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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-james-marc-leas-on-canceling-the-f-35
James Marc Leas is a founding member of the Stop the F-35 Coalition in Burlington Vermont. He has published some two dozen articles on the F-35 and F-35 basing. To highlight the F-35 issue statewide, he ran for the office of Vermont Adjutant General, the leader of the Vermont National Guard, in 2013, which is elected by the legislature.
Before becoming a patent attorney James was an engineer at IBM, and he holds over 40 patents for his inventions. While an IBM employee he led a vigorous campaign among employees to end IBM sales to South Africa. He also served as a staff physicist for the Union of Concerned Scientists in its Washington, DC office for a year in the aftermath of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. He is a graduate of MIT and completed all but the dissertation toward a PhD in physics from the University of Massachusetts. He is a member of the Vermont Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the National Lawyers Guild.
Sign the petition to cancel the F-35: | 0 |
More than three years after a Supreme Court decision gave federal recognition to marriages performed in states that allowed them, the demographics of married couples largely remain a mystery. In fact, no one has a definitive count of gay married couples in the United States. One reason it’s hard to get a fix on the marriages is that detailed marriage records are not tracked at the federal level. They’re managed by counties and states, which report the count of marriages and not much else. The Census Bureau isn’t always a lot of help either. Methodological problems like sample size and false positives have long plagued census estimates of this relatively small group. But a new research paper published by the Treasury Department on Monday has found an interesting way around these problems: tax records. By linking the tax returns of couples who filed jointly in 2014 with their Social Security records, researchers are able to give us the most accurate picture of marriages to date. And their estimate is this: In 2014 there were 183, 280 marriages in America, roughly a third of 1 percent of all marriages. Of course, implicit in this estimate is the assumption that all married couples file their returns jointly. But as a proxy for that, it’s pretty good. The Treasury Department estimates that 97. 5 percent of married couples who file taxes file them jointly. One highlight of the study: Pretax household income of married couples is higher than that of heterosexual married couples. Most of that is driven by the average earnings of male couples: $176, 000. On average, they make $52, 000 more than married lesbian couples and $63, 000 more than married straight couples. Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of said one reason is the gender pay gap. The math here is simple — for heterosexual couples, the gender pay gap affects one partner. For female couples, the gender pay gap affects both partners. But that doesn’t explain why female married couples earn more than heterosexual married couples, over all. The other key component is geography. The tax data shows married couples clustering along the coasts, and in urban pockets across the United States. These are regions that also tend to have higher wages. In fact, heterosexual couples actually earn more than female ones when you compare married couples who live in the same ZIP code region. Child care plays a huge role as well. female couples are four times more likely to have children than male couples. That means that many women will have to make tough between career and family. Combine that with the likelihood of lower pay to begin with and you start to understand why the income differences are so large. There is one group whose incomes are far above the rest: married men with children. Their income is roughly $275, 000, more than double the pretax income for heterosexual couples and married female couples with children. This is a select group of people for whom the cost of children is particularly high. Using a surrogate can cost $250, 000, and adoptions can cost upward of $30, 000. The data also reveals another, more subtle geographical difference in male vs. female married couples. The top 20 cities for male married couples are more likely to include dense city centers like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, while the top 20 cities for female married couples tend to include smaller and cities like Springfield, Mass. Madison, Wis. and Burlington, Vt. Women gravitated toward commitment more than men. Among the marriages, 55 percent involved women and 45 percent men. Those in marriages tend to be a little younger than those in straight marriages. The average age of filers is 47, while the average age for those in straight couples is 51. The Treasury’s tally of marriages is very different from that of the census — roughly half what the census estimates. It doesn’t rely on samples as the census does, but uses all the tax records in America. This difference is particularly important when it comes to counting gay and lesbian populations. For detailed records of American life, the Census Bureau usually employs surveys of a small but statistically representative sample of Americans. Normally that is sufficient for most kinds of estimates such as average family sizes, car ownership or other measures. The problem with estimating gay and lesbian populations is that they represent such a small fraction of the total population any mistakes in how people answered their census forms are likely to push the number of gay couples and, in particular, gay married couples wildly out of focus. And in fact, this is what happened in the 2000 census and again in 2010. One of the more interesting problems was that many straight couples were being classified as gay because of incorrectly checked boxes on a census form. This resulted, according to some estimates, in as much as a 25 percent overcount of gay couples. How did the Census Bureau try to control for this error? Simple. By taking names. It turns out that, even today, most first names are strongly associated with one gender. Using a database of gender probabilities for each given name, the bureau was able go back and correct the misreporting. But Gary Gates, former research director at the Williams Institute, notes it’s likely that some errors persist. The Census Bureau has been pretty upfront about its problems and even produced a delightfully nerdy video about its mistakes. Which is why the Treasury’s use of administrative data is so important. The joint tax returns were matched with the Social Security Administration’s data, so there’s less chance that gender is misreported. To be fair, tax records can give an incomplete picture, but the problem is more political than methodological. After the Windsor case was decided by the Supreme Court in 2013, marriage was still not recognized in every state. So gay couples who crossed state borders to marry, but lived in states that did not recognize gay marriage, were not allowed to file jointly on their state tax returns. Instead of trying to file a joint return for federal taxes and separate returns for state taxes, many couples opted to file separately on both their state and federal return. This changed after Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that recognized gay marriage in all states. But the Treasury’s data ends in 2014. So the Treasury data is most likely undercounting marriages in more than a dozen states that did not recognize such marriages before the Obergefell decision. Maybe the best way to think about these Treasury numbers is as a floor, lower than the hypothetically perfect count of gay marriage but the closest we’ve ever come to one. And if the Treasury researchers produce similar reports for 2015 and 2016, we will be even closer. | 1 |
VIDEO : Whoopsie, Hillary Top Aide Huma Abedin Isn’t on the Campaign Plane Today VIDEO : Whoopsie, Hillary Top Aide Huma Abedin Isn’t on the Campaign Plane Today Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 29, 2016 On Friday the FBI announced they were reopening the email investigation into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information. In a statement, the FBI said that they discovered “new emails” pertinent to the earlier investigation on “several devices.” Reports indicate that one phone device belongs to Anthony Weiner and the other phone device belongs to his estranged wife Huma Abedin. Today we’re learning that Huma, who is ALWAYS on the campaign plane with Hillary, is nowhere to be found. Curious. Gee, hope she’s still breathing. Watch the video: #Hillarysemail Huma Abedin is not on the plane with #HillaryClinton today. She must be freaking out especially since she signed this doc. pic.twitter.com/KOwI5rN1pW
— Trump Street Team FL (@ChatRevolve) October 29, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America F irst! 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 |
An Appetite for Action on Tax Reform An Appetite for Action on Tax Reform By 0 33
In a few short weeks, this election will be over, and the task of governing will fall on the winning candidate and the reshuffled Congress. At the top of the list of issues to address in the early months of 2017 should be reforming our broken tax code.
Why should tax reform take center stage among the many issues plaguing the country?
Because Americans desperately want to see rising inequality addressed. Concern over the issue drove the insurgent Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and is top among issues of importance to Democratic voters.
Lest one think Sanders’ primary loss gave the green light for inaction on inequality, note that the socialist senator from Vermont is currently the most popular politician in the country. (bright strangely / Flickr)
The growing divides between the rich and the rest of us rank consistently among the most pressing issues facing all voters, not just Bernie supporters. In short, the public’s appetite for action is high, and the next president as well as Congress would do well to listen to them.
There are a number of drivers of inequality, but none are so obvious and so fixable as the deeply unfair tax code.
A review of tax returns by the New York Times last year showed the top one thousandth of 1 percent — the richest of the rich — pay just 17.6 percent of their income in taxes. For context, the top tax rate in the country, intended to tax these very people, is more than double that figure, at 39.6 percent.
Perhaps the most egregious poster child for the broken tax code is Donald J. Trump. The billionaire appears to pay zero federal income taxes . In other words, the major party presidential candidate has contributed nothing to the development of our roads and bridges, our schools and public parks, or any of the other essential public services that taxpayers make possible.
But Trump’s far from the only offender.
Wealthy households and their armies of lawyers and accountants are able to dodge paying their fair share through loopholes they helped put in place. The same goes for the most profitable corporations, many of which have also dropped their federal income tax rate to zero . Plenty of these corporations are exploiting offshore tax shelters to avoid paying over $700 billion in taxes.
It’s now commonplace for these elites to spend millions to save billions on tax reform. Meanwhile, working and middle class families, who don’t have millions to spend on lobbyists or “creative” accountants, are left to fill the hole.
The solutions to fix the tax code and thus make a dent in reversing inequality are straightforward.
Close the expensive loopholes and offshore tax havens that only exist to encourage tax evasion. Update the tax code to ensure those who make their money via investments or inheritance pay taxes on their income the same way people who punch a time clock do.
Of course, the simplicity of a solution doesn’t imply it’ll be easy. Powerful forces aligned to create the unfair tax code we have now, and they’ll go to great lengths defending it. An equally powerful movement will be required to overcome this, on par with the social movements required for all the major steps forward our country has taken in its history.
The conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously said, “You win the tax issue, you win all the issues.” On this point, he was right. | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The final night of the Republican National Convention is here. Donald J. Trump accepted the party’s nomination, pledging to rebuild a country of “law and order. ” To recap: On the first night, the speech by Melania Trump, Mr. Trump’s wife, contained passages from one that Michelle Obama gave in 2008. On the second night, the G. O. P. seemed to move toward unity, but that was disrupted on the third when Ted Cruz refused to endorse Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump gave a interview to The Times that raised questions about his commitment to defending NATO allies. _____ 2. Ahead of Mr. Trump’s acceptance of the nomination, which might be considered a success for the type of boisterous politics espoused by Fox News, the network’s powerful chairman, Roger Ailes, announced he would step down. Mr. Ailes was accused of sexual harassment by Gretchen Carlson, a former anchor, but has denied the allegations. People briefed on an internal inquiry said that at least six other women told lawyers that he had behaved inappropriately. Rupert Murdoch, 85, is going to assume control of the network. _____ 3. The last day of the Republican convention in Cleveland also meant that it was the last day for protesters to vent their frustrations outside. On Wednesday, several people were arrested after trying to burn a U. S. flag near the convention site. But there’s a cheerful crowd to be found outside Quicken Loans Arena, too — one with fans and an ad hoc marketplace hawking “Lock Her Up” paraphernalia targeting Hillary Clinton. _____ 4. The terrorist attack in Nice, France, that killed 84 people last week was planned with the help of five people over several months, the Paris prosecutor said. The attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was killed by the police after driving a truck through crowds gathered to watch the Bastille Day fireworks on July 14. His accomplices have been arrested. _____ 5. The N. B. A. will move its 2017 Game out of North Carolina because of a state law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate. The league made a formal announcement on Thursday. “We feel this law is inconsistent with the core values of the league,” Adam Silver, the N. B. A. commissioner, said this month. _____ 6. The ban of Russia’s team from the Rio Olympics was upheld by an appeals court on Thursday, according to Matthieu Reeb, an official with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, above. But Russian athletes living outside the country can petition to compete in the Games on an individual basis, and so far, two have successfully done so. _____ 7. People in Turkey woke up to a text message from their president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging them to remain loyal and maintain their presence in public squares. Turkish officials also tried to assure the public that individual freedoms would not be threatened by the state of emergency issued after a failed coup, despite the government’s purge of tens of thousands of people, including academics, from state institutions. But Mr. Erdogan’s leanings toward authoritarianism haven’t deterred President Obama from supporting his leadership. _____ 8. The majority of the U. S. is already coping with hot weather, and it’s not going away soon, at least not through the weekend. Weather experts are calling this a “heat dome,” which reminds us of other domes — Mad Max’s Thunderdome, for one — that have been unpleasant. Parts of the Midwest will have to cope simultaneously with another weather phenomenon: “corn sweat” (it’s when water released from plant leaves makes the air more muggy). _____ 9. He rapped. He sang. And, of course, there was plenty of tough talk lobbed at other artists. Drake kicked off his summer tour this week in Austin, Tex. with the word “Revenge” displayed on a giant screen, setting the tone for a show that moved between blocks of ferocious rapping and more tender sections. “Drake is becoming a pop star with anxieties,” our music critic wrote. _____ 10. Six vials of sperm belonging to a woman’s deceased husband went missing. Several women who thought they gave birth to the children of a genius were actually given the sperm of a schizophrenic felon. The cases are part of a new wave of lawsuits against sperm banks as the industry for frozen sperm continues to grow. But another piece of frightening news — a study reporting that aggressive prostate cancer has risen sharply — appears to be a false alarm: Experts say the study’s methodology doesn’t pass muster. _____ 11. If you’re a fan of libraries, consider putting the Czech Republic on your list of places to visit. The country has a lot of them — there are more libraries than there are grammar schools, and relative to the population, 10 times as many as in the United States. The abundance is made possible because of a 1919 law that mandated every city and village, no matter how big or small, must have a library. While the requirement was dropped in 2001, the law accomplished its goal of helping its citizens develop a strong reading habit. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Welcome to Watching, The New York Times’s guide. We comb through releases big and small to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. You can browse previous guides here, and to receive recommendations straight to your inbox, sign up here. Stay tuned for our coming website. The sad truth is that I’ve have a song from the NBC series “Smash” stuck in my head for three whole days. And not even one of the great ones. No, I’ve been humming “History Is Made at Night. ” That’s Tier 2 at best! Thanks for nothing, brain. This weekend, in an attempt to dislodge said number, I’ll be finishing up my “Southland” rewatch (if you’ve never seen this police drama, you should start) and seething with jealousy that England is able to enjoy a new season of “The Great British . ” We in the States have to just practice patience, I guess. See you Monday, pals. “Horrible Histories,” Hulu Watch if you wish Monty Python were more factual, or if you imagine you’d be the coolest social studies teacher. “Horrible Histories” is a beloved series of books, and it’s been adapted into several TV formats, including this brilliant sketch version that premiered in Britain in 2009. It’s deeply silly and frequently hilarious, and is hosted by a rat puppet — but it’s also genuinely educational, and covers a wide variety of historical topics (Socrates, Joan of Arc, the Titanic). There are 82 episodes available, and it’s very consistent, so there’s no bad episode to pick. There’s occasional toilet humor, but if you’re trying to convince an to give it a go, that might be a selling point. “I Miss Downton Abbey!” Sunday, 9 p. m. some PBS affiliates (check your local listings). Watch if … well, you get it. I’m surprised that more shows don’t have specials like this, especially this long after their finales. I’d totally watch a “Are You Still Thinking About ‘Mad Men’?” special. Or “‘Lost:’ Like, It’s Been a Few Years, You Can Chill. ” Or “‘ER’ Was So Good. ” So many people complaining about the “nostalgia boom,” so few people making the sort of nostalgia I am deeply interested in. “Spiral” (“Engrenages” in France) Netflix (four seasons) Hulu (five seasons). Watch if you like gory, bleak foreign murder mysteries. The French series “Spiral” premiered in 2005, so it predates most of the shows that are like it — “The Killing” and “The Bridge” specifically. Do I even need to say that the series begins with the discovery of a dead woman’s mutilated, mostly nude body? It does. But it also has depth and potency, particularly in its character development, if not always in its plotting. The first season focuses on one particular investigation, and subsequent seasons keep the cop and lawyer characters but vary the cases. “Monkey Thieves,” Hulu. Watch if you like monkey business. Ho, ho. You might think this is about people who steal monkeys, à la the absolute worst moment in “Law Order” franchise history, but it’s the monkeys themselves who are the thieves! HBO’s limited series “The Night Of” ends its season Sunday night with an installment. (It’s almost two hours long.) If you need to brush up a little, our recaps of the previous episodes can be found here. She’s a tomboy who doesn’t fit in at the local community center — not at her brother’s boxing ring and not on the dance team. But Toni (Royalty Hightower) wants to belong. Unfortunately for her, fitting in means potentially catching a mysterious condition that has befallen the dancers. They call it “the fits,” which gives the movie its name. “The Fits” is an impressive debut for both Hightower and the director Anna Rose Holmer. Hightower’s understated performance allows her (and us) to observe the gender divided corners of her community center. And Holmer makes every one of her visually stunning scenes count by getting close to the action and slowing down the hits, kicks and fits. (Watch on Amazon or iTunes) — Monica Castillo Something silly: Uproxx’s explainer about CBS’s incoherent drama “Zoo” is a thing of beauty. Something serious: The Hollywood Reporter’s feature “Little People, Big Woes in Hollywood: Low Pay, Degrading Jobs and a Tragic Death” is a long, worthwhile read. Something surprisingly interesting: At first I scoffed, but Atlas Obscura’s “I Made a Shipwreck Expert Watch ‘The Little Mermaid’ and Judge Its Nautical Merits” is actually fascinating. Maritime archaeology! What a cool job. | 1 |
Shopping for a phone plan can be as daunting as picking a health insurance package. The rates and options constantly change, and it feels impossible to make simple comparisons between carriers. Case in point: The best phone plans we recommended a year and a half ago are now obsolete because the wireless carriers have completely changed their offerings. The biggest change involves the unlimited data plan. About five years ago, all the major carriers killed data plans that let you browse the web, download music and post photos as much as you want in favor of plans that charge you by the gigabyte. But now Sprint, ATT and, most recently, Verizon Wireless have resurrected unlimited data. As enticing as that may sound, unlimited is ideal for a small set of people. For everyone else, you may be paying for more than you need, and the plans come with major limitations on how you can use them. “The unlimited plan will confuse consumers even more because it’s not really unlimited,” said Toni Toikka, the chief executive of Alekstra, a research firm that analyzes wireless bills. “They think ‘O. K. it’s a great deal,’ but actually it’s not so. ” Still, it is a good time to consider a new phone plan. Phone manufacturers like Samsung Electronics, LG and Sony are expected to show new smartphones next week at Mobile World Congress, the annual trade show centered on mobile devices. To help narrow your options, The Wirecutter, the product recommendation site owned by The New York Times, named Verizon Wireless the best carrier, largely because it has the broadest network coverage and service quality, along with generous data packages that are easy to understand, said Rob Pegoraro, who writes about phone carriers for The Wirecutter. The Wirecutter’s pick comes down to a simple fact: A smartphone is no good if it lacks a connection, so good coverage should be the top consideration when you select a plan. But choosing the best plan for you is not as simple as heading straight for a Verizon plan, Mr. Toikka said. Prices can fluctuate, and in some cases, ATT, the carrier, offers a better deal on a network that is generally as good as Verizon’s. Here are recommendations we made with the help of Mr. Toikka for the best phone plans for individuals, couples, families and travelers. ATT’S PLAN PRICE $60 a month WHY IT WINS On average, smartphone owners with tiered data plans used 2. 9 gigabytes of data per month last year, according to Cisco. At $60 a month, ATT’s offering is large enough to suit the average smartphone owner’s needs. Verizon offers a bucket for $60 a month, which may be too small for $75 a month it offers a plan, which is a bit more than you probably need. VERIZON’S UNLIMITED DATA PLAN PRICE $80 a month WHY IT WINS If you use at least 10 gigabytes a month, consider yourself a power user. For a single phone line, Verizon’s $ unlimited data offering beats ATT’s $ unlimited plan. Verizon customers can also get a discount by enrolling in automatic payments, reducing the price of the unlimited plan to $80 a month. Only Verizon’s unlimited data plan includes the ability to tether, or share a smartphone’s cellular data with another device like a computer. Both plans share a limitation: After 22 gigabytes of use in a month, data speeds may be slowed. ATT’S SHARED PLAN PRICE $100 a month WHY IT WINS ATT’s shared data plan should have most couples covered since the average data consumption per person is three gigabytes a month. Priced at $100 a month, the plan is also more generous than Verizon’s plan at $100 a month. VERIZON’S OR ATT’S UNLIMITED DATA PLAN PRICE $140 a month WHY THEY TIE A couple that uses at least 20 gigabytes a month would benefit from either ATT’s or Verizon’s unlimited plan, and both cost the same each month. Which to choose? Mr. Toikka recommends checking coverage maps for ATT and Verizon to see which carrier is better in your hometown. VERIZON’S UNLIMITED DATA PLAN PRICE $180 a month WHY IT WINS On average, a family of four will probably consume about 12 gigabytes a month. Verizon’s largest tiered data plan includes eight gigabytes a month, which can easily be surpassed. Verizon’s unlimited data plan costs $200 a month for four people, which can be reduced to $180 a month for families that enroll in automatic payments. Mr. Toikka warned that automatic payments might lead parents to overlook unexpected charges on their phone bills, so just make sure to closely monitor your bills. VERIZON’S AND ATT’S TRAVEL PLANS OR A FOREIGN SIM CARD PRICE $10 a day WHY THEY WIN Verizon and ATT customers can use a smartphone abroad in over 100 countries for an extra $10 a day on top of the rates for their normal phone plan. The main difference is that Verizon’s smartphones come unlocked, offering the flexibility of inserting a foreign SIM card and potentially paying even lower rates. By contrast, ATT’s smartphones come locked by default, meaning you will have to go through some hassle to unlock a device to use a foreign SIM card. Kelly Crummey, a Verizon spokeswoman, said, “Verizon’s coverage is second to none, and we have very competitively priced plans loaded with features, providing customers with incredible value. ” ATT said it “provides value to customers that our competitors can’t match. ” Switching to a new phone plan can be tedious and frustrating, and chances are you are happy with the one you have. But Mr. Pegoraro of The Wirecutter warned that sticking with a dated plan could make you miss out on options that offer better value or neat features like tethering. “Don’t assume that the plan you’ve been on is the one you should stay on,” he said. | 1 |
Home › POLICE STATE › HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES TARGETED IN DISTRICT’S ‘OPERATION ROUND UP’ HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES TARGETED IN DISTRICT’S ‘OPERATION ROUND UP’ 0 SHARES
[10/31/16] A public school official in Florida has urged citizens to fight truancy by reporting any children they suspect might not be in school or being educated — including homeschool families.
It is all part of an “anti-truancy” initiative called Operation Round Up, in which residents of Jackson County, Florida, are urged to be on the lookout for children not in school and to report them to school officials or to police.
A truancy report can lead to a home check by sheriff’s deputies or police and possibly the arrest of the parents, TV station WJHG reported.
The policy of the Jackson County School District is to send law enforcement to the homes of suspected truants.
“Sometimes if these citizens don’t call me, I have no way of knowing,” Shirl Williams, director of student services for the school system, told the TV station. “So if it’s a nosy neighbor, be a nosy neighbor. Just call me and let me check out the situation.” Post navigation | 0 |
Home / Be The Change / Filming Cops / Ever Google Yourself? Do a “Deep Search” Instead, but brace yourself for the results Ever Google Yourself? Do a “Deep Search” Instead, but brace yourself for the results The Free Thought Project October 26, 2016 Comments Off on Ever Google Yourself? Do a “Deep Search” Instead, but brace yourself for the results
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Ever try Googling someone only to come up with basic information and maybe a link or two to an outdated social media profile? There’s a new website going around that promises to reveal much more than just a simple google search can show you.
Been issued a speeding ticket? Failed to stop at a stop sign? What about your family members? And friends? If you are like most of us, the answer to at least one of those questions is “yes”—the vast majority of us have slipped up at least once or twice.
An innovative new website — Instant Checkmate is now revealing the full “scoop” on millions of Americans.
Instant Checkmate aggregates hundreds of millions of publicly available criminal, traffic, and arrest records and posts them online so they can easily be searched by anyone. Members of the site can literally begin searching within seconds, and are able to check as many records as they like (think: friends, family, neighbors, etc. etc.).
Previously, if you wanted to research someone’s arrest records, you might have had to actually go into a county court office—in the appropriate county—and formally request information on an individual. This process may have taken days or weeks, or the information might not have been available at all. With websites like Instant Checkmate , however, a background check takes just a few clicks of the mouse, and no more than a minute or two.
While preparing this article, I decided to run a quick search on myself to give the service a real-world test. To my dismay, the search revealed several items I’d long forgotten—one of them being for the possession of a fake ID I was (embarrassingly) issued back in college when I was just 18 years old. “possession of a fake ID I was (embarrassingly) issued back in college when I was just 18 years old”
After searching myself and finding those records, my curiosity was piqued, and I began researching family members—apparently my aunt Susanne isn’t a very good driver, judging by the numerous traffic citations that showed on her record.
One of the most interesting aspects of Instant Checkmate is that it shows not only criminal records, but also more general background information like court records, various types of licenses (FAA, DEA), previous addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, estimated income levels and even satellite imagery of known addresses—it’s really pretty scary just how much information is in these reports.
In addition to giving information on the specific person you search for, the report also includes a scrolling list of “local sex offenders” for whatever region you’ve searched—along with a map plotting out the locations of those offenders. I started perusing the ones that showed up in my report, and I was absolutely blown away when I stumbled upon my junior high school wrestling coach’s mug shot.
“I was absolutely blown away when I stumbled upon my junior high school wrestling coach’s mug shot.”
His crime was listed as “Out of state offense,”” so I wasn’t able to get the specifics (you usually can—this was an unusual case), but he was definitely a registered sex offender. Scary stuff.
I would definitely recommend this tool to friends and family. Anyone can start running background checks on Instant Checkmate within a few seconds—just click this link to get started. If you would like to search someone you know, click here . Note from the Author
I have to warn you before you start your search, the information you find may be overwhelming and has the potential of changing your view of the search subject forever. Keep this in mind when completing your search . – Heidi R. | 1 |
Former President Barack Obama broke his silence again to criticize President Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement. [Obama criticized Trump’s decision as “an absence of American leadership” that moved the United States backward. “Even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got,” he wrote in a statement. Obama recalled his “steady, principled” leadership on the climate change agreement and “bold American ambition” that convinced other countries to follow their lead. “The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” he said. Obama praised business interests for investing in green energy, but did not mention the government subsidies that made it possible. Despite his assertion that he wanted to remain silent after leaving office, Obama has broken that promise on multiple occasions to criticize President Trump. | 0 |
Posted on November 7, 2016 He goes to school full-time and works three part-time jobs, but running this pantry is important to him. Credit: Justin Franks
What started as a simple act of kindness has since exploded into a movement that some students rely on at a college in Alabama. Justin Franks, a 20-year-old student at Alabama A&M University, first noticed that some students in his dorm building were going to bed hungry.
“They didn’t have any food,” Franks told ABC News. “The cafeteria here closes pretty early, and a lot of students here don’t have the money to go outside of campus to eat. I wanted to cater to those students.”
Franks spent $40 of his own money to build up a stock of instant noodles, Capri Suns, and a few household items, such as tissues and bottled waters. He planned to share his stash with those few in need, and decided to share the news of his small stash on Facebook. His post reached over 600 shares, and word spread like wildfire.
“I didn’t think it would get shared that much, but people really cared about our students and Alabama A&M University,” Franks told WHNT News 19. Credit: Fox 5
Soon after, donations for the food and basics pantry started rolling in to help fund Franks’ small operation. He has since moved the pantry to an old mail room in his dorm’s building. It’s open from 6pm to 11pm, just after the cafeteria closes and into the evening in case late-night studiers need a pick-me-up.
The pantry also includes bigger basic items, such as toilet paper, deodorant, and toothpaste, along with the dozens of non-perishable food items. It’s run just like a regular pantry, where students can come in twice a week and take up to three items. Franks is even training someone else to take over so that the pantry can continue long after he graduates. Credit: Justin Franks
The full-time student who works three part-time jobs takes this job seriously as well, and has already helped over 100 students. He told ABC News,
“‘Service Is Sovereignty’ is our school’s motto and I want to live up to that. I’m hoping that we can keep expanding the pantry and that it’ll continue for years to come.”
It might be a small gesture but it’s helping these students in this small way that can help them get through one of the most challenging years of their life.
What are your thoughts on this news? College Student Runs Food Pantry Out Of His Dorm To Help His Schoolmates | 0 |
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On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” MIT Economics Professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber argued that “The law is working as designed. However, it could work better. And I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that, we need a larger mandate penalty.”
Gruber said, “Obamacare’s not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we’ve covered 20 million, the largest expansion in american history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurors could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare.”
When asked about the 22% Obamacare premium increases, Gruber stated, “the 22% increase, let’s remember who that applies to. That applies to a very small fraction of people, who have to buy insurance without the subsidies that are available.”… | 0 |
Universal released the final trailer for its upcoming monster reboot The Mummy this week. [Tom Cruise stars in the studio’s third reboot of the iconic franchise as Nick Morton, who is informed in the trailer by Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) that he’s been cursed with the “ultimate evil. ” “It takes a monster to defeat a monster,” Jekyll tells Morton, who escapes death on at least three separate occasions in the trailer. Universal is hoping to launch a shared “monster universe” with the release of this film, similar to Marvel’s series of superhero movies. According to the Hollywood Reporter, other films in the series will include a Frankenstein film (starring Javier Bardem) and an Invisible Man film (starring Johnny Depp). The Mummy is directed by longtime producer and frequent J. J. Abrams collaborator Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) off of a script by Christopher McQuarrie and Jon Spaihts. Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson and Courtney B. Vance . The films hits theaters June 9. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
November 20th, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
Various - Translated by Inessa Sinchougova
While US State Department dodging questions into its allegations is nothing new, the spokesperson John Kirby has recently gone the extra mile. Kirby stated that he would not be treating RT as an equal media organisation, to the likes of western mainstream media. Referring to the fact that Russia Today is "state sponsored" media, this apparently obliterates his responsibility to provide evidence into allegations of "Russian bombing of hospitals in Syria."
Part of RT funding does come from the government, however this is publicly listed information and not a secret as is often "exposed". Who would you rather listen to - state media that is indeed supported by the government that you elected, or corporate interests of the 1%? Furthermore, the Russian Ministry of Defence provides weekly briefings of its own, so Kirby's suggestion to "ask your own government" only highlights his seeming obliviousness to pretty much everything.
Kirby conveniently "doesn't know" that "respectable" CNN or BBC journalists actively distort the truth to the outlets, while working in Russia. I thought Jennifer Psaaki would be hard to beat, but then this guy happened....
Maria Zakharova holds the equivalent position in Russia as John Kirby does in the US and I think it is fair to say she takes the cake.
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During Friday’s Weekly Address, President Trump said, “the first budget we are releasing provides a firm new foundation for the safety, and also for jobs and prosperity for all Americans in the years to come. ” Transcript as Follows: “My fellow Americans, Each month families across the country work very, very hard to balance their budgets and to make the tough choices necessary to take care of their loved ones and to give their children opportunities they never had before. This is who we are as Americans — we take pride in leaving each new generation a better country than the one we inherited. Yet for decades, Washington has refused to make the tough choices. As a result, the American Dream has slipped from the grasp of more and more of our people. This has to change. We need a government that spends on the right things — the safety, security, and of our people — and stops the waste and abuse of taxpayer funds, whether in America or in global projects overseas — of which, perhaps, there are too many. My administration is laying a new foundation to build a future of economic prosperity and achieve American Greatness. The budget we are proposing will reverse economic stagnation and open the path to millions of new jobs for American workers. We will balance the budget without making cuts in Social Security and Medicare. We will achieve our goals by doing exactly what you do in your home: setting priorities, cutting the fat, and growing new opportunities. And the big thing for me is economic growth, which is not possible without safety and security. We will grow our economy it is growing already. It will grow faster than you’ve seen it in decades. That is why our budget reverses years of cuts to our military that have made us less safe in a more dangerous world. We are going to make sure the men and women on the front lines of freedom have the tools they need to keep us safe and totally secure. At home, we are going to give our ICE officers — who have done an incredible job — and our Border Patrol agents — who are amazing people — everything they need to end the lawlessness once and for all. It is our moral duty to keep our citizens safe and free, and to protect the right of every American to pursue their dreams. We don’t want roving our streets, we’re getting rid of them by the thousands, they’re going to be out of here. But I’m proud to tell you that the first budget we are releasing provides a firm new foundation for the safety, and also for jobs and prosperity for all Americans in the years to come. Thank you very much. You’re going to love the end result. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0 |
Serious reports of voter fraud in Texas with usual suspects of Clinton and Soros. The complete story is here.
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Putin Says It's Too Early for Him to Retire
Putin expressed the opinion at the Valdai International Discussion Forum in Sochi Originally appeared at Russia & India Report
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the time has not yet come for him to retire. He expressed this opinion at the Valdai International Discussion Forum in Sochi.
"The moderator wished me a pleasant retirement, I have the same wish for myself, only when the time comes. This is the right thing that needs to be done but I haven’t retired yet, I am an acting head of a large state so I should be reserved, and refrain from expressing unnecessary aggressiveness," Putin said.
According to him, belligerence is not his style. Nevertheless, he was confident that in front of the Valdai Club audience one should be very honest otherwise the discussion would be boring and dry. Did you enjoy this article? - Consider helping us! Russia Insider depends on your donations: the more you give, the more we can do. $1 $10 Other amount
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by Alliance for Natural Health – USA
They’re dangerous, even deadly, but hugely profitable. Big Pharma has bought politicians and doctors. Only the American public can stop it by refusing the product. Action Alert!
Most people are understandably afraid to say no. They don’t know enough about medicine. We understand. We aren’t doctors and never offer medical advice. But the Internet has put most medical research at your doorstep, including information about drug side effects and risks. And there are integrative doctors who can offer sound advice on the subject.
Are we as a society addicted to legal drugs? Are we also wasting huge amounts of money on substances that all too often offer more harm than benefit? Let’s consider these numbers: 60% of Americans take one or more prescription drugs. 15% of Americans take five or more prescription drugs. Some, many more. There are no studies on the interaction of all these drugs. 10% of Americans take an antidepressant medication; for women in their 40s and 50s, it’s 25%. 25% of Americans over the age of 45 take a statin drug, despite much evidence of harm , including promoting diabetes. Doctors write about 6 million prescriptions for proton-pump inhibitors (a class of acid blocking drugs) each year, making these drugs the third highest selling class of drugs on the market. This is happening although logic and evidence suggest that most people, especially older people, suffer from too little stomach acid , not too much.
Statins and acid blockers only begin to describe the problems.
A recent study found that elderly patients were able to reduce their risk of death by 38%. How? By “ de-prescribing ”—reducing the number of prescription drugs they were taking.
Properly prescribed prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the country; they cause an estimated 1.9 million hospitalizations a year and 128,000 deaths. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions. These are just hospital numbers. And even in hospitals, there is reason to believe that most of the injury from drugs is hard to isolate and therefore not reported.
Even if a drug does not kill or hospitalize us, there can still be serious side effects. One study found that adverse drug effects reported to the FDA more than doubled in the last decade—and these figures are based on voluntary reports. Some researchers estimate that fewer than 10% of adverse events are actually reported .
Another risk to taking prescription drugs: they often deplete the body of nutrients. This is a serious issue. Last week , we reported that the US Department of Agriculture estimates that 90% of the American public is deficient in at least one nutrient; it is common to be severely deficient in many. Magnesium is an essential co-factor with more than 300 different enzymes regulating different processes throughout the body. If magnesium is scarce, it may be routed to the heart, where it is especially needed, and other parts of the body suffer over time. Or it may even be inadequate in the heart.
Another example is vitamin D. A number of drugs can interfere with the body’s absorption of vitamin D, including antacids, anticonvulsants, antiretrovirals (AIDS drugs), and some antibiotics. A meta-analysis found that those with what conventional medicine considers low vitamin D in the blood and integrative doctors consider very low (lower than 30 ng/ml) were twice as likely to die prematurely from all causes. As much as two-thirds of the US population may be below that level (David Williams, Alternatives Newsletter , September 2014).
The list goes on. COX-2 inhibitor drugs, which include some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs (ibuprofen, aspirin), reduce vitamin B6 levels in the body. This is in addition to the risk they present for internal bleeding and other medical complications. For further information, Dr. Julian Whitaker has a helpful reference chart explaining which drugs deplete the body of which nutrients.
The irony is that many doctors prescribing multiple drugs to their patients will advise them NOT to take a vitamin or mineral supplement while on the drug, when in fact the need for supplements is increased.
There are more reasons to wonder about these drugs. Unlike natural treatments, which give your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself, they directly interfere and force biological outcomes. This is bound to produce unintended consequences.
In addition, virtually all drugs are chlorine-based, but little or no research has explored whether this in itself is a risk. While a tiny amount of chlorine is natural to the body, higher amounts are toxic. The effects of ingesting, breathing and absorbing this chemical on a daily basis, as Americans do, are largely unknown.
Keep in mind also that 80% of the prescription drugs consumed in the US come from China or India . While drugs made overseas must theoretically meet US standards, in reality, widespread quality issues abound.
Think of the irony here. The prescription pill that costs a few pennies to make but sells for hundreds of dollars is made in China to save another penny. Does this make sense?
