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posted by Eddie Ever wonder how cellphones went from being a point of wealth to household commodity? Well, there’s reason to believe that the accessibility of cellphones isn’t purely coincidental. The thought originated with metadata and the possibilities made possible through the documentation of information that cellphones provide, through both backdoor access and the location data each phone provides. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is an incredibly secret court that answers to no one and, has autonomy in not only their proceeding and rulings, but, is also highly-classified. Through this system, President’s George Bush and Barrack Obama have enabled their own domestic surveillance practices. Although, The NSA is heavily involved as well. In doing so, the government has created programs and jobs that are specific to collecting and translating meta-data. The government would have you believe that meta-data is not as invasive as specific data, but, let’s consider it this way. Imagine your coordinates being reported by the second, from the time you wake in the morning, during your commute to work, and whichever plans you have afterwards. This data system gives insight into each particular location, phone call, and the duration of said phone calls to these data collectors. Imagine being able to see each and every step your better half or child has throughout the day, and you notice they stops at location that seem unusual or speak/communicate with numbers/people unfamiliar to you while having access to the duration of those calls. Although, this leaves an opportunity for misconception, but, it also brings us to an objective truth, how revealing metadata can be. Edward Snowden, a former NSA employer who specialized in technology in the cyber division, released classified documents involving both government programs that enacted policies, and, FISA court rulings on said programs. These revelations brought his need to flee for asylum in China, and then and currently, Russia. Snowden’s attempt of transparency let Americans learn just how much census data has changed and the contracts deployed between the government and the major communications companies, such as AT&T. These companies have made millions by granting backdoor access and data to the government. Yet, this isn’t all bad. Local officials have occasionally solicited access, through communication companies, to find criminals and perpetrators of crime. For example, in 2013 California officials used the data and cellphone accessibility to find the murderer that slaughtered a man, his wife, and their two children. Until the solicitation, the local officials weren’t close to right suspect. After collaboration, the local officials were able to find, through metadata collection, analysis, and cellphone GPS, the exact location of the murderer. So, you tell me, do you think your phone is as private as you think? Written by Anthony A Fabrikant. From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8889 Posts )
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. and Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media. | 0 |
IN my spare time, when not writing about consumer technology for The New York Times, I have a sideline renting out a cabin on Airbnb. So when Jose reserved the property last October, it was nothing unusual. He said he wanted to host some relatives for a quiet weekend in the mountains. I welcomed him without hesitation. That Saturday, my neighbors texted me as they watched caterers carry large white pillars and bouquets into the backyard. Then 10 cars surrounded the front yard and dozens of people wearing suits and dresses poured into the house. It became clear this was no intimate . For a day, my Airbnb rental was turned into a wedding venue, which broke city laws. My business would be in jeopardy if the police were notified. Such is life as an Airbnb “Superhost. ” Since buying my cabin in Northern California in late 2015, I have hosted about 30 groups and become part of the booming ecosystem for Airbnb, the online reservation marketplace that lets people turn their homes into vacation rentals. With more than 140 million guest arrivals to date, Airbnb has proved a boon for hosts and an attractive option for travelers looking to avoid hefty fees from hotels. In the process, I have been named a Superhost, which means I have hosted many guests and consistently received reviews. It’s a small group — researchers say only about 7 percent of hosts are Superhosts. In exchange, I get more visibility in search results, invitations from the company to exclusive events and a medal next to my profile photo. The designation as a Superhost has paid off: My house is a few bookings away from netting a profit. Yet vaulting to Superhost status is hardly intuitive, and I learned hard lessons along the way. Here are some tips on running a successful (and lucrative) Airbnb rental based on interviews with Superhosts and my experience. People who rent your house on Airbnb are choosing it over a hotel. So you had better be as hospitable, friendly and communicative as a hotel. For your rental, that means a few things. Provide staples like cooking equipment, cable TV, soap for bathing and cleaning, towels, toothpaste and toilet paper. Your house should work as advertised — faulty appliances should be repaired or replaced. For another, be extremely responsive to guests, much like a hotel front desk. Nobody trusts a host who is slow to respond. Jasper Ribbers, a of “Get Paid for Your Pad,” a book about his experience as an Airbnb Superhost who has completed more than 300 stays, uses the app AvivaIQ to respond automatically to messages from potential guests, which comes in handy when he is asleep. When he is awake, he can continue the conversation. Being dishonest about your listing will hurt when it comes time for a guest to leave a review. It’s better to be straightforward about what you are offering and transparent about any imperfections. In my experience, guests were surprised in the summer that the house lacked even though the listing never said it had . I resolved this with subsequent guests by saying explicitly in my welcome email that the house lacked and that portable fans were in each room. Be quick to address complaints, or risk facing a negative review. If a dishwasher breaks or the shower pressure is too low, send a plumber. If a remote control was misplaced or stolen by a previous group, have a backup remote ready in a drawer. If you host the property remotely, the best option is to befriend someone trustworthy in the neighborhood who can act as a property manager. Pay the manager a fee for each task. Airbnb attracts travelers from all over the world, and it is remarkable how standards for cleanliness differ from person to person. My jaw dropped when one guest left a positive review about her stay, but dropped me one star because the brush was dirty. (Couldn’t she have used the clean sponge instead?) There is no point acting defensive. The solution is to hire superb professional cleaners. Relay any negative feedback from guests to your cleaners so they improve over time. Depending on where your house is, demand may be higher at certain times of year. If you hope to ever make a profit, you will want to set prices higher during peak rental seasons, and reduce prices during slow seasons. But constantly changing prices on your listing can be daunting. I use a dynamic pricing tool, BeyondPricing. com, that automatically adjusts prices based on demand, including factors like holidays, peak travel season and the day of the week. (Airbnb provides its own dynamic pricing tool called Smart Pricing, but in my experience it chooses rates that are too low.) Last year, Airbnb introduced an policy that urged hosts to welcome guests regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and age. That makes sense, since Airbnb wants to connect hosts with travelers from all over the world. But it doesn’t mean you should let just anybody into your home. Hosts reserve the right to decide what types of groups they would like to host, especially when taking into consideration city laws. For my rental, city law forbids loud parties past 10 p. m. When guests request the house, I ask them the purpose of the visit and ask them to carefully read and agree to my house rules, including one about loud noise. I am less inclined to book a group of college students looking to have a party than I am to book a family planning a winter vacation. (Though if the students promised to stay quiet, I would probably book them.) Mr. Ribbers, the Airbnb Superhost, said he preferred families or couples staying in his apartment in Amsterdam partly because of the size constraints. He also typically accepts bookings only from guests who already have positive reviews themselves. When guests reserve his home, he reads their profiles to get a sense of their personalities and check if they have verified their identities with Airbnb by providing driver’s license information, among other documentation. Some vetting is permitted by Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy, which says hosts can decline to rent based on factors that are not prohibited by law — so my rejection of those planning to have loud parties fits the bill. Another important point is to describe your listing depending on the guests you want. Mr. Ribbers titled his listing “Couples Getaway. ” My listing, intended to attract family ski trips, advertises the house’s proximity to the ski lifts. Most guests are not bad people. But perhaps one out of 10 times, a rotten egg will pass your smell test. The lesson I learned from Jose was that being a Superhost did not make me impervious to the actions of a misbehaving guest. To protect yourself, diligently document everything valuable in your house. Take photos of countertops, the refrigerator, stove, dining table, barbecue grill and television set. In the event anything is damaged, Airbnb will ask for photos to prove that guests caused the damage. With Jose, after an Airbnb representative evicted the group for breaking my house rules, I found a large chip in my kitchen countertop. After sending Airbnb the photo of the damaged countertop, a company representative concluded it was not reasonable to let me keep Jose’s security deposit because “there is no way to document whether or not the chip on the counter was there before or after this guest stayed at the listing. ” Airbnb did agree to charge Jose for excess guests — but only for those my neighbors were able to photograph. Nick Shapiro, an Airbnb spokesman, said I should have been treated better and the company apologized that its resolution process “did not work as it was supposed to in this incident. ” In my conversations with Jose, he insisted that he did nothing wrong and that I broke the contract by kicking his group out of the house. Neither of us could leave each other a review because his reservation was voided. | 1 |
You Are Here: Home » Cancer » 3 Year Old Son of Singer Michael Bublé Diagnosed With Cancer 3 Year Old Son of Singer Michael Bublé Diagnosed With Cancer Prev post Next post
There isn’t a single parent alive, famous or not, that doesn’t fear for their children’s health and safety. None of us ever wants to confront the reality that one of our kids is sick, but that’s just what singer Michael Bublé and his wife, Luisana, are facing.
Their eldest son, Noah, was just diagnosed with cancer. He’s just three years old.
The family were dealt the tragic blow after the youngster visited doctors with a suspected case of mumps , Argentinian website La Nacion reports .
“They’re staying positive and Noah is a fighter.”
Argentinian journalist Tomas Dente read out a text message from Daniela on a morning TV show which said: “To tell you the truth I’m devastated. This is very recent.
“The only thing I ask is that you don’t speculate because not everyone has children and can understand what this means.
A story on Buzzfeed shares the couple’s statement, in which the singer asks for privacy as he and his family fight this battle.
According to BuzzFeed , the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion reported that Noah was initially taken to the doctor for a suspected case of the mumps and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, every parent’s worst nightmare.
As Bublé said in his post, “We are devastated about the recent cancer diagnosis of our oldest son Noah who is currently undergoing treatment in the US. We have always been very vocal about the importance of family and the love we have for our children.” A photo posted by Michael Bublé (@michaelbuble) on Oct 16, 2016 at 7:25am PDT
It seems clear that this isn’t a family that will take this situation lying down. Noah’s cancer is in for a fight.
The battle won’t be easy, especially since childhood cancer research is woefully underfunded. The St Baldrick’s Foundation states that only 4% of cancer research is devoted to childhood cancer, despite the fact that, according to Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman, head of the division of pediatrics at the Children’s Cancer Hospital at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, “Curing childhood cancer is the equivalent of curing breast cancer in terms of productive life years saved.”
Bublé and his wife are putting their careers on hold to tend to their son, and expressing hope that, with the “support of family, friends and fans around the world, we will win this battle, God willing.”
Recently, the singer had expressed his joy at being a dad, telling Entertainment Tonight , “The only regret that I have in my life is that I took this long to have kids, because I had no idea the perspective it would give me. I had no idea how much I would love being a dad.”
And now he has to face that hardest battle any parent could imagine. Hopefully, that love will be enough, and his son will pull through. Vanquishing Viruses – 10 Natural Antiviral Remedies
by Martin Hum – Institute For Optimal Nutrition Colds, flu and other viral infections are common during the spring. Although prevention is best, when a virus strikes there are a number of natural remedies that can stop it in its tracks. Dr Martin Hum digs up the research on 10 natural antivirals. At this time […] Chia Seeds: The Ancient Aztec Super-food
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Medical cannabis, medicinal marijuana, medical mary jane – no matter how you refer to it, cannabis has been demonstrated in an increasing amount of studies to be medically useful! by Elizabeth Seward – Staff Writer Although the plant was once thought to be a troublesome gateway drug in mainstream America, recent polls show that 80% […] Astaxanthin: The Most Potent Antioxidant On the Planet
Astaxanthin – The algae that heals, protects, and prevents DNA damage. Astaxanthin is a natural carotenoid extracted from a marine algae found in… you guessed it — Hawaii! Well, at least the kind that I buy is made from algae harvested here in our islands. The blue-green pigment in certain types of marine micro-algae is […] Estimated 75% of world’s population lactose intolerant
Did you know approximately 75% of earths population is lactose intolerant? Don’t agree with that statement? Reading this may change your mind. Humans are the only species on the planet that drinks milk from other species. And although the statistics vary from race to race and country to country, overall it remains consistent. Most everywhere, […] 9 Healthy Food Scraps You Shouldn’t Be Throwing Away
by Mae Chan – Prevent Disease We waste a third of the world’s food supply every year along with all the energy and water needed to produce it. However, we may be chucking away food scraps that are not scraps at all. Many fruit and vegetables have skins and leaves which we commonly discard that are more […] Panic attacks and anxiety linked to low vitamin B and iron levels
If you suffer from anxiety or develop occasional panic attacks marked by bouts of hyperventilation, you could merely be experiencing the side effects of an underlying nutrient deficiency that is easily correctable, says Jonathan Benson of Natural News. This definitely appears to have been the case with 21 people who participated in a recent study […] The Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening
At this time, many things are changing in the world. We live a time of awakening and desire to change, never seen before. A lot of people become more conscious and aware of issues and practices that have lasted for too long and that must change. Many people now want to take their lives back […] An Avocado a Day Keeps Body Fat Away
Avocado a day keeps the fat away! by Tricia Pingel, NMD – Holistichealingnews.com People are terrified to eat fat. Calorie counting, non-fat diets are a craze in the dieting world, but they make no differentiation between calorie sources. In these diets all calories are created equal, but this is a dietary falsehood. Our bodies need fat. […] Why You Should Stay Away from Canola Oil
There’s an urban legend about canola oil stating it causes teeth to fall out, hair to disappear, lesions to appear, hands and feet to numb, and more horrifying results By Matt Hall — Staff Writer While these consequences are over-exaggerated (and sometimes completely false), we do know canola oil is frequently (and deceivingly) mislabeled as non-GMO, […] Home Remedies For Inflammation
Inflammation is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. It is a definite indiction and often the root cause of an underlying illness, infection, or even arthritis. by Homemade Medicine Inflammation is a natural reaction to injury or infection. And, surprisingly it can also help make your body heal. The affected tissues swell, redden, […] Bronchitis Home Remedies
by Staff – Best Health Magazine Anyone who’s suffered from bronchitis knows what a pain it can be. But if you treat yourself right with these simple home remedies, you can help clear your body up. Your goal when you have bronchitis: Thin the phlegm in your chest and get it moving, so you can cough it […] Do You Truly Know How to Love Yourself?
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by Joseph Bennington-Castro – Everyday Health A Yeast infection (vulvovaginal candidiasis) is the most common type of vaginal infection after bacterial vaginosis, according to a 2007 report in the medical journal The Lancet. Vaginal yeast infections are the result of an overgrowth of the fungus Candida albicans, and less frequently other Candida species, particularly C. glabrata. Treating yeast infections typically requires killing the fungi with antifungal medications […] Join For Free! Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name | 0 |
WILMINGTON, Del. — For decades, many of the nation’s biggest companies staked their futures far from the fraying downtowns of aging East Coast and Midwestern cities. One after another, they decamped for sprawling campuses in the suburbs and exurbs. Now, corporate America is moving in the other direction. In June, McDonald’s joined a long list of companies that are returning to downtown Chicago from suburbs like Oak Brook, Northfield and Schaumburg. Later this month, the top executive team at General Electric — whose wooded campus in Fairfield, Conn. has embodied the quintessential suburban corporate office park since it opened in 1974 — will move to downtown Boston. When the move is completed in 2018, the renovated red brick warehouses that will form part of G. E.’s new headquarters won’t even have a parking lot, let alone a spot reserved for the chief executive. But even as they establish new urban beachheads, business giants like G. E. are also changing the nature of their headquarters, staffing them with a few top employees and a smattering of digital talent, rather than recreating the endless pods they once built in the ’burbs. “Part of it is that cities are more attractive places to live than they were 30 years ago and are more willing to provide tax incentives, and young people want to be there,” said David J. Collis, who teaches corporate strategy at Harvard Business School. “But the trend also represents the deconstruction and disaggregation of the traditional corporate headquarters,” he explained. “The executive suite might be downtown, but you could have the back office and administrative functions in Colorado, the finance guys in Switzerland and the tax team in the U. K. ” Reinforcing the trend, Chemours plans to announce on Tuesday that it is staying here in Wilmington after considering suburban locations, most likely in the headquarters it inherited from DuPont when the chemical giant spun out Chemours last year. Unlike Chicago and Boston, Wilmington’s urban renaissance remains a work in progress, and Chemours was very close to moving to a new home in southern New Jersey or suburban Philadelphia, despite the DuPont family’s deep roots in Wilmington and the state of Delaware. But the company’s chief executive, Mark Vergnano, ultimately came to the same conclusion that leaders of bigger and firms did: To attract younger workers, it helps to be in the city. “We are going through a change in our work force, and we wanted to be where we could attract millennials,” Mr. Vergnano said. “This is a group that likes to be in an urban setting, with access to public transportation. They don’t want to be confined to a building with a cafeteria or be next door to a shopping center. ” To be sure, cash from the State of Delaware and other incentives played an important role in the decision as well. In addition to providing Chemours, which produces a range of industrial chemical products, with a $7. 9 million package of grants, Delaware overhauled its corporate tax code, sacrificing revenue and easing the company’s tax burden as an added lure to stay put. For Wilmington, where the unemployment rate of 5. 7 percent is above both the national average and Delaware’s overall 4. 2 percent level of joblessness, keeping Chemours’s 800 headquarters jobs in the city counts as a major win. “In a more perfect world, states would be competing on the quality of schools, infrastructure, work force and so forth,” said Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware. “We live in a world that’s not perfect, so if other states are competing on the basis of these dollar incentives, we need to be in the same arena. ” In an era of relentless many corporate moves these days coincide with downsizing. Kraft Heinz, for example, had 2, 200 workers when the company was based in Northfield it has 1, 500 now in downtown Chicago. With advanced communications tools making it easier than ever to separate headquarters from other corporate operations, location is increasingly being driven by function. The first 175 members of G. E.’s management team, including Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive, will move to Boston’s Fort Point section on Aug. 22. Even after the move is completed, about 800 G. E. employees will be based there. Hundreds of other workers in functions like human resources, legal and finance will be scattered among G. E’s existing locations in Cincinnati, Norwalk, Conn. and Schenectady, N. Y. The headquarters of Motorola Solutions will start moving to downtown Chicago on Aug. 15, though more workers will stay in suburban Schaumburg than move to the new offices near Union Station. But for the first time in half a century, top executives from the company will again be in downtown Chicago. “Where you work really matters,” said Greg Brown, the chief executive of Motorola Solutions. “No disrespect to Schaumburg, but customers and new hires didn’t want to come to the suburbs an hour outside of Chicago. We wanted energy, vibrancy and diversity, and to accelerate a change in our culture by moving downtown. ” Mr. Brown and most of the executive team will be in the city, along with data scientists and design engineers workaday functions like procurement, training and supply chain management will stay in Schaumburg. Over all, Motorola Solutions will have 1, 100 employees in downtown Chicago, and 1, 600 still in Schaumburg. Unlike many other corporate migrants, the company did not receive any financial incentives to move, Mr. Brown said. “This was the right thing in terms of strategy,” he said. “Millennials want the access and vibrancy of downtown. When we post jobs downtown, we get four or five times the response. ” As for G. E. executives were focused on moving to a city from the beginning of its search for a new headquarters, said Ann R. Klee, director of Boston operations and development for the company. Along with eliminating the parking lot (workers are being encouraged to use public transit) G. E. wanted to do away with security gates and the sense of isolation that characterizes many corporate campuses. “This is going to be the exact opposite,” Ms. Klee said. “We want it to be open and to bring the public in with a museum and exhibits of technology like printers. ” Besides icons like G. E. McDonald’s and Kraft Heinz, venture capital investors and are increasingly looking to urban centers, particularly on the West Coast, said Richard Florida, an urban theorist and professor at the University of Toronto. “The period of companies moving to suburbs and edge cities has ebbed, but I had thought that would continue to locate in nerdistans, like office parks,” he said. But a recent study by Mr. Florida showed more than half of new venture capital flowing into urban neighborhoods, with two San Francisco ZIP codes garnering more than $1 billion each, he said. The return of a top echelon of executives to American cities reflects — and may well reinforce — disparities driven by widening inequality, underscoring how jobs are disappearing in other locales. Over all, there has been a slight pickup in employment and population in the central core of big cities, said Joel Kotkin, an author and urban geographer at Chapman University in California. But many suburbs and neighborhoods are withering, particularly in the Northeast. More distant suburbs and exurbs are still thriving, especially in the Sun Belt. “The elite functions are going downtown,” Mr. Kotkin said. “But at the same time, jobs are moving to the suburbs in places like Dallas, if they’re not leaving the country entirely. ” In Wilmington, local shopkeepers were elated that Chemours decided not to follow its former corporate parent, DuPont, to the suburbs. “Anybody who has a business in downtown Wilmington doesn’t want to lose Chemours,” said Leonard Simon, whose men’s clothing store, Wright Simon, has been around the corner from Chemours since 1952. “I’m thrilled. ” Jeffrey C. Flynn, director of economic development for Wilmington, said that the advantages of city life ultimately proved to be a compelling selling point. “We’re not Philadelphia,” Mr. Flynn said, “but we do have an urban atmosphere. ” | 1 |
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” the great Hippocrates once said. This can sometimes be a torturous realization for me as I contemplate eating something that I know will not serve my body, mind, and spirit well. But if only it were that simple — merely having to decide between a cookie or a piece of fruit, rather than trying to understand how their ingredients may help or harm me. advertisement - learn more Labels in particular are one giant headache, but they can also make a world of difference between choosing a good food and a bad one. Labels on the majority of packaged foods need to meet strict requirements, relaying important information for people with food allergies, exposing food additives, and offering food storage instructions. But with the plethora of food labels out there, how can one keep up? It’s not even a matter of whether you can or not, or even want to or not; you simply need to know what you are putting in your body. We all shop for food, and as we do, whether it be online or in the store, we come across so many ingredients, brands, and ultimately, labels. There’s “cage free” and “humane certification,” there’s “natural”and “no antibiotics,” and then there’s “organic.” All of these labels can tell you important information about how animals are fed and handled, how crops are grown, and even how the workers are treated. They say ignorance is bliss, but when it comes to your health and humanity, the saying doesn’t always hold up. Have you ever seen a video online, listened to a descriptive story, or watched a full-length documentary about the way our food is made and by whom, and been utterly turned off, disgusted, or even beside yourself with anxiety and sadness? There’s a reason such exposures exist: to make people wake up and realize that the system isn’t as cut and dry as healthy and unhealthy. So when it comes to labels, while it can seem like far too much information to comprehend, it remains our duty to ourselves and to our families to learn what each signifies. And it doesn’t even have to be that difficult. advertisement - learn more Ghergich & Co. teamed up with Woodside to create an infographic on food labels in the hopes that they could easily share a go-to guide for consumers to understand exactly what the labels on the food they’re considering buying mean. They cover terms like cage free, certified humane, free range, free roaming, grass fed, and wild caught. Certified Fair Trade products, for instance, are made in safe and healthy working conditions. Both the farmers and producers receive a fair price and have a voice in how their workplace is run. “Natural,” on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily hold up to what consumers may assume. While these products don’t contain artificial ingredients or added colour and are minimally processed, growth hormones can still be used, they’re not always organic, and they don’t require that animals are raised in open space, either. Take a closer look at the following infographic to learn some valuable truths and important information for you to consider the next time you go grocery shopping.
The Sacred Science follows eight people from around the world, with varying physical and psychological illnesses, as they embark on a one-month healing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle.
You can watch this documentary film FREE for 10 days by clicking here.
"If “Survivor” was actually real and had stakes worth caring about, it would be what happens here, and “The Sacred Science” hopefully is merely one in a long line of exciting endeavors from this group." - Billy Okeefe, McClatchy Tribune | 0 |
Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of a corrupt political system won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption.
Let’s set aside Hillary Clinton as an individual and consider her as the perfection of a corrupt political system. As I noted yesterday, Politics As Usual Is Dead , and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate product of the political system that is disintegrating before our eyes.
The corruption of pay-to-play and the commingling of public and private influence is not the failing of an individual–it is the logical conclusion of a thoroughly corrupt political system.
Given the incentives built into politics as usual , public/private pay-to-play doesn’t just make sense–it is the only possible maximization of the political system .
Cobble together a multi-million dollar private foundation, millions of dollars in speaking fees from big-money contributors, conflicts of interest, the secrecy of private email servers, pay-to-play schemes and corrupted loyalists planted in the Department of Justice, and the inevitable result is a politics as usual money-harvesting machine that lays waste to the nation, supporters and critics alike.
All the Clintons did is assemble the parts more effectively than anyone else. Now that the machine has scooped up hundreds of millions of dollars in “contributions” and other loot, vested interests and corrupted loyalists within the federal government will do anything to protect the machine and its vast flow of funds.
The nation’s political system needs a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of politics as usual won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption.
That will require rooting out the incentives that made the Clintons’ perfection of corruption both logical and inevitable. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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Contributed by Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds . | 0 |
Do you have an unhealthy skin that is prone to acne, shingles, rosacea and other common women’s skin problems? If so, then it is probably because your body is deficient in certain vitamins. Vitamins... | 0 |
As it turns out – according to studies— our planets magnetic field could flip in our lifetime. According to experts , the position of the South Pole has shifted and is not located precisely at Antarctica, the North Pole is also believed to be ‘racing’ across the Arctic Ocean. Earth’s magnetic field appears to be collapsing which could severely damage our climate and WIPE OUT power grids across the world.
Our planet’s magnetic field exists because Earth has a massive ‘ball of iron’ at its core which is surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal.
As the earth’s magnetic field varies over time, the positions of the north and south magnetic poles gradually change. The magnetic declination at a given location also changes over time. As it turns out a lot has changed in the last couple of hundred years, and to see what we are taking about visit NOAA and take a look at Historical Magnetic Declination .
Interestingly, according to previous studies, Earth’s magnetic field – which shields our planet from blasts of deadly solar radiation has dangerously weakened in the last couple of years.
According to reports from the European Space Agency , the biggest weak spots seen in the magnetic field are located in the western hemisphere.
Experts are unsure why the magnetic field is weakening but one of the MOST LIKELY reasons is that our planets magnetic poles are getting ready to flip said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA’s Swarm mission manager.
Researchers have concluded that the magnetic field had diminished at a rate of around five percent per century. However, new studies who that the magnetic field is weakening at an accelerated rate of five percent per decade –meaning that it is deteriorating five times faster than previously believed.
If we take a look at the animation of secular variation in geomagnetic total intensity for the last 400 years, we will see that the magnetic field began weakening in 1600 .
Animation of secular variation in geomagnetic total intensity for the last 400 years:
Furthermore, the magnetic field weakened a staggering 10 percent from the 1800’s to 2000.
Ok so… what would happen if it really flips? According to experts, if the pole switch does happen the entire planet and everything on it will become exposed to solar winds which could punch giant holes into the ozone layer which in turn could have a devastating effect on mankind. If the planet’s Magnetosphere starts collapsing power grids could collapse, the weather would abruptly change and humans would have serious health risks.
According to reports from the European Space Agency, as of 2014 the magnetic field is continuing to weaken rapidly . With the help of SWARM, scientists have obtained unprecedented insights into the complex workings of Earth’s magnetic field. Reports show that the general trend of the magnetic field is weakening and the most dramatic declines are present over the Western Hemisphere.
The latest measurements also confirm the movement of magnetic North towards Siberia. It is believed that the magnetic field is speeding away at a rate of about 40 miles per year.
But what is most terrifying is perhaps a study that warns that magnetic reversals lead to extinction events. The highlights of the study indicate :
Geomagnetic field reversal substantially weakens the protection for the atmosphere. Solar wind energizes more oxygen ions to escape when geomagnetic field is weakened. Oxygen escape may explain the drop of atmospheric level during mass extinction. The causal relation between reversal and mass extinction should be “many-to-one”. The simulated oxygen escape rate based on knowledge of Mars support our hypothesis. Furthermore, it is believed that magnetic reversals can be responsible for floods of biblical proportions as you can see in the video below:
Source: EWAO
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According to the JASTA law which allows government and leaders of foreign governments’ harassment by families of victims of the terrorist attacks, it is so likely that Saudi king be tried. According to experts, the passing of JASTA may cause international chaos. Especially after some governments threat they will pass similar legislation to prosecute US officials if US do so.
Is it possible that Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz being tried for potential liability in events of September 11? The trial is possible by the legislation of Jasta. By Jasta law the families of the victims could sue governments and this will lead to chaos in international relations.
In late September, United States Congress ignored President Obama’s advice and his veto and passed JASTA law, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. This law made US-Saudi relation more chaotic.
US confederate states expressed concern to JASTA legislation
Not just Saudi Arabia expressed concerns to JASTA, US confederate states also expressed concern about breaking the US quasi-sacred treaty with Saudi Arabia and asked for appealing. France and the Netherlands have threatened to pass similar laws which lead to a series of judicial complaints against USA and its military and diplomacy allies.
John Kerry, United States Secretary of State, showed his displeasure and called it a huge risk. A few days ago Kerry and Adel al-Jubeir discussed about the ramifications of JASTA and pointed out the negative impact on the diplomatic immunity of US interests. He said: “there are ways to fix the problem.” While experts agreed that it is only possible to reduce the strength of America in complaining by circumvent the law.
Even Saudi minister warned the danger of chaos in the international system.
According to Hussein ibish, an expert on the Persian Gulf littoral states, JASTA will cause chaos at the international level.
Last September, European Union warned: “Other countries may also want to pass similar legislation and discuss impunity. This threat was an addition written letters to US government.
Also France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom representatives discussed about the feedback of this law. The Gulf littoral states, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Japan Protested against JASTA.
The Saudi-US Relations in danger of Jasta
Bernard Haykel, Princeton University Professor, said: “If Saudi king does not appear in New York court to be interrogated, warrant will be issued against Saudi Arabia.” Riyadh and Washington relations declined over the past three years especially with Obama's policies on Syria.” JASTA shows Saudi ruling that Obama turned his back to its allies in the Middle East,” he added.
Riyadh strictly denies his involvement in 9/11, While 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia. Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, also comments:” America wants to invade his most loyal friend over the past 70 years.”
Jasta law does not refer to Saudi Arabia. It would allow families of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue the perpetrators of the attack. | 0 |
Physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking has predicted that mankind will have to populate another planet within 100 years to survive. [Hawking made the prediction in an upcoming documentary titled Expedition New Earth, which the BBC has teased with Hawking’s comments. “Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive,” reiterated the BBC in a statement. “With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious. ” Hawking has become known for his futurist predictions, in 2014 he also claimed that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. ” Michael Guillen Ph. D. a former science editor for ABC News, disputed Hawking’s prediction in an article for Fox News, claiming that the author has “become a celebrity, who’s flung off the chains of academic rigor to make sensational pronouncements. ” “Does Stephen really expect to be taken seriously? I doubt it,” Guillen proclaimed. “Despite everything, he is too smart for that. My impression is he’s become the Donald Trump of science, given to saying outrageous things for the fun of it and to attract attention. ” “Apart from being spectacularly unscientific, his prophecy is also wrongheaded,” he continued. “Hawking says we ought to escape to Mars. Interestingly, some scientists think once lived on the Red Planet. But a global catastrophe produced what we see today, a moribund world lacking a thick, atmosphere — wanting for greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to keep warm. ” Guillen added that “Winter temperatures can dip below minus 195 degrees Fahrenheit and summer temperatures barely reach 70 degrees,” before declaring that “for the adventure, I’d go to Mars this minute. But for refuge? !” “No thanks, Stephen. I’m not giving up on Earth,” he concluded. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Penguin Random House will publish coming books by former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama, the publishing company announced Tuesday night, concluding a heated auction among multiple publishers. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but publishing industry executives with knowledge of the bidding process said it probably stretched well into eight figures. Robert B. Barnett and Deneen C. Howell of Williams Connolly represented the Obamas. Penguin Random House acquired world rights to the books, and worldwide sales could be substantial. No decision has been made yet as to which of the company’s major imprints — which include Random House, Doubleday, Alfred A. Knopf and Crown — will publish the books. Mr. Obama’s previous books were published by Crown, which also published Mrs. Obama’s book “American Grown,” about the White House garden. A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House would not say whether the books would be memoirs and referred questions to representatives of the Obamas. Speculation about the Obamas’ books and how much they would sell for have been circulating in the industry in recent weeks, as executives at the top publishing houses met separately with the former president and first lady. Some publishing executives who followed the bidding process said that the opening offers for Mr. Obama’s book alone were in the $18 million to $20 million range. The publisher plans to donate one million books in the Obama family’s name to First Book, a nonprofit organization that provides books to disadvantaged children, and it will continue to provide digital copies to Open eBooks, which grew out of the 2016 White House digital education initiative. The Obamas also plan to donate part of their advances to charity, including the Obama Foundation. “We are absolutely thrilled to continue our publishing partnership with President and Mrs. Obama,” Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, said in a statement. “With their words and their leadership, they changed the world, and every day, with the books we publish at Penguin Random House, we strive to do the same. Now, we are very much looking forward to working together with President and Mrs. Obama to make each of their books global publishing events of unprecedented scope and significance. ” The Obamas’ advance is likely to exceed even the stratospheric figures that other recent presidents and first ladies have received. Former president Bill Clinton sold his memoir “My Life” for more than $10 million, and Hillary Clinton reportedly received an $8 million advance from Simon Schuster for her memoir “Living History. ” George W. Bush’s memoir “Decision Points,” became a hit, selling about two million copies and earning him an estimated $10 million. (Mr. Barnett, a lawyer, has handled many of these lucrative deals and represents some of the capital’s most powerful players, including the Clintons Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush Speaker Paul D. Ryan and former Vice President Dick Cheney.) It is unusual, however, for a former president and first lady to make a collective deal for their memoirs, and some publishing industry insiders said that early on the process, it appeared that the books were going to be auctioned separately. (It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the books will be published by different imprints in the Penguin Random House conglomerate, which could also help the company absorb the cost of a large advance, by sharing it between imprints.) Mr. Obama has a proven track record in publishing as an author of multiple best sellers. His three books — “Dreams From My Father,” “The Audacity of Hope” and “Of Thee I Sing” — have sold more than four million copies. According to financial disclosures, he earned more than $10 million from those titles. Reviews have praised him as a gifted prose stylist. But a postpresidential memoir has even greater potential to be a critical and commercial hit. Mr. Obama kept a journal during his time in office, which suggests his memoir could include moments that were captured as major events unfolded. A frank discussion of his time in the White House, and of issues like race relations in America, could reach an even wider audience, becoming a worldwide blockbuster. Penguin Random House, a global publishing house with more than 250 imprints, has worldwide rights to the books, which means the company can make a good deal of money overseas and in translation. For the Obamas, the books may be valuable beyond the advances. The deal was announced, probably coincidentally but somewhat awkwardly, on the night that President Trump gave his first address before Congress. These books could provide a chance to reframe and highlight the former president’s legacy, at a moment when a new Republican administration is making an effort to dismantle some of his signature legislation. | 1 |
Trump is The Lesser Evil Because Hes Such a Narcissist By Prof. Michael Hudson
She a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons
Well, both Hillary and Donald Trump say the election is about the lesser evil. So, if thats true, whos the greater evil? Posted November 08, 2016
Ross Ashcroft: Youve got two candidates in the U.S. and one is very pro-Wall Street, specifically Goldman Sachs. She might as well be on the payroll. In fact, she is on the payroll. And the other is a rent-seeker -in-chief, and hes built real estate and used the banks. So youve got Trump and youve got Clinton. Both of them are in bed with Wall Street, fundamentally. But the people get it now.
Michael Hudson: Well, I think Hillary Clinton has a 79 percent disapproval rating, and Trump has an 81 percent disapproval rating. So you have the two most unpopular politicians in the United States as the choice. So basically, the voters in the United States are given a choice: Yes,Yes, please, and Yes, thank you. I think Trump missed his big chance to make a populist push. Instead of saying hes going to cut taxes on Wall Street, he can say, Look, I stiffed the banks. I went bankrupt four or six times. I screwed the banks and they didnt get paid and I can screw the banks for you people. Vote for me. I know how to do it.
Ashcroft: Yes, hes missed that.
Hudson: I think that would have been his winning ploy.
Ashcroft: You should be his campaign strategist.
Hudson: Well, except I dont think Id have many friends if I worked for Donald Trump. And we dont know that if he agreed with me today what hed do tomorrow. Thats part of the problem. He doesnt play well with colleagues.
Ashcroft: You sort of prefer him thoughwould that be right? Because he doesnt play well with colleagues, because hes awkward, because hes a loner, becausebecause youre saying you dont want a resourceful, intelligent and influential type in the job because the jobs so powerful.
Hudson: Well, both Hillary and Donald Trump say the election is about the lesser evil. So, if thats true, whos the greater evil? Hillary has a whole crowd behind herthe neocons, who basically want to be very confrontational toward Russia and continue what she was doing in Libya to Syriamilitarily confrontational. Or you have Donald Trump, who doesnt really know who he can appoint and whether he can get enough people to work with him. So if the direction of America is to try to hold on to a unipolar worldmilitarily confrontationalyou want a president who is least able to do evil. And theres no question, Trump is the lesser evil because hes such a narcissist, and really sort of a blank slate. And Id rather take a pig in a poke than someone whoyou already know what Hillary will do. Shell do what the husband does. And itsthe Clintons have corrupted the Democratic Party. Thats what Bernie Sanders ran on against her
Ashcroft: And did very well.
Hudson: And did very well. But then he didnt realize that there really cannot be any progress by the labor unions, or consumers, or the 99 percent as long as the Democratic Party is controlled totally by Wall Street and by the Robert Rubin gang that they brought in. And theyre really like a mafia gang. If you think the financial sector and the banking sector as crimeand after all, remember, theyve paid billions and billions of dollars in civil fines without a single banker being sent to jailthats what a criminal wants to do. When the criminals take control of the justice system and take over the police force and bribe the judgesall the Hollywood movies in the 1930s were thatthen youve got the criminals in control. And youve got the financial sector criminalized. Thats what my colleague Bill Black at the University of Missouri at Kansas City has been emphasizing, and hes convinced all of us that the business plan of the big banksCitibank, Bank of America, weve just got, and Wells Fargo, with all of the huge frauds that are coming outthat was their business plan: fraud. And people are afraid to say that fraud is banking. Theyre afraid to say just exactly what the evidence is because its considered impolite to talk about reality.
Ashcroft: What sort of president then will Hillary Clinton be?
Hudson: A dictator. She a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons in the secretary of state, in the defense department, appointing Wall Street people in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and the class war will really break out very explicitly. And shellas Warren Buffet said, there is a class war and were winning it.
Ashcroft: As in the one percent are winning it.
Hudson: The one percent are winning it. And she will try to use the rhetoric to tell people: Nothing to see here folks. Keep on moving, while the economy goes down and down and she cashes in as shes been doing all along, richer and richer, and if shes president, there will not be an investigator of the criminal conflict of interest of the Bill Clinton Foundation, of pay-to-play. Youll have a presidency in which corporations who pay the Clintons will be able to set policy. Whoever has the money to buy the politicians will buy control of policy because elections have been privatized and made part of the market economy in the United States. Thats what the Citizens United Supreme Court case was all about.
Ashcroft: So thats another example of rent-seeking.
Hudson: Yes, political payoffs. And thats the largest rent-seeking of all. Basically, for paying one penny, you get a whole dollars worth of special privileges. And rent is really payment for a privilege. Its for a privilege thats created from the private sector. And basically as Balzac said, every great fortune originates in a great theft that isnt considered a great theft anymore because its all viewed as part of the market. Its viewed as if thats how the world works. So youll have a theft taking place and the Clintons will say, Thats just how the world operates and GDP is going up because were getting richer, enough to offset the degree by which you 99 percent are getting poor. | 0 |
« on: Today at 08:41:54 PM » Solar Winds Spur Geomagnetic Storm That May Affect Power 25 October 2016 , by Brian K Sullivan (Bloomberg) - Geomagnetic storms can cause voltage corrections, false alarms- Space weather center lowered alert to moderate level storm Also see: | 0 |
Email Jane Goodall has dedicated her life to studying primates, and the insights she has gained into our evolutionary ancestors are truly powerful. Prepare to have your breath taken away by Dr. Goodall’s words.
1. Chimps will betray their own to get their hands on Italian food: “As with all chimps, the ones I studied in Gombe were absolutely obsessed with Italian food and would go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on some. One day, the troop’s alpha male, whom I called Goliath, managed to acquire a plate of linguine. Humphrey, a younger male, saw Goliath’s linguine and became incredibly jealous. He offered to give Goliath his most prized possession—a vacant hornet nest that he enjoyed having sex with—in exchange for the linguine, but Goliath declined, as he already had a hornet nest of his own. Desperate to eat the linguine, Humphrey threw some pebbles to divert Goliath’s attention, then snuck up behind him and ripped his head off, allowing him to take the Italian food from his superior. It was a gruesome yet utterly fascinating scene.”
