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BADANA PICHWK, Iraq — Kurdish forces on Monday morning began advancing on a string of villages east of Mosul, the start of a campaign to reclaim Iraq’s city from the Islamic State, which seized it more than two years ago, officials said. About 4, 000 Kurdish pesh merga troops are involved in the operation to retake 10 villages, the opening phase of a battle that could take weeks or months and could involve nearly 30, 000 Iraqi and Kurdish troops, with American warplanes providing air support. Iraqi counterterrorism forces, which work closely with American Special Operations commandos in Iraq, are also expected to join the Kurdish forces in the coming days. The operation began hours after Prime Minister Haider announced in a brief speech aired on state television just before 2 a. m. that the campaign to liberate Mosul had begun. “The Iraqi flag will be raised in the middle of Mosul, and in each village and corner very soon,” Mr. Abadi said, dressed in a military uniform and surrounded by officers. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, in Washington, said the start of the Mosul campaign was a “decisive moment” in the effort to defeat the Islamic State. In the first phase, the troops who have been massing at bases around Mosul in recent weeks will encircle the city, seeking to cut it off and prevent Islamic State fighters from fleeing, particularly west into Syria. Later, the counterterrorism forces, which took the lead in liberating other Iraqi cities, like Ramadi and Falluja, from the Islamic State, will join regular army units in storming the city. After dark on Sunday evening, armored vehicles on flatbed trucks were seen moving west from Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, along with many ambulances. The operation began under the light of the moon on Monday as pesh merga tanks, Humvees and pickup trucks with guns mounted on the back snaked their way toward the villages. Although Mr. Abadi vowed that the Iraqi flag would be flown in every town, only the tricolor flag of the Kurdish semiautonomous region could be seen during the assault. The Kurdish troops included the elite Zeravani paramilitary force, which attacked on three fronts. To avoid roadside bombs, a pesh merga column drove off the main highway, headed south on a rutted, undulating dirt road, and it then rumbled west across a dusty field. There has been considerable speculation about how hard Islamic State fighters would resist: Would the militants make a final stand in the villages or pull back to Mosul to fight another day? The sounds of battle Monday morning indicated there was resistance. Attack helicopters could be heard overhead at the start of the assault, followed by the thud of tank rounds as the pesh merga fired on Islamic State positions across a stretch of the Nineveh Plain. There were bursts of fire. A powerful airstrike sent out shock waves. In the distance, there was a funnel of black smoke. Pesh merga officers said they expected to be joined in a couple of days by Iraqi forces, which would help them secure their gains and, ultimately, push farther west. But first there were villages to take and secure, and the goal for the pesh merga on Monday was to take control of more than 45 square miles. The battle plans have unfolded in recent weeks against a backdrop of grave concerns about the civilian population in Mosul, which by some estimates numbers more than one million. United Nations officials have warned that 200, 000 people could be displaced in just the first few days of an assault on the city, and humanitarian groups have scrambled to set up emergency camps for the displaced. Hoping to avert a mass exodus of civilians, which could place them in the middle of the crossfire, the Iraqi government, in radio broadcasts into Mosul and with thousands of leaflets dropped over the city, has urged civilians to stay in their homes. The leaflets gave a long list of instructions: Put tape over windows in the form of an X to prevent shattering. Disconnect gas pipes. Hide jewelry and money. Stay on low floors. Tell your children that the loud booms are just thunder. And for the young men of Mosul, the government had a special instruction: Rise up against the Islamic State when the battle begins. The campaign had been building for months, and Mr. Abadi’s dramatic speech was in keeping with tradition. Earlier this year, he made similar remarks late at night before an offensive on Falluja, which was retaken in June after several weeks of fighting. Addressing the people of Mosul and using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, Mr. Abadi said, “Today I declare the start of these victorious operations to free you from the violence and terrorism of Daesh. ” Mosul, a city that once had a diverse population that included many Shiites and Christians, fell to the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State in June 2014, when soldiers of the Iraqi Army, built up with tens of billions of dollars of support from the United States, dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms and ran. Initially, many Sunni residents of Mosul, angered at what they perceived as treatment from the government in Baghdad, welcomed the militants. But after more than two years of the terrorist group’s brutal rule, with public beheadings and tough rules that ban smoking and force women to cover themselves in public, many residents have grown tired of the jihadists. It was in Mosul, from the pulpit of the city’s Great Mosque, that Abu Bakr the leader of the Islamic State, declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, that spanned the borders of Iraq and Syria. | 1 |
The Obamas refused to be photographed welcoming President-Elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania to the White House Thursday morning, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal .
“The Obamas canceled a photo-op of the current and future first couples outside the south entrance of the White House. In his first visit to the White House after the 2008 election, Mr. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama posed for the cameras alongside President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush. The decision not to participate in this tradition illustrates how bitter the campaign was, particularly for Mrs. Obama who delivered some of the most emotional arguments against electing Mr. Trump.”
Fox News reported that there was no pool video of Trump’s arrival due to an unspecified problem. There does not appear to be any photographs published yet of Trump’s arrival to the White House.
President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush and President-elect Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama pause for photographs Monday, Nov. 10, 2008, after the Obama’s arrival at the South Portico of the White House.
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Donnerstag, 3. November 2016 Oettinger: "Ich habe nichts gegen Schlitzaugen. Einige meiner besten Freunde sind Reisfresser" Wieder einmal hat Günther Oettinger (CDU) mit einer Rede für Aufsehen gesorgt. Dabei fiel im Hinblick auf China unter anderem die Formulierung "Schlitzaugen und Schlitzohren". Im exklusiven Postillon -Interview äußert sich der künftige EU-Haushaltskommissar nun detailliert zu seinen umstrittenen Äußerungen: Postillon: Herr Oettinger, derzeit werden Sie von vielen Menschen kritisiert, weil Sie Chinesen unter anderem als "Schlitzaugen" bezeichnet haben. Viele haben das als rassistische Äußerung aufgefasst. Oettinger: Das ist völlig falsch rübergekommen. Ich habe nichts gegen Schlitzaugen. Einige meiner besten Freunde sind Reisfresser. Postillon: Ach ja? Wie heißen die denn, diese besten Freunde? Oettinger: Äh… Ich bin zum Beispiel erst neulich Sushi-Essen gewesen und habe dem Kellner sogar ein Trinkgeld gegeben. Der hieß… wahrscheinlich Tsching Tschang Tschong oder so. Keine Ahnung. Die schauen doch alle gleich aus. Außerdem habe ich mal in Thailand Urlaub gemacht, wo ich die Kultur der Gelbhäute aus erster Hand erleben konnte. Postillon: Wie darf man Ihre Aussagen denn dann verstehen? Oettinger: Das war als Kompliment gemeint. Ich habe nämlich unglaublichen Respekt vor diesen China-Männern, weil sie so unglaublich fleißig sind – und das obwohl sie nur ein beschränktes Sichtfeld haben und dazu noch so klein sind. Postillon: Haben Sie eine Botschaft an das chinesische Volk? Oettinger: Ja. Ich sag's am besten gleich so, dass sie es verstehen. (räuspert sich) Liebe Asia-Männel, hiel splicht Günthel Oettingel. Ich möchte mich auflichtig bei Ihnen entschuldigen. Sollte jemand von Ihnen so velweichlicht sein, dass ich ihn mit meinen Wolten velletzt haben könnte, so tut mil das leid. Bitte investielen Sie tlotzdem fleißig in Ländel del EU und lassen Sie sich Ihlen Hund schmecken. Postillon: Klare Worte. Oettinger: Ja. Ich schätze, nach diesel … äh dieser Entschuldigung sollte dann auch das ganze Missverständnis ausgeräumt sein. Postillon: Was meinten Sie genau, als Sie in Ihrer Rede von einer "Pflicht-Homoehe" sprachen? Oettinger: Herrgott! Sind die Tucken jetzt auch noch beleidigt? Dann entschuldige ich mich dafür eben auch noch: Sorry, liebe Hinterlader! War echt nicht so gemeint, also bitte beruhigen Sie sich. Gehen Sie shoppen, schwuchteln Sie herum – was auch immer man halt so macht als Sodomist. Postillon: Damit dürften Sie wieder rehabilitiert sein. Kommen wir zu Ihren beruflichen Aussichten. Nach zwei Jahren als EU-Kommissar für Digitalwirtschaft wechseln Sie jetzt auf den Posten des Haushaltskommissars. Oettinger: Das kam tatsächlich überraschend. Immerhin habe ich mich gerade so langsam in den Job als Digitalkommissar reingefuchst. Ich habe sogar schon mit dem Gedanken gespielt, mir dieses Internet selbst mal anzuschauen, quasi im Saiberschbäis zu sörfen, wie Profis das nennen. Das kann ich mir jetzt wohl sparen. Postillon: Wie haben Sie reagiert, als Sie erfuhren, dass Sie Haushaltskommissar werden sollen? Oettinger: Erst war ich stinksauer. Haushalt ist ja eigentlich Frauensache. Ich habe nicht verstanden, warum die da einen Mann haben wollen. Aber dann hat mir wer erklärt, dass Haushalt was mit Geld zu tun hat. Klar, dass man das keine Frau machen lassen kann. Postillon: Haben Sie schon erste politische Pläne? Oettinger: Nein. Ich hatte noch keine Zeit, mich mit den für meinen neuen Aufgabenbereich zuständigen Wirtschaftslobbyisten zu treffen. Was ich will, kann ich Ihnen erst danach sagen. Postillon: Vielen Dank, Herr Oettinger, für dieses aufschlussreiche Gespräch. Oettinger: Aber gerne doch. Für einen Pressefritzen waren Sie eigentlich ganz erträglich. | 0 |
Home › SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY › MOBILE PASSES DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME… MOBILE PASSES DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME… 0 SHARES
[11/1/16] More users around the world are accessing the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers for the first time, according to internet monitoring firm StatCounter . The combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices tipped the balance at 51.2 percent, vs. 48.7 percent for desktop access, marking the first time this has happened since StatCounter began tracking stats for internet usage.
It’s a huge moment for the web overall: this means going forward, companies that haven’t yet decided to focus on a mobile-first approach to their internet services and web properties really should, as the trend line is unlikely to reverse.
StatCounter also found that the maturity of the market impacts which is the dominant means of access, and as you might have guessed, mobile platforms are far and away the method of choice for internet access when it comes to emerging markets like India, where they account for 75 percent of use. More mature markets including the UK, the US and Ireland still see use swinging in favor of desktop, but the trend is still showing a narrowing gap. Post navigation | 0 |
MOSCOW — Islam Karimov, a ruthless autocrat who ruled Uzbekistan for almost three decades, died on Friday in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. He was 78. A joint statement by the cabinet of ministers and Parliament announced the death, saying he had a stroke that led to multiple organ failure. The announcement followed a long, strange interlude during which Uzbek officials refrained from confirming the death even while the leaders of Turkey and Georgia expressed condolences, mosque leaders were barred from offering prayers for the president’s health, and funeral arrangements were being made very publicly. A respected opposition website posted pictures of cemetery workers in Samarkand, the president’s hometown, digging a fresh grave in a prominent location. The likeliest reason for the official silence was that top government officials had been unable to decide on the succession and did not want to announce that Mr. Karimov was dead until they could also say who would replace him, at least temporarily. The official statement said that the prime minister, Shavkat Mirziyoev, who is widely deemed to be the president’s likeliest successor, would lead the funeral on Saturday and that Mr. Karimov would be buried in Samarkand in accordance with Muslim rites. Long in poor health, Mr. Karimov had a stroke on Aug. 27, ending what was often described as one of the most brutal reigns to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, exemplified by its continued use of forced labor for Uzbekistan’s annual cotton harvest. The circumstances of his death remain murky. The first hint that he was critically ailing came in a government statement on Sunday saying he had been hospitalized. It gave no other details. But in a Facebook post, his younger daughter, Lola Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Unesco in Paris, said he had had a brain hemorrhage. On Friday she posted a black, blank picture on Instagram, saying, “He left us . .. I am trying to choose words and don’t believe in it myself. ” Rumors that Mr. Karimov had died circulated throughout the week. The suspicion was that the state was withholding the news while officials addressed the issue of who would succeed him in running the most populous country in Central Asia, rich in energy reserves and viewed as a strategic crossroads by China, Russia and the United States. It is by no means certain that Prime Minister Mirziyoev, who is considered a Kremlin ally, will succeed Mr. Karimov. Rustam Azimov, a deputy prime minister and finance minister, is a possible technocratic alternative. Mr. Karimov’s glamorous older daughter, Gulnara Karimova, had once been seen as having a promising political future, but those prospects disintegrated in a public soap opera involving charges of bribery, money laundering, physical violence and even sorcery. Mr. Karimov rose through the ranks of the local Communist Party until the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev named him first secretary and effectively Uzbekistan’s chief in 1989. He won a presidential election after independence in 1991 and used Soviet methods to govern the country. “He is the state and the state is him, and it has been that way for at least 25 years,” said Steve Swerdlow, the director of Central Asia research at Human Rights Watch. Power in Uzbekistan was concentrated in the hands of the National Security Service, modeled on the old K. G. B. of the Soviet Union. Its longstanding but reportedly ailing director, Rustam Inoyatov, is expected to wield the greatest influence in the selection of the next president. The president’s widow, Tatyana Karimova, an economist, also holds considerable sway. Neither is known to be seeking a public role. “It is a police state where the power belongs completely to the security services,” said Daniil Kislov, the editor in chief of a website, Ferghana. ru. “The special services will not allow for any alternative on the succession. ” The immediate succession is expected to follow the Constitution, which mandates that the head of the Senate run the country for three months until new presidential elections can be organized. Mr. Karimov repeatedly manipulated elections or referendums to extend his rule well beyond the two terms mandated by the Constitution. Such voting, which critics called fraudulent, always had a preordained conclusion. He won his latest presidential term in March 2015 with over 90 percent of the vote. Mr. Karimov jailed or exiled his political opponents and muzzled the news media. Political prisoners were estimated to number in the thousands. Torture was rife. He brushed aside any criticism that managed to bubble up despite the oppression. “I am one of those who is criticized for staying too long,” he said in 2014. “But I want to keep working. What’s wrong with that?” An estimated one million Russians still live in Uzbekistan, though the population of more than 31 million is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. Mr. Karimov, who crushed an Islamic insurgency after surviving an assassination attempt by Islamic militants in 1999, was considered a bulwark against the spread of any jihadist threat in the region. With him gone, there was some question about whether the Islamic State or other groups might try to exploit the transition. “Whether or not the Islamic State sees a succession as an opportunity to create risks for the Russians remains an open question,” said Cliff Kupchan, an expert on Russia and chairman of the Eurasia Group, a risk advisory firm based in Washington. In 1999, Mr. Karimov made his position toward radical Islam abundantly clear. “I am prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic,” he told reporters. “If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head. ” He went on to prove it, massacring hundreds of antigovernment demonstrators in 2005 in the town of Andijon, a center of ethnic, social and economic tension in the fertile Fergana Valley. Europe and the United States imposed military sanctions. Mr. Karimov responded by expelling American forces from Military Base, an important link in the supply chain for the forces propping up the government in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Eventually, supply needs trumped human rights issues, and the United States restored relations, even giving the Uzbekistan forces hundreds of surplus armored vehicles as American forces in Afghanistan were being drawn down. If Mr. Karimov was a gray, reclusive figure, his older daughter and heir was anything but. Ms. Karimova, pursuing simultaneous careers in business, diplomacy, music and fashion design, partied with rock stars and fashion designers around the globe. Yet, from the outset her revealing clothes made her an unlikely leader in a conservative Muslim society. Ms. Karimova fell from grace in a spectacular manner when, around 2013, she was put under house arrest and her business ventures were shuttered or confiscated. She was under investigation in Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and elsewhere on suspicion of pocketing bribes and participating in schemes related to selling telecommunications licenses in Uzbekistan. She and the companies involved have denied wrongdoing. Opposition websites alleged that Mr. Karimov beat his daughter in a fit of rage before jailing some of her associates and confining her to her home, where she remains incommunicado. “Karimov first slapped her on the face and then really started to beat Gulnara,” according to an account, attributed to an unidentified security service insider and published in 2013 on the website of the opposition People’s Movement of Uzbekistan. Ms. Karimova took to social media at the time to accuse her mother and her younger sister of dabbling in witchcraft. “The other part of the family destroys and is friends with sorcerers,” Ms. Karimova wrote in a post on Instagram. Mr. Karimov’s wife and daughters survive him, as do four grandchildren. Some analysts attributed Mr. Karimov’s reclusiveness and violent tendencies toward opponents as well as relatives and associates — he was known to pitch heavy marble ashtrays at senior aides — to his early years in a Soviet orphanage. Islam Karimov was born on Jan. 30, 1938, in Samarkand. His official biography said his father had been an office worker. Other accounts suggested that his parents, overwhelmed by a large family and meager resources, put him in an orphanage, at first temporarily, but eventually left him there. He studied to become an engineer, worked at an airplane factory and joined the Communist Party in the early 1960s. He married in 1964, and he and his wife had a son, Petr, but soon divorced. The son is believed to have moved to Moscow decades ago and never returned. Mr. Karimov joined Gosplan, the central Soviet economic planning agency, in 1966 and married for the second time in 1967. He rose to become the finance minister for the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan in 1983. By all accounts Mr. Karimov hated the political jockeying by different groups in the initial burst of freedom after independence in 1991 and worked to destroy all autonomous political, media and human rights organizations. His antipathy toward Islamic groups is sometimes linked to an episode that same year. With Soviet authority crumbling, Islamic vigilante groups had established security and social services that were lacking in the Fergana Valley, and after one extremist group seized a building, Mr. Karimov went to negotiate with its representatives. He soon found himself humiliated when a young religious leader forced him to pray publicly. Later, he banned mosques from broadcasting the call to prayer. Over the years, Mr. Karimov also closed off the country to outside observers and put the news media under government control — one reason the circumstances of his death remain unclear. Uzbekistan remained open to tourists, drawn to spectacular mosques and other monuments in Silk Road cities like Samarkand. The country was also known as the site of a major environmental disaster: The diverting of water from the Aral Sea for irrigation, especially for the crucial cotton crop, drastically shrank what had once been one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water. Mr. Karimov never lost his love of Soviet methods, be it for strengthening the domestic intelligence services or fostering a centrally planned economy, even if it kept much of the population mired in poverty. He once infamously criticized the millions of Uzbeks who had gone to take menial jobs in Russia just to survive, calling them “too lazy” to work at home. Every year, the government forced about one million students and others to join Uzbekistan’s annual cotton harvest to meet quotas. “He was a Soviet man to the end,” Mr. Kislov, the web journalist, said. | 1 |
Share on Facebook Not many people can walk freely with wolves and the rare few who are able to share such a close and special bond with the majestic animals are incredibly fortunate. Danielle, a wildlife worker at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, is one of those lucky souls. She has earned the trust and respect of several timber wolves at the center and as you can see in this awesome video, they truly seem to love and appreciate her like one of their own! The large grey wolf seen walking alongside Danielle in the beginning is named Kekoa, which in Hawaiian means “brave one.” He's a nine year old Timber wolf who was transferred in from the Seacrest Wolf Preserve in Florida along with his sister Sakara who is also featured in the clip. According to the Wildlife Center, Kekoa enjoys giving visitors sweet kisses and he's exceptionally gentle around them! It's clear to see that the handsome boy definitely loves the ladies and watching him interact with Danielle says it all. He walks with her happily wagging his tail and when she sits down in the snow he nuzzles her affectionately and bows his head in submission. Then he starts licking her face enthusiastically, which make seem kind of gross, but it's actually a further sign of his affection and subordination towards her. As brave and noble as he looks, he's also a big baby and I mean real big! He weighs in at 115 pounds and when he places his front paws up on a persons shoulders he comes in at about 7 feet tall! Check out the size comparison between Danielle, who happens to be an average sized adult, and his sister Sakara, who is slightly smaller than her brother and weighs 85 pounds. Kekoa is huge, yet so sweet and soft! The best part is when he rolls over on his back and fully exposes his tummy to Danielle. Not only does this signal that he wants her to give him belly rubs, it also shows just how much he truly trusts her. While he's willing to be completely vulnerable around Danielle, he's also not a fully wild wolf. In an interview with The Dodo wildlife center staffer Michelle Smith explained that “Since he was raised by people and bottle fed from the time he was born, he is very well socialized, meaning he enjoys the company of people. This is not the same as domesticated or tame. He is still a ‘wild’ animal, and he does tend to show it when he is around his sister. A wolf in the wild would not act this way.” To drive home her point, a healthy and normal wild wolf would never allow a person to pet them, let alone approach them in the first place. Wolves actively avoid human contact and prefer to stay well away from us. This clip just shows how well people and wolves can get along if given the chance to. They are highly personable and are a far cry from the wicked, evil animals that they have been portrayed as in fairy tales and stories over the centuries. In fact, wolves are easily among the most intelligent, socially complex, and misunderstood animals on Earth. They have been given a wholly undeserved reputation by people, hunted and persecuted to near extinction, and yet through it all they've managed to survive and endure. Please be sure to check out the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center's beautiful video and see for yourself how sweet natured and loving they can be! Related: | 0 |
October 29, 2016
A man with no DIY experience has set aside around 15 minutes to assemble a 300 piece cabin bed this weekend.
Having glanced through the 36-page instruction booklet, 40-year-old Nick Ferguson plans to start the job at around 6pm on Saturday and will definitely be done by quarter past if not slightly before.
‘I’ll simultaneously be making a vegetarian chilli,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to complete both tasks in a cool and fun way that involves my three young children.’
Meanwhile Mrs Ferguson was hastily making plans to take the kids to her mothers.
‘DIY with Nick is what you might call a journey,’ she said.
‘One that begins relatively calmly, progresses to high strength alcohol and ends with him screaming Rudyard Kiplings ‘If’ into the mirror at around 1.30am.
‘Usually with a serious injury to his face or hands.’ Matt Ward | 0 |
By GRTV The FBI’s October surprise has thrown the 2016 election into November chaos. But an examination of the trigger mechanism behind this event reveals... | 0 |
The top Democrat on the Senate’s homeland defense committee insisted Wednesday that U. S. border officials should not ask incoming visitors — including jihadis — about their ideological worldview or even ask to check stored images on their cellphones. [“My hair is on fire about this, I am really upset about this,” said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “We are signaling something that is very to the rest of the world by announcing this [border] policy,” she told Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. McCaskill — who is up for in November — also complained that the policy would be ineffective at stopping terrorists. “If they know we’re going to look at their phones, and we know we’re going to ask [ideological questions] … they’re going to lie. Are we going to use polygraphs?” “We could do that for all the people we put into secondary [review],” Kelly responded. “Generally speaking, the average tourist coming into the United States is not” going to be asked for their phones or be asked questions about their beliefs, Kelly said. McCaskill also suggested that the preferences of foreigners should be considered equal to the preferences of Americans, saying “Americans would never put up with this in other countries … we don’t want to send that signal. ” Kelly rejected McCaskill’s complaints, “this is nothing new — we’ve being [asking ideological questions] for a couple of years,” and suggested that officials might use polygraph tests on some visitors who might lie about their links with jihad groups. For many years, immigration documents, including the citizenship application form, have required immigrants to describe their ties with various ideological groups and to explain their personal beliefs. GOP members of the committee slammed McCaskill. Committee chairman Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson noted that the border officials checked the phones of 26, 000 visiting individuals in 2016, up from less than 1, 000 in 2015. “This is not new — this is being blown somewhat out of proportion,” Johnson said. Only 0. 06 percent of visitors arriving from overseas flights have their phones checked, he said. Sen. John McCain also pushed back against McCaskill. The stream of news reports showing the Islamic State sending people to launch terrorist attacks in the United States “sets my hair on fire,” he said, adding “maybe we ought to put a little perspective on this hysteria. ” GOP Sen. Rand Paul said officials should not be allowed to demand to view the cellphones of returning citizens. ‘That’s obscene,” he told Kelly, adding that officials probably have the right to exclude people who refuse to have their phones inspected. Kelly downplayed the particular ideological questions cited by McCaskill, even as he pushed back against her complaints. “We will go to those questions or request social media [access on cellphones] … We’ll be going in that direction when the [DHS] professionals at the [border] counter decide to go in that direction,” he said. Searching visitors’ cell phones is just like searching visitors’ luggage, Kelly said, adding that most searches of cell phones consist of quick searches through stored photographs and videos. In one recent case, border officials asked a visitor from the Middle East for his phone, which showed contacts with several terrorist organizers, plus images of murdered gays, Kelly said. Border officials asked for his phone because “there was something not quite right about him,” he said, adding that “we sent him back. ” In other searches of cellphones, “we find child pornography, we find really grisly photos of terrorist acts,” he said. In her second round of questions after the criticism from GOP senators, McCaskill partially retreated. “For some [visitors] maybe we should do polygraphs,” she said, and then changed the subject to other questions, such as rules for checking domestic air travelers’ identification. | 1 |
João Havelange, the Brazilian businessman who built soccer into a international enterprise over his 24 years as the autocratic head of the sport’s world governing body but who was later implicated in a scandal involving millions of dollars in kickbacks, died on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 100. Soccer’s world governing body, known by the acronym FIFA, after its French name, confirmed his death, at Samaritano Hospital in Rio. He had been hospitalized several times in recent years and was treated for pneumonia last month. When he was elected in 1974 as FIFA’s first president, the organization, based in Zurich, had existed for 70 years. It had a staff, however, and meager funds with which to preside over the World Cup, a prodigious undertaking held every four years. When Mr. Havelange completed his sixth and final term in 1998, he estimated that FIFA had $4 billion in its treasury and that international soccer had become a $ international industry. Mr. Havelange was also the member of the International Olympic Committee when he resigned in December 2011 after 48 years, citing health reasons. He departed shortly before the I. O. C. ’s executive board was scheduled to issue findings on reports by the BBC that Mr. Havelange had taken a large kickback from a World Cup marketing firm based in Switzerland when he was nearing the end of his final term as FIFA president. Mr. Havelange could have been suspended or expelled from the I. O. C. if it had substantiated the charges, but the case against him, investigated by the I. O. C. ’s ethics committee, was closed on his resignation. In July 2012, a report by a Swiss prosecutor that had been kept secret for two years was released. The prosecutor found that Mr. Havelange had received about $1 million in 1997 from the Swiss company ISL in connection with its being awarded World Cup marketing and broadcast rights. The firm had collapsed in 2001, leading to a criminal investigation. The prosecutor also found that Ricardo Teixeira, Mr. Havelange’s at the time, had received at least $13 million in kickbacks from ISL in the 1990s. Mr. Teixeira resigned in March 2012 as head of Brazil’s soccer federation and of the organizing committee for the 2014 World Cup, which was held in Brazil, and gave up his FIFA executive committee position, citing health and personal considerations. FIFA, Mr. Havelange and Mr. Teixeira had reached a settlement in 2010 to end the Swiss criminal investigation by making partial restitution. The settlement stipulated that neither man would be identified in connection with the case, but the text of the report was released after Switzerland’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of journalists challenging its suppression. Mr. Havelange’s wife, Anna Maria, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in May 2015 that her husband was innocent of any crimes. “He loved what he did, was a fantastic administrator who raised FIFA up from nothing,” she said. In what was virtually rule over FIFA, Mr. Havelange garnered immense revenue for soccer from worldwide television rights and corporate sponsorships, turning the world’s most popular sport into an economic powerhouse. Mr. Havelange doubled the number of nations participating in the World Cup, introduced a Women’s World Cup and won a spot for women’s soccer in the Olympics. At a party in 1998, when he was about to step down as FIFA’s ruler, Mr. Havelange was asked whether he considered himself the world’s most powerful man. “I’ve been to Russia twice, invited by President Yeltsin,” Time magazine quoted him as saying, referring to Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian leader at the time. “In Italy, I saw Pope John Paul II three times. When I go to Saudi Arabia, King Fahd welcomes me in splendid fashion. Do you think a head of state will spare that much time for just anyone? That’s respect. They’ve got their power, and I’ve got mine: the power of football, which is the greatest power there is. ” Faustin Godefroid de Havelange was born on May 8, 1916, in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a businessman. He was a member of the Brazilian swim team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, obtained a law degree and then grew wealthy with business interests that included senior positions with insurance, steel and transport companies. He returned to the Olympics at the 1952 Helsinki Games as a water polo player. Mr. Havelange joined the Brazilian Olympic Committee in 1955 and became the president of the Brazilian Sports Confederation, now known as the Brazilian Football Confederation, which governed the nation’s soccer programs. He ran the confederation from 1958 until 1973, a period in which Brazil won three World Cups. He was elected to FIFA’s presidency by defeating Sir Stanley Rous of Britain, by which time the demise of colonialism had vastly expanded the number of African and Asian countries in the organization. Mr. Havelange won major support from those regions and FIFA’s many small countries in the election and rewarded them with FIFA financing for their national soccer organizations. At the same time, he began reshaping the World Cup field beyond its familiar European and South American domination, expanding it from 16 nations to 24 in 1982, and then to 32 in 1998. A crowning triumph for Mr. Havelange’s commercial ambitions came when FIFA held the World Cup in the United States in 1994. “The only hole in his marketing and television plan was the United States, and he filled it by coming here,” Harvey Schiller told The Washington Post in June 1994, when he was the executive director of the United States Olympic Committee. Mr. Havelange had flaunted his power the previous December when he took revenge on Pelé, soccer’s most famous athlete and its most recognizable figure in the United States. He barred Pelé from the 1994 Cup’s draw ceremonies in Las Vegas after Pelé had leveled corruption accusations against the Brazilian soccer governing body, run by Mr. Teixeira. Within FIFA’s ranks, Mr. Havelange was paid homage over the years befitting a global presence. “In the fearsome battle between the Swiss and the French for the rights to host the 1998 World Cup, the Swiss football federation nominated Havelange for the Nobel Peace Prize,” David Goldblatt wrote in his book “The Ball Is Round” (2006). “The standing ovation which followed the announcement would have shamed Khrushchev. ” (The French nonetheless won the right to host the 1998 Cup.) When Mr. Havelange stepped down as FIFA president in 1998, his imprint carried on. He was named FIFA’s honorary president for life. His longtime aide Sepp Blatter, the Swiss businessman and lawyer who had been the association’s secretary general, succeeded him. Mr. Blatter was suspended from FIFA for eight years by its ethics committee in December 2015, six months after he had secured a fifth term. The ban stemmed from his $2 million payment in 2011 to a top FIFA official, Michel Platini, who had hoped to defeat Mr. Blatter in his bid for a fourth term that year but who dropped out of that race. Mr. Platini also received an ban. The length of both bans was later reduced by a FIFA appeals panel. Mr. Havelange resigned from his FIFA honorary presidency in April 2013 after a report issued by a FIFA ethics court judge said that Mr. Havelange’s conduct had been “morally and ethically reproachable” because of the ISL bribes. Mr. Blatter was cleared of criminal or ethical wrongdoing in the ISL matter, but he was accused of knowing about the bribes and of “clumsy” conduct. Some 30 current and former soccer and marketing officials, among them Mr. Teixeira, were indicted in 2015 on corruption charges as a result of investigations by the Swiss and United States authorities. That year, some of the individuals were arrested during raids in May and December in Zurich. The charges included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering. Mr. Blatter was not criminally charged in connection with those inquiries. But in June 2015, he said he would voluntarily give up his FIFA presidency. While maintaining that he had not done anything wrong, he called for a special election to choose his successor so that immediate reform could be instituted. Gianni Infantino of Switzerland, a member of FIFA’s reform committee, was elected to succeed him in February 2016. In addition to his wife, Mr. Havelange’s survivors include a daughter, Lucia, who was married to Mr. Teixeira for many years before their divorce in 1997 two grandsons and a granddaughter, according to The Guardian, a British newspaper. Mr. Havelange’s reputation may have been in tatters in his later years, but the stadium in Rio for the track and field events at the 2016 Summer Olympics, built in 2007, was formally named João Havelange Olympic Stadium. Organizing officials for the Games decided, however, to refer to it simply as “the Olympic Stadium. ” Mr. Havelange invariably had the last word within FIFA, even when it did not have to be uttered. That was the case in 1995 when he was criticized for visiting Nigeria at the same time that a prominent dissident there, Ken was about to be executed. “I don’t want to make any comparisons with the pope, but he is also criticized from time to time, and his reply is silence,” Mr. Havelange was quoted as saying. “I am, too, sometimes criticized, so explanations about such matters are superfluous. ” | 1 |
Archives Michael On Television 10 Things That Every American Should Know About Donald Trump’s Plan To Save The U.S. Economy By Michael Snyder, on September 15th, 2016
Can Donald Trump turn the U.S. economy around? This week Trump unveiled details of his new economic plan, and the mainstream media is having a field day criticizing it . But the truth is that we simply cannot afford to stay on the same path that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have us on right now. Millions of jobs are being shipped out of the country , the middle class is dying , poverty is exploding , millions of children in America don’t have enough food , and our reckless spending has created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet . Something must be done or else we will continue to steamroll toward economic oblivion. So is Donald Trump the man for the hour?
If you would like to read his full economic plan, you can find it on his official campaign website . His plan starts off by pointing out that this has been the weakest “economic recovery” since the Great Depression…
Last week’s GDP report showed that the economy grew a mere 1.2% in the second quarter and 1.2% over the last year. It’s the weakest recovery since the Great Depression – the predictable consequence of massive taxation, regulation, one-side trade deals and onerous energy restrictions.
And Trump is exactly right about how weak this economic recovery has been.
So how would he fix things?
The following are 10 things that every American should know about Donald Trump’s plan to save the U.S. economy…
#1 Donald Trump would lower taxes on the middle class
The tax savings under Trump’s plan would actually be quite substantial for middle class families. The following numbers come from a recent Charisma article …
• A married couple earning $50,000 per year with two children and $8,000 in child care expenses will save 35% from their current tax bill.
• A married couple earning $75,000 per year with two children and $10,000 in child care expenses will receive a 30% reduction in their tax bill.
• Married couple earning $5 million per year with two children and $12,000 in child care expenses will get only a 3% reduction in their tax bill.
#2 Donald Trump would lower taxes on businesses
Under his plan, no business in America would be taxed more than 15 percent. Alternatively, Hillary Clinton’s plan would tax some small businesses at a rate of close to 50 percent. So Trump’s plan would undoubtedly be good for businesses, and it would encourage many that have left the country to return.
But where would the lost tax revenue be made up?
#3 Childcare expenses would be exempt from taxation
For working families with children this would be a great blessing. Without a doubt this is an effort to win over more working women, and this is a demographic that Trump has been struggling with.
It is definitely an idea that I support, but once again where will the money come from to pay for this?
#4 U.S. manufacturers will be allowed to immediately fully expense new plants and equipment
This would undoubtedly lead to a boom in capital investment, but it would also reduce tax revenue. As an emergency measure this would be very good for encouraging manufacturers to stay in America , but it would also likely increase the budget deficit.
#5 A temporary freeze on new regulations
Red tape is one of my big pet peeves, and so I greatly applaud Trump for this proposal. I think that Bob Eschliman put it very well when he wrote the following about Trump’s planned freeze on new regulations…
In 2015 alone, federal agencies issued over 3,300 final rules and regulations, up from 2,400 the prior year. Studies show that small manufacturers face more than three times the burden of the average U.S. business, and the hidden tax from ineffective regulations amounts to “nearly $15,000 per U.S. household” annually. Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion dollars per year, and Trump will end it.
#6 All existing regulations would be reviewed and unnecessary regulations would be eliminated
In particular, Trump’s plan would focus on getting rid of regulations that inhibit hiring. The following are some of the specific areas that he identifies on his official campaign website … The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which forces investment in renewable energy at the expense of coal and natural gas, raising electricity rates; The EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, which gives the EPA the ability to regulate the smallest streams on private land, limiting land use; and The Department of Interior’s moratorium on coal mining permits, which put tens of thousands of coal miners out of work.
#7 Donald Trump would fundamentally alter our trade relationships with the rest of the globe
Donald Trump is the first major party nominee in decades to recognize that our trade deficit is absolutely killing our economy. I write about this all the time , and it is a hot button issue for me. So I definitely applaud Trump for proposing the following … Appoint trade negotiators whose goal will be to win for America: narrowing our trade deficit, increasing domestic production, and getting a fair deal for our workers. Renegotiate NAFTA. Bring trade relief cases to the world trade organization. Label China a currency manipulator. Apply tariffs and duties to countries that cheat. Direct the Commerce Department to use all legal tools to respond to trade violations.
#8 Donald Trump’s plan would be a tremendous boost for the U.S. energy industry
Barack Obama promised to kill the coal industry, and that is one of the few promises that he has actually kept. Obama also killed the Keystone Pipeline, and right now the energy industry as a whole is enduring their worst stretch since the last recession. To turn things around, Trump would do the following … Rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda. Ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline. Make land in the Outer Continental Shelf available to produce oil and natural gas. Cancel the Paris Climate Agreement (limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.
#9 Trump would repeal Obamacare
Trump claims that Obamacare would cost our economy two million jobs over the next ten years. And without a doubt, it has already cost the U.S. economy a lot of jobs .
Not only that, but Obamacare has also sent health insurance premiums soaring, and this is putting a tremendous amount of financial pressure on many families.
Trump says that he would “replace” Obamacare, but that is a rather vague statement.
What exactly would he replace it with?
#10 Trump’s plan says nothing about the Federal Reserve
This is a great concern, because the Federal Reserve has far more power over the economy than anyone else does. It is at the very heart of our debt-based system, and unless something is done about the Fed our debt bubble will continue to get even larger.
Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by more than 96 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger. For Trump to not even mention the Federal Reserve in his economic plan is a tremendous oversight.
We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and things have not gotten better during the Obama years. If you can believe it, a study that was just released by Harvard even acknowledges this …
America’s economic performance peaked in the late 1990s, and erosion in crucial economic indicators such as the rate of economic growth, productivity growth, job growth, and investment began well before the Great Recession.
Workforce participation, the proportion of Americans in the productive workforce, peaked in 1997. With fewer working-age men and women in the workforce, per-capita income for the U.S. is reduced.
Median real household income has declined since 1999, with incomes stagnating across virtually all income levels. Despite a welcome jump in 2015, median household income remains below the peak attained in 1999, 17 years ago. Moreover, stagnating income and limited job prospects have disproportionately affected lower-income and lower-skilled Americans, leading inequality to rise.
That same study found that the percentage of Americans participating in the labor force peaked back in 1997 and has been steadily declining since that time…
If we continue to do the same things, we will continue to get the same results.
Donald Trump is promising change, and many of his proposals sound good, but there are also some areas to be concerned about.
Ultimately, just tinkering with the tax code and reducing regulations is not going to be enough to turn the U.S. economy around. We need a fundamental overhaul of our economic and financial systems, and Trump’s plan stops well short of that. But without a doubt what he is proposing is vastly superior to Hillary Clinton’s plan, and so he should definitely be applauded for at least moving in the right direction. More Jobs Shipped Out Of The Country: Ford Moves All Small Car Production To Mexico » trump will have an “accident”
but,but,but but ,but obammy mammy said “Donald trump will never (ever) become president”,his words ver batem.bawok also said “Donald trump will never replace me in the WH”,ominous ,disturbing words from el president,what exactly did baaaarak mean obamas red line 2.0
Obama did say trump will “never” become president,not on his watch,for him that was a” red line’,but let’s face it we all know barry’s track record when it comes to red lines lol JC Teecher
It will only happen the way the Obominable One says it will happen, “IF”, the Creator on the Throne, says it will. barry oldwater
Hopefully his changes will spur economic growth which will bring in more revenue as more jobs are created, not saying it will, just speculating that this is his plan. SnodtBlossom
he won’t be elected anonymous
Nobody is elected, they are selected. Elections are just a way to keep dumb-downed masses in check. So keep voting Lazarovic
You’re stupid, that’s why you’re anonymous. Coward too. anonymous
You must be responding out of shameful ignorance. It’s not your fault you are dumb-downed. It is ironic that you are calling me out for posting anonymously, when you are doing the same. Resorting to name calling though, really? LIZ THE SHIZ
just like in Ancient Rome election season is bread and circus , keep the masses entertained so they won’t notice they’re powerless and gullible BS1986
She’ll use that in the debate. BS1986
he wants to be coronated , all hail Trumpus Maximus ThePeanut995
You are in for a rude awakening GSOB
We all are, if either one is elected. I’ve done my research. No choice is without risk. Trump is who I’d like to see. It’s time to think outside the box.
If he gets in, perhaps in a 2nd term, the Fed Reserve get’s axed.
I can’t stop thinking big with Mr. Trump. I can’t stop thinking small with the leftist. GSOB
With more than 50% leftist population….it does look like the final nail. Alan Cecil
Bwah ha ha ha…another twist on the “trickle-down” theory. It works great…for the top 1%. hillery comin for your guns
then there’s hillery’s economic “plan”, massive across the board tax increases,massive increases in the size of gov’t,staggering draw droppin deficits,massive increases in entitlements (handouts),after all she did say she was continuing beewok obambi failed policies Mondobeyondo
I have never felt as depressed – about my own future, about the future of my friends, my family and my country- as I do at this very moment. William Lutz
Mondo I’m feeling the same way. Everyday the life is being sucked out of our wonderful nation with each passing day. I’ve noticed it ever since the 2008 crisis, but even more so after Obama got reelected. The only thing we have to do now is hope for the best of our personal lives in the next few years. This downfall is inevitable. anonymous
You’re not the only one. Jerry C
Most of us felt that way almost 8 years ago. rat28
Another stupid tickle down economy by the GOP.. We should be taxing the rich . Obama regulation and energy policies protect us from global warming Obama health care help the poor and sick .. repealing Obamacare will hurt all the economy gains we seen the last 8 years.. Bad deal from Donald Trump. libs credit card economics
yeah just let the 35 year old “kids” livin in their parents basement worry bout the 12T of red ink,and that’s just in 8 years GSOB
Which is impossible to pay off. South Texas
The stupid in your comment just burns. I’ve not met one person who is retired who has benefited from the wonders of Obummacare. Their cost went way up for less choice and service. Maybe you could go get a medical degree and offer our services for free and help out with the problem.
