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More Election Coverage Anthropologists Discover Isolated Tribe Of Joyful Americans Living In Remote Village Untouched By 2016 Election Researchers say the newly discovered tribe scored the highest on the Gross National Happiness Index of any society they have ever studied. Close Researchers say the newly discovered tribe scored the highest on the Gross National Happiness Index of any society they have ever studied. NEWS October 28, 2016 Vol 52 Issue 42 · Politics · Politicians · Election 2016
WALDPORT, OR—A team of anthropologists announced Friday it had discovered an isolated tribe of blissful Americans who have never been exposed to the current presidential campaign or its candidates, noting that the newly identified population lives contentedly in a remote village completely untouched by the 2016 race.
According to researchers from Lewis & Clark College, the peaceful, secluded community along the outskirts of Oregon’s Drift Creek Wilderness remains uncontacted by political canvassers, pollsters, and the election media, allowing its generally cheerful and affable inhabitants to go about their daily lives without ever encountering a political poll, election news story, campaign ad, soundbite, or stump speech.
“Upon first entering the village, we immediately noticed how relaxed and upbeat the inhabitants appeared, but it wasn’t until speaking with them directly that we understood how insulated they were from the country’s political climate,” said professor Elizabeth Letts, adding that the tribe’s levels of stress, depression, and anxiety were far lower than those recorded over the past 18 months among the broader American populace. “They actually seem to lead gratifying, well-balanced lives. The adults enjoy eight hours of sleep each night, and in place of discussing politics or the latest revelations about the candidates, they were seen regularly smiling or laughing—not cynically, or as a defense mechanism, even, but out of genuine joy.”
“In my 30 years studying human cultures, I’ve never come across a people so happy,” she continued.
According to Letts, when tribe members were asked their thoughts on major-party candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they looked puzzled for a moment and then shrugged their shoulders before grinning warmly and continuing on with their day. Similarly, villagers reportedly appeared confused but at ease when asked about the national mood, saying that as far as they could tell, people were feeling pretty good about everything.
The anthropologists confirmed this sense of tranquility permeated all aspects of life in the tribe, observing that when extended families gathered for mealtimes, the tenor of their conversation remained pleasant and amicable, with no subjects deemed off-limits. Moreover, scientists noted that the village lacked any signage, clothing, or other paraphernalia bearing divisive words or imagery, and residents appeared to trust one another and appreciate time spent interacting.
“When I brought out my iPad to show them footage of the recent presidential debates, they immediately became agitated, and several of the children started to cry,” said graduate student Lester Reinhold, who explained that the perplexed villagers kept asking him why the people on the screen interrupted each other so often when they didn’t even have anything of value to say. “I explained that one of the two people onstage would be their next leader, and they all gasped and recoiled in horror, with many saying they didn’t see how that could possibly be true.”
“I then tried showing them an attack ad about Donald Trump’s comments and actions toward women, but many of them became terrified and began screaming—that’s when one of the village elders swatted the tablet out of my hand,” he added. “After seeing how upset it made them, I determined that it was in their best interest to keep all audio and video clips from the election cycle away from them for the rest of our onsite study.”
Scientists noted that when they surveyed members of the tribe about their expectations for the future, specifically after November 8, the responses they received were universally optimistic. Every villager, regardless of age, gender, or social status within the community, reportedly mentioned how they anticipated things would continue to go as well as they had been going.
When asked to name the most pressing issue facing them, a few members of the group reportedly admitted, however, that it had been raining a lot lately, and that a little sunshine might be nice.
“This is a perfectly preserved community, probably the last of its kind anywhere,” said Letts, who expressed concern that outside forces such as the ever-lengthening campaign season and an increase of on-the-ground political operatives in the area threatened to encroach on the tribe’s simpler and more satisfying way of life. “Even though they’re disconnected from much of the modern-day world and the daily news cycle, these individuals seemed to possess something we don’t: a true sense of delight and positivity toward everyday existence, like each new day is a gift to be cherished.”
“Our society could learn a lot from these people,” she added.
At press time, sources confirmed a campaign bus could be seen winding its way down a wooded road toward the village. Share This Story: Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
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Former U. N. Ambassador John Bolton talked about North Korea, Russia, and Syria during his regular visit to Breitbart News Daily on Thursday. [Bolton said Trump was correct to see Syria’s use of chemical weapons as a threat to the United States. “I think this has been a view that has developed in the United States for a hundred years,” he observed. “You know, we’re just past the hundredth anniversary of America’s entry into World War I. It was the use of poison gas in World War I that caused people to begin to think about what we now call weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t happen overnight, but today, we include in that category nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. It’s been a consistent, and I think correct, policy of the United States for decades to prevent the proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction and to oppose their use, particularly against innocent civilians. ” “This attack by the Syrians was as much an act of terrorism as it was an act of military action,” he declared. As for policing the use of WMD, Bolton pointed out that “nobody else is going to do it, anywhere in the world, let’s not kid ourselves. ” “Not the United Nations, not the European Union, certainly not Russia or China, who are, by the way, themselves likely violating the Chemical Weapons Convention. We did it, and we did it because we’re going to make it clear that you don’t use weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “I think it was a precise and limited rationale and a very precise strike,” he judged. “I think it has almost no implications for the conflict in Syria, the civil war there. ” “Now, I know in the past four or five days since the attack, those who advocate more U. S. involvement in the Syrian civil war have said there’s a dramatic change in policy, and they’re in favor of it. Many who oppose greater U. S. involvement in the Syrian civil war have said it’s a dramatic change in policy, and they oppose it. They’re all wrong. I don’t think this is a change of policy with respect to Syria. I think it’s about weapons of mass destruction,” he said. SiriusXM host Alex Marlow brought up the rumors that President Trump ordered the Syria strike as an “emotional response” by members of the Trump family to photos and videos of chemical attack victims, especially the children. “I don’t think you should respond to strategic threats with an emotional response,” said Bolton. “I know that sounds to some people, but I think that’s the reality that the has to face. I don’t know exactly what the role of the president’s family was in persuading him to do this. ” “I would say we would test that over the next several weeks,” he proposed. “For example, many who want greater U. S. involvement on the side of the opposition, the rebels in Syria, have said, ‘Well, what difference does it make if Assad uses chemical weapons to kill innocent men, women, and children one day and uses cluster bombs or barrel bombs the next day? The people are just as dead.’ That’s an argument that says once you see an atrocity — and Secretary of State Tillerson said that we’ll come to the protection of innocents all over the world. ” “I said before, strategic analysis can be . It’s certainly the case that the victims of these attacks are just as dead, no matter what the methods used. But I would say there is a strategic difference and a real difference for the United States whether the brutality is carried out by conventional means or by weapons of mass destruction,” said Bolton. “We are not going to stop all brutality around the world. I think it’s inherent in human nature, among other reasons,” he acknowledged. “But we can say with this category of weapon — biological, chemical, and nuclear — they are different. They’re different because of their capacity to kill in large numbers and the nature of the regimes that use them. ” “This is a complex subject. I can’t prove this moment that the president’s going to stick to the line that he articulated or that maybe there will be an emotional response after another Syrian attack or an attack by somebody else. But I can say where we are right now on this retaliatory action against Syria’s use of chemical weapons, I think we’re right where we should be,” he contended. Marlow noted that many of Trump’s voters disagree with traditional Republican foreign policy by failing to see even a heinous deployment of chemical weapons in distant lands as a direct threat to the United States. “I think that the efforts we’ve made over the years to prevent the proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction demonstrates why we think it is a threat to the United States,” Bolton countered. “We don’t want more countries to have nuclear weapons. We don’t want more countries to have chemical and biological weapons. ” “Some people say there’s a huge difference between chem and bio on one side and nuclear on the other. Never forget that analysts call chemical and biological weapons ‘the poor man’s atomic bomb’ because it takes an awful lot less to create those kinds of weapons than the nuclear side,” he pointed out. “There have been technological reasons that it’s been hard to use chemical and biological weapons because when you deliver them via artillery shell, the explosive force of the shell destroys much of the weapon — which is why more sophisticated techniques are now being used, using ventilation systems at domed stadiums, for example, or large office buildings and that sort of thing. Put the chemical or biological weapon in the ventilation system and let it reach tens of thousands of people that way,” he said. “Don’t underestimate the extent to which terrorists and others would love to perfect these weapons to use against us,” Bolton warned. “In the caves of Afghanistan, in ’s files, we found after the overthrow of the Taliban that had been pursuing weapons of mass destruction almost from its inception. I think saying to everybody, ‘Don’t even think about using these weapons’ ultimately safeguards the United States more than anybody else because of our presence all around the world. ” Bolton said it was difficult to have complete confidence that Trump’s strike on Syria would be a “ ” action with no implications for deeper involvement but added that “as of now, when you listen to the president, his rationale has been very limited and very precise. ” “It is true that some of his senior advisers have been much more expansive in what they’re saying and have given the indication that they would like nothing more than to get further military activity underway,” he acknowledged. “I thought perhaps the most disturbing thing that I heard yesterday at the press conference in Moscow between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was an observation that Lavrov made. I just want to say, for all the obvious reasons that you and your listeners can understand, I don’t want to be in a public spitting contest with Rex Tillerson, but I would say this if Mother Teresa had made this comment,” Bolton said. “Lavrov said that Rex Tillerson told him he didn’t care about history he just wanted to solve the current problems that we have. I hate to say I agree with Lavrov, but he went on to say you can’t solve today’s problems unless you understand the history. This temptation to say, ‘Well, the new guys are here. We’re the pros from Dover. We know how to do it. We’ll take care of it’ is a risk, a risk of expanded activity without a strategic rationale behind it,” he cautioned. “I think what we’ve got now is, we’re in the right place, and I think the president should hear from his supporters the positive reinforcement that we understand the rationale for the strike against Syria, that we support it, and we think it’s just fine to stop there,” he said. Bolton sought to avoid hyperbole in describing the dismal state of relations between the United States and Russia. “In the midst of the politics that we found ourselves the last eight months, where after forty years of finding it difficult to stand up to the Soviet threat, the Democrats pretended to be the only defenders of America against the Manchurian candidacy run by Moscow that would convey Donald Trump into the White House, where he would do their bidding,” he observed sarcastically. Bolton speculated that Trump “feels that Russian complicity, quite possibly, in this chemical weapons attack, certainly Russian efforts to cover it up after the fact through disinformation, have made it impossible for him to do what he hoped to do, which is see if he could better relations. ” “Of course, he’s frustrated by that. I think anybody would be. I’m not so frustrated by it in the sense I fully expected it. Part of assuming the office is learning in a very personal sense some hard truths out there,” he said. Bolton found more hard truths to be learned in North Korea, where he said there was no doubt that “because of eight years of the Obama administration doing nothing, under the guise of a policy they called ‘strategic patience,’ which was really a synonym for doing nothing, North Korea is perilously close to having the capability to put a nuclear device under the nose cone of an ICBM and land it on the United States. ” “There is interesting testimony, I think it was just last week, by the commander of the U. S. Strategic Command, who said that of all the things you need to do to have a worldwide ballistic missile delivery capability for nuclear weapons that he doesn’t think the North Koreans have is the miniaturization issue — taking the nuclear device and putting it in a small enough package that it can actually be delivered via missile,” Bolton said. “Since we know that Russia and China both obviously mastered that a long time ago, you have to worry that the North may be even closer than we thought,” he continued. “The estimates were they were close to that point, people said, within a few years. There are people at the Pentagon, serious people, who believe that it could be 2018. That’s why I think there’s real concern about what’s going on. ” “I think it’s coupled with the disarray in South Korea, where they’ve just had their president impeached — an election coming up next month that could return a administration, which would be a real problem for us. So I think there’s good reason to be concerned,” he added. “You ask what the solution is. I believe this: North Korea will never be talked out of its nuclear weapons — not by diplomacy, not be economic pressure. People in North Korea live a prison camp now. The regime doesn’t care about their economic . They care about staying in power. A nuclear weapon is the regime’s ace in the hole to stay in power,” he contended. “I think the only way to deal with the North Korean nuclear weapons program is to end the regime in North Korea,” Bolton advised. “Reunite the Korean peninsula. It’s not enough to pressure China to impose sanctions on North Korea. They need to understand that this regime poses a threat to stability in the region that undermines their security as well. We need to bring them to the realization that reunification is going to happen one way or the other. We can either do it the sensible way, or it will happen in a much more threatening way. I don’t pretend that’s easy, but that’s the real solution. ” He said if reunification occurs, the “ ” necessary to repair North Korea would be done by the Korean people themselves. “To return to the German analogy, the country in the North Atlantic region that wanted German reunification most was the United States,” he noted. “The other European powers feared it, the West Germans thought it would cost too much, but ultimately, it was the United States that prevailed. I think the same thing is true here. ” “The South Koreans are worried about their pensions. In fact, the reunification of the two Koreas would produce an economic boom for South Korea,” he argued. “A huge labor force in the North that would become available to their capital investments — boy, I tell you, the Korean peninsula would just take off after reunification. ” “What China needs to be convinced of is that they wouldn’t see American troops on the Yalu River, the border with China, after reunification,” Bolton stressed. “They saw that movie in 1950. They didn’t like [it] then. They don’t like it now. Fortunately, we don’t want to be on the Yalu River either. We want to be at the southern tip of the peninsula so we can deploy elsewhere in East Asia if there’s a crisis. There’s a deal there. ” “As I say, it’s not easy. I don’t underestimate it. But there’s a way to do this if we start now and persist on it,” he said. “I would be very wary of Chinese assurances that they’re going to help persuade North Korea to give up the nuclear weapons program,” Bolton cautioned. “They’ve said that for 25 years, and they haven’t done a single thing to materially impede North Korea’s nuclear program. I think further discussions with North Korea, further efforts to pressure North Korea, are basically a waste of time. The way to end the North’s nuclear program is to end the North — merge it, reunify it with South Korea. ” John Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and head of his own political action committee, BoltonPAC. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
News, information and analysis from the black left. Black Agenda Radio for Week of Nov 14, 2016 Submitted by Nellie Bailey a... on Mon, 11/14/2016 - 21:23 2016 elections Cornel West: Class Becoming “Much More Central”
“We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era,” said Dr. Cornel West , the nation’s most prominent Black public intellectual, assessing the import of last week’s election. West backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, then endorsed the Green Party’s presidential ticket. The election “did not go left-populist, following Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein,” he said. Instead, “it went rightwing-fascist. But the neoliberal era is coming to a close and the neoliberal establishment is being exposed. The issues of class now are becoming much more central.” Trump Supporters Mounted an “Insurrection”
Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro was among the few observers on the Left that thought Donald Trump would win at the polls. But, even he was startled at the scope of Trump’s sweep. “I felt that the insurgency would grow and deepen, but I never thought that it would become an insurrection,” said Monteiro. “In a certain sense, white working and poor people in these small, rust belt towns have a sense of achievement in having brought the Clintons down that Black people had in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected with a huge Black turnout,” he said. Monteiro is one of the organizers of a Conference on Political Science for Radical Times, set for December 9-10, in Philadelphia. TPP “On Its Death Bed”
With Donald Trump’s victory, President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership corporate rights trade deal is “looking like it’s on its death bed,” said Kevin Zeese , of Popular Resistance. “We’ve worked for five years to make TPP stand for Toxic Political Poison, and that seems to have happened,” said Zeese. Trump won in “the rust belt that was destroyed by NAFTA” -- Bill Clinton’s jobs-exporting bill of a generation ago -- “and was going to be threatened again by TPP.” Zeese said Obama may make a last bid to pass TPP in the lame duck session of Congress that begins this week. Finally, a Practical Guide to Black Self-Determination
The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations adopted a 19-point Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination, at a conference in Washington. The document applies the principle of self-determination to the broadest range of issues, from Black Community Control of the Police, to Mass Black Incarceration, to Nationalization of the Banks. “Everybody wants self-determination,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela , “but what does it mean, practically?” The 19 points give direction to the struggle. “This isn’t something you work on every four years,” said Yeshitela. “This is something you work on every day. This is our program.”
Margaret Kimberley , an editor and senior columnist for Black Agenda Report, told the conference: “When we meet together, today, we are showing the world what self-determination looks like.” Voting for “your enemies” is not self-determination, and “thinking that electoral politics is the only road to liberation is not self-determination,” said Kimberley. Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour. | 0 |
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At a Florida rally, Hillary Clinton used the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks to pander to her supporters, and told a massive lie in the process.
“I know what happened not far from here at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando,” Hillary said. “I was in New York City on 9/11 as one of the two Senators. I will defeat ISIS. I will protect America.”
Watch:
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) November 2, 2016
But here’s the thing… Hillary wasn’t actually there on 9/11, and it’s common knowledge.
TellMeNow reported:
She went to New York City the following day, but she definitely wasn’t there on the day of the terrorist attacks. She toured the area on 9/12 with Mayor Rudy Giuliani then hightailed it back to DC. She didn’t get her hands dirty. She went for a short photo op and now she can’t even get the facts of that straight.
It is sickening that someone would use such a tragedy for personal gain, but then, this is Hillary Clinton we’re talking about. She left four Americans to die in Benghazi, she threatened women who were assaulted by her own husband, she laughed about getting a child rapist off the hook, and the list goes on and on… She is heartless. | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — It was a surprise photo finish at the weekend box office, with the drama “Hidden Figures” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” each selling an estimated $22 million in tickets at North American theaters. Most analysts had expected “Rogue One” (Disney) to easily repeat as the No. 1 multiplex attraction. The “Star Wars” spinoff has now collected about $477. 3 million over four weeks. Overseas, it has taken in another $437 million. But in its first weekend in wide release “Hidden Figures” (20th Century Fox) about unsung black heroines in the NASA space race of the 1960s, was lifted by strong reviews, an aggressive marketing campaign that included a appeal to faith audiences, and attention on Hollywood’s annual awards circuit. Fox said “Hidden Figures,” directed by Theodore Melfi and starring Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monáe, did particularly well in San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and Cleveland. Produced by Chernin Entertainment and Levantine Films for about $25 million, after accounting for tax credits, “Hidden Figures” received an grade from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. The movie was most popular with women (64 percent of the audience) and people over the age of 35 (about 56 percent of attendees). The animated musical “Sing” (Universal) was next in line, taking in about $20 million, for a domestic total of $213. 4 million. The weekend’s other new movie, “Underworld: Blood Wars” (Sony) only managed $13 million in ticket sales, or nearly 50 percent less than the initial results for its 2012 franchise predecessor. Sony noted that “Blood Wars” also cost half as much to make — about $35 million — and has already taken in $45 million overseas. Sony also blamed winter storms in the Eastern United States for decreasing turnout. Among specialty releases: “Manchester by the Sea” (Roadside Attractions) sold about $2. 5 million in tickets in 1, 054 theaters, lifting its total to $34 million “Patriots Day” (CBS Films and Lionsgate) about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, had $105, 000 in seven locations, ahead of its nationwide release on Friday. | 0 |
Over the weekend an exhibition opened at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Entitled “Uniformity,” it displays 71 pieces from the museum’s collection of (surprise) uniforms, divided into four categories — military, work, school, sports — as well as a select group of the fashion looks they influenced, like Geoffrey Beene’s 1967 sequined football jersey gown and Rei Kawakubo’s 1998 military vest and pleated skirt for Comme des Garçons. “I was interested in the inherent dichotomy between uniforms and fashion,” said Emma McClendon, assistant curator of costume, and the organizer of the exhibition, “because while they should be antithetical to one another — the first is about conformity, the second about creativity — they are also deeply interrelated. It’s ironic. ” But not as ironic as the fact that the show opens just as a number of recent disputes have underscored a somewhat different, and disruptive, reality. We live in a moment in which the notion of a uniform is increasingly out of fashion, at least when it comes to the implicit codes of professional and public life. Indeed, the museum may be the only place they now make sense. If once upon a time Melanie Griffith’s character in “Working Girl” could manipulate viewers’ assumptions about her job and background simply by swapping leather jackets and minidresses for greige suits, today it would be impossible. “We are in a very murky period,” Ms. McClendon said. Just before the museum’s show opened, for example, Britain was momentarily distracted from discussions over Brexit (leaving the European Union) by the news that Nicola Thorp, a temp worker, had been sent home from her receptionist job at PricewaterhouseCoopers for refusing to wear heels, as dictated by the dress code of her agency, Portico. She took her cause public, starting a petition for a parliamentary hearing titled “Make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work. ” If you get more than 100, 000 signatures, Parliament will consider the petition, and as of Tuesday afternoon she had 140, 712. Almost immediately, ITV, the British television network, conducted a poll on whether employers should be allowed to require women to wear heels social media freaked out and Portico announced it had changed its policy: Flats were now acceptable for women (men, of course, could always wear them). A few days later, sweatergate broke out in the United States when a weather forecaster on in Los Angeles was handed a gray sweater to cover up a tank dress she was wearing on the air. She said it was a joke, courtesy of her but Twitter took offense, perceiving it as an attempt to control what women wear. All of this follows famous dress code brouhahas like the UBS scandal of 2010 when the Internet discovered that the Swiss bank had issued a booklet of guidelines for employee dress that included instructions on shoulder width and underwear shade. Then there was the “flat shoe” uproar of 2015, when two women were supposedly barred from the red carpet in Cannes for not wearing heels. (The festival director denied the report on Twitter.) And earlier this year, Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes was forced to issue a public apology for having included, in his guidelines for the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, which he chaired, a rule for those appearing before the state panel that read: “Conferees should be dressed in professional attire. For ladies, necklines and miniskirts are inappropriate. ” No such specific guidelines were issued for men. Oops. This did not sit well with many. “I have decided to retract the conferee guidelines,” he said later in a statement, which also noted, “My failure to clearly specify that all conferees, regardless of gender, should strive to present themselves professionally is unacceptable. ” The slippery slope may have started as a gentle incline way back in the 1970s, and become a bit steeper during the Casual Friday movement of the 1990s and the success of the Facebook I. P. O. in 2012 with its billionaires. But today, we are speeding down it at breakneck pace, partly thanks to the conversation around gender equality, and fluidity. “There has been a dramatic change very recently,” said Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University and founder of the Fashion Law Institute. She noted that last December the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced new guidelines for the municipal human rights law that expressly prohibited “enforcing dress codes, uniforms, and grooming standards that impose different requirements based on sex or gender. ” As a result, no employer may require men to wear ties unless they also require women to wear ties, or ask that heels be worn unless both sexes have to wear them. And though this applies only to “official” dress codes, the effect is inevitable. “Dress is now open to the interpretation of the individual, rather than an institution,” Professor Scafidi said. This has created an even greater tension in the more ambiguous areas of office dress, especially as the boundaries between home and work become ever blurrier. “There’s a strain of thought that says an employee represents a company, and thus dress is not about personal expression, but company expression,” Professor Scafidi said. “But there’s a counterargument that believes because we identify so much with our careers, we should be able to be ourselves at work. ” And that has led to all sorts of complications. One person’s “appropriate” can easily be another’s “disgraceful,” and words like “professional,” when used to describe dress requirements, can seem so vague as to be almost meaningless. Kanye West wearing ripped jeans and a jeweled Balmain jacket at the Met Gala: cool or rude? Julia Roberts at the premiere of “Money Monster” at Cannes this year in bare feet: red carpet pioneer or a step too far? At The New York Times, Michael Golden, the vice chairman, told me: “We have jobs and those that are principally internal. We ask employees to dress appropriately for the interactions planned for their day. ” But that can have broad interpretations. In the newsroom, people show up in everything from suits to shorts from sneakers and Birkenstocks to platform heels. All of which leaves us where? Confused, mostly. And fast trying to create our own codes, or parse those of the offices around us. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is on the record as saying he wears the same gray every day so that he can focus his energy on other decisions. Ms. McClendon acknowledges that she tends to wear “all black, pretty much every day, and sculptural shapes — it’s the museum uniform. ” Professor Scafidi said, “My business uniform is a black jacket with a fitted, sheath, classic pumps, and usually our logo pin — my equivalent of armor, arms and insignia, respectively. ” Indeed, according to Ms. McClendon, uniforms evolved for a reason: “They fulfill a need to identify your place in the world,” for the wearer and the observer. At least when they are easy to read. And part of the idea behind the F. I. T. show, she said, was to “put visitors in the to consider uniform dressing more broadly, and how it impacts their own lives. ” In other words, to live an examined life when it comes to your wardrobe and your workplace. Because these issues are only going to get more complicated. “We are moving into an era where personal expression is going to trump the desire to create a corporate identity,” Professor Scafidi said. “It’s a huge power shift. ” And it has already begun. | 1 |
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Perhaps no country has been more welcoming of Muslims refugees to their own detriment than Sweden.
Not only has the country accepted far more of these migrants than they can feasibly handle, but the nation has also bent over backwards to make them comfortable. Things have gotten so out of hand that Christmas lights have now been banned so as not to offend these devout Muslims.
The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) will not allow municipalities to erect Christmas street lights on light poles that the authority manages this year, which means that many towns will have no lights at all for the holiday.
What a sad time for the native Christians in Sweden.
To add insult to injury, Speisa called the decision “a victory for those who want to tone down the reminder of the country’s Christian traditions.”
Shockingly, even though the onslaught of Islamic culture has wreaked havoc on Sweden’s people and infrastructure, they want to “tone down” the Christian influence. How backwards is that?!
Authorities appear to be trying to sweep the decision under the rug by claiming it is a matter of “safety.”
“Poles are not designed for the weight of Christmas lights, and we have to remove anything that should not be there,” said Eilin Isaksson, national coordinator at the Swedish Transport Administration.
I’m not sure they’re going to be fooling anyone with this “safety” line. If they were really so worried about that, they wouldn’t be allowing millions of migrants to roam around raping their women and children.
MRC Blog expressed the same sentiment:
This argument that lights are too heavy and pose a safety risk is complete [sic] bogus, of course. Authorities in Sweden actually expect people to believe that lights normally held up by tree branches are now too weighty to be supported by metal poles. In reality, these lights have simply been banned to avoid offending Muslim “refugees.”
You can be sure that if Hillary Clinton is elected, we have a future similar to Sweden’s to look forward to. She has privately expressed her desire for completely open borders and she kowtows to Muslims the same way President Obama does.
SHARE this report if you think it is utterly absurd that Sweden has banned Christmas lights to appease Muslim refugees! | 0 |
Undercover Video Exposes Obama’s Plan to Make American “Gun Laws” More Like Britain Undercover Video Exposes Obama’s Plan to Make American “Gun Laws” More Like Britain Videos By Amy Moreno October 26, 2016
We know that Obama and Hillary want to take away of Second Amendment right.
They say we’re just paranoid freaks for thinking that way.
But we know, right?
This undercover video exposes a close Obama advisor speaking about Obama’s “issue” which is to make America more like Britain when it comes to gun violence.
FYI, HANDGUNS ARE ILLEGAL IN BRITAIN – YOU CAN ONLY OWN “SPORTING RIFLES” AND THAT’S SUBJECT TO LICENSING.
Don’t think it can happen here?
Elect Hillary and a liberal Supreme Court and watch. This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said on Tuesday that it was laying off 12, 000 people, about 11 percent of its work force, as it continues to reel from a long downturn in global demand for personal computers. The company’s chief executive, Brian Krzanich, announced the layoffs as part of a larger corporate restructuring, which will result in a $1. 2 billion charge. Intel also reported earnings and reduced its projected revenue for the year. “Intel has been known as the PC company,” Mr. Krzanich said in an earnings call with Wall Street analysts. “It’s time to make this transition and push the company all the way over” to supplying chips for things like smartphones, cloud computing, sensors and other devices. Intel’s restructuring is the latest evidence of how onetime tech bellwethers have had to navigate a rapid shift into the more flexible and dispersed tech world created by the combination of mobile computing devices connected to cloud computing systems. On Monday, for example, IBM reported lower profit and revenue, including a 22 percent drop in sales of computing hardware. Microsoft, which will report its financial results on Thursday, has over the last several years changed its strategy from software in PCs toward computer servers, a mix that involves much more software rented over its giant cloud system. Dell, a big PC maker, took itself private in 2013. divided into two companies last year, one focused on corporate computing and one that makes PCs and printers. Last September, HP announced about 30, 000 layoffs. At Intel, Mr. Krzanich became chief almost three years ago, and over much of that time he has talked about moving the company into new areas. More recently, top executives have left the company, and Mr. Krzanich has brought in executives from other companies. The new restructuring is intended to help Intel invest more heavily in its new segments, such as chips to power connected devices. Yet Intel still gets 60 percent of its revenue from chips supplied to PCs, and its profit margins there are not as good as in data center chips, its other major business. The company’s other businesses have small profits, or else lose money. That means PCs are still core to what Intel does. Most of the layoffs, along with things like consolidating facilities and cut projects, are expected to be inside the PC business. Employees who are affected by the restructuring will be notified in the next 60 days, the company said. The layoffs are the largest since 2006, when the company let go 10, 500 employees. Last week, Gartner reported that worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter were 64. 8 million units, down 9. 6 percent from a year ago. “The hope was that PC demand, which has fallen for years, would be flat, and other segments would start filling in,” said Mark Hung, an analyst with Gartner. “This threw a monkey wrench into that. ” For the first quarter, Intel had net income of $2 billion, or 42 cents a share, and revenue of $13. 7 billion. Wall Street analysts had projected that Intel would earn 47 cents a share on revenue of $13. 8 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Revenue at the PC group fell 14 percent from the previous quarter, indicating Intel had to cut prices as demand fell. Intel faces other potential stumbling blocks. The company is unique as much of the tech industry counts on it continually delivering chips with more transistors for the same money. The process, known as Moore’s Law after Intel Gordon Moore, has generally happened in intervals. The next generation of chips, however, is likely to arrive in two and a half years, or more, leading to fears that Moore’s Law is slowing. Mr. Krzanich, who previously had played down the significance of his production schedule, took pains on Tuesday to say that Intel wanted to pick up its pace. “We are continuously striving to get back to two years,” he said. Intel had better do so, Mr. Hung said. “Its competitors don’t seem to be slowing down,” he said. “They may get to the next generation of chips at the same time as Intel. That would be . ” Besides cutting its operating expenses by $700 million this year through the restructuring, Intel may be seeking to sell different types of chips in combined ways for better efficiency and profit. “We’re moving from a company that was at the center of the PC market to being a company at the center of cloud computing,” said Stacy Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer. On Tuesday, Mr. Smith was named to run Intel’s sales, manufacturing and operations, another indication of how Intel needs to tighten its relationship with a few big cloud companies, like Amazon and Microsoft. This would involve integrating the production and sale of things like chips for computer memory along with computer processors. The company also wants to build a business in connecting things like automobiles to cloud computing, and needs to build faster wireless computing technologies for that. Intel added that it would begin a search for a new chief financial officer. | 1 |
The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters writes that Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon “offered a message of soothing reassurance to the conservative activists” at the annual CPAC conference on Thursday. Bannon’s reputation, Peters writes, “has taken on almost mythic proportion as a populist, emerging power center, man of mystery. ”[From the New York Times: [Bannon] urged a ballroom full of activists to stick together against the forces that were trying to tear them apart. “Whether you’re a populist, whether you’re a conservative, whether you’re a libertarian, whether you’re an economic nationalist,” he said, “we want you to have our back. ” Despite Mr. Bannon’s assurances, a simmering unease remains among conservatives over whether Mr. Trump will honor his promises to them, given that he was not part of their movement — or any political movement, for that matter — until very recently. Not too many years ago CPAC almost denied Mr. Trump a speaking slot because it feared he only wanted to promote himself. As for Mr. Bannon, he was essentially banished from the premises when he was running Breitbart News. So Mr. Bannon started a rival conference at a hotel down the street and called it The Uninvited. Read the rest here. | 0 |
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Donnerstag, 10. November 2016 Offizieller Friseur des Weißen Hauses erlitt am Wahlabend Nervenzusammenbruch Washington, D.C. (dpo) - Zu einem tragischen Zwischenfall ist es während der US-Präsidentschaftswahl am Dienstagabend in Washington gekommen. Wie erst heute bekannt wurde, musste der Friseur des US-Präsidenten kurz nach Bekanntgabe der ersten Wahlergebnisse ins Krankenhaus eingeliefert. Die Pressestelle des Weißen Hauses bestätigte den Vorfall. Demnach ging Arthur McMellow, der seit 31 Jahren im Amtssitz des Staatsoberhauptes für den perfekten Look der präsidialen Haarpracht zuständig ist, voller Euphorie zu einer Wahlparty in den Keller des Weißen Hauses, wo auch andere Mitarbeiter den Verlauf der Wahl verfolgten. "Anfangs war er wie wir alle sehr zuversichtlich und freute sich auf die Nacht", erinnert sich der Chefkoch des Weißen Hauses, der ebenfalls anwesend war. "Arthur hatte sich vorsorglich schon mit Material für blonde Strähnchen eingedeckt und war guter Dinge." Sind es politische Differenzen mit seinem künftigen Chef, die McMellow zu schaffen machten? Als gegen Mitternacht immer klarer wurde, dass Trump auf Obama folgen würde, sei die Stimmung zwar etwas gekippt, "aber alle Beschäftigten des Weißen Hauses blieben ruhig und professionell", wie einer der Gärtner berichtet. "Nur Arthur wurde immer fahriger und lauter, das ist sonst gar nicht seine Art." Normalerweise gilt McMellow in seinem Umfeld als sehr ausgeglichener Mensch, der seinen Job liebt und ihn mit Leidenschaft ausfüllt. Doch der 56-Jährige ließ sich nicht mehr beruhigen: Gegen ein Uhr morgens alarmierte der Leibarzt von Präsident Obama den Notruf. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt lag McMellow in Fötusstellung wimmernd am Boden. Inzwischen liegt er in einem Washingtoner Krankenhaus und befindet sich auf dem Weg der Besserung. Bekannte erklärten, McMellow plane, schnellstmöglich seine Stelle kündigen und in einen nervlich weniger fordernden Job wie etwa Löwendompteur zu wechseln. pfg; Foto oben: Shutterstock [M]; Foto unten: Michael Vadon , CC BY-SA 4.0 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
During his speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump attacked Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer ( ) describing him as a “bad leader” who is “leading the Democrats to doom. ”[Discussing the opposition from Democrats to his plans to build a border wall, Trump said, “Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have no leadership, they are rudderless. ” “Senator Schumer is a bad leader. I’ve known him a long time, Senator Schumer is a bad leader, not a natural leader at all. He works hard to study leadership … Well if you have to study leadership you’ve got problems,” Trump said. “His policies are hurting innocent Americans and making it easier for drug dealers to enter our country. Schumer is weak on crime and wants to raise your taxes through the roof. He is a poor leader, and he is leading the Democrats to doom,” Trump continued. Trump also criticized Democrats in Congress for opposing his immigration agenda, arguing that “If the Democrats knew what the hell they were doing, they would approve [the wall] so fast, as we want to stop crime in our country. ” He said: Obviously they don’t mind illegals coming in, they don’t mind drugs pouring in, they don’t mind MS13 coming in. Members of Congress who’ll be voting on border security have a simple choice, they can either help to vote drug cartels and criminal aliens trying to enter the United States, like frankly, the Democrats are doing. Or they can vote to help American citizens and American families be safe, that’s the choice. In March, Sen. Chuck Schumer claimed that Trump’s plans to build a wall on the southern border would not get sufficient votes from Democrats or Republicans, as “It’s not the best way to protect the border” and “It’s very expensive. ” You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0 |
Hillary Clinton and 6 aides had access to classified State Department information after she left office, lawmaker says | @edhenry pic. twitter. Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox Friends,” network correspondent Ed Henry reported Sen. Chuck Grassley ( ) had revealed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, and six of her aides retained their access to top secret and classified information after leaving the State Department in 2013. “We’re learning from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that she and six staffers in 2013 retained clearances where they still had access to top secret and classified information,” Henry said. “Why? They were titled ‘research assistants.’ So the assumption on Capitol Hill is it was because she was writing her memoirs and saying, ‘Look, I still need access to this information in order to go through what happened in Syria, what happened with Russia. But obviously think back to what James Comey said in how Hillary Clinton handled classified information. ” Henry was referring to Comey’s July 2016 statement calling Clinton “extremely careless” in how she handled classified information. “He obviously believes something needs to be done about this,” Henry added. “The only positive for Chuck Grassley at this point is, there’s no longer a Democrat at the State Department, obviously. You got Rex Tillerson, so if you have these documents on why she retained these clearances, and for example does she still have a clearance today? A lot of former officials get to keep these clearances for years — when they’re consultants … some of them like to retain it because they say I was in the middle of all of these important issues. I need to keep abreast of it. Been then some of these folks in Washington — they say drain the swamp. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0 |
Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday, uses a nonbinding “loophole” primary — and that could cost Donald Trump the Republican nomination. If the state adopted the delegate rules of any other primary, he would probably be an favorite, or better, to amass the 1, 237 delegates needed before the convention. Instead, his chances may come down to the whims of 54 unpledged Pennsylvania delegates. No other state leaves so many of its delegates unbound — allowed to vote for whomever they please at the convention. That’s because it conducts its loophole primary in two parts. First is the “beauty contest,” which is a presidential primary preference vote. The winner of the beauty contest gets all of Pennsylvania’s 17 and bonus delegates. But the remaining 54 — the three delegates awarded to each congressional district — are unbound and elected in the delegate selection primary. In this part, voters directly elect delegates to the national convention. What makes Pennsylvania’s G. O. P. delegate selection primary so distinctive is that the ballot includes no guidance on whom a delegate will support at the national convention (the prospective Democratic delegates commit to a candidate). A voter will just see a list of names — some of whom might be recognizable, but others might as well be Joe Schmo. (It’s called a loophole primary because it could circumvent the delegate allocation rules. Voters could, in theory, elect a slate of delegates who unanimously support one candidate, even in cases where a contest was prohibited.) The result is that Pennsylvania, with the G. O. P. delegates of any state, ranks 49th in pledged delegates. It’s behind even Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. The other two states with loophole primaries — West Virginia and Illinois — take a somewhat different approach: The delegates pledge whom they’ll support, and their preferences are listed alongside their names on the ballot. When you read articles about whether Mr. Trump can reach 1, 237 pledged delegates by the convention, these 54 delegates are held out of the analysis. Mr. Trump would be favored to win a majority of Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates under any other primary system. He leads by at least nine percentage points in every survey in the state, and is ahead of Ted Cruz by an average of 44 percent to 28 percent, according to The Huffington Post Pollster. He’s up by a similar margin of 46 percent to 30 percent in The Upshot’s model. Our model gives him an edge in 15 of the state’s 18 congressional districts. In a standard proportional allocation, Mr. Trump would probably be on track to win at least 40 of the state’s delegates. In a system, like Indiana’s or California’s, Mr. Trump would be favored to win at least 60 delegates. The difference matters a lot because Mr. Trump’s prize of 1, 237 hangs on a thread. He is probably on track to finish a bit short of 1, 237. Our model puts his projected delegate deficit as slightly less than the number of delegates left unpledged (54) in Pennsylvania, meaning he would be projected to win if they were bound delegates. Although facing a challenge in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump has benefited from other quirks in the Republican primary rules. Compared with the Democrats’ rules, the Republican ones are far more favorable to a candidate who wins with a plurality of the vote. And with the race as close as it is, any number of tweaks in the rules could make Mr. Trump a clear favorite — or an overwhelming underdog. | 0 |
We Are Change
While many Americans headed to the polls to vote in the 2016 election on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to… Antarctica.