Because the FDA was so deficient in inspecting foreign drug manufacturers, a law was passed in 2012 that requires the agency to inspect foreign pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities as frequently as domestic facilities. But the numbers don’t add up. India and China each have about 500 drug manufacturing plants registered with the FDA. The FDA has nineteen staff members in India, and is working on increasing the number of inspectors in China from eight to twenty-seven.
A report by the Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the agency was not able to meet the legal requirements. Before the 2012 law was passed, the Government Accountability Office found that the FDA inspected 11% of foreign drug facilities in FY 2009, noting that at such a rate, it would take the agency more than nine years to inspect these facilities just once. And who are the inspectors? How do we know that they have not been bought off?
Meanwhile the same FDA that is utterly failing to meet the inspection requirements demanded by law has issued proposed rules on new supplements which cannot possibly be implemented without huge additions to staff, and which will also cripple and even destroy the supplement industry. Why is it doing this? The only reason we can think of is that the FDA is so beholden to the drug industry it is supposed to regulate, but which is actually providing much of its funding.
Action Alert! Write to Congress and the FDA, urging them NOT to move forward with the NDI guidance Please send your message immediately.
Read the full article at ANH-USA.org. Published on November 17, 2016 | 1 |
US accuses China of stealing plans for future war 31.10.2016 Special committee of the US Congress reported that the Chinese agents had stolen the Pentagon plans on how to carry out 'the future war'. According to freebeacon.com, which referred to the report, 'the United States faces a large and growing threat to its national security from Chinese intelligence collection operations'. The experts highlighted that China's efforts to penetrate closed cyber space and the US national security agencies is the most serious threat. It is forecasted that the Chinese special services could get access to 5.6m fingerprints, some of which 'could be used to identify undercover U.S. government agents or to create duplicates of biometric data to obtain access to classified areas'. According to estimations of the authors of this report, activity of the Chinese intelligence has increased significantly for the last 15 years and is conducted through various services, including the Ministry of State Security, the People's Liberation Army, and other military organizations. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
Home › POLITICS › THE END GAME CLOSES IN ON THE CLINTONS AS THE DEEP STATE TURNS THE END GAME CLOSES IN ON THE CLINTONS AS THE DEEP STATE TURNS 0 SHARES
[11/2/16] MIKE ADAMS -My fellow Americans, we are watching history unfold before us with such sound and fury that we are likely to never witness comparable events again in our lifetime. As of today, I am now convinced that the deep state has turned on Hillary Clinton and will unveil damning evidence in the next few days that will end the Clintons’ reign of terror over America and collapse her bid for the presidency.
The mainstream media, of course, will never report this news for the simple reason that they are the propaganda arm of the criminal Clinton cartel. As such, they will lie to the public to the bitter end, even as the Clinton Titanic sinks with all of them on board (in deep, frigid waters, no less, with no more lifeboats to be found).
The so-called “deep state”— the powerful insiders who really run the intelligence services and inner layers of untouchable bureaucracy — has decided Hillary Clinton is too damaged to defend any longer . Even if she were to win by stealing the election, she would be so mired in criminal investigations and political illegitimacy that she would rip the nation to shreds while fighting for her own political survival.
It has now been decided, I believe, that Hillary Clinton will be taken out of power by releasing criminally damaging emails which have long been held by the NSA and FBI. This will likely happen before the coming weekend. Once that is accomplished, the next goal will be to wait for President Trump to take office, then destroy the U.S. economy through a controlled, global debt collapse so that Trump can be blamed for the near collapse of western economies. (Remember: The deep state isn’t pro-Trump. They’re still all about defending the establishment. But Hillary is one bridge too far for even the statists to stomach…)
Instead of allowing Hillary Clinton to take power and destroy America from the top, in other words, deep state power brokers have reverted to “Plan B” which is to let Trump take the White House, then destroy America through the controlled demolition of its currency and economy. This is simpler than it sounds. Bringing down the debt pyramid of a nation carrying nearly $20 trillion in national debt isn’t exactly rocket science. All they have to do is stand back and stop manipulating the markets and stop printing new money for a few months while raising interest rates. Monetary gravity will do the rest…
In the mean time, Hillary Clinton and a long list of her co-conspirators are going to find themselves charged with obstruction of justice , lying under oath, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, corruption and other serious charges that will lead to serious prison time for many.
The criminal racket of the Clintons is about to implode. The participants will be charged under the RICO Act for “racketeering” activities, for which ample evidence already exists. A new video from Steve Pieczenik describes some of this
In this video, intelligence insider Steve Pieczenik lays out how high-level intelligence insiders are now working in concert to “reverse the Clinton coup” that’s attempting to take over America and destroy it from within.
Even if you don’t believe Pieczenik — and I fully realize he’s controversial in his own way — this short video is a very important “must watch” explanation to know what people in the intelligence community are doing…“we’ve initiated a counter-coup…” The Clintons are going to go “full murder” in a last ditch, desperate effort to save themselves
Beware of what may yet unfold in the coming days. Like a cornered wild animal, the Clintons are extremely dangerous when they realize they have nothing to lose by going “full murder” in an attempt to save themselves.
I will not be surprised the least bit if bodies of people in high places start piling up over the next week. Watch for news reports of mysterious car crashes, swimming pool accidents or “natural” deaths involving people like James Comey, who’d better have armed security personnel around him at all times.
Look for desperate measures such as the Clintons attempting to blackmail Obama, Comey or anyone who they think might serve as leverage to save their own skins. We might also see desperate false flag attacks unfold in the next few days, although that’s increasingly unlikely since it seems the Clintons are now on their own (they would need the assistance of Obama to pull off another Sandy Hook, you see). A deal has already been struck with Obama
Most likely, deep state operatives have already struck a deal with Obama to avoid prosecuting him for his own serious crimes as long as he stays out of the way as Hillary Clinton’s head is served up on a platter. This likely explains why Obama is now publicly saying he trusts Comey (and refuses to go to bat for Hillary). There’s no love lost between Obama and the Clintons (remember 2008?).
As all this is going down, the propaganda ministry of the Clinton regime — CNN, NYT, Washington Post, etc. — is going to explode into an all-out “bat-s##t crazy” conspiracy theory phase where they blame the Russians, extraterrestrials, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster for everything that’s imploding around the Clintons. Mainstream media news reports are going to increasingly sound like sociopathic babble from crazy people grasping at whatever outlandish theories they can invoke. Maybe crop circles were created by the Russians as a secret code to Wikileaks and Donald Trump, eh?
Meanwhile, conspiratorial operatives like George Stephanopoulos fully realize they are probably going to jail for collusion and sedition , so they have nothing left to lose by desperately trying to put Hillary in the White House via any means at their disposal, including totally faking negative news against Donald Trump (which is, of course, the entire news mission of CNN at this point, a disgraced propaganda network run by anti-American traitors). If the vote is stolen for Hillary Clinton, all hell breaks loose
Should the globalist Soros operators manage to steal the vote, bribe the electoral voters or rig the black box voting machines sufficiently to place Hillary Clinton in the White House, all Hell breaks loose across America :
• The FBI goes into full indictment mode to push criminal charges for the Clinton criminal regime.
• Donald Trump launches a massive legal challenge to the election outcome, dispatching an army of lawyers to level a vast assortment of charges involving coordinated voter fraud, the rigging of voting machines, the attempted bribery of Electoral voters and so on.
• The U.S. military revs up its plans for an armed military coup to depose Clinton and restore democracy. This one should be especially entertaining to watch unfold if it gets activated… (and yes, YOU will beg for a short-term military dictatorship as long as they promise to depose Clinton and restore open, fair and free elections).
• Armed U.S. citizens prepare for a massive march on Washington to take back their democracy and restore a lawful society where the political elite don’t get away with corruption, fraud and murder. Expect this march to be joined by police officers and federal law enforcement officials of all kinds.
• The NSA likely goes into “full dump” mode to unleash every scrap of damning criminal evidence against Hillary Clinton. This will likely be joined by CIA assets who already have the goods on the Clintons and their “Lolita Express” pedo joy rides.
• Wikileaks, Anonymous and every former NSA analyst goes into “destroy the Clintons” mode and begins to hack and expose every last shred of email evidence ever possessed by the Clintons and anyone close to them. Anonymous alone has enough technical clout to accomplish this with little or no outside help. (I expect Kim Dotcom to be aiding this entire effort as well, as he rightly holds extreme hatred toward Hillary Clinton… as do we all, come to think of it.)
• The establishment Republicans in the U.S. Congress will, as usual, meekly surrender to the democrats, pulls down their britches and bend over to prepare to take it in the rear because that’s what they do best when the going gets tough. Totally useless politicrats like John McCain can’t get their pants around their ankles quickly enough when democrats start accusing them of something. These useless heaps of human baggage will be tossed out of Washington as the revolution unfolds, replaced with individuals who actually honor the U.S. Constitution (like Rep. Louie Gohmert). I root for all groups working to save America and expose the criminal politicians
Bring out the marshmallows and weiners, folks: This is going to be the most bizarre campfire front row seat to U.S. history that anyone has witnessed in over 200 years. Try not to trip and “face plant” into the flames as all this unfolds. It might be a smart idea to have some preparedness supplies at the ready, since no one really knows just how nasty this is all going to get. (And thank God Hillary doesn’t have her fingers on the nuclear launch codes, or she’d probably launch them just to change the narrative…)
As for me, I’m with anybody who’s trying to save America , restore democracy and throw the establishment criminals in prison. Like almost everybody else, I’ve had enough of the lies, the corruption, the media deceptions and the incessant blood sucking parasites in Washington D.C. who are too arrogant and stupid to realize just how much they’re universally despised. The revolution is ON. Anonymous, Wikileaks, Project Veritas, the FBI and the NSA have all been activated. There’s no stopping them now, and all the details of all the crimes of the Clintons are about to spill onto the stage of history, dirty deeds and all.
Be warned, you are probably not psychologically prepared for the truth about what the Clintons really are. You will probably vomit. Post navigation | 1 |
Αλέξης Τσίπρας Πρωθυπουργός της Ελλάδας/Flickr Wikileaks to drop bombshell Clinton emails in next two days; Clinton camp quivers in fear More emails to come, #Podestaemails By Staff Writer - November 6, 2016 ( INTELLIHUB ) — Our sources tell us that Wikileaks will be releasing, adding, new bombshell information to the Podesta email collection in the next few days that may rock the Clinton campaign’s world.
In fact, Intellihub News expects the release to be so damning that the Clinton campaign’s communication director pre-planted the following tweet Sunday morning in anticipation of the coming Wiki-dump: Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days – it’s probably a fake.
— Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) November 6, 2016
In the tweet, Palmiri tries to push propaganda that anything big released by Wikileaks in the next few days will be fake.
#MAGA | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau have built the hottest new social app in America. Now the young men have to keep it from getting crushed by an anonymous slander campaign, overwhelmed servers and their urge to personally respond to thousands of messages from users. The app, called Down to Lunch, is shockingly : It’s all about meeting up with your friends in person. You send a message to some or all of your buddies saying that you have free time and are looking for company for a meal, a gym workout, even a church service. Whoever is interested responds and you arrange to meet. “We’re trying to make it feel like you live with your friends again in your freshman dorm,” said Mr. Viswanathan, a Texas native who graduated from Stanford University in 2012 with a master’s in computer science. The concept is so simple that the first version was built in a day last spring. By last week, Down to Lunch, also known as DTL, was the No. 1 free social networking app for the iPhone and the No. 2 free iPhone app over all. (It doesn’t rank quite as high on Android.) But keeping a prime position on crowded smartphone screens isn’t easy. Just ask Foursquare, which debuted with a splash in 2009 but has drifted into near irrelevance, or Yo, an app that lets you send the word “yo” to your friends, which momentarily topped the charts in 2014. Mr. Viswanathan, a talker, and Mr. Lau, who is more meet one fundamental requirement for success: a stubborn belief that they have a great idea. Mr. Viswanathan worked on five previous services that tried to connect people, three of them with Mr. Lau, but Down to Lunch was the first to catch on. The San Francisco has needed little capital so far, and the founders have turned away dozens of potential investors. However, the men, both Stanford alumni, have not been shy about seeking advice from their array of Silicon Valley connections, including senior tech executives, venture capitalists and other company founders. As thousands of app developers have discovered, attention spans are short, especially among the college and high school students that Down to Lunch is targeting. Dozens of competitors are vying to help people organize spontaneous gatherings, including Hangster, Shortnotice, Down to Hang and a Google app called Who’s Down. And a lot of things can go wrong on the road to becoming the next Snapchat. Down to Lunch’s servers went down last week after hitting limits imposed by their cloud computing provider, forcing the to devise a . A human error derailed for six hours on Monday. In addition to typical problems — lack of sleep, inadequate staffing, technical malfunctions — Mr. Viswanathan and Mr. Lau have also been battling an anonymous social media campaign claiming that Down to Lunch is used for sex trafficking. The assertions, some describing encounters with suspicious strangers, are dubious. Down to Lunch is designed to allow communications only between people who know each other and have each other’s phone number. Kirsta Melton, who heads the human trafficking division of the Texas attorney general’s office, said that she looked into the app and found no evidence supporting the allegations. “Unless you have random strangers in your address book or someone stole your phone, it’s unlikely that this app could be used for human trafficking,” she said. It’s not clear who is behind the smear campaign, although Mr. Viswanathan and Mr. Lau believe it might be a competitor. They traced the accusations back to several Twitter accounts. Twitter temporarily suspended one account and appears to have blocked offending tweets from others. Apple and Google have also removed reviews that mention the trafficking allegations. But that has not stopped worried users from contacting Mr. Viswanathan or Mr. Lau or simply deleting the app. Mr. Viswanathan said one school administrator even called him about it. Despite the damage the trafficking accusations have caused, there is no question that Down to Lunch has struck a chord with young people. After the app appeared on the University of Notre Dame’s campus, for example, 15 percent of the student body downloaded it within 12 hours, Mr. Viswanathan said. Aakash Malhotra, a freshman at the University of Georgia who downloaded the app last September, said it helped him build friendships on campus. “We have enough apps on our phone that give us information or entertain us,” he said. “We’d rather have an app to help us connect in person. ” Until February, Mr. Viswanathan and Mr. Lau were the only employees. The company still operates from the apartment that the founders share in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. Whiteboards cover one wall, laying out the top tasks for the day and week. Mash notes from fans are posted as inspiration. Leaky takeout containers have colonized the kitchen, and Mr. Lau often stashes McDonald’s breakfast burritos in the refrigerator to fuel marathon coding sessions. Mr. Viswanathan, 28, interned at Microsoft, Google and Facebook, where he sat right outside the office of Mark Zuckerberg, the and chief executive, and occasionally played chess with him. Mr. Lau, 26, was an engineering intern at LinkedIn. When the job wound down, LinkedIn’s chairman and Reid Hoffman, personally implored him to stay. Mr. Lau declined and later went to Pinterest. While the pair has not been shy about tapping their networks for help, they have eschewed most of the usual marketing tactics for a . They have avoided publicity, refusing most interview requests. When Product Hunt, a service that highlights new apps, opened a discussion about Down to Lunch two months ago, Mr. Viswanathan quickly posted a note saying, “Haha what how is this on product hunt — can we take this down?” And in an industry where an investment from a top venture capitalist confers immediate credibility, “they’ve been pushing everyone away, even the who’s who of investing,” said Cameron Teitelman, the chief executive of StartX, a nonprofit for Stanford entrepreneurs that has helped the company. Mr. Lau explained, “If we take time out to raise money, that’s time we’re not working on the product. That’s time that users can’t talk to us. That’s time that we’re not keeping servers up. ” The founders and their small team have instead focused on improving the app. When they have a new version to test, they drive across the Bay Bridge to the University of California, Berkeley, to get feedback from students. They try to respond personally to the thousands of messages they get from users every week. At one point, Mr. Viswanathan was getting so many texts that his iPhone’s messaging app froze. The problem stumped even Apple’s V. I. P. support team, which got involved after Mr. Viswanathan emailed Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, for help. The founders are also wrestling with a question faced by developers everywhere: How hard do you push your users to recruit friends to download your app? Last week, they added a button that allowed people to invite all of their contacts with one click. But many people consider such requests to be spam, and Twitter was already filled with complaints from people who received unwanted Down to Lunch invitations. After a couple of days, the pair decided to disable the feature. Although their lives are stressful, the founders say they are having a blast. “We know we can build something that improves the lives for every single person on the planet,” Mr. Viswanathan said. “It sounds kind of crazy, but we’re going to do it. ” | 1 |
Eli Lake writes in Bloomberg View that the leaks leading to the resignation of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn are an alarming, weaponized use of “tightly held government secrets. ” He likens the intelligence community’s actions to that of a police state. [From Bloomberg: The point here is that for a White House that has such a casual and opportunistic relationship with the truth, it’s strange that Flynn’s “lie” to Pence would get him fired. It doesn’t add up. It’s not even clear that Flynn lied. He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That’s neither illegal nor improper. … There is another component to this story as well — as Trump himself just tweeted. It’s very rare that reporters are ever told about communications of U. S. citizens, let alone senior U. S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress. Normally intercepts of U. S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do. Read the rest of the article here. | 0 |
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The Politico/Morning Consult Poll finds that 41 percent of voters think widespread voter fraud could cause the GOP nominee to lose the election. Amid Trump's increased warnings about a "rigged election," 73 percent of Republicans think the election could be stolen from him, compared to 17 percent of Democrats.
Over the past week, Trump has cast doubt on the American electoral system, saying he believes the results will be "rigged" at many polling places.
"The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD," Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday.
Trump has also encouraged supporters to keep an eye on voting locations to prevent fraud, which some say is a ploy to intimidate voters.
Trump is trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the polls following sexual assault and harassment allegations from multiple women.
The Politico/Morning Consult poll showed Clinton leading Trump by 5 points, 46 to 41 percent.
In a RealClearPolitics polling average, Clinton leads Trump by 5.5 points, 47.7 to 42.2 percent.
While Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and even Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, have tried to reassure the electorate about the reliability of the election system, the poll released Monday found 60 percent of Americans think it is necessary to question the accuracy of the election results.
The poll was conducted among 1,999 registered voters Oct. 13–15 and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. | 0 |
Russian strategic missile troops reportedly launched an RS-18 ballistic missile on Tuesday. The launch may have been a test of the advanced hypersonic glider warhead, which would be able to defeat US anti-missile systems.
According to previous reports this nuke is also going to be made STEALTH and impossible to be detected by any current radar systems and it will carry a payload capable of wiping off areas as big as France or US’s Texas state with a single missile.
The test was conducted at midday from a site near the town of Yasny, Orenburg region, in the southern Urals, and the warhead reached the Kura test range in Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East.
“The test was a success. The warhead was delivered to Kura field,” the Defense Ministry reported.
Popular defense blog MilitaryRussia.ru says the launch was meant to test Russia’s hypersonic glider warhead, currently known by its developer designation, ‘object 4202’, or Aeroballistic Hypersonic Warhead.
A select few countries are currently developing the technology. The US has the HTV-2, a device developed by DARPA that has two partially successful tests under its belt. The Chinese warhead using the same technology is called DF-ZF, with Beijing first confirming a test in 2014. India is also studying hypersonic flight technology, but unlike Russia, the US and China, it is reportedly not developing a strategic missile warhead.
A hypersonic glider vehicle (HGV) is different from a conventional ballistic missile warhead in that it travels most of the time in the stratosphere rather than in space. It gives an HGV-tipped missile greater range and may give anti-missile systems a shorter window to respond to an attack.
More importantly, an HGV can maneuver during the approach to a target at high speed, making interception significantly harder, because it makes guiding an interceptor missile towards the attacking vehicle challenging and potentially impossible with current rocket technology.
Object 4202 is reportedly meant to be used with Russia’s next-gen heavy strategic missile the RS-28 Sarmat. Military experts estimate that the new ICBM, an image of which was first made public this week, may carry up to three HGVs as payload.
A previous possible test of object 4202 was reported in April.
Source
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GaryNorth.com November 1, 2016
Here is a video of a recent protest at the University of California, Berkeley, the nation’s most academically prestigious tax-funded university. It is the premier state school today. It was in 1964. It was in 1880.
This is not a threat to the social order. It is an annoyance for students who want to go to class.
WHERE AND WHEN THE SIXTIES BEGAN
On September 10, 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at Berkeley. Almost no one remembers why.
The University’s Board of Regents had long imposed restrictions on what kinds of recruiting were possible on school property. Everyone involved in student government knew the rules. Every group had to be approved: fraternities, sororities, religious groups, and political activists. The underlying motivation, more than anything, was to restrict religious proselytizing: the church/state separation issue.
There were almost no conservative political groups on any of the six campuses (San Diego was opening with under 200 undergraduates that semester). As an undergraduate, I was probably the hardest core right-winger in any of the student governments on the five campuses. I had been involved in student government. I had been president of the sophomore class (1960) and president of the Associated Men Students (1961). I was part of an elite group of campus leaders called the California Club. The president of the University, Clark Kerr, met with us once year.
In the fall of 1964, a 26-foot strip of land close to the Berkeley campus on Telegraph Avenue had long been used by Left-wing activists for recruiting. They set up tables at the beginning of the school year. In early September, the University’s administration learned that this strip of land was actually inside the boundaries of the campus. So, the rules governing recruiting applied.
The Assistant Dean of Students, Katherine Towle, decided to enforce the rules. She sent out a letter on September 14.
“Provisions of the policy of The Regents concerning `Use of University Facilities’ will be strictly enforced in all areas designated as property of The Regents… including the 26-foot strip of brick walkway at the campus entrance on Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue…””Specifically, Section III of the (Regents’) policy…prohibits the use of University facilities `for the purpose of soliciting party membership or supporting or opposing particular candidates or propositions in local, state or national elections,’ except that Chief Campus Officers `shall establish rules under which candidates for public office (or their designated representatives) may be afforded like opportunity to speak upon the campuses at meetings where the audience is limited to the campus community.’ Similarly, Chief Campus Officers “shall establish rules under which persons supporting or opposing propositions in state or local elections may be afforded like opportunity to speak upon the campuses at meetings where the audience is limited to the campus community.”
“Section III also prohibits the use of University facilities `for the purpose of religious worship, exercise or conversion.’ Section IV of the policy states further that University facilities `may not be used for the purpose of raising money to aid projects not directly connected with some authorized activity of the University…’
“Now that the so-called `speaker ban’ is gone, and the open forum is a reality, student organizations have ample opportunity to present to campus audiences on a `special event’ basis an unlimited number of speakers on a variety of subjects, provided the few basic rules concerning notification and sponsorship are observed… The `Hyde Park’ area in the Student Union Plaza is also available for impromptu, unscheduled speeches by students and staff.
“It should be noted also that this area on Bancroft Way… has now been added to the list of designated areas for the distribution of handbills, circulars or pamphlets by University students and staff in accordance with Berkeley campus policy. Posters, easels and card tables will not be permitted in this area because of interference with the flow of (pedestrian) traffic. University facilities may not, of course, be used to support or advocate off-campus political or social action.
“We ask for the cooperation of every student and student organization in observing the full implementation of these policies. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to come to the Office of the Dean of Students, 201 Sproul Hall.”
This was reasonable. She was enforcing the rules. The Best of Gary North Tags: Gary North [ ] is the author of Mises on Money . Visit http://www.garynorth.com . He is also the author of a free 31-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible . Copyright © 2016 Gary North | 1 |
It’s an idea that has long been used as an argument against abortion — that terminating a pregnancy causes women to experience emotional and psychological trauma. Some states require women seeking abortions to be counseled that they might develop mental health problems. Now a new study, considered to be the most rigorous to look at the question in the United States, undermines that claim. Researchers followed nearly 1, 000 women who sought abortions nationwide for five years and found that those who had the procedure did not experience more depression, anxiety, low or dissatisfaction with life than those who were denied it. The findings come as the abortion debate intensifies in the United States, with Donald J. Trump promising to nominate an abortion opponent to the Supreme Court after taking office next month. The question of the effect of the procedure on women’s health, both physical and mental, has been an effective argument in recent years, used by states to enact a number of regulations and restrictions, and is likely to be a continuing part of the debate. The study, published on Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, found psychological symptoms increased only in women who sought abortions but were not allowed to have the procedure because their pregnancies were further along than the cutoff time at the clinic they visited. But their distress was whether they went elsewhere for an abortion or delivered the baby. About six months after being turned away from the first abortion clinic, their mental health resembled that of women who were not turned away and had abortions. “What I think is incredibly interesting is how everyone kind of evens out together at six months to a year,” said Katie Watson, a bioethicist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “What this study tells us about is resilience and people making the best of their circumstances and moving on,” she said. “What’s sort of a revelation is the ordinariness of it. ” Called the Turnaway Study and run by the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California, San Francisco, the research strove to avoid methodological pitfalls of previous studies. Other studies compared women who had abortions with women who chose to give birth, two groups considered so different that many experts said little could be learned from comparing them. Other studies also failed to account for whether women had previous psychological issues, which turns out to put them at greatest risk for mental health problems after abortion. The Turnaway Study accounted for mental health history and focused on women who were close to or beyond the limit of when a clinic would perform abortions, so researchers could compare women who wanted abortions at the outset. Clinic cutoff limits vary somewhat by state, but also by individual clinic decisions. Limits at the 30 clinics in 21 states in the study ranged from 10 weeks of pregnancy to the end of the second trimester, about 25 weeks. Dr. Roger Rochat, a former director of reproductive health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University, said the study “provides the best scientific evidence” on the subject and was likely to be influential in court challenges to state laws. “This is an incredibly powerful study,” he said. “States will continue to pass laws that restrict access to abortion services and they will do it in part based on mental health effects of abortion. But the evidence of this study says that just isn’t true. ” Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research for National Right to Life, said that “it’s not surprising that there’ll be this immediate sense of anxiety and frustration” for women denied abortions because “they’ve been told that their plans are being squashed. ” But he emphasized that the study showed those feelings dissipated quickly, suggesting that effects of denying women abortion “were not entirely negative. ” Dr. O’Bannon had several criticisms of the study. “While it sounds to most people, I suppose, that five years is a sufficiently long time,” some women experience problems long after abortion, he said. “This study would not capture those women who had those experiences at 10 years. There are women who go through some serious trauma later on, multiple sorts of effects that they deal with, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. ” Women seeking abortions are required to be counseled about possible emotional or psychological effects in 22 states, nine of which focus almost entirely on potential negative effects, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Although abortions in the United States are overwhelmingly obtained in the first trimester, the study included hundreds of women who sought them later in pregnancy. There were 452 whose pregnancies were within two weeks of the clinic’s limit and who received abortions and 231 women who were denied abortions because their pregnancies were up to three weeks past the clinic’s limit. The study also included 273 women who received abortions. Of the 231 turned away, 161 ended up giving birth and 70 miscarried or received abortions elsewhere, often requiring longer travel and more expense. Starting one week after women sought abortions, researchers asked questions to assess psychological and each woman every six months for five years. M. Antonia Biggs, a social psychologist researcher and an author of the study, said that some people “would expect the women who have an abortion to have increasing depression and anxiety over time, but instead we don’t see that. ” Instead, she said, the research showed that “women denied an abortion have more anxiety, lower less life satisfaction than women who are able to get an abortion. But by six months to a year, they’re similar to women who had an abortion. ” Another intriguing finding was that women receiving abortions were no more or less affected than those ending pregnancies later. “People guessed that it would be more difficult to their mental health to have a later abortion procedure than to have an earlier abortion procedure, and we didn’t find that,” Dr. Biggs said. Dr. Biggs said the study suggested that “expanding access to abortion care is more likely to protect women’s mental health than restricting women’s access to abortion care,” but she also noted some results that “might not be very . ” Those included that none of the groups differed in experiencing depression, and that women denied abortions did not have “more negative mental health consequences. ” | 1 |
Posted on November 11, 2016 by Charles Hugh Smith
Though I am just another powerless peon, I’d like to offer seven suggestions to President-Elect Trump and his transition team:
1. Make sure your administration is as diverse as America. No single act will give your enemies more ammo than populating your cabinet and administration with the Usual Suspects: Caucasian elites from Ivy League universities. These privileged “experts” have bankrupted the nation financially, morally and spiritually while enriching themselves and their privileged cronies.
Populate your cabinet and administration with entrepreneurially minded, honest, hard working, forward-looking people who just happen to be African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, female, gay, mixed-race, etc.
Having a cabinet that reflects the diversity of America (or just the diversity of New York City or Los Angeles County, for goodness sakes) will send a powerful message not just to the nation but to the world: America’s diversity is America’s strength.
If you want an example of how to do this, follow in the footsteps of the U.S. military. Yes, it’s imperfect, but for a large-scale voluntary institution, it’s done a lot better than most to promote a diverse spectrum of Americans.
2. Wage total war on regulatory capture and bureaucratic fiefdoms. Everyone knows federal regulations are completely out of control on several fronts. Yes, there is a need for regulations to protect the nation’s air, water and resources from despoliation, its labor force from exploitation, its food supply from unhealthy additives and foreign-sourced toxic products, and so on. These safeguard regulations should be rigorously enforced.
But K Street lobbyists and the Corporatocracy they represent have mastered the art of regulatory capture : digging regulatory moats so deep and so wide that competition cannot possibly afford to meet the regulatory burdens imposed by the central state.
This is how we’ve ended up with a high-cost, ineffective, inefficient state-cartel economy.
The only way to tackle this issue is retire/sunset ALL federal regulations every few years, and require a constant streamlining to limit the number of regulations, lower the cost of compliance and ensure regulations are clearly composed in plain English.
The only way to root out corruption, collusion and regulatory capture is to require total transparency and open competition in all government functions.
3. Accredit the student, not the school/college. America’s education system is unaffordable and failing for one simple reason: we accredit the school/college, not the student’s knowledge/skill. The inevitable result of this is a cartel of self-serving fiefdoms with soaring costs which routinely graduates students who have learned essentially zero of productive value in the emerging economy.
I have described this in my book The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education .
By accrediting the student’s knowledge/skill, we would be testing and accrediting what actually matters. By eliminating the central-planning accreditation racket of schools/colleges, we would take away the power of this cartel to relentlessly strip-mine taxpayers and students while providing ineffectual near-zero-market-value education.
The only way to make America great again is to increase productivity via distributing higher level skills across the entire populace. The current education complex has failed and the only way to truly reform it is to accredit the student, not the school/college.
4. Promote decentralized, bottoms-up localized solutions rather than top-down centralized programs. As I discussed in Now That the Presidential-Election Side Show Is Finally Ending…. , the current mode of production is a legacy of World War II, when the federal government took complete centralized control of the U.S. economy and society.
The war’s success led to the fatal assumption that the solution to every problem was to aggregate more power in centralized bureaucracies.
What worked in the cartel-state economy of 1945 is now failing, with catastrophic consequences. Decentralized transparent networks that share a wealth of solutions and offer localized participation are not only more cost-effective, they enable the blossoming of 10,000 solutions rather than smother the economy with a bloated centralized system that imposes crushing costs on the nation (think ObamaCare, which burdens healthcare with thousands of pages of costly regulatory requirements) while squelching local solutions.
America is an increasingly diverse nation. What sort of insanity is it to reckon that one centralized bureaucracy can come up a single system that works well for every community and household?
Replace the mindset that the “solution” must be a centralized, top-down, bloated, unaffordable bureaucracy with the understanding that centralized, top-down, bloated, unaffordable bureaucracies are the problem, not the solution.
5. Lower the corporate income tax rate to a flat 5% for all domestic corporations. An incredible amount of precious capital is squandered on tax avoidance schemes, and incredible sums of precious capital are being held overseas to avoid the absurdly perverse 35% U.S. corporate tax rate.
This perverse set of incentives costs the nation, not just corporations. To those who wish to impose high taxes on all those evil greedy corporations–you can’t do it. There will always be loopholes overseas.
Make it difficult to make a profit and do business here, and business and profits will go elsewhere–and so will the jobs. Not liking this reality won’t change it.
6. Increase the security of America’s work force and households by encouraging entrepreneurism and food/ energy/ manufacturing security in the local community economy. It’s essential that you hire people who understand the Digital-Industrial Revolution that is remaking the global economy, whether we like it or not. We all have daily experience of how this new mode of production is disrupting one sector of the old mode of production after another.
We as a nation have to learn to do more with less –more productivity, more community-based security, more wealth that is earned by skilled labor and entrepreneurism, more broadly distributed ownership of wealth-producing assets, while consuming less energy and less capital and reducing the cost burdens imposed by self-serving fiefdoms, pay-to-play corruption/collusion and centralized sclerosis.
I lay out how to do this systemically in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All and on an individual/household basis in Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy .
7. Dismantle the corrosive sense of entitlement that has infected the nation. Obsessing over illusory “rights” and “what we were promised” leads to a politics of resentment and a corollary obsession with get-rich-quick schemes and avoiding the dirty work of actually building wealth rather than skimming and scamming asset bubbles.
The way to dismantle the dead-end ideology of entitlement is to promote earning, not getting, and learning real, practical, marketable skills that have value in the emerging economy.
Nobody owes anyone anything but the right to pursue happiness and the civil liberties stated in the Bill of Rights. To survive, much less prosper, we need a society and economy based on accountability and the willingness to do the dirty work, the nitty-gritty work, of making sure goods and services actually work, and to reward those doing the hard work with security and opportunities to take ownership of the engines of wealth creation.
President-Elect Trump, more policy tweaks, more promises of more government free money and more symbolic gestures won’t fix anything. You must dig out the rot in our system of governance, destroy needless and burdensome state-cartel-imposed costs and encourage transparency, competition, accountability and locally based community-economy solutions.
Thanks to Chad D. and Cindy F. for suggesting that I draw up a list of recommendations for the President-Elect. This entry was posted in General and tagged President-Elect Trump . Bookmark the permalink . ← Veterans Day is typical .01% rogue state inversion to ‘honor’ duped military ‘serving’ forever lie-started illegal Wars of Aggression. Truly thank Veterans by demanding arrests of US ‘leaders’ who treasoned them to attack, invade, occupy victims of Empire jrrrr
Actually diversity is meaningless, as every problem, experienced by every human being on the planet, is resolved by “accurate thought,” not a diversity of either physical differences or opinions. tom
I think we all understand that diversity, in this situation, would be mostly a cosmetic measure to reduce discontent among the governed. While ability is certainly the most important criterion, if able people from diverse backgrounds can be found, so much the better. Scoot Wad
Yeah more diversity, yay. I have a feeling that Jewish Americans will be heavily overrepresented as usual, and likely referred to as white as usual when it suits their purpose. Maybe we can even have a foreign national Indian on the cabinet to represent all the high paying tech jobs those guest workers take from Americans like we have all of the dual Israelis in our government making decisions now. tom
“Nobody owes anyone anything but the right to pursue happiness and the civil liberties stated in the Bill of Rights”.
And the right to enjoy pensions and other benefits that have been paid for in full up front. Those are debts, plain and simple, and Uncle Sam is no more entitled to dodge his debts than anyone else. diogenes
In the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the word “life” means “livelihood,” ACCESS TO LIVELIEHOOD, not access to LIES. diogenes
decrease the corporate tax rate
signed | 1 |
November 23, 2016 Elijah Magnier On Fake News And Fake Analysts
While I am still knocked out somewhat by a nasty influenza let me recommend Elijah Magnier's most recent piece on the "fake news" and "fake analyst" media:
Syria and Iraq caught between the “new analysts’ and the politicised media
Some excerpts: The wars in Syria and Iraq celebrated the unfortunate end of the “free and independent press” and the rise of the “neo-analysts”. They sit in far-off lands, with no ground knowledge of the war, collecting information and analysing the colourful bin of social networking sites.
They have even the temerity to believe they can dictate to the US administration what measures should be taken, who to support and, as if they had mastered the “art of war”, they even push for a nuclear war with Russia.
On Syria: According to the US State Department and to the western press, over 90 hospitals were totally destroyed in eastern Aleppo in the last months at the rate of almost one destroyed hospital per day. And every day we hear “the last hospital has been totally destroyed”. The only problem with this figure is the statistic released by the Syrian Ministry of Health stating that “on the entire Syrian territory, there are only 88 hospitals”. ... [W]hen jihadists and rebels start a large scale attack against Syrian Army forces and their allies, the media stand by, waiting for results. If the regime begins a military operation hospitals are destroyed and civilians are killed in the first hour of the battle. Rarely do militants die in mainstream media.