As for GW, another money sucking joke pushed by scum who live in opulate homes and waste more energy than any working class family. Speaking of which, how big is your home? SnodtBlossom
Sleep with Trump in 2016! BS1986
You do have your moments. LIZ THE SHIZ
oh Snotty, you just want to rub your fingers through his thick blond weave, don’t you SnodtBlossom
What I’m saying is.. If you vote for Trump and you’re single and admit to voting for him,.. a lot of women won’t want you. GSOB
Let me be blunt – God called women into spiritual leadership roles, as an exception to His design, in order to shame the men into bringing the nation back to God, and into exercising their God given responsibility to lead in the church, the home and in the nation.
In no way does the Bible EVER paint women in leadership roles as a positive thing, but it is something God uses to shame the men into action. SnodtBlossom
Be SHAMED.. be very SHAMED G SOB LIZ THE SHIZ
and you wonder why your single LIZ THE SHIZ
but they’ll be the ugly women, not the mindless bleach blond Fox News types Satirist 1976
Michael this is one of the best articles you have ever written. You presented Trump’s solutions to issues that plague everyday Americans. Well done. This is not satire.
Trump should replace Ocare with the free market and nothing else. William Lutz
Replace Obamacare with individual Health Savings Accounts based on investments. Public hospitals with vouchers is also a great idea. South Texas
No, the government needs to get out of looting me with a ‘savings account’ and make it free market all the way. GSOB
You don’t understand how it works. They don’t tax those dollars you put into a HSA. Orange Jean
Except that in most of them… you select a certain $$ amount each year… and if you don’t use it, you lose it. Who do you think ends up with the money then? GSOB
Don’t expect a reward for being careless. No system can sustain carelessness South Texas
Exactly my point. Why do we have to put up with some over compensated elected person to ‘let’ me do something with my money?
I’ve never had a use for an HSA but known people who do. But hey, at least the scum implicitly acknowledge they are cheating us by ‘giving’ us the privilege to use our money pre-tax.
If some of us were not working almost 5 months of the year to support government and we had a real private health insurance and health care sector, this would be a non issue. SnodtBlossom
Hillary will win Peanut
NO SHE WON’T … HE IS NOW NECK AND NECK WITH HER AND WILL EXCEED HER… MORE STUFF ABOUT HER WILL BE COMING OUT! SnodtBlossom
How much prior political experience does Trump have? NADA!!! ZIP!!!! ZILCH!!! ZERO!!! He talks the talk, but never walked the walk. But hey.. it’s only THE PRESIDENCY! Maybe next we’ll grab people off the street w/no medical training to do surgery!
Neither did Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower have a prior politcal position, though both had a strong military background. Dwight being ” The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II” and Grant “Commanding General of the United States Army” How much military background does Trump have? NADA!!! ZIP!!!! ZILCH!!! ZERO!!!
“no major U.S. company has filed for Chapter 11 more than Trump’s casino empire in the last 30 years.” He has filed four business bankruptcies. Maybe he thinks it’s just as easy to file bankruptcy w/the entire government and walk away. Raymond Chow
Political experience means nothing especially when someones political experience means the detriment of the nation. Cobbett
”How much prior political experience does Trump have”
Oh yes…there’s Iraq, Libya, Syria(she was also instrumental in convincing Bill to bomb Serbia….all resounding success stories…politics just equal BS. turee60
How much military experience does Hillary and Obama have zilch none! jonodough
you mean like the idiot obama? Mondobeyondo
If she doesn’t have a coughing epileptic seizure before the election. LIZ THE SHIZ
yup, the fix is in just watch the electoral college , your vote don’t mean squat!!! GSOB
Not yet it don’t Raymond Chow
Why do people always mention electoral college when they don’t understand what electoral college is?
When looking at the map of blue or red those are just projections where Democrats or Republican voted favorably in the past it doesn’t mean electoral college. Electoral college delegates are pick by the winning candidate in the state. All states in the national election are winner take all. So if the candidate wins in majority of the district in the state he wins all the state electoral college. LIZ THE SHIZ
just like super delegates, seems fishy budman
nebraska is not winner take all. each congressional districts electoral vote depends on the vote within that district. GSOB
And the minimum wage will go up. And unemployment will rise, and government will spend even more. Orange Jean
… yeah, and little pink pigs will fly away from Smithfield Foods and not get turned into hams! ISA41:10
Yep! krinks
Hey Genius. A Free Market solution led people to be denied coverage for nearly every malady under the guise of a pre existing condition. A Whistle Blower for/from the Health Insurance Industry admitted as much. The more she came up with creative reasons to deny payment/coverage the higher she was promoted. GSOB
The free market is the best thing going! Because it has some level of risk, non hackers despise and envy this good system. What makes it good is that it benefits the majority of the people, not all. No system can. What happens if the majority are non hackers? Non hackers default to handout mode by finding fault with reality and cry, they depend on a leftist government to provide a silver spoon for everyone. The market then is no longer free. krinks
Weren’t you paying attention? They take your premiums and then when you need to use it deny payment. GSOB
Appeal it then. krinks
Appeal? To who? The same person who gets a bigger bonus for telling you no? Are you an idiot? GSOB
You sound like a confident young man. Just ignore me. Stick with your leftist ideas. Your choice. Jace Tate
the once estudious michael snider is now drowned by drivel. LIZ THE SHIZ
well he opened it up to a Trollathon Raymond Chow
When people runs out of argument or loses they start calling names which is exactly what you are. Yes, you sue or appeal your case. krinks
I explained that a big bonus follows when you tell people NO in the private industry. If you don’t understand this YES you are an IDIOT. Jerry C
Then payers should be free to leave and go to a provider who says yes in a fair market. LIZ THE SHIZ
meanwhile you die waiting for the appeal Raymond Chow
Then sue them or perhaps you didn’t sign up for the coverage. It’s like you got liability for your car insurance but you wanna be cover for medical when you get into an accident. joe
That’s how “insurance” works. Simply banking in reverse and how the inventors, IE banksters intended. Raymond Chow
Yes, a free market system where you can acquire health insurance across state boundaries. I.e., wish to buy health insurance in Iowa where it’s lower even though I live in California. Cobbett
Why are people so obsessed with their health? Why paying endless 10000s on the chance I ”might” get ill…rather spend it on women and booze. Lillian DeVore
I think it’s more of an obsession with the pre-existing conditions people’s health. Cobbett
I had my appendix whipped out when I was 14(some time ago)…even though I’m a heavy boozer(although not now)…I Feel Fine. Why worry…what will be will be. GeneP54
He should, but he said that he wants universal healthcare. turee60
I agree our medical the way it was was still the best in the world. People from Canada were coming here for medical cause it was so much better. The government doesn’t need to get into our medical. Years ago like in 1986 I was out of work and had no medical and went to a free clinic in my area and got waited on quickly and it didn’t cost me anything. William Lutz
I agree. On one hand, some of Trump’s policies sound alright, but a lot of his proposals are dubious and a few are unrealistic. First of all, building a YUGE wall on the border is going to be very expensive and not very effective. Furthermore:
1) He never really mentions how he is going to deal with Planned Parenthood. 2) He obviously has no full intention of abolishing some bureaucratic agencies such as the Fed Reserve, the FDA, the USDA, Department of Energy, etc. 3) Reckless spending and debt is going to continue, and tax revenue will never keep up with the expenses. 4) I am not sure how he is going to replace Obamacare. 5) His idea on how to combat ISIS is not practical. It would mean extorting the Middle East out of their oil and having a costly militarist operation in various countries. It’s a recipe for World War 3. 6) Even though he is anti establismhment at heart, he is running on a major party platform, which is rigged and corrupt. He should’ve refused to participate within the Republican Party and join an alternative political party. Jace Tate
Isis took the oil didn’t they William Lutz
Yeah they probably took it, but my point is that you don’t easily defeat ISIS by confiscating the oil and having a double version of the Iraq War. By the way, I forgot to mention that DJ Trump never spoke openly about civil liberties or mass surveillance either. Hence, I suspect that he will strengthen the so called “war on terror”, which God forbid he would do. No more George Dubya Bush please. Christopher Privett
Obama expanded Bush’s programs of surveillance, and just paid Mexico 75 Million dollars. For a WALL built across their southern border. John Francis
You are right, some things don’t add up, but I’ll take him over Hillary any day of the week. I’m still struggling with whether to vote in the presidential at all, having a very hard time with Trump’s torture advocacy and his call for the execution of Edward Snowden. Jessy Scholl
Seriously, Donald Trump can’t talk about abolishing federal agencies because he would be killed on the spot. Jace Tate
how are lower taxes going to help zero growth? How is income in the middle class going to aid the systems recovery? Once you go off the cliff of a set system in a fixed economy, you don’t think there is any fixing it. I think higher taxes and lower barriers to growth are the answer. However the way the apple is peeled can only be determined post collapse, after the decision makers have decided the direction the country takes. That is why even if you take out the true deplorables ruining everything, the best you can do is elect someone who identifies with the American way of life and our decisions. themacabre
How are higher taxes for failed government programs going to help?…we need to cut federal spending not give it more money. That’s like giving a lazy bum watching tv and drinking beer another six pack. ISA41:10
” I think higher taxes and lower barriers to growth are the answer. ”
How stupid can you be?!?!? Explain to me how taking more money from the private sector (businesses and people) improves growth and the economy?
Waiting .. JC Teecher
You are proof of how well mind control by the elite liberals is working. It is this mentality that is meant to destroy the God induced US Constitution.
When a nation has allowed four scotus to take the whole nation down a rat hole of sin, then the nation either digs back out or it gets drowned in darkness.
There is a slim…very slim chance that America can dig out of the rat hole for a few years, but ultimately sin will drown this nation into the abyss.
Don’t believe it? It is in the book; the only book that matters. sister soldier
Amen and amen again. LIZ THE SHIZ
we will wind up with a one world government just like in Star Trek Next Generation , the united federation of planets GSOB
Leftist 1. A member of an ideological camp that defines socialism as a form of totalitarian secular feudalism; an advocate for the management of non-Leftist people as farm animals.
“When the Leftist tried to convince me that North Korea had the only true and just form of socialism on earth, I gave up on trying to talk rationally with him and just walked away.” Jace Tate
if you would all stop patting each other on the back you’d find the diversity among yourselves deplorable in the face of true knowledge. Jace Tate
you changed your comment you liberal demagogues. William Lutz
But I give Donald credit where it’s due. At least he is better than Hillary and not as conniving and deceiving as she is. However, I refuse to pick the least of two bad apples. GSOB
.. vizeet
Removing Obamacare and reducing Defense budget will be huge saving for US. And will be good for rest of the world…. William Lutz
Trump however, will not reduce military spending and his idea of replacing ACA is only a secret plan. SnodtBlossom
Do you think he will help you when you are homeless? GSOB
It is not the POTUS job to do that. LIZ THE SHIZ
if he has any rooms empty in his crappy hotels he can rent them to the homeless and get refunded through section 8 housing Raymond Chow
You can’t even afford to step into his hotel lobby. I don’t think they allow vagrants there. sister soldier
Didn’t the current sitting president already reduce the defense budget? My bad…. he reduced our defenses. turee60
You can’t reduce the defense budget you need to raise the defense to protect our country from terrorist! Ye Deplorable Uncucker
I would hope that after he is elected he will go after the Fed. Shut them down. Paleface
and let the treasury print the US$. that way avoiding paying interest to a private bunch of parasites. LIZ THE SHIZ
ask JFK what happens when you try to go after the fed, you can’t can you? Priszilla | 0 |
Analysis from the Brookings Institution says that 15 million people could lose coverage under Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act. [The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has yet to score the Ryan plan, although the Brookings Institution’s report does not bode well for the House leadership’s bill. The Ryan plan reports, “We conclude that CBO’s analysis will likely estimate that at least 15 million people will lose coverage under the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by the end of the scoring window. Estimates could be higher, but it’s [sic] is unlikely they will be significantly lower. ” The Kaiser Family Foundation states that the Ryan plan’s tax credits aid wealthier Americans more than individuals. Older Americans would face comparatively less aid through tax credits than younger counterparts. American Medical Association CEO James Madara also criticized the Republican leadership’s tax credits, saying, “We believe credits inversely related to income, rather than age as proposed in the committee’s legislation, not only result in greater numbers of people insured but are a more efficient use of resources. ” Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady ( ) has maintained that tax credits help everyone get covered. He said, “It covers more people, because it applies to those who don’t have a tax liability, and it’s advanceable, so it’s available today. ” Avik Roy, a health expert at Forbes, argued that tax credits in the Ryan plan will “price many poor and vulnerable people out of the health insurance market. ” Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, believes that the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill will force the poor to lose their coverage. He lamented, “If the tax credits (read: subsidies) for Americans are less than under Obamacare, many more patients will lose coverage. Premiums will continue to rise. Republicans will take the blame for all of it, because they will have failed to repeal Obamacare, or learn its lessons, when they had the chance. ” | 1 |
Poll after poll shows Hillary Clinton leading.
Clinton up by four points.
Hillary up by six points.
Clinton leads by 6 points , is the latest headline from The Washington Post .
But these polls – most of them – have huge problems: They’re oversampling Democrats.
This happened a couple of days ago in Arizona , a state that has more Republicans than Democrats, but whose poll had many, many more Democrats polled.
The story for the poll starts out pretending that everything is perfectly legitimate:
With 12 days to go, Hillary Clinton holds a six-point edge over Donald Trump among an electorate fixated on the campaign and nervous about their candidate losing, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll.
Then it shows a graphic showing just how far ahead Hillary is. See? Hillary’s line is in orange and Trump’s is in gray. She must be winning.
But there’s a problem with the poll – like with so many other polls that have come out recently … they’re conveniently asking many more Democrats than Republicans.
Here’s a link to their methodology (they have to publish this if they’re going to pretend they’re legitimate).
If you look at page 7, you’ll see exactly who they’re polling.
Of the 1,135 people they polled, 36 percent identify as Democrats and just 29 percent as Republicans.
This is bad enough, but they also have 29 percent self-declared “independents” answering the poll. How do independents vote? Gee? Who knows? The pollsters do…
Now, they have to justify the fact that there are so many more Democrats than Republicans at the polls (and of course, there are simply not 29 percent of “independents” going to the polls. They’re going to choose a Republican or a Democrat, except for the tiny percent who will choose a third-party candidate.
So here’s the paragraph justifying their methodology:
This survey uses statistical weighting procedures to account for deviations in the survey sample from known population characteristics, which helps correct for differential survey participation and random variation in samples. The overall adult sample is weighted to correct for differential probabilities of selection among individuals who are landline-only, cell phone-only or dual users. Results are also weighted match the demographic makeup of the population by sex, region, age, education and race/ethnicity according to the latest Current Population Survey March Social and Economic Supplement by age, race/ethnicity, sex and education. Party ID was weighted to the average of the most recent Post-ABC surveys.
Did you understand that? That’s okay, because they do. And they want you to trust them.
The only poll that counts is the one that you are going to participate in on Nov. 8, and they don’t get to “over sample” or “account for deviations.” They count the votes.
So make sure your vote is counted. | 0 |
Last week, as Donald J. Trump endured one of the most tumultuous stretches of his presidential campaign, a few longtime allies in New York conservative circles met for dinner and a drink. As the evening progressed, the conversation turned to an inevitable topic: What would it take to give Mr. Trump his best shot at winning? A few days later, one of the guests, Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, would become Mr. Trump’s campaign chief in a sudden . But it was a guest without a formal role in the campaign, a conservative philanthropist named Rebekah Mercer, who has now become one of its most potent forces. Mr. Bannon’s ascension on Wednesday — urged on Mr. Trump by Ms. Mercer, among others — shows how a cadre of strategists, “super PACs” and political organizations quietly nurtured by her family have emerged to play a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. Over more than half a decade, Ms. Mercer’s father, the New York investor Robert Mercer, has carved an idiosyncratic path through conservative politics, spending tens of millions of dollars to outflank his own party’s consultant class and unnerve its established powers. His fortune has financed think tanks and insurgent candidates, super PACs and media watchdogs, lobbying groups and organizations. Many of them are now connected, one way or another, to Mr. Trump’s presidential bid. Mr. Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is a veteran Republican pollster who previously oversaw a super PAC financed by the Mercers. Mr. Bannon oversaw Breitbart, an outlet that has often amplified Mr. Trump’s message and attacked his perceived enemies. Mr. Mercer reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart several years ago, and most likely still has a stake: A company sharing an address with Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Mercer helps lead, remains an investor in Breitbart, according to corporate documents filed in Delaware. Mr. Trump is also relying on Cambridge Analytica, a voter data firm backed by Mr. Mercer, whose staff members are working with Mr. Trump’s vendors to identify potential Trump supporters in the electorate, particularly among infrequent voters. A super PAC supporting Mr. Trump is now being shepherded by David Bossie, a conservative activist whose own projects have been funded in part by the Mercers’ family foundation, according to tax documents. Mr. Bannon has worked particularly closely with the family in recent years. “I think they have complete confidence, and rightly so, in Steve Bannon’s decisions and what he brings to the table politically,” Mr. Bossie said. “He has been smart and successful in running these different political operations. And those things have come to the Mercers’ attention. ” The Mercers, who rarely grant interviews, declined through a spokesman to comment. Mr. Mercer, 70, a mathematician and competitive poker player who spent his early career at I. B. M. joined Renaissance in the 1990s and rose to become the executive, earning hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Today, he and his wife, Diana, live on a sprawling estate on Long Island’s North Shore where, according to court records, he installed a $2. 7 million model railroad set (and later sued the vendor for overcharging him). Like many elite donors, the Mercers shun mainstream media attention — even while financing alternative outlets that provide content for conservative activists. That includes not just Breitbart, but also the watchdog organization Media Research Center and the Government Accountability Institute, home to Peter Schweizer, the author of “Clinton Cash,” a book examining the Clinton family philanthropies. (Mr. Bannon the institute and Ms. Mercer, 42, has served on its board she also a documentary based on the book and released last month, just before the Democratic National Convention.) They have given to libertarian organizations, such as the Cato Institute, and political organizations like the Club for Growth, which spends millions of dollars each election cycle in Republican primaries, hoping to promote orthodox conservative policies on taxes and spending. The Mercers are also significant donors to the sprawling political network overseen by the political activists Charles G. and David H. Koch, which is also . But unlike the Koch brothers, who remained neutral in the Republican primary and have said their organizations will focus on congressional races this fall, the Mercers were deeply involved in the Republican nominating battle this year. And they have shown a taste for more and populist politics than most of Mr. Mercer’s fellow hedge fund magnates. The family originally backed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a more traditional conservative but one who, like Mr. Trump, is disliked by much of the party establishment. During the early phase of the campaign, Mr. Mercer donated $13 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cruz. In doing so, he broke with many peers in the elite donor world, who looked to candidates like Jeb Bush or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. The Mercers maintained close control over the group’s purse strings, installing Ms. Conway to oversee the group and coordinate with several other groups, an unusual move for a super PAC. During the Republican primary, the group ran ads questioning Mr. Trump’s conservative credentials, hoping to outflank Mr. Trump. But the Mercers moved to support Mr. Trump after he won the nomination. They were helped in part, according to a person who asked for anonymity to describe the family’s thinking, by Mr. Trump’s growing emphasis on traditional conservative ideas, such as tax cuts. And the family broke with Mr. Cruz in highly public fashion after his speech at the Republican convention, when the Texas senator refused to endorse Mr. Trump and instead suggested that Republicans should “vote your conscience” for candidates “up and down the ticket. ” In an extraordinary rebuke, the Mercers issued a rare public statement, calling themselves “profoundly disappointed” in Mr. Cruz. In late June, the super PAC quietly as Make America Number One, now a entity. Mr. Bossie, a longtime conservative activist who has produced documentaries about the Clinton family and illegal immigration, is leading the group, which is likely to raise more money from the Mercers to pay for attacks on Hillary Clinton. | 1 |
Colombia’s Congress approved a revised peace accord with the country’s largest rebel group on Wednesday night, a vote that was most likely the final hurdle in ratifying the troubled agreement whose earlier version had been rejected in a referendum this fall. By pushing the new deal through Congress, the government bypassed voters this time, who had turned down the accord by a narrow margin on Oct. 2. Both the Senate and House of Representatives, controlled by President Juan Manuel Santos’s governing coalition, voted overwhelmingly for the agreement. But congressional opponents of the deal had walked out of the chamber in protest before the vote took place. On Twitter, Mr. Santos expressed “gratitude to Congress for approving the new accords. ” His chief rival and predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, in an earlier Twitter post, said the congressional action was an attempt to replace a popular mandate. Mr. Santos’s opponents in the Congress were furious the new accord had been pushed through with what they said was too little time to either comment or review the changes. The president, who has staked his legacy on ending the long conflict with the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, consulted his opponents shortly after the referendum was defeated, but he has largely kept them in the dark since, they said. The Congress’s vote brings to a close what had become one of the country’s biggest political dramas in decades. After years of tense talks in Havana, rebel and government negotiators announced in August they had reached a deal to end a half century of war which left more than 200, 000 people dead. The next month, the rebels arrived to the port city of Cartagena, where a celebratory signing was held before world leaders and televised to the nation. Just one piece remained: A popular vote to approve the accord, which polls had shown would be a . Instead, it lost by a narrow margin. Then days later, in another twist, Mr. Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In their announcement of the prize, the Norwegian judges acknowledged the referendum’s defeat but said they hoped that the prize would “give him strength to succeed in this demanding task. ” Though most voters supported peace with the rebels, many, noting the FARC’s long history of kidnappings and killings, felt the deal offered too much leniency, including reduced sentences in exchange for confessions. Yet Mr. Santos also faced a challenge in renegotiating new terms with the rebels, who had been promised new lives as civilians and a clean slate. Analysts say the new deal took some steps to address some of the objections. The agreement now offers some clarity over what to expect as rebels accused of various offenses, including war crimes and drug trafficking, go before a special court. That was one of the opposition’s demands, but the new accord still does not allow for prison sentences for those who confessed to war crimes, which the government said would have caused FARC to leave the negotiating table. The agreement also guarantees former rebels representation in Congress, but it bans them from running in newly created districts in former conflict zones. Mr. Santos’s office said the president would give a speech on Thursday outlining the next steps to demobilize the FARC now that the agreement had been ratified. The two sides have said in coming weeks the rebels will leave their camps, relocating to a set number of sites throughout the country. From there, the groups will disarm under the watch of United Nations inspectors and then begin a new life as civilians. | 1 |
By Julian Rose Virtually everything that conventional wisdom teaches about ‘economics’ is undergoing changes of an almost seismic nature at this time. Albeit mostly beneath... | 0 |
by Cassandra Fairbanks | Nov 3, 2016
A New York elementary school has cancelled their mock presidential election after some of the students began to chant the Republican nominee’s name.
Mock debates and elections have long been a staple of children’s schooling. I personally have fond memories of “campaigning” for Ross Perot in second grade. The free exchange of ideas, and arguing your beliefs, has traditionally been an important, and fun, part of growing up.
Sadly, that tradition appears to be coming to an end, at least at Jericho Elementary School in Centereach, where students will now be holding a mock election to choose their “favorite school lunch” instead.
The cancellation of the mock election came after some students were reportedly chanting “Trump,” and repeating “negative rhetoric about minorities.” Some of the students had reportedly stated that they did not want Muslims here.
While some may find that offensive, this is an issue in the world, and in the news. Perhaps a better way to handle it would have been to have a discussion or a debate and allowed students to argue their feelings on the issue — instead of shutting down discussions entirely.
The school’s principal said in a statement that he decided to toss the learning experience aside to prevent minority students “from feeling uncomfortable.”
“I mean, kids often repeat what they hear on the TV or the news, but it doesn’t mean it’s OK,” school principal Glen Rogers said. “We have a diverse community here. We want all our students to feel valued.”
Comfortable or not, immigration is an issue in this election, which students should be free to explore and discuss.
“Some people were getting angry because some people like Trump and some people like Clinton,” Miranda Waters, a fifth-grader at the school told ABC News. “Some people think Clinton’s not good. Some think Trump’s not good. So there’s a lot of arguments going on, and I don’t like that.”
The discouragement and shaming for discussing political beliefs, and attempting to silence voices which may stray away from what the left deems acceptable, has lead to a generation of college students who believe that they have a right to never be offended — and who are willing to trade free speech to ensure it. Cassandra Fairbanks is a DC-based writer and political commentator who has been published in a range of outlets including Sputnik News, Teen Vogue, TeleSUR, and Bipartisan Report. Join We Are Change! | 0 |
DETROIT — As the and chief executive of Tesla Motors, the technology billionaire Elon Musk has consistently portrayed his company’s electric cars as cleaner, safer and more innovative than models made by other automakers. His confidence in Tesla’s technology has seemed boundless, particularly when the company announced last year that it would equip its flagship Model S sedans with a feature called Autopilot that was still in its testing phase. The technology was so out in front of federal highway regulations that there were no rules against it. But with the revelation this week that a Model S driver in Florida was killed in May while operating his car in mode, Mr. Musk’s determination to push limits has hit its most formidable roadblock. The question now is how much longer Mr. Musk and Tesla can continue to defy auto industry convention in trying to stay so far ahead of the competition. A major point of contention is the Autopilot feature and the decision to make it available to car owners while it was in “beta test” mode — a term typically applied to software that a company releases on an experimental basis. “I can’t think of another example of anything like this delivered in a beta phase in the automotive world,” said Ron Montoya, an analyst with the auto research firm Edmunds. com. “Everything is tested up and down before it comes out. ” Even some Tesla owners, many of whom can be cultishly devoted to the brand, now question whether the technology is as safe as advertised. “It gives you a false sense of security,” said Pete Cordaro, a Model S owner who used Autopilot in a loaner when his Tesla vehicle was being repaired. “You get comfortable and think you can take your hands off the wheel, but you really can’t. ” The death in May of Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was the first known fatality in a vehicle being operated by computer systems. Auto industry executives and analysts wondered aloud on Friday whether Tesla had miscalculated by introducing a feature that was perhaps not ready to live up to Mr. Musk’s pronouncements. In April, he told a conference in Norway, “The probability of having an accident is 50 percent lower if you have Autopilot on. ” Tesla declined to comment on Friday, but critics were not so reticent. “They’ve always had this attitude of invincibility, and perhaps promising more than their cars can deliver,” said Joseph Phillippi, president of the consulting firm AutoTrends. “But what can they say about a car that drove straight into a ?” After minor recalls on Tesla cars this year, the company’s quality controls were already being called into question, as was Mr. Musk’s ability to adequately oversee Tesla while pursuing other grand plans that include a proposal two weeks ago to merge the company with his solar energy company, SolarCity. Other automakers and technology companies at work on vehicles that are years away from the commercial market expressed concerns that the Florida death could cast a pall over their field — and prompt federal regulators to rush to write restrictive rules on the technology before any of their cars take to the road. Executives at the rival companies declined to comment publicly. But Mr. Phillippi, of AutoTrends, noted that most car companies had already tempered expectations and predicted a conservative timetable for the availability of vehicles. “You talk to the traditional automakers, and they say we are five years away from being able to let go of the wheel and the car will drive itself,” he said. “It may be time for Mr. Musk to back off, too. ” With a federal investigation underway, Tesla has declined to respond to many questions about the Florida crash, including why it did not make details of the accident public for nearly two months — and then not until regulators announced their inquiry. In addition, Tesla did not respond to emails on Friday about when the company would disclose more information about the accident, or about any plans for possibly alerting vehicle owners about the dangers of misusing the Autopilot feature. A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Bryan Thomas, declined to say why the agency waited until late June to begin a formal inquiry into an accident that happened in May, or why the agency did not require Tesla to notify owners about a possible problem. While the investigation into the accident is just beginning, the repercussions could be profound for Tesla. The company has been preparing to sharply increase its manufacturing production for the introduction next year of its less expensive Model 3 sedan, which already has a long waiting list of customers who have preordered the vehicles. At the same time, Mr. Musk is trying to engineer the merger between Tesla and SolarCity and complete a new factory under construction in Nevada that will produce batteries meant to provide energy storage both for cars and households. In the past, Mr. Musk has been able to move quickly past issues related to Tesla’s quality and safety, such as when the company modified its cars to prevent batteries from catching fire in collisions. But the company has been vague about whether the Florida accident was the result of a defect in the system, or the result of a driver who neglected to use it correctly. For now, Tesla continues to characterize the system as a safety improvement. “When used in conjunction with driver oversight, the data is unequivocal that Autopilot reduces driver workload and results in a statistically significant improvement in safety when compared to purely manual driving,” the company said in a news release discussing the Florida crash. That type of response is not unusual for Mr. Musk, who tends to attack suggestions that Tesla has ever fallen short of its goals. “This company is very personal to Elon Musk and he is very passionate and protective of it,” said Mr. Montoya of Edmunds. com. “But when anything goes wrong, he becomes very defensive. ” Regulators are now proceeding with the next step in their investigation by preparing to make an official “information request” for Tesla to provide more details on the accident and the equipment in the vehicle. Mr. Thomas, the spokesman for the federal safety agency, declined to say how long the process might take. Mr. Musk has recently been publicly drumming up support for Tesla’s proposed merger with SolarCity, while continuing his role as Tesla’s chief cheerleader. On May 31, for example, he spent more than three hours dissecting Tesla’s history and outlining its future before an overflow crowd of shareholders at the company’s annual meeting. Over the course of the meeting, he talked extensively about setting new industry standards for manufacturing at Tesla’s California plant, and building the world’s biggest battery factory in the Nevada desert. When asked by one Tesla owner about whether he expected to keep adding new technology to the Model S, Mr. Musk responded as if that was a foregone conclusion. “We are always going to keep improving the product,” he said. But what he did not mention at all was the Florida accident, which had occurred three weeks earlier. | 1 |
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Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 Historischer Sieg: Donald Trump zieht als erster Clown ins Weiße Haus ein New York (dpo) - Er hat es geschafft! Am Ende einer historischen Wahl in den USA steht Donald Trump als Sieger fest. Damit zieht erstmals in der Geschichte ein Clown ins Weiße Haus ein. Demografen hatten zuvor angezweifelt, ob die amerikanische Bevölkerung wirklich bereit für einen Clown als Präsident ist. Mit seiner lustigen Clown-Perücke, seiner bronze-roten Nase und zeitlosen Slapstick-Einlagen bringt Trump schon seit Jahren Groß und Klein zum Lachen. Vielleicht auch deshalb wurde seine Ankündigung, Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika werden zu wollen, zunächst von vielen als weitere brillante Performance des liebenswürdigen Milliardärs betrachtet. Doch nun konnte der Spaßmacher der ganzen Welt beweisen, wie ernst es ihm ist. Nicht zuletzt dank der Unterstützung der US-Clown-Community. Fizbo Simmons, der Vorsitzende der amerikanischen Clown Society ist immer noch wie im Rausch. "Wir haben das geschafft, was Comedians schon im Jahr 2000 mit George W. Bush geschafft haben. Jetzt wird niemand mehr über uns lachen!", so Fizbo begeistert. "Wollen Sie mal an meiner Blume riechen?" Hart trifft Donald Trumps Sieg seine unterlegene Widersacherin Hillary Clinton. Sie wollte ebenfalls Geschichte schreiben – doch für den ersten Roboter als Präsidenten waren die US-Bürger offenbar einfach noch nicht bereit. dan, ssi; Foto: Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com ; Hinweis: Erschien schon einmal so ähnlich. Artikel teilen: | 0 |
The traditional goal of a presidential nominee is to win the presidency and then serve as president. Donald J. Trump is not a traditional candidate for president. Presented in a recent interview with a scenario, floating around the political ether, in which the presumptive Republican nominee proves all the naysayers wrong, beats Hillary Clinton and wins the presidency, only to forgo the office as the ultimate winner, Mr. Trump flashed a mischievous smile. “I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens,” he said minutes before leaving his Trump Tower office to fly to a campaign rally in New Hampshire. It is, of course, entirely possible that Mr. Trump is playing coy to earn more news coverage. But the notion of the intensely competitive Mr. Trump’s being more interested in winning the presidency than serving as president is not exactly a foreign concept to close observers of this presidential race. Early in the contest, his rivals, Republican operatives and many reporters questioned the seriousness of his candidacy. His knack for creating controversy out of thin air (this week’s edition: the Star of David Twitter post) and his inclination toward comments did not instill confidence in a political culture that values discipline in its candidates. Those doubts dissipated after Mr. Trump vanquished his Republican opponents and locked up the nomination. “I’ve actually done very well,” Mr. Trump said. “We beat 18 people, right?” But as the race has turned toward the general election and a majority of polls have shown Mr. Trump trailing Mrs. Clinton, speculation has again crept into political conversations in Washington, New York and elsewhere that Mr. Trump will seek an exit strategy before the election to avoid a humiliating loss. Now he is refusing to rule out an even more dramatic departure, one that would let him avoid the grueling job of governing, return to his business and enjoy his status as a news media celebrity. Told of Mr. Trump’s noncommittal comment, Stuart Stevens, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012 who has become one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics, said that Mr. Trump was “a con man who is shocked his con hasn’t been called” and that he was looking for an emergency exit. “He has no sense of how to govern,” Mr. Stevens said. “He can’t even put together a campaign. ” Even Mr. Trump’s supporters acknowledge that his past campaigns had the air of a vanity tour. That impression lingers. A recent Trump news release promising “a speech regarding the election” prompted many reporters and political fortunetellers to predict a declaration of his departure. But just the fact that a routine news release prompted paroxysms of conjecture throughout the political universe suggested that, as Mr. Trump might say, “there’s something going on. ” Mr. Trump’s campaign and his supporters dismiss the talk as the fantasizing of frightened liberals or frustrated establishment figures. “He’s not going to pull out,” said Thomas Barrack Jr. a financier and real estate investor who is a close friend of Mr. Trump’s. He compared Mr. Trump’s candidacy to an innovative company: “You never see disruption when it’s happening. ” In Mr. Trump’s case, the disruption is everywhere. Last fall, he said in television interviews that if his standing collapsed in the Republican primary polls, he could very well return to his business. In amid an onslaught of negative news coverage, he joked to a crowd that he would consider leaving the race for $5 billion. On the off chance he actually is planning to back out, what would happen? Alexander Keyssar, a historian at Harvard who is working on a book about the Electoral College, said the process of succession would depend on “the precise moment at which he said, ‘Nah, never mind. ’” The party representatives who make up the Electoral College would suddenly have real power rather than a rubber stamp. If Mr. Trump bowed out after winning on Nov. 8 but before the electors met in each state to cast their ballots on Dec. 19, then the electors could have the opportunity to vote for another candidate, Professor Keyssar said. A majority of the 538 electors would be Republicans, but they might not agree on the best alternative candidate. If no one won a majority of the electors, the contest between the top three — one of whom would presumably be Mrs. Clinton — would go to the House of Representatives, where each state would be given one vote, while the Senate would select the vice president. House Republicans hold 33 states to the Democrats’ 14, with three evenly split. It is unclear whether the vote would take place before or after newly elected representatives were seated. It is also unclear what would happen, Professor Keyssar said, if Mr. Trump bid adieu after the electoral votes were cast but before they were officially counted, per the 12th Amendment, by the president of the Senate before a joint session of Congress in January. And if Mr. Trump left after the votes were counted in Congress but before he was sworn in on Jan. 20, Professor Keyssar said the closest guidance would probably come from Section Three of the 20th Amendment: “If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the president, the shall have died, the vice shall become president. ” “Nothing like this has ever happened,” Professor Keyssar said. And nothing like it will this year, Mr. Trump’s supporters say. “It’s going to be too late by then,” Roger Stone, Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser, said of the theory. “If he got elected president, he’d certainly serve. I’m fairly certain about that. You think he’d resign? I don’t see that happening. There is only one star in the Donald Trump show, and that’s Donald Trump. ” Russell Verney, a former top strategist for Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who abruptly pulled out of the 1992 election, only to and win 19 percent of the vote, said that outsider candidates were more vulnerable to questions about their resolve. “It never would be a subject raised with Romney and others, because the presidency is the ultimate goal of their entire professional career,” said Mr. Verney, who conferred with Mr. Trump during his exploration of a presidential run in 2000, during which, he said, Mr. Trump expressed reservations about selling his casinos to fund his campaign. “Donald Trump has not worked toward being president every day of his professional career. ” Mr. Trump’s supporters point out that he has begun adopting the more traditional trappings of a presidential campaign: a operation, policy ideas, prepared speeches. “This is silly,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, which has tried hard to make the Trump campaign more professional. “He’s in it to win it. ” But the only person who could truly put any doubts to rest seemed instead to relish the idea of keeping everyone guessing, concluding the recent conversation with a you’ grin and handshake across his cluttered desk. “We’ll do plenty of stories,” Mr. Trump promised enigmatically. “O. K.?” | 1 |
BERLIN — The bicentennial of the birth of Karl Marx was supposed to bring his hometown, Trier, Germany, an important exhibition about his life and an increase in tourism. But an offer from China to present the city with a nearly bronze statue of Marx, the intellectual who was one of the writers of “The Communist Manifesto,” is overshadowing the festivities a year before they begin. After months of discussion and more than an hour of lively debate, the City Council in Trier, in western Germany near the border with Luxembourg, decided on Monday to accept the gift from the Chinese government, by the sculptor Wu Weishan. However, the Council left open the thorny questions of how large it would be and where in the city it would stand. “Karl Marx is one of the most important citizens of this city, and we should not hide him,” the mayor of Trier, Wolfram Leibe, told the public broadcaster SWR before the vote. Statues of Marx, who was born in Trier on May 5, 1818, and later lived in Berlin, London and Paris, were common throughout Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and several still survive in Germany’s formerly communist eastern states, including in Berlin. But his birthplace, firmly in the former West Germany, has struggled with how best to remember its famous son. The city, which is on the banks of the Moselle River and in an important area, has increasingly become a destination for tourists from China, but many residents are nevertheless uncomfortable with accepting a gift from the Chinese government. “China is not a free country, quite the opposite,” a Trier newspaper quoted Tobias Schneider of the Free Democratic Party in Trier as saying on Monday. “We could draw up a long list of human rights violations. Do we want to allow such a rogue regime to set up a statue of Karl Marx in the heart of our city?” The Chinese told city officials they were offering the statue to honor the bicentennial and as a symbol of the strong ties between the countries. The Chinese government agreed to cover about of the cost of a pedestal for the statue and its installation, estimated at 105, 000 euros, or about $112, 000. But after word spread about the gift, many residents balked at the idea of a bronze version of the father of communism towering over the Simeonstiftplatz, the city’s square, which is named for a church that once stood there. City authorities erected a wooden in the square to give residents an idea of how it might look. In the end, a majority of the Council voted to accept the statue, although perhaps a smaller version of it than was originally envisioned, with a final height to be determined later. It would be unveiled as part of the city’s attempt to Marx’s work and the turbulent time in which he lived, through exhibitions and intellectual discussions. “This debate is less about human rights, aesthetics or location” of the statue, Richard Leuckefeld’s of the Green Party said. “It is about getting the city out of a predicament, because those responsible have failed to honor Karl Marx. ” | 1 |