Kerry’s trip will include a visit to the McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott South Pole stations, which will make him the first Secretary of State to visit Antarctica, according to a press release from the National Science Foundation.
It comes at a curious time, given the ongoing election. When asked about the timing, State Department spokesman John Kirby insisted that its purpose is “to talk to researchers and scientists largely about climate change research.”
A reporter responded by questioning the legitimacy of the trip, noting, “There’s some criticism that this trip is basically, you know, the Secretary wants to knock Antarctica off his bucket list and he’s doing it on taxpayer expense.”
Kirby insisted that it is important for Kerry “to see firsthand what we are learning about the environment down there on the South Pole.”
“As an individual who has literally championed climate change research and awareness for decades now, the secretary is and will remain committed to increasing the awareness and education of the public about this,” Kirby said.
The location of Kerry’s trip is also interesting. Russian scientists drew criticism in 2012 for drilling into Antarctica’s “Alien” Lake Vostok, which scientists claim went “undisturbed by sunlight for over 15 million years.”
Theories as to what is under the surface of the lake—which is considered the sixth largest in the world— include oil, a secret Nazi base with Hitler’s remains, nuclear energy, Atlantis, and of course, a UFO landing site.
Kerry’s trip will add to his lead as the Secretary of State who has traveled the most miles, with over 1.3 million since 2013. This sends him even further ahead former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who traveled 956,733 miles from 2009 to 2013.
In addition to staying away from the polls in the U.S. where he would be expected to vote for Clinton, Kerry is also showing her up by reminding the world that he beat her in total miles traveled—an area where Clinton was very competitive.
In 2010, Clinton wrote an email to her top aide Huma Abedin asking , “What’s my total now?”
“We have 36 trips to date,” Abedin responded, noting that Clinton needed at least four more to beat the record of 1.06 million set by Condoleezza Rice.
Follow Rachel Blevins on Facebook and Twitter .
The post Election Heats Up: Kerry Heads To The Poles…In ANTARCTICA WTF appeared first on We Are Change .
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GOP Office Is Bombed and Loretta Lynch (Mob) Stands Down
IF Trump wins the election, the following is a sign of very serious things to come.
The GOP offices are firebombed in North Carolina. The obvious suspects are Soros’ groups, the Clinton Foundation and rabid Democrats. And what did Loretta Lynch (Mob) do? The answer to the question and more lies below. | 0 |
Carol Adl in Middle East , News , US // 0 Comments
Hillary Clinton proposed rigging the Palestinian parliamentary elections while she was a US senator in 2006, according to a newly emerged recording.
The decade-old audio exposes then-Senator Hillary Clinton saying the US should have manipulated Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 to prevent a Hamas victory.
The US Democratic presidential nominee lamented that the US didn’t “determine who was going to win.”
The result of that election was a victory for the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas over the US-favored Fatah political party.
RT reports:
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” then-New York Senator Clinton told the Jewish Press, a New York-based weekly newspaper, several months after the January election.
“And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she said.
Until Friday, the comment Clinton made on September 5, 2006, only existed on a private audio cassette belonging to journalist Eli Chomsky. An editor and a staff writer for the Jewish Press, he interviewed Clinton at the newspaper’s office in Brooklyn.
Chomsky, who shared and played the tape for the Observer, says it is the only existing copy of that meeting with Clinton, during which the Palestinian parliamentary election was among top topics. The comments have been posted on SoundCloud.
Speaking to the news portal, he recalled being confused by the fact that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.”
The interview took place nine months after the Hamas movement claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats, pushing aside the US-favored Fatah movement and securing the right to form a new cabinet. That victory was neither welcomed in Israel, nor in the US. In Washington, where Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, officials repeatedly stated that they would not work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas.
Then-President George W. Bush spoke of the elections as symbolizing the “power of democracy,” but refused to deal with Hamas as long as it opposed Israel’s existence and espoused violence.
That day in September 2006, Clinton made “odd and controversial comments,” all now saved on the 45-minute record that Chomsky “held onto all these years.”
“I went to my bosses at the time,” Chomsky told the Observer. “The Jewish Press had this mindset that they would not want to say anything offensive about anybody — even a direct quote from anyone — in a position of influence because they might need them down the road. My bosses didn’t think it was newsworthy at the time. I was convinced that it was and I held onto it all these years.”
The latest revelation comes after repeated accusations by the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump who says that the media and the political establishment have rigged the 2016 election against him.
It would seem that the crooked Mrs Clinton thinks nothing of rigging any election to suit her agenda. | 0 |
A new survey shows widespread support for President Donald Trump’s plan to swap current U. S. immigration policy, based on toward entry based on skills and merit. [In a Rasmussen Reports poll, 44 percent of likely American voters want to move to a immigration system that only admits legal immigrants if their skills are needed in the U. S. Only 37 percent of likely voters want to keep the current legal immigration system which is based solely on family chain migration. Another 18 percent of likely voters said they did not know which system they would prefer. Men, as well as younger likely voters, much prefer a immigration system, with 51 percent saying they would like to see a switch, as opposed to 38 percent of women. Voters between the ages 18 to 30 favored a merit system by 49 percent. Voters from 40 to 64 preferred the status quo by 43 percent. While Trump’s plan is wildly popular with 60 percent of Republicans, likely voters who do not identify with either of the two major political parties show 47 percent support as well. The poll also found that Americans continue to support deportations of illegal immigrants, even if the illegal immigrant has a child in the U. S. percent of likely voters said illegal immigrants with children born in the U. S. should not be exempt from deportation. Only 37 percent disagreed. Across party lines, deportations of illegal immigrants with children remains popular, with 62 percent of Republicans supporting the action, along with 30 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of American voters who are not affiliated with either major political party. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0 |
The sports media is just now learning what was apparent to conservatives and Republicans all last season: that Colin Kaepernick cares an awful lot more about politics than he does about football. [Peter King, from the Monday Morning Quarterback, spent the weekend of the NFL draft with the San Francisco 49ers. During that time, a time spent in close quarters with many of the 49ers staff, King came away with the distinct impression that many in the building felt Kaepernick would rather protest than play football. King wrote, “I spent a long draft weekend with the Niners in California and there are those in the building who think Kaepernick might actually rather do social justice work than play quarterback. ” King cites Kaepernick’s frequent tweeting about social justice and the Know Your Rights Camps, which the former 49er QB began somewhat recently. However, King also brought up Manhattan, where Kaepernick lives, and his wife Nessa, a DJ in New York City. King explains, “He emerges in New York City occasionally for noble cause work, last week donating 100 men’s suits to a parole office in Queens, so recipients, recently out of prison, would look more presentable when going on job interviews. I haven’t talked to Kaepernick, so I have no idea what his gut is telling him about what to do with his life. But it’s crazy that a quarterback who four years ago was coming off a Super Bowl appearance and looked to be a answer has no team now and no hot NFL prospects that anyone can see. ” What’s crazier, is that Kaepernick’s true priorities and passions are apparently news to the sports media. Playing quarterback in the NFL has no equal in sports in terms of difficulty and complexity. It’s literally the hardest thing anyone could do in sports, requiring complete and total concentration and channeling of focus. Yet, after the media turned his protest into the biggest story in sports, certain to engulf him, his team, and obscure everything they would attempt to accomplish on the field, what did Kaepernick do? Did he stop, for the benefit of the team? No, he wore a Fidel Castro to a press conference. How could anyone have seen this and come away with the conclusion that Kaepernick was putting football first? The sports media wanted so badly for Kaepernick to turn into a permanent statue of protest on television screens every Sunday throughout America, that they forgot all about the fact that you have to actually play really well in order to keep a job in the NFL. In fact, especially if you plan on insulting the flag and all who fought and died for it, you have to play exceedingly great. Kaepernick, obviously, did not play great, partially due to the fact that he’s never refined and evolved his game to counter defenses who have figured him out. But, in equal part, due to the fact that he was too busy buying pig socks. It’s still my opinion that Kaepernick will get signed at some point midseason. But, until then, the media will continue to have a sad about their protest puppet, and what might have been. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0 |
ORANGE CITY, Iowa — A year ago, Evan Wielenga, 40, believed — as does his congressman, Steve King — that undocumented immigrants should all be deported. They broke the law to enter the country. They spoke little English. They strained schools and public services. But as talk of a border wall and a Muslim ban overtook the presidential campaign, Mr. Wielenga, the agronomy manager of a farmers’ here in northwestern Iowa, had a change of heart. He heard dairy farmers say they couldn’t get their cows milked without immigrants. “You can put an ad in the paper and you won’t get two white guys to apply,” said Mr. Wielenga, who grew up on a dairy farm himself. He heard of the ruinous damage an immigration raid had done to families. “Some of these kids were born in the U. S.,” he said. “These families had lived here 10 years, and all of a sudden, Dad’s gone, Mom’s gone. When you think of it from that perspective, what’s the lesser of two evils?” Mr. King, a Republican who has displayed a Confederate battle flag on his desk in Washington, shows no sign of budging in his views. His latest tirade — “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” he said — once again drew wide condemnation and critical attention to Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District, whose voters overwhelmingly him to an eighth term in November. Sioux County, Mr. Wielenga’s home, provided the largest margin in the district, Iowa’s most conservative. And there is no shortage of voters who echo Mr. King’s contention that “culture and demographics are our destiny,” as he said earlier this month to cheers from white supremacists. But in conversations over four days with residents who voted for Mr. King, a new chorus of earnest naysayers could also be heard in many corners of the district. Some said the congressman’s latest provocation — uttered in support of a Dutch politician — was finally more than they could brook. Several said they were rethinking their support. “I’ve always voted for him, but I think this was way out of line,” said Bill Kooi, a retired farmer, sipping coffee at a Hardees in Orange City, as the friends who shared his table — to a man, older white conservatives — all nodded. Again and again, voters brought up how much Mr. King’s district has changed since his election 15 years ago. Though still overwhelmingly white, it has absorbed a sizable population of Hispanics who have taken jobs and opened small businesses in the empty storefronts of struggling towns. As a generation of white children leaves for college and seldom returns, immigrants are keeping many of those communities alive. Denison, in Crawford County, is one. Eric Skoog, a county commissioner and owner of Cronk’s restaurant in Denison, where Mr. King, 67, sometimes stops on his way home, said the community had been successfully assimilating a steady stream of Hispanics for years. “One of our claims to fame is we don’t have a Hispanic neighborhood,” Mr. Skoog said. Rather, immigrants and their families live throughout the community. Before the 2010 census, city officials worked hard to persuade immigrants to allow themselves to be counted so Denison could receive its share of federal dollars. Mr. Skoog said that Latino newcomers had flocked to Denison to take jobs in meatpacking plants that Iowa farmers had once filled — but that those native Iowans wanted better for their children. “The next generation, there was not a supply of male white farmers around here,” he said. “So all of a sudden you saw the influx of the Hispanic population. ” Mr. Skoog counts himself a friend of Mr. King’s, but offered no explanation for the lawmaker’s and racially inflammatory statements, which go back years, including a 2013 description of undocumented teenagers with “calves the size of cantaloupes” from carrying drugs across the border. Selecting his words carefully, Mr. Skoog said of Mr. King: “There’s a personal relationship there. I don’t want to damage that by saying too much negative. ” Others describe an ethos that is changing day by day. Libbie Schillerberg has three children in the Denison schools, where more than half the students are Hispanic. Her oldest, Ethan, 15, plays guitar in a high school mariachi band. Her youngest, Addison, 6, is one of four whites in her class. “I’m on our youth soccer board,” Ms. Schillerberg said. “We didn’t used to see as many Hispanic parents volunteering to coach. We’re seeing more and more. When your kids are such good friends at school, people are getting to know each other better. They’re trusting each other, wanting to be around each other. ” Mario Flores, a loan officer at Bank Iowa in Denison, said Hispanics there were buying homes, investing in apartment buildings and otherwise injecting economic vitality into the community. “I believe both groups, the Anglo and are learning from each other,” he said. Mr. King has survived past denunciations: Last year, he drew a rare primary challenger, who accused him of being so toxic that his name on a bill rendered it “dead on arrival. ” But Mr. King won easily and went on to crush his Democratic opponent, Kim Weaver, an advocate for the elderly. Over the weekend, Ms. Weaver, who received a small gusher of donations after Mr. King’s latest remarks, announced she would challenge him again in 2018. It will not be easy. Last summer, Douglas Burns, an owner of The Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, headlined a column: “King could use daily, still get here. ” Mr. Burns has branded Mr. King as a racist, but he recoiled from calling the district’s voters bigoted. Rather, he said in an interview, they embraced Mr. King for blackening the eyes of Washington and Des Moines elites. “I think people feel condescended to so much from urban forces that, while they may not like the racist tactics that King uses, if forced to choose sides, they’re going with King,” Mr. Burns said. But there are plenty who don’t seem to quibble much with Mr. King’s way of thinking. Sitting at the Hardees in Orange City last week, Don Engeltjes, 76, said he agreed with Mr. King on the need to clamp down on immigration. He said he believed new arrivals were a drain on taxpayers’ money, lumping immigrants from Mexico in with those from the Muslim world. “It’s just handout, handout, handout,” he said. “But Don, your dad is an immigrant too,” another man piped up, noting that Mr. Engeltjes’s father, like many forebears of the district’s voters, had come over from Holland at age 9. “You bet he was,” Mr. Engeltjes replied. “But the way it’s going nowadays, man, they’re outproducing us. We’re going to be the minority in a few years. ” Asked by a reporter who he meant by “we,” Mr. Engeltjes said: “The white people. The American people. ” Mr. Engeltjes said he did not oppose all immigrants. He described a successful prostate procedure he had not long ago in Sioux Falls, S. D. performed by a Korean doctor. But he complained that homes occupied by several Hispanic families living together were running down his neighborhood. On Sundays, he said, he picks up trash in the street from parties he believes are held by his Hispanic neighbors. Interviewed at his home later, where his wife, Alma, said her husband had occasionally made enemies by being outspoken, Mr. Engeltjes praised the same quality in Mr. King, for whom he said he would vote again. “Enough of this ” he said. “The man’s got a pair. ” Mr. Wielenga, the agronomist, suggested that northwestern Iowa, with its proud Dutch heritage, may have grown too insular, too complacent, during Mr. King’s tenure in Congress. He called it a safe community and a great place to raise children. He has four daughters and is the board president of Hull Christian School, where Mr. Wielenga said only one of the 100 families who send children to the private school is Hispanic. He said some of the area’s churches were entirely white. “We talk about this at school,” Mr. Wielenga said: “Are we living in a bubble? And is that what God is calling us to do — to live in a bubble?” “This has been going on now for 20 years,” he said of the Hispanic influx. “Now you want to fix it by kicking people out?” He gently shook his head. | 1 |
Your hyperbole makes you sound more like a Trump supporter than a Stein supporter, but both groups of losers will continue to whine in unity. | 0 |
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives on Monday in a busy Baghdad market, killing at least 36 people hours after President François Hollande of France arrived in the Iraqi capital. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomb went off in a produce market that was packed with day laborers, a police officer said, adding that another 52 people were wounded. During a news conference with Mr. Hollande, Haider Iraq’s prime minister, said the suicide bomber had pretended to be a man seeking to hire day laborers. Once the workers gathered around, he detonated the vehicle. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed the attack in a statement circulated on a website that is often used by the group. It was the third such attack in three days in or near Baghdad, underscoring the lingering threat posed by the extremist group despite a string of setbacks for it elsewhere in the country over the past year, including in and around the northern city of Mosul. The attack took place in Sadr City, a vast Shiite district in eastern Baghdad that has been repeatedly targeted by Sunni extremists since the 2003 invasion. Militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada were seen evacuating bodies in their trucks before ambulances arrived. Bodies were scattered across the bloody pavement alongside fruit, vegetables and laborers’ shovels and axes. A minibus filled with dead passengers was on fire. Asaad Hashim, 28, an owner of a nearby cellphone store, described how the laborers had pushed and shoved around the bomber’s vehicle, trying to get hired. “Then a big boom came, sending them up into the air,” said Mr. Hashim, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his right hand. He blamed “the most ineffective security forces in the world” for failing to prevent the attack. An angry crowd cursed the government, even after a representative of Mr. Sadr tried to calm them. Late last month, the Iraqi authorities started removing some of the security checkpoints in Baghdad in a bid to ease traffic for the capital’s six million residents. “We have no idea who will kill at any moment and who’s supposed to protect us,” said Ali Abbas, a father of four who was hurled over his vegetable stand by the blast. “If the securities forces can’t protect us, then allow us to do the job. ” Several smaller bombings elsewhere in the city on Monday killed at least 20 civilians and wounded at least 70, according to medics and police officials. All officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. The United States State Department condemned the attacks. Separately, the American military announced on Monday the death of a coalition service member in Iraq in a “ incident,” without providing further details. Mr. Hollande met with Mr. Abadi and President Fuad Masum, and later traveled to the northern Kurdish region to meet with French troops and local officials. He pledged to help displaced Iraqis return to Mosul, where Iraqi forces are waging a large offensive against the Islamic State. France is part of the coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State after the extremist group seized large areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria. France has suffered multiple attacks claimed by the extremist group. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — A day after the release of a damning intelligence report on Russia’s efforts to influence the American election, Donald J. Trump called on Saturday for a closer relationship between the two nations, saying only “stupid” people or “fools” would think this was unwise. The United States, Mr. Trump wrote in a series of Twitter messages Saturday morning, has “enough problems around the world without yet another one. ” He pledged that Russia would “respect us far more than they do now” after he is sworn in as president, and said that the two nations could perhaps work together on the international stage. For years, Russia has been anything but a willing partner of the United States. Relations became strained well before the cyberattacks began nearly a year and a half ago, despite the Obama administration’s early effort to reset relations. After Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014, the United States and its allies levied broad sanctions against the Russian economy and blacklisted dozens of its citizens, including some close to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. President Obama added to those measures last month in retaliation for the hacking, expelling 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on two Russian intelligence services. Russia and the United States have also often been at odds over Moscow’s involvement in the war in Syria. Senior intelligence officials briefed Mr. Trump on their findings on Russian election interference on Friday, before releasing a declassified report that concluded that Mr. Putin had “ordered” a sprawling campaign intended to denigrate Hillary Clinton and aid Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence agencies’ conclusions as politically motivated, but he appeared to soften that stance in a statement his transition team released after the briefing. He also seemingly conceded Russian involvement in the election, but he has taken pains to point out that there is no evidence that any vote tallies were altered, apparently seeking to avoid the suggestion that his victory was illegitimate. Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that it is time to “move on” from the focus on Russian meddling in the election, arguing that it has received such attention only because Democrats are embarrassed about their loss — an assertion he repeated on Twitter on Saturday. Late on Friday, he blamed the Democratic National Committee for the hacking of its computer systems, saying that “gross negligence” had allowed it to happen. Many Democrats said on Twitter that Mr. Trump was essentially engaging in . | 0 |
Why Save American Politics? By Daily Bell Staff - October 29, 2016
Four Steps to Save American Politics … Donald Trump has taken a battering ram to longstanding political norms — the unwritten conventions that make governance possible … Immediately after the election, one of the most pressing questions will be how to restore them. To answer that question … what are the minimal norms on which we might agree? Here are four suggestions. -Bloomberg
Cass R. Sunstein is disturbed that “unwritten political conventions” have not been adhered to in the current presidential election.
From our point of view, the disintegration of such conventions is good news. Anything that impedes the political system from working in the US is probably a net positive.
The current political system has virtually bankrupted the US and especially the middle class, many of whom have less than $1,000 in savings and over $100,000 in debt. Some 90 million potential workers don’t have formal employment.
The US continues to engage in serial, undeclared wars that have killed and wounded tens of millions overseas. And in the past few years, the military-industrial complex, facilitated by Congress and the executive branch, has embarked on a series of provocations abroad that have heightened tensions with both Russia and China.
The political system itself is held in low repute, with Congressional approval in the single digits. The US justice system and even the executive branch are not held in high regard.
Yet for some reason Sunstein is worried that “normal” American politics won’t be “restored.”
He makes four points.
1: Civility now … Right after the election, the losing and winning candidates should strike notes of humility and grace, and Democratic and Republican leaders should join them.
2: Compromise, early and often. 2017 could be the year of splitting differences. On gun control, for example, Clinton has a number of ideas, such as forbidding the sale of guns to people on the terrorist watch list, that many Republicans could accept.
3: Identify a set of attractive proposals from “the other side,” and champion them. With a compromise, one party yields to another; it gives something up. But there is an even more appealing possibility, which is to find domains in which the two parties agree with one another, and no one has to yield a thing.
4: Ease up on the process for confirming executive-branch nominees. This is more important than it may seem, because the current system, in which nominations are held up for months or even years, discourages good people from entering public service, wastes time and money, creates acrimony, and makes it much harder for government to serve the American people
Let’s take these points one at a time.
Why should civility return to a process that has bankrupted the American people, put six million of them in various stages of incarceration and murdered millions abroad in serial, illegal wars? Civility presumably makes the system less dysfunction. Our take: the more dysfunctional the better.
Why should the system seek out compromise? This assumes that compromise will actually be beneficial to those being governed. But compromise merely facilitates the secret goals of those who run the federal political system from behind the scenes – especially banking and military interests. Why ease their way?
Champion proposals from the other side? The US is $20 million in debt, is viciously divided and increasingly provides a government that is actively adversarial to the people it is supposed to “serve.” The FBI and IRS are only two elements of governance that have proven dysfunctional in the immediate past. Why support such a system or advance it?
Confirm executive-branch nominees? These individuals for the most part ease the way to more effective federal actions domestically and abroad. Yet when one examines what the federal government does, it become hard to make an argument that much of it, or almost any of it, supports the civilian population it is supposed to aid. Why facilitate federal government actions when those actions are most often destructive?
Sunstein concludes his editorial by claiming that the current rancor in federal government and its heightening dysfunction has made the American people “the real losers.” He suggests that immediately after the election, those involved should rebuild the “institutional norms that have long served the nation well.”
Again, as is normal, when we discover a Sunstein editorial, we find his speculations highly questionable . To sum up: The US struggles with unpayable debt, is run by shadowy military and banking forces with their own agenda and increasingly the federal government is hostile to its own civilian population.
Conclusion: The most troubling issue is that larger international interests are apparently trying to destroy Western civilization in order to install globalism. Governments generally are employed as part of this destructive process and the US federal government is no exception. To enhance its utility only supports this destructiveness. Better that it remains dysfunctional. Paralysis is not an enemy when it comes government. | 1 |
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WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump plans to nominate Vincent Viola, the billionaire founder of a trading company, as secretary of the Army, the Trump transition office said. Mr. Viola, a retired Army major and graduate of West Point, is the owner of the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and founder of Virtu Financial. He is worth $1. 8 billion, according to Forbes, making him one of the 400 wealthiest Americans. He joins a growing list of billionaires selected by Mr. Trump for senior administration positions. In its statement announcing the selection, the transition office lauded Mr. Viola for working “tirelessly to promote the Army philanthropically in the areas of counterterrorism, cybersecurity and leadership development. ” Mr. Viola helped found the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point after the Sept. 11 attacks. The center describes itself as “an important national resource that rigorously studies the terrorist threat and provides research while moving the boundaries of academic knowledge. ” Mr. Trump, in the announcement, described Mr. Viola as “incredibly accomplished and selfless. ” If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Viola, 61, would be the Army’s senior civilian leader, succeeding Eric Fanning, the openly gay person at the Pentagon. Mr. Fanning has been helping to guide the country’s largest military service as it undertakes a sweeping integration of women into combat roles and lets openly gay soldiers serve. Mr. Viola would report to Gen. James N. Mattis, Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, if the Senate confirms General Mattis, a retired officer in the Marines. A person familiar with Pentagon appointments for the transition said that General Mattis had reached an agreement with Vice Mike Pence that the new defense secretary would choose who would fill the top policy jobs at the Pentagon — like under secretary of defense and general counsel — while the White House would select the service secretaries, like Mr. Viola. Mr. Viola, a native of Brooklyn, graduated from Ranger School and served in the 101st Airborne Division. He holds a degree from New York Law School. In the statement from the Trump transition team, Mr. Viola called it an “honor” to be chosen and said, “A primary focus of my leadership will be ensuring that America’s soldiers have the ways and means to fight and win across the full spectrum of conflict. ” Mr. Trump has continued to meet with a series of figures. On Saturday, after holding the final “thank you” rally of his transition, he met with Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, for dinner at his resort, a representative for the transition said on Monday. The meeting, reported by The Washington Post, was notable because Mr. Trump has vilified Mexico, and at times Mr. Slim, for illegal immigration and the loss of American manufacturing jobs. As a candidate, he also used Mr. Slim as a target in his frequent assaults on the news media, because Mr. Slim is a major shareholder in The New York Times Company. | 0 |
A manhunt for the killer of a Pennsylvania state trooper who responded to a domestic disturbance before being shot has ended after an overnight search. The suspected is dead. [“The only good cop is a dead cop,” Jason Robinson, the alleged posted on Facebook earlier this month, according to the Central Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania. The post was reported to have been deleted from Facebook about 1 a. m. on Saturday morning. The post was said to include an image of a police cruiser that crashed and a photo of an injured police officer. Pennsylvania State Police officials confirmed that Robinson is dead following a massive overnight manhunt. The initial announcement did not state whether Robinson killed himself or if he was killed in an engagement with police, PennLive. com reported Saturday morning. UPDATE: “Troopers encountered Robison at an unoccupied mobile home not far from his residence,” State Police officials posted on Facebook. “Robison refused commands to surrender, made threats to harm additional law enforcement personnel, and was shot and killed in the ensuing confrontation. ” Trooper Landon Weaver was shot and killed after responding with another trooper to a call regarding a “ incident,” the Central Daily Times reported. The incident took place early Friday evening. Details of the encounter remain sketchy at this time. The shooting took place at a residence in Juniata Township, about an hour east of Pittsburg. Weaver had been dispatched to the suspect’s mother’s house to investigate a call about a violation of an order of protection that had been placed on Robinson, PennLive. com reported Friday evening. Before the alleged killing of Trooper Weaver, Robinson had several encounters with law enforcement. Court records reported by PennLive. com revealed he was currently awaiting trial on charges filed in December for theft, receiving stolen property, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and driving without a license. He was also arrested by state police troopers in April for unlawful bodily injury, simple assault and harassment. A motion had previously been filed with the courts for a mental health evaluation. Trooper Weaver was in his first year as a state trooper. He became a state police officer in December 2015 but did not graduate from the police academy until June. Officials reported he is the 97th member of the Pennsylvania State Police to be killed in the line of duty. Weaver had been assigned to Troop G, Hollidaysburg, which is located near his home in East Freedom, Pennsylvania. He was also in his first year of marriage, having married his high school sweetheart, Macy Gottshall, in June, the Central Daily Times reported. The trooper was the 140th law enforcement officer to be killed in the line of duty this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP). He is the 63rd officer this year to have been killed by gunfire. The State of Pennsylvania has suffered the loss of three other law enforcement officers this year, the ODMP reported. Police Officer Scott Leslie Bashioum from the Canonsburg Borough Police Department was shot and killed just six weeks ago on November 10. Two correctional officers, Corrections Officer David M. Weaver and Correctional Officer Kristopher D. Moules, also died in the line of duty. Officer Weaver died in a fall and Officer Moules died from injuries in an assault. Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with additional information from the State Police about the death of the suspect. 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. | 0 |
GOP VP candidate Mike Pence's plane skids off runway at LaGuardia airport page: 1 JAMAICA, Queens (WABC) -- Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Mike Pence's plane skidded off the runway at LaGuardia Airport on Thursday night. It happened just before 8 p.m. Everyone on board is reportedly ok. Just witnessed an emergency landing at La Guardia Airport. Hope everyone's safe. @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/e4PtrsQDeo — Xpl0iter (@itsmeJilani) October 27, 2016 It's not yet known what led to the mishap. Scary! No details as to what happened yet. CNN reporting that a witness from 27 years ago has come forward stating Trump told her he was going to kill Pence one day. Details forthcoming link originally posted by: In4ormant CNN reporting that a witness from 27 years ago has come forward stating Trump told her he was going to kill Pence one day. Details forthcoming link originally posted by: In4ormant CNN reporting that a witness from 27 years ago has come forward stating Trump told her he was going to kill Pence one day. Details forthcoming The witness wishes to stay anonymous and does not seek legal action. They just thought this is a good time to bring it up. link a reply to: xuenchen The onl thing to add is that he was on his to a fundraiser that he will no longer attend. link a reply to: In4ormant yea it definitely has been eyes are re, and i need a beer so i dont get teh tremors... anyway glad everyones ok I'm sure that there are those that are disappointed that no one was hurt. hate to be the one to say it, but it's true. I'm sure that there are those that are disappointed that no one was hurt. hate to be the one to say it, but it's true. Good god, why would you say that? Fox had a producer on Board, and he is saying everybody is ok (were about 45 people on the plane). Sounds like a real close call! link originally posted by: mobiusmale Fox had a producer on Board, and he is saying everybody is ok (were about 45 people on the plane). Sounds like a real close call! Good link This happens several times a year at that airport. They built the runway too short. Burbank airport in los angeles had a plane go off the runway. Through a fence and hit a bunch of cars in traffic on a major blvd several years ago originally posted by: BASSPLYR This happens several times a year at that airport. They built the runway too short. Burbank airport in los angeles had a plane go off the runway. Through a fence and hit a bunch of cars in traffic on a major blvd several years ago I could never stand landing there. They make you fly so high above the city and then drop you like a stone on to a short strip. I would rather parachute In. link I worry about this sort of thing happening to Donald Trump as we get closer to the election, and he keeps gaining on Evil Hillary. I have no doubt that the U.S. government would sabotage some part of Trump's jet, if he gets too close for comfort. link There’s a retro look to the aircraft flying Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence. Aviation enthusiasts may recognize the Eastern Air Lines paint scheme on the Boeing 737-700 picked to shuttle Pence, Donald Trump's running mate, between campaign stops. ... That’s because the old Eastern name and logo has been resurrected by a new Miami-based start-up carrier. The “new" Eastern made its first revenue flight in 2015 on a charter from Miami to Havana, Cuba. Eastern spokesman Nicholas Loudon confirmed to Today in the Sky it is an Eastern 737 that's flying the Republican candidate for vice president. The aircraft is configured in an all-business class layout that can seat 62 passengers. As for the current incarnation of Eastern, the company has said it intends to eventually launch regularly scheduled flights from U.S. airports. For now, however, the airline is focused on operating charter services to Cuba and destinations in the Caribbean region. | 1 |
How Putin’s Plan to Collect Former US Allies Could End the American Empire Oct 24, 2016
( UR ) As Anti-Media reported Monday, analysis of recent events suggests President Vladimir Putin may have ulterior motives in sending the largest Russian naval fleet since the Cold War steaming toward the Mediterranean Sea. He may, in fact, be initiating the first stages of militarily securing the long-desired Turkish Stream pipeline.
As highlighted , positioning the aircraft carrier-led fleet just off the western coast of Syria in the Mediterranean also strategically places it between friendly nations to the north and south — Turkey, with whom the pipeline deal was officially signed last week, and Egypt, with whom Russia is now expanding ties both militarily and economically.
But in truth, the agreements being struck around the Mediterranean — while unquestionably important in their own right — are indicative of a much broader, and rather recent, Russian pattern.
On the southeast border of Russian ally, Iran, for instance, lies Pakistan. Russia raised eyebrows back in September when it announced that for the first time in modern history Russia and Pakistan would conduct joint military drills — a signal Russia’s influence is spreading across Asia.