2. When chimpanzee communities encounter a Japanese researcher, they will try to put them in jail: “My colleague, Dr. Kiyoshi Yamamoto, discovered this when chimps dragged him from his tent in the middle of the night down to the local prison. The apes would then approach the town’s sheriff with their hands out, expecting a food reward. It was truly shocking to learn that chimpanzees are capable of such things. Nature is not always pretty.”
3. Most chimps can vocalize the phrase “oh no”: “They like to yell it while they defecate.” 4. Chimps don’t like it when you blow up one of their family members with a grenade: “One of my young researchers, Sofia Manfredi, discovered this after rolling an active grenade into a ditch where several male siblings were sharing a lunch of termites and soup. The grenade exploded the youngest one into a red mist of viscera and bone, and, curiously, the other brothers seemed to become rather disheartened.”
5. Chimps revere hippos: “When they become aware of a hippo in the vicinity, chimps stop whatever they’re doing and take turns honoring the beast. They bring offerings of plump salamanders, crushed soda cans, and other treasures they’ve found in the dirt, and they join together in an angelic chorus of growls to soothe the hippo. New mothers will rub their infants against the hippo’s groin to bless them with his virility. The troop’s elders will break off their incisors with a rock and fashion a crude crown of teeth for the hippo to wear. If the hippo becomes aggressive towards them, they do not resist; in fact, it is an honor for them to be crushed by the hippo, and they will often place their heads on the ground next to his hooves in hopes that he might accidentally stomp their skulls flat.”
6. If a chimp dunks its head into a bucket of horchata for an hour, it will die: “Whenever chimps discover a large pail of horchata in the forest, the eldest female of the group will approach it and slowly lower her head into the liquid, remaining there for an hour or more until another chimp yanks her out of it. It was fascinating to observe the way their social structure altered afterwards, with the next eldest female unfailingly rising up to lead the group’s children in licking the sweet rice milk from their deceased matriarch’s body.” | 0 |
. Alien-Looking Skull From Peruvian Desert Awaits Further Investigation We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many o... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/alien-looking-skull-from-peruvian.html We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many others, in a cave in the southern desert of Peru; exact location to be given, hopefully, in the future. The underside of the skull (full set of images below) indicates that this artifact is bone, about 3 to 5 mm thick, and still has a stiff, grey, skin-like material attached to it. Note the very narrow foramen magnum aperture where presumably a very thin vertebral system once entered the skull. The adult hand indicates the size of the specimen, and note that it is relatively bilaterally symmetrical, and that the skull is greatly elongated.Though easy to state that it is a complex fake, the caretaker and those that presumably found it, along with other specimens, have no access to artisans or taxidermists that could have made them. The caretaker removed some of the bone from the underpart of the skull and exposed what is presumably marrow. This, as well as the bone and skin can be sampled for DNA and radiocarbon testing in prominent laboratories in North America that we are working with already. The television series Ancient Aliens has shown initial interest in the specimen, and more specimens like this, from the same location may soon be available for observation and study. Here's the full set of images from Brien Foerster's website : Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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WASHINGTON — Steven Mnuchin, a financier with deep roots on Wall Street and in Hollywood but no government experience, is expected to be named Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary as soon as Wednesday, people close to the transition say. Mr. Mnuchin, 53, was the national finance chairman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, and his selection would elevate a wealthy loyalist to a pivotal economic post. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner, before creating his own hedge fund, moving to the West Coast and entering the first rank of movie financiers by bankrolling hits like the “ ” franchise and “Avatar. ” If confirmed, Mr. Mnuchin would play a critical role in carrying out Mr. Trump’s promised economic policy changes, including the enactment of a large package of tax cuts, sweeping changes to foreign trade agreements and the fulfillment of a huge new infrastructure spending program. He could also help lead any efforts to roll back President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and the administration’s opening to Cuba by reimposing sanctions on Tehran and Havana. Mr. Mnuchin’s selection fits uneasily with much of Mr. Trump’s campaign attacks on the financial industry. Mr. Trump, in a campaign ad intended as a closing argument, portrayed the chief executive of Goldman Sachs as the personification of a global elite that the ad said had “robbed our working class. ” The selection of Mr. Mnuchin (pronounced ) came as Mr. Trump moved on Tuesday to fill the ranks of his domestic policy team with seasoned Washington insiders chosen to help smooth the way in Congress for his two marquee campaign promises: the repeal of Mr. Obama’s health insurance coverage law and the large package to repair infrastructure, which could reach $1 trillion. Mr. Trump also took time Tuesday night to have dinner with Mitt Romney, whose name has been mentioned as a potential secretary of state, and who has become a source of contention among members of the transition team. Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who called Mr. Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” during the Republican primaries, sat down for a meal Tuesday night at a Michelin restaurant at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan. Mr. Romney emerged several hours later to heap compliments on the who has bristled privately that Mr. Romney never apologized for insulting him during the race. There was no apology, but Mr. Romney said he had been impressed by Mr. Trump’s victory speech on election night, his transition effort and his personnel decisions. “He did something I tried to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing: He won the general election,” Mr. Romney told reporters. The appointments on Tuesday included Elaine L. Chao — a veteran of past Republican administrations who is married to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader — as transportation secretary. She will be charged with steering the infrastructure initiative through a divided Congress and the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Trump also announced that he would nominate Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, a physician who has been a fierce opponent of the health care law, as his secretary of health and human services — tasked with leading his efforts to dismantle the measure. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump will announce Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor, as his secretary of commerce, according to the transition team. The moves suggested that Mr. Trump was seeking experienced policy makers who have deep relationships in Washington to shepherd his most sweeping pledges. In Ms. Chao, Mr. Trump is turning to a former secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. Her experience on Capitol Hill will be necessary to take on what will have to be a bipartisan infrastructure effort in Congress. Aides said Mr. Trump’s choice of Mr. Price underscored the ’s commitment to move swiftly — as early as his first day in office — to roll back the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, and replace it. Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, brings a third woman to positions in a Trump administration and an additional degree of diversity to the ’s team, so far filled largely with conservative white men who have scoffed at political convention. Democrats said they were cautiously optimistic about working with Ms. Chao to forge a bipartisan infrastructure deal. “I hope Secretary Chao shares that ambitious goal and is willing to work with Democrats to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs along the way,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who is set to become the new minority leader. But Ms. Chao was quickly criticized by liberal groups who said she was emblematic of the very political establishment Mr. Trump had promised to dismantle. Some policy analysts argued that as labor secretary she had inadequately protected employee rights, and the Center for American Progress called her selection an “ominous sign for workers. ” The selection of Mr. Price, who has served in Congress since 2005, revealed deeper partisan divisions. Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, called Mr. Price “a brilliant choice,” adding, “I’m glad that we’ll have a doctor who knows health care inside and out leading the way. ” But Democrats and their allies voiced alarm. Richard J. Fiesta, the executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, which represents retired union members, said he was “horrified” by the selection of Mr. Price. Marcia D. Greenberger, a president of the National Women’s Law Center, a research and advocacy group, said Mr. Price “would have a devastating impact on women’s health. ” In Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Trump has an ally whose nomination is expected to be well received on Wall Street, a number of traders and bankers contacted on Tuesday said. Since Mr. Trump’s victory, United States equity markets have hit record highs, with financial institutions leading the way. Having a Treasury secretary with broad experience as a financier is likely to sustain the view that a Trump administration will look favorably on Wall Street, not least in terms of pulling back some regulations put in place by Mr. Obama. Mr. Mnuchin was an early supporter of Mr. Trump. When Mr. Trump won New York’s Republican presidential primary contest in April, Mr. Mnuchin attended the victory party. The next day, he accepted Mr. Trump’s invitation to become the campaign’s national finance chairman. Mr. Mnuchin, the son of a Goldman Sachs partner, joined the firm after graduating from Yale. He worked there for 17 years, rising to oversee trading in government securities and mortgage bonds. He would be the third Goldman Sachs alumnus to serve as Treasury secretary, and the announcement of his appointment drew swift condemnation from liberal groups who said he had cashed in on the country’s financial collapse. “He purchased a bank for pennies on the dollar and then aggressively foreclosed on tens of thousands of families,” Jon Green, a spokesman for the Take on Wall Street campaign, said in a statement. “Anyone concerned about Wall Street billionaires rigging the economy should be terrified by the prospect of a Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. ” The group was apparently referring to Mr. Mnuchin’s role in 2009 in a group that bought the failed California mortgage lender IndyMac from the government. He became the chairman of the company, renamed OneWest, which was ultimately sold to CIT, the nation’s largest lender, in 2015 for more than twice the price the group had paid. During Mr. Mnuchin’s tenure, OneWest faced allegations that it had foreclosed improperly on some borrowers. groups also filed a complaint with the federal government, claiming that OneWest was not meeting its legal obligation to make loans in minority neighborhoods. Mr. Mnuchin was the latest in a string of wealthy donors whom Mr. Trump has selected for top posts in his cabinet, including Mr. Ross Todd Ricketts, a Republican megadonor and an owner of the Chicago Cubs, who is expected to be the deputy commerce secretary and Betsy DeVos, a school choice activist and Republican who he announced would be his education secretary. Mr. Mnuchin has conducted past business deals with the — but not always under the best of circumstances. Mr. Mnuchin’s hedge fund, Dune Capital Management, helped finance construction of a Trump project in Chicago. In 2008, Mr. Trump sued Dune and other lenders to extend the loan terms. The parties ultimately settled. The selections on Tuesday came as Mr. Trump huddled with advisers and potential cabinet officials in Trump Tower in Manhattan. Among the issues is whether Mr. Trump should name Mr. Romney as his secretary of state. After their dinner, Mr. Romney told reporters that Mr. Trump “continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together, and his vision is something which obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way. ” He said Mr. Trump’s conduct since winning the election gives “me increasing hope that Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future. ” | 1 |
Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul ( ) said he wanted to know if presidential candidates were unmasked by the Obama administration for political purposes. Paul said, “I’ve sent several letters to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee and also the White House asking political figures were presidential candidates unmasked by the Obama administration? If the Obama administration used intelligence for political purposes, this is a really, really serious abuse of power and must be investigated. There are rumors swirling about Susan Rice. There are rumors now swirling about Samantha Powers. So we need to know. Were they actually looking into people’s phone calls for political purposes? If that happened, really, we have to do something about it. We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. ” He continued, “We cannot have anybody in the intelligence community — they have such power to suck up every bit of every transmission of every communication we ever made — We can’t have them releasing classified information to the public. ” He added, “We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. So, yes, absolutely from top to bottom we need a reform, and we need to go in and say the American people need to have oversight of this because we can’t let them listen to legislators phone calls or the president’s phone calls and blackmail the president. Something has to change. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The bespectacled teenager in the gray A. C. L. U. hoodie and cargo pants stood, back pressed against a fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, under a sign saying “No Trespassing, Authorized Personnel Only. ” The White House, illuminated at night, cast a glow over who, having just wrapped up a protest against President Trump, waited in line to pay homage to Gavin Grimm. Mr. Grimm looked a little flustered. “Absolutely humbled,” he pronounced himself, as his admirers thanked him for being brave. With Mr. Trump’s decision this week to rescind protections for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, the next stop is the Supreme Court, where Mr. Grimm — an engaging yet slightly awkward young man — is the lead plaintiff in a case that could settle the contentious “bathroom debate. ” Amid a thicket of conflicting state laws and local school policies on bathroom use, the suit, which pits Mr. Grimm against his school board in Gloucester County, Va. could greatly expand transgender rights — or roll them back. Mr. Trump has portrayed the issue as one of states’ rights, and already the country’s transgender students face differing realities depending on their school. Some are restricted to the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate. Others are not. Then there are the students like Mr. Grimm, who have had separate facilities set aside for them. At issue in Mr. Grimm’s case is whether Title IX, a provision in a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money, also bans discrimination based on gender identity. President Barack Obama concluded that it did. Despite Mr. Trump’s action, lawyers for both Mr. Grimm and the school board said Thursday that they expected the case to go forward, with oral arguments set for March 28 and school officials across the country awaiting the result. “No one was in a rush to bring this case to the Supreme Court,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Grimm. “Gavin didn’t choose this fight this fight happened to Gavin. But now that we are here, lives are at stake, and they are at stake in a way that is even more acute because you don’t have a federal government anymore to protect us. ” For Mr. Grimm, who said he knew he was a boy “as soon as I was aware of the difference between boys and girls,” the case amounts to a crash course in government and media relations. It bears his initials, G. G. because he is a minor, and the name of his mother, Deirdre. At home in rural Gloucester, he is a kid with a pet pig named Esmeralda, a geek’s love of Pokémon cards and Facebook friends. He wears $12 sneakers from Walmart and likes eating at Fuddruckers because the name sounds funny. He is applying for college, but doesn’t want to talk about it. But here in the nation’s capital and in big cities around the country, Mr. Grimm is now a hot property, the new face of the transgender rights movement. Laverne Cox, the actress and activist, gave him a public at the Grammys. (“Everyone, please Google ‘Gavin Grimm,’” she said.) After his appearance here Wednesday night, he dashed off to New York to appear Thursday morning on ABC’s “The View. ” At the protest here Wednesday night, he was the star speaker, besieged with teary hugs and cellphone selfies. The mother of a transgender child burst into tears when she saw him. A government lawyer shook his hand. Activists posed for pictures. Suddenly, he is hearing his name mentioned in the same breath as Norma McCorvey, the eponymous plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that established a national right to abortion (and who died last week) and Jim Obergefell, whose case led to the legalization of marriage. Mr. Grimm looked at the thought. “I just hope I do it justice,” he said quietly. When Mr. Grimm was about 12 or 13, he said, he was able to put a name to what he was feeling and recognized himself as transgender. He came out first to his friends, which was easier than telling his parents. For the family, it was a jolt, his mother said. It made her question preachers — she eventually left her church — but strengthened her faith. “God gave me this child to open my heart and my mind,” Mrs. Grimm, a nurse, said. In 2014, when Mr. Grimm was 15 and starting his sophomore year, the family told his school he was transgender. Administrators were supportive at first and allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom. But amid an uproar from some parents and students, and after two tense school board meetings, the board barred Mr. Grimm from using the boys’ bathrooms and instead adopted a policy requiring transgender youth to use separate “single user” restrooms. The school now has three such restrooms, but two are in refurbished utility closets, said Mr. Block, the A. C. L. U. lawyer. Kyle Duncan, a lawyer for the school board, said the board “agonized” as it sought a thoughtful way to accommodate Mr. Grimm while protecting students who felt uncomfortable. “This is a sensitive and difficult issue in which everyone’s privacy rights need to be respected,” he said. But Mr. Block said that Mr. Grimm had been singled out for “classic sex discrimination. ” Mrs. Grimm was more pointed: “This school board has targeted my child. ” Her son did not always have such aplomb. Before he began “living authentically,” his mother said, he was introverted, often retreating to his room. She winces at the times she tried to curl his hair and make him wear dresses. Mr. Grimm is, by all accounts, the perfect plaintiff, poised beyond his years. He knows how to deflect unwanted lines of questioning (he will not talk about his twin brother, friends or teachers) and is unfailingly polite in replying to intimate queries about his bathroom habits (“If I have to go, I go to the nurse’s restroom,” he told a local television reporter on Wednesday night) and his emotions (“It’s incredibly frustrating, it’s embarrassing, it’s very uncomfortable. I have this neon sign above my head that says I’m different from my peers”). But at heart, he is still a kid. Once, while touring the National Archives here, Mr. Grimm excitedly played Pokémon Go in front of the Declaration of Independence, as Bill Farrar, a spokesman for the A. C. L. U.’s Virginia affiliate, patiently tried to remind him that he was probably “the only person here who has a legal proceeding before the Supreme Court. ” The two have bonded over hours of travel, including a dash from Gloucester to Washington on Wednesday. Mr. Grimm stuffed his belongings in a white trash bag, sticking in a dress shirt at the last minute, which proved handy for “The View. ” Because Mr. Grimm is to graduate this year, it is unlikely that he will benefit if the court finds in his favor. And legal experts say that is a big if. The Supreme Court could rule narrowly, send the case back to the appeals court for further review, or decide to wait until similar suits percolate through the federal court system. And with just eight justices on the court — confirmation hearings for Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the ninth seat, are scheduled to begin March 20 — the justices might be inclined to wait. “There are many reasons not to resolve this issue now,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, who has followed the case. But Vanita Gupta, who ran the Civil Rights Division in Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and helped write the directive that Mr. Trump rescinded, said the Grimm case had already advanced the cause of transgender rights, just by raising awareness. “There has been such social and cultural change in the hearts and minds of people in this country,” she said, “and I think that’s only going to grow, even if there is a legal setback. ” Whatever happens, Mr. Grimm appears destined for a life of advocacy. He says he feels a heavy burden standing up for other transgender people, knowing that everyone is different. He worries that other young people will not have the support that he has had. While he is not much on school (he is taking only the two courses he needs to graduate) he would like to be a geneticist. He wants to know how the brain works. But asking him about his career plans brings a answer — wry and pointed. “I want to be,” he said, “someone who doesn’t have to talk about where he is going to use the bathroom. ” | 1 |
WARSAW — President Obama expressed optimism on Saturday that the killings of young black men and white police officers this week have not left the United States as racially divided as it was during the strife and riots that racked the country in the 1960s. Speaking in Warsaw at the conclusion of a security summit meeting with European leaders, Mr. Obama said the United States had suffered “a tough week,” but he pledged to try to build upon good will among protesters and police officers alike. “There is sorrow, there is anger, there is confusion about next steps,” Mr. Obama said at the start of a news conference. “But there is unity in recognizing that this is not how we want our communities to operate. This is not who we want to be as Americans. ” The president said he would visit Dallas early next week to pay homage to the police officers who were killed there. And he said he would invite activists, police officials and others to the White House next week to seek “constructive actions that are actually going to make a difference. ” Mr. Obama acknowledged that the killings had unleashed some harsh speech, and he urged people of all points of view to be careful in how they express their opinions. But he said he believed that most people were simply saddened by the lives lost. “When we start suggesting that somehow there is this enormous polarization and we’re back to the situation in the 1960s — that’s just not true,” Mr. Obama said. “You’re not seeing riots, and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully. ” Asked to comment on how he will be remembered for dealing with racial issues, Mr. Obama said he would prefer to leave that question to historians. But he then continued to discuss, with some emotion, how he has sought to confront the divisive issue. He said he has tried to speak honestly about race in ways that he hoped would help people reach solutions. “More than anything, what I hope is that my voice has tried to get all of us as Americans to understand the difficult legacy of race,” Mr. Obama said. “If my voice has been true, and positive, then my hope would be that it may not fix everything right away, but it surfaces problems, it frames them, it allows us to wrestle with these issues,” he added. “I’d like to think that, as best as I could, I have been true in speaking about these issues. ” Mr. Obama deflected questions about the motives of the man who shot the police officers in Dallas. But he said whatever the motive might have been, people should not assume that the gunman speaks for Americans protesting police killings or anyone else. He said that the white individual who is charged in the shooting of nine black parishioners in South Carolina did not represent the views of all white Americans. And Mr. Obama said that people should not make the assumption that a “troubled Muslim individual” who engages in a shooting represents all Muslims. “I think the danger is that we somehow suggest that the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country,” he said. “It doesn’t. ” The president also defended his mention of the need for new gun laws in the hours after the shooting in Dallas. He said the easy availability of guns in America was “a contributing factor” to the country’s gun violence. Critics have charged that Mr. Obama should not have raised what they say is a political issue in the moments after the shooting, calling it an insult to the memory of those killed and to the families of the dead who were still in the early stages of mourning. The president rejected that accusation and vowed to continue talking about the issue. “Part of what’s creating tensions between communities and police is the fact that police have a really difficult time in communities where they know guns are everywhere,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m not going to stop talking about it. ” The president noted that violent crime in the United States is significantly lower now than it has been in decades. But he acknowledged that people’s fears are understandable, especially in the wake of a terrorist attack or a gruesome killing captured on video. “We should never be satisfied when any innocent person is killed,” he said, “but that is not something that should be driving our anxieties, relative to where we have been in the past. ” | 1 |
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Waking Times
Politics in America has devolved into a contest of personalities, where policy, history, and reality are rejected in favor of style, skin color, gender and celebrity factor. This is unsurprising, though, in a nation that has for generations been weened on television and state indoctrination. We’ve been trained to look to politicians for leadership, but the real heroes and change makers in our world are the fearless truth-tellers who work to free our minds and inspire us to greatness by setting an example with their words and deeds.
As we stare down the barrel of a critically divided society under the thumb of an all-powerful government and police state, righteous voices of non-partisan, no-bullshit truth who apply logic, common sense, and critical-thinking in defense of community and humanity are needed now more than ever. One such example is hip-hop artist, civic leader, social activist, and entrepreneur Michael Render, aka Killer Mike . His articulation of the problems we all face, accompanied with real ideas for meaningful action, make for an excellent reminder of what true leadership can look like.
He’s done a ton of interviews in recent years, and although he mentions being a conservative, even advocating for the 2nd Amendment in response to public shootings, he played a big role in Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination in an effort to help educate and awaken black voters. Consider the following clips of Killer Mike speaking on a number of today’s critical issues.
Firstly, he talks to TMZ about the importance of participating in local elections and in using your vote to hold political parties accountable, while helping to see through the phony logic of voting for the lesser of two evils.
“Scaring me with the boogie man is not going to work as effectively as giving my community something that helps.” ~Killer Mike
In his song, ‘ Reagan, ‘ he rails against Obama, along with all the other authoritarian presidents we’ve had, as a member of an organization of war and profit, saying what so many Obama supporters are afraid to acknowledge.
“Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor Just an employee of the country’s real masters Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters If you don’t believe the theory, then argue with this logic Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Qaddafi We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor If I say any more they might be at my door”
~Killer Mike, Reagan
As a leader in the black community, he is keenly aware of the affects of racism and police brutality today, but rather than advocating for protests or riots as an expression of justifiable anger, he breaks down how black people can overcome systemic corruption and racism by using the one weapon that is most effective in a capitalist culture: money.
Furthermore, on the Bill Maher show on HBO , he goes into relationship between politicians and police, pointing out how politicians themselves use police as pawns. Final Thoughts
The President of the United States of America is the figurehead of an authoritarian and corporatized organization that masquerades as benevolent, but POTUS is a puppet, not a leader. As Americans go at each other’s throats over about the election, it may serve us well to remember that individuals are the true leaders in our community and in our world.
“My criteria is probably Libertarian views, where you just let the free market reign, you let people do what they want to, and the government takes care of protecting us from foreign interests and one another.” ~ Killer Mike About the Author
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at . This article ( Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won’t ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.
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Photos released by the Islamic State group purport to show that its jihadists are again using small unmanned drones to attack targets in the area of Mosul where IS is in the midst of a battle with the Iraqi army. [The use of drones was allegedly renewed after about a month during which the group avoided deploying them in combat. In the photos released by ISIS on the group’s Telegram account, its small unmanned aircraft can be seen attacking Shi’ite militia targets on the outskirts of Mosul (above and below). Earlier this month, a U. S. coalition airstrike reportedly struck an IS drone factory in Mosul. The U. S. international military coalition killed Islamic State foreign drone experts and destroyed a drone factory in western Mosul on Monday. The redeployment of IS drones comes as the group finds itself being pushed back toward the Old City of Mosul, a zone without many open areas where the aircraft can operate. Meanwhile, reports circulated on Iraqi social media citing Shi’ite activists saying the U. S. has supplied the Iraqi army with equipment designed to neutralize and disrupt the use of IS drones. مصادر إعلامية | تزويد #فرقة_الرد_السريع في #الموصل باسلحة تشويش تم استيرادها من #الصين لمواجهة طائرات #داعش المسيرة pic. twitter. — غريب (@2011iqbgd2017) April 14, 2017, In February, the Iraqi army claimed that it had raided a drone factory near Mosul. Also that month, the Stratfor global intelligence newsletter investigated the IS drone threat, writing, The Islamic State is taking to the skies as the fight for Mosul wears on. Over the past several weeks, the extremist group has been flaunting its use of unmanned aerial vehicles against Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in and around the city. Propaganda videos feature dramatic aerial footage of the precision attacks, and they have produced their intended effect, receiving heavy coverage in mainstream media outlets. So far, the Islamic State has deployed this technique only in Iraq and Syria. That’s likely soon to change, though, considering the attention the group’s drone attacks have been getting and the prevalence of drones in the West. Drone attacks are coming. But they do not necessarily portend death from above. Reuters last month reported on less sophisticated IS drones: For the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have been a cornerstone of America’s campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Greater Middle East. Predator and Reaper drones crisscross the globe firing Hellfire missiles on U. S. enemies. Other countries have operational drone fleets, but few match the might and ubiquity of America’s. But journalists on the front lines in Iraq have seen a disturbing new trend — Islamic State using retail quadcopters to drop their own munitions with surprising accuracy. Mosul is the frontline in the fight against ISIS as well as the frontline in a new arm’s race. One that pits the tiny drones of the Islamic State against the budding technology of the West. To be clear, Islamic State’s commercial quadcopters rigged with grenades and manufactured missiles is nothing compared to the power of a Predator firing off Hellfire missiles with pinpoint accuracy. But that’s cold comfort to a civilian killed by a handmade explosive dropped by a quadcopter over the streets of Mosul. | 1 |
DUBLIN — Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister since 2011, is facing one of the worst political crises of his career over a convoluted police scandal that has dragged on for more than a decade. The scandal has been compared to the case of Frank Serpico, the detective whose testimony in the 1970s brought to light corruption in the New York Police Department. The matter dates to 2006, when an officer began raising concerns about misconduct within the National Police Service. The officer, Sgt. Maurice McCabe, quickly found himself shunned by his fellow officers. But he persisted, exposing what he said was a practice of deleting penalty points incurred by drivers for minor traffic violations. Eventually, a government inquiry found in his favor. But the case won’t go away. Last week, The Irish Examiner and the public broadcaster RTE’s “Prime Time” program reported that Ireland’s child protection agency had created a file on Sergeant McCabe containing a false accusation of child sexual abuse — a mistake that the agency has attributed to what it called a clerical error. The news organizations also reported that this wasn’t the first time Sergeant McCabe had been wrongly accused of such a crime an earlier complaint against him had been made, in 2006, and dismissed. The disclosure that a could face such accusations in apparent retaliation has raised unsettling questions about Ireland’s culture of policing and the possible collusion of other agencies, including the child protection agency. The case has affected the highest levels of the Irish government, bedeviling Mr. Kenny. He has been attacked by critics who charge that he missed opportunities to resolve the mess in 2014, and supported the police chief at the time and his justice minister for too long. Mr. Kenny failed at first to give a complete account of when he learned of the false abuse allegations, and has insisted that he knew nothing of a broader smear campaign — an assertion that his critics in Parliament have contested. There were heated exchanges between Mr. Kenny and Gerry Adams, the leader of the opposition Sinn Fein party. At one point, Mr. Kenny called Mr. Adams an “absolute hypocrite” and attacked him for playing down, years earlier, the case of a former Sinn Fein member who said she was sexually abused by IRA members — a charge that Mr. Adams denies. Mr. Kenny has pledged a new official inquiry into the latest developments in the McCabe case. Late Wednesday night he survived a motion put forward by Sinn Fein. Both Mr. Kenny’s party, Fine Gael, and the Fianna Fail party, whose support Mr. Kenny needs, had little appetite for fresh elections that could unsettle their fragile alliance. But observers say the prime minister has been wounded by the scandal, and may not survive long after he returns from a trip to Washington to meet President Trump for St. Patrick’s Day. On Wednesday evening, ahead of the vote, Mr. Kenny apologized in Parliament to Sergeant McCabe. He called the allegations against him “appalling. ” “He and his family deserve the truth, as do all against whom allegations have been made,” Mr. Kenny said. “And I therefore offer a full apology to Maurice McCabe and his family for the treatment handed out to them as exposed in recent programs. ” Sergeant McCabe, and his wife, Lorraine, said in a statement that they had been victims of a “long and sustained campaign to destroy our characters. ” They added: “We have endured eight years of great suffering, private nightmare, public defamation, and state vilification arising solely,” they said, from Sergeant McCabe’s determination to ensure that the police agency “adheres to decent and appropriate standards of policing in its dealings with the Irish people. ” Sergeant McCabe, 55, a father of five from County Westmeath in the center of the country, has been on sick leave since last year. The McCabe case has exposed the secretive and insular nature of the police service. An internal investigation into Sergeant McCabe’s complaints found no evidence of corruption, but concluded that some officers had failed to follow procedures. But a police chief, Martin Callinan, stunned the country when he told lawmakers in 2014 that like Sergeant McCabe were “disgusting. ” (He later took early retirement.) Dermot Walsh, a law professor at the University of Kent in England who has studied police and criminal justice in Ireland, said the uproar “was not so much what he was complaining about as the fact that he took his complaints outside the force — in other words, he was seen as not a team player, not a member of the club. ” Professor Walsh added that Sergeant McCabe “had stepped over to the other side of the line between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ ” and compared the case to that of Detective Serpico. He also said the hierarchical organization of the police agency made it resistant to criticism from its lower ranks. In 2014, the justice minister, Alan Shatter, resigned after a report commissioned by the government found that the government and the police had failed to address Sergeant McCabe’s allegations adequately. A second report, prepared by a commission led by a judge, Kevin O’Higgins, found that Sergeant McCabe had performed “a genuine public service at considerable personal cost. ” Now, the case is about to get yet another look. Mr. Kenny has promised to investigate whether a smear campaign targeted Sergeant McCabe. The task was originally assigned to a private commission of inquiry, led by a judge, but after the latest furor, Mr. Kenny agreed to appoint a tribunal, whose proceedings will be open to the public — something that Sergeant McCabe said he believed was essential. Another Superintendent David Taylor, a former police press officer, has come forward to say that the existence of a smear campaign against Sergeant McCabe was widely known within the police force and by his superiors, including Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan. She has asserted her innocence. “I have made it clear that I was not part of any campaign to spread rumors about Sergeant McCabe and didn’t know it was happening at the time it was happening,” Commissioner O’Sullivan said in a statement on Monday. Yet another police officer, Superintendent Keith Harrison, has come forward, saying that he stopped a colleague for drunken driving in 2009 and, in retaliation, found his family referred to the child protection agency over a baseless allegation. | 1 |
Hillary Arrives At Rally, Makes One Weird Move That Left Onlookers Puzzled Posted on October 27, 2016 by Alisha Rich in Politics Share This
As Hillary Clinton makes her last few rounds of appearances before election day, the presidential hopeful will feel a little bit of the pressure that the presidency will demand. However, when she arrived at her rally in Lake Worth, Florida, she attempted to make one move that she hoped no one would notice.
There have been many questions over the course of Hillary Clinton’s campaign regarding her health. As a result of her age and her lifestyle, there’s no doubt that her body is starting to feel the effects of aging – whether she likes to admit it or not.
However, video footage of her recent rally in Florida shows how desperate she is to keep her health problems hidden, but her attempt was met with failure the moment she hit the stage. In fact, the Democratic presidential candidate struggled to climb one single step. The video captures one of her aides rushing towards her side as she attempted to climb up the riser.
“She needed assistance to get onto it as she could be seen reaching her hand out for a boost or some added steadiness,” according to The American Mirror . “The aide extended his hand and Clinton held on tightly as she made her way up the 18 inches.”
Although Hillary Clinton insists that her health isn’t an issue, the number of incidents she has had paints quite a different picture. If you take a close look at the video, the aide can even be seen standing behind her, reaching for her waist – probably preparing for the event of her falling.
We have said it time and time again – she’s not fit to be president. Although her health is a major concern considering how demanding the presidency can be on a person, it’s her disastrous political history that raises, even more, concerns. | 0 |
-Onions -Red peppers
Notice they are all healthy foods we often don’t get enough of? This is another big issue with our diets. We consume a lot of junk, meat, dairy and processed foods, items that clinically have been proven to be the number one causes of heart disease and illness yet we consume them in huge quantities. The key is to limit these and eat a lot of fresh, lively foods that provide nutrients and don’t ask the body to perform a mega job to digest.
You can also increase your exercise as glutathione production increases when you exercise. Breathing and sweating are also great ways to get rid of toxins in the body.
Glutathione Protects Against Chronic Illness
What makes glutathione so important and powerful is that it recycles antioxidants. When your body is dealing with free radicals, it is essentially passing them from one molecule to another. They might go from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then to glutathione where they are cooled off. Antioxidants are recycled at this point and the body can now regenerate another glutathione molecule to go back at it again.
Glutathione is crucial for helping your immune system fight chronic illness as it acts as the carrier of toxins out of your body. Like a fly trap, toxins stick to glutathione and they are carried to the bile into the stools and out of the body. Glutathione is also powerful enough that it has been shown to help in the treatment of AIDS greatly. The body is going to get in touch with oxidants and toxins, the more we can deal with those the better our body will be at staying strong, this is why glutathione is so important.
Dr. Mark Hyman has given 9 tips to increase your Glutathione levels. Check them out!
1. Consume sulfur-rich foods. The main ones in the diet are garlic, onions and the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, cauliflower, watercress, etc.).
2. Try bioactive whey protein. This is great source of cysteine and the amino acid building blocks for glutathione synthesis. As you know, I am not a big fan of dairy , but this is an exception — with a few warnings. The whey protein MUST be bioactive and made from non-denatured proteins (“denaturing” refers to the breakdown of the normal protein structure). Choose non-pasteurized and non-industrially produced milk that contains no pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics. Immunocal is a prescription bioactive non-denatured whey protein that is even listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference.
3. Exercise boosts your glutathione levels and thereby helps boost your immune system, improve detoxification and enhance your body’s own antioxidant defenses. Start slow and build up to 30 minutes a day of vigorous aerobic exercise like walking or jogging, or play various sports. Strength training for 20 minutes 3 times a week is also helpful.
One would think it would be easy just to take glutathione as a pill, but the body digests protein — so you wouldn’t get the benefits if you did it this way. However, the production and recycling of glutathione in the body requires many different nutrients and you CAN take these. Here are the main supplements that need to be taken consistently to boost glutathione. Besides taking a multivitamin and fish oil, supporting my glutathione levels with these supplements is the most important thing I do every day for my personal health.
4. N-acetyl-cysteine. This has been used for years to help treat asthma and lung disease and to treat people with life-threatening liver failure from Tylenol overdose. In fact, I first learned about it in medical school while working in the emergency room. It is even given to prevent kidney damage from dyes used during x-ray studies.
5. Alpha lipoic acid. This is a close second to glutathione in importance in our cells and is involved in energy production, blood sugar control, brain health and detoxification. The body usually makes it, but given all the stresses we are under, we often become depleted.
6. Methylation nutrients (folate and vitamins B6 and B12). These are perhaps the most critical to keep the body producing glutathione. Methylation and the production and recycling of glutathione are the two most important biochemical functions in your body. Take folate (especially in the active form of 5 methyltetrahydrofolate), B6 (in active form of P5P) and B12 (in the active form of methylcobalamin).
7. Selenium. This important mineral helps the body recycle and produce more glutathione.
8. A family of antioxidants including vitamins C and E (in the form of mixed tocopherols), work together to recycle glutathione.
9. Milk thistle (silymarin) has long been used in liver disease and helps boost glutathione levels. | 0 |
It is known as the flight to safety, yet it may be leading the global economy toward fresh danger. In the week since Britain stunned the world with its vote to quit the European Union, coloring markets in uncertainty, investors have dumped much that seems risky — the pound, the euro and shares on stock exchanges around the world. They have entrusted the proceeds to that rare sure thing, United States Treasury bills. Too much money may now be sloshing toward the dollar. For the United States, a stronger currency makes exports more expensive on world markets, complicating an already halting economic expansion. For emerging markets, the move into the dollar could presage a tide of investment flowing out, imperiling economies from Brazil to Indonesia. For Europe, a weaker euro underscores fundamental doubts about whether leaders can finally muster a formula for economic vibrancy after years of disappointment and recrimination. When economies function in healthy fashion, money flows across investments in pursuit of rewards that are supposed to be correlated to risks. But when a shock hits and fear takes hold, investors tend to trust only storehouses with one key trait — the certainty of survival. Since Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, or “Brexit,” the dollar has gained nearly 3 percent compared with a broad basket of currencies, about 2. 5 percent against the euro, and nearly 12 percent against the pound. The latest surge came on Thursday, when Mark J. Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said the central bank would probably have to lower interest rates to support the economy. That sent the pound hurtling downward anew. On Friday, the yield on United States Treasury notes dipped to a record low, 1. 385 percent, reflecting the eagerness of investors to lock their money in a safe place even for minuscule returns. The charge into the dollar says less about investors’ faith in the United States and more about the alarming situations confronting other major economies. With the vote, Britain has jeopardized its dominant financial center and trade with Europe, the largest common market on earth. The country is now enmeshed in a leadership crisis that makes everything uncertain, including who will negotiate the terms of a messy divorce with the European Union. If leaders follow through and initiate that process, Britain must haggle with the remaining bloc, made of 27 different European governments operating with their own domestic politics. The 19 countries that share the euro appear vulnerable to political discord and widening separatism as they contend with an influx of refugees, aging populations and tepid economic growth. Years of confusion may be unfolding — the sort of turmoil that could make a money manager crave safety. The United States is not without risks. Its public debt exceeds $19 trillion. Fractious politics have in recent years brought the country to the verge of default. It has economic inequality rivaling the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and tens of millions of working people who have essentially lost faith in the American economic bargain as living standards have declined. The Republican Party is on the verge of nominating Donald J. Trump as its presidential candidate. His intimations that he might oversee the Treasury much as he has managed Atlantic City casinos — by renegotiating with creditors — sent shudders through global markets. And yet, the United States can print its own money while finding seemingly limitless demand for its debt. The dollar remains the foundation of global finance, the one piece of a cosmically complex puzzle in which continued faith is required or the totality ceases to make sense. So powerful is the market’s craving for dollars in times of crisis that it has intensified even when the United States has itself been the locus of trouble. From September 2008 to February 2009, as the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers turned a crisis into the worst financial panic since the Great Depression, the dollar surged by nearly 10 percent. “Rightly or wrongly, there are existential questions about the future of the euro,” said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Say what you will about the dollar, no one questions that it will be around 10 or 20 years from now. ” In recent years, as European leaders failed to spur growth and as Greece slipped toward the abyss, nearly abandoning the euro, a lack of effective political coordination has time and again bedeviled effective response. The countries, like Greece, Spain and Portugal, have sought to unleash government spending, running deficits to stimulate their economies. Germany, the eurozone’s most powerful member, has vetoed that move, demanding that they instead cut spending, including on pensions and social services. Britain’s decision to leave the union has been widely construed as an angry admonition to the establishment from working people who have absorbed global trade, immigration and European political integration only to see their living standards stagnate. Britain has its own currency and authority over its budget. It has much lower unemployment and healthier economic growth than the eurozone does. If such ferment can explode in Britain, the eurozone looks like a tinderbox. “The people running Europe have gotten so disconnected from what the majority wants, and has always wanted for decades,” said Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Will Britain’s withdrawal alter the politics and spur Germany to moderate its obsession with austerity? Will Berlin assent to less dogmatic economic policies aimed at bolstering growth and spreading the spoils? Those are questions lacking answers. At the same time, the British vote to leave has energized populist movements with separatist inclinations in Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. Every new development heightening doubts about the cohesion of the European project risks provoking investors to demand greater compensation for loans to borrowers like Italy, Portugal and Greece. The more those countries have to pay to keep credit flowing, the greater the worries about the health of their banking systems. The greater the reduction in banks’ willingness to lend, the tighter the chokehold on European economic growth. And the absence of growth is both cause and effect of the populist inclinations coursing through the region. And so the cycle potentially turns, with only one predictable outcome: a flight to safety. “Continuing uncertainty is going to make the dollar go up more,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at Harvard. “If the uncertainty continues, it’s going to hit the periphery of Europe,” he added. “It’s probably going to hit emerging markets. ” World markets are now so interconnected that when money shifts with unexpected severity, it can yield unanticipated effects. Such was the case in 2013, as the Fed signaled its intention to slow the pace of its extraordinary interventions. The Fed had been buying vast quantities of bonds to keep interest rates low after the financial crisis. Ben S. Bernanke, then the chairman, let slip in May 2013 the Fed’s intention to “taper” such purchases. The result became known as the taper tantrum — a damaging stampede out of emerging markets. Currencies dropped in Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey. Stock markets fell. Businesses suffered, laying off workers. A repeat today would unfold at an especially difficult time. The slowdown of China’s economy has diminished the appetite for goods produced worldwide. Weaker growth in Europe puts more pressure on emerging markets. The Fed is supposed to serve American interests, yet as the taper tantrum brought home, its impacts are felt everywhere. Now, the Fed is weighing when to lift rates after years of maintaining them near zero. “There’s a potential for huge volatility and huge shocks,” said Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University. “The part of this that no one can say out loud is that the Fed is the global central bank. ” | 1 |
Huckabee Responds To Flag-Burning Trump Hater…“What’s Happened To This Country?”