FAIRVIEW, W. Va. — The coal was piled about as high as it could go, spilling down to the railroad tracks and towering over the elevator shaft. A yellow bulldozer pushed the mound to make room for more. From a distance on this rainy day, the black heap looked like a giant whale about to swallow the mine whole. The word underground was that Federal mine No. 2 would soon have to close. It was early April, and the mine was running out of storage space. There were not enough buyers for all the coal. A few months earlier, this problem would have belonged to Patriot Coal, one of the nation’s largest coal companies, which used to operate the Federal mine, built near a meandering mountain stream called Miracle Run. But this was not Patriot’s problem anymore. Nor was it the problem of the hedge funds and other investors that had lent the company millions. When Patriot filed for bankruptcy in 2015 — its second time in three years — environmentalists and regulators were prepared for the company to figure out ways to shunt liabilities and maximize returns. But no one could have envisioned what happened next. Patriot handed over millions of dollars of environmental obligations to a nonprofit company run by a man named Tom Clarke, who owned a chain of nursing homes and a tourist attraction that had fallen behind on its bills. Until that day in April, Mr. Clarke, 61, had never been in a coal mine. Patriot sold not only the troubled Federal mine to Mr. Clarke, but also several other mines that were no longer in operation, including a sprawling surface mine carved from the top of a mountain in southern West Virginia. Mr. Clarke’s new company agreed to clean up the shuttered mines and reclaim the land that had been ravaged. As part of the deal, the miners’ union invested $10 million in the Federal mine operation, which was supposed to keep producing coal for Mr. Clarke to sell. But the mine has struggled from low coal prices. “It was a spectacular deal for Patriot,” said Patrick McGinley, a law professor at West Virginia University who has been involved in cases against coal companies since 1970s. “This company has had complete success in divesting itself of all liabilities of every kind, including environmental liabilities, which are the hardest to shed. ” Why then, would someone like Mr. Clarke want to take over a troubled mine and the environmental obligations that Patriot Coal was seeking to get rid of? As improbable as it may seem, Mr. Clarke said the Patriot deal had played to his advantage — helping start his grand plan to remake coal mining into a greener industry. He is not only reclaiming Patriot’s mines that are no longer in use. He has come up with a model, he said, for how the industry can keep producing coal, while reducing its impact on the climate. The plan involves creating pollution credits by planting or preserving trees around the world to offset the carbon emitted from burning coal. For every ton of coal he sells, Mr. Clarke attaches some of the credits. Mr. Clarke has had trouble, however, persuading buyers of his coal, like utilities and steel companies, to pay extra for the credits. Mr. Clarke hoped electric utilities would be able to count his credits toward the goals that the Obama administration has set for states in its Clean Power Plan, now before a federal court. But administration officials have effectively ruled that out. That hasn’t stopped Mr. Clarke’s company from acquiring more mines. In addition to Patriot, Mr. Clarke has made deals over the last 11 months with several other struggling coal companies, gaining control of multiple underground mines, millions of tons of coal reserves and thousands of acres of surface mines. He has even tried bidding on steel mills to create a captive buyer for his coal bundled with carbon credits. Now he is in the market for utilities, for the same reason. While the Federal mine has cut back on production, some of his other mines are poised for a rebound. Demand for metallurgical coal — which is used for making steel — has roared back in recent months. One of the companies he founded with a longtime coal executive, ERP Compliant Fuels, is now one of the largest producers of metallurgical coal in North America. “I am the guy that is trying to work from within,” Mr. Clarke said. “The goal is to have a big enough footprint to drive our environmental philosophy home. ” If this were a movie about the American coal industry, Mr. Clarke would be the character who goes completely off script. For decades, the battle lines around coal have been clear. The companies are fighting to protect their diminishing business. Many environmentalists, meanwhile, are trying to limit coal production permanently and force the industry to clean up the damage it has inflicted on forests, rivers and lakes. The debate over coal on the campaign trail is also predictable — Donald J. Trump has vowed to bring back lost mining jobs and roll back overzealous environmental regulations, and Hillary Clinton is promising to help mining communities transition out of coal and into new industries. Environmental groups can almost smell victory. Many of the nation’s largest coal companies have filed for bankruptcy. Natural gas is pulling even and may surpass coal as the top power source in the United States. The industry’s decline is forcing states to deal with how to clean up the mines and who should pay for it. In West Virginia alone, 300, 000 acres of forest — an area half the size of Rhode Island — have been damaged by mountaintop mining, by one estimate. After some challenges, Mr. Clarke’s reclamation work has been meeting regulatory standards and even exceeding expectations by some measures, one West Virginia official said. In January, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia lauded Mr. Clarke in his address for helping develop “new and innovative ideas. ” Mr. Clarke is donating a reclaimed former Patriot mountaintop mine to the state to build an industrial park. “Tom is a real visionary,” said Robert McAtee, one of several coal industry veterans who have come to work with Mr. Clarke. “He stepped in when no one else would. ” Mr. Clarke says he relies on the expertise of several seasoned coal executives to run his mining operations. But environmentalists worry that Mr. Clarke is breathing new life into a polluting industry and that he is incapable of handling the huge mess the coal companies have handed him. In August, several environmental groups granted Mr. Clarke an extension on a court order to treat polluted runoff from a former Patriot mine, saying his “ capital was less than expected. ” Should Mr. Clarke’s company run into financial trouble, environmentalists worry that the cost of reclaiming the mines could fall to West Virginia taxpayers. Unlike Patriot, Mr. Clarke has few Wall Street investors that the state could pressure to cover the costs, they say. “These are strange days,” said Peter Morgan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, who has been challenging the coal industry over water pollution issues for years. “I don’t know what Tom Clarke’s intentions are. But I am skeptical he can pull it off. ” Bankruptcy is like a chess game in which companies seek to minimize liabilities and creditors look to maximize profits. Over the years, Patriot has played like a grandmaster. The company was founded in October 2007 from a spinoff of the coal mining giant Peabody Energy. From the start, Patriot was loaded with liabilities. Peabody gave Patriot 13 percent of its coal reserves but 40 percent of its obligations to pay for health care for thousands of retired miners. In short, Patriot took over many of the company’s unionized mining operations in Appalachia, while Peabody kept its nonunion operations in the West. “The legend in the coal fields is that Patriot was set up as a liability dump,” said Kevin Barrett, a lawyer at Bailey Glasser, who represents the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in the coal bankruptcy cases. “It was destined to fail. ” In a statement, Peabody said: “Patriot Coal was highly successful when it became an independent, publicly traded company nearly a decade ago,” adding that its market capitalization quadrupled in less than a year. But in July 2012, Patriot failed as predicted. A few weeks before it filed for bankruptcy, the company, which is based in St. Louis, took steps to improve its chances in court, according to the union. Patriot created two subsidiaries in New York City, allowing its case to be heard there. The United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan was viewed as favorable to corporations looking to cut their debts. After the coal miners’ union objected, the case was moved to St. Louis. On that first trip through bankruptcy, Patriot was able to deal with its health care obligations after a separate fund was created to administer the benefits. Health care was not Patriot’s only issue, though. The company faced huge costs for cleaning up selenium — a harmful coal byproduct — that was seeping into water sources downstream from its mines. While industries readily used bankruptcy to shed labor and pension obligations, it was unclear whether coal companies could do the same with reclamations and water remediation. In 1986, the Supreme Court blocked a New Jersey company from abandoning its oil waste processing plants in bankruptcy, citing a threat to public health and safety. But it was unclear whether the judges in the coal bankruptcy cases would rule that defunct mines posed the same pressing health threat. In the end, Patriot was able to emerge from its first bankruptcy without dealing with most of its environmental liabilities. By 2015, the American coal market was in a deep slide, as utilities and manufacturers increasingly turned to natural gas and demand from China cooled. One after another, mining companies, including Patriot, declared bankruptcy. “Everybody knew what to expect in Round 2,” Mr. Barrett said. “They would try to sell their best assets and leave their biggest environmental problems behind. ” The Natural Bridge is a rocky arch towering 215 feet above a small creek in southwestern Virginia. Thomas Jefferson bought the property from King George III of England for 20 shillings. Today, it is owned by a nonprofit company started by Mr. Clarke. He bought the bridge in 2014, using a $9. 1 million loan from the State of Virginia. Mr. Clarke planned to revitalize flagging ticket sales to the bridge, then hand over the property as a state park. But his plans ran into trouble early on. Visitors dwindled, and he defaulted on his state loan. He had to use proceeds from selling coal and land to help get caught up on his bills. In September, Mr. Clarke handed over management of Natural Bridge to the state. His nonprofit group, called the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, will still own the property until it pays back the loan. Some state officials praised Mr. Clarke’s work preserving the property but also had to give him more time to pay back his debt. Mr. Clarke compares his struggles to those of the former president, who also ran into financial trouble at one point. “I sort of felt like I am having my Jeffersonian moment,” Mr. Clarke said. Relentlessly upbeat, with a near permanent smile and the soothing voice of a public radio announcer, Mr. Clarke has spent a career trying to turn around an eclectic assortment of companies. He has bought troubled nursing homes, a forest preserve in Belize and a restaurant in Roanoke, Va. — a “philanthropub” that was supposed to dedicate its profit to Africa until it closed down in March 2015. In the 1990s, he turned one of his companies, Lenox Healthcare, into a $ business — one of the largest nursing home chains in the country. His former business partner at Lenox, Lawrence B. Cummings, called him a master at bolting together impossible business transactions. “He showed again and again an ability to put together deals that other people couldn’t. ” Lenox was a juggernaut, Mr. Clarke said, until it went bankrupt in 1999. Mr. Clarke said he began to rethink his life’s goals. He went hiking in South America, where he met his wife, Ana, a native of Venezuela. They moved to Virginia, converted his remaining nursing homes to nonprofits and placed them under a new company, Kissito (pronounced ) Healthcare. He became interested in poverty issues in Africa and began raising money and building a maternity hospital in Ethiopia. Mr. Clarke said he realized that many of the problems like drought and extreme floods in Africa were caused by climate change. Back in Virginia, Mr. Clarke said, he decided to take aim at the coal industry’s contribution to carbon emissions. Too often, Mr. Clarke said, the debate over the future of coal is infected with what he called tribalism — a conviction that you are either with the mining industry, or against it. He said he was trying to find some middle ground. Mr. Clarke’s first foray into the coal industry came when he took a job in late 2014 with Jim Justice, a wealthy West Virginia businessman who had built a fortune partly on coal. Mr. Clarke’s job was to assist Mr. Justice and his Southern Coal Corporation in dealing with hundreds of environmental violations at mines across Appalachia. While results are difficult to track, some environmental groups acknowledge that Mr. Clarke’s work had an appreciable impact on the Justice properties. A Democrat, Mr. Justice is running to become West Virginia’s next governor. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment. One of Mr. Clarke’s believers is Chandler Van Voorhis, a founder of C2I, a company outside Washington. C2I’s business is planting trees. The trees soak up carbon dioxide, converting it to wood and leaves. An acre of trees can convert 156 tons of carbon over a period, Mr. Van Voorhis said. C2I plans to reforest a million acres in the southern Mississippi River Valley and sell the carbon offsets to companies to reach goals. Together, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Van Voorhis sketched a plan to bundle C2I’s carbon offsets with coal. Their plan faced some steep challenges including this one: There was no natural market for coal bundled with pollution credits because of its higher cost. Undaunted, Mr. Clarke hired an investment banker and lawyers to hatch his idea. “Wall Street’s a pretty cynical place,” said Tim Hess, a real estate developer in Virginia, who introduced Mr. Clarke to his banking contacts. “But when you see somebody with that kind of passion and integrity, if there’s a way to make business sense out of it, I think people lean forward. ” Patriot Coal’s executives and advisers first met Mr. Clarke around the start of the company’s second bankruptcy case in May 2015. For this second bankruptcy filing, Patriot chose to file in Richmond, Va. where restructuring experts say some judges are eager to move large bankruptcy cases through quickly. The choice turned out to be a fortunate one. During the first day of bankruptcy hearings, Mr. Clarke said he happened to be in Richmond for a meeting with state officials when he wandered over to the federal courthouse. “It just amazed me how quickly they rushed through everything,” Mr. Clarke recalled of the proceedings. The best mines would be sold to Blackhawk Mining, a coal company in Kentucky, which would run the properties with financing from some of Patriot’s lenders. The less valuable mines would be placed in a separate “liquidating trust. ” The sole purpose of that trust would be to clean up water pollution and reclaim the mines. West Virginia officials felt comfortable with this arrangement because they could pressure Patriot’s hedge fund lenders to contribute money to the trust for reclamation work, said Mr. Barrett, the lawyer for West Virginia’s environmental protection agency. Equally important, regulators could hold Patriot’s top executives liable for completing the mine cleanup. If they failed, the government could deny them mining permits until the work was completed. “It was incredibly important to them personally, because these liabilities would follow them,” Mr. Barrett said. But Mr. Clarke was proposing something else entirely. His nonprofit company would assume Patriot’s environmental and reclamation obligations. And ultimately, the deal would release former executives from liability. At first, regulators and advisers to Patriot didn’t know what to make of Mr. Clarke. He had no experience. He had no traditional bank financing. When he came to meet Patriot’s management for the first time, he brought his young daughter with him. A company secretary watched her while he met with the executives for hours at the Charleston airport. Many people involved in the negotiations assumed that Mr. Clarke had the financial backing of Mr. Justice, but that wasn’t the case. Initially, state regulators did not consider Mr. Clarke a realistic option. So when Patriot signaled last summer that it was going to make a deal with Mr. Clarke, Mr. Barrett said, “we were floored. ” Shortly before a crucial court hearing, a major piece of Mr. Clarke’s financing fell through. Patriot’s lawyer and investment bankers scrambled to keep the deal from falling apart. In the end, Patriot agreed to effectively lend Mr. Clarke $5 million, and the coal miners’ union also stepped in with money. Surety companies that had insured Patriot’s reclamation obligations agreed to release millions in cash so Mr. Clarke could start the work. Regulators and environmental groups worried that if the state held up the deal, Patriot could threaten to liquidate its properties, leaving no money for reclamations. “It was the least bad outcome,” Mr. Morgan of the Sierra Club said. Even if Mr. Clarke’s venture proves Mr. Morgan said, he has already completed a good deal of reclamation work. Mr. Clarke said his fund has spent about $28 million on the work to date. As insurance, Patriot’s lenders contributed $12. 5 million to backstop the reclamation work in case Mr. Clarke failed. The state also has some control over the account that Mr. Clarke uses to pay for reclamation work. For Mr. Clarke, the Patriot agreement opened the door to other deals. He took over reclamation obligations from Walter Energy, another mining company that had declared bankruptcy. He also picked up more viable mines and a coke processing plant from Walter. This spring, his company vied to take over an entire coal company, Alpha Natural Resources, but the bid was not accepted in the bankruptcy case. “For someone with zero experience to come into this complex and troubled industry proposing the sort of things he is proposing is astonishing,” said Mr. McGinley, the law professor. “I give him the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t see where it is going. ” It was raining when Mr. Clarke and a clutch of miners rode a cavernous elevator 734 feet down to the dank shafts of Federal mine No. 2 last spring. At the bottom, the men boarded trains that clanked and jerked along wooden tracks through a maze of silent tunnels, empty except for the occasional mouse scurrying. The trains passed emergency shelters and ventilation shafts pumping cool air from above. This is the miners’ commute to the coal seam, where they shave off thousands of tons of black rock each week. “I am proud of you,” Mr. Clarke told some of the miners. As part of the deal with Patriot, the coal miners’ union invested $10 million and took a 20 percent stake in the Federal mine, which Mr. Clarke says he is doing everything he can to keep open even though it doesn’t break even. When he bought the Federal mine from Patriot, Mr. Clarke said he expected to sell its coal for at least $50 a ton. Recent shipments have sold for just above $40 a ton, he said. On some weeks, the mine has had to operate on a schedule because of the low demand for thermal coal, which is used to produce electric power. Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said the union expected production to improve at the mine when the broader coal market recovered. Still, Mr. Clarke’s company has shifted away from thermal coal and is hunting for mines that produce the much more valuable metallurgical coal used in steel production. Last month, an company acquired a set of huge surface mines in British Columbia out of bankruptcy. Unlike many of the Patriot mines that Mr. Clarke acquired to clean up, these new mines are capable of pumping millions of tons of new coal onto the market each year and he’s projecting big profits next year. Ultimately, Mr. Clarke hopes to offset all of the expected emissions from the coal he is producing with pollution credits. But right now, he is offsetting only 10 percent. That worries environmentalists. “It’s all I can afford,” he said. Mr. Clarke says he has been absorbing the costs personally until he can persuade utilities and steel mills to agree to pay for credits. He is hoping that states, led by West Virginia, will allow utilities to pass through the costs of his credits to ratepayers. Those discussions are continuing, he said. “Coal isn’t the villain,” he said. “The villain is excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we have to find ways to deal with it. ” | 1 |
Just two hours of social media use a day can double the risk of young adults feeling “socially isolated,” according to a recent study. [The study — led by Brian A. Primack, the director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health — discovered that the longer young adults spend on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and even YouTube, the more likely they were to feel socially isolated. “Primack and his team examined questionnaires in 2014 from 1, 787 Americans between the ages of 19 and 32. The surveys sought to see how often the participants logged onto the 11 most popular social networks and how much time a typical session would last,” reported Studyfinds. org. “Those who spent more than two hours a day on social media were twice as likely to show signs of social isolation than participants who spent no more than 30 minutes on the sites. ” “Similarly, young adults who visited the sites at least 58 times in a week were triple the odds of feeling socially isolated than those who only logged onto social media nine times in a week,” they continued. “This held true even when demographic and other control factors were taken into consideration. ” In response to the study’s results, Primack claimed that social media is often used to fill a social void, however, it “may not be the solution people were hoping for. ” “This is an important issue to study because mental health problems and social isolation are at epidemic levels among young adults,” Primack claimed. “We are inherently social creatures, but modern life tends to compartmentalize us instead of bringing us together … While it may seem that social media presents opportunities to fill that social void, I think this study suggests that it may not be the solution people were hoping for. ” “I don’t doubt that some people using certain platforms in specific ways may find comfort and social connectedness via social media relationships,” he continued. “However, the results of this study simply remind us that, on the whole, use of social media tends to be associated with increased social isolation and not decreased social isolation. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
HAENGCHI VILLAGE, South Korea — Each day hundreds of visitors, many with young children, make a pilgrimage to Haengchi Village, where Ban was born 72 years ago. They wander through a replica of Mr. Ban’s old house. They learn about his personal journey to the United Nations, where he was secretary general for 10 years. Despite criticism of his tenure there, Mr. Ban is seen as a role model by vast numbers of South Koreans. School textbooks, for example, celebrate him as a “man who made South Korea proud. ” And many South Koreans want Mr. Ban to be their next president, succeeding Park whom the National Assembly voted to impeach last month on corruption charges. When Mr. Ban arrived home on Jan. 12, crowds of turned out at the airport, waving flags and shouting, “Ban please save this country!” Yet there is also deep skepticism about his potential presidential bid, especially among the nation’s progressives. They say he is trying to be part of the establishment yet against it at the same time — a “Mr. ” in the words of critics. (The word “ban” in Korean means “half. ”) Mr. Ban calls himself “a child of the United Nations,” part of a generation of South Koreans who remembered United Nations handouts in the destitute years after the Korean War, as well as United Nations Forces who fought in the war. Many of his contemporaries view the United States as South Korea’s savior and protector. “I am ready to give my all to uniting the divided country and making South Korea a nation,” Mr. Ban said. “As United Nations secretary general, I have seen why some nations prosper and why some fail. ” His advocates say he is a seasoned, diplomat who can best deal with both North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program and President Trump, who has raised questions about Washington’s trade and defense commitments to its allies. One of the first things Mr. Ban did after his homecoming was support the deployment of an American missile defense system that has angered North Korea and China. Critics say his place in the establishment makes him unsuitable as a figure who can restore trust in government. They believe the political class has been disgraced by Ms. Park’s corruption scandal and yet is also desperate for a candidate it can support in an election that could take place as early as this spring. The Constitutional Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks whether Ms. Park should be formally unseated. As Mr. Ban crisscrossed the country after his return, paying homage to the dead at national cemeteries and shaking hands with street vendors, his detractors trailed him, holding signs that called him “an opportunist,” or worse. “He has spent his entire life on the sunny side,” said Moon an opposition leader who comes in ahead of Mr. Ban in surveys on presidential hopefuls. “He is not the kind who shares the people’s desperate desire for change. ” Lee who served as South Korea’s prime minister when Mr. Ban was its foreign minister from 2004 to 2006, called Mr. Ban “a diplomat who looks twice but does not leap. ” Mr. Ban won his United Nations job 10 years ago with the support of Roh then the president, a progressive who handpicked him as a candidate. Critics called Mr. Ban a turncoat when he later appeared to align himself closely with conservatives, including Ms. Park. His popularity rating as a presidential contender has plummeted in the wake of Ms. Park’s scandal. Since he has returned home, Mr. Ban has defined himself as a “progressive conservative” who can mend an ideologically fractured country. But some local news media suspect him of while he tries to find an ally among the existing political parties or to woo enough lawmakers away to form his own. They also call him a “slippery eel,” accusing him of being notoriously vague on tough questions, a trait that has sometimes served him well as a diplomat but now is under harsher scrutiny as he considers a presidential bid. As United Nations secretary general, he praised the deeply unpopular agreement Ms. Park struck with Japan to end a dispute over “comfort women,” or Korean sex slaves for Japan’s World War II army. But as a presidential hopeful, he began raising questions about the deal, saying that an agreement that failed to satisfy the surviving victims was not enough. With his popularity ratings stuck behind Mr. Moon’s, the usually Mr. Ban began bridling at criticism. When journalists recently dogged him with hard questions and then wrote articles that accused him of being over the comfort women issue, he called them names. (He later apologized.) He has also called himself a Mr. Clean, responding to the outcry over Ms. Park’s scandal. But to people weary of recurring corruption scandals among political leaders and their families, Mr. Ban’s claim has already lost some of its luster this month, the United States indicted his nephew, who is a New York real estate broker, and his younger brother in South Korea on charges of attempting to pay bribes to facilitate a Korean company’s sale of a commercial building in Vietnam. Mr. Ban denies involvement. Yet here in his home province of Chungcheong, pride in Mr. Ban is compared to a personality cult by his critics. Streets, marathons and contests are named after him. Songs are written about him, including one that calls him “Korea’s favorite son who embraced five oceans and six continents. ” In Eumseong, the seat of the county that includes this village, a park displays a circle of bronze busts of Mr. Ban and other former United Nations secretaries general. And this hamlet, which has only a dozen households, is a veritable Ban theme park. A monument erected by the local Ban clan calls him a “sacred peak of the world” whose “warm smile dissipated international conflicts. ” Visitors stroll around the “Ban Peace Land,” a small park with a granite monument in the shape of the United Nations headquarters surrounded by flags of member states. In the “Ban Memorial Hall,” biographical sketches and video clippings tell how Mr. Ban, with his quiet tenacity and “warm charisma,” overcame his humble origin and became the “president of the world. ” “If I sleep now, I may dream, but if I study now, my dream will come true,” goes one of the 19 Ban sayings in a museum handout. Older villagers remember the young Mr. Ban walking on a dirt road with his eyes fixated on an English textbook. (His English skills gave him his first big break: As a teenager in 1962, he excelled at an contest, winning a Red trip to the White House, where he met President John F. Kennedy and resolved to become a diplomat.) A roadside motel here added more rooms because so many newlyweds believed that if their firstborns were conceived with the blessing of the energy of the mountains surrounding the village, they would grow up to be luminaries like Mr. Ban. “I brought my children here so they can learn from Secretary General Ban’s life that there is no easy way in life but that if you try hard, your dream comes true,” said Lee 42, who recently visited here with his daughter and son. Kim 65, a owner who recently visited Mr. Ban’s birthplace, said Mr. Ban’s “vast experiences and ” will make him a great president, enabling him to avoid the kind of mistakes that led to Ms. Park’s scandal. “It’s an honor to have him in our country,” he said. But another visitor, Kim also a Ban fan, feared that Mr. Ban might not survive the thrust and parry of domestic politics. “I wonder why he risks ruining his image by entering domestic politics,” he said. “It’s a mud pit, and he could end up losing all. ” | 1 |
President Donald Trump tweeted his response to the protest in Washington, D. C. known as the “Women’s March on Washington. ”[Trump tweeted early Sunday morning: Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017, Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don’t always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017, According to NBC News, a Trump administration official noted about the “Women’s” March that women who had asked to partner with the march were refused. “If you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman’s right to choose,” Linda Sarsour, a Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist, and a chairwoman of the event, told the New York Times. “The organizers noted that their platform is and they revoked partnership status’ from groups,” the Trump official’s comment continued. The news report noted the official also commented, that it was a “shame” that the March for Life next Friday “will not get anywhere near the same amount of coverage that this march got — and those members were NOT welcome at the Women’s March. ” NBC added: The comment also called out Madonna, one of many celebrities to speak at marches across the country, for telling crowds that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. ” “Comments like [Madonna’s] are absolutely unacceptable and had they been said about President Obama, the mainstream media would be in an uproar,” the official continued. “The Trump administration welcomes a robust discussion regarding the critical issues facing America’s women and families. ” Students for Life of America (SFLA) the nation’s largest organization of youth attempted to partner with the march, but were told only groups would be welcome, an action that ultimately revealed the main focus of the demonstration was to support abortion rights and fight the Trump administration’s promise to defund Planned Parenthood if it continues to perform abortions. SFLA crashed the march in Washington anyway, carrying a banner that read, “Abortion Betrays Women. ” The group posted on Facebook, “We will not sit by as Planned Parenthood, our nation’s abortion Goliath and a sponsor of this March, betrays women into thinking abortion is their only choice. ” The president of the youth group, Kristan Hawkins, also said in a statement that the Women’s March is “excluding the majority of American women who find abortion to be morally wrong and believe in protecting families, defending the marginalized, and achieving social justice. ” “Instead of a march to promote those worthy values and truly be inclusive, the event has turned into a rallying cry for the radical abortion industry to save their own baby: taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood,” she added. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Jeffrey M. Lacker, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in Virginia, resigned abruptly on Tuesday, saying that he had broken the Fed’s rules in 2012 by speaking with a financial analyst about confidential deliberations. Mr. Lacker said he also failed to disclose the details of the conversation even when he was questioned directly in an internal investigation. The confession and resignation shed light on a nearly mystery. In October 2012, Medley Global Advisors, a firm that tracks policy developments for financial investors, sent a note to its clients describing previously undisclosed details of the Fed’s plans for a new phase in its campaign. The information was potentially valuable to investors, who could have made money by anticipating the market’s reaction when the Fed’s plans were publicly disclosed. The Fed conducted an inconclusive investigation into the source of the leak. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened an insider trading investigation and referred the matter to the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which then began a criminal investigation, two people briefed on the matter said. But the investigation stalled in the past couple of years, one of the people said. As the various government authorities sought to resolve the matter, negotiations heated up about six weeks ago. The statute of limitations on the case was due to expire in the fall. Mr. Lacker decided to announce his resignation after being told by the authorities that they had completed their investigation into his role, a lawyer representing him said. “Dr. Lacker has cooperated with the Department of Justice and has been informed that no charges will be brought and that the investigation as to him is complete,” said the lawyer, Richard Cullen, a partner at McGuireWoods. (Mr. Lacker has a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin.) The Fed’s Office of the Inspector General said Tuesday that its investigation also was now complete. It is not clear whether any other investigations are in progress. The episode occurred after the Fed said in September 2012 that it would begin to accumulate mortgage bonds until job growth improved substantially, a new chapter in its campaign to stimulate economic growth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. On Oct. 3, a day before the Fed released an account of its deliberations, Regina Schleiger, a Medley analyst, sent a note to clients saying the Fed was likely to announce in December that it would buy Treasuries too. The note also said that Fed officials were considering a statement that the central bank would not raise interest rates before the unemployment rate fell below a threshold of 6. 5 percent. The information was accurate and valuable. On the day Ms. Schleiger published her memo, the yield on the benchmark Treasury was 1. 61 percent. After the Fed’s official account was published the next day, the benchmark yield rose to 1. 74 percent on the day. Investors who saw the memo — titled “Fed: December Bound” — could have profited by anticipating that movement. Mr. Lacker said Tuesday in his statement — issued by McGuireWoods rather than the Richmond Fed — that he had not provided any confidential information about the Fed’s deliberations to Ms. Schleiger, whom he did not name. Instead, he said that Ms. Schleiger mentioned the information and that he had failed to make clear that he could not comment. The next day, after seeing Ms. Schleiger’s memo, Mr. Lacker said, “I realized that my failure to decline comment on the information could have been taken by the analyst, in the context of the conversation, as an acknowledgment or confirmation of the information. ” He added, “I deeply regret the role I may have played. ” After the leak, the C. F. T. C. pursued an investigation under its “Eddie Murphy rule. ” This rule was a nod to Mr. Murphy’s 1983 movie “Trading Places,” which humorously exposed the legality of insider trading in commodities. In 2010, the Act adopted some restrictions on federal employees intentionally providing nonpublic government information to help other people trade in certain markets. Yet the investigation stalled as the agency and Manhattan federal prosecutors were unable to serve a subpoena on Medley because it considers itself to be a news organization, the people briefed on the matter said. The Justice Department generally avoids issuing subpoenas to news organizations. Separate from the insider trading rules, the Fed had announced a new policy in 2011 restricting contact between policy makers and market intelligence firms like Medley, which traded on the perception that analysts had access to inside information. Officials were instructed to avoid conversations that might contribute to such impressions. Mr. Lacker said Tuesday that in speaking with Ms. Schleiger he may have violated this policy, too, regardless of the contents of the conversation. He acknowledged speaking with her multiple times. Mr. Lacker, 61, was the member of the Fed’s committee. He became president of the Richmond Fed in August 2004. He had previously announced that he planned to resign in October. The Richmond Fed said it would continue to search for a new president, and that its first vice president, Mark L. Mullinix, would lead the bank in the interim. Mr. Lacker was not a voting member of the Fed’s policy committee this year. The Fed has sought to limit leaks in recent years both by sharing more information with the public and by tightening its communications policies. In a statement, the Fed said, “We appreciate the diligent efforts made to bring this matter to its conclusion. ” | 1 |
Democrat sources report U. S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke ( ) will announce his plans to run against Senator Ted Cruz ( ) in his 2018 bid. [“I’m very moved to do it,” O’Rourke, 44, said, according to the Houston Chronicle. O’Rourke said he had reached “the emotional decision” about running after traveling across Texas for the past three months. He has made no secret of his interest in running for the seat. Just before his to his third term last November, the Texas Tribune reported O’Rourke’s interest in either running against Senator Cruz in 2018 or Senator John Cornyn ( ) in 2020. O’Rourke currently represents the far West Texas District that includes El Paso. The congressman could face a challenger from within his own party in the 2018 Democratic Party Primary as fellow Rep. Joaquin Castro is also reported to be interested in running in 2018. Castro, who has been rising in the ranks of Democrat reps, is expected to announce his intentions in April, the Houston Chronicle stated. While the young representative from El Paso unseated a fellow Democrat in 2012 (Rep. Sylvester Reyes) his positions and other liberal leanings would make him a very unlikely to unseat a popular Republican senator who finished in second place in a field of 17 major candidates, the largest ever U. S. presidential primary race. Cruz has a war chest filled with cash and a proven ability to raise millions. O’Rourke drew national attention in the summer of 2016 when he staged a House Floor “ ” calling for stricter measures, a highly unpopular position for a potential statewide Texas politician. The Texas Tribune reported comments from a Democrat Senate campaign strategist who said it would take about $30 million for a “barebones” campaign in Texas. To have any chance, a candidate would need to raise around $50 million, the unnamed operative stated. One reason O’Rourke could be considering the 2018 run against Cruz is his stated position of supporting term limits for Congress. Senator Cruz’s campaign has yet to respond to O’Rourke’s intentions. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
A inquiry into allegations of doping in Russia, released Monday, confirmed a Russian ’s claims. The inquiry, commissioned by the World Agency, focused on Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov’s detailed account of cheating at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Who is Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov? He is the former director of Russia’s antidoping lab who oversaw drug testing at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He resigned last November after another investigation accused Russia of doping that was coordinated by government officials and Dr. Rodchenkov. Dr. Rodchenkov did not fully cooperate with that inquiry, and after its results were published, he fled to the United States, fearing for his life in Russia, he said. When did he speak out, and what did he say? In Los Angeles in May, he told The New York Times that Russia had seen hosting the Olympics as an opportunity to control the antidoping lab results and allow athletes to use drugs throughout the competition. He said that at Sochi, he had carried out orders from the country’s sports ministry to “win at any cost,” protecting top Russian Olympians who were on steroids from getting caught. At least 15 Russian medalists at Sochi used banned substances, Dr. Rodchenkov’s records indicated. How did the scheme that he detailed work? Dr. Rodchenkov said he had received spreadsheets from the Russian sports ministry that named top athletes who were part of the doping program. In the months leading up to the Olympics, he said, those athletes collected their clean urine and provided it in containers — soda bottles and baby formula bottles, for example — that were stockpiled in a freezer. At Sochi, Dr. Rodchenkov said, he spent most nights, from around midnight on, replacing urine samples tainted by drugs with clean urine from the same athletes, somehow breaking into the supposedly bottles that are the standard at international competitions. He did so with the help of members of Russia’s intelligence service, he said. For hours each night, the small team worked in a shadow laboratory lit by a single lamp, passing bottles of urine through a hole in the wall, to be ready for testing the next day, Rodchenkov said. How could the bottles have been breached? Dr. Rodchenkov said he never saw the bottles being opened, and whether it is possible to successfully break into the bottles has certainly figured into the investigation that is to be reported on Monday. “Magicians were on duty,” he said, claiming that he had seen locked bottles disappear through the hole in the wall and return about an hour later, unlocked and with their caps intact. He theorized that the method the Russian intelligence service used to break into the bottles had something to do with the toothed metal rings that lock the bottles when the cap is twisted shut. In the months leading up to the Games, he said, a man that Dr. Rodchenkov believed to be working for the intelligence service collected hundreds of those rings from the Moscow lab, he said. Aren’t doping samples anonymous? How did he know whose urine was whose? Each urine sample is coded with a unique number. Dr. Rodchenkov said that athletes had taken pictures of their sample forms, including the code, and texted them to the ministry, offering forbidden insight into the samples. Is there any other way to prove what he said? Dr. Rodchenkov said that he had added table salt to some of the urine samples he tampered with to make the specific gravity — a chemistry measurement recorded on the samples — match the specifications of the original tainted samples. He has encouraged investigators to examine Russian athletes’ urine from Sochi — which is still being stored in a laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland — to test for excessive levels of table salt, and to examine the glass bottles for telltale scratches around their necks, where the interlocking metal rings sit. Who conducted the investigation? Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer, led the inquiry, which was commissioned in May by the World Agency. Mr. McLaren was also part of a independent investigation that, last year, accused Russia of widespread, doping. What will happen next? Any decision to discipline Russia would rest with international sports federations and the International Olympic Committee. Last month, the global track and field authorities barred Russian athletes from the Rio Games. WADA has indicated that it could recommend barring the entire Russian delegation. Over the weekend, several national antidoping organizations and athlete groups made it clear that they were preparing to ask the I. O. C. to bar the entire Russian Federation from the Games. The organizations discussing taking that extraordinary step included the antidoping agencies of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. How will Russia react? Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s minister of sport, dismissed the significance of the McLaren investigation, which did not consult with him during its inquiry and which, along with WADA, does not have the power to do anything beyond issue recommendations to the I. O. C. and sports federations. Russia is challenging the ban imposed on its track and field team, and further legal action may follow if additional disciplinary measures are imposed. The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland is set to have a hearing this week regarding the ban on Russia’s track team, and a decision on that could come as soon as Wednesday. | 1 |
How Crooked Hillary’s “Fixer” Destroyed Bill Clinton’s Women
“I arranged a meeting for Hillary and a woman in an exclusive Beverly Hills hotel,” the man, who was hired by the Clintons, via a Hollywood executive, to cover up their scandals, told The ENQUIRER. PHOTOS: Revenge! Donald Trump Fighting Back Against Hillary Clinton’s Smear Campaign “She had come to the studio to see the filming of a movie in 1994.” “While I was there, I helped her slip out of a back exit for a one-on-one session with the other woman. It was made to look casual, leaving quietly [rather] that being caught up in the melee … but really it was for something presumably more sordid.” What’s more, it wasn’t just Hillary’s flings with women that the shadowy Mr. Fix It helped to orchestrate!– Clinton’s Top 5 Debate Whoppers Hillary’s former bagman finally confessed to The ENQUIRER just how he helped her to cover up her affair with married lover Vince Foster, too! The shadowy figure — who provided PROOF of his employment for the Clintons — also revealed 12 fixes he covered-up, including: + How Hillary secretly plotted to a counter-attack on Bill’s mistress Monica Lewinsky — via a document buried for two decades! + What crooked reporters were on the take from the Clinton camp! + How he covered up Bill’s seedy romp with hookers! + Which A-list celebrity had a secret affair with Bill during his presidency!
Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and has also produced the syndicated radio program, Health News. He has written 22 books and two documentary videos and is the host of his wildly popular daily YouTube Channel the “Still Report”, the quintessential report on the economy and Washington. | 0 |
President Donald Trump hosted a listening session at the White House to highlight the problems with Obamacare, as Americans continue to suffer from higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles and less coverage. [The president met nine American citizens Monday who were suffering the financial effects of what he described as the “very, very, failed and failing Obamacare law. ” Trump told the group that he would put into place a better plan that “lowers cost, expands choice, and ensures access for everyone” and promised “more competition and less regulation” in the market place. “You’ll see rates go down, down, down, and you’ll see plans go up, up, up, you’ll have a lot of choices,” he said. Trump admitted that it would take a few years to fully fix the insurance marketplace, but promised that it would be “a thing of beauty” when completed. He was critical of the media for reporting that Obamacare was doing well. “It’s a little bit like President Obama, when he left people like him, when he was here, people didn’t like him so much. That’s the way life goes, that’s human nature. ” Trump said that Republicans were in bad position politically by trying to repeal Obamacare, when it would be easier to let it collapse entirely. “The press is making Obamacare look so good all of a sudden,” he said, predicting disastrous results for the law in 2017. Carrie Couey, a cattle rancher from Colorado explained that her rates under Obamacare were three times the rates and that multiple insurers had dropped their coverage. “Millions of people had great health care that they loved,” Trump said. Brittany Ivey of George said her private insurance rates went up 110 percent, and that even though she was paying $1300 a month for a plan, her doctors wouldn’t take the insurance. “We’re so happy to be seeing it going,” she said. “It’s almost put our family in financial ruin. ” Elias Seife, Florida, an attorney from Florida, said that their insurance had changed every year since Obamacare was put into place, noting that they had a daughter with a disability. “I think the real scenario was that this law was supposed to implode … my parents came from communist Cuba, they know what socialism is all about, so I know what socialism is and that’s pretty much what this whole system was meant to have one single provider,” Seife said. Kim Sertich from Arizona told the president that the 116 percent increases reported in her state were very real, explaining that she lost her plan three times before opting out of getting health care all together. A nurse from Wisconsin, Gina Sell, said that she was forced to take a full time job and more time away from her family after, One man, Greg Knox of Ohio, gave the president a cutout card of his face with a note that was created by his son. Greg Knox of Ohio brings @realDonaldTrump a card that his son made for him pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) March 13, 2017, “I wish I looked that good,” Trump said, showing the card to the rest of the group. | 1 |
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The Golden State Warriors have been defined by artistic ball movement and underrated defense. But at their core, they may be powered by something more abstract: an ability to motivate themselves just when they are being doubted. With the playoffs set to begin on Saturday and the Warriors coming in as heavy favorites after winning a record 73 games, the question is whether a tightly knit group of players that has come to dominate basketball the last two years can keep that edge through the next two months. In all likelihood, they can. Just consider how the regular season concluded: After a shocking home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on April 5 left the Warriors with a record, Golden State needed to win its last four games to break the mark established by the Michael Chicago Bulls in the season. Because two of those last four games would come against a very tough Spurs team, including one in San Antonio, where Golden State had not won since 1997, the consensus seemed to be that the Warriors would fall short — especially with Warriors Coach Steve Kerr talking about the importance of resting key players before the playoffs. But Draymond Green, Golden State’s forward and emotional leader, had other ideas. He became intensely vocal about his desire to get the wins record, and pressure from him and Stephen Curry seemed to get to Kerr, who allowed his starters to keep playing as long as the Warriors kept winning. And they did, including a difficult victory in San Antonio that broke the Spurs’ seasonlong home winning streak. The rest was history, as the Warriors snatched the wins record and Curry almost assuredly locked up his second consecutive Most Valuable Player Award. Now comes the postseason. Can anyone really challenge this Warriors team and somehow rattle it? The Cleveland Cavaliers, despite the murmurs of internal strife, can never be discounted as long as LeBron James is around. The Spurs had one of the best teams in N. B. A. history, even if it went somewhat unnoticed. Still, if the Warriors, a team perfectly constructed to succeed in this era, play to their potential, it is hard to see any team keeping up with them. Jalen Rose, a N. B. A. veteran who will be providing playoff analysis for ESPN, said one of the biggest reasons for that is Curry’s killer instinct. Rose called Curry a “ assassin” and said Curry is set apart by his ability to maintain an edge as a defending champion and defending M. V. P. “He is not playing around,” Rose said. If Curry is looking for slights to motivate him, he may find one if he is not the first N. B. A. player unanimously named M. V. P. (Shaquille O’Neal and James have come the closest, each falling one vote short.) Chris Webber, a who will be part of TNT’s broadcast team, said a few M. V. P. voters may choose someone other than Curry simply to be contrarian. “I don’t see how a true, humble basketball fan can vote against Steph,” Webber said. Curry is likely to be the dominant story line of the playoffs after leading the N. B. A. in scoring average along with total field goals, and steals despite playing in the fourth quarter in just 60 of his 79 games. The Warriors complement him with incredible depth in Green, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala on a roster that is largely unchanged from last season. Asked to imagine a team that could compete with the Warriors, Rose said that the Spurs are contenders but that people should also consider the star power and depth of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Beyond Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, the Thunder also have a defensive ace in Serge Ibaka and an rotation at center in Steven Adams and Enes Kanter that can be remarkably effective. “If they’re clicking on all cylinders, I give them a punter’s chance obviously to put the kind of firepower out on the floor to go head to head with the Warriors four quarters,” Rose said, while acknowledging that Oklahoma City struggled in the fourth quarter this season. The quality of Oklahoma City’s front line could be a pivotal issue if it should face Golden State. Rose cited points in the paint as the Warriors’ biggest weakness and said teams would be wise to attack them inside. “While they defend really well, one of the best in the league, they’re short,” Rose said of Golden State’s Death Lineup in which Green plays center. “Draymond Green, when they have that lineup out there, he’s Harrison Barnes is or so you have to take advantage of that, try to get to the line, get them in foul trouble. ” For now, the Warriors will focus on the Houston Rockets, whom they beat in five games in last season’s Western Conference finals. It is a matchup that may not extend any longer this time around. But if an uninspiring matchup was not providing the team with the proper motivation, Jordan may have inadvertently put the chip right back on Golden State’s shoulder. When the Warriors broke the Bulls’ record earlier this week, Jordan issued a statement of congratulations. But he also included a line that seemed to be part jab and part reminder that their legacy is not yet secure. “I look forward to seeing what they do in the playoffs,” he said. For Curry and Green, that may be enough of a challenge to carry them all the way. | 1 |
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Breaking News PIERS MORGAN: “Get Off Your High Horse, Hillary. Only ONE Candidate is Up To Her Neck in FBI Probes and Her Name Isn’t Donald” PIERS MORGAN: “Get Off Your High Horse, Hillary. Only ONE Candidate is Up To Her Neck in FBI Probes and Her Name Isn’t Donald” Breaking News By TruthFeedNews November 4, 2016
By Piers Morgan When I competed in Donald Trump ’s first season of Celebrity Apprentice , he pitched me in the finale against country music star Trace Adkins. NBC promoted our showdown in endless commercials as ‘USA versus UK, good versus evil.’ Trace was portrayed as a strong, kind, polite, hard-working, all-American hero. I was depicted as an arrogant, obnoxious, ruthless British villain. There was just one problem, as I pointed out to Trump in a boardroom exchange that tragically never got aired. ‘One of us,’ I explained, ‘is a violent alcoholic who’s been shot by an ex-wife, stabbed in bar-room knife fights, and has a criminal record for a DUI.’ I competed in Donald Trump’s first season of Celebrity Apprentice – and I was once portrayed as evil, not unlike how Donald has been branded these days Yesterday, Hillary Clinton showed she didn’t get the ‘rise above the monster’ memo, shrieking herself hoarse (pictured today speaking in North Carolina) I paused for effect. ‘The other…. is me…. the bad guy.’ Trump roared with laughter. He got the irony, even if viewers never got the chance to. I was reminded of this today as I watched President Obama tear into Trump, branding him a small-brained, star-f***ing, Ku Klux Klan tolerating ‘loser’ born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It was an astonishingly personal and nasty attack from a man whose own wife Michelle recently declared from atop her lofty moral plinth: ‘When they go low, we go high.’ Yesterday, Hillary Clinton showed she didn’t get the ‘rise above the monster’ memo either, shrieking herself hoarse as she once again laid into Trump supporters she recently described as ‘The Deplorables’. ‘I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and the anger of people who support Donald Trump,’ she raged. This follows a familiar pattern from Team Clinton as election day draws closer: when in doubt, trash Trump and his followers in the meanest, ugliest, most personal way possible. The mantra seems to be: ‘When they go low, we plummet even lower.’ A similar mistake was made in Britain during the EU referendum debate when the Remain campaigners belittled and berated the Brexiters in a snide, sneering, superior manner. They lost. The problem for Mrs Clinton as she gallops across the fields of America like a crusading white knight trying to single-handedly save the nation from imminent Armageddon at the hands of Mr Evil is that she’s the Trace Adkins of this battle. In other words, she ain’t no saint herself. Her supporters don’t accept this of course. To them, Hillary is a vestal political virgin of unimpeachable integrity. ‘Why would I want to criticise her?’ a female Clinton-ite actress indignantly asked me on Twitter yesterday. ‘She’s up against a mad man. Compared to him, she’s bathed in golden light.’ It was the kind of thing I’d expect Tom Cruise to say in defence of his beloved basket case Scientologists. Yet as I write this, Clinton is facing potential FBI criminal investigations on two fronts. One is the re-opened case of her ongoing email scandal, this time centering on the contents of sexting pervert Anthony Weiner’s laptop. The second, according to the Washington Post, is an investigation into an alleged ‘pay-or-play’ operation Hillary ran out of the State Department that favoured donors to the Clinton Foundation charity. At the root of it lies a central charge that the Clintons have cynically and greedily exploited political power and status to enrich themselves, under the convenient protective umbrella of their Foundation. Big sponsors have been repeatedly ‘invited’ to donate big sums to the Foundation, then also donate big sums to the personal fortunes of Bill or Hillary in the form of cash, holidays, private jets and other benefits. On the face of it, this seems like a prima facie case of potential corruption. Yet the Post further reports the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation has been held up by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to the fury of many in the FBI. This is the same Loretta Lynch who Bill Clinton hijacked for a 30-minute conversation on a private airstrip days before the original FBI email investigation verdict exonerating his wife was made public. We can all draw our own conclusions, none of them I suspect very pretty. I know from first-hand experience there’s no such thing as a free lunch with the Clintons. There is no such thing as a free lunch with the Clintons. I know from my own dealings it’s quid-pro-quo: Bill would scratch my back if I scratched his I’ve interviewed Bill Clinton twice, for CNN. On both occasions, the request was only granted once I had agreed to moderate a panel for the former president at his annual Clinton Global Initiative event in aid of Clinton Foundation. It was a strict quid-pro-quo: Bill would scratch my back if I scratched his. So I scratched away, as do many other TV journalists each year who want an interview with him. There’s a similar pattern to almost everything in Planet Clinton: they trade favours. But when that trade involves millions of dollars raked into personal bank accounts on the back of charity donations, it stinks to high heaven. ‘Trace’ Clinton should get off her high horse, before she gets a nosebleed.