In October, it was reported additional joint exercises between the two nations had been scheduled for 2017.
Pakistan’s neighbor to the east is India. In mid-October, it was announced Russia’s largely state-owned oil company Rosneft, along with other partners, would invest around $12.9 billion in India’s Essar Oil. Additionally, a Russian state investment fund would work with an Indian counterpart to invest $1 billion toward Indian infrastructure. Share: | 0 |
Boy wearing a ‘My dad is an ATM’ T-shirt chased by mob; father frisked, robbed Posted on Tweet
Rakesh Bemaani, the 16-year old son of billionaire Lokesh Bemaani, was caught in a mad chase yesterday, which resulted in his father being attacked by a vicious, bloodthirsty mob. The reason? The unsuspecting youngster was wearing one of the popular t-shirts that read “My dad is an ATM.” (Image via redbubble.net)
A horrified Rakesh has vowed to never, ever don the t-shirt henceforth. “There I was, zooming around in my Merc as usual, with a few cops on the road saluting me. But as I was driving, I happened to notice large queues on the roads, outside ATMs. I thought of seeing what the problem was and stepped out of the car. The moment the crowd saw me, they looked intently at each other and before I knew it, they collectively sprinted towards me, gunning for my throat. I quickly hopped into my car and sped away, but they chased me unflinchingly. Thankfully, I saw my dad, surrounded by a few security guards, just returning from his morning walk. The guards were of no avail, as the mob overpowered them with ease and started frisking dad all over. Some of them even stuffed his mouth with their debit cards, hoping for some notes to come out. Thankfully, dad had only ₹500 and ₹1000 rupee notes in his wallet, so the mobsters threw the wallet right back at his face, spat at us and went back. It was only after the melee subsided, did I realize the reason for it all happening – I was wearing one of my dozen of ‘My dad is an ATM’ t-shirts. Phew! Never putting these on again,” the harrowed Rakesh narrated to The UnReal Times .
Companies manufacturing the t-shirts have offered to insert a ‘NOT’ in the middle of the statement for free. “We’re recalling all such t-shirts and without any payment, we’re willing to stitch a ^ NOT after the ‘is’ and before the ‘an.’ The safety and security of our customers is our topmost concern,” one such clothing manufacturer stated.
The Bemaani family, however, received a flurry of support from the Bollywood fraternity. Tweeting to PM Narendra Modi was actor Arshad Warsi, who stated, “Mr. PM, your so-called masterstroke and surgical strike is paining not only the poor and common men, but also the billionaires. Of what good is all this, really? Can you please come back to India and repeal this goddamn rule? I don’t mind sponsoring your return ticket, if you do this!” Warsi was followed by director Anurag Kashyap, who tweeted angrily to the PM demanding an apology.
The Bemaani family was also visited by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who sat in protest against the abrupt demonetization scheme. “Like aloo ki factories, we also need paise ki factories instead of ATMs. If we empower the villagers, we can get this done soon,” the Nehru-Gandhi scion stated. The Delhi CM was far more scathing in his diatribe. “The psychopath isn’t happy with the already prevailing smog. He wants more people to come out to the streets, thereby increase the smog and punish Delhites fatally for not voting for him. Yehi to scam hai ji ,” the AAP chief yelled.
A section of liberal democrats in the US, however, hailed the development as a sweet revenge against the presidential election of Donald Trump. “It’s all happening! Billionaires all over the world will have to incur people’s wrath like this, for having one of their own, and a racist, bigot, xenophobe at that, as the US president,” said one such tolerant, intellectual democrat. Tweet About Ashwin Kumar
1 of the proud columnists of URT, former co-editor of URT Tamil, amateur musician, Real Harris Jayaraj devotee, UnReal T. Rajendar fanatic, passionate about stopping female foeticide. | 0 |
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Parliament passed a provocative law late Monday that would retroactively legalize Jewish settlements on privately owned Palestinian land, pressing ahead with a statement of assertiveness despite the likelihood that the country’s high court will nullify the legislation. It was a defining — opponents said frightening — moment in Israel’s relations with Palestinians and amid fading hopes of ending decades of conflict through a solution. While polls consistently show that most Israelis still support two states, their leaders and the reality of what is happening on the ground are consistently heading in the opposite direction: Fifty years after Israel defeated Jordan and captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, many politicians say that now — with negotiations with the Palestinians frozen — is the moment Israel must decide what it wants and act decisively on it. The new law is “deteriorating Israel’s democracy, making stealing an official policy and bringing us one step closer to annexation” of more land Palestinians claim for a future state, said Anat Ben Nun, the director of external relations for Peace Now, an group. Only a few months ago, the law was believed to have little chance of coming up for a vote. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was flying back from a meeting with Britain’s leaders as the law was being debated, seemed to oppose its passage for fear of further international censure. The bill had been so contentious that the nation’s attorney general, who described it as unconstitutional and in contravention of international law, said he would not defend it in the high court, which seemed in any case likely to nullify it. That is partly because the law applies to Palestinians and their property rights. Since Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are not Israeli citizens and cannot vote for candidates for Israel’s Parliament, or Knesset, critics of the legislation say it is inherently . Under the law, Palestinian landowners will be offered compensation for the use of their property but will not be able to reclaim it. But the bill gained internal momentum through several forces: Mr. Netanyahu is determined to show his support to the powerful settler movement, and is under pressure from on the right and from corruption investigations that even his supporters say appear serious. That pressure intensified last week after Mr. Netanyahu’s government carried out a court order to evacuate about 40 settler families at the Amona outpost, declared illegal a decade ago. “Today Israel decreed that developing settlement in Judea and Samaria is an Israeli interest,” said Bezalel Smotrich, a lawmaker, using the biblical names for the West Bank. “From here we move on to expanding Israeli sovereignty and continuing to build and develop settlements across the land. ” At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu and the right — some allies, some opponents — have taken into account that they have more leeway under President Trump than under President Barack Obama, who regularly condemned settlement building. It is uncertain, however, just how firm the support from the new administration in Washington is: Last week, the White House issued a statement, amid announcements here about thousands of units of housing for settlers, saying that further expansion “may not be helpful” in achieving a deal with the Palestinians, which Mr. Trump has said he wants. A clearer sense of how Mr. Trump differs from Mr. Obama and from nearly 50 years of American opposition to settlement building is expected to emerge from a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu on Feb. 15 in Washington. The vote on Monday, which passed, 60 to 52, retroactively legalized several thousand housing units in 16 settlements on about 2, 000 acres of land. The law provides for compensation to Palestinian landowners. Opponents said the law would encourage more settlements on Palestinian land, with the expectation that they, too, would be legalized. “Looting is illegal,” Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, said in a statement after the vote. “The Israeli settlement enterprise negates peace and the possibility of the solution. ” Yair Lapid, the opposition politician seeking to succeed Mr. Netanyahu, said before the vote: “It’s unjust, it’s not smart, and it’s a law which damages the state of Israel, the security of Israel, governance in Israel and our ability to fight back against those who hate Israel. ” He added, “They are passing a law which endangers our soldiers, will undermine our international standing and undermine us as a country of law and order. ” Israel’s settlement activity has come under intense international criticism. In December, the United Nations — with the tacit support of the outgoing Obama administration — condemned Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as an impediment to a solution. Settlers and Israelis say the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured from Jordan in the War of 1967, belong to the Jewish people. The international significance of the vote on Monday was underscored during Mr. Netanyahu’s quick trip to visit Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain. On one hand, she noted that her first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu came 100 years after the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government governing the area supported the creation of Jewish state. She said, however, that Britain remained “committed to a solution,” adding, “It’s the best way of building stability, peace and prosperity in the future. ” Appearing before reporters with Mrs. May in London, Mr. Netanyahu, who has in the past tepidly supported a solution, did not do so on Monday. As voting neared, tensions rose in the divided Knesset. “You are only passing this law so that the Supreme Court will later overturn it, and then you’ll be in the position to blame the judges,” Revital Swid, a member of the Zionist Union Party, told the governing Likud Party’s science minister, Ofir Akunis. “The land of Israel is ours, and this cannot be disputed or be divided,” Mr. Akunis responded. “The concept of settlement blocs is no longer relevant because there are no Arabs to negotiate with anymore. ” The vote came on the same day as a rocket fired from Gaza landed near the Israeli city of Ashkelon. No one was hurt. The Israeli military responded with artillery fire and airstrikes in northern Gaza. It was unclear if the rocket attack was related to Monday’s vote. | 1 |
Director Ava DuVernay celebrated her decision to wear a gown to the 2017 Oscars by a designer from Lebanon, which she proudly described as “a majority Muslim country. ” Lebanon was founded as a Christian “sanctuary” state in the Middle East, and its religious makeup is so controversial the nation has not held a census since 1932. [Although various assessments that use other metrics have determined that Lebanon is a slightly country, Tom Harb, of the Middle East Christian Committee, believes otherwise. In Lebanon, “Christians are the majority including [Lebanese people] abroad,” Harb told Breitbart News, adding that there has been “no census since 1932. ” “The Muslims in Lebanon refused the Lebanese diaspora to be counted because they count for more than 70 percent of the Christian Population,” he explained. “A small sign of solidarity. I chose to wear a gown by a designer from a majority Muslim country. Thanks to @AshiStudio of Lebanon. #Oscars,” director Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter on Sunday, the day of the awards. A small sign of solidarity. I chose to wear a gown by a designer from a majority Muslim country. Thanks to @AshiStudio of Lebanon. #Oscars pic. twitter. — Ava DuVernay (@ava) February 27, 2017, The move to wear a dress from Lebanese brand Ashi Studio was a deliberate snub towards President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven countries, which she has protested in the past. Lebanon is not among the countries on the list. Intended as a sanctuary for Christians in the Middle East, Lebanon was established over territory from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. However, Lebanese Christians are currently being persecuted and facing genocide at the hands of jihadist groups such as the Islamic State ( ) among others, reported the Gatestone Institute, noting, “Recent upheavals in Lebanon are making local Christians communities worry about their existence as heirs and descendants of the first Christians. ” The CIA World Factbook reports that about 55 percent of Lebanon’s estimated 6. 2 million people are Muslims, split down the middle between Sunnis and Shiites, and 40 percent Christian. “Lebanon is a country. There hasn’t been an official census since 1932. However, estimates and data from other sources, such as voter registries, indicate that the two Muslim sects — Sunnis and Shiites — are almost equal in size to each other and represent around 60 percent of the population,” Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told Breitbart News. “All Christian sects combined come to about 35% or so. ” Unlike other governments in the Muslim world, Lebanon’s political system is established under a agreement between Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians. However, Badran notes that Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah “dominates the political order and the institutions of the state, and also maintains a standing army of its own. ” Lebanon’s government system is established under a agreement between the major religious groups in the country, including Christians. A Christian is required to serve as president, a Sunni as prime minister, and a Shiite as speaker of parliament. However, more than two years and 45 attempts to appoint a president occurred before the incumbent, the Michel Aoun, came to power late last year. Muslim politicians in the country have also stripped Christians of some of their political power. Muslim politicians reportedly want to officially designate Lebanon an Arab Islamic republic and change the constitution so that the country is ruled by Sharia law like many other Muslim countries. The Gatestone Institute pointed out last year: Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician supported by Saudi Arabia, has invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. This is clearly intended to turn Lebanon into yet another officially Arab Muslim state. The next step will be to ask that the constitution of Lebanon be changed so that the country be ruled by Sharia law, as with many other Arab and Islamic states. “When it was first carved out of the crumbling Ottoman empire, Lebanon was intended as a haven for Christians in the Middle East,” reported the Economist in November 2016. “Their numbers have since dwindled after decades of war, emigration and low birth rates. ” | 1 |
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When Luther Strange ran for attorney general in this state in 2010, he appeared in an advertisement that spoke darkly of the Alabama capital’s “corruption, grand jury investigations, insider deals, abusing the public trust. ” Mr. Strange won that year’s general election easily, and then another one in 2014. But since ascending to the United States Senate this month, he has found his popularity threatened and his fellow Republicans troubled, largely because he accepted the appointment of Gov. Robert J. Bentley, a subject of an active investigation that the new senator spent months overseeing. A startling number of people in and around the State House openly suspect, but lack evidence to prove, that part of Mr. Bentley’s reason for appointing Mr. Strange to the Senate was to try to undermine the inquiry. Beyond clouding Mr. Strange’s early days in the Senate, the appointment to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s new attorney general, has exacerbated the controversy that has publicly swirled around Mr. Bentley for almost a year. The maze of scandal — featuring sexually explicit conversations and the sudden firing of a top law enforcement official, and consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars from public and political bank accounts — has led to swelling demands for the impeachment of the governor, a Republican. “It’s like every time we turn around, there’s somebody else who is potentially going to jail, or being too greedy, or being too arrogant,” said State Representative Ed Henry, a Republican who has pushed for Mr. Bentley’s ouster. Mr. Bentley, 74, who did not agree to an interview request, has been on the defensive for nearly a year. In March, Spencer Collier, whom Mr. Bentley had fired as the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, accused the governor of having an affair with an aide and said the aide had served as the “de facto governor. ” An audio recording of Mr. Bentley, said to be in conversation with the woman, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, was leaked and left Alabama residents listening to the governor utter phrases like “when I stand behind you and I put my arms around you and I put my hands on your breasts. ” Mr. Bentley, whose wife of 50 years filed for divorce in August 2015, said he had apologized for “any conversations and behavior that was inappropriate,” but he insisted that he had not had a physical relationship with Mrs. Mason. Mrs. Mason, who declined to comment and whose husband leads the Governor’s Office of and Volunteer Service, resigned as Mr. Bentley’s senior political adviser soon after the governor’s public acknowledgment of misconduct. Mr. Bentley’s words and Mrs. Mason’s formal exit — she and her husband have remained connected to the governor and traveled to last month’s presidential inauguration with him — did little to curb outrage. Lawsuits emerged, federal and state investigations began, and at least one grand jury here has been considering evidence. Mr. Strange, a former lobbyist widely regarded as ambitious and long seen as the future of Republican politics in Alabama, attended some of the grand jury testimony. Then Mr. Bentley, in his second and final term, chose Mr. Strange as Mr. Sessions’s replacement in the Senate and scheduled a special election for 2018. When his appointment was announced, Mr. Strange, 63, said the rampant speculation about an inquiry involving the governor was “unfair to him and unfair to the process. ” He also said, in a remark that has since been parsed, analyzed and criticized, “We have never said in our office that we are investigating the governor. ” Less than a week later, the man Mr. Bentley chose to succeed Mr. Strange as attorney general, Steven T. Marshall, appointed Alabama’s equivalent of a special prosecutor and asked her to “assume oversight of the state’s interest in the current investigative matter relating to Gov. Robert Bentley, to include all potential criminal matters arising from that investigation. ” One of the lawyers leading the inquiry, Matt Hart, helped to secure the conviction last year of Michael G. Hubbard, then the speaker of the State House of Representatives. Although many senior Republicans in Alabama and in Washington strongly urged Mr. Bentley to appoint Mr. Strange, the only one of six finalists to have been elected statewide, the choice and Mr. Marshall’s acknowledgment of an investigation still upset many people here. “Luther would have been the man to beat in an election,” said State Representative Corey Harbison, a Republican who decided to support Mr. Bentley’s impeachment because of misgivings about why the governor named Mr. Strange to the Senate. “He would have been solid, and he probably would have beaten the governor’s appointment. ” He added, “Luther’s ambition to become a United States senator caused him to do things that I don’t think he would have done in normal circumstances. ” Mr. Harbison said he would have strongly considered supporting Mr. Strange in next year’s special election. Mr. Strange said in a statement that he was confident that prosecutors in his former office would “relentlessly pursue the rule of law,” and his allies noted that his Senate appointment had hardly derailed the inquiry related to Mr. Bentley. “My own commitment to rooting out corruption in government speaks for itself,” Mr. Strange said. “That vow has never wavered and will continue to guide me as I serve the people of Alabama in the U. S. Senate. ” But Republicans are talking regularly of the political obstacles the senator might confront next year, when he could face a primary campaign focused more on ethics than on devotion to conservative policy ideas. Perry Hooper Jr. a former member of the Legislature who was a finalist for the Senate seat, said he was considering a challenge to Mr. Strange that could center on the circumstances of the appointment. And Mr. Strange’s new political patron, Mr. Bentley, is unlikely to be of much help. According to an internal poll commissioned by Republican officeholders and described by several Republicans who were not authorized to discuss a confidential survey, the governor’s approval rating is at an abysmally low level. “It’s very important in our state for our governor to be recognized and acknowledged as the strongest elected official in the state of Alabama,” said John H. Merrill, a Republican and the secretary of state. “I don’t think that there are a whole lot of people in our state who would think the governor is in that position today. ” With Mr. Strange’s turn at the ballot box more than a year away, Mr. Bentley is in more immediate political jeopardy. This is chiefly because his choice of Mr. Strange for the Senate seat has helped spur new support for an impeachment push that Mr. Henry conceded had been “fizzling out. ” (Last year, Mr. Strange asked the Legislature to suspend its impeachment inquiry because his office was conducting “related work. ” For now, the Legislature’s review, part of a murky process, remains on hold and a large number of lawmakers have said its findings would prove decisive in any votes they cast on impeachment.) “I met with him the day he appointed Luther Strange and told him, ‘If you do this, it will be the end,’” Mr. Henry recalled of a recent conversation with the governor. “He believed that was his best appointment, and it did nothing but his impeachment, and I believe it has probably a potential indictment. It reeked of corruption. ” One of Mr. Bentley’s lawyers, William C. Athanas, said that Mr. Bentley would “cooperate fully” in the state’s inquiry but that it would be “inappropriate for the governor to comment on the substance of this matter. ” Even if the criminal investigations remain open, some House Republicans believe that by the end of May, they will have settled the matter of whether Mr. Bentley will keep his job. Despite winning two statewide general elections with ease, Mr. Bentley is frequently isolated. Still, after Mr. Bentley had decided to promote a man who was investigating him to the Senate, he called Mr. Hooper to talk. He spoke of old alliances and cherished relationships. “You can’t buy loyalty,” Mr. Bentley told Mr. Hooper, “and you can’t buy friendship. ” | 1 |
It hasn’t been a great time to be a man without a job. The jobs that have been disappearing, like machine operator, are predominantly those that men do. The occupations that are growing, like health aide, employ mostly women. One solution is for the men who have lost jobs in factories to become health aides. But while more than a fifth of American men aren’t working, they aren’t running to these new jobs. Why? They require very different skills, and pay a lot less. They’re also seen as women’s work, which has always been devalued in the American labor market. The two occupations predicted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to decline most quickly from 2014 to 2024 are locomotive firers, shrinking 70 percent, and vehicle electronics installers and repairers, down 50 percent. They are 96 percent and 98 percent male. Of the jobs, many are various types of health aides, which are about 90 percent female. When men take these jobs, they have more job security and wage growth than in work, according to recent research. But they are paid less and feel stigmatized. “The jobs being created are very different than the jobs being eliminated,” said David Autor, an economist at M. I. T. “I’m not worried about whether there will be jobs. I’m very worried about whether there will be jobs for adults, especially the males, who seem very reluctant to take the new jobs. ” Take Tracy Dawson, 53, a welder in St. Clair, Mo. He lost several jobs, some because his employers took the work to China and Mexico and others because the workers were replaced by robots. He has heard the promises of jobs in the health care field: His daughter trained to be a medical technician. But he never considered it. “I ain’t gonna be a nurse I don’t have the tolerance for people,” he said. “I don’t want it to sound bad, but I’ve always seen a woman in the position of a nurse or some kind of health care worker. I see it as more of a woman’s touch. ” Also, health aides earn a median wage of $10. 50 an hour. Mr. Dawson used to earn $18 an hour making railroad traction motors. “I was a welder — that’s all I know how to do,” said Mr. Dawson, who is living on disability insurance because he has rheumatoid arthritis. Women were hit harder than men by the decline in jobs, according to Mr. Autor. But they have more easily moved into the expanding occupations, and earn more college degrees than men. Women have always entered fields — usually professional ones — more than men enter ones. There are now many female lawyers, but male nurses are still rare. One reason is that jobs done by women, especially caregiving jobs, have always had lower pay and lower status. Yet when men, especially white men, enter fields, they are paid more and promoted faster than women, a phenomenon known as the glass escalator. Much of men’s resistance to jobs is tied up in the culture of masculinity, say people who study the issue. Women are assumed to be empathetic and caring men are supposed to be strong, tough and able to support a family. “Traditional masculinity is standing in the way of men’s employment, and I think it’s a problem,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist and public policy professor at Johns Hopkins and author of “Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Family in America. ” “We have a cultural lag where our views of masculinity have not caught up to the change in the job market,” he said. But telling men to take feminine jobs plays to their anxieties and comes off as condescending, said Joan Williams, a law professor at U. C. Hastings and author of “Reshaping the Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. ” “White men’s wages have plummeted, and what happens to men in that context is anxieties about whether they’re ‘real men,’ ” she said. It’s no surprise, then, that Donald J. Trump appealed to men who feel this way — not just his promises to bring back factory jobs, but also his machismo. Many unemployed men who did manual labor say they can’t take the time and make the effort to train for a new career because they have bills to pay. And they say they chose their original careers because they wanted to build things, not take care of people. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard, has a term for this: “retrospective wait unemployment,” or “looking for the job you used to have. ” “It’s not a skill mismatch, but an identity mismatch,” he said. “It’s not that they couldn’t become a health worker, it’s that people have backward views of what their identity is. ” Jon Ray, 31, of Inez, Ky. was an electrician at a coal mine until it was shuttered a year ago. He applied unsuccessfully for maintenance and repair jobs, and got a job in manufacturing after enrolling in a program to learn how to operate computerized tools. jobs weren’t an option, he said. “I couldn’t afford to go back to school,” he said. “And I’m used to working with my hands. ” If more men do jobs, they could erase the stigma and turn them into men’s jobs, said Janette Dill, a sociologist at the University of Akron, at least for jobs that require less caregiving. “More men will go into care because they don’t have a choice, but they’re going to carve out spaces for themselves that feel less like women’s work,” she said. Ms. Dill was a of a study published in April that looked at what happens when men move into jobs in the health care field. Men in the health jobs, like the nursing assistants who change patients’ sheets and help them bathe, earned 10 percent less than men in jobs. But they were less likely to be laid off and their wages rose over time, while wages were stagnant. Technical health care jobs like ultrasound technician — requiring more training but not a college degree — paid 22 percent more than other jobs, after controlling for things like education. They involve less interaction with patients and more with computers, so they are less stereotypically feminine. There is an education and race divide among the men who take these jobs, the study found. Black men were 3. 3 times as likely as white men to take the health jobs, and other minority men were 1. 8 times as likely. White men were more likely to take the technical jobs. For men without college degrees, more technical training that equips them for those jobs could help. And if health aide jobs paid more and offered better benefits, they’d probably attract more men. Some hospitals are trying to make caregiving jobs seem manly — like with a recruitment poster comparing the “adrenaline rush” of being an operating room nurse to mountain climbing. Perhaps then men could take the same pride in their work that Mr. Dawson, the unemployed welder, showed when he talked about making pilings for the rebuilt World Trade Center. “I had a good life as a welder,” he said. “It always amused me. That’s one reason I picked the job. ” | 1 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — It’s too late to cancel the Rio Olympics. Despite protests and criticisms that the Summer Games do not belong in Brazil, a country struggling with political turmoil and economic collapse — not to mention the Zika virus — the competitions have begun: shooting, gymnastics, volleyball and more. Already the Games have produced elation and anguish, cheers and curses. And that was only the first day. The curtain on these Games rose at the Maracanã stadium during Friday night’s opening ceremony, with tens of thousands watching live and millions of people from all parts of the world watching from home. And on that first night, Brazil, despite a squeezed budget, did what it could to put on a good show. The party was clearly but irresistibly fun, proving that deep pockets, which are often considered so necessary in the Olympic world, aren’t so necessary after all. There were dancing and bossa nova and fireworks and more dancing. And when the song “The Girl from Ipanema” began playing, naturally the supermodel Gisele Bündchen strutted across the giant stage in a shimmering gold dress that had a slit up to there, as the crowd roared for one of its stars. In one segment, images of water and waves were projected onto the floor to simulate the ocean. Floating garbage and untreated sewage — and sometimes even dead bodies and body parts — weren’t part of the picture, as they are a part of real life here, in the contaminated Guanabara Bay, where some Olympic athletes will compete. In another segment, puppets resembling giant insects stomped around as a lovely story unfolded of how Brazil was born. None of those bugs were mosquitoes. Rio showed Brazil’s best side to the world, and its Olympic debut as a host went off without a glitch. Here’s hoping it’s a harbinger for the rest of these Summer Games, the first held in a South American nation. History tells us that we shouldn’t worry — at least all that much. Because even when doom and gloom are a part of the mood before the Games, which they have been for a least a decade now, most of the time the Olympics unfold without any fears coming true. In Salt Lake City in 2002, the first Olympics, there was apprehension about more terrorism. Police and military helicopters buzzed overhead. In 2004 in Athens, that terror threat only grew, with some news outlets providing biohazard suits to reporters as part of their Olympic gear. In Beijing in 2008, some athletes were given inhalers and specially designed face masks to protect them from the heavy pollution (which miraculously disappeared when the Olympics began, then reappeared a day after the closing ceremony). In 2010, Vancouver rushed to bring snow to the mountains because unusually warm weather had left the ground relatively bare. For London 2012 and Sochi 2014, more threats of terror created a dark cloud, but those Games ended without major disruption. And now, here is Rio, a breathtaking city with white sand beaches and emerald rain forests, but a city ridden with crime and corruption and pollution. People watching on TV will see a sanitized version of it. A generation of children will be inspired. My is already leaping around the house and doing cartwheels, pretending to be Simone Biles, the American gymnast who could win five gold medals. She and her friends at the pool insist on wearing “Olympian goggles” because they, too, want to be Olympic swimmers someday. They don’t know how rough a road it has been for the Olympics to get here, and that is quite likely for the best. Carlos Nuzman, president of the organizing committee, nailed it when he addressed the crowd at the opening ceremony and said, “The best place in the world is here, now. ” You could say that Nuzman was right because Rio and these Olympics are thousands of miles away from the United States’ presidential election, and the negativity surrounding it. And that, of course, would be true. But watch the athletes and you’ll really know why Nuzman was right. There are about 11, 000 of them at these Games, and many of them walked into the Maracanã for the opening ceremony on Friday, mugging for the cameras and toting selfie sticks. There was the for Tonga, who marched in with skin so well oiled that he looked coated in Crisco as he glistened under the lights. And there was the team of refugee athletes who marched behind the Olympic flag, getting the opportunity to compete in the Games when they otherwise wouldn’t have. They received the biggest cheers of the night, which made sense. Just look at what those athletes have overcome to get here. One of those refugees, Yusra Mardini, and her family had fled Syria. When their dinghy, which was too packed with people, began to sink en route from Turkey to Greece, she and her sister jumped into the sea to pull the boat to the shore, and to safety. Now she will swim at the Olympics, and her accomplishment will be a reminder that humans can be resilient, even when faced with the darkest odds. Even the Russians seemed happy on Friday as they made their way into the stadium. Well, not all the Russians. Nearly 300 of them will compete in Rio, but 100 others were barred from the Games because they were linked to a doping program. But there they were, the ones who convinced their international sports federations that they were clean, and they appeared delighted as they, like the other athletes, danced to the samba music. No matter which athletes, from no matter which country, this is what they’ve been waiting for. Right now, they don’t care that Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, may be impeached. Or that superbacteria lurk in the waters they will swim in or sail on. Now, for those athletes, and for many of us, it’s too late to turn back. It’s right here, right now, blinders on, bug spray on. Fingers crossed. Full speed ahead. | 1 |
Delivering the first of six State of the State addresses planned around the state this week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday located the cure to the nation’s political fever in New York State, implicitly offering himself as an antidote to a whose name went unmentioned. “New York knows that our progressive principles of acceptance and diversity are not the enemy of our middle class, and we know that success is not the enemy of our progressive beliefs,” he said. “In fact, it was the progressive policies that created the nation’s middle class in the first place. ” Ahead of his scheduled stops in western and central New York, on Long Island, in Westchester County and in Albany, Mr. Cuomo’s remarks in a room at 1 World Trade Center colored largely within state lines. But remarkably for a politician who has avoided even the appearance of White House ambitions since entering the governor’s mansion in 2011, his speech also seemed aimed at an audience outside New York. Mr. Cuomo reiterated his promise to upgrade Queens’s two major airports, but he dwelled far longer on the reality on Queens’s streets. There, he said, the economic recovery trumpeted by the Obama administration had somehow never gotten around to the Hillside Avenue gas station where he worked as a teenager or the “pizzeria where we hung out. ” “It is not what they feel,” he said, referring to the white voters who proved so receptive to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy. “It is not their reality. ” Lines drawn from the Elizabeth Warren syllabus got the Cuomo treatment (at one point, he noted that the Wall Street executives who presided over the financial crisis were never punished). One of Mr. Cuomo’s chief proposals on Monday was a “ recovery act” that he said would provide jobs and erect infrastructure, expand access to education and lower taxes. Lest anybody miss the point, the governor’s staff circulated “key takeaways” and quotations from the speech, billing the address as a groundbreaking blueprint for moving forward in the Trump era. There were ’ proposals covering what seemed like the whole spectrum of liberal causes. Doubling the tax credit for more than 200, 000 families. Executive orders intended to reduce a wage gap for women working for the state. Criminal justice reforms affecting the state’s bail system, recordings of police interrogations, the age of criminal liability and access to a speedy trial. voter registration and early voting. Mr. Cuomo proposed a defense fund guaranteeing legal representation to immigrants, as well as passing the Dream Act, a piece of legislation that would open financial aid at state colleges to undocumented immigrants. For environmentalists, Mr. Cuomo unveiled a deal, reported by The New York Times on Friday, that would lead to the shutdown of Indian Point, a nuclear plant north of New York City. The governor had already announced several initiatives before the speech, including a pledge to cover tuition costs at state universities and community colleges for families making up to $125, 000 a year. Some of his ideas seemed to be flags planted directly on the liberal territory previously staked out by Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, who listened from the second row on Monday — the latest subplot of a feud between governor and mayor that recently reached new depths over the death of a deer. Mr. Cuomo even took credit for establishing a universal prekindergarten program in New York City, a mayoral proposal ultimately financed by Albany. Yet for all that Ms. Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont might find to like in the speech, Mr. Cuomo, who has been criticized by the left over collaborating with Republicans, faces a bumpy session in Albany. Legislators have taken the governor’s decision to split the traditional State of the State address in Albany into six regional events as a snub, and legislative leaders have declined to attend. But there was someone present who wanted to air the legislators’ grievances, however lonely the quest. About 64 floors below the pristine white room in which Mr. Cuomo spoke, Edward F. Cox, the chairman of the state Republican Party and a Trump supporter who had been denied entrance, monitored the proceedings from a Joe the Juice shop. “He’s afraid to face them,” Mr. Cox said outside afterward, referring to state legislators. “So he’s running around the state giving great speeches that really sound like speeches for someone who’d like to be president of the United States, rather than someone who’s governor of New York State. ” In the cold wind, Mr. Cox fended off a shiver. He planned to follow the governor to his afternoon speech in Buffalo, where Mr. Cox would be, doubtless, equally unwelcome. | 1 |
As Donald Trump’s election to the highest office of the land became inevitable on Tuesday night The Daily Sheeple reported that the Clinton campaign mysteriously went dark:
“THEY KNOW” – NBC Reports Clinton Campaign Has Gone Completely Dark – No Longer Talking To Media #trump #hillary #itsover #election
— The Daily Sheeple (@TheDailySheeple) November 9, 2016
Even Hillary herself must have know it was over, because she published a not-so-victorious Tweet to her supporters several hours before the official counts started being confirmed:
This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything. pic.twitter.com/x13iWOzILL
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 9, 2016
As confirmation of Trump’s victory swept the world, many undoubtedly wondered what was going on in Hillary’s mind. Then, as reports of a Clinton concession came to the forefront, it turned out that Hillary, in an unprecedented move for a losing Presidential candidate, refused to take the stage in front of thousands of distraught party goers who were expecting a coronation and fireworks show.
Instead of Hillary, controversial campaign manager John Podesta took the stage to announce that the election wasn’t over and that votes were still being counted, implying that Hillary would not concede.
At that moment, we knew something was wrong:
Is something wrong with Hillary? Has she had another health episode? https://t.co/yP3fYWpinL #trump #hillary #vote #2016 #hillaryhealth
— The Daily Sheeple (@TheDailySheeple) November 9, 2016
Had Hillary suffered another health episode? Was she so emotionally destroyed by the loss that she couldn’t handle it mentally?
It turns out, according to Ed Klein who spoke with a close friend and confidante of Hillary, that she did, in fact, have a serious breakdown and was in no condition to speak to America on live television.
The shock of losing after having been a “98%” lock for the Presidency was simply too much to bare. And as you might expect from a Clinton, it was everybody else’s fault:
Here’s what I know, not my opinion. About 6:30 this morning she called an old friend. She was crying inconsolably. She couldn’t stop crying. And her friend, her female friend from way, way back said it was even hard to understand what she was saying she was crying so hard. This is Hillary we’re talking about.
Eventually her friend said she could make out that she was blaming James Comey, the Director of the FBI, for her loss, and, I don’t understand exactly, the president of the United States for not doing enough.
Via Gateway Pundit
If all goes well, Hillary will be crying again when they put the handcuffs on her after President Trump’s special prosecutor recommends charges, that is, so long as Trump didn’t make a secret deal to let Hillary off the hook .
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Rosana colabora con Joseba de Carglass en su nuevo disco “Lunas de oferta” "LUNAS NUEVAS PARA LUNAS ROTAS" ES EL TEMA CON EL QUE ARRACA EL ÁLBUM Rosana
La cantante canaria Rosana Arbelo ha anunciado hoy la inminente publicación de su nuevo álbum, “Lunas de oferta”, un trabajo hecho en colaboración con Joseba de Carglass.
“Carglass cambia, Carglass repara, Carglass sigue el camino del cortejo, a fuego lento, a fuego viejo”, reza la letra de “Lunas de oferta”, el single que da nombre al disco.
La colaboración era un secreto a voces en el mundo de la música, pues es sobradamente conocido el interés de Rosana por las lunas. “Lunas rotas, luna nueva, ocho lunas… era cuestión de tiempo que ella y Joseba se conocieran”, explica el representante de la canaria.
“Es el disco con la producción más barata que he hecho nunca”, reconoce Rosana, añadiendo que “las lunas de Carglass estaban a un precio irresistible y él sabe que a mí me da igual si están rotas. De hecho, tanto mejor”.
“Lunas nuevas para lunas rotas” es el “single” elegido para presentar el álbum. “No te doy la luna llena porque es la eterna rosa”, canta Rosana en esta canción. Luego, añade Joseba: “Pero si tienes un impacto en tu parabrisas, puedes ahorrarte tiempo y dinero si lo reparas ya”.
