sexual assault allegations? Point the finger at Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Once again, Kurt Eichenwald has dug into Donald Trump’s deplorable past and revealed the real Donald Trump. It’s not pretty. And each revelation from Eichenwald and David Fahrenthold shows Trump to be an even worse human being than the last.
It is no wonder his deplorables love him so much.
It Turns Out Trump Put off Investigators for 6 Months While He Destroyed Emails added by Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Mon, Oct 31st, 2016 | 0 |
Yemenis stage rally to condemn Saudi war crimes Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:22AM Yemenis rally to condemn Saudi war crimes. © Press TV
Mohammed al-AttabPress TV, Sana'a
Thousands of Yemenis have staged a rally near the site of a funeral ceremony bombarded by Saudi Arabia in early October. The protesters condemned what they call Riyadh's war crimes against the Yemeni people. Loading ... | 0 |
November 7, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Flopot,
Yes, I know it makes your blood boil to consider the “lesser of two evils” scenario. But LD has always been a conscientious non-voter and is therefore unlikely to be voting for either Trump or Hillary. Nor am I for that matter, since I am a UK resident and do not get to vote in the American elections.
You really must reconcile yourself, Flopot, to the fact that Hillary is held in such visceral loathing that her millions of haters feel they have no option but to vote for her opponent, Donald Trump, even though they are aware of the Donald’s many faults and his Zionist connections.
It’s either not voting at all or voting for the lesser of two evils. | 0 |
AMSTERDAM (AP) — A diplomatic rift between Turkey and key European nations deepened Sunday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany of “Nazi practices,” days after a local authority prevented a Turkish minister from addressing a rally. [Meanwhile, at an election campaign event in Amsterdam, Dutch populist Geert Wilders also resorted to comparisons, calling Erdogan an “ leader. ” The diplomatic tension has been rising in recent days amid Turkish plans to have government ministers to address rallies in Germany and the Netherlands in support of an upcoming constitutional referendum that would give Erdogan new powers. Speaking in Istanbul, the Turkish president fanned the flames with a stinging verbal attack. “In Germany they are not allowing our friends to speak. Let them do so. Do you think that by not allowing them to speak the votes in Germany will come out ‘no’ instead of ‘yes? ’” Erdogan said. “Germany, you don’t have anything to do with democracy. These current practices of yours are no different than the Nazi practices of the past. ” On Thursday, Turkey’s justice minister canceled a meeting with his German counterpart after local authorities in southwest Germany withdrew permission for him to use a venue to hold a rally near the French border that was part of a campaign to get Turks in Germany to vote “yes” in the referendum. Turkey’s economy minister, Nihat Zeybekci, was due to speak at two events in western Germany on Sunday. There are about 1. 4 million people in Germany who are eligible to vote in the Turkish referendum, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, in an interview with German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag, said it is time to pull the plug on moves to bring Turkey into the EU. “We shouldn’t just temporarily suspend the accession talks with Turkey but end them,” Kern said. “We can’t continue to negotiate about membership with a country that has been steadily distancing itself for years, during ongoing access talks, from democratic standards and principles of the rule of law. ” The Dutch government is investigating whether it can halt a rally being planned for later in the week at which Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is reportedly due to speak. Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Dutch broadcaster NOS on Saturday that his government “is looking at all legal avenues to prevent such a visit. ” Rutte said the proposed constitutional changes take Turkey, an aspirant European Union member state, “in a less democratic direction. ” “We believe that Dutch public space is not the place for political campaigns of other countries,” Rutte wrote earlier in a post on his Facebook page. Kern said, “A concerted approach by the EU to prevent such campaign appearances would make sense. So that individual countries such as Germany, where appearances have been banned, don’t come under pressure from Turkey. ” Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is lagging only slightly behind Rutte’s VVD party in polls before March 15 elections for Parliament’s lower house, said he would go further if he were in power. “I think that coming here to advocate a change of the Turkish constitution that will only strengthen the leader Erdogan of Turkey more than Parliament, Turkish parliament, is the worst thing that could happen to us,” Wilders told reporters at a campaign event. Wilders said that if he were Dutch prime minister, “”I would call the whole Cabinet of Turkey ‘persona non grata’ for a month or two, not allowing them to come here. ” Kern, however, pointed out that totally cutting ties with Ankara wouldn’t be in EU interests. An EU deal with Turkey, which also is a NATO member, has significantly cut the number of migrants crossing into Europe. “We should realign the relationship, without the illusion of EU membership,” Kern said. “Turkey is an important partner in security matters, on migration and on economic cooperation. Turkey has stuck to all of its commitments resulting from the refugee deal in any case. We should build upon that. ” | 1 |
Immigration activists in Los Angeles are enraged after the mother of a prominent open borders activist is expected to be deported. [Following a massive drug raid by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency at an apartment complex, Teresa an illegal immigrant, was detained and now is facing deportation, according to the L. A. Times. has been living in the U. S. since 2001 and her husband, Hugo Rueda, was arrested for drug possession by officials in the raid, where Rueda’s car allegedly had 33 pounds of cocaine in it, and the couple’s apartment had $600, 000 cash inside, along with an ounce of crystal methamphetamine. Federal officials believe Rueda is involved with the U. S. drug trade. is the mother of Los Angeles immigration activist Claudia Rueda, who claims her mother was detained by authorities illegally, despite her mother’s illegal immigrant status. A small rally was held at the Border Patrol station in San Ysidro near San Diego, with “Free Teresa now” chants from protesters. An organizer of the protest told the L. A. Times that not only should not have been detained, but she also claimed federal authorities arrested the woman because her daughter is an activist against immigration enforcement. “We think it is retaliation against her mother for her daughter’s activism,” Marcela Hernandez said. In a statement to the L. A. Times, Claudia Rueda said authorities should let her mother out of federal custody. “Despite being told she would not be detained as long she cooperated, my mother was apprehended during an illegally conducted raid at my apartment,” Rueda said. “I know my mother is innocent, and both [the Sheriff’s Department and Border Patrol] know that, which is why they were supposed to let her go,” Rueda continued. is awaiting a deportation hearing before an immigration judge and is expected to be deported. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
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Luis Banchero: el pez dorado por Jorge Smith Socios | 28 de octubre de 2016 Luis Banchero: el pez dorado Testimonio a manera de prólogo Esta nueva entrega del chimbotólogo Pedro Miranda, complementa su obra publicada hace dos años sobre "Moncada: El Profeta de la ecología". Es una segunda parte del abanico de personajes emblemáticos de esa fascinante época que fueron los años 50 y 60 en Chimbote. El ascenso vertiginoso de Luis Banchero y su pronta desaparición en una situación impredecible y de proporciones trágicas, hace más veraz que nunca, aquella máxima que suele volver en los mitos griegos, y que es que cuando los dioses aman a alguien le dan virtudes y habilidades en demasía para triunfar en la vida pero a cambio de eso se los llevan jóvenes.
Con la curiosidad de un dentista que quiere ver todos los detalles de una dentadura, Miranda que es odontólogo, indaga sobre esos años a través de estos personajes tan disimiles como lo fueron Moncada y Banchero. Ambos personajes tenían una diferencia de edad de solo 6 años o sea prácticamente pertenecían a la misma generación. Los dos coinciden en Chimbote en un momento cuyo telón de fondo era el boom de la pesca. El puerto vivía en un frenesí de crecimiento económico como el que años después se experimentó en el emporio textil de Gamarra en el distrito de La Victoria en Lima en los años 90. Si en los 50 ó 60´s en Chimbote o en los 90´s en Gamarra, llegabas con un espíritu emprendedor, las ideas claras y objetivos precisos, podías hacer en pocos años dinero para el resto de tu vida.
En los dos extremos de la escala social estaban, en el caso de Chimbote, Luis Banchero, el rey de la pesca, el visionario empresario y por otro lado, el humilde pescador. El uno había nacido en la vecina región de La Libertad y el otro en la sureña y fronteriza ciudad de Tacna. Ambos tenían el gusto del mar y la hermosa bahía de Chimbote fue el escenario inicial de muchos de sus sueños. El pescador Moncada era hábil con sus manos para reparar todo tipo de redes y para reciclar objetos y sin duda para filetear pescado y por otro lado, Banchero era hábil con sus ideas y proyectos para hacer todo tipo de negocios a partir del pescado, ya sea como producto para consumo directo, como harina, como conserva o como fuese. Como cita la obra, muchas veces se le escuchó decir al empresario," En el mar no hay que arar, solo hay que recoger".
Luis Banchero sabía recoger el fruto del mar, pero más que eso, generar riqueza a partir de un insumo natural, comprando pescado a buen precio al filo de la madrugada, llevando pescado hasta Lima para venderlo a mejor precio, o en otro caso, ya procesado como harina, venderlo a los mejores precios o como conserva haciendo que el producto llegue envasado a los más recónditos lugares del país. Desde joven no era un simple empresario pesquero sino una máquina para proyectar estrategias de cómo comercializar ese insumo en apariencia inagotable. Cuando tenía solo 26 años ya era propietario de varias lanchas y se perfilaba como dueño de una fábrica. Creativo como ninguno, ideó toda una red de empresas complementarias para así aminorar sus costos en muchas áreas de la industria pesquera, pues la pesca es una actividad que tiene múltiples matices y negocios aleatorios que sólo puedes percibirlos cuando estás en la cúspide. Así el empresario llevó el negocio pesquero a una capacidad de producción de proporciones inesperadas, haciendo que al Perú se le respetase como productor mayor de un insumo como la harina de pescado, que directa o indirectamente, servía para elaborar muchos productos por su altísimo contenido proteico.
Es cierto que la vorágine extractiva de esos años, creó las consecuencias ecológicas en la bahía chimbotana, y sobre la cual, en el peor caso, solo podría imputársele al empresario una responsabilidad compartida. De haber tenido más tiempo de vida un hombre visionario como Banchero, hubiese tomado conciencia del daño colateral que genera la actividad pesquera y sin duda con su capacidad de liderazgo en el sector, hubiese incentivado el uso de sistemas de producción que hubiesen reducido la contaminación ambiental o marina y, sin duda, apoyado estrategias globales de descontaminación de la bahía. Pero la historia fue otra, y con su trágica y temprana desaparición, la anarquía reinante en la extracción pesquera continuó y, por ende, también la agravación de la contaminación que sufrimos hasta ahora. Banchero era definitivamente otro tipo de empresario, un hombre visionario, que ya intuía que el pescador y en consecuencia el habitante chimbotano, difícilmente iba a poder coexistir por siempre en una situación contradictoria, en la cual la fuente de su trabajo que era la pesca, fuese también la causa de una catástrofe ambiental. Con Banchero vivo, otra hubiese sido la historia.
Estás últimas reflexiones me hacen decir lo justificado que ha sido por parte del autor, incrustar ese diálogo imaginario entre el llamado "loco" Moncada y Banchero, en el cual el pescador increpa al empresario responsabilidad en la contaminación de la bahía. El encuentro, si se hubiese producido en la realidad, habría sido, tal vez, un diálogo de sordos, pero al ver Banchero, que todos no vivían en el puerto con el mismo entusiasmo la vorágine extractiva, tal encuentro, le hubiese dado un tema de reflexión y una búsqueda ulterior de soluciones al problema. De allí que las palabras que pone en boca de Banchero el autor son muy precisas , "Este no tiene nada de loco, veré que puedo hacer, si es verdad que se está contaminando el mar, analizaré qué puedo hacer, tiene que haber una solución y la voy a encontrar, esto no puede seguir así."
Al haber nacido yo en Chimbote, a comienzos de los años 50, pude ver con mis propios ojos, las transformaciones en el paisaje urbano y costero y también en la vida de la gente, que generó el boom de la pesca. El dinero, efectivamente, corría a raudales y se generó una capacidad de consumo desenfrenado en el puerto. Había trabajo para todos, en todas las profesiones. No es cierto el mito que los chimbotanos solo "la vieron pasar", que el dinero que se producía iba a otra parte, a Lima o al extranjero. Como en todo lugar donde hay ese explosivo auge del dinero, hay algunos que saben ahorrar y otros no. Hay algunos que invierten en la educación de ellos o sus hijos y otros se abandonan al despilfarro desbocado o caen en el dispendio irresponsable. Lo interesante es que para todo el que vivió aquella época, queda el recuerdo de haber vivido en un gigantesco laboratorio humano. En el centro de este auge y este laboratorio estaba justamente Luis Banchero.
Chimbote siempre fue una ciudad poblada de gente sin mucho arraigo. Siempre fue, y no ha dejado de serlo, una ciudad muy horizontal. En muchos casos, diferentes gentes frecuentan los mismos lugares y en el mundo de la pesca, sobre todo, hay una forma de manejar las relaciones laborales. Eso lo captó rápido un observador sagaz y un hombre con una intuición excepcional como lo fue Banchero. El trato entre la gente en Chimbote, es directo, informal y a veces desenfadado. Es el mundo del tú a tú, reacio a las jerarquías o las formalidades innecesarias.
Quizás porque bastante joven ya fue exitoso, pero más por su propia personalidad, Banchero sabía mimetizarse con personas de toda condición social y eso es algo muy claro en el recuerdo de los muchos que todavía viven y que trabajaron con él. Su personalidad tenía una magia que te hacía sentirse bien delante de él, nunca intimidado de estar en presencia de un empresario que en su momento era el más poderoso y quizás el hombre más rico del Perú.
Podía entrar y preguntar con curiosidad sobre todos los detalles del funcionamiento de una lancha, como también interesarse en visitar todos los recovecos de una planta harinera o indagar sobre cualquier detalle de las fases productivas de una planta conservera. Todo esto combinado con su capacidad de proyectar la venta del producto final en todas sus formas, hacía de él un empresario único, lo más alejado de un especialista, que era el paradigma del gerente o empresario que ya se comenzaba a gestar en los años 60´. Pero lo más importante de Banchero era su trato con la gente, que perteneciese o trabajase en sus empresas o no. En eso todos coinciden. Era increíble la empatía que suscitaba su persona. Por eso, casi medio siglo después de su muerte, la gente que lo conoció y lo trató lo recuerda con mucho afecto y lo que es más, basta darse una vuelta por el cementerio El Ángel donde reposan sus restos, para ver que su tumba sigue siendo visitada por anónimos visitantes que le llevan flores. Como pocos, quizás como ninguno, salvo Haya de la Torre en la política, Luis Banchero es alguien que caló muy hondo en la memoria y el imaginario de los peruanos.
Por esas circunstancias de la vida pude conocer a muchos de los personajes citados en el libro de Miranda, los volví a ver a algunos en circunstancias muy diversas después de la muerte del empresario. A él mismo lo pude tratar personalmente solo dos veces.
Era el año de 1971 y yo regresaba de Lima a Chimbote un fin de semana a ver a mi familia y mi padre me llevó a cenar al restaurante del vivero forestal y me dijo que se tenía que encontrar también con un tío mío que era uno de los abogados de Banchero. Cuando nos íbamos sentar a cenar, mi padre me dijo "Ahí esta justo tu tío, conversando con Banchero y quiero presentártelo". Nos dirigimos a ellos y allí estaba el magnate, a quien mi padre ya conocía y me lo presentó. Mi tío le dijo a mi padre para conversar con él lo que tenían que conversar, mientras yo conversaba algo con el gran Lucho Banquero. El hombre de veras irradiaba una simpatía natural y en los 15 ó 20 minutos que pasamos charlando, me hizo las preguntas mas diversas, sobre qué estudiaba y porqué y qué grado de compromiso tenía con Chimbote y si iba a volver a trabajar allí cuando terminase mis estudios. "Sabes -me dijo- que recién me he podido titular como ingeniero, después de más de 20 años. Yo en realidad hubiese querido ser investigador. Siempre me interesó la forma cómo se pueden preservar los alimentos en buen estado. Creo que las guerras del futuro serán por alimentos." Prosiguió con diversas reflexiones muy visionarias y puntuales que todavía recuerdo y al decirle que mis clases universitarias eran en la Universidad Católica en la Plaza Francia me dijo: "Mis oficinas están cerca. Llámame un día y pasa a verme. Me dio un número telefónico y ya en ese momento se aparecían mi padre con mi tío.
Unas semanas después ya en Lima lo llamé y su secretaria me dijo que le daría el mensaje y lo llamase al día siguiente antes del mediodía. Así lo hice y la secretaria me lo pasó al teléfono y me dijo que si estaba libre me invitaba a almorzar y me citó en el restaurante del Hotel Bolívar. Después supe que él tenía una suite permanente en el Hotel Crillón a pocas cuadras del Bolívar. Cuando llegó yo ya estaba sentado esperándolo.
"En el Crillón, hay en el sótano un excelente restaurante que es La Balsa (donde preparaban el mejor sancochado de Lima), pero allí no puedo almorzar en paz, pues todo el mundo me conoce y no puedo almorzar, a tal punto que pido que me lleven la comida a mi suite". Bueno, en el Bolívar, me di cuenta que allí también lo conocían y mientras tomábamos el pisco sour de aperitivo, unas 8 personas vinieron a estrecharle la mano o desde una distancia prudente otros lanzarle un "¡Hola Lucho!" o "¡Buen provecho Lucho!". "Aquí, los mozos me reservan un sitio en el fondo del restaurante en la parte que da a La Colmena y me siento de espaldas al resto y puedo almorzar tranquilo." Fue un almuerzo que duró un par de horas, solo interrumpido por algunos documentos que le trajo para firmar un empleado. Me impresionó la variada gama de intereses que tenía Banchero. Evidentemente era un hombre que le robaba horas al sueño para ilustrarse sobre temas que ni por asomo tenían que ver con su área de negocios específicos que era la pesca. Mucho le interesaba la innovación tecnológica, la organización de la información como la base para tomar decisiones empresariales eficaces. "Viajo felizmente mucho y eso me tiene informado, pues al regresar a Lima sé que estaré en una involución informativa desesperante. Ahora que conozco a gran parte del empresariado limeño puedo decir que la carencia de curiosidad informativa e intelectual es desesperante. Por eso algunos en sus respectivas áreas se estancan, pudiendo potenciar sus empresas en forma extraordinaria. El limeño está siempre dispuesto a perder su tiempo en banalidades. Los fines de semana cuando no tengo que ir a Chimbote u otro lugar en Perú, me refugio en mi casa en Chaclacayo". Yo no sabía que estaba frente a un hombre que siete meses después iba a ser asesinado en su vivienda, justamente en Chaclacayo. "Me dijistes en Chimbote, que has iniciado tus trámites para irte a estudiar a Francia. Lo que más me gusta de ciudades como París y Nueva York es el anonimato. Me ha ocurrido estar con Onassis, almorzar con él en la Avda. de los Campos Elíseos en pleno aire libre y aunque él es más conocido que nadie sobre todo en París, ninguna persona se acercaba a molestarnos. Aquí, como has visto, un poco de popularidad y tu vida se convierte en un calvario. No es que sea malo. Los latinos somos así. Pero llega un momento que te hartas.” Fue la segunda y última vez en mi vida que vi a Luis Banchero.
Ya en París, en la edición de Le Monde el 2 de enero de 1972 me enteré de lo que había acontecido en Lima. De veras me apenó la noticia. Estoy seguro que otro hubiese sido el destino del Perú, si alguna vez un hombre como Banchero hubiese conducido el país. En muchas áreas, la innovación tecnológica ya hubiese llegado, nos hubiésemos ahorrado por lo menos 10 ó 20 años de retardo. Hubiésemos despegado más y mejor mucho antes.
A Eugenia Sessarego la conocí en circunstancias bien especiales en la ciudad de Ginebra en Suiza y luego la volví a ver en Lima en diversas ocasiones y, sobre todo, en dos ocasiones que recuerdo bien, una en mi casa en Miraflores y otra en su departamento en uno de los malecones del mismo distrito.
Ambas veces hablamos de los más infinitos temas y me impresionó su inteligencia, su soberbia organización mental y su belleza. Nunca traté, por iniciativa propia, el tema de Banchero, pero sabiendo que yo era de Chimbote, y que por mi edad había vivido el boom de la pesca, sabía que mi curiosidad latente de cómo había percibido al empresario alguien tan cercano a Banchero, como lo fue ella. Una vez, hablando sobre la ineficacia en la toma de decisiones en los dirigentes políticos, ella misma abrió la puerta: "Ningún empresario que conozco y menos aún ningún político, tiene la lucidez y la capacidad de tomar decisiones eficaces que tenía Lucho Banchero. Yo le organizaba citas hasta de solo 5 minutos en las cuales él podía evaluar alternativas diferentes y tomar una decisión. Era una máquina de tomar decisiones. Era como un láser para ir al meollo del asunto. No solo tomaba decisiones , sino tomaba las más acertadas. Creo que deben haber pocos empresarios que hayan tomado decisiones acertadas con tanta regularidad como Lucho Banchero. Uno podría imaginar que alguien así era el colmo de la arrogancia o la vanidad, pero no. A Lucho no lo cambió el dinero, yo diría más bien que él cambió los usos que le daba al dinero. Quería crear empresas donde la innovación tecnológica pudiese ser introducida en forma permanente y si era posible, inmediata. Su pérdida fue para el país una desgracia. Era un ser extraordinario. Puedo dar fe".
La segunda vez que la vi, algunos meses después, igual hablamos de muchas cosas. Yo siempre sorprendido por sus atinados juicios sobre cualquier tema. Igual, en ningún momento por iniciativa propia, cité el nombre de Banchero. Ya con los años de distancia sobre los penosos hechos, creo que con Eugenia hubiésemos podido hablar al respecto. Ya había aparecido la estupenda historia novelada de Guillermo Thorndike, ella misma había hecho extensas confesiones en la revista CARETAS y se había publicado mucho al respecto. Me volvió a hablar otra vez, sin que se lo pidiese en la forma en que tomaba decisiones el empresario, pero era imposible no darse cuenta que al pronunciar el nombre de Banchero, una sombra de tristeza se reflejaba en su mirada. Preferí no tocar el tema. No la he vuelto a encontrar.
Otra persona a quien frecuente mucho, pues escribí con cierta frecuencia en uno de los diarios que él dirigió, fue a Guillermo Thorndike, un hombre de un talento excepcional a quien le debemos la extraordinaria novela "El Caso Banchero", escrita a pocos años de sucedido el crimen. Gracias a él pude comprender mejor la compleja y rica personalidad del magnate pesquero. La novela de Guillermo es estupenda y no tiene nada que envidiarle a la obra maestra del género que es "A Sangre Fría" de Truman Capote. Guillermo conoció a Banchero cuando ya éste era un empresario consolidado, un verdadero magnate cuyo negocio ya no era simplemente la pesca y sus derivados sino que precisaba estrategias mediáticas que tenían que estar en manos de profesionales de genio y de ingenio como lo fueron Raúl Villarán y luego Guillermo Thorndike. Ellos lo ayudaron con "Correo" y luego con una publicación que fue "Ojo", dirigido a un segmento más popular. Allí también las sugerencias de Banchero fueron de una gran creatividad, pues se crearon una de las primeras plataformas periodísticas descentralizadas y "Correo" tenía una edición para Lima, pero también ediciones que se sacaban en Huancayo y otras ciudades. Eso era importante para agrandar la audiencia, pues para Banchero las ciudades, ellas mismas querían ser el personaje central de sus noticias. En eso no se equivocaba. Y es cierto pues incluso progresivamente las publicaciones regionales se convirtieron en propulsoras de movimientos regionales que, para bien o para mal, hicieron fragmentarse el panorama político en la forma que lo conocemos ahora.
Por lo que me dijo Thorndike, muchos sectores políticos ya comenzaban a percibir a Lucho Banchero como un posible presidenciable, por su éxito personal y un innegable magnetismo mediático, como el que ahora se suele percibir en Gastón Acurio.
Es mérito de Pedro Miranda, en su obra “Banchero, El rey de la pesca”, en cortas 69 páginas lograr lo que también consiguió transmitir en sus casi 490 páginas la novela de Thorndike en su momento: captar lo esencial de un personaje tan complejo. Al ser chimbotano el autor, Pedro Miranda, ha podido interrogar exhaustivamente a muchos de los colaboradores de Banchero que todavía viven en el puerto, de escribir con lujo de detalles las extraordinarias habilidades empresariales y comerciales y el ascenso a la cima empresarial de un joven que con solo algo más de 20 años, después de una fase en que vendía de todo, desde forrajes hasta motores, comenzó a forjar un imperio de la pesca.
He titulado este testimonio a manera de prólogo, "Banchero: El pez dorado", pues en una última estadía que he hecho en China, observé que muchos de los chinos, que por otro lado adoran las peceras, suelen tener en ellas un pez dorado que, según las leyendas chinas, puede vivir hasta la edad aproximada de 40 años, edad aproximada de la muerte de Banchero. Los chinos llaman también a este pez, el pez de la sabiduría y aquél que lo encuentra puede considerarse sabio y afortunado. Es un pez tranquilo. Es un pez generoso que le gusta compartir y aun cuando está en cautiverio en una pecera, le gusta estar con peces de otras especies, algo que algunas especies de peces aborrecen.
Luis Banchero era así, como el pez dorado: sabio, sencillo, comunicativo y le gustaba compartirlo todo. Un gran hombre.
Jorge Smith Fuente
Senal de Alerta (Peru) | 0 |
AUSTRIA: Freedom Party leader calls Chancellor Angela Merkel the “most dangerous woman in Europe” Heinz-Christian Strache (right), chairman of the anti-Islamization Freedom Party roasted the German Chancellor for allowing an unlimited amount of Muslim illegal aliens which he claims has left Europe on the verge of civil war. Talking to supporters, Strache argued “the uncontrolled influx of migrants alien to our culture who seep into our social welfare system… makes civil war in the medium-term not unlikely.” Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) party leader Heinz-Christian Strache (L) and Freedom Party’s presidential candidate Norbert Hofer UK Express (h/t Terry D) Strache added that his party’s presidential candidate, Norbert Hofer, “will be there for all Austrians” in a rallying speech to drum up support ahead of the general election. Hofer has attempted to keep a neutral tone in a bid to broaden the typical appeal of the Freedom Party from an anti-immigration stance to the wider Austrian population ahead of a re-run of the earlier election. Yet the 45-year-old’s recent election posters carry the phrase “so help me God” – a term which has been slammed by both Islamic and Christian officials who say introducing God into the campaign is not appropriate. “Vienna must not become Istanbul” He says what Vienna thinks Three branches of the Protestant church in Austria released a joint statement denouncing the slogan. It reads: “God cannot be instrumentalised for one’s own intentions or for political purposes. “We consider that mentioning God… to attack other religions and cultures indirectly amounts to an abuse of his name and religion in general.” The Freedom Party claim Hofer used the rallying phrase as it came “directly from the heart” and “is strongly anchored in Christian and Western values” which the party holds. Two-thirds of Austrians identify as Catholic while just four per cent are Protestant. The Freedom Party narrowly lost the election by just 31,000 votes to Alexander Van der Bellen’s left-leaning Green party, but the result was ruled void after voting irregularities were discovered. The initial re-run of the election was due to take place in October but has been pushed back to December after defects were found in the postal vote envelopes. | 0 |
An amazing (but nearly 90% censored) Foreign Intelligence Service report circulating in the Kremlin today states that the Antarctica “guardians” swiftly retaliated against the United States this past week by “creating unleashing” a massive earthquake after the Obama regime sent “without invitation or permission” its Secretary of State John Kerry to initiate contact with them in the “barrier zone” that’s forbidden by all “known protocols” in dealing with these “entities”.
As the United States neared election day, Secretary of State John Kerry announced he would take a historic trip to the massive, frozen seventh continent, Antarctica.
He was flying over the South Pacific toward New Zealand the next day when the results began to come in .
A major 5.8 magnitude aftershock has rocked New Zealand's South Island, north of where two massive earthquakes measuring 6.3 and 7.8 struck less than 24 hours before.
Local media reported that six-foot-high waves were rolling into Kaikoura, a coastal city north of Christchurch, and at least one building had collapsed. Phone service and the power supply in Kaikoura appeared to be cut off so the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
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We’ve gone Ultra-Sonic. By Lisa Transcendence Brown
Super high geomagnetic solar winds started about an hour or two ago. These knock us on our butts. We go through an intense inability to function as we upgrade huge. The body goes weak, the mind goes mush. High high high charging protons/ions and these sound like razors, which are part of diamond light lasers. These re-calibrate our magnetics, they tune us high really fast. They “sing” us to sleep, literally, s high in frequency, we basically cannot do anything else.
I came home ready to rock it out. New courses, new lots of stuff to get done…. nope…. Outside was magnificent! I thought about getting my computer and getting back in the car, going to a coffee shop to work, as inside the house, the frequency is so high, it’s right to sleep in these energies. Walked through the door, it took 2 minutes to crawl to the bed (not literally this time, more for the affect of how strong these are. Years ago was crawling…)
We are going super mega high…. sleep where called. Integration is faster. I’m done for brainwork today. Spent the morning gifting, which is always super uber mega awesome!
READ: She’s back! Large coronal hole faces Earth again
Okay loves. Honor your upgrades, your body. You may have to get away from electronics, as when you are tuning, they drain you. After the process is complete (the next day or days later), you’ll be better than new and ready to rock and roll! Some times we slow-mo-it through our stuff… which is many days now, in these super high frequencies.
Working with the energetics is definitely an art. It’s been this way for years and continues to increase as we go. Every moment dictates, getting used to the flow, learning to navigate with it and then master it…. it’s a process for us all!
Right now the crown of my head could just shoot off. We have lift-off loves! Here we g !
Gravity goes, pineal, spine, chest, nasal… abdomen … hearing/sound adjustments…most noticeable right now.
Source: Awakening to Remember
Via: In5D
Related: She’s back! Large coronal hole faces Earth again | 0 |
NYT Advocates Internet Censorship November 20, 2016
Exclusive: The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news,” reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting “liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
As this mainstream campaign against “fake news” quickly has gained momentum in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton. New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump’s sex life, and Clinton personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that McCarthyistic accusation.
The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around during the heat of a campaign – nothing new there – and it is always a challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can. What’s different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or algorithm) for eliminating what it calls “fake news.”
But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge the many times that it has published “fake news,” such as reporting in 2002 that Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of a Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that turned out to be four times outside the rocket’s range; or its publication of photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the “inside-Russia” photo was also taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story. The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21 Sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base.
These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing “fake news” – and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most readers wouldn’t notice. Much of the Times’ “fake news” continued to reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial retractions.
Who Is the Judge?
So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York Times stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem of “fake news.” Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of approval.
The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating “fake news.” Photograph published by the New York Times purportedly taken in Russia of Russian soldiers who later appeared in eastern Ukraine. However, the photographer has since stated that the photo was actually taken in Ukraine, and the U.S. State Department has acknowledged the error.
The editorial said, “a big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites. …
“Facebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself, far more.
“Facebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms, which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. … Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms, which means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment.”
The Times editorial continued: “This summer, Facebook decided to show more posts from friends and family members in users’ news feeds and reduce stories from news organizations, because that’s what it said users wanted. If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. …
“Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. … None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
Gray Areas
But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut, much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn’t always tell the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades, the Times has usually embraced the Official Version of a disputed event and has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds. Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, co-author of the Iraq “aluminum tube” story.
That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and some outside experts who disputed the “aluminum tube” story in 2002 – and how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government’s portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than a professional journalistic entity.
But the Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with some favored Internet sites – now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft Coalition , which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will decide which stories are true and which are “fake.”
If the Times’ editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public’s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ What to Do About ‘Fake News.’ ”]
The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy – and it surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to democracy – but regulation of information in the manner that the Times suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.
And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ). | 0 |
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At a prestigious Boston school, they have a pretty strict dress code. No gang-related colors, no cut-offs, nothing too offensive or revealing.
Women at Boston Latin School can’t wear skirts whose hemlines are more than four inches above the knee and their bra straps can’t be the “spaghetti” style, where they’re so thin they’re barely there. This is a middle and high school folks … not a college for adults.
It’s a way of showing a little decorum – a little respect for yourself and for the school.
And it promotes rape culture .
Because for radical feminists, telling them not to dress provocatively is telling them that men are sexist pigs who simply can’t resist the wiles of a woman.
They call it “victim-blaming” and while there’s a point to it – you can’t blame a woman for being assault if she’s jogging alone in a park, but certainly you can bring up a woman’s attire if it is specifically designed to attract attention from the opposite sex.
Let’s be honest: Women sometimes dress for attention. They want guys to look at them.
But under leftist-feminist theory, they shouldn’t.
So, as HeatStreet reports, there’s a Change.org petition that claims this dress code sends the message that “we live in a patriarchal society where men can decide whether a female’s clothing is appropriate or inappropriate.”
The dress code, they claim, creates a “a sense of shame towards girls [sic] bodies” and reinforces the notion that “yes, it is our fault when girls get raped because they should have covered up and avoided the situation by dressing in a way that does not attract another person.”
I’m not sure what these women want. Do they want to be able to attend school wearing micro-miniskirts and just bras? Pasties? Maybe we shouldn’t have a dress code at all?
In reaction to the idiotic controversy, Boston Latin School changed their policy, allowing women to wear “leggings” as long as they’re not “see-through.” The rest of the policy will stay in place until Nov. 1 – then it will probably be changed again.
Here’s how their “petition” reads: By allowing the school to dress code us, we are telling the school several things: Yes, we still live in a patriarchal society where men can decide whether a female’s clothing is appropriate or inappropriate. Yes, a body should be covered in order to be attractive. Establishing a sense of shame towards girls bodies is okay and perfectly acceptable. Yes, a girl’s body is a sinful temptation that needs to be covered up at all costs for others to focus on their education. Yes, a female’s body is more tempting and sexual than a male’s body. Yes, it is our fault when girls get raped because they should have covered up and avoided the situation by dressing in a way that does not attract another person. Are these statements correct to you? Is it okay to assign a dress code in this manner? If the answer is NO! then sign this petition to tell Mr. Contompasis to reconsider his dress code restrictions.