On Iraq: “Neo-analysts” and journalists focus also on the role of the “Popular Mobilisation Units” (PMU) by giving them different titles, like the “Shiite crowd”, “sectarian crowd” and “Militia crowd” as if its members came from another world. There are more than 60% of Shiites in Iraq and the rest are Sunnis, secular Kurds, Assyrians, Shabak, Sabea and other minorities. From these same Iraqis are formed the Iraqi army units, counter-terrorism, intelligence, special forces, federal police forces, tribes, and Peshmergan as well as the PMU, which has become an integral part of the security apparatus under the leadership of the Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, the Prime Minister.
Those writing about Iraq disregard the fact that the US Army, before and during its invasion to Iraq, committed the most abominable atrocities in that country, starting with the embargo on Iraq to massacres, torture, rape and human rights abuses during the occupation of the country.
On the media: The notion of a “free unbiased press” is finished and has been replaced by the will of politicians: investigate journalism was replaced by information or disinformation from social media.
It was obvious during the US presidential campaign that the “free press” was sharing “statistics” confirming the absence of any prospect of success of Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton as a winner by 98 to 99%. This indicates that the press was following wishful thinking rather than confirming data and facts, just as they have been doing most of the time with the war in Syria and Iraq.
Elijah has been working as a newspaper journalist for some 30 years. He was war correspondent in the Yugoslavia wars, in Lebanon, in Iraq during the U.S. invasion and in Syria. The above is based on factual knowledge and experience, not on political agendas or paid "analyst" propaganda. One hopes that younger journalists will learn from it. 23, 2016 at 01:47 PM | Permalink | 0 |
AYRSHIRE, Scotland — Donald J. Trump arrived in Scotland just as Britain was deciding to leave the European Union and proclaimed the momentous departure “a great thing” and the subsequent decline of the British pound good for local companies — including his own Turnberry golf course. Touching down in Scotland on Friday morning to visit his luxury resort and golf course, Mr. Trump, who before the vote had suggested that Britain leave the European Union, took a victory lap of sorts, landing in his “ ” helicopter and proclaiming, “I said this was going to happen, and I think that it’s a great thing. ” “Basically they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said. And amid global jitters over Britain’s divorce from the European Union, Mr. Trump reacted with celebration and predicting that it would benefit his business and declaring that President Obama contributed to the outcome. “Look, if the pound goes down, they’re going to do more business,” Mr. Trump said, when asked during a news conference about the referendum’s market ramifications. “When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly. ” Mr. Trump also said he saw “a big parallel” between the vote in Britain and the broader populist, sentiment that helped fuel his rise to the status of presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “People want to take their country back, they want to have independence in a sense, and you see it with Europe, all over Europe, and you’re going to have more than just, in my opinion, more than just what happened last night,” Mr. Trump said. “You’re going to have many other cases where people want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back, they want to be able to have a country again. ” His message in favor of “Brexit” was not necessarily welcome here in Scotland, whose citizens had overwhelmingly voted to remain part of Europe and were already discussing the possibility of breaking from England as a result of Thursday’s vote. Early in June, Mr. Trump did not even know what Brexit referred to, and as recently as Wednesday, he said that his opinion on the referendum was insignificant because he had not been following the issue closely. But hours after Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain announced that he was going to resign as a result of the vote, Mr. Trump offered his own political analysis, saying frustration with the status quo had helped influence the result. “People are angry, all over the world people, they’re angry,” he said. “They’re angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, nobody even knows who they are. They’re angry about many, many things. ” Mr. Trump’s trip came at an unusual moment — just a month before the Republican National Convention, and as many of his aides privately fretted about the timing of the visit as he seeks to unite the party behind him. He arrived after a tough week in the United States — the firing of his campaign manager and the revelation that his campaign has stunningly little cash on hand — and the bucolic backdrop belied the turmoil roiling Europe, the markets and even his own political operation. At the news conference, he was pressed repeatedly on the British referendum, and at several points he blamed Mr. Obama, who had urged Britain not to split from the European Union. “It’s not his country, it’s not his part of the world, he shouldn’t have done it, and I actually think that his recommendation perhaps caused it to fail,” Mr. Trump said. He also attacked Hillary Clinton, saying she had “misread” the mood of the country — violating a tacit rule of decorum that politics stop at the water’s edge. Still, Mr. Trump’s visit at times had the feel of an American abroad promoting his moneyed golf links, rather than his own candidacy for president. He was greeted, much like the queen of England would be met, by staff members of Trump Turnberry — all clad in red “Make Turnberry Great Again” hats — as well as bagpipers who, along with Secret Service agents, preceded him up the sloping steps to his property. And he waxed proud about his golf resort for more than 15 minutes, before finally taking questions on the seismic news of the day. At one point, Mr. Trump even compared his renovation of Trump Turnberry to how he is hoping to overhaul the United States. When a reporter pointed out — correctly — that a country is hardly a golf course, Mr. Trump replied: “No it’s not, but you’ll be amazed how similar it is. It’s a place that has to be fixed. ” Other candidates have made such trips abroad to burnish their foreign policy credentials and elevate themselves as a statesman in the eyes of voters back home, jamming their days with meetings with dignitaries. But not Mr. Trump, whose business interests have long prescribed his political ones. Despite landing the day after the referendum, his itinerary consisted simply of 48 hours spread across two of his golf courses — one on Scotland’s southwest coast on Friday, the other in Balmedie on Saturday, overlooking the chilly North Sea. (Asked if he had huddled with his foreign policy advisers about “Brexit,” he replied, “I’ve been in touch with them but there’s nothing to talk about. ”) Yet even across the ocean, Mr. Trump was unable to escape the news of the campaign trail. A group of Scottish communities and leaders organized a phone call Friday to discuss their opposition to Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Mr. Trump, who nonetheless received a fairly warm welcome in Scotland, where locals say they appreciate the money he has poured into the village economy since buying the golf course in 2014, is unlikely to be greeted as cheerfully when he visits Balmedie, north of Aberdeen. There, his course, Trump International Golf Links, has been rived with controversy, with Mr. Trump trying to push locals out of their homes, promising jobs that never materialized, fighting over an offshore wind farm and even suing the Scottish government. Mr. Trump, whose comments about Mexicans and Hispanics have enraged many, including members of his own party, is expected to be met with a giant Mexican flag flying in view of his clubhouse — an act of protest by two local men. Frank Cruickshanks, 52, who is a caddy at Mr. Trump’s property, including for Mr. Trump’s son Eric, said he appreciated the work Mr. Trump had put into overhauling the golf course. “Having caddied for the last three weeks, mostly for Americans, I have yet to meet one who’s voting for Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Cruickshanks said. Asked if those American tourists were voting, then, for Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruickshanks paused. “No, I didn’t say that,” he said, with a mischievous grin. | 1 |
Donald J. Trump’s low approval ratings and the palpable enthusiasm of progressives nationwide have Democrats dreaming of a big win in next year’s midterm elections. But to pull that off, they’ll need to overcome one of their biggest challenges of the last decade: low turnout in contests. The Democratic turnout in those elections has been extremely weak — worse than many public analysts have suggested. Democrats have depended on young and nonwhite voters, two groups that produce low turnout in midterm contests. Nationwide, Republicans were more than 20 percent likelier to vote than Democrats (defined by party vote history and registration) in 2010 and 2014, according to an Upshot analysis of voter file data from the company L2. But there are early signs this could be changing. If it does in 2018, it will be consistent with a trend in which the party out of power benefits in midterm elections, seemingly from a stronger turnout. Democrats have fared well in recent special elections, and they have turned out in strong numbers in the four contests where complete turnout numbers are now available: a relatively uncompetitive special election in Iowa’s 45th State Senate district in December, two January contests in Virginia, and Delaware’s 10th State Senate district race in February. In Delaware, the turnout for Democrats and the unaffiliated matched 2014 levels, while Republican turnout was five percentage points lower. In the end, the partisan composition of the electorate was about the same as in 2016, and Democrats won the race. (For a special election in a state senate race, simply matching previous turnout levels is an impressive feat.) In Iowa, Democratic turnout was far higher than Republican turnout, improving the Democratic share of the electorate by 14 points since the last midterm election. The turnout data is harder to interpret in Virginia, where voters do not register with a party. But Republican primary voters outnumbered Democratic primary voters by a somewhat smaller number in both contests than they did in the 2014 elections. The trend toward higher Democratic turnout appears to be continuing in the April 18 special election for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, where early voting has recently gotten underway. So far, the party’s turnout is running about twice as high as it did at this point in 2014, while Republican turnout is about half what it was. It would be unfair to judge Republican voters too harshly for their low turnout at this stage — they are trying to decide among 11 candidates. (I wouldn’t have voted yet, either.) But the higher Democratic turnout is striking, and if it holds it suggests that the Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff will benefit from stronger party turnout than in the past. A few elections aren’t enough to prove that turnout is really shifting. But there are other signs of higher Democratic enthusiasm, like the millions who marched and protested a day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, or the abundant for Mr. Ossoff. Parties out of power have long tended to do very well in midterm elections. It has been less clear why — maybe because of turnout, or because voters swing across parties to check the president. If it’s because of turnout, the Democratic midterm turnout problem might just solve itself with a Republican in the White House. If it’s not because of turnout, Democrats might be disadvantaged by an unfavorable electorate, even in the sort of election they’re supposed to win. The available evidence is limited, but it suggests that the party out of power enjoys stronger turnout than the party holding the White House. The best evidence comes from Iowa, which has voter turnout data by party registration going back to 1980. It tells a fairly consistent story: Democrats usually have worse turnout in midterm elections, but the Republican edge is greatest when Democrats hold the presidency. The Democratic turnout disadvantage is smaller — or basically nonexistent — when Republicans hold the White House. On average, Republican turnout has been just 6 percent higher than Democratic turnout in midterm elections when Republicans have held the White House, like in 1982, 1986, 1990, 2002 and 2006. Republican turnout has been 17 percent higher than Democratic turnout in midterm elections when Democrats have held the presidency — like in 1994, 1998, 2010 and 2014. The same pattern shows up in the data available elsewhere. It’s far too early to say whether Democrats can return to the relative parity they enjoyed in the Bush and Reagan years, especially since the Democratic coalition is younger and more diverse than it was then. But the history of midterm turnout, the recent special elections, the protests, the donations and the early vote all seem consistent with the same story: The Democrats might be fixing their midterm turnout problem. | 1 |
This Could Be The FUNNIEST Anti-Trump Campaign Ad You’ll Ever See (VIDEO) By Paddy Maclachlan on October 27, 2016 Subscribe
The famously thin-skinned Republican candidate Donald Trump will be feeling even more sensitive if he sees this hilarious ad that pokes fun at him. It takes its rightful place among the very wittiest political campaign ads.
Produced in Denmark for the country’s Socialist People’s Party ( SF ), the bus-side ad is aimed at American expats, urging them to vote in the upcoming election. It’s fairly obvious who they want those people to vote for.
Like most of the best ads, it’s as clever as it is simple.
It shows Trump’s unforgettably distinctive quiff and forehead but, just below it, a pair of big, googly eyes have been attached to the wheels. As the bus moves, Donald’s eyes roll.
Talking to a local broadcaster, the SF leader Pia Olsen said : “It is meant to be a bit funny. One can’t be in doubt that it was done tongue in cheek. We want to tell American citizens: Remember to vote, it has consequences.”
As the election draws near, both parties can be expected to increase their efforts to attract votes from the large number of U.S. citizens abroad, which amount to as many as 8.7 million.
Turnout among this sector is traditionally low, but it has also been proven that their input can be absolutely crucial.
Al Gore would have won the 2000 election by 202 votes, if the 2,490 overseas ballots had been counted in time.
Let’s hope Americans in Denmark – and everywhere else overseas – see the serious side as well as the funny side, and make sure to get their vote in.
Talking of clever ads, here’s one for Audi , which was deliberately planned to air during the Trump-Clinton presidential debates. It’s beautifully shot and directed, but it’s the line at the very end that makes it especially relevant.
Featured image: Richard Foster via Flickr /Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license Connect with me | 0 |
The biggest book of the summer isn’t a blockbuster thriller or a splashy celebrity memoir. It’s a play about a wizard. The publication of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the eighth installment in J. K. Rowling’s series, is being celebrated at more than 5, 000 bookstores and libraries across the country this weekend, with midnight release parties featuring costume contests, magic shows, wizard rock bands, live owls and butterbeer, the beverage of choice among young wizards. The elaborate rollout has all the flourishes that fans have come to expect for a new Harry Potter book. But for many nostalgic readers, this one feels different. “Cursed Child” is not a new novel, but a script of a play — a format that typically isn’t read for pleasure and almost never produces overnight best sellers. And unlike the previous seven books in the series, it was not written by Ms. Rowling herself. In a sense, “Cursed Child” is more like sanctioned fan fiction than a new work by a beloved writer. Ms. Rowling worked on the play’s plot with the playwright Jack Thorne and the director John Tiffany, and while she helped shape the story, she has made it abundantly clear that she did not write the script. The idea for the play, which explores Harry’s life as an adult and parent, didn’t originate with Ms. Rowling, either: She merely agreed to it when two theater producers proposed the concept. Which raises a sticky question: If Ms. Rowling didn’t conceive the play, or write it, is “Cursed Child” really a new Harry Potter story by J. K. Rowling? And if it isn’t, do Harry Potter fans even care? Many, apparently, do not. “J. K. Rowling’s involvement legitimizes it as canon, and the fact that other people collaborated on it doesn’t detract from that,” said Matt Maggiacomo, executive director of the Harry Potter Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes literacy and other causes. Melissa Anelli, the author of “Harry, a History,” a book about the Harry Potter phenomenon, agreed that any story with Ms. Rowling’s blessing counts as a continuation of the tale — a view that many Potter fans seem to share, based on the vast number of preorders and the ecstatic response on social media to news that the play would be published. “The thing that we all always want most from her is a book, but if we’re getting the story in the form of a play, as long as she says it’s the real deal, we’re on board,” said Ms. Anelli, who is organizing a midnight release party for some 2, 000 fans at Geeky Con, a festival in Orlando, Fla. that will feature a costume ball and performances by wizard rock bands. But other Potter fans are skeptical, arguing that a story that didn’t spring from Ms. Rowling’s imagination just isn’t the same. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who aren’t sure if they’re going to treat it as canon, because J. K. Rowling didn’t write it,” said Helen Haslam, who publishes Potter fan fiction at the website Wattpad. “I grew up with the books, I spent a lot of time in that world, and the idea of someone else adding to that is a little bit . ” Some will skip it altogether. Sharanya Sharma, an elementary school teacher in Washington who fell under Harry Potter’s spell when she was 9, said she was satisfied when the series ended with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. ” “I worry that it would negatively affect my memories of what Harry Potter meant to me when I was growing up,” she said. “Sometimes I go back and reread Harry Potter as a nostalgic experience, and I’m not sure I want to ruin that. ” Though it’s been nearly a decade since Ms. Rowling ended her beloved series, devotion among fans has never waned. While Ms. Rowling has moved on to writing adult fiction, she has continued to embellish the Potter universe, not just with material on her Pottermore website but also through public pronouncements about the characters. The fans’ fervor has been steadily fed by a stream of blockbuster movies, theme parks, new short stories about the wizarding world released on Pottermore, and now, “Cursed Child,” which picks up with a scene from the epilogue in “Deathly Hallows,” as a Harry watches his own sons depart for Hogwarts. The play, which officially opens on Saturday in London, has already generated ecstatic praise from theater critics. It’s hard to imagine enthusiasm running as high for the unvarnished script, which could fall flat on the page without the elaborate staging and the emotional nuances of a performance. “I think there will be a lot of disappointment,” said John Granger, who has published several books of literary criticism about Harry Potter and dismissed the play as “franchise exploitation. ” Still, “Cursed Child” — which is being released at midnight on Saturday (just in time for Harry’s birthday Sunday) — is on track to be a blockbuster. Scholastic, Ms. Rowling’s American publisher, is printing 4. 5 million copies — a staggeringly large number, though it scarcely approaches the run for “Deathly Hallows. ” Barnes Noble reported that “Cursed Child” is the most heavily preordered book since “Deathly Hallows. ” On Amazon, “Cursed Child” has held steady at, or near, the top of the list since publication was announced in February, making it the site’s book so far this year. Some booksellers and librarians say that the story’s format could introduce young readers to the pleasures of reading drama for entertainment. While most high school students are exposed to classics by Shakespeare, Sophocles and Arthur Miller, children and teenagers rarely pick up plays for fun. “They’re going to discover how much their own imagination can add,” said Peter Glassman, the founder and owner of Books of Wonder in Manhattan, which will have live owls, jugglers and magicians at its midnight release party. Scholastic is hoping that readers will embrace the book, regardless of the form. “Play format, novel format, it’s still a story,” said Arthur A. Levine, the vice president and publisher of Arthur A. Levine Books, a Scholastic imprint that publishes Harry Potter. As the series, which has sold more than 450 million copies globally, has become an undisputed modern classic, Scholastic has capitalized by releasing new editions with revamped covers and illustrations. “They sell year after year after year, when a new generation discovers Harry Potter,” Mr. Levine said. “We try to keep giving them something new. ” This year, fans will get plenty. In November, Scholastic is publishing the screenplay for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a coming movie that expands the Harry Potter universe to North America. Readers are already swooning, driving the screenplay to No. 34 on Friday on Amazon’s list. Unlike “Cursed Child,” this script was written by Ms. Rowling herself. | 1 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right Kathy Burke had a wonderful response to Helena Bonham Carter in the letters page of Time Out Before celebrities could argue with each other on social media, they had to do it in the letters pages of magazines and newspapers. In the 90′s Kathy Burke had this wonderful response to Helena Bonham Carter complaining about hard it is being pretty and posh. (via @KathyBurke)
Marvellously eloquent and succinct. In the 90's, before Twitter, one had to express oneself through the letters page of Time Out pic.twitter.com/IfojETpGnM | 0 |
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Minutes before singer Sevyn Streeter was supposed to perform the national anthem at the Philadelphia 76ers game Wednesday night, she was told by the organization there was a change of plans.
Streeter took to social media to express her frustration behind the 76ers' decision to cancel her performance, which was prompted by the statement on her clothing:
“I'm at the 76ers game singing the National Anthem and the organization is telling me I can't because I'm wearing a 'We Matter' jersey.” Was suppose to sing the anthem at @sixers & @okcthunder game but mins b4 @sixers said I couldn't because I was wearing a "We Matter" jersey pic.twitter.com/wjoJN3rq0r — Sevyn (@sevyn) October 27, 2016
In an interview with the Associated Press , Streeter said she was never told there was a certain wardrobe to adhere to:
“I'd say two minutes before we were about to walk out...the organization told me that I could not wear my shirt while singing the national anthem at their game. I was never given any kind of dress code. I was never asked beforehand to show my wardrobe.”
The 76ers issued the following statement , essentially saying that they understand the fact Streeter can wear her “Black Lives Matter”-related jersey, just not in their house:
“The Philadelphia 76ers organization encourages meaningful actions to drive social change. We use our games to bring people together, to build trust and to strengthen our communities. As we move from symbolic gestures to action, we will continue to leverage our platform to positively impact our community.”
Americans were quick to voice their support for the 76ers' decision: @KyleNeubeck @sevyn - People were there to watch the game, not you and your "protest". Just sing the song and walk off the court. — Vince Rosetta (@VinceRosetta) October 27, 2016 @sevyn @Sixers @okcthunder They made the right decision. Fans aren't interested in your invented crisis. — Phillip McGuire (@PhillipCMcGuire) October 27, 2016 @marclamonthill @sevyn Seriously what? A professional organization doesn't want to risk the person singing anthem turning it into a fiasco?
But others felt the 76ers violated her First Amendment rights by not allowing her to perform: I don't understand what's happening to the First Amendment. @allanjohnson14 @sevyn @Sixers @okcthunder — Nancy Sinatra (@NancySinatra) October 27, 2016 @MTTHWBRK @sevyn @Sixers @okcthunder So she can't wear what she wants? That's a right we have in this country isn't it or is that against the law ???? — Honestly, Truly (@_RavenCamille) October 27, 2016
And demanded answers: so... @Sixers wont let @sevyn perform the national anthem because she has a "We Matter" shirt on? ???? answers are needed ???? — Nellium (@_cornbread_) October 27, 2016
76ers dancer Jemila Worley ended up singing the national anthem instead and, apparently, did an outstanding job. 76ers guard Gerald Henderson told ESPN he was a bit confused when he first saw her step on the court, but Worley “killed it.”
Henderson added his two cents about the singer switch up, too:
“There's a lot going on man. People care about these things that are happening, as well as they should. And they are going to express themselves in different ways...People are trying to make statements, I guess.”
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has not commented on the matter. | 0 |
Paul Greengrass couldn’t have been clearer. He was done with Jason Bourne. And that meant his loyal star, Matt Damon, wouldn’t be returning as the covert operative for the C. I. A. who unraveled agency conspiracies while he recovered his memory. As late as 2013, Mr. Greengrass, the director of “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” insisted he had no desire to return to the Universal Pictures franchise inspired by the Robert Ludlum novels. “I certainly didn’t expect to ever come back and make another one,” Mr. Greengrass said in an interview last month. Yet on July 29, Jason Bourne will return to theaters after a sabbatical, played by Mr. Damon in a movie directed by Mr. Greengrass. The road to yes involved a fragmented political landscape, an insistent fan base and gently prodding studio executives. But the simply titled “Jason Bourne” emerges in a moviegoing environment very different from the one the superspy found himself in in 2007. For franchise films, 2016 has been an annus horribilis. “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising,” “The Divergent Series: Allegiant” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” just to name a few, landed with a thud at the box office. The results were even worse for sequels with significant time lags since the previous film, like “Zoolander 2” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. ” The creative team and studio behind “Jason Bourne” hope their film performs more like this year’s few outliers, “Captain America: Civil War” and “Finding Dory. ” But they all recognize that the calculus behind successful sequels is tricky. “It’s this weird thing where you can’t give them exactly the same thing, or they’ll be resentful,” Mr. Damon said. “But you have to give them enough of something they recognize that they feel like they’re getting what they paid for. ” Given the Bourne franchise’s rocky beginnings, its ultimate success came as a bit of a shock — even to its star. “The first movie looked like a turkey within the business,” Mr. Damon said of “The Bourne Identity. ” That film was delayed and over budget. But something odd happened in the summer of 2002. The movie’s mix of visceral, kinetic action and contemporary political concerns felt fresh to audiences. Jason Bourne was a new kind of action hero. He didn’t punctuate his pummeling of foes with quips. And he wasn’t kitted out with the latest technological marvels or a Aston Martin he made do with found objects or whatever car he could steal. Though “The Bourne Identity” performed only decently on its opening weekend — “ ” nearly tripled its take — word of mouth buoyed the movie, and it ended up making more than $120 million domestically. The studio quickly set out to make more. Mr. Greengrass, coming off “Bloody Sunday,” his dramatization of a massacre by British troops of Irish protesters in 1972, was recruited for the 2004 “Bourne Supremacy. ” Critical acclaim joined success for “Supremacy” and, in 2007, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” which won Oscars for film editing, sound mixing and sound editing. But Mr. Greengrass was burned out on Bourne. The films were not only grueling to make, but the original trilogy also felt of a piece, one unfolding story when watched in succession. At the end of “Ultimatum,” Jason Bourne remembered everything about his past as a highly trained government assassin and swam off in the East River, having dispatched the corrupt agency officials who had tried to have him killed. A new film would require a new motivating set of circumstances. The studio gave Mr. Greengrass time, and he gave it a shot. But when it became clear that he couldn’t find an idea that excited him, Universal Pictures — facing a contractual deadline with the Robert Ludlum estate to produce another film — went to Plan B. Not keen on recasting the role, the studio then released an offering from the screenwriter of the first three films, Tony Gilroy, who conjured up another black ops agent, Aaron Cross (played by Jeremy Renner) for “The Bourne Legacy. ” But Donna Langley, the chairwoman of Universal Pictures, never gave up hope. After all, franchise sequels are the lifeblood of today’s movie business. “We were always playing the long game with the Bourne franchise,” said Ms. Langley, respecting the pair’s decision but believing that a compelling idea might take hold. “Even though Matt and Paul had been very definitive about not wanting to come back, we weren’t really willing to submit to that,” she added with a laugh. In late 2013, Ms. Langley invited Mr. Damon to lunch with her new boss, Jeff Shell, a longtime television executive whom Comcast had just put in charge of Universal’s filmed entertainment business. The had but one purpose: to gently nudge a Bourne movie starring Matt Damon back on track. Mr. Damon was amenable to at least considering a return. Year after year of people coming up to him on the street, in the coffee shop, at the airport, urging him to make another Bourne film, had had its intended effect. And stumbling upon the production offices of “Legacy” while he was in Vancouver filming “Elysium” a few years earlier may have contributed as well. “I thought I was completely at peace with the three movies, and I was so happy with how good they were and what the whole franchise had done for my career and my life,” Mr. Damon said. “But when I saw their production offices, it hurt me in a way that surprised me. ” Not long after his meal with the Universal executives, Mr. Damon dined with Mr. Greengrass in Los Angeles. “At a certain point, I said to Paul, ‘People really want to see this movie, and that’s not something to turn our noses up at,’” Mr. Damon said. “Having made movies that didn’t find an audience, I didn’t want to thumb our nose at this opportunity. ” That resonated with Mr. Greengrass. The ideas began whirring with his longtime creative partner Christopher Rouse, who had edited “Supremacy” and “Ultimatum. ” And a few weeks later, on a long drive back to his London home, Mr. Greengrass realized: This could actually be fun. Mr. Greengrass, a former journalist, tends to situate his films in recent, events, whether in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion (“The Green Zone”) or on a cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates (“Captain Phillips”). And the economic and political aftershocks of the 2008 financial crash that he and Mr. Rouse had been exploring for other projects — institutions desperately trying to hold onto power amid a wave of angry populist movements — could find fertile ground in a new “Bourne” entry. One of the early action set pieces in “Jason Bourne” unspools during an austerity riot in Athens. “At heart, Bourne is a patriot who’s been betrayed by the institutions he believed in,” Mr. Rouse said. “Those are very identifiable feelings for people today. ” Social media had barely begun when “The Bourne Ultimatum” was released: Facebook was three years old, Twitter just one. Now, it’s a dominant feature of our lives, and Mr. Greengrass wanted to incorporate the debate the rise of these companies has exacerbated. “The classic Bourne universe is one where you look at the C. I. A. with great skepticism,” Mr. Greengrass said. “But I wanted to cast that skeptical eye, Bourne’s skeptical eye, a bit broader. Because the truth is there are other barons in the world now. ” The need for a different world to confront Jason Bourne may be addressed. But a significant slice of the younger moviegoing public may have no clue about the character. And in a summer where more sequels have been rejected than embraced, the audience may view another Bourne movie as just the latest cynical studio project. Mr. Greengrass had that concern in mind when he mapped out Jason Bourne’s first appearance in the film, engaging in a fight on the border. “It’s important because it tells you that Bourne is potent, and a physical force to be reckoned with still,” Mr. Greengrass said. (Mr. Damon said he had to get in the best shape of his career, which, he added ruefully, was harder to do at 45 than at 29.) “But more importantly, it’s proof of our intent, that this is real for us. ” Every movie franchise comes with its own set of audience expectations, and the filmmakers sought to both provide what Mr. Greengrass calls “the new and the true. ” Younger characters are introduced. The fight scenes are there but amped up. And Mr. Damon’s Bourne once again finds himself in a possibly deadly car chase, but this time there’s a SWAT truck involved. Asked if the absence from theaters worries him or the fans beseeching him for an encore were outliers, Mr. Damon began to laugh. “It’s too late now — scared money never wins, and I would never have wanted to make the movie worrying about stuff like that,” he said. “We still approached it the same way we approached them all: We made the very best movie we could. ” Ms. Langley at Universal doesn’t betray any doubts about the new movie’s prospects. There are no current plans for a sequel to “The Bourne Legacy” with Mr. Renner, nor are there designs (as had once been considered) to spin off other characters in other clandestine government operations, she said. “Look, here’s what I think the goal is: to keep Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass doing Bourne movies till they can’t do them anymore,” she said. Lassoing the two men again will require more of Ms. Langley’s skills. Mr. Damon said that the franchise would need to go off in another direction and that Mr. Greengrass must be involved. Asked if he’d return for another Bourne film, Mr. Greengrass began cackling. “Last time I made the mistake of saying never again, which proved not to be true,” he said. “So I’m not going to say that. ” While he’s been noodling with a new adaptation of “1984,” Mr. Greengrass has not committed to his next project. But he insisted that another Bourne movie would definitely not be it. “I hope the franchise lives on, because I’ve got immense affection for it,” Mr. Greengrass said, but whether he’ll be part of it is an open question. “I’m not even going to think about it for some years. ” | 1 |
Gov. Mike Pence, aligning himself with the Republican establishment rather than his running mate, broke with Donald J. Trump on Wednesday by endorsing Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s bid, a day after Mr. Trump roiled the party by declaring that he was not yet ready to support the speaker. “I strongly endorse his ” Mr. Pence, of Indiana, said in an interview with Fox News. “He’s a longtime friend, he’s a strong conservative leader. ” The split between the two members of the Republican ticket over whether to endorse the speaker of the House in his own primary illustrated the party’s glaring divisions. Republican officials are nearing a state of panic as Mr. Trump’s provocations divert attention from the perceived vulnerabilities of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “If he makes himself the issue, we’re going to lose,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi and a top lieutenant to Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. “There’s only one guy who can fix this, and that’s Donald Trump. I hope he’s willing. ” While running mates have differed on policy issues in the past, it is for them to part ways on such traditionally uncontroversial matters as whether to support the campaigns of other party leaders. But Mr. Trump, as he has demonstrated time and again, has little regard for the conventions of politics. And he is plainly angry that Mr. Ryan continues to criticize him for his inflammatory remarks. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said “I’m just not quite there yet” when asked in an interview with The Washington Post if he was supporting Mr. Ryan’s . Mr. Trump’s choice of words sounded familiar: In May, Mr. Ryan said he was “not ready” to endorse Mr. Trump for president (the speaker subsequently did.) In a phone conversation between Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump on Wednesday morning, according to someone with knowledge of the call, Mr. Trump brought up his Washington Post interview. Mr. Pence, who served in the House with Mr. Ryan, said that while he understood where Mr. Trump was coming from, he personally was inclined to support Mr. Ryan. Mr. Trump agreed that he should. But it was not just Mr. Trump’s rebuff of Mr. Ryan that was causing difficulties for Mr. Pence: The Republican nominee also happened to be meeting in Arizona on Tuesday night with Senator John McCain, just hours after Mr. Trump said in the same Washington Post interview that he also was not ready to endorse Mr. McCain’s campaign. Mr. McCain was cordial but direct with Mr. Pence, according to a Republican briefed on the meeting, making clear that he hoped the Indiana governor could help rein in Mr. Trump. Yet it was Mr. Trump’s slight of Mr. Ryan that was most exasperating to party officials. The speaker is facing a primary challenge in Wisconsin on Tuesday from a businessman, Paul Nehlen, who is running on a populist platform similar to Mr. Trump’s. Mr. Nehlen came to Mr. Trump’s defense this week after Mr. Ryan implicitly criticized the Republican nominee for ridiculing the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq. That prompted Mr. Trump to thank Mr. Nehlen on Twitter. And on Tuesday, Mr. Trump told the Washington Post that Mr. Nehlen was “running a very good campaign. ” This flirtation with Mr. Ryan’s challenger has infuriated Wisconsin’s leading Republicans. Gov. Scott Walker, who ran for president himself, and Senator Ron Johnson indicated that they would not join Mr. Trump for a scheduled appearance in Green Bay this week. And Mr. Walker on Wednesday posted a photograph of himself with Mr. Ryan on Twitter, saying,“We stand with Paul Ryan!” Mr. Walker did not respond to a question about Mr. Trump but said in an email that “Paul Ryan will win because he is totally in touch with his district. ” Mr. Priebus, a Wisconsin native, is also said to be livid over Mr. Trump’s remarks about Mr. Ryan and debating the best way to demonstrate his solidarity with Mr. Ryan, from a formal endorsement to an email publicly stating his support, said three people with knowledge of Mr. Priebus’s internal discussions. Mr. Priebus has not had a direct conversation with Mr. Trump over the Ryan matter, according to people close to him. But he has been in contact with some of Mr. Trump’s children. Since endorsing Mr. Trump, Mr. Ryan has continued to distance himself from the Republican nominee on several matters, from Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country to his comments criticizing Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Captain Khan’s parents. Mr. Priebus has made a point of staying neutral in all aspects of Republican primaries, including when asked to speak out against Mr. Trump. Deciding to publicly back Mr. Ryan in his primary would be a step away from that. For Mr. Priebus, Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Ryan were just the latest indignity in a week full of them. Earlier, Mr. Trump had criticized the Khan family for their speech at the Democratic National Convention and implied that Ms. Khan had not spoken because of her religion. Ms. Khan said she did not speak because she was worried she would be overcome with grief. Mr. Trump’s missteps in the weeks since the Republican convention have spurred a degree of open criticism among otherwise supportive party officials rarely seen since he secured enough delegates for the nomination in May. On Wednesday, two Republican congressman who had expressed misgivings about Mr. Trump, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, said they would not endorse him. The day before, another Republican congressman, Richard Hanna of New York, endorsed Mrs. Clinton. In the Senate, Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, has been outspoken in opposing Mr. Trump. Party officials are hamstrung — there is no mechanism for removing Mr. Trump as the party’s candidate he would have to step down himself. Nonetheless, party leaders are said to be furious at the controversies involving him. There are now active discussions among Republican officials about how much longer the party can wait before recasting their focus away from Mr. Trump and toward candidates. One adviser to Mr. Priebus indicated that, much as the party did when Bob Dole’s presidential campaign was flagging in 1996, officials may have to turn their attention to congressional and governors’ races as early as next month. Some Republican strategists, however, have little sympathy for the party committee, noting that it smoothed the way for Mr. Trump’s nomination by aggressively putting down efforts to let delegates vote their conscience. And, many in the party note, Mr. Priebus can hardly act surprised now about Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior, given his string of inflammatory comments since entering the race. “You would have to have had your eyes wide shut for the last year to think he would act differently in the general than he did in the primary,” said Josh Holmes, a top adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. At a campaign event in Daytona Beach, Fla. on Wednesday, Mr. Trump seized on national security and terrorism to lash into Mrs. Clinton, suggesting that if he had been president, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would not have happened. | 1 |
Sunday on CNN’s “Stare of the Union. ” during his interview with U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, host Jake Tapper called President Donald Trump’s past tweets on climate change “a big box of crazy. ” Follow Pam Key On Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
The federal bureaucracy is comprised of about 2. 6 million permanent employees protected by Civil Service and about 4, 000 political appointees. Many of these bureaucrats are actively engaged in sabotaging President Trump’s agenda. [Political appointees can be fired by the president at will. Permanent Civil Services employees are more difficult to fire. “Today, the Pendleton Act shields from dismissal, even on legitimate grounds, more than 90 percent of civil servants,” the Federalist reports. But even if they can’t be fired from Civil Service, they can be removed from their current positions. Here is a list of the top ten holdover Obama loyalist bureaucrats President Trump can either fire immediately or remove from their current positions (civil service). Cordray, Lansing, and Bennett could try to fight their terminations, but ultimately, if President Trump wants to get rid of them, they will be gone. Here’s the case for firing or removing from their current positions these ten Obama administration holdovers: 1. John Koskinen, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Koskinen’s term is scheduled to end in November 2017, but President Trump has the authority to accelerate his departure. “A faction of conservatives is circumventing leadership brass and calling directly on President Trump to tell IRS Chief John Koskinen, ‘You’re fired,’ ” the Washington Examiner reported last month: Rep. Mark Walker, . C. will make the ask. The chairman of the Republican Study Committee has quietly but urgently been circulating a letter inside the GOP conference to build support. He’s now got 50 congressmen signed onto the letter. While Trump has fleshed out his cabinet, so far, he’s stayed hush about the fate of the IRS chief. And conservatives really want Koskinen’s head. “You have the authority to remove Commissioner Koskinen,” Walker writes to Trump, adding that “we encourage you to dismiss him in the most expedient manner practicable. ” House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, first drew up impeachment articles against the taxman in October 2015. Since then, conservatives have accused Koskinen of interfering with a congressional investigation and abetting the of the continued targeting of conservative . “Last year, irate Republican lawmakers unsuccessfully sought impeachment of Koskinen over the IRS’s alleged targeting of tea party groups and other conservative organizations,” NewsMax notes. 2. Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Cordray’s term is scheduled to end in 2018, but, as with Koskinen at the IRS, President Trump can move his departure date up. “So long as President Donald Trump is in a firing mood, Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, must go,” Kelly Riddell wrote in a Washington Times on Friday: One of the biggest swamp creatures, many thought Mr. Cordray wouldn’t survive 48 hours in the Trump administration, but alas, he has. He’s collected much power running his sprawling bureaucratic fiefdom, without any oversight from Congress, or even the president for that matter. There’s the question whether Mr. Trump has the authority to even fire Mr. Cordray, a man who knows Republicans want him gone, but is refusing to leave. Last year, the bureau’s structure was declared unconstitutional in a court case, allowing Mr. Cordray to be fired at will, but the CFPB has appealed. So long as the case is pending, Mr. Cordray has grounds to stave off any dismal. 3. John Lansing, CEO of Broadcasting Board of Governors, The Broadcasting Board of Governors is one of those agencies most Americans have never heard of. It “is the largest public diplomacy program by the U. S. government, reaching an audience of 278 million by broadcasting in 100 countries and 61 languages,” Politico reported. It runs the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and several other broadcasting entities. “Voice of America was created in 1942 during World War II to send news across Europe, as it aimed to counter Nazi and Japanese propaganda. The agency has since evolved into a more traditional news operation, while still pushing out the virtues of democracy worldwide,” Politico reported. The problem in recent years is that Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the other broadcasting entities run by BBG have shifted from their traditional mission of promoting classic American values and interests to the rest of the world, and have become mirror images of mainstream media outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Current CEO John Lansing, a veteran cable industry executive, took over the reins in 2015 and has done nothing to stop that trend. As Politico reported, a recent change in the law now provides President Trump with an opportunity to put his own person in charge over at the BBG: Early last month, a provision buried into the National Defense Authorization Act called for disbanding the bipartisan board of the BBG, pleasing critics who said the board was ineffective but alarming others who feared an accountability layer was being swept away. “The status of the [BBG] board is in limbo, however, since Obama added a signing statement to the NDAA, saying it was unconstitutional to get rid of the board because it violates his constitutional right of appointment. Another uncertainty is that Lansing can be replaced at any time for a CEO appointed by the president,” Politico reported. Even those on the left, however, acknowledge that President Trump has the authority to fire Lansing. “But on page 1, 404 of the defense bill that was passed by the Republican Congress right after the election, this far into the bill that high, they took the board of governors part out of the equation,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow says: So that’s no longer who runs this $800 million broadcasting effort, Voice of America. Now instead of being run by a sort of insulated board of governors it’s now run by a CEO who is appointed by the president and who serves at the pleasure of the president. 4. Amanda Bennett, Voice of America Director, “Voice of America Director Amanda Bennett oversees BBG’s largest organization, providing content in more than 45 languages to 236. 6 million people each week on radio, television, mobile and the Internet,” the VOA website reports. Under Bennett’s leadership, VOA has become increasingly focused on covering domestic politics from a far left perspective, similar to that found at NPR. Bennett is the classic elite mainstream media journalist: Amanda Bennett is a Pulitzer author, investigative journalist and editor. Through 2013, she was Executive Editor, Bloomberg News, where she created and ran a global team of investigative reporters and editors. She was also of Bloomberg News’ Women’s project. She was editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from June, 2003, to November, 2006, and prior to that was editor of the in Lexington, Kentucky. She also served for three years as managing for The Oregonian in Portland. Bennett served as a Wall Street Journal reporter and editor for more than 20 years. A graduate of Harvard College, she held numerous posts at the Journal, including auto industry reporter in Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s, Pentagon and State Department reporter, Beijing correspondent, management national economics correspondent and, finally, chief of the Atlanta bureau until 1998, when she moved to The Oregonian. Most recently, she has been a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Bennett is married to Donald Graham, former owner of the Washington Post, and current owner of Graham Holdings, which owns, among other media outlets, the far left website Slate. “Together with her husband, Donald Graham, she is a of TheDream. US, which provides college scholarships to the children of undocumented immigrants,” the Voice of America website notes. 5. Kenneth Tota, Acting Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (civil service) As Breitbart News has reported previously, the two agencies responsible for the implementation of the federal refugee resettlement program — the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the Department of State — are populated by a revolving door of ideologically aligned bureaucrats from the Voluntary Agencies that are paid $1 billion annually by the federal government to resettle refugees. Any bureaucrat who has served at either agency for any period of time has been utterly compromised by the refugee industry lobby and has to go in a Trump administration. “Ken Tota is the Acting Director for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He has served as ORR Deputy Director since 2008, and also served as Acting ORR Director in 2006 and 2015,” according to the ORR website: Prior to joining ORR, Ken served as Senior Program Specialist at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where he provided oversight to the Unaccompanied Children’s Program and the program transfer from the U. S. Department of Justice to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Since coming to ORR, he has worked to significantly increase capacity and enhance care and services for unaccompanied children. While at ORR, Ken has worked to enhance funding and services for refugees by focusing on the most vulnerable populations, technical assistance and expanding intensive case management. He has also been instrumental in the creation of an ORR division to focus on refugee issues and developing partnerships in support of services for refugees. Before entering civil service, Ken was the Program Coordinator for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, D. C. and Miami, Fla. In his resignation letter last month, ORR Director Bob Carey, an Obama appointee and former VOLAG executive, praised Tota. “I am pleased to announce that, as I leave office today, Ken Tota will be assuming the position of Acting Director of ORR. Ken’s knowledge of the policies and issues which affect the populations we serve and his commitment to the work of the office is unmatched,” Carey wrote. 6. Anastasia Brown, Acting Deputy Director for Refugee Programs, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services (civil service) Anastasia Brown worked for years in the “ ” refugee resettlement industry. Most recently, she held a senior position at the Refugee Council, USA, the lobbying arm for the 22 voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) who are paid more than $1 billion a year to resettle refugees in the United States. Brown was recently planted at ORR by the Obama administration to ensure that the interests of the VOLAGs would be served in future administrations. Outgoing ORR Director Carey also praised Brown in his resignation letter saying she will bring “a wealth of experience” to her role, “which will be of great value going forward. ” 7. Simon Henshaw, Acting Assistant Secretary, Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (civil service) According to his State Department bio, Henshaw has been with PRM since 2013: Mr. Henshaw is a career officer in the U. S. Foreign Service, currently serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. His previous assignment was Director of Andean Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U. S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Mr. Henshaw joined the State Department in 1985. 8. Mark C. Storella, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (civil service) According to his State Department bio, Storella has been with PRM since 2016: Ambassador Mark Storella, a member of the Senior Foreign Service, has a longstanding commitment to humanitarian affairs and human rights. He joined the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in June 2016 with responsibility for admission of refugees to the United States and refugee programming in the Near East and Asia regions. 9. Lawrence Bartlett, Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (civil service) A long time official with PRM, Bartlett has been an active apologist for the refugee resettlement industry for many years. “Communities certainly have a say in what happens [with regards to refugee resettlement locally],” Bartlett told an audience at a public forum in 2015, an assertion strongly disputed by opponents of the federal refugee resettlement program. “We would not bring refugees to any city in the United States that wasn’t going to be safe for the refugees,” he added. “I put a little twist on that on purpose,” Bartlett continued. “I am certainly, as someone who is resettling a refugee, would not take them to a place where I felt the refugees themselves, was going to be unsafe. . . The point is, if this was not a welcoming community, refugees wouldn’t be coming here. ” 10. Elaine Zimmerman, Regional Administrator for the Administration for Children and Families, Region 1, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont (civil service) There is nothing particularly distinctive about Ms. Zimmerman. She, in fact, is fairly representative of a number of high level federal bureaucrats protected by civil service. Her world view, however, is unlikely to align with the policies of President Trump, like many of her colleagues. “Ms. Zimmerman partners with state, local, community based organizations, and tribes within the Region to promote economic and social of children, families, individuals and communities in the New England region,” according to her bio on the HHS website: Ms. Zimmerman was formerly the Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission on Children. She has devoted her career to developing and promoting model policy for children and families in health, safety and learning. Expert in trend analysis and public will, she knows how and when to move initiatives forward to maximize public interest and community partners for policy. Ms. Zimmerman has been at the forefront of setting model policy in support of children. Her work with state leaders includes design of law in school readiness, early reading success, children and disaster, children’s behavioral health, home visitation and law. She guided legislation to establish Connecticut’s Blueprint in Reading and initiatives. Ms. Zimmerman is recognized for one of the strongest parent leadership and family civics model in the states. For this work she was awarded the Good Housekeeping Award for Women. At the center of Ms. Zimmerman’s work is the critical role that community does and must play in preparing children for their future. Her education background tells a lot about her world view: “Ms. Zimmerman has a B. A. with a dual major in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She also has a Masters in Community Mental Health from the University of California, Berkeley,” according to her bio. This list of ten bureaucrats who can be fired or removed from their current positions is a good starting point. While he’s at it, President Trump can reverse 17 conversions at eight agencies from political appointees to career civil service in the federal bureaucracy that, according to a recent GAO report, were implemented “without receiving prior approval from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as required by OPM policy. ” The report did not identify the jobs by title, but it named the offending agencies or departments. | 1 |
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The thank-you gift was the new edition of Robert Parry’s Trick or Treason (with a new afterword by the author), plus a DVD of PBS Frontline’s “The Election Held Hostage,” co-written by Parry.