H/T – DailyMail
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Waking Times
The people at or near the top of the power pyramid are just as vulnerable to being sheep as we all are. In fact, they’re even more likely to fall to pressure from their peers because they have so much more at stake if they make the wrong choice.
That stake is money, power and other forms of capital. It’s their entire lifestyle at risk. If they rock the boat, there goes their business deals, their favors, their prioritization.
And these aspects of their life most likely define their identity, as sad as that might be.
That’s because all these consequences are of a nature which do not account for honor, integrity and morality. Connecting with the self to become an authentic man or woman is one of the real successes in life, so if they disregard this basic tenet to being human, then they’ve sold their soul for nothing less than a false path.
These sorts of people have a lot of influence that they’re failing to utilize for the benefit of humanity, as well as the environment. The core effect they could achieve is based in helping people to expand their understanding, and therefore their consciousness, to facilitate bringing about an era of truth, justice, peace and abundance for humankind.
Who exactly is being referenced here? They include celebrities, politicians, bureaucrats, military and police personnel, journalists, business moguls, so-called self-help gurus and pretty much anyone who is connected to the oligarchical families that are orchestrating the grand plan of global governance.
Now of course not all of them are alike. But let’s face it; how many of those with a massive social influence are speaking out against not just the peripheral problems, but the core ones such as the scams embedded into our system itself?
Fuck all; that how’s many.
Entering into their minds, it’s easy for them to be persuaded by the fear if they talk about some of the seriously uncomfortable truths of the world they’d be labeled as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the reality is that many conspiracy ‘facts’ are backed up with so much evidence they are simply ‘matter as fact’.
Like so many of us do, the truth needs to be shared. We all need to hear, understand and embody it into our thoughts and actions.
Simply, it stands to reason that we all need to play our part, especially those who have taken on a role with societal responsibility.
In any case, there are obviously many other reasons why these people don’t speak up. Examples include that they’re: subtly pretending to themselves that nothing is happening, ensuring they are a very unconscious person; turning a blind eye, even though they know and feel it; just simply ignorant of how the world works, like most people; psychopaths and/or sociopaths, where they’re involved in deeply disgraceful ideologies and practices; programmed and conditioned to support the status quo; dazed and confused in an overwhelming game of so-called power; a fake and weak human being; and/or in the drift of an existential crisis, which means their tide might actually turn. Final Thoughts
In the awakening community, we talk a lot about the people having the ultimate power, because we’ve got the numbers. So, if we want the sham of our system to cease, then all we have to do is organize to at least some degree to bring about the next steps of our societal evolution.
Well, what about all these people embedded in the parasitic culture that has hijacked humanity’s future? Can’t they be a beacon of light too?
Of course they can. To do so, they, like all of us, need to do their proper research and open their minds and hearts to both the madness and magic that permeates our existence of duality. If they do, they’ll deeply connect with their true role as a light shining into the darkness.
After all, no shadows exist when the light is shone from all angles. About the Author
Phillip J. Watt lives in Australia. His written work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook or visit his website . This article ( The Powerful Act Immoral as they Also Suffer from Herd Mentality ) was originally created by Phillip J. Watt and is re-posted here with permission. ~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family… | 0 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — It was 2:40 p. m. on Monday, a lull before the evening rush hour in Russia’s city, St. Petersburg, where the subway normally carries two million people a day. The train had just entered a tunnel between stations, on its way out of a sprawling downtown hub, when the bomb exploded. The homemade device, filled with shrapnel, tore through the third car. It killed 11 people wounded more than 40, including children and spread bloody mayhem as the train limped into the Technology Institute station with smoke filling the air. Videos circulating on social media showed long red streaks across the white floor as the injured were dragged from the car. With the doors damaged, some people smashed windows to get out. “What a nightmare!” somebody yelled amid piercing screams. With the attack, Russia once again appeared to have found itself a target of terrorism, shattering a respite in its main urban centers. Law enforcement agencies initially said they were seeking two people suspected of planting explosive devices, according to Russian news reports, but later indicated that the attack might have been carried out by a suicide bomber from a militant Islamic group. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but speculation turned toward militants from southern Russia, who fled the law enforcement policy in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Caucasus, joined the Islamic State by the thousands and have repeatedly threatened attacks. President Vladimir V. Putin sent the Russian military to Syria in September 2015 in order, he said then, to battle militants on their own turf before they could strike in Russia. In a nod to that possibility — a potential political setback — Mr. Putin, who was in St. Petersburg for the day, emphasized that terrorists were the likely culprits, although he said investigators were exploring various possibilities. He laid flowers at the site of the explosion and went to the local security headquarters to be briefed on the investigation. The last major terrorist attack in a Russian city was in Volgograd in 2013. “If somebody announces that it is related to the Russian invasion in Syria, it would be a sensitive scenario for Putin, because the Syria campaign would lose support inside Russia,” said Kirill Rogov, a political analyst, while adding that it was too early to connect the attack to Mr. Putin’s Syria policy with any certainty. The dead and wounded had barely been evacuated before the factions in Russia’s heated political sphere began blaming one another. Nationalists and others on the right pointed the finger at the opposition, saying such attacks emerged from the same womb as the street protests on March 26, in which tens of thousands of people marched against government corruption. Opposition figures responded that the security forces, feeling vulnerable, were perfectly capable of provoking a crisis in order to expand their powers of search and seizure. There were also unconfirmed reports that a suicide bomber from Uzbekistan or a neighboring country might have been responsible, unnerving St. Petersburg’s Central Asians. “This will be a stain on us, as though we are criminals,” said Rafael Artikov, a Uzbek, standing in front of a makeshift memorial. “The goal was to frighten us and split us into separate groups,” he added, lamenting that “people look at me as though I am suspicious. ” There was some relief that the attack had not been worse. A larger bomb was found at a nearby station, Vosstaniya Square, but was disarmed, a spokesman for the National Committee, Andrei Przhezdomsky, said on television. That bomb had been disguised as a fire extinguisher. Security was increased in the Moscow Metro system and at major transportation facilities across Russia. The health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, announced live on television that 10 people had died — seven in the subway system, one en route to a hospital and two while they were being admitted to an emergency room — and that 39 had been injured. Some of the wounded were children, she said. Mr. Przhezdomsky appeared on television later with an update that 11 people were dead and 45 wounded. Mikhail Syrovatsky, 20, wrote on VKontakte, a Russian social media network, that he had been ascending the escalator at the Technology Institute station when the blast occurred, followed by urgent calls to evacuate the station and the arrival of ambulances and a helicopter. “Left metro just in time,” he wrote. Mr. Syrovatsky added later, “I was standing on the escalator when some kind of noise started coming from below, then I heard the noise of the coming train. ” People began to scream, he said, and an announcement ordered passengers to evacuate. “Very soon, you could detect the smell of burning, but I didn’t see any smoke,” he said. “I didn’t see what was going on the platform itself. I think everyone thought this was a fire. ” A St. Petersburg transit worker, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was forbidden to comment to the news media, said the bomb exploded just after the train left the Sennaya Square station but was not powerful enough to derail it. The train limped to a stop at the Technology Institute station with smoke billowing, as passengers broke glass windows to escape and rescue workers smashed open the doors. At the Dzhanelidze Hospital, a large Soviet block of concrete, arriving relatives were whisked into a special room away from the news media. Valery Parfenov, the chief doctor, said at a news conference that many of the victims were dazed. He said six patients were in serious condition and four in very serious condition, including some with skull injuries that would require complex surgery. He held up a ball bearing to show the metal bits extracted from victims. The subway system was shut down for about five hours, and the city declared surface transportation free. Still, as offices let out, the streets clogged with traffic, and sidewalks were jammed with people making the long trek home from work on foot. “I appeal to you, citizens of St. Petersburg and guests of our city, to be alert, attentive and cautious, and to behave in a responsible manner in light of events,” Georgi S. Poltavchenko, the governor of St. Petersburg, said in a statement. He declared a mourning period starting on Tuesday. In a televised statement less than an hour after the explosion, Mr. Putin said he had spoken with the leaders of the special services, including the Federal Security Service, and with law enforcement officials, who he said would “do everything to find out the causes of what had happened. ” Speaking from the Konstantin Palace in the Strelna district of St. Petersburg, about 10 miles west of the blast, he added, “The government, both on the city and federal levels, will do everything to support families of the victims and injured. ” Mr. Putin was in St. Petersburg for a meeting with the president of Belarus — Alexander G. Lukashenko, a traditional ally who has recently feuded with the Kremlin — and to give a speech to the People’s Front, a political group Mr. Putin started. At a joint appearance with Mr. Lukashenko to say they had resolved their differences, he did not mention the attack again. According to a White House statement, President Trump spoke with Mr. Putin on Monday and condemned the “attack” in Russia. Over the years, most terrorist attacks against domestic targets in Russia have been the work of Islamic insurgents. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bomb that brought down a Russian airliner in Egypt in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board. Many victims were from St. Petersburg. In December 2013, weeks before the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, twin bombings at a train station and on a bus in the southern city of Volgograd killed more than 30 people. And in January 2011, a suicide attack at Domodedovo International Airport near Moscow killed more than three dozen people. The last fatal attack on a subway system in Russia occurred in March 2010, when explosions at two stations in central Moscow killed at least 33 people. Investigators blamed two suicide bombers from the Dagestan region for those attacks, and the leader of the Islamic insurgency in Chechnya, who has since been killed, claimed responsibility. The subway system in Moscow was also struck twice in 2004. In February of that year, a bomb detonated inside a train car as it left the Avtozavodskaya station in southeastern Moscow, killing at least 39 people. That August, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a station in northern Moscow, killing nine. Mr. Putin, in deploying the Russian military to Syria, said the move was meant to take the fight to Islamic radicals. Once deployed, however, the Russians concentrated more on shoring up the government of President Bashar than on attacking the Islamic State. The Russian militants in Syria have periodically threatened reprisals in Russia. In a video posted on YouTube last July, a masked man driving across a desert landscape growled, “Listen, Putin, we will come to Russia and kill you at your homes. ” | 1 |
LONDON — In a deeply embarrassing episode revealed on Sunday, a senior employee of the Israeli Embassy in Britain was recorded plotting to “take down” senior British politicians critical of Israel and calling Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson “an idiot” who “has become minister of foreign affairs without any responsibilities. ” The Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, offered a formal apology on Friday, according to a statement from the Israeli Embassy. The embassy also said that the employee, Shai Masot, who described himself as a former major in the Israeli Army now working as a political officer, would soon leave his job. Mr. Masot made the comment in October, in footage filmed in a London restaurant and obtained by the newspaper The Mail on Sunday. The recording was made by an Al Jazeera reporter acting undercover, who called himself Robin and who described himself as working for a political group called Labour Friends of Israel, which rejected any connection to him. The conversation involved Mr. Masot and Maria Strizzolo, an aide to Robert Halfon, an education minister and former political director of Conservative Friends of Israel. Mr. Masot was particularly eager to target Alan Duncan, a minister in the Foreign Office who has been critical of Israel and its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, a sensitive issue in British politics. Mr. Duncan, he said, “is causing a lot of problems. ” In the footage, Mr. Masot asked Ms. Strizzolo, “Can I give you some M. P. s that I would suggest you would take down?” he asked. He went on to say that she knew which M. P. s — members of Parliament — he was referring to. She asked him to remind her. “The deputy foreign minister,” he said, referring to Mr. Duncan. She said, “You still want to go for it?” His reply was ambiguous, but he said that Mr. Duncan was still causing problems. Ms. Strizzolo then asked, “I thought we had, you know, neutralized him just a little bit, no?” Mr. Masot answered, “No. ” Mr. Masot also mocked the opposition Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, whom he called “crazy,” and his “weirdo” supporters. Ms. Strizzolo told the newspaper that her conversation with Mr. Masot was “ and gossipy. ” But Crispin Blunt, a member of Parliament and the chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the “apparent activity of a diplomat of a foreign state,” in reference to Mr. Masot, was “formally outrageous and deserving of investigation. ” (In the video, Mr. Masot was also very critical of Mr. Blunt.) Stuart Polak, a member of the House of Lords and the director of Conservative Friends of Israel, said, “We utterly condemn any attempt to undermine Sir Alan, or any minister, or any member of Parliament. ” In its statement, the Israeli Embassy said it “rejects the remarks concerning Minister Duncan, which are completely unacceptable” and described Mr. Masot as “a junior embassy employee who is not an Israeli diplomat, and who will be ending his term of employment with the embassy shortly. ” Mr. Regev, the statement said, spoke to Mr. Duncan on Friday to apologize “and made clear that the embassy considered the remarks to be completely unacceptable. ” Reached on Sunday, Yiftah Curiel, the embassy spokesman, said that Mr. Masot was “not a diplomat and not a member of diplomatic corps — he’s an assistant to the deputy ambassador, who handles parliamentary affairs. ” Mr. Masot, sent from Israel, has been at the embassy for about a year, on a contract that is being terminated. Mr. Curiel emphasized that the Foreign Office judged the issue concluded. “The Israeli ambassador has apologized and is clear these comments do not reflect the views of the embassy or government of Israel,” a Foreign Office spokesman said in a statement. “The U. K. has a strong relationship with Israel, and we consider the matter closed. ” | 1 |
Prof. Rafiq Islam Responds to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Punjab Outlining the Background of the Hall Case at the 2 Shares
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Dear Vice Chancellor Kamran:
Salam from the East coast of Canada.
Thank you for taking the time to address this important issue regarding Professor Hall. Like yourself, we all have been stunned by the voracity of Dr. Mahon’s action. We used to think academics of certain reputation were above the reach of the tentacles of the Establishment. We all hoped that a president would not resort to such a shameless pandering to a special interest group. However, B’nai Brith is not just a special interest group, it is perhaps the most vindictive organization that has ever received prominence in the west. Allow me to elaborate.
You have correctly identified B’nai Brith to be “behind this movement against shutting down free speech.” While this statement is accurate, this phenomenon of targeting Canadian universities and Canadian society is not something that started now. Not too long ago, it used to be branded as ‘the hidden hand behind the hidden hand’. During the Harper era, this operation became a full-blown politically driven policy directive. The legislation that Dr. Mahon pathetically relies upon is a product of the Harper era. Harper had an extremist right-wing background and organizations like B’nai Brith have channelled that extremism to accomplish their hateful agenda. As early as the 1980s, I personally observed the spirit of this unholy union during my tenure as the president of Muslim Student Association at the University of Alberta. Although Harper didn’t attend that university, we were not too far from the epicentre of the neo-conservatism movement that was brewing in Canada. We fast-forward 30 years and come upon the type of events such as Professor Hall travesty that are products of that time. In fact, a web of such operations has been in full force for sometime in every aspect of Canadian lives. Only recently, we had this court ruling against Canadian Security Intelligence Service that was illegally spying on the public. This gangster-like involvement started in 2006, shortly after Harper and the neocon came to power.
This is not to say that the public is protected from such unconscionable manoeuvring under a liberal government. In fact, the most notorious scandals involving government and human rights have erupted during the liberal regime. Take for instance the case of Omar Khadr travesty .
MORE... Creating an Anti-Muslim Bias at a Canadian University Suspension of Tenured Professor Lacks Due Diligence Toxic Mind Control Contaminates The Public Sphere Irish human rights activists against freedom of speech? This case is something we had known, albeit too late to intervene at the time, and has been subsequently discredited publicly, even during the Harper regime . The overwhelming theme was pointed out by then barely 16 year old, Omar Khadr, who said, “ You don’t care about me ”. This is what defines the mindset of these people, bent on extremism over extremism to subdue public conscience.
The attack on Professor Hall was particularly toxic, but equally sinister attacks have taken place before. Some decade ago, now defunct Canadian Islamic Congress faced onslaught from all sides based on planted stories and baited manoeuvring. It was the largest Muslim Organization at a time Canadian Muslims became the largest religious minority. One particular episode involved B’nai Brith’s planted story involving a University professor, who became the target of hate crime, while at the same time investigated for hate crime. If it wasn’t for the humane and civic behaviour of the then University president (current Governor General), David Johnston, it would have become career threatening, if not life threatening event of the professor. Top university personnel told me in private how the university faced pressure from ‘donors’ that wanted that professor to disappear from the academic as well as public arena. The vendetta of this sort beggars belief even today. What we don’t know is how many of these assaults on conscience took place and has been brewing.
Clearly, some of the faithful members/sympathizers apply it publicly. Such was the case of former professor turned politician, Irwin Cotler, who routinely infected the political arena with his prejudice and bias imported from the academia. Then there are others, such as Alan Rock of University of Ottawa that implanted manoeuvring of the political arena to the academia. A third group would be Lorna Marsden of York University that abused authority to run a vindictive agenda. Yet, others have found every other way possible to target a person of conscience all the meanwhile covering up all trails so the victim cannot point a finger to the attacker and has no recourse to justice or self defence. It doesn’t matter which category they belong to, they all produce scandals and drag down the good name of the academia while agencies that are supposed to be uphold the rights and dignity of the academia stand by and, for some cases, join in to the atrocity. This obscene attack on human rights and academic decency was once brought to light by late Professor David Noble, who ended up suing York University and Canadian Jewish Congress jointly for conspiring against him. Professor Noble, a Jew himself, faced the vilest of subjugation by organizations claiming to promote the rights of Jews. That wasn’t enough, Dr. Noble had to take on Human Rights Commission and other agencies that stood by either in complicity or in collusion with the University authority. Professor Noble passed away before the lawsuit could see a day in court but soon University of Ottawa would come in the picture with the infamous involvement of Alan Rock, a man without a PhD that was at the helm of the University. Mr. Rock recently left the University—but not before leaving the University’s good name in the sewerage of politicking. What Dr. Mahon has done is bring this insidious modus operandi to yet another victim.
Had I not have the misfortune of being on the wrong side of this modus operandi in the last 30 years, I would almost not understand what is at works here. In old days, such tactic would be unheard-of in a University. Certainly, such things couldn’t happen in a civilized country, I would exclaim.
So, what happened to Professor Hall is not new. What is new is the waking up of the general public. Your letter reverberates the emotion of everyone with conscience that came to know about Professor Hall. People are waking up and are beginning to ask for justice. For instance, in the context of CSIS, an activist, Jim Comeau wrote, “I would say it's time to jail the highest ranking CSIS to send a clear message to the rest of them, do something illegal, straight to prison. They damn well knew what they were doing was illegal.”
The People’s revulsion to such atrocious maligning of people of conscience was summed up in recent letter of Julian Assange, who wrote on US General election day (November 8, 2016):
“Yet, some weeks ago, in a tactic reminiscent of Senator McCarthy and the red scare, Wikileaks, Green Party candidate Stein, Glenn Greenwald and Clinton’s main opponent were painted with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications—because none exists.
In the end, those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them – a reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate.”
Of course, recent events have allowed us to see this in the highest level of politics in the United States.
To anyone with an iota of conscience, there is no mystery here. People are making their voice clearly known. In the words of Claire Lanyado, “I prefer unpredictable to criminal and evil.” The problem is, when a president of University for whatever reason decides to use his position to serve the special interest group deliberately, there is no recourse for a professor to fight him/her. In other cases, if such atrocity were launched against a student (e.g. the case of Freeman-Maloy vs. Lorna Marsden of York University ), the student, an anti-Zionist Jew, could bring a lawsuit of misfeasance in public office with the help of yet another Jewish lawyer, Peter Rosenthal (who himself is a University professor of Mathematics). It was struck down by the court, and then it was overruled by the court of appeals. At the end, the University settled and Dr. Marsden, the embattled President was gone. The morale of this story is, the path to justice is steep, but for a professor, the path to justice is becoming impossible.
The irony is that it is the people harboring so much hate who tell others that they are committing hate crimes, just because they dare speak out against an atrocity. Of course, they pick their targets that are perceived as weak and vulnerable and they attack the target only after making sure that the target cannot run to anyone for justice.
That’s how extremism works.
Sincerely,
Rafiq Islam | 0 |
Federal authorities in New York have issued a subpoena for records pertaining to allegations that Anthony D. Weiner exchanged sexually explicit messages with a girl, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Weiner was the subject of an article on Wednesday in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, that said he had an online correspondence with the girl beginning in January that included suggestive texts and explicit messages sent over social media. According to The Daily Mail, the girl, who was not identified, said she did not want to press charges “because she believes her relationship with Weiner was consensual. ” Still, she and her father agreed to be interviewed out of concern for other underage girls, the publication reported. It was not clear which records investigators in the office of the United States attorney, Preet Bharara, would subpoena. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. A spokesman for the New York Police Department said it was investigating Mr. Weiner but did not elaborate. Last month, Mr. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, told him she wanted to separate, after The New York Post reported that he had exchanged lewd messages with a woman, including a photo that included an image of his crotch as he lay next to the couple’s son. The New York City Administration for Children’s Services opened an investigation into his treatment of the Jordan, Mr. Weiner said at the time. Before that, Mr. Weiner’s political career, as a congressman and then a candidate for mayor of New York, had been twice destroyed as a result of lewd messages exchanged with strangers. | 1 |
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A leaked passage from Megyn Kelly’s new book reveals that her perverted boss, Roger Ailes, offered to advance the Fox host’s career in exchange for “sexual favors.”
Kelly’s book, titled Settle For More , is set to be released on November 15. In the book, she reportedly reveals that Ailes targeted her as well as many of the other women at Fox News. The harassment took place early on during Kelly’s time at Fox News, beginning in 2005. The managing editor came to her and told her that she had “captured the attention of Mr. Ailes.” She would soon learn just what this meant during the first of several meetings at his office in Manhattan.
“Roger began pushing the limits,” she alleges. “There was a pattern to his behavior. I would be called into Roger’s office, he would shut the door, and over the next hour or two, he would engage in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with me — veering between obviously inappropriate sexually charged comments (e.g. about the ‘very sexy bras’ I must have and how he’d like to see me in them) and legitimate professional advice.”
But things didn’t stop there. Radar reports :
“He offered to advance her career ‘in exchange for sexual favors,’ she writes, and even though she says she rejected ‘every single one,’ she claims he tried ‘physical advances.'”
“But in January 2006, she claims, he ‘crossed a new line — trying to grab me repeatedly and kiss me on the lips.’ When she shoved him away, she alleges, ‘he asked me an ominous question: ‘When is your contract up?’ And then, for the third time, he tried to kiss me.’ ”
Kelly stayed conspicuously quiet when former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson came forward and filed a lawsuit against Ailes accusing him of sexual harassment. In her book, Kelly says that Ailes launched an “intense campaign” to convince her to speak out on his behalf when Carlson first filed her claim against him.
“I was approached several times, and several times I refused,” she writes. “There was no way I was going to lie to protect him.”
The revelation confirms what most of us already assumed. After all, it wasn’t likely that a dirty old man like Ailes would go after so many other women at the network and not target the pretty young starlet. Until now, though, this had not been confirmed by Kelly. She said in her book that she finally decided it was time to speak out, even though there could be serious consequences.
“Crossing him was a major risk,” she said, “but what if — God forbid — he was still doing it to someone?”
The passages regarding Ailes were reportedly added to the book after the rest of it had been completed. The book’s publisher is HarperCollins, which is owned by the same media company as Fox, who fired Ailes after Carlson filed suit against him.
Radar also noted that Kelly has stressed “that though she rebuffed all of his advances, he [Ailes] never went through with his implied threat of revenge. Instead, he promoted her.”
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A large cache of documents hacked from French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaigning team have been dumped on the internet, with just hours to go until polling opens in the final round of voting. [The information includes genuine staffers’ personal and professional emails as well as campaign finance material and contracts, all of which were taken by anonymous hackers some weeks ago, Macron’s En Marche movement confirmed in a statement. However, they added that false documents had been mixed in to the file dump to “seed doubt and disinformation. ” Staffers said they would “take all measures” to uncover what happened. The incident is embarrassing for the campaign, which had previously denied reports that staff emails had been hacked. They were also unable to point out which documents were false. Links to the documents were posted to the internet chat site 4Chan shortly before midnight in France, just as the Presidential election entered a mandated media blackout. Traditionally no public discussion of the election takes place on the eve of polling day, nor on the day itself, to give voters time to make their own assessment of the campaign and vote accordingly. Consequently, Macron rival Marine Le Pen’s campaign team were unable to comment formally on the leak. However, Florian Philippot, one of Le Pen’s main advisors, asked in a tweet, “Will the #Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism deliberately buried?” He added “[I] fear democracy is wrecked”. Les #Macronleaks des choses que le journalisme d’investigation a délibérément tues ? Effrayant ce naufrage démocratique. — Florian Philippot (@f_philippot) May 5, 2017, France’s electoral commission moved quickly following the release of the documents to issue guidelines asking French media to refrain from covering the leaks. “Free and fair elections are at play,” a statement said, adding that penalties for rebroadcasting forged documents could include criminal charges. It also confirmed that it will be holding a meeting early Saturday to address the hack and leak. The incident arose just hours after the commission confirmed in a separate statement that it had called on the Interior Ministry to investigate claims by the Le Pen campaign that ballot papers nationwide are being tampered with nationwide, to the benefit of Macron, The Le Pen campaign said electoral administrators in several regions who receive ballot papers for both candidates have found the Le Pen ballot “systematically torn up. ” | 1 |
Getty - Alex Wong The Wildfire is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.
With the election a little under two weeks away, former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh is all in for Trump.
But if you thought you were anti-Hillary, you may want to think again.
Walsh, who's made no secret about his disgust for the former Secretary of State, sent out this head-turning tweet on Wednesday: On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump.On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket.You in? — Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
No, it's not a parody. Walsh just said he is going to grab his musket if Trump doesn't win the 2016 presidential election. And yes, he invited others to join him.
CNN's Jake Tapper saw the tweet and like most of us, he wanted Walsh to clarify his comments: @WalshFreedom what exactly does that mean? — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 26, 2016
Walsh responded: @jaketapper It means protesting. Participating in acts of civil disobedience. Doing what it takes to get our country back. — Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
Others weighed in, too: — Brian Fagioli (@brianfagioli) October 26, 2016 @walshfreedom @jaketapper Doing what it takes to get your country back? It’s called voting. Never heard it referred to as “musketing” — John Blanco (@ZaBlanc) October 26, 2016 I don't think @WalshFreedom understands the meaning of "civil disobedience." pic.twitter.com/qqdX6WDbP9 — John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) October 26, 2016
But one commenter said, “I think you got a good portion of gun owners that are with you. But seriously a musket. You might want to update your arsenal.” | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Ben Carson, the nominee for secretary of housing and urban development, presented himself on Thursday as a credible manager for a sprawling federal bureaucracy, navigating an unlikely transition from celebrated neurosurgeon and genial conservative presidential candidate to the steward of American housing policy. At a Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Carson, 65, strained at times to square his past remarks on the dangers of federal assistance — he once called poverty “really more of a choice than anything else” — with the mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency with a $47 billion budget and a mandate to help millions of renters and struggling homeowners. Forgoing many specifics, he laid out a vision of a more “holistic” approach: recruiting private sector dollars and seeking to end what he called a cycle of “generation after generation of people living in dependent situations. ” “Safety net programs are important. I would never advocate abolishing them without having an alternative for people to follow,” he said, adding that “some have distorted what I’ve said about government. ” Yet Americans had come to view HUD’s mission as “putting roofs over the heads of poor people,” Mr. Carson said. “It has the ability to be so much more than that. ” As with his presidential campaign, Mr. Carson leaned heavily on his own compelling biography, straying frequently from his prepared opening remarks as he spoke of life in an impoverished section of Detroit as the son of a single mother with a education. He waded through several contentious moments, including some aimed at his prospective boss, Donald J. Trump, and the specter of conflicts over HUD funding and Trump family business ventures. But Mr. Carson, who was prone to fits of spaciness and occasionally bewildering remarks as a candidate, appeared to avoid any major slips on Thursday. The tone of the proceedings diverged sharply from that of hearings this week for Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and the selection for attorney general. Both men faced aggressive questioning from Democrats — and, in Mr. Tillerson’s case, from a Republican, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. On Thursday, Mr. Rubio introduced Mr. Carson as a leader with “the values, the compassion and the character and the kind of drive that we need. ” Senators from both parties made warm reference to Mr. Carson’s granddaughter in attendance, who wore pink headphones during the testimony. They thanked him for his career in medicine. Even some of the more pointed questioners, like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, were disarmed. “You remind me of Columbo,” Mr. Carson said at one point, to extended laughs. “I’ve actually heard that before,” Mr. Brown said. Still, there were sharp exchanges. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sought to pin Mr. Carson down on a simple question: “Can you assure me that not a single taxpayer dollar that you give out will financially benefit the or his family?” Mr. Carson said he would be driven by morals. Ms. Warren cut him off, saying her specific concern was whether grants and loans could specifically benefit Mr. Trump. “It will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any American,” Mr. Carson said, becoming flustered for a moment before quickly clarifying that he wanted to use the department to help “all Americans. ” Ms. Warren called on Mr. Trump to establish a blind trust, accusing him of “hiding” his assets. Mr. Carson would not commit definitively to avoiding Trump businesses if confirmed. “If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that’s working for millions of people and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain $10 from it, am I going to say no?” Mr. Carson said. Later, he agreed to work with Mr. Brown to construct a system to identify properties tied both to the Trump family and the department. He committed to telling senators about the department’s dealings with any businesses owned by Mr. Trump or his relatives. More often, Mr. Carson sat patiently as lawmakers recited some of the most fraught comments of his public life. In one interaction, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, asked if Mr. Carson truly believed in HUD’s mission, given his trail of comments railing against government intervention. “I think the rental assistance program is essential,” Mr. Carson said, when pressed twice, “and what I have said if you’ve been reading my writings: It is cruel and unusual punishment to withdraw those programs before you provide an alternative. ” When asked about housing protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens, Mr. Carson, a vocal opponent of marriage, said he would “enforce all the laws of the land” if confirmed. But he expressed his personal opposition to any expression of what he called “extra rights” for certain groups. For Republicans, the hearing supplied an opportunity to pay tribute to a figure revered by the conservative base. Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, asked Mr. Carson what he thought was “the best possible thing we can do for someone on government assistance. ” “Get them off it,” Mr. Carson said. | 1 |
By Sarah Jones on Fri, Oct 28th, 2016 at 2:27 pm Donald Trump's message that everything in the U.S. is crap and we are all drowning in economic hardship that only Trump can fix got slapped down today as the U.S. economy “roars back”. Share on Twitter Print This Post
Donald Trump’s message that everything in the U.S. is crap and we are all drowning in economic hardship that only Trump can fix got slapped down today as the U.S. economy “roars back”.
The advance estimate of GDP for the third quarter of 2016 showed that the Obama economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9%. The conservative Wall Street Journal headlined this news with, “U.S. Economy Roars Back, Grew 2.9% in Third Quarter.”
Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, summarized the numbers, “Real GDP grew 2.9 percent at an annual rate in the third quarter, with strong export growth and continued strength in consumer spending.”
This news flies in the face of Donald Trump’s basic economic message of doom and gloom that only he can fix. “The Trump economic plan creates at least 25 million jobs, boosts growth up to 4 percent, and is revenue neutral,” Trump’s website claims.
Before these numbers, Trump’s previous problem was that Trump’s economic plan is a big giveaway to the top one percent, isn’t revenue neutral and would destroy 11 million jobs. Trump also struggled with analysis that his plan could hurt the economy in the long run.
The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation found that Trump’s plan would cost the US trillions of dollars and grow the incomes of the top one percent by 10%-16%. Trump’s tax plan could cost the U.S. 11 million jobs.
According to a report released at the end of July by Moody’s Analytics, Hillary Clinton’s economic proposals would create millions of jobs and boost economic growth higher than current projections. “The analysis shows that, if implemented, the Democratic nominee’s agenda would create 10.4 million jobs and accelerate economic growth to an annual average of 2.7 percent.”
Under Trump’s plan, Moody’s estimated that unemployment would spike to 7 percent and over 3 million Americans would be put out of work. “The U.S. economy will weaken significantly if Mr. Trump’s economic policies are fully implemented as he has proposed,” the June report said. “The economy will suffer a recession that begins in early 2018 and extends into 2020…even longer than the Great Recession.”
Yikes.
Trump sells these plans with a broadly negative message that often strays from facts. Trump earned a “Pants on Fire!” from PolitiFact for this claim made June 16th, 2015 in his presidential announcement speech, “The last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product … was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.”
But also they note, “Finally, since Trump was attacking Obama for this bad quarter of growth, we’ll just throw this out: Of the 42 quarters of negative growth since World War II, 30 occurred under Republican presidents and just 12 under Democratic presidents.”
Today’s new economic numbers help Clinton make the argument that people should vote for her if they want to continue the record setting job growth numbers and economic growth under President Obama.
Hillary for America Senior Policy Advisor Jacob Leibenluft pounced on the numbers to say, “Today’s GDP release shows economic growth at its fastest pace in two years… But Hillary Clinton believes there is still more we need to do to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. Independent experts agree her plan would create good-paying jobs through investments in infrastructure, innovation and education.”
The economy is roaring back under President Obama, and the numbers suggest that it does better under a Democratic president. Donald Trump keeps saying Clinton is 4 more years of Obama, which makes a sunny case for her.
Trump is already struggling with just 11 days to go until the election on November 8th, and these numbers just added more weight to his uphill battle. Reality has spoken, and it doesn’t agree with Donald Trump’s vision of America. | 0 |
Everyday, more and more information surfaces about Benghazi.
A critical email that just surfaced shows that the Pentagon offered to act immediately in Benghazi.
Here are the details:
VIA Allen B West
The ugly truth about Benghazi continues to trickle out. Like this critical email that shows the Pentagon urgently offering help to the unfolding attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. And although it came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty.
As Judicial Watch notes, the email ‘leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come.”
In other words, the Pentagon was offering military assets that potentially could have saved the lives of American citizens — if only the State Department had signed off.
Of course, we all remember who was leading the State Department at that time. Everyone’s favorite leading Democrat candidate for president, Hillary Clinton.
Via The Right Scoop :
An email recently obtained by Judicial Watch shows that the Pentagon was demanding Hillary allow them to send help to Benghazi during the 2012 attack. This would completely contradict the claim from Hillary and Leon Panetta that no forces were available and within reach to provide help to the compound that was under siege.
From Fox News:
As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.
The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”
Ironically, Hillary Clinton and her minions were concerned with spinning the story instead of gearing up the military forces.
Here’s the email: More:
The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.
Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.
“This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.
Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.
So there it is. Panetta and Hillary LIED to the American public over and over, and the media never pressed them enough to demand answers.
The clincher? This information has been available since a month after the attack. But as Judicial Watch notes:
The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA Annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi. | 0 |
PARIS — A French farmer who smuggled African migrants to safety, defying the authorities in an effort that his supporters likened to the Underground Railroad, was essentially given a slap on the wrist by a court on Friday. The farmer, Cédric Herrou, a bearded olive grower, has become something of a hero after he shepherded migrants across the Italian border and into the Roya Valley of southern France, challenging official policy of rounding up migrants and sending them to detention centers or deporting them. A court in Nice ordered Mr. Herrou on Friday to pay a fine of 3, 000 euros, or about $3, 200. If he stays out of trouble for five years, he will not have to pay it. The light sentence — almost a nonsentence, given that the prosecutor, Prêtre, had asked for a tougher punishment — was an indication of how politically delicate the case against Mr. Herrou had become. He had popular opinion largely on his side — a fact the judges appeared to acknowledge in essentially letting him go with a warning. At the end of a highly publicized trial last month, Mr. Prêtre had requested that Mr. Herrou, 37, be given a suspended prison term. A 2012 law allows citizens to help migrants for humanitarian reasons. Before that legislation, such aid could result in a sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to €30, 000. But Mr. Prêtre said that Mr. Herrou’s actions had gone beyond the scope of the law, helping migrants enter the country illegally instead of merely offering them shelter. Last month, the readers of the newspaper chose Mr. Herrou as “Azuréen of the Year,” a reference to people from the Côte d’Azur. At the trial, Mr. Prêtre appeared contrite at times that the law had to be applied to Mr. Herrou, whose cause he praised as “noble. ” Mr. Herrou was cleared on Friday of the more severe charges of having helped illegal migrants stay on French territory and of having illegally hosted more than 50 Eritreans in an abandoned holiday resort. Agence reported that Mr. Herrou had welcomed the decision in an address to a small crowd of supporters in front of the courthouse. “We’ll carry on, because it’s necessary,” he told the crowd, according to the news agency. Mr. Herrou told Europe 1 radio Friday morning that he is sheltering five migrant minors from Sudan and Eritrea at his home. “There’s a deficiency of the state in France and in Italy, so I take action,” he said. Mr. Herrou is not the only person to have appeared in court for illegally assisting migrants. Last month, Mannoni, a researcher, was acquitted by the same court in Nice of having offered a ride to migrants. Border control has become a defining political issue in France in light of repeated terrorist attacks. | 1 |
By John Whitehead, the Rutherford Institute .