El disco incluye también una versión de “Gaviotas de cristal” en la que ahora el cristal de las gaviotas es tintado y está un 30% más barato. | 0 |
The sale of a major league sports team always draws attention and local interest. But this one may attract even more interest, especially around the White House. The Kushners, the New York real estate family whose scion is a close adviser to President Trump, are in negotiations to buy the Miami Marlins baseball team, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The Kushners — led by Joshua Kushner, a venture capitalist, and Joseph Meyer, his and key lieutenant for the family’s investments — have pursued the Marlins for several months, devising a complicated financial arrangement that would include bringing in partners later, these people said. Mr. Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s . Neither Jared Kushner, who married Ivanka Trump in 2009 and is a top White House adviser, nor Charles Kushner, the family patriarch who spent over a year in prison for illegal campaign donations, tax evasion and witness tampering, is participating in the effort, these people said. Yet it was unclear whether a deal would be reached, or whether the family would prevail in any bidding contest. Forbes reported on Thursday that the team had a “handshake agreement” to sell the team for about $1. 6 billion, a figure that the people involved in the process said the Kushner family has contended was too high and refused to pay. Any deal would have to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which would closely scrutinize the buyer’s financing and would probably seek to ensure that Charles Kushner had no role in operations. The deal has already prompted questions within Major League Baseball, according to the people briefed on the conversations, about what kind of relationship Mr. Trump would have to the team and whether that would be a benefit or a disadvantage. Would fans or sponsors boycott or embrace the team or league based on a comment or Twitter post by Mr. Trump? And would Mr. Trump attend games? While Jared Kushner has not been not involved in the bidding for the Marlins — and he has pledged to be from any of the family’s businesses — he and his brother had bid for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, though they eventually withdrew from the bidding. The winner was a group backed by the financial firm Guggenheim Partners, which paid over $2 billion. As part of the financing for the Kushners’ bid, which was being shepherded by the boutique investment bank LionTree, the family would plan to bring in additional partners to help defray the costs. Representatives for the Kushners, the Marlins and LionTree declined to comment. Some of the people with knowledge of the Kushners’ bid said that Joshua Kushner, drawing upon his experience investing in technology companies like Instagram, saw potential profits in capitalizing on the Marlins’ digital rights. The Marlins are currently owned by Jeffrey Loria, who paid $158 million for the team in 2002 after selling the Montreal Expos back to Major League Baseball. The team won the World Series in 2003 — when they defeated the Yankees — but has not returned to the playoffs since. Still, Mr. Loria persuaded County to sell bonds to finance the construction of a new $639 million stadium. Critics of the agreement argued that the bond sale could eventually cost Miami taxpayers more than $1 billion. And there is one other potential wrinkle that might weigh on Mr. Loria: having to pay a percentage of any sale’s profits back to the county. As part of the Marlins’ agreement with the county, Mr. Loria would owe money if he sold the team within 11 years of signing the 2009 stadium agreement. According to The Miami Herald, the payment would be based on the team’s 2009 valuation of about $250 million it has risen since then. | 0 |
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Hundreds of police in riot gear with heavy military equipment have evicted Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from their encampment on private land in the US state of North Dakota. Police have protesters more or less surrounded. #noDAPL pic.twitter.com/G4xGQuXpZM
— Jason Patinkin (@JasonPatinkin) October 27, 2016
The police reportedly arrested at least 141 Native Americans and other demonstrators who are seeking to halt construction of a controversial oil pipeline.
Press TV reports
At least 141 protesters were arrested on Thursday evening and Friday morning as officers attempt to clear a camp on private property in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
Officers in riot helmets used pepper spray and shot beanbag rounds on some of the estimated 330 protesters as helicopters flew overhead.
Demonstrators also allegedly set a car and some tires on fire, giving the scene a war zone-like appearance.
The protesters have been demonstrating for several months, and dozens have been arrested. Police expect additional protests, and possibly more arrests, in the coming days.
Native American protesters had occupied the property that crosses the pipeline’s path since Monday in an effort to stop Energy Transfer Partners’ construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The pipeline has infuriated the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and environmental activists who say it threatens the region’s water supply and sacred tribal sites. The tribe’s reservation is close to the pipeline’s route.
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple said police were successful in clearing the camp. “Private property is not the place to carry out a peaceful protest,” he said.
Demonstrators, however, say they aren’t trespassing on private property, citing an 1851 treaty with the US government that says the land belongs to Native American tribes.
The Native American-led protest has grown into a larger movement in the United States, drawing in other tribes, environmentalists and advocates for Native Americans.
The federal government has twice asked the pipeline operator to voluntarily pause construction near the tribe’s reservation while the authorities reconsider the project’s route. But courts have refused to compel a halt.
The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe criticized law enforcement’s “militarized” response to the activists. “Militarized law enforcement agencies moved in on water protectors with tanks and riot gear today. We continue to pray for peace,” Dave Archambault II said in a statement Thursday evening. | 0 |
Disappointed First-Time Voter Thought He Was Going To Get To Pull Big Lever Close Vol 52 Issue 44 · Politics · Politicians · Election 2016
NASHVILLE, TN—Complaining that there wasn’t even some sort of button to press, disappointed first-time voter Rob Blackman told reporters Tuesday he thought he was going to get to pull a big lever inside the voting booth. “I was sure there’d be a handle I’d have to really yank down on to officially cast my vote, and then there’d be this satisfying mechanical thunk sound,” said Blackman, 19, adding that quietly filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper was a “complete fucking letdown.” “I always thought you’d open up the curtain, see two big levers, and pull down on the one that corresponded to your candidate. But no, there was just a little table in there and that’s it. This is such bullshit.” Blackman went on to say that he wasn’t sure if he’d participate in another election since there really wasn’t an incentive for him to vote anymore.
Check back throughout the day for live updates from the Onion political team as it covers Election Day 2016. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
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Otto Warmbier, an American student detained in North Korea for committing “hostile acts” has died, his parents confirmed Tuesday in a statement. He was 22. [Warmbier, who returned to America last Tuesday, having previously been sentenced to 15 years hard labor after stealing paraphernalia from his hotel, had lapsed into a coma before his return. The North Korean government claimed Warmbier had contracted botulism shortly after his conviction of crimes against the communist state in March 2016. Doctors treating Warmbier upon his return to Ohio stated, however, that they found no evidence of botulism, instead finding “extensive brain damage. ” The North Korean government has not remarked on the discrepancy or provided any explanation for what could have caused Warmbier such brain damage in prison. “It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home,” his family wrote in a statement. “We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at Cincinnati Medical Center who did everything they could for Otto. Unfortunately, the awful torturous treatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today. ” Otto Warmbier, US student detained in North Korea, dies after returning home in coma pic. twitter. — Jason Calabretta (@JasonCalabretta) June 19, 2017, According to the Warmbier family, Otto was “unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands. ” Warmbier had gone to North Korea in early 2016 on an adventure tour of the rogue state, under the auspices of the Young Pioneer Tours, which preys on the curiosity of young westerners by offering “Budget tours to destinations your mother wants you to stay away from!” Warmbier was arrested during his visit for allegedly having attempted to steal a communist propaganda sign and forced to confess to the “serious crime” on North Korean television in February 2016. Warmbier pleaded guilty to taking down a political sign from a area of his hotel. “I have made the worst mistake of my life, but please act to save me,” he said at the time. Under duress, Warmbier accused the United States of bribing him to steal the sign, calling it “the worst mistake of my life. ” In an appearance carefully choreographed by North Korean authorities, Warmbier said that although his crime was “very severe and ” he was grateful for the regime’s “humanitarian treatment of severe criminals. ” Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for his “crime. ” North Korea continues to imprison three other U. S. citizens: academics Kim and Tony Kim, and businessman Kim . Update: President Donald Trump has released a statement on Warmbier’s passing: Melania and I offer our deepest condolences to the family of Otto Warmbier on his untimely passing. There is nothing more tragic for a parent than to lose a child in the prime of life. Our thoughts and prayers are with Otto’s family and friends, and all who loved him. Otto’s fate deepens my Administration’s determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency. The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim. | 0 |
The actress Carrie Fisher, who spoke openly about her struggles with mental illness, once joked that she wanted to start a “Bipolar Pride Day” to help erase the stigma of the disease. Legions of fans seemed to grant her wish on Tuesday in the hours after her death at age 60. One after another, in words both and deeply personal, admirers paid tribute to Ms. Fisher by “coming out” on Twitter with their own stories of mental illness. [ Read the obituary | Carrie Fisher and “bipolar pride” ] Ana Marie Cox, senior political correspondent for MTV with 1. 3 million followers on Twitter, was among the first to tweet. “I really did think, ‘What would Carrie do? ’” Ms. Cox said in a subsequent telephone interview, as she described trying to decide how open to be about her own health. Choking back tears as she spoke, Ms. Cox continued: “I really did identify her as a feminist icon, a model for being a tough smart girl. But where she really pushed the boundary of what we could talk about in polite company or impolite company was her mental illness and her openness about that. ” Almost immediately after her tweet, some of Ms. Cox’s followers began sharing their own stories about mental illness. Jeremy Hitchcock, 34, a computer programmer from Manhattan, was seeing the new movie “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” on Friday when he heard other audience members sharing the news that Ms. Fisher had suffered a heart attack hours earlier. Mr. Hitchcock, who was so devoted to the space saga that he named his son Luke after the character Luke Skywalker, said in an interview that he was devastated by her death. After seeing Ms. Cox’s tweet, he decided to do something he’d never done before, something that terrified him. He announced publicly that he has bipolar disorder. The Chicago radio personality Julie DiCaro also followed Ms. Cox’s lead, tweeting to her 31, 000 followers that she suffers from depression. She also began the hashtag #InHonorOfCarrie. Within a couple of hours, the hashtag had reached 182, 000 unique viewers as people began opening up about their struggles with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, suicide — often for the first time in such public fashion. “I wanted to do something that wasn’t about her being beautiful or a sex symbol,” Ms. DiCaro said of Ms. Fisher, “but about her being a woman who wasn’t afraid to speak out about mental illness. She became a hero to me because of who she was off the screen more than who she was on the screen. ” “People who struggle with these issues often feel like they’re going it alone,” Ms. DiCaro continued. “But it’s comforting that Carrie, or Princess Leia — who’s cooler than Princess Leia? — was comfortable speaking publicly about her struggles. It made me feel comfortable. ” Ms. Fisher has said that she was first given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at the age of 24, but that it wasn’t until five years later that she actually accepted it. In time, she spoke often about her lifelong struggles with both addiction and bipolar disorder and her desire to erase the stigma of mental illness. She wrote her 1987 novel “Postcards From the Edge” after a stint in rehab following a drug overdose. It was during her autobiographical stage show, “Wishful Drinking,” that she first posited the idea for “Bipolar Pride Day. ” Dr. Barron Lerner, a medical historian, said that while public outpourings are common after a celebrity’s death, the nature of the tribute to Ms. Fisher is unusual. “The fact that they are outing their mental illness needs to be acknowledged as it remains far more stigmatized than other diseases,” said Dr. Lerner, an internist at New York University Langone Medical Center and author of the book “When Illness Goes Public. ” “Rather than just saying ‘R. I. P. Carrie,’ it is much more powerful to take a courageous step oneself to honor the memory of someone famous who also struggled with what you have,” he added. Ms. Cox, who also writes the “Talk” column for The New York Times Magazine, said that while it felt risky to tweet about her bipolar disorder, she received a number of emails and tweets from people close to her who also cope with mental illness. And the overwhelming response on social media has convinced her it was a fitting tribute to Ms. Fisher. “I think she would be floored,” Ms. Cox said. “I think she would be happy. It’s a powerful thing. ” Ms. Fisher’s efforts to destigmatize mental illness and addiction took new form this year as she started writing the column “Advice From the Dark Side” for The Guardian. Characteristically funny and cleareyed, Ms. Fisher fielded questions from readers on bipolar disorder and dysfunctional marriages, among other topics. She ended one memorable exchange with a line that was often tweeted on Tuesday: | 1 |
On Monday, Katie Glueck, senior political correspondent for the McClatchy news agency, published an extensive profile of Breitbart Jerusalem and how bureau chief Aaron Klein leads a team that reports from the Middle East while Breitbart grows in influence during the era of President Donald Trump. [Gleuck reported: On a Wednesday afternoon in March, Klein was found running Breitbart Jerusalem operations from his luxurious apartment located, notably, not in Jerusalem but in Tel Aviv, the most liberal, cosmopolitan city in Israel. As storm clouds gathered over the Mediterranean, which was visible from his airy kitchen, Klein sipped a Diet Coke and alternated between expounding on the opportunities for Breitbart Jerusalem in the Trump era and tending to his dog, a black and white papillon named Uzi — for the gun. “We have major influence right now politically,” said Klein, who also makes the trek to Jerusalem multiple times a week to report. “Our platform skyrocketed since the election. It increased in the last year, I would say. Around the time of the campaign,” he said. “With the rise of Trump and the rise of Breitbart. ” … Klein said the Breitbart Jerusalem platform is growing in influence along with the rest of the organization in the Trump era, and the outlet has recently landed interviews with prominent American and Middle Eastern officials. Read the full piece here. | 0 |
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk explained to an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday why humans will need to merge with machines to keep up in an world. [“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” declared Musk. “It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output. ” “Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,” he continued. “Musk explained what he meant by saying that computers can communicate at ‘a trillion bits per second’ while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second,” reported CNBC. “In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there’s a need to merge with machines, according to Musk. ” In November, Musk predicted that automated robots would lead to mass unemployment, which could eventually create a universal wage from the government. In June, the billionaire tech entrepreneur claimed it likely that mankind is living in a computer simulation. Musk was also one of the Silicon Valley billionaires, along with fellow PayPal Mafia members Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, who invested $1 billion into an artificial intelligence center in 2015. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0 |
HOUSTON, Texas — In addition to massive security constraints, Super Bowl attendees will also have to face possible disruption of their arrival plans by Black Lives Matter protesters. [Black Lives Matter organizers are planning a protest dubbed “Stand Up, Fight Back: Super Bowl LI Protest March. ” “It is time for the city government of Houston to see how diverse we are,” organizers posted on Facebook. “The grand claim was made that we are a ‘welcoming city,’ but the treatment of the local homeless community, gentrification, lack clarity on where our elected leaders stand on Trump’s policies and of course the issue of anti Blackness need to be addressed. ” “WE WILL MARCH UP FANNIN FROM HERMANN PARK TO NRG PARK. RAIN OR SHINE,” organizers wrote. The march is scheduled to coincide with the arrival of attendees to the Super Bowl. Attendees have been encouraged to use public transportation. Some of the seating capacity of these buses and trains could be taken up by protesters in an attempt to slow down the attendees’ arrival to the NRG Stadium. The protest is expected to end before game time. A massive security operation is underway in advance of Sunday’s Super Bowl LI presentation. Additional resources have been brought in from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. U. S. Customs and Border Protection is adding resources to the effort to maintain safety at the event. The agency tasked with securing our nation’s borders and ports of entry is providing aviation and electronic resources in addition to manpower. “LOOK @CustomsBorder working with many partners @HoustonTX to ensure safe #SB51 #SEESOMETHINGSAYSOMETHING,” the agency tweeted on Saturday. LOOK @CustomsBorder working with many partners @HoustonTX to ensure safe #SB51 #SEESOMETHINGSAYSOMETHING pic. twitter. — CBP Central Texas (@CBPCentralTX) February 4, 2017, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told Breitbart Texas in a conversation on Thursday he is pulling out all the stops to make sure the Super Bowl goes off without the kind of incidents of violence seen in other parts of the country. 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. Big Government, Breitbart Sports, Breitbart Texas, 2016 Super Bowl, blacklivesmatter, CBP, Houston Police Department, Super Bowl LI, Sylvester Turner, U. S. Customs and Border Protection | 0 |
Monday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney Company,” conservative columnist and “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!” author Ann Coulter said if President Donald Trump does not keep his campaign promises, Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections and then attempt to impeach him. Coulter said, “I love the tweets. Almost everything that everyone else dislikes about Trump are what I consider his strong points. I love his tweets. That is how he defends himself. I love that he had steak — he brought his own steak to Saudi Arabia — everything others attack him for. What I’m concerned with — I’m not — I mean, we had no choice. What were you going to do, vote for Rubio? No. Both political parties for years and years have been pushing whatever Wall Street and elites want. Trump was the only candidate who is going to put Americans first. I just want him to get back to his campaign promises, but I love his 3 a. m. tweets. I think they’re hilarious. ” “I hope Trump notices that if he doesn’t keep his promises, Republicans will be wiped out in the midterm election,” Coulter warned. “Democrats will have the House of Representatives, and they will absolutely impeach him. It doesn’t matter. He could be purer than Caesar’s wife. They will impeach him. The base is obsessed with that. So Trump better keep his promises. ” She added, “I blame the Republicans in Congress the most, but we always knew that. I know they were traitors again, working for the lobbyists, the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street, and not for the American people. We knew that Trump would have a tough road to hoe, but he was supposed to go down and be a bull in a china shop. We’re still waiting for the bull in the china shop. I mean, there is obviously still time. It has only been a few months now, but so far, that budget deal, it was, it was like a George Soros practical joke. I mean, sending Washington bureaucracy $18 million to study misogyny in the Marines, funding for a wall specifically prohibited, funding for, you know, Planned Parenthood. No, this isn’t what we voted for, And I do think Trump meant what he said. You wouldn’t go through what he went through for 18 months, being attacked by both political parties, the entire media, the Washington bureaucracy, it is tough when he is up against. It’s what he promised. That is what we want. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Michelle Obama Deletes Hillary Clinton From Twitter When Hillary goes low, Michelle goes BYE! Posted on November 1, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News , US // 1 Comment
Michelle Obama has scrubbed all references to Hillary Clinton from both of her Twitter accounts as news breaks that Clinton is under two different FBI investigations involving four FBI offices.
The @FLOTUS account has been wiped clean of all traces of Hillary, and @MichelleObama , a verified page with almost six million followers, has been scrubbed all the way back to 2013.
Is Michelle performing a last minute tidy up, clearing out the clutter before the dumpster fire of the Democratic campaign finally burns out? RELATED CONTENT Obama Administration Begs Court Not To Depose Hillary Clinton
Are the Washington elite preparing to move on from Hillary?
Bernie Sanders has also begun to change his tune. A Twitter post today sure didn’t sound like it was referring to Hillary Clinton. Now is the time for our next president to rally people against Wall Street and corporate greed and stand up for the declining middle class.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 30, 2016
Bernie was asked by a supporter about the write-in thing – and his response might surprise you. “ If you want to write me in here [Vermont], I think it’s fine.” | 0 |
This is the Filippino Trump. They are so much alike that I cannot tell them apart. | 0 |
Native American Project Urges Political Involvement, Representation Beyond Standing Rock Posted on Oct 26, 2016 ( Vox Efx / CC 2.0 )
Fighting back against decades of exclusion from the voting process and underrepresentation in government, Native Americans across the United States are struggling to have their voices heard beyond the Dakota Access pipeline protest—within local, state and federal elections.
According to a report released Tuesday by Advance Native Political Leadership (ANPL), Native Americans suffer from injustice in voting rights, intimidation tactics, unequal access to polls and “gross underrepresentation … at every level of government,” which prevent people from “[seeing] themselves in these elections.”
But, the report argues, Native American representation in elected offices is necessary to secure a democracy that reflects the increasingly diverse American population.
“If we want to see race equity in the United States, we can’t get there without Native Americans being represented in political office,” the report’s lead author, Chrissie Castro, director of the ANPL and a citizen of the Navajo Nation, told Truthdig. “The issues and concerns that Native Americans have are what everyone cares about. … We say that we want more Native American elected officials in political office because this is about everyone—this inclusive picture of democracy is about all of us.”
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Of 41,000 elected officials in the United States, 90 percent are white and 0.03 percent are Native American, the lowest percentage of any minority group, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign , a project of the Women Donors Network . Native Americans have held few positions on the federal level—“one vice president, eight House representatives and two Senators,” according to the report.
“We’re the first ones here, and we’re the last ones to have the opportunity to vote,” Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said of Native American communities. Native Americans across the country face barriers that systematically prevent them from voting , such as out-of-the-way polling booths, mail-in ballots sent only to those who have mailing addresses, refusal of state citizenship and bans from voting in state elections in states such as Arizona and New Mexico, which have significant Native populations.
“We were the first peoples of this country, and yet we are not part of the governance of this country, and we think that’s a real miss,” Castro said. “In order for us to get ourselves into elected office, we need people to elect us. What we’ve seen time and time again is that there are structural barriers that really dilute the Native vote or make it very difficult [to get] into elected office.”
“We are having to deal with a colonial legacy that was intended to exclude us,” Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, who is running for the House of Representatives in North Dakota, told BBC News .
Some Native American communities don’t see themselves as a significant part of the electorate. But while they make up less than 2 percent of the total U.S. population, they can make a difference in an election.
“We are really working to change our cultural norms around our relationship with voting. … We’re doing the hard work of culture shift to say that it is important that we participate,” Castro said. “The Native vote does matter.”
The Native vote has made a difference, the report says, in swing or battleground states with significant Native American populations that overwhelmingly lean Democratic. In 2012, Colorlines reports, Democratic candidates’ victories in some of the tightest Senate races in New Mexico, Montana and North Dakota are attributed to the Native vote .
Presidential hopefuls Dr. Jill Stein and Sen. Bernie Sanders understood the power of the Native vote, Castro said. Sanders brought on a Native American adviser, Tara Houska, and Stein joined the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s protests . During the primaries, Secretary Clinton met with tribal leaders in Iowa, Washington, Arizona and California, according to BBC News.
According to the report, the Democratic Party has a formal infrastructure that is inclusive of Native Americans, including several Democratic Native American caucuses on the West Coast and a national director of Native American outreach. However, various Republican representatives told Castro that there is no comparable infrastructure in the GOP.
The Dakota Access pipeline protest has helped bring Native American issues to the forefront, Castro said.
“I think the Dakota Access pipeline has really galvanized the Native American community across the country and even internationally,” she said. “At Standing Rock, there’s been a lot of work to do canvassing and [engaging] voters as part of a strategy to make sure people that are in elected office understand the issues and the experiences of Native American people.”
Though the numbers this year are promising, with a record of eight Native American candidates running for Congress and more than 90 running for state legislatures, there needs to be “pathways” in place for future Native American politicians to make their way on to the ballot, the report argues. One way Native politicians can have equal access to government offices is for accurate data on Native Americans to be available so they could use the information to design voter turnout strategies. Currently, in California, there is data on numerous minority groups, but not Native American voters.
There has been some recent success in bringing out the Native vote. Since its launch three months ago, Native Vote has registered 1,000 Native American voters in California, Castro said, calling this a necessary and robust Native American voter engagement campaign. Your #NativeVote makes a difference, and together, Indian Country's voices count! #RestoreTheVRA — Native Vote (@nativevote) Oct. 20, 2016
In 2017, ANPL will launch pilot projects in Montana and New Mexico that will “build a pathway for Native American elected officials” by teaching children the importance of civic engagement and providing training for potential campaign managers and team members. Portland and Los Angeles will also host pilot projects on a local level, since more than 70 percent of Native Americans live away from reservations, in cities and suburbs.
“We thought it was important to start looking at municipal races, to look at school boards, water boards, looking at city planning commissions, and really building infrastructure in municipals for elected and appointed positions to make sure our voices are heard at the local level,” Castro said.
“I think as Native Americans we are taking our rightful place as part of the fabric of leadership in this country. I think that we’re going to see good things if we’re able to see a more reflective democracy that’s inclusive of Native American peoples [and] of all of the diversity that exists in this country that we don’t see in these positions of power and decision-making.”
Castro is hopeful that Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-MT) proposed bill, the 2015 Native American Voting Rights Act , will pass next year and “right the wrongs” to protect Native American access to the polls.
“We have a lot of work to do to make sure that people see themselves in these elections,” she said. TAGS: | 1 |
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AN EMBARRASSING sequence of events has led to Irish President Michael D. Higgins taking an elaborate detour from his official tour of South East Asia and ending up in a field in Laois, WWN can exclusively report.
After an historic visit to Vietnam, President Higgins was expected to then head to the neighbouring nation of Laos, but a GPS entry mishap on board Ireland’s presidential jet sent the travelling party several thousand miles in the wrong direction.
Disembarking from the plane and unaware of his true location, the President was heard remarking “I know it isn’t a well off country but fuckin’ hell this kip looks like Laois”. The President then greeted a bewildered Portlaoise farmer, whose field the plane had landed in, by speaking fluent Thai.
The President was said to livid after discovering that someone had erroneously typed ‘Laois’ into the plane’s on-board GPS.
“One fuckin’ holiday I wanted this year, just one fuckin’ holiday and some eejit pilot has bollocks’d it,” the normally articulate leader shouted.
“Now myself and Sabina are definitely going to miss that full moon party in Thailand,” he angrily added. | 0 |
Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter said President Donald Trump‘s tweet labeling the press an “enemy” of the American people was “a verbal form of poison. ” Stelter said, “Poison. that’s what it is. It’s a verbal form of poison meant to affect your view of the media world. Meant to harm news organizations. Notice what Trump was doing with this tweet. The famous tweet from Friday. It says the fake news media, failing New York Times, NBC, CBS, CNN is not my enemy. It’s the enemy of the American people. ” “He was signaling out specific news outlets as enemies,” he continued. “He wasn’t talking about the entire press. He was talking about those five. He wasn’t saying they are his enemy but your enemy. Maybe trying to drive another wedge between the sources he likes and the sources he dislikes. Maybe he was trying to distract us. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Butler Shaffer blog/soldiers-getting-stiffed/
There is a long-standing myth that “soldiers fight for our freedom.” The fraudulent nature of this claim is found, repeatedly, in examples that confirm that soldiers do not even fight for their own freedom, much less that of the rest of us. One finds current evidence for this in the California National Guard having offered reenlistment bonuses up to $15,000 to each of some ten thousand soldiers then serving in the Iraq/Afghanistan war. The soldiers and California Guard contractually agreed to this, but the federal government, some ten years later, is now intervening to demand that the soldiers return such bonuses, on the grounds that the California National Guard did not have the authority to enter into such contracts. Many of the ex-soldiers are now being threatened with foreclosure on the liens the government had put on their homes, lawsuits, or with garnishment of wages, and other remedies sought by the federal government.
Who are these soldiers to complain? Don’t they know that respect for the inviolability of contracts applies only to “persons” (i.e., to human beings) and that they, along with the rest of us, have been redefined as government “assets,” not self-owning persons? When Tony Snow – then White House press secretary under President George W. Bush – dismissed the deaths of some 2,500 American soldiers as “it’s a number,” and when earlier Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that the boycott-incurred deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was acceptable to her, the state was telling us of our status as no more than resources for its ends.
Readers familiar with Jacques Ellul’s critiques of the “technological imperative,” will see how this dehumanizing premise gets played out, not only on battlefields, but even in more peaceful settings. At a time when the institutional order boasts of the computerized, driverless trucks and cars it is now introducing to American highways, we witness yet another step in the process of helping us turn ourselves into mindless robots, programmed by our Frankenstein masters. Robots have no independent will or sense of being to be respected by arrogant established authorities. Like the aforementioned soldiers, the relationship between ourselves and the corporate-state is no more to be thought of as contractually-based than is our relationship to a family dog or cat 1:09 pm on October 26, 2016 | 0 |
One in four people fantasize about A. I. virtual assistants, including Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, according to a new survey. [“The ‘Speak Easy’ study — based on the responses of over 1, 000 UK smartphone owners aged 18+ and 100 Amazon Echo owners — was published on Wednesday by advertising agencies JWT and Mindshare,” reported Business Insider on the survey. “It’s not clear what percentage of respondents were men and what percentage were women. ” “The study also found that 37% of voice technology users ‘love their voice assistant so much that they wish it were a real person. ’” they continued, adding that “Clearly some humans are finding themselves very attached to their voice assistants. ” The survey also discovered that 88% of UK smartphone users surveyed had used voice technology services, or would consider doing so in the future. “We are on the cusp of a new era in technology where voice is set to become mainstream,” said Elizabeth Cherian, a director at JWT. “Our research shows that 88% of UK smartphone users have used voice technology or would consider doing so in the future. ” “To successfully integrate voice into their offerings, brands need to understand how the technology can simplify everyday tasks by adding value and removing friction from their experience,” she continued. “This is not about tech for tech’s sake. Thoughtful and helpful interactions which genuinely enhance the experience will drive engagement and deeper relationships between consumers and brands. ” Last year, it was also reported that sexual conversations with A. I. were on the rise, with one company CEO claiming that his virtual assistant “Robin” is used by “teenagers and truckers without girlfriends” for up to 300 conversations a day. “This happens because people are lonely and bored,” said Robin Labs chief executive Ilya Eckstein. “It is a symptom of our society. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0 |
Keywords: Election 2016 , rigged election , Voting , voting errors , voting machines malfunction Voting Machines Malfunction
This is just a straight up fact, especially since many of our voting machines are so antiquated. As you vote this year you should watch out for these glitches. Sometimes the votes appear to be “flipped” as in a voter intends to vote for Candidate A, but Candidate B’s name is selected on the screen.
When this happens it is known as “vote flipping,” and is supposed to only happen rarely. With millions of votes cast, there have supposedly only been a few hundred reports of vote flipping every year for the past decade. These are the ones reported so you do wonder whether this happens unnoticed much more often. I’m just saying I’m seeing reports of this specifically happening all around the country so cast your vote and double check. Check your ballot after you cast your vote and if it happens to you call on a poll worker to help get it fixed. Remember Voting Machine malfunctions do happen.
There are reports of this happening already in North Carolina, Texas and Nevada with machines vote flipping in the last couple weeks.
“You have to remember that the majority of the machines in use today predate the iPhone or the iPad, and most of them use technology from the late ’90s,” Lawrence Norden, a voting technology expert at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, told TIME. “As these machines age, you start to have hardware issues.”
One problem that also occurs on older machines is the glue that attaches the screen to the machine breaks down and you can get alignment issues as well. Poll workers and technicians need to reset the machines regularly to ensure the buttons are lined up right. In other cases, it can just be a user error because no one uses the type of equipment used at the voting centers on a regular basis.
In Texas voters reported attempting to vote a straight Republican ticket, but found the Clinton/Kaine ticket selected instead. This can be found specifically in voting districts where they use the old, rotary-style voting machine.