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Thanks for all your support, PBS Frontline’s: The Election Held Hostage, co-written by Robert Parry | 0 |
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It’s easy to glance at Tuesday’s popular vote — which, with 92 percent of all precincts reporting, shows Hillary Clinton with six million fewer votes than Barack Obama won in 2012 – and reach the conclusion that Clinton lost the White House because she failed to turn out the Democratic base. But the truth is much more complicated.
While she underperformed relative to Obama’s 2012 totals in several Midwestern states — Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin — Clinton ran virtually even with Obama in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. What’s more, she far surpassed Obama’s 2012 vote total in Florida, the country’s biggest swing state. Yet somehow, while Obama carried Florida, Clinton lost it.
Which brings us to an important question: Was Donald Trump just good enough to beat a bad Democratic opponent on Tuesday, or does he deserve far more credit? Could he, for instance, have competed with the vaunted Obama machine? The answer, somewhat shockingly, is yes. A review of vote totals in the past two elections reveals that Trump 2016 would have defeated Obama 2012 in the electoral college.
The math might seem impossible. After all, Obama won nearly 66 million votes in 2012; Trump is currently at 59.5 million and should finish around 60 million, which will actually be one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney won. How, then, could Trump have topped Obama in the electoral college? The answer: Republican turnout lagged in certain parts of the country but shot through the roof in the nation’s most critical battleground states.
Let’s look at them individually, in descending order by population, and do the electoral-vote math. The 2016 totals aren’t yet final because not all precincts have reported.
FLORIDA — 29 EVs — 98 percent reporting
Obama 2012: 4,235,270
Clinton 2016: 4,485,745
Romney 2012: 4,162,081
Trump 2016: 4,605,515
Conclusion: Trump beats Obama by some 370,000 votes and wins Florida. (Note: Clinton herself won 250,000 more votes in Florida than Obama did in 2012.)
PENNSYLVANIA — 20 EVs — 97 percent reporting
Obama 2012: 2,907,448
Clinton 2016: 2,844,705
Romney 2012: 2,619,583
Trump 2016: 2,912,941
Conclusion: Trump squeezes past Obama by a margin of some 5,000 votes and wins Pennsylvania. (Note: Clinton runs about 60,000 votes behind Obama, but would’ve had more than enough to defeat Romney in 2012.)
OHIO — 18 EVs – 94 percent reporting
Obama 2012: 2,697,260
Clinton 2016: 2,317,001
Romney 2012: 2,593,779
Trump 2016: 2,771,984
Conclusion: Trump edges Obama by roughly 75,000 votes and wins Ohio. (Note: Clinton’s worst battleground state showing was Ohio, winning 380,000 [!] fewer votes than Obama.)
Stop right there and crunch the numbers: Florida (29) + Pennsylvania (20) + Ohio (18) = 67 EVs.
Romney finished with 206 EVs. By protecting all of those, and then taking 67 from Obama, Trump would hit 273 and win the presidency.
The question: Did Trump 2016 defeat Obama 2012 in all of the states Romney won? Yes. Here’s a look at the competitive ones:
– NORTH CAROLINA (98 percent reporting): Trump 2,339,603 ‌ Obama 2,178,388
– ARIZONA (73 percent reporting): Trump 947,284 ‌ Obama 930,669
– GEORGIA (93 percent reporting): Trump 2,068,623 ‌ Obama 1,761,761
– UTAH (78 percent reporting): Trump 360,634 ‌ Obama 229,463
A review of the Romney 2012 states confirms that Trump, in this hypothetical matchup, would have carried every single one against Obama.
It doesn’t matter that Obama would have trounced Trump by nearly 300,000 votes in Michigan; by more than 200,000 in Wisconsin; by 175,000 in Virginia; and by 160,000 in Colorado. It’s similarly meaningless that Obama would have narrowly defeated Trump in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. The 44th president carried all of those states in 2012, and in this hypothetical contest, he would successfully defend all of them. But it wouldn’t be enough.
The electoral college would produce a razor-thin margin: Trump 273, Obama 265.
Again, this is an apples-to-oranges exercise. It’s impossible to know how the Obama campaign might have targeted certain voters in a contest against Trump, or whether Trump would have the same success in the three big battleground states against a more formidable opponent. But that’s not the point here; the point is that it’s not entirely fair to blame Clinton for depressing Democratic turnout when she ran even with him in five of the country’s most competitive states and ahead of him in a sixth, Florida, the single biggest swing state — and still lost the electoral college.
Source
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The Heritage Foundation’s Ed Haislmaier told Breitbart News that Congress’s health care bill acts as damage control for Obamacare. [Haislmaier told Breitbart that the House’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) will move health care in the right direction, although, the Senate can make improvements to the bill. He said, “It is progress, and now it moves over to the Senate. The Senate is really the final decision maker where it is really going to make a difference. ” The Heritage scholar added that he likes the idea of a tax credit to purchase health insurance, however, there could be better ways to model the tax credit. He said, “I think the problem with the House’s tax credit is that they could have more thoroughly modeled different ways of doing it, and hopefully in the Senate, they can have several variants and come up with a better design. ” Senator Bill Cassidy ( ) proposed a solution for higher premiums that would Americans without health insurance into a basic, catastrophic health care plan paid for by an individual’s federal tax credit. The Louisiana senator explained, “Your best way to lower premiums is to expand the risk pool … would allow expansion of the risk pools. ” Haislmaier noted some of the complexities behind the idea of Americans who forgo health insurance. He stated: As for Americans without health insurance, you are mainly talking about a group of people who choose not to buy insurance even if they are healthy. It’s a practical question how do you make that work and stay with it, and especially for people who are loosely connected to the workforce, and don’t have a lot of income and usually go to a clinic to get care. This is the problem with expanding Medicaid it does not do a lot to change their behavior, it does a lot more to get the hospital paid. So there’s a number of issues you have to think through on that, that I believe they have to do. Once you enroll people, how do you keep them in the system? They do not want to pay nominal premiums, and that’s what happened with Obamacare. With Obamacare, we got them insured in very subsidized coverage, and the insurers were surprised that once they were healthy, they would not even pay ten bucks to keep the coverage. It is a technical issue, how do you work through that and make it better? Haislmaier told Breitbart News that the Senate bill should mirror the MacArthur amendment to lower premiums. The MacArthur amendment allows states to obtain waivers to rollback Obamacare regulations. He said: It is not easy to balance out covering conditions with lower premiums, that is where you saw some of the political difficulty in the House, and that’s how they came up with the solution of the MacArthur amendment, which allows states to lower premiums through a waiver. I think that the process, doing this as part of a budget reconciliation, means that the best you can get out of this is some sort of waiver system. Haislmaier responded to some critics of the AHCA that the bill does too little, too late. The state waivers for Obamacare regulations would only apply as early as 2019 and only if the state applies for the waiver. Haislmaier pointed out: That’s why they tied in some additional stabilization funding, they recognized that some of the regulatory actions could not be done right away and to make it acceptable for reconciliation they have to tie some money to the bill. They’re going to offer states additional funding and other regulatory relief with the expectation that they’ll use the extra funding to initially to keep things going for the next year or so before the relief can kick in. Keep in mind the target here is not the subsidized ACA exchange market, the target is the market that’s tied to it, the regular insurance market, that’s where the spillover effect is. That’s where everyone is experiencing higher premiums, deductibles, loss of insurers, and providers, and they’re getting nothing in return. What they’re trying to save is the market outside of the exchanges, for the individual and small employer plans. The ACA dumped a whole bunch of costly people to that market, and you got to disentangle that and keep those people and keep insurance affordable for them. What they’re trying to do with the stabilization funding is to provide insurers with some stabilization to help bring down premiums. This is a rescue effort at this point. There is a number of things that the Trump administration has done for 2018, and they can do more things for 2019 and beyond. Congress under the best circumstances, would not have been able to affect health insurance plan year 2018, what Congress is working on is for further down the road. Haislmaier told Breitbart News that Congress’s efforts for repealing Obamacare basically amounts to damage control, not true health care reform. He explained, “Let’s be clear this is not health reform, this is damage control for Obamacare. There’s a lot more to be done. It’s not going to happen overnight. ” | 1 |
Film director and climate change activist James Cameron says President Donald Trump has filled his cabinet with crazy people. [“[Trump] nominated a guy to run the EPA [Scott Pruitt] who has eight lawsuits against the EPA, and refuses to recuse himself from those lawsuits! It’s basically the world right now, and the kind of dialogue coming out of these guys sounds like George Orwell,” Cameron told The Daily Beast. “Alternate facts? There’s no such thing as an alternate fact! These people are insane,” Cameron said. Cameron said President Trump is going to undo all the work that was done to help avoid a disaster that could put the planet in peril. “Years ago, we sort of spotted the iceberg ahead of us and we called out the order to turn, and we’ve been slowly, slowly, slowly trying to turn this ship to not hit the iceberg, and then Trump grabbed the tiller and just plunged it right back at the center of the iceberg,” Cameron said. He added: So am I worried? Of course. I’m like anyone of good conscience and reasonable intelligence. I think we’re the biggest freakin’ idiot civilization in history right now, and they’ll probably be talking about us 4, 000 years from now scratching their heads — like they talk about Atlantis. “Who are those guys? What did they do to piss off the gods so much that they’re buried under a hundred feet of mud right now?” The Titanic director says he has “been in the writing cave for the last two years,” working on scripts for the sequels to his 2009 global blockbuster Avatar. But it’s not as if the “ ” believer put aside his political activism entirely during the last couple years. Indeed, for example, Cameron debuted a documentary warning of the dangers of climate change at the Democratic National Convention in July. The video, which featured dramatic music, extreme weather, and natural disasters, championed Hillary Clinton as the only presidential candidate capable of saving the planet from mankind. A few months later, Cameron was among the filmmakers behind an video that aired in swing states on behalf of a super PAC just weeks before Election Day. Now, following President Trump’s first week in office, Cameron said he is keeping his “head down” and “doing the stuff that [he] thought [he] would be doing if Hillary was elected. ” “I’m making my Avatar films, I’m doing my climate work, I’m doing my sustainable agriculture work. You can only do what you can do,” he said. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson. | 0 |
DACHAU (GERMANY) (AFP) — An iron gate with the infamous slogan “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work will set you free”) stolen from the former Nazi concentration camp of Dachau in Germany two years ago, was returned to the site Wednesday. [The theft of the ( ) gate was reported in November 2014, sparking uproar, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the crime “appalling”. It was recovered outside Bergen in southwestern Norway last December following an anonymous . At a ceremony marking the return of the gate, the president of the International Dachau Committee, Thomas, urged investigators to press on with the probe into the theft. He said he was “deeply shocked by the desecration of the site dedicated to the memory of all the victims of the camp, and to the respect for the 41, 000 detainees who died” there. He said the theft had aimed to “remove a trace, a symbol of all that is represented by the inscription ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ on this gate of Dachau camp that some 210, 000 detainees walked through from 1933 to 1945,” he said. The gate was taken on a Saturday night between the rounds of security guards watching the site. Police at the time said they were investigating whether had committed the crime and offered a ($11, 000) reward for information that could solve the case. No arrests have been made so far. The Dachau camp near Munich opened in 1933, less than two months after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. More than 200, 000 political prisoners, Jews and others were incarcerated there by the Nazis and 41, 000 died before US troops liberated it on April 29, 1945. Today some 800, 000 visitors from around the world visit the camp each year. Last Sunday, US Vice President Mike Pence paid a sombre visit to the camp along with his wife and daughter. Another sign with the same inscription at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz was stolen in 2009. The mastermind of that theft, Swedish Anders Hoegstroem, was caught and jailed for two and a half years. The metal sign was eventually recovered, cut up into three pieces. A replica was displayed above the entrance until the original was restored in 2011. | 0 |
5 demonetisation WhatsApp fwds you cannot do without Posted on Tweet
Chennai, Nov 23 : Regular mainstream media outlets and WhatsApp forwards are great sources of news that are totally unreliable. But WhatsApp forwards are — in ways that mainstream media can never be — more fun. And in the aftermath of the demonetisation, WhatsApp forwards have become absolute riots.
In the spirit of this occasion, we in Crank’s News, who take our irresponsible journalism pretty seriously, have come up with five WhatsApp message that you should be forthwith forwarding to all the groups your are part of so that by tomorrow morning these will be actual news all the newspapers and channels.
1) Is demonetisation a monetisation for Adani?
“Friends, this is confirmed as fact by a colleague’s cousin who is working as a senior-level secretary in the Finance Ministry. He says the Adanis, who are very close to the Modigovernment, and are actually funding not just the BJP but also the entire government, have recently taken over a chocolate factory in Gujarat. The factory is into the manufacture of all kinds of toffees, candies. These are typically the eclairs-types chocolates that shopkeepers give in lieu of small change.
My colleague’s cousin says that what we take to be the demonetisation move by the Modigovernment is a move to monetise the chocolates that Adanis are now manufacturing. Even in normal times, shopkeepers give these candies for change, and in these change-starved times, this is going to get even more pronounced.
So let us realise what the government is really trying to do here through demonetisationand that rich businessman are the ones calling the shots and cheating poor gullible public. Those who think that demonetisation is a sweet news may not know the real fact.
The above is a fwd from another group”.
2) India the first country to abolish rich and corrupt totally
“Forward this to all the other patriotic Indians:
According to a recent report in the US magazine Business Insider, India has now become the first country in the world to have abolished the rich people (sic) and officially every one in India is middle-class now.
The report, quoting latest statistics from the IMF, has said that Modi’s masterstroke demonetisation has totally made all Indians, including the poor and the rich, truly middle-class, along with those who are already middle-class. The magazine has also quoted Frank X McNamara, the ‘inventor of credit cards’, as saying that India’s Prime Minister NarendraModi has pulled off what all economists of the world have been wanting to do for long. The use of credit cards will increase and there will be no difference between the rich and the poor as both will be in huge debts”.
3) How Modi brought Ratan Tata and Naval chief to fall in line
“Interesting True Story This:
A friend’s wife was standing in a long queue in front of an ATM in South Bandra, Mumbai. Standing next to her were two well-dressed gentlemen who quietly went about minding their own business. There were murmurs of discontent from some others in the line at having to stand in the queue for withdrawing their own money.
Hearing this one of the two gentlemen, smiled quietly, and said that standing in a line is a good way to understand the value of hard-earned money. To this the other well-dressed person agreed wholeheartedly and said that there are also people out there on the high seas without any access to ATMs. We are actually lucky to have ATMs near where we live.
The first gentleman, who nodded his headed in approval, said that is very true and introduced himself to the other. ‘I am Ratan Tata,’ he said. The other offered his hand in a firm handshake and said, ‘I am Sunil Lanba. I work in Indian Navy. I am its Chief Admiral’.
The rest in the line went silent after this.
Friends, this is true simplicity. And thanks Modi for making the country understand this.
Send this to your near and dear to make them feel inspired”.
4) Trump to outsource management of US economy to Modi
“India’s contribution to the world economy is economy:
After years of Indians looking in awe of the Americans, now the tide has turned in favour of India. It is no secret that American President (sic) Donald Trump always likes to follow the footsteps of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump had used the same technique in campaigning that Modi used to defeat Sonia to get the better of Hillary Clinton. Trump understood that both Sonia and Hillary Clinton were essentially both women and hence copied the same strategy.
And now comes the most interesting part. With India’s economy being the fastest growing one in the entire world and the US economy struggling, there are expectations that Trump may ask Modi’s help, and if need be demeonetise US currency, to help shore up his country’s economy. Both dollar and rupee, if Trump has his way, may start sharing the same symbol soon.
Economy, which comes from the ancient Sanskrit word ‘eko’ which means ‘one’ and ‘nomy‘ that signifies ‘currency’, may soon have one single currency as predicted by our scholars who gave economy to the world.
MODI truly is Man Of Demonetised India”
5) Urjit Patel and Mukesh Ambani are twins FaceOff: Urjit Patel and Mukesh Ambani presenting different facial features to hide the fact that they are actually twins.
“What your mainstream media will not tell you?
How many of you in the group know that RBI Governor Urjit Patel and Reliance Chief Mukesh Ambani are not only related but are actually twins?
What your mainstream media will also not report is that Rajdeep Sardesai’s wife Sagarika Ghose, who writes every anti-Modi story that you find in all newspapers, is actually the long-lost granddaughter of former Prime Minister Indra Gandhi.
Here is the proof. Check their hairstyles:
Send these to all Indians who truly believe they are Indians”. | 1 |
The Maryland House of Delegates passed legislation on Tuesday that would allow the state to issue five more licenses above what current law allows for growing and processing medicinal marijuana, specifically designed to make pot providers more diverse. [“The bill, which was passed on a vote, is aimed at boosting business participation in the state’s developing industry after a disparity study,” the Associated Press reported. “The vote sends the measure to the Senate, which is considering a separate bill. ” Del. Cheryl Glenn, a Democrat, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and sponsor of the House bill, was critical of a state commission’s picking finalists for 30 licenses — 15 for growing and 15 for processing — last year that “lack minority ownership. ” “Passing this bill will show the country that this is not an issue that we’re going lock African Americans and other minorities from participating in this business venture,” Glenn said on the House floor before the vote. “Less than one percent of the licenses held in the entire country are held by African Americans and other minorities. ” AP noted that no final decisions have been made on any licenses and that the state commission also has named finalists for 102 marijuana dispensaries. Maryland lawmakers passed legislation to allow medical marijuana production in 2013, but limited it to academic medical centers and none came forward, according to AP. Earlier this year the cannabis industry research and lobbying group, Washington New Frontier Data, used data from the Barack Obama Labor Department to claim legal medicinal and recreational pot would create 300, 000 jobs over the next three years. The NFD report said the industry’s biggest growth would come from legalized adult recreational marijuana use in states like New York, Illinois, and Maryland. | 0 |
The campus of UC Davis welcomes MILO to the stage this evening to deliver a speech entitled “SHKRELOPOULOS — A TWITTER VILLAIN EXTRAVAGANZA” to a sold out crowd, featuring Martin Shkreli. [The talk begins at 10 PM ET, or in Pacific Time, 7 PM, and will be held in Science Lecture Hall 123 of UCD. Tonight’s event marks the first date in the third leg of the tour, a return after an Christmas break. MILO will discuss social justice issues, and host a discussion with entrepreneur and “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who was recently banned from Twitter. You can watch the event live, at the scheduled time, using the link below. | 0 |
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC © NASA Saturn's polar hexagon changes color from 2012 to 2016. It's like nothing we've seen on any other planet in the entire Universe, and now the mysterious structure on Saturn's north pole just got even weirder. In just four years, Saturn's hexagon has changed its colour from blue to gold. So far, our best guess as to why this change occurred is that this is what it looks like when Saturn's north pole gears up for next year's summer solstice. Discovered almost 30 years ago, Saturn's hexagon is a six-sided structure that spans roughly 32,000 km (20,000 miles) in diameter, and extends about 100 km (60 miles) down into the planet's dense atmosphere. As observed by NASA's Voyager and Cassini spacecraft, each point of the hexagon appears to rotate at its centre at nearly the same rate that Saturn rotates on its axis. Along the rim of the hexagon, a jet stream of air is blasting eastward at speeds of 321 km/h (200 mph). © NASA Based on its size and movements, scientists have concluded that it's a vast cloud pattern generated by a gigantic, perpetual hurricane spinning at the centre of the planet's north pole. Scientists estimate that this storm has been raging for decades - maybe even centuries . While we're pretty confident that we know what Saturn's hexagon is, the big mystery is how it got there in the first place. Once you have a giant whirlpool of air, it's relatively easy to keep it spinning - but the force you need to get it wound up in the first place is a whole lot more difficult to explain. "Scientists have bandied about a number of explanations for the hexagon's origin," says Charles Q. Choi from Space.com. "For instance, water swirling inside a bucket can generate whirlpools possessing holes with geometric shapes. However, there is of course no giant bucket on Saturn holding this gargantuan hexagon." Now we've got something else to explain - how the Cassini spacecraft could have observed two completely different colours in the hexagon between November 2012 and September 2016. Here's more of the false colour hexagon: The best hypothesis we have right now is that this is what it looks like when Saturn changes seasons. With a year that lasts 29 Earth years, Saturn changes seasons only once every seven years, and the increased sunlight over the past three years could explain the golden haze. As NASA explains: "The colour change is thought to be an effect of Saturn's seasons. In particular, the change from a bluish colour to a more golden hue may be due to the increased production of photochemical hazes in the atmosphere as the north pole approaches summer solstice in May 2017." So how does this work? It's thought that the hexagon acts sort of like a barrier, preventing haze - or aerosol - particles produced on the outside from getting in. This is evidenced by the fact that when scientists analysed the hexagon in false colour (as seen in the video), they noticed differences in the types of particles that were being suspended in the atmosphere - both inside and outside the hexagon. "Inside the hexagon, there are fewer large haze particles and a concentration of small haze particles, while outside the hexagon, the opposite is true," Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University, explained back in 2013. "The hexagonal jet stream is acting like a barrier, which results in something like Earth's Antarctic ozone hole." During the polar winter between November 1995 and August 2009, Saturn's north polar atmosphere became clear of aerosols produced by photochemical reactions - reactions caused by sunlight interacting with the atmosphere - and we got to see its hexagon in clear blue: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Val Klavans True color photo taken 26 June 2013 But since Saturn reached its equinox in August 2009 - the point where the Sun is directly over Saturn's equator - it's been gradually exposed to more and more sunlight. This means for the past three years, aerosols have been produced inside of the hexagon and around the north pole, making the polar atmosphere appear hazy and golden when photographed last month. Without more evidence though, this is just an educated guess , and scientists at NASA now have an investigation underway to figure out what's actually going on here. "Other effects, including changes in atmospheric circulation, could also be playing a role," NASA explained this week . "Scientists think seasonally shifting patterns of solar heating probably influence the winds in the polar regions." Cassini is continuing its orbits around Saturn, and its moons, Titan, Mimas, Daphnis, Methone, and Pandora, in the coming months , so get ready to see more strange images of their seasonal shifts. | 1 |
Marty is CIA one presumes...the oligarchy needs Clinton. They fear Trump's threat to impose 35% tariffs on outsourced manufactured items--see Michael Moore's recent comments.
It is Obama and Clinton that destroyed any pretense a free media in the USA, not Trump.
Obamacare only benefits insurance companies, hospitals, wealthy physicians, big pharma, medical equipment suppliers. Note the huge increases approved for the upcoming year--20-93% depending upon the state. Small business has been severely hurt and a huge loss of full time employment has resulted (businesses are exempt from providing health care under the Affordable Care Act for employees that work less than 28 hours per week).
The US is the most litigious nation on earth--- dimocrat lawyer groups are the major lobby to blame here...65% of the litigation in the world occurs in the USA. Can you spell stoopid?
Sanctuary cities is a canard as is term limits. But there are idiots who will believe that the earth is flat. | 0 |
What Did Sen. Richard Black Learn In Syria? What Did Sen. Richard Black Learn In Syria? By 0 134
Virginia State Senator Richard Black was curious about why the US seemed to be attacking only secular countries in the Middle East. Why attack Libya? Why Syria? So he decided to go over to Syria and see for himself. After meeting Syrian president Assad and speaking favorably about the situation with Christians under his rule, Sen. Black earned himself a place on ISIS’s “enemy list.” For not taking the Washington line that “Assad must go” he also earned a place on the Washington Post’s “enemy list.” Are we on the wrong side in Syria? Today, with Sen. Black, on the Ron Paul Liberty Report: | 0 |
We’re about to launch Red Kings Shop , which will sell ROK branded clothing. We’re starting with a limited run of a basic red t-shirt. Here’s a bearded fellow we hired to model the shirt…
We will do a soft launch of the store in approximately one week to those who sign up with their email address. If you want to be the first in line to get your shirt, click here for the Red Kings Shop homepage and enter your email address . The sign up will be removed in approximately 48-72 hours.
| 0 |
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — After years of punishing rent increases, activists across Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area are pushing a spate of rent control proposals, driven by outrage over soaring housing prices and fears that the growing income gap is turning families into an endangered species. Those campaigns, if successful, would lead to the largest expansion of tenant laws since the 1970s. “In the national picture, tenants’ rights and housing advocacy for the poor has been pretty sleepy for several decades,” said Michelle Wilde Anderson, a law professor at Stanford. “California is starting to wake up, and it may lead to national change. ” The Bay Area may be a special case, with the growth of technology industries driving housing costs into the stratosphere and a California initiative system that allows citizens to put proposed laws on the ballot. But the state has a long history of being at the forefront of populist uprisings that spread across the country, and rent control movements have already popped up in other cities like Portland, Ore. and Seattle. In 1978, Proposition 13 sharply reduced California’s property taxes, presaging a nationwide tax revolt. More recently, the state government adopted one of the nation’s most expansive minimum wage laws, to $15 statewide by 2022, reflecting a populist tide against income inequality that the rent control effort is also riding. “This is happening so fast that we in the advocacy community can’t even keep track of it,” said Daniel Saver, a housing lawyer who is helping draft rent control proposals in several towns. Instead of being based in big cities like San Francisco, today’s renters’ rights movement is centered in the collection of suburbs and bedroom communities that fill the peninsula south of the city. Here, the collision of tech riches with decades of development measures has pushed rent prices up about 50 percent over the last five years, according to Zillow, the online real estate pricing service. Today, as in the 1970s, the economic prescription would be to build more and soon. But as tales of eviction spread and landlords raise prices to the limit, even people who acknowledge rent control’s problems argue that it is still the best instrument to help families and service employees who can no longer live close to work. “The solution to the overall increase in housing prices in this area is bringing supply and demand into better balance,” said Leonard Siegel, a city councilman in Mountain View, where Google has its headquarters. “But until we get there — which means we need time to build housing — we keep losing people, and the fabric of our community is being torn apart. ” Silicon Valley looks and feels suburban, lacking in pedestrians and full of homes. It also has many tenants. In Mountain View, for instance, renters make up 60 percent of the households. And since this is a place where a $1 million starter home is considered a steal, those renters also include tech workers at some of the most valuable companies on earth. “In many of these places, rent growth by far outpaces income growth,” said Svenja Gudell, chief economist at Zillow. “And you will find that not only at the bottom of the market, but even at the top of the income distribution, where incomes are growing but not as fast as rents are growing. ” Google employees routinely show up at City Council meetings to speak out about rents and evictions. And after a 2014 election that served as a housing referendum by bringing Mr. Siegel and two other housing advocates onto the council, Mountain View is poised to add 15, 000 new units, about a 40 percent increase in the housing stock. Nevertheless, a group called the Mountain View Tenants Coalition is collecting signatures for a voter initiative in hopes of putting rent control on the November ballot. One of the group’s leaders and its chief spokesman, Evan Ortiz, is a Google employee who works in ad sales. Thomas K. Bannon, chief executive of the California Apartment Association, a landlords’ group, said his members were mobilizing a statewide response and planning to spend millions of dollars — he would not estimate exactly how many millions — to beat back the initiatives one city at a time. The members’ message: Don’t blame landlords. Blame cities for making it so hard to build new housing. “We recognize that if there isn’t new development and there aren’t dollars for affordable housing, we are going to be up against the wall,” he said. “The days of the industry trying to play below the radar are, unfortunately, over. ” Rent control is rare nationally, and it is generally left over from laws for urban areas of New York, California and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia. About half the states have laws prohibiting localities from regulating rent prices at all, according to the National Apartment Association, while others, including California, have imposed limits, such as making more recent buildings exempt. Economists have an almost universally dim view of rent control because it does nothing to attack the underlying problem here, which is that more people want to live in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley than there are housing units to put them in. Indeed, study after study has shown that while limits on rental increases may have helped a comparative handful of tenants stay in their apartments, they only added to a shortage of affordable housing and did little to stem the tide of higher costs. Rent control also comes with unintended consequences. The supply of rental apartments can become tighter as landlords exit the business. The properties that remain can become shabbier as owners stop keeping up with maintenance. “Rent control exists for a reason, and it’s because someone gains from it,” said Daniel Fetter, an economics professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. “The question is, ‘Is that really the best policy for achieving those ends? ’” But such abstruse arguments don’t carry much weight when many people are worried about being displaced, especially in the Bay Area, where losing a cheap apartment can mean moving an hour or more from work. On a recent evening in Burlingame, a Silicon Valley bedroom community about 20 minutes south of San Francisco, a legal secretary named Cindy Cornell sat at a foldout table in a San Francisco Giants visor collecting signatures for another rent control initiative. About half the households in Burlingame are renters, and the list of horror stories went up and down the economic ladder. There was a mother of one whose husband is an engineer who makes good money at a tech company. She signed because their landlord raised the rent to $4, 600 from $3, 400 while she was pregnant. A woman with four children and a husband who paints houses signed because the rent on her apartment had risen to $1, 600 a month from $1, 400 a month in two years. A later in nearby San Mateo, Reyna Gonzalez, a nanny, was going door to door with her granddaughter and a clipboard, finding voters for similar proposal. Whether or not these efforts are successful, Mr. Bannon, from the landlords’ group, said he expected escalating housing costs to remain one of the state’s central political issues for years. “My members are not going to put their buildings on wheels and move them out of California,” Mr. Bannon, the landlord lobbyist, said. “We’ve got to do something to build. We can’t continue like this. ” | 1 |
Waking Times
It’s always important to keep a strong perspective on reality and the objective truth about what is happening even though we ourselves (readers, truth seekers) are humans with principles, passion, interests, needs and emotions. These are factors which sometimes can make objectivity difficult to see. Yes, we all have human attributes meant for our own good and for survival which, if not carefully handled, can make us vulnerable to deep state propaganda, political strategies, psychological operations and political agendas. This is saying a lot so let’s break this down and see if we can apply some principles that make this reality easier to understand. Engineered Chaos
The first point I want to emphasize as I did in several articles of the past month or so is that no one should be mistaken, in America we are smack in the middle of an engineered chaos. That’s right. Political chaos that was planned and desired by the ruling elite. Nothing going on now is by coincidence. If anyone thinks the revelations, leaks, surprises, shocking news, infighting, controversies, division, accusations and political clashes of the past months is spontaneous and coincidental then you are far too naive to comprehend what we are about to discuss. Please try to see how politics in the year 2016 with all the technology available, the global agendas of the elite, the opportunity to control resources and the trillions of dollars at stake is indeed all by design. The ruling elite can and thus WILL always try to steer humanity in the direction of their liking. This basic reality of the ruling elite pulling the strings at the highest level is the fundamental basis to understanding how the world works today. For everyone else who understands this, let’s move on.