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” Clinton told editor Eli Chomsky.
“And if we were going to push for an election,” she added, “then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
The election resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas over the U.S.-preferred Fatah — something Clinton, apparently, thought could have been avoided if we had somehow influenced the outcome (aka: “rigged” the election). Advertisement - story continues below
Listen to the audio here:
Chomsky said he recalled being taken aback that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the U.S. should be in the business of fixing foreign elections,” according to the Observer .
But for conservatives who have been warning against Clinton for years, it comes as little surprise that she would want to use her political power to influence the outcome of an election inappropriately. Advertisement - story continues below | 0 |
He survived conscription in Eritrea, conspired to confront his country’s injustices and faked an emergency to elude the authorities when they discovered his plan. He fled across the African country’s border to Ethiopia and made his way to a refugee camp, braving horrific conditions and rationed food and water for a chance to eventually get to the United States. Yet it was in a terminal at Kennedy International Airport in March that Melake Gebreselase was overcome with anxiety. Now living in New York, he arrived there three hours before his wife of 21 years, Sebentu Aynu Kidane, was supposed to exit customs. Then her plane landed but she was nowhere to be found. “You can worry: ‘What happened? Did she not come? ’” Mr. Gebreselase, 38, said. After a delay passing through immigration, however, Ms. Kidane, 41, emerged and they embraced, both free and together at last after years of forced separation, including a period during which they did not speak to each other. Mr. Gebreselase, who is still learning English, said in a recent interview that he could not articulate in his new language the emotions he felt that March day. Ms. Kidane, however, remembered what was on her mind. “When I came here, I told him that I liked very, very much to have baby,” she said. “Now that I’m pregnant, I’m happy. ” In April, the couple will welcome their first child. Various forces prevented them from starting a family for nearly two decades. The couple married in 1995 in Eritrea, where military conscription is mandatory and indefinite. Mr. Gebreselase was pulled into military service a couple of years after he married Ms. Kidane. He hoped he would have to serve for only a year and a half. After eight years, he felt certain he would be stuck there until retirement. The only time he saw his wife, friends and other relatives was during periods of leave that lasted roughly 10 days. “It was not enough to meet with her to have a baby,” Mr. Gebreselase said. On a visit home in 2005, Mr. Gebreselase, indignant about his conscription and about injustices in his country, held a meeting with villagers about a plan to criticize the government. His actions attracted the attention of the authorities, and he was arrested. Fearing the horrors that awaited him in jail, Mr. Gebreselase feigned a bathroom emergency — and made a run for it, reaching the refugee camp in Ethiopia. According to Amnesty International, the mass of young Eritrean people fleeing the country’s national service has contributed to the global refugee crisis. Mr. Gebreselase, separated from his wife, would not speak to her again until 2013 Ms. Kidane said that all she knew about her husband’s fate was that he was alive. In the camp, eight people were assigned to share one small hut. Refugees were given paltry food rations and had to wait hours in line to get water, Mr. Gebreselase said. In 2013, Mr. Gebreselase received legal refugee status and arrived in New York, where he called his wife. He urged Ms. Kidane to go to Ethiopia and then to try to join him in the United States. Mr. Gebreselase moved into an apartment in the Bronx with three roommates and found work at a restaurant. He also enrolled in classes to learn English. “From Monday up through Friday, I was working,” Mr. Gebreselase said. “Saturday, I was at school. ” Mr. Gebreselase sent money to Ms. Kidane, who by then had reached Ethiopia, where she stayed first in a refugee camp and later in an apartment in Addis Ababa, the capital. Mr. Gebreselase said that the more time passed, the more nervous he became about being able to have a child with his wife before she grew too old. Eventually, Ms. Kidane was granted refugee status, and she arrived at Kennedy on March 13. The couple rented a single room for $600 a month in an apartment in the Bronx. They will have to find a new place to live, because the friend they are renting from will soon be having family members move in with him. For now, Mr. Gebreselase works six days a week at a restaurant, where he earns $9. 25 an hour. Ms. Kidane works part time at a hardware store, earning $10 an hour. The couple also receives $39 a month in food stamps. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund, used $500 from the fund to enable the couple to buy a crib, a stroller and baby clothes. They hope their child will be the first of at least two. Ms. Kidane expects to enroll in nursing school soon. Mr. Gebreselase is considering becoming a cabdriver. He is committed to remaining in New York. “If you don’t work hard, you will not have,” Mr. Gebreselase said. “We’re going to work hard. We need a good life. ” | 1 |
As flying goes, the only thing more uncomfortable than sitting next to a couple having a spat on an airplane, Maury Rogoff learned, is sitting between that couple — especially when one partner prefers bare feet. Ms. Rogoff, who owns a public relations firm with offices in New York and Florida and travels frequently, discovered what a growing number of travelers now know: The middle seat has become the third rail of flying — and it is getting harder to avoid. As planes fly at record capacity and new cabin configurations squeeze in ever more passengers, airlines are, intentionally or not, nudging fliers into paying extra to avoid drawing the proverbial short straw. “I was literally in the middle of their argument,” Ms. Rogoff said. “It was just that awful. ” Her discomfort was magnified when the husband kicked off his shoes and crossed his legs, thrusting a bare foot into Ms. Rogoff’s space. Her entreaties with his wife to swap seats fell on deaf ears. “Of course she had no interest because it was middle, and because it was a smelly foot,” Ms. Rogoff said. For travelers like Ms. Rogoff, airlines are making it harder than ever to avoid the middle seat based on luck alone. Southwest, which does not assign seats, raised the price of an pass to $15 from $12. 50 last month. For those who do not pay up, it is a mad rush when online opens 24 hours before the flight. Delta Air Lines’ Basic Economy fare, introduced last year, does not allow seat assignments to be made until after — when customers have had a chance to claim window and aisle seats. American Airlines and United Airlines plan to introduce similar fares this year. Neither would confirm whether selecting a seat would be one of the perks eliminated, but one airline analyst said it was likely, given the competition legacy airlines face from carriers. “It’s a way to compete,” said Max Rayner, a partner at Hudson Crossing, a consulting firm in New York. “If you want to go at premium times, there will be far fewer seats available at the lower end of prices. ” Mr. Rayner suggested that this shift in pricing models wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, saying it could be a boon for the most customers. “You can think of it actually as opening up choice,” he said. “You just want basic transportation — sure, here it is. ” But the crunch has left some travelers taking extreme measures to avoid getting stuck in the middle. Fliers said they have offered fellow travelers money or drinks to switch seats, paid the fee to upgrade to a premium or exit row, feigned illness or switched flights. Some travelers even report buying two seats, just to have an empty one next to them. Dr. Sachin Shridharani, a plastic surgeon in New York, found himself on an overbooked flight back from San Diego, and a middle seat was the only one available. “I told them I’d be willing to take another flight,” he said. “I’ll pretty much do just about anything to avoid sitting in that notorious, infamous middle seat. ” The was to wait in the airport for four hours, but Dr. Shridharani said it was worth it so he could work on the way home. “You can’t have someone looking over your shoulder,” he said. In the end, analysts say, airlines are selling a form of real estate, but they are trading in square inches, not square feet. “People buy work space that’s really what they buy on board,” said Robert W. Mann Jr. an airline industry consultant. “Some of those configurations may not give you enough room, for example, to take out a laptop and use it productively. ” One carrier, though, has tried to address the issue. Frontier Airlines recently installed new seats on its Airbus A319 and A320 planes, with the middle seats about an inch wider than the window and aisle seats. But for most passengers, the tight squeeze continues, and business travelers say counting on their status to avoid the middle seat is no longer a sure thing. “You can’t show up at the airport hoping to talk your way into an upgrade,” said Mark Jeffries, a corporate speaker and author. “You don’t see free seats anymore. ” Mr. Jeffries said he sometimes buys two seats — a window or aisle, and a middle. It’s cheaper than buying a or ticket on a legacy carrier, he said. “We find that people will pay for premium economy or any kind of seat assignment if they’re traveling solo to avoid the middle seat,” said Julia Douglas, owner and president of Jet Set World Travel in Chicago. Some travelers will spend hundreds of dollars more, she added. Another approach is to appeal to another traveler. “There have been instances where I’ve bought someone an upgrade,” said Michael Winston, who used to travel once or twice a week while working in management consulting. At times, he said, he had resorted to bargaining with seatmates to avoid the middle seat. It is not an uncommon transaction, frequent travelers say, with cash, upgrades and cocktails all serving as forms of currency. But that is assuming that the seats are available. Last year, airline capacity again hit a record high, just shy of 85 percent, meaning that a lot of flights are full. And that leaves flight attendants and travel agents acting as de facto referees for games of midair musical chairs. The excuses passengers use to avoid the middle seat are many, they say. “Long legs is always one,” Ms. Douglas said. She then listed the most common complaints: claustrophobia, a need for frequent trips to the bathroom, panic attacks and a penchant for airsickness. “I don’t know if any of them are truly medically founded,” she said. “I just think it’s anxiety about being in that middle seat. ” Of all the excuses, genuine or exaggerated, the one that seems most effective is the threat of gastrointestinal distress. William Bauer, who travels frequently as an executive at a manufacturer of leather goods, said that hinting at a medical need for quick access to the bathroom usually prompted either gate agents or fellow passengers to make the switch for him. “Make it clear that you need that aisle seat. Really convey a compelling sense of urgency,” he said. “Thus far, I’ve never been rejected. ” On one recent flight, though, the tables were turned when Mr. Bauer found himself on the receiving end of a plea to swap seats on a flight. “There was a woman I gave up my aisle seat for because she cried,” he said. “If you cry, you win. ” | 1 |
South African golfer and major champion Ernie Els looks forward to the return of Tiger Woods at the Farmers Insurance Open next week at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, California. [The smooth swinging Els, AKA The Big Easy, thinks it quite plausible that Tiger can work his way back to winning tournaments again, including major championships. Els, who won the last of his four major at the British Open at Royal Lytham St. Annes Golf Club in 2012 at age 42, points out, “If players like myself, Darren Clarke and Mark O’Meara won (majors) in our 40s, surely Tiger thinks he can do it too. I am sure it’s on his agenda. ” Els says he would love to see Tiger play like his old self and thinks that he can do it if he can get it going at some of his favorite tournaments. “Mentally, he is as strong as anybody but he needs to find some momentum at his favorite events and if he gets that, he can start believing again. I would love to see him play like he did back in the 90s, but I am not sure that is going to happen,” Els told reporters on Wednesday. Certainly, there are a number of events he likes and no one exemplifies the idea of “horses for courses” more than Tiger. Woods has dominated more golf courses than any golfer in the history of the sport. He’s won at least four times on the same course at seven different Tour stops: Cog Hill (former home of the BMW Championship) Firestone (WGC Bridgestone) Doral (WGC Cadillac) Muirfield Village (the Memorial) Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer Invitational) Augusta National (the Masters) and Torrey Pines (Farmers Insurance Open). The South African knows where his bread is buttered and who has held the spreader for the last couple of decades. “We would not be playing for the money we play for if it wasn’t for Tiger, so we have to thank him for that, for what he has done for the game and it can only be good if he plays well. ” Els praised Tiger for his achievements, observing that “It’s been 20 years since he won his first major at the Masters and it’s quite amazing what he has achieved. ” He added, Woods “has won 14 majors in that span and he was injured for at least three or four of those seasons, so it’s really a major for every year he has been healthy as a professional. That’s incredible. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 27, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn
Hillary Clinton is like a chameleon .
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams , who’s a trained hypnotist and observer of facial nuances, calls it an “unusual level of variability” in her physical appearance. In his words, Hillary “looks like an entirely different person every few days. See “ Chameleon Hillary Clinton is back to looking like sh*t — and the return of her medical handler ” and “ Hillary Clinton’s teeth, tongue-hole & now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t wrinkles ”
On Monday, October 24, 2016, Hillary Clinton was in St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire for a rally , accompanied by “Fauxcahontas” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Close-up images of her face show that she’s morphed again, back to yellow teeth and a face crisscrossed with wrinkles. What happened to the porcelain-doll Hillary with dazzling-white teeth of the July 2016 Democratic National Convention?
But this time, at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, there’s something even stranger.
Tuesday, Matt Drudge tweeted two close-up images of Hillary at the NH rally, which show something embedded under the skin of her right cheek . Here’s the tweet:
Here are the two images again, enlarged. I painted yellow arrows pointing to the lumps:
According to plastic surgeons , Botox injections don’t cause lumps under the skin. Dr. Richard Baxter explains that “Botox relaxes muscles that are hyperactive and so wrinkles caused by those muscles are smoothed,” but don’t lead to lumps. Dr. Janet Turkle says that although “Botox injections can result in temporary bumps due to the injection,” the bumps last “only a few minutes”.
According to the American Academy of Facial Esthetics , however, “some of the risks of facial injections are lumps (granulomas/nodules) which are a potential risks [sic] associated with Radiesse, Sculptra, Juvederm, and ArteColl.”
Facial injections are injections of facial fillers such as collagen, hyaluronic acid and calcium hydroxyl apatite that rejuvenate facial skin by reducing or eliminating wrinkles, raising scar depressions, enhancing lips and replacing soft-tissue volume loss.
H/t FOTM ‘s TPR
Dr. Eowyn’s post first appeared at Fellowship of the Minds Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 0 |
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Of all the weeks to turn in a late Follies post from your LU Football Commentary Service.
We’ve already had two outcomes for our Inner Circle (more below, in case you’re still in suspense).
But we’re also in a position to ask the eternal question: if Cal and USC play and no one pays attention, did anything happen? (FWIW, USC won, 45-24. Another Storied Rivalry settled for 2016. Cal ballcaps back in the closet, folks.)
Next week: CFB rankings to lampoon.
Tennessee whupped up on Jacksonville Thursday night in the pros. As nature seems to have intended this year. Get a defense, Jags.
Inner circle
The University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane (4-2), which beat Notre Dame 28-27 on 30 October 2010, will be at Memphis Saturday for an American West showdown. The Tigers are giving 6.5, but we think TU has a better shot than that. Should be a good game.
Oklahoma, holding steady at #16, hosts Kansas (motto: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”) on Saturday evening, while laying a ridiculous 40.5. Has the betting fraternity been held in isolation for the last six weeks? Kansas isn’t nearly as bad as they were a year ago, and Oklahoma’s defense couldn’t stop a gum-wrapper chain if it were barreling down the field. Anything could happen, but this is just the sort of situation where Oklahoma ends up struggling in the final 2 minutes to stay on top of a 3-point lead. We’ll believe 40 when we see it.
Oklahoma State gets to host #10 West Virginia, pride of the Big 12, in Stillwater early Saturday. As befits a ranked visitor facing a Gundy squad, the Mountaineers are giving, but not a lot – 3.5. That said, WVU could well find a way to rattle Cowboy QB Mason Rudolph. Game by game, the Mountaineers have tended to be a one-trick pony on defense this year, but they keep finding the right trick to get the job done.
New #22 Navy will be squaring off with South Florida at Ray-Jay in Tampa by the time this goes to post. The 6-2 Bulls top the American East at the moment, while 5-1 Navy leads the American West, so there will be a lot of talk about a conference-champ preview. The Bulls scored 35 on Florida State in a wild early-season loss, but just took a bad dive last game against Temple. They’re favored by 6, but Navy’s likely to cover. (Umm. Well, any minute now, Navy’s going to start getting in the same hemisphere as “covering.” Good grief, Navy’s secondary just can’t keep up with these guys.)
Army will be in Winston-Salem to take on Wake Forest Saturday, on the short end of 7. Wake could more than cover, but Army took a drubbing from North Texas last week, and will be out for blood. Key week to see if this year’s Black Knights are for real.
Air Force , also coming off a painful loss to Hawaii, heads to Fresno State Friday evening for the late game. Falcons give 14.5. We think the Bulldogs will cover.
Virginia Tech , back at #25 (for now), knocked off Pitt 39-36 in a rock-‘em-sock-‘em slugfest last night in Pittsburgh. Hard-fought battle with major yardage on both sides, but some intermittently impressive defense poking through as well. See what you can do, Hokies, when you don’t eat yourselves alive with penalties and turnovers?
Nevada , we’re happy to say, has the week off. New #19 LSU is off this week as well, preparing for the rivalry bout with Alabama next week.
For all you offense fans out there, TCU hosts Texas Tech on Saturday. We, personally, are going to be extremely disappointed if the combined total points clock in anywhere south of 130. Toads give 9.5.
Kansas State is off to Iowa State to see what the Wildcats can do with the 1-6 Cyclones’ bad habit of losing. K-State is 4-3 and a solid shot for a bowl bid – but, still facing OK-State, Baylor, rival KU, and TCU down the stretch, they really want to add to the “W” column this weekend.
Toledo is our other Thursday night winner, because we just know they had a Great Learning Experience coming in second to Ohio last night (31-26, for those with a thirst for data). Apparently it’s been quite a while since the Bobcats won in Toledo. Seemed to be all anybody could talk about. Rockets go to 6-2; their biggest conference game at division-leader (and #20) Western Michigan will be Thanksgiving week, and when they win that one, they may just get another crack at Ohio for the MAC crown.
Wyoming hosts #13 Boise State, and it’s a measure of the Cowboys’ improved performance this year that the Broncos are only laying 13.5. It wouldn’t surprise us, exactly, for the Pokes to cover.
Top 10
#1 Alabama is off, preparing as any sensible team would to meet LSU.
New #2 Michigan heads to East Lansing for something they’ve been wanting to do since 2012: win the Paul Bunyan Trophy back from Michigan State. This is the year they can do it. The Wolverines give 24 at the moment. The 2-5 Spartans will play them tough, of course, but we’re figuring on Blue from out here in the cheap seats. And who cares if the trophy looks like a manly man’s Hummel figurine? There’s nothing foofy about, you know, collecting.
In default of better options, Clemson is cycling back through #3, and takes on #12 FSU in Tallahassee, in the marquee slot on Saturday evening. Tigers give only 4, even though the ‘Noles haven’t been all that, recently. The one and only Paul Bunyan Trophy, in play once more. (Image: Wikipedia)
New #4 Washington is at #17 Utah, giving 11.
New #5 Louisville heads to Charlottesville with a gift of 33 for hapless Virginia.
New #6 Ohio State, which owes us all an apology for upsetting the top 10 in this incontinent way, hosts Northwestern, giving 27.5.
New #7 Nebraska will be at #11 Wisconsin, facing the real probability of losing top 10 standing in their Storied Rivalry game, not to mention the Freedom Trophy. Which may be Just A Trophy, but is discreetly attractive at least. Badgers give 9.5. Why they fight. (Image: UW Athletic Communications via Fox Sports)
New #8 Baylor is at Texas, giving 3.5, and better watch its six.
#9 Texas A&M hosts New Mexico State, which makes for a meeting of Aggies but doesn’t seem to have a lot of other merits. A&M is laying 43.5.
Best of the rest
We can’t vouch in advance for the football, but it’s always an exciting weekend when Florida (#14) and Georgia meet in their Storied Rivalry to fight for the Okefenokee Oar.
#15 Auburn at Ole Miss might be kind of interesting. Miami at Notre Dame holds possibilities, featuring a tight 1.5-point spread (Arsh) and the usual primo slot on the Notre Dame Broadcasting Channel. The Okefenokee Oar’s glamour shot from its Facebook page.
Other ranks
In FCS, McNeese State hosts Abilene Christian for the Cowboy Homecoming on Saturday evening. Abilene Christian is 1-7 and sucks royally, but they are coming off their one win (over Incarnate Word), and McNeese has whiffed on some softballs this season. But Go Pokes! 70s and clear for the 6 PM game start.
In Div II, Slippery Rock (5-3) heads to Clarion to take on PSAC rival Clarion U. on Saturday. The Eagles are 2-6 and have already had their obligatory losses to ranked powerhouses California U. (PA) and IUP. We don’t want to say it’s cake for Clarion from here on, but we do suspect SRU may be a tad more motivated. Little Clarion P-A (pop. 5,000) is northeast of Pittsburgh (and Slippery Rock), and just southwest of the Allegheny National Forest, where it will be in the 60s and clouding up something fierce for the noon kickoff.
In Div III, Rose-Hulman , AKA The Bomb, is now 6-2 and perched atop the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference after the epic win over Franklin. The Fightin’ Engineers host Bluffton U. (OH) in Terre Haute on Saturday, in a game that could be a showstopper. The Beavers come in 6-1 (4-1 conference), and although they lost to Franklin, they beat RHIT’s archrival Mt. St. Joe in September. Fight hard, Engineers. 70s and overcast for the 1:30 PM kickoff.
Christopher Newport , now 5-2 after the owwie at Frostburg State, could do itself some major good hosting Salisbury U. (MD) for Homecoming Saturday night. Salisbury (6-1) is second in the NJAC, behind Frostburg, but also ranked #17 in the Coaches’ Poll. See how easy? Vault Salisbury and Wesley (which CNU beat a few weeks ago) in the NJAC, and maybe surge back into the top 25. Well, it’s a goal. Topping out at 70, with clear skies, for the 4 PM game start.
Merchant Marine has the week off.
Pros
Our Redskins lead us off Sunday morning, playing Cincinnati at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM PDT because they’ll be at Wembley Stadium in London. Bengals give 3.
New Orleans hosts Seattle (-2.5) in the (godlier) early slot.
San Diego and Denver are going to get right back on that horse in Sports Authority at Mile High, and we’d like to see the Broncos do something with their 4-point give this time. They did wallop the Texans, for what that’s worth.
Dallas has a big one coming up Sunday night, hosting Philly in Arlington. The 5-point Cowboy advantage isn’t completely unjustifiable.
Steelers have the week off.
Monday night gives us Minnesota (-4.5) at Chicago. | 0 |
November 8, 2016 Palestinians say ‘oui’ to Paris peace conference after Israel balks
Palestinians on Monday welcomed a French plan to hold an international conference on the two-state solution in Paris at the end of December.
“We have encouraged France to go ahead with its initiative and supported its efforts to have a multilateral conference before the end of the year,” PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said after meeting with French envoy Pierre Vimont in Ramallah.
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Better this than letting them regroup and counter. | 0 |
175 Views Share: Commentary — Seriously, you always hear that we mustn’t deport people because it could break up families. Yet we are encouraging teenagers to run away from their families and try their luck on America’s streets! Latino Invasion Set for New Record
The New Observer March 2, 2016
More than 17,000 “unaccompanied alien minors” had invaded the US over the Mexican border in the past few months, and the number of “family units” has increased to 21,000, the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security has been informed.
The House was also told that if the present trends continue, there will be a 30 percent increase on the record number of 260,000 invaders who entered the US in 2014.
“In the past few months the number of unaccompanied alien minors unlawfully entering the US soared to over 17,000 and the number of family units increased to 21,000,” Chair Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) informed the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security in a February 4 hearing on Capitol Hill.
“If these trends continue it is predicted there will be a 30 percent increase in the record high numbers we witnessed in 2014.”
The widespread criminal violence endemic in the nonwhite Third World countries to the south continues to be a major factor in the ongoing invasion, Omar Zamora, public affairs officer for the US Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector told the local KVUE TV station.
“We’ve got gangs over there that are controlling the neighborhoods, controlling the cities,” Zamora said.
Agents of the RRGV Sector, he said, “man the front lines of the battle against drug trafficking and human smuggling.”
The US government has mounted an ad campaign along the Guatemala–Honduras border warning would-be invaders what to expect from human traffickers.
According to Zamora, the human traffickers engage in everything from child molestation and rape to extortion and fraud. READ Cologne Police Officer Confirms: It was “Refugees”
“I think the biggest misconceptions are, ‘Hey they’re just children down there, right? It’s a humanitarian crisis,’” said Zamora, “But what I want to stress is there’s the 50 percent of the other individuals that are running, that are fighting, that have criminal records.”
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the House Border Security Caucus, told KVUE that “If people figure they have a 95 percent chance of being allowed to stay and work and get government benefits, they’re going to come no matter what they might hear on the street or on the radio or see in a leaflet.”
In a February 23 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked agency Acting Chief Ronald Vitiello whether giving undocumented immigrants the impression they won’t be allowed to stay in the US without a legal claim would act as a deterrent and slow the flow of unauthorized crossings.
“Yes, I believe that matters,” Vitiello answered. | 0 |
A leading Indian software entrepreneur says Indian companies must accept President Donald Trump’s policies and must start hiring Americans instead of sending Indian visa workers into American job sites. [The startling Feb. 2 recommendation came from N. R. Narayana Murthy, the president and of the outsourcing firm, Infosys Limited, which has asked for more than 100, 000 work visas since 2013. The company uses the visas to send their Indian employees to work in U. S. banks, manufacturers and service companies throughout the United States. “We should stop using visas and [stop] sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services,” he said in an interview on an Indian affiliate of Microsoft’s MSN network. We have to recruit from colleges there, we have to train those local people [to work with] Indian companies … it is great opportunity for Indian companies to become more and more multicultural. Murthy’s televised concession appears as Indian and American companies rally to stop Trump from implementing his campaign promise to reform the outsourcing visa program. Roughly 650, 000 foreign workers are employed in a wide variety of jobs in the United States, including roughly 100, 000 as academics, teachers, doctors, therapists, scientists, and designers at American universities. Overall, roughly 1 million foreign are employed as contract workers in the United States, even as 800, 000 Americans graduate from college each year with skilled degrees to compete for jobs. Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump criticized the program, which is used by many American companies, including Comcast, Carnival, Disney, McDonalds, Caterpillar and Uber. The Indian firms usually rent their employees out to American companies. The increased supply of foreign graduates pushes many American professionals out of their careers, and pushes younger American graduates into different careers with lower salaries. The sidelined American professionals and their families have been a huge source of support for Trump among voters because of Trump’s promise to reform the program. Trump’s plan to reform the programs is expected to appear in the next few months, amid determined efforts by major U. S. companies — such as Microsoft and Google — to keep their reserve army of foreign professionals. On Friday, Trump met with top business advisors, many of whom oppose his January decision to exclude immigrants with “hostile attitudes. ” In his TV interview, Murthy said Indian companies must hire Americans to become global firms: I personally believe that Indian software companies must truly become multicultural. They must recruit American citizen [and] American residents in the U. S. they must recruit Canadians in Canada, British people in Britain, etc. That’s the only way we can become a true company and in order to do that, we should stop using visas and sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services. We have to recruit from college there, we have to train those local people [to work with] Indian companies. Therefore, I think, even if the [Trump] Executive Order comes, we should look at it more as an opportunity for Indian companies to become more multicultural … it is great opportunity for Indian companies to become more and more multicultural. Indian managers need to learn skills from American graduates, he said: I think by and large, the Indian mindset is always to take the soft option. … Our managers will have to learn with professionals … how to make sure that we understand the rules of crossing cultures. So therefore I think this is a learning opportunity for our senior people. This is not an easy option, it is s very tough option, but the earlier we start, the better it is for us. Companies also have to hire Americans because of legal risks, including Trump’s planned reform of the outsourcing program: This is the only way you can remove a very important risk, which is the risk of governments mandating things like the Executive Order that we are talking about. I would think risk mitigation is a very important duty of any [company] board, and I have no doubt that all the boards of Indian software companies will at least now start thinking of this as a very important risk and will take action to mitigate. The TV interviewer responded by saying, “I certainly hope that Indian companies are listening to that because you are the best person to advise them on the road ahead.“ But many Indians criticized Murthy’s advice as bad for their nation’s industry and as hypocritical, because he made his fortune and name by renting India’s cheap programmers to American companies. Major clients of Infosys:~ Bank of America~ Wells Fargo~ JP Morgan Chase~ Morgan Stanley#OutsourcedHypocrisyhttps: . — Dr. Sania 🇳 (@DrSaniaMaan) February 3, 2017, Murthy’s company is already facing legal threats in the United States because of its hiring practices. According to an November article in ComputerWorld, a judge has approved a lawsuit to proceed against Infosys for discriminating against Americans: The plaintiffs, four IT workers from around the U. S. brought their discrimination lawsuit against the IT services giant in 2013. This week, they filed a motion seeking certification from 2009, and say the potential pool of plaintiffs may be as large as 125, 000 … There were some 50 exhibits filed in this case, including one from a former Infosys recruiter who said, in a declaration, that in conference calls “many of the highly qualified American candidates we presented were being rejected in favor of Indian candidates. ” The company’s reliance on Indian workers may also have helped torpedo President Barack Obama’s disastrous Obamacare rollout: One plaintiff was hired by Infosys to work on a $49. 5 million Affordable Care Act, development project for the District of Columbia. There were about 100 Infosys employees working on the healthcare project, but only three were American, the lawsuit claimed. The plaintiff alleged harassment, and was denied promotion, the complaint said. U. S. officials say the program suffers from fraud and extensive corruption, especially in India where inflated resumes and faked documentation are used to get poorly trained and poorly paid Indian workers into American job sites. One U. S. government cable released via Wikileaks said that: fraud is one of the top two visa categories for fraud throughout Mission India. All posts regularly encounter inflated or fabricated educational and employment qualifications. The vast majority of these documents come from Hyderabad. In the 18 months prior to the of consular operations in Hyderabad, FPU Chennai investigated 150 companies in Hyderabad, 77 percent of which turned out to be fraudulent or highly suspect (ref F). Most of those cases slated for site visits were to verify the experience letters for applicants who did not meet minimum educational qualifications. Murthy’s recommendation to hire more Americans was cautiously welcomed by one American software expert, who was forced out of regular work in the early 2000s when companies began hiring from the pool of 500, 000 younger and cheaper contract workers now working in the sector. A recruiter for Infosys recently called him to talk about possible work, he said, but he remains skeptical: There are a lot of conversations going on, but until I confirm a start date and confirm compensation terms with the hiring company, it’s all nice . … Most of the job leads I on — I’m talking to someone clearly not born in the USA. This seems to me to be a structural discrimination based on national origin when American [ ] most of the time, find themselves talking to recruiters or hiring managers. It’s like our tech labor market has been colonized. Another American technology expert, who is a legal immigrant, told Breitbart News that the inflow of foreign workers has crushed career prospects for Americans, who are discriminated against because they are Americans and . I have been turned down by every single possible employer. Every job in Atlanta that is advertised by the [Atlanta Journal Constitution] says that you can ‘apply, even if you have a university degree from another country,’ meaning from India. Microsoft’s CEO is from India. Google has hundreds of Indian and foreigners that have taken our jobs from us, Comcast is doing the same, and so is Facebook, etc. … I am in perfect health, I have no defects, I have no criminal records, my credit score is perfect, I taught at very prestigious universities (taught math and computer science, applications, C++ English language and Spanish language. … A few years ago I was making $50 an hour with a major corporation in Atlanta … A few weeks ago I was willing to accept $21 an hour from [a company] working at their headquarters. I had four phone interviews. They were ready to offer me the job. Until they saw me in person. They discriminated as they thought I was ‘too old’ for them. They said to the recruiter, that ‘I was going to get bored with the Job.’ I feel I was … I have two small children to feed and clothe. How could I allow myself to get bored? visa workers are used throughout the American economy, and there is no annual cap on the number of visas, or or OPT visa graduates which can be brought into the United States. Companies are not required to interview or hire Americans before they hire foreign and are not required to pay them market wages, and in some case, are not required to pay some taxes. Also, each year, companies are allowed to provide a huge bonus to as many as 150, 000 foreign contract workers who have worked long hours — the very valuable prize of U. S. citizenship for the workers and their family. The numbers and jobs of workers are tracked at this website. Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart. com | 1 |
Two Boston doctors were allegedly murdered in their penthouse Friday night, police said on Sunday. The victims were reportedly engaged to be married. [Boston Police Department responded to a call about “a suspect with a gun at a luxury condominium in South Boston” where Dr. Richard Field and Dr. Lina Bolanos lived. Police said the suspect “immediately began firing at the officers,” NBC News reported. The suspect is Bampumim Teixeira, who reportedly missed shooting the police officers however, police fired back at him multiple times, wounding the suspect in the process. Officers took him into custody and took him to Tufts Medical Center where he is undergoing treatment for injuries that are not considered the Daily Mail reported. Officers found the bodies of Field, 49, and Bolanos, 38, with both of their throats slit and their hands bound when they entered the apartment. The Boston Globe reports that police found blood and a “message of retribution” on the walls of the apartment, along with photos of the two doctors cut into pieces. Police say the victims and the killer knew each other, but the police have not yet to pin down a motive for the killings, WCVB reports. CBS Boston reports that the apartment building was not lacking in security either — the building required the use of a special key to get inside and use the elevator. Field worked as a pain management specialist at North Shore Pain Management where his colleagues said he was known for his “tireless devotion. ” “Dr. Field was a guiding vision at North Shore Pain Management and was instrumental in the creation of this practice, in 2010,” the company said in a statement. They also noted that he “was noted for his tireless devotion to his patients, staff, and colleagues. ” Prior to working at North Shore, he worked as an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist at Beverly Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Bolanos worked as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary where she was regarded as “outstanding” in her profession and as an anesthesiology instructor at Harvard Medical School. “The entire Mass. Eye and Ear community is deeply saddened by the deaths of Dr. Lina Bolanos and her fiancé,” the hospital’s CEO John Fernandez said in a statement. “Dr. Bolanos was an outstanding pediatric anesthesiologist and a wonderful colleague in the prime of both her career and life. ” NBC Boston reports that Teixeira will undergo arraignment Monday and that police expect he will face multiple charges. Teixeira recently served nine months out of a prison sentence for two counts of larceny that he pleaded guilty to in September 2016. | 1 |
The accused former governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas claimed in Italian court that he does not want to be extradited to the U. S. for multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The politician faces allegations of being a surrogate of Mexico’s Gulf, Los Zetas, and Beltran Leyva Cartels. [According to information provided Italian authorities, Yarrington made a court appearance on Wednesday to announce his wishes against extradition. He will remain in an Italian prison as a flight risk to the U. S. Department of Justice until the matter is settled. As Breitbart Texas reported, Yarrington was charged out of the U. S. Southern District of Texas on multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The allegations in the indictment point to Yarrington having worked for various Mexican cartels while serving as governor of Tamaulipas. While U. S. agents tracked him down for years, Mexican authorities gave the politician official protection details. On Sunday, agents with Homeland Security Investigations and Italian police arrested Yarrington in at a restaurant. The arrest was based on the investigation done by U. S. authorities and the Italian government however, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) issued a news release taking credit for the collar and claiming that Yarrington would be returned home. The claims by the PGR were proven to be lies by Breitbart Texas this week when it quoted diplomatic officials revealing that the arrest was solely a U. S. based operation. Soon after, the PGR tried to backtrack by stating they provided information beneficial in locating Yarrington. One day later, Breitbart Texas reported that Mexican officials told the DOJ that they would not oppose Yarrington’s extradition to the U. S. While the PGR tried to claim the story was not accurate, Reforma published documents proving that PGR had once again lied. The PGR again issued a series of news releases to “clarify” previous statements. One release by the PGR revealed that the agency requested Yarrington’s extradition two days after his arrest, while the U. S. acted much earlier. Breitbart Texas has since learned that the request filed by Mexico is only a temporary hold and is not considered a formal extradition document. In an apparent attempt to ease tensions between the two countries Wednesday, both the PGR and DOJ issued a joint news release claiming they “are working together on a legal strategy which will allow Tomas Yarrington to face justice in both countries. ” Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. | 1 |
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He is alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iO8YZLwqlY | 0 |
NICOSIA, Cyprus — As the United Nations geared up for negotiations that it declared the “best and last chance” to unite Cyprus after more than four decades of acrimonious division, Russia’s ambassador attended a seminar dedicated to derailing any prospect of an agreement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The presence of the ambassador, Stanislav Osadchiy, delighted Greek Cypriot politicians in Nicosia, the capital of the south of the divided island. They had helped torpedo a 2004 reunification plan supported by the United States and have now rallied together to defeat a new push for a settlement that began on Jan. 12 with an international conference in Geneva. But Mr. Osadchiy’s attendance at the seminar, which Western and other diplomats shunned, angered Nicos Anastasiades, the president of the Republic of Cyprus and a strong supporter of efforts to resolve an interethnic dispute as intractable and nearly as protracted as the conflict. In an interview in Nicosia, Mr. Anastasiades said that, when questioned, the ambassador had apologized and said he had misunderstood the nature of the seminar, despite its clear agenda and the fact that it had been organized by five small political parties all bitterly opposed to a compromise deal in Geneva. The president said he accepted the ambassador’s explanation and his insistence that he had not meant to endorse the rejectionists by attending. But, Mr. Anastasiades added, “I consider any intervention by any third country as not what we are looking for. ” Like countless previous diplomatic efforts to reunite Cyprus since Turkey invaded in 1974 and split the country in two, the recent Geneva talks failed to achieve a breakthrough, though they did make some progress. Mr. Anastasiades said the two sides were “halfway” to an agreement but still had deep divisions, notably on the issue of whether Turkey, Greece and Britain, the former colonial master, should retain their status as “guarantors” of the island’s security, a setup that Russia rejects. Bound to Russia by a shared Orthodox Christian faith and its role as a financial and banking center for Russian business, the Republic of Cyprus, the nation in the south of the island, has long looked to Moscow as a protector rather than a troublemaker. But accusations that Moscow intervened to skew the United States presidential election and supported forces across Europe have stirred a wave of alarm about Russia in the European Union, of which the Republic of Cyprus is a member. This alarm, which Russia dismisses as Russophobic hysteria, has given new force to voices in Cyprus warning that Russia’s geopolitical interests have made it determined to upset a Cyprus settlement. Makarios Drousiotis, a researcher who has long bucked sentiment in Cyprus and sought to expose what he sees as Russian meddling, said events in the United States and Europe were shaking his compatriots’ view that Moscow had only their best interests at heart. “What they have been doing in America and Europe they have been doing for 50 years in Cyprus,” said Mr. Drousiotis, who in 2014 published a book, “The Cyprus Crisis and the Cold War,” that demolished what he called a “myth” that the West is to blame for Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island and the decades of division that followed. The book, denounced by Russia’s diplomatic mission in Nicosia as “politically unacceptable,” portrayed Moscow as a duplicitous partner that had for decades used disinformation, front organizations and other tools of subterfuge to woo support among while working behind the scenes to stoke tensions to ensure that Cyprus never aligned too firmly with the West or became a NATO member. To Moscow’s fury, this once taboo view that Russia wants to block a settlement has in recent weeks been discussed openly in some Cypriot media outlets. The Cyprus Mail, for example, described Russia’s ambassador, Mr. Osadchiy, as “the darling” of forces “because he regularly says things aimed at undermining the talks or making the pursuit of a deal more difficult. ” Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Moscow was “surprised by the comments in the Cyprus media” and accused the media of creating “a smoke screen for the real problems that need to be tackled as part of the Cypriot settlement. ” Mr. Drousiotis said the Russian ambassador’s apparent support for rejectionist politicians ahead of the Geneva talks fit a long, but previously mostly ignored, pattern. “Every time there has been an attempt to solve the Cyprus issue, the Russians have jumped in to block a settlement,” Mr. Drousiotis said. A solution in Cyprus would end a deep rift within NATO between Turkey and Greece, both members, and open the way to the development of large gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean that could upset the grip of Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, on the Turkish market. Turkey imports nearly 99 percent of its natural gas, more than half from Russia, its biggest supplier by far. Gas from Egyptian, Israeli and Cypriot fields in the Mediterranean would be cheaper than supplies from Gazprom, but it has little chance of reaching Turkish consumers so long as arguments over territorial waters and other matters between Greek and Turkish Cypriots obstruct the development of pipelines. In 2004, ahead of a referendum in Cyprus on whether to accept a reunification plan proposed by Kofi Annan, who was the secretary general of the United Nations at the time, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution relating to security arrangements on the island that all other Council members supported. Hopes for the Annan plan then took another big blow when AKEL, the influential communist party in southern Cyprus, dropped its previous support and, on the eve of the referendum, urged voters to reject the plan, as did the Orthodox Church. In the end, the north voted to accept the plan, while voters in the south rejected it. Yet another international effort collapsed after hackers penetrated the United Nations computer system and, in 2009, leaked emails and documents to a Cypriot newspaper. Some of the documents were doctored in a way that inflamed fears of any settlement. The United Nations concluded that only a foreign intelligence service could have orchestrated such an operation. Mr. Anastasiades, speaking at the presidential palace in Nicosia, said that his country counted Russia as a friend, but that it had to take care not to give fuel to those who questioned Russia’s intentions, as the ambassador did by attending the seminar. Russia has responded angrily to accusations that it has been working against its own stated policy in favor of a Cyprus solution. Vladimir A. Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, issued a scathing statement on Jan. 13 to denounce what he called “preposterous” reports that Russia wanted to block a settlement. “Evidently, hysteria is becoming contagious. Overzealous fighters of the (dis) information front are working day and night trying to implicate Russia in all sorts of problems, including those that are the direct result of shortsighted and arrogant policies of others,” Mr. Chizhov, a veteran diplomat who earlier served at the embassy in Nicosia, said in the statement. Harry Tzimitras, director of the Nicosia branch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said many obstacles blocked a settlement irrespective of Russia, notably the gulf between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the issue of whether the Turkish military should be allowed to keep troops on the island after reunification. “The fundamental mistrust” between the two sides, Mr. Tzimitras said, is the main reason for the failure of decades of diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement. “In Cyprus, you rarely fight facts,” he said. “You fight perceptions and ghosts. ” All the same, he added, some think that Russia has many reasons, despite its public position, to want the island to stay divided. “In this view, the status quo is working very well for Russia,” Mr. Tzimitras said. “They don’t want it disrupted. ” Aside from strengthening NATO and damaging Gazprom, a reunification deal would deliver a success to the United States, whose diplomats have been particularly active in trying to prod Greece, Turkey and their ethnic kin in Cyprus toward an agreement. Mr. Anastasiades said the main obstacle to a solution was Turkey, whose increasingly autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently said Turkish troops must be allowed to stay in Cyprus “forever. ” Mr. Anastasiades has forged good relations with the leader of northern Cyprus, Mustafa Akinci, but, he said, “the solution does not depend on the Turkish Cypriots but on Ankara’s will. ” The issue of troops is tightly connected with another big hurdle — demands by Mr. Anastasiades, urged on by Russia, that Turkey, Greece and Britain be stripped of their role as guarantors. Moscow has long wanted to scrap this system, continuing a policy that was based in part on its desire to weaken the role of Britain, a NATO member that has military bases and a listening post in Cyprus. Mr. Anastasiades said it was up to Mr. Erdogan to decide what he wanted. “His rhetoric is that he is in favor, but what remains to be seen is whether in practice he is supporting a solution,” Mr. Anastasiades said. As for Russia and the United States, Mr. Anastasiades said, Cyprus understands “the games superpowers play. ” “We want the support of everyone who can give support,” he added. “It is a matter of survival. ” | 1 |