If you select one candidate and the other appears on the screen or if you’re looking at the summary screen and it just isn’t right voters should notify the poll workers. They can cancel out your session so you can do it over. Poll from PressTV.com 10/28/2016 | 0 |
If you order chicken, you expect chicken. If you order a coffee, you expect a coffee. But if you order butter, is margarine or a vegetable spread an acceptable substitute? It wasn’t to Jan Polanik, who sued 23 Dunkin’ Donuts locations in Massachusetts for serving him “margarine or a butter substitute” instead of butter with his bagels between June 2012 and June 2016. He filed a pair of lawsuits in March against franchise owners who are responsible for multiple stores. He paid 25 cents for butter and was not told a substitute was used, according to the suits. If settlement agreements filed on Monday are approved, up to 1, 400 people may claim up to three free buttered muffins, bagels or other baked goods from the 23 locations in Grafton, Leominster, Lowell, Millbury, Shrewsbury, Westborough and Worcester. Customers would not need to show a receipt of a previous purchase. The stores will be required to use only butter — no margarine or butter substitute — for a year. If they use butter substitutes in the future, the menus will have to explicitly say so. Mr. Polanik, who lives in the Worcester area, will receive $500 as an “incentive award” for representing the class. Thomas G. Shapiro, a lawyer who represented Mr. Polanik, said it was unclear what each of the restaurants used in lieu of butter, but one of the stores had “a large tub that looked a lot like a tub of Country Crock, a very inexpensive spread that is sold in grocery stores. ” “The main thrust of the case, really, is to get the stores, and hopefully Dunkin’ Donuts generally, to change that practice and not deceive people,” he said on Monday. Dunkin’ Donuts said in a statement that it was aware of the lawsuit but did not address any companywide butter policies. “The majority of Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in Massachusetts carry both individual whipped butter packets and a vegetable spread,” the company said in a statement. To culinary partisans, the question, which The New York Times called a “ debate” in a 1974 article, rubs up against as among the most contentious dividers of our time. Based on either health concerns or personal taste, preferences run deep. Take Wisconsin. It would be wise for you to not mess with Wisconsin’s butter. There, laws crack down on margarine hawkers. An unannounced swap at a restaurant is expressly forbidden, punishable by a fine of up to $500 and three months in prison for the first offense, and as much as $1, 000 and a year in prison for subsequent offenses. Margarine cannot be served to students, patients or inmates in state facilities. Even the butter selection is limited. Kerrygold, an Irish brand, cannot be sold in Wisconsin grocery stores because it has not been graded for quality by state or federal authorities, causing some butter bandits to carry bricks over state lines. A group of residents filed a lawsuit in March challenging the law. Tom Balmer, a spokesman for the American Butter Institute, said he was unaware of other states with butter laws. But dairy products of all stripes face competition from “imitators attempting to capitalize on dairy’s excellent reputation for delivering flavor, wholesomeness and nutrition,” he said. “Our friends in the milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream industries are currently waging their own battles with substitutes which are frequently inferior in terms of taste, performance and (especially) nutrition,” he said in a statement. “As a result, we can foresee similar issues arising, particularly in the food service sector, if labeling and product identity messaging are less than clear. ” History is replete with scientific on which is healthier. Butter is high in cholesterol and saturated fat, which are linked to heart disease. Margarine contains unsaturated fat, but some varieties contain trans fats, which are also dangerous. Nutritionists suggest closely inspecting the label of your brand. “Your goal is to limit intake of saturated fats and to avoid trans fats altogether,” according to Harvard Medical School. “Look for a spread that doesn’t have trans fats and has the least amount of saturated fat,” according to the Mayo Clinic. In 2013, a Dunkin’ Donuts spokeswoman, Lindsay Harrington, offered an explanation for why a vegetable spread might be used. “For food safety reasons, we do not allow butter to be stored at room temperature, which is the temperature necessary for butter to be easily spread onto a bagel or pastry,” she told The Boston Globe. The recommended procedure in the store, she said, was for individual whipped butter packets to be served on the side of a bagel or pastry, but not applied. “The vegetable spread is generally used if the employee applies the topping,” she said. Such explanations were insufficient for Mr. Polanik. “It’s the basic principle that if something is misrepresented to you, it should be corrected,” Mr. Shapiro said. “He really just prefers butter for a number of reasons. ” | 1 |
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — On one of their earliest dates, the comedians Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher knew they were meant for each other. During that fateful assignation, Ms. Leggero was searching Mr. Kasher’s car for a lost cigarette when she instead found a pair of women’s underwear — not hers. Mr. Kasher, who acknowledged that they belonged to a previous paramour, said that he could still remember his panicked reaction. “All of my focus was on going, like: ‘What? I don’t know what those are,’” he said over a recent dinner with Ms. Leggero here. “‘I don’t know what objects are. I don’t know what fabric is. ’” Ms. Leggero, who was not especially angry then or now, laughed at Mr. Kasher’s recollection. “That’s a good joke — you should do that in your act,” she said. Now married, Ms. Leggero, a saucy standup, actress and of the Comedy Central historical satire “Another Period,” and Mr. Kasher, a hyperverbal performer, podcaster and creative contributor to films like “Zoolander 2,” have found further ways to strengthen their union. Though they had a proper honeymoon after their Oct. 11 nuptials, they have spent the past weeks on what they are calling their “Honeymoon Tour. ” At these comedy shows in comfortable destinations, they perform their individual routines, then appear together. (The tour started on May 22 in Honolulu and continues through Monday in Los Angeles.) Yes, this tour, which offers the sufficiently rare sight of on the same bill, allows them to earn money while vacationing at luxury resorts (like the San Ysidro Ranch, where they were now dining). It is also an opportunity for them to bond as a couple, and to stave off feelings of isolation that many comedians experience. “It is the ideal way to tour,” Mr. Kasher said. “Except for having to split the money, this couldn’t be better. ” Later that night, they performed at Velvet Jones, a Santa Barbara nightclub where Ms. Leggero joked about having never wanted to marry and having no desire to become pregnant. (“You have to stop drinking in public,” she explained.) Mr. Kasher needled her for claiming that he had performed on HBO. (“I’ve never been on HBO,” he said. “That’s my wife. ”) Over dinner, the two spoke with more tenderness for each other. Before they began dating, Ms. Leggero said, she was “a serial monogamist” Mr. Kasher said he was “busy, romantically” (by which, he added, he meant “very promiscuous”). But, from afar, they appreciated each other’s work, and Mr. Kasher said he considered Ms. Leggero the type of friend “that you’ll text every six months to remind them that you’re around, if they’re ever single. ” Chelsea Peretti, the “Brooklyn ” star and a longtime friend of the couple, said that they were compatible because they were both “blunt hippies. ” “They have this weird common ground,” Ms. Peretti said in a telephone interview. “They both have this spiritual side and this side that likes to be indulgent. Moshe does Burning Man, and Natasha will do spa baths that I don’t venture into. But then they both can be cutting and outspoken. ” Despite the misgivings about marriage she joked about, Ms. Leggero said that when they were dating, she felt they were “on the marriage track. ” But Mr. Kasher, who has written in his memoir, “Kasher in the Rye,” about growing up in Oakland, Calif. and Brooklyn as a child of divorced parents, said he had felt uncertain about the relationship models he’d seen in his life. Ms. Leggero, who grew up in Rockford, Ill. was more guarded about her upbringing but agreed with Mr. Kasher’s assessment that her parents were also volatile. (“Next question,” she said softly.) Mr. Kasher compared his hesitation to his fear, earlier in his career, of moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they now live. “Somebody said to me, ‘You know, you can just move back,’” he explained. “I was like: ‘Huh. Yeah.’ The same thing with marriage. Why not give it a whirl? And if you fail, you can just get a divorce. ” The wedding was a traditional Jewish ceremony — Ms. Leggero converted from Roman Catholicism — and took place at the couple’s house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. “Because we’re comedians, we agreed: No bits at the wedding,” Mr. Kasher said. But, Ms. Leggero added, “He let me have just one. ” After their vows, the couple momentarily disappeared, then reappeared to mock a rite by holding up a sheet that said, “She’s a virgin!” Ms. Peretti, who married the comedian Jordan Peele (“Key Peele”) this year, said Ms. Leggero and Mr. Kasher’s ceremony was so enjoyable that it made her question her decision to elope with Mr. Peele. “It was bittersweet, going to a fun wedding,” Ms. Peretti said. “You go, ‘Ugh, are we missing out on family and friends?’ And then ultimately, we decided, ‘Nah. ’” As professional partners, Ms. Leggero and Mr. Kasher said they did not compete over material or industry stature, though Mr. Kasher, who also works on “Another Period,” said wryly that he can sometimes feel “a power imbalance” there. “I make her scream ‘executive producer’ when we’re making love,” he said. “I need a constant reassurance that I’m valued and it wasn’t nepotism. ” Though they could point to only a few examples of other comic spouses who have traveled and performed together — vintage duos like Gracie Allen and George Burns or Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, or contemporaries like Bonnie McFarlane and Rich Vos — they said their tour let them lean on each other in lonely moments on the road. Looking back on a New Year’s Eve when he was performing solo in Grand Rapids, Mich. Mr. Kasher said: “At 12:05, I was in the lobby of a Courtyard Marriott with some Doritos and a Diet Coke, headed to my room to watch Netflix. It’s nice to be on the road and do these shows. ” “That’s so sad,” Ms. Leggero said. If there is any downside to marital bliss, they say, it is the fear that happiness will take away the tension and the skepticism that shape their comedic perspectives. “When you become happy, and your life is becoming more solid and stable, it is a little harder,” Ms. Leggero said. “I felt like I was much funnier when I had, like, $30 in my account. ” Of course, if they need to make their lives complicated again, they can have a baby. “There’s definitely people in comedy that have had children for material,” Mr. Kasher said. Her routine notwithstanding, Ms. Leggero said she was ready to embrace having a child, but added, “I’m not having it for material. ” Mr. Kasher replied, “We’re naming it Material. ” | 1 |
On White House response to Yates’ warning about Flynn, @PressSec says she was ”not exactly someone that was excited about President Trump.” pic. twitter. Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the Trump administration weighed the fact that concerns about Mike Flynn were coming from former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, “who is not exactly a supporter of the president’s agenda. ” Spicer said, “One thing that’s important to note is — let’s look at again how this came down. Someone who is not exactly a supporter of the president’s agenda, who a couple days after this first conversation took place refused to uphold a lawful order of the president, who is not exactly someone that was excited about President Trump taking office or his agenda. ” “She had come here, given a told us there were materials and at the same time, we did what we should do,” he continued. “Just because someone comes in and gives you a about something and says I want to share some information doesn’t mean you immediately jump the gun and go take an action. I think if you flip the scenario and say what if we had just dismissed somebody because a political opponent of the president had made an utterance, you would argue it was pretty irrational to act in that manner. We did what we were supposed to do. The president made ultimately the right decision. ” Spicer added Yates was “appointed by the Obama Administration” and “a strong supporter of Clinton. ” | 0 |
HOBOKEN, N. J. — Federal investigators have still not inspected the train that slammed into a busy transportation hub here, killing a woman and injuring more than 100 others, because of the extensive damage at the scene of the crash, officials said on Friday. A day after the crash set off a panic at the station during the morning commute, federal investigators have provided few answers about why the train careened into a wall. On Friday evening, officials said that they had not yet interviewed the train’s engineer or examined most of the train. Jim Southworth, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said he had not sent investigators into the front of the train because of concerns over asbestos and the structural integrity of the building. The damage from the train’s impact caused part of the terminal’s roof to collapse. “Because of the asbestos, because of the unsettled structures that we’re not sure about, I’m not allowing anybody to go in there,” Mr. Southworth said at a news conference. “None of the evidence in there is perishable, so I have the time to go in there. ” Federal investigators said they could not estimate when the historic station, Hoboken Terminal, might reopen or when they would remove the train from the tracks, prompting questions over how long New Jersey Transit’s train service to the station might remain suspended. Officials were still working to schedule an interview with the train’s engineer, Thomas Gallagher, who was injured on Thursday, said Bella the vice chairwoman of the safety board. The results of his toxicology report were not yet available, she said. While investigators removed the event recorder from the locomotive in the rear of the train, they were not able to download the information on it and sent it to the manufacturer for assistance. The recorder is an important device that can reveal how fast the train was traveling. The safety board planned to spend as many as 10 days at the scene of the crash as part of the investigation, which could take a year to complete. The board will review several possible factors, including the engineer’s actions, the train’s maintenance and the railroad’s tracks and signals. The train’s crew had been cooperative, and investigators were scheduling interviews with two other train crew members — a conductor and a brakeman, officials said. At the station, part of the collapsed roof was resting on top of the front of the train. “As you can imagine we don’t want anyone to go in there until it’s completely stable,” Ms. said. Another obstacle facing investigators is the likely presence of asbestos inside the building that houses Hoboken Terminal, Ms. said. On Friday, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey told reporters that New Jersey Transit had an exemplary safety record. Still, he added, “No accident is acceptable, and so we have to get to the bottom of what happened, and I promise you that we will. ” Later in the day, Mr. Christie, a Republican, announced a deal to finance the transportation trust fund, which pays for mass transit projects, roads and bridges. The governor had received criticism over funding for the railroad after the crash. The closing of Hoboken Terminal, which serves six New Jersey Transit rail lines, forced commuters to make do with contingency plans provided by New Jersey Transit, the commuter rail system in the country. New Jersey Transit officials said they could not restart service until receiving approval from the safety board. If train service at the station remains suspended for days or weeks, many New Jerseyans could be forced to consider painful travel options and heavy crowds on other train lines and buses. Veronica Vanterpool, the executive director of the Transportation Campaign, a rider advocacy group, said she hoped train service would resume by next week. But she had concerns over how quickly the railroad could bounce back since it has been facing financial problems and other issues. “If it were the M. T. A. I think service could be restored relatively quickly, but I think N. J. T. has had so many operational challenges,” Ms. Vanterpool said in reference to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York’s subways and commuter rail. On Friday morning, many commuters braved long and complicated commutes into New York and other areas, facing a confusing slate of schedule changes, delays and cancellations with a mixture of weariness, frustration and stoicism. Many, like Maulik Pokiya, were determined not to let the disaster keep them from getting where they needed to be. Mr. Pokiya was a passenger on the train as it plowed into Hoboken Terminal, watching out the window of the second car as electrical wires were being ripped loose from their holds and were flashing sparks. The terror had yet to fade from his mind. Though he was given the option to work from home, Mr. Pokiya was back on another train on Friday. He climbed aboard in Oradell, N. J. and was joined by his brother, who usually takes a later train but was providing emotional support. “Since I was safe, I’m not worried,” Mr. Pokiya said. “I was feeling scared, but anything can happen. ” Stephen Schroeder, who was in the train’s first car when it crashed — the quiet car where cellphones are supposed to be on mute and conversation kept to a minimum — was similarly unbowed. “I thought about working from home, but I just prefer being in the office,” said Mr. Schroeder, a resident of Park Ridge who works for a software company. He looked out the window of the bus as it crossed the marshes along the Hackensack River on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was a far cry from the day before. “I saw the roof collapse and people were screaming,” he said. “One guy kicked out the emergency exit, and I told him to be careful. ” Mr. Schroeder said he did not think he would ride in the first car anymore, as had been his habit. Those with less visceral connections to the crash had a simpler aim: to get to work on time. At the Secaucus Junction station, people walked and jogged to catch connecting shuttle buses. Donald Pantelli had allotted an additional two hours to make it to work. “Hopefully, the boss will be understanding,” he said. Though he had expected to take a bus to Hoboken, Mr. Pantelli found himself rerouted to Jersey City. “It is what it is we have to make these adjustments in life,” he said. Beverley Terry, riding the shuttle from Secaucus to Jersey City, said she missed the train that crashed because she was running late, an echo of Sept. 11, 2001, when she had been late to her job at the World Trade Center. “I had to come in today,” Ms. Terry said. “It’s like my mother told me: You always get back on that horse. ” | 1 |
November 7: Daily Contrarian Reads By David Stockman. Posted On Monday, November 7th, 2016 My daily contrarian reads for Monday, November 7th, 2016. You need to login to view this content.
David Stockman’s Contra Corner isn’t your typical financial tipsheet. Instead it’s an ongoing dialogue about what’s really happening in the markets… the economy… and governments… so you can understand the world around you and make better decisions for yourself.
David believes the world -- certainly the United States -- is at a great inflection point in human history. The massive credit inflation of the last three decades has reached its apogee and is now going to splatter spectacularly.
This will have lasting ramifications on how governments tax and regulate you… the type of work you and your family members will have available and what you get paid… the value of your nest egg… and all other areas comprising your quality of life. Login
David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 0 |
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In an election season full of anger and divisiveness, it’s easy to lose sight of just how important and meaningful our democratic process is. Thankfully, as millions have cast their ballots today, there’s been no shortage of heartwarming stories involving Americans exercising their right to vote. One of those stories centers around lifelong Mississippi resident Helen Karnes, who, although not quite old enough to have been born before women won the right to vote, is still pretty goddam old.
Wow. What a special woman!
While Karnes can’t claim that she was alive during a time when women were still politically disenfranchised, it just takes one look at her to tell that she’s fucking old. No, she might not have the inspiring, thematically satisfying story of a 100-year-old, but you get the sense that she’s definitely lived through some shit. She was certainly around in WWII times, and she might’ve even been there for the Depression, too. Who knows? This is no spring chicken we’re talking about here.
Though, admittedly, Karnes’ story would be a bit cooler if she’d been alive before 1920, you still have to applaud her for being old on this historic Election Day. Also, her mom and her aunts were definitely alive before women’s suffrage, so you know she’s probably got some good secondhand stories that she heard from them. Maybe one of them was even an important figure in the women’s rights movement or something. Statistically speaking, that’s probably not the case, but you never know!
It’s unclear if Karnes voted today for America’s first female presidential nominee, or if she even voted at all. But what matters is that she’s brittle, stooped-over, and ancient. There are probably lots of dusty ol‘ bats out there who are older than Karnes and who have more of a substantial foothold in U.S. women’s history, but this lady is still more or less a living skeleton. And that’s something that should make us all proud to be Americans. | 0 |
The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, dealt a hammer blow to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy on Monday, dashing any remaining semblance of Republican unity and inviting fierce backlash from his own caucus by announcing that he would no longer defend Mr. Trump. Mr. Ryan’s stance drew an immediate rebuke from Mr. Trump, who posted on Twitter that Mr. Ryan should focus on governing “and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee. ” Mr. Ryan informed Republican lawmakers on a morning conference call that he would never again campaign for Mr. Trump and would dedicate himself instead to defending the party’s majority in Congress, according to five lawmakers who participated in the call and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Effectively conceding defeat for his party in the presidential race, Mr. Ryan said his most urgent task was ensuring that Hillary Clinton did not take the helm with Democratic control of the House and Senate, two lawmakers said. The reaction from was swift and angry. Over the course of an hour, a stream of conservative lawmakers urged their colleagues not to give up on Mr. Trump and chided Mr. Ryan for what they described as surrendering prematurely in the presidential race. Mr. Trump’s campaign is reeling after a disastrous two weeks that culminated in the release on Friday of a 2005 recording in which he bragged about sexual assault. One of the conservatives, Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, attacked the Republicans stepping away from Mr. Trump as “cowards,” three lawmakers said. Another, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona, said, using graphic language to describe abortion, that allowing Mrs. Clinton into the White House would end with fetuses being destroyed “limb from limb. ” Trying to quiet the uproar, Mr. Ryan interjected after about 45 minutes to assure members that he was not withdrawing his endorsement of Mr. Trump, but rather doing what he felt was in the best interests of the House. For five months, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump have alternated between friction and courtship, eventually forging an uneasy working relationship only to see it collapse now, in the final weeks of the race. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, confirmed that his sole priority for the remainder of the election would be defending congressional Republicans. “The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” she said. Mr. Trump did not repeat his Twitter jab at Mr. Ryan at a campaign event in Pennsylvania Monday afternoon, offering instead a diatribe unlikely to appeal beyond his dedicated base. He repeated his call from Sunday night’s debate for a special prosecutor to pursue Mrs. Clinton, called her “the devil” and warned that her election would lead to “the destruction of our country. ” A buoyant Mrs. Clinton seemed to revel in her growing advantage over Mr. Trump during a speech in Detroit on Monday afternoon. Mr. Trump, she said, had spent their debate “attacking when he should have been apologizing. ” While Mrs. Clinton made no direct reference to the fissures appearing among Republicans, her campaign tried to exploit the moment, releasing several television ads featuring voters who describe themselves as Republicans but plan to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, expressed little sympathy for Republicans now fleeing Mr. Trump. “There was a time when they could have spoken out against him,” Ms. Palmieri said of party leaders like Mr. Ryan. “That time was this summer. Obviously, it is too late now. ” The consequences for both men are enormous. Mr. Ryan and other Republican leaders fear that Mr. Trump’s flagging campaign will imperil their majorities in the House and Senate, and Mr. Trump can ill afford more prominent rejections when he is trying to rally reluctant Republican voters behind him. Mr. Trump’s candidacy was already in dire condition before Mr. Ryan’s announcement. A poll published Monday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found him trailing Mrs. Clinton by a wide margin, drawing less than 40 percent of the vote. The survey was taken before the debate. And in a sign of how deep divisions now run among Republicans, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, held a conference call of his own after Mr. Ryan’s to emphasize his commitment to Mr. Trump. Mr. Priebus told members that the committee was working in “full coordination” with the Trump campaign and planned to direct “a lot” of money to the presidential race. “Nothing has changed in our support for our nominee,” he said, vowing “an incredible four weeks” until the election. Mr. Priebus, long a close political ally of Mr. Ryan, made no direct reference to the speaker’s announcement, or to the dozens of governors and members of Congress who have rescinded their support for Mr. Trump. Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia, a Republican who has long opposed Mr. Trump, said there was a general sense in the House that more humiliating disclosures about Mr. Trump were likely to come before Nov. 8, Election Day. “There’s a consensus, even among supporters, that the likelihood of something else breaking in a very embarrassing and negative fashion is certainly better than ” said Mr. Rigell, who joined the call on Monday. “The conference, members, et cetera, are bracing themselves for another salvo of this. ” Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge that possibility in Pennsylvania, commenting offhand in his speech that if more recordings were to emerge, he would respond with more personal attacks on Mrs. Clinton and her husband. Mr. Trump’s allies had hoped that the debate would halt the exodus of fellow Republicans from his candidacy, and they publicly implored members of the party on Monday to stick with him through Election Day. Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate, punctured speculation that he might withdraw from the race by pronouncing himself “proud to stand with Donald Trump” in a visit to North Carolina. Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, also offered an ominous warning for Republicans fleeing Mr. Trump. She noted on television that Mr. Ryan had been booed by Trump fans over the weekend in Wisconsin and said she knew of Republican lawmakers who had behaved inappropriately toward young women, and whose criticism of Mr. Trump was therefore hypocritical. Just as telling as the frustration from outspoken conservatives in the House on Monday was the silence from so many mainstream Republicans in the chamber, who showed little appetite to argue for or with their embattled nominee. Few voices weighed in on the call with Mr. Ryan. Representative Martha Roby of Alabama, who defected from Mr. Trump on Saturday, said she would contribute significant money to help Republicans hold their House majority. But she also said she would speak with colleagues in private about her decision to withdraw her endorsement in the presidential race. Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a vocal critic of Mr. Trump, asked his colleagues if they were truly confident that there would be no more damaging disclosures. In any case, Mr. Dent argued that the race was effectively over for Mr. Trump. No new prominent Republicans have withdrawn their endorsements since the debate, but there was a palpable fear throughout the party that Mr. Trump had been damaged beyond repair. Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged members on the conference call to take polls in their districts to gauge the effect of Mr. Trump’s political slide. Mr. Walden said they should brace for a significant erosion of support for Mr. Trump and acknowledged that the shift could hurt congressional candidates, too. He asked the entire caucus to contribute quickly to the party’s campaign arm, making it clear that they needed to strengthen their defenses across the country. At a briefing for Washington lobbyists later in the day, Mr. Walden acknowledged to donors that Republicans were in uncharted territory and wholly uncertain of what would happen next. Still, many members were pointed in expressing their dismay to Mr. Ryan, warning him of grave consequences, in November and beyond, if Mr. Trump’s campaign collapses altogether. Representative Billy Long of Missouri spoke up in Mr. Trump’s defense, citing the danger of losing the Supreme Court if Mrs. Clinton wins. “Many of us commented that if Hillary picks the next two to four judges, it will change the fabric of our country of 40, 50 years,” Mr. Long said later. “Abortion and the Second Amendment, also, and lots of Supreme Court concerns. ” | 1 |
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IN an attempt to avoid accusations of hypocrisy NATO has taken swift action on itself after the death of 30 civilians in Afghanistan were killed by a NATO airstrike.
Women, children and babies were among the innocent civilians struck by a missile in the Kunduz region of the country, prompting NATO to adopt the sort of stern rhetoric it normally adopts for when non-NATO nations carry out premeditated attacks on civilian populations.
“Bold NATO, bold!” the organisation said, chastising itself, with further scolding not ruled out if similar tragedies were to occur again.
Airstrikes were called in when US and Afghan forces came under fire from Taliban forces occupying a village in the northern province.
Asked if a lengthy investigation would take place and possibly result in punishment for those involved in making the decisions which led to the fatalities, NATO was vague.
“No, we’re the good guys,” it confirmed.
The sanctions imposed include NATO restricting itself from being livid with on the ground independent monitors of conflicts for accurately reporting events and getting information to the public, for at least one week.
The tragic loss of life in Kunduz comes one year after 42 innocent people were mistakenly killed in a US airstrike on a hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontiéres in Kunduz, and 7 years after a US airstrike killed over 90 civilians in error in Kunduz. | 0 |
Donald Trump fires back, after Hollywood actress Meryl Streep’s tirade during the Golden Globe awards. [“Meryl Streep, one of the most actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes,” Trump writes on Twitter. “She is a Hillary flunky who lost big. ” Streep accused of Trump making fun of a disabled reporter, lamenting that the event “sank its hooks in my heart. ” “It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie it was real life,” she said. But Trump argued that he was simply showing the reporter “groveling” for changing a 16 year old story to make him look bad. “Just more very dishonest media!” he concluded. Streep vocally supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, and boldly celebrated that she would be the first woman president in a DNC convention speech. “You’re gonna make history again in November. Because Hillary Clinton will be our first woman president. And she will be a great president,” Streep said at the time. “And she will be the first in a long line of women. And men. Who serve with grit and grace. ” In June 2016, Streep also did an unflattering Trump impression during a performance at the Public Theater Gala, as she smeared a spray tan on her face and sang for the audience. She also gave a tribute speech to Hillary Clinton during a 2012 Women in the World summit. In December 1, 2012, Streep snapped selfies with Hillary Clinton as she prepared another run for president. During her Golden Globes speech, she fretted that Trump would make the country worse. “Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose,” she warned. “Disrespect invites disrespect” Meryl Streep pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) January 9, 2017, | 0 |
Alzheimer’s disease can seem frightening, mysterious and daunting. There are still a lot of unknowns about the disease, which afflicts more than five million Americans. Here are answers to some common questions: Just because you forgot an item on your grocery list doesn’t mean you are developing dementia. Most people have occasional memory lapses, which increase with age. The memory problems that characterize warning signs of Alzheimer’s are usually more frequent, and they begin to interfere with safe or competent daily functioning: forgetting to turn off the stove, leaving home without being properly dressed or forgetting important appointments. Beyond that, the disease usually involves a decline in other cognitive abilities: planning a schedule, following multistep directions, carrying out familiar logistical tasks like balancing a checkbook or cooking a meal. It can also involve mood changes, agitation, social withdrawal and feelings of confusion, and can even affect or slow a person’s gait. Diagnosing Alzheimer’s usually involves a series of assessments, including memory and cognitive tests. Clinicians will also do a thorough medical to determine whether the thinking and memory problems can be explained by other diagnoses, such as another type of dementia, a physical illness or side effects from a medication. Brain scans and spinal taps may also be conducted to check for corroborating evidence like the accumulation of amyloid, the hallmark protein of Alzheimer’s, in the brain or spinal fluid. The cause is unknown for most cases. Fewer than 5 percent of cases are linked to specific, rare gene mutations. Those are usually cases that develop in middle age. In the vast majority of cases, Alzheimer’s disease makes its presence known after age 65, and the older one gets, the greater the risk. Aside from age, which is the single biggest risk factor, there are health issues that can increase the chances of developing Alzheimer’s. Heart and vascular problems, including stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure, appear to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Depression has also been associated with increased risk. People with one copy of the ApoE4 gene variant have two to four times as much risk of developing Alzheimer’s as people without the variant, and people with two copies of ApoE4 have about 10 times the risk. That risk appears to be larger in women. Carriers of ApoE4 also have a greater chance of developing symptoms at a younger age. About 25 percent of people have one copy of ApoE4 about 3 percent have two copies. Many researchers have been trying to figure this out. So far there is no clear answer. There are hints that behaviors that keep us healthy and engaged — exercise, healthy diet, social activities, educational activities — may keep dementia at bay for some time, probably because those behaviors promote overall brain and body health, as well as emotional . Education may promote what is called cognitive reserve, essentially the idea that the more we learn and stimulate our brains, the more brain cells we have that can temporarily compensate for some memory and thinking problems. But no vitamin, supplement or brain game has been found to be a magic wand. Before developing symptoms of Alzheimer’s, some people, but not all, experience a condition called mild cognitive impairment. One type of MCI affects memory. Another type affects perception or skills. Both types involve a slight decline in these abilities, but it does not prevent the person from functioning independently. People with MCI have a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s, but it is not inevitable. Recently, scientists have begun to recognize an even earlier state that can precede dementia, called subjective cognitive decline. This occurs when people notice lapses in their memory or thinking that worry them, even if those around them are not really aware of the lapses. Dementia experts have found that sometimes people recognize these issues before they reach the threshold of a clinical diagnosis, and that those people may be more likely to eventually develop Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s itself typically involves mild, moderate and severe stages. Mild and especially moderate stages can last years, and there is often no way to predict a person’s pace and path of decline. There are five drugs approved to treat Alzheimer’s, sold under the names Aricept, Exelon, Namenda, Namzaric and Razadyne. These drugs either slow the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine or block the overproduction of glutamate in the brain, but none have been shown to work very well for very long. The search for more effective medications has been met with years of failure. One theory behind that failure is that many drugs have been tested on patients too far along in the disease their brains may have been too damaged for the drugs to have an effect on their symptoms. Many of the drugs developed so far target the amyloid protein that forms plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, because many scientists believe that amyloid buildup is a cause of Alzheimer’s. Recent research has found that amyloid begins accumulating 20 years or more before symptoms of dementia occur, and advancements in scans that can detect amyloid are making it possible to identify people in earlier stages, including some who have no symptoms of dementia yet. Several clinical trials are underway, including large trials testing drugs at these early stages. It will be several years before solid results are known. | 1 |
How Hillary Clinton Poisoned American Politics Crazy conspiracy theories dominate the final days before Nov. 8 Share This
FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information has the Clintonites falling back on their tried-and-true response to all the revelations coming from WikiLeaks and other sources – it’s all a Russian plot. Except, this time, the hysteria has reached such a fever pitch, and the conspiracy theories are so unhinged, that the political discourse in this country will be poisoned for years to come.
It started with Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
“So the question is: Where did these [emails] come from? How did they get to the FBI? Is Russia involved in this? We don’t have a clue where this stuff is coming from.”
We don’t know if Ryan was drunk ( again ) when he said this, but his nickname of “ Congressman Moonbeam ” seems well-earned, and the implication of his remarks – that the FBI is in league with the Russians – underscores his marginality. However, it wasn’t long before the marginal started merging with the mainstream. In tandem with Rya, Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and once head of the Democratic party, tweeted :
“Ironically, Comey put himself on the same side as Putin.”
Now Dean may be a bit more credible than Ryan, but who can forget the “ Dean scream ” that dramatized his loonier side, and effectively knocked him out of contention for the Democratic presidential nomination? And then there were those payments from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq , a nutty Marxist-Islamist cult, in return for serving as their front man. And so while Dean may be better known, what he’s know for isn’t exactly adding to his credibility, and so we can safely relegate this kind of conspiracy theorizing to the fringes of the Democratic party spectrum. Right?
Wrong. Here is longtime Clintonite strategist James Carville opining that “It’s unprecedented … the House Republicans and the KGB are trying to influence our democracy.” Well, okay, who listens to Carville, anyway? He’s so yester day! Well, then, get a load of Harry Reid, who leads the Senate’s Democrats, repeating a different version of the same nonsense in a letter to Comey :
"In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest hostile to the united states, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
It’s so “explosive” that it exploded into utter nothingness, according to the New York Times this [Tuesday] morning:
“For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead – which they ultimately came to doubt – about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.
“Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, FBI and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”
As Gertrude Stein once put it, “There’s no there there.” She was talking about Oakland, California, but might just as well have been describing the inside of Harry’s brain.
And, yes, you read the above cited Times story right: instead of going after terrorists, or ordinary criminals, for months the FBI has been chasing down rabbit holes looking for Trump’s alleged links to the nonexistent International Kremlin/Alt-Right/Putinist Conspiracy. We have returned to the halcyon days of J. Edgar Hoover, when people were investigated and harassed for their political views at the instigation of their ideological opponents.
Oh, but the FBI was too “ overburdened and undermanned ” to keep Omar Mateen on their radar.
In this election, the tragic and the comic mix and merge, but surely the former is dominant in the latest of Franklin Foer’s Russophobic effusions. Formerly the editor of The New Republic , who was unceremoniously dumped by its new owner, Foer has teamed up with the Clinton campaign as its unofficial conspiracy theorist, spinning tales of Trump’s “links” to the Russians. He’s the Alex Jones of the Clinton crowd, except that not even Jones would be caught dead promoting the kind of incoherent nonsense in Foer’s latest screed .
According to Foer, Trump has a “secret server” set up specifically to communicate with his Kremlin Masters. We know this because a “computer scientist” who wants to be known only as “Tea Leaves,” and other “experts” – who also don’t want to tell us their names – have supposedly “discovered” this Secret Link. The server connects to the Alfa Bank, which is located in – cue in scary music – Russia! And guess what!? This closed communication link was especially active during politically sensitive times! This, according to Foer and his anonymous band of “experts,” is conclusive proof that The Donald is a secret agent of the KGB, intent on polluting our precious bodily fluids with icky Russian cooties.
The only problem with this wacky conspiracy theory is that there’s a prosaic explanation for the existence of this “suspicious” online traffic: the Trump Organization had hired a company to send out ads for their hotels. The online traffic to Alfa Bank meant only that several employees of that bank had stayed in Trump’s hotels and were being solicited to do so again. And in spite of the “scientific”-looking chart displayed in the Foer piece, in fact the online traffic to and from Alfa didn’t “peak” when the US political scene got hot: “That’s wrong,” writes Timothy B. Lee in the anti-Trump pro-Hillary Vox.com. “If anything, the chart shows the opposite of that.”
As Lee puts it:
“ Foer claims that the pattern of traffic between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank servers is highly unusual – so unusual that it can best be explained as a secretive communication link between Donald Trump and the Kremlin.
“But in this case, there seems to be a plausible and perfectly innocent explanation for the traffic pattern suggested by an IT consultant named Naadir Jeewa and endorsed by security expert Robert Graham : The Trump organization is sending out promotional emails about Trump hotels, and one or more Alfa Bank employees is on the recipient list.
“This is actually the explanation that’s suggested by Occam’s razor because – as Foer himself acknowledges in his story – the server was originally registered by an email marketing firm called Cendyn. The Trump organization seems to have hired Cendyn to send out emails promoting Trump’s hotels, a service Cendyn has been providing since the Trump server was registered in 2009. So the most obvious explanation for the traffic is that Cendyn is using its server for its intended purpose.”
When Hillary Clinton’s Twitter account tweeted Foer’s farrago and declared “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia,” cyber-security expert Robert Graham replied on his blog :
“This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain "trump-email.com," nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump’s hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philadelphia.”
So the server wasn’t even owned by the Trump Organization . And yet it took the FBI months, and “journalists,” including even The Intercept , “weeks” to conclude that this story is completely bogus. The US taxpayers should demand their money back – not to mention Pierre Omidyar .
Even after this sloppy McCarthyite smear was debunked, the Clinton campaign breathlessly repeated the charges: “This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia”! What this perfervid fantasy is the actually key to is the hysterical desperation of the Clinton campaign as it is engulfed in daily scandals that threaten to sink it beneath the electoral waves.
Are you laughing – or crying – yet? Oh, but I’m not done! If you think this grade-B conspiracy theory is the lowest form of electoral entertainment, then you obviously haven’t read David Corn’s latest entry into the Smear Trump Sweepstakes. Glenn Greenwald – no friend of Trump’s – describes it as “an unnamed person, from an unknown country, who used to work in an unnamed agency, claims Trump is a Russian agent.” How did the real estate mogul become a tool of the Kremlin? Well, you see, Trump once traveled to Russia, where he was suborned by one of those slinky-looking Russian ladies and “Russian intelligence had ‘compromised’ Trump during his visits to Moscow and could ‘blackmail him.’”
Yes, they’re blackmailing Trump over a sexual indiscretion – because that would destroy him for sure ! And it’s all in a “secret memo” that only Corn, the editors of Mother Jones , and their Mysterious Veteran Spook have seen.
On one level, this is hysterically funny; it’s grade-C thriller material that is likely to be found at the bottom of some publisher’s slush pile. On another level – the political level – it is immensely depressingly significant – because these people are “liberals,” even “leftists.” They aren’t stupid: they know the ignominious history of witch-hunting in this country. I’d call this McCarthyism – but even Joe McCarthy had some actual evidence to back up his claims of “foreign agents” lurking in the corridors of power. Corn, Foer, and the Clinton campaign are simply retailing lies.
What’s depressing about this is the fact that, if Hillary wins, it isn’t going to stop. Far from it: the new “red scare” will accelerate, as her political enemies are tarred with the “KGB agent” brush. And when the notoriously vindictive Democratic candidate takes revenge not only on her domestic political enemies, but on the Russians, an ugly – and dangerous – confrontation is in the cards. She’ll sic the FBI on Trump’s supporters, and Trump himself, and she’ll unleash the US military and our allies on Putin – and then, watch out.
That American liberalism has degenerated into a Russophobic, warmongering, witch-hunting ideology so quickly is one of the most astonishing ideological transformations in our political history. And all in the name of garnering partisan political advantage. As Donald Trump would put it: Sad!
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here . Read more by Justin Raimondo | 1 |
Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh reacted to a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, VA that had resulted in five people hospitalized, including House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise ( ). Limbaugh argued the shooter, identified as James T. Hodgkinson of Illinois, was influenced by the media and the Democratic Party stoking hatred and resentment. Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh. com): The sad and unfortunate fact is that, as evidenced by the sound bite of me yesterday, I have foreseen this coming. You can’t continue to enrage people the way the left, and predominantly the media, has been doing. The Democrat Party and the left for years have been feeding this. And particularly since the election of Trump they have virtually assured their supporters that Trump is guilty, guilty of treason. And every congressional hearing is going to provide the proof. Every one. Sessions yesterday, Comey a couple of times, Sally Yates, you name it. They build up these expectations that Trump is not really the president. He shouldn’t have been. He cheated. He colluded with the Russians. There isn’t any evidence for it, and so every time the left builds up an event where this is going to be established as fact and it blows up in their faces, it creates rising expectations followed immediately by rank disappointment and anger and letdown over the fact that it’s not happening. And I think these people on the left have been driven to this extreme for quite a while. I have been worried about it for I don’t know how long. And I’ve been telling you so. And we could, if we wanted to, we could scour — well, we have. I could go back and show you tweets, I could read you tweets. I could read you statements made by elected Democrats and others promoting just this kind of behavior, just this kind of behavior. You can find it. If you look at the TV programs and the media personalities that this guy, Hodgkinson, was devoted to, you’ll find out how radicalized he was by TV and comedy. Last week Tonight With John Oliver, the Nightly Show on the Comedy Central, Democracy Now, The Ed Show, the Rachel Maddow Show. He apparently loved Rachel Maddow, wanted her to run for president. The Daily Show on Comedy Central, Real Time with Bill Maher. Those are the TV shows that he recommended everybody watch. Clearly, he was radicalized. Now, I also want to say he probably started off this way. I don’t know that this guy’s ever been a rational, invisible functioning member of a community, but at some point he got radicalized, and if you dig deep you’ll find — we’ve got examples of it to share with you. This guy is the exact personification when I sit here and talk about the lunatic fringe base, the deranged base of the Democrat Party, this is the guy. This is the face. This is the picture. This is what you get when you stoke and fuel hatred, raw hatred and resentment, at some point it’s gonna blow over, because it cannot be contained, this kind of rage and repeated disappointment. You add climate change probably to this guy’s list of grievances, and I think everybody ought to take a step back and realize this guy is not isolated. This guy is probably typical. Not that there’s going to be rampant shootings, but he just happened to go over the edge and pull the trigger. But he, to me, is exactly what I am unfortunately worried about when I look at the way all of these lies and all these nothingness, nothing burger stories have now been out there for month after month after month. And you add everything else that the Democrat and the liberal media agenda is. It’s nothing but anger, it’s nothing but rage, it’s nothing but hatred, and it has to have an outlet. And they know it. The fact is, they know it. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
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I grew up in a working class family and have experienced the deep racism of a society that views Vietnamese Americans as the targets of war. I've lived through successive Democratic Party administrations with little to celebrate. The Bill Clinton era brought NAFTA, which outsourced my Aunt's union job and forced her into the low-wage service sector. My mother never found a living wage job and relied on my father's public sector union position to meet our family's needs. In the 21st century, Obama expanded Bush’s War on Terror, which merged my father’s job with into the Department of Homeland Security.