What a bunch of nonsense. These are CHILDREN. They do not get a say in establishing a school’s dress code. PERIOD. | 0 |
A strong majority of voters support a temporary ban on refugees from unstable and violent countries, Rasmussen Reports found. [Nearly of voters want the U. S. government to halt refugee resettlement until better controls to screen foreigners can be implemented, according to Rasmussen: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 57 percent of Likely U. S. Voters favor a temporary ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen until the federal government approves its ability to screen out potential terrorists form coming here. percent are opposed, while 10 percent are undecided. Similarly, 56 percent favor a temporary block on visas prohibiting residents of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States until the government approves its ability to screen for likely terrorists. percent oppose this temporary ban, and 11 percent are undecided. The survey questions do not mention President Trump’s executive action issued on Friday: “Do you favor or oppose a temporary ban on refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here?” “Do you favor or oppose a temporary block on visas prohibiting residents of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here?” Public sentiment is largely unchanged from August, when 59 percent of likely voters wanted a temporary immigration moratorium placed on countries who export terrorism. In September, 59 percent opposed failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s plan to dramatically increase the importation of Syrian refugees, while only 25 percent approved. Another poll conducted in August found only 36 percent of voters wanted to import thousands of Syrian refugees, including only 18 percent of Republicans. These numbers reflect the broader public mood on extreme immigration levels. For example, another poll found 54 percent of voters would like to see immigration levels halved or reduced to zero. Another 58 percent think illegal aliens should not be allowed to stay in the U. S. at all. Rasmussen questioned 1, 000 likely voters from Jan. 25 to Jan. 26, with margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. | 1 |
Leaves scream their final cries in color before dropping to the ground. Their shouts — in golden, crimson or scarlet — eventually fade to brown bellows, and their lifeless bodies dry up on the forest floor. It absorbs their crinkly corpses and that’s it — worm food. The fall of a leaf in autumn is an orchestrated death. A complex, brilliant, beautiful death. Right now across the United States, fall foliage season is peaking, and everyone’s out to get a peep at the fiery show. Hiking trails are crowded. Mountain roads are packed, and leaf cams are getting lots of love. When you think of it as watching the death of leaves, it sounds morbid, but it’s captivating nonetheless. Does the way some turn red in the process serve any purpose? Leaves actually start out yellow. Chlorophyll, the chemical responsible for giving leaves their green appearance and converting light to energy during photosynthesis, just overpowers it in the spring and summer. But when temperature, daylight and weather events like rain or drought cause leaves to die in the fall, chlorophyll breaks down and reveals the yellow or orange helper chemicals known as carotenes or carotenoids that were there all along. Red is another story, because it’s made on purpose. As some leaves die, they produce chemicals called anthocyanins (also found in the skin of grapes and apples) from built up sugars. These chemicals produce a red pigment that can combine with green pigments left from chlorophyll and display different shades of red. How bright this red is depends on what species the leaf belongs to, its inherent genetics and the environment around it — including the forest, the tree, and individual leaves, said John Silander, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at The University of Connecticut. But with the chemical explanation out of the way, the question still remains: Why do some leaves use precious energy to turn red right before dying? There are a handful of evolutionary explanations, Dr. Silander said, but many of them sound contradictory. According to a 2007 paper published in The Botanical Review, red and yellow fall leaves could be flashing arrows that attract birds and mammals to a tree’s fruits. Animals that stop by for a bite will then do what animals do, dispersing the seeds as they go, thereby aiding in the species’ survival. On the other hand, colored leaves could work like the wings of the monarch butterfly, warning others about defensive poisons or chemicals that tend to be in red leaves. But this could be wrong, too. Pests laying eggs in the fall might prefer drab plants rather than bright ones, leaving the bright ones to survive. “It may be an ‘I’m don’t bother’ signal to potential insects, pests, or parasites that they should look elsewhere,” Kerissa Battle, a community science educator at Community Greenways Collaborative, wrote in an email. But then again, she said, the red color could also signal that a leaf is on its way out, and there’s not much healthy stuff left to eat before it drops. With these and other contradictory hypotheses, what else could explain all that red foliage? Robert Guy, a professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia, suggested it could have something to do with the autumn sun. While it doesn’t appear to be true in all trees, red probably works like a sunshade in maple trees. Abby van den Berg, an ecologist at the University of Vermont, found that protecting leaves from sun damage lets them do important stuff on their way out, like sending nutrients back into the tree to store for later use. If something goes wrong during this critical process, the whole tree suffers. This is also why new buds are also often red — that’s another critical time when a tree needs to avoid sun damage. “Protection from bright light (and probably UV light as well) during the process of leaf senescence is the best explanation for why the leaves of some trees turn red in autumn” Dr. Guy wrote in an email. So when you go out and watch thousands of leaves absorb sunlight one last time, keep this in mind: They didn’t die in vain. | 1 |
President Donald Trump was welcomed to Israel on Monday with at a red carpet ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv featuring a large delegation that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah as well as Netanyahu’s cabinet and Knesset Members.[ A military band played the U. S. and Israeli national anthems before Trump, Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin walked to a podium to deliver brief remarks. After the arrival ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Trump traveled by helicopter to Jerusalem and for a meeting with Rivlin at the Israeli president’s residence. From there Trump and his delegation will continue to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, and stop for a visit to the Western Wall before heading to a private social dinner with Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Trump’s schedule includes a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem and a wreath laying ceremony at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Trump will then give a speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem before departing the country for the Vatican. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. | 1 |
November 8, 2016
Notoriously mild-mannered editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, made his move to trigger Article 50 today, arguing that 49 articles about Brexit in his paper each day just wasn’t enough to get his message across.
‘We’ve tried everything. ‘Take a Bow Britain’, ‘Enemies of the People’, ‘You’re all a bunch of European-loving t****’, noted Dacre placidly. ‘However, some people remain unconvinced by the softly-softly, measured, evidence based headline-making that is our hallmark. It’s time for more drastic measures.’
All features in the paper will now be expected to have a Brexit angle, with the exception of the daily filler piece on the dangers of statins, for which copy is already in the can for at least the next five years.
Early sightings of tomorrow’s paper reveal a front-pager on the big overnight news from the US, revealing ‘Meghan Markle looking Supreme, that’s the Judgement of everyone, as she looks for a quick Brexit back to Stateside’. Crossword answers must now be drawn from a series of approved words, which include Brexit, May, Article 50, invoke, the, people, have, spoken, timetable, for, exit, now, now and NOW! The regular free garden seeds promotion will feature a new ‘sovereign Brtain’ bloom which the paper hopes will blossom ‘sometime in 2017′, but which the planting notes caution will need much attention and care from May.
Some at the paper are said to be uncomfortable with Dacre’s new editorial policy, but they know that arguing with him is ultimately a futile exercise. ‘Colleagues say that likes to impose his will on the paper’, said one insider. ‘At least that’s what I think they meant when they talked about that big cock on the Mail.’ 8th, 2016 by chrisf chrisf UK News 0 | 0 |
A lone man’s climb up the side of Trump Tower became a New York City spectacle on Wednesday afternoon after thousands watched his ascent in real time on television, through social media and in person. The man was pulled off the building’s facade and apprehended by police officers who had removed a glass panel on the 21st floor about three hours into his climb. By then, he had become a social media sensation, as people watched live videos posted on Facebook and Periscope, a live app. A stream on Facebook from in New York received more than four million views, and people commented along with the action. Clad in shorts and a the climber began to scale the building around 3:30 p. m. the police said, wearing a harness and using what appeared to be suction cups to aid his climb. William Aubry, the New York Police Department’s assistant chief of the Manhattan South detective squad, told reporters that the man was a from Virginia who had told them he sought to scale the tower with one purpose: to gain a personal meeting with Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. Police officials said he told them about a YouTube video he posted on Tuesday that explained his motives. In the widely shared video that matched the police’s description, titled “Message to Mr. Trump (why I climbed your tower),” a hooded man claimed he was an “independent researcher. ” “Believe me, if my purpose was not significant, I would not risk my life pursuing it,” the man said solemnly. “The reason I climbed your tower was to get your attention. ” Police did not release the name of the man, whom they took to Bellevue Hospital Center for an evaluation. On Wednesday night, Mr. Trump expressed his appreciation for the police on Twitter, writing, “Great job today by the NYPD in protecting the people and saving the climber. ” Livestreaming, which increasingly draws wide audiences, has helped turn the outlandish happenings that occur periodically in a place like New York into viral public events. In June, a broadcast primarily seen on Periscope of a naked man whom the police described as “emotionally disturbed” became a similar public spectacle. With the climber’s image being broadcast — and commented on — far and wide on Wednesday, the man perched, if only briefly, at the intersection of two unpredictable worlds: the combustible presidential campaign and the chaotic city beneath him. The climb and frenzy that followed were also the latest instance in which Trump Tower has starred in a noteworthy role during the campaign. The building on Fifth Avenue, the site of Mr. Trump’s campaign launch and his residence, has prompted some of the same strong emotions as those inspired by the candidate himself. It has been a magnet for those making political statements: a protester in a Ku Klux hood who tussled with security guards in September 200 marchers in December activists in the spring. It has also been the site of a zoning tussle, magnified by the stakes of the presidential election, after the Trump Organization was forced to remove a Trump kiosk from its lobby, which had been designated as a public space as part of an agreement that allowed the developer to add 20 stories to the building’s height. And it has burnished its status as a tourist attraction, drawing more than one million visitors every year from around the globe. On Wednesday, hundreds of people gawked from the streets below, filming the climb with cameras and phones, oohing after the man dropped an object. Some cheered for him, remarking on the difficulty of his climb. “You will never believe what I just saw,” a woman leaving the commotion said into her cellphone. Aaron Hesseltine, 17, in town with his family from Saranac Lake, N. Y. to see Alex Rodriguez’s last game with the Yankees, watched for an hour and a half, documenting the experience on Snapchat for his friends at home. His last missive showed the moment the climber disappeared into the opening. ”They got him,” it read. | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Donald Trump has chosen three hawkish loyalists for key posts. They are Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Representative Mike Pompeo as C. I. A. director and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser. All three are regarded as outliers from conventional Republican thinking, shunned in various ways for viewpoints that were seen as unacceptable or overly partisan. Mr. Sessions, an Alabama conservative, was denied a federal judgeship by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 because of racially charged comments. Mr. Pompeo, above, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, would become one of the most overtly partisan figures to take over the C. I. A. — a spy agency that, at least publicly, is supposed to operate above politics and avoid a direct role in policymaking. General Flynn was the angry voice of the national security establishment on the campaign trail. He describes Islam as a political ideology, not a religion, and has even called it a cancer. ____ 2. Mr. Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits stemming from his defunct education venture, Trump University. Fraud allegations by former students had dogged him for years and hampered his presidential campaign. Above, Mr. Trump announced the establishment of the university in 2005. ____ 3. The World Health Organization declared an end to its global health emergency over the spread of the Zika virus. Zika should now be treated as a continuing problem rather than an exceptional situation, the agency said. The move prompted dismay from some public health experts, especially because Zika is seasonal and summer is just starting in the Southern Hemisphere. Above, a baby born with microcephaly in Brazil. ____ 4. Confederate flags are being displayed across the country, often as a kind of rejoinder to protesters. Those who have publicly embraced the flag are a small minority of the more than 60 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump. But displays of the flag — and reports of threats and attacks directed at minorities — are forcing Americans to confront vexing questions about race relations. ____ 5. A windowless, fortified ATT building in downtown Manhattan has been identified as an N. S. A. listening post. Neither ATT nor the National Security Agency would confirm this, but that’s the conclusion of a short film debuting this weekend, based on material provided by Edward Snowden. The film, “Project X,” says the building was Titanpointe and used to collect communications from international entities with operations in New York. ____ 6. In a new study, scientists using genetic engineering techniques were able to alter photosynthesis, the chemical reaction powering nearly all life on Earth. They increased the productivity of a test plant by 20 percent, raising hopes that they could do the same with food crops. Above, rice seedlings that are part of the experiment in a lab at the University of Illinois. ____ 7. Mr. Trump’s election has upended French politics and given new momentum to the far right. But it could also propel an aging, generally unpopular politician into the presidency. Alain Juppé is the heading into a party primary this Sunday. He’s seen as a bulwark against rising populism. ____ 8. Pope Francis’ third set of cardinals will receive their “red hats” at a ceremony on Saturday. Most of the current cardinals were appointed by his more conservative predecessors. The pontiff is in a race against time to appoint enough cardinals to ensure that his vision of the church endures after he dies. ___ 9. Pirates are sowing terror along the Amazon River in Brazil. Robberies and boat hijackings have surged as local drug gangs grow stronger. The police are struggling to respond. “There’s no law on the Amazon River,” said one woman whose son was robbed. ____ 10. Here are eight new books we recommend this week. From Wesley Lowery’s reportage on police shootings to Zadie Smith’s new novel, they elucidate and offer escape from the noisy politics of our times. ____ 11. Finally, we built an interactive meal planner for Thanksgiving. Tell us how many guests are coming, their dietary needs and your culinary dreams. In return, we’ll offer recipe ideas and tips for an extraordinary Thanksgiving meal. (And if it’s your first time making Thanksgiving, you may want to head straight to a specially selected batch of simple recipes.) Have a great weekend. ____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Gardasil Vaccine Given without Consent and Ruins Life of 14 Year Old Girl Savannah with her mother Sarah Snyder.
Health Impact News
The VAXXED film crew continues interviewing people who are vaccine damaged around the country.
In this interview in Nebraska, 14 year old Savannah Snyder is interviewed along with her mother Sarah.
Savannah talks about her experiences in receiving her 7th grade required vaccines. Her mother Sarah explains that she only gave permission for Savannah to receive the required vaccines. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, is an optional vaccine. Sarah explains that she had been warned about this vaccine and wanted to investigate it further.
You believe your doctor. Every parent believes their doctor. We’re all trying to do the right thing.
But Savannah was given the Gardasil vaccine anyway, without their original knowledge. She immediately started suffering some side effects, such as a headache, almost fainting, and skin rashes breaking out. She soon developed pneumonia and other infections.
As time went on, things got worse. She started experiencing seizures, including grand mal seizures. She was hospitalized many times for severe pain. Her mother tearfully explains that Savannah would wake up in the middle of the night and state that she was dying.
Like many other parents of children with Gardasil injuries, Sarah relates how they had little support, and that most people just thought it was all in Savannah’s head.
But after a trip to the Mayo clinic, Savannah was diagnosed with POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), a known side effect of Gardasil that affects the heart. (See: Cardiologist Comments on New Study Linking HPV Vaccines to POTS )
Savannah explains that before the Gardasil shot, she was very active and athletic. She was in the process of joining a gym. Now, she has difficulties speaking and walking, and needs a feeding tube.
Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com.
Watch the entire interview: More information about Gardasil Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people. In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine. FREE Shipping Available! Order here . Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? eBook – Available for immediate download.
One of the biggest myths being propagated in the compliant mainstream media today is that doctors are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and that the anti-vaccine doctors are all “quacks.”
However, nothing could be further from the truth in the vaccine debate. Doctors are not unified at all on their positions regarding “the science” of vaccines, nor are they unified in the position of removing informed consent to a medical procedure like vaccines.
The two most extreme positions are those doctors who are 100% against vaccines and do not administer them at all, and those doctors that believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective for ALL people, ALL the time, by force if necessary.
Very few doctors fall into either of these two extremist positions, and yet it is the extreme pro-vaccine position that is presented by the U.S. Government and mainstream media as being the dominant position of the medical field.
In between these two extreme views, however, is where the vast majority of doctors practicing today would probably categorize their position. Many doctors who consider themselves “pro-vaccine,” for example, do not believe that every single vaccine is appropriate for every single individual.
Many doctors recommend a “delayed” vaccine schedule for some patients, and not always the recommended one-size-fits-all CDC childhood schedule. Other doctors choose to recommend vaccines based on the actual science and merit of each vaccine, recommending some, while determining that others are not worth the risk for children, such as the suspect seasonal flu shot.
These doctors who do not hold extreme positions would be opposed to government-mandated vaccinations and the removal of all parental exemptions.
In this eBook, I am going to summarize the many doctors today who do not take the most extremist pro-vaccine position, which is probably not held by very many doctors at all, in spite of what the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government, and the mainstream media would like the public to believe. Read : Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? on your mobile device! | 0 |
Nicole Kushner Meyer is apologizing for mentioning her brother, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and to President Donald Trump, during an investment conference in China over the weekend. [“In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO, and recently moved to Washington to join the administration,” Meyer said at the conference aimed at encouraging Chinese developers to invest in a New Jersey real estate project, according to CNN. On Monday, Kushner Companies said Meyer’s remarks were not meant to motivate investors to sign onto the real estate project. “Ms. Meyer wanted to make clear that her brother had stepped away from the company in January and has nothing to do with this project,” the company said in a statement. Meyer never mentioned the president’s name during the investor event, but Trump’s photo was seen in a slide at the conference that detailed the “key decision makers” on the program, CNN reports. Kushner Companies distanced itself from the photo Monday, insisting that the image “was part of a presentation by the event’s organizers. ” “Kushner Companies had nothing to do with it,” the company said. The visa program encourages wealthy foreign nationals to make substantial investments in U. S. business ventures in exchange for a Green Card and a investor visa. Saturday’s event was hosted by Qiaowai, a Chinese company seeking funding for the Kushner 1 project in New Jersey. Reuters reports that journalists were “barred” from the event. Reporters were barred from a Kushner Companies event that offered Chinese investors a chance to get visas: https: . pic. twitter. — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 8, 2017, The program has come under intense scrutiny by both Republicans and Democrats. California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein opposes the visa program, arguing that it allows monied foreign nationals to use their wealth to buy visas and U. S. citizenship. The program — which was extended and sneakily slipped into the latest spending bill — is rife with abuse, leading to fraud convictions. GreenTech Automotive, the electric car manufacturer by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe — funded by visas granted to Chinese investors, and pushed through the approval process by Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother — failed to make its first payment on a $3 million loan from the state of Mississippi. The company shuttered its Mississippi factory earlier this year. Jared Kushner stepped away from his family’s business after becoming a senior adviser to President Trump. He is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who also serves in the White House as an assistant to the President. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Home » Gold » Gold News » It’s Coming… UNPRECEDENTED US BOND DUMPING | Jim Willie
A dollar collapse is coming… Jim Willie editor of the Hat Trick letter joins Silver Doctors to Sound the Alarm : foreign governments are getting concerned about the Federal Reserve devaluing the U.S. dollar. As a result, foreign governments are dumping U.S. debt at an unprecedented rate.
Regarding the U.S. presidential election, Willie says the polls and voting machines are rigged. However, Willie remains hopeful that after the election we will be released from this “fascist dictatorship.”
Stay tuned to hear The Golden Jackass answer viewers questions!
Subscribe HERE for free to the Silver Doctors’ YouTube channel so you do not miss part 2! | 0 |
Mark Warner, Virginia Ron Wyden, Oregon
In both houses of Congress, these were the barest of margins — 218 Yes votes in the House and 60 Yes votes in the Senate, in each case exactly the minimum required for passage. Another indication of how toxic this “trade” bill is. No Democrat dared touch it who didn’t want to or have to.
Black Lives Matter and the TPP
And now the TPP has become even more toxic, since the Black Lives Matter (BLM) social-justice movement has endorsed the anti-TPP position. Politico Pro has this (sub. required; my emphasis):
Obama’s latest TPP foe: Black Lives Matter By Andrew Hanna Monday, Oct. 31, 2016
The Obama administration will face an unexpected adversary as it gears up for what could be a blockbuster lame-duck fight over the Trans-Pacific Partnership: the Black Lives Matter movement.
The group — best known best for its protests of police shootings of African-Americans — has joined the fray over the Asian Pacific trade deal as part of its growing focus on economic issues, contending the pact would lead to greater racial injustice . It ties past trade deals to the closures of factories that have hurt black workers disproportionately and increased black poverty .
Its involvement could influence the votes of a handful of wavering Democrats, should Congress tackle TPP during the lame duck.
“There are groups that are going to pay a lot of close attention to what they say, especially the Congressional Black Caucus,” said Bill Reinsch, a fellow at the Stimson Center and close trade-vote watcher.
Only a small band of 28 House Democrats voted to give the president fast track authority to complete TPP, including three members of the Congressional Black Caucus: Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.). A fourth black caucus member, Republican Mia Love of Utah, also voted for fast-track authority.
With anti-trade fervor whipped into a fever pitch by the presidential election campaign, their votes are considered key to passage of the pact — and all are under increasing pressure to abandon the president should the pact come to a ratification vote.
The pretend reason, of course, for TPP support is support for a major legacy “want” by the first black president. The pro-Clinton members of the Democratic Platform Committee, for example, resisted to the end any explicit language about TPP on the grounds that the Party must support its president.
Democrats Prioritize Party Unity Over Including Stand Against TPP In Platform
Members of the Democratic National Convention Platform Committee shot down an attempt to include specific opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in the platform, despite the fact that both Democratic presidential candidates have taken positions against the TPP.
The attempt failed because members appointed by Hillary Clinton and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed it was improper to oppose the TPP when President Barack Obama fervently believes in the agreement. However, by putting party unity before taking a firm stand against the trade agreement, the door was left open for Clinton to go back to supporting the TPP , which was the case when she was secretary of state.
“It is hard for me to understand why Secretary Clinton’s delegates won’t stand behind Secretary Clinton’s positions in the party’s platform,” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said….
Even platform committee chair, Representative E.J. Cummings [normally progressive on trade issues], chose to vote against the resolution. He, too, bragged about not voting for trade agreements.
“I don’t want to do anything as he ends his term to undercut the president of the United States. I’m just not going to do it. And that’s where I stand,” Cummings proclaimed.
That’s the pretend reason — supporting the first black president — for most of them anyway. The real reason is different and not unexpected — money and everything money can buy. The Democratic Party as it’s currently configured exists to enable the fire hose flow of corporate and big-wealth dollars into its coffers. Opposing that flow gets you the “Sanders treatment,” but I’m not spilling any new beans in saying that.
This move by Black Lives Matter takes away the pretend reason and thus puts some careers at risk. BLM has high visibility at the moment. It will be worth watching the result, the actual TPP vote, as this plays out later.
What to Watch For in the Lame Duck
Once the Democrats figure out how many Republicans will defect from their leadership in each house of Congress (there were 50 House Republican defections last time plus six not voting, and five Senate defections plus two not voting), they’ll know how many Democrats will have to “take one for the team” — vote Yes on TPP so others with reputations to protect (like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi ) don’t have to.
The numbers needed to pass TPP in the Senate have changed this time. Only 51 votes are needed there now (that’s part of what “fast track” means). Finding 50 No votes in the Senate is not an impossible task, but it’s a very high bar — depending on the way Republicans vote, as few as four “Democrats” like Ron Wyden could guarantee passage.
So the greatest vulnerability for TPP is in the House . Can Democrats again muster something like 28 pro-corporate votes? Which Democrats will chose to take the fall a second time? Corporatists like Ron Kind will eagerly comply. But will Earl Blumenauer ( bow-tie bicycle guy )? Will CBC members Sewell and Johnson, with BLM lobbying hard against them? Or will other House Democrats be needed (and willing) to take the fall so Pelosi can move TPP across the line?
Again, Fast Track passed the House with zero votes to spare. What if the Republican opposition — including the opposition to Speaker Ryan in the wake of the Trump debacle — swells to more than 50? This could be a very close vote.
TPP, Obama’s Legacy and “A Glide Path to His Life as an Ex-President”
The Politico article quoted above helpfully notes this about Obama’s legacy:
If successfully pushed through Congress, ratification of the trade accord would be the last major piece of legislation of the Obama presidency. The prospect that black lawmakers and activists could help to hand him a defeat is complicated by Obama’s position as the first black president.
“ This is part of President Obama’s legacy ,” said [CBC member Gregory] Meeks.
Will Barack Obama get his legacy wish, along with his legacy library and foundation? The New York Times a few weeks ago told us this about Obama’s future plans and needs:
Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.
The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion . The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future….
So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.
The real push for donations, foundation officials said, will come after Mr. Obama leaves the White House .
Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser, oversees an effort inside the White House to keep attention on Mr. Obama’s future and to ensure that his final 17 months in office, barring crises, serve as a glide path to his life as an ex-president .
“A glide path to his life as an ex-president.” I guess you could call him, after his 2008 trademark, “ever hopeful and looking for change” Interesting times indeed. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 |
KABUL, Afghanistan — An American journalist for NPR was killed on Sunday afternoon along with his Afghan translator in a Taliban ambush in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan military confirmed. NPR also confirmed their deaths on Sunday. The victims were identified as David Gilkey, a photographer and videographer who was part of a NPR team embedded with Afghan Special Forces in Helmand Province, and his translator, Zabihullah Tamanna. The other two American journalists on the team were unhurt. Mr. Gilkey was the first civilian American journalist killed during the Afghan conflict since 1992, at least 27 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2010, James P. Hunter, a staff sergeant and journalist with the 101st Airborne Division, was killed by an improvised explosive device. The journalists were in a special forces convoy driving on the main road from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, to Marja when Taliban insurgents fired at the convoy with heavy weapons, said Shakil Ahmad, the spokesman for the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps in Helmand. The vehicle carrying Mr. Gilkey and Mr. Tamanna was destroyed, Mr. Ahmad said. It was not immediately clear where the other two NPR journalists were at the time of the attack. After a heavy firefight, the Afghan government forces recovered the victims’ bodies and retreated to a nearby Afghan police base, Mr. Ahmad said. The bodies were then flown to Camp Bastion, the corps headquarters, which was once the major American and British base in Helmand, late Sunday. Mr. Gilkey was an journalist who had extensive experience covering conflicts in Gaza, South Africa, Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan. After he covered the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Mr. Gilkey talked about his profession in a video. “It’s not just reporting. It’s not just taking pictures,” he said. “It’s do those visuals, do the stories, do they change somebody’s mind enough to take action?” The NPR team’s most recent report, Thursday on the network’s “Morning Edition” program, described American Army Special Forces troops working with their Afghan counterparts and using drones to hunt Taliban insurgents. Mr. Gilkey’s photographs accompanied an online version of the report. The last foreign journalist killed in Afghanistan was Anja Niedringhaus, a German citizen and an Associated Press photographer, who was shot by a rogue policeman when she was covering the Afghan presidential election in 2014. The NPR team also included Monika Evstatieva, the director of the “All Things Considered” program, and Tom Bowman, NPR’s Pentagon correspondent. | 1 |
When Jeff Hornacek took the job as the Knicks coach last May, he did so with eyes wide open. He was not oblivious to the dysfunction that has been a part of the organization for years. He expected some controversy or another with the Knicks. Roughly nine months into his tenure, the team has not fallen short of Hornacek’s expectations. “It’s lived up to the billing,” he said Wednesday before the Knicks fell, to the Los Angeles Clippers. “It’s been something out here. ” But even Hornacek could not have expected that the game that night would dissolve into a circus. While a feud continues to stew between the Knicks president Phil Jackson and the team’s top star, Carmelo Anthony, amid struggles, their game ceded the spotlight Wednesday night to a courtside fracas. Charles Oakley, the voluble but beloved former Knicks stalwart, was arrested after getting into an altercation with security guards midway through the first quarter. Oakley was removed from Madison Square Garden and handcuffed. Oakley was sitting courtside, in an aisle seat in the first row of the section near the Knicks’ bench. Accounts of his behavior varied widely. According to some spectators seated nearby, he had been calm early in the game. He took a photograph with Felice Bergman, a fan with season tickets several rows higher. James L. Dolan, the Knicks’ owner, with whom Oakley has a contentious relationship, sat nearby, but several spectators said they did not see Oakley exchange any words with Dolan or try to provoke him. But they did see Oakley exchanging glances with a security guard who was standing several feet away. Oakley seemed to utter something to the guard when he walked by, according to T. J. Veenstra, who was sitting behind Oakley. A guard soon came over to Oakley and asked him to leave. Oakley asked why. “He just couldn’t understand why,” said Matthew Barbara, who sat a few rows up from Oakley. “We didn’t see him throw a punch or do anything. He wasn’t nasty to any of the people behind him. We’re trying to figure out what happened. ” Oakley was soon surrounded by a phalanx of guards, as John McEnroe, the former tennis champion, stood behind them on the court watching. As they tried to remove Oakley, he pushed one guard twice before being restrained and taken away. The game, which was still in its early stages, stopped as players from both teams watched the commotion. As he was being led out, the crowd chanted: “Oakley! Oakley!” Knicks guard Derrick Rose later said: “That was the weirdest. I didn’t know what was going on. ” The police said Oakley had been charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal trespass, all misdemeanors. He was released with an appearance ticket. The Knicks, in a statement, said Oakley had behaved in a “highly inappropriate and completely abusive manner. ” But fans sitting nearby said they did not feel that was the case. “Nothing he did rose to the level of what happened,” Jamie Vitiello said. “They overacted. ” The episode was a distraction from another Knicks quarrel. The previous day, Jackson had posted a message on Twitter that seemed to endorse a Bleacher Report story painting Anthony as a star who did not have a sufficient will to win and who was more interested in building his brand and his own statistics. It was another shot in a feud between Jackson and Anthony that has persisted all season. After the game, Anthony was asked if he still trusted Jackson. “I did say that,” Anthony said, adding: “I trust the process. ” Anthony and Jackson have met twice to calm the waters. In December, Jackson said Anthony was a on offense. In January, Charley Rosen, a longtime confidante of Jackson’s, wrote a column on FanRag Sports that said Anthony had “outlived his usefulness in New York. ” And for the last several weeks, Anthony has heard his name in trade rumors as the Knicks have reportedly tried to trade him, to teams including the Clippers. Anthony, however, has a clause in his contract and has not indicated that he wants to leave the organization. Jackson, however, did try to play peacekeeper in the Knicks’ other contentious situation on Wednesday. After Oakley was taken away from his seat, Jackson rushed out to the tunnel to try to calm him. But Oakley continued to fume as he stood outside the court with his hands in cuffs and guards surrounding him. “I didn’t do nothing,” he said, mixing in expletives. He said Dolan was responsible — although he did not say for what. Oakley has had a conflicted relationship with the Knicks. He was a fan favorite during his 10 seasons with the team. He was known for his rugged and physical style and helped take them to the 1994 N. B. A. Finals. Yet, he has been exiled over the last few years after a falling out with the organization. While many of his former teammates returned to Madison Square Garden, Oakley had not. “The boss don’t like me,” Oakley told The New York Times last fall. He said he has tried to meet with Dolan but has been rebuffed. “I mean, I had at least 15 people try to set up a meeting,” Oakley said. “He won’t meet. I want to sit down to talk to him. I want me and him in a room. And lock the door. Lock that door!” On Wednesday, however, they shared an arena — one that had once been the setting for Oakley’s glory days. When he was eclipsed by security guards, Doc Rivers, the Clippers coach and a former teammate, immediately recognized him at the center. “That was tough to watch,” Rivers said. | 1 |