Engineered chaos and the orchestration of division, strife and clashes of ideology leading to civil unrest and ultimately the fracturing of nation-states is the standard mechanism by which the US empire has exerted its domination over nation-states, especially since the creation of the CIA in 1947. This is how the US overthrows governments. What About This Election Season?
The most important thing we need to understand is that chaos and civil unrest is engineered and it is usually based on the following factors: Legitimate gripes and discontent held by some or all of the people Because it is based on legitimate gripes and concerns it always appeals to at least some of the people involved The ruling elite always have an end game planned as a result of the chaos and civil unrest.
This is all we need to understand in order to recognize the engineered election season chaos and unrest we’ve all experienced and witnessed here in America over the past few months. Now let’s apply these rules to the reality we face today in the US. Legitimate Gripes, Concerns and Discontent
I (we) are all part of this discontent. In this current example we (truth seekers, Republicans, Trump supporters, Bernie Sanders supporters, even some Democrats, anyone not completely brainwashed with Hillary propaganda) have watched as Hillary Clinton and her supporting criminal DNC, mainstream media and long list of players both domestically and globally have committed unspeakable crimes and blatantly gotten away with it. Corruption has exploded and propaganda and lies have been used to cover it up or ignore these crimes. There’s your “legitimate gripe.” Again, we’re not talking about JUST Hillary, we’re talking Bill Clinton, Bush Junior, Cheney, Soros and so on. We’re talking almost the entire mainstream media, Obama and his conspirators and many more.
The legitimacy of many of our concerns are overwhelming. The reality is that the revelations of the Clinton crimes and all the corruption and evil being officially revealed by all the sources (WikiLeaks, Project Veritas, FBI. etc.) is welcomed and to be taken serious. There’s your legitimate reason for chaos and civil unrest and I (we) are part of it. Appealing to large segments of the population
The concerns of criminality is very real for most Americans and exposing this criminality must be done. This is appealing to all of us. The controllers know this. They (the ruling elite) have to base a perceived organic chaos in America on real issues and real concerns. Because of this, naturally many of us want to see these revelations and calls for justice and accountability come to fruition. This by definition is what a revolution looks like. We embrace it, again, because it’s based on real issues that need real attention. This is appealing even to me and many others. This “appeal” is part of the engineering of the chaos and civil unrest. Ruling Elite Will Always Manipulate End Game to Their Benefit
The one thing the masses cannot do is tell the ruling elite how to think. We (humanity) don’t sit in on their (CFR and Bilderberg) meetings. We can only respond to the reality that unfolds before us with the wisdom we have which is obtained from the knowledge and understanding we gain over time. The knowledge and understanding comes from staying on top of current events, researching things on your own, thinking critically on your own, being awakened and eager to follow truth. In order to dwell in this truth-seeking mode and build your knowledge, understanding and wisdom you must by default truly understand that mainstream media is all lies and deceit controlled and operated by the elite for the purposes of controlling the beliefs of the masses.
So while you are packing your brain with knowledge and following truth, realize that the ruling elite have their own plans and their own paradigm. This reality will never change. Throughout history we have seen empires come and go. Those who thirst for power will always exists and it is the wise person who learns to navigate life knowing that these control freaks exist. This is how we know for sure that the ruling WILL manipulate the end result of this election season for their benefit.
More than ever, we (truth seekers) need to be alert and aware of this reality. At no point will we be able to say “it’s over now, we can live in peace.” No way. Do not be fooled. Freedom must constantly be fought for. Governments will always be corrupt. That doesn’t mean we stop trying either.
In the best-case scenario we might see a lot of people charged and convicted for their crimes against humanity, the Constitution, America and the world. In the best-case scenario things will get a tiny bit better for a season. We’ll take the good while it lasts. We shouldn’t pin our hopes on a leader (whoever it may be) to lead us from the top-down. Making This Engineered Chaos a Win-Win
The mark of a true revolution is one where we the people begin to realize that all these “leaders” that want to rule humanity from the top-down are useless to us. Eventually humanity will see that we don’t need them any more. Humanity will someday soon be ready to move on to a new paradigm. One of self-sustaining existence which takes advantage of technology, new levels of self-awareness, new strategies and models for survival and economic growth and true “sustainability.” Sustainability of the principles of truth, justice, freedom and liberty.
So as this election season winds down and America awaits the big surprise which may include orchestrated revolts, terrorism or worse, let’s think ahead and consider what is it that we all REALLY want. Is it really all about electing or selecting a leader to lead us? What if humanity is ready to think outside the box?
For now it appears we have an opportunity to see some of the scum politicians who have betrayed humanity and America be taken down. We’re all left wondering, will this happen now, this week, very soon? And, how will that play into the elections (selection)?
Finally, believe it or not, despite all the craziness going on I am thankful for this version of engineered chaos since indeed it has an appeal to some of us. We are actually hearing rumors of the possible arrest of some of the elites, and if you ask me it’s music to my ears. Of course I’ll believe it when I see it, and for what it’s worth I’ll take the engineered chaos and see where it takes us. I believe somehow it gets us closer to wherever it is we are going. Either way, as I’ve said before, paradigm shift IS here. What we do with it is up to us. And being rooted in reality and truth is all we need to make the right decisions moving forward. That to me is good news and that is why I welcome all the events that are unfolding, for better or for worse. About the Author
Bernie is a revolutionary writer with a background in medicine, psychology, and information technology. He is the author of The Art of Overcoming the New World Order and has written numerous articles over the years about freedom, government corruption and conspiracies, and solutions. A former host of the 9/11 Freefall radio show, Bernie is also the creator of the Truth and Art TV project where he shares articles and videos about issues that raise our consciousness and offer solutions to our current problems. His efforts are designed to encourage others to joyfully stand for truth, to expose government tactics of propaganda, fear and deception, and to address the psychology of dealing with the rising new world order. He is also a former U.S. Marine who believes it is our duty to stand for and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. A peace activist, he believes information and awareness is the first step toward being free from enslavement from the globalist control system which now threatens humanity. He believes love conquers all fear and it is up to each and every one of us to manifest the solutions and the change that you want to see in this world, because doing this is the very thing that will ensure victory and restoration of the human race from the rising global enslavement system, and will offer hope to future generations.
This article ( A Positive Perspective on the Engineered US Election Chaos ) was originally created and published by Bernie Suarez at Truth and Art TV and is re-posted here with permission.
~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family… | 1 |
President Trump’s executive order on immigration set off a widening political and legal crisis one week into his presidency. The order indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The immigration ban unleashed chaos on the immigration system and in airports in the United States and overseas, and prompted protests and legal action. It was condemned on Monday by former President Barack Obama, at least 100 American diplomats and the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, whom Mr. Trump quickly fired on Monday night. Here is a quick guide to what we know and what we don’t know about the order. The executive order was signed at 4:42 p. m. Eastern on Friday. The full text can be found here. It does not affect naturalized United States citizens from the seven named countries. After the order was signed, students, visitors and legal permanent United States residents from the seven countries — and refugees from around the world — were stopped at airports in the United States and abroad, including Cairo, Dubai and Istanbul. Some were blocked from entering the United States and were sent back overseas. The order quickly prompted large protests across the country. On Saturday night, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked part of Mr. Trump’s order, saying that travelers being held at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. Federal judges in three states — Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington — soon issued similar rulings. On Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said it would comply with the rulings while it continued to enforce the president’s executive orders. Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that holders from the seven targeted countries would not be prevented from returning to the United States. Demonstrations against the ban continued on Sunday and Monday, and at least 100 diplomats at the State Department signed a dissent memo expressing opposition. Opponents of the ban got a boost on Monday from Mr. Obama, who criticized the executive order and endorsed the protests against it, and Ms. Yates, who ordered the Justice Department not to defend the executive order in court. She said she did not believe the order to be lawful. Mr. Trump fired Ms. Yates just hours after she defied him, saying she had “betrayed” his administration and was “weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration. ” Mr. Trump replaced Ms. Yates with Dana J. Boente, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He will now serve as acting attorney general. Mr. Trump’s inner circle had left much of the administration in the dark about the executive order. It was created with little to no legal review or input from the departments most involved in carrying it out, in particular Homeland Security. It was written by a small White House team overseen by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist and former Breitbart News executive. The order was widely condemned by Democrats, religious groups, business leaders, immigration policy experts, academics and others, but was praised by some Republican leaders, including the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, and supporters of Mr. Trump. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees estimated that 20, 000 refugees from all over the world would be affected immediately by the ban. The United Nations human rights chief said on Monday that the ban violated international human rights law. The abrupt firing of Ms. Yates left the Trump administration without a leader at the Department of Justice. It was not clear how long the new acting attorney general, Mr. Boente, would remain in that position or what approach he would take toward the immigration ban, which is the subject of several lawsuits. The president has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, to be to attorney general. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on his nomination on Tuesday. It was unclear how consistently airport officials across the country were complying with the court rulings that partly blocked Mr. Trump’s executive order. Mr. Priebus’s statements on Sunday morning did little to clarify how the executive order would be interpreted and carried out in the weeks ahead. He said border agents had “discretionary authority” to subject travelers, including American citizens, to additional scrutiny if they had been to any of the seven countries mentioned in the executive order, but it was not clear what that would look like in practice. | 1 |
Updated: 11:50 p. m. The New York Times is driving to Friday’s inauguration with supporters of Donald J. Trump. On Wednesday, we traveled with a woman from Massachusetts, the bluest state east of the Mississippi. On Thursday, we joined a man from West Virginia, the reddest state in the East. Dianna Ploss, 53, is a volunteer organizer for Mr. Trump, a turn of fate that surprised even her — a longtime Democrat who until recently was uninterested in politics. I am a national correspondent for The Times, originally from Granville, Mass. and I rode with a photographer in the back seat of a Dodge pickup driven by Dianna’s friend Scott Hayes, a landscaper. There was a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump, too. Along the way, we talked about life, Mr. Trump and the future of America. We stopped at a McDonald’s, Cracker Barrel, Applebee’s and multiple rest areas. We listened to Abba, the Supremes, Fleetwood Mac, Cheryl Lynn and Obama. I got carsick. And hours later, we made it to Washington. SABRINA TAVERNISE _____ GLOUCESTER, Mass. 10:27 a. m.: I just wrapped up a Facebook Live video introduction to Dianna and Scott, and we’re about to leave for the drive. For her part, Dianna spent the past year working tirelessly for Mr. Trump’s campaign, spending her own money and countless hours to get him elected. She was even a delegate at the Republican convention. She also lived for years in Cambridge, where Hillary Clinton won 88 percent of the vote. (Mr. Trump got 6 percent.) She has a rare ability to move back and forth between the two worlds. She has a lot to say about both. She had never really been that interested in politics. She grew up in Boston in the 1970s. Her dad worked as a school bus driver. Her mom raised four children and tended bar. “We were all Democrats back then,” she says. “Forty years later, we are all Republicans. ” Miles driven: 0. Miles to go: 470. _____ NEAR WORCESTER, Mass. 11:59 a. m.: It has started to snow. The truck’s windows are steaming up. Dianna is talking to people on the phone, trying to help them find a place to stay in Washington. The Airbnb she will be staying in there is filling up fast. Her phone is pinging with people talking to her on Facebook. It’s like a giant extended family all chattering at once. Her journey to this point has been quite a trip of its own. Dianna’s adult life happened suddenly and soon. She got pregnant as a freshman in high school — a Catholic school. She was afraid. She says she got through it by putting each part of her life in a different room and closing the door. At graduation, she was the student council president. She thought she should go to college, but now she had a daughter. She had an underachiever boyfriend. She had no money. And her family did not understand what college would get her. It took her 10 years to finish community college. She worked in a bank, painting houses, as a secretary in an shop. In her she decided to go to nursing school. She worked in cardiac surgery, in psychiatry, in urgent care. She did well, but she didn’t like it. What she really liked was volunteering. And organizing. She knew nothing about running, but became the director of a private track club, managing 25 coaches and 200 kids ages 8 to 14, and raising the money to support it. When she had the kids sell a coupon book with discounts from local businesses, it was the the club had ever run. Miles driven: 71. Miles to go: 399. _____ CHARLTON, Mass. 12:26 p. m.: I am carsick. Scott spots a rest area and pulls in. Dianna buys me a Coke and even finds me generic medicine in a store. “Here you go, honey,” she says kindly. “Sit down. You don’t look so good. ” I’m drinking a full sugar Coke, and my stomach is already starting to feel better. Miles driven: 83. Miles to go: 387. _____ STURBRIDGE, Mass. 12:47 p. m.: “Oh my God! You got to put this one in!” Dianna says, looking through a stack of CDs. “The Partridge Family?! Are you nuts?” says Scott. “I have Abba,” she says. “Neil Diamond. Chicago. Bee Gees. But I love the Partridge Family. ” Scott: “Oh boy. ” The music begins to play. “I woke up in love this morning. Went to sleep with you on my mind. ” “It’s a very complicated song,” she says, laughing. Miles driven: 92. Miles to go: 378. _____ NEAR HARTFORD, 1:07 p. m.: Dianna reads through some of the comments on the Facebook Live segment: Lots of angry shouting about Trump. Some of it about us. I ask Dianna how she feels. “Uncomfortable,” she says. As much as she is part of the Trump team, she tries to avoid alienating people. Maybe that comes from having lived in Cambridge. Maybe that comes from her personality as a networker. “I try to encourage people not to yell,” she says. “I had a little meeting with women who are part of the volunteer team. I said, ‘If our goal is getting people to go toward Trump, criticizing them isn’t the right way. It makes you look bad, too.’ ” “I don’t attack people personally,” she adds. “Except if I’m by myself and the TV is on. ” She pops an Abba album into the truck’s CD player. Miles driven: 126. Miles to go: 344. _____ WETHERSFIELD, Conn. 1:30 p. m.: I ask Dianna how someone who grew up a Democrat in Massachusetts could have wound up a Trump voter. Her move toward politics, she explains, was less a burning ideological expression and more an affinity for people, and for bringing them together. She was good at leading people, but the world was also changing. In 2015, she sold her house in Cambridge and quit nursing to focus on an invention that involves beverages. “I was living in my camper in Framingham in my friend’s yard,” she says. “They were liberal. Stuff was happening — San Bernardino, Paris. I’d think: I don’t know if I agree with them. ” When Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, she felt no sudden spark, she says. But his message steadily seeped in, like a realization about herself and her beliefs: one she had always had, but had never really considered. “People were lying down everywhere,” she says, recalling protests about police violence. “They were lying down in Harvard Square. They were lying down on Route 93. They blocked traffic for three hours. is a really congested road you want to pull your hair out anyway. To shut it down? What the hell is going on? What are these people doing?” At some point, she registered as a Republican. “I was trying to find out who I am in this whole crazy mess,” she says. “I feel like I had to take a stand. It was just crazy. I couldn’t understand it. ” Miles driven: 135. Miles to go: 335. _____ BERLIN, Conn. 1:37 p. m.: It has stopped raining. I ask Dianna how she came to like Mr. Trump. She says she did not take his candidacy seriously at first. “All I knew about him was that reality show,” she says. But when she tuned in, she realized he appealed to her. “I really liked Trump’s thing. I grew up, I went to Catholic school. We did the Pledge of Allegiance every day. That was important. ” “I started to pay attention not to what he was saying, but to the effect that he had. The freedom of speech things. He said outrageous things but so what. People would get so worked up over outrageous things. ” “He was the tough guy. I like that he stood up for himself. He didn’t take any garbage from people. He retaught people how to have their . He showed that you can stand up for yourself. ” Miles driven: 142. Miles to go: 328. _____ NORWALK, Conn. 2:53 p. m.: “Oh, they were not happy in there,” Dianna announces, emerging from a McDonald’s with Scott, the Trump cutout and a small bag of French fries. (I had been in the bathroom and missed the action.) “The guy behind the counter said, ‘We don’t do politics,’” Dianna reports. “I told him we just needed some fries. ” A woman in a puffy blue jacket sitting at the window bangs on the glass with her fist. Having caught our attention, she points her finger at the cardboard Trump and gives a deep motion. We are standing in the parking lot, and two women walk briskly up to Dianna. “I love Mr. Trump, trust me,” says Lillia Millard, a retired translator who was born in Russia and now lives in West Norwalk. “He says it like it is, just like me. ” Dianna asks if she is going to watch the inauguration. “Yes!” she says enthusiastically. Her daughter, a journalist, will not. “She’s going to the women’s march, unfortunately,” Ms. Millard says, adding, “I still have until Saturday to talk her out of it. ” Scott gives her a bumper sticker, and we pull back out onto the highway to the music of Grand Funk Railroad. Miles driven: 202. Miles to go: 268. _____ DARIEN, Conn. 3:26 p. m.: We are stopping again. The rest stop is all beige plastic and fake wood. A television is playing President Obama’s last news conference. It is barely audible under a thumping Stevie Nicks song. It is in the final minutes. “There are a lot more good people than bad in this country,” he says. Dianna says back: “Yeah. I agree with that. I do. ” He says that he curses more behind closed doors. “So do I,” Dianna says. He is talking about his daughters. He keeps going. He says he believes in this country. Dianna stops agreeing. “Do you believe he believes in this country?” I ask her. “No,” she replies. “I don’t believe that. ” I ask her why. “For all these years, people said all this stuff about him and I didn’t believe them,” she said. “But he has done so much to harm America. He basically tried to be Robin Hood. His trade policies. His willingness to try to take away from people who had more and give to those who had less. ” “The middle class shrunk, more people ended up at the bottom. That was as the result of him. Obamacare was a big part of this. Look how much money it costs me just for my health care. It didn’t make sense to me. It’s hard to know. Is it really what’s in his heart, or are his ideals getting in his way?” Miles driven: 207. Miles to go: 263. _____ Still in DARIEN, Conn. 4:33 p. m.: We’re eating spicy hummus and carrots at the Darien, Conn. rest stop. I am asking Dianna about Mr. Obama. She didn’t vote for him. But she defended him when her family or friends would attack him. Now, she is glad to see him go. Part of that is because of policing. “The first thing he said that struck me was when he said the Cambridge police acted stupidly,” she said, referring to Mr. Obama’s remark about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. a black Harvard professor, in 2009 as Mr. Gates tried to enter his own home. “When that comment came out, something in my head went, ‘Huh? ’” “Then he said, ‘Trayvon Martin could have been my son.’ Maybe that’s what he’s thinking, but when he says something like that as a leader, people listen. I had this like, ‘What?’ I was confused by that. What are you doing?” She added: “Things have changed in terms of the criminality. People will do anything. They are going up to cops and executing them. People are blowing themselves up. They are ramming trucks into things. If you alienate the police, then we are going to have no law and order. ” On Mr. Obama, she said: “When you are the leader, there are times when you have to bite your tongue. ” She added: “I feel the irony in that, because people will say Donald Trump doesn’t bite his tongue. I want to see how it plays out once he’s president. I don’t know the answer. ” Miles driven: 207. Miles to go: 263. _____ FORT LEE, N. J. 6 p. m.: We are back on closer now to the end of our trip than to the beginning. The Supremes are playing our driver, Scott, is grateful that we are no longer listening to Abba. We have just crossed over the George Washington Bridge. I’m asking Dianna and Scott about immigration. For Scott, economics undergirds his thinking. Two friends used to give him a lot of landscaping work 10 or 15 years ago, but have since stopped they have Latin American employees now. Another client, who recently sold a company for millions, said he wanted to cut Scott’s rate to $20 an hour from $30 and asked him if he could learn Spanish to manage a work crew. “Fundamentally, it’s not fair,” he says. “I’m working seven days a week now so I can carry myself through the winter. They say Republicans want the cheaper labor and Democrats want the votes. But I think they both want cheaper labor. People with money just want cheaper labor. ” He says he does not blame the laborers, but is angry with politicians who talk as if it were not a problem. “If I was a poor person south of the border, I’d probably do the same thing,” he says. Scott, 58, who lives in Beverly, Mass. has led rafting trips in Texas on the Rio Grande for years. In 2010, he says, he was at the end of a rafting trip when he saw five people trying to cross the river. They appeared to be asking him to help them across. He kept going. Several months later, Janet Napolitano — then the secretary of homeland security — was nearby, in Laredo, Tex. and said the border had never been more secure. Scott says he did not believe her. “You lose your language, border and your culture, you’re going to lose your country,” he says, sounding one of the ’s campaign themes. “Your country is done. ” Miles driven: 240. Miles to go: 230. _____ EAST WINDSOR, N. J. 6:57 p. m.: The car is silent. Dianna: “Do you like lobster?” Scott: “I like it, but it’s expensive. ” Dianna: “I just don’t like fighting with my food. ” Scott: “The only thing that’s really good is the tail. ” Dianna: “The only thing that’s really good is the butter. Anything tastes good dipped in butter. ” Miles driven: 296. Miles to go: 174. _____ MOUNT HOLLY, N. J. 7:38 p. m. We pulled into a Cracker Barrel for dinner. Dianna had never been inside one. “O. K. there’s country music in the bathroom,” she said. “It smells nice — like candles or something. ” She surveys the store. She looks at a wall full of coffee mugs with names on them: Grandpa. Papa. Mom. “Look at all these cups. It’s spewing happiness. It’s like a quaint little town or something. ” We left because there was no table with an outlet near it for Dianna or me. Miles driven: 318. Miles to go: 152. _____ WESTAMPTON, N. J. 8:11 p. m.: We are waiting for dinner in an Applebee’s. I ask Dianna and Scott what they expect from Mr. Trump and if they are afraid he might disappoint them. “If he doesn’t deliver on the economy, I’ll be disappointed,” Scott says. “He says he’s going to change the tax rate for the middle class. That’s huge for me. I bought a house five years ago and the taxes have gone up $200 every single year. ” Scott doesn’t trusts the elites — entrenched politicians with money. “I don’t trust McCain, I don’t trust Rubio, I don’t trust Paul Ryan,” he says. “I love Trump for calling out the elites and the ruling class for who they are. Because they have forgotten about the working man and working woman. ” He is also suspicious of the term “comprehensive immigration reform. ” Dianna says: “Anytime a politician uses the word comprehensive, it makes you think they are lying. It’s just an empty word. Smoke and mirrors. They throw big words around, make it look like they are actually doing something. Makes people feel like, almost like they are not smart enough to understand what they are doing. ” She added, “I think Trump will deliver. ” Our dinner comes. Two shrimp salads and a burger. Miles driven: 319. Miles to go: 151. _____ NEW CASTLE, Del. 9:51 p. m.: We are getting sleepy. Another toll, this one for the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Scott thinks the sign says $400. “What! ?” Dianna says in mock shock. “Got to pay for that wall somehow. ” Everybody laughs. We pull up to the cash lane. An older woman in a wool hat, glasses and a yellow security vest hands us change. Holding up the Trump cardboard cutout, Dianna asks: “Do you know who this is?” The woman responds in a deadpan voice: “I’ve never seen him in my life. ” But when she is asked if she likes him, a smile creeps onto her face. “Thumbs up,” she says. Miles driven: 366. Miles to go: 104. _____ NEWARK, Del. 10:03 p. m.: It’s dark. Dinner’s over. Disco is playing: Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real. ” Dianna is driving to give Scott a rest. Cardboard Trump is still smirking in the back seat. “I’m getting out my bell bottoms,” says Scott drily. I sing for a while. Dianna does too. Then I ask about health care. “I spent probably $20, 000 on health care last year,” Dianna says. She was paying about $850 a month through a private plan she bought herself. But her deductible for care jumped to $4, 500 from $3, 000. she says, jumped to $3, 000 from $2, 000. Dianna, who has been living off the proceeds from the sale of her house in Cambridge, says she could have gotten insured through Obamacare last year, because she was not working. But she chose not to. “I said, Dianna, how can you go on food stamps and get free health care if you are volunteering for Trump? I thought it would be the wrong thing to do. ” But now she has Obamacare. She is helping to support her father, she explains, and her budget has gotten tight. “I don’t feel good that I had to do that,” she says. “I have more control over my life when I have better health insurance. It’s also about pride. ” Miles driven: 381. Miles to go: 89. _____ BALTIMORE, 10:50 p. m.: Hurtling through Maryland. Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits playing, “Rhiannon” among them. Whatever happens with Mr. Trump, Scott Hayes has already won something important: a deep network of people who think like him. He has a flip phone. He is not on Facebook. But he believes he will hold on to those new connections. They have revived him. Made him feel more alive. “I always felt so alone, like nobody wanted to hear what I was saying,” he says. “So I’d go to these rallies just to see if there were other people who thought like I did. Now I’m meeting all kinds of people. It’s been awesome. ” Dianna wants to keep up the momentum with all the people she has met, too. Like the woman named May who owns a Chinese restaurant in Newton, Mass. and who went up to New Hampshire on Tuesdays with some of her staff to volunteer. Dianna organized a Christmas party for Trump supporters in Massachusetts in December. There was Champagne on every table. The cardboard cutout of Trump was there, too. “I’m relieved,” she says. “He won. I think he’s going to deliver. ” Miles driven: 427. Miles to go: 43. _____ WASHINGTON, 11:50 p. m.: We pull into the parking garage at Dianna’s Airbnb in southwest Washington, ride the elevator to the eighth floor, and walk into a spacious with parquet floors. Scott holds cardboard Trump. There is a view of the Washington Monument. “Wow, it’s huge,” Dianna says, looking out a long glass sliding door. “This is, like, pretty fancy. ” Scott stands the up. I ask the two of them how it feels to be at the end of this journey. “It’s the end, but it’s the beginning,” Dianna says. “Now, it’s a new chapter in our lives, for the country, for Mr. Trump. Let’s see what he can do. ” Miles driven: 470. Miles to go: 0. | 1 |
in: Special Interests , US News Do you remember that scene in the old Frankenstein movie when the villagers descended on the castle with burning stakes and pitchforks? The hounds were baying, people were shouting incoherently, and ignorant, fearful villagers watched the whole thing? Listen in particular to the speech at the beginning of this. That’s about what the person leading the charge against James Comey is saying. That’s pretty much what is happening to FBI Director James Comey, who is in for a bumpy, maybe even death-defying, ride after i nforming Congress that an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server debacle was being reopened, against the advice of Loretta Lynch , Attorney General. According to Harry Reid, a US Senator and one of the head honchos of the Democratic Party, James Comey “may” have broken the law by announcing that emails on devices associated with Hillary Clinton are under renewed investigation. He’s referring to the Hatch Act, a law passed in 1939. It was officially called “An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities” and was adopted to prohibit executive branch federal employees (except the President and Vice President) from engaging in certain political activities, such as: using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election”; soliciting, accepting, or receiving political campaign contributions from any person; running “for election to a partisan political office”; soliciting or discouraging participation in political activity of any person who either has an application for a grant, contract, or other status pending before the employing agency or is the subject of an ongoing audit, investigation, or enforcement action by the employing agency; engaging in partisan political activity on official duty time; on federal property; while wearing a uniform or insignia identifying them as federal officials or employees; or while using a government vehicle. ( source ) Will he be investigated for exposing a potential crime or will he be investigated for the timing of exposing a potential crime? It seems to me that keeping his mouth shut could also be in violation of the act – if he knew something and did not disclose it, wouldn’t that also affect the outcome of the election? The other villagers are joining in. Reid isn’t alone in the monster hunt. He’s joined by some other villagers with torches, pitchforks, and hounds too. Take former Attorney General Eric Holder, for example. In a letter to the Clinton campaign, he wrote: Many of us have worked with Director Comey; all of us respect him. But his unprecedented decision to publicly comment on evidence in what may be an ongoing inquiry just eleven days before a presidential election leaves us both astonished and perplexed. We cannot recall a prior instance where a senior Justice Department official—Republican or Democrat—has, on the eve of a major election, issued a public statement where the mere disclosure of information may impact the election’s outcome, yet the official acknowledges the information to be examined may not be significant or new.” ( source ) Perhaps Comey’s decision had something to do with the fact that, as Zero Hedge reported , the DoJ stifled an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation donating money to the political campaign of the wife of an FBI investigator. (I know, it’s sort of like my brother’s sister’s cousin’s husband’s uncle.”) Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and the chief White House ethics lawyer for a couple of years during the Bush Administration, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times . He said he’s filing a complaint. The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.
Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election. That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election. The usual penalty for a violation is termination of federal employment.
That is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics. I spent much of my career working on government and lawyers’ ethics, including as the chief White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush. I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations. Until this week. ( Source ) The Mainstream Media (MSM) will not be kind to Comey. Of course, when are they ever kind to people who oppose the Clinton Monarchy? The so-called journalists have armed up with self-righteousness and propagandist pitchforks. Here are some related headlines: In Releasing Email News, FBI Director Ignored Justice Department Advice, Tradition – Slate FBI’s James Comey under fire after jolting presidential race – MSNBC Harry Reid: FBI Director James Comey might have broken federal law – Washington Times Clinton Allies Target Comey as Probe Scrambles Campaign – Bloomberg Basically Everybody Thinks James Comey Has F***ed Up – Mother Jones And of course, everyone knows how much I love (cough) Huffington Post , which was a trove of ridiculous headlines like: Former Attorney General Eric Holder: FBI Director James Comey ‘Violated’ Justice Department Policies Harry Reid Blasts FBI Director James Comey Over Handling Of Clinton Email Probe First Poll Since James Comey Announcement Shows No Effect On Hillary Clinton — Yet Dozens Of Former Federal Prosecutors Sign Open Letter Criticizing James Comey James Comey Just Unmasked Himself The director of the FBI is between a rock and a hard place. If he had said nothing, he would have been pilloried for remaining silent. Today he is being pilloried because he did. The man had a stack of resignation letters on his desk from angry FBI agents who knew what was going on. Comey was not alone in the belief that something had to be done to allow the American people to know who they are actually voting for. He’s just the one who is taking the hit for it. A leaked memo to FBI employees probably gives the best picture of Comey’s mindset when he made the decision to put himself in the line of fire. In a memo explaining his decision to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.” He admitted that he broke with custom in alerting lawmakers that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was being reopened because of its political sensitivity. He further explained to FBI employees that “Of course we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed . I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.” …“At the same time, however, given that we do not know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression,” Comey’s letter continued. “In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter, and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.” ( source ) He is in a lose-lose situation, and I’m sure he knew this. It seems to me that knowing he’s going to be dead the ex-director of the FBI sooner rather than later, he has done what he believes is the right thing. Personally, I can’t fault Comey for doing what he did. Maybe he was trying to undo the wrong he did in letting her off in the first place. He’s taking one for the team and most likely sacrificing his career – if not also his life – by taking the action that he took, considering how things tend to go for people who run afoul of the Clintons . It’s anyone’s guess what will happen between now and November 8th. Grab some popcorn, my friends. We’re in for an eventful week. Article first posted at DaisyLuther.com Submit your review | 1 |
The Utah state legislature has passed a joint resolution calling for a return to federalism in general, and, in particular, the end of the federal Education Department. [The measure passed the Utah State House with a vote of and the State Senate, . It was enrolled on March 17. State Rep. Ken Ivory sponsored HJR 017, titled “Joint Resolution to Restore the Division of Governmental Responsibilities Between the National Government and the States. ” The resolution “urges the President of the United States and Congress to recognize state authority and take action to restore power to the states. ” The measure specifically urges that Congress end the federal Education Department and block grant funds for education to the states: WHEREAS, the [federalism] Commission received the following summary of federal overreach: EDUCATION, The resolution also: In addition, the resolution “encourages other states to join with the state of Utah in documenting issues of federal overreach. ” Two bills have been introduced into Congress that call for the abolishment of the U. S. Education Department. In February, Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced H. R. 899, a measure that contains only one sentence: “The Department of Education Shall Terminate on December 31, 2018. ” North Carolina Rep. David Rouzer (R) introduced another measure in March, H. R. 1510, that “proposes a responsible dismantle of the Department of Education by reallocating its billions in funding to be proportionally distributed to the respective states to be used for any education purpose as they see fit. ” President Donald Trump recently signed legislation that rolled back two education regulations, one regarding teacher training programs and another focused on state requirements in meeting some directives of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which was enacted in 2015 to replace No Child Left Behind. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — By the time April D. Ryan left the White House briefing room on Tuesday, she was already making headlines: on live television, President Trump’s press secretary, Sean M. Spicer, had cut off her questions to chastise her for what he deemed an inappropriate shake of her head. In Ms. Ryan’s basement office in the West Wing, the phone started to ring. Her fans, it seemed, were having none of it. “I was appalled at the way Sean Spicer was treating you with such disrespect,” said a woman named Pam, who said she had listened to Ms. Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, for years. “I have people come at me in all sorts of ways,” Ms. Ryan told Pam, nodding. “I thank you so much. ” Hanging up, Ms. Ryan, whose workspace is about the size of a telephone booth, checked her Twitter account. After Mr. Spicer’s harangue, she had tweeted a single word — “Lawd! !!!” — which was rapidly going viral. (By week’s end, it would be retweeted more than 6, 000 times.) Somebody had replied with a video of Melissa McCarthy imitating Mr. Spicer on “Saturday Night Live” by shoving a lectern at a reporter. Ms. Ryan howled with delight. “I love Melissa McCarthy!” she said. One of the few black journalists in the White House press corps, Ms. Ryan has covered presidents and clashed with press secretaries for 20 years. But her encounters with the Trump administration are propelling the journalist to a new level of prominence — and into a contentious debate over this White House’s attitudes toward gender and race. First there was Mr. Trump’s bizarre request, at a February news conference, that Ms. Ryan arrange a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus. “Are they friends of yours?” the president asked, apparently oblivious to the racial undertones of posing such a query to a black journalist. Then came Tuesday, when Mr. Spicer laced into Ms. Ryan after she asked how the administration planned to revamp its image in light of reports about suspicious ties with Russia. “It seems like you’re hellbent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays,” Mr. Spicer shot back from the lectern, after accusing Ms. Ryan of harboring an “agenda. ” When Ms. Ryan tried to clarify, he interrupted. “You’re asking me a question and I’m going to answer it,” he said, adding in a tone: “I’m sorry, please stop shaking your head again. ” Mr. Spicer is belligerent on the best of days. But his tone toward Ms. Ryan struck some viewers — including Hillary Clinton — as pointed and condescending, particularly because it was directed toward a black woman. “April Ryan, a respected journalist with unrivaled integrity, was doing her job just this afternoon in the White House press room, when she was patronized and cut off trying to ask a question,” Mrs. Clinton told a women’s group in California. (Mrs. Clinton, who has sat for interviews with Ms. Ryan, saw the exchange on Twitter that day and added the line to her speech.) The hashtag #BlackWomenatWork trended on Twitter, linking Ms. Ryan with Representative Maxine Waters of California, whose hairstyle was mocked by the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (he later apologized). Whoopi Goldberg expressed her disgust on “The View. ” John Dingell, the former Democratic representative from Michigan, wrote on Twitter: “If the WH doesn’t want talented journalists like @AprilDRyan to shake their heads, perhaps they should stop acting like some damn children. ” For Ms. Ryan, the attention is energizing, and a bit unsettling. She posted supportive comments from fans and celebrities on her Twitter feed, but also some of the racist replies that she says are a byproduct of her job. When a Florida radio host requested a photo with her at the White House — “I just love the way you don’t take no for an answer” — Ms. Ryan politely declined. “It’s going to look like I’m gloating,” she said. “Look, I’m a black woman in a white male dominated town,” Ms. Ryan said later, when asked if she felt treated differently. But she said her primary goal was to remain focused on her work. “I like Sean Spicer,” Ms. Ryan said. “I don’t want this to hurt him. ” She paused. “I don’t want it to hurt me, either. ” By turns serious and ebullient, Ms. Ryan’s dispatches reach about 400 radio stations around the country, most with a primarily audience. This is not her first time in the spotlight. Barack Obama’s first press secretary, Robert Gibbs, once tried to cut off her questions about a botched state dinner by instructing Ms. Ryan to “calm down,” adding, “This happens with my son, he does the same thing. ” The remark, widely circulated on cable news, prompted groans and glares from fellow journalists. “She is a force, and you really have to be a force when you are an woman in one of the clubbiest rooms in the country, the White House press briefing room,” said Jonathan Capehart, the Washington Post opinion writer. “You’ve got to be tough, especially to be in that room for 20 years. ” When Mr. Trump, at his news conference, tried to deputize Ms. Ryan as a liaison with black lawmakers, Mr. Capehart recalled thinking: “What the hell just happened?” “Does he think that all black people know each other and she’s going to go run off and set up a meeting for him?” Mr. Capehart said. Adding of Ms. Ryan, “When she is belittled, she rises above it. ” Mr. Spicer has clashed with numerous journalists in the briefing room — men and women — and this week he described himself as “kind of astonished” that his with Ms. Ryan was singled out. “April is a tough reporter who knows how to throw it out and take it back,” Mr. Spicer said in an interview with the radio host Hugh Hewitt. “But to suggest that somehow because of her gender or race she is treated differently, I think, is frankly demeaning to her. ” He added: “I’m treating April Ryan with the same pushback that I would any other reporter in that room. ” Ms. Ryan joined American Urban Radio Networks in 1997 to cover the White House, after reporting at local stations in Baltimore and Tennessee. At first, she sat in the back of the West Wing briefing room, among the more obscure news outlets. Over the years, she made her way forward, sometimes taking the chairs of reporters and eventually securing her current seat in the third row. She has published two books, “The Presidency in Black and White” and, last year, “At Mama’s Knee,” a look at motherhood and race. (Ms. Ryan is a single mother of two daughters.) Her purview is general politics, but she often pursues questions germane to a black audience, a rarity in a press room where white men are the majority. “The truth of the matter is, if she doesn’t ask the questions, they may never get asked,” said Jerry Lopes, president of program operations at Ms. Ryan’s network. After Mr. Spicer’s remarks on Tuesday, Ms. Ryan was greeted by reporters with smiles and a rousing “Hey troublemaker!” from a passing cameraman. Asked who might play her on “S. N. L. ,” Ms. Ryan burst out laughing, started to dismiss the idea, then allowed that she was a fan of Taraji P. Henson, who plays Cookie on “Empire. ” In January, Ms. Ryan was spotted outside Mr. Spicer’s office, giving him a hard time about one of his answers. Mr. Spicer, who had taken pains to call on Ms. Ryan that day, was incredulous. “How many times did you get called on in the Obama administration?” he asked. “Now and again,” Ms. Ryan replied, slyly. The day after the incident, Mr. Spicer walked into the briefing room and conspicuously called on Ms. Ryan first. “How are you today?” he asked with a smile from the lectern. “I’m fine, and how are you?” Ms. Ryan replied, drawing laughter. “Fantastic,” Mr. Spicer said. And then Ms. Ryan moved on to the news of the day. | 1 |
It’s becoming more and more clear that not only do we have to contend with electoral interference from foreign government, but from within as well. FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reignite the controversy witch-hunt directed at Hillary Clinton and her private email server was an appalling show of partisan scheming by the FBI, and it’s becoming clear that the entire agency is working to undermine the Democratic nominee in clear violation of the Hatch Act.