Downward pressure on wages and working conditions forced my father to refinance our home multiple times to pay college expenses for my sister and I. Even then, my sister and I graduated with large sums of student debt. I have worked four jobs in three years and only one has paid a truly living wage. Another four years of a Democratic Party President was not going to make anything better for my family. That is not to say that Donald Trump was the answer to the structural problems of exploitation. But Trump's victory is not the end of the world, either.
Trump's victory is the product of global capitalism’s decay. Millions of people voted for Trump for a variety of reasons, namely because he clearly labeled problems and outlined solutions to them. I don’t agree with all of his solutions. White nationalism stains his domestic and international agenda. Trump’s call to further militarize the US-Mexico border yet make peace with Russia is a contradiction in and of itself. A white nationalist billionaire who speaks the language of racism on the one hand and the interests of peace on the other is not exactly a model of consistency.
However, Trump’s consistency is not the most important aspect of this election. Millions of people have shown their disgust with the two-party system of the capitalist class. A number of mostly white workers and whites from the petty business class voted for Trump. Trump also received more votes than expected from the Black and Latino electorate. Meanwhile, the elections produced a low turnout for Clinton from the historic Democratic Party bases of Black voters, Latino voters, and women voters. Clinton may have won the electoral vote, but the balance of forces ensured the ruling class would gamble on Trump. Trump's base of white workers and petty business elites angered by thirty years of monopoly capitalist assault are more of a threat at the moment than the millions of Democratic party voters who are now without a home. The round table of elites called the Electoral College could not afford any more damage to the Democratic Party than what transpired during the election.
So the Democratic Party is now on its deathbed and there is only one class of people willing to resurrect it: white liberals. A large section of the Democratic Party base wanted Bernie Sanders to be their next President. They did not hold their nose for Clinton. The legitimate concerns that immigrants and oppressed people possess with Trump's racism should not be led into the bowels of the Democratic Party. Yet for white liberals, this is the ultimate mission.
MORE... Brian Cloughley: “The Greatest Achievement of Mr. Trump would be Engage in Positive Discussions with Russia and China” Arise President Trump (or Why it's not the End of the World as We Know it) Trump's sexual predator characteristics - His Grandfather was a pimp, but at least he paid the women he hired The significance of the GOP's attempted purge of Donald Trump Trump's victory has energized the white liberal section of the United States to fight back. White liberals began the process in a deep state of mourning over Clinton's loss. They then placed blame for Trump’s victory on Russia, low-voter turnout, and the white working class. White liberals have blamed everyone except Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Now, white liberals in the US hope to wage a crusade against Trump in hopes of a Democratic Party recovery. It is all too clear that their primary intention is to get ahead of the genuine forces that rejected both Trump and Clinton and lead them into the Democratic Party graveyard.
White liberals love to hide their own racism and ruling class sensibilities through a process of appeal and betrayal. They speak with the authority of moral righteousness on the one hand and the knife of oppression on the other. They talk down to the struggle of peoples oppressed by white supremacy and attempt to steer it in a way that benefits their class interests. White liberals despise the working class because they understand that there will come a day when it destroys the system that they profit so handsomely from.
White liberals usually originate from the ruling class, the managerial class, and various stripes of the professionalized sector. Their class has ordained themselves the true leaders of "human rights" based on race, gender, and sexual equality. However, White liberals speak of human rights on the basis of a complete abandonment of the material struggle for liberation. In other words, the white liberal is the ultimate counterrevolutionary force in US society. It has wielded the so-called struggle for human rights as a weapon to prevent the emergence of class-consciousness among the oppressed and its genuine leaders.
The 2016 elections have shown that the broad class arrangement of white liberals is indeed in crisis and only has itself to blame. White liberals cannot acknowledge that it was their brand of politics that led to the Trump moment. Their dominance over the left in the US ensured that no organized force existed strong enough to challenge the ills of capitalist decline. Millions of people voted for Sanders based on his demands for material relief. Millions of people voted for Trump for the similar reasons, his racism and sexism notwithstanding. Whatever racism and sexism existed in his rhetoric could not "trump" the fact that the trade deals and wars he spoke out against in part drove ordinary people to vote for him. If the Trump base wanted racism and sexism primarily, they would of voted for Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush in the primaries.
So White liberal anger about Trump's victory is not directed at sexism, racism, or any other aspect of Trump's politics. White liberals are afraid of the sharpening contradictions of US society that threaten to squeeze them out of their privileged position under the racist and capitalist order. Millions of people are now asking where white liberalism was during the massive loss in working class income and wealth that occurred over the last forty years? Where were the White liberals during the endless wars that have been waged even more fervently by Democratic Party Administrations? Where were the White liberals during the erection of the largest police and prison state in the world, the institutions that murder and incarcerate Black Americans in record numbers and deport undocumented peoples at historic rates?
The answer is that white liberals were supporting the US capitalist system's assault on the oppressed every step of the way. This is what they are trying to hide with their anger over Trump. We cannot defeat Trump's white nationalism if the white liberal is not defeated with just as much vigor. White liberal ideology has a history of infecting social movements. As it spreads, it breeds the germs of Democratic Party control over these movements. But the Democratic Party made its own bed by acting as the more effective evil of the ruling class. If a powerful movement of the working class is to emerge in the age of Trump, then we must fight hard against the white liberal forces working hard to resuscitate the Democratic Party and build an independent party of our own. | 1 |
A faction of military forces in Turkey attempted a coup on Friday night, but within a few hours it appeared to be faltering. Here is a list of the key players involved in, or held responsible for, the night’s events. • The Turkish Armed Forces Turkey’s military is a trusted institution, seen as the guardian of the secularist principles on which modern Turkey was founded. It has intervened in national politics a number of times, including three previous coups since 1960, and, as recently as 1997, it maneuvered to oust an Islamist prime minister. Historically, the military has opposed interventions abroad, but it is not known how its senior officers, many of them appointed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, feel about his recent interventions in Syria. • President Erdogan An Islamist and populist who has been the dominant figure in the country for more than a decade, Mr. Erdogan came to power promising to reform the economy and give the country’s rural, more religious majority a bigger voice in the capital. More recently, he has grown increasingly autocratic and alienated many Turks as he cracked down on protests, took control of the media and renewed a war with Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast. • Fethullah Gulen Mr. Gulen is a former imam and onetime ally of Mr. Erdogan who now lives in exile in the United States, and has an extensive following in Turkey. He has promoted a more liberal stream of Islam, and his ideas are popular with the country’s police and intelligence establishments, though not necessarily the military. Mr. Erdogan accused Mr. Gulen and his supporters, whom Mr. Erdogan has called terrorists, of being responsible for the coup he has repeatedly accused Mr. Gulen of plotting against him in the past. The Gulen movement has denied any involvement in the coup attempt and denounced any military intervention in Turkey’s domestic affairs. • Republican People’s Party The leftist main opposition party is considered less than the governing Justice and Development Party. It has been trying to find a way to break Mr. Erdogan’s political grip, but it would not be likely to benefit from a coup in the past, the military has tended to sideline leaders of all political parties when it took power. In a statement, party leaders spoke out against the coup. • NATO and the United States Turkey has been an American ally and a NATO member since 1952. Though the Obama administration has criticized Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on civil society in Turkey, the United States sees him as a stabilizing and mainly leader in a volatile region. The coalition fighting the Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq makes heavy use of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. | 0 |
The smile that spread across my face a few seconds after the Zaffre Quartet began the rousing finale of Mozart’s String Quartet in G was the first hint that I’d stumbled onto something special. A few minutes later, as I glanced around my living room, my friends’ and confirmed I wasn’t the only one enjoying the music. I barely listen to classical music, so how did a live string quartet end up in my apartment on a Saturday night? As I scrolled through my Twitter feed last month, a tweet about Groupmuse caught my attention. Groupmuse, which specializes in what it calls “classical music concerts,” sees itself as offering a fairly straightforward process: Set up an event as a host, hire musicians from its site, invite friends and people who use the Groupmuse site, sit back and relax. (Or you can simply attend an event, rather than hosting.) Each attendee contributes at least $10 to compensate the performers. Millennials are Groupmuse’s largest audience. Concerts are in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle, with some elsewhere, and there are plans for nationwide expansion next year. “All you need is four chairs,” Sam Bodkin, the Groupmuse founder, said in a telephone interview. “So whether you’re under a bridge or on top of a building, we can create the great masterworks in the history of Western culture. That makes it a scalable and flexible experience that communities everywhere can gather over. ” From jazz clubs to experimental art shows, I regularly graze at the vast array of New York’s cultural buffet. And as a young black woman, I’m no stranger to navigating spaces in which I’m one of just a handful of minorities. But I still sometimes feel uncomfortable in those spaces — many of them considered highbrow cultural bubbles, even the ballet, which I love and attend every season. As with the ballet, there’s a perception that classical music isn’t the most welcoming, and certainly not the most diverse in its performers or audience members. Add to that the formal settings in which classical music is often presented, and you have the roots of my lack of interest. But if I didn’t have to leave my couch, did I have a valid excuse not to at least consider it? I made two decisions: to invite other classical music newbies, and not to listen beforehand to any of the music that would be played. The goal was to have my ears be a blank slate, even if my mind had some preconceived notions. Mr. Bodkin, who discovered classical music at 19 in a friend’s basement, offered me a few tips, highlighting the relationship between consonance and dissonance and the importance of focus and encouraging me to relinquish the idea of a linear narrative. “You do need to listen to classical music in a different way,” he said. “It’s not going to be about something specific it’s about an abstract emotional journey. ” Any jitters quickly dissipated as the quartet began the hourlong show: two sets and an intermission. During the performance, four of my guests (three friends and a Groupmuse newbie stranger) and I were treated to a swift lesson in Classical 101, with movements from works by Mozart, Haydn and Brahms. Before each piece, the cellist Julia Yang gave quick talks, providing contexts for the work and insights about the composers. As it turns out, quite a bit did resonate for me. I quickly picked up parallels between the music in my living room and sequences that accompanied the ballets I loved. Having set out the drinks before the show, playing hostess was a breeze, and not having to spend the usual energy on my attire (I opted for leggings and a long sweater) meant I could put the focus where it needed to be: on the music. However, it was the radical proximity of the guests and performers that made the evening. “I’ve never thought about classical music as emotional and soulful, and I don’t know if I would’ve if I was sitting in a different environment,” my friend Reginald Scott told me. During intermission, the violinist Zenas Hsu said, “You’re not elevated on the stage, so there’s definitely a deeper connection. ” After the performance, the quartet stayed to talk, a stark departure from the usual rush out the doors and into the subway. Orchestras and other institutions must cultivate the next generation of loyal patrons if they are to remain culturally relevant and financially stable. Their pitches land in the email inboxes of millennials like myself on a regular basis: Join a young patrons group and receive insider perks. In all of their appeals, there’s a constant: You have to go to them. Groupmuse works because, like many apps and tech it has shifted (and in some cases inverted) ideas around the delivery and consumption of goods and services. Not so different than Spotify, here, the music comes right to you. “Contemporary classical music patrons have done an absolutely invaluable service in preserving this art form, but institutional change is hard,” Mr. Bodkin said. “We’re creating the next generation of classical music listeners and the New York Philharmonic will be there to benefit from that. ” As my concert evening drew to a close and I cleared away the wine glasses, I was already thinking about hosting another Groupmuse. And who knows, maybe I’ll get dressed up and see a show at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. For now, though, I’ll start with a Spotify playlist. | 1 |
An Army veteran with a hatred of black men claimed responsibility on Wednesday for using a sword to fatally stab a homeless man in Manhattan this week, the police said, calling the attack random and racially motivated. The suspect, James Harris Jackson, 28, of Baltimore, surrendered to the police shortly after midnight on Wednesday, a day after the victim, Timothy Caughman, 66, stumbled into a police station bleeding from stab wounds to his chest and back, Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan South detectives, told reporters at Police Headquarters. The police arrested him on a charge of murder, but the chief said they wanted to upgrade the charge by classifying it a hate crime. “I’m the person you’re looking for,” Chief Aubry said Mr. Jackson told police officers when he walked into the police substation in Times Square. He had recognized himself in an image from a security camera broadcast on the news Tuesday evening, the chief said. Mr. Jackson told the police that he had chosen New York City to make a statement by attacking black men. He told investigators where he discarded the murder weapon, a sword with an blade, and told them he was carrying knives in his pocket. Chief Aubry said the police had collected video evidence that seemed to corroborate Mr. Jackson’s account of the evening. “He was very forthcoming with us,” Chief Aubry said. “He knew what he was doing when he was coming up here, and he relayed all of that information to us. ” The attack on Mr. Caughman, who was black, came as cities across the country, especially New York City, are experiencing a rise in hate crimes since the presidential election. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has condemned the attacks, denounced the killing, which he said appeared to be based solely on Mr. Caughman’s race. “More than an unspeakable human tragedy, this is an assault on what makes this the greatest city in the world: our inclusiveness and our diversity,” he said. The victim, who lived in a homeless shelter on West 36th Street, and was an avid recycler, according to his Twitter profile, had been sifting through the trash around the corner on 9th Avenue, in front of a row of restaurants, when he was accosted by a man in a dark coat around 11:15 p. m. on Monday, the police said. The assailant argued with Mr. Caughman before stabbing the victim, according to the police, who declined to say what words they exchanged. After the attack, Mr. Jackson, the police said, threw the sword in a nearby garbage can and went into a restaurant restroom to wash the blood off. Mr. Caughman walked two blocks to the Midtown South Precinct, where he arrived about 10 minutes after the attack. Officers summoned an ambulance to take him to Bellevue Hospital where Mr. Caughman was later pronounced dead. The police on Tuesday released an image of the suspect wearing a black coat and walking away from the scene of the stabbing. Around 12:30 a. m. on Wednesday, Mr. Jackson had turned himself in. Mr. Jackson was handcuffed and dressed in a Tyvek suit to protect evidence on his body when investigators escorted him out of the Midtown South Precinct on Wednesday afternoon. He appeared subdued as he was taken to his arraignment in criminal court in Manhattan, which was not expected to take place until later in the day. The police found two knives in Mr. Jackson’s coat, and later recovered the sword he said he used to kill Mr. Caughman, Chief Aubry said. Investigators were also seeking a warrant to search his cellphone and laptop. Mr. Jackson had a manifesto explaining his desire and plans that he had wanted to deliver to The New York Times, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the investigation is continuing. Mr. Jackson harbored a hatred of black men for more than a decade and came to New York last weekend to attack them, Chief Aubry said. Officials did not say if they knew what had triggered his animosity. Investigators were beginning to plumb his background, including any criminal history or mental health issues, the chief said. Mr. Jackson returned from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011 and was stationed in Germany before he was discharged, according to information posted on his father’s Facebook page. It is not clear when he was discharged or under what circumstances. An Army spokeswoman did not return an email seeking comment. Calls to numbers listed for his parents in Maryland were not returned on Wednesday. Surveillance video recorded before the fatal attack showed Mr. Jackson following another black man around Midtown though he did not do anything to the man, the police said. “We’re very fortunate that it stopped at one, and it wasn’t more,” Chief Aubry said. | 1 |
Oil prices rise globally amid glut woes November 03, 2016 A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Oil prices rose globally Thursday as an attack on a Nigerian pipeline and momentum from a five-week low. Brent crude trading up 48 cents, or 1 percent, at $47.34 a barrel. U.S. crude up 40 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $45.74 per barrel. Futures have not recovered to levels traded in October Stockpiles of oil in the United States have risen to record amount of 14 million barrels. Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank: “Following a host of negative news, which culminated with another erratic U.S. inventory report, oil has stabilized and moved higher, driven by short-covering and the sense that it may have become too pessimistic about an OPEC deal being reached.” London broker PVM: "There is a massive market-share battle going on between Russia and Middle Eastern oil producers that sees Saudi oil ending up in Poland and Russian crude in traditional OPEC markets in the Far East.” "Last but definitely not least ... Russia is in dire economic difficulty and needs cash."
(LONDON, UK) Oil prices rose on Thursday, supported by news of an attack on a Nigerian pipeline and moving up off a five-week low reached the previous session when U.S. crude stocks data compounded doubts that a glut in global oil supplies could be eroded.
Brent crude was trading up 48 cents, or 1 percent, at $47.34 a barrel by 1200 GMT. U.S. crude was up 40 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $45.74 per barrel.
Prices were underpinned by concerns about supply disruptions after militants in Nigeria's southern Niger Delta oil hub attacked a pipeline operated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Wednesday. | 0 |
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Far too often, artificial sweeteners replace one addictive substance with another. Recently, The Pepsi Corporation announced that it is pledging to cut sugar from its products, raising the percentage of its single-serving beverages with 100 or fewer calories to 66 percent by 2025. Currently, that percentage is less than 40.
How are they planning to do this while still manufacturing and marketing a profitable addictive drink? Artificial sweeteners. Last year, responding to changing tastes, Pepsi pledged to reduce the number of their products with the artificial sweetener Aspartame in them. However, in September they actually re-introduced Aspartame into several products. Because the market craves that sweet taste and so long as that is the case profitable flavor companies will figure out how to meet that demand.
The huge problem for people trying to lose weight is that artificial sweeteners undermine that goal. I find they are more dangerous than sugary drinks because it is easy for people to think they are getting a freebie—something sweet that will not impact their weight. How many chronically overweight people do you know who live on diet beverages?
What is happening? …Well, a few things.
First, when the sweet taste hits the tongue the body cues up the insulin response system, same as for sugar. Only, within minutes, the body is flooded with insulin, but there are no calories for that insulin to process. This breaks the body’s feedback mechanism and contributes to insulin resistance and Type-II diabetes.
The added danger of anything that elevates the body’s insulin level is that we now know insulin blocks the hormone leptin in the brain. Leptin is critical for weight loss. It is the hormone that signals the body that it is full and needs to get moving. When leptin is blocked, the body feels relentlessly hungry and lethargic—and there is no amount of caffeinated diet cola that will fix that. Artificial sweeteners also put the body through the same high and insulin crash, making the body crave more sugar or caffeine to wake back up. Anything that sets you up to leave you feeling wanting is ultimately going to sabotage your weight goals.
Second, drinking artificial sweeteners keeps cravings alive. Cravings are a function of a brain that has been overstimulated by sugar to the point that it has taken some pleasure receptors offline to cope. This is a neurological process called downregulation and you only have to eat the average amount of sugar Americans consume, 22 teaspoons daily, for three weeks for it to happen. The remaining receptors in the brain’s nucleus accumbens then demand more sugar just to stimulate them back to baseline functioning and now you have a sugar addiction. Artificial sweeteners do not heal that cycle. The sweet flavor jacks the brain the same way and triggers the same neurological response: MORE. The brain demands more.
Therefore, the final result of eating artificial sweeteners should come as no surprise. Studies show that people who eat artificial sweeteners will eat more sugar later when it is offered, AND more total calories. Which makes sense. The body received a message that calories were coming, but none came. The next time calories are on offer the body is going to consume as many possible—and try to hold onto them. Because it is now nervous about your food source.
Remember, we may live in a land of plenty, but for the majority of our species’ existence food was scarce. Our bodies operate from that place. In addition, when leptin is blocked by elevated insulin we are primed to be looking to consume calories anyway.
Ultimately, I do not advocate the consumption of artificially sweetened beverages for my Bright Line Eating boot camp members because they keep the brain oriented around and expecting that fix. In order for the brain to heal from sugar addiction, the cycle has to be broken.
The good news is if allowed to heal, receptors do replenish. Cravings diminish. Baseline insulin levels drop, and leptin gets back on board to make us feel full and eager to be active.
I try to encourage people to think of Aspartame, NutraSweet, and Saccharine, not as free treats, but as methadone. They are simply an additive substitute that fully keeps the addiction alive and prevents you from living how I want all of my Bright Line Eaters to live—Happy, Thin and, most of all, Free.
Written by Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D.
(Edited by Cherese Jackson)
Sources:
Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free
Fortune: PepsiCo Sets a Global Target to Reduce Sugar in Its Soft Drinks
Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D. is a psychology professor, a brain and cognitive scientist, and an expert in the psychology of eating. She is President of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and CEO of Bright Line Eating Solutions, a company dedicated to sharing the psychology and neurology of sustainable weight loss and helping people achieve it. Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free (Hay House, March 2017).
Photo Credits:
Top Image Courtesy of Susan Peirce Thompson
Featured Image Courtesy of Mike Mozart – Flickr License artificial sweetner , Pepsi , sugar | 1 |
Cyrus Mistry speaks out, says TATA removal didn’t hurt as much as punny headlines on it Posted on Tweet
Ousted TATA group chairman Cyrus Mistry finally spoke out regarding the development, terming that while getting the boot did hurt , it was nowhere in comparison to what he felt after reading dozens of pun-filled headlines over his name and ouster.
“What the hell, yaar ? Whatever I pick up, all I read is: Mystery over Mistry’s ouster; Che-Mistry no more, TATA group sacks chairman; Mist yet to clear on why Mistry was ousted, TATA says tata to Mistry. I can’t take this anymore! Please stop. I can always find another job or even become a chairman of some other company if lady luck favors me, but will these Mistry puns ever end? I’ve had enough of this pun-ishment!” the ex-chairman cried out to The UnReal Times . The businessman was soon supported by Sixth Sense scientist Pranav Mistry, who tweeted, “I feel you, bro!”
The mainstream media, however, shot back at Mistry, asking him to take a chill pill. “Sigh-rus Mistry clearly not happy over some witty puns, eh? ;)” tweeted Times Group chairman Vineet Jain. Jain’s tweet was soon followed by rival newspaper The Hindu publisher, N Ram’s tweet: “About time Cyrus gulps in some Citrus juice to calm himself. Ratan Tata’s right about the intolerance part – it’s coming from his own ex-chairman!”
An upset Mistry mentioned that sooner or later, he would have to change his name if things continue this way. “The last thing I want now is Cyrus Broacha meeting me and the media saying ‘Cyrus broaches Mistry!’ AAARGH!” an angry Mistry cried. He was, however, consoled by actor Neil Nitin Mukesh. “Be happy you have a popular 2-word name and not a 3-word one. That’s much, much, much better! Seriously, seriously, seriously!” Neil Nitin Mukesh reportedly told him.
Media-appointed BJP MP, the VHP’s Sadhvi Prachi, who usually asks people to go to Pakistan, got into a bit of a lighthearted mood herself. “If Cyrus doesn’t like what happened, he can go to Cyprus!” the Sadhvi exclaimed. The ex-chairman was also approached by Sports Minister Vijay Goel, who told him, “I can never get a selfie with Miley Cyrus. So let me at least get one with Mistry Cyrus.”
Mistry’s biggest consolation and shoulder to cry on, though, came all the way from South Africa, from the quarters of wicket keeper Quinton De Kock. “I can’t tell you how it feels each time I trend on Twitter and see the tweets about me. Trust me, you’re much better off. You just can’t imagine how cocky some tweeters can get. Oops!” the keeper is supposed to have said. Tweet About Ashwin Kumar
1 of the proud columnists of URT, former co-editor of URT Tamil, amateur musician, Real Harris Jayaraj devotee, UnReal T. Rajendar fanatic, passionate about stopping female foeticide. | 0 |
Мир » Азия » Ближний Восток Ближний Восток превратился в самую большую мировую головоломку, части которой уже никогда не сойдутся в изначальный рисунок. Потому что региональная специфика, помноженная на западные амбиции, приводит к полному провалу и неразберихе, которые мы имеем сегодня в Сирии. И пока Америка в предвыборной агонии усиленно разбрасывается грязным бельем, мы рассмотрим вектор развития российско-турецких отношений, на фоне сирийского конфликта вкупе с западными потугами сохранить демократический имидж. 0 комментариев 0 поделились Фото: AP
Сделать это, скажу я вам, непросто, потому что политические перипетии — и так явление не для слабонервных, но когда в одном котле замешаны Россия, Турция, США, полуразвалившаяся Сирия, курды, Европа, ИГИЛ (запрещенная в России террористическая организация. — Ред. ) и т. д., то здесь одной статьей не обойтись…
Начнем с крайней обеспокоенности Анкары по поводу активной поддержки курдов Вашингтоном. И обеспокоенность эта столь велика, что подталкивает Турцию к военному сотрудничеству с Москвой. Вплоть до того, что некоторые российские политики на радостях наивно предположили, что Турция выйдет из НАТО. Это вполне характерно для российско-турецких отношений, когда из полной безоговорочной "эйфории" катастрофически безнадежных отношений впадаем в эйфорию чуть ли не идеальных. Но это лишь крупный план нового витка взаимодействия России и Турции, а на заднем плане можно рассмотреть много моментов, которые остаются за кадром.
Мы знаем, что в данный момент действия Турции в Сирии совместно с сирийской свободной армией продолжаются, пусть и не так активно, как в начале операции. На то есть две причины. Во-первых, Турцию в Сирии жестко контролируют США, а во-вторых, она уже подходит к тем стратегическим точкам, где ИГИЛ держится намного крепче (например, Эль-Баб), чем в других районах, откуда они уже ушли. Что касается города Дабыка, то это отдельная история, имеющая для ИГИЛ особый идеологический характер, так как, по исламской религии, священный бой между мусульманами и неверными должен пройти именно в этом населенном пункте. И то, по последней информации, Дабык уже находится под контролем Турции совместно со свободной сирийской армией (что-то очень быстро закончился священный бой).
Также Запад четко обозначил, что не хочет участия Турции в операциях по спасению Ракии и Мосула. Одним словом, без слез на все эти рокировки не взглянешь. Еще пару месяцев назад действия Турции в регионе были ограничены из-за России, но уже сегодня свобода действий наступила благодаря России. И все это вопреки воле военного союза, в котором Турция находится. Турция осталась вне игры на Ближнем Востоке из-за России, но и вернулась она туда благодаря той же России. И то, что сегодня она может остаться вне игры уже из-за США, кардинально меняет дело. А такие опасения на сей счет не безосновательны. И если Турция будет сопротивляться, ей, очевидно, это дорого обойдется, и тут даже Россия не сможет помочь.
По сути, для Турции ничего не меняется, то она была заложницей ситуации с Россией, то сейчас она может стать заложницей ситуации с США. А за всем этим стоит только одна проблема — вечный конфликт с курдами и нежелание решить этот вопрос в рамках общепринятых демократических основ. Нам не раз приходилось наблюдать, что курдская проблема подталкивает Турцию на необдуманные поступки и действия. Особенно когда курды выходят за локальные рамки в надежде на поддержку извне. А когда сама Хиллари Клинтон на почти решающих предвыборных дебатах открыто заявляет, что будет поставлять оружие и поддерживать курдов в регионе (а это значит, что вопрос разделения Сирии пока еще открыт) и когда весь Запад, так или иначе, делает ставки на курдов, — это, конечно, не может не отразиться на поведении Эрдогана.
В связи с этим Эрдоган решил поменять свою риторику в отношении Асада. И отнюдь не только из-за того, что на этом настаивает Россия и чтобы угодить ей. Мы должны понять, что Турция сделала это, чтобы проучить США. Если быть честными, то все понимают, что экономические отношения между нашими странами имеют обоснованные причины, а политическое сближение чаще всего строится на противоречиях с другими странами.
Проучить Америку Турция страстно желает из-за Гюлена, которого Вашингтон отказывается выдавать, и из-за активной поддержки США курдов в регионе. Как только эти обстоятельства изменятся, изменится и все остальное… Еще одно раздражающее Эрдогана явление — это невозможность уследить за переменчивыми настроениями США. То Америка поддерживает иракских курдов во главе с Барзани, то теперь РПК. То она хочет, чтобы именно Турция участвовала в операциях под Мосулом и Раккой, то, наоборот, считает, что Турция там вообще не нужна. И это не что иное, как стремление к деморализации Эрдогана.
А в целом, все, что сегодня происходит с курдами в регионе, сбивает с толку многих, кому судьба курдов небезразлична. И многие россияне, в том числе, ровным счетом не понимают регионального расклада по курдам. То курды были, так сказать, в топе в России и были чуть ли не главной темой после Асада, то вновь канули в историческое и информационное небытие. При этом надо понимать, что все эти скачкообразные противоречивые процессы чисто конъюнктурные. И никто не знает, чем все это закончится. Ясно одно: в ближневосточном регионе ничего уже не будет, как прежде. И по той же логике — как не будет единственного выигравшего, так же и единственного проигравшего. И тех и других будет несколько. Понятия победы и поражения в контексте Сирии — явления коллективные. И выиграют, скорее всего, те, кто возьмет в свою команду курдов.
При этом все понимают: как бы ни сложились обстоятельства, нужен консенсус между ведущими и второстепенными игроками. Почему консенсус? Да потому, что или консенсус, или третья мировая война. И это надо делать пока не пройдена точка невозврата. И еще потому, что, наверное, никому не захочется остаться наедине с экономическими и социальными последствиями этой разрушительной войны. Хотя обострение отношений между крупными державами, скорее всего, продолжится до выборов в США, а потом пойдет на спад, как это не раз было в истории.
Но при условии, если бы год назад Россия взяла под свой полный контроль не только Асада, но и курдов (ведь в Сирии есть две реальные силы — это Асад и курды) и вплотную занялась строительством хотя бы маленькой военной базы и сопутствующих инфраструктур, которые сейчас вместо России вполне успешно возводят Соединенные Штаты в сирийском Курдистане, то вообще бы никаких вопросов не возникло. Сейчас американцы либо помалкивали бы в тряпочку, либо тихо ретировались в сторону Ирака. А сегодня момент упущен и, увы, придется с американцами считаться.
Высоцкий пел: "Как мы место шаха проворонили… Нам этого потомки не простят". Скорее всего, на тот момент Россия не хотела раздражать ни Тегеран, ни Анкару, ни Дамаск. Я считаю, что Россия этот тонкий момент с курдами пропустила зря. И в этом случае с Турцией сегодня все было бы так же хорошо, как сейчас. И даже лучше, потому что и Москва, и Анкара, в отличие от США, реально заботятся о территориальной целостности Сирии. Именно поэтому на данном этапе такой расклад устраивал бы всех.
В сложившейся ситуации курдам все равно, конечно, но России и Турции было бы приятнее, если бы в свой совместный союз они смогли включить курдов. Тогда я был бы спокоен за дальнейшую судьбу российско-турецких отношений. Как я говорил неоднократно, непредсказуемость турецкой внешней политики (на что очень часто жалуются в России) кроется именно в нерешенности курдского вопроса. Хотя все еще не поздно. Вернее, лучше поздно, чем никогда.