LAS VEGAS — The disturbing images seem so distant now: the tabloid tale — head shorn, face twisted, umbrella gripped like a police baton as she bashed a paparazzi S. U. V. window. More than eight years after her meltdown, Britney Spears, at 34, appears to be thriving. In September, she announced a $35 million deal to extend her residency at Planet Hollywood Resort Casino here. Forbes named her the female musician of 2015, ahead of powerhouses like Rihanna and Nicki Minaj. And she’s been hard at work on her ninth studio album, expected this year. With her television guest spots and a wildly popular, often eccentric Instagram feed featuring her toned abs and adorable sons, Ms. Spears looks like that rare celebrity who has vanquished deep travails to snatch a second chance. “I’m in a real good place in my life,” Ms. Spears told People magazine last year, in an interview about her personal life. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. ” Ms. Spears’s team presents her onstage as fully in control, and backstage, as the mastermind of her show, an artist in top form. But that view seems at odds with the conclusions routinely drawn about her at probate court in Los Angeles, where an undisclosed mental illness and substance abuse led her family to take action in 2008. Since then, Ms. Spears’s life has been controlled by a conservatorship, known in other states as a guardianship, designed for people who cannot take care of themselves. According to the arrangement, which is typically used to protect the old, the mentally disabled or the extremely ill, Ms. Spears cannot make key decisions, personal or financial, without the approval of her conservators: her father, Jamie Spears, and a lawyer, Andrew M. Wallet. Her most mundane purchases, from a drink at Starbucks to a song on iTunes, are tracked in court documents as part of the plan to safeguard the great fortune she has earned but does not ultimately control. While the conservators are widely credited with rescuing Ms. Spears’s career — and her life — her apparent stability and success could belie the need for continuing restrictions. There are recent signs, in fact, that the conservators are now acknowledging the great progress she has made. After successfully fighting to keep her from testifying in at least three prior lawsuits — (a probate judge had previously agreed that doing so could cause her “irreparable harm”) — Ms. Spears’s conservators allowed her to testify on Monday in a case filed against her by a former manager. They agreed that “giving such testimony is not likely to cause harm to her,” according to court papers. Could this be the start of a major unfastening of the strictures she lives under? Neither the conservators nor her managers or lawyers will discuss her status, and Ms. Spears did not respond to multiple requests seeking an interview. While it is not possible to get an accurate sense of someone’s mental state from afar, Ms. Spears’s friends and former associates said in interviews that, for her, the conservatorship has become an accepted fact of life — not a cage but a protective bubble that allows her to worry about her true passions: music and her children. “If anyone knew the real Britney, they would know that she would rather be remembered for being the great mother she is rather than the artist she is,” said David Lucado, a former boyfriend whose relationship with Ms. Spears foundered in 2014 amid charges of infidelity that Mr. Lucado denies. “And if anyone could see her interactions with her kids, they would know that there is no need for a conservatorship over Britney’s personal life. ” Since the conservatorship began, some restrictions have been eased. More rollbacks were discussed several years ago but never occurred, according to a person who has been involved in Ms. Spears’s care who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Ultimately some of the people who would help to decide whether to end it are the conservators and doctors who now help oversee it, many of whom receive fees from Ms. Spears’s estate for their work on her behalf. Ms. Spears’s status and progress are measured by a court investigator for her case, who is assigned to file reports on her progress once every other year. (Those under conservatorship are not required to regularly appear in front of a judge after their conservators are appointed.) And should Ms. Spears ask to be released, her cause would probably be led by the man the court appointed to be her chief advocate, a lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III. Mr. Ingham’s role is, among other things, to ensure that the conservators do not loot her assets, abuse their power or inappropriately restrict her freedom. There has been some debate in California over whether lawyers do enough to advocate the rights of those under conservatorship. Just last year, the state’s Senate Committee on Judiciary noted in a report: “In theory the counsel should be arguing on the proposed conservatee’s behalf for a alternative to conservatorship whenever possible. ” Mr. Ingham has been awarded more than $2 million in fees for his work on Ms. Spears’s behalf since 2008. This is in addition to the $6. 9 million paid from the estate to the conservators and other lawyers who have helped manage Ms. Spears’s affairs under the current arrangement. Ms. Spears has never publicly questioned any of these payments, but critics of the process have. “As long as she is bringing in so much money and as long as the lawyers and conservators are getting paid, there is little incentive to end it,” said Elaine Renoire, president of the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse, an advocacy group. “Usually, the conservatorship just keeps going unless the conservatee makes a fuss or the family does. ” No one questioned whether Ms. Spears needed help in early 2008 on Jan. 30, her psychiatrist had called for assistance, and when the ambulance left the singer’s Los Angeles home, it was led by a robust entourage of police vehicles. For days, Ms. Spears had been behaving bizarrely, speaking in a British accent and driving at breakneck speeds. Now she was strapped to a gurney en route to U. C. L. A. Medical Center. Helicopters buzzed overhead. It was the second time in less than a month that Ms. Spears had been taken to a hospital by ambulance for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. Anyone watching that day would not have recognized Ms. Spears as the musical phenomenon who, a decade earlier, and 17, had posed in hot pants and bra on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. With hits including “ … Baby One More Time” she dominated the charts, and her first four albums sold a combined 30 million copies. But like child stars before her, Ms. Spears encountered the pressures created by sudden fame and wealth. And a rocky personal life did not help. In 2002, her relationship with Justin Timberlake ended. In January 2004, she married a childhood friend from Louisiana in Las Vegas — a union that lasted 55 hours. Nine months later, she married again, this time to Kevin Federline, a local backup dancer. Two years later, in November 2006, after the birth of their second son, she filed for divorce. Drug and alcohol issues fueled her decline. In 2007, Ms. Spears twice entered treatment but each time cut her stay short. The substance abuse would factor in her battle to retain custody of her children. The idea of losing contact with them tormented her, associates said. After being told she had lost custody of them in October 2007, she spent a night sleeping in a parking lot, according to court papers. (She has since worked out a custody arrangement with Mr. Federline.) “It clearly wasn’t working with her in control of the ship,” said Peter Katsis, who was part of her management team in 2007. “It was overwhelming for her when she came of age. ” Just what kind of mental condition afflicts Ms. Spears has never been publicly disclosed. But, whatever the ailment, by 2008 it seemed to have full possession of her. Although divorced, Ms. Spears’s worried parents decided their daughter was in crisis. Her father, a former welder, oil worker, cook and a recovering alcoholic, had subjected his family to years of “verbal abuse, abandonment” and “erratic behavior” as a result of his heavy drinking, Britney’s mother, Lynne Spears, wrote in her 2008 book, “Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World. ” But her parents rebuilt some kind of relationship after Mr. Spears stopped drinking, and they sought to intervene. After days of fasting and praying, Mrs. Spears said, Mr. Spears asked the court to establish a temporary conservatorship for his daughter that would give him broad control over her treatment, visitors, security and daily life. On Feb. 1, 2008, while Ms. Spears was still in the hospital, a judge, Reva G. Goetz, granted his wish. “I shuddered to think,” Mrs. Spears wrote in her book, describing her worries about those influencing Britney at the time, “what depths of desperation we would have to plumb to regain charge of our child. ” At the outset, Ms. Spears thought of challenging the arrangement, according to Adam Streisand, one of two lawyers whom she spoke to at the time. Mr. Streisand said Ms. Spears told him she was not comfortable with her father as conservator of her finances. “It was clear to me that she seemed a bit agitated,” Mr. Streisand said. “But my sense was that she did have the capacity to pick a lawyer and that she could make a rational decision. ” The judge, though, citing a recent medical evaluation, said the singer was not capable of hiring her own counsel. Mr. Streisand said he respected the doctor’s opinion and went away. “Britney wanted to oppose the conservatorship,” he said, “but she was also extremely worried about her kids and seemed to understand that the best thing to do to see her kids was to accept it. ” By the end of 2008, the conservatorship had been made permanent. By March 2009, Ms. Spears was back on tour. Initially, though, she seemed frustrated by the restrictions. “I think it’s too in control,” she said during a 2008 interview with MTV. “If I wasn’t under the restraints I’m under, I’d feel so liberated. ” She continued, “There’s no excitement, there’s no passion. ” And then: “Even when you go to jail, you know there’s the time when you’re going to get out. But in this situation, it’s . ” Since then, Ms. Spears has said little publicly about this arrangement. The conservatorship system in California, troubled for decades, has undergone reforms in recent years that were designed to further protect the old and infirm people who are its typical clients. Ms. Spears hardly fits that bill, but this system operates for her the same way as it does for others. Probate judges in California can appoint two kinds of conservators: ones responsible for a person’s physical and mental health, and others who are put in charge of the individual’s finances. Ms. Spears has both. Her father, 63, is responsible for her physical — making sure she takes her medicine, for example — and manages her estate. He shares the financial oversight with Mr. Wallet, who specializes in conservatorships and probate law. Mr. Spears takes in about $130, 000 a year as a conservator and is also reimbursed for the rent on an office he uses. His bills are reviewed and approved by the judge. He has sought only modest increases over the years, though he also requested 1. 5 percent of gross revenues from the performances and merchandising tied to Ms. Spears’s Las Vegas show. The court, Ms. Spears and her lawyer signed off on it. For a time, during 2012, Jason Trawick, then her boyfriend, also served as for her personal . As conservator, according to his court filings, Mr. Spears’s work has included “overseeing and coordinating Britney’s [redacted] business, costuming, personal, household stuff, and legal matters (touching upon entertainment, music, other business opportunities, family law issues, the litigation, trial resolution of other disputes, and ongoing litigation and conservatorship matters). ” He negotiates business opportunities, such as her 2012 stint as a judge on “The X Factor,” as well as interviews and sponsorships, even the maintenance of vehicles and the custody arrangement for her children. Mr. Spears and his lawyers have also aggressively kept at bay anyone they consider a threat to Ms. Spears’s stability, including a former business manager, a former boyfriend and a lawyer who once sought to intervene in her case, all of whom were served with restraining orders. In 2009, after a Spears fan site, BreatheHeavy. com, started a “Free Britney” campaign critical of the conservatorship, its owner, Jordan Miller, said he received an irate call from Mr. Spears, who threatened to have the website taken down. Speaking today, Mr. Miller says he can understand the lengths her family took. “It was a really volatile situation, and they were trying to protect her,” he said. The conservators’ work is monitored by Mr. Ingham, Ms. Spears’s veteran lawyer. Though the court’s typical maximum hourly fee is $250, Judge Goetz awarded Mr. Ingham as much as $475 an hour to represent Ms. Spears, citing an exception in court rules that allows higher fees “in cases involving unusual problems requiring extraordinary expertise. ” Mr. Ingham, who describes himself as a lawyer with expertise in conservatorship cases, told the court his typical hourly fee is $595. For a time in 2014, Mr. Ingham’s clients included both Ms. Spears and Casey Kasem, the radio personality, then 82, who was also in a conservatorship until his death that year his wife was challenging the size of the lawyer’s legal bills. Mr. Ingham said the case was particularly complicated, but Mrs. Kasem’s lawyer at one point accused Mr. Ingham of padding his bills, a charge the judge dismissed. Mr. Ingham declined to comment. Ms. Spears is not known to have ever questioned any of Mr. Ingham’s fees. The rules for meeting Britney are tight. No selfies. No autographs. No invading her personal space. Each night before Ms. Spears appears in her “Piece of Me” show at Planet Hollywood’s Axis Theater here, she poses for photos with fans backstage, maintaining her brand at a time when her public appearances and interviews are rare and tightly controlled. (Interviewers who are approved seldom mention the conservatorship.) The packages start at $1, 500 and include a backstage tour led by a longtime Spears employee. “Britney is very shy,” Felicia Culotta, the V. I. P. coordinator, said on one night last year. “I know y’all find that very hard to believe — she goes out on that stage, and she is a powerhouse. But she is extremely shy. ” “Britney plays off energy,” Ms. Culotta added. “If you go in scared of her, she is going to be scared of you. So don’t be scared of her. She’s very normal. ” The routine and consistency of her Las Vegas residency — typically three shows a week for six weeks followed by six weeks off — are a good fit for a mother of two looking to avoid the grind of a tour. During her 90 minutes onstage, Ms. Spears recycles two dozen hits into an act that features backup dancers, pyrotechnics and showers of confetti. She changes costumes repeatedly. At one point, she jumps in a harness from a tree. During each performance, a man or woman picked from the audience is strapped into a leather bondage harness and forced to creep across the stage on all fours. On this night, Ms. Spears, in a bustier, held the leash on a man. “Your ass is out of this world!” she screamed. To be sure, the show does not showcase the Britney of old: Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets. Her vocals are largely prerecorded, and the can lapse. She seems to be doing a job, but a good job, and there is no arguing that the show is doing well: It often fills the Axis, the largest theater on the Strip. Ms. Spears splits her time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where her sons are in school, often taking the flight back after a weekday performance. She and her children are spotted around town in Las Vegas — by the Planet Hollywood pool or at the Sonic near the Strip. (The fast food outlet was the hub of Kentwood, La. the small town where Ms. Spears grew up.) In addition to the residency, Ms. Spears’s next album, her first since 2013, is expected this summer. For months, she has teased her new music — a single, “Make Me (Oooh),” is due in May — and logged studio time with hot songwriters. Online, she has promoted herself in photos as a sexy pop star back in fighting shape. “Honestly, I’m just particular with this record,” she told V, the magazine. “It’s my baby, and so I really want it done right. ” Music is only one part of the business of being Britney Spears these days. More than a dozen interconnected businesses, including profitable lines of lingerie and perfume, are overseen by the conservators. Occasionally the businesses and Ms. Spears are sued. When a company, Brand Sense Partners, sued Ms. Spears in 2011, in a dispute over a licensing agreement for one of her fragrances, its lawyer at the time, Geoffrey A. Neri, argued that the singer had to be capable of testifying. He pointed out in court papers that she takes care of her children, makes numerous public appearances and was then on a tour across much of the world. “The notion that Britney Spears is mentally or emotionally unfit to testify under oath is a sham,” Mr. Neri wrote. But in that case and two others, Judge Goetz ruled the singer too fragile, mentally, to testify. The judge, now retired, declined an interview request the case has since been transferred to a new judge. On Monday, after years of maintaining that the singer was too vulnerable to be questioned, her conservators consented to a deposition by Ms. Spears in a lawsuit filed against her and her father by Sam Lutfi, an associate from the time of her breakdown. (He claims Ms. Spears owes him money, asserting she made an oral agreement in 2007 to have him serve as her manager and that her father assaulted him.) Despite an attempt by the conservators to separate Ms. Spears and Mr. Lutfi during her testimony — his “physical presence in the same conference room as Ms. Spears poses serious risks” to her they argued in court filings — both parties were present for her deposition, which lasted about four hours. Ms. Spears, in a magenta blazer and pearls, testified without incident in Mr. Lutfi’s presence, even snacking on a cookie during a down moment. Soon after, she was back to posting on Instagram, including an image that read, “All energy is contagious. ” Hundreds of supportive comments flooded in from fans seemingly well aware of the latest legal twist in her life. “You have gone through hell and back again but you have persevered every time,” one wrote. “You got this. ” | 1 |
The news of Sunday’s attack in Jerusalem that left four Israelis dead and 17 injured has sparked outbursts of jubilation among Palestinian terrorist groups. [Hamas welcomed the attack, saying the carnage is a “natural reaction” to the “crimes of the occupation,” and what the terrorist group claimed was the infringement on the “Palestinians’ rights” and their holy sites. Fawzi Barhoum, the movement’s spokesperson, lauded the attack as a “courageous act in defense of the holy sites and especially Al Aqsa mosque. ” He added that the attack proves that the “Jerusalem intifada [a series of attacks on Israelis that started in October 2015] continues to defend our lands and holy sites, and the Israeli oppression and aggression won’t be able to stop it. The oppression will only increase the determination of the Palestinian people to continue its heroic resistance in all its forms. ” The Islamic Jihad also welcomed the attack, and said in a statement that the deadly represented “a natural reaction to the crimes of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. ” The journalist Adham Abu Slamiyeh tweeted a picture of Palestinians handing out sweets, with the following caption: “The sweets of the attack are in. Allah bless the men of Jabel Mukaber [the perpetrator’s home neighborhood] that helped us redeem the spirit of Jerusalem. ” حلوان #عملية_القدس وصل.. حيا الله رجال #جبل_المكبر الذين أعادوا لنا روح #انتفاضة_القدس pic. twitter. — أدهم أبو سلمية #غزة (@adham922) January 8, 2017, Twitter user Ahmad Qanita wrote: “Allahu akbar, these pictures make me want more. They remind us of [Hamas explosives expert Yahya] Ayash’s attacks, just as we smell his perfumed memory,” referring to the 21st anniversary of Yahya’s elimination by Israel, which Hamas marked earlier this week. الله أكبر ،، صور بتفتح النفس. .صور تذكرنا بعمليات #يحيى_عياش ونحن نتنسم ذكراه العطرة( صور من عملية القدس قبل قليل)#انتفاضة_القدس pic. twitter. — أحمد قنيطة #غزة (@ahmadqanita89) January 8, 2017, Hussein Shaweesh also evoked Ayash’s memory: “Jews, the children of Ayash are back and the Jerusalem attack is the best proof. ” أبناء العياش عادوا يا ابناء اليهودية وخير دليل #عملية_القدس#انتفاضة_القدس, — حسين الشاويش — غزة (@HshShaweesh) January 8, 2017, “Here is the Jerusalem intifada, Jerusalem the crown jewel of cities demonstrates its determination to fight against the invaders,” the analyst Yasser Zaatreh tweeted. “The attack today proves that the intifada continues despite the cruel oppression of the enemy and the collaboration of our brothers. ” هي انتفاضة القدس، وفي زهرة المدائن يتجلى الإصرار على رفض الغزاة. عملية اليوم تؤكد أن الانتفاضة متواصلة، رغم شراسة قمع العدو وتآمر الشقيق. — ياسر الزعاترة (@YZaatreh) January 8, 2017, “Allah, harm the sons of Zion and show them the wonders of your might,” Mohammed Yehya tweeted. 5 قتلى وأكثر من 15 اصابة بينهم حالات حرجة جميعهم جنود في عملية #القدس البطوليةاللهم أثخن في بني صهيون وأرنا فيهم عجيب قدرتك#انتفاضة_القدس, — محمد يحيى #غزة (@mhmdyjber) January 8, 2017, Ramadan wrote: “In Jerusalem the hero rose up and exacted revenge, the Jerusalem intifada will continue until the return and liberation of the land. ” في #القدس ثأر البطل؛#انتفاضة_القدس مستمرة حتى تعود الأرض حرة pic. twitter. — ramadan (@ramadan32583280) January 8, 2017, | 1 |
Family vacations should be about creating a lifetime of memories, spending time with your loved ones and, most important, having fun. More often than not, however, they end up being just the opposite, according to Kay Merrill, a family travel specialist and the owner of Are We There Yet? Family Adventures, a travel consultancy in Larkspur, Calif. Here, she shares her tips for making sure that your family getaway is as picture perfect as you imagine it to be. Involve Everyone in Planning, Even Younger Children Your may not be able to have much to say in planning the itinerary, but Ms. Merrill said that children who are 5 or older should definitely help out. “Most any place you go will have activities and sights that will appeal to both you and them,” she said, “and once you’ve decided where you’re going, it’s important to spend the time to figure out what you will actually do there. ” During the initial planning, she suggested getting a map and some books relevant to your destination and leaving them out in your home where they are easily visible such as in the kitchen. “Encourage your children to look at them and have them come up with some things that they want to do on the trip,” she said. She added that parents should incorporate their own interests to make sure the trip is fun for them too. Set the Mood in Advance If Cuba is on the agenda, for example, cook a Cuban meal or play mambo music, which is integral to the country’s culture. Travel movies and YouTube videos can also build interest before you go. Build in Downtime Daily In an attempt to see and do everything your destination offers, you may be tempted to plan an itinerary that has your family going all day long, but Ms. Merrill warns against overscheduling. “If you try to pack in too much, everyone in the family, especially kids, will get cranky and whiny,” she said. Balance out a morning of sightseeing or other activities with a few hours to chill in the afternoon. Ms. Merrill said that is a great time to relax — you and your brood can unwind by the hotel pool or read a book. Children can also write in a journal about their favorite part of the morning. Then you can all head out again for another activity. Take a Diversion From the For the family vacations she plans, Ms. Merrill said that she likes to include an activity that is different from the trip’s theme. If it’s a beach getaway to Nevis in the Caribbean, she would include a visit to the island’s farms to meet farmers and sample their produce. “Often, this diversion ends up being the most memorable part of the trip,” she said. Book Creative Tours and Excursions “Sticking to the standard tours,” she said, is “boring so I encourage families to get creative and have a better trip by finding the excursions that most visitors don’t do. ” That could mean a walking tour of secret gardens in Paris or a visit to a local family’s home in Marrakesh, Morocco. Your hotel concierge, local tour companies or a travel adviser can help find these activities. | 1 |
PHOENIX — When lawmakers in the Arizona House of Representatives went looking for a new speaker in late 2014, they turned to David M. Gowan, an unassuming Republican legislator whom colleagues on both sides of the aisle saw as someone they could work with. But Mr. Gowan has proved to be anything but. He has angered lawmakers from the right and left since assuming the post in January 2015, putting his own stamp on a legislative body that has garnered its share of attention for its leanings on issues like immigration and abortion. Right after approving a budget last year that forced state agencies to make another round of cuts, Mr. Gowan, a conservative who makes his home in a rural border county in southeastern Arizona, embarked on a redecorating spree. The House floor got an elegant carpet. Lawmakers got reupholstered chairs. His leadership team got cherry wood office furniture. He also planned for showers and a multiuse room in the basement, but shelved the project after half of his Republican caucus chided his “excessive spending” in a letter. In January, Mr. Gowan repaid the state for travel reimbursements and daily allowances he had improperly claimed, a matter that remains under investigation by the state’s attorney general. He began this month by abruptly revoking reporters’ access to the House floor unless they agreed to an extensive background check. None of them did. Fourteen journalists regularly assigned to cover the Capitol retreated to the gallery that morning, taking pictures and writing stories as a group of visiting elementary school students giggled and gawked. State Representative Ken Clark, a Democrat from Phoenix, warned, “This is a slippery slope. ” In an column, Amanda Ventura, the president of the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, wrote, “Reporters pose no security threat — unless truth hurts. ” From the floor, Mr. Gowan told his colleagues, by way of explanation, “I want to make sure you’re protected. ” But the ensuing debate promptly stirred another controversy, about guns in the chamber. Mr. Gowan had authorized the removal of a sign that banned firearms from the staff entrance to the House building, effectively allowing lawmakers to enter armed. Mr. Gowan, 46, who was first elected as a state representative in 2008, is leaving the House at the end of the year because of term limits. He is now aiming his sights at Washington, running to represent one of the largest congressional districts in the country. In a crowded field of Republican contenders, he is considered an underdog, though he does not seem deterred. “David Gowan has always been underestimated, always traveled under the radar,” Frank Antenori, a former Republican state senator who is a close friend of Mr. Gowan’s, said in an interview. “He’s got a real folksy personality, people just don’t see him as being as aggressive. That’s a big mistake. ” Mr. Gowan hails from conservative Cochise County, a land of cattle ranchers that takes in Fort Huachuca — once home to the storied Buffalo Soldiers, these days a sprawling base that is host to the armed forces’ intelligence training program. He earned a living as a magazine distributor — stacking periodicals and paperback novels on the shelves of supermarkets and drugstores — and teaching martial arts on the side he is a black belt in karate. Mr. Gowan turned his political ambitions into action methodically and patiently. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination to the Arizona House twice, in 2004 and 2006, focusing his campaign on a single issue: illegal immigration, a major point of contention in the border district he wanted to represent. An editorial in The Tucson Citizen, a newspaper that has since ceased publication, called his command of other topics “fuzzy at best. ” Jonathan Paton, who defeated him twice in primaries, said determination is what got Mr. Gowan where he is. “He does not quit,” said Mr. Paton, a Republican who served in both the Arizona House and Senate. “He does not accept that he shouldn’t be in office, that he shouldn’t be speaker of the House, that he shouldn’t be in Congress. ” Mr. Gowan is one of seven Republicans running for Arizona’s First Congressional District, whose jagged borders encompass nine counties in full or in part in eastern, northern and central Arizona. The area has traditionally leaned Republican, but the district itself has been competitive since it was realigned in 2010. In 2014, Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, narrowly defeated her Republican opponent, Andy Tobin, a former Arizona House speaker. She is leaving her congressional seat to run against John McCain, the Republican senator and former presidential candidate. One of Mr. Gowan’s rivals for the Republican nomination is Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, one of the most vociferous proponents of more border security. His county, an expanse of desert and rugged mountains near the border, is a major route for drug cartels bringing contraband to Phoenix and Tucson. “In a crowded Republican field like this, each of the candidates is trying to move to the right of the other,” said Matthew Benson, a political consultant and senior aide to former Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican. “Nobody is running as a moderate. ” “They’re all trying to prove they’re the most conservative and go to Washington to shake things up,” he added. Mr. Antenori said Mr. Gowan got into politics “to make sure that our basic liberties were protected,” in particular “our religious freedoms, the Second Amendment, our property rights. ” At the Capitol, Mr. Gowan is reserved, a man who has a tendency to mumble his words. While his predecessor, Mr. Tobin, was known for his “backslapping, more public, more accessible” ways, Mr. Gowan has “a quiet, more style, but he has been just as effective,” said Glenn Hamer, the president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, an influential group. Mr. Gowan rarely gives interviews and declined to comment for this article. Lobbyists often meet with him over lunch. In 2013, Mr. Gowan ranked No. 3 on a list of expenditures reported by lobbyists, according to an analysis of such records by The Arizona Capitol Times. (“I’m looking for free food,” he told the newspaper.) For his part, Representative Bruce Wheeler, a leader of the Democratic minority, was unreservedly blunt in his criticism: “The leadership under Gowan has been disastrous,” he said. But to Republicans and Democrats alike, the storm over the banning of reporters from the House floor became a source of embarrassment. Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, told reporters he felt “pretty safe around you. ” On April 8, the day Mr. Gowan issued his ban, The Capitol Times suggested in an online article that the move may have been motivated by the fact that one of its reporters, Hank Stephenson, has written about the improper reimbursements and the lobbyists’ expenses. Mr. Gowan rescinded his ban on Tuesday, maintaining nonetheless that his motivation had been to protect the chamber. | 1 |
Craig Diangelo, Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut’s 5th District and former information technology worker, who was laid off and forced to train his foreign replacement here via an visa, spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow Thursday. [Fox Business News also recently reported Diangelo’s story: “In the very beginning we did not know that we would be training our replacements … the CIO came down from Boston, said that she would hold a town hall meeting to discuss the future of our IT at our particular company,” Diangelo said. “We all got into the room, 220 of us, she proceeded to tell us that … what we are going to do is … outsource IT infrastructure and IT development. ” Diangelo said company employees at the time were told it was because “global employees can adjust to change a lot faster than the American worker. ” He questioned why American workers weren’t classified equally. Diangelo said while he feels supported by many average citizens in Connecticut, that’s not the case with the state’s politicians. “Senator Blumenthal, after I spoke with him and talked about this, he went out and . … That was to increase the number of by 100, 000, on top of the 85, 000 visas that are issued every year,” he said. “Elizabeth Esty, who I’m running against, she was very curt with me,” he added, saying she passed him off to an aide who was supposed to call him but never did. Diangelo said Esty was not even informed of the pertinent immigration laws at the time of their encounter. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
One of two things just happened, folks.
Either Hillary Clinton finally lost every single last one of her marbles…
Or, perhaps, she has accepted the painful truth, which is that no one can stand her.
On Monday, the Democratic nominee tweeted out an article referring to her as one of the “most corrupt, least popular candidates of all time.”
Yeah, not exactly something you want to brag about… A guide to help you make your choice for president. https://t.co/QzK7XZYmJW
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 31, 2016
“A guide to help you make your choice for president,” she captioned the odd tweet.
And Twitter reacted… | 0 |
As the police continue to investigate a shooting during a concert at a Manhattan nightclub last week that left one person dead and three injured, the concert promoter behind the club is postponing a series of shows, including many rap events. Live Nation, the giant concert company that operates the club, Irving Plaza, said it was postponing three rap concerts there over the next week, as well as three other concerts at another of its New York clubs. The shows include events by the rappers Joey Badass, Mac Miller and Vince Staples at Irving Plaza that were being presented with the Governors Ball Music Festival this weekend, and three concerts at the Gramercy Theater, by Appetite for Destruction, a Guns N’ Roses tribute band the rock band Black Pistol Fire and YG, a popular rapper. “In light of last week’s tragic events, we are acting with an overabundance of caution and coordinating a strategy with the New York Police Department that may also include a curfew,” Jim Yeager, a spokesman for Live Nation, said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “Because these discussions with the N. Y. P. D. are ongoing, we will be postponing a few of our upcoming shows at Irving Plaza and the Gramercy. ” But the police contradicted Live Nation’s statement. “The organization’s decision to cancel the event was in no way influenced by the N. Y. P. D.,” Sophia Mason, a spokeswoman for the department, said in a statement. The cancellations came as the New York concert halls struggled to deal with the aftermath of the shooting, with security checks at some venues becoming much more rigorous than usual. A clip from a security camera video shows Troy Ave, a Brooklyn rapper whose real name is Roland Collins, firing a gun backstage at Irving Plaza on May 25. He was charged on Monday with attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon he pleaded not guilty. One of Mr. Collins’s bodyguards, Ronald McPhatter, 33, was killed in the episode, and Mr. Collins was shot in the leg. A police official who declined to be named because of the continuing investigation said on Tuesday that three guns were found in a car used to drive Mr. Collins to the hospital. Investigators believe one of the guns is the same weapon that Mr. Collins was seen firing in the video and that was used to kill Mr. McPhatter, but they are awaiting confirmation from ballistics tests, the official said. If the tests show that the gun Mr. Collins fired was the one that killed Mr. McPhatter, Mr. Collins will also be charged with murder, the official said. Mr. Collins’s lawyers have claimed that he was acting in and said he did not shoot himself or Mr. McPhatter. The police have said until now that they are not seeking a second suspect, but that could change based on results of the tests. Live Nation offered no details about rescheduled dates for the postponed concerts, but by Wednesday afternoon, some of the performers were already making other plans. Black Pistol Fire, which was to play on Saturday at the Gramercy, said it was moving its show to Saint Vitus in Brooklyn the same night. Appetite for Destruction said it would play at the Gramercy on Aug. 12. Joey Badass, a rapper from Brooklyn, told his fans via Twitter on Wednesday to meet him elsewhere in the city. “They cancelled my show tmrw,” he wrote, “so we gon party. ” | 1 |
It will feel like a familiar affair at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards, with “Game of Thrones,” “Modern Family” and Julia once again landing nominations on Thursday. But the occasionally stodgy Emmys, which sometimes latch on to winners (like Ms. ) and stay with them, was also infused with new blood. Popular shows like “The People v. O. J. Simpson,” “Roots’’ and “Fargo” drew attention to the limited series category, James Corden emerged as a force in the competition, and there was recognition in the best drama category for the widely praised but previously overlooked “The Americans. ” “Game of Thrones,” HBO’s fantasy epic, will again be the leader of the pack heading into the awards. The drama, which just completed its sixth season, received 23 nominations, the highest total for any show. The show received 24 nominations last year and won its first best drama Emmy. [ List: Nominations for the 2016 Emmy Awards ] HBO, which is coming off its biggest Emmy haul ever last year, had a total of 94 nominations, the highest of any network for the 16th consecutive year. FX’s limited series “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and its anthology series “Fargo” were the and nominated shows. FX finished behind HBO in nominations with 56. The streaming services Netflix and Amazon continue to make significant inroads, with each scoring its highest Emmy nomination totals (54 for Netflix and 16 for Amazon). The Emmys reflect an infusion of talent into television at a time when movie stars are increasingly turning to TV, especially in limited series, and there are more scripted shows than ever before. Over the past few months, networks have been ferociously competing against one another in nomination campaigns. The broadcast networks are still experiencing a diminished presence at the Emmys, with three of the networks — ABC, Fox and CBS — notching fewer nominations than in 2015. NBC had the same total, with 41. And for the fifth consecutive year, the networks were shut out of nominations for best drama. In that category, “Game of Thrones” will compete against the final season of the PBS show “Downton Abbey,” USA’s “Mr. Robot,” AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” Netflix’s “House of Cards,” FX’s “The Americans” and Showtime’s “Homeland. ” “Mr. Robot,” which won the Golden Globe for best drama in January, is a new entrant in the category, along with “The Americans. ” They replace “Mad Men,” which ended last year, and Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black. ” HBO’s “Veep,” which last year ended the winning streak of ABC’s “Modern Family’’ in the best comedy category, was once again nominated for that award. It will go up against “Modern Family” again, along with Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Amazon’s “Transparent,” HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” ABC’s “ ” and Netflix’s “Master of None. ” With Jon Hamm’s Don Draper from “Mad Men” out of the race, the best actor category for drama has no clear . Two previous Emmy winners, Kyle Chandler (“Bloodline”) and Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) will compete against Kevin Spacey (“House of Cards”) Liev Schreiber (“Ray Donovan”) Matthew Rhys (“The Americans”) and Rami Malek (“Mr. Robot”) all of whom are looking for their first Emmy. Viola Davis, who last year became the first woman to win a best acting Emmy in the drama category, will try to repeat, for her performance in “How to Get Away With Murder. ” She is up against Robin Wright (“House of Cards”) Keri Russell (“The Americans”) Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) Claire Danes (“Homeland”) and Taraji P. Henson (“Empire”). Ms. Russell is the only new actress in the category, and this represents her first Emmy nomination. FX’s Emmy haul was propelled by “The People v. O. J. Simpson,” “Fargo” and “The Americans. ” “The People v. O. J. Simpson” received a whopping six nominations in the limited series acting categories, including one for Sarah Paulson, who was also nominated for her role in FX’s “American Horror Story: Hotel. ” Ms. Paulson, who portrayed the prosecutor Marcia Clark in “The People v. O. J. Simpson,” said in an interview that she shot both roles at the same time and that she was “running on fumes, just as Marcia was. ” She added, “I used all of my exhaustion to my benefit since no one was more tired during that trial than Marcia Clark. ” Another standout on Thursday was Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf, who was nominated for three awards: for best actress in a comedy series for HBO’s “Getting On” and for guest appearances in “The Big Bang Theory” and “Horace and Pete. ” Netflix had a strong day, with nominations in both the lead drama and comedy categories and in several acting categories. With 54 nominations, Netflix has 20 more than it received last year, its previous record. “Making a Murderer,” the popular Netflix documentary, was nominated for six awards, including best documentary series. This is the first year that Netflix eclipsed each of the broadcast networks. Amazon was led by its comedy “Transparent,” which had 10 nominations. Last year, the show’s star, Jeffrey Tambor, won the best actor award, the first time a streaming service had won a lead acting Emmy. For the first time in 16 years, “The Daily Show” was not nominated in the best variety show category, a blow to its rookie host, Trevor Noah. Likewise, Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” was snubbed, while Mr. Corden’s “The Late Late Show” was honored instead. The nomination will add fuel to the discussion that Mr. Corden is outshining his more experienced CBS colleague. Rounding out the category were HBO’s John Oliver, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, HBO’s Bill Maher, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and Crackle’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” with Jerry Seinfeld. Unlike the Academy Awards, which have overhauled the membership ranks following controversy over its slate of acting nominees, the Emmys have a relatively diverse lineup, with a number of actors of color receiving nominations. Last year, the Emmys made changes to the voting process, opening up the best drama and comedy categories to all Television Academy voters, not just a committee. “Game of Thrones,” which has never been more popular, has probably been a beneficiary to the rules change. In the comedy acting categories, Ms. is up again for her performance in “Veep. ” She has won the award four years in a row (and has seven Emmys over all). She will be competing against Ms. Metcalf, Amy Schumer (“Inside Amy Schumer”) Lily Tomlin (“Grace and Frankie”) Tracee Ellis Ross (“ ”) and Ellie Kemper (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”). Mr. Tambor will be up against Anthony Anderson (“ ”) Aziz Ansari (“Master of None”) Will Forte (“The Last Man on Earth”) William H. Macy (“Shameless”) and Thomas Middleditch (“Silcon Valley”). Though television has never been more celebrated as an art form, drawing a sizable audience for the Emmys remains something of a challenge: Last year’s show was its lowest rated ever. The Emmys will be hosted this year by Mr. Kimmel and will be broadcast on Sept. 18 on ABC. | 1 |
And now we wait. After 18 months of the most surreal, divisive, angry and psychologically exhausting presidential campaign in modern times, there’s nothing to do but sit in suspense on Election Day. For hour after hour. Which is why The is giving listeners a better way to pass the time: by answering the big remaining questions from you, our listeners, in a special episode. We summoned the Times political team to field your inquiries about the candidates, the issues, the polls and how we — and everyone else in the news media — will make the call on Tuesday night about who won. And we answer a nagging question that we keep hearing: What exactly is the future of The ? Joining us are Maggie Haberman, Amy Chozick, Jonathan Martin, Michael Grynbaum and Nate Cohn. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
— Caroline Grueskin (@cgrueskin) October 27, 2016 Fire spreading through the straw bales pic.twitter.com/7AzsZM3UKJ
— Caroline Grueskin (@cgrueskin) October 27, 2016 How does burning tires at #NoDAPL #StandingRock promote your cause?
— Marcus Norvell (@MrNorvell) October 27, 2016 @ Dakota Access #Pipeline : Stupid SJWs set tires on fire sending toxic fumes into the air. Oh ya, save the environment — more b.s. by Left. pic.twitter.com/yVx5MqAxkV
— Raven*H⚓️U*Wolf (@RavenHUWolf) October 27, 2016 @NoDakTrav really makes sense to protest an oil pipeline and protecting the water/environment by setting fire to tires. SMH.
— Nate Heinrich (@NateDH78) October 27, 2016 Hey #NoDAPL protestors. I appreciate you standing up for environment but you see the irony in setting rubber tires ablaze right? Burning tires at #NoDAPL Smh
Smart guys. You just made yourselves look stupid.
— II 501 II (@Theycallme501) October 27, 2016
Ruffalo missed out on the fumes, instead appearing on “The Lead with Jake Tapper” Thursday to point out the aggressive attitude emanating from police at the scene, compounded not only by their AR-15s but also — their black sunglasses. . @MarkRuffalo speaks about police being 'aggressive' at pipeline protests: "I met a girl who had her arm broken" https://t.co/kd0JKhQMug
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) October 27, 2016
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We Are Change
The White House website features a petition to remove thousands of voting machines supposedly tied to billionaire Democrat George Soros from 16 states. The petition reached well over 100,000 signatures as of Friday night.
The petition’s supporters want to make sure Congress convenes to ban those machines by November. Lifezette first reported that the machines could be linked to Soros, by asserting the man that owns that sold the machines serves the board of the Open Societies Foundation, a board led by Soros.
“This man has been linked to a person’s campaign who is running in the election and has a clear bias to one candidate. His ownership of voting machines in 16 states is a clear breach of integrity of our electoral system,” the petition states. The machines were tied to Soros by The Epoch Times, which reported the company that sold the machines is owned by a Soros ally.
Business Insider reported Tuesday, that notions of Soros controlling the machines is false, because Soros doesn’t have a controlling interest in the company that sold the machines, claiming that the 16 states to purchase the machines don’t plan to use them in the 2016 general election.
This amount of signatures make it clear that a large amount of people have a lot distrust in the current election system.
RELATED BREAKING: The NEW Election FEC Violation That Should End Clinton’s Campaign . Russia Trolls The U.S., Offers A “Helping Hand” In Overseeing Elections WE THE PEOPLE ASK THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO CALL ON CONGRESS TO ACT ON AN ISSUE: We the people ask congress to meet in emergency session about removing George Soros owned voting machines from 16 states Created by J.W. on October 21, 2016 Follow WE ARE CHANGE on SOCIAL MEDIA SnapChat: LukeWeAreChange
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange I nstagram: http://instagram.com/lukewearechange Sign up become a patron and Show your support for alternative news for Just 1$ a month you can help Grow We are change We use Bitcoin Too ! 12HdLgeeuA87t2JU8m4tbRo247Yj5u2TVP Join and Up Vote Our STEEMIT The post White House Petition To Remove ‘Soros-Owned Voting Machines’ Hits 100,000+ Signatures appeared first on We Are Change .
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A group of Hollywood celebrities is urging Americans and the United States Congress to come together to “obstruct” Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. [A who’ of stars — including actresses Sally Field and Rosie Perez, Westworld star Jeffrey Wright, comedian Key, Boardwalk Empire actor Steve Buscemi and other activists — appear in the video released Tuesday, titled “#StandUpForUS. ” “We demand that you block nominees who threaten the rights of women, the LGBT community, people of color, immigrants and the poor,” Key and Field say in the video. The message is meant to encourage the “dear members of Congress,” the entertainers say, to “vigorously oppose” Trump’s “racist, sexist, policies. ” “The majority of Americans, regardless of who they voted for, did not vote for racism, for sexism, or for xenophobia. And yet, Donald Trump won,” the various stars recite. Supporters are asked to spread the video on social media and sign a petition posted on the website MoveOn. org. “We won’t remain silent. We’ll work harder to mobilize our votes, and our communities. But we need you and expect you to have our backs,” the stars and activists say. It’s the first political PSA of the year, after a number of similar videos were released in the to November’s presidential election. Last month, actor Martin Sheen led a group of celebrities in a video PSA which urged Republican electors in the Electoral College to ignore their states’ voting results and vote to deny Donald Trump the presidency. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
المغاربة يذهلون العالم ويبتكرون طريقة لتجفيف الملاعب بإضرام النار فيها
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 13:27 GMT | انسخ الرابط http://ar.rt.com/i5g7 فاجأ المنظمون لبطولة الدار البيضاء للتنس "Challenger" الجميع، عندما سكبوا البنزين على أحد ملاعب البطولة وأضرموا النار في أرضيته الرملية لتجفيفها بسرعة من مياه الأمطار.
فبعد الأمطار الغزيرة التي هطلت على الملعب، قرر المنظمون سكب البنزين وإضرام النار على الأرض الرملية من أجل تجفيفها بسرعة، لاستكمال مباراة في التنس عن الدور نصف النهائي للبطولة، جمعت بين البلجيكي أرتور دي غريف والفرنسي ماكسيم جانفيه.
تجدر الإشارة إلى أن جانفيه حقق الفوز في هذه المواجهة بمجموعتين نظيفتين بواقع: (6-4) و(6-3).
المصدر: lenta.ru | 0 |
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While the recent police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott has led to increased scrutiny on police activities in North Carolina, police-community relations are not the only reason racial tensions are flaring. While encounters with police officers can radically differ depending on the race of those involved, access to economic resources tend to follow a similar pattern. Although racial gaps regarding wealth, incomes, and healthcare are nationwide issues, observing them from a statewide perspective can help understand why specific communities feel maltreated.
A UNC Chapel Hill study found that the income and wealth disparities between African Americans and whites in North Carolina are far worse than the national average. It states that:
…black households, at the median, claim only about 13 percent of the wealth and, stunningly, about 4 percent of the net worth of white households. The corresponding figures for the nation are bleak: 15 and 13 percent respectively. Median wealth for white households is roughly seven times that of black households…Nationally, black households have about half the home equity of whites. In North Carolina, it’s about a third.
The study goes on to state that half of all black households in North Carolina have under $100 in savings. At the median, black heads of household aged between 50 and 65 own $17,000 in assets compared to white households’ median of $143,000, which seriously hampers older, black workers from retiring comfortably. This data paints a picture of a state that fails to allow black communities from advancing economically and obtaining some semblance of equality.
The issue is further exasperated by lack of access to health insurance. A North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services study found that 13% of North Carolina whites have no health insurance as compared to 22% of blacks. 16% of whites were reported to be in “fair or poor” health as compared to 23.2% of blacks. The Kaiser Family Foundation research shows that the majority of non-elderly uninsured North Carolinians were minorities: 30% Hispanic and 14% black, while 10% were white. This is especially concerning considering minorities experience disease at a higher rate than American whites, and visit the doctor at much lower rates. The result: communities most in need of medical assistance are least likely to attain it.
This imbalance is in part due to the state government’s failure to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, something which would have significantly reduced the coverage gap between those receiving Medicaid and those obtaining income-based subsidies. The North Carolina Justice Center finds that, had the expansion gone through, 500,000 low-income North Carolinians would have health insurance who currently don’t have it, and over 1,000 unnecessary deaths would have been prevented.