On her February 19th episode of “Full Measure,” host Sharyl Attkisson investigates new concerns involving the Department of Veterans Affairs. Attkisson examines allegations in a lawsuit against a Veterans Administration contractor getting millions of taxpayer dollars while accused of cheating veterans. [Cleaning up the Department of Veterans Affairs was one of the main themes of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Attkisson’s “Full Measure” provided Breitbart News the following excerpts of her upcoming show. Born in Iran, David Vatan attended medical school and came to live in the U. S. He got a job in California working for a VA contractor under Lockheed Martin: QTC Medical Services. Vatan’s job was to review medical files of Vietnam vets to see if they’re eligible for payments for injuries from Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide used to remove leaves from trees in jungles where the enemy hid. Vatan: By reviewing their files, I was honored and I felt that I, there is a purpose in what I do and at the end of the day every day, I felt so good if I reviewed a file and I found the evidence that could benefit our veterans. That’s the least I could do. Sharyl: So their ability to get payments or benefits hinged on the reviews that people like you were doing, of their medical files? Vatan: Absolutely. But Vatan says he quickly saw major problems at QTC: large numbers of vets denied benefits after he says their medical files weren’t properly reviewed. Sharyl: What made you think that something wasn’t right? Vatan: I noticed that some of my are reviewing claim folders a lot faster than I did, and then I realize some of them do not have the necessary background to review and understand the highly complex medical records. And, much to my surprise, some of them had only high school education. QTC got $300 to $350 per file. The faster the analysts worked, the more money QTC made. Sharyl: How many files do you think could reasonably be reviewed in a day? Vatan: Five or six based on my observation. Sharyl: But some people were doing fifty? Vatan: Fifty and sixty. QTC staff emails confirmed the files were being pushed through in what Vatan sees as impossibly fast: “We are running behind,” the staff were told. “We were 30 short. ” “We did not do well yesterday. ” “We need to make it up today. ” Vatan reported his concerns to QTC’s senior leadership and parent company, LockheedMartin. Vatan: I approached the management and I was challenged, and then I approached the Lockheed Martin ethics office. Sharyl How did you tell Lockheed Martin what you thought was wrong? Vatan: I told them I believe it’s unethical, unprofessional and as a result, based on the statistics that they have released, it’s unacceptable. Sharyl: The company was getting a huge amount of tax dollars to conduct these reviews? Vatan: Absolutely. I think it’s close to 50 million dollars. That’s your tax money. Sharyl: What would they say? Vatan: They say, “We’ll look into it,” and they conducted several interviews with me, of course the ethics office did, and they took their time and then eventually they send me an email. They said, “your allegations were unsubstantiated. ” After blowing the whistle, Vatan says he faced harassment and retaliation. QTC’s CEO admonished him for “creating a disruptive work environment. ” He was eventually fired for misconduct, which he denies. Vatan filed a whistleblower suit in federal court, alleging fraud and retaliation. The case was dismissed. He’s appealing. Vatan: I felt that not only they’re defrauding for our government, but also at the same time they’re scamming and screwing our veterans. Rep. Phil Roe, : If what he says is true, then these claims have not been properly adjudicated. Congressman Phil Congressman Phil Roe, Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is looking into the handling of Agent Orange claims and Vatan’s allegations. Rep. Roe: I think it needs to be investigated. I think we need to look at it. We certainly have asked the VA for an explanation for it here. QTC has been under scrutiny before. A 2008 audit by the Inspector General found QTC overcharged taxpayers more than $6 million for vets’ medical exams. Yet four years later, QTC got the lucrative government contract to review Agent Orange claims. Rep. Roe: I think the veterans deserve more for the money we’re spending. The VA didn’t respond to Attkisson’s interview requests. Also, QTC declined to comment “due to ongoing litigation. ” Dr. Vatan hopes his story will make the VA and its contractors more accountable, and he still sees the U. S. as among the best countries the world. Sharyl: I see you’re wearing an American pin, an American flag. Why is that? Vatan: I’m proud of this country. It’s one of the safest countries in the world and the safety and security that we all enjoy, we owe it to our veterans because they fought the wars outside of our border in the past. Though QTC and Lockheed Martin wouldn’t talk with Attkisson, their lawyers argued in court, “There is nothing inherently wrong with QTC encouraging people to work quickly. ” QTC said Vatan’s level wasn’t the final say in reviews, because files were then sent to doctors hired for that purpose. They noted that Vatan was part of the first step review, because although he has a medical degree, he did not have a license. The main “Full Measure” website is here and the February 19 show will be available here. “Full Measure” airs Sunday on Sinclair stations nationwide and is streamed live on Sundays at 9:30 a. m. ET at www. fullmeasure. news. | 1 |
I’m on the verge of giving up trying to explain why Ignacio Mattos’s food is so good. I once wrote that the cooking at his first restaurant, now closed, dabbled in “deep, surrealist weirdness. ” At Estela, the place on Houston Street that put him on the map, I described his food as “almost familiar, but not quite. ” What struck me at his most recent restaurant, Café Altro Paradiso, was “the inverse relationship between prettiness and deliciousness. ” (What I ate was unpretty and highly delicious.) In retrospect, nothing I wrote captured the qualities that made the food compelling. I latched on to visual style because I couldn’t figure out how to explain why the flavors grabbed me the way they did. After spending some time at Flora Bar, which Mr. Mattos opened in October, I’ve started to think that whatever it is that sets his food apart is something you can’t see. It’s a kind of cooking that’s almost invisible. Flora Bar is inside the Met Breuer museum, Marcel Breuer’s blunt and muscular stack of granite and concrete on Madison Avenue in the 70s, regarded as a masterpiece of the brutalist style. “The taste for its disconcertingly inverted pyramidal mass grows on one slowly,” the architecture critic for The New York Times, Ada Louise Huxtable, wrote in 1966, “like a taste for olives or warm beer. ” The food at Flora Bar is much easier to like than warm beer. Under the direction of Jake Nemmers, the executive chef, it comes out of the kitchen in a series of tidily formal circles and squares. The rough edges of the cooking at Altro Paradiso and Estela have been refined, which makes it even more astonishing when the flavors come at you out of nowhere. A simple red disc on a white plate, Flora Bar’s tuna tartare isn’t like any I’ve had before it pops with toasted flax seeds and crunches with fried shallots, neither of which hides the clean, cold taste of chopped yellowfin tuna. Flora Bar does not quite reinvent tuna tartare the way Estela reinvents beef tartare, but it comes closer than you’d think was possible. Steak comes with béarnaise and beet hunks. The beets look a little wrinkled, like prunes, and have an uncannily focused flavor. The béarnaise is silky and light on the herbs. The steak looks like steak, sliced. It is tender, and the flavor goes on and on as you chew, yet it doesn’t have the stink of beef. Something must have happened to make it so extraordinary, but the answer is not visible. (The beef has been given, among other treatments, a surreptitious marination in fish sauce.) How can a shrimp cocktail hold any surprises? Well, there’s the price, $29, which may be a record. But then there’s the astonishingly fine flavor and texture of the blue shrimp themselves, glossy and appealingly slippery on a bed of ice pebbles. They’re terrific, and so is their dark, uncloying cocktail sauce. Note the name. Flora Bar is, when you get down to it, less a restaurant than a wine bar. The plates are almost all small even the steak, which could pass as a main course, is a far cry from a steakhouse portion. Flora Bar is not trying to be a utilitarian cafe for museum patrons who knocked themselves out taking in Kerry James Marshall’s show upstairs and now want a cheap, filling meal. That job goes to Flora Coffee next door, where you can get sandwiches and pastries during the day. The wine list at Flora Bar is about as exhaustive as any artist’s career retrospective. It contains multitudes, and in three visits, I barely scratched the surface. And I left the shelves and shelves of tempting, knowledgeably chosen spirits mostly untouched, apart from the slug of gin that went into my very soothing Tuxedo No. 2 cocktail. As wine bars go, it’s somewhat stiff. The service can be punctilious in a way that I imagine is meant to appeal to the Upper East Sider, but fans of Estela (and there are many Upper East Siders in that group) may find it slightly . Or Mr. Mattos and his business partner, Thomas Carter, may just be trying to live up to the space. It’s an exceptionally dramatic one, with marble surfaces and banquettes of dark leather and windows the size of billboards that look out on Breuer’s bridge across the moat below Madison Avenue. A sculpture garden when this building still housed the Whitney Museum of American Art, the moat is now an outdoor extension for Flora Bar. I miss the art, but the tables look inviting enough to make me come back when the weather warms up. The menu is part tapas, part sashimi and part something else. On the tapas side, we have wonderfully crunchy croquetas with a soft core of warm raclette, pink shavings of jamón Ibérico, and a plate of anchovies, three cured in oil and three in brine. The quality is impeccable if you can get over paying $18 for six anchovies. I couldn’t. Representing sashimi, there is shimmering raw seafood, some of it on or under squares of nori. You’re meant to treat the nori like a tortilla. A month ago, the filling in this taco was raw scallops and a salty streak of plum paste, and I was quietly happy. When I went back, the nori covered sticky raw red shrimp and sea urchin, and I went completely giddy. It took me a minute to warm up to another raw dish, the lobster crudo. Raw lobster is not something you naturally want to cuddle up with. Here it is chopped with shiso and molded into a disc, ready to be swabbed in a mayonnaise. It’s refined and almost comforting. As for something else, you tell me how to characterize raclette and golden slices of rutabaga over a thin, buttery tart shell, or an omelet that is in fact cooked in a thin disc, inverted on to the plate down, and then topped with spoonfuls of hackleback caviar, firm trout roe and crème fraîche. There’s a fine line between simple and dull, and one or two dishes fell on the wrong side. Stracciatella with lemon peel and cubes of fennel struck me as an ordinary burrata salad traveling under an alias. Halibut with wild mushrooms was no more than the sum of its parts, although they were very good parts. Natasha Pickowicz’s desserts sound safe but can be daring. Mandarin sorbet in a kind of cradle made of coconut was served with a yuzu sauce so sour it made me sit up straight. After the initial shock, I loved it. If I’d expected the parfait of chocolate and amarena cherries to be a layered dessert served in a tall glass, like other parfaits, I was wrong. This was chocolate, as dense as ganache, and served in the shape of, you guessed it, a disc. | 1 |
Lena Dunham claims (claims!) she is losing weight because Donald Trump has convinced her not to eat. The Catholic church won’t declare a person a saint until after their death, but if this extraordinary statement is true, maybe a miracle of this magnitude deserves an exception? [Dunham revealed the news on the Howard Stern Show, during which the actress went through her tired routine of explaining that promising to move to Canada was “just a joke. ” She also said Hillary Clinton was “the best qualified candidate we’ve ever had. ” But in the middle of her schtick, an amazing revelation emerged. Lena said “Donald Trump became president and I stopped being able to eat food … Everyone’s been asking like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, try pain and devastation and hopelessness and you, too, will lose weight. ” Now that we’ve collectively pulled ourselves together, stopped guffawing and picked the sick out of our keyboards, let’s unpack that statement for a moment. None of us really believes that Lena Dunham can stay off cheeseburgers for long. But if it is true, Trump’s achievement is on par with curing the sick and returning sight to the blind. You’ll recall that when Lena made disgusting comments about abortion, her excuse was that they were said as part of a “delusional girl persona” she “often inhabits. ” Perhaps these weight loss comments were made as part of another persona, one that doesn’t want to die lonely and far too young due to obesity and feminism … but I repeat myself. I’ve had my with Dunham. Without a doubt she is one of the best examples of how feminism attracts ugly women. I even offered to buy her ticket to Canada before she explained it was all of course just a joke. Before the election, I used my Dangerous Faggot college tour stop at Ohio University to point out something Dunham was serious about — the extinction of white men. Maybe the real reason she’s lost her appetite is that she realized her antics directly contributed to Daddy’s election! A reasonable person at this point would say, “Why should we pay any attention to Lena Dunham at all?” And it is a fair question. Her HBO series Girls is long gone, and her lack of comedic chops and acting skill ensures she won’t have a serious career outside of small parts given to her out of pity and ideological sisterhood by producers and directors. As President Donald Trump correctly put it,”Well, she’s a . You know, she has no — you know, no mojo. ” One could argue she has no mojo because that would be cultural appropriation from indigenous tribes, but either way, she certainly lacks the elusive star factor needed in Hollywood. But I’d argue Lena Dunham is an important person to keep an eye on, even now, because she represents the continued lunacy of the left and the progressive march off the cliff. They’ve doubled down on stupidity, and little lost Lena is a perfect case study of the terrible . (I say “keep an eye on,” but I mean this metaphorically. Even a few Lena Dunham photos can cause irreparable mental scarring and random malfunctions in the optic nerve.) Dunham has also revealed herself to be something of a chameleon, which is another reason we ought not count her out just yet. Consider the drastic changes she has undergone since the election. In the past she was content to be a typical feminist and an ugly poster child for the body positivity movement. But since the election she has vomited forth a steady stream of hysteria and worse. Her immediate reaction to the election was to blame her fellow white women for the loss, inventing a new privilege called violent privilege to do so. It is certainly instructive that the sisterhood falls apart at the first sign of trouble. Dunham then posted a selfie while sitting on a toilet in December. It was a torrid cry for help from a frightened little girl — not a brave move from an empowered woman. She had no clue why people didn’t applaud her for it, either. Just a few weeks into the Trump presidency and the porcine princess of progressive politics is on hunger strike. What’s not to love? And what could be coming next? It’s all just so exciting. Because the deterioration of Lena’s piddling reserves of sanity is speeding up. Will she next be spotted “punching a Nazi” (i. e. anyone to the right of Jane Fonda)? Will she run for the Senate against Al Franken, because he isn’t unfunny enough to be the left’s former star in Washington? Who can say! I guess there’s a chance she will calm down and moderate her politics instead of attempting to further divide America. But realistically, there is a higher chance of me doing a photoshoot naked in a public bathroom eating cake. Not that such a shoot wouldn’t be, like, super hot. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! Follow Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Hear him every Friday on The Milo Yiannopoulos Show. Write to Milo at milo@breitbart. com. | 1 |
President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday evening and asked why aren’t congressional lawmakers probing the various deals, transactions, and connections former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have to Russia. [“Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech,” read Trump’s first tweet, which was followed by, “ … money to Bill, the Hillary Russian “reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!” Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech … . — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017, … money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ”reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017, Trump’s assertion that of State Clinton “allowed big Uranium to go to Russia” and Bill Clinton’s “Russian speech” were allegations first reported by The New York Times (NYT) and based on research from the NYT bestseller Clinton Cash, authored by Breitbart News Peter Schweizer. The facts found in Clinton Cash, reported by the NYT, and deemed accurate by establishment media reveal how Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State coincided with the influx of tens of millions of dollars from foreign sources into the Clinton Foundation which resulted in favorable actions for Russia’s government. Indeed the Clinton Foundation had received millions in donations from several investors in Uranium One, a company in which a majority stake was sold to Russia’s nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, in a lucrative deal needing approval from Clinton’s State Department and eight other federal agencies. “The sale gave the Russians control of of all uranium production capacity in the United States,” The New York Times confirmed. The “deal,” as Trump points out, refers to how donations to the Clinton Foundation from executives of Uranium One had exceeded $145 million, according to the New York Times. In fact, those Clinton Foundation donations from uranium investors spiked just as the deal for Russia’s Rosatom to secure Uranium One was being finalized. A troublesome series of undisclosed donations came from former Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer. Telfer made four foreign donations totaling $2. 35 million to the Clinton Foundation while the uranium deal was being negotiated. However, the Times noted, “those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. ” “We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them,” The Clinton Foundation admitted at the time. But Hillary Clinton’s failure to disclose the millions in donations her family foundation received from Teller was a direct violation of the Memorandum of Understanding she signed with the Obama administration promising to disclose all foreign donations during her tenure as Secretary of State. More troubling still, was the $500, 000 speech Bill Clinton delivered in Moscow that was paid for by “a Russian investment bank that had ties to the Kremlin” at the time of the Uranium One deal, the New Yorker confirmed. “Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was Secretary of State?” asks the liberal publication. Trump’s calls for a federal investigation into the Clintons’ Russia ties come amid a partisan push to link the President and his aides to Russian and collusion during the presidential campaign. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
BREAKING: Soros Election Tampering Explodes… Illegally Funneling Cash
I am very sorry when children have nightmares. I don’t want children to have nightmares. Nobody on Conservative Tribune’s staff wants children to have nightmares. I think I can safely stake that out as our editorial policy without consulting too many of my superiors.
However, from that starting point on which Ms. Schmidt and I can surely agree, here are two reasons why I believe this story is prima facie bosh.
Firstly, I question the genesis of this nightmare, and I find it unbelievable that the writer didn’t. Did Schmidt not think that the child’s bad dreams might have been the result not of the perfidy of Donald Trump but of the political leanings and discussions of her parents? If she did, does she not feel that maybe the tone of the piece was out of line?
Secondly, let’s assume that these parents have been completely unbiased in presenting the election to their children (which I find an unlikely possibility, but hey, it could happen). The world can be a nightmarish place — and unfortunately, one of the things that makes it that way is an extremist movement connected, however tangentially you believe it to be, to their religion.
If you want to talk about bad dreams, talk to survivors of the San Bernardino terrorist attack . Talk to survivors of the Boston bombing. Talk to survivors of 9/11 . These people have very real nightmares, sometimes each and every night, about very corporeal things done to them in the name of Islam — and they’re the ones who survived .
These aren’t idle thoughts. They are concrete events.
For that matter, it’s worth pointing out that the same terrorists probably wish to perpetrate the same nightmarish fate (or worse) on this 7-year-old and her family, simply for the crime of being Westernized. Is this what we wish to ignore in the name of making Donald Trump our national bogeyman?
If Schmidt is so concerned about the nightmares that Trump’s candidacy is giving 7-year-olds, perhaps she ought to go talk to grown men and women who still have those nightmares, thanks to radical Islamic terrorism.
If the topic of radical Islamism and how to prevent it is so traumatizing to your children, it’s time to turn off the TV instead of blaming those willing to address it.
Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree The New York Times’ story is balderdash. What are your thoughts on this story? Scroll down to comment below! Advertisement Popular Right Now | 0 |
The Times of Israel reports: Egyptian President told a delegation from an umbrella group of US Jewish groups that reaching an end to the conflict is one of his top priorities. [Meeting in Cairo, Sissi told representatives from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that reaching a peace deal would remove a main impetus behind terror attacks. Sunday’s meeting came as an Israeli media report detailed a secret summit between Sissi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah and US secretary of state John Kerry last year aimed at cobbling together a regional peace initiative. Read more here. | 1 |
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Liberals are a mess right now.
They’re either crying like babies or raging like third-world anarchists on a violent bender, as they burn down cities and attack pregnant women with baseball bats.
Fox News Jesse Watters went into the hub of liberal madness – New York City – to check in on the snowflakes post-election.
Watch the video:
Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here .
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Seven of the 12 jurors who convicted Ronald B. Smith in the murder of a convenience store clerk voted to spare his life. When the case reached the Supreme Court, four of the eight justices voted to stay his execution. The arithmetic of capital punishment can seem curious. Mr. Smith was executed Thursday night. Mr. Smith was convicted of murdering the clerk in 1994 in Huntsville, Ala. The jury recommended life without parole, but the trial judge overrode that determination, sentencing Mr. Smith to death. Alabama is the only state that allows such overrides. It is a good bet that the Supreme Court will soon weigh the constitutionality of the practice. That will be too late for Mr. Smith, who came up one vote short on Thursday night, illuminating a lethal gap in the Supreme Court’s internal practices. It takes four votes to put a case on the court’s docket, but it takes five to stop an execution. Over the years, in fits and starts, some justices have sought to address this anomaly by casting a “courtesy fifth” vote to stay an execution when four justices thought the case worthy of further consideration. In a 1985 concurrence, Justice Lewis F. Powell explained his reluctant decision to supply such a courtesy vote. The inmate’s case had “no merit whatever,” he wrote. “But in view of the unusual situation in which four justices have voted” to hear it, he wrote, “and in view of the fact that this is a capital case with petitioner’s life at stake, and further in view of the fact that the justices are scattered geographically and unable to meet for a conference, I feel obligated to join in granting the application for a stay. ” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was asked about the practice at his confirmation hearing in 2005. “How would you feel, if you were chief, if you had four of the justices now voting for a stay of execution?” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, asked. “Do you feel as chief you would do the courtesy of kicking in the fifth one?” Chief Justice Roberts seemed receptive. “I don’t want to commit to pursue a particular practice,” he said. “But it obviously makes great sense. ” “You don’t want to moot the case by not staying the sentence,” he added. In the 11 years that Chief Justice Roberts has led the Supreme Court, its commitment to such courtesy votes has been inconsistent. Until Thursday, though, it seemed to be on the upswing. The recent trend started with a case on transgender rights. A Virginia school board wanted to stop a transgender boy, Gavin Grimm, from using the boys’ restroom at his high school while the Supreme Court considered an appeal from a decision in Mr. Grimm’s favor. In August, the court’s four more conservative members — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — voted to grant a stay. Justice Stephen G. Breyer added a fifth vote “as a courtesy. ” Justice Breyer’s motives were not hard to discern. He was concerned about execution chambers, not restrooms. The only case he cited in his concurrence in the transgender case was Medellin v. Texas, a death penalty decision in which he had expressed frustration that “no member of the majority has proved willing to provide a courtesy vote for a stay. ” Last month, Justice Breyer’s gambit seemed to pay off. On Nov. 3, the court considered an application for a stay of execution from another Alabama death row inmate, Thomas D. Arthur. Chief Justice Roberts provided the fifth vote needed to halt the execution. He said he would not ordinarily have favored a stay, but noted that four justices had voted in favor of one. “To afford them the opportunity to more fully consider the suitability of this case for review,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “I vote to grant the stay as a courtesy. ” On Thursday, in Mr. Smith’s case, the court’s more liberal members — Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — voted for a stay. But this time there was no courtesy fifth vote. Upon hearing that news, Mr. Smith’s lawyers immediately filed a request for reconsideration. “The court should not permit executions in the face of four dissents,” the motion said, adding that the court’s practices in this area “clash with the appearance and reality both of equal justice under law and of sound judicial decision making. ” That motion was denied, too, this time without noted dissent. The leading student of the courtesy fifth is Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. The title of his 2015 law review article on the subject makes his views plain: “No Execution if Four Justices Object. ” On Thursday night, as it became clear that Mr. Smith was going to die, Professor Freedman made a more modest point. The justices, he said, should at the least explain their reasoning and standards. “The time has long ago passed for the court to address forthrightly a situation which is simply unseemly,” Professor Freedman said. “For people to live or die in the middle of the night on the basis of no visible rule is simply at odds with any defensible system of judicial decision making. ” | 1 |
BNI Store Nov 6 2016 Like a good little sharia-compliant female, Prince Charles’ wife Camilla removes her shoes to enter a mosque in Abu Dhabi, but the Prince of Wales keeps his shoes on The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have visited the spectacular Sheikh Zaved Grand Mosque to promote religious tolerance. ( HAH! ) UK Daily Mail Charles was dressed in a linen suit and striped tie, while Camilla wore a blue headscarf, long jacket and trousers. Visitors to the mosque must remove their footwear, BUT Charles walked round in black shoes while his wife went barefoot with her head covered. The mosque was established in 2008 and sits at the entrance to Abu Dhabi City Island. It aims to work with research centres and religious, educational and cultural institutions within the United Arab Emirates and across the world. | 0 |
How do you deal with an opponent immune to the truth, whose appeal is atavistic rather than rational? How do you pick off enough of his constituents and prevent him from making inroads into yours? In Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies face a candidate for whom there is no precedent in presidential politics. It remains unclear whether Trump can be brought to his knees the way Mitt Romney was by ads like “Coffin” and “Firms,” which alleged that Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, closed factories and shipped jobs abroad. In April, during the primary campaign, Politico reported that Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster currently working for the “super PAC” Priorities USA Action, contended in a phone interview that Trump’s immunity to criticism worked only in the primaries among Republican voters: “Trump is not Teflon. ” Among all voters, Garin argued, “a majority has come to the conclusion that Trump is unfit for the job and that he would represent a significant risk as president. ” Polling and focus group testing, Garin said, have shown that one ad produced by Priorities, “Grace,” has been highly effective. It shows Grace, who was born with spina bifida, her parents, Chris and Lauren Glaros, and a clip of Trump ridiculing a disabled New York Times reporter. The ad concludes with the father on camera: I asked Garin, along with other strategists and political observers, how they would respond to a long list of Trump’s rambling, theatrical promises, which he would, in fact, be unable to keep. Just a partial list of these includes refusing to defend America’s NATO allies, returning 11 million undocumented immigrants to their home countries, saving $300 billion annually on a prescription drug program that spends only $78 billion a year, nationalizing concealed weapons permits and vowing that “If I become president, we’re gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store . .. You can leave Happy Holidays at the corner. ” Should Democrats, I inquired, point to the infeasibility of Trump’s proposals and the damaging results of any attempts on his part to follow through? That approach would not work, Garin said, because voters, including many of Trump’s supporters, don’t really “believe he will build a wall, or get Mexico to pay for a wall” — they have already discounted many of Trump’s assertions as hyperbole. “The real case has more to do with his character and temperament,” Garin said. “The biggest concern is that he is temperamentally unsuited to lead the country. ” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with the Clinton campaign, argued in an email that there were risks in attacking specific Trump proposals as unrealistic: In an interesting warning to Democrats, Arthur Lupia, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, wrote me: Making a related argument, a Democratic strategist who sought anonymity in order to protect his relationship with the Clinton campaign, wrote me: This strategist cited the futility of accusing Trump of hyping crime: Democrats have to negotiate a tricky path in communicating their candidate’s “identification with the main concerns of many of Trump’s voters” on such issues as immigration, the strategist argued. This empathy has to be Robert Borosage, of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group, described the problem of attempting to refute Trump : Clinton’s task, in Borosage’s view, is not an easy one for a politician who has been in the national spotlight for more than a quarter of a century: “H. R. C. ’s challenge is to claim the future — one that is different than the past,” Borosage wrote. In his speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Bill Clinton sought to address the issue Borosage raises of how Hillary Clinton can plausibly “claim the future. ” The former president referred to his wife’s record of making “positive changes in people’s lives” and noted that his wife is a “woman who has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. ” Borosage brought up a second point, that Hillary Clinton, who has campaigned on the theme that she will protect and enhance the Obama legacy, needs to jump an additional hurdle: “Her biggest challenge is to be different than Obama — bolder, challenging Wall Street, corporate trade and tax deals. ” Borosage’s argument — that the Trump campaign is based on attitudes and ingrained belief systems, not on a set of policies — points to the difficulty of addressing Trump’s rhetoric. Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton and the author of “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Age of Economic Integration” pointed out in an email, for example, that Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported in July 2015 that numerous studies These facts are unlikely to dissuade voters convinced that immigrants are taking jobs, committing crimes and undermining American values. From their point of view, any crime by an illegal immigrant is one crime too many. There are many Democrats who believe that taking on Trump does not require nuance or calculation. “When 60 percent of voters say they’ll never consider voting for you and you have a 29 percent approval rating, you’ve got a serious image problem,” Jim Jordan, who managed John Kerry’s presidential campaign and served as executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, wrote me in an email. “Trump is already gushing blood. This is just blocking and tackling for the Clinton folks. ” Jordan argues that “the two real imperatives” for Democrats are 1) “to deny Trump the ‘I’ ’ space,” and 2) “to keep hammering on how bizarre and dangerous he is to America and our interests around the world. His weird on Putin and his invitation this week to Russia to invade the Baltics seem like good places to start. ” Despite Jordan’s confidence in Democratic presidential prospects, at the moment Trump has moved ahead of Clinton by 1. 1 percent in the RealClearPolitics aggregation of recent polling. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N. Y. U. told me in an email that Democrats need to adopt a more subtle strategy in dealing with Trump. This, Haidt argues, is because the The elephant “really runs the show,” Haidt said, Translating this analytic approach to the 2016 election, in Haidt’s view, means that To counter Trump, Democrats have to get into the electorate’s automatic, intuitive and unconscious level of responding to events before attempting a critique based on reasoned argument, according to Haidt. To do this, he wrote, the goal should be to portray Trump in ways that conflict with “deep moral intuitions about fairness versus cheating and exploitation. ” And how do you do that? The next step is to present a vision of Trump that violates “moral intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity:” On Monday night in her speech, Michelle Obama tapped into this theme when she described “the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children. ” The first lady declared: Haidt put it another way: I could not have said it better myself. Despite the overt chaos, the competing narratives of the fall campaign — each side’s attempt to define the other as weak or crazy and itself as tough and dependable — are clearly emerging from the conventions. The question is whether the Democratic Party can get emotional enough or reach deep enough into our brains to counter the sheer id of Trump’s primeval appeal. | 1 |
Democrats working to oppose any changes to Obamacare have launched a morbid campaign to fight the GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) by urging supporters to send the ashes of dead relatives to Washington, DC. [“Millions of Americans rely on protections and coverage from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare,” the campaign website insists. “The Republicans [sic] new bill will gut these protections and many will die. ” The site then urges supporters to gather the ashes of dead people and send them along to any Republican member of Congress. The effort is the vision of college junior Zoey Jordan Salsbury, an employee of a Democrat strategy company called New Blue Interactive: @nsilverberg I made a website for sick people to send their ashes to a GOP member of congress because of this tweet: https: . — Zoey Jordan Salsbury (@zoeyjsalsbury) May 4, 2017, Despite the initial claim, however, Salsbury told the Washington Post that she does not really intend to send any ashes to D. C. “I have the feeling the Capitol building would actually stop” the packages, Salsbury told the paper. But she did say that instead of sending the ashes to Congress, supporters should send them to the district offices back home in any particular congressman’s state. Salsbury is worried that the GOP’s “repeal” of Obamacare will impact people with conditions, but the GOP’s AHCA does not roll back any of the protections for conditions, nor does it “repeal” Obamacare in any meaningful way. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Home › POLITICS › WIKILEAKS WARNS IT IS LAUNCHING “PHASE THREE” OF ITS ELECTION COVERAGE WIKILEAKS WARNS IT IS LAUNCHING “PHASE THREE” OF ITS ELECTION COVERAGE 0 SHARES
[10/31/16] On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “ phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations.
“We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago.
On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “ phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations.
“We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago.
As the Hill noted , Wiki did not provide information about what the third phase entails or if there are still more revelations to come. As a reminder, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange currently finds himself in the Ecuador embassy where his internet access has been revoked for the duration of the presidential campaign to avoid the appearance of intervention.
Wikileaks supporters, now including a number of disgruntled GOP nominee Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, promptly replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. User “CorruptMedia” responded with a Photoshopped estimating what CNN coverage of Clinton being escorted to jail would look like. A new archive of Clinton-related documents would further irk a campaign still reeling from FBI director James Comey’s announcement on Friday that new emails related to the Clinton server probe had been discovered. Post navigation | 0 |
by Lambert Strether
I will add my thanks to Yves’ for a highly successful fundraiser. But if you are able, you can still help us make next year the best one ever for Naked Capitalism! We still had donations coming in after the formal close of our fundraiser, and they most assuredly are still welcome. Please visit our fundraiser page to see how to contribute by check, credit or debit card, or PayPal. And thanks again for all your support!
By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
TTP, TTIP, TISA
CETA: “‘I trust that an agreement will be reached in the course of today with Belgium, Wallonia and other parts of the country,’ Mr Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France” [ Business Times ]. “Some two hours of Belgium negotiations broke up without an apparent agreement early Wednesday, following six hours of similar talks the previous evening.” Reading all the Eurocrat statements, it looks to me like “an” agreement, to Juncker, means an agreement to sign the agreement, CETA, at some future date (so that Thursday’s summit with Justin Trudeau can proceed).
CETA: “What’s Wallonia’s deal? A primer on its role in CETA’s crisis” [ Globe and Mail ]. ” [Walloon Premier Paul Magnette’s] Socialist Party is under growing political pressure within Wallonia, an economically depressed rust-belt region. The Marxist party has been steadily gaining ground in recent polls, pushing the Socialists further to the left on issues such as trade.” There needs to be a left equivalent for “Always Be Closing.”
CETA: “CETA has bigger problems than not-so-‘tiny’-after-all Wallonia” [ Rabble. ca ]. “[B]y EU standards it is not all that small. Wallonia’s population is 3.5 million, almost a third of the Belgian total of somewhat more than 11 million. There are seven EU countries with smaller populations. Each of the EU’s 28 member states has veto power over CETA. That is how the EU works – on the Three Musketeers principle, one for all and all for one. If one or more of the smaller member states, such as Slovenia or Estonia, or one of the tiny island states with far fewer than a million people, Cyprus or Malta, vetoed the deal, would we be calling them tiny and insignificant?”
CETA: “Corporate Sovereignty Helps To Bring EU-Canada Trade Deal To Brink Of Collapse” [ TechDirt ]. This looks like what’s on offer to Wallonia:
The fact that CETA’s ISDS/ICS remains the most problematic area can be seen from a fascinating CETA document (pdf) that was recently leaked. It’s called the “Joint Interpretative Declaration on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union and its Member States,” and is an attempt to offer additional guarantees that are enough to convince Magnette and other CETA skeptics to allow its signing and ratification:
This interpretative declaration aims to provide a clear and unambiguous statement of what Canada and the European Union and its Member States agreed in a number of CETA provisions that have been the object of public debate and concerns. This includes, in particular, the impact of CETA on the ability of governments to regulate in the public interest, as well as the provisions on investment protection and dispute resolution, and on sustainable development, labour rights and environmental protection.
The section on Investment Protection is by far the longest, reflecting the seriousness of the problems there. Here’s a key paragraph: CETA clarifies that governments may change their laws, regardless of whether this may negatively affect an investment or investor’s expectations of profits. Furthermore, CETA clarifies that any compensation due to an investor will be based on an objective determination by the Tribunal and will not be greater than the loss suffered by the investor.
As that demonstrates, there is nothing new in the declaration. Nobody is claiming that CETA will stop governments changing their laws, just that the massive fines that can be imposed by supra-national tribunals are likely to discourage them from doing so. Similarly, claiming that those fines will be “based on an objective determination by the Tribunal and will not be greater than the loss suffered by the investor” simply confirms the untrammelled power of the tribunal to impose whatever fine it thinks is appropriate.
Lipstick on a pig.
TPP: “If the trade deal comes up during the lame-duck session this fall, the two [Vice Presidents] could play leading roles on opposite sides of the debate: Kaine as a potentially significant “no” vote should the pact come up for a vote while he’s still in the Senate, and Biden as President Barack Obama’s go-to guy for shoring up Senate support and casting the tie-breaking vote if need be” [ Politico ].
TPP: “The TPP ‘provides no guarantee of equal rights and remedies to migrants for labor violations, no regional task force or other solution to address region-wide trafficking issue and no region-wide restrictions on abusive behaviors by recruiters who prey on desperate workers simply trying to feed their families,’ Celeste Drake, the AFL-CIO’s trade and globalization specialist, said during a call with reporters. While the broader deal does not contain migrant worker protections advocated by the labor group, Malaysia is obligated through a separate ‘consistency plan’ to undertake certain reforms for protecting migrant workers” [Politico]. Weak-ass framing from the AFL-CIO (no surprise here) and terrible reporting from Politico (ditto). The issue with Malaysia is not “certain reforms to protect migrant workers,” and not even “trafficking.” The issue is slavery , which Obama is enabling in order to get the deal passed. Use the word!
TPP: “Australia could face a growing number of expensive legal claims from foreign corporations if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) comes into force, a new report has warned” [ Guardian ]. “Dr Kyla Tienhaara, from the Australian National University, said Australia ought to learn from Canada’s experience after it signed the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which came into force in 1994 and led to dozens of legal cases against Canada by US corporations [under ISDS].”
“Selected Government Statements and Actions Against Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)” (PDF) [ Public Citizen ]. Lots of good quotes (the US is at the end) for you to use when you write your Congresscritter.
2016
Days until: 12. That’s less than two weeks!
Corruption
” But Trump’s biggest local political donation [in Chicago] was the $50,000 he donated to Emanuel’s first mayoral campaign” [ Chicago Reader (DG)]. “That donation came on December 23, 2010, a couple months before Rahm was elected. In 2011, Emanuel’s administration approved the god-awful 20-foot-high “T-R-U-M-P” sign that the Donald felt compelled to plaster on his building overlooking the Chicago River. But Mayor Emanuel’s not Trump’s only Democratic pal in town. Trump also hired Alderman Burke’s law firm to handle his tax appeals to Assessor Berrios’s office. Burke then won Trump several million dollars worth of property tax breaks.” There don’t seem to be many degrees of separation between the elites. I suppose that’s why they’re elites…
Policy
” A hotelier’s guide to the 2016 presidential election” [ Hotel News Now ]. “Many hotels in the U.S. rely on a flow of legal immigrants to fill a variety of positions. Hoteliers want that pipeline of potential employees to remain open, while avoiding additional red tape to verify their statuses.”
“Battlegrounds: The Fight for Mosul and Election Day Disruptions” (podcast) [ Foreign Policy Editor’s Roundtable ]. If you want to get a good reading on the insanity that is The Blob , this is the podcast for you. The speakers spend a good twenty minutes discussing the details of Syria and Iraq, concluding that historians will look back on it as “a forty year’s war,” without ever once giving a reason for us to be there . Soothing NPR voices, no anger, a lot of laughter. Smart people.
War Drums
“Hillary Clinton Promises A More Muscular Foreign Policy As President” [ HuffPo ]. “As secretary of state, Clinton was an early supporter of arming and training members of the Syrian opposition to fight Assad, a plan that faced resistance out of concern that it would be difficult to appropriately vet fighters and ensure that weapons didn’t fall into the hands of extremists. Today, the program is off to a slow start, with only 54 graduates from the first class, several of whom scattered after coming under attack by an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. As commander-in-chief, Clinton would dramatically escalate the program, she said. ” Who was in charge of the training program? Ira Magaziner?