The New York Times has revealed that the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation was based on the rantings of a wingnut conspiracy theorist who wrote the an anti-Clinton propaganda tract.
“…had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book ‘Clinton Cash,’ according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.”
Clinton Cash, written by Peter Schweizer, has been best described as :
“a trainwreck of sloppy research and shoddy reporting that contains over twenty errors, fabrications, and distortions. Schweizer pushes conspiracies “based on little evidence” that are “inconsistent with the facts” and “false”; takes quotes “badly out of context”; excludes exculpatory information that undermines his claims; and falls for a fake press release.”
Schweizer rubs shoulders with other prominent wingnuts like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, another cog in the conservative agitation-propaganda machine.
He is also the president of the Government Accountability Institute, an agitprop think tank run by – wait for it – ex-Breitbart CEO and current Trump campaign chair Steve Bannon.
This morning, it was revealed that Donald Trump donated $1 million dollars to a Marine Corps veterans association run by the ex-assistant FBI director James Kallstrom.
This afternoon, an FBI official spoke to the Guardian and said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.” It is clear that there are a great many forces at work behind the scenes trying to destroy the United States as we know it – and Trump is the one with the nerve to claim “rigged election!” Related Items: | 0 |
WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from the Obama administration to reconsider a major immigration decision, dooming for now President Obama’s plan to spare millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The court also declined to hear more than 1, 000 petitions seeking reviews in cases that had piled up during the justices’ summer break. Among them were ones concerning what college athletes may earn, the Washington Redskins’ trademarks and a campaign finance investigation in Wisconsin. Adhering to its custom, the court did not give reasons for turning down the cases. The request that the justices rehear the immigration case came after a deadlock in the case in June. The tie left in place an appeals court ruling that had blocked Mr. Obama’s plan, which also would have allowed the undocumented immigrants to work legally in the United States. The Supreme Court has been one justice short of its standard nine members since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February. The tie vote in the case, United States v. Texas, No. set no precedent. The court did not disclose how the justices had voted. The administration’s petition seeking rehearing said a matter of such importance should be resolved by a Supreme Court, which “should be the final arbiter of these matters through a definitive ruling. ” The administration acknowledged that the immigration case was at an early stage and could again reach the court in a later appeal. But the petition said there was a “strong need for definitive resolution by this court at this stage. ” The Supreme Court also declined to hear a case about whether the N. C. A. A. violated federal antitrust laws by restricting what college athletes could earn. Last year, the federal appeals court in California issued a decision that managed to make both sides unhappy. The court ruled against the association, saying its amateurism rule violated the antitrust laws. But the court went on to say that the association may restrict colleges from compensating athletes beyond offering scholarships and a few thousand dollars for “the cost of attendance. ” The appeals court rejected a trial judge’s proposed alternative that colleges be allowed to pay athletes up to $5, 000 a year in deferred compensation. Both sides sought Supreme Court review in N. C. A.A v. O’Bannon, No. and O’Bannon v. N. C. A. A. No. . The case was brought by Ed O’Bannon, a former basketball star at U. C. L. A. and other current and former college football and basketball players. They sought compensation for the commercial use of their names and images in video games, archival recording and the like. The N. C. A. A. responded that college athletes were amateurs and that the distinctive nature of college sports would be destroyed by turning a scholastic model into a professional one. The association also sought review of a related appeals court ruling. The association said the First Amendment allowed use of the athletes’ names and likenesses without compensation. The lower courts are divided on the legal standards for when commercial uses of celebrities’ images require payments to them. The Supreme Court also turned down a petition from the Washington Redskins football team, which sought review of a decision denying federal trademark protection. But the basic question in that case — whether a federal law on disparaging trademarks violates the First Amendment — is already before the justices in a case they agreed to hear on Thursday, Lee v. Tam, No. . On Monday, the justices refused to hear the Redskins case, Inc. v. Blackhorse, No. probably because it is still pending before a federal appeals court. The Supreme Court also declined to hear a campaign finance case arising from an investigation into campaign spending in Wisconsin. Last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down an investigation into spending to oppose a 2012 effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. The court also ordered prosecutors to destroy the documents they had gathered. The Guardian recently disclosed about 1, 500 pages of the documents, which seemed to show substantial coordination between candidates and ostensibly independent groups. The public version of the prosecutors’ request for United States Supreme Court review was heavily redacted but appeared to address two main questions: whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court had been too lax in policing coordination between candidates and independent groups, and whether two State Supreme Court justices who had benefited from campaign spending should have recused themselves. In a brief urging the United States Supreme Court not to hear the case — Chisholm v. Two Unnamed Petitioners, No. — the state’s attorney general, Brad D. Schimel, said the Wisconsin Legislature had codified the State Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, meaning that there was nothing to review. “The people of Wisconsin thus made as clear as they possibly could that they wish to put this unfortunate chapter behind them,” Mr. Schimel wrote. He added that there had been no need for the two justices, Michael J. Gableman and David T. Prosser, to disqualify themselves. A 2009 Supreme Court decision that required a West Virginia Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from a case involving a campaign supporter, Mr. Schimel wrote, concerned a more extreme potential conflict. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators on Monday moved to approve Charter Communications’ $65. 5 billion acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, enabling the creation of a new cable giant as the industry focuses more on broadband as traditional TV declines. Yet, the orders to approve the deals were coupled with many restrictions that illustrate how regulators are increasingly using their power to further policy goals that are not covered by current regulations for the industry. The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department imposed mandates on the acquisitions aimed at protecting streaming video companies and providing cheaper broadband services to families, some of which go far beyond regulations for the entire cable and Internet sectors. The conditions are meant to ensure competition in the nascent online video business and to spread Internet connectivity given that broadband has been deemed a utility. Attaching the restrictions could blunt the power of the combined Charter entity, which becomes the country’s broadband provider with 19. 4 million users and the cable television provider with 17. 4 million customers. “The cumulative impact of these conditions will be to provide additional protection for new forms of video programming services offered over the Internet,” Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F. C. C. said in a statement. He added that there would be an independent monitor to ensure compliance with the conditions. Mr. Wheeler circulated his approval order to other F. C. C. commissioners and was expected to get enough votes to close the deals. The deals still await final approval from regulators in California. The move to approve Charter’s acquisitions is the latest development in the cable industry. Over the last few years, the industry has greatly shifted from a business controlled by hundreds of regional outfits to one controlled by three major players — Comcast, Charter and Altice, the European company that recently made a deal for Cablevision — that wield more heft over the country’s broadband and entertainment infrastructure. That heft gives the companies more leverage in negotiations with TV companies over programming and distribution deals, as well as more leverage over what crosses their broadband pipes and the future of online video. “Each player has a lot more scale to shape broadband and online video going forward,” said Amy Yong, an analyst with Macquarie. “About 80 to 90 percent of broadband homes are now in the homes of three players. It is starting to look like a . ” In the last year, the F. C. C. has also increasingly used conditions imposed on merger approvals to advance its regulatory goals. In approving the merger between ATT and DirecTV last year, for instance, regulators required a building out of more broadband services to millions of households and the offering of cheaper broadband option for homes. This time, the F. C. C. and Justice Department asked Charter to agree to abstain from negotiations with programmers that would keep shows and movies off competing streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Charter also promised that for seven years it would not impose data caps on broadband users who can run up big bills when watching online video, and that it would not charge companies like Netflix extra to connect to Charter customers. In addition, Charter agreed to expand its Internet footprint to two million more homes and to offer a cheaper broadband service to households. Justin Venech, a Charter spokesman, said in a statement that the conditions ensured the company’s “current and business practices,” adding that the combined entity “will be a leading competitor in the broadband and video markets. ” Regulatory approval would be a major win for Charter, which had circled Time Warner Cable for the last three years. Comcast stepped in with a rival bid for Time Warner Cable that collapsed under regulatory pressure last year. After that, Charter announced its pair of deals for Time Warner Cable and Bright House in May 2015. The approvals will have enormous implications on the telecommunications, media and technology ecosystem, with the combined company set to have greater influence over program pricing, new technologies in broadband infrastructure, and business models emerging in streaming video. Consumers have also come to rely on the Internet as a utility, but see prices increase with few options for providers. The prospect of so much combined power by a few companies has drawn protests from consumer groups and some tech companies, most notably Dish Network, which fears its Sling TV streaming video services could be threatened by the Charter mergers. On Monday, Dish declined to comment on the regulators’ move to approve the Charter deals. Dish is part of the Stop Mega Cable Coalition, which was formed to raise awareness of the harms that could result from the deals, and which on Monday said in a statement that the conditions proposed by the F. C. C. fell short of “addressing all of the threats to competition and consumers posed by this transaction. ” The coalition said Charter should be required to offer a broadband service. Others criticized the F. C. C. ’s conditions of approval as overreaching. “At first blush, it appears that the commission may have operated well outside the four corners of the merger application to pursue unrelated matters and policies,” Michael O’Rielly, a Republican commissioner for the agency, said in a statement. Some consumer advocates also opposed any approval of the deals, fearing that a combined entity would eliminate competition and increase prices for customers. “Creating broadband monopoly markets raises consumer costs, kills competition, and points a gun at the heart of the news and information that democracy depends upon,” Michael Copps, a former Democratic member of the F. C. C. and a special adviser to the Common Cause public interest group, wrote in an email. “F. C. C. approval of this unnecessary merger would be an abandonment of its public interest responsibilities. ” The F. C. C. has the broad mandate of protecting the public interest, which gives it the ability to create conditions that may seem unrelated to antitrust reviews but could make a deal good for consumers, said Gene Kimmelman, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department who is now president of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit media advocacy group. “Offering to extend their broadband footprint and offer subsided broadband to some low income customers furthers existing F. C. C. policy efforts and serves the public interest,” he said. | 1 |
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Roughly at the same time that the WSJ reported of what is now a clear “civil war” between (and within) the FBI and the DOJ, Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported that the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation that has been going on for more than a year has now taken a “very high priority.” He added that FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people on the foundation case, which is looking into possible pay for play interaction between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
The FBI’s White Collar Crime Division is handling the investigation, which will continue, as “there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment. ”
I said sources described an “avalanche of evidence” in case & barring obstruction they’d likely continue 2 push to try for an indictment” https://t.co/2TjzxdJod1
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) November 2, 2016
The news was cited by various traders as the catalyst that pressured the USD when it come out late on Wednesday.
“There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day,” one source told Fox News, who added some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails. He added that FBI agents are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case,” and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, sources said. Agents are also going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews and the FBI 302, documents agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.
Here are the key highlights from his report, as summarized by Real Clear Politics: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is “likely” in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it. A transcript of his statement: BRET BAIER: Breaking news tonight — two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation tell Fox the following: The investigation looking into possible pay-for-play interaction between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Foundation has been going on for more than a year. Led by the white collar crime division, public corruption branch of the criminal investigative division of the FBI. The Clinton Foundation investigation is a, quote, “very high priority.” Agents have interviewed and reinterviewed multiple people about the Foundation case, and even before the WikiLeaks dumps, agents say they have collected a great deal of evidence. Pressed on that, one sources said, quote, “a lot of it,” and “there is an avalanche of new information coming every day.” Some of it from WikiLeaks, some of it from new emails. The agents are actively and aggressively pursuing this case. They will be going back to interview the same people again, some for the third time. As a result of the limited immunity deals to top aides, including Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, the Justice Department had tentatively agreed that the FBI would destroy those laptops after a narrow review. We are told definitively that has not happened. Those devices are currently in the FBI field office here in Washington, D.C. and are being exploited. The source points out that any immunity deal is null and void if any subject lied at any point in the investigation. Meantime, the classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through former Democratic Congressman Anthony Wiener’s laptop and have found e-mails that they believe came from Hillary Clinton’s server that appear to be new, as in not duplicates. Whether they contain classified material or not is not yet known. It will likely be known soon. All of this just as we move inside one week until election day.
Baier gave more details to Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume:
BRET BAIER: Here’s the deal: We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far… Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations.
Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was beleived that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed — they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited. .
Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it’ and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.’ WikiLeaks and the new emails.
They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.
The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They are having some success — finding what they believe to be new emaisls, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton’s server.
Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that…
There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done. She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning . They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015…
I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.
Will the FBI stun the world and announce yet another probe is being opened into the Clinton foundation, or will the DOJ successfully stifle this and at least push it until after the elections? As we concluded last night, the last few days before the election are shaping up as very interesting.
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Hillary Clinton publicly conceded the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump Wednesday after a surprise defeat overnight. Her concession speech was largely well received, even by her critics.
Via Yournewswire
She did not lash out or challenge the result. Excerpts of her concession speech Wednesday in New York. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.
I know how disappointed you feel because I feel it too, and so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful and it will be for a long time, but I want you to remember this: Our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love and about building an America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted.
We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.
Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power, and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things: the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values too, and we must defend them.
And let me add, our constitutional democracy demands our participation not just every four years, but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear: making our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top; protecting our country and protecting our planet; and breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams….
Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.
And to all the little girls who are watching this: Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.
By Hillary Clinton
—
Hillary Clinton addresses staff and supporters at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan.
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Posted on October 29, 2016 by Michael DePinto
Who would have thought right? Hillary’s campaign establishing what appears to be some very close ties with the largest social media company ( Facebook ) on the Internet, right in the midst of her presidential campaign? It’s not enough that Hillary has Google hiding various stories from Clinton search queries, but it looks like she had to go and get Facebook on board to help her cheat as well. But should Trump supporters take any issue with that?
Sure, there’s been issues in the past with Facebook banning conservatives for merely looking at their monitors the wrong way, but all that changed this week right? If you recall, earlier this week we learned that despite donating huge amounts of money to Hillary’s campaign, allegedly Mark Zuckerberg betrayed Hillary Clinton, and actually jumped on board the Trump Train … or is there more to this? In the video below I dig a bit deeper into both these stories…
Emails Show Connection Between Facebook Executive, Clinton Campaign
… kept the interactions with Clinton private …
A new WikiLeaks email dump shows Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg eager and willing to be involved in helping Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Sandberg’s role in helping the research-driven Clinton campaign was revealed in a WikiLeaks email from Clinton aide Cheryl Mills.
“I have arranged for Sheryl Sandberg and her researcher to be available on 5 March at 10 am to step through the research on gender and leadership by women,” Mills wrote in a February 2015 email.
Two months after that meeting, Sandberg offered to do more for the campaign in response to an email from campaign chairman John Podesta expressing sympathy for the death of her husband.
“I still want HRC to win badly ,” Sandberg wrote in May 2015. “I am still here to help as I can. She came over and was magical with my kids.”
Facebook has said that Sandberg was acting in a private capacity in sharing research with the Clinton campaign. Sandberg kept the interactions with Clinton private, and did not formally, publicly endorse Clinton until early 2016.
However, she kept in touch with the campaign. In August 2015, she emailed Podesta offering to put him in touch with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg , a staunch opponent of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump .
“Mark is meeting with people to learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action and it’s hard to imagine someone better placed or more experienced than you to help him,” she wrote.
“He’s begun to think about whether/how he might want to shape advocacy efforts to support his philanthropic priorities and is particularly interested in meeting people who could help him understand how to move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about,” she added.
“He wants to meet folks who can inform his understanding about effective political operations to advance public policy goals on social oriented objectives (like immigration, education or basic scientific research),” she wrote.
The WikiLeaks emails from Podesta’s account imply a meeting was arranged later that month.
SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS ARE ACTUALLY GOVERNMENT CREATIONS:
If you doubt that the CIA made Google, and Google made the NSA, but you don’t read the following: save your worthless drivel for someone who cares. If you don’t have the facts presented, how can you presume to dispute then? Conversely, if you dispute the facts presented with evidence stacked higher than Mt. Everest, by all means… let’s hear it, but support your opinions with FACTS, not platitudes. | 0 |
• Hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington on Saturday in a kind of counterinauguration after President Trump took office on Friday. A range of speakers and performers cutting across generational lines rallied near the Capitol before marchers made their way toward the White House. • They were joined by crowds in cities across the country: In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the march that was to follow was canceled for safety. In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a river of pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, even before the gathering crowd stretched itself out to march, it was more than a quarter mile deep on several streets. • Begun as a Facebook post just after the election, the march is the start of what organizers hope could be a sustained campaign of protest in a polarized America, unifying demonstrators around issues like reproductive rights, immigration and civil rights. The movement has also encountered divisions. • The Times had journalists covering the marches in Washington New York Boston Atlanta Denver Los Angeles Phoenix St. Paul and Key West, Fla. Check out what they posted on Twitter and what readers asked of them live. See photos from marches around the world, too. (All times listed below are local.) (Or watch video of the whole event.) • The singer and actress Janelle Monae highlighted the issue of police violence, leading the crowd in a chant of “Sandra Bland! Say her name!” a reference to the case where a black woman died in police custody in Texas after being arrested in 2015. She then brought the microphone to each of the women in “Mothers of the Movement” who had joined her onstage. One by one, they joined in the chant, each inserting the name of her child who had died at the hands of the police. • The actress Ashley Judd delivered an uninhibited speech that ended with her referencing how Mr. Trump bragged, in a 2005 recording, that he could use his celebrity status to force himself on women, even groping their private parts. They “ain’t for grabbing,” she said. “They are for birthing new generations of filthy, vulgar, nasty, proud, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, you name it, for new generations of nasty women. ” • Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon of the 1960s and 1970s, told the women in the group to get to know one another more personally. “Make sure you introduce yourselves to each other and decide what we’re going to do tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow,” she said. “We’re never turning back!” • “It’s been a time to be both a woman and an immigrant in this country,” said the actress and activist America Ferrera. “But the president is not America. His cabinet is not America. Congress is not America. We are America! And we are here to stay. ” • After getting to the crowd to repeat a number to call Congress, the filmmaker Michael Moore urged people to run for office: “This is not the time for shy people! Shy people, you have two hours to get over it. ” • The actress Scarlett Johansson told a story about how she had visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City after starting her acting career, and how a doctor there had treated her with compassion, “no judgment, no questions asked. ” “I feel that in the face of this current political climate, it is vital that we all make it our mission to get really, really personal,” she said. “President Trump, I did not vote for you,” she continued. “I want to be able to support you. But first I ask that you support me. Support my sister. Support my mother. Support my best friend and all of our girlfriends. ” Otherwise, Ms. Johansson said, her own daughter, “may potentially not have the right to make choices for her body and her future that your daughter Ivanka has been privileged to have. ” _____ Many participants believed that Mr. Trump expressed misogynistic views during the presidential campaign, with remarks about Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton. After the 2005 recording surfaced, several women came forward to accuse Mr. Trump of inappropriate sexual conduct. He dismissed the recording as “locker room banter” and assailed his accusers. In a sly allusion to the crude remarks Mr. Trump made in the recording, many marchers, men and women alike, wore pink “pussyhats,” complete with cat ears. The hats are described on pussyhatproject. com as a way to “make a unique collective visual statement which will help activists be better heard. ” _____ Just after 10 a. m. Mr. Trump and his family headed in the opposite direction of the march in Washington for the National Prayer Service, an inaugural tradition, at the National Cathedral. When he spoke at C. I. A. headquarters in Langley, Va. in the midafternoon, he told his audience that they were his “No. 1 stop” on his first full day in office, because they were “really special amazing people. ” He also ruminated about how big the attendance had been at his inaugural speech, but he did not mention the large crowds of the women’s march, where demonstrators were challenging his administration on a number of policies, or even that the march was taking place as he was speaking. _____ Mrs. Clinton was not expected to attend the march in Washington, The Times reported on Friday, but her Twitter account sent a midmorning note anyway. _____ In a speech in Boston, Ms. Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said fundamental freedoms, like abortion rights and gay marriage, could be at stake under Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court. “We can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back,” she said, as demonstrators in pink hats waved American flags. “Me, I’m here to fight back. ” “We believe in science,” Ms. Warren said, adding, “we know that climate change is real. ” A police officer patrolling the rally pumped his fists in agreement. “We also believe that immigration makes this country a stronger country,” Ms. Warren said. “We will not build a stupid wall and we will not tear millions of families apart. ” “You know, I could do this all day,” she added, to laughs and cheers. “But we gotta march. ” Jess Bidgood _____ Notable Signs: “Bend toward justice,” evokeing the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I’m ready to march again,” said Mr. Lewis, a Democratic representative of Georgia, who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. “I’ve come here to say to you: Don’t let anybody, anybody, turn you around. ” Citing the demonstrations across the country, Mr. Lewis urged marchers, who flowed onto the street running near the Center for Civil and Human Rights, to “use this unity to organize” future political efforts. ”The next election, we must get out and vote like we never, ever voted before,” said Mr. Lewis, who was embroiled in a public clash with Mr. Trump recently. Alan Blinder _____ The crowds appeared to be huge in most places, with marchers in Washington, New York City and Chicago seeming to stretch to the horizons. Police departments, at times, decline to provide crowd estimates, and crowds are notoriously hard to estimate, even with a good satellite image. But some official and unofficial estimates have given a sense of the turnout. Attendance in New York City was more than 400, 000, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office. The St. Paul police issued an official crowd count of 50, 000 to 60, 000 people. Attendance in Boston was 175, 000, according to Nicole Caravella, a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh. The Atlanta Police Department estimated about 60, 000 people attended a rally there. The Department of Public Safety in Phoenix estimated that some 20, 000 marched, while in Key West, Fla. a town of 25, 000, police said more than 2, 000 people marched. Organizers in Chicago estimated the crowd there at 250, 000, the Chicago Tribune said. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications there said late on Saturday morning that Grant Park, the sprawling area where the had gathered, had been filled to capacity. Though the official march was canceled, many still chose to walk through downtown holding protest signs. Although the mayor’s office in Washington and organizers declined to provide an estimate of the size of the flagship march, The Associated Press reported that the District of Columbia’s homeland security director, Christopher Geldart, said it was safe to say the crowd at the march there was more than the 500, 000 that organizers told city officials to expect. “The crowd was so heavy, we didn’t know which way to go,” said Sabitha a psychotherapist who traveled to Washington from Philadelphia with her child, Sanji, and a friend, Pallavi Sreedhar. “We were squeezed, touching. ” (March organizers offered a worldwide tally for the 673 “sister” marches, but when asked, could not provide an explanation of how the tally had been calculated.) _____ Overheard Chant: “Yes we can” as people walked past the White House. As the sun set downtown, protesters made their way to the White House and assembled in small groups in a park just across from the building’s entrance. There in an area surrounded by temporary gates, people walked single file through one open entrance and one by one laid protest signs across gates set up for inauguration several hundred feet away from the White House. While the temporary gates made walking up to the building impossible, people stood shaking their heads in frustration. Fontella Garraway, a retired Army veteran who drove three and half hours from her home in Rocky Mount, N. C. sat on a bench staring at the White House with a pin that read “girl power. ” “Even looking at the White House, it’s like I hope he’s looking out here at us,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I hope it’s penetrating to him that we mean business and we are serious. ” Moments later she lay a handwritten sign that read “Love trumps hate Hear our voice,” on the a fence facing the White House. ”That’s his inauguration gift,” she said. Yamiche Alcindor _____ Notable Chant: “Tell me what America looks like! This is what America looks like. ” Notable Sash: “65, 855, 610 votes for a woman,” worn by Sara Powell, 61, of Phoenix, and nine of her friends. Overheard: “My arms are tired. This is a good workout,” said Rima Borgogni, 50, owner of a Pilates studio in Sedona, Ariz. after holding a sign throughout the march. Ellen Ferreira and her friends felt as if they were fighting for some of the same things they used to. They are mostly retired and many of them are veterans of past protests, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. “For our right to choose,” said Piya Jacob, 70, a retired elementary school principal. “For equality,” said Mary Helsaple, 67, an artist. “For healing justice,” said Gretchen Vorbeck, 72, who runs a nonprofit that buys grocery gift cards for public schoolteachers. Carol Decker, 70, a retired magazine publisher, jumped in and said, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. ” Fernanda Santos _____ Notable Chants: “We are the popular vote!” Notable Shirt: A blue shirt with “Make Sexism Wrong Again” in the same style as “Make America Great Again” campaign shirts. Just off 15th street, a block north of the parade’s official end point, a large flatbed float with big “TRUMP” letters arched along the back parked itself in the middle of the street, drawing the ire of the thousands of marchers, who berated the float with chants of “Shame!” and “We are the popular vote!” Police officers formed a barricade around the float with more than a sidecar motorcycles. The six or so men and one woman on the float all took pictures of the protesters. Yet some of those who chanted to chase the float away weren’t surprised at its appearance at their march. “I mean the inauguration was yesterday,” said Chrissy Fiore, 39, of Washington, though she said it was “crazy that they made it down here and that now they’re getting police escorted out. ” Officers wouldn’t let reporters approach those on the float or those driving it, but a magnet on the side said “Trump Unity Bridge. ” As the float headed east to move away from the parade, Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. of Milwaukee County, a Trump supporter, was seen walking along the sidewalk, taking in the scene but remaining silent. He did not respond to a reporter’s question about his opinion of the march or protest. Nick Corasaniti _____ Chant: “Don’t take away our ACA” and “Who’s the boss? We are!” Notable Signs: “Show us your taxes” “you can’t comb over sexism” “1459 days” and “build a bridge not a wall. ” Overheard: One woman speaking at the rally told the story of having an abortion when she was young, making the minimum wage and could not support a child. She said she was fighting for equal pay “not just for white women. ” At the rally in Mr. Trump’s hometown near Trump World Tower, elected officials and celebrities assailed the president. Signs in the crowd mocked his bouffant hair and the size of his hands. The actress Whoopi Goldberg said it would be the first of many protests against the president. “This is how people ended the war in Vietnam,” Ms. Goldberg told the cheering crowd. Grace Huezo, 20, a student at Hunter College, marched with her twin sister holding a “Nasty Woman” sign. She said she was there to defend women’s rights after she was appalled by Mr. Trump’s comments about grabbing women. “We’re here saying, no, people do not have permission to grab women without our permission,” she said. She said she was buoyed by the huge turnout and the camaraderie. “I’m hopeful to see so many people that are not giving up and they’re keeping their spirit,” she said. “We’re all just going to stick together over the next four years. ” Emma G. Fitzsimmons _____ Popular chant: “March! March! March!” Notable signs: “I won’t stop til it rains glass” “You can’t comb over misogyny” (accompanied by a drawing of Mr. Trump’s hair) “Flunk the Electoral College. ” Overheard: “I got to bring my high school punk rock out,” said Emily Hastings, 39, a woman from Denver wearing a black “eat the rich” and carrying a “Don’t tread on women” sign. “Punk rock is all about resistance. ” The march began in a park at the center of the city with a group singing “You’ve got a friend. ” Marchers blanketed the park nestled between the state capitol and city hall, hauling strollers, wearing pink hats and often hugging and kissing. Julie Turkewitz _____ Notable Sign: “Make America Compassionate Again,” and “I Love You” Thousands of demonstrators gathered on a drizzly morning clad in rain boots, ponchos and pink knit “pussyhats” to march to the Capitol. “What Trump has said is so based on exclusion and winning and being right versus taking care of everyone,” said Hilary James, 27, a musician from Minneapolis. “Even if he doesn’t listen to us, I feel it’s important to not sit back. ” Christina Capecchi _____ Notable Sign: Make America Think Again Gloria Cole, 66, had turned the protest into a family affair, traveling here with her wife, her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and her brother and . “I drew a line, it’s like, I’m an old woman — I’m not that old, I’m 66 — I have to stand up for equal rights for everyone, for human rights,” Ms. Cole said. “We’re here, and we’re not going away. ” Aili Shaw, 14, held a white sign that read, “Our arms are tired from holding these signs since the 1920s. ” Ms. Shaw had traveled here, by train and car, with friends from her home in Coventry, R. I. “Women don’t have the rights they should,” she said. Jess Bidgood _____ Popular Chant: “Thank You. ” Women were chanting this to the organizers of the march as they kicked off the day’s events. Notable Clothing: At the corner of C and Third Southwest, many women (and some men) were wearing “pussyhats” of all shades of pink. Organizers wanted to knit as many as one million hats for this event. People were also getting creative with the signs they carry. Alan and Alison Lewis drove in from Astoria with their Grace. “You shouldn’t have to have a relationship to a woman to stand up for women,” Mr. Lewis said. “Equality and justice is enough of a reason to be here. ” Katie Rogers _____ Who She Is: Jessica Coleman, 56, of Stone Mountain, Ga. Backstory: A black retired teacher who used to show her daughter documentaries about black history and march with her daughter and church members during Martin Luther King holiday weekends. “I wanted them to know you can be a smart, intelligent black person. You don’t have to sag your pants and follow certain things that became media culture. I wanted them to know that people marched, bled and died for us to be able to vote and be able to go to college and have certain jobs. ” “You can really lose your sense of self if you don’t know where you’ve come from and you don’t have a vision of where you want to go. ” _____ Who She Is: Amber 34, of Bethesda, Md. is Ms. Coleman’s daughter Backstory: Works at a nonprofit focused on civic education “On the evening of election night, after saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to vote and I’m going to get my friends to vote,’ I sat on the sofa bawling trying to figure out what to say to my daughters the next morning because they went to bed certain that Hillary was going to win. ” “Marching is my way of putting my money where my mouth is as far as being an active citizen. ” “I want my daughters to have agency and have control over their bodies and feel comfortable in the country that they are in so this is my way of saying, ‘Hey everybody, I agree with all the people who are out here for different reasons and we don’t agree with what is happening right now and we are taking a stand. ’” _____ Who She Is: Garvey Mortley, 8, of Bethesda, Md. is Ms. Coleman’s granddaughter Backstory: Third grader was named after Marcus Garvey “I think it’s good to share the moment with them and help protest Donald Trump because we want to stand up for our rights because a long time ago, lots of women could not vote. Now we can vote and protest people and stuff. ” “If he affects the world in a bad way — like I have lots of friends from different countries and he could make them all move away … that makes me mad because all the people from the civil rights movement had a hard time trying to put us together. It’s like a puzzle, all these people came together, piece by piece, and now Donald Trump is coming over and just breaking those puzzle pieces. ” | 1 |
40 Views November 09, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
Today former U.S. Treasury Secretary just warned that Trump could be assassinated.
(King World News) Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: The US presidential election is historic, because the American people were able to defeat the oligarchs. Hillary Clinton, an agent for the Oligarchy, was defeated despite the vicious media campaign against Donald Trump. This shows that the media and the political establishments of the political parties no longer have credibility with the American people… SPEAKING OF GOLD… To find out which company is set to become one of the highest grade producing gold mines on the planet and is one of the greatest precious metals investment opportunities in the world CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts continues: It remains to be seen whether Trump can select and appoint a government that will serve him and his goals to restore American jobs and to establish friendly and respectful relations with Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.
Will The Elite Make A Move Against Trump? It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump’s victory. Wall Street and the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury. Rogue agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations with Russia. Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.
With Trump there is at least hope. Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment in his appointments and by obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington’s orchestrated conflict with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia’s border with Poland and Romania, the end of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end of Washington’s effort to overthrow the Syrian government. However, achievements such as these imply the defeat of the US Oligarchy. Although Trump defeated Hillary, the Oligarchy still exists and is still powerful.
Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks to his view, it means a big political change in Washington’s EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed.