While the protests in Charlotte appeared to be a backlash against apparent police brutality, underlying economic factors also come into play. A breaking point will eventually be reached by those living in undesirable economic situations which they view as consequential of a racist and unfair system. The case of North Carolina is a particularly negative one, but the principles outlined in this research are not unique to North Carolina. Americans cannot expect race relations to cool until access to income, wealth, and healthcare are equalized and structured in a fair, equitable manner. | 0 |
A carjacker became enraged and shot a motorist in front of his wife and child because the thief was unable to drive a stick shift transmission, police say. [The murder occurred in Houston, Texas, on March 11 when Pedro Aguilar, 47, was standing near his car with his wife and daughter. They family was then approached by two men reportedly in the 20s. The men pulled a gun on Aguilar and demanded his car keys. But neither of the assailants could get the car in gear using its manual transmission. According to ABC 13, the pair became enraged and one shot Aguilar in anger. Both men then fled. Mr. Aguilar died at the scene. The victim’s son, Kevin Aguilar, said his father was his “inspiration. ” “He always was happy. He say, ‘I want the best for you.’ ‘It’s difficult,” son Kevin Aguilar said. The suspects are still unidentified. Police are asking anyone with information to contact the Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit at or call Crime Stoppers at (8477). Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
You know I was in Subic Bay (U.S. Merchant Marine attached to the U.S. Navy base ) for half of 1988,... and at that juncture "Shabu" (Chystal-Meth) was just becoming a prominent issue in that country... These days,... after quite a few years of living (part time) in Tampico, Mexico I decided some years back that it was getting too "out of control"/risky to be doing that anymore... I started researching, and taking a look at the Philippines again, but found that now Shabu is so pervasive in that culture that they estimated that perhaps 10 percent of the population is hooked on it The irony to me is that CHINA was reported to be the primary source of Shabu, yet now Duterte is warmly snuggling up, and uber-pandering to the VERY SAME monsters who supply the poison to the afflicted Pinoy druggies that Duterte is so enthusiastically murdering en mass Hey,... I myself believe that such extreme measures (societal mass-purging of malignant criminal elements) could very well be a legitimately necessary imperative (in the short term... ) for a few years when mass-addiction/pervasive criminality has swelled so mush out of control, but I am yet incrementally beginning to smell a rat... If Dutertes' N.P.A./Communist connections are a harbinger of things to come, and if his authoritarian orientation, and unfettered homicidal compulsions become more pronounced as time goes on,... we may be left witnessing the birth of a Filipino analog to Hugo Chavez,... but this time it will be "Hugo on Steroids" I sincerely, and fervently, pray/hope that this will not be the case | 0 |
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C.E. Dyer reports that actor James Woods posted a powerful video on Twitter about what happened on Highway 265 in Arkansas over four decades ago that Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton doesn’t want people to know about.
The video chronicled the rape of a 12-year-old Arkansas girl, Kathy Shelton, that occurred on May 10, 1975 when two men lured the girl into their car and brutally assaulted her.
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 20, 2016
This video details the horrific attack…and the actions of the attorney who defended one of the rapists: Hillary Clinton.
According to the video, child was raped and beaten so brutally that she spent five days in a coma and was left unable to bear children.
A local paper mill worker, 41-year-old Thomas Alfred Taylor, was charged with the rape. Then Hillary Rodham became his attorney.
Taylor had semen mixed with the 12-year-old victim’s blood in his underwear, proving that he committed the crime. In court, Hillary maligned the rape victim’s character in order to defend her monster of a client.
From the video: “Taylor’s attorney went to extraordinary lengths to discredit the child victim, suppressing all oral, written and physical evidence, forcing the 12-year-old to submit to polygraphs and psychiatric evaluations, even accusing the child (who had been a virgin until the attack) of seeking out older men and ‘fantasizing’ her rape.”
The victim has recently come forward to talk about how Hillary’s lies ruined her life, which after the trial spiraled into a struggle with drugs and prison time.
Shelton, who has already been put through a truly horrific nightmare, had to hear the tapes released in which Hillary laughed about the trial.
Hillary laughed, on tape, about a trial of a man who brutally raped a 12-year old girl and subsequently received less than a year in prison for his horrific crime.
Shelton has decided to speak out about her nightmare at the hands of Hillary Rodham. The video ends with a message from Shelton to Clinton, “You lied about me. You took me through Hell.”
Clinton has claimed that she had an obligation to defend Taylor, but she is wrong; she did not have to do what she did. What she put a 12-year-old rape victim through is beyond the pale.
Liberals regularly talk about victim blaming and rape culture in America, but where is the outrage about what Clinton did to a 12-year-old rape victim as a defense attorney?
What else is there to say really? If you can watch that video and not be utterly and completely disgusted with Clinton, well, God help you. | 0 |
Set the contents of Hillary’s emails aside for a moment. For this story let’s look at obstruction of justice.
You see, federal obstruction of justice in and of itself is a felony that carries a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
Why is that relevant here? Well, Hillary Clinton and her inner circle told federal investigators all emails were turned over to the FBI. That would be fine and dandy if it were true.
But according to CBS it isn’t.
. @CBSNews confirms FBI found emails on #AnthonyWeiner computer, related to Hillary Clinton server, that are "new" & not previously reviewed.
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) November 3, 2016
CBS news confirms the FBI has emails from Weiner’s computer that had not been previously reviewed .
In other words, those emails were never handed over to the FBI. This after Clinton and her team claimed all emails were handed over.
What we have brewing here is both a lie and what appears to be blatant obstruction of justice.
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At the third debate, Donald Trump was asked if he would accept the results of the election. Trump responded that he would have to look at the process to determine if everything was done fairly before he could accept it. The media went berserk claiming that Trump was undermining democracy. But is the US system really rigged? And if it is, can Trump overcome it?
Why rig the system? The elite realize that their time is short.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. Revelation 12:12
It is human nature to want to accumulate wealth. It is also human nature to want to keep what you have. One of the ways that the wealthy do that is through influencing the political process to ensure it is favorable to them. A democratic republic is particularly easy to influence. The wealthy elite can “buy” candidates through donations to them or to their superpacs. They can make voting patterns more favorable to them by changing the country’s demographics. Or they can influence voters through the supposedly unbiased news media that they control. In the US, the wealthy elite use every one of these levers to rig the system.
For example, liberal voters often favor a progressive tax system where high earners pay greater percentages than those who earn less. It sounds like a populist policy but it is not. Progressive taxation is put in place to prevent middle class people from rising into the ranks of the truly wealthy who have already accumulated their wealth and are taxed at the much lower capital gains rate. Progressive taxation keeps the rich on top and keeps the plebs down. That’s why no matter which political party is in power, we are still stuck with progressive taxation.
Everything goes well as long as both parties don’t rock the boat. But once you get a true wildcard like Trump, the system must spring into action to stop the threat to the established order. That’s what we are seeing now. The elite are using every tool in the arsenal of the rigged system to ensure Trump does not upset their gravy train. The elite sense their time is short.
Voter Fraud
The first way in which the election is rigged is through voter fraud. In his Gettysburg address, Trump outlined some of the ways in which this occurs:
According to Pew, there are 24 million voter registrations that in the US that are either invalid or significantly inaccurate. 1.8 million dead people are registered to vote, and some of them are voting. I wonder how that happens? 2.8 million people are registered to vote in more than one state. These are numbers folks. These are numbers. 14% of noncitizens are registered to vote.
Liberals always object to any sort of voter identification requirement. They say that it negatively affects minority voters, who may not have any identification. But this is obvious nonsense. The real reason liberals oppose voter identification is because it would make voter fraud more difficult.
By raising concerns about voter fraud, Trump is firing a warning shot. He is saying that he will fight voter fraud, unlike prior GOP candidates who preferred defeat to calling out cheating by the other side. Simply putting the Democrats on notice may cause them to cheat less than they would have otherwise. The only question is whether Trump will be able to muster enough votes to overcome the amount of cheating that will take place.
The Lügenpresse
A second way that the system is rigged is through the legacy news media. These include the three oldest television news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) as well as the newer ones (CNN, MSNBC, Fox). It also includes the remaining newspapers, especially the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Of these, the only ones that are reliably conservative are Fox and the WSJ, both of which are owned by Rupert Murdock. But even here, it is more accurate to call Fox and the WSJ “neoliberal” rather than conservative as they both push the globalist message of open borders and unenforced trade.
Trump is very media savvy. He’s been in the public eye since the 1980s and his philosophy has been that no publicity is bad publicity. Trump has used this to highlight his policies. By making controversial statements, he has been able to force the media to cover his positions. Still, the nonstop smear campaign has hurt Trump’s numbers particularly among older voters who still get their news from legacy sources.
New media outlets like Return of Kings, Breitbart, and Danger & Play have been more favorable to Trump but the most highly funded new media such as Daily Beast, Heat Street, Buzzfeed, and Huffington Post all push the globalist message. The end result that Trump is fighting an ocean of disinformation with only a handful of allies by his side.
Voter Discouragement Fivethirtyeight doing its best to discourage Trump voters.
Another way that that system is rigged is that the legacy media conspires to discourage Trump voters from going to the polls. One way they do this is to over poll Democrats to make it look like Trump is losing. For example, one recent poll placed Hillary 12 points higher than Trump. But even Obama was only able to beat McCain by 7 points even though he was packing stadiums of 70,000 people. And Hillary doesn’t command the sort of adulation that Obama did in 2008.
There is a huge motivation gap between Trump and Clinton. Recently, Trump held a rally in Tampa where 28,000 people showed up. Some of these people waited in line for 12 hours for the chance to see Trump. A day later, Hillary hosted a rally in Florida where only 1000 people showed up. And some of those were likely paid plants. Her running mate Tim Kaine did even worse barely getting 30 people to show up for one of his events.
One day before the Brexit vote, polls showed Remain leading by 10 points. Leave ended up winning by 3.5 points.
Why does the legacy media report polls that show Trump losing by a landslide? Because it is designed to dishearten Trump voters.
Conclusion Will Trump be able to overcome the rigged system? It will be a heroic achievement if he does. One thing is certain: This is not the time to give up but to fight with all of our might. The elites want us to be discouraged, to give up hope, to lie down and die. That is the one thing we will never do. Even if the host of hell rise up to oppose you, go to the ballot box on November 8th. Regardless of what you may hear otherwise, your life will be very different under President Trump than it will be under globalist pawn Hillary.
Win or lose, our battle to bring back the patriarchy will not end on November 8 th . A Trump victory would give us breathing room to start restoring our society in the open. A Hillary victory, heaven forbid, would signal that our work will need to be underground. Either way, our battle is just beginning. In future columns I will outline the way forward for traditional men.
Read More: Did George Soros Rig The Utah Vote To Help Ted Cruz Defeat Donald Trump?
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As with so many elements of this presidential campaign, the way in which Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump have handled their medical histories feels strange, secretive and theatrical (Dr. Oz, anyone? ). But there’s a long and rich history of candidates concealing — even lying about — the details of their health. In the latest episode of The we talk to John Dickerson, a history buff, columnist at Slate and moderator of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” who recalls the United States’ pivotal brush with a president’s ailment: the heart attack of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955. Mr. Dickerson, the author of “Whistlestop,” a new book about the history of presidential campaigns, explains how the White House’s initial resistance to disclose the incident triggered something new in American public life: a deluge of deeply private medical information about the commander in chief. We also speak with the doctor who, more than anyone else, is responsible for our modern expectation that candidates give detailed disclosures about their health: Lawrence K. Altman, a reporter at The New York Times who was the first to interview candidates about their medical histories. Mr. Altman recalls his tough and sadly prescient question to Ronald Reagan when he was a candidate in 1980 about a potential condition that would later haunt him. We also hear from voters in Times Square about whether they even care about candidates’ health. Short answer: not particularly. One voter told us he’d be going with Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump. Was there anything about her health that might change that? “I’m pretty sure he’s crazy,” the man said, “and that’s more dangerous than her dying in office. ” From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
On Thursday, during an Oval Office interview with Reuters, President Trump said: “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely. ”[“We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult,” the president added. China will clearly play a major role in that diplomatic resolution, as Trump suggested he would not anger Beijing with another phone call to Taiwan’s president. He explicitly stated he wanted to avoid “causing difficulty” for Chinese President Xi Jinping while he is “doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation. ” He praised Xi as a “good man” who is “trying very hard” to avoid “turmoil and death” on the Korean peninsula. “He is a very good man and I got to know him very well,” said Trump. “With that being said, he loves China and he loves the people of China. I know he would like to be able to do something, perhaps it’s possible that he can’t. ” Trump was also surprisingly sympathetic to North Korean dictator Kim . “He’s 27 years old. His father dies, took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy, especially at that age,” he said of Kim. “I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit, I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational. ” On the other hand, Trump played hardball with South Korea, saying that he intends to renegotiate its deal with the U. S. “very soon,” and seek compensation for the $1 billion cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) shield to Seoul. “It is unacceptable, it is a horrible deal made by Hillary. It’s a horrible deal, and we are going to renegotiate that deal or terminate it,” he said of the Korean trade deal, formally known as KORUS, referring to his defeated 2016 presidential opponent and onetime Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said it would be much easier to terminate KORUS than the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he has also strongly criticized. “With the Korean deal, we terminate and it’s over. I will do that unless we make a fair deal. We’re getting destroyed in Korea,” he said. According to the Washington Post, the South Korean Trade Ministry stated on Friday that it has no plans to renegotiate the agreement, whose anniversary occurs next week. The United States is currently running a $27. 7 billion trade deficit in goods with South Korea. When Reuters asked when he planned to announce this surprising review of South Korea trade policy, Trump replied, “I’m announcing it now. ” This did not go over well in South Korea, where stocks and currency values immediately tumbled. Among other market indicators, shares in Hyundai Motor dropped by as much as 2. 4 percent, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index slid 0. 1 percent, and the South Korean won dropped 0. 2 percent against the dollar. These would seem more like signs of unease than panic. Analysts told CNBC Trump’s remarks came as a surprise, but most of the South Korean market and its foreign investors await firmer announcements of the Trump administration’s intentions before concluding a trade war is brewing. A foreign policy adviser to the favored candidate in the upcoming emergency South Korea presidential election, Moon said asking South Korea to pay for THAAD was an “impossible option. ” Moon is already known as a skeptic of THAAD deployment, with his campaign describing the decision of his impeached predecessor Park to install the system “strongly regrettable” and “very inappropriate” because she did not properly consult with parliament. Moon has called for an immediate halt to the deployment of the THAAD system, which has increased tensions between South Korea and China. Chinese boycotts over THAAD have cost South Korea enough money to raise concerns about the future of South Korea’s economic recovery. China objects to the deployment because it believes THAAD’s powerful radars will be employed to spy on Chinese activity. The New York Times quotes Moon spokespersons describing Trump’s demand for payment as validation of their criticism that Park’s administration was not honest with the Korean people about the costs and drawbacks of the missile shield. | 1 |
Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sen. Mike Lee ( ) said the proposed House Republican health care legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare does “very little at all” that would bring premiums down. Lee said, “I think he’s wrong especially if what he’s suggesting is that we have conservative policies in this bill that will bring down the cost of health care. Look, one of the things that has caused the cost of health care to spike so significantly is the regulatory section of the Affordable Care Act, which has put insurance companies in a position where they’ve increased their premiums and the cost of health care across the board has gone up. ” “This bill does far too little about that,” he continued. “It does very little at all, that would bring premiums down. And that’s the concern I have with it, is what this would do to the cost of health care. We have to bring that under control. This bill doesn’t do that to a degree sufficient for me to vote for it. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Accuses Indian Diplomats of Espionage Amid Growing Tensions
On-again, off-again fighting between Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir looks to be spilling over into the diplomatic relationship between the two nations, as Pakistan has announced it will withdraw six staffers from their mission in New Dehli, and threaten to expel a number of Indian diplomats.
The six staffers withdrawn include at least four diplomats, and Pakistani officials went on to accuse the five Indian diplomats of espionage , naming them in media reports and threatening to expel them from the country outright.
This is a continuation of tit-for-tat expulsions which began last week, with both nations ordering a staffer out of the other’s embassy on espionage charges. The tensions are soaring with reports of heavy exchanges of fire in Kashmir over the weekend.
India and Pakistan are never on the best of terms, but seem to get into these dust-ups once in awhile, usually around the Line of Control in Kashmir. The most recent fighting has been ongoing since August, and seems only to be getting worse as time goes on, raising concerns about a full-scale war between the two nuclear powers. | 0 |
Comments of the Week: Here Comes Trouble Posted on Oct 26, 2016 torbakhopper / CC BY-ND 2.0
As is to be expected, if not applauded, the closer we get to the Nov. 8 election, the more debates and divisions have appeared in discussions about the headlines of the moment.
During the week that ranged from Oct. 16-23, those headlines included additional revelations from WikiLeaks’ trove of Pedesta emails regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as various writers’ takes on how to vote this time around, and news of the ongoing Dakota Access pipeline protest.
As for the how-to-vote issue, Jonathan Mitchell posted a short and direct comment under this story about Clinton’s famous hawkishness when it comes to envisioning and enacting American foreign policy on the world stage:
Reader Helen Hanna, like many others who took in Robert Reich’s piece titled “The Incalculable Damage of Doing Whatever It Takes to Win,” noticed and remarked upon Reich’s gloss-over of Democratic Party leaders’, and in particular Hillary and Bill Clinton’s, proclivity for doing damage in the interest of maintaining power:
That said, it’s not as though commenters were about to give Donald Trump a pass, either. Take Ignatius J. Reilly’s rejoinder to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway’s “5-point plan to defeat Islam,” as Trump and his team conceived of it (and Juan Cole wrote of it):
Touché.
Another point of contention on the comment boards last week had to do with how to evaluate WikiLeaks’, and by extension Julian Assange’s, latest release of documents in the Pedesta emails. Though some commentators like Naomi Klein and Glenn Greenwald have spoken up about particular aspects of WikiLeaks’ current m.o., in the thread under Alexander Reed Kelly’s Truthdigger of the Week column on Assange , reader JJG noted how, like him or not, Assange and his organization are providing a public service that professionals working in the mainstream press (who are supposed to be skilled in curating and redacting sensitive material) are not generally delivering on these days:
We’ll give Opa Westphal the last word this time, ending on an up note (in terms of the shout-out to other commenters) and a cautionary note at the same time. This one was posted under Chris Hedges’ latest column , “How Power Works”: | 0 |
jkbj
I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a man on camera at #StandingRock …and here’s the footage. #NoDAPL https://t.co/FfWiSCbiKf pic.twitter.com/4DRwNPkfZ9
— Erin Schrode (@ErinSchrode) November 3, 2016
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New PAN report warns of global contamination of health damaging glyphosate
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer Tags: glyphosate , PAN report , toxicity (NaturalNews) The popular herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup, is far more toxic to humans than the chemical industry claims it is, a new report has found. The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) in a 96-page document entitled Glyphosate , reveals how people all around the world are being systemically poisoned by glyphosate, and many of them are even dying.Aerial sprayings of the chemical across crop fields are said to be safe for humans, because the so-called "shikimate" pathway upon which the herbicide acts exists only in plants, and not in animals or humans. But the report highlights the fact that, regardless of the supposed nonexistence of this pathway in humans, glyphosate is sill wreaking havoc on human health .Some of the acute health effects of glyphosate exposure include gastrointestinal and skin infections, headaches, blistering on the skin, rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, dizziness, numbness, insomnia, blurred vision, abdominal pain, chest pains, problems breathing, respiratory problems, sore throat and strange tastes in the mouth.Other lesser-reported symptoms include problems staying balanced, cognitive abnormalities, impaired senses, muscle paralysis, peripheral neuropathy, decreased motor skills, chronic fatigue and abnormal body temperature. And none of this even touches on the long-term health effects of glyphosate exposure, which are significantly more problematic.According to the report, glyphosate directly interferes with "numerous mammalian organs and biochemical pathways, including inhibition of numerous enzymes, metabolic disturbances and oxidative stress leading to excessive membrane lipid peroxidation, and cell and tissue damage." Furthermore, the report highlights "genotoxicity and endocrine disruption" that lead to "chronic health and developmental effects." South American doctors confirm that glyphosate spraying is causing infertility, cancer Though U.S. doctors and health experts appear reluctant to report on their observances with glyphosate, their counterparts in South America have a lot to say on the subject. Doctors in Argentina, for instance, are reporting what's being described as a "dramatic upsurge" in long-term health effects where glyphosate is being sprayed on genetically-modified soybean crops.Included in the list of effects are infertility, pregnancy problems, birth defects, respiratory disease and various forms of cancer. Epidemiological studies have established a link between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, hairy cell leukemia, multiple myeloma and DNA damage. Even at very low concentrations, glyphosate has been shown to damage vital organs like the liver and kidney, as well as skin cells.Not only is glyphosate sprayed all over food crops during the growing season to kill weeds, but it's also used as a pre-harvest desiccant to speed up the growing and harvesting process. According to the report, this process is used on wheat, cotton, various cereal grains, peas, and beans, as well as other crops.It's bad for the people who end up eating these food crops, but great for farmers and the chemical companies like Monsanto that they support when they purchase all that extra glyphosate. And the repercussions are startling. Glyphosate residues are now being found in women's breast milk, as well as in blood and urine. Even vaccines are starting to turn up as glyphosate-contaminated, which means developing babies are now being injected with this lethal poison."The PAN Report is extremely comprehensive and really needs to be mainstreamed so that food growers, in particular, can understand the harm they are doing to crops, the soil, the environment, wildlife, pollinators, water resources and humans," writes Catherine J. Frompovich for Natural Blaze ."However, it will be up to consumers and farmers ... to make their concerns and priorities known about saving the planet and humankind from toxic chemicals in food, water and the air, if we are to survive toxic chemicals and their currently unavoidable poisonings."The full PAN report is available for free online here . Sources for this article include: | 0 |
Todd Rundgren isn’t bothered that some of his fans might avoid his concerts due to his politics. [The musician and record producer conceded as much in an interview with Variety when asked about an incident in which a couple walked out of a concert in Los Angeles due to comments he made about President Donald Trump. “No,” Rundgren said when asked if it bothered him. “If I had the power, I’d say: If you’re a Trump supporter, don’t come to my show, because you won’t have a good time. And also, I don’t understand your frickin’ values. Because I’m not singing about that. If you don’t understand that basic thing, you’re just fooling yourself. ” The “Hello It’s Me” singer was talking to the magazine to promote his latest album, White Knight, which is filled with collaborations with artists such as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Joe Walsh. One song on the album, “Tin Foil Hat,” is a direct jab at Trump, written and performed with Steely Dan Donald Fagen. The lyrics reference Trump’s descent down an escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential run, and add that Trump tweets “like a teenage girl” and “puts the ‘pluto’ in ‘plutocrat. ’” Rundgren is currently on a tour, with multiple dates in Florida and Texas, states that Trump won during the 2016 campaign. But the musician told Variety that Trump supporters “will likely be offended” if they attend his concerts. “Let the buyer beware! I mean, if you can’t take a joke, or you can’t admit that you’ve made a mistake, you don’t belong with the rest of us,” he said with a laugh. Elsewhere in the interview, Rundgren explained that music is the most “plagiaristic” art when compared with other forms, because there are only so many ways musicians can arrange a limited amount of notes together. “You’ve got the western scale. That’s essentially 11 notes. So you’re eventually going to run out of melodies, just by the pure mathematics of it,” he said. “So the whole art of making music is trying to obscure the fact that this is a melody from another song and has just been changed in subtle enough ways that you don’t recognize it. ” Read Rundgren’s full interview with Variety here. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
The ongoing efforts by Democrats, the mainstream media, and elements of the federal bureaucracy to bring down President Donald Trump raise alarms for the safety of our constitutional democracy. [Trump won the election fairly — there is not a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise — and yet his opponents have never accepted the result, nor ceased trying to frustrate his efforts to govern. If they succeed, American democracy will effectively be finished. Amidst the giddy enthusiasm of outlets like CNN to report sensational — and almost certainly false — stories like “Sources: White House lawyers research impeachment” — little thought is being given to the consequences if their wildest dreams come true. And those who have considered the fact that Vice President Mike Pence would take over — like Sally Kohn and NeverTrumper Bill Kristol — assume that Pence will be just as easily dispatched. Straightforward from here:1. Impeach Trump Pence2. Constitutional crisis3. Call special election4. Ryan v Clinton5. President Clinton, — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) February 15, 2017, Straightforward from here:1 Joe Lieberman to FBI2 Mueller Joe do in Trump3 Pence makes Joe VP4 Pence impeached5 President Lieberman, — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 18, 2017, Trump won nearly 63 million votes. Those voters would be instantly disenfranchised by his removal. Opinion polls suggest nearly all of them would vote the same way again, and no facts have emerged from the Russia conspiracy theory, nor have any major policy betrayals taken place, that would sever that trust. Seeing him deposed would trigger nationwide anger, and perhaps a real “Resistance,” not the “Resistance” the left has contrived. Even by considering the possibility of impeaching Trump — which some conservatives, rightly, have called a “silent coup” — the Beltway elites are sowing division and uncertainty. They have laid bare their contempt for democracy — even those who, like Kristol, enthusiastically support imposing democracy abroad. Trump’s voters believed they were taking their country back — and did so through the ballot box. God help us if that victory is taken from them. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump first tried a few years ago to line up a speaking slot at the marquee event for the conservative grass roots, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the organizers almost rejected him because they thought he was a fraud who only wanted a platform to promote his hotels, casinos, neckties and golf courses. Stephen K. Bannon, then the head of Breitbart News, found himself essentially blacklisted from the gathering, known as CPAC. So he started a rival conference called The Uninvited and ran it out of a hotel down the street. With Mr. Trump now ensconced in the Oval Office and Mr. Bannon, his chief strategist, right down the hall, it is hardly in dispute who won the fight for control of the Republican Party. But there are still much bigger questions about whether Mr. Trump, who has never claimed to be a conservative but so far has governed conspicuously to the right, will ultimately be loyal to conservatives’ agenda. Mr. Trump does not dwell on policy, right or left. He prefers the transactional to the ideological. And for conservatives devoted to a cause that is fundamentally about ideas, the distance between the new president and the movement he overtook continues to loom as a red flag. That gap has been partly obscured by his first moves as president — trying to bar visitors from seven largely Muslim countries, scaling back Wall Street regulations, restricting federal funding that could go to abortion overseas and nominating a judge to the Supreme Court who is adored by conservatives. But some in the movement are unlikely ever to be totally at ease. And Mr. Trump may never fully be at ease with many of them. “With Trump, I do feel his instincts are conservative I do feel he understands the practical implications of an incompetent and inefficient government,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which will convene CPAC starting on Wednesday. This time, Mr. Trump has been extended an invitation and is expected to speak. Still, with regard to conservatism, Mr. Schlapp added, “I’m not so sure he understands all the tenets and the philosophical background. ” Other Republican presidents have disappointed conservatives with major policy moves, from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s preservation of New Deal programs to Richard M. Nixon’s regulatory agenda to the elder George Bush’s reversal on his “no new taxes” pledge. But Mr. Trump, who considers himself the consummate deal maker, faces gnawing suspicions that he will find it easy to cut bargains that betray conservative principles. “I think it is safe to say that on the issues that are important to movement conservatives, the president’s actions since the inauguration have significantly reduced concerns by conservatives,” said Morton Blackwell, a longtime conservative activist who served as Ronald Reagan’s liaison to conservative activists and met with Mr. Trump at the White House this month. Still, Mr. Blackwell added, “there are significant numbers of people who are concerned. ” What makes some especially wary of Mr. Trump, said Grover Norquist, the veteran activist and conservative leader, is how uninterested the president seems in their ideas. “They don’t think he’d ever read their novel, their policy paper, their magazine article — or even listen to them for more than five minutes,” he said. Republicans remain traumatized by presidents they believe governed too far to the left despite promises to do the opposite. “They’re used to sending senators, governors, congressmen into Washington and instead of seeing a sewer, they see a hot tub that they want to jump in,” Mr. Norquist said. Mr. Trump has, however, given conservatives plenty of reasons to temper their concerns. Beyond the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and the flurry of executive orders, he has assembled a cabinet that the American Conservative Union deemed the most conservative of any Republican president, based on ratings given to the appointees who were members of Congress. The group scores lawmakers on a scale of conservatism. And the six House members and senators Mr. Trump has selected for his cabinet were among the most conservative on Capitol Hill, earning an average score of 90. 6. “I’m seeing a pattern,” Mr. Schlapp said, “where I can more comfortably say he’s governing like a conservative. ” But many of the biggest items on the conservative checklist remain in flux — the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act and an overhaul of the tax code being chief among them. And it remains in doubt whether Mr. Trump, whose White House has ricocheted from one distraction to the next in its first few weeks, will retain enough credibility with lawmakers to accomplish those goals. “I think now the question is: Can we get a lot of this stuff done?” said William Kristol, a frequent Trump critic and editor at large of The Weekly Standard. The risk for conservative policy, he said, is that the circuslike atmosphere around the White House will end up shattering Mr. Trump’s relationship with Republican lawmakers. “And if it really is a circus, you don’t want to be just another clown inside the tent,” Mr. Kristol added. One reason that some conservatives believe Mr. Trump’s support from the movement and its loyal lawmakers is so fragile is that it has been predicated on the sugar high of an election everyone told them they could not win against an opponent they loathed. “I think the majority of conservatives celebrating his victory were really celebrating Hillary’s defeat,” said Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union. “And he was the conduit for that defeat. ” There are also serious policy questions that trouble conservatives, foremost among them what might happen to the federal deficit if Mr. Trump embarks on a plan to spend $1 trillion on revamping the nation’s infrastructure — a deal that many Democrats are eager to strike with him. That is where Mr. Trump’s brand of transactional politics could become a liability. “That was sort of the point of view of the tentative Trump supporters — you can do transactional politics with them,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. But the conservatives are hardly guaranteed to come out on the winning end of the transaction every time. | 1 |
Election Mood Setting Music for You and Your Family 11/08/2016 11/08/2016 | 0 |
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Sioux Falls, IA | During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton allegedly had sexual intercourse with cattle off of Tom Brady’s family dairy farm.
The family farm which was owned by Tom Brady’s father at the time, Willow Brady Jr., was often visited by the Clinton family when they were in the area.
“My dad and Bill Clinton’s step dad were like brothers. They often visited us on the holidays when I was a kid. Bill even knew the cows names by heart. That always surprised me” recalls the 64-year-old, third-generation dairy farmer.
“ My father was a strong Democratic party supporter all his life and a big Bill Clinton fan, so I never found the strength to tell him the truth before he passed away ”
Sex, drugs and cattle
During the 1992 Iowa caucus, the Clinton campaign stopped by for a night of festivities at the Brady’s farm, a night Tom Brady says he will never forget.
“The Clinton team came by and we drank a lot and all was merry before they started indulging in hard drugs, that’s when everything went wrong” he recalls, visibly distraught by the whole affair.
“I don’t know about all those stories about him sexually assaulting women, but I sure as hell know he assaulted one of our cows because I was there and I saw him do it with my own eyes and believe me, it’s not something I’d wish my worst enemy to live to see” he told local reporters.
“I’m sorry for the Clinton family, but as a God-fearing Christian, I just had to let the truth be known” he adds.
Bill Clinton has been personally accused publicly by seventeen women of sexual misconduct between 1972 and 1997. The former US President also admitted to having had an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. | 0 |
Anthem
RIP - Leonard Cohen Dead at 82
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" Rolling Stone" - Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned nearly 50 years, died Monday at the age of 82. Cohen's label, Sony Music Canada, confirmed his death on the singer's Facebook page Thursday evening.
"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away," the statement read. "We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief." A cause of death and exact date of death was not given.
November 11, 2016
Leonard Cohen Everybody Know Live 1988
"My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records," Cohen's son Adam wrote in a statement to Rolling Stone . "He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor."
"Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candor, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed," his manager Robert Kory wrote in a statement. "I was blessed to call him a friend, and for me to serve that bold artistic spirit firsthand, was a privilege and great gift. He leaves behind a legacy of work that will bring insight, inspiration and healing for generations to come."
Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet.
Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns and Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker , earlier this year.
"I never had the sense that there was an end," he said in 1992. "That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot."
"For many of us, Leonard Cohen was the greatest songwriter of them all," Nick Cave, who covered Cohen classics like "Avalanche," "I'm Your Man" and "Suzanne," said in a statement. "Utterly unique and impossible to imitate no matter how hard we tried. He will be deeply missed by so many."
Leonard Norman Cohen was born on September 21st, 1934, in Westmount, Quebec. He learned guitar as a teenager and formed a folk group called the Buckskin Boys. Early exposure to Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca turned him toward poetry while a flamenco guitar teacher convinced him to trade steel strings for nylon. After graduating from McGill University, Cohen moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he purchased a house for $1,500 with the help of a modest trust fund established by his father, who died when Leonard was nine. While living on Hydra, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964) and the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).
Frustrated by poor book sales, and tired of working in Montreal's garment industry, Cohen visited New York in 1966 to investigate the city's robust folk-rock scene. He met folk singer Judy Collins, who later that year included two of his songs, including the early hit "Suzanne," on her album In My Life . His New York milieu included Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, and, most importantly, the haunting German singer Nico, whose despondent delivery he may have emulated on his exquisite 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen .
Cohen quickly became the songwriter's songwriter of choice for artists like Collins, James Taylor, Willie Nelson and many others. His black-and-white album photos offered an arresting image to go with his stark yet lovely songs. His next two albums, Songs From a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971), benefited from the spare production of Bob Johnston, along with a group of seasoned session musicians that included Charlie Daniels.
During the Seventies, Cohen set out on the first of the many long, intense tours he would reprise toward the end of his career. "One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people," he told Rolling Stone in 1971. "I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don't feel like a citizen." His time on tour inspired the live sound producer John Lissauer brought to his 1974 masterpiece, New Skin for the Old Ceremony . However, he risked a production catastrophe by hiring wall-of-sound maximalist Phil Spector to work on his next album, Death of a Ladies Man , whose adversarial creation resulted in a Rolling Stone review titled "Leonard Cohen's Doo-Wop Nightmare."
Cohen's relationship with Suzanne Elrod during most of the Seventies resulted in two children, the photographer Lorca Cohen and Adam Cohen, who leads the group Low Millions. Cohen was well known for his wandering ways, and his most stable relationships were with backing singers Laura Branigan, Sharon Robinson, Anjani Thomas, and, most notably, Jennifer Warnes, who he wrote with and produced (Warnes frequently performed Cohens music). After indulging in a variety of international styles on Recent Songs (1979), Cohen accorded Warnes full co-vocal credit on 1984's Various Positions .
Various Positions included "Hallelujah," a meditation on love, sex and music that would become Cohen's best-known composition thanks to Jeff Buckley's incandescent 1994 reinterpretation. Its greatness wasn't recognized by Cohen's label, however. By way of informing him that Columbia Records would not be releasing Various Positions , label head Walter Yetnikoff reportedly told Cohen, "Look, Leonard; we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good." Cohen returned to the label in 1988 with I'm Your Man , an album of sly humor and social commentary that launched the synths-and-gravitas style he continued on The Future (1992).
In 1995, Cohen halted his career, entered the Mt. Baldy Zen Center outside of Los Angeles, became an ordained Buddhist monk and took on the Dharma name Jikan ("silence"). His duties included cooking for Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the priest and longtime Cohen mentor who died in 2014 at the age of 104. Cohen broke his musical silence in 2001 with Ten New Songs , a collaboration with Sharon Robinson, and Dear Heather (2004), a relatively uplifting project with current girlfriend Anjani Thomas. While never abandoning Judaism, the Sabbath-observing songwriter attributed Buddhism to curbing the depressive episodes that had always plagued him.
Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned five decades, died at the age of 82. Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns/Getty
The final act of Cohen's career began in 2005, when Lorca Cohen began to suspect her father's longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, of embezzling funds from his retirement account. In fact, Lynch had robbed Cohen of more than $5 million. To replenish the fund, Cohen undertook an epic world tour during which he would perform 387 shows from 2008 to 2013. He continued to record as well, releasing Old Ideas (2012) and Popular Problems , which hit U.S. shops a day after his eightieth birthday. "[Y]ou depend on a certain resilience that is not yours to command, but which is present," he told Rolling Stone upon its release. "And if you can sense this resilience or sense this capacity to continue, it means a lot more at this age than it did when I was 30, when I took it for granted."