“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government .”—John Lennon
How do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels , sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs?
Politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.
No matter who sits in the White House, the shadow government will continue to call the shots behind the scenes.
Relying on the courts to restore justice seems futile.
Indeed, with every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts, largely lacking in vision and scope, rendering narrow rulings focused on the letter of the law. This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Even so, justice matters.
It matters whether you’re a rancher protesting a federal land-grab by the Bureau of Land Management, a Native American protesting an oil pipeline that will endanger sacred sites and pollute water supplies, or an African-American taking to the streets to protest yet another police shooting of an unarmed citizen.
Unfortunately, protests and populist movements haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.
It doesn’t matter who the activists are (environmentalists, peaceniks, Native Americans, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, or the Bundys and their followers) or what the source of the discontent is (endless wars abroad, police shootings, contaminated drinking water, government land-grabs), the government’s modus operandi has remained the same: shut down the protests using all means available, prosecute First Amendment activities to the fullest extent of the law, and discourage any future civil uprisings by criminalizing expressive activities, labelling dissidents as extremists or terrorists, and conducting widespread surveillance on the general populace in order to put down any whispers of resistance before it can take root.
Thus, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
Just recently, in fact, an Oregon jury rejected the government’s attempts to prosecute seven activists who staged a six-week, armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
In finding the defendants not guilty—of conspiracy to impede federal officers, of possession of firearms in a federal facility, and of stealing a government-owned truck—the jury sent its own message to the government and those following the case: justice matters.
The Malheur occupiers were found not guilty despite the fact that they had guns in a federal facility (their lawyers argued the guns were “as much a statement of their rural culture as a cowboy hat or a pair of jeans”). They were found not guilty despite the fact that they used government vehicles (although they would argue that government property is public property available to all taxpayers). They were found not guilty despite the fact that they succeeded in occupying a government facility for six weeks, thereby preventing workers from performing their duties (as the Washington Post points out, this charge has also been used to prosecute extremist left-wingers and Earth First protesters ).
Many other equally sincere activists with eloquent lawyers and ardent supporters have gone to jail for lesser offenses than those committed at the Malheur Refuge, so what made the difference here?
The jury made all the difference.
These seven Oregon protesters were found not guilty because a jury of their peers recognized the sincerity of their convictions, sympathized with the complaints against an overreaching government, and balanced the scales of justice using the only tools available to them: common sense, compassion and the power of the jury box.
Jury nullification works.
As law professor Ilya Somin explains, jury nullification is the practice by which a jury refuses to convict someone accused of a crime if they believe the “law in question is unjust or the punishment is excessive .” According to former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, the doctrine of jury nullification is “premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished.”
Imagine that: a world where the citizenry—not the government or its corporate controllers—actually calls the shots and determines what is just.
In a world of “ rampant overcriminalization ,” where the average citizen unknowingly breaks three laws a day, jury nullification acts as “ a check on runaway authoritarian criminalization and the increasing network of confusing laws that are passed with neither the approval nor oftentimes even the knowledge of the citizenry.”
Indeed, Butler believes so strongly in the power of nullification to balance the scales between the power of the prosecutor and the power of the people that he advises :
If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights ; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
In other words, it’s “we the people” who can and should be determining what laws are just, what activities are criminal and who can be jailed for what crimes.
Not only should the punishment fit the crime, but the laws of the land should also reflect the concerns of the citizenry as opposed to the profit-driven priorities of Corporate America.
This is where the power of jury nullification is so critical: to reject inane laws and extreme sentences and counteract the edicts of a profit-driven governmental elite that sees nothing wrong with jailing someone for a lifetime for a relatively insignificant crime.
Of course, the powers-that-be don’t want the citizenry to know that it has any power at all.
They would prefer that we remain clueless about the government’s many illicit activities, ignorant about our constitutional rights, and powerless to bring about any real change.
In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, jury nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.
For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.
Nullification is one way of doing so.
Various cities and states have been using this historic doctrine with mixed results on issues as wide ranging as gun control and healthcare to “ claim freedom from federal laws they find onerous or wrongheaded .”
Where nullification can be particularly powerful, however, is in the hands of the juror.
The reality with which we must contend is that justice in America is reserved for those who can afford to buy their way out of jail.
For the rest of us who are dependent on the “fairness” of the system, there exists a multitude of ways in which justice can and does go wrong every day. Police misconduct. Prosecutorial misconduct. Judicial bias. Inadequate defense. Prosecutors who care more about winning a case than seeking justice. Judges who care more about what is legal than what is just. Jurors who know nothing of the law and are left to deliberate in the dark about life-and-death decisions. And an overwhelming body of laws, statutes and ordinances that render the average American a criminal, no matter how law-abiding they might think themselves.
If you’re to have any hope of remaining free—and I use that word loosely—your best bet remains in your fellow citizens.
Your fellow citizens may not know what the Constitution says (studies have shown Americans to be abysmally ignorant about their rights), they may not know what the laws are (there are so many on the books that the average American breaks three laws a day without knowing it), and they may not even believe in your innocence, but if you’re lucky, those who serve on a jury will have a conscience that speaks louder than the legalistic tones of the prosecutors and the judges and reminds them that justice and fairness go hand in hand.
That’s ultimately what jury nullification is all about: restoring a sense of fairness to our system of justice. It’s the best protection for “we the people” against the oppression and tyranny of the government, and God knows, we can use all the protection we can get. It’s a powerful way to remind the government—all of those bureaucrats who have appointed themselves judge, jury and jailer over all that we are, have and do—that we’re the ones who set the rules.
We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent.
Unfortunately, the government’s divide and conquer tactics are working like a charm.
Despite the laundry list of grievances that should unite “we the people” in common cause against the government, the nation is more divided than ever by politics, by socio-economics, by race, by religion, and by every other distinction that serves to highlight our differences.
The real and manufactured events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have all conjoined to create an environment in which “we the people” are more divided, more distrustful, and fearful of each other.
What we have failed to realize is that in the eyes of the government, we’re all the same.
In other words, when it’s time for the government to crack down—and that time is coming—it won’t matter whether we supported Hillary or Trump, whether we stood with the pipeline protesters or opposed BLM, or whether we spoke out against government misconduct and injustice or remained silent.
When the government cracks down, we’ll all suffer.
Here’s the thing: the government wants a civil war.
The objective: compliance and control.
Its strategy: destabilize the economy through endless wars, escalate racial tensions, polarize the populace, heighten tensions through a show of force, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.
The government has been anticipating and preparing for such a civil uprising for some time now.
Those protests in Ferguson , Baltimore and Baton Rouge to protest police brutality? The militarized police “ clad in Kevlar vests, helmets, and camouflage, armed with pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, and tear gas ” turning towns into war zones? The kenneling of pipeline protesters in North Dakota?
Those were just dress rehearsals for the government to work out the kinks in its operating manual on how to deal with civil unrest.
They were also previews of what’s in store if we continue to challenge the powers-that-be.
After all, it’s hard to persuade anyone to stand against tyranny when all you can promise them as a reward is persecution, prosecution and a one-way trip to the morgue. And when the outcome seems to be a foregone conclusion—the government always wins—it can seem pointless, even foolhardy, to dare to challenge the system.
So how do you not only push back against the police state’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?
You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.
Employ militant nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience , which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.
Take part in grassroots activism, which takes a trickle-up approach to governmental reform by implementing change at the local level (in other words, think nationally, but act locally).
And then, as I explain in more detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , nullify everything. Nullify the court cases. Nullify the laws. Nullify everything the government does that is illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional. | 0 |
USA TODAY reports that downsizing at various Kellogg’s facilities across the country could put 1, 110 Americans out of work. [Kellogg’s spokesperson Kris Charles said the cereal giant will shift away from direct delivery of its foods to stores, and will instead utilize grocers’ distribution centers. The move will shutter 39 Kellogg’s distribution centers from Maryland to Ohio to New York. “While this is the right move for the company to achieve our objectives, it was a difficult decision because of its impact on employees,” company spokesperson Kris Charles said, according to CNYCentral. Charles says each site outfits roughly 30 employees, which means the company could lay off as many as 1, 170 workers. The closures “will not have a sizable impact on any one community,” Charles added. The move is part of the company’s initiative, Project K, launched in 2013. Kellogg’s reported a loss of $53 million in the fourth quarter, CNBC reports. The decision to expand its direct store delivery network shows “how serious we are at creating a more competitive and a snack business,” said President Paul Norman of Kellogg North America on the company’s investor call Thursday. “(It’s) a very difficult decision,” Norman added. “We firmly believe this is the right move for our business as we look forward to changing consumer and shopper trends. ” Kellogg’s is facing allegations of racism toward factory workers in some of it distribution centers and has been accused of profiting from the use of child labor. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
By James Holbrooks A day after the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dismissed an additional 10,000 civil employees and shut down another 15 media... | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Like so many bright, young entrepreneurs these days, Isaac Choi arrived here last year, set up shop and promised employees that he would lead them to the Silicon Valley dream. That dream is turning out mostly to be a mirage. This week, Mr. Choi’s company, WrkRiot, began unraveling in a highly public fashion. Its former head of marketing revealed that the had been mired in internal chaos and had sometimes paid employees in cashier’s checks before delaying payment altogether. She also alleged that Mr. Choi had forged wire transfer documents to make it look as if compensation were on the way. By late Tuesday, WrkRiot had taken itself offline. The veracity of Mr. Choi’s credentials are now also in question. While WrkRiot is not widely known, the ’s collapse has gripped Silicon Valley. Mr. Choi’s situation may be extreme, but the company’s implosion has a familiar ring to many who came west to be the next Mark Zuckerberg — but ended up instead at the next WrkRiot. Silicon Valley is always eager to celebrate its success stories, but the reality is that numerous tiny that few ever hear about form the tech industry’s dysfunctional underbelly. “With the exception of the alleged fraud, almost anyone who has worked at a has experienced most everything that went wrong at WrkRiot,” said Semil Shah, a investor based in Menlo Park, Calif. “People don’t realize the word is a broad concept that includes everything from a proven entrepreneur raising $15 million to a guy with money from friends and family. ” To an outsider, he said, “they’re both the same. ” On Hacker News, an online forum for techies, WrkRiot’s tale has exploded into one of the most popular threads, attracting more than 500 comments, including one from a poster who said that the ’s experience “is pretty much a rite of passage here. ” Tech blogs have also seized the tale one called it “one of the ugliest stories we’ve ever heard. ” Penny Kim, the former head of marketing at WrkRiot who wrote about her experience at the company, including the forgery allegations, said, “I’d heard stories about late paychecks or failing, but who expects fraud in Silicon Valley?” WrkRiot terminated Ms. Kim’s employment in after she filed a wage claim. She has since filed a retaliation complaint against the company and moved to Dallas, where she previously lived. In an interview this week, Mr. Choi, 35, said WrkRiot, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif. near where Intel has its headquarters, was “like any company. If you want to talk all have problems. ” When asked about the forgery claims, Mr. Choi said Ms. Kim was a disgruntled employee who was fired for cause and that the accusations were “unfair to my guys. ” Along with the Mr. Choi’s personal credibility is on the line. As he built WrkRiot, the entrepreneur said that he graduated from the Stern School of Business at New York University and that he worked at J. P. Morgan for nearly four years as an analyst. N. Y. U. and J. P. Morgan both said they had no record of Mr. Choi. At least one company listed on his LinkedIn profile also could not be found. Mr. Choi, whose LinkedIn profile has since been wiped clean, did not respond to questions about his résumé. His lawyer, Bernard Fishman, said he was not aware of the allegations against WrkRiot until contacted by The New York Times. Mr. Choi set up his in June 2015 under the name 1For. One, with a mission of helping people find the perfect job online. He brought in advisers with expertise in recruiting and data science and eventually hired nearly 20 employees, including Chinese nationals under work visas. The company later changed its name to JobSonic with a tagline, “Finally, a lightning fast job platform that cares. ” Eventually, the settled on the name of WrkRiot. Mr. Choi said the company had not raised any money from venture capital firms but that he had “a bunch of private investors who are individuals who believe in the company. ” He said one investor was related to him and one was not, but would not say how much money the company had. WrkRiot’s former chief technology officer and Al Brown, said Mr. Choi had intended to put $2 million of his own money into the company, but that only $400, 000 materialized. “I did not find out till the beginning of August that the money for the last payroll came from one of the employees,” Mr. Brown wrote in online comments this week. In Ms. Kim’s post about her experience at the company, which she did not initially identify but later confirmed was WrkRiot, she wrote that the without consulting her, hired someone who would report to her, did not plan ahead on its business — and had no idea what its business really was — and was repeatedly turned down by investors. The chief executive, later identified as Mr. Choi, also borrowed money from employees, she said. “Nothing about that surprises me anymore and it all seems like a horrible nightmare I was lucky enough to wake up from,” she wrote. Since Ms. Kim’s disclosures, others have told her they were also shortchanged by . Michelle Young, the founder of the online travel guide Untapped Cities, reached out to Ms. Kim to tell her about an undisclosed that bought ad space from her company — but then stopped paying. Ms. Young was eventually offered $40, 000 in guaranteed business by the if she agreed to a nondisparagement clause. She did not sign and is still waiting for some of the money she is owed. “At some point the checks stopped coming,” said Ms. Young. “There were warning signs. Offers that seemed too good to be true. ” After Ms. Kim’s post, several of WrkRiot’s advisers and former employees moved to distance themselves from the company. Daniel Tunkelang, a former WrkRiot adviser who has worked at LinkedIn and been a consultant at Pinterest, terminated his relationship with the company and wrote in a blog post, “I should have gotten to know the company and its leadership better before associating myself with them and lending them my credibility. ” At WrkRiot, a handful of the ’s remaining 10 or so employees gathered on Tuesday night to discuss their situation, according to a person who attended the gathering and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was concerned about retaliation. A few were hopeful that Mr. Choi could save the company. Some of the Chinese nationals whose work visas are tied to their employment said their visa extensions were in limbo, partly because WrkRiot had missed a payment to the company ADP, making it impossible for the government to verify their employment through ADP. By then, WrkRiot had shut down its website, its Facebook page and its Twitter account. Many of the employees are now hunting for other Silicon Valley jobs. | 1 |
By Chris “Kikila” Perrin In what can only be described as a case that defies the idea of freedom of the press, CTV News reported... | 0 |
Carbon Tax Reversal in Washington State November 12, 2016
Exclusive: Washington State’s rejection of a modest carbon tax – opposed by some environmentalists for not being larger – marks a reversal for what could have been a model for the U.S., writes Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
Even as voters nationally elected a notorious climate denier as their next president, several environmental groups rallied to help defeat a ballot measure in the state of Washington that would have taxed carbon emissions. It was an historic missed opportunity that should provoke serious reflection about realistic strategies for fighting global warming.
With the possible exception of the rising threat of nuclear war , no issue facing humanity is more urgent than climate change. Yet the world’s second largest carbon polluter, the United States, has consistently failed to take tough national measures to curb its emissions, owing to fierce resistance by the fossil-fuel industry and its conservative allies. Although most Americans believe climate change is real, they are easily spooked into inaction by warnings of higher energy costs or job losses. Graphic on “The Greenhouse Effect” at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site
That’s why Initiative 732 on Washington’s ballot was so important: It offered a plausible way to bring skittish taxpayers and businesses on board the climate action train by addressing their concerns about the economic costs of environmental remedies.
The $2 billion carbon tax proposal, modeled on a successful tax in neighboring British Columbia , offered a carrot-and-stick approach to effect change. Rising gradually over time, it would have added about 25 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline and roughly two cents per kilowatt-hour to the price of electricity generated from fossil fuels. Most consumers would have found those “sticks” motivating but not crippling.
The carrots in the measure were a 1 percent cut in the state’s regressive sales tax, near elimination of business taxes for manufacturing to protect jobs, and tax rebates of up to $1,500 for hundreds of thousands of low-income households. Through “revenue neutrality” — giving back the money it raised — the initiative aimed to quiet anti-tax activists. And targeting so many of the benefits to people of modest means, it beat the usual rap that higher energy costs fall hardest on those who can least afford them.
Tax Endorsements
Charles Komanoff, New York-based director of the Carbon Tax Center, called the Washington proposal “fantastic,” saying, “I think it’s really fair and smart.”
The proposal also won over influential Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, former chair of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic advisers, who said “I’m hopeful that it would become a model for other states, and indeed nationwide. . . . This kind of thing is really the model for where climate policy needs to go in the coming years.”
Many economists believe that using market prices rather than command-and-control regulations to influence energy choices will ultimately achieve the most bang for the buck.
The initiative also won the endorsement of the Audubon Society, famed climate scientist James Hansen, dozens of scientists at the University of Washington, and climate activist Leonard DiCaprio.
On the other side, not surprisingly, the measure earned the militant opposition of Koch Industries, other petrochemical companies and a major utility. They spent more than a million dollars to kill the initiative.
Much more surprisingly, the fossil-fuel lobby was joined in opposition, or non-endorsement, by Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington Environmental Council, and several other environmental, social justice and health advocacy groups. By dividing the environmental movement, they helped cut the “yes” vote to 42 percent.
Their chief concern: the initiative didn’t raise taxes enough or mandate more spending on renewable energy development, mass transit, affordable housing and community programs. They let their liberal-progressive ideas of the perfect be the enemy of what one MIT energy economist called “by far the most aggressive U.S. proposal” he’s ever seen.
Perfect as Enemy of Good
Opponents did raise legitimate issues, such as whether the initiative set the carbon tax high enough to fully pay for the tax rebates. Critics also questioned , with reason, whether the drafters’ studied attempts to win over businesses and conservatives would actually produce results. Oil billionaires David and Charles Koch.
But some of the criticism was hyperbolic. Naomi “Shock Doctrine” Klein, for example, smeared the carbon tax initiative as “right-wing friendly” and “the policy choice of big polluters.” She further denounced it as “a disastrous precedent that could set back the climate justice movement for a decade,” apparently because it would not immediately “jumpstart an urgent, sweeping phase-out of fossil fuels” or “deliver the massive green energy investments and community-driven solutions we all need.”
Klein and other hard-liners fail to acknowledge some basic truths. First, even voters in liberal Washington may be reticent to approve huge new tax-and-spend programs. Second, slamming residents with really high carbon taxes would ensure the premature death of any such program. A modest carbon tax can be raised over time once voters are reassured that it doesn’t cost jobs or pinch their wallets excessively.
Moreover, purists ignore the fact that a more radical program in Washington, even if approved, would have no direct impact on global warming. The contribution of any one state to the global pool of carbon emissions is minuscule. Only broad, collective action ultimately matters.
Where a state like Washington can make a difference is by showcasing a model approach with broad appeal. A successful and popular carbon tax in Washington might convince other states and other countries to follow suit, just as British Columbia’s successful tax is now spreading across Canada . That’s why Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel interests spent so much to defeat it.
Environmentalists who denigrate anything short of super-progressive policies are living in a thick bubble. In an age when the media barely even acknowledge the existence of climate change, and when voters elect Donald Trump president, we need creative new approaches to combating climate change.
Let’s hope the vote in Washington, rather than closing the door on smart carbon taxes, has, in the words of Audubon Washington’s executive director, “awakened a sleeping giant” in “the fight for commonsense climate solutions.” | 0 |
Texas Official: We Are Seeing RECORD BREAKING Voter Turnout in Texas… And It’s ALL For TRUMP (VIDEO) by IWB · October 27, 2016 Tweet
Sid Miller , Texas Agriculture Commissioner, went on FOX News on Wednesday to discuss the record breaking voter turnout for Donald Trump in the Lone Star State. YUGE RECORD BREAKING VOTES in TEXAS!!! & Its Not Bernie Fans or Obama Voters for Hillary Clinton!! ALLL Donald Trump Folks???? #wednesdaywisdom pic.twitter.com/Sn79fMhwXG
— DEPLORABLE TRUMPCAT (@Darren32895836) October 26, 2016
Sid Miller: We have a record number of people registered to vote in Texas. We’re having record turnouts, the first day, the second day of voting. And it’s not Bernie Sanders supporters coming out to support Hillary. It’s not Barack Obama supporters coming out to support Hillary. It’s a new surge of Trump voters, many who have never registered to vote. Many who have not voted in eight or ten elections so they’re not reported in the polls…
…I know for a fact that the polls are off because they oversample Democrats by eight sometimes up to sixteen percent oversampling Democrats. They’re oversampling women by five to eight percent. So the Republican vote is underreported. Plus there is no way to sample this extra twenty to twenty-five percent of new voters that are Trump voters. They’re not Republican, they’re not Democrats, they’re pragmatists. They’re tired of the status quo and they want change. | 0 |
New Heavy-Duty Voting Machine Allows Americans To Take Out Frustration On It Before Casting Ballot WASHINGTON—Saying the circumstances of this year’s presidential race made the upgrade necessary, election commissions throughout the country were reportedly working to install new heavy-duty voting machines this week that will allow Americans to physically take out their frustrations on the devices before casting their votes. Man Grateful To Live In Society Where Mattress Disappears If Left On Sidewalk For A Couple Days COLUMBUS, OH—Emphasizing that such an impressive feat should not be taken for granted, local man Nathan Montgomery told reporters Wednesday he was incredibly grateful to live in a society where a mattress just disappears if it’s left outside on the sidewalk for a couple days. Clinton Staff Readies EMP Launch To Disable All Nation’s Electronic Devices NEW YORK—In an effort to prepare for any new revelations that might emerge about her emails during her tenure as secretary of state, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly told her staff Tuesday to ready the launch of several electromagnetic pulses to disable all of the nation’s electronic devices. Mom Produces Decorative Gift Bag Out Of Thin Air LEXINGTON, MA—Conjuring the item into existence along with several sheets of perfectly coordinated tissue paper, local mother Caroline Wolfson, 49, reportedly produced a decorative gift bag out of thin air Tuesday within a mere fraction of a second of her daughter mentioning she needed to wrap a present. Anthony Weiner Sends Apology Sext To Entire Clinton Campaign BROOKLYN, NY—In response to the FBI’s announcement that its investigation of him had produced new evidence that could pertain to its probe of the Democratic presidential nominee, Anthony Weiner reportedly sent an apology sext early Monday morning to the entire Hillary Clinton campaign. | 0 |
By Jon Rappoport Follow the bouncing ball. It turns out that several money bundlers for Hillary Clinton—Fredrick D. Schaufeld, Karen Schaufeld, Sonjia Smith, Michael Bills—... | 0 |
Russia Has Called the War Party's Bluff
A hot war is not going to break out after Nov. 8th - thanks to shrewd moves and preparation by Moscow
By Pepe Escobar
" RI " - Cold War 2.0 has reached unprecedented hysterical levels. And yet a hot war is not about to break out before or after the November 8 US presidential election.
From the Clinton (cash) machine supported by a neocon/neoliberalcon think tank/media complex to the British establishment and its corporate media mouthpieces, the Anglo-American, self-appointed leaders of the free world are racking up demonization of Russia and Putinism to pure incandescence.
And yet a hot war is not about to break out before or after the November 8 US presidential election. So many layers of fear and loathing in fact veil no more than a bluff.
Lets start with the Russian naval task force in Syria, led by the officially designated heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, which will be stationed in the eastern Mediterranean at least until February 2017, supporting operations against all strands of Salafi-jihadism.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is fully equipped with anti-ship, air defense, artillery and anti-submarine warfare systems and can defend itself against a vast array of threats, unlike NATO vessels.
Predictably, NATO is spinning with alarm that all of the Northern Fleet, along with the Baltic Fleet, is on the way to the Mediterranean. Wrong; its only part of the Northern Fleet, and the Baltic Fleet ships are not going anywhere. The heart of the matter is that when the capabilities of this Russian naval task force are matched with the S-300/S-400 missile systems already deployed in Syria, Russia is now de facto rivaling the firepower of the US Sixth Fleet.
To top it off, as this comprehensive military analysis makes clear, Russia has basically made their own no-fly zone over Syria; and a US no-fly zone, viscerally promoted by Hillary Clinton, is now impossible to achieve.
That should be more than enough to put into perspective the impotence transmuted into outright anger exhibited by the Pentagon and its neocon/neoliberalcon vassals.
Add to it the outright war between the Pentagon and the CIA in the Syrian war theatre, where the Pentagon backs the YPG Kurds, who are not necessarily in favor of regime change in Damascus, while the CIA backs further weaponizing of moderate, as in al-Qaeda-linked and/or infiltrated, rebels.
Compounding the trademark Obama administration Three Stooges school of foreign policy, American threats have flown more liberally than Negans skull-crushing bloody baton in the new season of The Walking Dead.
Pentagon head Ash Carter, a certified neocon, has threatened consequences, as in potential strikes against Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces to punish the regime after the Pentagon itself broke the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire. President Obama took some time off weighing his options. And in the end, he backed off.
So it will be up for the virtually elected by the whole US establishment Hillary Clinton to make the fateful decision. She wont be able to go for a no-fly zone because Russia is already doing it. And if she decides to punish the regime, Moscow already telegraphed, via Russias Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov, there will definitely be consequences for imposing a shadow hot war.
Sun Tzu doesnt do first-strike
Washington, of course, reserves for itself a first-strike nuclear capability, which Hillary Clinton fully supports (Donald Trump does not, and for that hes also demonized). If we allow the current hysteria to literally go nuclear, then we must consider the matter of the S-500 anti-missile system which effectively seals Russia's air space; Moscow wont admit it on the record because that would unleash a relentless arms race.
A US intel source with close connections to the Masters of the Universe but at the same time opposed to Cold War 2.0 as counter-productive, adds the necessary nuance: The United States has lost the arms race, indulging in trillions of dollars of worthless and endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now is no longer a global power as it cannot defend itself with its obsolete missiles, THAAD, Patriot and Aegis Land Based Ballistic Defense System, against Russian ICBMs, even as the Russians have sealed their airspace. The Russians may be as much as four generations ahead of the US.
Moreover, in the deep recesses of shadow war planning, the Pentagon knows, and the Russian Defense Ministry also knows, that in the event some
Dr. Strangelove launched a nuclear preemptive strike against Russia, the Russian population would be protected by their defensive missile systems as well as nuclear bomb shelters in major cities. Warnings on Russian television have not been idle; the population would know where to go in the terrifying event of nuclear war breaking out.
Needless to add, the ghastly possibility of US nuclear first-strike turns all these WWII-style NATO war games in Eastern Europe into a pile of meaningless propaganda stunts.
So how did Moscow plan for it all? According to the US intel source, they took out almost all the military budget from their stated federal budget, lulling the West into thinking that Russia could not afford a massive military buildup and there was nothing to fear from Russia as they were finished as a world power.
The [stated] military budget was next to nothing, so there was nothing to worry about as far as the CIA was concerned. If Putin showed publicly his gigantic military buildup, the West could have taken immediate remedial actions as they did in 2014 by crashing the oil price.
The bottom line then would reveal the Pentagon as totally unprepared for a hot war even as it threatens and bluffs Russia now on a daily basis; As Brzezinski has pointed out, if this is the case it means the US has ceased to be a global power. The US may continue to bluff, but those that ally with them will have nowhere to go if that bluff is called, as it is being now called in Syria.
The US intel source is adamant that one of the greatest military buildups in history has taken place right under the nose of the Russian Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina and the Russian Ministry of Finance while the CIA awaits what they think will be the inevitable Russia collapse.
The CIA will be waiting forever and eternity for Russia to collapse. This MGB maneuver is sheer genius. And demonstrates that the CIA, which is so drowned by data inputs that they cannot connect the dots on anything, must be completely reorganized. In addition, the entire procurement system of the United States military must also be reorganized as it cannot ever keep up if new weapon programs as the F-35 take twenty years to develop and then are found obsolete before they even enter service. The Russians have a five-year development program for each new weapons system and they are far ahead of us in every key area.
If this analysis is correct, it goes against even the best and most precise Russian estimates, according to which military potential may be strong, asymmetrically, but still much inferior to US military might.
Well-informed Western analysts know that Moscow never brags about military buildups and has mastered to a fault the element of surprise. Much more than calling a bluff, its Moscows Sun Tzu tactics that are really rattling loudmouth Washington. | 0 |
SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — For decades, archaeologists here kept their eyes on the ground as they tramped through thick jungle, rice paddies and buffalo grazing fields, emerald green and soft with mud during the monsoon season. They spent entire careers trying to spot mounds or depressions in the earth that would allow them to map even small parts of Angkor, the urban center at the heart of the Khmer empire, which covered a vast region of what is now Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos from roughly A. D. 802 to 1431. In modern times, little material evidence existed beyond a network of monumental stone temples, including the famed Angkor Wat, and the sprawling settlements that presumably fanned out around the temples long since swallowed up by the jungle. But earlier this year, the archaeologists Shaun Mackey and Kong Leaksmy were armed with a portable GPS device containing data from an aerial survey of the area that is changing the way Angkor is studied. The device led them straight to a field littered with clods of earth and shot through with tractor marks. It looked to the naked eye like an ordinary patch of dirt, but the aerial data had identified it as a site of interest, a mounded embankment where the ancestors of today’s Cambodians might have altered the landscape to build homes. Almost immediately after stepping onto the field, Mr. Mackey, his eyes glued to the ground, pounced on a shard of celadon pottery. Soon the team had turned up a small trove of potsherds and began taking copious notes. “It’s not sexy, like a temple, but for an archaeologist it’s really interesting that we have this representation of cultural activity,” he said. He and Ms. Kong Leaksmy are part of a consortium of scholars called the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative (CALI) which uses a technology known as lidar to shoot ultraquick pulses of light at the ground from lasers mounted on helicopters. The way they bounce back can show the presence of subtle gradations in the landscape, indicating places where past civilizations altered their environment, even if buried beneath thick vegetation or other obstructions. The Mr. Mackey, a veteran of fieldwork here, noted that before lidar’s availability, an accurate ground survey of archaeological features in the Cambodian landscape entailed years or even decades of work. “We’ve all spent hours getting clawed and shredded by bamboo forests with thorns or dense scrub and bush, in the hope that we might find something,” Mr. Mackey said. CALI’s helicopters flew for 86 hours in March and April of 2015 over 1, 910 square kilometers, or 737 square miles, with Buddhist monks blessing the lidar sensors before takeoff. The data generated during the flights, based on roughly 40 billion individual measurements, is now being verified and made public. “We had hit a roadblock in terms of technology until recently,” said Damian Evans, the archaeologist who heads the initiative. “The vegetation was obscuring these parts of Angkor and other monumental sites. The lidar allowed us to see through the vegetation. ” The result, Dr. Evans said, has been an unprecedented new understanding of what the Khmer empire looked like at the apex of its power, with maps revealing an intricate urban landscape stretching across several provinces of Cambodia, along with a sophisticated network of canals, earthworks and dams that the Angkorians used to control the flow of water. “It is pretty amazing,” he said. “The larger the temples are, the larger the urban infrastructure around it is likely to be, so they weren’t lost, in the sense that we assumed that they must be there. But, of course, that is an entirely different thing from being able to see it in incredible detail and how it works and how it functioned, how it evolved, the morphology of these places. ” The group is now using the maps to make more targeted excursions into the field, “ ” the lidar data to ensure that it is accurate and to determine where digging might be useful. On a recent mission, Mr. Mackey barreled down a freshly paved road in a pickup truck driven by Ms. Kong Leaksmy. Although the Khmer empire’s great stone monuments have endured for centuries, spawning a $ tourism industry and preserving information about the dynasty of who ordered their construction, the stuff of everyday life at Angkor, made from wood, mud, thatch and brick, has long since rotted away in the hot and humid climate. Almost nothing has been known about the lives of those who built the temples and served its rulers — who they were, how they lived, what they believed. David Chandler, a professor emeritus at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a leading historian of Cambodia, said the new lidar data was particularly exciting because it was providing more information than ever about how ordinary people lived in the Khmer empire. Historians had assumed that the residents of Angkor existed — “these temples certainly didn’t get built by themselves,” Dr. Chandler said — and they had cobbled together some understanding of the area’s population through inscriptions, notes from a Chinese diplomat who visited Angkor, and a few other sparse clues. Dr. Chandler compares the process to trying to understand American history from a small collection of obituaries and Fourth of July speeches. But with maps, people who had spent their lives trying to retrace Angkorian history could actually see for the first time an intricate network of houses, gridded streets, canals, bridges and even palaces. “People imagined it was a city, but they didn’t know how to imagine it, because they didn’t know what it looked like, Dr. Chandler said. “Now they do. ” “This is where Angkorian research is going to go from now on: research into the people who built the temples, not the people whom it was built for,” he added. “It’s putting the population of the city back in view. ” The Greater Angkor Project, a team from the University of Sydney in Australia, has been trying since 2010 to identify and excavate ancient mounds believed to have been households in the Angkor Wat compound. When the team started its research, it spent months simply trying to identify where all the mounds were. But after it received preliminary lidar data in 2012, it realized immediately that the mounds were arranged in a tight grid pattern, indicating houses lined along roads, as in a modern city. “Lidar made everything new and exciting,” said Heng Phipal, a Cambodian archaeologist who worked with the project. Since then, members of the project have used lidar to target areas for deeper excavation, unearthing sandstone from the temples that might have been recycled into floors for city dwellers, and analyzing a garbage dump on the Angkor Wat grounds full of burned food remains and broken ceramics. They have found some of the first evidence of what Angkorians ate (rice and pomelo fruit) and how they cooked (in earth pots over fires). And they have come to understand that the gridlike pattern inside Angkor is just part of a much larger urban agglomeration, challenging conventional wisdom that the temple cities were discrete and . “Previous maps only show us different temples — they look like different units, where settlements around them seem to be concentrated around these temples — but with lidar we know that is not actually the case,” Mr. Heng Phipal said. “We know it was all inhabited, and the city is larger than expected. ” Being able to see the true scope of the city has led to discoveries in other areas, too. Lidar has helped find the giant quarry field where most of the sandstone to build the temples was taken from, and has identified mysterious earthen spirals close to Angkor Wat and a few other temples that might have served aesthetic or religious purposes. At a remote but massive temple called Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, which the Khmer king Jayavarman VII used as a base to raise an army against invaders from the east, scholars had worked for over a decade to determine what lay below the surface, with little success. They ultimately concluded that the area was not thickly settled. But the lidar data revealed a dense cityscape that even included the same spirals seen at Angkor Wat, and helped pinpoint areas for archaeologists to dig that had not been looted. In other cases, what lidar has not found is just as revealing. At the temple Banteay Chhmar, on the Thai border, archaeologists had also struggled to find evidence of settlement. The lidar data confirmed this, leading Dr. Evans to conclude that it was not the center of a city but perhaps a temple or a garrison that saw only waves of temporary settlement. Perhaps most crucially, the narrative of the collapse of Angkor is being recast by lidar evidence. Based on stone inscriptions in the temples, scholars have long believed that the empire fell in 1431 after its capital was sacked by an invading Thai army, and that the population of the city moved closer to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s current capital. But when these areas were scanned, there was no evidence of an influx of refugees. This suggests that while there might have been a political schism in 1431 that induced members of the royal family to move closer to Phnom Penh, the vast majority of people stayed near Angkor and only gradually moved away. This understanding is unfolding day by day as the research continues. At Site 305, for example, Mr. Mackey and Ms. Kong Leaksmy uncovered bits of water jars, showing that the area included households, and shards of Chinese tradeware dating from after the 1400s. “This helps feed into the concept that Angkor wasn’t really abandoned,” Mr. Mackey said. “When myth becomes such entrenched history, archaeology is a way of challenging the written record, particularly because history is often written by the powerful who give voice to their own agendas,” he said. “But the material remains. ” To Ms. Kong Leaksmy, a recent university graduate who used lidar data to write her thesis on a small temple called Banteay Sra, the takeaway was simpler. “I can see many, many points that I cannot see just by eye,” she said of the new tool. “It’s amazing for me. ” | 1 |
Radio host and comedian Dean Obeidallah, who recently smeared MILO as a white supremacist and Nazi, once suggested Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson was a token minority. [In an article posted on CNN’s website, Obeidallah wrote, “By inviting “alt right” (aka white supremacist) darling Milo Yiannopoulos (known as “Milo”) onto his HBO show Friday night, Bill Maher could’ve seized a great opportunity to expose Yiannopoulos’ history of hate” The only reason for the ridicule of the young child seemed to be purely based on the race of Kieran Romney, the former Massachusetts governor’s adopted grandchild. Obeidallah at one point implied that the adopted child was a token, saying ”I think this picture is great. It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person. ” and Obeidallah both later apologized for their remarks. Watch Obeidallah’s comments on Mitt Romneys grandson below. | 1 |
The Hodges & Hagmann Hour- America’s Last Chance to Survive Doug Hagmann
The recent show in which Doug Hagmann and myself discussed all election scenarios was one of the liveliest hours in the history of The Common Sense Show.
The topic centered around the Constitutional crisis that Clinton is creating by refusing to withdraw from the race. Who will ultimately decide the race. Will it be George Soros’ voting machines? Will it be Obama? Will it be the Supreme Court? Most importantly, we discussed the real possibility of martial law and war. Please note, there was insider testimony from a Postal worker from the Phoenix area who discusses ballot stuffing in Arizona.
The details are included in the following video. | 0 |
Tuesday at a discussion hosted by the Commonwealth Club, Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( ) said that it was “hard” for her to say the words “President Trump. ” When Pelosi referenced “the new president of the United States,” the moderator said, “I noticed you don’t say President Trump. ” Pelosi replied, “It’s hard. ” She then acknowledged, “I’m the woman politically in our country to be Speaker of the House. President, Vice President, Speaker of the House — it’s the third highest position. And leader is a very significant position. One of the things that I was looking forward to [on] election day was when finally there would be a woman who would be the highest ranking woman practically in the world as president of the United States. So it was a blow, I mean, for the country. And so it’s hard because I don’t know, from what I’ve seen, I don’t know how much respect he has for the job. ” ( The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
The hardest thing about the decision may be when parents have to make the call: It’s usually during the family’s tightly orchestrated morning routine. “It’s kind of hard to make that judgment in the morning,” said Dr. Timothy Shope, an associate professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who is the of the American Academy of Pediatrics book “Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools: A Quick Reference Guide. ” “Sometimes very parents have only a short window to make a judgment before they have to activate their day, get the child on the bus,” he said. And those parents may be feeling pressure to get to their own jobs. In a poll of parents conducted by C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan and released last month, parents were asked about how they make that decision. Concern about the illness getting worse if the child went to school was very important to 60 percent of the parents, followed by concern that the child’s classmates might get sick (47 percent). This was especially true for parents of younger children, 6 to 9 years old. Parents of older children, not surprisingly, tended to worry more about children falling behind or missing a test. Parents also worried about logistics 11 percent cited not wanting to miss work as very important in the decision, and parents worried about finding someone to stay home with a sick child, especially those with younger children. “The most important thing to parents in the decision was the health of their child and the health of other children,” said Dr. Gary L. Freed, the of the poll. “That took precedence over the proportion of parents who were concerned about missing work. ” In terms of specific symptoms, parents said they would keep kids home for diarrhea (80 percent) or vomiting (58 percent would keep a child home for having thrown up once, even if there were no other symptoms) or for having a slight fever, even if acting normal (49 percent). But worrying too much about what may evolve over the course of the day, or even about other children getting sick, should not get in the way of assessing how your own child is looking right now, in the morning. “I think there are more overprotective parents than there are parents who send their kids to school too easily,” Dr. Shope said. “The primary concern I have as a pediatrician is that the parent make a decision about whether the child can effectively participate in the school day. ” That would rule out a child who is vomiting, of course, or a child who is miserable and feverish, and many school districts do have specific illness policies about symptoms like these. As far as spreading infection, the bad news is that many infectious illnesses are infectious well before symptoms appear, and continue to be transmitted after the child has recovered, while some children don’t get sick at all, but do continue to carry — and spread — viruses and bacteria that can make other children sick. Children should get their flu shots every fall that can prevent a great deal of misery and school absence. But there are a lot of other viruses out there, and infections can be spread by children who aren’t sick, or aren’t yet sick, or aren’t still sick. So we have to prevent transmission by emphasizing habits that improve hygiene and interrupt possible transmission, or, as we would say in the medical setting, infection control. And the good news is that as children get older, they can learn these techniques, which make even a symptomatic child much less dangerous to others. It is not, as we say, rocket science. Respiratory etiquette means coughing or sneezing into a sleeve or an elbow. And after immunizations, the single most important way to prevent transmission of infections in schools is the same as it is in hospitals (where you don’t have the option of excluding the sick people) good hand hygiene: when possible, hand sanitizer as a backup. “Encourage families to understand the importance of in both keeping their children healthier and also the children their children encounter,” Dr. Freed said. One suggestion is to teach children to lather for long enough to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday” twice. Hand hygiene is important for respiratory illnesses, which are most likely to be transmitted by viruses that get (mysteriously) from the mouth and nose onto the hands, and from there to other objects, from doorknobs to papers to pencils. But it’s also very important to prevent the spread of stomach problems a child who has diarrhea but practices good hand hygiene is much less likely to cause problems for anyone else, while an asymptomatic child could be incubating and spreading a GI infection. So we have to focus on what happens at the sink. The other good news, I suppose, though it can be hard for parents to appreciate this when they’re in the throes of negotiating who stays home and skips work, is that the infections that children get do build up their immune system capacity and make it less likely that they will get sick later on. It’s also important for parents to remember that if you make the decision to send a child to school, and then get that dreaded call from the school nurse, you haven’t made a terrible mistake or shown yourself to be a bad or uncaring parent. “You can’t beat yourself up for not knowing the course a condition is going to take,” Dr. Freed said. As a pediatrician, I am very familiar with the sinking feeling that comes when you hear that a child you thought was doing fine has in fact gotten sicker. As a parent, you have to make the best assessment you can in the window you have. Dr. Shope said: “It’s not really a doctor decision, it’s a parent decision. ” | 1 |
on November 11, 2016 3:30 pm ·
As if the election of Donald Trump couldn’t get even more disastrous and hypocritical, Senator Lindsey Graham just called on Trump to nominate a right-wing extremist to nation’s highest court.