We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government. It is likely that Trump is unfamiliar with the various possibilities and their positions on issues. It really depends on who is advising Trump and what advice they give him. Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopeful for the changes that now have a chance.
Trump Could Be Assassinated If the oligarchy is unable to control Trump and he is actually successful in curbing the power and budget of the military/security complex and in holding the financial sector politically accountable, Trump could be assassinated.
Trump said that he will put Hillary in prison. He should first put her on trial for treason and war crimes along with all of the neoconservatives. That would clear the decks for peace with the other two major nuclear powers over whom the neoconservatives seek hegemony. Although the neoconservatives would still have contacts in the hidden deep state, it would make it difficult for the vermin to organize false flag operations or an assassination. Rogue elements in the military/security complex could still bring off an assassination, but without neocons in the government a coverup would be more difficult.
Trump has more understanding and insight than his opponents realize. For a man such as Trump to risk acquiring so many powerful enemies and to risk his wealth and reputation, he had to have known that the people’s dissatisfaction with the ruling establishment meant he could be elected president.
We won’t know what to expect until we see who are the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries. If it is the usual crowd, we will know Trump has been captured.
The Discredited Mainstream Media A happy lasting result of the election is the complete discrediting of the US media. The media predicted an easy Hillary victory and even Democratic Party control of the US Senate. Even more important to the media’s loss of influence and credibility, despite the vicious media attack on Trump throughout the presidential primaries and presidential campaign, the media had no effect outside the Northeast and West coasts, the stomping grounds of the One Percent. The rest of the country ignored the media.
I did not think the Oligarchy would allow Trump to win. However, it seems that the oligarchs were deceived by their own media propaganda. Assured that Hillary was the sure winner, they were unprepared to put into effect plans to steal the election.
Hillary is down, but not the Oligarchs. If Trump is advised to be conciliatory, to hold out his hand, and to take the establishment into his government, the American people will again be disappointed. In a country whose institutions have been so completely corrupted by the Oligarchy, it is difficult to achieve real change without bloodshed. ***ALSO JUST RELEASED: After Trump Shocker, One Market Is In Freefall! And What Is Happening In The Gold Market Is Unbelievable! CLICK HERE.
***KWN has now released the extraordinary audio interview with Egon von Greyerz, where he gives KWN listeners a look what is really happening behind the scenes globally and in the gold market, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
© 2015 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the articles is permitted and encouraged. About author | 1 |
A lawsuit has been filed against Pop Warner, the nation’s largest youth football league, claiming that the organization knowingly put players in danger by ignoring the risks of head trauma. The suit is the biggest sign yet that youth football programs are the next front in the legal battle over concussions. Unlike other cases that have centered only on football leagues, the complaint also accuses USA Football, the youth football arm of the N. F. L. and the group that creates football helmet safety standards, of failing to protect young players from the dangers of brain trauma and the consequences of repeated head hits, and ignoring medical research that underscores the dangers of playing football. Taken together, the complaint, which was filed in federal court in California by the mothers of two deceased former football players, is the broadest challenge yet to youth football. It comes as the N. F. L. continues to rack up huge legal bills to combat similar claims. The N. C. A. A. and colleges have been swept into the legal maelstrom as well. The complaint against Pop Warner could spell trouble for smaller leagues that may come under increasing legal scrutiny. These leagues would have to pay more to defend themselves against lawsuits at the same time some of them are having to pay higher insurance premiums. Under scrutiny from wary parents, youth football leagues are introducing more training of coaches and players, another cost. Pop Warner, which has seen a decline in participation in recent years, has already had to fend off a variety of lawsuits brought by the families of players who were significantly injured or died. In March, Pop Warner settled a lawsuit with a family whose son played in the league and later committed suicide and was found to have a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head. In January, Pop Warner settled a separate case in California brought by the mother of Donnovan Hill, a player in Los Angeles who was paralyzed. The latest case against Pop Warner was brought by Kimberly Archie and Jo Cornell, whose sons played football as youngsters and were found after they died to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurological condition linked to repeated head hits. They are represented by Thomas Girardi and Robert Finnerty, who represent some of the former N. F. L. players who sued the league for knowingly hiding from them the dangers of repeated hits to the head. The N. F. L. has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle that case. The case filed Thursday accuses Pop Warner of failing to monitor games, practices, rules, equipment and medical care “to minimize the risks associated with brain injuries including repetitive hits” failing to accurately diagnose brain injuries and failing to approve the best equipment available. Pop Warner and the other defendants “acted with callous indifference” and players who participated in Pop Warner dating back nearly two decades are entitled to an unspecified amount of damages, according to the complaint. Jon Butler, the executive director of Pop Warner, said his organization had not seen the complaint. The complaint has also taken aim at USA Football for promoting safety programs that are of questionable value and for issuing flawed research to back up its claims that the programs are effective in reducing the risk of concussions. In particular, USA Football, which has received tens of millions of dollars in funding from the N. F. L. has misrepresented the benefits of its Heads Up Football program that trains coaches on how to teach safe tackling techniques. An investigation by The New York Times found that USA Football relied on flawed research to bolster its claims that Heads Up Football helped reduce the risk of concussions. Steve Alic, a spokesman for USA Football, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The suit also accuses the National Operating Committee on Standards Athletic Equipment, or Nocsae, of certifying helmets that were not designed to properly protect younger players, and overstated their safety benefits. According to the complaint, Nocsae has no helmet safety standard, yet falsely maintained that helmets used by players in Pop Warner were safe. Mike Oliver, the executive director of Nocsae, said that he had not seen the complaint but that his organization had never stated that any helmet was safe. All helmets approved by his group include permanent warning labels that alert players that “no helmet can prevent all head or any neck injuries a player might receive while participating in football. ” | 1 |
The British newspaper the Guardian has published anonymous source claims that Brexit leader Nigel Farage is a “person of interest” in an FBI investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. [Despite stating in their fourth paragraph that the former UKIP chief Nigel Farage “has not been accused of wrongdoing and is not a suspect or a target of the U. S. investigation” authors Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Nick Hopkins, and Luke Harding composed 2000 words claiming “sources” told them about the FBI’s interest in Mr. Farage. Not naming sources, or even who or where they work, the Guardian reports the British MEP is a “person of interest” to the FBI — if only because he has met several members of the President’s administration and sought to interview Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his capacity as an LBC radio presenter. The Guardian quotes anonymous informants — though it is not clear if there is more than one — as embellishing these links to present Farage as a figure, describing how, “If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage. “He’s right in the middle of these relationships. He turns up over and over again. There’s a lot of attention being paid to him. ” Responding in a statement seen by Breitbart London, the veteran Brexit campaigner said it took him “a long time to finish reading” the article because he was “laughing so much”. “This is fake news,” he said. “This hysterical attempt to associate me with the Putin regime is a result of the liberal elite being unable to accept Brexit and the election of President Trump. “For the record I have never been to Russia, I’ve had no business dealings with Russia in my previous life and I have appeared approximately three times on RT in the last 18 months. “I consider it extremely doubtful that I could be a person of interest to the FBI as I have no connections to Russia. ” Farage also reiterated that his “meeting with Julian Assange was organised for me by LBC Radio with a view to conducting an interview. ” In response to the Guardian article, it has taken me a long time to finish reading because I am laughing so much at this fake news. — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 1, 2017, | 0 |
Share This Baylee Luciani (left), Screenshot of what Baylee caught on FaceTime (right)
The closest Baylee Luciani could get to her boyfriend, who’s attending college in Austin, was through video online chat. The couple had regular “dates” this way to bridge the 200-mile distance between them. However, the endearing arrangement quickly came to an end after his FaceTime was left on and caught something that left his girlfriend horrified.
Baylee had been discussing regular things with her boyfriend, Yale Gerstein, who was on the other side of the screen on an otherwise average evening. This video chat was not unlike all the others she had with Yale from his apartment near Austin Community College until the 19-year-old girlfriend heard some scratching sounds after FaceTime had been left on.
According to KRON , Baylee was mid-conversation with Yale when scratches at the door caught both of their attention and he got up from his bed, where the computer was, to see who was at his door. He barely turned the handle to open in when masked men entered the room and beat Yale’s face in and slammed him down on his bed while shoving a pistol in his cheek. The intruders didn’t seem to know or care that FaceTime was still on and Baylee’s face, seen in the corner, was watching everything, terrified that she was about to see her boyfriend murdered in front of her, as she watched him fight for his life.
Admitting that she first thought it was a joke, seconds later, she came to the horrid realization that he was being robbed and called her dad, who was at home with her in Dallas, into the room. “I was scared, because they were saying I’m going to blow your head off, I’m going to kill you,” Baylee explained along with the chilling feeling she got when the intruder finally realized the video chat was running and looked right at her in the camera. “I’m like wow… seriously watching an armed robbery happen to somebody that I care about,” she added. Screengrabs of intruder forcing Yale down on his bed while Baylee and her father watch on FaceTime in horror
With a clear view of at least one intruder’s face, Baylee began taking screenshots of the suspect in the act as she and her dad called the police to report what was going on. She got the pictures right in time since, seconds later, the intruder decided to disconnect the computer as he and the suspects took off with thousands of dollars worth of Yale’s music equipment. Although the boyfriend’s life was spared in the traumatizing ordeal for the two of them, he said that the thieves took something from him that can’t be replaced.
“I had just finished my first album as a solo artist,” Yale said. “That’s all lost,” since they took the recordings on the equipment, which means nothing to the thieves and everything to the victim. It’s not often that you hear of FaceTime solving crimes or potentially saving lives, which is what happened in this case. Although it was difficult to watch, Baylee, being there through technology, was an instrumental part in protecting Yale, who hopefully learned that he better take advantage of Texas’ great gun laws and arm himself with more than just a computer. | 0 |
Joy Villa was hit with a barrage of hate from leftists who wished for her death on social media after she walked the red carpet at the Grammys on Sunday proudly wearing a dress emblazoned with President Donald Trump’s signature “Make American Great Again” slogan. [“Die,” was the message some Twitter users sent directly to Villa on the social media platform. @PopCrave @Joy_Villa die, — ️ (@iggyoutsold) February 12, 2017, @Joy_Villa die, — ㅤㅤㅤ (@grigiobey) February 12, 2017, The tolerant Left call for #JoyVilla to be KILLED after she wears Make America Great Again dress to #Grammys, RT to show her your support! pic. twitter. — Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) February 13, 2017, “Sometimes you just gotta be free to express yourself,” Villa wrote of her dress. “Go big, or go home. You can either stand for what you believe or fall for what you don’t. Above all make a choice for tolerance and love,” the singer wrote on Instagram. “Agree to disagree. See the person over the politics, carry yourself with dignity, always. Life is made to be lived, so go boldly and give no offs!” While the multiracial singer intended to send a message of “tolerance and love,” leftists on social media called her “coon,” a “disgrace,” and a “dumb Uncle Tom. ” Fuck Donald Trump and fuck that Joy Villa coon ass bitch. — Freddie (@Benjamin_MCQ) February 12, 2017, @ReignOfApril @Joy_Villa The Coon is strong in this one, — Michael Shepperd (@mashepperd) February 13, 2017, Thank u kind sir for telling me this dumb Uncle Tom braud is named joy villa https: . — Morris Yay do lines (@dances) February 12, 2017, Andre Soriano, the gay Filipino immigrant and naturalized citizen who designed Villa’s dress, says the hate from the left is “crazy. ” “It’s more so about love,” Soriano said of the gown he designed for Villa. “We all live on this planet. I’ve never been in the political area. However, it’s just so crazy that people are getting beat up because they voted for Trump, or this and that, someone wants to bomb the White House … .I am an American, I moved here from the Philippines and I highly believed in the trueness of what this country can bring. It’s about bringing people together, that’s the message. ” Soriano, who has designed red carpet gowns for singers Macy Gray and Courtney Love, says President Trump is “going to do the best thing” for America. “I always channel Joy’s music as a designer — we’re both artists and I love her so dearly,” Soriano said. “She is one of the people on this planet that really promotes love. We need to move this country forward, and we believe it’s time to promote love. We only live once, and we need to promote love. We have one president now who is going to do the best thing for planet America. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0 |
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — British police say they have resumed sharing intelligence about the Manchester bombing with U. S. counterparts. [Britain had halted the exchange of information after details of the Manchester investigation — including forensic photos — appeared in U. S. media. The disclosure infuriated British officials, and Prime Minister Theresa May brought up the leaks with President Donald Trump at the NATO summit Thursday. Mark Rowley is Britain’s top counterterrorism officer and announced the resumption of late Thursday. Rowley says that “having received fresh assurances, we are now working closely with our key partners around the world including all those in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. ” The Five Eyes is an group that includes the U. S. Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. | 0 |
GREENSBORO, N. C. — President Obama is weighing a “proportional” response to Russia’s efforts to interfere with this fall’s election campaign through hacking, the White House announced Tuesday. “The president has talked before about the significant capabilities that the U. S. government has to both defend our systems in the United States but also carry out offensive operations in other countries,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on Air Force One to Greensboro, where he was holding a town meeting with students and campaigning for Hillary Clinton. “There are a range of responses that are available to the president, and he will consider a response that is proportional,” Mr. Earnest said. Whatever the president opts to do would probably not be announced in advance and may never be acknowledged or disclosed if it is carried out, Mr. Earnest said. On Friday, the Obama administration publicly acknowledged for the first time that it believed that the Russian government was responsible for stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and prominent individuals, most recently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta. The emails were posted on the WikiLeaks site and two newer sites, DCLeaks. com and Guccifer 2. 0. “Only Russia’s officials could have authorized these activities,” said a statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr. and the Department of Homeland Security. The statement did not name President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but that appeared to be the intention. Emails from the Democratic National Committee appeared to show party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, leading to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman and the departure of several staff members from the organization. Much of the Russian efforts in the election appear directed at undermining the campaigns of Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats. Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, has called Mr. Putin a better leader than Mr. Obama and suggested a more collaborative relationship between the United States and Russia. The Russian efforts have become a talking point in the campaign. In Sunday’s debate, Mrs. Clinton called Russia’s interference in the campaign unprecedented. “And believe me, they’re not doing it to get me elected,” she said. “They’re doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump. ” In the debate on Sept. 26, Mr. Trump said the identity of the hackers was unknown and “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, O. K. ” On Sunday night, he again suggested that Russia might not be to blame for the email releases and said that “they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. ” “I know nothing about Russia. I know — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia,” Mr. Trump continued. “I don’t deal there. I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia. ” | 0 |
Every Friday, we’ll offer a Trilobite talking point to help you bring a bit more science to your weekend conversations. Earth is old. The sun is old. But do you know what may be even older than both? Water. It’s a mystery how the world became awash in it. But one prevailing theory says that water originated on our planet from ice specks floating in a cosmic cloud before our sun was set ablaze, more than 4. 6 billion years ago. As much as half of all the water on Earth may have come from that interstellar gas according to astrophysicists’ calculations. That means the same liquid we drink and that fills the oceans may be millions of years older than the solar system itself. The thinking goes that some of the ancient ice survived the solar system’s chaotic creation and came to Earth. To demonstrate that, researchers analyzed water molecules in oceans for indicators of their ancient past. The clue comes in the form of something known as “heavy water. ” Water, as you know, is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. But some water molecules contain hydrogen’s chunky twin, deuterium. (It contains a neutron in its nucleus, whereas regular hydrogen does not.) water is found on other planets and moons, even here on Earth, but researchers are not sure where it came from. One idea is that much of the heavy water formed in the interstellar cloud and then traveled across the solar system. Using a computer model, the scientists showed in a 2014 paper that the ice molecules could have survived the sun’s violent radiation blasts, and gone on to bathe a forming Earth and its cousins. They concluded that remnants of that ancient ice remain scattered across the solar system: on the moon, in comets, at Mercury’s poles, in the remains of Mars’ melts, on Jupiter’s moon Europa — and even in your water bottle. Now that’s something to raise your glass to. Previous Trilobite talking points: Plants will remember if you mess with them enough and yes, you are at the center of the universe. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Obama surprised Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday by bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, calling Mr. Biden “my brother” in a tearful goodbye in the East Room of the White House. Having called Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, to the White House for a private farewell, the president instead brought him into a room filled with his friends, family and colleagues to present him with the honor, the nation’s highest. For the first time, Mr. Obama awarded the medal with distinction, an added level of veneration that previous presidents had reserved for recipients like Pope John Paul II and Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state. “To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without and to live life fully,” Mr. Obama said during the televised ceremony, as Mr. Biden wiped tears from his eyes and dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief. Moments later, as the president called up a military aide to read the proclamation, Mr. Biden appeared to break down, turning his back to the audience to compose himself. After Mr. Obama hung the medal around his neck, the vice president cried openly. “Ricchetti, you’re fired,” Mr. Biden joked to his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti. “I had no inkling. ” Addressing Mr. Obama, who stood to his side, Mr. Biden said that he had never met anyone who had “the integrity and the decency and the sense of other people’s needs like you do. ” The ceremony was an emotional conclusion to an improbable partnership that began in 2008 when Mr. Obama asked his former presidential rival to be his running mate. The two men became close during eight years in the White House. “Mr. President, you got right the part about my leaning on Jill,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the president’s remarks about the couple’s love. “But I’ve also leaned on you and a lot of people in this room. ” It was not always clear that the pairing would work, either politically or personally. Mr. Obama brought a cool and disciplined approach to politics, while his vice president was the hotheaded, passionate one. Gaffes by Mr. Biden during the early part of the Obama administration annoyed the president and his aides. And the relationship between the two men was strained when Mr. Biden endorsed marriage in 2012, forcing the president’s hand on the issue. But their bond strengthened through the difficult campaign and a second term in which they confronted several mass killings. And Mr. Biden’s personal tragedy — the loss of his son Beau to cancer — brought them even closer together. Last year, Mr. Biden seriously considered another run for president. But he concluded that his son’s death had left him emotionally unable to mount an effective campaign. The citation with the medal noted Mr. Biden’s “charm, candor, unabashed optimism and deep and abiding patriotism,” as well as his “strength and grace to overcome great personal adversity. ” It called him one of the most “consequential vice presidents in American history. ” Mr. Obama spoke emotionally about the relationship between his own family and the extended Biden clan, many of whom had gathered for the ceremony. “My family is so proud to call ourselves honorary Bidens,” he said. Mr. Biden sought to return the compliment. He noted that the Constitution did not grant the vice president any inherent powers — “for good reason,” he said. But he said that Mr. Obama had made good on a pledge to make sure that Mr. Biden had a job that mattered. “You have more than kept your commitment to me by saying you wanted me to help govern,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he hoped the history books would record that he was an asterisk in Mr. Obama’s historic presidency. “I can say I was part of a journey of a remarkable man who did remarkable things for this country,” Mr. Biden said. | 1 |
On the face of it, this might not seem the right time to be investing in Turkey. Terrorists attacked the main airport in Istanbul, a foiled coup raised questions about political stability, and the country’s debt is being downgraded by rating agencies — all of this happening within a span of two weeks. So what were the investments in the global economy last week? You guessed it: Turkish stocks and bonds — up 6. 6 and 3. 8 percent in dollar terms, according to Merrill Lynch. Emerging markets are known for their wild, discordant swings, but this in Turkey, brief as it may be, highlights just how much risk investors are willing to take on when $11 trillion worth of bonds of governments around the world are offering up negative returns. That is why a Turkish bond that offers a 9 percent reward can be tempting, even if that country’s inflation rate is 8. 7 percent and rising and its currency is heading south. Stocks and bonds in developing markets have been on a tear since early last year, with countries like Brazil (stock market up 54 percent in dollar terms for the year) and South Africa (up 24 percent during the same period) leading the way. The surge has been driven in part by a shift in mood by investors choosing to scoop up assets in these countries. stocks as a whole are trading at steep discounts to their counterparts in the United States and Europe. A partial recovery in oil prices, political calm in Brazil and a growing sense that Chinese authorities will not allow the renminbi to collapse have also had their effect. At the root of this sudden rush of money into assets is the pressure that many institutions, from large pension funds and insurance companies to some hedge funds, are facing to find returns in a world of zero to negative interest rates. These pressures have increased since the market shock of the British vote to leave Europe. Bonds yields have continued to shrink and stock markets have hit record highs, giving investors further pause about their overweight positions in developed market stocks and bonds. “In places like Europe, the U. K. and the U. S. you have lots of risks but no reward,” said Gavin Serkin, an expert at Frontier Funds, a consulting firm based in London. “In the developing world, you have risks, but at least you are getting paid for it. ” And that even includes Mongolia, where a new government and a view that commodity markets have bottomed have prompted a stampede into Mongolian government bonds. These bonds — issued in the middle of a slump in raw materials — were not that long ago held out as an emblem of excess. Their prices have since surged, halving their yields to 8 percent from 16 percent in March. Other unlikely markets that are now in demand include Russia, where stocks year to date are up over 20 percent in dollar terms. A big factor driving these rallies, traders say, is the sense the currencies of these countries that have suffered from a strong dollar in recent years are now in recovery mode. And while there is still potential for the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates, there is less fear than there was a year ago that rates will push persistently upward and lure money out of emerging economies. Investors are also finding bargains among established companies in emerging markets that have improved their profitability in recent years but still trade at 30 percent discounts to their peers. “We are seeing a real shift in sentiment,” said Nick Robinson, a portfolio manager at Aberdeen Investment Management which oversees $420 billion, a large chunk of which is in developing markets. “And you really don’t have to look too hard to find good stories with cheap valuations. ” According to the Institute of International Finance, a bank lobby that tracks global capital flows, about $25 billion poured into emerging markets last month. Asia and Latin America absorbed most of these funds. Combined with the $13 billion that swept into these markets in June, the last two months reflect a sharp shift in sentiment after one of the worst periods ever for capital flows. According to the institute’s calculations, $81 billion exited these markets in the months after the Chinese devaluation scare last August — an amount that approached that $96 billion that fled during the financial crisis. Economists at Institute of International Finance say that the flows surged in the weeks after Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union when investors doubled down on their bets by buying Japanese, European and United States government bonds. As the yields on these securities vanished late last month, government bonds in Brazil, South Africa and Turkey that yielded around 10 percent began to look attractive. That was especially so when compared with Italy, where comparable securities offered a 1 percent return even with concerns mounting that the country’s banking crisis might force it to leave the euro. Or Japan, where investors in July took the extraordinary step of paying to borrow money for 20 years from a government with the highest debt burden among developed nations. Such minuscule returns are the result of an unprecedented era of monetary policy activism. The world’s central banks have bought up 15 percent of global corporate and sovereign bonds in an effort to stimulate economic recovery. But, as Jan Dehn, the head of research at Ashmore in London, which oversees $51 billion in emerging market assets, points out, these securities do not hail from emerging markets. And that is why, he says, there is such a contrast between bond yields in the developed as opposed to the developing world as investors worldwide have, for the most part, ignored emerging markets in favor of following in the path of central banks. “The Q. E. trade is over,” said Mr. Dehn, referring to the central bank policy of quantitative easing. “And people are now looking to the . E. world, where the bonds in countries representing 58 percent of G. D. P. had an average yield of 5. 6 percent — which is higher than when the Fed had rates at 5 percent before the crisis. That is pretty extraordinary. ” | 1 |
The U.S. government’s power to assassinate By Jacob Hornberger Posted on November 2, 2016 by Jacob Hornberger
Throughout the presidential campaign, including the presidential debates, among the issues that have not been raised or discussed is the federal government’s power to assassinate. The power to assassinate is now consider an accepted power of the federal government. In fact, most people, especially mainstream reporters and pundits, treat federal assassinations with blasé and nonchalance.
Most people undoubtedly believe that the federal government’s power of assassination was acquired only after the 9/11 attacks and as part of its “war on terrorism.”
But that’s simply not true. The federal government’s power to assassinate people stretches all the way back to the decision to convert the federal government into a national-security state in the latter half of the 1940s. It didn’t take the CIA, one of the principal components of the national-security establishment, long before it adopted and exercised this extraordinary power in its effort to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War and to protect the United States from going communist.
Let’s go back to 1954. The CIA had decided that the people of Guatemala had made a mistake in electing a man named Jacobo Arbenz as their president. Arbenz was a socialist. He was also a person who believed that everyone, including communists, had the right to participate in the political process.
When Arbenz began seizing land belong the giant U.S. corporation United Fruit, which was the largest landowner in Guatemala and had connections to members of Congress and members of the national-security establishment, and distributing it to the poor, the CIA targeted him for a regime-change operation. In the eyes of the CIA, Arbenz’s land-reform plan confirmed that he was operating under the direction of an international communist conspiracy based in Moscow.
As part of that operation, the CIA prepared a kill list for the man who would replace Arbenz, a brutal army colonel named Carlos Castillo Armas. The CIA’s kill list consisted of suspected socialists. The idea was that there would be nothing wrong with assassinating or executing people who believed in socialism or communism.
Fortunately for Arbenz, he decided to leave the country before the CIA’s handpicked replacement was able to kill him.
In the 1960s, the CIA entered into a partnership with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro. What had Castro done to deserve being assassinated? He had certainly never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Like Arbenz, his “crime” was that he was a socialist or a communist. That’s all the justification the CIA needed to murder him.
In the 1970s, the CIA participated in the assassination of a man named Rene Schneider. Who was Schneider? He was the commanding general of Chile’s armed forces. He also had a wife and children.
More important, he was an insurmountable obstacle to U.S. hopes for a military coup that would prevent Chile’s democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, from taking office. Schneider’s position was that he had taken an oath to support and defend the constitution of Chile, which, like the U.S. Constitution, did not provide for a military coup as a way of replacing a democratically elected president.
Since President Richard Nixon and the CIA wanted the coup, the CIA targeted Schneider for a violent kidnapping that would remove him from the scene. When the kidnapping attempt took place, Schneider, who was armed, fought back and was shot dead by the kidnappers.
When the CIA’s role in the kidnapping-murder came to light years later, the CIA maintained that it only wanted Schneider kidnapped, not killed. The CIA’s claim, however, was disingenuous. After all, what did the CIA think the kidnappers would do with Schneider after he was kidnapped? Since the reason he was being violently removed from the scene was so that he could no longer obstruct a U.S.-orchestrated military coup, there was no possibility that he would ever be returned alive. Assassination/execution had to be part and parcel of the original kidnapping scheme, something that Schneider himself undoubtedly recognized, which had to be the reason he fought back rather than letting himself be taken captive.
Of course, under the legal concept of felony-murder, the CIA was as responsible for the murder of Rene Schneider as the people who shot him dead. That concept holds that when a person is killed during the commission of the felony, all the participants to the felony are legally responsible for the murder as well as the felony.
Consider the execution/assassination of two young American men during the Chilean coup—Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. Many years after the coup, a top-secret State Department investigative report stated that U.S. intelligence had played a role in their murders and recommended deeper investigation.
Of course, no further investigation took place and no one, needless to say, was ever indicted here in the United States for the murders of those two men. By the 1970s, the CIA had simply become too powerful for any U.S. official to suggest that it be held to account for the murder of two innocent men.
Why did U.S. intelligence agents want Horman and Teruggi killed? They were socialists. They had supported Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically elected socialist president. They also opposed the Vietnam War. As journalists, they were also exposing the deep U.S. involvement in Chile’s democratic affairs. Moreover, Horman had inadvertently discovered U.S. complicity in the coup itself, which he planned to write about. Of course, U.S. officials were equally determined to keep their role in the coup top secret.
Several weeks ago, the U.S. mainstream press commemorated the 40th anniversary of the assassination on the streets of Washington, D.C., of former Allende administration official Orlando Letelier and his 25-year-old assistant Ronni Moffitt. The assassination was carried out as part of Augusto Pinochet’s top-secret international assassination program known as Operation Condor, an operation that the CIA not only partnered in but also most likely planned and orchestrated as part of its post-coup relationship with Pinochet.
Why did Pinochet target Orlando Letelier for assassination? For the same reason that the CIA, which helped install Pinochet into power, targeted Arbenz, Castro, Horman, and Teruggi for assassination: Letelier was a socialist, as was Ronni Moffitt.
Ironically, while still condemning Pinochet for assassinating Letelier and Moffitt, the U.S. mainstream press remains silent., blasé, or even supportive of the U.S. national-security state’s assassinations or assassination attempts against Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Rene Schneider, Charles Horman, and Frank Teruggi.
But let’s face it: when they assassinated Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt the U.S.-installed and U.S-supported dictator Augusto Pinochet and his national-security establishment were simply exercising the same power of assassination that the U.S. national-security establishment has been exercising since its inception in the 1940s and, equally important, that it continues to exercise today.
This work by MWC News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License .
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. This entry was posted in Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1 |
When I first set foot onto the hot sand of a Bulgarian beach and laid eyes on the Black Sea, I thought to myself, “This has to be the ocean. ” I was wrong, of course, but I couldn’t get over how vast it was, stretching seemingly forever toward the horizon. The Black Sea, which connects southeastern Europe to western Asia, covers more than 160, 000 square miles, making it about the size of California. It’s encircled by a countries, including Russia, Turkey and Bulgaria. It’s also the perfect place for the traveler looking for a great deal. I spent a few days traversing the Bulgarian Black Sea coast by car, enjoying the bright, sunny weather, stunning ocean views and elegant, ancient cities that gild its shoreline. I wouldn’t be surprised if this corner of the world became the new “hot” destination in Eastern Europe, with its abundance of inexpensive lodging, fantastic seafood and gorgeous (free) beaches. It’s also not as tough to get to as you might expect. There were (as of this writing) some good airfares from the United States to Sofia, the capital, as low as $603 from Kennedy or $612 from Chicago for dates in September. It’s also worth noting that Sofia and Plovdiv, a city 90 miles east of the capital, are destinations of the carrier Ryanair. flights from Sofia to London cost as little as $19 (I took advantage of a cheap Ryanair flight to London out of Bulgaria). Once on the ground, you’ll need a car. I picked one up from Sixt Rent a Car. I hadn’t heard of Sixt before (it’s a German company) but was happy enough with the rate I was paying for my economy rental: 15 euros (about $17) per day, before taxes. I also hadn’t heard of the make or model of the car I received, something called a Dacia Sandero. It was a tiny little box that occasionally shook when a stiff wind, or large truck, blew past it but otherwise performed admirably. It was also a stick shift — luckily, after a few hours my high school driver’s ed class kicked in. It helped that the roads are good in Bulgaria and that the main highway, the A1, is a road with a passing lane on each side. When you’re on a road, however, you should drive defensively: Bulgarian drivers are aggressive passers. Don’t tempt fate, and take your time. I passed through the small town of Haskovo on my way to the sea, meeting up with some family members to attend the wedding of my American cousin Matthew and Tanya, his fiancée, who is from Bulgaria. I spent the night at the spacious and stylish Hotel Retro, where I had a huge room with for 71 lev, about $40. I also enjoyed the first of many shopska salads, a refreshing mixture of tomato, cucumber and onion lightly dressed in olive oil. From Haskovo, it was an uneventful drive to the Black Sea. I used the small city of Burgas and the modest Guest House Fotinov (65 lev per night) as my home base. The imposing Hotel Bulgaria is another option in the center of town — a huge concrete monolith. Rooms are large and there are views, but the cost is roughly twice what I paid. “It’s nice,” my cousin Tanya said. “Well . .. it’s communist nice,” she added. One plus: Within steps of the hotel is the small, elegant Holy Cross Armenian Church, built in 1673. Indeed, the area is steeped in history. I love the rich, deep sense of the past that pervades areas like Burgas and the nearby towns of Nessebar and Sozopol. Around the seventh century B. C. Greek colonizers moved into old Thracian settlements on the western Black Sea coast. The archaeological museum in Burgas contains some fascinating Bronze Age artifacts, including the oldest marble statue found in Bulgaria. (Admission to the museum is 5 lev, and it’s only 10 lev for a combination ticket to visit all four museums in town.) While I found few English speakers in Bulgaria generally, a woman working at the museum spoke some, and kindly walked me around town to show me the locations of the other museums. Most signage in Burgas is in Bulgarian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Many businesses, however, especially those that cater to tourists, offer translations. While the history in Burgas is impressive, I was even more taken by the quality and price of the food. I went to Sladko Soleno, a small bakery on Aleksandrovska Street, and had a series of great sweets, cookies and breads. My favorite was probably the big, soft kashkavalka, a pliant loaf of bread covered in cheese. Another day, I stopped by a small doner kebab stand on Aleko Bogoridi Boulevard and picked up a big flatbread stuffed with grilled chicken, French fries and slaw for 3 lev. Even the stingiest traveler doesn’t have to be stuck with bakeries and street food, however — in Bulgaria, a nice dinner is easy on the wallet. Bistro Oreha is an excellent restaurant with outdoor seating on the main pedestrian mall in downtown Burgas. The ubiquitous shopska salad was great but the seafood really excelled. A bucket of meaty mussels dressed in herbs and a tangy, slightly spicy sauce cost 11 lev. A plate of baby squid with a creamy, garlicky sauce cost another 11 lev. Alcohol won’t set you back too far, either: A of local Burgasko beer costs 2 lev. Exploring the town by foot is satisfying, but Burgas is big, and more ground can be covered by bike. I rented a through its program, which required buying a small magnetic for 10 lev. As opposed to renting the bike for a flat day rate, you get 10 hours of bike usage with the card and tap in and out every time you take or return a bike to one of the many kiosks around town, truly maximizing your lev. I used my bike time primarily to explore the Sea Garden, a spacious park that runs along the eastern border of the city along the Black Sea. The park, designed near the turn of the 20th century, is home to public art installations, a public swimming pool, summer theater and, of course, miles of biking paths and great views of the sea. Burgas isn’t the only town on Bulgaria’s coast that’s worth checking out, and other charming places are within easy striking distance. I made the drive up the coast to Nessebar, a former Greek colony that is now a Unesco World Heritage site. The old city is connected to the main town by a thin, isthmus. It’s easy to park your car for a handful of lev and spend a few hours exploring the ruins of the old town and its dozens of churches, some from as far back as the fifth or sixth century. Exploring all of Nessebar’s churches and museums would have taken all day, but I did check out several. My favorite was the peaceful St. Stephen church, a basilica that dates to the 11th century. (If you are looking to visit many of the churches in Nessebar, it’s worth getting a pass for 20 lev.) It’s mostly just fun to walk the town’s cobblestone streets, grab a freshly squeezed orange juice (I paid 4. 20 lev for a large plastic cup) and maybe do a little shopping. There are plenty of places to get souvenirs, particularly leather goods. While I didn’t make a purchase, I did peruse several shops: handbags were in the 150 to 200 lev range. If you’re hungry, you can stop by Restaurant Old Nesebar, with tables overlooking the sea. The mussels are 16. 50 lev, a substantial markup over Burgas, but it still won’t break the bank. About 30 minutes southeast of Burgas is another fantastic little town, Sozopol. The charm of Sozopol, like Nessebar, is in its cobblestone streets, appealing restaurants and breathtaking seaside views. There’s a slightly more festive feel, however — when I drove in and parked my car, the streets were full of vendors, music and street performers. I walked past some boutiques (I stopped into the particularly charming Kotka i Kotka, a small shop and gallery) and met my family at a restaurant called Antichen Kladenec, where we tucked into a seafood dinner that featured, among other things, fried stingray (16 lev). Afterward, we had dessert crepes next door at Happy Pancake Workshop, a ramshackle operation that was manned by three affable young actors from Sofia. Three crepes — plum and cinnamon, chocolate, and apple and rosemary — ran me about 9 lev. The beach, however, was ultimately what I came for. I sneaked down a small path one day near the Port of Burgas, stepping through weeds and high grass, until I had reached a beautiful, vast white sand beach. It was a blisteringly hot day, and the towels and umbrellas of beachgoers dotted the coast. Bikini tops littered the sand as well — the beaches are topless (or tops optional) so best to leave any puritanical notions at home. My beach excursion was impromptu, and I wasn’t at all prepared, but I just went with it. I stripped down to my boxers, ditched my clothes in a secluded area near the sea wall and plunged in. The water was cool, and gloriously refreshing on my skin. I floated on my back, listened to the sounds of families picnicking, the lapping of the waves, a faint thump of music coming from somewhere down the beach, and wondered how I hadn’t made it to this part of the world earlier. | 1 |
Dakota Pipeline Protests Are Working! One Bank May Pull Funding of Pipeline Build
While all eyes have been on the recent election results, protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline achieved a quiet victory. One bank may be pulling its investments in the project, leaving the Dakota Access Pipeline with very little money to continue its build.
DNB, Norway’s largest bank, has reportedly loaned $350 million to Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) for the construction of the pipeline.The bank is worried that Indigenous rights are being overlooked by Energy Transfer Partners.