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Man Wearing ‘Jewmerica’ T-Shirt Never Dreamed He’d See This Day SAND SPRINGS, OK—Feeling a mixture of intense pride and abject disbelief after news networks called the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, local man Terry Williams, who is currently wearing a T-shirt adorned with the word “Jewmerica,” told reporters late Tuesday night that he never dreamed he’d see this day during his lifetime. Nation Throws Off Tyrannical Yoke Of Moderate Respect For Women WASHINGTON—Political experts are hailing Donald Trump’s historic presidential victory early Wednesday as a resounding declaration that the nation is finally ready to cast off the tyrannical yoke of moderate respect for women that has suffocated the citizens of this country for generations. Nation Elects First Black-Hearted President WASHINGTON—Shattering a barrier long thought unbreakable in the United States, Donald Trump, the 70-year-old billionaire real estate mogul from New York, became the first black-hearted man in history to win the American presidency, in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Nation’s Optimists Need To Shut The Fuck Up Right Now WASHINGTON—Saying their rosy attitude about the state of the election was not helping anything given what is currently transpiring, sources confirmed Tuesday night that the nation’s optimists need to seriously shut the fuck up as soon as humanly fucking possible. Anderson Cooper Informs Viewers CNN Just Minutes Away From First Significant Piece Of Information Of Day NEW YORK—Roughly two hours into the network’s live nine-hour-long “Election Night In America” programming block, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper informed viewers Tuesday evening he is only moments away from delivering the first piece of genuinely significant information of the day. | 0 |
Theme: 9/11 &‘War on Terrorism’ , Crimes against Humanity , US NATO War Agenda Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting: “ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country. We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them. The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK, etc. Everyone knows that here. American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone. Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank. Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions. I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure… they behead babies and rape young kids. They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand. Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government. Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president… support Ron Paul or Rand or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing..if they attack and I think they will….it will be hell. Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates… and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!? American people…you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for.the.death you bring almost everywhere. Ask the Iraqis…the Afghans…the Pakistanis…the Palestinians…the Syrians…the Macedonians and Serbs…the Libyans…the Somalis…the Yemenis ….all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars, Enough wars. Use diplomacy..dialogue…help..not force.” Consistent testimonies from Syrians, as well as well-documented, open-source Western sources, and historical memory, all serve to reinforce the accuracy of the aforementioned testimony. Syrians are living the horror brought to them by the criminal West. They can not afford the complacency of shrugging their shoulders in indecision, not when their lives and their ancient civilization is being threatened by Western-paid terrorist mercenaries of the worst kind. “Our” proxies, slit throats, chop heads, and take no prisoners as we waffle in indecision, ignore empirical evidence, and take the comfortable easy road of believing the labyrinth of lies promulgated by Western media messaging. The veil of comfortable confusion, nested in an unconscious belief that our government knows best or that it is patriotic to believe the lies and fabrications implicit in the hollow words of politicians (who no longer represent us) and the false pronouncements of Imperial messengers, is concealing an overseas holocaust . Western societies are rotting from the inside out because of these lies and this barbarity. We are protecting a criminal cabal of corporate globalists who do not serve our interests and never will. Our democracies, which we should be protecting, have long disappeared – except in the hollow words of newspaper stenographers. Instead we are supporting transnational corporate elites and their delusional projects. Poverty and unemployment are all soaring beneath the fakery of government pronouncements, as the public domain evaporates beneath words like “efficiency” or the “economy” — all false covers that serve to enrich elites and destroy us. Internal imperialism at home is a faded replica of the foreign imperialism abroad. As countries are destroyed, and its peoples are slaughtered — think Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and others — by abhorrent Western proxies — public institutions are contaminated, and ultimately replaced by parasitical “privatized” facsimiles. Public banking is looted and destroyed in favour of transnational banksterism, World Bank funding, and IMF usury. Food security is destroyed and replaced by biotech tentacles and engineered dependencies on cash crops and unhealthy food. Currencies are destroyed, sanctions are imposed, and the unknown, unseen hand of totalitarian control imposes itself, amidst the cloud of diversions and confusions, aided by comprador regimes, oligarch interests, and shrugging domestic populations. Syria refuses to submit. That is why the West is taught to hate her, and the rest of the world learns to love and respect her. Yet, Syria’s struggles are our struggles. Syria represents international law, stability, and integrity: the same values that western peoples overtly cherish but stubbornly reject, as our countries wilt beneath suffocating veils of lies and delusions . I support Syria, because I respect what remains of international law. I support Syria because I reject Wahhabism, Sharia law, and terrorism. I support Syria because I reject the undemocratic, transnational oligarchies that are subverting our once flourishing, now dead, democracies. I reject the lies of our propagandizing media , the hollow words of our politicians, and the fake “humanitarian” messaging that demonizes non-belligerent countries and their populations. In the name of justice, humanity, and the rule of law, I support the elected government of Syria led by its President, Bashar al-Assad. Syria, an ancient cradle of civilization, is leading the way towards a better future for all of us. All we have to do is open our eyes. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Mark Taliano , Global Research, 2016 NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS | 1 |
An Ohio bus driver’s quick thinking last month saved a suicidal woman’s life, Daily Mail reports. Damone Hudson was crossing the Great Miami River in downtown Dayton, OH with his bus when he spotted a woman standing on the other side of the bridge’s railing. RTA bus surveillance video shows Hudson stopping to urge the woman to get away from the edge. “Hey miss, why don’t you come back on this side of the rail for me?” Damone said as he got off the bus. He then told the woman, “Ma’am, you look like you’re having a bad day, you know. Can I give you a hug?” Hudson stayed with the woman and talked to her until authorities arrived. Once they arrived, the woman got off the ledge and Hudson went back to his route. “Everyone’s going through something,” he told Fox 45. “Even if you are, just reach out and try to touch someone, even if it’s in a small way. ” RTA will recognize Hudson for his good work at the upcoming RTA Board meeting on March 17. Follow Breitbart. tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo | 0 |
A recall effort against a California judge was announced on Monday in a sexual assault case at Stanford University that ignited public outrage after the defendant was sentenced to a mere six months in jail and his father complained that his son’s life had been ruined for “20 minutes of action” fueled by alcohol and promiscuity. In court, the victim had spoken out against the inequities of the legal process, arguing that the trial, the sentencing and the legal system’s approach to sexual assault — from the defense lawyer’s questions about what she wore that night to her attacker’s sentence — were irrevocably marred by male and class privilege. The case, which had made headlines after the suspect was found guilty in March, began to seize the public’s attention anew after a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, Aaron Persky, on Thursday handed the defendant, Brock Allen Turner, 20, what many critics denounced as a lenient sentence, including three years’ probation, for three felony counts of sexual assault. According to the judge: “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others. ” The next day, BuzzFeed published the full courtroom statement by the woman who was attacked. The statement, a cri de coeur against the role of privilege in the trial and the way the legal system deals with sexual assault, was provided by the victim and has since gone viral. By Monday, it had been viewed more than five million times on the BuzzFeed site. Also on Monday, the CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield spent part of an hour looking into the camera and reciting the entire statement live on the air. The unidentified victim, who was not a student of the university in Palo Alto, Calif. was attacked while visiting the campus, where she attended a fraternity party. In the statement, she spoke of drinking at the party, but not remembering the assault in January 2015. She said she was told she had been found behind a Dumpster, and learned from news reports that witnesses had discovered her attacker lying on top of her unconscious, partly clothed body. The witnesses intervened and held the attacker for the police. The judge, identified by The Guardian as a Stanford alumnus, handed Mr. Turner, a champion swimmer, far less than the maximum 14 years after he was convicted, pointing out that he had no “significant” prior offenses, he had been affected by the intense media coverage, and “there is less moral culpability attached to the defendant, who is . .. intoxicated,” The Guardian said. The victim said Mr. Turner had admitted drinking, but still had not acknowledged any fault in the attack, insisting the episode had been consensual. She said the court privileged his over her own, and in the end declined to punish him severely because the authorities considered the disruption to his studies and athletic career at a prestigious university when determining his sentence. She wrote: Michele Dauber, a law professor and sociologist at Stanford, said Monday that she was part of a committee that was organizing a recall challenge to Judge Persky, whose position is an elected one. And by Tuesday, a Change. org petition calling for the judge’s removal had garnered over 240, 000 supporters. Professor Dauber said the judge had misapplied the law by granting Mr. Turner probation and by taking his age, academic achievement and alcohol consumption into consideration. “If you’re going to declare that a perpetrator is an unusual case, then you’re saying to women on college campuses that they don’t deserve the full protection of the law in the state of California,” the professor said. On Sunday, Professor Dauber posted to Twitter a statement read to the court by the defendant’s father, Dan Turner. Mr. Turner’s father said that his son should not do jail time for the sexual assault, which he referred to as “the events” and “20 minutes of action” that were not violent. He said that his son suffered from depression and anxiety in the wake of the trial and argued that having to register as a sex offender — and the loss of his appetite for food he once enjoyed — was punishment enough. Brock Turner also lost a swimming scholarship to Stanford and has given up on his goal of competing at the Olympics. “I was always excited to buy him a big steak to grill or to get his favorite snack for him,” Dan Turner wrote. “Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist. These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. ” In a statement, the Santa Clara, Calif. district attorney, Jeff Rosen, said the sentence “did not fit the crime,” and he called Brock Turner, who withdrew from Stanford, a “predatory offender” who refused to take responsibility or show remorse. “Campus rape is no different than rape,” Mr. Rosen said. “Rape is rape. ” In an editorial, The San Jose Mercury News called the sentence “a slap on the wrist” and “a setback for the movement to take campus rape seriously. ” Judge Persky did not respond to a request for comment sent to Santa Clara County Superior Court on Monday. Stanford University said on Monday that it “takes the issue of sexual assault extremely seriously” and was proud of two students who intervened to stop Mr. Turner’s attack. “There is still much work to be done, not just here, but everywhere, to create a culture that does not tolerate sexual violence in any form and a judicial system that deals appropriately with sexual assault cases,” the university said in a statement. In his statement, Dan Turner said his son planned to use his time on probation to educate college students “about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity” so that he could “give back to society in a net positive way. ” The victim, however, rebuked that proposal: | 1 |
Donald J. Trump on Monday invoked comparisons to the Cold War era in arguing that the United States must wage an unrelenting ideological fight if it is to defeat the Islamic State. He said he would temporarily suspend immigration from “the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world” and judge allies solely on their participation in America’s mission to root out Islamic terrorism. In a speech at Youngstown State University in Ohio, a critical swing state where polls show him trailing Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump combined old vows to seize Middle Eastern oil fields with the announcement of a series of new, if still vague, proposals to change America’s battlefield tactics. “Just as we won the Cold War, in part by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of radical Islam,” he said. He again tried to change his politically inflammatory approach to immigration, replacing his 2015 vow to bar Muslims from entering the United States with a new commitment to bar anyone from parts of the world where terrorism breeds. Once again, he did not name those countries, or say whether citizens of longtime allies where terrorists have plotted and executed attacks — Germany, France and Belgium among them — would be included. Mr. Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the border with Mexico, also said he would call for “extreme vetting” of immigrants that would include requiring them to respond to a questionnaire with an “ideological test. ” Over all, he appeared to be arguing for the kind of foreign policy that President George W. Bush adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But over time, that approach ran into complications: China and Russia used the fight against terrorism to crack down on Muslim minorities. And the Bush administration eventually discovered that a approach, measuring countries almost exclusively on their commitment to fighting Islamic terrorists, left it little leverage when their partners in counterterrorism took other steps opposed to American interests — from the Chinese claiming portions of the South China Sea to increasing Russian threats against former Soviet states. Monday’s speech represented another attempt by Mr. Trump to focus on issues after a rocky period in his campaign, much as he did last Monday with a speech on the economy. He laid the blame for the rise of Islamic extremism on President Obama and Mrs. Clinton. He said they made “a catastrophic mistake” in “the reckless way in which they pulled out” of Iraq. He charged that Mrs. Clinton compounded the error by attempting to “build a democracy in Libya. ” He argued — accurately — that Mrs. Clinton had been a vocal proponent of the American intervention in Libya in 2011, which Mr. Obama has repeatedly acknowledged was the most foreign policy move in his nearly eight years in office. He also charged that “Hillary Clinton wants to be America’s Angela Merkel,” a reference to the German chancellor. Germany has taken in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria, in which fighting between forces loyal to President Bashar rebels opposed to his rule and Islamic State jihadists has claimed 400, 000 lives. Mr. Trump offered no criticism of Mr. Assad, but criticized the Obama administration for advocating the removal of the Syrian leader and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who was deposed in the first blush of the Arab Spring, because doing so took out the strongmen who kept the lid on violence in the region. He pledged to form a new partnership with Israel, Egypt and Jordan to try to stop the spread of terrorism, including groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. He also suggested that the United States would be well served by joining forces with Russia against the Islamic State. And though Mr. Trump made no reference to whether he would send more American troops back to the region, that appeared to be the clear implication. The kind of relentless attacks on the Islamic State he advocates — along with taking and holding the oil fields, which may well be a violation of international law — would require a considerable presence by American troops or their allies, and foreign bases to launch the drones. Peter Feaver, a former Bush administration official who handled Iraq strategy and now teaches at Duke University, and who has signed two letters from national security officials opposing Mr. Trump’s candidacy, praised Mr. Trump for giving a “surprisingly serious” speech on counterterrorism. But he also said that “given how vehemently Trump has denounced Bush’s national security team, it is striking how much of this speech depends on counterterrorism ideas developed by the Bush administration. It is not a perfect copy — we never contemplated seizing the oil for our own purposes and we were far more concerned about how rhetoric might demoralize the moderate Muslim voices we were seeking to empower. But the good parts are not new — they are imported from the Bush approach — and the new parts are not good. ” Mr. Trump did not explain how his vision of “extreme vetting” of immigrants, including an “ideological test,” would be enforced, or how it would be different from when prospective terrorists lie on questionnaires now. But he made clear that he views the recent terrorist attacks in the United States through the prism of immigration, pointing out that the common point between the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. and the mass attack in San Bernardino, Calif. was that they were carried out “by immigrants, or the children of immigrants. ” As part of the ideological battle against the Islamic State, he said, a Trump administration will “be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East,” and would speak out “against the horrible practice of honor killings, where women are murdered by their relatives for dressing, marrying or acting in a way that violates fundamentalist teachings. ” But he never squared that with the complexities he would confront in the Oval Office. Pakistan, where one recent honor killing occurred that Mr. Trump cited at length, is also considered a key partner in the counterterrorism fight — even though its intelligence service has, at times, been accused of supporting the Taliban. Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s policy chief, argued that Mr. Trump’s concern about respecting minority rights within the Muslim religion was not sincere. “This ‘policy’ cannot be taken seriously,” he said in a statement. “How can Trump put this forward with a straight face when he opposes marriage equality and selected as his running mate the man who signed an . G. B. T. law in Indiana? It’s a cynical ploy to escape scrutiny of his outrageous proposal to ban an entire religion from our country, and no one should fall for it. ” In his address, Mr. Trump said that if he is elected, “the era of will be ended,” implicitly criticizing efforts to restore stability to Iraq and Afghanistan. He did not note that most of that began in the Bush administration, and much of it was terminated by President Obama. Mr. Trump was clearly defensive about challenges to his claim that he had opposed the invasion of Iraq, notably a Sept. 11, 2002, comment to Howard Stern, the radio host, in which he was asked whether he supported a future invasion of the country. “Yeah, I guess so,” he responded, “I wish the first time it was done correctly,” a reference to the Persian Gulf war. The day of the invasion in 2003, he described it as a “tremendous success from a military standpoint. ” But in his speech, Mr. Trump quoted himself from an August 2004 statement to Esquire when the Iraq war was beginning to turn against the United States. “It turns out that all the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong,” he said, 17 months after the invasion. “All this for nothing. ” He noted that he had warned that “two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. ” | 1 |
Sen. Al Franken ( ) has disinvited Kathy Griffin from an upcoming book event one day after saying he would still appear with her in the wake of the controversy generated by a photograph in which the comedian posed with what looked like President Donald Trump’s decapitated head. [Griffin had been set to appear alongside Franken at an event at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on July 7 to discuss Franken’s new book, Giant of the Senate. In a Wednesday appearance on CNN, the senator said the image of Griffin holding a bloody, fake head meant to resemble that of the president was a “horrible mistake” and “had no business being in our public discourse. ” But Franken — who has previously received campaign donations from Griffin — said the July book event would continue as scheduled. Franken backtracked Thursday, saying “it would be best” for Griffin not to appear at the event. “After hearing from many Minnesotans who were rightfully offended, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be best for her not to participate in the event we had previously scheduled. I understand why Minnesotans were upset by this, and I take that very seriously,” Franken told Politico Thursday. “I believe what Kathy Griffin did was inappropriate and not something that should be anywhere in our national discourse. I consider her a friend and I’m glad she realized she crossed the line and apologized,” he added. The photo of Griffin — taken by L. A. photographer Tyler Shields — sparked a firestorm when it was first published by TMZ Tuesday morning. CNN fired the comedian from her role as of its New Year’s Eve coverage, and at least five venues have cancelled scheduled performances on her comedy tour. Griffin is set to hold a press conference Friday morning to address the “true motivation” behind the image, and respond to the “bullying” she says she had endured by the Trump family. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
ATLANTA — As a young prosecutor in the late 1990s, Sally Q. Yates sat at a conference table with a former sheriff and began picking away at his story. With an F. B. I. agent watching, Ms. Yates soon had the lawman in knots about a deposition. “I watched him as she broke him down, and he confessed that he had lied under oath,” the agent, Oliver G. Halle, now retired, recalled on Tuesday. “She can be very disarming, but underneath that disarming appearance is a woman who knows how to fight. ” As acting attorney general, Ms. Yates picked the fight of her life on Monday when she ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s executive order blocking refugees and restricting immigration to the United States. Ms. Yates became convinced, based on the president’s own statements, that he had intended to unlawfully single out Muslims, senior officials said. “We have comments from the president about what this is supposed to do,” Ms. Yates said in one meeting on Monday, according to two people involved in the discussions. She later added, “The intent was clear from the face of it. ” Ms. Yates, 56, was swiftly fired. Before she even finished packing up her office, she had become a hero to many Democrats, the face of a simmering resistance inside the government to Mr. Trump’s administration. Her firing was a politically divisive turn in a career that had, until now, earned her bipartisan praise. “She will be a hero of the American people, a hero of what’s right,” Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, said in 2015 at Ms. Yates’s confirmation hearing. “She’ll call them like she sees them, and she will be fair, and she will be just. ” While Ms. Yates was a reliably liberal voice in the Justice Department on issues of civil rights, criminal justice and sentencing, she worked her way up as a career prosecutor in Atlanta under political appointees from both parties. A native Georgian, she led prosecutions against some of the highest profile defendants in Atlanta, including former Mayor Bill Campbell, a Democrat who was accused of racketeering and tax fraud, and Eric Robert Rudolph, who set bombs at a park during the 1996 Olympic Games, a gay nightclub and two Southern abortion clinics. She also took on the leaders of an Atlanta suburb who refused to allow construction of a mosque. The Justice Department sued, and the city reversed itself. “Religious freedom requires that local government decisions impacting the exercise of that freedom be free of discrimination,” Ms. Yates said at the time. When Ms. Yates, who declined to comment on Tuesday, became deputy attorney general in 2015, she told colleagues that she had no intention of merely being a caretaker. “We’re going to run through the tape,” she often said. In Washington, her outgoing personality made her a counterpoint to her more reserved boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. At times that made Ms. Yates the face of the Justice Department in ways that caused tension with Ms. Lynch’s staff. Ms. Yates was regarded as professionally ambitious, though she has told friends that she has no interest in running for political office. Last year, Ms. Yates and Ms. Lynch earned the ire of Democrats — including many in the department — for not intervening to prohibit the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, from sending a letter to Congress in the final days of the presidential campaign. The letter raised the prospect of new and potentially damaging evidence against Hillary Clinton related to an investigation that had been closed. Nothing came of the new evidence, and Mrs. Clinton’s team says the letter cost her the presidency. Her supporters argued that Justice Department leaders were too timid to stand up to Mr. Comey. Mr. Trump’s executive order prompted a new challenge for Ms. Yates, who was serving until the Senate confirmed a new attorney general. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed and signed off on the order, but Ms. Yates believed that the department had to also consider the president’s intent, which she said appeared aimed at singling out people based on religion. Mr. Trump had promised to do as much. His campaign website still calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. ” After the decision was announced, one of his advisers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in an interview that Mr. Trump had wanted a Muslim ban but needed “the right way to do it legally. ” Mr. Trump then said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christian refugees would be given priority for entry visas to the United States. In meetings on Monday, some in the department said it should defend the order, as it normally does. Others disagreed. Prominent lawyers echoed that debate on Tuesday. Some former Justice Department officials, like Martin Lederman, praised Ms. Yates’s decision. Ms. Lynch said “her courageous leadership embodies the highest traditions of the Department of Justice. ” But others, like Jack Goldsmith, said she should have either defended the president’s order or resigned. George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general who, like Ms. Yates, served briefly as acting attorney general, said that Ms. Yates had made herself and the Justice Department “look blatantly political. ” Ms. Yates considered resigning, four current and former Justice Department officials said, but she concluded that doing so would only defer a difficult decision to a temporary successor. That dilemma was foreshadowed two years ago in her confirmation hearing, when Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who is poised to become the next attorney general, questioned whether Ms. Yates had the independent streak needed to be the Justice Department’s second in command. “If the views the president wants to execute are unlawful, should the attorney general or the deputy attorney general say no?” Mr. Sessions asked. “I believe the attorney general or deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and Constitution and give their independent legal advice to the president,” Ms. Yates replied. Shortly after 9 p. m. on Monday, roughly three hours after she ordered department lawyers not to defend the president’s position, a White House courier arrived with a copy of her dismissal letter. “Dear Deputy Attorney General Yates,” said the letter, which was signed by John DeStefano, an assistant to Mr. Trump. “I am informing you that the president has removed you from the office of Deputy Attorney General of the United States. ” | 1 |
BANGKOK — North Korea said Tuesday that it was barring all Malaysians from leaving the country until there was a “fair settlement” of a dispute over the assassination in Kuala Lumpur of Kim the half brother of North Korea’s leader. Malaysia responded in kind, with Prime Minister Najib Razak instructing the police to prevent all North Koreans from leaving Malaysia until he was assured of the safety of Malaysians in North Korea. The developments were a drastic escalation in the diplomatic dispute over Mr. Kim’s killing. The Malaysian police have said that several North Koreans are suspects. “This abhorrent act, effectively holding our citizens hostage, is in total disregard of all international law and diplomatic norms,” Mr. Najib said of North Korea’s action. Mr. Najib convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council in the evening. In its statement on Tuesday, North Korea said it would “temporarily ban the exit of Malaysian citizens” until the safety of North Korean diplomats and citizens in Malaysia is “fully guaranteed through the fair settlement of the case that occurred in Malaysia,” the Korean Central News Agency reported. It was unclear what resolution to the Kim case North Korea was seeking. But it has rejected the findings of the Malaysian police that Mr. Kim was poisoned by VX nerve agent at the Malaysian capital’s international airport on Feb. 13, and it has demanded that his body be handed over to the North Korean Embassy. The Malaysian police want to question several North Koreans in the case, including a diplomat. Malaysian officials said there were 11 Malaysians in the North who could be affected by the North Korean ban, including embassy staff members, their family and two workers for the United Nations. After the security council meeting, Mr. Najib posted on his Twitter account: “I know that the family and friends of our fellow Malaysians detained in North Korea are anxiously anticipating news of their loved ones. ” He added in a second posting: “You can rest assured that we are doing our very best to secure their safe return. ” About 1, 000 North Koreans are believed to live and work in Malaysia until Monday, they had been allowed to enter the country without a visa. “As a nation, Malaysia is committed to maintaining friendly relations with all countries,” Mr. Najib said on Tuesday. “However, protecting our citizens is my first priority, and we will not hesitate to take all measures necessary when they are threatened. ” Mr. Kim, the elder half brother of the North Korean leader, Kim was killed when two women rubbed poison on his face at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the Malaysian police said. The women, one from Vietnam and one from Indonesia, have been arrested and charged with murder. The Malaysian police, who conducted an autopsy of Mr. Kim’s body over North Korea’s objections, concluded that he had been poisoned by VX nerve agent, a banned chemical weapon known to be in North Korea’s arsenal. North Korea has suggested that he died of heart failure and accused Malaysia of working with other countries to defame North Korea. “Once it denied responsibility for the assassination, North Korea had no option but to push back in a escalation,” Kim a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea, said on Tuesday. “Offense is the best defense for the North. ” Preventing the Malaysians from leaving North Korea would also give the government continuing leverage over Malaysia. If the Malaysians had been free to leave, Malaysia could have broken off diplomatic relations without any significant political cost. That would have led to the closing of the North Korean Embassy, with at least one suspect who has taken refuge there no longer safe from arrest. The suspect, Kim an employee of the North Korean airline, Air Koryo, could be arrested if the embassy were closed. A second suspect who the police say may be hiding at the embassy, Ri also known as James, would also be subject to arrest. A third suspect, Hyon a second secretary at the embassy, has diplomatic immunity and could not be arrested. “If we break diplomatic ties, then all the embassy staff have to leave Malaysia, but the staff with diplomatic immunity at the time of the offense is still safe and must be allowed to leave,” said Sivananthan Nithyanantham, a Malaysian lawyer who has served as counsel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. “The airline worker then loses his sanctuary and will be liable to arrest. ” The police are seeking seven North Korean men in connection with Mr. Kim’s killing. The other four are believed to have returned to North Korea. Khalid Abu Bakar, Malaysia’s top police official, confirmed at a news conference on Tuesday that at least two suspects had taken refuge at the North Korean Embassy and that North Korea had refused a request to hand them over. “The North Korean authorities are not cooperating with us in this investigation,” he said. He said the police would wait as long as necessary to arrest Mr. Kim, the airline employee, and Mr. Ri, if he is there. “If it takes five years, we will wait outside,” he said. “Definitely somebody will come out. ” North Korea has denied responsibility for the killing and has not acknowledged that the victim was Kim . Lim Kit Siang, a leader of Malaysia’s opposition Democratic Action Party, called on Parliament to adopt an emergency motion condemning what he called North Korea’s “hostage terrorism” and urging the North Koreans to let the Malaysians leave. North Korea’s statement on Tuesday described the exit ban as temporary. But the North Korean government has been accused of playing hostage politics before, partly to complicate negotiations over its nuclear arms and missile development. In 2014, North Korea said it would reopen an investigation into Japanese citizens it was accused of abducting during the Cold War, but it halted that inquiry last year in retaliation for sanctions imposed by Japan over a rocket launch. Duyeon Kim, a nonresident fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, said on Tuesday that North Korea was “playing dirty and not diplomatically, apparently hoping this might force Malaysia to reverse its findings” about Mr. Kim’s killing. Malaysia, however, showed every intention of pressing ahead with its contention that VX nerve agent had been used in the Kim assassination. On Tuesday, the Malaysians presented their formal report about their findings to the executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group based in The Hague that monitors compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Malaysia has signed. In a statement to the executive council, Malaysia noted that it did not “produce, stockpile, import, export or use” VX or any other such chemical weapon. “Malaysia strongly condemns the use of such a chemical by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances,” the statement said. “Its use at a public place could have endangered the general public. ” North Korea, which has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, is believed to have a large stockpile of VX despite its denials. Tuesday’s developments follow the expulsion of ambassadors between the two countries. Kang Chol, North Korea’s ambassador to Malaysia, was expelled on Monday over what Malaysia considered to be insulting comments. North Korea responded by formally expelling Malaysia’s ambassador, Mohamad Nizan Mohamad, though he had already been recalled to Malaysia for consultations. | 1 |
October 28, 2016 -
Katehon -
In this unique documentary prepared exclusively by Tsargrad and Katehon Analytical Center , top Russian experts, including those present in Turkey during the whirlwind events of July 2016, discuss the geopolitical intrigues and dynamics of the coup attempt against Erdogan.
The documentary breaks down the situation in the Middle East and run up to and unfolding of the coup before turning to discuss the geopolitical consequences of the failed coup attempt for the Middle East and Eurasia.
This breakthrough analytical work, adorned with breathtaking footage, aims to unveil the truth behind the coup d'etat attempt in Turkey and expose the people who stood behind it...
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WASHINGTON — A divided Federal Reserve, struggling to decide how soon to prune its economic stimulus campaign, said on Wednesday that it would wait at least a little longer. The Fed left its benchmark interest rate unchanged after a meeting of its committee, although most of its officials said they expected to raise rates by the end of the year. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, said she saw no reason to rush. The economy keeps bubbling along without boiling over. “We’re generally pleased with how the economy is doing,” she said at a news conference. “The economy has a little more room to run than might have previously been thought. That’s good news. ” But concern is growing among some Fed officials that the central bank is waiting too long to resume moving borrowing costs back toward normal levels. The decision to wait passed by a vote of 7 to 3, the narrowest margin in almost two years. Ms. Yellen said Fed officials had “struggled” to reach a consensus, though she said the disagreement was mostly about a narrow question of timing. The Fed’s latest round of economic projections reflected a broad consensus 14 of the 17 Fed officials surveyed anticipated at least one rate increase this year. “The committee judges that the case for an increase in the federal funds rate has strengthened but decided, for the time being, to wait for further evidence,” the Fed said in its postmeeting statement. The Fed’s next meeting is in November, concluding six days before the presidential election, but the Fed is widely expected to defer any decisions until its final meeting of the year in . Ms. Yellen said on Wednesday that the Fed would not consider politics in making its decision, but that line, often repeated by Fed officials, is regarded as tactful rather than truthful. Fed officials cited the uncertain consequences of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union as a reason they did not want to raise rates in June. They are unlikely to act on the eve of a presidential election that could have larger economic consequences. “The Fed will not want to be seen as influencing political outcomes,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer for global at BlackRock. Even the decision to wait, however, exposes the Fed to continued attack by Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly charged that Ms. Yellen is delaying necessary action to help Democrats. Ms. Yellen was pressed repeatedly about the Fed’s motives Wednesday. “I can say emphatically that partisan politics plays no role in our decisions about the appropriate stance of monetary policy,” she said. “We do not discuss politics at our meetings, and we do not take politics into account in our decisions. ” The Fed decided to wait despite an upturn in economic conditions after a weak start to the year. “Growth of economic activity has picked up from the modest pace seen in the first half of the year,” its statement said. It noted consumer spending remained relatively strong, while business investment remained relatively weak, a pattern that continues to defy easy explanation. The Fed also said it now saw the chances of faster growth as “roughly balanced” against the risks of economic disruption, an improvement over its bleaker outlook in recent years. “Our decision does not reflect a lack of confidence in the economy,” Ms. Yellen said. (Ms. Yellen, however, indicated the Fed did not include the presidential election in this assessment. Asked, for example, about the economic consequences of Mr. Trump’s proposal to impose higher tariffs on imports, she declined to answer, calling that a “political issue. ”) So why did the Fed decide to wait? Ms. Yellen said that the growth of the labor market had exceeded the Fed’s expectations while inflation remained sluggish, suggesting the economy had room to grow. One sign of progress is the continuing rebound in the share of American adults in their prime working years, between the ages of 25 and 54, who are working or looking for work. “More people, presumably in response to better employment opportunities and higher wages, have started actively seeking and finding jobs,” Ms. Yellen said. “This is a very welcome development both for the individuals involved and for the nation as a whole. ” The three dissenters, all of whom voted in favor of raising interest rates by a in September, were Esther L. George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Loretta J. Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The statement did not explain their votes, but all three described their concerns in the weeks before the meeting. Mr. Rosengren, a longtime proponent of the Fed’s stimulus campaign, has become increasingly concerned that the Fed, by waiting too long to raise rates, will need to move more sharply, a pattern that often ends in a recession. The last time three Fed officials dissented from a policy decision was nearly two years ago. Two reserve bank presidents wanted Ms. Yellen to move more quickly to tighten policy, while one dissented in favor of moving more slowly. Notwithstanding the debate about when to take the next step, Fed officials are increasingly agreed that they will not be raising rates for very long. As recently as last September, Fed officials predicted the Fed’s benchmark rate would rise to 3. 4 percent by the end of 2018. On Wednesday they predicted it would reach just 1. 9 percent by that time, and that it would top out at 2. 9 percent. Fed officials are increasingly reconciled to the reality of a downturn in global interest rates that has dampened the force of the Fed’s stimulus campaign even as the Fed stands still. The central bank stimulates the economy by pushing borrowing costs below normal levels. The decline in market borrowing costs means that the normal level has been falling toward the Fed’s rate. The Fed remains in a better position to raise rates than other major central banks, which are struggling to drive up inflation in the face of even lower interest rates and weaker growth. The Bank of Japan tried earlier on Wednesday to reinvigorate its own struggling campaign to bolster inflation, announcing for the first time that it would try to drive inflation above its current 2 percent target. Whether it will succeed is an open question: Despite an aggressive stimulus campaign, now in its fourth year, prices in Japan fell by 0. 5 percent during the most recent period. The European Central Bank cut its growth and inflation forecasts at its most recent meeting but, like the Bank of Japan, did not increase its stimulus campaign, judging it was doing what it could. Officials at all three banks have suggested that too much is being asked of monetary policy. They argue that fiscal policy makers must embrace some combination of fiscal stimulus and structural reforms to increase growth, a view shared by a wide range of independent economists. | 1 |
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Donald J. Trump has slowly but surely improved his standing in state and national polls since the final presidential debate.
A New York Times Upshot/Siena poll released Sunday is consistent with that trend: It gives Mr. Trump a four-point lead in Florida, 46 percent to 42 percent, in a four-way race. In our first poll of Florida a month ago, Mr. Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by a percentage point.
The survey is Mr. Trump’s best recent poll in Florida, and it should be interpreted with caution. In general, it is best to look at an average of polls. Mrs. Clinton still leads in an average of recent Florida surveys by nearly three points.
But the poll is not the only one to show Mr. Trump in the lead. A Bloomberg/Selzer poll , which is methodologically similar to the New York Times Upshot/Siena poll, showed Mr. Trump with a two-point edge last week. | 0 |
actor Matthew McConaughey sent a sobering message to celebrities and the cultural elites protesting Donald Trump’s election and his new administration: get over it. [During an interview with ChannelFi to promote his new film, Gold, McConaughey was asked if he thinks Hollywood had given Trump a chance to govern. “Well, they don’t have a choice now. He’s our president,” the Oscar winner said. “And, it’s very dynamic and as divisive of an Inauguration and time as we’ve had. At the same time, it’s time for us to embrace and shake hands with this fact. And be constructive with him over the next four years. ” Even if you have strong disagreements with Trump, McConaughey says, it’s worth waiting to see what he actually does in his first term in office. “So anyone, even those who may strongly disagree with his principles or things he’s said and done — and that’s another thing, we’ll see what he does compares to what he has said — no matter how much you even disagreed along the way, it’s time to think about how constructive can you be,” he said. Some of the entertainment industry’s biggest stars have spent months protesting Trump’s stunning Election Night victory over Hillary Clinton, and have caused outrage over his Cabinet appointments, his executive orders, and even his pick for the Supreme Court. Celebrities have even gone so far as to launch personal attacks against Trump’s son. But McConaughey says it’s past time Trump’s detractors stop protesting Trump for the sake of protesting. “‘Cause he’s our president for the next four years, at least,” McConaughey said, “the President of the United States. ” McConaughey’s new thriller Gold, in which he plays a prospector in Indonesia, opened in theaters on Jan. 27 and is directed by Stephen Gaghan. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0 |
Rice is a staple food in many cultures, but are certain types of rice dangerous to human health?
While fears about lead in rice are based in research, researchers who originally presented the study that found high levels of heavy metal in imported rice are realizing that their results may have been skewed by faulty equipment.
Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, a PHD of Monmouth University in New Jersey, first presented his alarming findings at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in March 2013. He conducted tests on rice imported from Taiwan, China, the Czech Republic, Bhutan, Italy, India, and Thailand, and revealed that the grains of rice could be contaminated with 6 to 12 parts per million lead. That is nearly 10 times the amount of lead that is considered safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Yet, when he replicated those findings in order to get the study published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health, the levels were less than 1 part per million which was less lower than his previous findings.
Tongesai had also sent the original testing equipment back to the manufacturer and the company had reported that it had been miscalibrated.
The authors of the study are still trying to understand the lead content in rice and are using other methods to analyze the amount of lead these grains contain.
Though the amount of lead in rice is still questionable, detectable levels of the carcinogen arsenic has been found in every one of the 60 rice products tested.
Why would arsenic be found in rice? Arsenic can naturally occur in water, soil, and rocks, but its levels may be higher in some areas than others. It can readily enter the food chain and may accumulate in significant amounts in both animals. When eaten, this can have an effect on human health.
Arsenic is the primary reason to limit your consumption of rice because it is extremely detrimental to human health.
If you still love rice and want to be healthy in your consumption…
Transition into eating wild rice which has much lower levels of arsenic than regular rice.
Eat rice grown in California because arsenic levels are higher in rice that is grown in areas like Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas and much lower in rice that is grown in the west.
Substitute rice for grains like quinoa, buckwheat, millet, and amaranth.
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Dublin, Ireland.
The West is feeling more and more like an irrational maze. The banks are mad. The austerity too. But the anti-Russia hysteria is the final straw. It’s not just “anti-Russia”: it’s anti-truth, anti-rational and anti-modern. It’s the end result of postmodernism. What began as irony is now systematic madness.
Everything is upside down. Or maybe at last it’s the right side up. Maybe the West to begin with never was the Free World. Wasn’t that the whole point of modernism? Modernism was self criticism. Modernism was critical of the West. And then along came postmodernism. And the West suddenly was off the hook. The West wearing the clothes of postmodernism went on the attack again.
The end result is that anything goes as long as the West wins. Forget the truth. Forget the facts. And forget history. Everything apparently is fiction. The West can say what it wants because everything is interpretation. That’s the beauty of postmodernism. You can contradict yourself a million times and laugh it all off. As long as you’ve the power. And that’s the key word: power. Because postmodernism was from the word go a political project. One that was made in the West for the West.
The end result is hatred for Russia. And love for “Al-Qaeda”. Why? Because Russia attempted to rationalise the world. It attempted to apply reason to the 21st century. And so the irrational West had to punish it. Listen to Putin in 2007 when he spoke in Munich:
“However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.
It is [a] world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.
And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.
Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.
I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.”
And listen to him in New York in 2015 when he spoke in the UN General Assembly:
“ and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called democratic ones, continues. It would suffice to look at the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, as has been mentioned by previous speakers. Certainly political and social problems in this region have been piling up for a long time, and people there wish for changes naturally.
But how did it actually turn out? Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.
I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you’ve done?”
Did you hear the plea for reason? Did you hear the cry for modernity? Did you hear the demand for “moral foundations” – for universal values – for international law? Did you hear the defence of national sovereignty and the defence of the UN Charter? The West didn’t. In these two key Russian speeches (Munich ’07 and New York ’15) the West only heard a threat to it’s power.