When the Grand Tour ended in December 2013, Cohen largely vanished from the public eye. In October 2016, he released You Want It Darker , produced by his son Adam. Severe back issues made it difficult for Cohen to leave his home, so Adam placed a microphone on his dining room table and recorded him on a laptop. The album was met with rave reviews, though a New Yorker article timed to its release revealed that he was in very poor health. "I am ready to die," he said. "I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."
The singer-songwriter later clarified that he was "exaggerating." "Ive always been into self-dramatization," Cohen said last month. "I intend to live forever.
Suzanne (Rare Footage) | 0 |
During his career, Harry Belafonte has been a singer, an actor, a friend to Martin Luther King Jr. a Unicef ambassador, an activist and more. “I’m at a time of life when I’m examining the entire journey,” he said one recent afternoon at his Manhattan home, lamenting how the dreams of the civil rights movement are far from realized. “When I was 20 and 30, my visions for what the world would be, all things were possible. ” Mr. Belafonte, for whom art and activism have been inextricably linked, said his life is a “call and response,” and, at 89, he isn’t ready to retire from being one of society’s most passionate and visible advocates just yet. This weekend, “Many Rivers to Cross,” a “music, art and justice” festival in the Atlanta area focuses on three issues: voting, mass incarceration, and the relationship between community and law enforcement. The lineup features an array of genres and musical styles: John Legend Carlos Santana Goapele Dave Matthews and Tip Harris, better known as the rapper T. I. are scheduled to take the stage, alongside Chris Rock, the poet Sonia Sanchez, the actor Jesse Williams and the activist Umi Selah of the Dream Defenders. The event will raise money for Sankofa. org, a social justice organization founded by Mr. Belafonte that unites organizations and artists in the fight against problems like income disparity and inequities in the justice system. “What makes a movement work are thousands of parts that come together and express itself in favor of a given destination or objective,” he said. “You have to find men and women who are willing to play the role that each of these things demand. ” With Election Day nearing in what has been a contentious presidential race exposing deep ideological divides, registration services will be available to help attendees ahead of nationwide deadlines. “The vote is perhaps the single most important weapon in our arsenal,” Mr. Belafonte said. An area called the social justice village will feature representatives from over 40 organizations. The goal is to allow festivalgoers to “walk away with tools to better go out and support the causes they care about,” said Gina Belafonte, who helped organize the event with her father. Mr. Belafonte said, “When Trayvon Martin was shot and our community went into a response to that, there was no question in my mind that America was being awakened to its reality. ” Thinking back to the 1950s and ’60s, when he toiled alongside activists including Dr. King, Julian Bond and Fannie Lou Hamer, Mr. Belafonte recalled how Dr. King represented a “harvest of opportunity. ” He added: “The energy that went into the movement disappeared because people were reaping the benefits. We’ve forgotten what the opportunity was about. ” In 2012, a brouhaha ensued after Mr. Belafonte asserted that today’s celebrities have “turned their back on social responsibility” and mentioned Jay Z and Beyoncé. Jay Z responded in an interview with Rap Radar’s Elliott Wilson by saying among other things, “my presence is charity. ” Mr. Belafonte said that he extended an olive branch and that he and Jay Z met one on one. But Mr. Belafonte fervently maintains that artists must do more to champion causes. “There’s no evidence that artists are of the same passion and of the same kind of commitment of the artists of my time,” he said. “The absence of black artists is felt very strongly because the most visible oppression is in the black community. ” Mr. Belafonte provides counsel to celebrities and organizations, saying that he draws parallels between the roadblocks and successes of the ’50s and ’60s and those of the present political movements. Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said conversations with Mr. Belafonte had proved critical. “Mr. B plays no games with us,” she said. “When he doesn’t think we’re doing the right thing, he tells us. He said, ‘Look, you need the wisdom of your elders, but we need your energy right now. ’” T. I. who will perform at “Many Rivers to Cross” on Saturday, said he felt compelled to take action his latest EP, “Us or Else,” addresses interactions between law enforcement and blacks, among other issues, and part of its proceeds benefit Sankofa. org. “It just seemed all too consistent, all too repeated, all too ignored,” he said of police killings of black people. In the widely viewed video for the song “Warzone,” which he plans to perform at the festival, he spotlights the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Philando Castile. “It was very insightful to hear from someone who had been through so much and been a part of history in so many ways,” he said of his meeting with Mr. Belafonte. With his 90th birthday on his mind, Mr. Belafonte paused to take stock. “I wake up at the age of 90, and I look around and say, ‘What do we need now? ’” he said. “Well, the same things needed now are the same things needed before,” he went on. “Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die. ” | 1 |
Single Family Housing Starts Surge Before Long Winter of Our Discontent By Lee Adler. Yesterday we looked at total housing starts for October. The numbers were very strong. I concluded that within those strong numbers lay the seeds of destruction. Total housing starts are comprised of single family and multi family units. The total number can be misleading about one of the two markets if one is materially stronger than the other. | 0 |
Home | World | Anti-Brexit Meddler Gina Miller Poses Outside the Houses of Parliament Anti-Brexit Meddler Gina Miller Poses Outside the Houses of Parliament By Alphonse Mucus 08/11/2016 13:27:37
LONDON – England – Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has been revelling in her new found fame by posing outside the Houses of Parliament.
“I used to be a model you know,” Miller says every two minutes.
She seems to be enjoying the limelight and fame of being one of the foreign interests who was instrumental in attempting to block 52% of British voters who voted to leave the EU.
Posing in defiance, Ms Miller, a native of Guyana, brings out her new hat, acquired at some posh shop no doubt, or a betting shop lavatory to be more precise.
“Do you like my new hat?” she scowls, as the primping begins in earnest.
The photographer adjusts his lens, then sniffs loudly.
“S’cuse me Miss, but what’s that awful smell? It smells like a turd that has festered in satan’s butt hole for a thousand years.”
“It’s my hat, or shall I say crown. I shall wear it wherever I go from now on, and anyone who looks at me will see my beautiful crown that I wear so proudly, and think of me.”
At that moment, four dozen bluebottle flies plop themselves on Gina Miller’s crown and tuck down to some good nosh.
In the background, the spire of Big Ben looms over the scene, and as the coughing photographer clicks away, a wry smile comes over Gina Miller, she is the Queen today, the Queen of No-Brexit, and she will cherish this moment of fame for the fifteen minutes it will afford her.
Enjoy your crown Gina Miller, you will wear it for the rest of your pitiful life. | 0 |
Burning Fall Leaves Is Extremely Toxic For The Body & Planet Nov 8, 2016 0 0
With it being the time of autumn here in the northern hemisphere, the leaves have begun to fall and the colors have begun to change. In what has been a common practice of raking leaves and burning the piles, information is spreading as to why that practice is actually very harmful for people and the planet. Burning leaves is harmful to the health of a person.
According to Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources , burning leaves creates a large amount of dust, soot and other airborne particulates as a result of the often slow process that burning leaves takes. These toxic particles have the ability to reach deep into the lungs, which can cause long-term respiratory issues as well as short term issues to like coughing, wheezing and an accentuation of asthma issues.
More specifically, burning leaves creates smoke which contains carbon monoxide. This is deadly as it binds with hemoglobin in the bloodstream, which then drastically reduces the amount of oxygen circulating through the body. A bit further down, we’ll look at supplements a person can take if they are exposed to leaf smoke.
The smoke from leaves also contains benzo (a) pyrene , which is a known carcinogen as it binds to and mutates DNA and is thought to be a major factor in cancer from cigarette smoke.
Additionally, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , the concentrations of pollutants coming from leaf smoke can be higher than all other forms of air pollution combined, including factories, vehicles, garden and lawn equipment.
Instead of burning leaves, one can consider composting them or looking into whether your town or city offers pick-up services for the leaves. Ensure though that the leaves are not being burned at a larger collection site. Consider composting your fall leaves.
Composting leaves creates a wonderful after-effect by helping to create nutrient rich soil that can be used for potting plants or growing a garden. Ensuring that the leaves are shredded will help to speed up the decomposition process as well as including a source of nitrogen, which could be freshly cut green grass, animal manure or a product from your local home and garden store that helps to catalyze the process. One such product would be beneficial microbes . Supplements
If you are exposed to leaf smoke, the first and most obviously thing a person can do is to get as far away as possible from the smoke. The second would be to get to a place where the air is clean and begin doing deep in and out breaths to replenish your body with oxygen.
If a person was exposed for a lengthy period of time to the smoke, eating plenty of green vegetables and salads greens is a great way to not only detoxify the body of harmful pollutants, but also to give your body plenty of chlorophyll, which will help to carry oxygen throughout your bloodstream and into your cells.
Supplements one can consider include chlorella and spirulina, which are both an algae that contains almost all known nutrients needed in the human body as well as a rich supply of chlorophyll.
A person can also look into fulvic acid , which is the most potent anti-oxidant known and is excellent at removing toxins and metabolic waste from the body.
Is there someone in your neighborhood that could benefit from this information? Or someone in your family? Let us all create healthier bodies and a cleaner atmosphere.
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. | 0 |
The treatment of veterans in Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals is an inexplicable scandal. Now try to focus on this: the federal government, in all its might, is bringing criminal charges against a veteran for hanging an American flag on a fence. A flag! On a Veterans Affairs fence! On Memorial Day! [We announced last week that we will provide legal representation to Robert L. Rosebrock, a veteran who faces federal criminal charges for displaying two American flags outside a Veterans Affairs fence on Memorial Day, May 30, 2016. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 7, 2017, in Los Angeles. Rosebrock also is being criminally prosecuted for taking photographs on Memorial Day 2016, and on Sunday, June 12, 2016, without permission. The Memorial Day charge stems from photographs Rosebrock took of a Veterans Affairs police officer while the officer detained and cited him for displaying the two small flags outside the fence. Rosebrock also took photos of VA police detaining and handcuffing conservative activist Ted Hayes after Hayes displayed an American Flag above the same VA fence. Hayes, dressed as “Uncle Sam,” was not charged with any wrongdoing despite being detained and handcuffed. Uncle Sam! The case, United States of America v. Robert L. Rosebrock, (CC11, 4920201 4920202 6593951) will be heard by U. S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim in the U. S. District Court for the Central District of California. Judicial Watch attorney Sterling E. Norris, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney and Los defense attorney Robert Patrick Sticht will represent Rosebrock. The fence is part of the “Great Lawn Gate” entrance to the Los Angeles National Veterans Park, a public park on the corner of Wilshire and San Vincente Boulevards in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. The gate and park are part of a larger, parcel that includes the Veterans Home of West Los Angeles. Rosebrock, along with fellow veterans, Hayes and others, have been assembling at the site nearly every Sunday and Memorial Day since March 9, 2008, to protest what they believe is the VA’s failure to make full use of the valuable West Los Angeles property for the benefit and care of veterans, particularly homeless veterans. Deeded to the federal government in 1888 for the specific purpose of caring for disabled veterans, the property includes the veterans’ home, but also entirely unrelated uses such as a stadium for UCLA’s baseball team, an athletic complex for a nearby private prep school, a golf course, laundry facilities for a nearby Marriott hotel, storage and maintenance facilities for 20th Century Fox Television’s production sets, the Brentwood Theatre, soccer practice and match fields for a private girls’ soccer club, dog park, and a farmer’s market. A hotel laundry! VA officials previously told Rosebrock that a federal regulation allowed hanging the American Flag and flags on the “Great Lawn Gate” fence, and Rosebrock, Hayes and others hung as many as 30 America flags at the fence at the same time without incident. Rosebrock faces up to six months’ imprisonment if found guilty on any of the three charges. Six months! The federal government’s pursuit of these vindictive charges against Mr. Rosebrock is . Why in the world would the feds prosecute a veteran over the placement of two small American flags at the entrance to a park honoring veterans on Memorial Day? Frankly, President Trump should ask why the VA and his Justice Department are trying to jail this American patriot. | 1 |
Did Anthony Weiner say these things as part a deal to save himself? Anthony Weiner has spoken! One year ago, we all that that Donald Trump was just being funny, just being Trump, when he said that Hillary Clinton was showing poor judgement in letting Huma Abedin, wife of “perf sleaze” Anthony Weiner have access to government information. Trump called the couple a security risk, but again, we thought he was just making fun of them. As it turns out, Donald Trump’s words were eerily prophetic. Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have heard by now that the FBI is reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email problems after finding evidence on devices at Anthony Weiner’s home. Earlier, we reported that FBI Director James Comey had tricked Obama’s Department of Justice and the Clintons in sending the investigation announcement letter to Congress. Some believe that Comey was attempting to force the DOJ to issue a warrant so that his agents can start reading the 10,000+ emails on Weiner’s device.
Here Is How FBI Director Comey BAMBOOZLED The DOJ, CONGRESS, And The CLINTONS All At Once
Now, Anthony Weiner has spoken and he may have made Comey’s job even easier, while completely bypassing the Department of Justice altogether.
According to reports, Weiner has given permission for the FBI to access all of the information on his electronic devices, including his wifi router. . @BretBaier emails Chris Wallace while he’s on air: Weiner has given FBI permission to search computer so no warrant needed. @FoxNewsSunday
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) October 30, 2016 I emailed that 2 sources say Weiner is cooperating w/ FBI- & co-owned laptop. Also NY FBI had info 4 a few weeks- pressure was building https://t.co/AHbQVtvQzg
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) October 30, 2016
In essence, Weiner is singing like a bird, and the FBI can conduct a thorough review of the emails in question. If there is criminality found on Weiner’s devices, they have a shot at it.
Is there anything that the Department of Justice or the Clintons can do?
Time will tell, but many believe that WikiLeaks and others are about to drop more incriminating evidence on Hillary later this week.
Comey may have saved himself. Weiner may be trying to cut a plea deal to save himself.
Hang on, as this ride is still picking up steam! Related Items | 0 |
A woman was killed in her home and four other people were injured when a truck carrying Takata airbag parts and explosives crashed and detonated on a Texas road last week, the company and local authorities confirmed on Monday. The immense blast — the victim’s remains were not located for two days — highlighted the potency of the explosives used by Takata in its airbags as a propellent to activate its bags in a car crash. It also pointed to the risks associated with Takata’s transport of the explosives across the country from a propellant factory in Washington State to Mexico. Takata’s airbags, and the explosive material used to make them, are at the center of the largest auto safety recall in history. Takata airbags installed in automobiles can explode violently when activated, and have been linked to the deaths of at least 14 drivers as well as to the injuries of over 100 people. Fourteen automakers have recalled more than 64 million inflaters over the defect. The airbags use a propellant based on ammonium nitrate, which has come under scrutiny for its tendency to break down over time and combust violently when triggered. In last week’s accident, which occurred in the early hours of Aug. 22, the woman who died, Lucila Robles, 69, was apparently in her home in the town of Quemado, on the Mexico border, when the crash occurred on the road in front of her property before dawn. The blast destroyed the home. The sheriff’s office sent out search parties for Ms. Robles, thinking she may have been carried by the force of the explosion into nearby brush. Investigators called off the search after two days when they discovered Ms. Robles’s bones, teeth and other remains in the smoldering debris of her house, said Tom Schmerber, the local sheriff for the county of Maverick. Also injured were the two drivers of the truck, who fled their vehicle after it swerved off the road and crashed, and two in a car. An internal document provided by a former Takata employee shows that Takata transports its explosive compound more than 2, 000 miles across the United States, from its plant in Moses Lake, Wash. to a distribution center just north of the Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Tex. The journey, manned by two drivers, takes the truck through Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, as well as Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N. M. according to the document, dated October 2007. From Eagle Pass, the propellant is transferred to separate trucks that then travel to Takata’s airbag factory in Monclova, Mexico, according to the document. Drivers of the trucks are required to be equipped with clothing, boots with rubber soles, safety goggles and helmets, the document says, pointing to the hazardous nature of the cargo. Takata said the trucks were carrying the propellant alongside airbag components called inflaters, which are small devices within an airbag that contain the explosive material and which are designed to cause an airbag to inflate in microseconds. The inflaters aboard the truck were newly manufactured, the company said. In a statement, a spokesman for Takata, Jared Levy, said the company followed all regulatory requirements. Glenn P. Wicks, managing director at the Wicks Group, a law firm based in the District of Columbia that specializes in hazmat transportation, said it was not immediately clear whether any federal safety regulations were violated in Takata’s shipping of the propellant and inflaters. Given the severity of the crash, he said, the ammonium nitrate propellant could have triggered an explosion by itself, with or without the inflaters present. Still, investigators are likely to scrutinize how the propellant was packaged and shipped, whether the drivers were certified to handle hazardous materials and whether their working hours were within legal limits, Mr. Wicks said. The Department of Transportation said its investigators were working closely with local officials in Texas to look into the crash and explosion. “Every possible factor or factors — including the safety compliance of the motor carrier, the handling of the cargo by the shipper, its packaging, how the truck was placarded, as well as the truck’s routing — and all other aspects will be thoroughly investigated to determine whether there were violations of any U. S. Department of Transportation safety regulations, which exist to protect everyone’s safety,” the agency said. The explosion is not Takata’s first accident involving ammonium nitrate. In March 2006, its Monclova plant was severely damaged by a series of blasts blamed on the ammonium nitrate propellant. There were no injuries, although the explosions blew out the windows of nearby homes and forced hundreds of workers and local residents to evacuate. Takata said the truck was operated by a subcontractor, which it did not name. The supplier immediately sent personnel to the site and has been cooperating with local investigators, Mr. Levy said in a statement. “Takata has strict safety procedures relating to the transportation of its products that meet or exceed all regulatory requirements,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the family of the woman who died as a result of this accident, and with the four people injured. ” | 1 |
Every four years, I notice a dramatic increase in personal disclosure at the office. who are usually reserved about nonwork matters suddenly begin expressing their political beliefs and singing the praises of their preferred presidential candidates. I understand the desire to discuss such a critical event, even if there is a risk of stirring up rancor among people with opposing views. For people whose political opinions are aligned, such conversations can be satisfying and reinforce collegial bonds. Some people feel the election is so important that they simply must express their views in the office. But those who do should beware: Political talk at work can have unintended effects. Declaring your support for a candidate is essentially an unsolicited recommendation to any people who can hear you, whether they are listening voluntarily or not. Research I have done shows that people often have peculiar reactions to such talk. Rather than doing what’s recommended, or even ignoring a suggestion, they often do the exact opposite of what you propose. For example, Donald R. Lehmann of Columbia University and I told participants in a study that a health and fitness magazine strongly recommended against a particular granola bar. Armed with this advice, the participants’ preference for that granola bar then skyrocketed. We got the same results when we told another group of participants about an auto magazine’s compact car recommendations. That people will resist expert recommendations about a car purchase suggests this tendency also plays into decisions with higher stakes — including, perhaps, an election. Studies of backlash to restrictions have shown that even strongly held beliefs and behaviors can be turned on their heads. For example, some hospital patients react to restrictions of their freedom by placing themselves at a much greater health risk. Obviously, for a large portion of the public, voting preferences are not subject to outside influence. Some people, for example, always vote the party line no matter what. But for voters who are undecided, subtle environmental influences have the potential to play an outsize role at the polls. When people ask for your opinion before making a choice, they typically incorporate it into their decision. Sometimes they value it greatly. But if you offer advice without being asked — watch out. This backlash to unsolicited advice comes from a psychological concept known as reactance, first identified in the 1960s by Jack W. Brehm, a social psychologist at Duke. When a freedom to choose is restricted, it becomes much more attractive. Tell a child he can have either the or candy but not the orange, and orange is suddenly his new favorite flavor. People do not appear to outgrow this tendency as they mature. Unlike tuning into a pundit’s TV show, or reading the editorial page of a newspaper, people rarely seek out their colleagues for political recommendations. Making a show of supporting one candidate, or criticizing another, is a form of unsolicited opinion. Based on our research, I’d say it’s most likely to be resisted, maybe even to the point where an undecided voter will lean the other way. Many workplaces request that their employees not discuss politics in the office. Such policies are generally thought to reduce animosity among who have differing perspectives. Unfortunately, such policies are rarely successful, and in many cases they elevate political discussion to forbidden fruit. As we learned from our study of reactance, a restricted freedom becomes a desirable one. So employees thrust their opinions on their colleagues, perhaps talking about a funny portrayal of a disliked candidate on a television program instead of directly attacking the person. And this, of course, creates the potential for a backlash against that political perspective. The colleagues rejecting your unsolicited political advice might not even realize that they are doing so. In work with Tanya L. Chartrand and Amy N. Dalton at Duke, I found that many people push back against perceived threats to their freedom outside their conscious awareness. In one study, we asked participants to name someone in their lives who wanted them to work hard. Then we asked them to work on a puzzle. The participants actually did a worse job when the name of the person who wanted them to work hard was flashed subliminally on a screen before they began working on the puzzle. When it comes to political preferences, keep in mind that certain combinations of perceptions can magnify the effect of a backlash. If you pull into the company lot driving a Toyota Prius — already associated with liberal voters — plastered with a Hillary Kaine bumper sticker, and then loudly complain about Donald J. Trump while getting your morning coffee, it could be seen as a particularly annoying, recommendation. The net effect of who you are, and what you say, could turn undecided voters away from the Democratic ticket. We might expect a similar backlash to a gun enthusiast loudly supporting Mr. Trump. However, these assumptions could also be turned to a candidate’s advantage. If you are a hybrid driver, or if you like to hunt and you’re a big fan of Mrs. Clinton, then go ahead and tell everyone at the office, and slap an bumper sticker on your hybrid or your truck. By defying expectations you’ll most likely dampen the automatic backlash, and you might even encourage undecided voters to think twice about your candidate. Perhaps they will realize there’s something they missed. | 1 |
Hundreds of activists gathered at the base of the Washington Monument this morning to advocate for an independent investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.[ Above: protesters gather in the “March for Truth” at the base of the Washington Monument June 3, 2017, Anger and derision were also directed at the president for his perceived mishandling of the truth, his associates’ interactions with various Russian officials, and American withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. Speakers at the event included Congressman Jamie Raskin, NOW President Terry O’Neill, Obama Speechwriter Jon Lovett, Town Hall Project Spokesman Jimmy Dahman, and Activist Linda Sarsour. Congressman Raskin spoke of Russian President Vladimir Putin leading a global conspiracy to destroy liberal democracy with his own puppets, ranging from President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to President Trump. He also railed against the American President’s entire agenda as “an act of war” on the American people. Above: Congressman Raskin of Maryland Speaking at the March for Truth All the speakers received thunderous applause interspersed with chants of “lock him up” and “Resist. ” Speakers also alleged that Russian interference helped Donald Trump win the presidential election through fake news campaigns, paid Russian trolls on social media, and media outlets. Various protest signs featured President Trump and President Putin in cahoots and essentially as one in the same person. Hammer and Sickle imagery was constantly evoked, bringing back memories of the Cold War. This Russophobia was especially striking, given that leaders in the Democrat Party snarked at Mitt Romney for calling Russia “America’s greatest geopolitical foe” in 2012. The crowd was largely white, which is noteworthy because leftists famously derided Tea Party gatherings and Trump campaign rallies for being overwhelmingly Caucasian. Various attendees refused to speak with this reporter due to his affiliation with Breitbart News. However, some were generous to share their thoughts on the event. Helen, a political science student from Loudon County said, “We need more transparency, and an independent investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. ” While she would prefer not to reach out to President Trump himself, she expressed a desire to reach Trump supporters and explain to them why an investigation would be warranted. Mary and James, a mother and son who drove down from Maine, claimed that President Trump’s involvement with Russia originated from Trump taking out loans from Russian financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 recession. James especially expressed frustration over Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s inability to answer basic questions from the press regarding such Russian ties. Not everyone at the rally was in line with such sentiments. One young man who went by the namesake of the second President, John Adams, held up a sign reading “CNN=ISIS” to derision and boos from the crowd. The efforts of Adams and his friends, info warriors and trolls, likely stemmed from Alex Jones’s promises of cash rewards to those holding up CNN=ISIS signs on TV. Adams blasted the Russian collusion narrative as fake. He claimed such contacts with Russian officials were legitimate, citing Jeff Sessions meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kilsylak as a normal duty of an American senator. Others who refused to speak with the media included noted and controversial Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, who brushed off this reporter’s questions in the aftermath of the rally. Above: Linda Sarsour at the March for Truth, Video by Stephen Chretien: Photos by Alex Clark for Breitbart News | 1 |
Public pressure has forced officials at the school district (CMS) to withdraw a book for kids — but the officials are now mandating a book with a disguised version of the same message. [A teacher raised concerns about the book, Jacob’s New Dress, at a school board meeting. The book celebrates a young boy who wears dresses to school, and it stigmatizes boys who urge their peers to wear boys’ clothes. After lawmakers in Raleigh heard the concerns, the book was removed from the “ ” curriculum — but it was replaced with Red: A Crayon’s Story, which focuses on a red crayon that believes itself to be blue, reports WFXB. But both books are included in the campaign known as Welcoming Schools by the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, an effort to help elementary schools become “ ” and “ . ” According to the Amazon review, the Red: A Crayon’s Story book “can be read at any levels. ” The review says: Red has a bright red label, but he is, in fact, blue. His teacher tries to help him be red (let’s draw strawberries!) his mother tries to help him be red by sending him out on a playdate with a yellow classmate (go draw a nice orange!) and the scissors try to help him be red by snipping his label so that he has room to breathe. But Red is miserable. He just can’t be red, no matter how hard he tries! Finally, a friend offers a perspective, and Red discovers what readers have known all along. He’s blue! This funny, heartwarming, colorful picture book about finding the courage to be true to your inner self can be read on multiple levels, and it offers something for everyone. Also, Amazon shows the two books are often bought by the same buyers and are matched with sales of a book about a boy who wants to be a girl named “Jazz. ” Other books, including “Toni the Tampon,” push the same transgender claim that a person’s sex is changeable, regardless of biology. “The purpose of our elementary schools is to teach writing, reading, and arithmetic, not to encourage boys to wear dresses,” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of NC Values Coalition, said in a statement. “I read the book online,” she told the New York Times. “It’s clearly geared to young children. The book is meant as a tool of indoctrination to normalize transgender behavior. I think a lot of parents would object to that. ” Schools should be focused on helping young children to achieve the building blocks of learning, not indoctrinating them in progressive social values, she said in her statement: CMS is failing our children in the recent 2016 state academic ratings, 43 of 165 CMS schools achieved overall pass rates below 50% and a majority (59%) earned a grade of C or below when measuring student proficiency and growth. These lessons found in the book, Jacob’s New Dress and My Princess Boy and other transgender curriculum are not appropriate for any child whose parents support traditional family values. There is no question that this attempt by CMS staff to mandated training is nothing more than putting a dress on CMS’s Gender Unicorn. We encourage CMS to refocus on their mission of maximizing academic achievement instead of advancing this controversial curriculum. The “Gender Unicorn” message tells children that sexual attitudes can be chosen, diverse and fluid, despite the risk of derailing some children’s normal maturation into healthy and stable young men and young women. The CMS school board is currently preparing to add sexual orientation and “gender ” to its policy on multiculturalism, reports the Charlotte Observer, along with such things as race, religion and national origin. “The proposed new policy … calls for CMS to “intentionally incorporate diversity throughout the curriculum, instruction and professional development,” says the report. Fitzgerald continued: As Charlotte’s City Council passed an outrageous ordinance last year that made it necessary for the State to correct the mistake with HB2, schools was working on rolling out a new policy that seeks to indoctrinate students in the school district by normalizing transgender behavior. Both Charlotte’s ordinance and the CMS transgender indoctrination were advanced by the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT activist group, in conjunction with its NC affiliates, Equality NC and Time Out Youth. They provided the curriculum, the training, and the lesson plans for mandated transgender training for our children, complete with the Gender Unicorn, all while the Bank of America funded the program and the groups that support it. Last year, the Charlotte City Council passed the ordinance that allowed anyone who simply declared they had changed their gender to use the restrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex. The ordinance was pushed forward by registered sex offender Chad and national groups during the tenure of Mayor Jennifer Roberts. Former Gov. Pat McCrory (R) however, signed the HB2 privacy and public safety bill into law to nullify the Charlotte ordinance. HB2 required people to use the bathroom that matched the official documentation of their sex. The documents could be their original birth certificate, or a modified birth certificate after surgical changes, so allowing people who want to live as members of other sex to use bathrooms reserved for the other sex. Following the passage of HB2, progressive groups pushed major universities, sports organizations, businesses, and celebrities to boycott the state. The resulting boycotts helped the state’s establishment media to portray the law as an economic hazard. In general, gay groups opposed the HB2 law because they seek to blur the social and legal recognition of the two male and female sexes. In general, transgender and gay groups opposed the HB2 law because they want to blur the social and legal recognition of the two male and female sexes. The overall goal is to get government support for the “transgender ideology,” which says that Americans should sacrifice their institutions — such as bathrooms, sports leagues, women’s shelters, and normal practices — to validate the relatively few people who want to live as members of the other sex. groups and their progressive political allies are trying to shape the early development of children, but are being rejected by the public and resisted by mainstream professional and groups. To learn more about the public’s opposition to the transgender ideology, click here. | 1 |
Butler Shaffer https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/re-jury-nullification-2/
Chris: It is telling not only that this academician has tenure, but that he has tenure at a STATE university. Do you think he might be concerned that this jury’s decision might reflect a growing disrespect for the arbitrary arrogance of state power; a weakening that might endanger his continued employment? 12:20 | 0 |
HONOLULU — President Obama expressed confidence that, if he had run for a third term, he would have defeated Donald J. Trump, according to an interview released Monday with David Axelrod, his friend and former adviser. “I’m confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Mr. Obama said on Mr. Axelrod’s podcast, “The Axe Files,” referring to his message of inclusion and helping Americans. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one,” he said. Several hours after the interview was posted, Mr. Trump responded on Twitter. “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me,” Mr. Trump said. “He should say that but I say NO WAY! — jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc. ” The discussion in the interview was pure political conjecture, because the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution limits a president to two terms. Mr. Obama praised the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, saying that she performed well under difficult circumstances and that there “was a double standard with her. ” “For whatever reason, there’s been a longstanding difficulty in her relationship with the press that meant her flaws were wildly amplified,” he said. But Mr. Obama also said she campaigned too cautiously. “If you think you’re winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “And the economy has been improving. There is a sense, obviously, that some communities have been left behind from the recovery and people feeling anxious about that. ” It was “nonsense,” Mr. Obama said, that Democrats had abandoned white Americans, who rallied to Mr. Trump. “Look, the Affordable Care Act benefits a huge number of Trump voters,” Mr. Obama said. “There are a lot of folks in places like West Virginia or Kentucky who didn’t vote for Hillary, didn’t vote for me, but are being helped by this. ” The problem, Mr. Obama said, was that Democratic politicians were not communicating to these people “that we understand why they’re frustrated. ” “We’re not there on the ground communicating not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities, that we’re bleeding for these communities,” Mr. Obama said. “There’s an emotional connection, and part of what we have to do to rebuild is to be there,” he said. “And that means organizing, that means caring about state parties, it means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races, and not thinking that somehow, just a great set of progressive policies that we present to the New York Times editorial board will win the day. ” In a telephone interview on Monday, Mr. Axelrod, now a commentator on CNN, said it was his sense that Mr. Obama was “frustrated” that his presidency is ending when his party has sustained such a dramatic loss. “He believes the momentum is still on his side in the long term,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He’s always been a guy who thinks long term and has an amazing ability to do that. ” | 1 |
Its getting confusing
What’s the difference between a “moderate” child raping, head chopping, Kalashnikov carrying American Hummer driving Jihadi
and a “Radical” child raping, head chopping, Kalashnikov carrying American Hummer driving Jihadi ?
One of them eats Bacon? | 0 |
NEW YORK (AP) — The premiere of a virtual reality short by director Kathryn Bigelow was already a event at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night. And then Hillary Clinton walked onstage. [advertisement | 1 |
By wmw_admin on October 31, 2016 Zero Hedge — via Russia Insider Oct 28, 2016
In our previous article The Secret Truth about Russia Exposed, we elaborated on how Russia is a convenient enemy for politicians and specifically the Democratic party, to create an enemy that really , well – doesn’t exist to distract and confuse voters. But like with any ‘enemy’ if you bomb a village, you may have some pissed off villagers. As we explain in our best selling book Splitting Pennies – the world doesn’t work the way you see on TV – in fact, it works more closely as seen on Zero Hedge.
Although Russia simply is just a country in the wrong place at the wrong time (which, throughout Russian history, seems to be a theme for them) – there really is a reason the Elite hate Russia. It’s not because they’re Xenophobic, although there’s that too – it’s because of several key factors that make Russia a unique power in the world, compared to similar countries. Russia is an independent country. It’s not possible to manipulate Russia via external remote control, like it is most countries. The Elite don’t like that! Russia kicked out Soros “Open Society” :
Russia has banned a pro-democracy charity founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, saying the organization posed a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution. In a statement released Monday morning, Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office said two branches of Soros’ charity network — the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) — would be placed on a “stop list” of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed “undesirable” by the Russian state. Russia is not easy to cripple via clandestine means, whether it be CIA, MI6, or outright military conflict. Some other BRICs however, that’s not the case. Say what you will about Russia’s military – it’s on par and in many cases, advanced, compared to the US military. And that’s not AN opinion, that’s in the opinion of top US military commanders:
Late in September, we brought you “ US Readies Battle Plans For Baltic War With Russia ” in which we described a series of thought experiments undertaken by The Pentagon in an effort to determine what the likely outcome would be should something go horribly “wrong” on the way to landing the US in a shooting war with Russia in the Balkans.
The results of those thought experiments were not encouraging. As a reminder, here’s how Foreign Policy summed up the exercises: Russian culture, and language, is too complex for the average “Elite” who pretends to be internationally well versed because they had a few semesters of French. For example, when the diplomat Clinton was Secretary of State, she presented a reset button translating the opposite meaning… ooops .
“I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is: ‘We want to reset our relationship, and so we will do it together.’…
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” she asked Lavrov, laughing. “You got it wrong,” said Lavrov, as both diplomats laughed.
“It should be “perezagruzka” [the Russian word for reset],” said Lavrov.”This says ‘peregruzka,’ which means ‘overcharged.’”
Yes, it’s almost a certainty that if Clinton by some horrible fate is President there will be Nuclear war. Wars have been started over much more subtle mistakes. One would think, that Clinton would have had an advisor CHECK THIS before presenting it in a public ceremony, in front of reporters? How much more blatantly unprofessional can one be? If politicians worked in the private sector, they wouldn’t last a day! How do these people advance so far in politics? Plain and simple, the Elite do not control Russia. While there are backchannels of Russian oligarchs that work directly with Western Rothschild interests, for example, they simply don’t have the same level of control as they do European countries, like Germany for instance. Or another good example is China, there’s this fanatical talk that China can dump US Treasuries blah blah blah the fact is that China is completely dependent on USA and US Dollars, and will be for the rest of our lives. Maybe in 1000 years in the Dong Dynasty still to come they will rule the world but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Russia is one of the most highly misunderstood cultures in the West. Which is strange, because Russia is more like America than any European country: Both Russia and America share huge landmasses with large undeveloped territory Both Russia and America are predominantly white christian majorities (although in last decades, America tries to be more of a melting pot whereas Russia favors ethnic cleansing) Both Russia and America fought against Hitler and the Nazis during World War 2, the defining event of the last 60 years
There have been numerous interesting situations where Russia helped America and America helped Russia on a number of levels, to learn more about it checkout the following books:
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution . Armand Hammer: The Untold Story
Most interestingly, during the Nixon administration Kissinger was prodding Nixon to partner with Russia that would, in Kissinger’s view would create an unstoppable alliance, that no one could compete with such a superpower axis. But, it didn’t happen, as there were ‘neo-cons’ who were against it, mostly Polish Catholics who have some deep genetic fear of any culture using the Cyrillic alphabet.