The Voters
“What Do Trump and Marx Have in Common?” [Jochen Bittner, New York Times ]. This is another piece along the lines of the article from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal that Yves linked to this morning, although it’s not a piece of outright hackery. For example: “When Hillary Clinton calls half of Mr. Trump’s voters a ‘basket of deplorables,’ she sounds as aloof as Marie Antoinette, telling French subjects who had no bread to ‘eat cake.'” But both articles deploy the “angry populists of left and right” vs. the “sensible center” trope (remember that in the Beltway you should never display anger; it’s a strong taboo). Bittner concludes: “Mrs. Clinton has the chance to change, by leading a political establishment that examines and processes anger instead of merely producing and dismissing it.” Obama destroyed hope by not delivering change. And now Clinton is holding the bag for the anger that caused. From the Department of Schadenfreude…
Downballot
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The Trail
“But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman” [ Politico ]. “Donald Trump is a stunning outlier. His linguistic style is startlingly feminine, so much so that the chasm between Trump and the next most feminine speaker, Ben Carson, is about as great as the difference between Carson and the least feminine candidate, Jim Webb. And Trump earns his ranking not just because he talks a lot about himself or avoids big words (both of which are true); according to Jones, he also shows feminine patterns on the more subtle measures, such as his use of prepositions and articles. The key then is not what Trump talks about—making Mexico pay for the wall or bombing the hell out of ISIL—but rather how he says it.” Readers?
Well, well:
— Bugei Nyaosi (@bnyaosi) October 25, 2016
Realignment
“This party was dead before Lincoln got here” [ USA Today ]. “Pity the poor Republican Party, which has been on its deathbed since the age of 2. Never mind that Republicans currently control both houses of Congress, 30 state legislatures and 31 governors’ mansions — this split between Establishment Republicans and Trump Republicans is a sure sign the party will be flatlining any day now. ny day now …”
Democrat Email Hairball
“Hillary’s 33,000 emails might not be ‘missing’ after all” Like a MacGuffin in a Hitchcock movie? [ New York Post ]. Important!
“Richard Nixon could only wish he got Hillary’s FBI treatment” [ New York Post ]. True! Sadly, I have to quote the New York Post twice in a row. It is what it is. We are where we are.
And then there’s this: LOL. If Neera thinks Hillary is going to forget about that one, she's fooling herself. https://t.co/ovVrqZJws6
— Billmon (@billmon1) October 25, 2016
Hopefully, Our Neena can kiss that chief of staff position goodbye.
“New Research Blames Insiders, Not North Korea, for Sony Hack” [ Time ]. The obvious parallel being…
Stats Watch
New Home Sales, September 2016: “New home sales in September, up 3.1 percent to a 593,000 annualized rate, proved very solid though sharp downward revisions to both August (575,000 from 609,000) and also July (629,000 from 659,000) do lower the degree of what is still, however, solid strength in the new home market” [ Econoday ]. And: “Overall I view this as a good report, which was slightly below market expectations. Dispite the fact the data jumps around, the three month rolling averages are solidly improving” [ Econintersect ]. And: ” The glass is more than half full. This is very solid year-over-year growth” [ Calculated Risk ]. But: “Data from the monthly NAHB survey has continued to suggest that there are shortages of available lots and labour shortages have also been an increasingly important feature in recent surveys. The new home sales data will reinforce these concerns and there will also be concerns over affordability issues” [ Economic Calendar ]. “[L]abour shortages”… If only there were something… like an invisible hand… to solve this problem!
MBA Mortgage Applications, week of October 21, 2016: “Purchase applications for home mortgages fell a seasonally adjusted 7 percent in the October 21 week to the lowest level since January” [ Econoday ].
International Trade in Goods, September 2016: “In a positive for Friday’s third-quarter GDP report, the nation’s trade gap in goods narrowed sharply in September” [ Econoday ]. “In a negative indication of retail expectations for the holidays, imports of consumer goods fell 1.8 percent following a 0.6 percent decline in August. And in a negative indication for domestic business investment, imports of capital goods fell 3.6 percent… [I]n a negative indication for domestic business investment, imports of capital goods fell 3.6 percent.” And we are a capitalist society…
Purchasing Managers’ Index Services Flash, October 2016: “Markit Economics’ U.S. samples are reporting a sharp upturn in business this month, first with Monday’s manufacturing report and now with the service flash where the headline index is up nearly 3 points” [ Econoday ]. “The sharp gains for Markit’s samples are a surprise but are still only anecdotal indications. Definitive data on October will be posted next week with the month’s unit auto sales and of course the monthly employment report. ” However: “Even with the stronger than expected surge in business activity, cautious staff hiring continued this month” [ Economic Calendar ].
Globalization: “Sluggish global trade is taking its toll on one of the world’s biggest ports operators. DP World reported just 1% growth in container volumes over the first nine months of 2016 at ports it’s owned for at least a year. Modest increases in traffic in Europe were offset by a sharp decline in the United Arab Emirates, where the company is based” [ Wall Street Journal ]. “DP World operates marine terminals on six continents, insulating it from economic slowdowns in individual countries or whole regions. But the company’s geographic reach can’t protect it from weak economic growth around the world, plus the ongoing commodities bust.”
Shipping: “The Suez Canal’s managers are opening a new front in their fight with the Panama Canal for a greater share of global shipping. Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority is negotiating with large shipping lines to secure payment of tolls three to five years in advance and with a break on pricing, the WSJ’s Costas Paris reports. Egypt has spent billions of dollars deepening the canal and opening it to two-way traffic, but the number of vessels passing through has barely grown amid a slowdown in global shipping” [ Wall Street Journal ].
Shipping: “Fundamentals of shipping are changing, warns Danish shipowners boss” [ Splash 247 ]. “Global trade will not double by 2030 as [ Anne Steffensen, director general of the Danish Shipowners’ Association’ and the other organisers of the [third annual Danish Maritime Forum] originally thought at the first forum back in 2014…. [T]he age old link between GDP growth and world trade has broken.”
Retail: “More than 90% of ‘genuine’ Apple chargers & cables sold on Amazon are fake, says Apple” [ 9to5Mac ]. I bought some and they fried. I figured it was the house’s electrical system. What a relief!
Retail: “How Amazon counterfeits put this man’s business on brink of collapse” [ CNBC (DK)]. “Once a thriving product for movers and contractors available at a dozen big-box retailers including Wal-Mart, Target and AutoZone, Forearm Forklift has been ravaged over the past half-decade by counterfeiters, mostly selling on Amazon. Scores of merchants have copied the patented product, using its name, images and labels and undercutting the real Forearm Forklift on price.”
The Bezzle: “Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings Inc. are cutting companies slack on mergers and acquisitions, an analysis of credit-ratings data by Bloomberg News found” [ Bloomberg ]. “Over the past year and a half, both have bumped up their ratings by two, three or even six levels on a majority of the biggest deals, the analysis found…. Some investors warn the approach has encouraged an epic debt binge that could pose dangers as years of near-zero interest rates come to an end.”
“In a clear nod to major market-makers’ concerns about the effect of more transparency on cash market liquidity and their own profit margins, Antonio Weiss, a counselor to U.S. Treasury Sec. Jack Lew, told an audience at a market structure conference on Monday that the Treasury market information transparency debate ‘should shift from whether to seek increased transparency to how, when, and on what basis'” [Francine McKenna, MarketWatch ]. “Information on activity in cash Treasury markets is not readily accessible, and regulators lack visibility into dealer-to-customer activity, which, according to some estimates, is over 50% of the cash market.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 55, Neutral) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 39 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 25 at 5:31pm.
Police State Watch
“AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal” [ Daily Beast ]. “The telecom giant is doing NSA-style work for law enforcement—without a warrant—and earning millions of dollars a year from taxpayers.” Not sure what’s new here….
“The day when police zap suspects from the sky with drones carrying stun guns may be nearing” [ Wall Street Journal ].
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“The U.N. Caused Haiti’s Cholera Epidemic. Now the Obama Administration Is Fighting the Victims” [ The New Republic ]. 2014, still relevant today.
Geographic Information Systems can be empowering: @BmoreDoc Anyhoo, this Bikeshare thing is only the tip of the bicycle iceberg. pic.twitter.com/zg43T3jkIb
— Cham Green (@Cham10101) October 26, 2016
Water
“A perfect storm of aging infrastructure, stretched municipal budgets, and changing climate conditions are putting even more of the country’s water systems under pressure. Faced with the steep cost of fixing their broken and ill-prepared infrastructure, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are turning to private money in their search for an answer to the country’s water woes. While the record of private companies handling water supplies has been mixed, this trend toward water privatization seems to be some kind of tacit acknowledgment that local governments can’t fix the problem on their own” [ Quartz ]. Ideal infrastructure projects, eh?
Gaia
“Far beyond the eight planets of the solar system, beyond even Pluto and the diminutive dwarf planets, may lurk a major new world called ‘Planet Nine.’ Few if any discoveries can be as sensational as finding another planet orbiting our sun, making the feat a Holy Grail for astronomers, who have managed to pull it off only a few times over the centuries. No one yet knows exactly where this ephemeral world might be—or even if it really exists at all” [ Scientific American ].
“Tilting, sinking San Francisco high-rise raises alarm” [ AP ]. Best quote ever: “What concerns me most is the tilting.”
Class Warfare
“Don’t Diss the Dark Ages” [ Of Two Minds ]. ” New modes of production and new social /political orders do not arise fully formed. They are pieced together by trial and error and numerous cycles of adaptation, innovation and failure.” Salutary reminder!
“This issue brief explains how monopsony, or wage-setting power, in the labor market can reduce wages, employment, and overall welfare, and describes various sources of monopsony power. It then reviews evidence suggesting that firms may have wage-setting power in a broad range of settings and describes several trends in recent decades consistent with a growing role for monopsony power in wage determination. It concludes with a discussion of several policy actions taken by the Obama Administration to help promote labor-market competition and ensure a level playing field for all workers” [ Council of Economic Advisors ]. How I hate that dead “level playing field” metaphor. Generally, playing fields are level. It’s the refs and the crooked guys with their hands in the till in the front office that I worry about.
“In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the damage. As of June, the G-7 as a whole had recovered almost completely, while the U.S. was only 60 percent back from its lowest point” [ Bloomberg ]. “Prime-age” like “prime beef”…
News of the Wired
“#WeAreTwitter” [ The Internet of Ownership ]. “Twitter is up for sale. Big companies are circling around looking to buy. But what about us, Twitter users? This proposal to turn one of the world’s most important platform utilities into a platform co-op has started spreading from a mere idea to an organizing campaign. Read, spread, and organize!”
“Only governments can safeguard the openness of the internet” [ Aeon ].
“Opia, sonder, liberosis: The dictionary for all the emotions you feel but can’t express” [ Quartz ]. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows .
____. n. The despondency that steals over you when you’re committed to inventing an election drinking game but have just realized that no rules can possibly be adequate to the task.
* * *
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (KR):
KR writes: “A nice profile of bee on untidy flower.” Winter is coming… 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 |
AUSTIN, Tex. — A fascinating story emerged about Netflix last week. The Daily Mail reported that the streaming television service was developing new interactive technology allowing viewers to direct the plots of certain television shows, style. The company later told me that the experiment was focused on children’s programming, more as a developmental learning tool than as some new twist on the modern media sphere’s rush to give you exactly what you want when you want it. No matter how far the experiment goes, Netflix is again in step with the national zeitgeist. After all, there are algorithms for streaming music services like Spotify, for Facebook’s news feed and for Netflix’s own program menu, working to deliver just what you like while filtering out whatever might turn you off and send you away — the sorts of honey traps that are all the talk at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival going on here through this week. So why not extend the idea to the plots of your favorite shows? The Mail even went so far as to envision viewers of the British historical drama “The Crown” making it so that Princess Margaret gets to marry her sister’s equerry, Peter Townsend. Of course, as Princess Margaret knew all too painfully, history saw no such union. But that’s no big deal anymore — at least if you consider the way people are being primed to shape the arc of the narratives on their highly personalized electronic screens to suit their own tastes, even if it means banishing inconvenient facts. As Dan Wagner, the Obama campaign data wiz and current Civis Analytics chief executive, put it when I bumped into him here during the weekend, “You used to be a consumer of reality, and now you’re a designer of reality. ” Understanding how that is playing out more broadly will help explain why you and your aunt’s new boyfriend can see the same events unfold in Washington and have utterly different ideas about what just happened. Allow me to direct you to the news media misadventure of the past week, which I’ll call “POTUS45, Episode 6: The Presidential Wiretap That (A) Was, (B) Wasn’t, (C) Was Because He’s a Russian Agent and Oh, Sister, Is He in Trouble. ” It started with President Trump’s Twitter posts accusing former President Barack Obama of having wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. Game on. If you were inclined to believe that Mr. Obama did what Mr. Trump said he did — indeed, if you wanted to believe it — you probably would have tuned into “Fox Friends” that Sunday morning for Adventure A. There, you would have seen the radio host Mark Levin, whose show was credited with helping to spur Mr. Trump’s accusations, laying out the case for Mr. Trump, declaring, “This is about the Obama administration’s spying. ” The proof, you would have heard him say, was already out there in the mainstream media — what with a report on the website Heat Street saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had secured a warrant to investigate ties between people in Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, and articles in The New York Times, in The Washington Post and elsewhere about intelligence linking people in Mr. Trump’s campaign to Russia, some of it from wiretaps. “These are police state tactics!” Mr. Levin would tell you. The next day, perhaps your Twitter or Facebook feed turned up a post from the Gateway Pundit — recently granted a White House press credential — speculating that maybe, just maybe, the F. B. I. director “Let Hillary Off the Hook Because She Knew About F. B. I. Wiretapping. ” As the week unspooled, you would have seen commentary on why Mr. Trump’s charge was so believable (Breitbart) and, shockingly, how it’s even possible that the C. I. A. hacked Clinton campaign email but made it look as if Russia had done it (Bill Mitchell, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity). Sure, you would have picked up static from other sources that made some of this seem ridiculous. But that stuff is for the followers of Adventure B, relying on journalism from seasoned reporters with deep contacts and established (and, yes, sometimes imperfect) protocols for — all of which the Adventure A people view with deep suspicion that the president is only too happy to stir. If you were among the Adventure B folk, maybe you saw James Clapper Jr. the former national security director, tell Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that Sunday that the F. B. I. had not secured a FISA warrant to spy on Mr. Trump’s aides. You probably would have seen the news, first reported by The Times, that the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, had asked the Justice Department to deny Mr. Trump’s charge (to no avail) and the viral video of George Stephanopoulos of ABC News telling a presidential aide, “That’s false,” as she tried to reprise the Adventure A argument that mainstream news reports backed Mr. Trump’s wiretap accusation. You would have seen PolitiFact’s rebuttal of the same argument — and, finally, a week later, reports about how evidence for Mr. Trump’s charge still had yet to surface. Or, lastly, were you an Adventure C kind of person? If so, you couldn’t get enough about how Mr. Trump’s wiretap allegation and the Russian connections could lead to his impeachment (MSNBC, The Independent, Maxine Waters) and your Facebook feed probably included the learnprogress. org headline “The F. B. I. Is Now Officially CRIMINALLY Investigating Donald J. Trump. ” (Nothing in the posting it links to shows evidence for any such thing.) As Mr. Stephanopoulos told me when we spoke by phone over the weekend, the trend may have been heading this way for a while — you don’t need an algorithmic feed to turn on Fox News or to catch Rush Limbaugh. But in the era of the curated digital news stream, the phenomenon has “ended up in a whole new place,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said. It’s easy to overdo it, he noted, given that no specially tailored plotline can fully tune out the contradicting details of another one. “Filters do have to contend with each other in some way, too,” he said. Really, arguments between adherents of the different adventure plots are the stuff of cable news programming, with each narrative vying for supremacy in debates that too often become arguments over established facts that should be indisputable. Because, after all, one of the plots we’re talking about here is of the sort that democracy depends on — that would be Adventure B, the one based on established facts that exist in the real world — and the others are of the sort that threatens to undermine any shared sense of truth while driving us into our corners. At South by Southwest here, a lot of words have been spilled on what to do about it, and just how urgently this multidimensional view of reality needs to be addressed — and how to do so. At a Mediapost event on the “ era” I participated in on Saturday, the editor of PolitiFact, Angie Drobnic Holan, said the truth would always come out, eventually. “At some point, evidence and facts will win out over an idea that has no substance,” she said. Our Mediapost conversation wandered into whether the big platforms could inject individual information streams with more items that might run counter to a person’s baseless beliefs. Intriguing. But there’s not a ton of economic incentive for the platforms to give people what they don’t want. Late Sunday, I checked out a exhibit presented at the Austin Motel by the digital creative collective the Future of StoryTelling. You could throw on the goggles, become a bird and fly around. If virtual reality can allow a human to become a bird, why couldn’t it allow you to live more fully in your own political reality — don the goggles and go live full time in the adventure of your choosing: A, B or C. Just watch out for that wall you’re about to walk into IRL (in real life). Or, hey, don’t — knock yourself out. | 1 |
This weekend, Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, are expected to step off the campaign trail for a beach vacation with their extended family at the Virginia shore. It is an annual tradition, as is Ms. Holton’s practice of making the adults hand over all their grocery store receipts. She ensures that every household, factoring in the number of children, has paid not a dollar more or less than its fair share. “She is not the accountant, she’s the judge,” said her brother Dwight Holton, a former United States attorney in Oregon. “No one has ever questioned her Solomonic wisdom. ” The daughter of a governor who grew up to marry a man who became governor, senator and now nominee, Ms. Holton has lived since childhood in a world of politics and power. But relatives and friends describe her as being uncommonly unimpressed by the trappings of privilege and instead driven by an almost religious sense of fairness, an aversion to idleness and a commitment to service that has helped elevate her into of Virginia’s most famous power couple. As a child, Ms. Holton, 58, had a symbolic role in helping integrate Virginia’s public schools before graduating from Princeton and meeting Mr. Kaine at Harvard Law School. As he rose up Virginia’s political ladder, she achieved renown in her own right as a legal aid lawyer, family court judge and Virginia’s secretary of education, a job she resigned once her husband was chosen as Hillary Clinton’s running mate. In some ways, Ms. Holton, who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for her husband in the Senate, represents Mrs. Clinton’s road not taken, continuing to pursue her career throughout her husband’s ascent rather than waiting her turn. But now those roads have converged on the presidential campaign trail, with Ms. Holton sharing stages with the Clintons and amplifying her husband’s high school teacher vibe with her Everywoman appeal. In a backstage holding room after Mrs. Clinton’s acceptance speech last Thursday, Mr. Kaine broke out his harmonica, one of his hobbies, and goaded his wife into one of hers, clog dancing. On the trail, Ms. Holton is a staple at her husband’s side, monitoring his speeches, giving him encouraging smiles and offering remarks in her lilting accent. “She has been around politics a looong time,” said Tom Wolf, Mr. Kaine’s former law partner and a friend of the family. “And she knows what it’s about and knows what needs to be done. ” Ms. Holton, who declined to be interviewed, first moved into the Virginia executive mansion in 1970 as the daughter of Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr. a Republican, and his wife, Virginia, known as Jinks. She enrolled at a prestigious grade school recommended to her parents by their friends. Many children at school wanted to attach themselves to her because of who her father was. “She called them ‘Buggy Friends,’” recalled her brother Woody, because they were constantly bugging her to visit the mansion. Status seeking, he said, was not a value instilled by their father. Instead, the children were roused from their comfortable beds every morning with refrains of “It’s opportunity time! Let’s go get ’em. ” A Presbyterian, he gave each of his four children Bibles with underlined passages about the good Samaritan. The lessons stuck. When a lightning strike in 1968 killed the daughter of the sitting governor, Ms. Holton started the Becky Godwin Club in the girl’s honor. The club specialized in good Samaritan deeds, like playing with and raising money for a developmentally disabled girl down the block. When a federal judge ordered the desegregation of Virginia schools, Governor Holton sent his children to Mosby Middle, an public school. He also made sure to alert the news media. “Dad is like Tim in this way,” said Woody Holton, a historian at the University of South Carolina and the author of an acclaimed biography of the first lady Abigail Adams. “They both are really good social justice people, but they also understand that you better call reporters. ” A photograph of Anne’s older sister, Tayloe, being escorted into the school by her father became an iconic image, though Woody Holton said she “was mad because Tayloe was becoming famous wearing Anne’s dress. ” At Mosby, Ms. Holton, then 12, showed a middle child’s talent for getting along with people, starting a cheerleading squad and making friends. She also gave a tour of the mansion to Slaughter, another who would go on to be a foreign policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and whose best friend was the daughter of the Democrat that Linwood Holton beat in the governor’s race. “She was very gracious,” Ms. Slaughter said. The Holton children entertained themselves by roller skating in the basement, and while Donald J. Trump has criticized “Corrupt Kaine,” as he calls him, for accepting gifts as governor — it was legal — the Holton children were themselves awash in presents. “When Dad was governor, the gifts just flowed,” Woody Holton said. “This is all before Watergate. Nobody thought how it might be corrupting. So one of the gifts we got was a golf cart, and we drove it all around the Capitol grounds. ” Ms. Holton later enrolled in Open High School, which allowed students to create their own curriculum and did not give grades. When asked to pick an activity for physical education, she took up clogging. When assigned to research her family’s ancestry, she presented not the names of distant gentry, but the names of slaves owned by her . At Harvard Law, she met Mr. Kaine in a legal assistance program that focused on civil rights protections for inmates, and she worked for the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, interviewing the criminally insane about the conditions of their imprisonment. “She handled the case of a serial killer,” Woody Holton said. As the couple decided where to live, Mr. Kaine’s family, who lived in the Kansas City area, wooed her by taking her to barbecue meccas. But for ambitious young lawyers, Richmond had its advantages. “He told us that Anne’s dad was the former governor of Virginia,” said Pat Kaine, Tim’s younger brother. Ms. Holton came home first, looking for a church to marry in. She was attending services at a Quaker meeting house at the time, but she knocked on the door of St. Elizabeth’s, a predominantly black Roman Catholic church (her husband is Catholic). She gave her name to the priest. “I tried to play it a little cool — we all deal with hierarchy all the time,” recalled the Rev. Michael Schmied, who said they had talked about wedding details for an hour. Then he looked up and remarked: “‘Wow. You are the real Anne Holton. ’” Ms. Holton began clerking for Robert R. Merhige Jr. the federal judge who had issued the desegregation order. As Mr. Kaine became a successful lawyer, a City Council member and mayor, Ms. Holton made a name for herself as a lawyer for families and foster children, and then as chief judge on Richmond’s juvenile court. Ms. Holton was sometimes so busy that she dropped her three children off at day care in their pajamas. In 2002, she conducted the ceremony when her husband became lieutenant governor. But before he ran for the office, she had to assuage his concerns about whether they could give a normal life to their three children: Nat, now a Marine Woody, an artist and Annella, who is studying to be an actress. “You’d see Anne tacking up posters to advertise the elementary school and middle school plays,” said Pierce Homer, a former secretary of transportation under Mr. Kaine and a neighbor. The couple live in a modest house and drive sensible cars. Their friends talk about the autoharp Ms. Holton bought Mr. Kaine for his birthday (she plays the violin) and their unapologetic public displays of affection: kissing on stages, holding hands in the park. When Mr. Kaine was elected governor in 2005, Ms. Holton resigned from the bench and returned to her childhood home, where as first lady she concentrated on foster care programs that helped keep older children with permanent families and extend their education. Mr. Kaine won his Senate seat in 2012. When Terry McAuliffe was elected governor a year later, he surprised many people by appointing Ms. Holton as secretary of education, a position she at first declined because of her lack of education background, according to Mr. Wolf, the family friend. “She knew everybody and had a real opportunity to bring people together,” Mr. McAuliffe explained. As for filling Mr. Kaine’s seat in the Senate should he and Mrs. Clinton win, Mr. McAuliffe said, “It will be a little hard since he presides over the Senate. ” (The vice president serves as president of the Senate.) Ms. Holton is clearly at ease among the most exclusive club in Washington. At a retreat at his Virginia farm last month, Senator Mark Warner said, senators were singing along to Mr. Kaine’s harmonica playing when Ms. Holton jumped into the middle of the room and started clog dancing. “Our jaws dropped,” Mr. Warner said. Mr. Kaine told Virginia delegates at a Democratic National Convention breakfast last week that his wife was “my political partner, my most astute critic, my most energetic enthusiast, my lover, my girlfriend, my wife of 32 years, the great mother of our great three children. ” He then kissed her on the lips and relayed to the crowd what the Clinton campaign told him about his wife: “We want every last minute that she can give us. ” | 1 |
■ Donald J. Trump appears to side with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over United States intelligence agencies, with Vice Mike Pence backing him up. ■ She’s hired: Omarosa Manigault gets a White House post, as do some notable Trump loyalists. But Mr. Trump is leaning on Republican veterans in the Oval Office’s top slots. ■ The finds something “very strange” about his intelligence briefing on Friday — even though the White House says it was always planned for Friday. For the Republican Party, Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, was once purely a villain. He found little sympathy with conservatives after he leaked American military secrets from Iraq, published purloined diplomatic cables that could have gotten American sources killed and sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, fleeing charges of rape. But now, Mr. Trump appears to be siding with Mr. Assange over the conclusions of America’s intelligence services. Mr. Assange appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night with Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest news media boosters, to declare once again that the Russians were not the source of the purloined emails that WikiLeaks released from the Democratic National Committee and the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Mr. Trump followed that appearance with a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday that appeared to be preparing his followers for battle once more information on intelligence findings was released, most likely by Thursday. There were actually two separate hackings that the Obama administration has said came from Russian intelligence — with “100 percent” certainty. As he has previously, Mr. Assange said: “Our source is not the Russian government. It is not state parties. ” But Mr. Assange has often said that the organization does not always know the identity of its sources. It is highly unlikely that anyone approaching WikiLeaks with the emails obtained by Russian government hacking would acknowledge the source, so it is likely that Mr. Assange cannot be sure of the origin of the emails. Mr. Assange and Mr. Hannity did not address that, in addition to WikiLeaks, the leaked Democratic material was published by two mysterious websites, DCLeaks. com and a blog written by someone called Guccifer 2. 0. American intelligence agencies say they believe both were created by Russian agents. In addition to American intelligence agencies, most private researchers also say they believe that the D. N. C. and Podesta hackings were carried out on orders of Russian government officials, though a few skeptics say they believe the case is unproven by the evidence made public. Mr. Assange’s statement is unlikely to change that conclusion. Intelligence officials will brief Congress on their Russia inquiry on Thursday, ahead of a briefing for Mr. Trump in New York on Friday. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will hold the first hearing on the matter on Thursday as well. As for that “terrible” information mentioned by Mr. Trump, the CNN commentator Donna Brazile did send Mr. Podesta an email ahead of a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich. tipping him off that a woman in the audience would ask why the government was not doing more to help clean the city’s water supply. That was, in fact, reported widely and often, here and here and here and here, among other places. And that was hardly an unexpected query — for Mrs. Clinton or for her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It did cause Ms. Brazile to lose her CNN post. The appears to be getting a jump on the news. Vice Mike Pence defended Mr. Trump’s Assange posts at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, effectively doubling down on the incoming administration’s icy blasts toward United States intelligence. Mr. Trump “expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions,” Mr. Pence said, with House Republican leaders by his side. Mr. Trump’s remarks have again placed fellow Republicans in an uncomfortable position. Asked on Wednesday morning about the Twitter post, Speaker Paul D. Ryan steered clear of criticizing the saying he would not be commenting on “every little tweet or Facebook post. ” But he called Mr. Assange “a sycophant for Russia,” who “leaks, steals data and compromises national security. ” Mr. Ryan noted that Mr. Trump had not yet received his latest briefing on Russia. “Hopefully, he’ll get up to speed on what’s been happening and what Russia has or has not done,” he said. Ms. Manigault, the villain and diva from Mr. Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” was officially named assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, one of a slate of Wednesday appointments that went to ardent Trump loyalists. The appointments include Bill Stepien, a confidant of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a figure in the “Bridgegate” scandal, who will be White House political director. Keith Schiller, who was head of private security at Mr. Trump’s real estate company, will be director of Oval Office operations. John DeStefano, a longtime aide to former House Speaker John A. Boehner, will direct presidential personnel. And George Gigicos, who organized those giant campaign rallies, will be director of advance, a further indicator that Mr. Trump plans to continue that sort of thing as president. But for star power, no one is going to beat Ms. Manigault. Ms. Manigault aside, Mr. Trump is turning to some seasoned veterans to run key operations in his White House. Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday that he had selected Joe Hagin, who served for 14 years in the White House under Roanld Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, as his deputy chief of staff for operations, a key post in which he will be responsible for organizing presidential trips and security, among other things. He named Rick Dearborn, who has 25 years of experience on Capitol Hill, as his chief liaison to Congress, heading the Office of Legislative Affairs as well as the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Cabinet Affairs. Katie Walsh, who was chief of staff at the Republican National Committee under Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, will become his deputy at the White House, overseeing senior staff, scheduling and the Office of Public Liaison. In a statement, Mr. Priebus called the three a “team of doers” who would fill critical roles. Kellyanne Conway, who served as counselor to Mr. Trump, said she was thrilled to have “another strong female leader” on the team in Ms. Walsh. First, Mr. Trump said that the nation should move beyond talk of Russian interference in the presidential election, but that he would listen to what American intelligence experts had to say. Then, on New Year’s Eve, the promised that by Tuesday or Wednesday, he would reveal information on the hacking that Americans do not know. And now, he seems to think the intelligence community has not quite gotten its story straight. The Obama administration quickly let it be known that, in fact, intelligence leaders always intended to brief Mr. Trump on Friday in New York. And intelligence officials were not amused. Nor were some Republican political consultants. But this is not the first time the has taken a swipe at the intelligence community, which has concluded that Russia tried to help get him elected president. President Obama is on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to plot a strategy to save his signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Vice Mike Pence countered with his own visit to congressional Republicans. “The first order of business is to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Mr. Pence said. “It needs to be done. ” And Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter, trying to stiffen Republican spines as Democrats press their point that a fast gutting of the law will endanger the health care of 20 million people covered under the law and put at risk tens of millions more with health problems. “Schumer clowns” may not be an olive branch to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new minority leader, but it is a signal that the incoming president is ready for war over health care. “Republicans should stop clowning around with Americans’ Medicare, Medicaid and health care,” Mr. Schumer responded after meeting with the president. He warned that Republicans would “throw the entire health care system into chaos. ” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, tried to coin a phrase: “Make America sick again? Is that what Republicans want?” The Trump transition office named the lawyer Jay Clayton to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The last time Mr. Trump held a real news conference was on July 27, when he said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had called him a genius and wrongly insisted that “many people” saw bombs strewn all over the floor of the San Bernardino, Calif. attackers’ home and failed to report it. That long stretch without a real news media grilling did not do him much harm. He did, after all, win the election. But he says he will hold a true, open news conference next Wednesday. No word yet whether this session will take the place of the one he scheduled for last month, then canceled, to specifically reveal his plans for the future of his corporation. | 1 |
Trey Yingst, chief White House correspondent for the One America News Network, is reporting Monday that three sources of the leaks liberally flowing from President Donald Trump’s White House have been found. [SCOOP: Three White House staffers have been identified for leaking classified info. POTUS will fire ’multiple people’ when he returns to DC. — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) May 22, 2017, According to Yingst, three staffers have been identified and referred to the Office of Government Ethics for their role in leaking information from within the White House. Leaks to the mainstream press have constantly plagued the Trump administration in its early days, with opportunely time leaks undermining key administration efforts. Yingst claims his source informed him President Trump will fire “multiple people” on his return to Washington from his landmark foreign tour through the Middle East. It was implied criminal prosecution may also be on the table for those responsible. SCOOP INFO: I’m told the names of the leakers are being run by the Office of Government Ethics, which is why they aren’t immediately fired, — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) May 22, 2017, Disclosing classified information without authorization is a crime. The Office of Government Ethics is not itself a prosecutorial body but may, if it is determined criminal acts have been committed, recommend the staffers’ referral to law enforcement or other disciplinary sanction. Breitbart News could not immediately independently confirm the OANN report. | 1 |
LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s Senate race could not get much bigger. It is the only real chance Republicans have to flip a Democratic seat. The outcome could seal control of the Senate. For those who have followed the intrigue of recent campaign cycles, it is riveting for another reason. The battle to choose a successor to Senator Harry Reid, the retiring Democratic leader, is pitting Mr. Reid and his political operation against his archenemies, Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire industrialist brothers whom Mr. Reid has spent the past few years denouncing as the avatars of politics. This is an epic proxy war, with Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat and a former Nevada attorney general, and Representative Joe Heck, a Republican, serving as surrogates in a clash to see who gets the last word in this brutal rivalry. Both sides, as they say around the Texas Hold ’Em tables here in America’s gambling capital, are all in. “I am going to do everything I can do to prevail, to help her prevail,” a determined Mr. Reid said in an interview at his home in nearby Henderson, Nev. as he takes on a more visible role in the Senate fight. For their part, leaders of the Koch network, which has at least four groups working to defeat Ms. Cortez Masto, do not disguise the fact that they would sorely like to knock off Mr. Reid’s chosen successor to exact a bit of revenge and to help Republicans hold the Senate. “It would certainly be poetic justice to see Harry Reid, who for so long has waged an unhinged personal vendetta against people we care a lot about, to see his seat go to someone who supports limited government, free speech,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, the group mounting an extensive ground game against Ms. Cortez Masto. With polls showing the Nevada race close, Mr. Reid has become pretty caustic with his own speech when it comes to the Kochs and their preferred candidate, Mr. Heck, a House member and a former state lawmaker. The Senate minority leader, who for years has taken to the Senate floor to assail the Kochs for taking advantage of campaign finance laws to covertly funnel money into defeating Democrats, seems more than willing to go on the attack for Ms. Cortez Masto, who chooses her own words very carefully. While receiving an award on Thursday from a progressive group whose leadership praised him for “holding the Koch brothers accountable,” Mr. Reid declared that the goal of the Kochs and their allies was to turn the United States into an oligarchy with a chosen few running the nation for their personal benefit. “They want to make sure that they pick the next Supreme Court justices,” said Mr. Reid, who regularly refers to Mr. Heck as a fraud and a phony. And he lashed out at Mr. Heck for being behind an advertising campaign that blamed Ms. Cortez Masto for a rise in violent crime even though the state attorney general in Nevada has little to do with local law enforcement. “Heck is an absolute stooge for these nut cases,” Mr. Reid said. The Heck camp dismisses Mr. Reid’s comments as criticism that will backfire with Nevada voters already familiar with the congressman. They say the combative tone reflects Mr. Reid’s rising fear about losing the seat, which could be interpreted as a rejection of his career in the Senate. “It is clear that in terms of both outside help and that Harry Reid is calling in every favor and connection he has and that this is about continuing his legacy,” said Brian Baluta, a spokesman for Mr. Heck. The Heck campaign is eager to link Ms. Cortez Masto to Mr. Reid, and at times it can be hard to tell from its Twitter feeds whether it is running against her or Mr. Reid. Mr. Baluta is correct that outside groups are supporting Ms. Cortez Masto, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Senate Majority PAC, a group run by Democrats with connections to Mr. Reid that has spent nearly $2. 5 million on ads against Mr. Heck. But Mr. Heck is receiving help from outside the state as well. Freedom Partners Action Fund, which relies on considerable Koch funding, reports that it has spent more than $4. 5 million against Ms. Cortez Masto. Concerned Veterans for America, another part of the Koch network, earlier ran more than $700, 000 in ads on behalf of Mr. Heck, a military veteran. Mark Holden, the chairman of Freedom Partners and general counsel to Koch Industries, said the Koch network was backing Mr. Heck because he supported policies that would “help drive a free and open society. ” “This will be a welcome change from the petty bitterness of Senator Reid, and the divisive and harmful policies that he favored, which Ms. Masto also supports,” Mr. Holden said. As for the ground game, Americans for Prosperity has three offices in the state, plans on opening a fourth and intends to marshal hundreds of volunteers to go door to door to reach out to voters identified as being open to opposing Ms. Cortez Masto. “Our No. 1 goal is to educate voters on her record,” said Adam Jones, the state director of the group, as young volunteers bustled around the organization’s headquarters in a strip mall. The Libre Initiative, another group partly funded by Freedom Partners, is for the first time actively opposing a candidate and hopes to mobilize Hispanic voters against Ms. Cortez Masto in a race where the Latino vote will be crucial. The stance means the organization, formed to promote economic opportunity for Latinos, will be trying to defeat the woman who would be the first Latina elected to the Senate. “A Latina is still a liberal,” said Dan Garza, the executive director of the group. Mr. Heck is generally seen as having a slight edge in the race at the moment and is being helped by the fact that Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who was endorsed by Mr. Heck, has not fallen as far in Nevada as he has in other swing states. Reflecting Democratic concern, some Reid staff members, including Kristen Orthman, his communications director, are being dispatched to the state party to bolster the final Democratic push. Mr. Reid, who concedes he can sometimes be “harsh” in his comments, remains confident that Democrats will hold his seat. And he takes pride in the fact that it is such a target of the Kochs. “I think people are not only identified by their friends, but also their enemies,” said Mr. Reid, who promised to stay as aggressive in protecting his seat as he has been in his feud with the Kochs. “Say what you want about me — and people do — but as my dad said, ‘If you do something, don’t do it ’” Mr. Reid said. “Just do it. ” | 1 |
He called it. Many times.
Michael Moore, the controversial documentary filmmaker, is a staunch Democrat and Clinton supporter, but has been saying all along that Trump was going to win.
On Real Time with Bill Maher in July, Moore cried out, “Get out of your bubble, people!” He listed five reasons why Trump was going to be the next president and he was creepy correct.
For example, his first reason ‘The Rust Belt/Brexit Strategy’ played out before our eyes last night:
“Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. The total votes of [Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania ]… 64. All he (Trump) has to do is win those four states.”
You can check out the whole list, explained in detail, here .
And during a talk posted on Youtube on October 24 th , Moore also explained why Trump was gonna win.
But the ever-optimistic Moore is not wasting his time saying, “I told you so.” Instead, he has put out a call for action. On his Facebook page, he posted a to-do list and it looks like this time people are listening. The posting has gone viral, with 218K reactions, 10K comments and almost 100K shares on Facebook alone.
So, without further ado… Michael Moore’s Morning After To-Do List: Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above). Let’s try to get this all done by noon today.
— Michael Moore
You can read the original post on Michael Moore’s Facebook page .