All year long, Republicans have been blocking President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because they want the next president to make the pick. And because they now have the conservative puppet president they have always wanted, they want to make sure that nominee is a conservative extremist.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told WYFF-TV that Trump should pick Texas Senator Ted Cruz as the nominee and warned Democrats not to block him, which is hypocritical considering how Republicans have treated President Obama’s nominee and threatened to block any nominees Hillary Clinton would have made had she won the election.
“I’m here to tell my Democratic colleagues that I voted for Obama’s nominees. I expect them to give Trump’s nominees a fair shake. He won this election. He will pick a conservative. I would put Ted Cruz on that list. If they try to block this pick, they will regret it. If you don’t honor Trump’s nominee, you’re making a huge mistake.”
Democrats should stand up and give Graham a collective middle finger.
Since Antonin Scalia died in February, there has been a vacancy on the Supreme Court bench that has yet to be filled. The body wasn’t even cold yet before Republicans vowed to block any nominee President Obama picked to replace him, going so far as to even deny Garland a confirmation hearing. That’s far from the “fair shake” Graham is asking Democrats to give to a man as dangerous as Ted Cruz.
Putting Cruz on the Supreme Court would guarantee rulings against women’s rights and LGBT rights as well as putting laws like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act in further peril. In no uncertain terms should Democrats grant Cruz a hearing, nor should they respect any of Trump’s conservative choices for the court. Republicans should have thought about “fair shakes” before taking the totally unprecedented step of being complete assholes toward the Supreme Court nominee of a sitting president who also won an election and s far more popular than Trump. Again, Senate Republicans didn’t even give Garland a hearing or a vote. They refused to do their jobs entirely out of disrespect towards President Obama. And so that’s exactly what Democrats should do to Trump. Turnabout is fair play and Republicans only have themselves to blame.
Featured Image: Ethan Miller/Getty Images Share this Article! | 0 |
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The Obama administration is preparing to broaden its military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria by increasing the number of Special Operations forces who advise Syrian rebels, and it is also considering the addition of Army attack helicopters to the fight against militants in Iraq. The goal would be to accelerate what United States officials said on Saturday was momentum behind Iraqi security forces and rebels in Syria fighting the terrorist organization. Inside Syria, the administration is prepared to add dozens of Special Operations forces to the 50 who now advise and assist Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State, say three Defense Department and military officials. The additional trainers, who could total as many as 200, would be able to expand their instruction to Syrian Arab fighters, who are likely to play a pivotal role in capturing Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria, the officials said. The administration’s plans for Iraq are more complicated. Pentagon officials would like to increase efforts to advise and train Iraqi security forces for the anticipated assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country. The plan calls for shifting trainers who are already in the country to positions closer to Mosul, the officials said. They would also like to deploy Apache helicopter gunships — which are already in Iraq, but used only to protect American personnel — and order them to participate in the battle for Mosul. But the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Haider has been battling internal political turmoil. His challenges include political opponents, rampant corruption and an economy weakened by low oil prices. The military options under consideration — which could be announced in the next several days — were described by five Defense Department and military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because final decisions are pending in Washington and Baghdad. Administration officials said on Saturday that announcing or even proposing increased American assistance is a delicate diplomatic task that could further imperil Mr. Abadi’s position. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter made clear on Saturday that the administration will increase its military efforts to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, but he did not discuss specifics. “You should expect us, to see us, doing more,” he said at a news conference at the Al Dhafra air base as he opened travels in the Middle East. “It will be consistent with the same approach, but it’ll be across all the domains, right up to cyber. ” Mr. Carter described the administration’s approach as one that will use members of the American armed services to help accelerate the military campaign against the Islamic State, but will not replace Iraqi security forces or Syrian rebels. There are roughly 5, 000 American service members in Iraq, according to current Pentagon estimates, but the number often varies, sometimes daily, by hundreds. Mr. Carter’s comments come at a time when Iraqi militias and military forces have been making notable progress on the battlefield against the Islamic State, including seizing parts of Hit, a city in Anbar Province, this month. Last Wednesday, Col. Steven H. Warren, the military spokesman in Iraq, said that the initial phase of the campaign against the Islamic State, with the intent of degrading or weakening the fighters, was complete, and that allied forces were in the second phase of the operation. “During this phase, we will enable our partners to dismantle the enemy, fragment his forces, isolate his centers of gravity and liberate the terrain he holds,” he said. But even as the campaign against the Islamic State is showing gains in Iraq and Syria, the group’s franchises in places like Libya, as well as its external operations in Europe, are increasingly lethal. On Saturday, Mr. Carter met with American service members, including pilots, who are stationed at the Al Dhafra air base and are part of the air campaign over Iraq and Syria. He said that in the coming days he would be meeting with American commanders leading the efforts to defeat the Islamic State. “We continue to look for, and identify ways of accelerating that, and as we find those we will do them,” Mr. Carter said, adding that the administration would seek the approval of Iraqi government there. Mr. Carter said that gaining the support of President Obama to do more in Iraq has not been an obstacle. “We’ve gotten approval from the White House every time the chairman and I have gone to ask for something that we’ve needed to accelerate going way back to last year,” Mr. Carter said, referring to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. who will also be traveling in the region in the coming days. “So that isn’t really the issue for us, the issue for us is yet identifying more ways to accelerate the campaign. ” | 1 |
PUEBLO, Colo. — After obliging a request for a selfie from a woman in the lobby, Bill Clinton left his hotel here on Friday and rode to his rally, where he made the case that Hillary Clinton cared more about restoring jobs to forgotten workers than Donald J. Trump did. Mr. Clinton said that his wife got things done, as evidenced by “a lady in a hotel lobby right here. ” “I said, ‘Who do you think we ought to elect? ’” Mr. Clinton said, supposedly recounting his conversation with the woman. “She said, ‘You don’t have to ask me that. I’m from Belfast. I remember what she did to help make the peace in Northern Ireland. ’” It was Mr. Clinton, not his wife, who played a major role in brokering a peace accord. And the woman in the lobby, Lorraine Gordon, who immigrated from Belfast and is now an American citizen, never said those things. Like so many white Americans who adored Mr. Clinton but despise his wife, Ms. Gordon and her husband have already cast their ballots for Mr. Trump. “I don’t trust Hillary,” said Ms. Gordon, 57, who added that she resented illegal immigrants because she went through a long and expensive naturalization process. Her husband, John, 62, an engineer, added that “there’ll be more jobs” with Mr. Trump in charge. Since January, Mr. Clinton has done nearly 500 public events, a good deal of them designed to capture the affection white voters had for him and then transfer it to Mrs. Clinton. But that happens to be the demographic that constitutes Mr. Trump’s base. Indeed, the man who was arguably the greatest political mind of his era has become something of a peripheral player, even within his wife’s campaign. He has spent much of his time seeking support on the Democratic margins among those white voters he refuses to believe have abandoned him — and his wife — for good. “They took a leave of absence from normal politics because, you know, they went a long time without a raise,” Mr. Clinton explained in a brief, interview with a reporter in the hotel lobby. “So that’s cyclical. ” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign managers and pollsters, aided by sophisticated data models and experience in the elections of 2008 and 2012, have shifted their focus away from the “Bubba” voters and to the winning Obama coalition of young progressives and Hispanics who are powering Mrs. Clinton. And while members of his campaign say they cannot imagine a more valuable political spouse to have, in interviews as well as hacked emails released by WikiLeaks, Mr. Clinton has sometimes come off as an old master struggling to get with the new program. According to two advisers to the Clintons, who declined to be identified because they were describing internal conversations, Mr. Clinton has at times doubted the approach of her campaign manager, Robby Mook, and has required mollifying assurances from senior staff members. Sometimes staff members, or one of his numerous Democratic allies in the country, have gone to Mr. Clinton to complain about decisions being made by Mrs. Clinton’s top campaign officials, causing irritation all around. One of the Clinton advisers said Mr. Clinton feared that her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would commit voter fraud in the Iowa caucuses by busing college students into the state, and urged the campaign to divert valuable energy away from organizing and onto defense against dirty tricks. Mr. Clinton saw his wife’s coming blowout loss in New Hampshire, where his unexpectedly strong showing in 1992 helped propel him to the nomination, as a crisis that desperately needed to be staved off, despite polling that showed Mrs. Clinton would quickly rebound as the race moved to more diverse states. “He still thinks that should be spending more time in — earlier in January,” his chief of staff emailed Mr. Mook last December. Mr. Clinton’s travel schedule, while robust, has operated on a second tier, with Clinton surrogates such as President Obama and his wife, Michelle, Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appearing in the most prime locations. At times, the campaign even seems to prefer him off the radar. Before Mrs. Clinton’s debate with Mr. Sanders in October 2015 in Nevada, Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s top policy aide, responded to an email from Huma Abedin, her top personal aide, confirming that Mr. Clinton would be joining his wife on the plane to Las Vegas with the words, “This is not a positive development. ” Asked about Mr. Clinton’s role and standing in the campaign, his aides said his trips to Massachusetts and Missouri, both of which Mrs. Clinton narrowly won in the primaries, were based on his feedback and that the campaign’s data showed Mr. Clinton was decisive in delivering victory. And Mr. Mook said Mr. Clinton has been nothing but helpful. “He’s been an integral part of this campaign throughout,” said Mr. Mook in a statement. “Once or twice a day I’m able to get his feedback and advice, and I could not be more grateful to have someone who is at once a mentor, a political junkie and a brilliant tactician for our campaign. ” Mr. Clinton acknowledged that he was glad the campaign was finally drawing to a close but added, “I’m having a good time, as you can see. ” But it has not always seemed like much fun. One of Mr. Clinton’s closest allies said he had been demoralized by an election that had resuscitated talk of his sexual affairs, alleged and otherwise. He has generally stuck to the script but sometimes unintentionally causes trouble, as when he met with Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, on a tarmac in Phoenix, an encounter Mr. Trump has used to accuse Ms. Lynch of rigging the State Department email investigation for Mrs. Clinton. In a January email, Mr. Clinton’s press secretary, Angel Ureña, let Mrs. Clinton’s staff know that one trip by Mr. Clinton to New Hampshire had resulted in no such drama: “Fair to say we didn’t break anything. ” And on the trail, his age can show, with drifting sentences coming out of a dried mouth. At a rally at the New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colo. where a propeller plane with the words “Go Trump” painted under its wings buzzed overhead, Mr. Clinton relayed how he had told hurting coal miners who disliked his wife, “You guys did well when I was president, let’s come in and talk. ” But his few applause lines came when he mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement and Mr. Sanders, and when he doled out progressive red meat about free college. In a Denver nightclub, Mr. Clinton made his case under a giant disco ball. Brooke McReynolds, 24, said she was impressed, but found his attention to the white working classes “a dying . ” Still, she said, “He’s getting there. ” And yet when Mr. Clinton returns to form, he remains something to behold. At his Pueblo rally, Mr. Clinton had the crowd as he lamented Mr. Trump’s degradation of politics. (“It looks more like reality TV and doesn’t do anything to change reality. ”) He got them laughing when he told men who feared a female president to get over it because when women work on weekends, “We’ll have more time to watch football. ” And a hush fell over the crowd when Mr. Clinton slipped inside the mind of the white voters who had left his family to support Mr. Trump. “Look, his base is where I grew up. I was born in Arkansas to a mother of lineage,” Mr. Clinton said. These were good, trustworthy people, he said, “but always and forever we have been manipulated by scoundrels. ” Mr. Trump, he said, followed in a long line of exploiters who “just — rub — salt — in our wounds. ” A white man standing beside his young son in the back shouted the refrain often heard at Mr. Trump’s rallies: “Lock that bitch up. ” Mr. Clinton continued as if he had not heard a thing. | 1 |
Trump supporter gets revenge on lawn-sign vandal in the absolutely best way possible Posted at 5:00 pm on October 28, 2016 by Greg P. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Justice was served on a guy who thought it would be funny to drive over these Trump lawn signs, except these particular signs fought back. That’s right, whoever put these signs on their lawn also added a wooden board with nails in front of the signs to get even with the unsuspecting vandals.
Check it out:
— Black Women 4 Trump (@TallahForTrump) October 28, 2016
Here are the 3 photos broken out of that tweet. The crime… Trending | 0 |
You’ve bought a product or service, and now — ugh! — there’s a problem. Your blood pressure climbs as you face an obstacle course worthy of “American Ninja Warrior” to get help. What is the most efficient and least painful path to get good customer service? Call the company’s number? Chat online? Send an email? Complain on social media? If you perceive a reduction in the quality of customer care, you are not alone. The frustration can turn some of us from Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. Among the findings of a 2015 “National Customer Rage Study” by Customer Care Measurement Consulting: Companies are doing all the right things the wrong way. For example, they have call centers, but they’re understaffed, which causes complaints to pile up. The report, conducted in collaboration with Arizona State University and Dialog Direct, was the seventh since 1976. The latest report found that 54 percent of customers reported a problem with a product or service in the preceding 12 months, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2013. In 1976, that figure was 32 percent. Scott M. Broetzmann, the president and chief executive of Customer Care, said companies direct consumers toward the approach. Consumers have been empowered by technology to perform routine tasks, such as checking an account balance or placing an order, but things can go awry when they have a question or problem. Mr. Broetzmann said companies sometimes rely on “disingenuous approaches,” which can be vexing or meaningless to customers, to internally measure their performance. For example, some call centers require a representative to say a customer’s name at least three times during a call. A 2015 report by the International Customer Management Institute, a training and research organization, emphasized that point. “When it comes to selecting metric and data sources, it doesn’t make sense to measure something simply because it’s always been measured or because it’s the latest industry trend,” the report said. “Using old approaches or data sources and expecting new or different outcomes is a quick path to insanity. ” It is because we end up feeling invisible and disrespected, Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist and a professor emerita of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, said in an email. “Disrespect can inspire rage because in the most primitive parts of our brains it’s tied to our survival,” she wrote. In days when we were cave dwellers, “to be overlooked or irrelevant was to die,” she added. The customer rage study found that nearly 50 percent of respondents found the statement “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold” very annoying, with another 17 percent saying it should be banned. were: “That’s our policy” “We are currently assisting other customers. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received” and “Can I get your account information again?” For quick solutions to small specific problems, try online chats, Ms. Yarrow said. They are ideal for handling issues like a promotion code or learning when your product will arrive. “This isn’t the place for empathy or to complain,” she said. Check a company’s Facebook or Twitter profile because some are savvy social media users, said Justin Robbins, the content director for the customer management institute. Other experts, though, have said that companies are largely slow to respond to complaints posted there, and that social media should be a last resort. Write down as many details as possible, such as the name of the person you are talking to. Ask how the company is tracking you — is it by your name, or either a phone, account or case number? All of that can be useful if you need to follow up, Mr. Robbins said. You can ask to “escalate” a call, which is lingo for wanting to speak with a supervisor. Be clear about what you want, said C. William Crutcher, the president of the National Customer Service Association. After outlining your issue, wait for a response. Don’t continue to talk and repeat your request. It is likely the representative got the message the first time. No matter how frustrated you are, remain calm and treat representatives with “the utmost dignity,” Mr. Broetzmann said. Experts suggest referring to the representatives by name because it signals you are interested in working with them. Research recently published by the University of British Columbia in The Journal of Applied Psychology suggested the quality of service received by customers was determined by what customers said to a representative. “For example, personally targeting employees by saying, ‘Your product is garbage’ instead of ‘This product is garbage,’ can trigger negative responses from service employees,” the researchers said in a statement. The researchers analyzed 36 hours of calls between customers and employees at a Canadian call center. When customers were not aggressive, fewer than 5 percent of the calls had problems. But researchers found that when customers used pronouns — such as “you” or “your” — and interrupted, the service worsened in more than 35 percent of the calls. For companies, customer service is more than an exercise in public relations. The customer rage study, drawing on several sets of data, extrapolated that businesses risked losing more than $202 billion in 2015 as a result of serious problems with their products and services. As the customer management institute’s report observed, “If organizations don’t get on board with meeting customer expectations, they’ll soon discover that they may not have many customers left around to serve. ” | 1 |
BUENOS AIRES — Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Argentine former president who with her late husband dominated the country’s politics for most of this century, was indicted Tuesday on fraud and corruption charges involving huge public works projects. It was her second indictment since she left office last year. Several members of her administration, including Julio De Vido, a former planning minister, and José López, a former public works secretary, were also charged in the case. Lázaro Báez, a businessman long associated with Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, Néstor Kirchner, was charged, too. One of his companies, Austral Construcciones, was accused of being the beneficiary of corruption. The former officials are accused of being part of an illegal association “that operated between at least May 8, 2003, and Dec. 9, 2015, and was created to commit crimes to illegally and deliberately appropriate itself with funds that were assigned to road works,” according to the indictment. The charges focus on 52 projects in the southern province of Santa Cruz, where Néstor Kirchner was governor for more than a decade until he became president of Argentina in 2003. Julián Ercolini, a federal judge, said that Mr. Báez’s company, which did not exist until shortly before Mr. Kirchner became president, was awarded contracts worth $2. 97 billion. That included 15 percent surcharges above the original cost of the contracts, Judge Ercolini added. Mrs. Kirchner, who was president for two terms between 2007 and 2015, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, and characterizes her legal troubles as little more than political persecution by her successor and rival, President Mauricio Macri. “Conspiracy was the crime that was created by de facto governments and used by all the dictatorships to persecute opposition leaders,” Mrs. Kirchner wrote on Twitter after the indictment was announced. Even while she was in office, she accused United States interests and others of being part of a crusade to undermine leftist leaders in Latin America, including her. She often compares her situation to that of Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil and an ally of her administration, who was impeached this year. Mrs. Kirchner was indicted in May on charges of manipulating Argentina’s Central Bank to bolster the peso. She is also under investigation in several other cases, many of which include Mr. Báez, who was detained in April in a separate case relating to money laundering. Mr. Báez has denied all charges against him. One of Mrs. Kirchner’s lawyers, Gregorio Dalbon, wrote on Twitter that the latest indictment would be appealed. Mr. De Vido characterized the charges as “a ruling that was for Macri’s political needs. ” Trials, given the slow pace of Argentina’s justice system, would most likely be a long way off. The indictments were announced a day after Mr. Macri fired the finance minister, Alfonso in what was the first cabinet since he took office last year in the midst of a deep recession. The economy has taken longer to recover than he promised economic activity plunged 4. 7 percent in October, compared to the previous year, according to official figures released on Tuesday. Some analysts say the latest indictment could help Mr. Macri’s government make its case, even if implicitly, that it needs more time to revive the economy. “In the context of a weak economy, the government needs to remind voters of who came before them and the inheritance they received,” said Marcelo Bermolén, a political science professor at Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires. “Much of the strength of the government lies” in keeping Mrs. Kirchner’s profile alive so it will have someone to blame. The corruption allegations swirling around Mrs. Kirchner and her circle have provoked resentment among a public still smarting from the recession. In perhaps the most lurid episode, Mr. López was caught in June at a convent outside Buenos Aires with a semiautomatic rifle, expensive watches and nearly $9 million in cash. Still, some observers suggest that the new indictment might actually bolster her support among the approximately 36 percent of the population that continues to have a positive image of the former president. “This could be useful for her in terms of victimization, which she is already doing,” said Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst. Mr. Berensztein added, however, that history was ultimately not on Mrs. Kirchner’s side: “ in Argentina have not been really successful in regaining power once they leave office. ” | 1 |
A plan by a Massachusetts county to work with federal immigration authorities in order to quickly deport illegal immigrants has open border groups enraged. [Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald signed an agreement with the federal government which will allow his officers to interview suspected illegal immigrants in police custody and better hand them over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, as Breitbart Texas reported. The agreement gives Plymouth County law enforcement access to a federal database where they can check if a suspected illegal immigrant is wanted for another crime or has returned to the U. S. after being previously deported. Open border activists from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Brockton Interfaith Community are targeting the local agreement as an effort they claim strips illegal aliens of their rights, despite their immigration status. “Now, literally your local police officer is going to be an ICE official,” ACLU Massachusetts Attorney Laura Rotolo told the Enterprise News. “When that happens, people become afraid to call the police. ” Similarly, the lead organizer for the Brockton Interfaith Community, Isabel Lopez, said the migrants being targeted “haven’t done anything wrong. ” “That’s the biggest concern we have, because we have mothers and families who haven’t done anything wrong,” Lopez told the paper. McDonald pushed back against the accusations, saying “I think it enhances public safety. ” “It’s not like we’re out there enforcing immigration law,” McDonald said. “What we’re doing is identifying criminal offenders who may also be here illegally. ” Lopez said her community group felt betrayed by McDonald because she said he promised not to sign an immigration agreement, though he denies that claim. “I’m looking forward to talking with them and hearing what they have to say, and I’m looking forward to informing them, because I think there is a lot of misinformation floating around,” McDonald said. McDonald is not the only sheriff in town to take on new measures to fight off illegal immigration locally. Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson also signed the same agreement with the federal government, as he has adamantly supported Donald Trump’s plan to end illegal immigration. Weeks ago, the Bristol County Sheriff voiced support for Trump’s plan to build a southern border wall, as Breitbart News reported. Hodgson offered county inmates as laborers to help build the wall, saying “I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
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Donald Trump has long campaigned on the promise of running the country the way he's run his businesses. On that basis, we essentially already know what it would mean if he entered the Oval Office and applied his personal business acumen to this nation (and the rest of the world). There's a surprisingly full record to cite. Who can forget, for instance, what happened to his signature gambling resorts in Atlantic City? Who can forget their serial failures in what was still relatively good times in that city, including the repeated trips to bankruptcy court and the way he stiffed local contractors and suppliers, running them out of business? As Russ Buettner and Charles Bagli of the New York Times summed it up : "He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen."
In his pre-political years, he perfected what Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek dubbed "the art of the bad deal": "lost contracts, bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions, and indifference to investors." And from every bad deal for those who supported him, he's almost always walked away better off. All in all, it's quite a record (and don't even mention Trumped Up University ). There is no reason to believe that this pattern of behavior would change in the White House. After all, The Donald's record shows a remarkable consistency, so it's possible to imagine with a fair degree of accuracy what you're going to get.
Take election night 2012 when The Donald was still a Mitt Romney supporter. CNN recently reported on his tweets that night and judging by his comment on the Chinese invention of climate change, his complaints about polling violations, his outburst about "sham" elections, and in the wake of Romney's loss his call for "revolution," there hasn't been much truly new under the Trumpian sun in 2016 -- not even his last tweet of that night four years ago: "We have to make America great again!" In other words, his record should be considered remarkably predictive. So count on this: from the Oval Office, he'll walk away a richer man, leaving the rest of us holding the bag, and his supporters, particularly white working class men, in a striking version of hell.
Then, of course, there's the other candidate. You know who -- the woman who never saw a bank CEO she couldn't get a couple of hundred thousand dollars from for giving thoroughly unsurprising speeches. Today, TomDispatch regular Nomi Prins, author of All the Presidents' Bankers , explores what our world might be like if The Donald goes down in flames and Hillary Clinton enters the White House next January. Consider this, economically speaking, the definition of a hold-onto-your-hats election, no matter who wins. Tom
Waking Up in Hillary Clinton's America Wall Street in the Saddle By Nomi Prins
As this endless election limps toward its last days, while spiraling into a bizarre duel over vote-rigging accusations, a deep sigh is undoubtedly in order. The entire process has been an emotionally draining, frustration-inducing, rage-inflaming spectacle of repellent form over shallow substance. For many, the third debate evoked fatigue. More worrying, there was again no discussion of how to prevent another financial crisis, an ominous possibility in the next presidency, whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton enters the Oval Office -- given that nothing fundamental has been altered when it comes to Wall Street's practices and predation.
At the heart of American political consciousness right now lies a soul-crushing reality for millions of distraught Americans: the choices for president couldn't be feebler or more disappointing. On the one hand, we have a petulant, vocabulary-challenged man-boar of a billionaire, who hasn't paid his taxes, has regularly left those supporting him holding the bag , and seems like a ludicrous composite of every bad trait in every bad date any woman has ever had. On the other hand, we're offered a walking photo-op for and well-paid speechmaker to Wall-Street CEOs, a one-woman money-raising machine from the 1% of the 1%, who, despite a folksiness that couldn't look more rehearsed, has methodically outplayed her opponent. - Advertisement -
With less than two weeks to go before E-day -- despite the Trumptilian upheaval of the last year -- the high probability of a Clinton win means the establishment remains intact. When we awaken on November 9th, it will undoubtedly be dawn in Hillary Clinton's America and that potentially means four years of an economic dystopia that will (as would Donald Trump's version of the same) leave many Americans rightfully anxious about their economic futures.
None of the three presidential debates suggested that either candidate would have the ability (or desire) to confront Wall Street from the Oval Office. In the second and third debates, in case you missed them, Hillary didn't even mention the Glass-Steagall Act, too big to fail, or Wall Street. While in the first debate, the subject of Wall Street only came up after she disparaged the tax policies of " Trumped-up, trickle down economics " (or, as I like to call it, the Trumpledown economics of giving tax and financial benefits to the rich and to corporations).
In this election, Hillary has crafted her talking points regarding the causes of the last financial crisis as weapons against Trump, but they hardly begin to tell the real story of what happened to the American economy. The meltdown of 2007-2008 was not mainly due to "tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy" or a "failure to invest in the middle class," two subjects she has repeatedly highlighted to slam the Republicans and their candidate. It was a byproduct of the destruction of the regulations that opened the way for a too-big-to-fail framework to thrive. Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era act that once separated people's bank deposits and loans from any kind of risky bets or other similar actions in which banks might engage, was repealed under the Financial Modernization Act of 1999. In addition, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was passed, which allowed Wall Street to concoct devastating unregulated side bets on what became the subprime crisis.
Given that the people involved with those choices are still around and some are still advising (or in the case of one former president living with) Hillary Clinton, it's reasonable to imagine that, in January 2017, she'll launch the third term of Bill Clinton when it comes to financial policy, banks, and the economy. Only now, the stakes are even higher, the banks larger, and their impunity still remarkably unchallenged.
Consider President Obama's current treasury secretary, Jack Lew. It was Hillary who hit the Clinton Rolodex to bring him back to Washington. Lew first entered Bill Clinton's White House in 1993 as special assistant to the president. Between his stints working for Clinton and Obama, he made his way into the private sector and eventually to Wall Street -- as so many of his predecessors had done and successors would do. He scored a leadership role with Citigroup during the time that Bill Clinton's former Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs co-Chairman ) Robert Rubin was on its board of directors. In 2009 , Hillary selected him to be her deputy secretary of state. - Advertisement -
Lew is hardly the only example of the busy revolving door to power that led from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration via Wall Street (or activities connected to it). Bill Clinton's Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs , Timothy Geithner worked with Robert Rubin, later championed Wall Street as president and CEO of the New York Federal Reserve while Hillary was senator from New York (representing Wall Street), and then became Obama's first treasury secretary while Hillary was secretary of state .
One possible contender for treasury secretary in a new Clinton administration would be Bill Clinton's Under Secretary of Domestic Finance and Obama's Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman, Gary Gensler (who was -- I'm sure you won't be shocked -- a Goldman Sachs partner before entering public service). These, then, are typical inhabitants of the Clinton inner circle and of the political-financial corridors of power. Their thinking, like Hillary's, meshes well with support for the status quo in the banking system, even if, like her, they are willing on occasion to admonish it for its "mistakes."
This thru-line of personnel in and out of Clinton World is dangerous for most of the rest of us, because behind all the "talking heads" and genuinely amusing Saturday Night Live skits about this bizarre election lie certain crucial issues that will have to be dealt with: decisions about climate change, foreign wars, student-loan unaffordability, rising income inequality , declining social mobility , and, yes, the threat of another financial crisis. And keep in mind that such a future economic meltdown isn't an absurdly long-shot possibility. Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve, the nation's main bank regulator, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation , the government entity that insures our bank deposits, collectively noted that seven of our biggest eight banks -- Citigroup was the exception -- still have inadequate emergency plans in the event of another financial crisis. | 0 |
BERLIN — Austria’s highest court threw out the results of the nation’s presidential election on Friday, giving a euroskeptic party a second chance to win. The ruling put the European Union’s core issues back in the cross hairs of voters only a week after Britain’s decision to quit. Citing irregularities in ballot counting, the court ordered a of the presidential runoff, which an candidate, Norbert Hofer, narrowly lost in May. It was the first time Austria had ordered a rerun of a national election since 1945, when the Nazis were defeated. Now, Mr. Hofer has another chance to become the first politician elected head of state in Europe since World War II. Much like the British vote last week, the new election in Austria could well serve as a referendum on the central tenets, roles and responsibilities of the European Union. The aftershocks of the British referendum on leaving the bloc did not stop there. Central and Eastern European nations are demanding that the European Union do a better job of dealing with migration. The prime minister of Slovakia, which assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union on Friday, warned that the bloc’s leaders needed to pay more attention to national sovereignty. The prime minister, Robert Fico, urged “a balance, an equilibrium, between the member states and the European institutions,” so that “neither should dominate. ” The leaders of the European Union are trying to discourage other states from leaving by making Britain’s exit as painful as possible. Still, the growing pressure from angry electorates across Europe may force them to rapidly address the issues that drove more than 17 million Britons to vote to leave: sovereignty, borders and migrants. The view that power “needs to be rebalanced toward capitals is absolutely on the table in light of the U. K.’s decision to leave the bloc,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the Europe director for the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. He added, “There’s a tremendous desire from all over Europe to win back autonomy and sovereignty from Brussels that is motivated by how out of touch the E. U. has become with the everyday fears and concerns of its citizens. ” In the Austrian election, the European Union “could very well become a theme in the coming campaign,” said Hans Rauscher, a columnist for the liberal Austrian newspaper Der Standard. The two candidates’ stances on Europe could not be more different. Mr. Hofer is a nationalist who has advocated for the rights of disabled people since he was injured in a paragliding accident. His opponent, Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Green Party, supports a “United States of Europe. ” Elected to Parliament in 2006, Mr. Hofer has galvanized voters disillusioned with the two mainstream parties that have governed Austria continually — and often in coalition — since the 1950s. When polls closed in the May 22 runoff, Mr. Hofer was leading, but a final count that included about 700, 000 postal ballots put Mr. Van der Bellen ahead by roughly 31, 000 votes. The leader of Mr. Hofer’s Freedom Party, Strache, filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court about irregularities in 94 of 117 electoral districts. The chairman of the Constitutional Court, Gerhart Holzinger, announced on Friday that “the runoff must be repeated in all of Austria,” and said the decision was guided solely by the court’s mission to protect the rule of law and democracy. The judges described procedural mistakes regarding the timing and monitoring of the counting of some ballots. Along with promising to hold Austria’s government more accountable, Mr. Hofer and his party campaigned heavily on the migrant issue. Most of the more than one million migrants who reached Germany last year did so on land routes that took them through Austria. More than 90, 000 migrants decided to apply for asylum in Austria — a similar proportion as in Germany, which has 10 times Austria’s population. Britain’s June 23 referendum — in which immigration was a central issue — was the first time a country had decided to quit the European Union, and it bolstered euroskeptic parties across the Continent, including in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. After the British vote, Mr. Hofer said he favored holding a similar referendum in Austria if new efforts to centralize power in Brussels were not halted. On Sunday, he told the newspaper Österreich that if the European Union “evolves in the wrong direction, then for me the time would have come to say: So, now we have to ask the Austrians. ” In a 1994 referendum in Austria, 67 percent of voters chose to join the European Union, and recent polls suggest that a clear majority supports continued membership, said Mr. Rauscher, the newspaper columnist. Any new referendum would have to be approved by Parliament, but the Freedom Party could begin a appeal for a referendum like the one in Britain. “Parliament could ignore that,” Mr. Rauscher wrote in an email, “but that would be a good propaganda tool for the Freedom Party. ” The decision by British voters to leave the European Union was strongly influenced by immigration from other European countries, but Britain, which is not part of the Schengen zone, has not felt the crush of Middle Eastern and North African refugees in the same way that other European nations have. Slovakia and other smaller countries have objected to the quota plan devised by European leaders. Germany has insisted that all members of the bloc must do their share to solve what is a common problem. But the British vote and the sparks it has ignited among other European electorates are now exerting intense pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and others who favor cautious and collaborative institutional reforms. That stance is arousing increasing resistance from states, and political parties, that want to chart their own path. On Friday, Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, met with Slovakia’s prime minister, Mr. Fico, who has indicated that the member states — as opposed to Brussels officials — take a greater role in setting set the strategic direction of the bloc. “National parliaments have to be heard,” the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, which meet in a bloc known as the Visegrad Group, said in a statement this week. Mr. Fico has criticized the European Union’s leaders for mishandling the migration crisis, for giving France and Germany too much influence, and for doing too much of its business in Brussels. On Friday at a news conference with Mr. Juncker, however, he took a milder tone, saying that while “migration can be a divisive subject,” Slovakia wishes to create a “scope for discussion. ” Slovakia’s foreign minister, Miroslav Lajcak, said this week that he would “support any measure” to keep Britain in the bloc, becoming one of the few European officials to raise the possibility of additional concessions. In many respects, Slovakia is a major champion of the European project. Brussels has provided huge amounts of funding to develop its infrastructure, and Slovakia is a member of both the eurozone and the Schengen area. But some of the policies from Brussels have outraged Slovaks, and Mr. Fico in particular. Mr. Fico has said that his country will accept only Christian refugees, and that forcing a country with little history of Muslim immigration to take in Muslim refugees would amount to “false solidarity. ” Slovakia is suing at the Court of Justice of the European Union to block a system devised by the European Commission that could require it to take a quota of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Mr. Juncker promised to cut down on red tape in Brussels, but said the European Union could not compromise on bedrock principles like freedom of movement. “There was one major issue, the freedom of movement of workers, and I will not change that because this is a basic freedom of the European Union,” Mr. Juncker said. | 1 |
Keywords: alkaline water
Water can either be acidic or alkaline, depending on its pH level. “pH” stands for “potential hydrogen” or “power of hydrogen” and refers to a number of hydrogen ions contained within the substance. The pH or potential hydrogen, scale runs from zero to fourteen, with 7 as the neutral middle. An acid is a substance with a pH of less than 7. A basic or alkaline substance has a pH of greater than 7.
Your tap water is a mixture of chlorine, antibiotics, hormones disturbing chemicals and other metals that will go straight into your system. Impure water can cause a weakened immune system and an array of other illnesses that occur when the immune system is vulnerable. Alkaline Water Simple Recipe
With the proper ingredients and some guidance, you can learn to make water alkaline and see for yourself the way it can enhance your health.
Ingredients:
Two liters of filtered, clean water One teaspoon of Himalayan salt A quarter of sliced lemon (organic).
Directions:
Pour the filtered water into a clean glass jar. After that, place the lemon in the water (don’t squeeze it). Next, add one teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt in the water. Put the lid on top of the jar and leave it overnight Consume three glasses of alkaline water in the morning on an empty stomach.
The beauty of lemon water is that it is delicious, refreshing, nourishing, and best of all alkalizing. By alkalizing our water, we can easily contribute to our health by improving our metabolism, lowering the acidity in our bloodstream, slowing the progressions of aging down, and kick-starting our body’s full potential by lowering its overall acidity.
Cancer Cells Cannot Live in Alkaline Water
The alkaline water is extremely powerful. Alkaline water has a high redox potential, and it has its water molecules in smaller clusters than normal water. Lemon is well known for its pH balancing, and it has quite an acidic taste, it is inherently alkaline and helps the body maintain its balance. Most importantly, they do so without damaging the healthy cells.
All of these things help inhibit the spread of cancer and aid in killing cancer cells, directly or indirectly. It is also a powerful disinfectant and antibacterial compound, aiding in the treatment many conditions from bad breath to cholera.
Sources include: | 0 |
Gregg Prescott, an author and editor at In5d.com got an intriguing private message from someone on Facebook. This is the message:
Via AlternativeNews
“Hi Gregg, I follow your in5d website everyday and I’m thankful there are like minded people like yourself who are aware of global things that I have know since I was a little girl.
I came across some photos from a trusted source of the inside of planes that are used for chemtrails and I figured if I passed them on to you, you can help spread more awareness with it on your website. Let me know if this is ok with you. Thanks.” Gregg saw the images and he immediately wanted to know who the source was and if they wanted to elaborate on these photos. He was told:
“Unfortunately my source does not want to be known and would rather remain anonymous… I’m sure they have some pretty good reasons and I must respect their wishes. As long as the information gets out there I think that’s the most important thing I’ll send you more photos later on in the day when I have a chance thank you.”
THESE ARE THE SHOCKING PHOTOS GREGG RECEIVED :
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Ford will build a plant in Michigan instead of Mexico as a “vote of confidence” in Donald J. Trump’s incoming administration, its CEO Mark Fields announced on Tuesday. [The announcement means Ford will cancel its plans to build a new plant in Mexico and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan — creating 700 new jobs here in the United States — CNN reports. “We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Fields told CNN, noting that his company had conversations on Tuesday with Trump and Vice Mike Pence. Trump and Pence will officially be sworn in on Jan. 20. Fields said his company’s decision to create jobs in America rather than in Mexico is a “vote of confidence” in Trump’s incoming administration and the environment it will create. The investment, CNN reports, will be at the plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, and will aim “to produce more electric and cars” since “Ford believes electric vehicles will outsell vehicles within the next 15 years. ” Trump’s success in keeping Ford jobs here is winning praise even from labor unions. “I am thrilled that we have been able to secure additional jobs for American workers,” Jimmy Settles, the UAW’s vice president, said. CNN notes that Ford’s decision to keep the jobs here in the U. S. rather than shipping them overseas to Mexico — as it announced early in 2016 — is a “major ” for the auto manufacturer. “The news is a major for Ford,” CNN wrote. “Last year, the company announced it would invest $1. 6 billion in Mexico to transfer the production of the Ford Focus from Michigan to Mexico to save costs. Now the Focus will be built at an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, and Ford will expand its plant in Flat Rock. ” Breitbart News was the first news organization to ask Trump about Ford’s plans to ship jobs to Mexico. In an interview back in February 2016, Breitbart News asked Trump about this decision from Ford — and about similar plans from Carrier Corporation, which had planned to expand in Mexico and shut down U. S. facilities in Indianapolis — and Trump laid out his exact plans to keep the jobs here in the United States instead of seeing them drained to Mexico. “There’s only one way you’re going to reverse it, and that’s that you’re going to have to make it more expensive to do business that way,” Trump told Breitbart News back then about the news from Ford and Carrier that they planned to go overseas: First of all, you’re going to have to look to lower taxes [for those who do business inside the United States] — and we may very well have to charge taxes at the border, when somebody drives a car through the border to sell it in the United States. But look, we’ve closed our plants. We’ve lost our jobs. They’re no going to build cars in Mexico and sell them in the United States, okay? We can lower our taxes, and we’re probably going to have to charge a surtax at the border. Otherwise we’re going to lose a fortune. And that will help Ford and other people make a decision to buy in the United States, to build in the United States. Even though he’s not even president yet, Trump has already succeeded on both cases, Carrier and Ford. He’s also succeeded in getting 8, 000 other jobs in the U. S. with Sprint and OneWeb, news announced last week. Trump, of course, shocked the political class by winning the state of Michigan against Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton on Nov. 8 on his pathway to 306 electoral votes. | 1 |
Police Attack and Arrest Peaceful Protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline Posted on Oct 27, 2016
Near Standing Rock, North Dakota on Oct. 22, armed police corralled and arrested more than 140 people seeking to protect themselves, their cultural heritage and the health of the planet on the site where contractors bulldozed the peoples’ ancestral burial ground to make way for the construction of an oil pipeline.
Jihan Hafiz, a journalist for The Intercept who was among the arrested, filmed the clip above, which is among the most compelling eye-level footage of the months-long protest of the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline, which is led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and reservation.
After a morning of prayer, the protesters “were attacked by police forces who used pepper spray and beat protesters with batons,” Hafiz wrote . “Dozens of officers, backed by military trucks, police vans, machine guns, and nonlethal weapons, violently approached the group without warning.”
As the protesters attempted to leave, the police began beating and detaining them. Several Native American women leading the march were targeted, dragged out of the crowd, and arrested. One man was body-slammed to the ground, while another woman broke her ankle running from the police. The military and police trucks followed the protesters as nearly a hundred officers corralled the protesters into a circle. Among the arrested were journalists, a 17-year-old pregnant girl, and a 78-year-old woman.
In total, more than 140 people were detained in half an hour. It was the largest roundup of protesters since the movement against the pipelines intensified two months ago. A majority of those arrested were charged with rioting and criminal trespass. Overall, close to 300 people have been arrested since protests against the pipeline kicked off over the summer.