Nixon instead chose China (what a mistake!) and created Forex. But the point being that, through a small slip of fate, “China” may have been in this alternative Kissinger reality the ‘Great Evil Enemy’ hacking our elections, as we drive across the Alaskan-Siberian highway without any speed limit, oil would be ten cents a gallon, and we wouldn’t need to war with the Middle East. | 0 |
This week, when The Times ran a photograph depicting an assassin standing next to the body of his victim, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, readers wrote to the public editor with questions. Some wanted to protest the photo’s publication, some simply were curious about the thinking behind the decision to run it so prominently. We took these concerns to The Times’s standards editor, Phil Corbett, and because the comments section on the resulting interview was particularly lively, we decided to highlight some of the conversation here. Many commenters stood behind The Times’s decision. Others worried that the photo’s prominence lionized the killer and would inspire similar acts. Still other commenters wondered whether the dead ambassador ought to have been included in the photo. An astute commenter immediately answered the question: The commenter also included a link to a blog post by the public editor’s predecessor on the subject, which addressed that choice, and stood by the editors’ decision. In other news, Donald Trump held an holiday party for the press at on Sunday, and a Times journalist was in attendance. Readers wrote in to object to The Times’s presence at the meeting. Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief, discussed The Times’s attendance at the gala with Erik Wemple of The Washington Post earlier this week. “Our policy on with presidents and is to push long and hard to do things on record,” she said. “With journalists, you need some insight into the ’s thinking. We have found in the past that this has helped us with Obama,” and she said sessions gave The Times “thought and direction to pursue stories afterward. ” The public editor’s take: This is a case where I believe The Times was right in agreeing to the meeting. Such sessions with the president are somewhat infrequent but common through the history of White House reporting. They offer a chance for the media to get to know the president they cover a little better, without sacrificing that much. After all, it isn’t that often that some information of great public import is revealed at these sessions. That said, pressing for sessions is always the preferred route. After the terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, a reader wrote in concerned about The Times’s use of the word “migrant” rather than “refugee. ” We asked Corbett whether there have been internal discussions around these terms. “The International desk has indeed wrestled with this question, which is complicated and sensitive,” he said. “Migrants is the broader term, including both refugees and others. ” Joe Kahn, the current managing editor and former international editor, also addressed this question in a blog post the public editor’s predecessor wrote last year. “While imperfect, it is accurate to refer to both migrants and refugees as ‘migrants,’ because they all belong to the class of people moving from one place to another,” he said. “It is not accurate to refer to all migrants as refugees, however, as refugees have a special status under international law that does not apply to all migrants. ” Another reader noticed an issue with a story about a nightclub in T, The New York Times Style Magazine. The reader, Danny Cohen of Los Angeles, put it bluntly: “How could you not mention the problems with Tenants of the Trees?” He linked to a story that reported that multiple men and women claim to have been drugged at the nightclub earlier this year. The public editor’s take: I’m with the reader on this one. Seems like a shadow hanging over the place that the readers should have been told about. Happy holidays to our loyal readers. The public editor’s office will be shuttered next week as we take a quick breather. See you in the new year. | 1 |
The most memorable thing about the Game on Tuesday night might have been what happened before the first pitch was even thrown: A member of a Canadian quartet singing the country’s national anthem altered some lyrics and held up a sign that said “All Lives Matter. ” The group, the Tenors, which is based in British Columbia, drew heavy criticism on Twitter after one of its members, Remigio Pereira, inserted the political statement while singing “O Canada” before the game at Petco Park in San Diego. Mr. Pereira pulled out the sign from his suit jacket and, during a solo portion of the song, sang: “We’re all brothers and sisters. All lives matter to the great. ” The traditional lyrics at that point in the anthem are: “With glowing hearts we see thee rise. The True North strong and free. ” The other members of the group — Clifton Murray, Fraser Walters and Victor Micallef — said later they were “shocked and embarrassed” by the actions of Mr. Pereira, whom they described in a statement as being a “lone wolf. ” They added that his stunt was “extremely selfish” and that he would not be performing with the group until further notice. “Our sincere apologies and regrets go out to everybody who witnessed this shameful act, to our fellow Canadians, to Major League Baseball, to our friends, families, fans and to all those affected,” the statement said. “United We Stand” was written on the back of Mr. Pereira’s sign, The Associated Press reported. Major League Baseball had no idea Mr. Pereira planned to make a political statement, a spokesman, Matt Bourne, said. The episode happened against a backdrop of heightened racial tensions in the United States. Last week, two black men were killed in separate police shootings and five police officers in Dallas were shot and killed by a black man who the authorities said was targeting white officers in retribution. “All Lives Matter” is a statement frequently delivered in response to “Black Lives Matter,” which has been used by activists to call attention to police shootings. The Canadian anthem was not broadcast live on American television, but it aired in Canada. At the stadium, fans reacted with surprise when Mr. Pereira’s sign was broadcast on the scoreboard. But that was nothing compared with the fury that appeared on Twitter: The Tenors were formed in 2007 and have performed more than 500 concerts on five continents and have made over 150 television appearances, according to the group’s biography. The singers appeared at the 2010 Olympic opening ceremony in Vancouver and with artists including Andrea Bocelli, Sting and Elton John. While the change in the anthem’s lyrics was widely criticized, some on Twitter found room for humor: | 1 |
Walmart announced Tuesday it would be creating 10, 000 jobs in the United States this year, a number that’s on par with the amount of jobs the store has created in previous years, as Donald Trump puts pressure on companies to create more jobs in the U. S.[The new jobs will be retail jobs for Walmart’s 59 new stores planned for the next fiscal year that starts in February or jobs, but there will also be 24, 000 new construction jobs created in order to build the new stores, Reuters reports. Walmart said the number of new jobs is about the same as previous years, and is part of $6. 8 billion in capital investments in the U. S. for the new fiscal year which starts Feb. 1. The investments also include construction and remodeling of stores and distribution centers as well as expansion of new services such as online grocery pickup, KWTV reported. “Our 2017 plans to grow our business … will have a meaningful impact on the country,” Executive Vice President Dan Bartlett said in a statement. Walmart also said it would open 160 training academies around the country, adding to the 40 that already exist. The company aims to provide up to six weeks of specialty training to 225, 000 workers, the company said. Walmart’s job announcement comes after the store had to close 154 U. S. stores and slash 10, 000 jobs in January 2016, USA Today reports. | 1 |
By Tony Cartalucci In reality, since even before Syria’s conflict began unfolding in 2011, the United States had been planning for the nation’s division and... | 0 |
Tweet Widget by Bill Quigley
A young Black lawyer from Youngstown, Ohio, had to sue a judge who held her in contempt of court for wearing a Black Lives Matter pin. The judge said his decision had nothing to do with politics. “The local NAACP chapter questioned that assertion and wondered whether the Judge would have jailed Burton if she was wearing a ‘Support the Troops’ pin.” Atty. Andrea Burton ultimately agreed to wear her pin in the courthouse, but not in the courtroom. Social Justice Attorney Andrea Burton: Jailed for Refusing to Remove Black Lives Matter Lapel Pin by Bill Quigley
“To remain neutral becomes an accomplice to oppression.”
Andrea Burton, a 30 year old Ohio criminal defense lawyer, was rocketed onto the national social justice scene this summer after she was handcuffed and jailed for refusing to take off a Black Lives Matter pin while in court.
Burton’s stance received international attention . “I think that you can’t remain silent or you remain a party to oppression,” she told The Washington Post . “I am usually a pretty agreeable person. I’m always smiling. I’m polite. I have manners. But at some point it eats away at you how any time people see you talk about Black Lives Matter, then you’re being sensitive, you’re the person who’s racist.” In interviews with local media Burton insisted “I'm not anti-police, I work with law enforcement and I hold them in the highest regard, and just to say for the record, I do believe all lives matter. But at this point they don't all matter equally."
The Black Lives Matter pin was about one inch across , the size of a nickel . Burton refused an order to remove the Black Lives matter pin by Youngstown Ohio Judge Robert Milich . Burton told the Judge she was asserting her First Amendment rights . “I said I’m respecting my first amendment right, that I’m not neutral to injustice, and to remain neutral becomes an accomplice to oppression.” The judge held her in contempt of court, jailed her and sentenced her to five days. After being jailed for five hours and the NAACP was called in to help, the judge released Burton pending an appeal of his decision.
Judge Milich, who was already famous for announcing his refusal to perform any marriages on the day the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage, told the media that his own personal opinions had nothing to do with the decision. The local NAACP chapter questioned that assertion and wondered whether the Judge would have jailed Burton if she was wearing a “Support the Troops” pin. When asked by The Daily Beast , whether he would jail a lawyer for wearing a pin that said Support Our Troops, he refused to say. “I can’t speculate on what a political pin might be until I look at it. I just used the definition in the Black’s Law Library Dictionary, and the standard dictionary of what’s political.” The Judge further muddied the waters when he said “There’s a difference between a flag, a pin from your church or the Eagles and having a pin that’s on a political issue.”
“Burton told the Judge she was asserting her First Amendment rights.”
Burton paid a high price for her convictions. After she was jailed, Burton, who had been previously regularly appointed to represent numerous Youngstown Municipal criminal defendants , said she was “frozen out” of the appointment process for representing criminal defendants and received no appointments at all.
Burton then filed a federal civil rights damages actio n against Judge Milich, the other Youngstown Municipal Judge, and the City of Youngstown for violations of her constitutional rights to Freedom of Speech, Due Process and Equal Protection. In the civil rights case, filed in the Northern District of Ohio, Burton pointed out police officers were in the same courtroom with black tape over their badges and the judge did nothing to them. After court monitored settlement discussions, Burton agreed to drop her federal civil rights case. In return the Judge agreed to drop her contempt charge. Burton said she will continue to wear her BLM pin in the courthouse but not inside the courtroom. Further, the settlement provided that local judges agreed not to retaliate against her and will fully consider her requests for future appointments to court-appointed cases.
Who is this brave lawyer?
Beginnings
Burton grew up in Youngstown, Ohio in a family active in the civil rights movement. “My grandfather marched on Washington with Martin Luther King ,” said Burton. “He was a good friend of A. Phillip Randolph . He protested in the South during the Civil Rights Movements and attended the 1963 March on Washington. He was one of the first black Councilpersons for Youngstown. My mother was pretty active in the black awakening during the 60s. She was fairly militant about civil rights as a teen and was what we know now as a feminist.”
Some of her courage is no doubt due to her upbringing. Burton’s older brother was born with a rare genetic disorder that left him mentally disabled and very sickly as a child. Dad operated a successful business despite addiction issues until his death when Burton was 15. Mom, a legal secretary and later a court bailiff, did heroic work caring for the family.
“My mother’s compassion and dedication greatly influenced how empathetic I have become. She pushed me greatly to do more than what was expected, to excel when it would be simpler to be typical. She never told me that there was anything I could not do if I set my sights on achieving it. She worked hard to make the resources available to me if I actually wanted them. Both my parents were college educated. Both were heavily invested in learning.
“My parents never really treated me as a child so I was often exposed to difficult realties and frank conversations. I was conscious of the ways people were different (i.e., gender, orientation, race, or class) but how it did not matter at all in determining their worth.”
Studies
Burton always did well in school. “I was expected to be a good student. My father was relentless about math grades and performances especially. I won a sport in the Junior Statesman Program at Georgetown University to study government when I was 16 years old. It was a highly competitive program that included people from all over the world.
Burton earned a scholarship and graduated from Youngstown State University in 2008 in pre-law and journalism. She was awarded another scholarship to study for her Masters in Library and Information Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .
“I decided to become a lawyer as I finished my bachelor’s degree.” So after she received her graduate degree she returned to Ohio and commuted from home to attend the University of Akron School of Law . “The best part of law school was working in the legal clinic.” There she wrote appellate briefs for prisoners, provided legal research to inmates, handled applications for clemency to the governor and other pro bono services to low income individuals. She took social justice classes when she could and wrote a major paper on Kelley Williams-Bolar who was convicted of a felony for enrolling her children in another better school district. “I wanted to study why anyone would commit a felony to educate their kids, why was it necessary? What differences where there?”
“She wrote appellate briefs for prisoners, provided legal research to inmates, handled applications for clemency.”
After becoming a lawyer, Burton began a small private practice and spent a lot of her time working as a public defender. “It was a shock,” Burton admits. “People with power and influence held some bigoted ideas. People were not treated fairly and it was quite disheartening.
“As a criminal defense lawyer, I am motivated by humanity, compassion and the oath I took to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I am often asked how I could represent those accused of crimes, some heinous crimes. I see criminal defense work as an opportunity to make sure that the promise that the criminal justice system makes “innocent until proven guilty” is followed. Getting convictions and imparting justice are two very different things. My job is to make sure that statutes and rules are followed to guarantee a fair and impartial trial. Politics should not factor into that. I am merely an instrument of justice but I take my role extremely seriously.
“It is sometimes challenging to work with other attorneys and people in the justice system who are oblivious to the discrepancies people of color and impoverished people experience within the system that is set up to eradicate those inequities. I am also disappointed in people who accept the status quo just because it is easy and convenient. We need to be willing to continually re-evaluate our role in furthering injustice.
Justice
“Justice sometimes comes slowly, through time, by the changing of minds through understanding and experience. Other times it is the result of tumultuous uncertain revolutions. The problem with maintaining justice is that often we only recognize what justice is by seeing injustice. Sometimes the world needs a major event, a major catalyst to stir change. That process is often frightening. To me, living in a world where we value some more than others is unjust. Especially when some are undervalued to the point that people are systematically dying. When people are too afraid to have an informed dialogue about how factors intersect to create injustice that perpetuates injustice. Willful blindness in the face of a wealth of information is the greatest threat to civilization today.
Sustainability
“One of the ways I sustain myself is that I read continuously. I read philosophy as well as political and spiritual texts. I have a close friend that I speak with virtually every week. He has been a savior for me since I was 17 years old. We understand each other because we are both avid readers, with similar interests in philosophy and in that we both have always felt a sense of isolation and disconnection from our peers. This is important because I think that more and more people feel a sense of disconnect from the world despite the many connections created through social media.
“When someone asks me for a book recommendation, I suggest Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr. It is a religious book, but I do not read it simply for the Christian aspects of it. I read it because it’s empowering, powerful and because King was an extremely smart compassionate person and it shows. I also read Nietzsche religiously.
“I am involved in the YWCA which is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.
“My dream is that differences in color would actually be as relevant as shoe size and that religious fanaticism would disappear.”
Advice to Law Students
“Learn to see value in every human being and truly read the papers that are the foundation of this Country. Study and understand the Constitution and The Federalist Papers . They demonstrate how this democracy was formulated. Know your history because it shapes today in ways you will never appreciate fully otherwise. Be prepared to examine yourself for your own conflicts in logic and your own biases. Learn how lawyers can become accomplices to injustice, even if unintentionally.
Role Models
“ Harriet Tubman , Sojourner Truth , Alexander Hamilton , W.E.B Du Bois , Langston Hughes , James Baldwin , Gandhi , Malala Yousafzai , Martin Luther King , A. Phillip Randolph , Rosa Parks , Thurgood Marshall , Ralph Abernathy , and Joseph Lowery inspire me. Malcolm X of course. And our President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama . I am also inspired by the countless individuals who face oppression and injustice in their lives daily but continue to work toward a better world. I am inspired by those who fight for those who are limited in power or face nearly insurmountable odds. I think the work of those individuals is the key to making the world a place where love conquers hate and fear.
Conclusion
“The day I wore that button and was found in contempt changed my life, the effect of it are still rippling, some in destructive ways and others in very inspiring ways. I wore it because my soul was so tired from all the inequities I had seen over my 4 years of practice. I was exhausted from losing a series of small battles for understanding for my vulnerable clients. I was tired of the indifference of the prosecutorial offices. And all I could think to do was wear this button for a little joy. For a small win. To hope to change someone’s mind. Bill Quigley teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans. | 0 |
Posted on October 27, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
By Robert Parry, the investigative reporter who many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. Originally published at Parry’s Consortium News (republished with permission).
The United States is so committed to the notion that its electoral process is the world’s “gold standard” that there has been a bipartisan determination to maintain the fiction even when evidence is overwhelming that a U.S. presidential election has been manipulated or stolen. The “wise men” of the system simply insist otherwise.
We have seen this behavior when there are serious questions of vote tampering (as in Election 1960) or when a challenger apparently exploits a foreign crisis to create an advantage over the incumbent (as in Elections 1968 and 1980) or when the citizens’ judgment is overturned by judges (as in Election 2000). Presidents Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan photographed together in the Oval Office in 1991. (Cropped from a White House photo that also included Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.)
Strangely, in such cases, it is not only the party that benefited which refuses to accept the evidence of wrongdoing, but the losing party and the establishment news media as well. Protecting the perceived integrity of the U.S. democratic process is paramount. Americans must continue to believe in the integrity of the system even when that integrity has been violated.
The harsh truth is that pursuit of power often trumps the principle of an informed electorate choosing the nation’s leaders, but that truth simply cannot be recognized.
Of course, historically, American democracy was far from perfect, excluding millions of people, including African-American slaves and women. The compromises needed to enact the Constitution in 1787 also led to distasteful distortions, such as counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation (although obviously slaves couldn’t vote).
That unsavory deal enabled Thomas Jefferson to defeat John Adams in the pivotal national election of 1800. In effect, the votes of Southern slave owners like Jefferson counted substantially more than the votes of Northern non-slave owners.
Even after the Civil War when the Constitution was amended to give black men voting rights, the reality for black voting, especially in the South, was quite different from the new constitutional mandate. Whites in former Confederate states concocted subterfuges to keep blacks away from the polls to ensure continued white supremacy for almost a century.
Women did not gain suffrage until 1920 with the passage of another constitutional amendment, and it took federal legislation in 1965 to clear away legal obstacles that Southern states had created to deny the franchise to blacks.
Indeed, the alleged voter fraud in Election 1960, concentrated largely in Texas, a former Confederate state and home to John Kennedy’s vice presidential running mate, Lyndon Johnson, could be viewed as an outgrowth of the South’s heritage of rigging elections in favor of Democrats, the post-Civil War party of white Southerners.
However, by pushing through civil rights for blacks in the 1960s, Kennedy and Johnson earned the enmity of many white Southerners who switched their allegiance to the Republican Party via Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy of coded racial messaging. Nixon also harbored resentments over what he viewed as his unjust defeat in the election of 1960.
Nixon’s ‘Treason’
So, by 1968, the Democrats’ once solid South was splintering, but Nixon, who was again the Republican presidential nominee, didn’t want to leave his chances of winning what looked to be another close election to chance. Nixon feared that — with the Vietnam War raging and the Democratic Party deeply divided — President Johnson could give the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a decisive boost by reaching a last-minute peace deal with North Vietnam. President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.
The documentary and testimonial evidence is now clear that to avert a peace deal, Nixon’s campaign went behind Johnson’s back to persuade South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu to torpedo Johnson’s Paris peace talks by refusing to attend. Nixon’s emissaries assured Thieu that a President Nixon would continue the war and guarantee a better outcome for South Vietnam.
Though Johnson had strong evidence of what he privately called Nixon’s “treason” — from FBI wiretaps in the days before the 1968 election — he and his top advisers chose to stay silent. In a Nov. 4, 1968 conference call , Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford – three pillars of the Establishment – expressed that consensus, with Clifford explaining the thinking:
“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,” Clifford said. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
Clifford’s words expressed the recurring thinking whenever evidence emerged casting the integrity of America’s electoral system in doubt, especially at the presidential level. The American people were not to know what kind of dirty deeds could affect that process.
To this day, the major U.S. news media will not directly address the issue of Nixon’s treachery in 1968, despite the wealth of evidence proving this historical reality now available from declassified records at the Johnson presidential library in Austin, Texas. In a puckish recognition of this ignored history, the library’s archivists call the file on Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks their “X-file.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “ LBJ’s ‘X-File’ on Nixon’s ‘Treason. ’”]
The evidence also strongly suggests that Nixon’s paranoia about a missing White House file detailing his “treason” – top secret documents that Johnson had entrusted to Rostow at the end of LBJ’s presidency – led to Nixon’s creation of the “plumbers,” a team of burglars whose first assignment was to locate those purloined papers. The existence of the “plumbers” became public in June 1972 when they were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate in Washington. National Security Adviser Walt Rostow shows President Lyndon Johnson a model of a battle near Khe Sanh in Vietnam. (U.S. Archive Photo)
Although the Watergate scandal remains the archetypal case of election-year dirty tricks, the major U.S. news media never acknowledge the link between Watergate and Nixon’s far more egregious dirty trick four years earlier, sinking Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks while 500,000 American soldiers were in the war zone. In part because of Nixon’s sabotage — and his promise to Thieu of a more favorable outcome — the war continued for four more bloody years before being settled along the lines that were available to Johnson in 1968. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “ The Heinous Crime Behind Watergate .”]
In effect, Watergate gets walled off as some anomaly that is explained by Nixon’s strange personality. However, even though Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, he and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who also had a hand in the Paris peace talk caper, reappear as secondary players in the next well-documented case of obstructing a sitting president’s foreign policy to get an edge in the 1980 campaign.
Reagan’s ‘October Surprise’ Caper
In that case, President Jimmy Carter was seeking reelection and trying to negotiate release of 52 American hostages then held in revolutionary Iran. Ronald Reagan’s campaign feared that Carter might pull off an “October Surprise” by bringing home the hostages just before the election. So, this historical mystery has been: Did Reagan’s team take action to block Carter’s October Surprise? President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981, as the 52 U.S. hostages in Iran are simultaneously released.
The testimonial and documentary evidence that Reagan’s team did engage in a secret operation to prevent Carter’s October Surprise is now almost as overwhelming as the proof of the 1968 affair regarding Nixon’s Paris peace talk maneuver.
That evidence indicates that Reagan’s campaign director William Casey organized a clandestine effort to prevent the hostages’ release before Election Day, after apparently consulting with Nixon and Kissinger and aided by former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate.
By early November 1980, the public’s obsession with Iran’s humiliation of the United States and Carter’s inability to free the hostages helped turn a narrow race into a Reagan landslide. When the hostages were finally let go immediately after Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, his supporters cited the timing to claim that the Iranians had finally relented out of fear of Reagan.
Bolstered by his image as a tough guy, Reagan enacted much of his right-wing agenda, including passing massive tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, weakening unions and creating the circumstances for the rapid erosion of the Great American Middle Class.
Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration signed off on secret arms shipments to Iran, mostly through Israel, what a variety of witnesses described as the payoff for Iran’s cooperation in getting Reagan elected and then giving him the extra benefit of timing the hostage release to immediately follow his inauguration. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)
In summer 1981, when Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East Nicholas Veliotes learned about the arms shipments to Iran, he checked on their origins and said, later in a PBS interview:
“It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment. … [This operation] seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration. And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”
Those early covert arms shipments to Iran evolved into a later secret set of arms deals that surfaced in fall 1986 as the Iran-Contra Affair, with some of the profits getting recycled back to Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist government.
While many facts of the Iran-Contra scandal were revealed by congressional and special-prosecutor investigations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the origins of the Reagan-Iran relationship was always kept hazy. The Republicans were determined to stop any revelations about the 1980 contacts, but the Democrats were almost as reluctant to go there.
A half-hearted congressional inquiry was launched in 1991 and depended heavily on then-President George H.W. Bush to collect the evidence and arrange interviews for the investigation. In other words, Bush, who was then seeking reelection and who was a chief suspect in the secret dealings with Iran, was entrusted with proving his own guilt.
Tired of the Story
By the early 1990s, the mainstream U.S. news media was also tired of the complex Iran-Contra scandal and wanted to move on. As a correspondent at Newsweek, I had battled senior editors over their disinterest in getting to the bottom of the scandal before I left the magazine in 1990. I then received an assignment from PBS Frontline to look into the 1980 “October Surprise” question, which led to a documentary on the subject in April 1991. PBS Frontline’s: The Election Held Hostage, co-written by Robert Parry and Robert Ross.
However, by fall 1991, just as Congress was agreeing to open an investigation, my ex-bosses at Newsweek, along with The New Republic, then an elite neoconservative publication interested in protecting Israel’s exposure on those early arms deals, went on the attack. They published matching cover stories deeming the 1980 “October Surprise” case a hoax, but their articles were both based on a misreading of documents recording Casey’s attendance at a conference in London in July 1980, which he seemed to have used as a cover for a side trip to Madrid to meet with senior Iranians regarding the hostages.
Although the bogus Newsweek/New Republic “London alibi” would eventually be debunked, it created a hostile climate for the investigation. With Bush angrily denying everything and the congressional Republicans determined to protect the President’s flanks, the Democrats mostly just went through the motions of an investigation.
Meanwhile, Bush’s State Department and White House counsel’s office saw their jobs as discrediting the investigation, deep-sixing incriminating documents, and helping a key witness dodge a congressional subpoena.
Years later, I discovered a document at the Bush presidential library in College Station, Texas, confirming that Casey had taken a mysterious trip to Madrid in 1980. The U.S. Embassy’s confirmation of Casey’s trip was passed along by State Department legal adviser Edwin D. Williamson to Associate White House Counsel Chester Paul Beach Jr. in early November 1991, just as the congressional inquiry was taking shape.
Williamson said that among the State Department “material potentially relevant to the October Surprise allegations [was] a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown,” Beach noted in a “ memorandum for record ” dated Nov. 4, 1991.
Two days later, on Nov. 6, Beach’s boss, White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, convened an inter-agency strategy session and explained the need to contain the congressional investigation into the October Surprise case. The explicit goal was to ensure the scandal would not hurt President Bush’s reelection hopes in 1992. C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under President George H.W. Bush.
At the meeting, Gray laid out how to thwart the October Surprise inquiry, which was seen as a dangerous expansion of the Iran-Contra investigation. The prospect that the two sets of allegations would merge into a single narrative represented a grave threat to George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign. As assistant White House counsel Ronald vonLembke, put it , the White House goal in 1991 was to “kill/spike this story.”
Gray explained the stakes at the White House strategy session. “Whatever form they ultimately take, the House and Senate ‘October Surprise’ investigations, like Iran-Contra, will involve interagency concerns and be of special interest to the President ,” Gray declared, according to minutes . [Emphasis in original.]
Among “touchstones” cited by Gray were “No Surprises to the White House, and Maintain Ability to Respond to Leaks in Real Time. This is Partisan.” White House “talking points” on the October Surprise investigation urged restricting the inquiry to 1979-80 and imposing strict time limits for issuing any findings.
Timid Democrats
But Bush’s White House really had little to fear because whatever evidence that the congressional investigation received – and a great deal arrived in December 1992 and January 1993 – there was no stomach for actually proving that the 1980 Reagan campaign had conspired with Iranian radicals to extend the captivity of 52 Americans in order to ensure Reagan’s election victory. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana.
That would have undermined the faith of the American people in their democratic process – and that, as Clark Clifford said in the 1968 context, would not be “good for the country.”
In 2014 when I sent a copy of Beach’s memo regarding Casey’s trip to Madrid to former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, who had chaired the October Surprise inquiry in 1991-93, he told me that it had shaken his confidence in the task force’s dismissive conclusions about the October Surprise issue.
“The [Bush-41] White House did not notify us that he [Casey] did make the trip” to Madrid, Hamilton told me. “Should they have passed that on to us? They should have because they knew we were interested in that.”
Asked if knowledge that Casey had traveled to Madrid might have changed the task force’s dismissive October Surprise conclusion, Hamilton said yes, because the question of the Madrid trip was key to the task force’s investigation.
“If the White House knew that Casey was there, they certainly should have shared it with us,” Hamilton said, adding that “you have to rely on people” in authority to comply with information requests. But that trust was at the heart of the inquiry’s failure. With the money and power of the American presidency at stake, the idea that George H.W. Bush and his team would help an investigation that might implicate him in an act close to treason was naïve in the extreme.
Arguably, Hamilton’s timid investigation was worse than no investigation at all because it gave Bush’s team the opportunity to search out incriminating documents and make them disappear. Then, Hamilton’s investigative conclusion reinforced the “group think” dismissing this serious manipulation of democracy as a “conspiracy theory” when it was anything but. In the years since, Hamilton hasn’t done anything to change the public impression that the Reagan campaign was innocent.
Still, among the few people who have followed this case, the October Surprise cover-up would slowly crumble with admissions by officials involved in the investigation that its exculpatory conclusions were rushed , that crucial evidence had been hidden or ignored , and that some alibis for key Republicans didn’t make any sense .
But the dismissive “group think” remains undisturbed as far as the major U.S. media and mainstream historians are concerned. [For details, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative or Trick or Treason: The 1980 October Surprise Mystery or Consortiumnews.com’s “ Second Thoughts on October Surprise. ”]
Past as Prologue
Lee Hamilton’s decision to “clear” Reagan and Bush of the 1980 October Surprise suspicions in 1992 was not simply a case of miswriting history. The findings had clear implications for the future as well, since the public impression about George H.W. Bush’s rectitude was an important factor in the support given to his oldest son, George W. Bush, in 2000. President George W. Bush is introduced by his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush before delivering remarks at Sun City Center, Florida, on May 9, 2006. (White House photo by Eric Draper)
Indeed, if the full truth had been told about the father’s role in the October Surprise and Iran-Contra cases, it’s hard to imagine that his son would have received the Republican nomination, let alone made a serious run for the White House. And, if that history were known, there might have been a stronger determination on the part of Democrats to resist another Bush “stolen election” in 2000.
Regarding Election 2000, the evidence is now clear that Vice President Al Gore not only won the national popular vote but received more votes that were legal under Florida law than did George W. Bush. But Bush relied first on the help of officials working for his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, and then on five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to thwart a full recount and to award him Florida’s electoral votes and thus the presidency.
The reality of Gore’s rightful victory should have finally become clear in November 2001 when a group of news organizations finished their own examination of Florida’s disputed ballots and released their tabulations showing that Gore would have won if all ballots considered legal under Florida law were counted.
However, between the disputed election and the release of those numbers, the 9/11 attacks had occurred, so The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other leading outlets did not want the American people to know that the wrong person was in the White House. Surely, telling the American people that fact amid the 9/11 crisis would not be “good for the country.”
So, senior editors at all the top new organizations decided to mislead the public by framing their stories in a deceptive way to obscure the most newsworthy discovery – that the so-called “over-votes” in which voters both checked and wrote in their choices’ names broke heavily for Gore and would have put him over the top regardless of which kinds of chads were considered for the “under-votes” that hadn’t registered on antiquated voting machines. “Over-votes” would be counted under Florida law which bases its standards on “clear intent of the voter.”
However, instead of leading with Gore’s rightful victory, the news organizations concocted hypotheticals around partial recounts that still would have given Florida narrowly to Bush. They either left out or buried the obvious lede that a historic injustice had occurred. Former Vice President Al Gore. (Photo credit: algore.com)
On Nov. 12, 2001, the day that the news organizations ran those stories, I examined the actual data and quickly detected the evidence of Gore’s victory. In a story that day, I suggested that senior news executives were exercising a misguided sense of patriotism. They had hid the reality for “the good of the country,” much as Johnson’s team had done in 1968 regarding Nixon’s sabotage of the Paris peace talks and Hamilton’s inquiry had done regarding the 1980 “October Surprise” case.
Within a couple of hours of my posting the article at Consortiumnews.com, I received an irate phone call from The New York Times media writer Felicity Barringer, who accused me of impugning the journalistic integrity of then-Times executive editor Howell Raines. I got the impression that Barringer had been on the look-out for some deviant story that didn’t accept the Bush-won conventional wisdom.
However, this violation of objective and professional journalism – bending the slant of a story to achieve a preferred outcome rather than simply giving the readers the most interesting angle – was not simply about some historical event that had occurred a year earlier. It was about the future.
By misleading Americans into thinking that Bush was the rightful winner of Election 2000 – even if the media’s motivation was to maintain national unity following the 9/11 attacks – the major news outlets gave Bush greater latitude to respond to the crisis, including the diversionary invasion of Iraq under false pretenses. The Bush-won headlines of November 2001 also enhanced the chances of his reelection in 2004. [For the details of how a full Florida recount would have given Gore the White House, see Consortiumnews.com’s “ Gore’s Victory ,” “ So Bush Did Steal the White House ,” and “ Bush v. Gore’s Dark American Decade. ”]
A Phalanx of Misguided Consensus
Looking back on these examples of candidates manipulating democracy, there appears to be one common element: after the “stolen” elections, the media and political establishments quickly line up, shoulder to shoulder, to assure the American people that nothing improper has happened. Graceful “losers” are patted on the back for not complaining that the voters’ will had been ignored or twisted. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Al Gore is praised for graciously accepting the extraordinary ruling by Republican partisans on the Supreme Court, who stopped the counting of ballots in Florida on the grounds, as Justice Antonin Scalia said, that a count that showed Gore winning (when the Court’s majority was already planning to award the White House to Bush) would undermine Bush’s “legitimacy.”
Similarly, Rep. Hamilton is regarded as a modern “wise man,” in part, because he conducted investigations that never pushed very hard for the truth but rather reached conclusions that were acceptable to the powers-that-be, that didn’t ruffle too many feathers.
But the cumulative effect of all these half-truths, cover-ups and lies – uttered for “the good of the country” – is to corrode the faith of many well-informed Americans about the legitimacy of the entire process. It is the classic parable of the boy who cried wolf too many times, or in this case, assured the townspeople that there never was a wolf and that they should ignore the fact that the livestock had mysteriously disappeared leaving behind only a trail of blood into the forest.
So, when Donald Trump shows up in 2016 insisting that the electoral system is rigged against him, many Americans choose to believe his demagogy. But Trump isn’t pressing for the full truth about the elections of 1968 or 1980 or 2000. He actually praises Republicans implicated in those cases and vows to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Trump’s complaints about “rigged” elections are more in line with the white Southerners during Jim Crow, suggesting that black and brown people are cheating at the polls and need to have white poll monitors to make sure they don’t succeed at “stealing” the election from white people.
There is a racist undertone to Trump’s version of a “rigged” democracy but he is not entirely wrong about the flaws in the process. He’s just not honest about what those flaws are.
The hard truth is that the U.S. political process is not democracy’s “gold standard”; it is and has been a severely flawed system that is not made better by a failure to honestly address the unpleasant realities and to impose accountability on politicians who cheat the voters. | 0 |
By Jake Anderson
Anomalous signals from deep space often evoke a quick pulse of gossip and speculation about aliens that dies off soon thereafter, when scientists are able to explain it. Usually, the explanation involves a natural cosmic process — an asteroid, space detritus, or frequencies from an exploded star.
Sometimes, however, the signals are too mysterious to explain. There’s a reason why you may have seen a sustained social media buzz regarding aliens this past week. A few days ago, two scientists from Laval University in Quebec released a paper arguing they may have just received our first communication from extraterrestrials.
First, a bit of context. This has been an exciting decade for those of us who stargaze in awe, wondering how many sentient beings live in this incomprehensibly enormous universe of ours. First, the search for exoplanets accelerated dramatically, aided by the Kepler telescope, which has identified over 1,000 planets outside of our solar system.
While scientists have long known that our Milky Way galaxy alone probably contains several hundred billion planets , the ability to study them had eluded us until fairly recently (this ability will be exponentially augmented when the James Webb telescope allows us to analyze exoplanets’ atmospheres and search for traces of industrial gasses). Additionally, the discovery of Earth-like exoplanets — some of which are conceivably close enough to visit in a few decades — has tantalizing ramifications for our near future human race.
Earlier this year, scientists announced the incredible observation of a series of inexplicable brightness frequencies from the star KIC 8462852, which led many to speculate the signals could have been originating from a Dyson sphere , a theoretical megastructure by which an advanced alien race (a Kardschez type 2 civilization ) could harness the power of its sun. The newest discovery from this star has made it even more unlikely that the signals are from natural causes.
The newest strange signals hail from a gaggle of some 234 stars identified by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which analyzed the spectra of 2.5 million stars. E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, the two astronomers who discovered the anomalies, discussed them in their paper , which was originally titled “Signals probably from Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”
“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” they wrote.
“The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis.”
Of course, it is far from certain that these are actual alien messages. In an interview with none other than Snopes.com , Borra claimed he never actually used the word ‘probably’ and that further confirmation was needed.
The director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute , Andrew Siemion, issued an admonishing response:
“You can’t make such definitive statements about detections unless you’ve exhausted every possible means of follow-up.”
So why is everyone so excited? The discovery appears to match a prediction Borra made in 2012 when he claimed aliens could very well use intermittent bursts of laser as a means of communication.
For his part, Siemion plans to use his Breakthrough Listen Initiative to more closely assess several stars from the 234 sample. Meanwhile, Borra andTrottier, Borra’s graduate student, will continue observing the mysterious signals.
It’s an exciting decade for space research. With plans for a mission to Mars in the hopper, as well as an exploratory probe that will be sent to the moon Europa, we may be witnessing the rebirth of the Space Race. What better incentive could there be to venture further into space than the call of an alien species?