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RIO DE JANEIRO — The brothers Dan and Anthony Rigney of Australia attended the Olympic weight lifting competition on Sunday and were not exactly mortified that the sport is more polluted than Guanabara Bay. Sure, they want athletes to be but they also want to be entertained by raw human power. So yes, they would have preferred to see the Russian and Bulgarian teams, which were barred for doping. Likewise with Ilya Ilyin, a suspended Olympic champion from Kazakhstan, who is the Barry Bonds of the clean and jerk. “You like to see world records,” said Dan Rigney, 28, a physiotherapist and competitive lifter from Sydney. “It’s like baseball. People just want to see home runs. ” There has long been a pragmatism about weight lifting. Drugs have been a hushed but vital part of doing business. If there is an argument to be made that any sport should permit doping, or even make it mandatory, that sport is weight lifting. “Maybe it already is,” Dan Rigney said with a laugh, adding that, in his view, doping “is what’s keeping the Olympics going. ” Let’s be honest. We don’t want to see anybody lift a keg. We want to see someone hoist a Buick. We are nostalgic for champions like Vasily Alekseyev, the great Soviet superheavyweight who won gold medals in 1972 and 1976. He set 80 world records and was the first person to lift 500 pounds in the clean and jerk. He was so massive that his uniform fit like a chin strap on a bowling ball. And those sideburns — great thickets wide and deep enough to plant potatoes. Oh, sure, we say we are against doping in sports. But we don’t care enough to stop buying tickets or watching on television. And let’s ask ourselves this: Would anyone stay tuned if the Olympic champion ran the 100 meters in 15 seconds instead of nine? Who would watch the N. F. L. if linemen were built more like Gilligan than the Skipper? Most fans seem to view doping in the same way they view special effects in “Star Wars” movies, said Charles Yesalis, a retired Penn State professor and an expert on drugs. “It enhances the enjoyment of viewing because you see people doing things,” Dr. Yesalis said in a recent interview. “If everybody looked like normal people, chances are the N. C. A. A. the N. F. L. and the Olympics would not be entities. ” Before the Games, international sports officials tossed out assorted male and female lifters from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, North Korea, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, a Fodor’s guide through the world of banned substances. Olympic weight lifting without Russia and Bulgaria is like Harry Potter without Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange (if those villains wore spandex and had necks the size of Easter hams). The competition will go on, but it won’t be the same. Until recently, weight lifting officials had mostly turned the other way, keenly understanding that the final word of the Olympic motto, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” is not easily achieved over the counter. Of course, with the Rio Games upon us, the International Weightlifting Federation is suddenly affronted. It has called revelations of widespread doping in Russia “shocking and disappointing” and has said that the “integrity of the weight lifting sport has been seriously damaged. ” Integrity? Now they worry about integrity? There were 24 positive tests at the world weight lifting championships last year, and retesting of urine samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2012 London Games revealed at least 20 additional positives, including four from Olympic champions, according to the news agency Agence . Essentially, comedy has become reality. Remember that “Saturday Night Live” sketch, with Phil Hartman playing a Soviet weight lifter named Sergei Akmudov at the All Drug Olympics? “His trainer has told me that he’s taken anabolic steroids, Novocain, NyQuil, Darvon and some sort of fish paralyzer,” the announcer, played by Kevin Nealon, says earnestly. “Also, I believe he’s had several cocktails within the last hour or so,” the announcer says. “All this, of course, is perfectly legal at the All Drug Olympics. In fact, it’s encouraged. ” Akmudov tries to lift more than 1, 500 pounds, triple the world record in the clean and jerk, except for one small problem. “Oh, he’s pulled his arms off!” the witless announcer yells. “He’s pulled his arms off! That’s got to be disappointing to the big Russian. ” With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the Olympics lost a gripping appeal for many Americans — the rivalry between East and West. With Russia now absent from Rio in weight lifting and track and field, that enthralling tension erodes further still. “There was no one to root against,” Matt Futterman wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal, lamenting the parting of the Iron Curtain for international sport. “It was like watching a Bond film in which everyone was working for MI6. ” One wonders whether medals won in Rio will be devalued in particular sports, as they were when the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union reciprocated at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. “Weight lifting is so riddled with doping problems, it’s hard to call any medal devalued,” said Bill Mallon, an Olympic historian. And to be sure, many people in weight lifting have applauded the mass suspensions. “Rules are rules,” said Mika Tiainen, Finland’s Olympic coach. “Lifting makes the competition, not the country. ” Still, it would surprise no one if the retesting of urine samples from Rio led to the stripping of medals in coming years. Anthony Rigney, 33, a teacher, said he had seen a meme online: “I can’t wait until 2024 to see who won the gold in Rio. ” | 1 |
Freitag, 4. November 2016 Übrige Wrestler überlegen, wann sie Tim Wiese endlich sagen sollen, dass alles abgesprochen ist München (dpo) - Früher oder später wird Tim Wiese die Wahrheit erfahren müssen. Doch noch rätseln seine Wrestler-Kollegen, wann sie den Ex-Nationaltorwart am besten wissen lassen sollen, dass sein Sieg bei seinem Debüt als Profi-Wrestler in der Münchner Olympiahalle von vornherein abgesprochen war . "Tim hat sich so ins Zeug gelegt für seinen ersten Kampf, da will ich echt nicht der sein, der ihm jetzt erklären muss, dass unsere Gegner absichtlich verloren haben und alle außer ihm vorher Bescheid wussten", erklärt WWE-Superstar Cesaro, der gemeinsam mit Wiese ("The Machine") und Profi-Wrestler Sheamus gegen das Duo The Shining Stars und Bo Dallas antrat. Zaghafte Versuche, Tim Wiese darüber aufzuklären, dass beim Wrestling alles abgesprochen ist, seien in der Vergangenheit fehlgeschlagen. Cesaro: "Ich habe Tim letztens erst gefragt, ob ihm klar ist, dass das alles Show ist." Daraufhin habe Wiese genickt und geantwortet: "Jaja, geile Show. Ich muss jetzt noch trainieren, damit ich nicht verliere." Dann sei Wiese im Fitnessstudio verschwunden. Cesaro und seine Kollegen hätten schließlich der Einfachheit halber beschlossen, den kompletten ersten Kampf um Tim Wiese herum zu choreografieren, damit er weiter seinen Traum leben kann. Auf Dauer sei das aber zu gefährlich. "Auch wenn es nicht schwierig ist, so zu tun, als wären seine plumpen Angriffe gefährlich: Irgendwann trifft er doch mal einen von uns wirklich. Deshalb müssen wir bald Tacheles mit ihm reden", so Cesaro. "Aber eine schöne Aufgabe ist das natürlich nicht – gerade jetzt, wo er so froh ist, eine Sportart gefunden zu haben, in der er der Größte ist." Damit Tim Wiese diesmal auch wirklich zuhört, wollen seine Wrestling-Kollegen "The Machine" beim nächsten Kampf innerhalb der ersten zehn Sekunden überwältigen, ihn auf dem Boden fixieren und ihm dann in aller Ruhe darlegen, wie Wrestling tatsächlich funktioniert. ssi, dan; Foto oben: dpa Artikel teilen: | 0 |
Documentaries . Al Gore Made Nearly $200 Million from the Global Warming Scam — Likely to Become the World's First 'Carbon Billionaire' Ten years after the release of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, none of the film's dire climate... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/al-gore-made-nearly-200-million-from.html Ten years after the release of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, none of the film's dire climate change predictions have come to pass. However, in the decade since the documentary was produced, its creator has raked in millions of dollars from the entire "global warming" scam, and is now poised to become " our first carbon billionaire ."In the 2006 film, Gore made a number of wild claims regarding what we could expect to see happening over the next few years due to global warming, but virtually all of his alarmist prognostications have turned out to be false. Arctic didn't melt, polar bears are thriving For instance, the film predicted that that the Arctic could become ice-free within the next decades, and that polar bears would begin drowning. Both claims were untrue.As reported by Investor's Business Daily:"In the mid- to late-2000s, Gore repeatedly predicted that an ice-free Arctic Ocean was coming soon."But as usual, his fortune-telling was wrong. By 2014, Arctic ice had grown thicker and covered a greater area than it did when he made his prediction."And the polar bears?The Daily Caller reports:"A new study by Canadian scientists once again debunks the notion polar bears are currently being harmed by global warming. Researchers with Canada's Lakehead University found 'no evidence' polar bears are currently threatened by warming ." Kilimanjaro's snow hasn't disappeared Another prediction made in the film was that Mt. Kilimanjaro would be snow-free "within the decade." But in fact:"In 2014, ecologists actually monitoring Kilimanjaro's snowpack found it was not even close to being gone. It may have shrunk a little, but ecologists were confident it would be around for the foreseeable future." Extreme weather has failed to materialize In Inconvenient Truth, Gore also forecasted that storms would begin occurring more often and at higher intensities.Wrong again, Al:"Gore's claim is more hype than actual science, since storms aren't more extreme since 2006. In fact, not even findings from the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) support Gore's claim."The IPCC found in 2013 there 'is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century.' "The IPCC also found 'no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century' and '[n]o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.'"Gore should probably take these findings seriously since he shared the Nobel Prize in 2007 with the IPCC for its work on global warming." Despite false claims, Gore grows richer from climate change myth Although Gore's claims have been thoroughly debunked by a number of experts, he has been quietly amassing a huge fortune based on the climate change scam.Mad World News reports:"Gore's wealth went from $700,000 in 2000 to an estimated net worth of $172.5 million by 2015 thanks to his environmentalist activism. Gore and the former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management made nearly $218 million in profits between 2008 and 2011 from a carbon trading company they co-founded. By 2008, Gore was able to put a whopping $35 million into hedge funds and other investments." Science Fights Back: | 0 |
The corporate owner of Sears and Kmart said on Tuesday that there was “substantial doubt” that it could continue operating, as stores continue to face challenges in an world. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the corporate owner, Sears Holdings Corporation, cited its efforts to cut costs, sell property, tap new funding sources and make other moves to stanch the flow of red ink. Still, it reported a $2. 2 billion loss for last year and said it had to use money from its investments and financing activities to fund operations. “Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” it said in the filing, its annual report. The disclosure is a setback for the company and for Edward S. Lampert, the hedge fund manager who engineered the combination of the two legends of American retail 13 years ago. Mr. Lampert has shut down stores, reshuffled the company’s organization and pushed to have a greater online presence. Still, Sears Holdings has lost more than $5 billion over the last three years as sales have declined. On Wednesday morning, in the first day of trading after the disclosure, shares in the company tumbled more than 13 percent. Sears, through its catalog, has been a fixture of American homes for more than a century. Kmart, which has its own lengthy history beginning as a store in Detroit, became a major national presence in the 1960s as a department store, with Blue Light Special discounts geared toward Americans. But both brands were squeezed by Walmart Stores, with its heavy discounts, and Target, which sold affordable goods but with more design and flair. Both Sears and Kmart also suffered because they were in older shopping malls and neighborhoods. Online retailing, with the rise of the likes of Amazon, presented a more recent challenge. To cope, Sears Holdings has been shrinking. This month, it sold its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black Decker in a deal valued at more than $775 million. Still, its debt as of January totaled nearly $4. 2 billion, almost double from the same period the previous year, according to the filing. In February, Sears Holdings said it had started a restructuring program that it said would save $1 billion annually. The plan focuses on streamlining corporate and support functions, tweaking product offerings and supply chain and looking for ways to reshuffle real estate. As of January, Sears Holdings said, it had 1, 430 Sears and Kmart stores in the United States. By contrast, a decade ago it had about 3, 800 stores in the United States and Canada. | 1 |
The USA Era (1945 - 2008) in Retrospect It worked for some but not for all.Winners and losers of the US American era:.5. South East Asia (partly). Re: The USA Era (1945 - 2008) in Retrospect It worked for some but not for all.Winners and losers of the US American era:.5. South East Asia (partly). Quoting: Anonymous Coward 67204360 There is a simple economic explanation for this development.USA and Whites are now losing influence at an alarming rate. White companies are increasingly complaining about losing access to non-white markets while China's influence is growing there fast, leading, among others, to bank and financial crises like Deutsche Bank. Also, more and more countries are banning white culture and languages.The last 500 years whites controlled all manufacturing, arms production and finance and needed only resources from others. Now whites are losing all that, and are about to become irrelevant when non-whites soon control resources, manufacturing, markets and finance.. | 0 |
Half a century ago, Bob Dylan shocked the music world by plugging in an electric guitar and alienating folk purists. For decades he continued to confound expectations, selling millions of records with dense, enigmatic songwriting. Now, Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that elevates him into the company of T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett. Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels. [ Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician | Our book critic on Dylan, the writer ] Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice. ” But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether songwriting, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature. “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” the novelist Rabih Alameddine wrote on Twitter. “This is almost as silly as Winston Churchill. ” Jodi Picoult, a novelist, snarkily asked, “I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?” Many musicians praised the choice with a kind of awe. On Twitter, Rosanne Cash, the songwriter and daughter of Johnny Cash, wrote simply: “Holy mother of god. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize. ” But some commentators bristled. Two websites, Pitchfork and Vice, both ran columns questioning whether Mr. Dylan was an appropriate choice for the Nobel. As the writer of classic folk and protest songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are ’,” as well as Top 10 hits including “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mr. Dylan is an unusual Nobel winner. The first American to win the prize since Ms. Morrison in 1993, he is studied by Oxford dons and beloved by presidents. Yet instead of appearing at the standard staid news conference arranged by a publisher, Mr. Dylan was in Las Vegas on Thursday for a performance at a theater there. By late afternoon, Mr. Dylan had not commented on the honor. Mr. Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound. He has also published poetry and prose, including his 1971 collection, “Tarantula,” and “Chronicles: Volume One,” a memoir published in 2004. His collected lyrics from are due out on Nov. 1 from Simon Schuster. Literary scholars have long debated whether Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist. Billy Collins, the former United States poet laureate, argued that Mr. Dylan deserved to be recognized not merely as a songwriter, but as a poet. “Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to,” Mr. Collins said in an interview. “Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry. ” In giving the literature prize to Mr. Dylan, the academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms. “It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official. ” In previous years, writers and publishers have grumbled that the prize often goes to obscure writers with clear political messages over more popular figures. But in choosing someone so well known, and so far outside of established literary traditions, the academy seems to have swung far into the other direction, bestowing prestige on a popular artist who already had plenty of it. It’s not the first time it has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history. In its citation, the Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. ” Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the academy, which called Mr. Dylan “a great poet in the tradition” and compared him to Homer and Sappho, whose work was delivered orally. Asked if the decision to award the prize to a musician signaled a broadening in the definition of literature, Ms. Danius responded, “The times they are perhaps. ” Mr. Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. But from the start, Mr. Dylan stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique songwriting style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes. Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out. After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N. Y. Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives, showing his working process through thousands of pages of songwriting drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla. His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra. Since 1988, Mr. Dylan has toured almost constantly, inspiring an unofficial name for his itinerary, the Never Ending Tour. Last weekend, he played the first of two performances at Desert Trip, a festival in Indio, Calif. that also featured the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and other stars of the 1960s. He is scheduled to return on Friday for the festival’s second weekend. “As the ’60s wore on,” Giles Harvey wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2010, “Dylan grew increasingly frustrated with what he came to regard as the pious sloganeering and doctrinaire leftist politics of the folk milieu. ” He “began writing a kind of visionary nonsense verse, in which the rough, ribald, lawless America of the country’s traditional folk music collided with a surreal ensemble of characters from history, literature, legend, the Bible, and many other places besides. ” Mr. Dylan’s many albums, which the Swedish Academy described as having “a tremendous impact on popular music,” include “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965) “Blonde on Blonde” (1966) “Blood on the Tracks” (1975) “Oh Mercy” (1989) “Time Out Of Mind” (1997) “‘Love and Theft’” (2001) and “Modern Times” (2006). His 38 studio albums have sold 125 million copies around the world. The academy added: “Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature. ” Mr. Dylan’s many honors include Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, won a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. The Nobel comes with a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or just over $900, 000. The literature prize is given for a lifetime of writing rather than for a single work. “Today, everybody from Bruce Springsteen to U2 owes Bob a debt of gratitude,” President Obama said at the medal ceremony. “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. All these years later, he’s still chasing that sound, still searching for a little bit of truth. And I have to say that I am a really big fan. ” ■ Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 3 for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “ . ” ■ David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics on Oct. 4 for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states. ■ Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Oct. 5 for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices. ■ President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the war in the Americas. ■ Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on improving the design of contracts, the deals that bind together employers and their workers, or companies and their customers. | 1 |
President Trump has carried his Twitter habit into his presidency. He has also brought with him another tech habit that is causing concern. Mr. Trump has been using his old, unsecured Android phone to post on Twitter since moving to Washington late last week. The president’s desire to use his old, personal smartphone raises concerns that its use could be exposing him and the nation to security threats. He is using the Android smartphone mainly to post on Twitter, not to make calls. But it’s unclear what security measures have been put in place on the device and how vulnerable he could be to someone stealing data or breaking into his Twitter account. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter requires a connection to the internet, which exposes the device to security vulnerabilities if proper measures like authentication — a password and a code texted to a phone, for example — are not in place. If he uses the smartphone on an unsecure network, he could be exposing his location and other personal information on the device. “The absolutely minimum Trump could do to protect our nation is to use a secure device to protect him from foreign spies and other threats,” said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon on the Intelligence Committee. “It would be irresponsible in the extreme for the commander in chief to use an unsecure device that could be easily hacked or intercepted. ” Among the concerns by security experts: ■ It is unclear if the device and its functions like texting are encrypted to thwart hacking. ■ The device could be more vulnerable to hacking if used on unsecured and cellular networks, such as when Mr. Trump travels between meetings or anywhere outside the White House. ■ Hackers could access the device to turn on the camera and microphone. ■ Stingray devices, a type of surveillance tool often used by law enforcement, can track a device’s location and other information. “There are a lot of questions, but it is clear there are often vulnerabilities in our phones and internet systems — and it is critical that people take precautions to ensure their sensitive information is protected from hackers and other malicious actors,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. The president’s use of the personal device is particularly notable given his criticism of Hillary Clinton for using a personal email address and server when she was secretary of state. In 2009, President Barack Obama fought to become the first president with a smartphone though he won, the use of a White secure device came with many rules. “As president, he is the biggest sitting target in the world,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of New America’s Open Technology Institute. | 1 |
[Ed. – Way to go, Asher! Way to go, Asher’s parents!]
Asher Nash may only be 15-months old, but he’s got the face of an angel.
His mother knew of her son’s potential, despite his disability, and wanted an opportunity for him to be represented in the modeling world.
But Meagan Nash ran into some issues: A talent agency wouldn’t even send out Asher’s photos — they wouldn’t even give him a shot. Her story was picked up by a few local organizations, all fighting for Asher.
“The second reason, which is very near and dear to my heart, is acceptance. Without truly accepting my son and others with special needs, there can be no inclusion for them in the future,” Meagan said.
Soon, her story went viral, and the children’s line OshKosh B’gosh responded, offering little Asher a spot in their 2017 campaign.
“I don’t want [OshKosh] to use him because of this fuss we are making on the Internet. I want them to use him because they value him and see how much he could contribute to their advertisement,” Nash said . | 0 |
Pete Souza/WhiteHouse.gov Will the Establishment elite allow Trump to take the presidency on Jan. 20, 2017?
WASHINGTON D.C. ( INTELLIHUB ) — The Establishment elite are in panic mode after their rigged elections backfired in their face when vast seas of patriotic Americans took to the polls in favor of Donald J. Trump, giving America’s new President-elect the electoral votes needed to win.
Last Thursday, during a meeting held at the White House, between Donald Trump and President Barack Obama, you could just see how irked Obama was knowing that he was sitting beside a truly patriotic soul; a man with a raging fire burning inside him; a man with the spirit to facilitate making America great again. Not to mention Trump was the man that brought Obama’s birth certificate issue to the forefront. The look on @POTUS face when he met @realDonaldTrump #priceless
— Shepard Ambellas (@ShepardAmbellas) November 12, 2016
In fact, during the meeting Obama was so threatened by Trump’s presence that his 8-year-long legacy likely flashed before his very eyes as the President of the United States realized that on day number one of Donald Trump’s presidency, a president Trump, at that point, could simply nullify any and all executive orders signed by the then would-be former president Barack Obama during his tenure as POTUS . What will happen if Trump nullifies all of Obama’s executive orders once POTUS? Ted Eytan/Flickr Does this mean no more ‘transgender bathrooms?’
Absolutely. Imagine that; a normal world, how it always was for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Naval History & Heritage Command/Flickr Does that mean Americans can keep their guns?
Sure does. America would not be America if we did not have the right to bear arms and work to undo what anti-gunners have done in Washington D.C. over the past two decades and what Obama has done over the past 8-years against the U.S. Constitution . Fibonacci Blue/Flickr Does that mean the repeal of Obamacare or major failed portions of it?
Yes it does. Does that mean the preservation of our civil rights and liberties per the Constitution?
Sure does. Does that mean implementing a sensible immigration policy; possibly building a wall?
Yes it does. After all, the Russians are now using advanced killer robots at their border, ones that can engage and kill humans from over 6 miles away. Nancy <I’m gonna SNAP!/Flickr Does that mean putting an end to dangerous geoengineering programs that our affecting all living things on the planet and our weather?
One can only hope.
But you can see where I am going with this. The Establishment elite simply do not want to lose their power and in my opinion will likely do anything to keep it. Remember, they have built a legacy and plan to protect it at all costs.
So in other words; will Donald Trump actually take office against all odds?
Please comment below and share your opinion on this highly important issue.
Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, filmmaker , radio talk show host and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics. Established in 2013, Intellihub.com is ranked in the upper 1% traffic tier on the World Wide Web. Read more from Shep’s World . Get the Podcast . Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter . ©2016. INTELLLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved. | 0 |
Nearly 150, 000 American teenagers from 13 to 17 years old — or one out of every 137 — would identify as transgender if survey takers asked, according to an analysis of state and federal data that offers an answer to a question that has long eluded researchers. The figure stands to inform the fierce debate over the rights of transgender youth, reignited on Wednesday by President Trump’s decision to rescind an Obama administration policy that protected the rights of students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The estimate may also help lawmakers and advocates across the country better understand the populations they serve. “We want to make sure that policy debates are informed by actual figures,” said Jody L. Herman, a scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute at the U. C. L. A. School of Law, where she and several published the estimate in a report last month. That report, the latest in a series on transgender populations, included estimates of the transgender population in each state and in different age groups. In addition to an estimated 149, 750 transgender teenagers nationwide, accounting for 0. 7 percent of the population ages 13 to 17, Dr. Herman and her estimated that there are 1. 4 million transgender adults in the United States. In the younger age group, transgender identification is probably more common among the older teenagers than the younger ones, they said. The Williams Institute, well regarded for its research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, was frequently cited during the marriage debate for its findings on the positive economic impact of allowing the practice. It also published a widely accepted estimate of the national L. G. B. T. population six years ago. In the January report, the researchers estimated that 22, 200 teenagers in California, 13, 800 in Texas and 9, 750 in New York would identify as transgender if asked. North Dakota and Wyoming were home to the smallest populations of transgender teenagers, estimated at just 200 each. Proportionally, however, Hawaii and West Virginia took the lead, with about 1 in 100 teenagers from 13 to 17 estimated to be transgender. In Connecticut and Iowa, the transgender share of that age group was projected to be much smaller, about 1 in 250. The analysis, an extrapolation based on adult responses to a federal survey, represents an indirect way of arriving at a figure that many advocates consider to be of crucial importance. ”It’s not about what your gut tells you, it’s not about what the news last night told you, it’s not about what you think you might have gathered from looking at a couple of internet websites,” said Kellan Baker, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress who specializes in L. G. B. T. and health issues. “It’s about what do the data actually say, so that we can target resources where they will do the most good. ” While the federal government collects a wide variety of detailed demographic information about the population, good, consistent data on sexual orientation and gender identity is lacking. “We just don’t have that same level of information readily accessible,” said Sandy James, survey project manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality. The Williams Institute estimates are based on a large Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In addition to a core set of questions asked nationally, the C. D. C. allows states to choose from several optional questions to ask their residents. One such option, selected by about half the states in 2015 and slightly fewer in 2014, inquired about transgender identity. More than 150, 000 people answered the question each year. With that in hand, the researchers applied an advanced statistical technique regarded by some academics as an emerging gold standard for making state estimates using national data, based on demographic and geographic patterns. The researchers extended the findings of the survey to all 50 states, after accounting for differences in race, age, education, income and religion. The C. D. C. surveys only adults, but the authors used trends among older age groups to estimate the number of teenagers who would identify as transgender if asked. There has been no authoritative, questioning of teenagers about transgender identity. While the C. D. C. surveys children about gender identity, it asks only how they express gender in terms of masculinity and femininity, and the question is posed in a limited number of places, Dr. Herman said. Large, national surveys are also typically slow to change, in order to maintain consistent, comparable data over long periods of time. “This series of reports is our best attempt to use the best available data and the best methodology,” Dr. Herman said. | 1 |
NAIROBI, Kenya — By 9 a. m. on Monday, clouds of black smoke blotted out the sky. A mountain of tires burned. Roads were blocked. Young men poured into the streets of a slum in Nairobi, gleefully carrying huge, jagged pieces of concrete. In Kisumu, a city on Lake Victoria, witnesses said police officers had fired on a crowd. A boy was in critical condition after being shot in the back. A demonstrator was killed. For the past several weeks, Kenya’s opposition leaders have turned Mondays into protest days. Now they are threatening to hold demonstrations twice, and soon four times, a week. Many Kenyans are shaking their heads with a sense of fatigue and dread, saying, Here we go again. Kenya is a relatively prosperous, developed and politically tolerant African nation. But elections have not been its strong suit. In the past 25 years, almost every presidential race has been marred by violence the worst one was in when ethnic rivalries cracked open and more than 1, 000 people were killed, many in deadly protests. Kenya spent years trying to heal its wounds and recover from the devastation, culminating in a tense but more peaceful election in 2013. Despite widespread distrust of the results, the country held together, helping it recapture its image as a bastion of stability in the region. Now, with another election scheduled for next year and the opposition already mobilizing thousands of people, many Kenyans are worried about recent economic gains’ being reduced to char blowing in the wind. “It’s getting very nervy,” said Satchu, an investment adviser in Nairobi. “The economy crashes and burns when we fumble these elections. What’s worrying is that this is happening so early, that we already have this degree of contestation. ” Each Monday, now known as Tear Gas Monday, many businesses close. Parents do not send their children to school. Motorists stay off the streets, afraid of rocks being thrown through their windshields. The opposition leaders are aware of this part of their leverage is the ability to slow down the economy. A watchman in Nairobi spoke of his “inside fear” of even coming to town on Mondays. The opposition’s rallying point has become Kenya’s election commission. Raila Odinga, a former prime minister who has been angling for president for much of the past two decades, has demanded that the government disband the commission, which is widely viewed as biased and corrupt. A British court recently convicted two British businessmen of bribing Kenyan election commissioners to get contracts for printing ballots. But in Kenya, those same commissioners have not even been charged. This is another problem in Kenya. Almost all corruption cases against powerful people languish for months. Then they quietly disappear. “The government needs to throw out that commission,” said Paul Shida, a welder in the Kibera slums in Nairobi, where the protests began Monday. “Street protest is the only language the government understands. ” The election commission controversy has progressed from an annoyance to a major crisis for Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. He is not believed to be especially close to any of the election commissioners, but they were the same ones who validated his victory in 2013 amid allegations of rigging. He has refused to disband the commission, and his security services have threatened to crack down on protesters. But as the protests grind on, a game is being played between Mr. Kenyatta’s government and Kenya’s judiciary, which many Kenyans regard as independent. Last week, police officials banned an opposition rally in the city’s historic Uhuru Park a court promptly overturned that ban. This weekend, police officials declared again that it was illegal for the opposition to protest and warned that they were ready to use lethal force. They did so in Kisumu on Monday. Witnesses said the police fired indiscriminately at a crowd, hitting the boy and leaving him in critical condition, and killing a protester. Also on Monday, a court ruled that the opposition had a right to protest and that the police had a duty to protect demonstrators. Though the violence in the past few weeks has been nothing compared with the paroxysm of bloodshed that swept the country in 2007 and 2008, the dynamics are similar. The nation, and especially its economy, are being held hostage by the relationship between Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Odinga, who will most likely face off in the election next year. Last week, tensions suddenly lifted after the two met and a picture of them walking together, smiling, appeared on the front pages of the leading newspapers. But the two were soon at loggerheads again, and the protests were back on. Mr. Satchu estimated that at least $5 million was lost every Monday because of interruptions, closed businesses, property destruction and petty crime. On Monday afternoon, Bharat Shah, who runs a Nairobi curio shop, held up a pad of paper with the number 360 scribbled on it, for 360 shillings, less than $4. “That’s what I’ve sold today,” he said with a wry laugh. “One packet of beads. ” Just as in business leaders have been discreetly meeting with government and opposition leaders, urging them to compromise, for the sake of the economy. “Among international investors, there remains a strong commitment to Kenya as a gateway to this region, and that hasn’t been shaken yet,” Mr. Satchu said. “But surely it will be shaken if this malarkey continues. ” | 1 |
Woman 'eaten alive' by daughter's dogs 2 German shepherds reportedly responsible for mauling death Published: 13 mins ago
(FOX5NY) — NEW YORK (INSIDE EDITION) – A 68-year-old woman was found dead in the basement of her New York home by her devastated daughter, who told authorities her dogs may have eaten her mother, a police source told Inside Edition.
Officers responding to a 911 call for an unconscious and unresponsive woman found the body of Daisie Bradshaw in her Staten Island home at about 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, the NYPD said.
The victim, who was found beaten and bruised, was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. | 0 |
ROME — Two passenger trains collided in the Puglia region of southern Italy on Tuesday morning, killing at least 25 people and injuring dozens more, some of them critically. The crash occurred around 11:30 a. m. on a single track running through an olive grove between the towns of Andria and Ruvo di Puglia. The closest major city is Bari, about 20 miles east of Ruvo di Puglia. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was attending the opening of a new science museum in Milan, announced that he would return immediately to Rome and ordered an investigation. He later visited the site of the crash, the news agency ANSA reported. “We won’t stop until we clarify what happened,” he told reporters in Milan. “There is an absolute need to understand who is responsible and to shed total light” on what happened, he said. Mr. Renzi sent the infrastructure and transportation minister, Graziano Delrio, and the head of the civil protection agency, Fabrizio Curcio, who oversees emergency response in Italy, to the site of the crash. “It’s an incident of enormous proportions,” Mr. Delrio said when he reached the scene on Tuesday afternoon, adding that the crash was “very violent. ” The circumstances that led to the collision were unclear. A team of inspectors from the transportation ministry will work with local prosecutors to determine the cause, officials said. Teams of rescuers worked through the afternoon to separate the two trains, extricating victims and searching for survivors in the intense July heat. One exhausted policeman, who appeared barely able to walk, was escorted from the scene by another officer. “It’s so horrible,” a woman who survived the crash told a local television channel, Telesveva, in an interview. “I don’t know how it happened, but in a second, my husband was suddenly two meters away from me. ” The woman, whom Telesveva did not identify, described seeing body parts strewn on the ground, and said she had had to step over them barefoot to get away from the crash after pulling her husband free of the wreckage. “I could do nothing for them,” she said. The front cars of both trains were smashed, and both trains were at least partly derailed. Television images showed heavily damaged rail cars. At least one car was still on the tracks with its windows blown out another was laying off to the side, twisted at an odd angle with its undercarriage facing upward. News agencies also broadcast images of rescue officials taking away wounded passengers on stretchers. The jarring sound of cicadas could be heard as firefighters searched for survivors among the wreckage. ANSA reported that emergency workers had extracted a young boy from the wreckage and taken him by helicopter to a hospital. With no access roads near the tracks, it was difficult for teams to get vehicles through the olive grove to the crash site. Local officials made an appeal for blood donations, and put the number of injured at 55, most in critical or serious condition. Stefania Gnesi, an information technology staff researcher at the National Research Council, said in a telephone interview that there was no automatic brake system in use on the stretch of track where the crash occurred. Ms. Gnesi said that the trains were probably operating on instructions from dispatchers. “It’s probable that there was some human error in this chain, in a section of train track that has no automatic control or automatic brake system,” she said. Automatic systems are used on most of Italy’s railway lines, but have not yet been installed in some areas, especially in southern Italy, which is less developed and less prosperous than the north. The line where the crash occurred links the cities of Andria and Bari on the Adriatic coast, and is used by about 10, 000 passengers a day, according to Riccardo Amirante, a deputy dean at Politecnico University in Bari. There are two tracks along most of the line, Mr. Amirante said in a phone interview, “but unfortunately not that stretch. ” He said trains typically travel the line at around 90 kilometers an hour, or 56 m. p. h. The accident appeared to be one of the most deadly rail disasters in Italy in seven years. In June 2009, a freight train carrying liquefied petroleum gas derailed and exploded in Viareggio, on the west coast of Italy in the Tuscany region. That disaster killed 32 people. President Sergio Mattarella of Italy expressed “deep pain” over the crash, which he called an “unacceptable tragedy. ” Mr. Mattarella said in a statement: “We need to ascertain immediately and precisely responsibilities and possible flaws. ” | 1 |
Selected Not Elected: The Election Has Been Stolen
As it stands now, the election has been stolen by George Soros and Hillary Clinton.
Examples of voter fraud are pouring in from across the country. George Soros and Hillary Clinton have made a mockery of our election. America is quickly descending into Stalin’s Russia. The great democratic experiment is over and our overlords (i.e. George Soros) rule America from behind the scenes. If Clinton becomes president, Soros will be the de facto president.
In the furtherance of this goal, voter fraud is rampant. Here is what is taking place in my home county. It is representative of what is happening across the country.
On Saturday, I am interviewing a Texas elector, Ken Clark, from the electoral college. He told me that when Bush was opposed by Gore, that he received enormous pressure to change his vote in the days leading up to the electors vote including being contacted at his hotel prior to the vote. This is already happening with some of the Arizona electors. It is going to happen all across the country. Massive Voter Fraud in Arizona As I have reported, and it bears repeating, a very reliable political source in Arizona has reported to me that an elector has been offered an inducement (bribe) to vote for Clinton instead of Trump. Details are still emerging and I expect to get more in the immediate few days following the election. I can say now, that the inducements included payment to a phony shell corporation in an off shore account. It should also be noted that Arizona is on the list of 16 states to be using George Soros’ voting machines. The following is an example of this impropriety at work. I received this communication last week from a relative of an employee of the Maricopa County Clerk’s office that is in charge of local elections in the Phoenix area. Dear Dave, I have a relative who works in elections for the county. What they have told me is scary beyond belief. During the primary election as you will remember, people lined up for hours to vote because our illustrious leader Helen Purcell purposely limited the amount of voting locations. My relative was a witness to the manner in which early ballots were transferred for counting. They saw an individual by themself transfer the votes. The ballots were in a cardboard box and were open? Anyone could tamper with the vote. I am telling that the same thing is going on again right here in Maricopa County. This practice which is illegal will allow the Clinton to commit massive voter fraud against Donald Trump. Some of the new voting machines have been tested and they revert to a vote for Clinton when a Republic straight line ticket is entered. Ballots that were mixed between the parties but had Trump as the choice were tagged as unreadable and if the test was real, would have been thrown out based on user error. The top people here know what is going on and they are not reporting this as of October 17, 2016. At County elections there is a very intimidating feel. Everyone is afraid to speak out. And I almost forgot that Sheriff Joe’s trial run showed the same pattern as Trump. They want him out too. Well this unbelievable account got attention from Phoenix TV station, News Channel 3. On October 26, at 605 AM, the station ran a very close version of the story described above. I was stunned as I saw the report parallel the email I received (above). However, at the end of the report, they let a Democratic Party Official, who looked like a heroin addict claim that similar problems with the voting machines were also found for Hillary Clinton. Yet, not one example was offered of this Democratic claim on the TV report, just her word in an example of very shoddy journalism. Speaking of the massive fraud going on in Maricopa County, I want to reiterate what I reported on 10/26/2016. A postal employee told me that they had already processed 2.7 million votes from early balloting. There are only 3.4 million registered voters in all of Arizona. Are we supposed to believe that 80% of Arizona’s residents are voting? Are supposed to believe that this unbelievably high percentage of Arizona voters are voting by mail in ballot? These numbers defy logic. This is a clear case of ballot stuffing. Should we be surprised by the events in Arizona? The head of Maricopa County elections, Helen Purcell, oversaw a voting fiasco in the last election,the Republican primary election. Yet, she was re-elected by the must suspicious and narrowest of margins. Also in Maricopa County, County DA, Bill Montgomery has filed an election tampering charges against George Soros for his personal donation of millions of dollars that were used to support Democratic prosecutors. In other words, when the voter fraud is unveiled and exposed for all to see, Soros will see that nobody gets prosecuted for the bad acts being committed by the Democrats in the same manner in which Comey and Lynch let Hillary Clinton avoid the per walk. The Purpose of the Polls The polls conducted by mainstream media outlets are shoddy and the include small sample sizes and a disproportionate number of Democrats that are surveyed. The purpose is to create the perception that Trump cannot win and when the voter fraud kicks in, as it is now, nobody will question the fraud because they have been falsely conditioned that Trump will lose. Further, the polls are designed to discourage Trump supporters from voting and since their man cannot win, why not just stay home and have a beer? Here is a summary of a recent independent poll in which Trump was found to be leading 67%-19% over Clinton.
When the fraud is cover and Clinton has won, Americans will have to make a choice on how to respond. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND DON’T FORGET TO “LIKE” US
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WASHINGTON — The pitched battle over President Obama’s signature climate change policy, which is moving to the courts this week, carries considerable political, economic and historical stakes. Yet its legal fate, widely expected to be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, could rest on a clerical error in an obscure provision of a law. That error, which left conflicting amendments on power plant regulation in the Clean Air Act, will be a major focus of oral arguments by opponents of Mr. Obama’s initiative when the case is heard on Tuesday in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The initiative, known as the Clean Power Plan, which Mr. Obama sees as at the heart of his climate change legacy, gave the United States critical leverage to broker the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord. If the plan is struck down, the United States, the world’s largest carbon polluter over the centuries, will lose its main tool to cut greenhouse gas emissions. If it is upheld, it will transform the nation’s electricity system, closing hundreds of power plants and setting in motion a wholesale shift to wind, solar and nuclear power, as well as to improved electric transmission systems. states and more than 100 companies and labor and industry groups are fighting to overturn the plan. Defending it are 18 states and dozens of environmental and public health groups that have joined forces with the Obama administration. Nearly 20 lawyers will take turns arguing the case before 10 judges — much larger than the typical panel. The judges have allocated four hours to hear the arguments, rather than the usual one or two. The chief judge of the court, Merrick B. Garland, who is also Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, has recused himself. Adding to the drama will be the presence of Mr. Obama’s mentor at Harvard Law School, Laurence H. Tribe, who will argue against the climate plan on behalf of the nation’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy. The clerical error at issue in the case — State of West Virginia, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency — involves an update to the Clean Air Act passed by Congress in 1990. The Clean Air Act of 1970 is the legal foundation of the Clean Power Plan. An obscure provision in the law — Section 111( d) — gave the E. P. A. broad authority to regulate unknown future pollutants. At the time, carbon dioxide, the nontoxic but gas that is the chief cause of global warming, was not considered a pollutant. In 1990, when Congress passed the update to the Clean Air Act, it amended Section 111( d). A version of the amendment passed by the House said that if the E. P. A. was already regulating power plant pollution under a separate section of the law, it could not use Section 111( d) to create new regulations on the same plants. A version of the amendment passed by the Senate, however, did allow such overlapping regulation. When the two bills were merged, lawmakers forgot to strike out one of the conflicting amendments in the rush to push the bill through. So it was signed into law by President George Bush with both amendments. Opponents of the Clean Power Plan will argue on Tuesday that a strict interpretation of the House amendment would render the plan illegal. Last year, when the E. P. A. issued the Clean Power Plan, it used Section 111( d) to justify placing new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The agency has also long regulated toxic power plant pollutants, such as mercury, under a different section, 112, of the Clean Air Act. “In 1990, Congress dramatically expanded the Clean Air Act, and when they did that, they said an industry cannot be ” said Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer representing many of the groups suing the administration. Sean Donahue, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund who will argue this portion of the case before the court, called that legal interpretation “preposterous. ” “It’s very interesting that there was this legislative glitch,” he said. Environmentalists and the administration will argue that because the two types of pollutants are so different, the E. P. A. is justified in using two sections of the law to regulate them. “This bizarre proposition is like exempting restaurants from food handling requirements because they are subject to the fire code,” Mr. Donahue said. Opponents of the plan will also focus on two other main points, arguing that Mr. Obama has exceeded his executive authority. While environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act often require states to cut pollution by using specific technology, such as affixing “scrubbers” to smokestacks, the Clean Power Plan goes further: It asks states to reduce pollution by making changes to their entire electricity systems — shutting down coal plants, and building wind and solar plants. The plan also encourages states to reduce emissions by putting in place “ ” systems, which would create state or regional caps on emissions and allow companies to buy and sell credits to pollute. In his first term, Mr. Obama tried but failed to push a bill through Congress. Now, his opponents say, he is using regulation to force the system through. “The E. P. A. is going beyond what it’s authorized to do by Congress and essentially creating new law,” said Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, a leader in coordinating the legal opposition to the plan. David Doniger, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which worked closely with the Obama administration to draft the plan, dismissed that objection, noting that the E. P. A. already uses a system to regulate other sources of pollution. Given the high stakes, the two sides have gone to unusual lengths in their preparation, including what longtime activists say is an unprecedented level of counterintelligence work. Consultants have been gathering details about how their opponents are organizing their side of the fight, in an attempt to find embarrassing tidbits that might undermine their arguments, at least in the public’s eye. Both sides have spent months filing Freedom of Information requests and related lawsuits to obtain email correspondence and other records from their opponents. Environmental groups sought emails between the state attorneys general who are challenging the Clean Power Plan and executives from the coal and electric utility industries. Lawyers and consultants paid by the energy industry have sought records showing that environmentalists have worked closely with liberal politicians who support the plan. “Transparency is a good thing, so having more of these documents serves the public,” said Kert Davies, the executive director of a group called the Climate Investigations Center, which has helped gather counterintelligence information on opponents of the Clean Power Plan. “But it is certainly an escalating war, back and forth. The intensity has peaked. ” | 1 |
Donald J. Trump on Thursday accused Hillary Clinton of guiding a “global power structure” that has rigged the economy against the working class, language that some suggested echoed themes. Mr. Trump made the accusation in a speech in West Palm Beach, Fla. in which he also defended himself against several accusations of sexual harassment, published by The New York Times and others. Early in the speech, he said that a global elite had “stripped” the United States of its wealth in order to line the pockets of corporate and political interests. “The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,” he said. “We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U. S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” he said, referring to the group that has, most recently, published thousands of hacked emails from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. The remarks drew criticism from some who said they resembled prejudicial language used by . “Whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the League, a group that fights discrimination, said in a statement. Mr. Greenblatt said the group feared that white supremacists might see the comments as tacit encouragement. “Mr. Trump focused on the very issues and themes that obsess conspiratorial : They believe that there is an elite group of Jews who control the media, the government, and banking, and who are trying to destroy white America,” he said. “They also believe that most of Hillary Clinton’s donors are Jewish. ” The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Others drew a more direct comparison between Mr. Trump’s words and those of . In the speech, Mr. Trump also accused the “Clinton machine” of wielding control over the news media, as well. “The most powerful weapon deployed by the Clintons is the corporate media, the press,” he said to jeers from the audience. While the allegations were aimed at Mrs. Clinton, who is a Methodist, Jews have long been accused of conspiring to control institutions like banks and the media in order to amass wealth and power. In 1931, for example, the author A. N. Field described the creation of the American Federal Reserve as the moment the “ engine of control” enslaved the United States, according to the League. That conspiracy theory has survived the ensuing decades and, even today, such beliefs remain prevalent around the world, according to A. D. L. polling. In West Palm Beach on Thursday, reporters covering Mr. Trump returned to a table reserved for the press to find a sign bearing a swastika and the word “MEDIA” scrawled on it, Jim Acosta, a senior CNN White House correspondent, reported. | 1 |
by Vladimir Golstein, via The Duran
Political discourse of American mass media is inundated with another wave of Russophobia and fear mongering. Besides the obvious military threat (Russia’s nuclear arsenal), or the challenges to the US foreign policy (the conflicts in Ukraine or Syria), a new fear has been introduced into the news: the US political system is endangered by Russia’s computer hacking, informational warfare, and its support of Donald Trump.