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When we arrived in Mandan, the jail was so overwhelmed with people that we had to sit on the floor in the jail’s common area. Two Native American men were thrown into solitary confinement. A number of women faced humiliating strip searches, which included spreading their body parts and jumping up and down while coughing. We were refused phone calls and received no food or water for eight hours after being arrested. Two women fainted from low blood sugar and another had her medication taken away, causing her to shake and sweat profusely.
When I was released from jail, my camera was missing. When I asked about its whereabouts, a police officer said, “Your camera is being held as evidence in a crime.”
The video footage presented here was shot from the beginning of the march, during the prayer, and ends the moment I was arrested. Many families, nearly all of them Native American, can be seen running for the hills. Many people told me they felt as though they were re-enacting the massacres of the Lakota nation during the westward expansion of the United States, when families were shot in the back as they fled. | 0 |
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a bit overtaxed from the morning’s pancake making and the previous evening’s socializing, I flopped into my hammock. To and fro I swayed, as if pushed by a beachy breeze. But I was not at the beach. A light breeze drifted through my bedroom window, and all I could see was a brick wall. A hammock in a Brooklyn apartment? Yes. Actually, I have three, one in each bedroom. After living for four years in Caracas, Venezuela, I returned this year and swore that I would never have a home without a hammock again. Venezuela has a long Caribbean coastline, and the closeness of that warm sea permeates the capital, with its eternal summer weather, where hammocks can be found with more or less equal regularity in homes, apartments and the big houses of the rich. Once you get used to having one around, a hammock isn’t so much a design option as a necessity. It practically imposes a different rhythm on your life. You walk into a room and see it hanging there, and it’s hard not to fall into it, even for just a few minutes. And once you’re there, suspended, swaying, the process is automatic: Cares evaporate. I read in it. I nap in it. I text in it. I lie in it while talking to my children or they lie in theirs while talking to me. I don’t sleep in it overnight but I do lie in it sometimes during bouts of insomnia. It helps that I have a apartment. Even so, the quarters can be tight. Rocking in the hammock, I sometimes bump against the bed on one side or the sofa on the other. (The hammock has to be hung properly. I used sturdy rope hooks fastened into the wall studs with lag bolts.) The word “hammock” comes to us through Spanish from the Taino Indians, who lived on several islands in the Caribbean at the time of the first European contact, including Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Hammocks were among the curiosities that Columbus took back to Spain Venezuelans mostly use a different word: chinchorro, which can also refer to a kind of fishing net. “My chinchorro is surrounded by beautiful plants and trees, and I can see the sunset,” said Hélène Alonso, an emigrant from Venezuela who lives in Harlem and has a hammock on her terrace. “Not too much sunset, it’s New York City. I see a square of sky high above. You see colors and clouds, you see airplanes. ” Her hammock is a place for contemplation. “I think a chinchorro is like an embrace,” she said. “Sometimes you get in there and it’s like a micro world, especially if you wrap it around yourself. You close it, and suddenly you are where that swing takes you. ” My recent hammock reading included Gabriel García Márquez’s novel about Simón Bolívar, Venezuela’s independence hero who is known as The Liberator for his role in freeing much of South America from Spanish rule. The book, which follows the last, bitter days of Bolívar’s life, is called “The General in His Labyrinth” but it might also be called “The General in His Hammock. ” Bolívar, who was born in Caracas, spends a good part of the novel either lying in a hammock or getting in or out of one. He sleeps in them, broods in them, has coughing fits in them, makes love in them. At one point his loyal valet, José Palacios, observes Bolívar’s reaction to an unusual piece of news: “José Palacios saw that it had made an impression on him,” García Márquez writes, “for he stopped swaying in the hammock. ” | 1 |
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Donald Trump’s Diversity Chairwoman Brunell Donald-Kyei has been laying waste to anyone who takes her on, and she just shredded one of Michelle Obama’s favorite spokesmen, Brian Benjamin, who now works on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. When it came to the race card, Brunell was lethal, cutting down his every liberal lie. She tore him apart, then kicked him to the curb, as another Michelle and Hillary spokesman bit the dust. Michelle Obama’s favorite pundit Brian Benjamin (left), Hillary & her hot sauce (middle), Brunell Donald-Kyei (right)
Brian Benjamin kept an arrogant smile on his face as Donald Trump’s Diversity Chairwoman Brunell Donald-Kyei surgically sliced through Hillary’s pandering to the black community. They appeared on Fox and Friends a few days ago and the video is only getting more popular as interest in Brunell’s tactics is making headlines.
Unsurprisingly, Fox & Friends Monday has been focusing on the latest to emerge out of the WikiLeaks scandal, and one detail concerning the use of the phrase “ yo mama ,” suggested a pandering effort to an African American crowd by Clinton earlier this year. Joining Fox & Friends to discuss was vice-chair of the Trump National Diversity Coalition Brunell Donald-Kyei who said, “The pandering is not working. Black people just want a real seat at the table.” [via Mediaite ]
As Brunell laid Benjamin out cold, he had to pull out the race card, but that was a wrong move. Brunell was waiting for it, and she launched into a tirade that made Hillary and her “hot sauce” in my purse comment look as stupid as it sounded, as poor Steve Doocy tried to moderate.
Brunell went off, saying the communities need jobs, not hot sauce and “yo mama” jokes. She added that the black community wants empowerment and the Democratic party to keep its promises. Benjamin was quick to interrupt, alleging Trump talks about law and order but ignores systemic issues between the community and the police. However, Brunell wasn’t about to let him get away with his lie.
She quickly pointed out that mass incarceration happened under Bill and Hillary Clinton, telling Benjamin that he knows that too. “His wife [Hillary] was ok with that. So don’t go there,” she said. “Let Donald Trump fix it. Let a person who is a builder and a doer fix it.”
Benjamin tried to retort, calling Trump a racist, and that’s all it took to really cause Brunell to unleash. “ Not a loser, not a taco bowl, or needy Latino? Really? Are we going there? Catholics are bastardized. Are we going there? “ she asked, referring to the WikiLeaks emails that exposed the Hillary camp’s true thoughts and nasty remarks about many Americans.
Benjamin shot back, “Yea, let’s go there,” before Brunell finished him off, saying, “I went there, WikiLeaks is out in the streets, Sir. I read WikiLeaks. I read about the corruption.”
This exchange proves that when these Hillary shills get beat, they turn to the race card every time. When Brunell hears that, as a black woman, she can go full throttle at Benjamin, and his nervous laughter and scoffing means he is embarrassed and lost this argument, which shreds Hillary’s whole narrative about why Americans shouldn’t vote for Trump.
Hillary is a one note wonder. She has no positive record to run on, and her whole campaign is based on bullying Trump supporters. In her narrative, Trump is a Nazi and so are those of us who support him. So, we are fair game to be bullied — on the internet or in person as we have seen the paid thugs do.
It’s all smoke and mirrors because it just doesn’t hold true, and Brunell brought that out as she left Benjamin, one of Hillary’s token black spokesmen, to languish as he failed to make anyone believe the lie Hillary is trying to sell to Americans. This is all Hillary’s got to run on, and it will not be enough to win. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump, who has called the North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst trade deal” ever signed by the United States, appears to have backed off his threat to abandon the deal and is instead proposing keeping major planks in place when he begins renegotiating it later this year. But Mr. Trump, eager to showcase his tough stance against unfair trade practices, plans to sign two executive orders on Friday that will lay the groundwork for new policies and stricter enforcement of trade laws. The president will order a study of abusive trade practices that contribute to the United States’ trade deficit. The Commerce Department and the United States trade representative will do a accounting of the reasons for the imbalance. A second directive is aimed at increasing the collection of duties from countries whose companies American officials believe are selling products in the United States below their cost of production. Neither measure will have an immediate impact on trade policy or enforcement, but each could eventually lead to aggressive new measures. Both are aimed at showcasing Mr. Trump’s intent to fulfill his promises on trade. “These actions are designed to let the world know that this is another step in the president fulfilling his campaign promise,” said Wilbur L. Ross, the secretary of commerce. He said the findings would “form the basis for by the administration” on how to approach trade deficits in the future, including in a renegotiation of Nafta. “For the first time, we’re looking comprehensively at the source of what has been a large and persistent trade deficit that has contributed to job losses, the loss of our manufacturing base and other things,” said Peter Navarro, the director of Mr. Trump’s National Trade Council. The president is poised to give Congress the legally required 90 days’ notice of his intention to renegotiate Nafta, the 1994 pact with Canada and Mexico. In a draft letter circulated among members of Congress this week, the administration proposed adding a provision to allow tariffs to be reinstated if a flood of imports threatens to harm a domestic industry. Mr. Trump also wants to adjust the agreement’s rules of origin, or how much of a product must be made in a Nafta country. And he wants Nafta partners to expand the market for United goods in their government procurement. “The persistent U. S. deficit in goods trade with Canada and Mexico demands that this administration take swift action to revise the relationship to reflect and respond to challenges,” read the letter, signed by Stephen Vaughn, the acting United States trade representative. Mr. Trump has often said that the United States could abandon Nafta altogether if renegotiating it is not possible. But the hawkish rhetoric of the campaign has given way to more measured statements on trade from the administration that track more closely with the stance of many congressional Republicans, who are avid promoters of free trade and deeply skeptical of policies they view as restrictive or protectionist. “In terms of what we consider to be President Trump’s economic nationalist objectives and what he has said previously about Nafta, the list of negotiating terms was relatively benign,” said Scott S. Lincicome, an international trade lawyer at White Case. American business welcomed the additional specifics on trade policy. “The details in the letter have whet our appetite for more,” said John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. The tone of the draft letter, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal, did not echo Mr. Trump’s campaign speeches. Nowhere was there a mention of his threats to pull out of the agreement. Antonio a former Mexican trade official, said the letter suggested a softening in tone but also contained several proposals that were likely to prompt a strong response from the Mexican government. “There are some specific problems,” said Mr. now a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington. “But in terms of the language used during the campaign and at the beginning of the administration, it’s not as as some people could have expected. ” The assessment that the actual policies of the United States might not end up being as harsh as those espoused by Mr. Trump during the campaign is reflected in the confidence in the Mexican peso. Measured against a basket of currencies, it has gained about 17. 5 percent in value since the inauguration, more than any other major currency. On Thursday, it traded at 18. 72 pesos to the dollar, approaching the levels it held before Mr. Trump’s victory. The Canadian government declined on Thursday to comment directly on the draft letter, because Nafta negotiations have not begun. “Should notice of intent to renegotiate be given, Canada is prepared to discuss improvements at the appropriate time,” said Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry. Among Canadian trade experts, the proposals were met with relief, but the suspense has not ended. While the draft letter did not completely dismiss Nafta, it outlined American priorities that could threaten Canadian industries. “It’s not ripping up Nafta, but there are a bunch of sticks of dynamite contained in those pages,” said Mark Warner, a trade lawyer based in Toronto. “It’s going to be a messy, negotiation. ” The letter calls for expanding market access among the three countries and eliminating licensing and permit barriers that tend to stall commerce. It also calls for maintaining “reciprocal access” for textile and apparel products. Rather than scrap Nafta’s arbitration tribunals, regarded by some critics as secretive bodies that give private corporations unbridled power to challenge foreign governments outside the court system, the letter proposed to “maintain and seek to improve procedures” for settling disputes. It made no mention of currency policy, an issue many trade experts had thought might be on the table. The administration did give itself room to get tougher. The proposal for reinstating tariffs, often referred to as a snapback, was billed as a “safeguard mechanism” to protect domestic industries. The draft also suggested efforts to “level the playing field” on tax treatment. Such measures could bring objections from Canada and Mexico. Mr. Trump’s economic advisers have argued that Mexico uses its tax as a tariff that puts the United States at a disadvantage. The president has called for a tax on companies that move their operations to Mexico and try to sell products in the United States. Republicans in Congress are considering a “border adjustment tax” that would make imports more expensive. Automakers and car dealers have expressed concerns that changes to Nafta could disrupt the strong vehicle market in the United States. General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler operate plants in Mexico that supply models popular with American consumers, such as pickup trucks. Their assembly plants in the United States also rely on a steady flow of parts made by Mexican suppliers. The industry, including dealers, is particularly worried that Mr. Trump will follow through on the border tax on vehicles imported from Mexico. The window gives members of Congress and industry players time to weigh in before the Trump administration opens the negotiations. “There is much to like about it,” Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said of the draft letter. “There are areas where we are going to make suggestions. ” | 1 |
Filmmaker Spike Lee doesn’t understand why free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick hasn’t been signed. [Lee wrote on Instagram, “Smells MAD fishy to me, stinks to the high heavens” Lee and others feel Kaepernick is being blackballed because he kneeled during the national anthem last season. Perhaps that is part of the story, but not the whole story. The biggest reason Kaepernick’s still unsigned is that he’s just not a very good quarterback right now. His play has slipped significantly since he helped lead the San Francisco 49ers to a 2013 Super Bowl appearance. The NFL has a dearth of elite quarterbacks. If a team felt Kaepernick would solve their quarterback issue, he’d likely be on a team right now. Lee asked, “What owner and GM is going to step up and sign Colin so their team has a better chance to win?” Mr. Lee, teams are very forgiving if they think a player can help them win. That is why Kaepernick’s fellow Miami receiver Kenny Stills, recently got a new $32 million contract from the Dolphins. He was forgiven because he had a terrific 2016 season (nine touchdowns) and the Dolphins think he can help them win. The Dolphins are also bringing back safety Michael Thomas, who also kneeled. He’s a very good safety and special teams player. Teams are willing to add mercurial players they think will help them win. Why do you think wide receiver Terrell Owens got so many jobs? However, if teams think a player isn’t very good, and a headache to boot, they tend to stay away. Kaepernick’s unemployment right now isn’t as much related to disrespecting the country and police (remember his socks last summer) but more about his underwhelming play. Last year, in losses to a pair of terrible teams, Chicago and the New York Jets, he showed why he’s out of work. Against the Bears, he threw for four yards in three quarters before being benched. Against the Jets, he threw for four yards in the second half, against perhaps the NFL’s worst secondary, and 49ers lost in overtime. One problem is he’s not very good at reading defenses, and gets fixated on his first read, not doing a great job going through his progressions. ESPN NFL analyst Trent Dilfer feels Kapenerick is a “remedial passer” once defenses take away his first read. Dilfer told Sports Illustrated in 2013, “He takes his first read and sticks with it. But if they take your first read away, that’s pretty much it. You don’t work deep through your progressions, you don’t get the ball out to other receivers. ” This has been problem the last four seasons. He also tends to abandon the pocket too quickly. In other words, he scrambles too much. The great NFL quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers do their best work from the pocket, rarely running. “He’s going to have to tie his legs in training camp,” ESPN’s Steve Young said in 2014. “Literally, he should tie his legs, physically, so he can’t do anything but throw from the pocket. ” Also, his throwing mechanics are flawed leading to accuracy issues. He once admitted he’s not that into “throwing mechanics. ” Teams aren’t going to jump through hoops to sign inaccurate free agent quarterbacks. “There is no more important attribute for a quarterback than accuracy, especially for a free agent who is shopping himself to teams with various schemes,” wrote ESPN NFL columnist Kevin Seifert. “All passers miss throws, but Kaepernick over the past two seasons has done it as much or as more as anyone. ” So it’s more performance, than a perceived lack of patriotism, that has Keapernick unemployed right now. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s proposal to add $54 billion to the Pentagon budget next year sounds huge at first — a 10 percent increase for a department that already receives more of taxpayers’ money than any other part of government. But the outgoing Obama administration had forecast a $35 billion increase for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2018, so Mr. Trump’s share of the proposed increase over and above that figure is $19 billion, according to budget analysts. Even so, the proposed Pentagon increase has been greeted with criticism from military spending hawks, in part because White House officials say Mr. Trump will call for a significant cut in foreign aid, including programs that military officials say contribute to global stability and are seen as important in helping avoid future conflicts. Senior administration officials acknowledged on Monday that there were few specifics attached to the bigger budget number proposed for the Pentagon — so it is not yet possible to assess how many more troops, warships or the Pentagon will be able to field with the $54 billion. “Where we’re at in this process is that the number’s going to the D. O. D. today, and over the course of the next 10 days to two weeks, we’ll be coming up with those types of details,” Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, said when pressed on plans for Department of Defense spending. Broadly speaking, Mr. Trump has said his military priorities include buying more warships and warplanes, increasing the number of American ground troops and modernizing the nuclear arsenal. Even so, he will face difficulty in getting such a proposal through Congress, where the threat of mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration has acted as a brake on military spending. “This is a symbolic gesture,” said Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What Trump is proposing is increasing defense spending and paying for it by cutting nondefense spending. There’s no way Democrats are going to go for that. ” Under sequestration rules, Republicans would need Democrats to increase the military budget, a requirement that is likely to stymie Republican efforts to pay for increases in the Pentagon budget with cuts in other spending, including social programs. At the Defense Department, where military leaders always welcome more money, officials were muted about Mr. Trump’s budget proposal. What is more, Mr. Trump joined his call for increased military spending with a critique of the military, implying that the nation’s armed forces need more money because they have failed at winning wars. “We have to start winning wars again,” Mr. Trump said. “I have to say, when I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war. We never lost a war, remember?” He continued: “And now we never win a war. We never win. And don’t fight to win. We don’t fight to win. We’ve either got to win or don’t fight at all. ” Mr. Trump was born in 1946, the year after World War II ended. The only wars fought when he was young were not American victories — he was 7 when the Korean War ended in a stalemate, and he was in college when American forces were bogged down in Vietnam. When he was in his 40s and 50s, the United States conducted a successful military operation in Panama, reversed Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo. But Mr. Trump was channeling public exhaustion after more than 15 years of warfare since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the still unresolved conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Trump gave no indication of how he would have ensured victory in either of those places or what he planned to do. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis briefed the president’s team on Monday on potential strategies for defeating the Islamic State, which has operated in Iraq and Syria. Still, even the wars believed to be outright American victories by the public are not necessarily so, according to Andrew Exum, a retired Army Ranger and a Defense Department official in the Obama administration. “Those victories were not as decisive as we remember: It took another 100 years, after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, before the North truly won the Civil War, while the peace that ended the First World War begat the Second World War, and the peace that ended the Second World War begat the Cold War and its many constituent conflicts,” Mr. Exum said. “What Trump is saying resonates because it’s based more on the myths we tell ourselves than the histories written down in long, dense books. ” Former and current American military officials agreed. “The wars today don’t deliver battlefield victories along the lines of what we saw in World War II, with the surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri,” said David W. Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general and former commander of American forces in Afghanistan. “We’re fighting enemies with no navies, no air forces or even conventional armies in some cases. Applying only conventional armed forces to these conflicts is not always going to be adequate. ” Several former Pentagon officials, including a number of retired generals and admirals, cautioned against cutting the State Department and foreign aid budgets to help pay for increases in Pentagon spending. In a letter to top congressional leaders, the retired military officers wrote that “elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development alongside defense are critical to keeping America safe. ” “We know from our service in uniform that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone,” the generals and admirals wrote. “The military will lead the fight against terrorism on the battlefield, but it needs strong civilian partners in the battle against the drivers of extremism — lack of opportunity, insecurity, injustice and hopelessness. ” James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral who signed the letter, said on Monday that most senior military leaders believed it was unwise to cut development aid and diplomacy funding. “So often, the far less expensive ‘soft power’ tools — humanitarian relief, medical diplomacy, foreign aid, strategic communications — are under sister agencies such as state and A. I. D. ,” said Mr. Stavridis, a former NATO commander who now serves as the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, referring to the State Department and the Agency for International Development. “Cutting them harshly would be a mistake. ” Even Mr. Mattis expressed those views before being named defense secretary. “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition,” he said during congressional testimony in 2013, when he was head of the military’s Central Command. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, recently released a report calling for an increase in military spending to $640 billion in the next fiscal year, not the $603 billion that Mr. Trump proposed. In a statement on Monday, Mr. McCain said Mr. Trump’s proposal was insufficient. “With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget,” Mr. McCain said. “We can and must do better. ” After the Pentagon budget number was released on Monday, the stocks of the largest military contractors rose 1 percent to 2 percent during trading. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, which pay relatively high dividends, had already seen their stocks rise to record levels in a rally that began last summer. Investors will now want to see how any budget increases would be divided among weapons programs to determine which companies would benefit the most. | 1 |
One attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, is already investigating Donald J. Trump over possible violations of New York State law at his charity foundation. Another, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, has joined Mr. Schneiderman in an investigation into whether Exxon Mobil — whose chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, is Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state — lied to investors and the public about the threat of climate change. Ms. Healey also has a new pitch: “I won’t hesitate to take Donald Trump to court if he carries out his unconstitutional campaign promises,” she recently wrote to supporters. A third, Representative Xavier Becerra, who was chosen this month to become California’s attorney general, has dared the Trump administration to “come at us” over issues including immigration, climate change and health care. As Democrats steel themselves for the day next month when the White House door will slam on their backs, some of the country’s more liberal state attorneys general have vowed to use their power to check and balance Mr. Trump’s Washington. If the Trump administration withdraws from environmental, antitrust or financial regulations, the attorneys general say they will plug regulatory holes that may gape wide open, deploying state laws like New York’s Martin Act, which allows the state attorney general to pursue investigations on Wall Street. They have pledged to defend undocumented immigrants, and to combat hate crimes that many believe were unleashed by Mr. Trump’s polarizing campaign. And if Mr. Trump’s policies veer toward the unconstitutional, several of the 10 current and incoming Democratic attorneys general interviewed recently said they would apply a remedy favored by Mr. Trump himself: a lawsuit. The strategy could be as simple as mirroring the blueprint laid out by their Republican colleagues, who made something of a legal specialty of tormenting President Obama. Conservative attorneys general in states including Texas, Virginia and Florida have sued the Obama administration dozens of times, systematically battering Mr. Obama’s signature health care, environmental and immigration policies in the courts. One of them, Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, who used his office to bayonet Mr. Obama’s regulations, was just chosen by Mr. Trump to become the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Schneiderman — who established himself early as a nuisance to Mr. Trump when he sued him over Trump University, negotiating a $25 million settlement — pounced on the Pruitt selection, calling him “an agent of the oil and gas industry” and promising to push an E. P. A. under Mr. Pruitt to uphold environmental laws. Ms. Healey has also expressed concern about the nominations of Mr. Pruitt and Mr. Tillerson. The jockeying to begin hostilities with the Trump administration is a measure of how the country’s widening political divide has transformed the offices of state attorneys general into legal laboratories and sharpened them into political scalpels. They were once primarily local law enforcement figures who rarely pursued issues beyond state borders. But with the growth of their clout and ambition over the last three decades, they have become magnets for lobbyists, campaign donors and other corporate representatives looking to intervene in regulatory policy and tip investigations, a New York Times investigation found in 2014. Under President Bill Clinton, attorneys general pioneered the major multistate lawsuit that has served as a model for interstate collaboration since, with nearly all the states joining together to win a groundbreaking settlement with the tobacco industry. Liberal states later collaborated to force the E. P. A. under President George W. Bush to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, winning a Supreme Court decision that made it easier for the states to sue the federal government. It was under Mr. Obama that states came into their own as political activists. One group of Republican attorneys general began holding weekly conference calls to strategize ways to weaken the Affordable Care Act months before it became law in March 2010, filing their lawsuit minutes after Mr. Obama signed the bill. For the moment, the precise shape of targets is hard to make out. At the annual meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. two weeks ago, bipartisan bewilderment about the ’s true intentions abounded. (Republican state attorneys general will slightly outnumber Democrats in 2017.) “People are coming up to me and saying, ‘What’s going to happen? ’” said James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine, who ran a program studying attorneys general at Columbia Law School. Mr. Tierney, a Democrat, now lectures at Harvard Law School. “There’s a lot of down here, in both parties, like, ‘Oh my God. ’” Even as attorneys general from blue strongholds like California, Massachusetts and New York hasten to brand themselves as leaders of the opposition, many of their Democratic colleagues are striking a less antagonistic note as they wait to see how Mr. Trump will govern. One incoming attorney general, T. J. Donovan of Vermont, said he was ready to collaborate with the federal government to tackle the heroin epidemic in his state, among other issues — and to dissent when necessary. “Let’s be patient and wait and see what happens,” he said. “But at the same time, let’s be prepared. ” Mr. Schneiderman, it seems, is not straining to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt. Since Election Day, he said in an interview, he has spoken to several attorneys general about teaming up, as Democratic attorneys general have already done to defend Mr. Obama’s plan against Republican legal challenges. “Life just got a lot more exciting for those of us at the state level who are now the first line of defense,” said Mr. Schneiderman, adapting a favorite catchphrase of Republican attorneys general. Their litigiousness turned attorneys general like Greg Abbott, now the governor of Texas, into luminaries. He often rallied crowds by saying, “I go to the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home. ” Next year, there is likely to be no shortage of Democrats who can say the same about Mr. Trump. The states’ rights arguments that Republicans have made gospel for nearly eight years — that states must serve as a check against federal overreach — are likely to become convenient for Democrats. So are the legal tactics that Republican attorneys general used to stifle Obama administration programs, including filing lawsuits in front of friendly local judges to win nationwide injunctions against policies they hoped to stop, said Amanda Frost, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. With Mr. Trump’s ascension, attorneys general of both parties may shuck any remaining veneer of nonpartisanship, even as they continue to wade across party boundaries on investigations involving consumer protection or pharmaceutical pricing. According to Paul Nolette, a professor at Marquette University, who studies attorneys general, Republican attorneys general filed partisan legal briefs in only five Supreme Court cases during the Clinton administration, a figure that rose to 97 in the first seven years of the Obama administration. “Things are being driven more by partisan politics,” Mr. Nolette said. “On virtually every issue you can imagine, A. G. s are signaling where they stand. ” As Mr. Abbott and Mr. Pruitt found, there are certain advantages to occupying a law enforcement office with an megaphone. Josh Shapiro, the incoming Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania, said he had turned down a run for the Senate this year in favor of the attorney general race. “I believe it to be the most impactful job in government today,” he said. Other Democrats said they were watching how Mr. Trump would treat the Consumer Financial Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission. Under Mr. Obama, attorneys general have grown used to working closely with both agencies on consumer and antitrust issues — “It’s been the golden years,” said Tom Miller, the longtime Democratic attorney general of Iowa — and several said they feared federal regulatory might would shrivel under the new administration, leaving states to try to hold the line with far fewer resources. “I don’t want to pick fights before there are fights,” said Brian Frosh, the Democratic attorney general of Maryland. “But based on the campaign, there’s cause for concern. ” | 1 |
. Chelsea Clinton Being Groomed to Buy Seat in Congress by NWO Handlers —& 'Clinton Cash' Documentary While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/chelsea-clinton-being-groomed-to-buy.html While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far from over. Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for the New York seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey. Chelsea Clinton could run for the seat in NYC’s 17th Congressional District once Lowey, a respected, 79-year-old career politician with nearly 30 years in office, decides to retire, we have exclusively learned. Lowey’s district includes parts of Rockland and Westchester counties and, conveniently, Chappaqua, the Clinton family home base. Continuing the Clinton Crime Brand If you thought for one, fleeting second that the Clintons would just somehow walk away after Crooked Hillary’s rejection by the American people, think again. There are many more billions to be made, and many more state favors to sell and trade. So the baton gets passed to Chelsea. Congresswoman Chelsea Clinton. Thanks for the Congressional seat, mom and dad! In August, Hillary and Bill Clinton purchased a home next door to their primary residence in Chappaqua for $1.16 million, which is intended for Chelsea, her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and their two children, Charlotte and Aidan. While Chelsea currently lives, and is registered to vote, in Manhattan, she could easily make Chappaqua her legal residence in order to run for Lowey’s seat when it becomes vacant. A source told us: “While it is true the Clintons need some time to regroup after Hillary’s crushing loss, they will not give up. Chelsea would be the next extension of the Clinton brand. “In the past few years, she has taken a very visible role in the Clinton Foundation and on the campaign trail. “While politics isn’t the life Hillary wanted for Chelsea, she chose to go on the campaign trail for her mother and has turned out to be very poised, articulate and comfortable with the visibility.” The source continued: “There has been a lot of speculation within New York Democratic circles about Lowey’s retirement and Chelsea running for the seat. There is a belief that Chappaqua is a logical place for Chelsea to run, because it would be straightforward for her to raise money and build a powerful base.” A spokesperson for Lowey — who is serving her 14th term in Congress and was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1988 — declined to comment. A spokesperson for Chelsea didn’t get back to us. Clinton Cash — Official Documentary By Emily Smith | 0 |
The new Clinton email scandal keeps getting worse for Republicans as new information is emerging that the emails the FBI is looking at were not on her server.
The AP is reporting: BREAKING: US official: Newly discovered emails related to Clinton investigation did not come from her private server.
From previous reporting, it is known that the emails have nothing to do with Clinton, her campaign, the Clinton Foundation, the Russian hacks, the State Department, and any emails she sent or received. Now, we know that the emails were not on her server. FBI Director Comey completely bungled this announcement, and he needs to explain what the FBI is analyzing, because it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Hillary Clinton.
The email scandal that Republicans thought would save them has evaporated nearly as quickly as it arrived. With each new development, it is clear that there is much less to the story than initially reported.
If the Republican Party wants to risk losing, even more House and Senate seats in 11 days by pursuing this non-story, they should feel free to have at it.
Any time that Republicans spend talking about Clinton’s emails over the next 11 days will only help the Democratic Party. | 0 |
Rep. Ron DeSantis ( ) talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Thursday regarding his experience at the GOP baseball practice where Rep. Steve Scalise was shot. [DeSantis said while Rep. Scalise “is fighting for his life, I think he’s going to pull through. ” After describing his interactions with the alleged shooter, DeSantis said, “We received a message expressing approval of what had happened and just hoping that Donald Trump would be next. And another one of my colleagues received an email saying one down, 217 more to go. and other colleagues have received other things. ” DeSantis said he believes the hate being engendered toward President Trump is being directed at Congress because they are more accessible. “This guy went there clearly filled with rage, clearly filled with political ideology that was hostile to the president and Republicans, and he wanted to kill a lot of Republicans. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
CHARLOTTE, N. C. — The grieving relatives of a man who was killed by the police here watched videos on Thursday of the fatal shooting, a wrenching experience that they said revealed no hint of aggression in him and left the family members convinced that the videos should be made public. But the city’s police chief, who had arranged for the private viewing, held fast to his decision not to release the recordings. The wife and other relatives of the dead man, Keith L. Scott, watched his killing from two angles, recorded Tuesday by police dashboard and body cameras, and “it was incredibly difficult,” a family lawyer, Justin Bamberg, said in a statement. He said the family had come away with more questions than answers and a different interpretation from the account offered by the police, who have said that Mr. Scott, 43, was shot after he got out of his car brandishing a gun. “When told by police to exit his vehicle, Mr. Scott did so in a very calm, nonaggressive manner,” Mr. Bamberg said. “While police did give him several commands, he did not aggressively approach them or raise his hands at members of law enforcement at any time. ” When an officer opened fire, he added, “Mr. Scott’s hands were by his side, and he was slowly walking backwards. ” On Thursday night, hundreds of people gathered at an intersection in central Charlotte, holding signs and chanting, “We want the tapes!” in a peaceful demonstration. Mayor Jennifer Roberts ordered a . m. curfew, the first since the unrest began, though the demonstrations were largely peaceful, and the police did not enforce the curfew as it went into effect. The police said that two officers were being treated after protesters sprayed them with a chemical. There were no immediate reports of injuries to civilians. On Thursday evening, some protesters marched to the police headquarters and held a moment of silence, fists raised in tribute to a man who was fatally shot during the previous night’s protest and to those killed by the police. They marched to the county jail and chanted for the inmates behind the slats. Some inside blinked their lights off and on in apparent solidarity. Later, Interstate 277 was briefly shut down as demonstrators moved onto the roadway, and the police fired smoke to try to disperse them. Mr. Scott’s death touched off violence in Charlotte on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. As hundreds of National Guard troops and State Police officers fanned out across the city on Thursday in an effort to head off further violence, Chief Kerr Putney of the police brushed aside demands by activists, community leaders and the news media to make the police video public. “We release it when we believe there is a compelling reason,” he said. Until they viewed the videos on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Scott’s relatives had said they were uncertain whether they should be released to the public, according to Mr. Bamberg. While the family members differed with the police on some major points about the videos, they seemed to be in agreement with Chief Putney on one aspect. “It is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr. Scott is holding in his hands,” they said in a statement. Earlier in the day, Chief Putney said, “The video does not give me absolute, definitive visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun. ” He added later that he could not see Mr. Scott’s hands. But the chief, speaking at a news conference, said that eyewitness accounts and other evidence suggested that Mr. Scott was holding a pistol at the time he was shot, and that a weapon had been found at the scene. Mr. Scott was black — as is the officer who shot him, Brentley Vinson — and his death added to a long list of killings of black men at the hands of law enforcement that had rocked cities and spurred protests around the country, bolstering claims of racial bias in policing. On Thursday, a white officer in Tulsa, Okla. was charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting an unarmed black man last week — a case in which startling police video was released within days of the encounter. During Wednesday night’s demonstrations, a protester was shot in the head in what the police described as a “civilian on civilian” episode. But some protesters accused the police of opening fire. Early Thursday evening, just about the time a crowd was gathering, the police announced that the man had died earlier in the day and that the department had begun a homicide investigation. The police identified the victim as Justin Carr, 26, without elaborating further on his death. Some black leaders and protesters have called for the public release of the videos from the outset, and those demands have grown louder in the succeeding days. “There must be transparency, and the video must be released,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina N. A. A. C. P. He said the protesters who had taken to the streets here by the hundreds since Mr. Scott’s death were “rising up against systems of injustice that protect officers who kill. ” “It’s about saying we are against bad police, because bad police make it bad for good police,” Mr. Barber said. In a day of rapid developments and rolling news conferences, local, state and federal officials called for calm. Protests had escalated the previous night, with some people smashing windows and storefronts, and the police used tear gas to disperse crowds and made 44 arrests. Nine civilians were injured, two officers had minor eye injuries, and three officers had heat exhaustion. At 12:30 a. m. Thursday, local officials declared a state of emergency, calling for help from state forces, who deployed during the day in a show of strength throughout the city. Gov. Pat McCrory said he started mobilizing the National Guard early Wednesday in anticipation of that request, but he refused to Chief Putney and Mayor Roberts for not asking for help sooner. The State Bureau of Investigation began an investigation of the case, the governor said, and critics of the police asked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the Justice Department and the F. B. I. were monitoring events and offering help to local officials. “I know that the events of recent days are painfully unclear and call out for answers,” Ms. Lynch said. “But I also know that the answer will not be found in the violence of recent days. ” Protests began Tuesday night after Officer Vinson shot Mr. Scott while the police were serving a warrant on someone else. Starkly different accounts have emerged about what happened. The police say Mr. Scott was holding a gun before he was shot friends and family say it was a book. Though the videos do not offer definitive proof on their own, they support the official version of events, Chief Putney said. “When taking in the totality of all the other evidence, it supports what we’ve heard and the version of the truth that we gave about the circumstances that happened that led to the death of Mr. Scott,” he said. He added that the department’s practice was not to release video to the public, to protect the integrity of investigations. Demonstrators and black community leaders said the outrage was not just about what had happened to Mr. Scott, but was fueled by a much broader context. “We need folks to understand there is a direct connection between the rioting and the creation of two separate groups based on class and race for decades,” said Justin Perry, an addiction counselor who is black and took part in the protest. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus pressed the Justice Department to do more by starting a thorough investigation into recent police shootings that had led to nationwide protests. Lawmakers from the group marched from the Capitol to the Justice Department to deliver a letter to Ms. Lynch, reinforcing the significance of their concerns. Both Chief Putney and Mayor Roberts sought to reassure residents that the city was prepared to avert another night of violence. Ms. Roberts said that the city was safe. “Our transit system is running our businesses are open our center city is here to welcome you,” she said on Thursday morning. Still, several large businesses encouraged employees to stay home after the chaos. Wells Fargo told approximately 12, 000 employees that they were not expected to report to work in Charlotte’s Uptown neighborhood. Those unable to work remotely would be paid regardless, a spokesman said. Ally, the financial services company, closed two offices in Charlotte, affecting 900 employees. Duke Energy asked 500 employees and contractors to work remotely, and Fifth Third Bank asked the same of its employees. | 1 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The evacuation of residents from the last section in the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo broke down on Friday with thousands of people still trapped inside, as concern escalated about their fate. The breakdown — a day after Syrian government buses and ambulances had begun taking people out of the besieged area — came as Russia claimed, incorrectly, that all civilians wishing to leave had already been evacuated and that only “irreconcilable” fighters remained, further raising fears among those still trapped. Tensions came to a head on Friday afternoon, when a convoy of hundreds of evacuees was detained and turned back by militiamen. They blocked the way, according to rebel and fighters, because insurgents in Idlib Province, farther north, were blocking an evacuation of civilians from two villages besieged by rebels. There were also multiple accounts that the militiamen shot dead several passengers in the convoy, detained at least six and took telephones, laptops and documents from others, before sending the rest back into the rebel enclave. Those accounts could not immediately be independently confirmed. Russian and Syrian officials say that government forces are protecting civilians. The government’s recapture of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial epicenter, after a prolonged siege by Syrian forces aided by their Russian allies has been exalted by President Bashar of Syria as a turning point in the nearly war. But the images of death, suffering and destruction have shocked the world. Buses had been taking civilians and fighters out of the shrinking rebel area under a deal struck between Russia, which backs the Syrian government, and Turkey, which supports the rebels. Blame for the breakdown was placed on spoilers on both sides — Shiite militias and the Levant Conquest Front on the rebel side — illustrating the fragmentation of both government and rebel forces that makes carrying out any deal harder and riskier. The deal became more complicated after Iran, Syria’s other main ally, which has sponsored thousands of Shiite militiamen to shore up government forces, added a new demand: evacuations from Foua and Kfarya, two minority Shiite villages encircled and frequently shelled by rebels who had intensified attacks during the government offensive in Aleppo. Rebel leaders said a deal was struck to evacuate wounded people from the villages. Nearly 10, 000 civilians and fighters had been bused out of eastern Aleppo by Friday morning, Russian and opposition officials agree, but none from Foua and Kfarya. Al Manar, the television channel of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which fights alongside the Syrian government, showed what it said were protesters blocking the convoy route out of eastern Aleppo. The accounts of killings and abuses on the stopped convoy were conveyed via telephone and by text and video messages by four civilian witnesses and two rebel officials. The militiamen forced the convoy’s Red Cross and Red Crescent escorts to leave the area, witnesses said, meaning the escorts did not see the whole episode. France said Friday that it would sponsor a United Nations resolution requiring “international observers” to monitor the evacuations the United States said it would support the move, a largely symbolic gesture because of a likely Russian veto. The Syrian government has denied United Nations staff permission to monitor the process, and the I. C. R. C. avoids roles that involve making public reports, to preserve its access to all sides. Zaher an antigovernment activist in the convoy, said militiamen at a checkpoint with yellow flags stopped the vehicles, fired in the air and began taking cellphones and laptops from the evacuees. One unarmed passenger accosted them for talking impolitely to his pregnant wife, Mr. Zaher said in a telephone interview, “so they shot him on the spot,” along with two others. Zouhair another activist reached briefly by phone, said he was in the convoy when militiamen stopped it and shot four men, telling them, “It’s payback. ” Several other passengers described being forced to lie down, remove shoes or some of their clothes and hand over possessions. A photograph that rebel spokesmen said showed part of the episode portrays a dozen men lying face down on a road at gunpoint. Geolocation techniques showed that the image matched the reported location of the stop and a photograph of the halted convoy taken from a distance by a British journalist in government territory. Many more people had tried and failed to get on the convoy, and were still milling around the area they ran when they heard gunshots. Videos showed crowds of people fleeing in panic from the evacuation point past wrecked buildings, crying, wrapped in blankets, carrying or dragging children, though it was unclear if the shooting that can be heard was related to the alleged killings. Earlier, Russia declared the evacuation “completed,” saying “all women and children” had been bused out, leaving only “irreconcilable and radical” armed fighters. It said Syrian government forces were “liquidating the radicals’ remaining points of resistance. ” But the World Health Organization’s Syria representative, Elizabeth Hoff, said thousands remained, including many women and many children under 5. She said W. H. O. staff had been ordered to leave the evacuation area Friday morning, but “no reason was given. ” Rebel leaders said they were deeply concerned by Russia’s statements playing down civilians’ presence because it had been the guarantor of the evacuations. They feared it had lost control of Iran and its ground allies and was seeking to absolve itself of any new violence against civilians. Adding to the volatility of the situation, many of the Levant Conquest Front’s fighters have already been bused out of eastern Aleppo, according to a civilian who rode with them. That could give the group less incentive to cooperate with the Idlib evacuation. | 1 |
UC Berkeley are investigating Ian Dabney Miller, who is allegedly an employee at the university, after he was caught bragging about and celebrating the assault of a MILO fan during the Breitbart senior editor’s event on Wednesday. [Miller, who attended the on Wednesday, uploaded several pictures to his Twitter account, including one of an injured attendee lying on the floor with the caption “hey come get your boy, he got ROCKED #miloatcal. ” “WE REP THE BAY,” declared Miller in another uploaded picture. “BICKIN BACK IN BERKELEY,” read another. “Bickin back” is a slang term created by the Bloods gang, and means kicking or fighting back. Miller also uploaded pictures celebrating “the traditional burning of the MAGA hat,” and showing off the bullets that police fired at violent rioters. In other tweets, which can only be found in online, Miller can also be seen boasting about and taking credit for the assault, which allegedly included “a couple of weak shots to the face,” before pushing the attendee over a bike wheel. @AnaKasparian @UCBerkeley I was asleep while all this was going on. Woke up to it, heard what this guy had done decided to pic. twitter. — Pave Darker☻☹☻ (@PaveDarker) February 3, 2017, UC Berkeley told Breitbart News that they “are aware of the allegations” made against Miller, and investigating the situation, however they did not confirm whether Miller was an employee at the college. “Our campus police department is working in close concert with the FBI on an ongoing investigation into this matter,” they responded. Miller’s real identity was discovered online after Twitter user “Pave Darker” went digging online, and discovered Miller’s anonymous username “teen_archer” linked to his real Facebook account. @AnaKasparian @UCBerkeley A quick search of facebook under his twitter handle leads you hear giving both his location and much pic. twitter. — Pave Darker☻☹☻ (@PaveDarker) February 3, 2017, Following further investigation made by the Twitter user, Miller’s name was revealed to be listed on UC Berkeley’s 2013 college employee records, where the alleged employee is reported to be making at least nearly $70, 000 a year. @AnaKasparian @UCBerkeley If you then do a simple google search of his name and the word berkeley you get to this pic. twitter. — Pave Darker☻☹☻ (@PaveDarker) February 3, 2017, @AnaKasparian @UCBerkeley On this page you will find this information. Kinda looks like he’s employed by the university to me … pic. twitter. — Pave Darker☻☹☻ (@PaveDarker) February 3, 2017, Miller has since deleted and privatized nearly all of his online accounts and profiles. “ ” rioters assaulted numerous attendees, started fires, smashed up shops and ATMs, and attacked people’s cars during the riot on Wednesday night in protest of MILO’s UC Berkeley show, forcing the event to be cancelled. Several celebrities and news outlets expressed support for the riot, including Hollywood director Judd Apatow, who deleted his tweet shortly after, and Fusion, who smeared MILO as a “Nazi,” before praising rioters. On Thursday, MILO’s tour bus was tracked down by “ ” and vandalized, forcing both him and his team to evacuate the premises after his location was leaked online. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Gravis: Clinton +1 LA Times: Tied
Overall, the Democratic nominee is beating Trump by an average of 5.4 points with just 12 days to go – and as millions of Americans have already cast their ballots.