The West’s reply to Russia’s rationalism was and continues to be irrationalism. Media madness, “Presidential” paranoia and Islamic insanity is the West’s response to the truth. And the truth is no secret. But the West just shrugs it’s shoulders and laughs it all off. The truth is Western imperialism: the unipolar world, full spectrum dominance, neo-con mendacity, hybrid warfare, sanctions, speculation, special forces, the CIA, fundamentalism and American Exceptionalism. In short: Putin hit the nail on the head.
And the West hit back. Why? Because the West can’t defend itself rationally. There is no good reason for all the wealth found in the West. So there can only be a bad reason: imperial power. And modernism proved beyond doubt that it was bad. However as this power was rolled back in modern times – as the victims of Empire succeeded in liberating themselves – postmodern times came to the rescue of the West. In Nietzsche the West found it’s champion. The will to power was the West’s trump card. And with Nietzsche’s blessing it played it.
For Nietzsche all that mattered was power. And whoever had it needed no justification or reason. Truth was a lie. And morality was only for the weak. However if this intellectual climate only emerged and became hegemonic in the late 1970s (think of Reagan and Thatcher) it of course was ever present behind the scenes in the dark corners of Western imperialism. For instance: America’s leading strategist (and Russian “expert”) after World War Two, George F. Kennan, famously put it into words in Memo PPS23 (1948):
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population….Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality….We should cease to talk about vague….unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
Nietzsche could not have said it better himself. The question is though: has this elite Western approach to the world changed since Kennan wrote Memo PPS23? No – it has only become more crass. As a result this Nietzschean worldview is what Russia is up against today. But haven’t we seen this before? Hasn’t Nietzsche in another guise attacked Russia already? Have not the forces of irrationalism invaded Russia before? And did Russia not for our benefit defeat those forces of irrationalism? We still owe Russia.
So let’s support it today it by burying Nietzsche. And by resurrecting universal reason and all the ideals which are built upon it. Give modern secular life another chance. Not just in Syria but in the West too.
Aidan O’Brien is a hospital worker in Dublin, Ireland. | 1 |
“Don’t scratch it. ” Those were the first words Abdou Travare’s wife, Ramata, ever spoke to him. He was from Senegal and she was from Mali, but they met on a street in Paris. Both were attending college in France. Mr. Travare had stopped to examine her car, the same make and model as the one he drove, except hers was white and his was green. Just do not get too close to it, she warned him, a playful request that led to a short conversation, an exchange of names and a few laughs. The next day, Mr. Travare intentionally parked his car next to hers, and flirtatiously tried to use his key to open her car door. She was smitten. Five years later, in 1980, the couple married. “We’ve been with each other for a while now,” Mr. Travare, 60, said. Over the past 30 years, they have faced challenges together, including a lengthy time apart in the . During a vacation to San Francisco, Mr. Travare became so fond of the city that he decided to stay and pursue a master’s degree in international finance at Golden Gate University. Three years went by before Mrs. Travare, who had stayed in Mali, was able to join her husband in the United States. Mr. Travare’s job in financial management, one that required him to travel so often that he had to add pages to his passport, allowed him to return to Africa a few times each year to see his wife. He held different jobs in the decades that followed. Whenever career stress overwhelmed him, Mrs. Travare was always there with encouragement and support, he said. In 2009, they moved to New York City. Soon after, Mr. Travare noticed his wife was behaving oddly. “After so many years, you know the person,” he said. “You can just see something is not quite right. ” Mrs. Travare would stare into space or turn on the stove only to leave it unattended. She became obsessed with cleaning and turning on every light in a room. “It was quite strange for me — very, very frightening,” he said. Doctors determined that Mrs. Travare was experiencing the cognitive aftereffect of an unnoticed stroke she had had years before. She already had diabetes and heart disease, and now she was slipping into dementia. The condition worsened over time. Mrs. Travare, 59, now barely speaks, and when she does, her command of English has drastically changed. Many days, she is barely able to leave her bed, and she needs Mr. Travare’s help to walk everywhere, including the bathroom. He stopped working in 2013 to care for her. “I left everything, mostly everything, to be by her side,” he said. But every so often, despite the grave diagnosis, Mr. Travare said, he sees glimpses of his wife’s former self. “I believe one day she will get better and be the same again,” he said. “I still believe it. That’s what keeps me going. ” Mr. Travare receives $733 in Social Security Insurance benefits each month. The couple also receive $215 in Social Security benefits and $350 in food stamps each month. He has spent much of his savings, and has struggled to pay their $1, 335 monthly rent. By this past summer, they were more than $11, 000 in arrears. Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, helped prevent the couple’s eviction. Staff members from the organization’s HomeBase program secured for the Travares a emergency grant from the city’s Human Resources Administration for $9, 300. Catholic Charities also contributed $300 in Neediest funds toward their back rent. Mr. Travare, who once trotted the globe, now rarely leaves his Bronx apartment, a place so bursting with possessions that a sofa sits in the middle of their kitchen. Their home is crammed with additional pieces of furniture, appliances, paintings and numerous other items, remnants of more prosperous times when the Travares had larger living quarters. Whenever Mr. Travare is able to venture out, it is usually to take his wife to a doctor’s appointment, or to pick up groceries and phone cards to call their families in Africa. Sometimes, he takes his wife to dinner. Much of his remaining free time is spent cooking, cleaning and looking after her. “I don’t see it as a job, I see it as a pleasure,” he said. “Anything she needs from me, I will be here. ” | 1 |
Officials in Columbus, Ohio, appealed for calm, patience and investigative help Thursday, hours after a white police officer fatally shot a boy who had apparently brandished a firearm that was later determined to be a BB gun. Speaking at a news conference, the mayor, the police chief and other officials offered few details about what led to the death Wednesday night of the teenager, Tyre King. They cautioned that the investigation, which will be presented to a grand jury, will not be quick. So far, they said, they do not know of any video recording of the shooting. “Any loss of life is tragic, but the loss of a young person is particularly difficult,” Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said. “Investigations take time, and I ask for everyone’s patience during this difficult time. ” According to the police, officers responded to a report of an armed robbery in the Olde Towne East neighborhood in central Columbus, and saw three males who matched the suspects’ descriptions. Two fled and officers chased them into an alley, where Tyre pulled what appeared to be a gun from his waistband, the police said, and an officer shot him multiple times. The officer was identified as Bryan Mason, a veteran, who fatally shot a man in 2012. His superiors cleared him of any wrongdoing in that episode. He has been placed on administrative leave. Tyre’s death is one in a long string of deaths of black people at the hands of the police in recent years that have drawn national attention, particularly when video is made public. They have prompted sharp debates about race and policing, intense criticism of the police and, in some cases, civil unrest. One of the most scrutinized cases, and one of the most similar to the one in Columbus, also took place in Ohio: the 2014 death of Tamir Rice, 12, who was playing with a pellet gun in a park in Cleveland. Columbus officials made it clear that they were acutely aware of that history, saying it was too early to make parallels to Tamir’s case, and insisting that they were striving for openness and community outreach that critics have said were lacking in other cities. They also repeatedly stressed Tyre’s conduct, the credible threats officers face and the gun culture. “Why is it that a would have nearly an exact replica of a police firearm on him in our neighborhoods?” Mr. Ginther asked. “An eighth grader involved in very, very dangerous conduct in one of our neighborhoods. ” The mayor cited “easy access to guns, whether they are firearms or replicas,” as a serious problem, adding, “A is dead in the city of Columbus because of our obsession with guns. ” Kimberley Jacobs, the police chief, repeatedly referred to Tyre as a “young man,” and said: “This is the last thing that a police officer wants to do in their career. Unfortunately, because of the things that are happening out on the streets, it becomes necessary at times to defend themselves. ” She held up a photograph of a BB gun of the kind found in the alley near Tyre to show how similar it looks to the sidearm used by the Columbus police, a Smith Wesson Military Police semiautomatic pistol. The Columbus Police posted a similar image on Twitter. The photographs show a BB gun that does not have an orange tip or other bright colors sometimes used to distinguish them from lethal weapons. “It turns out not to be a firearm, in the sense that it fires real bullets, but as you can see, it looks like a firearm that can kill you,” Chief Jacobs said. The shooting quickly drew widespread attention on social media, as people took sides to find fault with either the police or the boy. Chief Jacobs said the police were looking for video from security cameras or bystanders’ smartphones, and were interviewing witnesses, including one of the people who was with Tyre. She said it was not clear whether that person would be charged with a crime. “There were witnesses, we believe, to the armed robbery and there were people in the vicinity of the shooting, but we don’t know what they were able to discern,” she said. The Columbus police do not wear body cameras, but they will starting next year, said Mr. Ginther, the mayor, who supports their use. | 1 |
On the penultimate episode of this season’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the last four contestants gathered backstage, waiting to find out who would be eliminated from the competition to be named “America’s Next Drag Superstar. ” As they sat in the “untuck” lounge, they made lighthearted small talk, trading compliments and shade. The conversation turned, suddenly, to activism. Chi Chi DeVayne, a sweet Louisiana queen with a thick, accent, praised Bob the Drag Queen, a gifted, tenderhearted New York comedian, on her work in support of marriage equality. “I wish that I had the guts to stand up for gay rights,” she said wistfully (the contestants often use male and female pronouns interchangeably). Bob smiled and replied, “Go do it, you can start anytime. ” Ms. DeVayne, dazzling in full makeup and a fuchsia ball gown, shook her head firmly. “You can’t do it in Shreveport,” she replied. “They’ll blow your head off. ” That exchange reflected the cultural significance of “Drag Race,” for this particular moment in time. Queer and gay culture has been so widely and incorporated into mainstream popular culture that it can feel commonplace, embraced by default. On the surface, that feels like a positive thing — queer narratives, like those featured in “Carol,” “The Danish Girl,” “Modern Family” and “Transparent” go a long way toward humanizing difference. We may live in troubled times, but this visibility suggests people are finding their way. Yet, pop culture has barely started grappling with more complex and ugly contemporary narratives, ones that make clear that universal acceptance is still a fantasy — like North Carolina’s law limiting bathroom access to transgender people. This is what makes “Drag Race,” which airs its Season 8 finale on Monday night, so valuable. Bob and Ms. DeVayne are both 30, but they may as well be from parallel universes. They, like the show, remind viewers that these discrepancies, these gaping chasms exist. We live in a time of extreme dualities. In a recent interview with E. Alex Jung of New York magazine, RuPaul laid out the subversive function of his show. “They talk so much about acceptance now today and it’s like, yes, but trust me — I’m old,” he said, ”It’s superficial. ” “Things haven’t changed that much. You see it in politics right now,” he added. “And you know, people will have you think, ‘Oh, we’re fashion. We’re gay. That’s my gay over there!’ It’s like, no. We’re still a very, very, very primitive culture. ” Now, more than ever, we need axes of realness to anchor and make sense of this strange world we live in. “Drag Race” has always been a show that knows how to balances scripted moments and genuine interactions — by turning the shadiness and catty drama underlining the plot of almost every major reality show into a theatrical performance, in which contestants earn points for the ability to mock one another. Drag lives to be weird, to mock conformity, and pokes hole in the artifice of normativity, exposing the notion of fixed identity and gender as an inherently flawed premise. “Drag Race,” which in every episode asks competitors to construct new identities and costumes, lives to point out that our meat suits can be altered, that anyone can paint and sew a new persona, that all appearances are illusions anyway. Last season, the show almost deflated that premise. Season 7 was dominated by two contestants, Violet Chachki and Pearl, who both shimmered on the surface, but didn’t seem to have much depth below, at least, none that they were willing to reveal. Phenomenally talented, and already Instagram famous before their first appearance on the show, they were willowy and exceptionally gifted at pulling off classically “fishy” looks, which in drag slang means feminine to the point of passing. They won competition after competition, and praise from the judges. “Drag Race” no longer seemed to exist to expose the performance of hyperfemininity, it seemed to cultivate it. The preference for heteronormative standards of beauty was tremendously disappointing. But this season rebounded from that. One of the earliest and most severe eliminations was a pageant queen. And two of the season’s stronger contestants had male drag names. Weirdness reigned, through strong performances by Acid Betty, with her psychedelic palette, and the transformations of Thorgy Thor, a hippie with dreads and round glasses who invented a new character during every challenge. Kim Chi, one of the show’s first breakout contestants, constructed some of the most sophisticated looks to grace RuPaul’s stage, a combination of flora and fauna and dessert pastry. Charming and chubby, with a lisp, his most revealing moment came when he tearfully revealed that he has hidden his exquisite talents at makeup and costume design from his own mother, for fear she will be repulsed by his love of drag. In another, he confessed that he was a virgin. Moments like that, both shocking and sad, affirmed the importance of “Drag Race,” the rare space on television that relishes honesty and exploration, that doesn’t subscribe to the notion that all is well now that we live in a world. At its best, drag exposes the charade of modern life, the idea that there are set rules to follow, and even if there are, that you can win by following them. Personality, growth, the ability to evolve and, really, to survive, were the traits that the judges prioritized this season. But, you wonder, how can the show itself grow and evolve from here? At this point in its life cycle, RuPaul’s universe has expanded so much that a generation has been weaned on the show and its spinoffs, like “RuPaul Drag U. ” “Drag Race” is its own feedback loop, its own perpetual motion machine. It’s as mainstream as a show about drag can get. At the same time, “Drag Race” flourishes in cultlike purgatory. Even the show’s network, Logo TV, aimed at the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audience, is squirreled away, available only to cable subscribers. Without streaming services like iTunes and Amazon Prime, “Drag Race” might not have the fandom and staying power that it currently does. That won’t matter much on Monday night, when the finale is aired. It’s not yet clear who will win. In the episode, after the group trooped back out to hear the verdict, RuPaul informed Ms. DeVayne that she would not advance to the final round and win the $100, 000 or the title. She seemed unsurprised, and smiled. “You have taught me how to be a better person,” she said, about loving who she is and where she is from. “And $100, 000 can’t buy that. ” At that, Ms. DeVayne snapped her fingers so clear and loud it almost sounded like a bell, before sashaying away. | 1 |
Project Veritas Action has released the sixth video in a multi-part series that is sending shockwaves through the DNC and the Clinton campaign. In a new video released by Project Veritas Action, a PVA journalist exposes how his pay for play with Robert Creamer landed him a meeting with Bradley Beychock, the President of Media Matters For America, an organization that has been attacking James O’Keefe for years.
Bradley Beychock is first seen in the undercover video bragging how he is responsible for taking knowable conservative voices off TV stations with pressure campaigns: “Lou Dobbs from CNN left now and he is on FOX Business, Glenn Beck off of FOX News.” So it seems that there is simply no tolerance and no room left for conservatism in the media, yet they claim the system isn’t rigged? Of course its rigged!
During the meeting, Beychock gave the PVA journalist a tour of their offices. He also proudly boasted about the Media Matters assault on conservative writer and political consultant Roger Stone.
“So I think for Trump, our big role as a media watchdog has been to take his MVPs and put them on the sidelines. So the first one was Roger Stone,” said Beychock.
James O’Keefe interviewed Stone and showed him the footage, to which Stone responded.
Shortly after James O’Keefe and Roger Stone were interviewed together on Alex Jones’s show, Media Matters put up the Alex Jones interview on their website.
Media Matters is funded by Clinton confidante George Soros.
Project Veritas Action Fund (AKA Project Veritas Action) was founded by James O’Keefe to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct.
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Country duo Big Rich have been added to the entertainment lineup for Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration gala. [The “Lovin’ Lately” singers will perform at Great America Alliance Inaugural Gala, a event set for January 19th in Washington, D. C. Country music rapper Cowboy Troy is also expected to perform at the event, which is presented by the Republican Party of New York and Great America Alliance. “We’re thrilled to be performing in our nation’s capital during this historic moment in time,” Rich said in a press release. “A presidential inauguration is a uniquely American event, so we are honored to be a part of it and hope to help make it a memorable event. ” Singer John Rich has the Republican party. In 2008, Rich wrote Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign song “Raising McCain. ” Rich also has history with Trump, having been the winner of Trump’s NBC reality series, Celebrity Apprentice, in 2011. The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced last week that some 40 groups, including high school bands and military organizations, were accepted to perform in the inaugural parade. The Rockettes dance troupe, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and teenage opera singer Jackie Evancho are slated to perform at Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0 |
by Jonathan Benson
The primary way in which your body expels toxins is via the liver, which detoxifies and cleanses your body by continuously filtering the blood of poisons that enter it through the digestive tract, the skin, and the respiratory system. But when your liver becomes overworked as a result of stress or excessive exposure to toxins, your entire system can be thrown off balance, and your health severely compromised.
Since the liver is also responsible for producing bile, another form of detoxification that is metabolically necessary for the breakdown and assimilation of fats and proteins from your food, it is exceedingly important that your liver be properly maintained. Without a well-functioning liver, your body will be unable to cleanse itself and absorb nutrients, which is a recipe for a health disaster.
“The thousands of enzyme systems that are responsible for virtually every body activity are constructed in the liver,” writes Dr. Karl Maret, M.D., about the importance of vibrant liver function. “The proper functioning of the eyes, the heart, the brain, the gonads, the joints, and the kidneys, are all dependent on good liver activity.”
“If the liver is impaired from constructing even one of the thousands of enzyme systems the body requires, there is an impairment in overall body function and a resultant greater metabolic stress on the individual.”
So here are seven important foods you may want to begin incorporating into your diet in order to maintain a healthy liver.
Garlic, grapefruit, green tea, and green vegetables Garlic contains numerous sulfur-containing compounds that activate the liver enzymes responsible for flushing out toxins from the body. This bulbous relative of the onion also contains allicin and selenium, two powerful nutrients proven to help protect the liver from toxic damage, and aid it in the detoxification process.
Grapefruit is rich in natural vitamin C and antioxidants, two powerful liver cleansers. Like garlic, grapefruit contains compounds that boost the production of liver detoxification enzymes. It also contains a flavonoid compound known as naringenin that causes the liver to burn fat rather than store it ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk ).
Green tea is loaded with catechins, a type of plant antioxidant that has been shown in studies to eliminate liver fat accumulation and promote proper liver function ( http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v26/n11/abs/0802141a.html ). This powerful herbal beverage also protects the liver against toxins that would otherwise accumulate and cause serious damage.
Leafy green vegetables such as bitter gourd, arugula, dandelion greens, spinach, mustard greens, and chicory also contain numerous cleansing compounds that neutralize heavy metals, which can bear heavily on the liver. Leafy greens also eliminate pesticides and herbicides from the body, and spur the creation and flow of cleansing bile.
Avocados, walnuts, and turmeric Rich in glutathione-producing compounds, avocados actively promote liver health by protecting it against toxic overload, and boosting its cleansing power ( http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001219074822.htm ). Some research has shown that eating one or two avocados a week for as little as 30 days can repair a damaged liver.
Walnuts, which contain high levels of l-arginine, an amino acid, glutathione, and omega-3 fatty acids, also help detoxify the liver of disease-causing ammonia. Walnuts also help oxygenate the blood, and extracts from their hulls are often used in liver-cleansing formulas.
Turmeric, one of the most powerful foods for maintaining a healthy liver, has been shown to actively protect the liver against toxic damage, and even regenerate damaged liver cells. Turmeric also boosts the natural production of bile, shrinks engorged hepatic ducts, and improves overall function of the gallbladder, another body-purifying organ.
To learn more, visit: http://www.globalhealingcenter.com | 0 |
Tuesday, 15 November 2016 The New Nirvana?
Not willing to sit by and see what happens under a Trump presidency, a hearty group of 55 pilgrims has already left Portland, Oregon with the first barge to start a new nation. Their destination, the huge and elusive Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Patch is a huge loose-knit patch of floating garbage, mostly small plastics, that floats with the massive circular currents in the Northern Pacific. The smallest estimate of the size of The Patch is 270,000 square miles, roughly the size of Texas. So there's some room to set up house.
"It will take us a bit to move in, but it can't be worse than what's coming in the U.S." said Jennifer Griswell, communications representative.
The initial group must first stabilize the mass into one unit. Their plan involves an ingenious mix of six-pack rings, dental floss, used plastic diapers, discarded shoes, mattresses, yoga mats and carpet.
They will have to work fast to claim the territory however. There is a commercial cleanup project that has been brewing since 2012, The Ocean Cleanup, founded by Dutchman Boyan Slat.
The brave pioneers will need to plant their flag quickly. Make pinkwalrus's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
After Lisa S. Coico took the helm in 2010 as the president of the City College of New York, the flagship of the City University of New York system, she proved to be a divisive figure on the school’s Harlem campus. But when Ms. Coico resigned abruptly on Friday, it was not the deep budget cuts, or her contentious relationship with much of the faculty, or the high administrative turnover, including five provosts in the last six years, that apparently forced her out. It was her own expenses — and it was not a new problem. Since at least June, federal prosecutors have been investigating Ms. Coico’s use of college funds to pay personal expenses, and other matters, an inquiry that has been gaining momentum. Then, on Thursday, The New York Times presented evidence to the college suggesting that a memo from 2011 concerning reimbursements had been fabricated, possibly to mislead prosecutors. The Times also questioned whether Ms. Coico had repaid a $20, 000 security deposit for a rental home, or kept the money for herself. The news of Ms. Coico’s departure, coming late Friday on the eve of a long holiday weekend, represented a swift and unexpected downfall for a president whose appointment had been met with great fanfare. Effective immediately, it leaves a college once known as “the poor man’s Harvard” in disarray at a time when public higher education is increasingly starved of public funds. It also raises questions about who knew how much and how early. And over the weekend, speculation intensified among staff and faculty members as to whether people close to the president would also be implicated, and whether the federal investigation would spread to other parts of CUNY, the largest public urban university in the country. A graduate of Brooklyn College, Ms. Coico was the first CUNY alumna to head City College. As a former provost at Temple University with a science background, Ms. Coico, 60, was chosen to lead an ambitious expansion of City College’s science programs, and to focus on . But from the outset, Ms. Coico had a difficult relationship with some faculty members. She was also criticized for her handling of the budget: Last year, when CUNY asked its colleges to cut their budgets by at least 3 percent, City College, citing increased personnel costs and declining enrollment, cut its budget by 10 percent, or $14. 6 million. Behind the scenes, there were also questions about her personal spending going back to the middle of 2011, roughly a year after her appointment. Ms. Coico, who had an annual salary of $400, 000 at that point, was using the college’s main vehicle, the 21st Century Foundation, to pay tens of thousands of dollars for housekeeping, furniture, seasonal fruits and organic nuts, among other items. Anxious about the amount she was spending, especially given the fact that many of City College’s students come from families and struggle to pay even its modest tuition, some began “questioning its appropriateness, since the president had a substantial housing allowance meant for such things,” said one longtime official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being entangled in the investigation. Ms. Coico had a housing allowance of $5, 000 per month when she was hired, which was increased to $7, 500 per month in July 2010. By August 2011, according to an email between two school officials, the college had begun to itemize more than $155, 000 of her spending in three categories — “college,” “personal” and “iffy. ” Another email later discussed the need to “recoup the funds. ” She was later ordered by Frederick P. Schaffer, CUNY’s general counsel, to repay the college $51, 000, or roughly of the expenses in question, because she had not received prior approval for moving and other expenses. She fulfilled that obligation by January 2016. Ms. Coico was also informed that any furniture bought with foundation funds — including $50, 000 worth for a rental home in Larchmont, N. Y. — belonged to City College. Moreover, she was asked to return a $20, 000 security deposit at the end of her lease in Larchmont. Ms. Coico and her husband bought another home in Westchester County in April 2013, property records show. When asked if she repaid the $20, 000 deposit, the college declined to comment. In recent years, Ms. Coico’s troubles seemed to fade. The school opened a new science center and, this fall, a medical school. Michelle Obama delivered this year’s commencement address. But this summer, The Times took a closer look at her expenses, and reported that CUNY’s Research Foundation, which manages research funds for the entire system, had ultimately covered Ms. Coico’s personal expenses from her early years as president. Using Research Foundation funds that way raised concerns because they could include money from federal grants, which are typically earmarked for expenses, such as staff and equipment, and have strict guidelines about how they are used. Having a university pay its leaders’ personal expenses has generated controversy elsewhere. Stanford was embroiled in a scandal in the 1990s in which government grants improperly paid for flowers and the depreciation on a yacht, and ultimately prompted the resignation of its president. In recent months, two chancellors in the University of California system — at Berkeley and at Davis — resigned in part because of an outcry over their handling of expenses. Two weeks after the Times report was published, a subpoena was issued by the office of Robert L. Capers, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. A spokeswoman for Mr. Capers declined to comment, citing office policy. But now, the authenticity of a key document that the college turned over to prosecutors has been challenged by more than a dozen people who have been involved with the college’s finances or have been briefed on the investigation. They spoke anonymously to avoid retaliation or getting entangled in the investigation. The memo in question is just one paragraph long and is bureaucratic in nature. Addressed to an employee at the provost’s office named Luisa Hassan, and dated Sept. 15, 2011, it begins, “As we have discussed,” and is attributed to Ron Woodford, a manager at the college’s 21st Century Foundation. It goes on to say that some of Ms. Coico’s expenses “were inadvertently paid” by that foundation, when they should have been paid by CUNY’s Research Foundation. The memo then asks Ms. Hassan to process an invoice for $155, 176 to “rectify the funding source,” for what it calls “ expenses associated with the appointment of the new president. ” But the memo surfaced on July 13, almost five years after it was supposedly written, when Felix Lam, the chief financial officer of City College, it to Ms. Hassan, according to people who heard about the incident afterward. Roughly 30 minutes later, Ms. Hassan got an email from a lawyer representing the 21st Century Foundation, telling her that she “must preserve, and may not alter,” any documents related to Ms. Coico, among others, because of the federal investigation. The timing of Mr. Lam’s delivery troubled some college officials, who noted that he had managed to get the memo into the package of documents being prepared for investigators just in time. If the memo is authentic, it would indicate that approval for using the Research Foundation funds had come from two relatively employees. That would insulate Ms. Coico and other officials from being directly involved in, or even aware of, any payment decisions. Were the memo proved to be backdated or manufactured, the responsible parties could be open to charges such as obstruction of justice, legal experts said. In an email to college officials including Mr. Lam sent the day after Mr. Lam gave her the memo, Ms. Hassan questioned its authenticity. “I never received the attached memo that you gave me yesterday from Ron Woodford and I never spoke directly to him regarding this matter. ” She wrote that any request for payment would have had to come from her supervisor, Jim Styer. The Times obtained a copy of the email. Ms. Hassan declined to comment. But she has told people involved in the investigation that she does not recall meeting, much less corresponding, with Mr. Woodford until at least 2013, and has no records of any email exchanges with him until about the same time. Mr. Woodford directed all questions about the memo’s authenticity to “the management and the lawyers. ” As to whether he and Ms. Hassan could have independently authorized a transfer of that size from one foundation to another, Mr. Woodford said: “You know we’re people. We don’t make decisions like that. ” In addition to the federal investigation, James B. Milliken, CUNY’s chancellor, hired Andrew J. Levander, a former federal prosecutor, to conduct an internal review. That review is now nearing completion. By Friday afternoon, a day after The Times contacted university officials, Mr. Milliken had decided that Ms. Coico could no longer remain in office. So he told her by phone that she had to resign, or else face termination, according to two people briefed on the process. College officials declined to comment, out of respect for the continuing internal and federal investigations. On Sunday, William C. Thompson Jr. a former New York City comptroller who is the new chairman of CUNY’s board of trustees, urged the state inspector general to open a third investigation, into “all of the college foundations, alumni associations or other affiliated entities including the CUNY Research Foundation. ” He said that Ms. Coico had “improperly used funds from the college’s 21st Century Foundation to pay for certain personal expenses,” and that “despite her representations to the contrary,” she had not repaid all the money. Ms. Coico declined to comment in an email on Sunday. As for the purported Sept. 25, 2011, memo given to Ms. Hassan, at least four college officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said that they were willing to tell prosecutors that they believed the memo was fake. Neither Ms. Hassan nor Mr. Woodford, one official said, “were or are in a position even now to initiate or take action on such a request independently. ” The officials also note that the titles used for Ms. Hassan and Mr. Woodford did not match the ones they used at the time. In another incongruity, the invoice number on the September 2011 memo does not follow the chronological order of invoices from the 21st Century Foundation before and after that date. In an interview, Mr. Styer, who was Ms. Hassan’s supervisor in 2011, said that he did not recall having ever seen the memo either. He said it struck him as odd and “not the way business was done. ” “If Luisa is saying she never saw that memo,” said Mr. Styer, who left City College in 2013 and is now an elected official in Salford, Pa. “I think she’s correct. ” | 1 |
Email
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been criticized for his response as to whether he’d accept 2016 election results. His exact words: “I’ll keep you in suspense.” Several pundits think that statement cost him the election. But read more broadly, the way the subliminal mind does, and his response was brilliant, revealing his astute instincts emanating from the newly discovered unconscious super intelligence (which we all possess).
His word “suspense” implies an unfolding drama. Indeed, the depth of this drama is immeasurable. But Trump’s telling America a secret story.
His story is told through his super intelligence which quick reads situations before telling what it perceives between the lines. Trump’s super-intel is naturally attuned to other persons’ subconscious confessions. They do so in the symbolic language of “protests too much” denial and “log in your eye” projection along with other key imagery.
His super-intel quick reads Hillary Clinton and the media and conveys his response indirectly in code.
There’s far more to the media’s insistence that Trump was violating rules by not accepting election results. The media asked, “Are you going to play by the rules of prior presidential candidates?” But the big picture behind this election focuses on presidents playing by the rules, specifically the rule of law.
Unconsciously, Trump’s answer implied that the candidacy of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, raises serious rule of law questions.
For two weeks the media harangued Trump complaining he’d not played by society’s accepted rules of sexual conduct. That criticism continued while they ignored Hillary’s longtime enabling of her husband’s abusive sexual behavior and her documented harassment of his victims as well as her own sexual escapades. The media wanted to turn this sexual matter into the central rule of law issue while a far more important rule of law issue regarding the nation’s foundation still sits on the table.
As Roger L. Simon of pjmedia.com wrote on March 23, 2016, “The very backbone of our country was the rule of law. Without [it]… America as we know it does not exist.” Simon declared Americans must be convinced that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email matter was handled justly and that Obama dare not interfere. Neither condition was satisfied. Obama avowed long before the Department of Justice ruled that Hillary was innocent.
Then FBI Director James Comey in July 2016 detailed many of Hillary’s rule of law violations and in a denial confession—reading through his “protests too much”—revealed she should have been prosecuted although Comey lacked the courage to see it through. (On October 28 th under pressure from newly discovered emails he reopened the investigation.)
As Simon warned, Democrats nominated an illegal candidate who should have been tried for breaking the law. Trump reiterated that Hillary shouldn’t have been allowed to run.
Trump also reading Obama’s law-breaking Yet there’s a deeper, far more powerful story Trump unconsciously hints at —one which terrifies Democrats and the entire political class.
Trump demonstrates his subtle super-intel instincts. He’s far ahead of the media’s conscious take. Deep down, Trump focused on Barack Obama who facilitated Hillary Clinton’s violation of the law in her email scandal.
Trump alludes to a far more significant rule of law issue. His super-intel continues asking the greatest question regarding the legality of any presidential election in U.S. history: the question of Obama’s citizenship in 2008 and 2012.
From 2008 to 2015, Donald Trump stood strong, demonstrating presidential-type leadership by insisting on respect for the Constitution. He questioned Obama’s failure to produce evidence of legal U.S. citizenship. When Obama produced his alleged birth certificate under pressure in 2011, Trump was aware that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s panel of document examiners declared it a phony .
The media buried the issue. Reporters abused millions of Americans, including Trump, by labeling them racist conspiracy theorists—a basic projection reflecting that the PC media was itself “enabling the Obama conspiracy” at the expense of our Constitution.
Don’t believe Trump’s no longer a birther. Only recently, to avoid media harassment, did he claim that he accepted Obama’s U.S. citizenship. But besides the birth issue, Trump saw that Obama continually functioned as an illegal president . To America’s detriment he repeatedly violated laws on a whim, for example by ignoring immigration laws.
When Obama continually neglected to protect America’s national security, Trump confronted him. Trump recognized Obama had increasingly enabled Islamic terrorists while simultaneously building up terrorist Iran, even giving them a nuclear bomb on a layaway plan and cash money to boot.
Following the June 11, 2016 Orlando massacre perpetrated by an Islamic terrorist, Trump confronted Obama, observing that Obama wouldn’t identify the enemy—call them by their name, “Islamic terrorists”—and Trump suggested Obama unconsciously knew the many reasons he should resign the presidency.
On the surface, Obama became enraged, but unconsciously Trump elicited from Obama the most shocking confession imaginable. Secretly Obama wants the truth known.
On the heels of Trump’s challenge, Obama explained between the lines of two speeches on June 12 and 14, that he was truly a mind-controlled Stockholm Syndrome prisoner of radical Islam, programmed at an early age in his own home.
The decoded details are described in my book, The Stockholm Syndrome President, How Trump Triggered Obama’s Hidden Confession .
As he intuitively put together the story of his life, Obama learned the horrifying family secret that his Muslim father had wanted him aborted.
(My scientific forensic profiling approach confirmed that Obama’s super-intel imagery pointed toward a near abortion which matched his life’s circumstances including a promiscuous 17 year-old mother unexpectedly pregnant from a casual affair.)
His father had also emotionally “killed him” by abandoning him. Obama felt that pain on a daily basis, and then he learned that his father physically abused his mother and two later wives in Kenya.
The near-death by abortion and constant death experience at the hands of his anti-American Muslim father became fixated in Obama’s mind. He became frozen in terror—suffering a deep early-childhood trauma—terrified that his father would kill him at any moment.
When he was a child, his father was radical Islam to him—both one and the same. To stay alive Obama became an unconscious Stockholm Syndrome victim controlled by Islam—explaining his repeated capitulations to them as president and his curious refusal to use that term.
Obama’s Stockholm Syndrome remains buried deep in his psyche. Only his unconscious super-intel can tell his story in its psycholinguistic language. In his recent speeches, he unknowingly confessed in key images such as “doing the terrorists’ work for them” or key denials “then the terrorists would win. I’m not going to let that happen.”
But Obama further confessed in his June 14 speech, that he was programmed as “a radical Islam mole” to carry out a major robbery from America— first by stealing the rule of law and running as an illegal president.
In fact, Obama has robbed America in many ways: economically with massive debt and hampering business; robbed us of our borders with massive illegal immigration; of gains in racial harmony; of safe communities, of police safety, of inner city safety, of affordable health care, of military power and of our world leadership role. All the while his policies have strengthened terrorist Iran and radical Islam.
Now return to Trump’s threatened refusal to accept the election results. Consider his brilliant super-intel message to the media: “You keep America in suspense about how you avoid the rule of law both with Hillary Clinton and especially Obama, and I will keep you in suspense as to what I’ll do about it.”
Consciously Trump may not yet fully appreciate his deeper plans, but he hints at them strongly.
If Trump wins he could appoint a special committee of document examiners to study Obama’s birth certificate. As Obama and Clinton have reversed themselves on gay marriage, Trump could simply change his mind about the need to clarify Obama’s birthplace.
But if Trump loses he could still rise to the occasion by putting rule of law money behind a renewed investigation. He could potentially mobilize an abused citizenry. Rule of law Americans could demand Congress take action and legally obtain Obama’s birth records—as Obama himself, the traumatized child, has unconsciously encouraged. Obama’s super-intel, like Trump’s and all others, fully espouses the rule of law. And the need for America to re-embrace its moral compass is the most significant story of the election of 2016. Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares | 1 |
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