The newspaper titles sound like a commercial for the upcoming Invasion of the Body Snatchers sequel. The Washingon Post announces: “Russia Is Now a Threat. The US Should Treat It Like One.” Time magazine raises the stakes: “Russia Wants to Undermine Faith in the U.S. Election.”
The Atlantic warns of the “The Dangers of the Putin-Trump relationship,” articulating the already familiar litany of complaints: “Russia is directly interfering in the US elections … it is a dangerous escalation that threatens the integrity of the US electoral process.” While US Today allows notorious neocon named Max Boot to discover not just the threat, but an actual war. His “Time to Get Real About Russia Cyber War,” is rather blunt: “Our democracy is under attack by Russia, but almost no one is treating the situation with the gravity it deserves.”
Well, nobody treats the situation with the gravity it deserves because they are treating it with much greater gravity. In fact, some of the commentators are so grave, that they are ready to give in already. Zack Beauchamp concludes his tirades against Russian hacking in the following manner: “Russia’s strategy is even more dangerous that it appears. Not only does it undermine democracy using the press but it actually gets the press to undermine itself. And there’s not much we can reasonably do about it, either.”
Reading all this, one might think that the former Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal , has been resurrected along with his 1949 battle-cry: “The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They’re right around. I’ve seen Russian soldiers.”
What is behind this Russophobia? A real Russian threat? A smokescreen intended to cover failed policies of recent administration? The meeting between the Russophobic minds of a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) and a particular group of voters (neocons)?
I believe that these Joe McCarthy type accusations against both Russia and Trump seem to pursue only one goal: to give the veneer of respectability to the neocons’ and other Republican luminaries’ desertion of their own party. Thus, endless “confessions” of reformed Republicans and hardcore neocons , expressing their born-again zeal for the Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton.
The neocons are not switching parties because they’ve seen the light. They are enamored with Hillary Clinton’s record of foreign policy and her willingness to embrace the US globalist claims. As reported by Rania Khalek in Intercept , Robert Kagan, one of the leading neocons, the co-founder of the notorious PNAC (Project for the New American Century, the blueprint of the recent policies of aggression and regime change intended to cement US hegemony in world affairs), has been on the record for quite some time: “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” Kagan told …at a “ foreign policy professionals for Hillary ” fundraiser… –I would say that a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary.”
The neocons are very public about their desertion, and bear it as a badge of honor. Dubious honor, since in their pursuit of an ideal candidate for their agenda, neocons do not just betray their former party, but the very foundations of American democracy: the two party system.
Their desertion reveals that American political system has finally internalized Francis Fukuyama proud words about the end of history. We’ve reached the consensus; there is no need to argue or challenge, history has ended, the truths are revealed and they are now the property of the elites united into one globalist Imperial party bent on equating American prosperity with the American hegemony over world affairs.
To any objective observer it is clear that is not Russia that endangers US democracy but the political corruption, the rule of 1% oligarchy, and mad pursuit of PNAC policies. Even greater danger to democracy lies in the neocons’ desertion to the Hillary camp.
Unsavory as the corporate rule and globalism might be, one can argue for and pursue these goals, provided they leave the room for the alternative vision. It is this neocons’ dismissal of the alternatives that betrays the very foundations of democracy, at least, in the way, a political philosopher Karl Popper formulated them in his celebrated 1945 treatise, Open Society and Its Enemies .
The list of neocons and other prominent Republicans rushing toward one party system has been compiled by Eleanor Clift in Daily Beast at the end of June, and had obviously grown since then. Some of them, Max Boot in particular, are pretty explicit about the reasons for his desertion: in his May 8, 2016, article in LA Times , Boot announces simply that, “The Republican Party is Dead.”
Why? Because it is no longer led by the likes of McCain, Rubio and Romney, for whom Boot served as foreign policy advisor, but by Donald Trump, “the ignorant demagogue” intending to break up “the most successful alliance in history — NATO.” Furthermore, Trump has “kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin.” Indeed, how can anyone in the US political establishment have kind words for Putin? We keep our kind words only for “our SOBs.”
The simplicity if not poverty of this argumentation makes it difficult to distinguish it from exaggerations, simplification, or ignorance, for which neocons consistently fault Trump. But neocons were never friends of irony; otherwise, they would not make statements about NATO’s spectacular success with a straight face.
The alliance that followed every whim of its paranoid members, such as Baltic Republics or Poland, and which intended to drag Ukraine into NATO pushing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation? If this is success, how does one define failure? And talking about exaggerations: “The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”
As if being “dead” is not bad enough, Boot feels the need to drive a stake into the heart of the Republican Party: the party is stupid . Writing for NYT , the publication that never misses a chance to print something nasty about Republicans, Boot bemoans Republican complicity with Donald Trump phenomenon: “How the Stupid Party’ Created Donald Trump.”
Why can’t there be an alternative to the neocons’ doctrines of world domination in the form of a populist, nationalist movement that wants Americans to take care of Americans first, before overextending the country’s economic and military reach? And should this alternative be immediately called stupid?
Yet, for many neocons, it is Hillary or bust. James Kirchik goes out of his way trying to convince his fellow conservatives that it is Clinton who is a true conservative, and therefore, the last American hope: “It’s come to this: Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss.”
Referring to a profound conservative thinker, Michael Oakeshott, Kirchik observed that Oakeshott “defines the conservative disposition as one that ‘prefers small and limited innovations to large and indefinite’ ones and ‘favors a slow rather than a rapid pace, and pauses to observe current consequences and make appropriate adjustments.’ … Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, something that conservatives, by definition, are supposed to uphold.”
Kirchick fails to mention, however, that it is Clintons’ and Obama’s implementation of neocons’ policies which is nothing short of revolutionary. Military adventures, drastic regime changes, alliance redrawing, the willingness to sacrifice American lives and money in their pursuit, all these misguided policies that meet no political resistance –that’s what revolutionary.
Trump’s realism and pragmatic approach to politics appears as revolutionary only to the ideologues who refuse to pause in their drive to reshape the modern world according to their childish dreams.
This radical reworking of democratic and conservative process of slow incremental improvements into the hegemony of corporate sponsored elites is indeed revolutionary: a modern day version of Lenin’s hegemony of proletariat and its avant-garde, the elite party, all over again.
Hillary Clinton is as conservative as Brezhnev, who, in his failure to modify or change the radical agenda set up by the party of Lenin and Stalin, was indeed, a conservative. Only an intellectual of Kirchick’s magnitude can see something Oakeshottian in this embrace of one party system.
As someone who lived under one party rule in the former Soviet Union, I fully appreciate Popper’s rather minimalistic, but fundamental view of democracy, as the society that boasts a two party system and which guarantees the ease of deposing a ruling party in case of its failures.
Karl Popper insisted on the necessity and practical usefulness of the two-party system, so that the loss of power would lead to self-scrutiny and therefore improvement. While the two parties and their loyal press try to police each other, they keep each other busy, allowing the rest of the citizens to live in peace and pursue their goals without too much interference or control.
Obviously, all this goes down the drain with the one party system of globalists and the elites, the party that mocks and dismisses as ridiculous or deplorable anyone who happens to challenge it.
In his The Open Society and its Enemies Popper proposes a rather paradoxical, yet extremely sensible theory of a democratic society. What is important for Popper, is not the discovery of a perfect government, but a much more mundane and pragmatic question: how to avoid the blatantly bad ones. And democracy does it better than any other system. Insisting on this pragmatism, Popper highlights the following syllogism:
And we do not base our choice on the goodness of democracy, which may be doubtful, but solely on the evilness of a dictatorship, which is certain. Not only because the dictator is bound to make bad use of his power, but because a dictator, even if he were benevolent, would rob all others of their responsibility, and thus of their human rights and duties. This is a sufficient basis for deciding in favor of democracy—that is, a rule of law that enables us to get rid of the government. No majority, however large, ought to be qualified to abandon this rule of law.”
Popper wrote this elucidation for The Economist ; where he explains his paradoxical thought in the following manner:
In ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognized as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory… how can we best avoid situations in which a bad ruler causes too much harm?
When we say that the best solution known to us is a constitution that allows a majority vote to dismiss the government, then we do not say the majority vote will always be right. We do not even say that it will usually be right.”
For Popper, the two-party system is a requirement not because any of these parties possesses the truth, but because they can lose, be removed from power, and thus given a chance to think things through and improve. Consequently, it is the very possibility of losing, and therefore improving, that makes democracies dynamic and progressive:
From the point of view of the new theory, Election day ought to be a Day of Judgment. As Pericles of Athens said in about 430 BC, ‘although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.’ Of course, we may misjudge it; in fact, we often do. But if we have lived through a party’s period of power and have felt its repercussions, we have at least some qualifications for judgment…In order to make a majority government probable, we need something approaching a two-party system…. for such a system encourages a continual process of self-criticism by the two parties.”
For Popper, the two –party system is preferable since “an inclination to self-criticism after an electoral defeat is far more pronounced in countries with a two-party system than in those where there are several parties.” It is this self-criticism of a losing party; this desire to reform and modernize that provides healthy development for democracies.
The rule of the last two decades did not improve the economic life of the majority of Americans; in fact, it resulted in the drastic redistribution of wealth. It didn’t bring peace to the world stage. In fact, we are standing on the threshold of nuclear confrontation.
Yet, in the manner of the Germany in 1930s, we are rapidly overstepping democratic principles for the sake of one party and its global ambitions, of the consensus formulated by the PNAC, Council of Foreign Affairs, Atlantic Council, and other think tanks, along with the State Department, and the press, all of whom argue for the same policies all over again. Even now, weeks before the elections, we are reading about the same bureaucrats in Pentagon, CIA, or State Department, haggling for the place in the future Hillary cabinet.
It is those rascals that can be sent home, who are worthy of being voted in. And conversely, it is those rascals, who want to stay in power no matter how wrongheaded, dangerous, or unpopular their policies are that should be thrown out.
There is no absolute truth in politics, there is no end of history, and there is no one size fits all. Popper understood it much better than Fukuyama. History never ends: parties should continue to lose, and thus given a chance to come up with better policies for the next election. Only when Democratic Party is forced to take a back seat, it will contemplate on how it can improve, and offer new policies for the country.
Propping up Hillary as the best embodiment of the failed policies, allowing the same bankers, diplomats, and generals to metastasize into next election and hold the same key positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, CIA or Treasury, is ultimately, the embrace of one party system; it provides a profound disservice to the United States and its democratic tradition.
At the last presidential debate this electoral season, Hillary Clinton pretended to be appalled by Trump’s hypothetical refusal to accept the results of the November elections. Mass media echo chambers went into the override mode bemoaning Trump’s disrespect for the venerable political tradition of peaceful transition of power. Trump was never in power, however.
What is truly appalling is the real, not the hypothetical threat of turning US into a one party system, the system which is so entrenched that it can only mock, dismiss, and conspire to denigrate its opponents. Maybe Mr. Forrestal was right after all. Russians, or rather Soviets, are here, but they do not hack the emails, they write them. Rate this: | 0 |
Iran will bar the United States wrestling team from a major international meet this month in response to President Trump’s order severely limiting travel from several countries, including Iran. Bahram Qasemi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, announced the decision Friday morning, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The agency reported that the decision had been made by “a special committee, which opposed to presence of the team after necessary studies. ” Mr. Qasemi said the ministry opposed the Americans’ participation because of Mr. Trump’s order. “We’re in talks about it right at the moment,” said Christina Kelley, the chief international ambassador for U. S. A. Wrestling. “We’re pretty devastated. ” A U. S. A. Wrestling statement, while noting that the group had not received official confirmation of the decision, said: “If these reports are true, U. S. A. Wrestling is extremely disappointed about this, which we believe would be an unacceptable situation. Wrestling is about competition and good will through sport, and is no place for politics. ” The event, the Freestyle World Cup, is scheduled for Feb. 16 and 17 in Kermanshah, Iran. Held annually, it pits the best wrestlers in the world in team competition. Last year, the event was held in Los Angeles, and it is scheduled to be held in Iowa City in 2018. Iran has won the event five years in a row. Americans and Iranians regularly wrestle in each other’s countries, with few problems, if any. Wrestling is one of the most popular sports in Iran: 43 of the nation’s 69 Olympic medals have come in wrestling. The United States and Iran worked together in 2013 to persuade the International Olympic Committee to keep wrestling in the Summer Games when it was threatened with removal. There is an international wrestling meet scheduled for May in Times Square, an annual contest pitting top Americans against international stars. But it is not clear if Iranians will be granted sports visas to compete. Mr. Trump’s order bars visitors from seven nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Nenad Lalovic, the president of United World Wrestling, the international federation, said in a statement: “Though we had hoped for a different outcome from Iran’s Foreign Ministry, we appreciate the complex nature of this decision. We are currently working to find a solution for the Freestyle World Cup as soon as possible. ” “United World Wrestling hosts a full calendar of events every season, and we’re certain to see American and Iranian wrestlers on the same mat again in the very near future,” it added. Mr. Trump’s order is a complicated issue for the United States Olympic Committee, which calls itself “the steward of the Olympic movement in the United States. ” The organization does not want to antagonize the president, so its response has been relatively muted. The committee is invested in a bid to bring the 2024 Summer Games to Los Angeles, and that bid’s chances have been damaged by the executive order, which alarmed some of the International Olympic Committee members who will select the host city. “We are disappointed for our wrestlers, who have been warmly welcomed by the Iranian public on many occasions,” said Patrick Sandusky, a spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee. Jordan Burroughs, an American who won a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics and who was to participate in the World Cup, told The Associated Press: “These executive decisions are always so far beyond your reach. You always feel like, ‘Well, the presidency or these strict laws or these Muslim bans or whatever you like to call them, they’ll never affect me.’ This is one of the few times where something so personal has occurred. ” “There is such a common respect for wrestlers in Iran,” Burroughs told NBC. “They love wrestling. They’re huge fans of mine. I’m bummed about that. I really wanted to be part of something great in what I consider a great country. Obviously, my views and our country’s views are different. ” Iran said on Saturday that it would stop American citizens from entering the country, in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s order. But American wrestling officials had been hopeful that an exception could be made to allow the American athletes to participate. | 1 |
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The 2008 Democrat presidential primary got ugly between then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but you’d never know it given the ridiculous display by the Obamas on the campaign trail. Fortunately, a pro-Donald Trump super PAC decided to remind America… and Hillary Clinton is not too happy about it.
Buzzfeed reported :
The Clinton campaign has sent cease and desist letters to at least four local television stations in Florida demanding they stop running an ad paid for by a pro-Trump Super PAC featuring First Lady Michelle Obama — even as the PAC is expanding its ad campaign in North Carolina.
The ad, titled “Can’t Run Her House,” is being run through the Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC, a subsidiary of the Make America Number 1 PAC, which is backing Trump’s campaign.
During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, Michelle Obama said:
One of the important aspects of this race is role-modeling what good families should look like. And my view is, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. You can’t do it.
Barack Obama laughably claimed that the comment wasn’t about Clinton, but who else would it have been about? That’s what liberals do, though; they just deny something ever happened or wasn’t what it obviously was — and thanks to the biased mainstream media, they get away with it.
Hogan Gidley, the PAC’s spokesperson, said of the legal move by the Clinton campaign:
Hillary’s just angry because the ad is impactful, it’s working and it speaks directly to the women she’s been trying to con for years. Hillary’s own campaign said when Michelle Obama speaks out, “it has a real impact,” and indeed, we agree – because it was Mrs. Obama who correctly pointed out Hillary Clinton “certainly can’t run the White House.”
Take a look at the ad below:
You know, it really seems as if most Democrats are unable to just tell the truth. It looks pretty ridiculous for the Obamas to glowingly support Clinton and for Clinton to speak glowingly about the Obamas after the things they all said back in 2008.
Part of the problem with Democrats is that they have the media in the tank for them, so they don’t have to own up to anything. Besides, it’s not like their moral compass, the ones that actually have one, would force them to do so.
For the Clinton camp to resort to legal action over an ad that simply points out their hypocrisy is the height of absurdity. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t make deals with the devil … | 0 |
PACHINKOBy Min Jin Lee490 pp. Grand Central Publishing. $27. Min Jin Lee’s stunning novel “Pachinko” — her second, after “Free Food for Millionaires” (2007) — announces its ambitions right from the opening sentence: “History has failed us, but no matter. ” “Pachinko” chronicles four generations of an ethnic Korean family, first in Korea in the early 20th century, then in Japan itself from the years before World War II to the late 1980s. The novel opens with an arranged marriage in Yeongdo, a fishing village at the southern tip of Korea. That union produces a daughter, Sunja, who falls in love at 16 with a prominent (and married) mobster. After Sunja becomes pregnant, a local pastor offers her a chance to escape by marrying him and immigrating together to his brother’s house in an ethnic Korean neighborhood in Osaka. Together, they embark into the fraught unknown. Pachinko, the game ubiquitous throughout Japan, unifies the central concerns of identity, homeland and belonging. For the ethnic Korean population in Japan, discriminated against and shut out of traditional occupations, pachinko parlors are the primary mode of finding work and accumulating wealth. Called Zainichi, or foreign residents, ethnic Koreans are required to reapply for alien registration cards every three years even if they were born in Japan, and are rarely granted passports, making overseas travel nearly impossible. From a young age, Sunja’s oldest son sees being Korean as “a dark, heavy rock” his greatest, secret desire is to be Japanese. His younger brother, Mozasu, even after he accumulates great wealth through his pachinko parlors, confides to his closest Japanese friend: “In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. ” Mozasu’s son, Solomon, learns this too quickly after graduating from an American university. He returns to Tokyo on an expat package with the Japanese branch of a British investment bank, then is fired once his ethnic Korean connections are no longer needed for a business deal. Still, Solomon is of a new, less wounded generation. He believes there are still good Japanese people and sees himself as Japanese, too, “even if the Japanese didn’t think so. ” Like most memorable novels, however, “Pachinko” resists summary. In this sprawling book, history itself is a character. “Pachinko” is about outsiders, minorities and the politically disenfranchised. But it is so much more besides. Each time the novel seems to find its locus — Japan’s colonization of Korea, World War II as experienced in East Asia, Christianity, family, love, the changing role of women — it becomes something else. It becomes even more than it was. Despite the compelling sweep of time and history, it is the characters and their tumultuous lives that propel the narrative. Small details subtly reveal the characters’ secret selves and build to powerful moments. After Sunja arrives in Osaka, her modest life is underscored when she enters what is only the second restaurant of her life. When her husband, Isak, is finally cleared of charges and released from jail looking “both new and ancient,” their oldest son is “unable to take his eyes off his father for fear he’d disappear. ” Their reunion is moving yet understated: Isak simply holds his son’s hand and says: “My dear boy. My blessing. ” Dozens more characters amplify the vortex of points of views: a hostess bar girl, a farmer who has “no wish for the war to end just yet” so that he can benefit from the higher prices to realize “his grandfather’s dearest wish” of buying the adjoining land. The numerous shifts are occasionally jolting, but what is gained is a compassionate, clear gaze at the chaotic landscape of life itself. In this haunting epic tale, no one story seems too minor to be briefly illuminated. Lee suggests that behind the facades of wildly different people lie countless private desires, hopes and miseries, if we have the patience and compassion to look and listen. | 1 |
It is getting closer to midnight. On Thursday, the group of scientists who orchestrate the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic instrument informing the public when the earth is facing imminent disaster, moved its minute hand from three to two and a half minutes before the final hour. It was the closest the clock had been to midnight since 1953, the year after the United States and the Soviet Union conducted competing tests of the hydrogen bomb. Though scientists decide on the clock’s position, it is not a scientific instrument, or even a physical one. The movement of its symbolic hands is decided upon by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The organization introduced the clock on the cover of its June 1947 edition, placing it at seven minutes to midnight. Since then, it has moved closer to midnight and farther away, depending on the board’s conclusions. Thursday’s announcement was made by Rachel Bronson, the executive director and publisher of the bulletin. She was assisted by the theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, the climate scientist and meteorologist David Titley, and the former United States ambassador Thomas Pickering. Dr. Bronson, in a interview, explained why the board had included the mark in the measurement. She said that it was an signal that was meant to acknowledge “what a dangerous moment we’re in, and how important it is for people to take note. ” “We’re so concerned about the rhetoric, and the lack of respect for expertise, that we moved it 30 seconds,” she said. “Rather than create panic, we’re hoping that this drives action. ” In an for The New York Times, Dr. Titley and Dr. Krauss elaborated on their concerns, citing the increasing threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, as well as President Trump’s pledges to impede what they see as progress on both fronts, as reasons for moving the clock closer to midnight. “Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person,” they wrote. “But when that person is the new president of the United States, his words matter. ” The board has held the responsibility for the clock’s movements since 1973, when the bulletin’s editor, Eugene Rabinowitch, died. Composed of scientists, and nuclear and climate experts, the board meets biannually to discuss where the clock’s hands should fall in light of world events. In the 1950s, the scientists feared nuclear annihilation, and since then, the board has begun to consider other existential threats, including climate change, compromised biosecurity and artificial intelligence. There were crises that the clock was not quick enough to take into account. The Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, in 1962, did not change the hands of the clock, which at the time stood at seven minutes to midnight. An explanation on the Bulletin’s website accounts for this seeming lapse in timekeeping: “The Cuban Missile Crisis, for all its potential and ultimate destruction, only lasted a few weeks,” it says. “However, the lessons were quickly apparent when the United States and the Soviet Union installed the first hotline between the two capitals to improve communications, and, of course, negotiated the 1963 test ban treaty, ending all atmospheric nuclear testing. ” The end of the Cold War came as a relief to those who had lived in fear of nuclear annihilation for decades, and the minute hand slowly moved away from danger. In 1990, it was at 10 minutes to midnight. The next year, it was a full 17 minutes away, at the relatively undisturbing time of 11:43. “The illusion that tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are a guarantor of national security has been stripped away,” the Bulletin said at the time. But over the next two decades the clock slowly ticked back. Conflict between India and Pakistan, both of whom staged nuclear weapons tests three weeks apart, had the clock at nine minutes to midnight in 1998. By 2007, fears about Iranian and North Korean nuclear capacity had pushed it to 11:55. By 2015, the scientists were back in a state of unmitigated concern, with the clock at three minutes to midnight, the closest it had been since 1984. “Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity,” the bulletin said. “World leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. ” “These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth,” it added. | 1 |
Donald Trump had himself a tantrum on CNN after he was asked why he was spending the day promoting his hotel instead of campaigning in swing states.
Video: Dana Bash: Is your DC hotel opening free advertising?Donald Trump: “No, not at all” https://t.co/6OZtrfIwim https://t.co/9HHqooom8r
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 26, 2016
With just 13 days until election day, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Trump why he is promoting his hotel instead of campaigning in swing states, “I say the following: You have been covering me for the last— long time. I did yesterday eight stops and three major speeches, and I’ve been doing this for weeks straight. For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then she goes home and sleeps. And yet you’ll ask me that question. I think that’s a very rude question, to be honest with you.”
Trump can’t defend why he is wasting precious time promoting his business interests instead of campaigning. Trump doesn’t have a single campaign event scheduled until 7 PM. He has given up a critical day of campaign time to get publicity for his new hotel.
When Trump got called out for some very unpresidential scheduling priorities, his response was to attack the reporter.
The Republican nominee is not behaving like a person who is willing to give everything to be elected the next president, and every time he leaves his Fox News bubble, Donald Trump opens his mouth and reminds voters of why he should never be elected president.
Trump Throws A Fit When Asked Why He Is Promoting His Hotel Instead Of Campaigning added by Jason Easley on Wed, Oct 26th, 2016 | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Please note: The Evening Briefing is taking a break on Thursday, but we’ll be back on Friday. Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Donald Trump moved to diversify his cabinet with selections for three key positions. He chose Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina as the ambassador to the United Nations and Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate, for education secretary. He is also nearing an announcement of Ben Carson as secretary of housing and urban development. Ms. Haley, seen above last year, is a rising star in Republican politics and has sparred bitterly with Mr. Trump. We published the full transcript of Mr. Trump’s visit to our Midtown headquarters yesterday, and here’s a guide to the most salient quotes. ____ 2. Mr. Trump will hold meetings in his upscale club in Florida, over Thanksgiving. The use of his vast real estate holdings is raising questions about whether he is exploiting the high profile of the presidency to draw attention to his properties. Here is a visual visitors’ log of notable people who filed through Trump Tower in a single day earlier this week. Mr. Trump plans to bar registered lobbyists making donations to activities surrounding his inauguration, but corporations and wealthy donors are welcome to contribute. 3. Hillary Clinton has widened her lead in the popular vote to 1. 5 percentage points, a spread not seen for a losing candidate since the disputed election of 1876. The news prompted calls from liberal activists for audits in three states won narrowly by Mr. Trump: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Above, an election watch party hosted by the American Embassy in South Korea. ____ 4. A Thanksgiving dinner will be served to about 2, 000 people protesting an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota on Thursday — and two celebrities, Jane Fonda and Shailene Woodley, said they would be on hand to help. The state’s leaders are pressuring President Obama to authorize the pipeline’s completion. Here’s a detailed map of conflicts along its path. ____ 5. A London jury sentenced a man with a history of extremist beliefs to life in prison for the murder of Jo Cox, a British lawmaker, a week before the country’s “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union. Thomas Mair shot and stabbed Ms. Cox, a mother of two, in a case that shocked the country. Ms. Cox supported remaining in the bloc. ____ 6. The thick cloud of pollution that engulfed Delhi this month has dissipated, but the air quality will remain dangerous for months as the poor burn trash to stay warm. It’s a problem throughout northern India, particularly for children and the elderly. Our reporter visited two families at opposite ends of the economic spectrum to see how they are coping. ____ 7. The healthier dishes in your Thanksgiving spread were probably grown in California’s Salinas Valley, known as the salad bowl of the nation. But the workers who pick the crops there are facing a crisis of poverty and malnutrition. “The people who grow our food can’t afford to eat it, and they are sicker because of it,” said an advocate for farmworkers. ____ 8. Our movie critics have parsed through Hollywood’s latest offerings and chosen five films worth seeing over Thanksgiving, including “Moana,” above. And if you’re in New York City, here’s a guide to the best art shows in museums and galleries. The major museums have extended hours through the weekend. ___ 9. The big football game to watch on Thursday is the Minnesota Vikings against the Detroit Lions. Our writer says it is one of the 10 most important games left in the regular season. The teams are tied for first in the N. F. C. North, at . Whichever team wins will have a huge leg up on the other in terms of reaching the playoffs. (12:30 p. m. Eastern, CBS) ___ 10. Ralph Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher who served up the home run that lives on in baseball history as the “Shot Heard Round the World,” died at 90. He had three consecutive seasons, but would never live down throwing the fastball that lost his team the 1951 National League championship. “A guy commits murder and he gets pardoned after 20 years,” Branca once said at an ’ game. “I didn’t get pardoned. ” ___ 11. Finally, we’re down to the wire to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps you’d like some tips by text message from our food editor Sam Sifton, or to check out our Thanksgiving menu planner. In other news you can use, here’s how to be a perfect guest some election facts to employ in debate and if all else fails, a wine guide. (Look for something light, versatile and but really, there are no wrong choices.) And if your Black Friday shopping will be done from the comfort of your own home, you may want to consult our new holiday gift guide. Above, Mr. Obama pardoned a turkey as president for the last time. Happy Thanksgiving! ___ 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 |
JERUSALEM — The fragile treaty between the two former enemies was not even three years old when a Jordanian soldier went on a shooting rampage and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting a park in a border area known as the Island of Peace. On Sunday, almost 20 years after that March 13, 1997, attack, the Jordanian authorities released the soldier, Ahmed Daqamseh, a former corporal, after he effectively completed his term. Amid the grief and outrage over what became known as the Island of Peace massacre, King Hussein, then the ruler of Jordan, managed to salvage the spirit of reconciliation and provide some balm. The king paid a rare visit to Israel and made condolence calls to each of the bereaved families. Kneeling to speak with them as they sat on the floor in their homes as part of the Jewish mourning custom of shiva, he apologized and said: “Your daughter is like my daughter. Your loss is my loss. ” While the visit angered many in Jordan, it was seen as a gesture of friendship and humility by many in Israel and the West. Two decades later, Mr. Daqamseh’s release rekindled some of those emotions. The peace has proved firm and lasting, but it still exists mainly at the government level and has not been popularly embraced. The Island of Peace, about 12 miles south of the Sea of Galilee, was formally returned to Jordan when it made peace with Israel in fall 1994, but was then leased back to an Israeli kibbutz. Mr. Daqamseh fired on the girls, who were on a class outing, from a border post in Jordanian territory. After the attack, a Jordanian medical team gave Mr. Daqamseh a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder a military court sentenced him to life in prison. Life sentences are not in Jordan, and can essentially be commuted after 20 years. Mr. Daqamseh, who also injured five other girls and a teacher in the rampage, said at the time that the seventh and eighth graders had mocked him as he was performing his prayers. Early on Sunday, Mr. Daqamseh returned to his family’s home in Ibdir, a village in the governorate of Irbid in northern Jordan. Roya News, an independent Jordanian station, broadcast video of his homecoming, and photographs spread widely in the local news media. Israeli radio and news sites described the reception Mr. Daqamseh received from his family and other as a hero’s welcome, also posting photographs and video of the local celebrations. A Jordanian military spokesman confirmed the release, but the government appeared to be trying to keep it low key. The police prevented reporters from reaching Ibdir later on Sunday, citing orders from the local governor, who demanded that journalists obtain permission from the Ministry of Interior. Mr. Daqamseh, now in his 40s, emerged from prison with patches of gray hair and sunken eyes. He was defiant and showed no remorse. In his first statement to the news media from his home, he said, “There is no country named Israel,” adding that any normalization of ties with Israel and the notion that the conflict would be resolved by means of a solution were both “lies. ” Some Jordanians continued to see Mr. Daqamseh as a symbol of an movement against the treaty. The Israeli government and the bereaved families had protested earlier calls in Jordan for Mr. Daqamseh’s prison term to be cut short. There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials on Sunday, and relatives who spoke to the news media appeared mostly resigned to his release. “I always say that our peace with Jordan is with the royal family, not the people or their parliament,” Yisrael Fatihi, whose daughter, Sivan, 13, was killed in the attack, told Ynet, a Hebrew news site. Hezi Cohen, the father of Nirit, 13, another victim, described his family’s daily pain. On one hand, he said, Mr. Daqamseh had served his full sentence. On the other, he said, “If he had received 20 years for each girl he murdered, he would have rotted in prison for the rest of his life. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — For weeks, President Trump has insisted that President Barack Obama tapped his phones even as the F. B. I. director and members of Mr. Trump’s own party said there was no evidence for his charge. But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump got an assist from a powerful House Republican who said the president or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, introduced the new claim into the deepening controversy over Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Yet Mr. Nunes also told reporters on Wednesday that he had no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claim that he was directly or personally wiretapped. Democrats quickly denounced the disclosure and said it bolstered the need for an independent investigation to replace the House inquiry being led by Mr. Nunes. Mr. Trump responded positively to Mr. Nunes’s remarks. “I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found,” the president told reporters at the White House, evidently referring to sources Mr. Nunes said he would not name. Mr. Trump said he felt vindicated, up to a point. “I somewhat do,” he said. Mr. Nunes acknowledged that the incidental intelligence gathering on Trump associates — during the presidential transition late last year, when Mr. Obama was in office — was not necessarily unlawful. American intelligence agencies typically monitor foreign officials of allied and hostile countries, and they routinely sweep up communications linked to Americans who may be taking part in the conversation or are being spoken about. The real issue, Mr. Nunes told reporters, was that he could figure out the identities of Trump associates from reading reports about intercepted communications that were shared among Obama administration officials with top security clearances. He said some Trump associates were also identified by name in the reports. Normally, intelligence agencies mask the identities of American citizens who are incidentally present in intercepted communications. But nothing about the investigations into Russian election interference is routine. In making his claims, first in a news conference on Capitol Hill and then in the West Wing driveway after meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House, Mr. Nunes, who served on the president’s transition team, appeared to be trying to steer the public debate away from the investigations into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia during the election. “I don’t want to get too much into the details, but these were intelligence reports, and it brings up a lot of concern about whether things were properly minimized or not,” said Mr. Nunes, who said the surveillance was not related to Russia. “What I have read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team, because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate. ” Mr. Nunes, who has spent months assailing leaks of classified information about Mr. Trump from anonymous officials, refused on Wednesday to identify who had allowed him to read the intelligence reports on the surveillance. He would only say that the people had proper security clearances and needed to be protected. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, who has also complained about leaks of classified information, had no such quibble with what Mr. Nunes disclosed on Wednesday. “I think it’s startling information,” he told reporters. Despite the plaudits from the White House, Democrats said Mr. Nunes had badly damaged his credibility in his apparent attempt to shore up Mr. Trump’s. His decision to dash off to the White House and brief Mr. Trump in the middle of his committee’s investigation into Russian interference — which includes the president — raised questions about the independence and viability of the House inquiry he is leading. Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said Mr. Nunes needed to decide whether he was going to oversee the intelligence committee or be a White House surrogate. “He can’t do both,” Mr. Schiff said in a hastily arranged news conference in response to Mr. Nunes. “This is deeply troubling. ” Mr. Schiff said that “there is more than circumstantial evidence now” of collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials. The House Intelligence Committee is running one of three investigations into Russian interference in the election (the Senate and the F. B. I. are the other two). Before Wednesday, Democrats had already expressed skepticism that the House investigation could rise above partisan politics, and Mr. Nunes’s statements only deepened their concerns. Mr. Schiff, who said he had not seen the information Mr. Nunes cited, said the mere fact that Trump associates could be identified in intelligence reports, all of which remain classified, “does not indicate that there was any flaw in the procedures followed by the intelligence agencies. ” Current and former intelligence officials backed up Mr. Schiff’s assessment. “If the F. B. I. has asked for information about Trump or any of his cronies relative to N. S. A. collection overseas, it wasn’t for grins,” said Frank Montoya Jr. a former F. B. I. agent who served as the government’s senior counterintelligence official. They “asked because there was a legitimate concern about suspicious behavior that might warrant an investigation, or because an investigation was already underway. The fact that this news isn’t about Russia only makes me more concerned about the actions of our president. ” Apart from names of Trump associates, it was unclear what exactly was in the intercepts. Mr. Nunes said there were multiple Trump associates named in them, but Mr. Schiff said it appeared that only one person was identified by name. Mr. Schiff said he came to that conclusion after speaking directly with Mr. Nunes. Mr. Nunes’s concern, Mr. Schiff said, “was he could still figure out the identities of some of the parties even though the names were masked. ” Democrats and intelligence officials questioned whether Mr. Nunes had violated the law in discussing classified reports. Mr. Nunes said he had not broken the law even as he acknowledged that the reports were classified. Several people are known to be under scrutiny in the Russia investigation, including Paul Manafort, who stepped down as chairman of the Trump campaign in August amid reports his name was in a secret ledger in Ukraine listing payments for consulting work he did for a government there. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported new details of Mr. Manafort’s activities in Ukraine, including a proposal he is said to have drafted in 2005 to do similar work for interests in other former Soviet republics. The plan was presented to a Russian oligarch with whom Mr. Manafort had a business relationship, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who agreed to pay Mr. Manafort $10 million for the work. It is unclear how far the plan got or whether money changed hands. Mr. Manafort issued a statement denying he did any work for the Russian government. Mr. Deripaska, via a spokeswoman, said the only payments he made to Mr. Manafort were tied to private business ventures. | 1 |
Slovenia Adds Water To Constitution As Fundamental Right For All People Nov 20, 2016 1 0
“Everyone has the right to drinkable water.” This is what Slovenia’s newest article in their constitution states as the parliament voted 64-0 in favor of the amendment.
This amendment to their constitution will serve to make water a right for all people in Slovenia and will stop it from being commercialized. Slovenia has some of the cleanest water in the world.
The Guardian reports that the newest amendment states:
“Water resources represent a public good that is managed by the state. Water resources are primary and durably used to supply citizens with potable water and households with water and, in this sense, are not a market commodity. “
Miro Cerar, who is the Slovenian Prime Minister, was in full support of the measure and stated that:
“People should protect water-the 21st century’s liquid gold- at the highest level. Slovenian water has very good quality and, because of it’s value, in the future it will certainly be the target of foreign countries and international corporations’ appetites. Pressure over it will increase and we must not give in.” Water and people first, corporations second.
This marks Slovenia as the first European Union country to declare water as a common right for all people. According to Rampedre , there are 15 other countries in the world who have also done the same.
This news comes at a great time not only for Slovenia, but also for all people around the world who are protecting water supplies, namely the water protectors in the United States at Standing Rock. With Slovenia making this amendment to the constitution, is it time that the United States does the same?
The lies we are being told by those heavily vested in putting in the pipeline that would run under the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s water supply is being seen through. The people are awake and realize the severe consequences this pipeline would create not only for the tribe, but everyone that is affected by the water that runs downstream. Imagine all of the people affected by a pipeline break if this were to happen.
Again, this news comes at a perfect time for water protectors everywhere. If an entire country can amend it’s constitution to protect water, then why can’t others? While the challenge at Standing Rock continues on, this latest story on Slovenia protecting it’s people and it’s water is a major victory for humanity. If you have friends or family helping to protect water, please share this good news with them and the world. Light will always overcome darkness.