On the Electoral College front, RealClearPolitics shows that Clinton is ahead in states that total 333 electoral votes. One of the states she leads in is Arizona – a red state before Republicans nominated Trump.
To put things in perspective, Barack Obama was leading Mitt Romney by just a single percentage point on this day in 2012. That is what you call a close presidential contest, and Obama still went on to easily win.
Yet, as I write, CNN and other cable news networks continue to plaster the “close race” chyron all over their networks, claiming Donald Trump is making it a race again.
Here’s the thing: the contest between Clinton and Trump may be naturally tightening in a few polls, but that doesn’t mean it’s becoming a close race. It’s clear that, despite any one poll showing Trump gaining ground, Clinton still has a pretty durable lead. | @FiveThirtyEight tackles question everyone is asking: Is the Presidential race tightening? (Answer: Not by much.) https://t.co/XoMxzleajd pic.twitter.com/Gq5O47rNsv
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) October 26, 2016
While the media looks silly for trying to make the Clinton-Trump race seem like a nail-biter for the ages, there is also some good that can come of it – besides high TV ratings.
Clinton supporters who may have previously assumed the race was in the bag for their candidate and were becoming complacent now may recognize, at least if they watch cable news, that the “race is becoming close again.”
This should provide a last-minute boost of energy among voters who fear a Trump presidency. | 0 |
Anti-Trump US Color Revolution Includes Soros and Clinton ‘Purple’ Takeover? By `Daily 12, 2016
Billionaire Globalist Soros Exposed as Hidden Hand Behind Trump Protests — Provoking US ‘Color Revolution’ … Billionaire globalist financier George Soros’ MoveOn.org has been revealed to be a driving force behind the organizing of nationwide protests against the election of Donald Trump — exposing the protests to largely be an organized, top-down operation — and not an organic movement of concerned Americans taking to the streets as reported by the mainstream media. -Free Thought Project
Two recent articles may illustrate a determined attempt to overthrow the Trump victory and substitute a new regime, presumably Hillary’s.
One article, excerpted above, is a clever analysis of the “organic” protests against Trump now taking place in the US, which can certainly be perceived as a domestic “color revolution.” The second article, excerpted below, tells us about a “Purple Revolution” now being conducted by the Clintons.
Together, these efforts, if credible, comprise a formidable challenge to the Trump administration, which has not yet even begun to coalesce.
The original color revolutions were conducted against countries abroad to bring them into line with globalist strategies as promoted via American power. US intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and other internationalist facilities domestically and abroad were utilized.
It could be that the same coalition is now at work inside of the US. While this “color revolution” may be led by Soros and even partially funded by him, it may be a large effort is underway that includes elements of the US “shadow government.”
More:
In light of the protests and rioting that have transpired since the election of Trump, a closer analysis of the dynamic at play is warranted to gauge whether it’s an organic grassroots movement, or something much more organized, sophisticated and potentially dangerous.
… Now come reports from various protest locations that reveal a substantially coordinated effort, and not the organic grassroots showing by concerned Americans, as the mainstream media is reporting.
[Moveon.Org] is one of a number of progressive organizations affiliated with Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Soros-affiliated organizations across the world are deeply connected to various color revolutions, the Arab Spring, and a number of other political uprisings across the globe.
This color revolution, if it formally (if secretly) exists, will certainly extend itself, thus proving it is not simply a series of spontaneous expressions. While the article was posted earlier in the week, as of this writing more protests are now being reported via CNN and other media:
Anti-Trump protests spread across nation … Protestors in Atlanta burned a flag near the Georgia capitol … Thousands took to the streets of cities across the United States late Friday and early Saturday as anti-Donald Trump protests saw highways and interstates blocked, numerous arrests — and a shooting at a march in Portland, Oregon.
Angry crowds gathered once again outside the 58-story Trump Tower, the President-elect’s home in New York. Protester Shoshi “Rabin” Rabinowitz explained her motivation for being there: “Words can’t describe how disgusted I am that he was elected over Hillary (Clinton),” she said.
Marry this sudden “color revolution” to a recently reported and comprehensive “purple revolution” that has just been initiated by the Clintons and you are presented with a broad-based, efficient, ant-Trump program. Here from Wayne Madsen (also available at ZeroHedge):
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to «go quietly into that good night». On the morning after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned in purple attire.
The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent the coming together of Democratic «Blue America» and Republican «Red America» into a united purple blend.
… The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.
These two initiatives are separate but together they indicate considerable planning and foresight, One way to look at them is as a formidable reaction to an unexpected Trump victory. Another way is to see them as a planned reaction to a Trump victory that was actually preordained. Everything was prepared, in other words, and now the trigger has been pulled.
We are yet partial to the latter conclusion, believing that both Brexit and the Trump victory could be part of a larger elite manipulation (as we’ve suggested several times already).
The idea behind this latter manipulation would be to create an administration that is seen by people as representing a victory over globalism, but one that is then gradually destroyed and ultimately removed. People would thus realize that there is no alternative to the globalist paradigm they have struggled against.
If this latter perception is correct, then the Trump administration may continue to coalesce and take effect, but it will be accompanied by significant agitation, turmoil and economic and even military violence. You can see some of our other recent articles here and here .
Trump may well be dedicated to his cause of “Making America Great Again,” but the forces arrayed against him are formidable and dedicated to turning his victory into a message of defeat. This would be a classic form of the kind of “directed history” that we often analyze. It is always married to a dominant social theme – a meme – developed as elite propaganda and purveyed by the press.
Conclusion: In this case the meme informs us that Trump is an impossibly racist and brutal individual who will turn the US into a dictatorship that is easily slotted into a larger, international technocracy. In fact, the danger of this sort of social manipulation comes from Soros and the Clintons – and the larger shadow state itself. Trump on the other hand is the target. | 0 |
Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Pete Redfern Washington Home Depot store receives order for five-thousand gallons of gold exterior paint
The Washington DC branch of the famous chain of home improvement superstores received an unusual and baffling phone call late last night.
Store manager Chuck Williams told reporters, “We received a telephone call just before closing last night from a very excited gentleman, placing an order for over $120,000 worth of gold concrete paint.”
He continued “It was quite a hurried conversation, and I couldn’t catch everything he said, but I did hear the caller say something cryptic about turning a white house gold.
“I honestly have no idea what he could have meant, perhaps it was a riddle. And weirdly he kept referring to himself in the third person.
“At first we thought it might have been a hoax or someone out of their head on mind-altering substances, but we have checked our account and the money is already there, so we will start fulfilling the order immediately.”
When pressed by reporters, Mr Williams was reluctant to give further details for fear of breaching customer confidentiality, but he did confirm that the order was for a residence on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C 20500.
He added, “I don’t know who this caller who referred to himself as ‘The Big Cheese’ could be, but he sure loves gold.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, former Breitbart News National Security editor and current deputy assistant to President Trump, discussed Syria policy on Wednesday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily. [SiriusXM host Alex Marlow suggested there were too many conflicting statements coming from various Trump administration officials about Syria, but Gorka insisted “we have absolute clarity. ” “You just have to listen to the president, the ” he advised. “He has been explicit, and nothing has changed from November the 8th to today. ” “We sent a very clear message concerning the use of weapons of mass destruction against women and children, but the president has said we have no interest in invading other people’s countries and occupying them. This isn’t the Bush administration of 2003, nor is it the first Gulf War of 1991. These things are very, very clear,” Gorka asserted. Marlow countered by playing a clip of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seeming to endorse regime change in Syria. “I think it’s clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson declared. Gorka said it was “not a binary proposition” to call for regime change without also committing the United States to a military intervention. “Nothing that Secretary Tillerson said has anything to do with an invasion or forced removal of Assad. Nothing,” he said. “Everybody’s on the same sheet of music, whether it’s the Secretary of State, whether it’s Secretary Mattis, whether it’s General McMaster the National Security Adviser. They all follow the lead of the . ” “There’s more than one way — there are dozens of different ways that one individual can step down from power. He doesn’t have to be removed,” Gorka argued. “That’s why the action we took last Thursday was so seminal. We sent a message to the sponsors of this regime. ” “Remember this is a satrapy, it’s a client state of other nations,” he explained. “The message we sent is, there is a point at which an individual like Assad, when he does things as heinous as using chemical weapons against unarmed women and children, the analysis for his sponsors — Moscow included — has to be reassessed. ” “When that is reassessed, if he loses the sponsorship of places like the Kremlin, it becomes much easier for him to be forced out of office politically, not by force, because he simply loses the confidence of his supporters and also the people around him. Remember, Alex, Assad is just one man. He doesn’t have to be removed through force. He can be removed politically. We went a great distance towards that political resolution by the actions we took last week,” said Gorka. Marlow noted that much of President Trump’s voting base was “not expecting him to proactively get involved in foreign entanglements that did not directly impact the national security of America. ” “Number One, this did impact our national security directly,” Gorka responded. “Whether you live in San Bernardino, Boston, or whether you live anywhere else in the United States, the idea that you have the free use of chemical weapons in a war zone — where ISIS, our primary threat, is recruiting, is functioning, can access those weapons — that is a primary threat to the United States. ” “Secondly, this isn’t a ‘foreign entanglement’ in the way that our Founding Fathers described it,” he continued. “I say to your listeners, and this is a very important question — I understand the concerns, but really the people who voted for the president should not be concerned. ” “Just compare the difference between two things: the invasion of 150, 160 thousand soldiers and Marines into a given theater, whether it’s Gulf I, whether it’s 2003 — compare that please to the launching of 59 vehicles from the Med, from a ship in absolute safety, targeting one airfield used to launch those weapons,” he urged. “These two things are incomparable, and let’s have a little bit of sophistication in our analysis. One does not lead to the other. ” Marlow mentioned fears that even if American military actions remain as limited and as Gorka described, there was still a danger we could be pressed into service as “the world’s policeman,” with an enormous number of atrocities around the world demanding our attention. “There is no intent, no desire, no endgame that involves us being a global police officer. Absolutely not,” Gorka replied. “With regard to the awful things that happen in mass numbers every day around the world, we have a different perspective,” he continued. “It’s not the last eight years, when the Obama administration looked at the world as it would like it to be, as opposed to how it is. This president is a pragmatist. You don’t get to be the most successful real estate mogul in New York, the toughest market in America, for 40 years unless you are a pragmatist. ” “We are interested in the overlap between moral imperative and national security. Strategy is exactly like politics: it is the art of the possible. We take action not because there is a global interest we take action because there is a national security interest, which sometimes may overlap with the global interest with regard to human rights or the use of chemical weapons,” Gorka said. “The primary driving metric for everything the president does, because this is his primary mission, is the safety of the American people. In this case, this has nothing to do with being a globocop. This has to do with ISIS in theater, weapons of mass destruction, and the stability of the Middle East,” he stressed. Marlow said the Trump voting base was also wary of increased tensions with Russia, and was hoping the Russians could prove useful in defeating the Islamic State once and for all. He asked if the increasingly adversarial relationship between Presidents Trump and Putin was a response to “CNN conspiracy theories” about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Gorka responded by emphasizing Trump’s instincts as a pragmatist. “The statements coming out of Moscow should not be taken at face value. Remember who Putin was. Remember what this regime has done in the last 12 years,” he added. Gorka quoted Trump’s response to a question at a press conference about relations with Russia: “I would like, if possible, to have good relations with Moscow. Right now, it doesn’t really seem like that’s possible. If that’s the case, so be it. ” “We do not make the national security interests of the United States hostage to other people’s opinions and propaganda,” he declared. “As a result, the president will keep his course. ” Marlow brought up White House spokesman Sean Spicer’s gaffe comparing Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to Adolf Hitler, and said he hoped no one in the White House seriously thought Assad was in a league with Hitler. “Of course not,” Gorka replied. “Let’s close down the conspiracy theories. ” Marlow said it would not be easy to make the Left take that advice, because they are in “total meltdown over this, hysteria mode, even accusing him of Holocaust denial. ” “I’m used to it. This is what we’ve been living with for 12 weeks now: the absolutely absurd fixation on short little clips of interviews taken out of context to spin up fake news,” Gorka sighed. “Everybody knows that Sean misspoke, and he stated so,” he continued. “I want to say one thing to my colleague Sean, and everybody I think knows this: outside of the Oval Office, Sean Spicer is a great patriot, a great American, probably has the toughest job in America. If you offered me that job, I wouldn’t take it with a gun to my head. We have to recognize his professionalism. Sometimes you stumble, and he did yesterday, but he’s made up for it. Let’s move on. ” Turning to North Korea, Gorka reiterated his determination not to “give away the playbook” on strategy, but allowed that there was a “similar dynamic” with North Korea and Syria. “North Korea doesn’t function without sponsorship, and we know who sponsors it,” he elaborated. “We are reasserting American leadership in the world. We’re filling the vacuum created by the last administration everywhere, including in Asia. ” “I’ll simply put it this way: our actions are a forceful expression of our intent to provide leadership in the world and stability. We have actors. North Korea is one of them. Our actions send a very clear message to those people that sponsor rogue regimes like North Korea, that they too — like Russia with regard to Syria — have to reassess their analysis, and the calculation of how long they should support regimes like North Korea. Because North Korea is a destabilizing factor for all the nations of the region, and is a threat. That’s the message we’re sending,” said Gorka. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
Photo by The U.S. Army | CC BY 2.0
Here is a list of the noteworthy, ongoing results of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq beginning in March 2003. (Recall that invasion was denounced by the UN as illegal, based entirely on lies, and—given the U.S.’s hegemonic position in the world, allowing it to act with impunity—the crime’s architects have never punished.)
1/ The principal achievement of the war and occupation was the dramatic expansion of the al-Qaeda network that had attacked the U.S. on January 11, 2001. An al-Qaeda franchise was established in Iraq for the first time, playing a key role in the Sunni “insurrection” against the occupiers and their Shiite allies, then expanding across the border into Syria where it split into the al-Nusra affiliate and its even more savage rival, ISIL. Iraq also served and serves as a training ground for jihadis now operating from Iraq to Libya and beyond.
2/ The invasion and its consequences encouraged the cause of Kurdistan , an imagined state straddling Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world, victims of British and French colonialists who divided the region between them after World War I. After the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. established a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq to discourage Baghdad from deploying troops in the region. Iraqi Kurdistan had already obtained a degree of autonomy before the invasion but the status became official under the occupation and a referendum for independence is likely to pass soon. This would infuriate Iraq and perhaps provoke Turkey’s intervention. As it is, the autonomous region is locked in struggle with Baghdad over territorial claims and control over oil fields.
3/ The invasion destroyed the Iraqi state , causing it to fracture into three: Kurdistan, the Sunni zone in the west, and the Shiite-majority areas around Baghdad. The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein had been extremely repressive and brutal. But it had maintained order; discouraged religion in politics; protected the Christian and other religious minorities; promoted women’s rights; imposed no dress code; enforced a criminal code modeled after the Napoleonic (not the Sharia); licensed rock n’ roll radio stations, allowed the brewing of beer and its sale etc. The Shiite-led regime boosted into power by the occupation has reversed much of this. (A bill to ban the production and sale of beer was just passed by Parliament last week.) But the regime’s power does not extend into much of Anbar Province, ISIL still governs Mosul, and again, Kurdistan has become autonomous.
4/ Because Shiites are the majority in Iraq (60%), and dominate Iran next door; and because the leaders of Shiite parties have studied in Iran or lived their in exile and are sympathetic to Iran’s mullah-led regime; and because the U.S. was forced by peaceful mass protests to allow elections and the emergence of Shiites as the leaders of the country, Iran’s power and influence in the region has expanded dramatically. (Apparently no one in the State Department thought about that.) Since Iran has not attacked another country in centuries—but was savagely attacked by Saddam Hussein in 1981, sparking a long war killing over half a million people—and since Iran’s friendliness to its neighbor, one of the few Arab countries in which its co-coreligionists hold power, is entirely natural, one can ask why anyone might be alarmed by this. But it does alarm some, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, that crucial U.S. Arab ally governed by Wahhabi Sunnis, most of all.
5/ The invasion produced a regional power struggle between Sunni Islamists on the one hand, and their Shiite (and other) enemies on the other. This is often portrayed as a contest between Saudi Arabia (whose government-backed clerics condemn Shiites as heretics, and who fear the prospects for rebellion in Saudi Arabia’s own oppressed Shiite minority) and Iran, depicted as the protector of Shiites in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen etc. (The so-called “Shiite Crescent” extending from Iran to Hizbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon in fact embraces states and movements that have little in common with the Islamic Republic of Iran. But they are all targeted by the medieval regime in Riyadh which tars them all with the Iranian brush.) The Saudis were keen advocates for a U.S. strike on Iran (on the false pretext of a nuclear threat); are major supporters of al-Nusra in Syria and have funded ISIL as well, preferring such Islamist forces to the secular if Alawite-led Syrian regime; and are bombing the hell out of Yemen with active U.S. and British assistance under the false pretext that the Shiite Houthi “rebels” are agents for an expanding Iran. These things would not be happening, had the U.S. not ripped the lid off Pandora’s box in Iraq in March 2003.
6/ The invasion has produced friction between the U.S. and its important NATO ally Turkey (which has the second largest military in the alliance). Turkish war planes are bombing Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia in Syria who constitute the U.S.’s most reliable allies, producing U.S. protests (which the Turks ignore, arguing straight-faced that the YPG are just as terrorist as ISIL). The Turks warned before the invasion of Iraq that it would likely produce regional instability. But Ankara would have allowed the U.S. to attack from Turkish soil if Turkish forces as part of the “coalition of the willing” could be stationed around Mosul, once part of Turkey—the idea being to contain Kurdish nationalism.
Fortunately the parliament rejected the deal. But the predicted instability has occurred. The Arab Spring of 2011 in Syria was not directly connected to the Iraq invasion, but gave the U.S. the opportunity to pontificate that “Assad has lost legitimacy,” demand his immediate resignation, and bankroll the armed opposition including the Kurds. The fact that U.S. efforts to find and recruit Syrian Arab forces as allies—who are not in bed with al-Nusra—to topple Assad have failed so dismally binds the Pentagon ever closer to forces that Turkey wants to wipe out. (The conflict and contradiction are embarrassing to Washington. Oh, by the way, did you notice that the Turkish foreign minister just announced that Turkey would invade Iraq if it “felt threatened”?)
Having declared in 2011 that Bashar al-Assad must go, the U.S. was faced in 2014 with the horrible embarrassment of ISIL (that toxic fruit of its Iraq invasion) winning lightening victories from Raqqa to Fallujah, obliterating the Sykes-Picot line dividing Syria and Iraq. The now-Syria based terrorists were approaching Baghdad. So now the U.S. having withdrawn all troops in Iraq was back in action, bombing to prevent such a disaster. And it started bombing ISIL positions in Syria (although with far less efficacy than the later Russian efforts) in league with a list of largely reluctant allies dragooned into formal membership in what Washington likes to call a “coalition” to make its unilateral program for the region sound like the will of what they like to call “the international community” regardless of how many key nations that imagined “community” includes.
The U.S. command that Assad step down was made in the summer of 2011. Turkey’s President Erdogan, hitherto a friend and even mentor of the Syrian leader, opportunistically took up the U.S. demand and demanded his resignation. And Ankara itself began to interfere big-time in the neighboring country it once dominated, targeting Kurds more than anyone else. Since the U.S. relies on these allies, how could there not be a sharp conflict here?
7/ The invasion of Iraq and aftermath resulted in four million Iraqi refugees fleeing the country as of 2007. Hundreds of thousands have poured into Europe, alongside people displaced by U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and by the turmoil in Syria exacerbated by U.S. actions, producing a massive continent-wide crisis. Many Europeans aptly blame the deluge on the U.S., pointing to the U.S.’s paltry record of admitting refugees from the Middle East and complaining of strained national resources to handle the humanitarian catastrophe. (Another embarrassment.) ***
This is all what Buddhists call “karmic retribution” for past acts. Or what the Hebrew prophet Hosea referred to when he said “Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.” Or what the CIA meant when it invented the term “blowback.” It’s all heading towards something, unless decent people stop it.
But when I watch people like Michael Moore line up behind the foremost advocate of war in U.S. politics, joining (consciously, philosophical) amoral thugs hell-bent on maintaining and expanding the empire when it’s in a stage of precipitous decline, I am not optimistic. Not only will she win, but she will rival Dick Cheney as a cold-blooded latter-day Cold Warrior, cynically exploiting fear and stupidity to try to bring Russia to its knees.
Hillary doesn’t recognize any of these seven points, which to recapitulate are:
+ US actions have greatly strengthened al-Qaeda
+ US actions have encouraged Kurdish nationalism (with unpredictable ramifications)
+ The US through its vicious illegal actions has destroyed the modern Iraqi state
+ US actions have solidified ties between Iran and Iraq’s majority Shiite community, strengthening a country still targeted for “regime change”
+ The invasion of Iraq and the regime change there exacerbated the historical Sunni-Shiite divide, and encouraged Saudi Arabia as the ultra-Islamist protector of the shrines to redouble its efforts to support extremist Sunnis everywhere in the region
+ The results of the invasion place Turkey and the U.S. at loggerheads over the question of Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Syria
+ US interventions in the Middle East and North Africa since 2001 have produced a massive refugee crisis, inflicted mainly on Europe
She does not acknowledge that George W. Bush’s invasion (that she so passionately endorsed, fully exposing her Valkyrie soul, was criminal and not somebody’s well-meaning “mistake”). She doesn’t have any analysis of the Kurdish question. (She is not—as sometimes alleged by supporters—a “policy wonk” but a lazy intellect who doesn’t know jack-shit about the real world.)
She has never expressed regret for the horrific destruction of Iraq, nor given any attention to the plight of its women, who were (as she surely knows) much better off under Saddam Hussein. (To acknowledge that would be to suggest that sometimes U.S. imperialism favors misogynist Islamists over relatively progressive secularists, for its own pragmatic empire-building purposes. She can’t mention that publicly.)
She deals with the rise of Iran—made inevitable by the U.S. invasion of Iraq—by doubling down on her crude clueless Iran rhetoric, which rests on the assumption—repeatedly debunked by U.S. intelligence agencies—that Iran might pose a nuclear weapons threat. She doesn’t understand the history of the Sunni-Shiite divide; I believe she rolls her eyes in irritation that these people have these differences so hard to understand, impeding the Exceptional Nation’s ability to straighten everything out by bombing, and conquering, and making people die. She doesn’t understand anything about the history of the Kurds and their fate in the region.
She feels no guilt at all about her orchestration of the ruin of Libya. She sees no reason to link her own actions to the flooding of Europe with refugees fleeing terror. But she will probably be the next president, with fellow shieldmaidens Michele Flournoy (as “secretary of defense”) and Victoria Nuland or Samantha Power (as secretary of state).
Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global hegemony (just as that becomes absolutely impossible to do, because other nations rise too, and great nations like Spain and Britain actually get humbled over time), the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards a showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She’ll do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be.
And then there will be a sudden strange change in your environment. As you wonder what’s going on you’ll be painlessly vaporized, on account of Hillary’s passion to topple Assad, or forcibly reintegrate the Donbass into Ukraine.
The brilliance of the 2003 invasion will be clarified as never before in that bright blast, as Hillary—a very strong woman—cackles in the background from her bunker about how she came, saw, and a million died. | 0 |
Headlines and news reports have been flooded with accounts of so-called grassroots protests taking place in major cities across the US. These protests are in opposition to the November 8th national election where the citizens of the United States selected Donald Trump to be the 45th president.
Grassroots movement or orchestrated globalist takeover?
Protesters believe that the election of Trump is unfathomable and are refusing to accept the electoral college system put in place by the country's founding fathers to prevent tyrannical rule by high concentrations of the population. As they refuse to accept many of the rights given in the Constitution for their make-believe rights, it is no surprise that they would have no respect for the foreknowledge of our founders and their development of the electoral college.
While meaning to protest what they see as tyrannical rule under President-Elect Donald Trump, many of the misinformed marchers are playing into the hand of the globalist billionaire George Soros anad his plan to single-handedly control all the world's major governments.
What is seen happening across America is reminiscent of the protests around the world that Soros has orchestrated in his quest to gain control of all world economies and politics. Similar protests have been carried out in Ukraine as well as the Arab spring that put Soros' puppets in control of those countries and played directly into his plans of world domination.
Most news organizations are trying to paint the American protests as being young people, LGBT supporters, minorities, and women that are concerned about their freedoms and protection under a Trump administration. These reports try to give the impression that these people have come together organically and coincidentally formed large groups to gain the media's attention. Many patriots in these cities, however, are reporting that the protesters they are seeing are not even from those towns but rather bused in to inflate numbers and incite the meager crowds that would form on their own .
WATCH THE VIDEO: Orchestrating large demonstrations in multiple cities throughout the country would need major planning and massive funding. Soros' experience with leading such movements has been well documented in the past, and these protests fit perfectly into the modus operandi of the would-be leader of a one-world government.
The website MoveOn. Org is a common tool of the globalist to enlist those who are in on the farce as well as capture the minds of a well-meaning idealist who need only a small shove in the direction of anarchy and one world rule. The site has been proven to be funded by Soros, and many of the protests which disrupt traffic and businesses in major cities can be attributed to the site's involvement.
Not only does Soros use the common citizens to play into his game, but he also has many of the world's leaders in his arsenal of political puppets he uses to change world markets as he chooses. Hillary Clinton was confirmed to be one of these puppets with the Wikileaks release of private email communications between her and Soros. One of these emails plainly details how Soros was behind Clinton's choosing of Miroslav Lajcak to mediate throughout his orchestrated unrest in Albania.
Americans must remain vigilant and fight against the globalists' attempted coup to take over the United States republic as it was formed by the founding fathers and their inspired foresight into our future.
Disclose TV SOURCE | 0 |
By wmw_admin on October 28, 2016 by Henry Makow Ph.D. — henrymakow.com Oct 27, 2016 Where have I seen this before? Hitler was false opposition and I am afraid Trump is too. But false opposition is better than none at all. I believe Donald Trump will win the Presidential election November 8 . However, as I will explain later, I am hesitant to think that his victory will be a setback for the New World Order. I agree with Michael Moore who eloquently predicts the majority of American voters will deliver a big Fuck You to the political establishment: “Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said, ‘If you close these factories as you’re planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I’m going to put a 35 percent tariff on those cars when you send them back. And nobody’s gonna buy them.’ It was an amazing thing to see. No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives. And it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states… And on November 8th, Election Day – although they’ve lost their jobs, although they’ve been foreclosed on by the bank, next came the divorce and now the wife and kids are gone, the car has been repo’d, they haven’t had a real vacation in years, they’re stuck with the shitty Obamacare Bronze plan where you can’t even get a fucking Percocet – they’ve essentially lost everything they had. … So on November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain and take that lever, or felt pen, or touch screen and put a big fucking X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives. Donald J. Trump. They see that the elites, who ruined their lives, hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hate Trump – after they loved him and created him and now hate him. Thank you, media. The enemy of my enemy is who I’m voting for on November 8th. Yes, on November 8th, you, Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Bill Blow, Billy Bob Blow, all the Blows – get to go and blow up the whole God damn system because it’s your right. Trump’s election is going to be the biggest fuck you ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good.” Despite his (pre-divorce) net worth of $50 million , Moore clearly has not lost the common touch. IS TRUMP FALSE OPPOSITION? | 0 |
By James Holbrooks As Iraqi military forces were beginning their initial push into Mosul on Tuesday, the Washington Post was reporting that U.S. defense officials... | 0 |
HANGZHOU, China — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a relationship that has become increasingly discordant. On multiple fronts, like computer hacking and maritime security, ties between China and the United States have frayed during the seven and a half years of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The friction has worsened since the ascension of Mr. Xi as a powerful nationalist leader in 2013. Yet the fact that he and Mr. Obama could set aside those tensions to work together yet again on a joint plan to reduce greenhouse gases attests to the pragmatic personal rapport they have built, as well as to the complexity of the broader United relationship, a tangle of competing and congruent interests. At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible. Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world’s emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world’s emissions. “Despite our differences on other issues, we hope our willingness to work together on this issue will inspire further ambition and further action around the world,” Mr. Obama declared. Mr. Xi praised the Paris agreement as a milestone, adding, “It was under Chinese leadership that much of this progress was made. ” From the moment he stepped off Air Force One on his final visit to Asia as president, Mr. Obama confronted a resurgent China, undaunted by his efforts to restore America’s presence in the region and poised to capitalize on his troubles in winning congressional passage of his ambitious regional trade agreement, the Partnership. Mr. Obama’s chaotic welcome on the tarmac captured the mood on the eve of the G20 summit. There were arguments at the airport between White House aides and Chinese security officials who tried to keep back reporters. Shouting matches also broke out between Mr. Obama’s staff and guards over how many people were allowed into the state guesthouse where he and Mr. Xi later met. In recent years, the Obama administration has sought to highlight cooperation on climate change, but China’s commitments, first made in 2014, have been less a concession to American pressure than a restatement of its own goals. They include a promise for China’s carbon emissions to reach a plateau or decline “around 2030,” but without any specific target for reductions like those Mr. Obama pledged for the United States (between 26 and 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025). That means China has plenty of room to continue burning fossil fuels to power its economy. “The story of the past eight years is not mainly the pivot or the rebalance it is the very substantial increases in Chinese capacities since 2008,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, who helped formulate Mr. Obama’s Asia strategy as his chief China adviser in the first term. “How has the U. S. dealt with that?” he added. “How has the U. S. confronted that?” The Obama administration has experimented with a variety of approaches: pledging to respect China’s “core interests” in 2009 shifting in 2011 to a more assertive stance — verging on containment — as Mr. Obama articulated his pivot to Asia then resisting China’s proposal in 2012 to embark on a new model of relations. To some critics, that was an inconsistent strategy — one that alternately cheered or sowed anxiety among American allies, and likewise alienated or emboldened China. Under Mr. Xi’s leadership, China has made aggressive claims to shoals and reefs in the South China Sea, picking fights with neighbors like the Philippines and Vietnam. “This back and forth has, I think, exacerbated what was already a growing problem with a China that was already more assertive in the context of the financial crisis,” said Michael J. Green, who was the chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the administration’s defenders, like Mr. Bader, argue that Mr. Obama was merely following in the tradition of presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, dating back to Richard M. Nixon. They have tried to manage China’s rise by drawing it into the international system and prodding it to accept rules of the road in trade, navigation and other areas. However, China has dismissed a recent ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague that rebuked its aggressive reclamation of land on disputed shoals in the South China Sea and invalidated its historical claims to a large swath of those waters. Mr. Obama was expected to press Mr. Xi to abide by the ruling in a meeting after the climate ceremony, less because he expected the Chinese leader to reverse himself than because the ruling is a vital predicate for undermining the legitimacy of China’s imperial claims. Still, even after Mr. Obama deployed Navy ships to the Pacific, sent Marines to Australia and paid for greater access to the military bases of an old ally, the Philippines, China now has greater control of the South China Sea than it enjoyed at the start of his presidency. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s struggle to pass the Partnership has stoked doubts about America’s economic staying power. The pact, which excludes China, has become the centerpiece of the pivot to Asia. But it has fallen victim to politics at home and now seems unlikely to pass, even in a Congress. Some of the nations that signed on, particularly Japan — America’s most important Asian ally and a nervous neighbor of China — have made political sacrifices by opening markets in order to meet the standards demanded by the United States. Failure to pass the trade pact, Asian diplomats and analysts said, would leave them feeling burned. “The Japanese, living in an uncertain world, depending on an American nuclear umbrella, will have to say on trade: ‘The Americans could not follow through,’” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said during a recent visit to Washington, standing next to Mr. Obama. “If it’s a matter of life and death, whom do I have to depend on?” Mr. Obama and his chief trade negotiator, Michael B. Froman, understand the stakes. They plan a press to sell the pact on this presidential trip — characterizing its passage as a litmus test of American leadership — in hopes that the message will echo back home. “We are one vote away from cementing our leadership in Asia or ceding it to China,” Mr. Froman said in an interview in Beijing. “I’m not sure Congress wants to hand the keys to the castle to China. ” The Partnership is viewed in Asia as the handiwork of Mr. Obama in particular, especially since the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly backed it when she was Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, has renounced her support. If Congress fails to pass it, Asian diplomats said, China will emerge as a victor. “It will be a political disaster and play into the Chinese narrative that China is a geopolitical fact, whereas the U. S. presence is the consequence of a geopolitical calculation which could change and thus is not reliable,” said Bilahari Kausikan, the ambassador at large for Singapore. In practical terms, the United States would lose the chance to shape the economic future of the region, allowing China to forge ahead with its “ economic order,” which includes a project to build a new Silk Road linking Asia to Europe. Mr. Bader is among several American officials who are guardedly confident that the next presidential administration will find a way to win approval for the Partnership, perhaps by adding side agreements on contentious points. But he expressed concern that the South China Sea would be a chronic source of friction. “The situation hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Bader said. “Achieving that is beyond the capacity of the U. S. alone. ” China has extended its military reach there by building artificial islands with airfields, facilities that American commanders have said they regard as military bases. Although China appears to be taking stock of the situation since the unfavorable ruling in The Hague, Chinese military officials warn that they will continue with their building program in the waterway. “China will never stop our construction,” the head of China’s navy, Adm. Wu Shengli, said in July. Last month, China took delivery of a dredger, one of the biggest in its inventory, from a Dutch shipyard. The vessel would be suitable for dredging at Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef 150 miles from the Philippines. China, some academics say, plans to create an extremely large artificial island that would complete a strategic triangle of bases in the sea. “Obama is seen as reluctant to push back,” said Alan Dupont, a former defense intelligence analyst for the Australian government. “He has allowed China to militarize the islands in the South China Sea. The United States hasn’t put it at the top of its list. ” To reassure its allies, Mr. Dupont said, the United States would have to reinforce its military presence in the Pacific even further than it has under Mr. Obama’s pivot, or rebalance, as it has also been called. “There has to be a rebalance plus,” he said. | 1 |
Hillary Emails: “Taken Care Of” October 28, 2016 Hillary Clinton waves to the crowd after delivering her ''official launch speech'' at a campaign kick off rally in Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City, June 13, 2015.
Recently released email show a Clinton campaign manager pretty confident that "everything was taken care of", It is believed he referred to Clinton's email usage.
Members of what would become Hillary Clinton’s campaign team discussed her use of a private email account as secretary of state in Summer 2014, months before her email practices were publicly revealed. But an email released on Thursday shows that Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, was not overly concerned about the issue at that time because he was told that “everything was taken care of.” It is not clear what Mook meant by the cryptic statement, which he made in an exchange with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
The email, which was hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account and released by WikiLeaks, is the first to show that the Clinton team was caught almost completely off guard by The New York Times’ March 2, 2015 story about Clinton’s email usage. The late-night email exchange happened within hours of the New York Times breaking the news that Clinton exclusively used a private email account in a way that may have broken records rules.
“Did you have any idea of the depth of this story?” Podesta asked Mook in the email.
At 1:32 a.m., Mook wrote back:
"Nope. We brought up the existence of emails in research this summer but were told that everything was taken care of."
The exchange appears to show that even Clinton's most senior aides were initially unprepared for the scale of revelations about Clinton's email practices, which would end up dogging her campaign all the way through to the final weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election. After a yearlong investigation, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in July that Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" with classified information, but that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. | 0 |
A new poll from Rasmussen Reports showed that 69 percent of Americans don’t trust the media at all or very much. | 0 |
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A meeting of the contact group on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis is going to be held today in Minsk.
Steinmeier’s formula
The primary issue of this meeting is going to be the consideration of Steinmeier’s formula, which determines a special status for Donetsk and Lugansk and, after the publication of the election results in these regions, potential transfer to self-government. Moreover, the officials of these republics say that, without agreement on this matter, it is impossible to solve any other problems.
Meanwhile, Kiev is delaying decision-making on this issue. The talks are going very slowly and unproductively.
Provocations
In addition, Kiev is continuing provocations against Russia. Despite the fact that Russia is not a party to the conflict and does not participate in these talks, Kiev’s provocations negatively affect the credibility of Ukraine and do not help the course of the group’s work.
Just recently, Kiev sent several groups of spies and saboteurs to Russia and kidnapped two Russian citizens. Now they are being detained with the possibility of ransom, which suggests that all of this was started for the sole purpose of at least slightly improving Ukraine’s deplorable financial condition.
The neutral territory
During his visit to Moscow yesterday, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that Belarus was a neutral party and would not support any of the conflict’s sides, despite the fact that Kiev has really done everything possible to foment bad relations with all of its neighbors, including even its traditional anti-Russian ally – Poland.
The incident with the Belarusian aircraft, when Ukraine threatened to raise fighters against a passenger liner flying from Kiev to Minsk, did nothing good for the international image of Poroshenko, nor for Ukrainian-Belarusian relations, which until recently were considered to be even closer than relations between Minsk and Moscow.
Expectations
All of these facts suggest that no high expectations should be held for the meeting. Most likely, Kiev will once again delay the solution of fundamental problems, confining itself to blackmail over prisoners of the DPR and the LPR. Perhaps some contract clauses will be agreed upon, but no more should be expected. Related | 0 |
NEW DELHI — People weren’t frying eggs on the sidewalks in Phalodi during India’s hottest day ever — in fact, it was so hot that many did not venture out at all. Heat is a familiar part of life in Phalodi, in the deserts of Rajasthan, so residents were following a familiar drill even before temperatures soared to 123. 8 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday: When the heat comes, stay indoors, chug buttermilk and, if you must go out, cover your head and pray for shade. It is a drill that may prove ever more necessary if temperatures continue to rise. Dr. Bhani Ram Paliwal, the principal medical officer at a government hospital in Phalodi, could not remember a day like Thursday in 15 years of working there. Roughly 500 patients, almost double the average number, visited his outpatient department, many complaining of diarrhea and fever. “It was like heat waves were coming out of a clay oven,” he said. Scientists say that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high pace, average global temperatures could rise by more than six degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. “Climate change is obviously going to be playing a role,” said Andrew Robertson, a senior research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. May is typically the hottest month in much of India, Dr. Robertson said, with lots of sun and stagnating air leading to broiling temperatures. The Indian Meteorological Department has forecast a severe heat wave for parts of western India through Saturday. Extreme heat was also forecast across central and northern India into next week, though officials say another record high is unlikely. The heat is amplified by an accompanying drought across much of the country. As farmers await the rains of this season’s monsoon, they continue to struggle with the effects of inadequate rainfall from the last monsoon: negligible crop yields, scarce drinking water and emaciated cattle. “My buffalo is giving only of the normal milk,” said Dinesh Bishnoi, a farmer in the village of Sajananiyo ki Dhani near Phalodi. His grandfather, who is 93, “has never seen this kind of heat in his life,” he said. This year, India is facing “a double whammy: more heat and less water,” said Dileep Mavalankar, the director of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, who helped develop the city of Ahmedabad’s plan to cope with heat waves after a deadly one in 2010. “The main protection against heat is water,” he said. “If you don’t have adequate water or water gets contaminated, you might die because of diarrhea and dehydration in the summer. ” Last year more than 2, 400 people died from illness in India, according to India’s National Disaster Management Authority. Many of those who died were laborers and farmhands who work outside, even in peak temperatures, officials said. India’s former record high was 60 years ago, when temperatures reached 123 degrees Fahrenheit in Alwar, also a city in Rajasthan. The heat makes going outside virtually unthinkable and, experts say, staying indoors is a critical safety measure. “If you go outside you can’t survive in this heat wave,” Dr. Paliwal said. | 1 |
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