Let’s hope that by the time we meet them, our own species will have transcended its addiction to war and unsustainable resource allocation. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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WASHINGTON — Although there is plenty of anxiety in Washington about the shaky early performance of the Trump administration, don’t count Senator Mitch McConnell among the hand wringers. Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and the majority leader, says he and his Senate Republican colleagues are quite satisfied with the Trump team so far. In fact, he said, they are reassured by signs that President Trump is going to hew to a conservative agenda after early fears that the president — a relatively unknown quantity to most elected Republicans — might not really be one of them. “The country doesn’t need saving,” Mr. McConnell said when asked during an interview in his Capitol office if there was any cause for a congressional intervention given early chaos in the evolving West Wing. “I think there is a high level of satisfaction with the new administration,” he said, dismissing concerns about dissonant eruptions from the new president and some of his top staff members. “Our members are not obsessed with the daily tweets, but are looking at the results. ” He added: “No matter what sort of theatrics that go on around the administration, if you look at the decisions that are being made, they are solid — from our perspective — things that we would have hoped a new Republican president would have done. ” Mr. McConnell has broken with the president on a few subjects, taking a much harder line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than Mr. Trump has and objecting to some of the president’s “drain the swamp” initiatives, including a proposal for congressional term limits. Other members of the Republican establishment — inside and outside Congress — have expressed growing alarm about the conduct and competence of the White House. But Mr. McConnell, whose wife, Elaine Chao, was named by Mr. Trump as secretary of transportation, said things might even be turning out better than anticipated. “Back during the campaign, there were a lot of questions: Is Trump really a conservative? A lot of questions about it,” Mr. McConnell recalled. “But if you look at the steps that have been taken so far, looks good to me. “It is the kind of thing we would have expected of one of the others, had they been nominated and elected,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Republican presidential candidates defeated by Mr. Trump who had more conventional political and government backgrounds. Mr. McConnell’s view clashes violently with that of Senate Democrats and their allies around the country. They have viewed the beginning of the Trump era as a disaster best exemplified by an immigration executive order they decry as unconstitutional and as well as a selection of cabinet choices they rate as unqualified and carrying the very same baggage that has prevented others from being confirmed in the past. Even some Republicans have criticized as inept and amateurish the rollout of the immigration order, which is now at the center of a federal court fight. Others have expressed trepidation at the prospect of being hammered in a Trump tweet if they run afoul of the new president. Mr. McConnell, who is known for being able to take the temperature of his colleagues and to act accordingly, said he sensed no real unease about Mr. Trump on the Republican side of the aisle. “We have had very good unity on our side,” Mr. McConnell said. “People are genuinely excited about taking the country in another direction. I don’t find any decision that he has made surprising. ” He said Senate Republicans had been enthusiastic about Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees, dazzled by his Supreme Court pick and elated at the chance to roll back what he called the regulatory rampage of the Obama administration. “A lot of us were wondering, what is Trump really going to be like?” Mr. McConnell said. “He used to support Democrats and have various views earlier in his life about politics. But when he got to the point of actually having the office and making the decisions, I think the decisions have been very comforting to my members, most of whom are a little bit right of center and further right of center. ” It goes without saying that having Mr. Trump in the White House gives House and Senate Republicans the opportunity to pursue an aggressive legislative agenda if they can find common ground. That prospect should be heightened by installing colleagues like Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and two fellow Republicans, Representatives Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina and Tom Price of Georgia, at the highest levels of the administration. Mr. Sessions is Mr. Trump’s nominee for attorney general while Mr. Mulvaney has been tapped to run the White House Office of Management and Budget and Mr. Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. McConnell looms as potentially the president’s most important ally in Congress because success in the Senate is central to any legislative victory. But Republicans have not even started on the legislative end of the new Congress. Now their job is going to be made more difficult by the increasingly hard line that Democrats are taking against Mr. Trump by opposing his cabinet nominees en masse. Mr. McConnell’s frustration at Democratic tactics boiled over Tuesday evening when he invoked a rarely used Senate rule to force Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, to end a speech on the grounds she was impugning the integrity of Mr. Sessions, a fellow senator, by criticizing his record on civil rights. “It is a superficially poisonous atmosphere, not a fundamentally poisonous atmosphere,” Mr. McConnell said. Still, he noted that Republicans could do much of their preliminary work in the Senate just by relying on their party’s 51 votes there as they take up health care, tax changes and nominations, and could try to work out the differences with Democrats later. “Sooner or later we will get around to things that will require some level of cooperation,” Mr. McConnell said. “Hopefully there will be a kind of dysfunction fatigue. I think it will set in way before then. ” His point raises a question: Will that same passage of time produce a kind of Trump fatigue among the congressional Republicans? | 1 |
Last month, on the day after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. The Orlando Sentinel ran a editorial with the headline, “Our Community Will Heal. ” And on Sunday, three days after a sniper killed five police officers during a protest in downtown Dallas, The Dallas Morning News responded with its own editorial, featuring an image of an eye shedding a tear. “This city, our city, has been tested before,” the editorial said. “Now we face a new test. ” As spasms of violence continue to tear apart cities across the country, newspapers have been using editorials as a salve for healing communities. But more than that, the front page has come to reflect the rising frustration of a fractured country reeling from bloodshed. “There’s no doubt that editorials have come more into some prominence in the last year or so,” said Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute. “I think it’s a way of trying to tap into the public consciousness. ” In the last several months, The Boston Globe and The New York Times have both printed editorials calling for stricter regulation of guns in the aftermath of mass shootings. It was the first time since 1920 that The Times had run an editorial on Page 1. The which had its own mass shooting to cover when a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on campus in 2007, ran a editorial on Saturday that pleaded for a détente of sorts. “Let’s just stop and mourn and wonder how in the world America became this unspeakably, relentlessly terrorized place,” it said. The Daily News of New York has used its front page in recent months as an editorial vehicle to inveigh against violence and congressional inaction in the face of it, including one last month with the image of the dome of the Capitol soaked in blood. While many editorials are intended to soothe and promote resolve, other bold decisions by news organizations have been criticized as sowing divisiveness. The New York Post, for instance, was excoriated on Friday for deciding to use the headline “Civil War” on its front page on the Dallas shooting. A headline on the conservative Drudge Report, “Black Lives Kill,” also drew harsh rebukes. Like other editorials, the one in The Dallas Morning News addressed the violence gripping the country. “We are surely not alone in asking, as our hearts break, what kind of country are we creating where such violence has become so frequent?” the editorial said. But it also acknowledged the city’s deep divisions and urged more compassion. “We live together, but we do not often understand one another. This is because of class, sometimes geography and often race,” it said. “There will be time later for anger and for justice — anger whose purpose is served in justice,” the editorial added. “But for now we need to learn to understand each other, to really hear one another, to learn from each other. ” Mike Wilson, the newspaper’s editor, said in a statement that the editorial was intended to provide a “quiet place” for reflection. “After two days of covering violence and heartbreak, we felt the need to pause for a moment and speak directly to the community,” he said. “We had two simple questions: What kind of city are we? What kind of city do we want to be? “In the midst of so much noise and pain, we needed a quiet place for that conversation,” he added. “Sunday’s front page is that quiet place. ” | 1 |
Juror explanation for Ammon Bundy verdict 11/03/2016
OREGONLIVE
Juror 4 has so far provided the only public explanation of the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to the acquittal of Ammon Bundy, his brother and five others on federal conspiracy charges stemming from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation.
Readers have asked to hear more from him about the jury’s reasoning in reaching the surprising decision.
Juror 4 – a 44-year-old business administration student at Marylhurst University who served in the Navy during the Iraq War – went into detail in a series of email exchanges with The Oregonian/OregonLive that were used in news stories.
Here’s a transcript of the emails, with some minor editing for brevity or clarity. He’s asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The judge sealed the names of all nine women and three men on the jury, citing public safety.
Juror 4 makes references to U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown; prosecutor Ethan Knight; Juror 11 who the judge removed from the jury after Juror 4 questioned his objectivity; Juror 18, who replaced Juror 11; and Ryan Payne, one of the leaders of the occupation with Ammon Bundy.
He also references a Jan. 2 rally for Harney County ranchers and then the takeover of the refuge later that day.
All seven defendants faced a charge of conspiring to impede employees of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service or U.S. Bureau of Land Management from doing their work through intimidation, threat or force during the 41-day occupation.
His initial email:
It should be known that all 12 jurors felt that this verdict was a statement regarding the various failures of the prosecution to prove “conspiracy” in the count itself – and not any form of affirmation of the defense’s various beliefs, actions, or aspirations. Proving the elements of conspiracy, especially given the body of evidence we were forced to restrict ourselves to consider when judging, was far too great a standard to meet (without using our imaginations, prejudices, etc.).
The judge floored us when she said that there was no statute against impeding federal officers (by force, threat, or intimidation), nor was there a significant penalty applied to criminal trespass. We all queried about alternative charges that could stick and were amazed that this ‘conspiracy’ charge seemed the best possible option. It was not lost on us that our verdict(s) might inspire future actions that are regrettable, but that sort of thinking was not permitted when considering the charges before us.
The prosecution asked us to neglect Judge Brown’s final (binding) instructions when they asserted in closing that adverse possession = conspiracy to impede (as per Mr. Knight’s closing argument), as if defining actions was all that was needed to convict. All 12 agreed that impeding existed, even if as an effect of the occupation, and that something was very wrong. But we were not asked to judge on bullets and hurt feelings, rather to decide if an agreement was made with an illegal object in mind. It seemed this basic, high standard of proof was lost upon the prosecution throughout. Inference, while possibly compelling, proved to be insulting or inadequate to 12 diversely situated people as a means to convict. The air of triumphalism that the prosecution brought was not lost on any of us, nor was it warranted given their burden of proof.
Regarding my role in crafting the letter that led to the dismissal of juror 11, I can say that it was not only necessary but also borne out of much patience in dealing with a fellow who had zero business being on this jury in the first place. He effectively wasted a great deal of our time as he (irrationally) promoted his theory of conspiracy despite the absence of evidence. Also, he violated Judge Brown’s explicit orders by hearkening to ‘evidence’ that was never admitted in this case, refused to consider the defendant’s state of mind, and used imaginative theories to explain key actions. How this juror slipped through the cracks is mind boggling and very disconcerting.
You should know that the sentiments expressed in that letter were the exact thoughts I had when juror 11 first made his opening remarks on day one of deliberations, but I resisted the impulse to send the question at that time and give this fellow the chance to convince/explain. It seemed wise to suspend my shock/disbelief in him until a thorough examination of his mindset was complete (and the other jurors could weigh in themselves on his various theories). The vast majority of time was spent trying to deal with his bizarre theories, compared against what was admitted and/or expected of us as standards of judgment. While I wish now that I had sent the letter on day one, since it would have alleviated much stress for all of us, I would wish to have the time/opportunity to expand or alter my perspective that we afforded him.
As I peruse the responses of many interested parties in this case, many of which express ‘profound regret’ over the verdicts, I am baffled by the flippant sentiments that seem to dominate the landscape. Several questions immediately percolate in my mind: do these folks even know what it took to arrive at a verdict on any one of these counts? How could 12 diverse people find such agreement unless there was a colossal failure on the part of the prosecution? Don’t they know that ‘not guilty’ does not mean ‘innocent’? I have many such thoughts swirling around in my head that I’d like to vent, but I need to break it off for now.
***
We asked a series of follow-up questions : How did the jury feel about starting all over again? Did other jurors know about your note regarding Juror 11 — and how did they react to it? How did the jury start anew? Why the substantially shorter time period for the final verdicts?
Juror 4’s response:
The feeling, at the time of the reset, was universal relief that we even had a chance to hear from a more objective juror. It was not a relief to think we could be there today (Friday ) or Monday, frankly, but all said they were more than willing to start over in order to erase the ill feelings created while deliberating with juror 11. We had no knowledge about juror 18’s leanings in any regard prior to her coming in (we maintained a strict standard to not discuss the case with each other before deliberating).
Only juror #1 knew about my note (since he had to pass it on to the judge), or so I thought. Juror 11, when we later were arguing about his bias, said he knew what I must have been doing when I folded a note and quietly handed it to Juror 1. My note was a last resort, frankly, because I made the entire jury uneasy by directly challenging juror 11 (on Tuesday morning; more than 16 hours of deliberations had passed) about his stated bias. Many jurors were upset at my direct approach and seemingly personal challenge to him. What I had said to him was far more upsetting than the contents of my note, and so I don’t think the jurors should have been surprised. Of course, I didn’t openly state to the jury that I had an open question before the court until the next morning (Wednesday) when juror 11 played the victim. I again reiterated that this whole issue was of his own making, and although he calmly explained what his bias was or meant to him in this case, I was anxious to hear from the court.
It is a fact that we were so exhausted by this time that we nearly submitted final ballots on Wednesday, with juror 11’s input (equaling a mistrial on most counts). It is also true that I told the jury that if I did not get an answer to my question from the court, I would be forced to take my grievance to the media immediately afterwards. We had no idea of what had transpired in court as a result of my question, but you begin to feel neglected after almost 24 hours of silence.
All of the other 10 jurors were relieved that juror 11 was excused, and most of them personally thanked me for doing what I did (even though I upset them in the process).
Starting anew was filled with trepidation by the remaining 11 jurors, because we didn’t want to allow any whiff of prior deliberations to influence our new juror. This was all about her, frankly. We let her purge her feelings, as we all had the opportunity to do, and we let her direct the review of evidence. To her credit, she was fairly focused on getting her thoughts communicated quickly and purposefully so that time was not lost. The rapidity of her pace caused us to caution her, slow her a bit, but she was very business-like. It was clear that by 11:00 a.m., our new juror had resolved any questions regarding counts 1 and 2. She was relieved, and perhaps a bit surprised, that there was unanimity on these points.
While we had a robust process for counts 4 and 5, we had reached a point of impasse by 2:00. There were no throw away words expressed on this day. The extremes we felt pressed into really crystallized our purpose, even if we had to go through the essential elements again, and it made for a swift process.
Before we sent our final word to the court, I asked our new juror if she could explain why this process was so fast, to which she replied confidently and affirmatively. She’s a sharp lady and can handle herself, I think.
Q. Wondered if there were turning points or particular moments in the trial that stuck out for jurors in helping the jury reach the not guilty pleas.
A. Turning points? Let me begin by speaking for myself before I attempt to recall those of others. I expected there to be a witness to the January 2nd meeting at Ye Olde Castle before the protest/rally that would confirm the prosecution’s assertion of intent to impede, and the absence of such evidence became a seed of doubt that grew. I expected that there must be proof of conspiracy between Ammon and Ryan Payne (most logical link, owing to their initial visit to the Hammond’s place in early November) but he wasn’t even called for either side, nor were there any phone calls, emails, etc. that would demonstrate agreement here. These two major holes in the evidence record proved to cause insurmountable doubt for me.
Others said that, while the evidence record was not adequate, certain moments turned them. One said they did a full 180 degree turn when they realized there were six informants that went unnamed on the refuge during the occupation, and the choice of the prosecution to allow that much room for mysterious influence there (remember Fabio?) was decisive. One said that the doctrine of adverse possession seemed to govern every thought, word, and deed of the ‘leadership’ such that it could not be deemed intent to impede federal workers. Another said that the repeated objections to the reading of the constitution became a wedge issue for them. Those turning points are the most distinct ones I can remember, and so I’ll leave it there.
Q. What about counts 4 and 5? What was the thinking with those? (Count 4 was a property theft charge against defendant Kennth Medenbach for driving a refuge truck to the Safeway in Burns and Count 5 was a property theft charge against Ryan Bundy for helping to remove FBI surveillance cameras from two utility poles near the refuge.)
A. With count four, we were split for a good while and it didn’t look like we could agree. Because this law requires us to consider intent, one of the jurors pressed hard on the issue of what Medenbach was thinking (adverse possession: he believed it was no longer a refuge truck). The video/audio evidence of his arrest was instructive, confirming a mindset. Some jurors were impressed by the surprise Medenbach expressed to the state police officer when told that the rig was reported as stolen. Another said if he had been caught with it while not doing ‘resource center’ business, so to speak, then it would have demonstrated his intent was not consistent with the claim. Eventually, none of us could imagine he was not going to return the vehicle to the refuge.
Count five plagued us most of the day. We had to table the discussion a couple times because the contentions over the wording of the law as it relates to ‘knowingly stole’ proved to be a major hang up for one juror. There were many different definitions of ‘stole’ at play in the minds of several jurors. In the morning, 11 out of 12 were prepared to vote guilty, but after simmering and revisiting the debate a few times, the number of votes for not guilty grew to three. A couple of jurors came to believe that having the media present, offering back the cameras to the F.B.I., and taking steps to safeguard them after removal was proof of something other than theft. The majority could not deny that the intent to deprive was clearly present in Ryan. Since we were moving the opposite way of consensus and three jurors were resolved to vote not guilty, we agreed to end deliberations.
Q. What did you and others think of Ammon Bundy’s testimony?
A. It was clear that there was no juror who received Ammon’s testimony as fully honest, and several who felt manipulated. Even those who felt he was sincere in his beliefs found examples of inconsistency in his testimony.
The continual objections to Ammon’s answers (usually owing to his own misleading phrasing that was disallowed) became tedious to myself, especially since altering one word would make the answer acceptable (and often did). The emotional appeals riddled throughout, while understandable as a tactic, also became tiresome to me since our feelings as jurors are irrelevant after all. And I don’t think it was endearing to us jurors for him to characterize the entire federal court system, of which we were a key part of, as rigged against himself.
A few outstanding things Ammon testified to stood out to me. There apparently were multiple attempts to meet personally with the F.B.I. by Ammon and yet no face-to-face meet up ever occurred, presumably because the bureau did not wish to have that sort of negotiation. And the lack of law enforcement/engagement throughout the occupation, coupled with the visits to the refuge by many politicians, caused me to see how occupiers could view their presence as something other than illegal. Also, after watching an edited version of KATU’s Steve Dunn interview with Ammon at the refuge (this was played for the jury by Ammon Bundy’s lawyer ), there seemed to be consistency of message/belief that I did not expect — especially if you have 9 months to ponder your defense, even I might alter my emphasis or eliminate something unfavorable. Because of the law’s wording, Ammon’s state of mind weighed heavily.
Q. Why do you wish to remain anonymous?
A: Because I’d rather not encounter any of the angry commenters on your articles, I prefer to remain simply as Juror 4. I read on twitter that Matt Schindler (one of the defense attorneys) is receiving threats, which is very troubling to me.
— Maxine Bernstein | 0 |
A NBC affiliate in Chattanooga, Tennessee inadvertently published what appear to be election night results. The results are published in the typical format used by mainstream news networks and... | 0 |
As Tesla shares surged past $300 this week and the company’s market value surpassed Ford’s, even its founder, Elon Musk, acknowledged on Twitter that the company was “absurdly overvalued if based on the past. ” By “the past,” he presumably means valuation measures like or ratios, the traditional benchmarks for evaluating stock prices. By those measures, Tesla — a company that lost $773 million last year — is indeed off the charts. Tesla’s market value of nearly $49 billion is not only higher than that of Ford, which earned nearly $11 billion in profit last year, but is within easy striking distance of General Motors, which earned $9. 4 billion. In contrast to Tesla, Ford and G. M. shares have dropped recently on fears that auto sales have hit a cyclical peak. Ford and G. M. executives wouldn’t comment on Tesla’s stock surge, but it’s easy to imagine they’d be tearing their hair out in frustration. “It’s nuts,” Bruce Greenwald, a professor at Columbia Business School and an expert in value investing, said of Tesla’s stock price. “Investors believe it’s going to dominate a market that no company has ever dominated before. ” But Tesla is not a stock, or a company, that is measured by the past, as Mr. Musk is well aware. He also wrote on Twitter that stock prices represent “ future cash flows” — and Tesla is about nothing if not a utopian future of safe, reliable, powerful, electric vehicles powered by batteries that are easy on the environment. In that regard, Tesla has ascended into a rarefied realm of story stocks — companies that have so bewitched investors that their stock prices are impervious to any traditional valuation measures because their stories are simply too good not to be true. And to the dismay of who believe they have ample rational reasons to bet against such stocks, their share prices can stay in the stratosphere for years, even decades. These story stocks — the term was coined by James Montier, a value investor and a member of the asset allocation team at the investment management firm GMO — are relatively rare, but hardly new. Amazon’s stock surged for decades even without any meaningful profits. A more recent example is Snapchat’s parent, Snap, which is racking up large losses while its stock trades at an astronomical ratio of nearly 50, far higher than Tesla’s 7. (Ford’s, by comparison, is 0. 3.) Amazon and Snap both have stories that are compelling for many investors: Amazon has transformed retailing and is destined to dominate it. Snap is reinventing communication, at least for millennials and those even younger. Early investors in Uber and Airbnb, though they remain private companies, have valued them at stratospheric multiples based largely on the notion that Uber will transform and dominate local transportation and Airbnb will revolutionize the hotel industry. For story stocks, any development that lends credence to the story can cause a surge in already high valuations. This week Tesla reported quarterly sales that were modestly above expectations, and the stock surged 7 percent in a day. Tesla shares are up nearly 40 percent this year, even though many investors considered them overvalued in January. Ron Baron, the billionaire investor and founder of Baron Capital, disclosed last year that he owned about 1. 6 million Tesla shares. He predicted on CNBC in February that Tesla shares would quadruple by 2020 and triple again by 2025. By then he expects Tesla to become the largest company in the world as measured by market capitalization. For all the excitement and promise surrounding such companies, there are many cautionary tales. “Stories are great before bed, but are disastrous as a technique,” Mr. Montier wrote in his 2009 book “Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment. ” If something is expensive based on traditional valuation metrics, he said, “you had better believe its story, as that is all you have. ” (A Tesla spokeswoman said Mr. Musk could not be reached for comment.) Various studies have shown that stocks with high ratios, on average, significantly underperform market averages. For every Tesla or Uber, there’s a Valeant Pharmaceuticals or Theranos — two story stocks that seduced an astounding array of prominent investors and supporters based on stories that did turn out to be too good to be true. And while many investors’ memories tend to be short, the bubble in the late 1990s spawned scores of story stocks, nearly all of them now worthless and forgotten. Still, Mr. Montier acknowledged, “Stories are compelling. ” They appeal to intuition rather than reason. “But perhaps investors would be well advised to follow Odysseus’s example of putting beeswax in his crew’s ears and tying himself to the mast in order to avoid the disastrous, but oh so desirable, call of the Siren song. ” Will Tesla be one of the rare exceptions and, as Mr. Baron has predicted, emerge as the world’s most valuable company? The company has won over many skeptics with its execution, so far, and the high quality of its vehicles and high levels of consumer satisfaction. It is no longer a : It delivered 25, 000 vehicles in the last quarter. It is on track to achieve economies of scale, and the company says the gross margin on each vehicle is above 20 percent, far higher than the industry average. That could drive enormous future profits. But that’s not the Tesla story — or stories — investors are betting on. Adam Jonas, a Morgan Stanley automotive analyst who is hardly a optimist about the industry, upgraded Tesla shares to overweight in January. He singles out the company’s new autonomous driving technology as a compelling safety feature that will significantly reduce occupant and pedestrian injuries and fatalities. This week he said he expected “vehicle safety to be the primary differentiator in Tesla’s upcoming product offensive,” referring to the eagerly anticipated introduction of Tesla’s new, Model 3, which will be equipped with the new technology. That Tesla is an environmentally friendly, vehicle — the story that once excited investors — is barely mentioned anymore. Even more futuristic is the idea that Tesla cars will be entirely able to cruise streets nearly full time (except when they are being charged at Tesla’s stations). In this vision, Tesla owners will share their vehicles with Tesla when not using them, and during that time they will ferry other passengers, serving as Tesla’s version of Uber. Thus Tesla will disrupt Uber’s nascent market dominance. And Tesla is no longer seen just as a vehicle manufacturer. With its solar and battery technologies, it is in a position to dominate two other enormous industry segments. Tesla “is reinventing the electric grid,” as Mr. Baron said on CNBC. “That’s a bigger opportunity than cars. ” Even if all that comes to pass, it may not be enough to justify Tesla’s valuation unless it can sustain a competitive advantage over time, as Mr. Greenwald, the value investing expert, put it. Tesla is spending heavily on research and development, and perhaps its technology will be difficult or impossible for others to replicate. The established automakers have had years to catch up to or overtake Tesla’s Model S, with a conspicuous lack of success. But for committed value investors, the writing is on the wall: “Is Tesla going to dominate its industry? That’s the key question,” Mr. Greenwald said. “When it comes to the global auto industry, no one ever has, and in all likelihood, no one ever will. ” | 1 |
Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the renowned surgeon who was the first to implant a totally artificial heart in a patient and in the process set off one of medicine’s greatest feuds, died on Friday at his home in Houston. He was 96. The Texas Heart Institute, which Dr. Cooley founded, confirmed his death. He stopped performing surgery on his 87th birthday but had never retired, remaining active at the institute as its president emeritus. The institute said he last showed up there on Monday. A former college basketball star who was a towering presence in the operating room, Dr. Cooley had by age 50 performed more than 5, 000 cardiac operations, including 17 heart transplants. For more than six decades his name was inextricably linked to that of his mentor and former partner, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, the developer of the artificial heart. Their pioneering techniques for surgery on the heart and blood vessels have helped tens of thousands of patients. But those advances were overshadowed on April 4, 1969, when Dr. Cooley, working independently of Dr. DeBakey, performed his groundbreaking implantation without Dr. DeBakey’s authorization. At the time, Dr. DeBakey and a medical team were developing the artificial heart — it was still an experimental device — at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Dr. DeBakey felt betrayed. Suddenly his protégé was his archrival. So began a feud that would last 40 years, reveal much about the personalities and ambitions of the two renowned surgeons and end only a year before Dr. DeBakey’s death in 2008. Dr. Cooley long defended his action as a doctor’s obligation to do whatever is necessary to save a patient’s life. “If you are a ship out in the ocean and someone throws you a life preserver, you don’t look at it to see if it has been approved by the federal government,” he said in an interview for this obituary. The implantation was performed at the Texas Heart Institute the patient was Haskell Karp, 47, from Skokie, Ill. About 16 months earlier, Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard had performed the world’s first human heart transplant in South Africa, a milestone that led many other surgeons to try the operation. One was Dr. Cooley, a professor of surgery at Baylor and the chief of cardiovascular surgery at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, who in 1968 performed what he claimed was the first successful heart transplant in the United States. The rush to transplantation led researchers like Dr. DeBakey to renew their attempts to develop an artificial heart to keep patients alive until a donor heart could be found. He was believed to be the first to perform surgery using a partial artificial heart, known as a ventricular assist device. Dr. DeBakey, who had led a campaign to persuade the federal government to support such research, had been developing his artificial heart with a colleague, Dr. Domingo S. Liotta of Argentina, under a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. DeBakey believed the device, which had been tested only on calves, was not ready to be tried on a human patient. But Mr. Karp’s failing heart could not pump enough blood. When efforts to repair it failed, Dr. Cooley enlisted Dr. Liotta to deliver the artificial heart from Dr. DeBakey’s laboratory and, with a medical team in a operation, removed Mr. Karp’s heart and implanted the artificial one, a device made of plastic and Dacron connected by tubes to a bedside control console. The device worked for 64 hours, longer than it had in animal tests, while a frantic search began for a donor heart. When one was found, Dr. Cooley performed the operation. The new heart sustained Mr. Karp for another 32 hours, until he died of pneumonia. (The first totally artificial heart intended for permanent use, the Jarvik 7, was implanted in Dr. Barney B. Clark at the University of Utah in 1982. He survived for 112 days. Since then, the federal government has approved the use of partial artificial hearts.) Dr. DeBakey, who was Baylor’s chancellor, accused Dr. Cooley of committing an unethical and “childish” act to claim a medical first. He contended further that in using a device that was still under development, he had broken federal rules and jeopardized Baylor’s federal research support. Dr. Cooley said that use of the device to save a patient’s life, even experimentally, did not violate the grant contract. He later maintained the operation was also an act of patriotism: He did not want the Russians to be the first to implant a total artificial heart and beat the United States as they had with their early space program. Dr. Cooley resigned from Baylor, and the American College of Surgeons censured him for his unauthorized use of the device, which is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. For decades after that, Dr. Cooley and Dr. DeBakey rarely spoke to each other or were even in the same room. (The feud became so intense and so widely talked about that it became the subject of a cover story in Life magazine.) “Once Mike and I became rivals,” Dr. Cooley said, “he seemed to go out of the way to establish the fact that it was he who was responsible for all of the developments” in heart surgery techniques, many of which he and other members of Dr. DeBakey’s staff had performed. The two reconciled in October 2007, two years after Dr. DeBakey had recovered from an operation at age 97. In a ceremony at St. Luke’s, Dr. DeBakey accepted a lifetime achievement award from the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. After presenting the award, Dr. Cooley stepped down from the stage and knelt next to Dr. DeBakey, who sat in a motorized scooter. The two shook hands warmly. Dr. Cooley had sought the reconciliation for years. “Because I owe a real debt to the people who have helped me in my career,” he said, “I would have been somewhat derelict if I had not had the chance to tell Mike DeBakey that. ” Denton Arthur Cooley was born in Houston on Aug. 22, 1920, to a wealthy family. His paternal grandfather, Daniel Denton Cooley, was a founder of the planned community Houston Heights. His father, Ralph, was a prominent dentist. Dr. Cooley attributed his surgical skills to his athletic prowess. As a freshman at the University of Texas, he was told by his basketball coach to add at least 25 pounds to his frame to avoid “getting murdered” on the court. He gained even more weight and went on to play forward and center for the team. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated in 1941 with a degree in zoology. He was attracted to surgery at age 17 when he visited an emergency room in San Antonio and observed a friend sewing up knife wounds inflicted in Saturday night brawls. After starting medical school in Galveston, he transferred to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, earning a medical degree in 1944. After serving in World War II and then continuing his training on a fellowship in England, where he studied with the heart surgeon Russell C. Brock, Dr. Cooley returned to Houston to work under Dr. DeBakey. Over the next few years, the two surgeons had important roles in virtually every major development in heart and surgery. Dr. DeBakey and Dr. Cooley devised operations to repair potentially fatal bulges in aortas and to bypass arteriosclerotic damage in neck and leg arteries that could lead to strokes. Dr. Cooley also came up with a way to reduce the amount of transfused blood used in the machine that “breathes” for the patient during operations. The technique reduced the incidence of infections like hepatitis B at a time when no vaccine existed to prevent that debilitating and potentially fatal liver infection. It also made it easier to perform surgery on patients whose religious beliefs prevented them from receiving another person’s blood. Dr. Cooley said that “if there is any contribution I should be recognized for,” it is reducing the need for blood transfusions in operations. Dr. Cooley, who believed that the outcome of an operation was related to its length, became an exceptionally fast surgeon despite athletic injuries that damaged a few fingers and a wrist. “I was always surprised how seemingly slow all his movements were in operating,” Dr. Roland Hetzer, a onetime colleague and former director of the German Heart Institute in Berlin, said in an interview there in 2010. “But every stitch was just perfect the first time, and he never had to do something a second time. So in the end he was very fast, a very good technical surgeon. ” In 1962, Dr. Cooley founded the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s and became its president. He also taught at the University of Texas and Baylor medical schools in Houston. He worked in an era when federal regulation of the development of new medical and surgical devices was limited. Doctors could make their own devices and instruments and use them on patients with little outside oversight. Human experimentation committees, whose approval is needed before doctors can conduct an experiment on a patient, did not yet exist. “All the progress we made in that period would take us a century now,” Dr. Cooley said. “We would just try something in the lab, have some personal conviction that it was a meaningful thing to do and try, and then we would go ahead and apply it. ” At his peak, Dr. Cooley was said to be the busiest heart surgeon in the United States, performing many operations a day using an approach. Patients were assigned to separate operating rooms where younger doctors opened their chests and exposed the hearts. Dr. Cooley then scurried between operating rooms to do the crucial part of each operation. Some of his critics have questioned the quality of the surgery. “My athletic experiences taught me endurance and competitiveness, with perhaps an emphasis on endurance,” he said. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan presented Dr. Cooley with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, for “charting new territory in his search for ways to prolong and enrich human life. ” Dr. Cooley had homes in Houston and in Galveston, Tex. His wife of 67 years, the Louise Thomas Cooley, died before him, as did a daughter, Florence Talbot Cooley. His survivors include four other daughters, Mary Cooley Craddock, Dr. Susan Cooley, Dr. Louise Cooley Davis and Helen Cooley Fraser 16 grandchildren and 17 . Dr. Cooley had his failures, both professional (a experimental heart transplant was unsuccessful) and personal (he declared bankruptcy from failed real estate investments in the early 1980s). And though he and Dr. DeBakey reconciled, their rivalry never completely abated. Dr. DeBakey has been called the greatest surgeon ever. Before his death in 2008, he said in an interview that Dr. Cooley was “one of the best cardiovascular surgeons” he had ever known. Asked in a separate interview whom he considered the greatest surgeon, Dr. Cooley replied, “Besides myself?” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. President Trump is quickly dismantling policies. He revived two blocked pipeline projects: the Keystone XL pipeline, the focus of years of debate over energy needs and climate change and the Dakota Access pipeline, the target of intense Native American protests. Mr. Trump also pressed automakers to increase jobs in the U. S. But a new forecast of a federal budget deficit that could expand to almost $10 trillion over 10 years could complicate his agenda to slash taxes and ramp up spending. And the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, stood by Mr. Trump’s repetition of the false claim that only millions of illegal votes by undocumented immigrants cost him the popular vote. _____ 2. On Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump’s pick to be secretary of health and human services, Representative Tom Price of Georgia, defended his investments in an Australian pharmaceutical company. And James Comey, above, told top agents that he’d been asked to remain as head of the F. B. I. averting another potentially bruising confirmation battle. It’s a delicate time for the intelligence community, which is looking into ties between Mr. Trump’s associates — including his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort — and Russia. Mr. Trump said he’d name his Supreme Court pick next week. The top contenders are conservatives on federal appeals courts: William Pryor Jr. known for his opposition to abortion and gay rights, and Neil Gorsuch, more distinguished by credentials, erudition and relatively muted stances. _____ 3. This year’s Oscar nominations are out. Voters gave “La La Land” 14 nominations, a tie for the most in Academy Award history. The academy also honored six black actors — a record. They included Denzel Washington and Viola Davis for their roles in “Fences,” above. Here is the full list of nominees our critics’ rundown of surprises and snubs reactions from some of the nominees a form to complete your own ballot and a guide on how to stream the nominated movies. _____ 4. Israel, discarding diplomatic restraint just a few days into the Trump administration, approved the construction of 2, 500 housing units in West Bank settlements. A month ago, the Obama administration declined to veto a Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlements as a “flagrant violation of international law,” and a week ago, a gathering of world leaders warned Israel to stop expanding them. _____ 5. Two days of talks in Kazakhstan on the Syrian war concluded with an agreement by Iran, Russia and Turkey to enforce a partial . But they didn’t say how, and none of the Syrians at the conference — neither the government, nor the rebels, above — signed the agreement, and the main result was solidifying Russia’s role in the diplomacy. _____ 6. The Manhattan jail holding the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo is said to be tougher than Guantánamo. A remarkable figure in the annals of crime history, with two escapes from Mexican prisons, he was extradited to the U. S. last week. The lights are on almost 24 hours a day, security is extraordinarily stringent, and the most closely guarded prisoners are denied almost all human contact. But it has seen several successful escapes. _____ 7. The expensive wonder drugs approved in recent years to cure hepatitis C, which can lead to liver disease and cancer, offered the hope of resolving a huge public health problem in the U. S. and around the world. But a report coming out Wednesday warns of the possibility of serious side effects, including liver failure, and doctors said the issue warranted further study. The news set off a new round of debate over the risks of expedited approval for badly needed drugs. “Benefits and side effects evolve over the long term, not over 12 weeks,” an author of the study said. _____ 8. Burning dinner might seem like a mistake. But the art of strategic charring, browning and blackening has deep roots in many cuisines. Exercised with care, it can conjure a world of flavor. Chefs are embracing the technique. Consider moles made with charred and ingredients, above, blackened avocado and, mmm, lamb heart ashes. _____ 9. Houston is preparing to welcome the Super Bowl on Feb. 5, and its leaders are eager to show off the makeover the city has undergone since it last hosted the game more than a decade ago. A hub for the oil and gas industries and the nation’s city, Houston is on the upswing, boasting an array of new restaurants, green space, and cultural and entertainment venues. _____ 10. On the move? Our travel writer reviewed several meditation apps that have sessions for use on planes, trains — even your daily commute. One is called “OMG. I Can Meditate!” Another offers the affirming reminder: “The more our mind learns about itself, the stronger it becomes. ” As we’ve said before about mindfulness exercises: Hey, it can’t hurt. _____ 11. Finally, there are many ways to look at history. We’re gauging it through antique lace: our 165 years of wedding reporting. The project’s first installment focuses on the subjects of The Times’s first wedding announcement, on Sept. 18, 1851, Sarah Mullett and John Grant. And, amazingly, generations of their descendants, who gather every year for a family photo with the ancestral portraits. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