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and does health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information and other inspiring articles. | 0 |
By Jon Rappoport Shocking video reveals secret software designed to rig elections. Vote fraud expert Bev Harris exposes electronic voting machines. Okay. She finally did... | 0 |
Von wegen Staatsbesuch: Barack Obama ist offenbar auf Wohnungssuche Berlin (dpo) - Plant da jemand einen Umzug? Bei seinem letzten Deutschlandbesuch als US-Präsident häufen sich die Hinweise darauf, dass Barack Obama nicht etwa hier ist, um mit Angela Merkel eine seiner wichtigsten Verbündeten ein letztes Mal zu treffen, sondern heimlich nach einer neuen Wohnung sucht. Das melden mehrere Quellen aus dem Umfeld der Bundeskanzlerin. Schon kurz nach Obamas Landung in Berlin war Beobachtern aufgefallen, dass sich der US-Präsident bei Merkel auffällig oft nach Immobilienpreisen erkundigte und einzelne Räume von Gebäuden, die er besuchte, mit einem Zollstock ausmaß. Auch für Parkmöglichkeiten sowie Entfernungen zu Schulen und Supermärkten habe sich Obama immer wieder brennend interessiert. "How much is the house behind us, Mr. Sour?" "Auf mich wirkt das schon ein wenig verdächtig, dass der Präsident so kurz vor dem Ende seiner Amtszeit und quasi direkt nach Donald Trumps Wahlsieg ganz plötzlich noch einmal dringend nach Europa muss", erklärt eine Mitarbeiterin des Kanzleramts, der an der Planung von Obamas Deutschlandaufenthalt beteiligt war. "Er hat sogar einen kleinen Stapel mit Proben verschiedener Tapetenmuster dabei, die er in fast jedem Raum an die Wand hält." Außerdem habe Obama Merkel gefragt, ob er einige sperrige Möbelstücke, die er nach eigener Aussage "zufällig" in der Air Force One mit sich führte, vorübergehend im Kanzleramt "zwischenlagern" dürfe. Spätestens im Januar wolle er sie wieder abholen. Auch beim Programm der First Lady gab es verdächtige Momente, etwa als sich Michelle Obama von Merkels Gatten Joachim Sauer deutsche Immobilien-Apps zeigen ließ und sich nach dem Unterschied zwischen Kalt- und Warmmieten erkundigte. Eine persönliche Erklärung des US-Präsidenten zu den Gerüchten steht noch aus – es ist jedoch davon auszugehen, dass er auf der für heute geplanten Pressekonferenz mit Angela Merkel im Kanzleramt Stellung beziehen wird. Mehrere Mitarbeiter wollen Obama bereits dabei beobachtet haben, wie er vor einem Spiegel die berühmten Worte seines Amtsvorgängers John F. Kennedy einübte: "Ick bin ein Berliner!" dan, ssi; Foto [M]: picture alliance / empics / Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 0 |
PEWAUKEE, Wis. — Michelle Roelandts had a question for her congressman: If the Affordable Care Act and its premium subsidies were repealed, what would happen when her daughter turns 26 this year and needs to get her own health insurance while attending law school? Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a durable Wisconsin Republican who has served in the House since 1979, had little to offer in response. “If I could give you an answer today, I would, but I can’t,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said at a meeting on Saturday, where about 70 people packed a room at the Pewaukee Public Library. Ms. Roelandts’s question and others like it are being asked with increasing anger and urgency across the country, and Republicans have found themselves on the defensive — for all their fury aimed at repealing the law, so far they have not agreed on an alternative. Soon after, a man yelled to Mr. Sensenbrenner: “How many times did you vote to repeal without knowing what the replacement would be? How many times? Dozens!” The congressman, who prides himself on his prolific schedule of meetings, banged his gavel and insisted that his rules for civility be obeyed. While Mr. Sensenbrenner did not face the kind of anger that some of his peers did in recent days, he must answer the same question: Is this resistance a sign of a sustainable organic movement, or one that will soon flame out? And like his colleagues, he is also coming to grips with how much he will be saddled with the combative comments made by President Trump. Mr. Sensenbrenner, in an interview, attributed the turnout at his gatherings to “organized opposition by people who were on the losing side of the election. ” Facing restive audiences in public meetings is not new, but in the age of social media, an ugly scene in one congressional district can quickly attract widespread attention. “I’d be lying to you if I told you it was fun,” he said. In California, Representative Tom McClintock was escorted by police officers after a meeting earlier this month in Utah, the crowd chanted “Do your job!” at Representative Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the Oversight Committee. At a meeting last week, House Republicans were advised on security precautions so they would be prepared for protesters at meetings or their district offices. The questions from voters on display this weekend at a series of meetings in Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional District, many of which were focused on the future of the health care law, underscored the quandary many lawmakers are facing even in solidly Republican districts. The imminent problem: Constituents want answers, and without any consensus on how to go about replacing the law, Republicans have little to say. “It’s kind of like, you know, getting a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said, “and, you know, cleaning off the dining room table and seeing how long it takes to put all the 30, 000 pieces together in the right place. It’s not going to be easy. ” Mr. Sensenbrenner won last year by 37 percentage points. His district, which includes suburbs around Milwaukee, voted decisively for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton. At three meetings over the weekend, Mr. Sensenbrenner sat at the front of the room to take questions from people who submitted slips of paper listing their name and address. When he called on people, he read their names and where they live — a practice that makes people “less likely to make fools of themselves,” he said in the interview. At the meetings, he faced crowds that were adversarial but generally civil, and he fielded questions on a range of issues. At moments when the gatherings grew a bit unruly, he did not hesitate to bang his gavel. Like a frustrated teacher, he offered some unsolicited advice about comportment. “This is not a session on who can cheer or boo the loudest,” he said as he began the Pewaukee meeting on Saturday, urging people to “be respectful of opinions that you do not share. ” The tough questioning of Republican lawmakers has been driven partly by concerns over health care, but also by outrage over Mr. Trump’s presidency. That was true in Wisconsin, too. Mr. Sensenbrenner, who has long worked on immigration issues in Congress, said the executive order on immigration was “completely messed up” and a “train wreck. ” And he suggested he would be of little assistance in reining in Mr. Trump. “Do you think I’m able to control anybody else’s mouth, from the president on down?” he asked. Repeatedly, the questions Mr. Sensenbrenner faced over the weekend showed the challenge that lawmakers have in explaining the effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act, especially now, when Republicans have yet to coalesce around a replacement plan. Pressed by one questioner to oppose a replacement for the health care law if that replacement would raise costs for sick people, he explained that “there are winners and losers” when bills are passed. A woman told him she learned she had skin cancer in 2005, and she asked about coverage for people with conditions. Another woman told him that her mother was in a nursing home, and she wondered whether changing Medicaid to give each state a fixed amount of money, called a block grant, could cause her mother to be “put out on the street. ” Leigh Levas, 35, a medical technologist, told him that her daughter had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. “I’ve been sending him postcards with her photo, because I think he needs to see the people that it affects,” Ms. Levas said after the Pewaukee meeting. Mr. Sensenbrenner offered a reassurance that some popular aspects of the health care law would remain: insurers would not be able to deny coverage because of conditions, young adults could stay on their parents’ health plan until they are 26, and lifetime limits on coverage would not be allowed. And he acknowledged the stakes of the repeal effort. “From a political standpoint, we Republicans know that we will own whatever the replacement will be, just as Obama and the Democrats own the A. C. A. ,” he told Ms. Roelandts, who asked about health coverage for her daughter. “We got to get it right, and we got to get it right the first time. ” Ms. Roelandts, an accountant, said later that she was not happy with his answer. “I kind of interpret it as they don’t really know what they’re going to do yet,” she said, adding that she was alarmed by the comparison to a jigsaw puzzle. “Don’t talk about repealing something until you have valid ideas on the table for replacing it,” she said. “I mean, it’s causing me to literally lose sleep at night. ” Still, Mr. Sensenbrenner was blunt and unapologetic about the Republican push for dismantling President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. “I won by 146, 000 votes,” he said in the interview. “I represent the majority. Now, they’re a vocal minority. ” | 1 |
The Obamacare 2. 0 bill pushed by some Republicans strips out even Obamacare’s weak protections preventing illegal aliens from signing up for health care meant for citizens. [A draft of the bill, released by the House Committee on Ways and Means, cannot even include provisions requiring officials to check an enrollee’s immigration status, the Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz warns, calling it a “gift to illegal aliens. ” Obamacare included provisions from an earlier bill allowing illegal aliens with fraudulent documents to apply while the government and Obamacare managers looked the other way. Eager for welfare state clients and looking to grease the skids for a massive amnesty down the road, Obamacare navigators signed up thousands of illegal aliens for benefits. “President Obama had already paved the path for illegal alien Obamacare when he signed the massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program ( ) in 2009,” conservative author Michelle Malkin explained in March 2014. “As I’ve reported previously, the law loosened eligibility requirements for legal immigrants and their children by watering down document and evidentiary standards — making it easy for individuals to use fake Social Security cards to apply for benefits with little to no chance of getting caught. In addition, Obama’s expansion revoked Medicaid application time limits that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law. ” Obamacare has no meaningful, robust protections in place against illegal aliens claiming health care. The law claimed to exclude illegals, but in practice, made no effort to verify that the people applying for health care were citizens. Now, Republicans are about to take that problem and make it much worse by gutting enforcement, Horowitz says: Although Obamacare didn’t require photo ID and fingerprints to verify identity, it did harness the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. Thus, officials were at least able to check immigration status against Social Security numbers. The problem with this bill is that because it tweaks Obamacare and creates a new massive entitlement system through the budget reconciliation process, it cannot have the statutory effect of mandating HHS and IRS work with Citizenship and Immigration Services to use the SAVE database because that issue is outside the jurisdiction of the reporting committees. And no subject matter from other committees can be included in reconciliation. Thus, to pass Obamacare 2. 0 instead of plain repeal via budget reconciliation, Republicans must use weaker verification language. Allowing illegals access to health care through fraud is a disastrous move, Horowitz shows. What Republicans are doing is almost inexplicable: Ramping up the most punishing aspects of Obamacare while removing even its requirements against granting illegal aliens health care. Except, according to Horowitz, they never intended to repeal the “meat and potatoes” of Obamacare at all. There’s also the deeply troubling aspect of Republicans encouraging illegal immigration with enticing incentives and promises not to punish . Illegal alien identity theft is a serious, widespread problem. Since it’s all but impossible to work and collect benefits in the U. S. without valid ID and documentation, illegals commit felonies to steal Americans’ Social Security numbers and forge tax documents. “The demand is so great for counterfeit documents because the illegal alien population wants to work — that’s the majority of their motivation for wanting to come to this country,” one former immigration officer told Fox News in December. “So there’s a huge demand for those documents that are required to pass the employment eligibility verification procedures … . In every neighborhood where there’s a significant illegal alien population, there are at least several document vendors who supply this service,” he said. Illegals typically buy three fraudulent documents: A counterfeit resident alien card or work authorization card, plus a counterfeit California driver’s license, and a counterfeit Social Security card, which costs about $120 to $300. He encountered at least one hundred illegals during his career with voter registration cards who admitted they had voted in a U. S. election. With well over ten million illegals in the U. S. and so many buying up fake documents, there will almost certainly be a massive rush to claim health care benefits, especially with liberals looking to sign up illegals to “resist” against the Trump administration. “If nothing is done, Obamacare 2. 0 will contain the same verification provisions as the original version that have enabled illegal aliens engaging in identity fraud to access the subsidies,” Horowitz writes. It’s an insult to injury for Americans victimized by mass immigration policies and punishing healthcare regulations. Yet some Republicans seem eager to inflict more pain on the very voters who put them in power. Poll after poll shows Trump’s immigration policies prioritizing Americans, particularly struggling and vulnerable citizens, over foreigners are hugely popular with voters. Republicans in Congress ignore these voters and their pleas for affordable health care and immigration enforcement at their own peril. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump was crafting his campaign tax plan last year, one of his top economic advisers proposed an idea that would have made it harder for real estate moguls to use mountains of debt to make deals. Mr. Trump, who made his fortune as a property developer and earned the nickname “the king of debt,” scoffed at the suggestion. “He hated that idea,” said Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation economist who counseled Mr. Trump during the campaign. The proposal to scale back interest deductions for companies did not make the cut. As President Trump focuses his attention on overhauling America’s tax code, he has considered turning to the other side of the aisle to reach a bipartisan deal. But an obstacle has already surfaced, dimming the chances that a “grand bargain” will be achieved: Democrats are sounding the alarm that reshaping the tax code presents Mr. Trump’s biggest conflict of interest yet. A tax code overhaul gives Democrats the chance to again bring up Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns and to press for details of how his business deals are financed. That focus could also affect which tax code items, such as interest deductibility, are included in the overhaul. “The American people want to see what this is about,” Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said of Mr. Trump’s presiding over tax code changes. “Are our interests being protected or are these deals that somehow promote his interests?” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said this week that tax code changes should be delayed until members of Congress can review Mr. Trump’s tax returns to see how an overhaul of the tax code might benefit him. And last week Terri A. Sewell, an Alabama Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, declared at a hearing that it was “imperative to know how such tax reform affects the president. ” Mr. Trump, as president, is legally exempt from the kinds of financial conflicts of interest that other government officials are required to avoid. But that has not stopped questions from swirling beyond Democrats about how he and his family could profit from the presidency. “If the tax reform proposals start to have discussions of whether or not to drop certain deductions for the real estate business, or to expand those, that now becomes the entire matter of tax reform,” said Richard Painter, who was President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer. Referring to Mr. Trump, Mr. Painter added: “He cannot be an honest arbiter. ” Mr. Trump has proudly acknowledged that he fights to pay as little tax as possible so that the federal government cannot waste his money. While Mr. Trump’s advisers have said he would not release his tax documents, the financial disclosures and the portions of returns that have been revealed offer hints of his creative use of the tax code that will likely come up as debates over tax code changes intensify. A loss of nearly $1 billion that Mr. Trump booked in 1995, for instance, could have allowed him to avoid paying federal income tax for nearly two decades thanks to a rule that allows net operating losses to be carried forward into future years. Mr. Trump’s campaign tax plan did not call for changes to that provision. Tax provisions that have proved costly to Mr. Trump could be on the table. Last month, a portion of Mr. Trump’s 2005 tax return showed that he paid $31 million as a result of the alternative minimum tax that year. Mr. Trump has called for the elimination of that tax rule. The opportunity to use Mr. Trump as a weapon against a tax overhaul could distort the debate in other ways. After the fight over the “border adjustment” tax, the most contentious topic is the deductibility of net interest expenses, the idea Mr. Moore had unsuccessfully proposed to Mr. Trump. House Republicans, led by Speaker Paul D. Ryan, want to end the practice of allowing businesses to lower their tax bills by deducting interest from their incomes. Instead, companies would be able to immediately write off the costs of equipment expenses. This would generate more than $1 trillion in revenue — roughly the same amount as the border adjustment tax — according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group. “It’s been surprisingly less controversial so far than one would expect considering it’s a $1 trillion tax increase,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the foundation. That is quickly changing. New coalitions are forming to fight back against ending interest deductibility. Some Republicans from rural districts have expressed concern at congressional hearings this week about how scrapping interest deductibility would harm farmers who rely heavily on debt financing. Private equity and real estate lobbyists have also been aggressively mobilizing to resist the potential change. “This is the next large fight,” said James Maloney, vice president for public affairs at the American Investment Council, which lobbies for the private equity industry and considers the treatment of interest as its most pressing issue. So far Mr. Trump has avoided weighing in publicly on the finer details of the tax overhaul, but industries that could be affected by changes to the tax code hope to reap the benefits of having financial interests aligned with those of the president. Matthew Berger, vice president for tax at the National Multifamily Housing Council, an apartment industry group, warned that the tax outline being promoted by House Republicans could cause the tax burdens of real estate developers to spike, potentially dampening growth of new housing projects. But Mr. Berger said he was optimistic that Mr. Trump would not let that happen. “I would hope that his expertise in real estate would make him sensitive to the issues that developers consider,” Mr. Berger said. | 1 |
THE END GAME closes in on the Clintons as the deep state turns… massive collection of criminally damning evidence about to be revealed that will bring down the Clinton crime family forever
by Mike Adams , the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) My fellow Americans, we are watching history unfold before us with such sound and fury that we are likely to never witness comparable events again in our lifetime. As of today, I am now convinced that the deep state has turned on Hillary Clinton and will unveil damning evidence in the next few days that will end the Clintons’ reign of terror over America and collapse her bid for the presidency.
The mainstream media, of course, will never report this news for the simple reason that they are the propaganda arm of the criminal Clinton cartel. As such, they will lie to the public to the bitter end, even as the Clinton Titanic sinks with all of them on board (in deep, frigid waters, no less, with no more lifeboats to be found).
The so-called “deep state”— the powerful insiders who really run the intelligence services and inner layers of untouchable bureaucracy — has decided Hillary Clinton is too damaged to defend any longer . Even if she were to win by stealing the election, she would be so mired in criminal investigations and political illegitimacy that she would rip the nation to shreds while fighting for her own political survival.
It has now been decided, I believe, that Hillary Clinton will be taken out of power by releasing criminally damaging emails which have long been held by the NSA and FBI. This will likely happen before the coming weekend. Once that is accomplished, the next goal will be to wait for President Trump to take office, then destroy the U.S. economy through a controlled, global debt collapse so that Trump can be blamed for the near collapse of western economies. (Remember: The deep state isn’t pro-Trump. They’re still all about defending the establishment. But Hillary is one bridge too far for even the statists to stomach…)
Instead of allowing Hillary Clinton to take power and destroy America from the top, in other words, deep state power brokers have reverted to “Plan B” which is to let Trump take the White House, then destroy America through the controlled demolition of its currency and economy. This is simpler than it sounds. Bringing down the debt pyramid of a nation carrying nearly $20 trillion in national debt isn’t exactly rocket science. All they have to do is stand back and stop manipulating the markets and stop printing new money for a few months while raising interest rates. Monetary gravity will do the rest…
In the mean time, Hillary Clinton and a long list of her co-conspirators are going to find themselves charged with obstruction of justice , lying under oath, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, corruption and other serious charges that will lead to serious prison time for many.
The criminal racket of the Clintons is about to implode. The participants will be charged under the RICO Act for “racketeering” activities, for which ample evidence already exists. A new video from Steve Pieczenik describes some of this
In this video, intelligence insider Steve Pieczenik lays out how high-level intelligence insiders are now working in concert to “reverse the Clinton coup” that’s attempting to take over America and destroy it from within.
Even if you don’t believe Pieczenik — and I fully realize he’s controversial in his own way — this short video is a very important “must watch” explanation to know what people in the intelligence community are doing…“we’ve initiated a counter-coup…”
The Clintons are going to go “full murder” in a last ditch, desperate effort to save themselves
Beware of what may yet unfold in the coming days. Like a cornered wild animal, the Clintons are extremely dangerous when they realize they have nothing to lose by going “full murder” in an attempt to save themselves.
I will not be surprised the least bit if bodies of people in high places start piling up over the next week. Watch for news reports of mysterious car crashes, swimming pool accidents or “natural” deaths involving people like James Comey, who’d better have armed security personnel around him at all times.
Look for desperate measures such as the Clintons attempting to blackmail Obama, Comey or anyone who they think might serve as leverage to save their own skins. We might also see desperate false flag attacks unfold in the next few days, although that’s increasingly unlikely since it seems the Clintons are now on their own (they would need the assistance of Obama to pull off another Sandy Hook, you see). A deal has already been struck with Obama
Most likely, deep state operatives have already struck a deal with Obama to avoid prosecuting him for his own serious crimes as long as he stays out of the way as Hillary Clinton’s head is served up on a platter. This likely explains why Obama is now publicly saying he trusts Comey (and refuses to go to bat for Hillary). There’s no love lost between Obama and the Clintons (remember 2008?).
As all this is going down, the propaganda ministry of the Clinton regime — CNN, NYT, Washington Post, etc. — is going to explode into an all-out “bat-s##t crazy” conspiracy theory phase where they blame the Russians, extraterrestrials, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster for everything that’s imploding around the Clintons. Mainstream media news reports are going to increasingly sound like sociopathic babble from crazy people grasping at whatever outlandish theories they can invoke. Maybe crop circles were created by the Russians as a secret code to Wikileaks and Donald Trump, eh?
Meanwhile, conspiratorial operatives like George Stephanopoulos fully realize they are probably going to jail for collusion and sedition , so they have nothing left to lose by desperately trying to put Hillary in the White House via any means at their disposal, including totally faking negative news against Donald Trump (which is, of course, the entire news mission of CNN at this point, a disgraced propaganda network run by anti-American traitors). If the vote is stolen for Hillary Clinton, all hell breaks loose
Should the globalist Soros operators manage to steal the vote, bribe the electoral voters or rig the black box voting machines sufficiently to place Hillary Clinton in the White House, all Hell breaks loose across America :
• The FBI goes into full indictment mode to push criminal charges for the Clinton criminal regime.
• Donald Trump launches a massive legal challenge to the election outcome, dispatching an army of lawyers to level a vast assortment of charges involving coordinated voter fraud, the rigging of voting machines, the attempted bribery of Electoral voters and so on.
• The U.S. military revs up its plans for an armed military coup to depose Clinton and restore democracy. This one should be especially entertaining to watch unfold if it gets activated… (and yes, YOU will beg for a short-term military dictatorship as long as they promise to depose Clinton and restore open, fair and free elections).
• Armed U.S. citizens prepare for a massive march on Washington to take back their democracy and restore a lawful society where the political elite don’t get away with corruption, fraud and murder. Expect this march to be joined by police officers and federal law enforcement officials of all kinds.
• The NSA likely goes into “full dump” mode to unleash every scrap of damning criminal evidence against Hillary Clinton. This will likely be joined by CIA assets who already have the goods on the Clintons and their “Lolita Express” pedo joy rides.
• Wikileaks, Anonymous and every former NSA analyst goes into “destroy the Clintons” mode and begins to hack and expose every last shred of email evidence ever possessed by the Clintons and anyone close to them. Anonymous alone has enough technical clout to accomplish this with little or no outside help. (I expect Kim Dotcom to be aiding this entire effort as well, as he rightly holds extreme hatred toward Hillary Clinton… as do we all, come to think of it.)
• The establishment Republicans in the U.S. Congress will, as usual, meekly surrender to the democrats, pulls down their britches and bend over to prepare to take it in the rear because that’s what they do best when the going gets tough. Totally useless politicrats like John McCain can’t get their pants around their ankles quickly enough when democrats start accusing them of something. These useless heaps of human baggage will be tossed out of Washington as the revolution unfolds, replaced with individuals who actually honor the U.S. Constitution (like Rep. Louie Gohmert). I root for all groups working to save America and expose the criminal politicians
Bring out the marshmallows and weiners, folks: This is going to be the most bizarre campfire front row seat to U.S. history that anyone has witnessed in over 200 years. Try not to trip and “face plant” into the flames as all this unfolds. It might be a smart idea to have some preparedness supplies at the ready, since no one really knows just how nasty this is all going to get. (And thank God Hillary doesn’t have her fingers on the nuclear launch codes, or she’d probably launch them just to change the narrative…)
As for me, I’m with anybody who’s trying to save America , restore democracy and throw the establishment criminals in prison. Like almost everybody else, I’ve had enough of the lies, the corruption, the media deceptions and the incessant blood sucking parasites in Washington D.C. who are too arrogant and stupid to realize just how much they’re universally despised. The revolution is ON. Anonymous, Wikileaks, Project Veritas, the FBI and the NSA have all been activated. There’s no stopping them now, and all the details of all the crimes of the Clintons are about to spill onto the stage of history, dirty deeds and all.
Be warned, you are probably not psychologically prepared for the truth about what the Clintons really are. You will probably vomit.
To learn more, please click here. | 0 |
in: False Flags , Gun Control , Multimedia , Propaganda , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests , US News Non-profit Headed Up By Career Marketers In the first two years of its existence the Sandy Hook massacre event’s premier fundraising organization has raised close to $6 million–an average of $3 million per year. In 2013 and 2014 alone the nonprofit pumped the American public and larger donors for $5,809,367, according to the most recent IRS filings of the organization. The lofty figure shouldn’t come as a surprise given the marketing talent heading up the organization and the fact that major news media have vigorously promoted the event without ever questioning its veracity. Tim Makris is Sandy Hook Promise’s full time Executive Director. Mr. Makris, who claims he had children attending Sandy Hook Elementary at the time of the December 14, 2012 incident, brings twenty years of marketing and public relations experience to the project. As Makris’ LinkedIn profile reveals, he developed his skills in the corporate sector at Thule Inc., Procter & Gamble, and Schering-Plough Health Care. Below is the performance of this savvy salesman at the inauguration of the Sandy Hook Promise money juggernaut. Here is another video pitch Makris made to the Brookings Institution, where he explains in no uncertain terms Sandy Hook Promise’s public relations strategy to reshape US gun laws. Sandy Hook Promise has close ties to the world of finance as well. The chairperson of its Board of Directors and another of its four corporate officers is Kristin Lemkau, Chief Marketing Officer of major global investment bank JPMorgan Chase. image credit: youtube And perhaps unsurprisingly Sandy Hook Promise is overseen by individuals representing the news media. The organization’s vice chair is Rob Cox , a founder and global editor of Reuters BreakingViews. News entrepreneur Rob Cox is a corporate officer of Sandy Hook Promise. Image Credit: University of Vermont According to a profile of Cox published by his alma mater, The University of Vermont,
Within twenty-four hours of the massacre of twenty-six children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Cox and a circle of friends were working to found what would become Sandy Hook Promise, an organization dedicated to healing their own community and doing all it can to make sure others do not suffer the same fate. The degree of such caring is frankly difficult to comprehend. In other words, hours before Connecticut Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II stumbled through his press conference on December 15, 2012, explaining how parents were prohibited from viewing the bodies of their slain children, good-hearted souls like journalist Cox, professional marketer Makris, and banker Lemkau were scheming to cash in on the event. After all, this is what a community of like-minded souls is all about. James Belden the fourth and final Sandy Hook corporate officer. In addition to serving as a Newtown Commissioner, he also brings marketing experience to Sandy Hook Promise. Before funerals were even held for the deceased children or the results of a satisfactory crime scene investigation were close to completion Commissioner Belden was before television cameras promoting another non-profit, “Newtown United” and its promotion of “the underlying issues that caused this horrible incident–not just gun control but mental health and awareness.” Sandy Hook Promise is presently directing its marketing prowess toward leaning on US public schools to enforce certain mental health protocols on children; what it terms “mental health first aid” that will purportedly prevent “another Sandy Hook.” Sandy Hook Promise spokeswoman Nicole Hockley. Experienced marketers position the nonprofit to receive a large amount of “free publicity” via corporate news media. Sandy Hook Promise spokeswoman Nicole Hockley. Experienced marketers position the nonprofit to receive a large amount of “free publicity” via corporate news media. The millions solicited by Sandy Hook Promise thus far is merely a fraction of an estimated $130 million in federal funding and private donations brought in by Sandy Hook related charities. “The latest edition of the video We Need To Talk about Sandy Hook lists a total of $131,009,229 in grants and donations, including the $50 million for the new school,” academic researcher Vivian Lee notes , but this is only a partial accounting. Indeed, the total amount of money raised to date cannot easily be calculated. A 2014 Connecticut report on charitable donations lists organizations such as The Animal Center, Inc., Newtown Forest Association, Inc., Sandy Hook Arts Center for Kids, and Angels of Sandy Hook Bracelets, all raising funds in the name of Sandy Hook Elementary. John Rinaldi. Image Credit: New York Daily News Just how many individuals and organizations have sought to cash in on the Sandy Hook massacre and the broader public fear concerning child safety? Consider that even John Rinaldi, the convicted stalker of film actress Brooke Shields, oversees a Sandy Hook charity, “Sandy Hook Kids Center.” “We are actively/tirelessly/relentless fighting on behalf of our kids,” Rinaldi proclaims on the organization’s website . “We combat abuse/violence that in turns creates bully [sic].” Submit your review | 0 |
Dallas police arrested the Texas House Democrat voted “Freshman of the Year” late Tuesday night for driving while intoxicated. [Officers, responding to message that a vehicle hit a tree, later learned that the allegedly drunk driver was state Representative Victoria Neave ( ). Reportedly, she did not cooperate with law enforcement who arrived on scene. The arrest warrant described Neave, 36, as having a strong odor of alcohol, unsteady, and with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech, WFAA reported. Officers also documented the state lawmaker’s behavior as uncooperative, refusing to perform field sobriety tests, and give breath or blood samples. According to police records, Neave repeatedly told officers in slurred speech: “I love you and I will fight for you and I’m invoking my Fifth Amendment rights. ” Officers booked her into the Dallas County Jail at 3:30 a. m. (CDT) on Wednesday where she remained, waiting to see a magistrate. However, on Wednesday, shortly before 2 p. m. Neave took to social media with a public Facebook apology. She stated: “Last night, I disappointed my family, my constituents, and my supporters. I disappointed myself. I’m deeply sorry. I’m so grateful that no one was hurt. I will accept full responsibility for my actions and I will work to make this right. ” Ironically, Neave participated in a event promoting safe driving on Sunday, June 4. The often outspoken freshman representative has maintained a highly visible profile during the state’s 2017 legislative session. In April, she marched in Dallas against Texas sanctuary city legislation, Senate Bill 4, which Governor Abbott since signed into law. Breitbart Texas reported she tweeted: “Eleven years ago, I marched family. This time, I march as a State Representative fighting legislation at #txlege. ” A few weeks later, she led a hunger strike to oppose SB 4, asking other Democrat lawmakers and open border advocates to join her, as was reported by Breitbart Texas. She was also the organizer of the Dallas Women’s March and Texas House Democratic Caucus recently named her “Freshman of the Year. ” On Wednesday morning, Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Carol Donovan responded to the news of Neave’s arrest by issuing a statement: We understand, and are thankful, that no other person was involved or injured in the accident. Nevertheless, we look forward to speaking with her regarding the facts of her case and to insure she is alright. We wish her the very best and pray for her swift recovery so that she can resume her strong representation of the citizens of House District 107. Neave’s district encompasses East Dallas, Mesquite, and Garland. By trade, she is a lawyer with a practice in Dallas. Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter. | 1 |
Whether the music to your ears is pop, classical, jazz, country or another type of tune altogether, the rhythms of 2017 have you covered. Dance the days and nights away at Summerfest, June 28 to July 9 in Milwaukee, an bonanza that includes 800 acts spread out across 11 stages at Henry Maier Festival Park on Lake Michigan. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pink are among the headline performers this year, the festival’s 50th, but other genres such as classic rock, Latin and reggae are also represented. The Monterey International Pop Festival, June 16 to 18 in Monterey, Calif. is also turning 50 this year, and celebrating in style, on the same weekend and at the same location — the Monterey County Fair and Events Center — where the original festival was held in 1967. That event helped establish the careers of many legendary musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Grateful Dead, and this year, over the course of three days, nine bands will take the stage to pay tribute to them. In Monte Carlo, it’s all jazz all the time at the 12th annual Jazz Festival (November and December, exact dates to be determined) featuring performances by the world’s top jazz players such as Manu Katché, the drummer and singer, the bassist Richard Bona, and Ibrahim Maalouf, the trumpet player, all of whom were guests in 2016. The heart of the action takes place at the Opéra Garnier an ornate building, but the shows spill over into the Casino de and glitzy oceanfront bars. Mellower sounds are in store on the Caribbean island of Mustique from Jan. 18 to Feb. 1, at the Mustique Blues Festival, a secret among discerning fans. The event unfolds over nearly two weeks at the beachside Basil’s Bar, where spectators can sip sundowners while listening to the music of renowned blues players from around the world, including the San guitarist and singer Joe Louis Walker. Festivalgoers should be on the lookout for other attendees, both famous and not, giving impromptu shows Mick Jagger and Michael Kors have jumped on stage in past years to belt out the blues before a stunned crowd. On the classical music scene, a prestigious orchestra celebrates a big birthday while another is born. In Austria, the Vienna Philharmonic is marking its 175th anniversary with more than 100 concerts throughout the year, including the free and Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn on May 25, in the Baroque gardens of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, and four opera productions at the Salzburg Festival in Salzburg from July 21 to Aug. 30, most notably “Aida,” in which the Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko will sing the title role. And in Germany, Hamburg anticipates a January opening for the Elbphilharmonie, a striking new building set atop a former warehouse, with a glass facade, a scalloped roofline and two concert halls. Festivities at the new cultural landmark will unfold all year, like the ¡Viva Beethoven! series, March 19 to 23, when the highly regarded Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel will conduct. In Montreal, traditional opera takes on a contemporary edge with “Another Brick in the Wall,” on select dates from March 11 to 24 the production honors the city’s 375th anniversary and is based on Pink Floyd’s 1979 album “The Wall. The band’s chief songwriter, Roger Waters, collaborated with Opéra de Montréal on the work, which is inspired by his life. There are stories of isolation and the destruction of love, and it promises to be and emotional, just the way a captivating opera should be. | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — As customers swarmed her small grocery store on Westwood Boulevard, Minoo Yousefi hurriedly set out more bunches of hyacinths and tulips. This was one of the busiest times of year, with Nowruz, the Persian New Year and celebration of the first day of spring, just days away. And as she had done for decades, Ms. Yousefi had already begun preparing the special dishes of herbed rice and lamb to serve her family. But this year something would be missing. Her mother and brother would not join the celebration. They are stuck in Iran, their visas — meant to bring them here in time for Nowruz festivities, which begin on Monday — canceled two days after the Trump administration’s initial travel ban went into effect at the end of January. They briefly considered trying again when the ban was lifted, but decided against it when they heard a new ban would come soon. For hundreds of in Southern California, who traditionally travel back and forth to be with family for Nowruz, plans and family gatherings have been disrupted because of uncertainty over the ban. Weddings that were scheduled around the holiday have been postponed, and elderly relatives are fearful they will never see their grandchildren again. For many members of the diaspora, this is the first time since arriving in the United States after the Iranian revolution of 1979 that they feel that they cannot risk leaving the country for fear they will not be allowed to return. “This is so sad, it’s just crazy,” Ms. Yousefi said. She has been here for 35 years and became a citizen decades ago. She has helped her mother, who is in her 90s, travel to Los Angeles almost a dozen times. “We don’t know what we will do,” she added. “My mother is old. She is going to pass away soon. My daughter may not be able to see her again, and that would kill her. This is supposed to be a time of celebration, but I am so anxious. ” The Los Angeles region has the largest Iranian diaspora in the world, with a population in the tens of thousands. With signs in Farsi on almost every storefront, a strip of Westwood Boulevard is officially deemed Persian Square, and residents sometimes refer to the city as Tehrangeles. The families here are close knit and represent a powerful sector politically and economically. They are part of one of the most educated immigrant groups, with many working in academia, medicine, real estate and technology. The population is diverse and complex though most are Democrat, there is a significant Jewish segment that supported Donald J. Trump, believing he would take a more approach with the Iranian government. As prepare to commemorate Nowruz, a widely celebrated ancient secular holiday that marks the spring equinox with elaborate symbolic spreads, or the chatter has focused less on recipes and more on exchanging stories about thwarted travel plans and relatives stuck in limbo. Many fled Iran after the revolution, which ushered in the Islamic Republic, or during the war with Iraq that followed. And for them, the travel ban is a frightening reminder of religious rule by the authoritarian government they left behind. “This is America, where we came for freedom,” Ms. Yousefi said. “We have mullahs in Iran. We do not need that here. ” A running joke among Iranians here is that when they arrived in the United States, they did not unpack their suitcases, because they planned to go back, believing that the religious government would grow moderate. But many are now raising a third generation of children, and the ban feels like a stinging rebuke. While traveling back to Iran is costly, many Iranians in the United States consider themselves obligated to do so, not only to visit relatives but also to keep their children connected to Persian culture. Reluctant to give up on plans to someday return, some older residents have kept property in Iran. Mohebat Azimpour, 70, said he still maintained a life in Isfahan, in central Iran. He is a green card holder and had planned to go back this week to try to sell his house and to celebrate the holiday with his sisters. But he canceled his trip, worried that he would not be allowed back into the United States. He traveled from his home in Austin, Tex. to Los Angeles to visit his daughter and her family instead. “All my friends and family there were waiting for me to be there this New Year, but everyone agrees it’s best for me to wait,” Mr. Azimpour said. “I’m concerned that my retirement is in jeopardy if I don’t go back soon. I have so much at stake in Iran, I don’t have a choice. I have to go even if it’s hard. ” For the past two months, customers have come in distraught to see Farhad Besharati, who has owned the ATT Vacation travel agency in Persian Square for 25 years. Most of his clients are elderly green card holders who were horrified to see people like themselves detained in airports for days, he said. Roughly 70 percent of the flights he had booked for this month were canceled, he said. Fearful of losing repeat customers and feeling guilty that the flights were nonrefundable, Mr. Besharati returned their money anyway, losing more than $100, 000, he said. “They are all scared,” Mr. Besharati said. “They don’t want to get stuck. They don’t want their parents stuck here. ” He has been trying to reassure customers that it is safe to travel. But his advice has done little to quell their fears. “Even if you are following the news, you cannot understand what is happening,” he said. “They all worry they will never be able to see family members again, their homes again. ” Perhaps, Mr. Besharati said, it will calm down by the summer, another peak travel season to Iran. Not everyone is as optimistic. Typically, at least half of the nearly 250 Iranian graduate students at the University of California, Irvine, return home for Nowruz, but this year none of them are daring to leave campus, said Touraj Daryaee, a professor who runs the Center for Persian Studies there. He is organizing an international conference at the college scheduled for next year. But many of the scholars, including Iranians living in other countries, have said they are not willing to risk traveling to the United States. He is now considering moving the event to Canada. “People are all horrified with dismay, we thought that relationships were improving,” Professor Daryaee said. “Instead, we are all paranoid and scared. The student visas do not come with any promise of getting in again. ” Even citizens are on edge. Farideh Farrohi, 69, had planned to go to Tehran with her son this month. But she and her son, who was born in Los Angeles and is a medical student, canceled their plans because he was worried about the current climate. Ms. Farrohi said she would go with or without him this summer. “What’s the worst that can happen to me — they insult me?” she said over lunch at a Persian cafe. “They have already insulted all of us with these absurd rules. ” The change in immigration and visa laws has altered the Nowruz celebrations in more subtle ways, too. Sahinaz Safari has been attending the Persian Alumni Association’s holiday events at Stanford University for years, which usually feature talks from successful entrepreneurs or cultural experts. This year, participants heard from the executive director of the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and information booths with immigration lawyers were set up. “It’s not just about culture,” Ms. Safari, an graduate student, said. “It’s now also asking what we can do as a community, what we should be doing to take a risk and fight back. ” | 1 |
1010 Views November 15, 2016 16 Comments commenter-corner mod editor This comment was chosen by Mod FK from the post “Battle for the ages: Protectionist Trumponomics vs. Neoliberalism”. The moderator feels the commenters take on moving from ‘left’ to right as the situation demands is very interesting and brief. As in ‘brevity is the soul of…….’. Comment by Earthrise
“There has been an awakening, have you felt it?” TFA
I can’t believe how much my worldview has shifted over the last year. Hailing from the radical Left, I have felt the pull of History in a new direction. I have become a critic of the social engineering that has been carried out since the 60’s; it has gone too far. Because of this over-reach, I have had to shift to defending the foundations of our society; community and family. On the hand, I will always be proud to have stood against the Empire and the ruling class Capitalists. The Right was very happy to stay quiet while the Financial-Military Empire raped the world, and we always told you these chickens would come home to roost. But now that they have, it is time to call a truce.
I propose that we call a halt to the Culture Wars; this is the area where the Left is winning. I think we need to pause to assess the damage of this 50-year project anyway; the baby has almost been washed out of the bath. Then the patriotic Left (the anti-imperial/capitalist faction) and the Right can join against our common enemy. The division over social issues has been exploited by our enemy to prevent us joining on the political front. This must end, time for all People to come together against the evil which rules our world.
The momentum is with the Right, so I am coming over to join my brothers and sisters to fight our common enemy. I am worried about playing with Nationalism, it has a very bloody history, and will put a lot of pressure on our minorities. They will try and turn our nationalism outwards, towards a fake external enemy. The enemy is inside the gates. If we all stand together and maintain our focus, there is nothing they can do.
I am going to keep asking everybody to stop falling into the Left-Right trap. The patriotic-national Left and Right need to join, and anyone pushing social change during this war needs to see they are aiding the enemy. Once we are free, we can address the remaining social issues. A truce then, and all patriots rally to the banner. The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 0 |
President Donald Trump recognized the death of Kurt Cochran, an American citizen that was killed in the terror attack in London on Wednesday. [“A great American, Kurt Cochran, was killed in the London terror attack,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “My prayers and condolences are with his family and friends. ” Cochran and his wife were tourists, according to Breitbart London, and among the first people hit by the extremist’s vehicle as he drove into the crowd on Westminster Bridge. Cochran was killed, but his wife is recovering in the hospital. Vice President Mike Pence also expressed his condolences. | 1 |
President Donald Trump compared his current job as to his days spent in business before he became president in an interview Sunday. [“Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government involves heart, whereas in business most things don’t involve heart,” Trump told the Associated Press. “In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it. ” The interview comes as Trump approaches 100 days serving as president and Congress debates legislation that would keep the government funded. Trump stressed that there is a “human responsibility” that comes with the job. He provided an example of that human responsibility to the AP when he explained how much risk went into the decision to strike Syrian President Bashar ’s military. “When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria,” he said. “I’m saying to myself, ‘You know, this is more than just like 79 (sic) missiles. This is death that’s involved because people could have been killed. This is risk that’s involved. ’” Trump is expected to hold a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 29 on the 100th day of his presidency, the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump is also looking to cement his legacy in the first 100 days even further, saying in a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni that he expects both health care and government funding to pass this week. | 1 |
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