15 mins ago 0 Views 0 Comments 0 Likes Drone footage shows the devastation caused by twin earthquakes that rocked Borgo Sant'Antonio, near Visso, which left buildings reduced to rubble or partially collapsed. Central Italy was struck twice in quick succession the previous day, with the first tremor hitting it at around 19:11 local time (17:11 GMT). The quake measured 5.5 on the Richter scale and could be felt as far as Rome some 240 km (149 miles). Shortly after a second quake of 6.1-magnitude, struck at around 21:18 local time (19:18 GMT). Buildings were shaking, some parts even caving in, and residents fled into the street to save themselves. Several dozen people have been treated across the region for light injuries, while four are said to have been seriously hurt. COURTESY: RT's RUPTLY video agency, NO RE-UPLOAD, NO REUSE - FOR LICENSING, PLEASE, CONTACT http://ruptly.tv Subscribe Like Leave a Reply Login with your Social ID Your email address will not be published. Name | 0 |
Pity the poor billionaires who are about to take the oath of office. For them, everything is going to change. In winning the presidency, Donald J. Trump proposed a grand hypothesis: that the federal government can be managed like a business. “If we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of,” he told voters in the final presidential debate. It’s a theory that has been suggested, to various degrees, by almost every president in the last century, from Calvin Coolidge to Barack Obama. What’s different this time is the vigorousness of the experiment. With his inauguration on Friday, and a cabinet that is likely to include three billionaires, five former chief executives and some of the business world’s most accomplished leaders, Mr. Trump is poised to test, perhaps once and for all, if good governance and crafty deal making are really similar skills. But, as anyone who has spent time in a laboratory can attest, experiments are messy. Separating the signals from the noise takes diligence. And in this case, so much will depend on the savviness of those woeful billionaires who had it so good, and now will be guinea pigs thrust into a maze that has overwhelmed so many test subjects before them. “Running an agency is very, very different from running a company,” said Carlos M. Gutierrez, who was commerce secretary under George W. Bush after serving as chief executive of Kellogg’s. “Some of the skills do transfer, but you have to be careful figuring out which ones. In government, you can’t fire anyone. Your board of directors is 535 people in Congress, and half of them want to see you fail. ” One of the first challenges will be figuring out what “business leadership” means when so many of capitalism’s tools — firing misbehaving employees giving raises to those who overperform — aren’t allowed by federal rules. “C. E. O.s who come in saying, ‘I’m going to show everyone how it’s done,’ are the ones most likely to fail,” Mr. Gutierrez said. One problem has always been that while the business world rewards leaders for an intense focus on a singular goal — maximizing profits as efficiently as possible — government yearns for the opposite: pleasing the largest number of people with methods that offend the fewest. And while competition is usually a good thing within business, inside government, it’s often more corrosive, as the partisanship of the past decade demonstrates. “You succeed in Washington by collaborating,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr. who was widely lauded as Treasury secretary for Mr. Bush and, before that, as chief executive of Goldman Sachs. Businesspeople tend to see competition as a means to find the best solutions, a sorting device that pushes the smartest ideas ahead. But many of the trickiest government issues, like immigration or tax reform, involve dozens of agencies, as well as lawmakers and lobbyists, who must be persuaded to cooperate. Intelligence in government is almost always a humble, group activity. “You can’t just think about your own agency, or your own goals,” Mr. Paulson said. “You have to please both sides of the aisle, while making sure you’re not outshining other officials, and persuading employees who don’t have to obey your orders. And you have to adjust to having a boss, the president, instead of being the boss. It takes a lot of humility. ” Some of Mr. Trump’s picks might have an easier time making the transition than others. Rex W. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil and the choice for secretary of state, is among the nominees who have spent their careers involved in the operations of complicated firms that span continents. “Tillerson has basically been a politician for the last 20 years he’s just been doing it for the nation of Exxon,” said Paul H. O’Neill, who became Treasury secretary during Mr. Bush’s first term after leading the aluminum company Alcoa. “He’s negotiated with foreign governments, he’s had more than 80, 000 employees. You don’t run a company that size by telling people what to do. You learn how to persuade them to follow your vision, to accommodate all kinds of different agendas and personalities. ” Other cabinet secretaries have spent their careers mostly as investors, not as direct managers. Hedge fund and private equity professionals like Steven T. Mnuchin, likely to be the next Treasury secretary Betsy DeVos, who has been tapped as education secretary and Wilbur L. Ross, the expected commerce secretary, have largely devoted their lives to buying and selling companies. And so there are questions about how well they will make the shift to jobs that demand a focus on the smallest details of governance. Mr. Ross, whose confirmation hearing was held on Wednesday, presents a fascinating test subject. As an acquirer of steel mills, coal mines and other heavy industries, he has amassed a personal fortune worth billions. “Over the years, I’ve had businesses that actually operated in some 23 countries,” Mr. Ross said at the hearing. “We have been on the ground in all of the major trading partners of this country. ” Usually, when Mr. Ross buys a new company, he follows a pretty successful script: He shows up, says a few words and then hands operations to professional managers who know how to run things — and who know he will fire them if they fail. However, when Mr. Ross takes the oath of office, that script will change. He will be whisked off to the executive wing of the Commerce Department and walked past long rows of barren offices. (The furniture of political appointees is removed during each presidential transition, and — spoiler alert — it often takes weeks for new desks and bookcases to arrive.) If he can find enough chairs, he might call a meeting of the few employees milling around (his deputies and key department heads need senatorial approval, which might take a few months). He will be handed dozens of binders explaining how his department does everything from monitor weather satellites to administer patents, and admonished to study up. (Congress loves humiliating cabinet members who haven’t done their homework, and explaining that you are an excellent delegator, alas, fails to impress on Capitol Hill.) If Mr. Ross hopes to fly to one of the department’s satellite offices, he will have to decide if he wants to complete the reams of paperwork needed to use his own jet, or go coach, as secretaries in previous administrations were encouraged. “Perception matters a lot in Washington,” said Karen G. Mills, who always flew in the cheap seats as administrator of the Small Business Administration after a career in finance left her with more than $40 million. “I did, however, try to avoid the middle seat. ” If Mr. Ross is lucky, by the end of his first day, someone will have shown him where the bathrooms are. There’s a risk, however, that the agency’s permanent staff’s “No. 1 goal will be to find ways to sabotage each new cabinet secretary as soon as they walk through the door,” said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who was a campaign adviser to Mr. Trump. “All those bureaucrats overwhelmingly voted for Clinton. There won’t be any real cooperation until we change federal law so we can fire them. ” Worst of all, though, is that at the end of his tenure, no matter how hard Mr. Ross works or how much he sacrifices, a large part of his success — as well as that of the other secretaries and this experiment as a whole — will be outside his control. Ultimately, the most important variable in testing this hypothesis will be Mr. Trump himself. What kind of management style will he adopt? Will he be an operator or a delegator? Will he change as president, or simply relocate and remain C. E. O. in chief? How a president behaves filters into the cabinet, and senior officials, no matter how talented or powerful they once were, become an appendage of their new boss — a hard demotion for any former master of the universe. If Mr. Trump can’t manage the presidency, then no one working for him is likely to succeed. And vice versa. So as this experiment unfolds before a captivated nation, pity Mr. Ross and all the poor billionaires. They are sacrificing themselves so that all of us might learn. And, in case they are wondering: The bathrooms are down the hall and around the corner. You’re responsible for replacing the toilet paper if you’ve used the last of the roll. | 1 |
A car audio store owner in Downey, California fought back against three armed robbery suspects Monday, shooting two fatally and wounding the third. [The incident occurred around 8:15 p. m. on Monday. According to ABC 7, the attempted robbery occurred at First Class Car Audio. Police said they arrived to to find two suspects dead inside the business and the wounded suspect had fled the scene. The Patch quoted police saying: Detectives have determined three armed men entered the business and attempted to rob the business owner. Gunfire was exchanged during which the business owner shot all three suspects, two of whom died at the scene. The third suspect sought medical treatment for his gunshot wounds at a local hospital and is receiving medical care. Detectives are still questioning him. A man near the store — who did not want to be identified — said, “All I heard was gunshots — about nine or 10 gunshots. ” Another witness said, “That’s the store owner trying to protect his business. He got a family and, you know, people trying to take away his business where he work hard for it. That’s not right. ” The business owner was not injured in the exchange of gunfire and police have not released the identities of the two deceased suspects. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Rajiv J. Shah, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, was asked about six months ago to join the committee that would select the foundation’s next president. He said no. Instead, Mr. Shah, who until recently had been the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, ultimately said he wanted to be considered for the post. He got the job. On Thursday, the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the country’s largest and most influential philanthropies, will name Mr. Shah to succeed Judith Rodin, who has been president for 12 years. The appointment will make Mr. Shah one of the most powerful forces in charitable giving, overseeing a foundation that donates roughly $200 million each year and corrals governments, companies and organizations to contribute money and resources in tandem. Mr. Shah, 43, will be the first to lead the Rockefeller Foundation, which has gained stature in recent years through some prominent projects but has sometimes been criticized as being more interested in its publicity than its grantees. Founded in 1913 by the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the foundation says it has given away the equivalent of more than $17 billion in today’s dollars. Its first grant was to the American Red Cross, and it went on to play pivotal roles in establishing the field of public health, creating vaccines for yellow fever and malaria, and bringing agricultural advances to the developing world. In recent years, the foundation has focused on the themes of “resilience” and “inclusive economies. ” That has resulted in programs aimed at establishing “resilience officers” in 100 cities to focus on disaster relief and a plan that is sending 100, 000 students to see the musical “Hamilton. ” These efforts have struck critics as public relations stunts more than meaningful agents of change. And Ms. Rodin has drawn fire for spending too much time with corporate partners and not enough time with the recipients of grants. Much of the foundation’s work concerns improving health and in Africa, aiding economic development in impoverished areas and developing strategies to combat climate change. It was these diverse causes that attracted Mr. Shah to the job. With advanced degrees in medicine and health finance from the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Shah worked at the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation for nearly a decade, rising to be director for agricultural development. From 2009 to 2015, he ran U. S. A. I. D. leading the response to disasters including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. After leaving the agency, he founded Latitude Capital, a private equity firm focused on emerging markets. In those roles, Mr. Shah said, he came to understand the power of partnerships, a strategy that Ms. Rodin has embraced at the Rockefeller Foundation. “I’ve seen what’s possible when people come together,” he said in an interview this week. “We were able to save tens of thousands, if not millions, of lives. ” Ms. Rodin was not involved in the search for her successor but has known Mr. Shah for years. They worked together on an agricultural project when he was at the Gates Foundation, and he joined the Rockefeller Foundation board in 2015. “He’s a marvel,” Ms. Rodin said in an interview this week. “He’s very strategic and very innovative. He shows an interpersonal dexterity that is well beyond his years. ” Ms. Rodin said she believed that Mr. Shah was a good fit for the job thanks in part to his time at U. S. A. I. D. which required that he forge alliances with a vast array of governments, organizations and companies. “One of the things we tried to emphasize during my time at Rockefeller was broadening the scope of partnerships,” Ms. Rodin said. “We see in Raj someone who has the capacity to take advantage of this, and has the capacity to be a great partner. ” Richard Parsons, the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation board, said Mr. Shah was the unanimous choice of the search committee after a competitive process that considered hundreds of candidates. “Raj is the perfect guy to come in after her,” Mr. Parsons said in an interview. “He’s a performer. You put him up in front of a group and people come away impressed. Now, he’s got a platform. ” Mr. Shah said he was committed to the broad themes of resilience and inclusive economies. “That core concept of resilience is extraordinarily important going forward,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to evolve into the future. ” But he said he would look for opportunities to address schisms in the American electorate in this divisive political moment. “It is a different time today than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. “We live in a more fractured world. ” The Rockefeller Foundation is viewed by some has having a liberal bent. During Ms. Rodin’s tenure, the foundation donated money to the Clinton Foundation. Mr. Shah is close with President Obama but said he maintained good relations with Republicans in the House and Senate and believed that the foundation’s core mission had bipartisan appeal. “It’s widely acknowledged that tackling hunger and ensuring health around the globe are in our own national interest,” Mr. Shah said. “I have always been passionate about delivering social justice results at a massive scale. ” He will now have a $200 million a year to try to deliver those results. | 1 |
القبض على "الموناليزا" الأفغانية بباكستان
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 15:32 GMT | القبض على فتاة "ناشيونال جيوغرافيك" الأفغانية بباكستان A+ مصير "الموناليزا" الأفغانية
وقال شهيد إلياس، من وكالة التحقيقات الإتحادية، إن الشرطة ألقت القبض على شربات غولا خلال مداهمة، الأربعاء، في منزل ببيشاور.
وكانت "الموناليزا" الأفغانية، فتاة لاجئة أفغانية عندما اكتسبت شهرة عالمية، العام 1984، بعد أن نشرت مجلة "ناشيونال جيوغرافيك" على غلافها صورة لها التقطها المصور ستيف ماكوري، وعثر ماكوري عليها مرة أخرى في العام 2002، في أفغانستان. www.pinterest.com القبض على فتاة "ناشونال جيوغرافيك" الأفغانية بباكستان
كما ظهرت غولا مرة أخرى في باكستان بالعام 2015 عندما قالت السلطات إن لديها بطاقة هوية باكستانية مزورة.
ويقول إلياس، إن بعض المسؤولين تم فصلهم لاحقا لإعطائهم غولا بطاقة هوية مزورة، وإنها عاشت منذ ذلك الحين متوارية عن الأنظار لتجنب الاعتقال.
المصدر: وكالات | 0 |
Study: Americans fear “corrupt government officials” more than anything It's sad when more Americans fear government corruption than anything else, including death By Lexi Morgan - October 27, 2016 ( INTELLIHUB ) — According to a study conducted by Chapman University titled America’s Top Fears 2016 , “1,511 adults from across the United States were asked their level of fear about 79 different fears across a huge variety of topics ranging from crime, the government, disasters, personal anxieties, technology and many others,” and you won’t believe the results.
The study addressed ’11 major domains of fear’ which included: Fear Domain | 0 |
— Robert B -zee (@robkroese) October 29, 2016
Less than two weeks before the presidential election, the FBI announced the re-opening of the which includes focus on Anthony Weiner, the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius tried to lecture Comey about the timing: Note to Comey: In news business, you wouldn't publish story so thin 10 days before election, w/o providing details. https://t.co/dvdQIVWElm
— David Ignatius (@IgnatiusPost) October 28, 2016
Is that so?
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 29, 2016 You'd at least have the professional decency to forge some documents. https://t.co/3ZcTEZoEYF
— THE Chris Coon (@Coondawg68) October 29, 2016
Ha! Yes, the “no hits close to an election” lecture is hilarious. And besides: Note to @IgnatiusPost : Comey isn't in the news business, and the biased press is in no position to deliver sanctimonious lectures on ethics. https://t.co/pCH4XwalLJ
— (((David B. Cohen))) (@DavidBCohen1) October 29, 2016 @IgnatiusPost Note to Ignatius: He's not in the news business. And he didn't publish the story. You did.
— Joel Engel (@joelengel) October 29, 2016
Well, there’s that.
— Silence is Consent! (@NoSilentConsent) October 29, 2016 This is fun. The Washington Post chiding the FBI about political ethics #JulietEilperin https://t.co/p3lRmHDOij
— Dean Skoreyko (@bcbluecon) October 29, 2016 Local journalist annoyed that FBI doesn't hold himself to journalistic standards https://t.co/itGOdzvsdY
— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) October 29, 2016 What a weird and not very useful comparison. https://t.co/WINbyveGcd
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 29, 2016 Note to @IgnatiusPost : in journalism, you wouldn't be condemning government transparency. If u were a journalist. https://t.co/ZUSKaUcC6q
— Simon Templar (@SimonTemplarPV) October 29, 2016
A couple years ago, Ignatius called Obama “perhaps the least political president in modern U.S. history,” so nothing should be too surprising. Trending | 0 |
Sex and the Presidential City Sex and the Presidential City By 0 58
Why does everyone think that presidential campaigns are about “issues,” when anyone over the age of consent knows they are all about sex? But it says a lot about the lasting power of Viagra that this is still the case when we have a couple of seventy-year-olds on the ballot. (“ For an election lasting more than four years, please call your doctor .”)
In last week’s newspaper there was a report on the tenth or eleventh woman (I have lost track) to come forward to say that Donald Trump made suggestive and “inappropriate” advances to her during a golf tournament that took place about ten years ago.
The woman in question is Jessica Drake, who during her press conference announced that at the time of the tournament, she was working in the “the adult industry” (that’s what People Magazine calls porn) for Wicked Pictures (the 20th Century Fox of gang banging) when the randy Donald kissed and hugged her in his room.
Trump was already in his pajamas when she knocked on his door, together with two friends. Normally, in the adult business, when three porn stars knock on your hotel door, it’s considered foreplay.
When Trump’s effusive greeting of Miss Drake did not lead to more snuggling, let alone the suggestion to preview some of her work on the hotel television, he offered her $10,000 to satisfy his suite dreams.
Drake again demurred, saying that the next morning she needed to get back to Los Angeles “for work.” By that point in her career she had… | 0 |
(Before It's News)
Remember when the media, Barack Obama, and Democrats were finger-wagging and tut-tutting Republicans for saying Obamacare was going to be a failure? Remember how Obama said premiums were going to go down?
For the last 18 months, Obama and his fellow Democrats have been reduced to bragging about how many people are now “covered” by health insurance as if it was some real accomplishment. Two points to consider:
It is mandatory. People are merely obeying the law and getting a plan. The law’s intention was for healthcare coverage to be more affordable, and that has not happened. Insurers are recognizing this problem. Younger people would rather be in a position where they pay the fine (which the administration is not enforcing), rather than the out of pocket costs for a health care plan. The CEO of Aetna said as much:
Healthier people will avoid buying Affordable Care Act health insurance plans as premiums climb, threatening the stability of the market, Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said.
“As the rates rise, the healthier people pull out because the out-of-pocket costs aren’t worth it,” Bertolini said at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead Summit in New York. “Young people can do the math. Gas for the car, beer on Fridays and Saturdays, health insurance.”
Premiums for health plans sold to individuals under the ACA, known as Obamacare, are going up by about 25 percent on average for next year. Bertolini said that as costs rise, more individuals will decide not to buy health plans. That’ll push premiums even higher, unless a new president and lawmakers can find fixes for the new markets created by the 2010 health law.
The question over whether such problems get fixed is all dependent upon whether or no the President, be it Obama or Clinton, recognizes what divided government means. It is not to say, as President Obama believes, “Here is what I need, now pass it so I can sign it.” President Obama or President Clinton must recognize divided government means everything is on the table at the start of negotiations , not just what the President wants.
The post Aetna CEO On Obamacare: Young People Will Choose Beer First appeared first on RedState . | 0 |
Few actresses are more likable than Emma Stone. She is spunky, talented, and slightly goofy. But unlike some approachable actresses, who stick with the pretty if bland aesthetic, Ms. Stone is as soignée as they come. “She’s very spirited when it comes to fashion,” said Petra Flannery, her stylist for the past decade. “She’s a very animated person, and my goal is to make the clothes complement all of that, whether it’s through color, or a material that makes it unique, or an interesting design. ” It helps that like the variety of characters she inhabits — Ms. Stone is nominated for an Oscar in the best actress category for the musical film “La La Land” — she has range. She comes alive in marigold (a flirty, Gucci creation at a W magazine party last month, which Ms. Flannery called “the ultimate party dress”) sky blue (a Prada dress at the Los Angeles “La La Land” premiere in December) and even pale sea foam (a shimmering Atelier Versace gown at the Venice Film Festival in September, which seemed to have gone through a very expensive shredder). Strange proportions are also fair game. At the EE British Academy Film Awards, familiarly known as the Baftas, this month, Ms. Stone managed to make a embroidered smoke gray organza dress over pants (Chanel haute couture, mind you) seem like kismet. “The look was so cool because of the pants, but also it was a little Lucille Ball because of the ’50s shape of the dress,” Ms. Flannery said. It was not the first time Ms. Stone carried off a tricky Chanel design — or pants on the red carpet, for that matter. While an ornate embroidered jacket and a heavy silver and gold column skirt, both in tweed, might have sapped the youth out of some, Ms. Stone was a sophisticated jeune fille in the Chanel Métiers d’Art outfit she wore to the Paris premiere of “La La Land. ” Yet Ms. Stone doesn’t overdose on opulence. Like a palate cleanser, the actress peppered her red carpet look with minimal slip dresses (a rich burgundy number by the Row for the London premiere of “La La Land” in January and a strappy black Stella McCartney design at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this month). Another Stella McCartney, a midnight blue jumpsuit worn to the Oscar Nominees Luncheon a few days later, was also relatively spare, though the puffed cut had plenty of quirk. “I always want to keep it fresh and fun,” Ms. Flannery said. To that end, she works with a combination of custom and runway pieces. “I love doing custom, because it’s nice to know you’re really surprising people,” she said, pointing to the glittering Valentino gown Ms. Stone wore to the Golden Globes last month. Sourcing directly from the runway used to be the gold standard, but, Ms. Flannery said, “it’s different today with social media. ” “Instagram images pop up all over,” she continued, “and by the time a dress comes from the runway, it can feel like you’ve seen it already. ” Luckily, Ms. Flannery has such access — Ms. Stone, after all, is a red carpet score for any designer — that she can nab a collection piece before it has ever left the studio. Such was the case when she secured the remarkable Alexander McQueen dress with lily pad embroidery that Ms. Stone wore to the Screen Actors Guild Awards in January. With asymmetrical draping and a lace bodice, the design was a visual feat: Ms. Stone looked as though she was partially undressed. Ms. Flannery said the gown was from the label’s 2017 collection, which “had not been viewed by anybody yet. ” She reserved the piece a couple of weeks before the awards ceremony as she was passing through London with Ms. Stone. “It’s true designers love her,” Ms. Flannery said, “but also Emma appreciates fashion from an artist’s point of view. Style is innate. It’s in her bones. ” | 1 |
Region: USA in the World If one was only to read mainstream news in the West, you would probably be inculcated with the myth that Islamic State (ISIS) appeared almost out of thin air and many governments in the Western world have been completely shocked by the rise of this terror group. Perhaps you would correctly blame the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq as a major reason why such extreme groups gained power in the region, in addition to blaming certain governments for supposedly marginalizing Sunni’s. But what most mainstream readers will be miserably ignorant of is the fact that one of the main opposition groups fighting the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria has been ISIS itself, a group that has been trained, funded, aided and armed by NATO countries in collusion with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel (to name a few). This reality has been completely omitted in numerous corporate media publications, once again demonstrating the inept and deceptive nature of mainstream news. Some Western news outlets are still peddling the fallacy that the Obama administration misjudged the threat of ISIS, and was taken by surprise by the groups rise. Obama himself claimed in 2014 when responding to a question asking whether the US underestimated ISIS: “That their advance, their movement, over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and I think the expectations of policy makers both inside and outside of Iraq.” This narrative runs in stark contrast to a recently declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document from 2012 which was released by Judicial Watch after the watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The DIA document warned: “ISI [the Islamic State of Iraq] could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria.” ( p.5 ) In a recent interview with Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera, the former head of the DIA, Michael T. Flynn, reiterates that the Obama administration was warned about the potential of extreme groups gaining influence in the region but instead of halting the support for the Syrian opposition, the administration took the “wilful decision” to support the rebels anyway: Hasan (Interviewer) (From 11.15 onwards into the interview): “In 2012, your agency was saying, quote: “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq [(which ISIS arose out of)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” In 2012, the US was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of Islamic extremism?” Flynn : “Well I hate to say it’s not my job, but… my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be, and I will tell you, it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011, it was very clear what we were going to face.” Hasan (Interviewer): You are basically saying that even in government at the time, you knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?” Flynn : “I think the administration.” Hasan (Interviewer): “So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?” Flynn : “I don’t know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful decision.” Hasan (Interviewer): “A wilful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?” Flynn: “A wilful decision to do what they’re doing… You have to really ask the President what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing.” It is quite obvious that NATO countries in conjunction with regional allies have been funding, arming and training an array of rebel bandits to overthrow the secular Syrian government for years now, although they have been unable to force regime change in Damascus so far. In the 2012 declassified report from the DIA, the document reveals that the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” – wanted to create a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria in order to isolate the Syrian regime”: “Opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighbouring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts… If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” ( p.5 ) Shipping Weapons from Libya to the Syrian Rebels Numerous reports in 2012 alleged that the US was sending heavy weapons from the military stockpiles of the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to the Syrian rebels. Another formerly classified document released by Judicial Watch from the US Department of Defense (DOD) reveals that the White House was at least aware of arms shipments from Libya to Syria, although the document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons: “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles… The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]” ( DOD Document ) This is all part of a long term strategy by the West to overthrow regimes that are not subservient to Western interests. NATO’s 2011 war in Libya has already forced regime change in the North African country, with the West still working on bringing down the Syrian regime. Both countries were listed as enemies of the US by the neoconservative thinktank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in their 2000 report, long before the illegal 2011 war in Libya and the ongoing proxy war in Syria. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were also on PNAC’s hit list . Further illustrating the fact that many of the wars and proxy wars we have witnessed in recent years were premeditated operations by imperial powers, t he former French minister of Foreign Affairs, Roland Dumas, revealed that the war in Syria was “ prepared, preconceived and planned ” at least “two years before the violence” erupted. Dumas said he was approached in the UK by “top British officials” to see if he would participate in “organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria”, a proposal Dumas refused, but it is clear that many others within the Western establishment did not. Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report , especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” . Popular Articles | 0 |
The latest attack against President Donald Trump for allegedly being too close to his and his family’s business interests suffers from a serious flaw: it is based on a trust agreement provision authorized by law and recommended by the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics as well as the U. S. Office of Government Ethics. [The website ProPublica reported Monday that the documents governing the trust that holds Trump’s businesses were changed in February to instruct the trustee to make distributions to Trump when requested. “Trump can draw money from his more than 400 businesses, at any time, without disclosing it,” ProPublica explained. According to ProPublica, this shows “just how little separation there actually is” between the Trump businesses and the U. S. government. To anyone familiar with the blind trust agreements signed by government officials, however, this is nonsense. Almost every trust agreement signed by U. S. government officials authorizes distributions upon request of the official for whom the trust is established. The sample blind trust agreement distributed by the staff of the Senate Ethics Committee is the model document used by senators and their staffs for setting up trusts. It authorizes precisely the kind of requests for distributions that has ProPublica scandalized. Section 7 of the agreement reads: There shall be no direct or indirect communication between an interested party and the Trusteee with respect to the Trust unless — (A) It related to a request for a distribution from the Trust of cash or other unspecified assets of the trust or … Importantly, this is the only form of communication with the Trustee that doesn’t require written disclosure with the Ethics Committee. Just like Trump’s trust, the Senate model trust doesn’t require disclosure of requests for distributions. The Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency within the executive branch, uses very similar language in its model blind trust agreement. SEVENTH: There shall be no direct or indirect communication between an interested party or 21 any representative of an interested party and the Trustee with respect to the Trust unless the 22 communication is in writing and has the prior written approval of the Director, U. S. Office of 23 Government Ethics, and unless it relates only — (A) To a request for a distribution of cash or other unspecified assets of the trust … There’s a very good reason why both agreements allow government officials to request distributions from their trusts without requiring any prior disclosure: that’s what the law says. The requirements for a blind trust for government officials are set out in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. The law bars most communications between government officials and their trustees but it explicitly allows for requests for distributions. … except for communications which solely consist of requests for distributions of cash or other unspecified assets of the trust, there shall be no direct or indirect communication between the trustee and an interested party with respect to the trust unless such communication is in writing and unless it relates only [to certain permitted topics]. In other words, the authorization of undisclosed requests from distributions in Trump’s trust agreement is fully in keeping with the law and the government’s standard agreements. The small change revealed by ProPublica brought Trump’s trust into further conformity with the trusts used by other government officials and U. S. senators. This is just another Gold Easter Egg: a story that falsely depicts something as a scandal because Trump does it when it is, in fact, totally normal. | 1 |
Polls are tightening, but is the US presidential election rigged? Polls are tightening, but is the US presidential election rigged? By 0 28
One of the most important questions is will US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton rig the election to win the White House like she did in the primaries against Bernie Sanders, asks Myles Hoenig, an American political analyst and activist.
Recent polls show that Clinton’s national lead over Trump is shrinking as the Election Day is approaching.
The former secretary of state has the support of 49 percent of likely voters, while the billionaire businessman has 44 percent support, according to the CNN/ORC survey released on Monday.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 3 percent support among likely voters, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein has 2 percent support.
“In every election the race tightens towards the end,” Hoenig told Press TV on Thursday.
“It’s really hard to imagine that there is any flux in this election as the supporters of both sides absolutely hate the other. With Obama and Romney, or even Gore and Bush, many of… | 0 |
Everyone has theories for why professionals are moving back into parts of cities shunned by their parents’ generation. Perhaps their living preferences have shifted. Or the demands of the labor market have, and young adults with less leisure time are loath to waste it commuting. Maybe the tendency to postpone marriage and children has made city living more alluring. Or the benefits of cities themselves have improved. “There are all sorts of potential other amenities, whether it’s cafes, restaurants, bars, nicer parks, better schools,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. “But a huge piece of it,” she said, “I think is crime. ” New research that she has conducted alongside Keren Mertens Horn, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and Davin Reed, a doctoral student at N. Y. U. finds that when violent crime falls sharply, wealthier and educated people are more likely to move into and predominantly minority urban neighborhoods. Their working paper suggests that just as rising crime can drive people out of cities, falling crime has a comparable effect, spurring gentrification. And it highlights how, even if many Americans — including, by his own words, Donald Trump — inaccurately believe urban violence is soaring, the opposite trend has brought change to cities. “We’re trying to help people understand what a dramatic difference the reduction in violent crime in particular has made in our environment,” Ms. Ellen said. “That has repercussions far beyond what we think of. The homicide rate has gone down — that’s directly the most important consequence. But there are all sorts of repercussions as well. This really has been a sea change. ” Nationally, violent crime peaked in 1991. It fell precipitously for the next decade, then more slowly through the 2000s (and there’s a whole other set of theories about why that has happened). While homicides have increased recently in some cities, rates remain far below what they were 25 years ago, including in Chicago. (Another reality check, while we’re at it: Mr. Trump said during the 2016 campaign that homicides in his new home in Washington were rising by 50 percent, apparently citing the previous year’s crime statistics. At that time in July, though, the rate in the city was already falling compared with 2015, and by year’s end, it was down by 17 percent.) The new research looked at confidential geocoded data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses, and more recent American Community Surveys, to identify the neighborhoods where more than four million households moved. Using citywide violent crime data from the F. B. I. the scholars tracked the changing probability of different demographic groups moving into central cities, as opposed to suburbs, as crime fell. and movers — and to a lesser degree, whites — appeared significantly more sensitive to changing crime levels in their housing decisions than other groups. and minority households, for instance, didn’t become more likely to move to cities as they grew safer. That may reflect the fact, Ms. Ellen suggested, that families have more experience or confidence in their ability to navigate crime. Or it may suggest that attention to violence is a luxury in housing decisions that the poor and minorities may not have. A household facing racial discrimination, high housing costs or the need to be near supportive family members simply has fewer options — and less leeway to be choosy — than the households that this research identifies. “When cities feel safer, that opens people’s eyes,” Ms. Ellen said of the willingness of new groups to consider these neighborhoods. It’s entirely likely that the arrival of more affluent residents affected crime, too — either by increasing opportunities for property crime in the short term, or by adding eyes on the street and pressure on the police in the long run. Because this research looked at moves that occurred after crime was already falling, the authors believe the movers were reacting to changes in crime and not simply causing it themselves. But the relationship between crime and gentrification in particular is complex. Wealthier residents may bring new tensions to neighborhoods, fearing — and reporting — criminal activity where none exists. And such demographic change in cities could play a role in pressuring the police to pursue tactics that feel unduly aggressive to the people who preceded the newcomers. This study also doesn’t offer evidence that existing residents were displaced by the new arrivals. Many of the urban neighborhoods studied had lost population, so they had room to grow again without pushing existing residents out. But the possibility that these trends portend higher housing costs and more housing demand in the future in poorer, minority neighborhoods adds a cautionary note, Ms. Ellen said, to the declining crime trend. | 1 |
FONTANA, Calif. — The fire in Cajon Pass was first reported as a blaze along a highway 13 miles northeast of San Bernardino. So John McColly went about his business when he saw the smoke from Mountain High, a ski resort to the west of Wrightwood, where he works. Kevin Foree, a roofer working in Bellflower, southwest of the fire, heard about the blaze, but he figured he would have no trouble getting home to Victorville, to the northeast. But the speed of the Blue Cut Fire stunned even experienced fire officials. Fed by a buffet of shrubs squeezed of moisture and coaxed by the wind, the flames roared through 2, 500 acres, then 6, 500 acres in a matter of hours. Evacuations were ordered and major highways, including the interstate that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas, began to close. That, Mr. McColly said, was a signal that it was “time to go. ” The ski resort’s 40 or so employees joined thousands of other residents — many with their vehicles packed with whatever fit — fleeing the onrushing flames. About 82, 000 residents in an estimated 34, 500 homes were ordered to evacuate. By Wednesday, the fire had consumed more than 25, 000 acres, burning houses, businesses and outbuildings in its wake. (The official measurement lowered the estimate from about 30, 000 acres earlier in the day.) It was still raging out of control late in the day, and officials were warning residents to prepare for the worst. “There will be a lot of families that come home to nothing,” said Mark Hartwig, the San Bernardino County fire chief. Mr. Foree, a transplant from Northern California, was stuck overnight in a Red Cross shelter here. On Wednesday, still wearing his khaki shorts and work boots, he worried that his mother would run low on medication before he could get home. He marveled at the fire, which he said had taken even seasoned locals like his girlfriend’s family by surprise. “They have never seen anything like this,” he said. Mr. McColly, like many other evacuees from Wrightwood, found safety by heading west toward Pasadena. At midday Wednesday, the resort was still not threatened by the fire. Fire officials warned on Wednesday that explosive fires like this one were becoming more common. “It’s to the point where explosive fire growth is the new normal this year, and that’s a challenge for all of us to take on,” said Glenn Barley, the San Bernardino unit chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CalFire. The fire has been a jolt during a fire season that has been quieter than usual nationwide. Experts said this season has had about a quarter fewer fires start and acres burn for this point in the year. Nevertheless, several recently ignited wildfires are burning in California, although they have not moved as quickly as Blue Cut. The Chimney Fire, which began on Saturday, has burned 7, 300 acres in San Luis Obispo and was 25 percent contained. The Clayton Fire, near Lower Lake in Northern California, started the same day, and has burned nearly 4, 000 acres. It was 40 percent contained. And the Soberanes Fire, in Monterey County, has burned almost 80, 000 acres over nearly two months. The enduring drought may have played a role here, even as relief comes elsewhere. “You’ve had three, four years of drought that’s been going on, so the conditions in the mountains are just prime for a large fire,” said David Simeral, a climatologist and an author for the United States Drought Monitor. “You’ve got all the dry fuels, low humidity and winds, it’s a formula for fires spreading quickly. ” Richard Minnich, a professor in the department of earth sciences at the University of California, Riverside, said it was not so much the drought, but the weather of the day — coupled with a prevailing fire management strategy in which, he said, small fires are knocked down quickly but larger ones can grow more out of control — that had driven the fire. The low humidity, Mr. Minnich said, had dried out shrubs and bushes — known as chaparral — making them as flammable as a carpet. “It’s got a reputation for burning explosively,” he said of the chaparral, adding, “As soon as it’s blowing up like that, the capacity to stop the fire goes to zero. ” What no one disputes, however, is that, in less than 24 hours, the fire had turned people’s lives upside down. Outside the shelter here, Cathleen Coakley, 54, stood with her two small dogs. Sheriff’s deputies had canvassed her neighborhood in Lytle Creek on Tuesday, ordering everyone to leave, and she left almost everything behind, including five more dogs and five cats. “I want to go home. I want to check on my animals,” she said. “You just have to have faith that you will have a home to go to. ” | 1 |
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