DNB states that it will take initiative and use its position to try to find a constructive solution to the conflict. If the bank finds that these initiatives do not give appeasing answers or results, DNB will consider ending its involvement in financing the project.
Violence by police against protesters drove the bank to review its investment in the controversial pipeline.
As knowledge about what is going on in North Dakota reaches international countries, corporations are forced to question their own involvement in the pipeline build.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members, Indigenous peoples from First Nations around the planet, activists, and even well-known reporters and move stars are all speaking out against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Protesters have occupied several camps along the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, and North Dakota.
The protests have a history of police violence against peaceful protesters. ETP hired private security mercenaries who were untrained. These employees unleashed vicious dogs on crowds of unarmed protesters and at least 6 were mauled.
Since then, militarized police with tanks have replaced mercenaries. Activists have been pepper-sprayed, maced, beaten, shot with bean bag projectiles and rubber bullets, tasered, blasted by LRAD and sound cannons, and have been strip-searched, detained in dog kennels, had their arms marked with numbers, and more.
Police violence and tactics have been so bad that even representatives from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues have been amassing testimony from witnesses and victims about excessive force, unlawful arrests, and mistreatment in jail.
Amnesty International USA brought human rights observers to monitor the situation.
ETP has brazenly ignored requests by President Obama and several federal officials for ETP to halt construction until a tribal lawsuit and permit reviews conclude.
During the chaos of Election Day, ETP announced it will be moving forward with drilling to begin installation of the pipeline beneath Lake Oahe in only two weeks, hinting that it would do so with or without appropriate permits.
DNB views these acts as unacceptable and will likely revoke its financial support if ETP continues to ignore Indigenous requests.
If DNB withdraws its financial support, the bold move could inspire other major investors to follow suit, especially if the public continues to apply pressure.
Ariana Marisol is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She graduated The Evergreen State College with an undergraduate degree focusing on Sustainable Design and Environmental Science. Follow her adventures on Instagram. | 0 |
By wmw_admin on October 30, 2016 By Timothy Fitzpatrick — The Fitzpatrick Informer Oct 29, 2016 Anno Domini Donald Trump and Mossad asset Ghislaine Maxwell out on the town in New York City in 1997. Click to enlarge Part I Any inquisitive person should be asking themself why a seemingly anti-establishment candidate like Donald Trump has been allowed to get as far as he has in the U.S. presidential race for election November 8. The simplest answer is that he isn’t anti-establishment and is only fronting a very convincing facade for public consumption. The family-made rich man has been strategically propped up as the all-accommodating GOP extremist opponent of candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, herself part of the very same establishment and even personal friend to Trump—at least prior to the race. The two candidates come from the same organized criminal syndicate that leads back to Israel, its murderous Mossad terrorist organization, and the Lansky international crime syndicate. Furthermore, as we shall see, Trump is nothing more than a puppet of Mossad and is likely under their control through opportunism and, darker yet, blackmail. What Trump and his cronies all share in common is sexual compromise and their loyalty to the international Judeo-masonic power structure. Sexual blackmail and Illuminism Jeffrey Epstein and alleged child sex procurer Ghislaine Maxwell Perhaps the most powerful form of blackmail is that which involves sexual matters, and so it is that throughout human history, many men of power have been brought down upon revelation of some sexual scandal. It was through this channel that Adam Weishaupt’s illuminism (blackmail) was so successful in his time through to today (Weishaupt stole the Catholic sacrament of confession and used for his own personal gain—so that he could gain knowledge of people’s sins in order to use it against them). Since then, it has proven to be the most useful form of blackmail employed, especially in the political world. Every person in a position of power should be suspected of being controlled through this form of blackmail, since the Judeo-masonic cryptocracy controls virtually every aspect of organized government, the press, and the financial system, to name a few. You may have heard of the bizarre sexual initiation of Yale University’s Skull and Bones secret society, where the would-be bonesman reveals his sexual secrets to his fellow initiates and initiators. [ i ] From the very start of their societal ascent, you could say, a bonesman is blackmailed and falls under control of the society. Former Israeli Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky revealed in his first tell-all book about the Mossad: “… there are three major “hooks” for recruiting people: money; emotion, be it revenge or ideology; and sex.” [ ii ] This scenario is played out in virtually every sphere of influence at one degree (pun intended) or another. As it happens, both presidential candidates are connected to sexual scandals, the likes of which we shall explore in Trump’s life. Mossad’s child-sex ring procurers Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein | 0 |
Home › POLITICS | US NEWS › PHARRELL WILLIAMS BEGS WOMEN TO VOTE HILLARY: SHE’S DISHONEST, BUT SO ARE YOU PHARRELL WILLIAMS BEGS WOMEN TO VOTE HILLARY: SHE’S DISHONEST, BUT SO ARE YOU 0 SHARES
[11/3/16] Music producer and singer Pharrell Williams bashed Donald Trump at an industry conference on Tuesday and said his defeat in the upcoming presidential election would be “easy” if every woman in America voted to elect Hillary Clinton.
“If all the women in this nation decided to vote and support the first female candidate, there’d be nothing to worry about,” Williams said in an interview at Variety ‘s Inclusion summit at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills. “It’s that easy.”
“Has she been dishonest about things? Sure. Have you?” Williams said of Clinton, before insisting that “she don’t lie no more than any other politician does.”
The Happy singer endorsed Clinton in March 2014, telling GQ magazine: “We’re about to have a female president. Hillary’s gonna win.”
Asked about increasing polarization during the presidential campaign, the Grammy-winner paused and then pleaded with women to “save the nation” by not electing another “destructive” male president.
“That silence in this room right now is often what I feel when you see some of the things that are being said, not just about my culture, but about women,” Williams said . “I’m praying that women come together and save this nation. You think about the destructive things that have come from mankind, it’s mostly men.” Post navigation | 0 |
WEST POINT, N. Y. — It was 6:30 a. m. at the United States Military Academy, the sun was rising over the Hudson River, and Paula Broadwell was in athletic gear. With a women, she rotated between sprints and burpees. Sweating onto the pavement, the group was perched atop an overlook called Trophy Point, in the shadow of a battle monument memorializing those killed in the Civil War. There is a female statue in bronze at the top, arms outstretched regally, who is said to represent “fame. ” Ms. Broadwell was here in April for a 40th anniversary celebration for the academy’s first class of women, who enrolled two decades before she would graduate near the top of her class, with multiple varsity letters. It was also the first time she had been back to campus since 2012, when she achieved her own kind of unwanted fame. Yes, this is that Paula Broadwell, the of David H. Petraeus the West Point graduate and military intelligence officer who was revealed, through a F. B. I. investigation, to have had a romantic relationship with Mr. Petraeus, a former C. I. A. director and the general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also the Paula Broadwell who would be publicly portrayed as a “homewrecker,” a “stalker,” a “temptress,” the woman who “brought down the director of the C. I. A. ” And, perhaps with the most frequency, as the “mistress,” a word for which there is no male equivalent. As far as infidelity scandals go, this one had everything. He, with a Ph. D. from Princeton, was the revered “thinking man’s general”: honorable, visionary, charismatic, credited with turning around the failing war effort in Iraq and doing more than anyone his colleagues knew. “There was talk,” The Washington Post put it, “that, one day, King David would be president. ” (Through his lawyer, David Kendall, Mr. Petraeus declined to comment for this article.) She was the younger, equally ambitious overachiever: triathlete two master’s degrees deputy director of the center on counterterrorism at Tufts University a research associate at Harvard, where she had first met the general six years before. “She was a standout,” said Sue Fulton, a former military captain and member of the first class of women at West Point, who later became a friend. There was hubris: the man tasked with guarding the nation’s secrets revealing them a woman who had achieved incredible journalistic access committing the ultimate journalistic sin. Another friend of the general’s, Jill Kelley, also became tangled up in the coverage after she reported to the F. B. I. that she was getting harassing emails. Investigators later learned they were sent by Ms. Broadwell under a pseudonym. (Ms. Broadwell, now 43, declined to comment on the emails, other than to say that she regretted sending them Ms. Kelley said the two have never spoken directly.) The downfall was swift: Mr. Petraeus, now 63, resigned, apologized to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material related to eight personal notebooks he’d shared with Ms. Broadwell. For two months, he remained home in isolation — reading, communicating with friends and pedaling on his exercise bike. “One foot in front of the other, one day at a time,” Peter Mansoor, a military historian who was Mr. Petraeus’s man in Iraq, recalled Mr. Petraeus as saying. He was sentenced last April to two years’ probation and a $100, 000 fine. Ms. Broadwell was never charged. Nearly four years later, Mr. Petraeus is now a partner in a New York private equity firm, and has advised the White House on the war against the Islamic State. He publishes articles, speaks publicly and has affiliations with three universities, including Harvard. He was recently listed among five former military leaders suggested by a Washington Post columnist whom Republicans might have considered drafting for president. “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see him in some senior role in the next administration, Democratic or Republican,” said Vernon Loeb, the managing editor at The Houston Chronicle, with whom Ms. Broadwell wrote her biography of Mr. Petraeus. Ms. Broadwell has struggled to find her footing. For weeks, reporters camped outside her home in Charlotte, N. C. where she was trying to restore her marriage. Friends sent over groceries and hot meals for her family — her husband, Scott, and sons, 8 and 10 — and staged interference so Ms. Broadwell could cut across her neighbors’ lawns, climbing over fences, to escape for a morning run. She lost her military security clearance her promotion from major to lieutenant colonel was revoked when the news broke. The F. B. I. still has her computers — including her dissertation research — and she withdrew from her Ph. D. program. She said she was told in more than one job interview that, while she was qualified, hiring her would be a nightmare. Four years on, her name still pops up in the news with regularity. She tracks these references with precision. Every time there is a new development — a legal update, Mr. Petraeus’s sentencing, the recently memoir by the woman on the receiving end of her emails — she said she is reminded: that for him, the affair is a footnote to an otherwise celebrated career. But for her — not as decorated, not as public, but still accomplished in her own right — it has become a lasting stain. “I’m the first to admit I screwed up,” Ms. Broadwell said. “Really badly, I know that. But how long does a person pay for their mistake?” That seems to be the question of the moment, in an age when one mistake can permanently cement your reputation. But the shame of the mistress is a particular category. Donna Rice, Monica Lewinsky, Rielle Hunter … the names have come to represent a kind of archetype. “That may be, in part, an unfair standard between men and women caught in an affair,” said David Bradley, the chairman of Atlantic Media, who knew Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell and once sat down with Ms. Broadwell to offer professional advice. In the aftermath, he reached out to both by email to offer sympathy and support. “But, I think it’s equally the danger — the danger — for the private citizen caught in an affair with a public figure. ” Ms. Broadwell was not exactly an entirely private figure before, of course it was just that what she was known for publicly was him. And so her fall seemed to elicit a particular brand of female schadenfreude: She seemed a little too eager, a little too ambitious, a little too enjoying the attention just a little too much. Yes, she would challenge Jon Stewart to a competition — to raise money for wounded veterans — and win. She could also run a mile. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh no, they’re going to destroy her,’” said Ms. Fulton, who did not know Ms. Broadwell at the time but reached out after the affair became public to offer her support. To journalists, she was the woman who — without any journalistic experience — had persuaded the highest commander in the land to give her unusual access and then abused it. (When the book came out, and she appeared on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” Mr. Stewart joked that “the real controversy here is, is he awesome or incredibly awesome? ”) To military colleagues, she was guilty of “Hollywooding”: commanding the attention to herself in a culture that is all about the team. And then there was the infidelity, a crime for active duty officers for a reason. “Service members are required to deploy for months and months at a time — so you have to be able to trust your spouse,” Ms. Fulton said. It happens, of course, so often that there’s a name for it (“a zipper malfunction”). And yet “to violate that trust is viewed as particularly egregious. ” And so the public inquisition into the “mistress” began, with everything from her fitness acumen — could she really run a mile? — to her body fat (13 percent) to her “usually tight shirts and pants” scrutinized. She was called, by a senior military source, “a shameless prom queen” who “got her claws” into him. She was “curvaceous,” with “expressive green eyes. ” One general described her as “seemingly immune to the notion of modesty,” referring to the attire she was said to have worn in Afghanistan. Mr. Petraeus, meanwhile, was described by former aides as “the consummate gentleman and family man. ” He had “let his guard down,” The Washington Post said in a headline. Supporters said he’d done the “honorable” thing by quitting. When he resigned, the president offered his prayers for the general and his wife the Petraeus family, friends lamented in the news media, would get through this. And then there was the — in hindsight — unfortunate title of Ms. Broadwell’s book, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. ” There were porn parodies, and a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which a book event is actually a live reading of a steamy sex scene. There were rape and death threats, one sent in a handwritten letter to her home. Her Facebook page still vacillates between, “You ruined America!” and “Will you go out on a date with me?” “I think the worst feeling is when you don’t have control over your life,” Ms. Broadwell said. She was sitting on the couch in her living room in Charlotte while her children were at school. “And that’s what this felt like. ” The first year was hell, she said. She and her husband, a radiologist with whom she is still together, went into counseling. She went into therapy. They explained to the children that “Mommy made a really big mistake. ” She had panic attacks, lost weight and retreated from public view, hiring a team to manage the legal threat against her. Would she be tried for conspiracy to commit espionage? For cyberstalking? For something else? She was often reading about her legal status in the news. Mr. Petraeus had many defenders — and a career of service to stand on. Ms. Broadwell did not. She said she never heard from her best friend — a crime agent with the F. B. I. She asked another friend, a woman she had mentored, if she’d be willing to speak up on her behalf, but this woman was applying for a job with the C. I. A. “It was too controversial to even touch certainly if you were active duty you would pay a price,” Ms. Fulton said. There was the emotional toll of the abrupt severing of an intensely personal relationship. But there was also the professional one: her career tangled up with this man with whom she was once in love, her advocates, his allies. Mr. Petraeus had been helping her with her Ph. D. at King’s College London, on military and organizational innovation. (His unit was one of the case studies.) They were working on another book together, this one focused on his leadership style, called “Relentless. ” Before the fallout, the Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Richard Burr of North Carolina had sat her down in Mr. Burr’s office to discuss a future congressional run, she said. Suddenly, overnight, she became — in her word — “radioactive. ” (A spokeswoman for Senator Burr’s office confirmed that the meeting took place, but said that he could not recall the precise nature of it.) “She has such confidence, such presence in the way she carries herself, and she commands this attention,” said Rose Keravuori, a longtime friend and former West Point classmate. “I think people expected her to go into politics, or do something different. And then this happened, and just, nobody helped her up. It was hard to reconcile so many people being sort of gleeful in it. ” In March, Ms. Kelley, the Florida woman caught up in the Petraeus soap opera, a book in which she printed dozens of her email exchanges with the general, as well as emails sent by Ms. Broadwell. It is called “Collateral Damage,” and in it she describes her own struggle to restore a damaged reputation, which led her and her husband to sue the government for invading their privacy (the suit was dropped in March). The book landed Ms. Kelley on “Good Morning America,” as well as a flurry of media attention, while Ms. Broadwell was on a camping trip with her family in the mountains. She had spotty cellphone service but drove back down to call her lawyers. A few days later, she was still nervously checking the Google alerts on her phone. “You know, Petraeus, when we were working together, he would never read anything about himself,” she said, seated in the lobby of a Charlotte hotel. “Sometimes I wonder, am I doing myself mental harm by reading all of it. ” These days, her coping mechanism is to stay busy. She is on the board of multiple local leadership organizations, and she’s a member of an opera club. She volunteers for a group that provides safe houses for human trafficking victims, another that helps veterans rehabilitate. She drops off her sons at the bus stop each day, then goes for a morning run. She continues to push for women in combat, and is active in a group called West Point Women, which planned the event at her alma mater. She is emotional when she speaks about the Charlotte community that embraced her family. But she’s torn: Should she try to reclaim her past — her dream of becoming a national security adviser — or should she pursue something entirely different? Should she fight to restore her military status, or simply move on? “The truth is, the military is not a place where you can rehabilitate,” she said. “There’s a ‘Zero Defects’ policy — that’s military code. So the whole redemption thing? It’s not common. “My husband says I just need to walk away,” she continued. “Sue Fulton says I needs to fight back. My lawyers — I literally ask them, ‘What would you tell me to do if I were your daughter?’ Some days I think, if I could just move on and it was never again in the news, I probably would. But I can’t. My fabric is to fight back. ” With a friend, Kyleanne Hunter — a former Marine attack helicopter pilot — she has founded a nonprofit, Think Broader, focused on combating gender bias in the news media. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sliver of bias that bothers her the most is “mistress. ” She recently presented on the topic to a roomful of editors at The Huffington Post, as well as to a team at Yahoo and the United Nations. She is working with a professor at Harvard to try to come up with a system for tracking biased language, she said — from unnecessary words (“female fighter pilot”) to journalists primarily relying on male sources to the subtle ways language can affect the way an article is framed. She has also, quietly, reached out to female journalists she thought would be sympathetic, asking them to stop using the word “mistress”: Christiane Amanpour at CNN Norah O’Donnell at CBS Susan Glasser at Politico, who advised her staff to refrain from using the word. “You know that character on ‘Game of Thrones,’ Tyrion?” she asked. “He says at one point, something to the effect of, ‘You’ve got to own your weakness, and then nobody can use it against you.’ Well, I’m trying to figure out how to do that. ” Ms. Broadwell was pleased to discover last month, after conversations with The Associated Press, that it had addressed “mistress” in an updated style guide, advising “friend,” “companion” or “lover” in its place, or language that “reflects that it takes two to tango,” said The A. P.’s standards editor, Thomas Kent. After an article in The New York Times, about Mr. Petraeus’s plea deal, used the word to refer to her last year, Ms. Broadwell was in touch with the public editor at the time, who wrote a column about it, advising that The Times “hasten the departure” of the word. (It has appeared just several times in 2016.) Her hometown newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, said it would work to retire the term, opting instead to call Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus “lovers. ” “It takes two to have an affair,” said the newspaper’s editor, Rick Thames. The campaign can feel a little like putting out brush fires, Ms. Broadwell said, but for now, it’s given her some sense of purpose. “On the one hand, I don’t want to define myself by this,” she said. “But on the other hand, I’ve been defined by this. So if I can change things for the better because of it, then why not?” Of course, she added, “Maybe some day I just need to take off the Google alerts and live in oblivion. ” | 1 |
India to install modern avionics in Mi-17V5 helicopters 26 October 2016 Sputnik Amid rising militancy in its different regions, India intends to install more avionics that would boost its military strength in fighting militants in the dense forests of Kashmir and other dangerous areas. Facebook A Mi-17 V-5 helicopter is demonstrated at the testing facility of the OAO Kazan Helicopter Plant, part of the Helicopters of Russia, a Russian helicopter building holding. Source:Maksim Bogodvid/RIA Novosti
India has decided to add some more strength in its Russian made military helicopters Mi-17V5.
“Ministry of Defence intends to procure and install approximately 200 sets of Electronic Warfare Suite comprising Radar Warning Receiver (RWR), Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS) and Counter Measure Dispensing System (CMDS) on Mi-17V5 helicopters,” reads a request for information issued by the Indian government.
The system will provide self-protection to the helicopter against radar controlled weapons and IR seeking missiles by employing different counter measures such as chaffs, flares and directed infra-red. The Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS) is intended to provide the capability of detecting, identifying warning and prioritizing air to air and ground to air threat missiles to the pilot. Fifteen Mi-17V5 helicopters would also be integrated with Laser Warning Receiver (LWR) and Directed Infrared Counter Measures.
Russian Mi-17 V-5 helicopters to ferry Indian VVIPs - report
India also wants to secure its helicopters against radar controlled weapons and IR seeking missiles. For this Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) has design and developed the Counter Measure Dispensing System that will be integrated on to the platform.
India plans to buy additional helicopters from Russia out of which more than a dozen will be made available to the BSF. India had already approved the purchase of 48 more Mi-17V-5 medium lift helicopters. Delivery of 151 Mi-17V-5 helicopters was made in February this year.
First published by Sputnik . | 0 |
A undocumented immigrant who was detained by the authorities last week after speaking out about her deportation fears was released on Friday, her lawyers and rights groups said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said that the woman, Daniela Vargas, would be freed under an order of supervision, although it did not disclose the terms of the order, according to a statement from the Elmore and Peterson law firm, which is representing Ms. Vargas. The officials, the statement said, also did not disclose why her release from a detention center in Jena, La. was being ordered now. “We expect Daniela to return to her friends and community in Mississippi shortly to resume her daily life,” the firm’s statement said. “Court filings regarding the reason and manner of arrest and detention continue to be pursued in an effort to secure Daniela’s rights. ” An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, Thomas Byrd, confirmed on Friday in a telephone interview that Ms. Vargas had been released. He declined to provide further details about her specific case. He said the terms of an order of supervision can include a requirement to check in periodically with an immigration officer. Other terms include a requirement to obtain travel documents, according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website. On Tuesday, civil and immigrants rights groups announced that they had filed a petition in United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to stop Ms. Vargas’s deportation. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center, the Elmore and Peterson firm in Mississippi, and the law office of William Most said in the petition that the government had violated her due process and First Amendment rights. “We’re joining the community in celebrating the release of our client, Dany Vargas,” said Naomi Tsu, the deputy director of the law center, in a statement. “But, we will continue to challenge the unconstitutional actions of I. C. E. agents in this case and will not rest until she is no longer under threat of deportation. ” Ms. Vargas’s lawyer, Abigail Peterson, was not immediately available for further comment on Friday. She said in an interview last week that Ms. Vargas had been picked up on March 1 when the car she was riding in was pulled over by officers shortly after leaving a news conference at which she had spoken at City Hall in Jackson, Miss. The event was organized by lawyers, church leaders and the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance to raise awareness about the impact deportation and President Trump’s immigration policies have on families. Ms. Vargas was sent to the detention center in Jena and was held without bond. She was told she would be deported without a hearing, Ms. Peterson said. Ms. Vargas entered the United States from Argentina at the age of 7 under a visa waiver program, which meant that she and her family were allowed to stay for only 90 days. By staying longer, they became ineligible for an immigration hearing, L. Patricia Ice, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance Legal Project director, said last week. But under a program started by President Barack Obama in 2012, Ms. Vargas became one of hundreds of thousands of people allowed to stay in the United States through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. The program gave immigrant children who had mostly grown up in the United States the opportunity to become eligible for work permits and to stay temporarily. Ms. Vargas’s DACA status had expired while she was saving up to pay a renewal fee of about $495, her lawyer said. Ms. Vargas had two pending applications to renew her DACA status and her work permit when she was arrested. Ms. Peterson released a transcript of a recorded conversation with Ms. Vargas on March 2, in which the woman said, according to Huffington Post: “You know, there’s a lot of stuff that I can do for this country that they’re not allowing me to do. I’ve even tried to join the military, and I can’t do that. But, I mean that’s not the point, the whole point is that I would do anything for this country. ” | 1 |
Print On a rooftop overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, around 200 American-Israeli fans of Donald Trump gathered to proclaim their support for the Republican candidate, convinced he will be Israel’s best friend if elected. Wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, the small crowd, ranging from Holocaust survivors in their 80s to grinning teenagers in Trump t-shirts, said they didn’t care about the sexual assault allegations against the candidate or the online anti-Semitism of some of his supporters. “Trump will let Israel be itself and make its own decisions, that’s what I like,” David Weissman, a 35-year-old from Queens, New York, who moved to Israel three years ago, said at the event late on Wednesday. “He’s not a saint, but look at his achievements. He’s not afraid to identify the enemy as radical Islam, and he’s not going to support the two-state solution,” he said, referring to long-standing efforts to forge peace with the Palestinians. | 0 |
Tweet Home » Silver » Silver News » Silver Signals The Flight To Real Safety Is On Again – Fund Manager
The movement back into non-fiat assets is starting again – anything connected to debt, like housing, is a de facto fiat asset. The best indicator of this is not gold, but silver:
From PM Fund Manager Dave Kranzler :
Gold is powering higher because the dollar is dropping. The dollar index is down 1.7% in the last 3 1/2 trading sessions. It’s down 2.3% vs the euro in the last 5 1/2 days, down 2.1% vs the yen in the last 3 days and down nearly 2% vs. the Swissie since Sunday night.
This is NOT about the political chaos connected to the U.S. election. That’s a sideshow distraction to the real problems going on behind the scene.
The U.S. economy is starting to collapse. This is becoming glaringly evident from most of the data, notwithstanding the highly manipulated economic reports like auto sales.
The movement back into non-fiat assets is starting again – anything connected to debt, like housing, is a de facto fiat asset. The best indicator of this is not gold, but silver. Silver was correlating with SPX for most of October, when the investment “thesis” was “a strengthening economy is good for industrial metals.”
The graph below illustrates this. It shows silver’s movement vs. the SPX for the last 3 months:
Silver correlated almost perfectly with the movement of the SPX for most of October (shaded area on the graph). But silver has moved up while the SPX has been selling off (including today, Nov 2nd) the past 4 trading sessions. This signals a switch from silver performing as an “industrial” metal to silver functioning as a “monetary” metal.
Certainly based on the gold-silver ratio, silver is extraordinarily cheap to gold and thus represents a prototypical “value” trade as the markets begin to accept and reflect economic reality and reject the politically-charge propaganda about a “healthy” economy coming from the Fed, the White House and the Democratic candidates.
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link My first introduction to the world of conspiracy theories was a DVD I found while on vacation visiting my girlfriend in Kent, Ohio. There was a little bridge over a muddy area on a trail by the Cuyahoga river, and for some reason my girlfriend and I decided to take the muddy path instead of the bridge. Well, she slipped and fell, so I helped her up and we made our way back to the bridge to go across the sane way, when we saw a sleeve stapled to the outside of the wooden handrail with a DVD in it labeled simply with "infowars.com Jesse Ventura 9/11", and I grabbed it because... well, why not? Popped it in at her house and watched it, it was an episode or two from Jesse Ventura's show Conspiracy Theory, one about FEMA camps, one about 9/11, and then some reletively short clip of Alex Jones yelling at me, and ending with an audio clip of some guy preaching about the end times coming soon and needing to get right with Jesus or something. I dunno, I didn't listen much to him because I don't care a thing for religion. Anyhow, that's at least what opened my mind, so to speak, to this world of conspiracy. True or not, most of them are entertaining at least. So, I can't say they were delivered to my door. Far from it in fact, they were instead hidden on a park trail 600 miles away from home. | 0 |
The Alabama Republican senator, who “introduced” Sen. Jeff B. Sessions III (R. .) to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday told Breitbart News he was thrilled to stand by his friend. The senator watched as Donald J. Trump’s attorney general nominee handled himself with poise and intelligence during the day’s confirmation hearing. [“It was a great honor,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R. .) who was joined by Sen. Susan Collins (R. ) for the ceremonial introduction to a committee of which Sessions is actually a sitting member. “I believe Senator Sessions’ nomination by Trump was very wise,” he said. “Sessions brings integrity and purpose to this job. He has been on the committee for 20 years, he’s been the attorney general for the state of Alabama, he’s been a U. S. Attorney — he’s a conservative with a lot of purpose and that’s important. ” Shelby said it was difficult to watch Senate Democrats breach the comity that governs personal relationships in the Senate by attacking Sessions as a racist, a liar and someone who would not enforce laws he disagrees with. “I believe he’s going to be confirmed, but some Democrats were grilling him too much — being not real nice to him,” he said. “But, they are playing raw liberal politics,” he said. “I understand what they’re doing. They’ve got all these people they’re bringing are Democratic constituents to work the hard left against a good nominee. ” “But, they didn’t lay a glove on him,” Shelby said. “They know down deep — most of them — that he is qualified for the job and he will do a good job,” the senator said. “He’s got character above everything and they need that above everything at the Justice Department. ” | 0 |
BALTIMORE — Freddie Gray died after a “rough ride” in a police van, prosecutors here said on Thursday, laying out for the first time their murder case against the officer who drove the transport wagon in which Mr. Gray, a black man, suffered the “ injury” that broke his neck and later killed him. With Mr. Gray shackled but not belted in the back of the van, Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. ran through a stop sign and took a sharp right turn, driving so fast that he did not stay in his lane, a prosecutor, Michael Schatzow, said. Had Officer Goodson buckled Mr. Gray, or called promptly for medical attention, he said, the young man would be alive today. “He was injured because he got a rough ride,” Mr. Schatzow told Judge Barry G. Williams of Baltimore City Circuit Court, adding: “There was no good reason for the officer to repeatedly fail to seatbelt Mr. Gray except to bounce him around. ” It was the first time that prosecutors have used the words “rough ride” in connection with Mr. Gray — a compelling opener to a trial playing out more than a year after the violent unrest set off by Mr. Gray’s death in April 2015. Experts said the rough ride argument would be difficult to prove, adding to the challenges faced by prosecutors, who have already tried two of the six officers facing charges in Mr. Gray’s death, and so far failed to win any convictions. Officer Goodson, 47, a department veteran, faces the most serious charges of any of the six, and is the only one who did not give investigators a statement. Thursday was the first time his story has been told his defense lawyer, Andrew Graham, painted him as a “decent man” who acted in “good faith. ” Mr. Graham told the judge that Mr. Gray caused his own death, by thrashing around in the van or trying to stand up as it was moving. “An accident can be just an accident,” Mr. Graham said, “and the cause of the accident can be the person himself who was injured. ” At Officer Goodson’s request, the case will be decided by Judge Williams, not a jury. Even before it got underway Thursday, it took a dramatic turn, as a furious Judge Williams berated Mr. Schatzow and his team for withholding evidence critical to the officer’s defense — information about prosecutors’ meeting in May 2015 with Donta Allen, a suspect who rode in the back of the van with Mr. Gray and is a potential witness in the case. Prosecutors said the meeting, their second with Mr. Allen, produced only “silly” information that was not relevant. The judge sharply disagreed, declaring the meeting “extremely exculpatory. ” He ordered prosecutors to share any additional information that might be relevant by Monday morning, demanding: “What else is out there that you haven’t turned over?” Officer Goodson faces seven charges in all, including manslaughter and reckless endangerment, in addition to “second degree depraved heart murder. ” Legal experts say it will be especially difficult for prosecutors to prove the murder charge, which will require them to show that the officer acted with willful indifference to Mr. Gray’s life. “This is now about a rough ride,” said Warren Alperstein, who frequently represents police officers, but is not involved in the Gray cases. He said much would depend on what evidence the state produces to prove its case: “Is it going to be surveillance video? Is it going to be bystander witness testimony?” Many details of the case are familiar by now. On April 12, 2015, Mr. Gray was walking with friends in the downtrodden Sandtown neighborhood of West Baltimore when he spotted a group of police officers and ran. They pursued, detained and arrested Mr. Gray, and Officer Goodson responded to the scene with a prisoner transport van. The officers eventually placed Mr. Gray, who was handcuffed and wore leg shackles, inside the van, but did not secure him with a seatbelt. One of those arresting officers, Edward M. Nero, was acquitted late last month of four misdemeanors in the case. The trial of another officer, William Porter, who arrived as backup, ended in a hung jury last year. With Officer Goodson at the wheel, the van made a total of six stops through West Baltimore. In court on Thursday, Mr. Schatzow said medical evidence would show that Mr. Gray was injured by hitting his head before the fourth stop, and that doctors could have saved him. But Mr. Graham said defense experts would testify that Mr. Gray’s injury happened later, was catastrophic, and that medical care would not have made a difference. Officer Porter’s testimony is expected to be crucial to the case against Officer Goodson, because he can tell the court what he and Officer Goodson discussed about Mr. Gray’s condition, and when. Whether Officer Goodson will testify in his own defense is unclear defense lawyers have not said. But they did indicate on Thursday that they would call Mr. Allen, who rode in the van with Mr. Gray. He has said Mr. Gray was thrashing about in the back of the van — a remark that would seem to bolster the defense — but later recanted that statement in television interviews. The courtroom was packed for Thursday’s opening arguments, with a crew of familiar faces who have been sitting through the trials. Among them was Tessa the president of Baltimore’s branch of the N. A. A. C. P. who said her organization often receives complaints of rough rides. She sounded pleased to hear the issue raised in court: “We’ve got to get some hits where someone is taking responsibility for Freddie Gray’s death. ” | 1 |
In “Finding Nemo,” Pixar’s 2003 masterpiece, the ocean was a vast realm of menace and wonder, newly charted by rapidly advancing technology. The movie, a visual revelation, was also a welcome defense of in an era of anxiety, and something of a cautionary tale about the downsides of helicopter parenting. As often happens in adventure stories, the hero was occasionally upstaged by his sidekick. We rooted for Nemo and choked up when he was found, but the best lines and sweetest grace notes belonged to Dory, the blue tang voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. Now Dory has her own movie, imaginatively called “Finding Dory,” a merchandising opportunity for Disney and a welcome diversion for parents and children. While it may not join the top tier of Pixar features, “Dory,” directed by Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane, is certainly the best “Toy Story” sequel the studio has produced. That may sound like faint praise given the startling mediocrity of “Monsters University” and “Cars 2,” but what “Dory” lacks in dazzling originality it more than makes up for in warmth, charm and good humor. (Meanwhile, Pixar’s place on the vanguard of animation is affirmed by “Piper,” the short, directed by Alan Barillaro, that accompanies “Finding Dory” in theaters. A variation on the themes of “Nemo,” it tells the simple, touching story of a fledgling shore bird overcoming fear and facing danger. It also makes astonishing strides in the vivid and detailed rendering of feathers, foam and sand.) Taking place, for the most part, a year after Nemo’s return to the reef, “Finding Dory” flashes back to its heroine’s childhood, when she was an adorable, popeyed, hatchling living with her mom (Diane Keaton) and dad (Eugene Levy). She wandered off one day, and grew to adulthood looking for her family. The revival of this quest sends her across the seas, and this time Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) are the sidekicks. Not the only ones. Like other films of its species, “Finding Dory” is full of celebrity voice work, including from a number of television performers. Kaitlin Olson of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is a nearsighted shark. Idris Elba and Dominic West have a “Wire” reunion — Stringer Bell and McNulty, together again! — as a pair of Cockney sea lions. Ty Burrell plays a nervous beluga whale, while his “Modern Family” Ed O’Neill, steals many scenes as a wily, grouchy, octopus named Hank. Instead of the open seas, Dory conducts her search mostly in the confines of the Marine Life Institute, an institution clearly inspired by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California that the filmmakers turn into a theme park full of mechanical ingenuity and aquatic cuteness. There are toys and tots, aquarium tanks and drain pipes, strange birds and the disembodied voice of Sigourney Weaver. The plot, like a ride, is both predictable and exciting, a cascade of triumphs and setbacks, punctuated with humor and pathos. But in tradition, the movie also has lessons to impart. “Nemo” made the case for indomitability in the face of fear. “Dory” is more about the acceptance of chaos. Dory’s inability to make or stick to plans is shown, in the long run, to be an advantage. And her memory issues, played mostly for laughs in the first movie, take on a deeper meaning here. She and Nemo, who was born with a deformed flipper, are both people — well, actually, anthropomorphized fish, but you know what I mean — with disabilities, an identity shared by most of the new secondary characters. In a way that is both emphatic and subtle, “Finding Dory” is a celebration of cognitive and physical differences. It argues, with lovely ingenuity and understatement, that what appear to be impairments might better be understood as strengths. The inclusiveness of the film’s vision is remarkable partly because it feels so natural, something that no adult will really need to explain. Children will get it, perhaps more intuitively and easily than the rest of us. Everyone will laugh at the sight of an octopus driving a truck, a loon flying with a bucket of angelfish in her beak and the other slapstick set pieces. And very few throats will remain unlumped as characters are reunited. Maybe there are a few too many reunions. How many times does Dory need to be found? But the repetitiveness of the story is related to its moral, a Disney legacy reanimated by Pixar again and again. Solidarity and kinship are two sides of the same coin. “Friends and family” is a distinction without a difference. “Finding Dory” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). A little scary, a little sad. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. | 1 |
A sports reporter fired by the New York Post is now suing the paper for firing him without cause, a report says. [Sports writer Bart Hubbuch reported on his Twitter account that the paper fired him for his tweets. Hubbuch complained in his announcement that he posted his tweets on his own time. An important status update: pic. twitter. — Bart Hubbuch (@BartHubbuch) January 31, 2017, The writer referred to a series of tweets in which he called the election of Donald Trump a “national tragedy,” and compared the election to the terror attacks on and the Japanese attack on U. S. forces at Pearl Harbor causing the U. S. to enter WWII. At the time, the Post explained that Hubbuch engaged in “unprofessional conduct. ” “We expect our reporters to interact with the public, including on social media, in a professional manner. Unfortunately, Mr. Hubbuch has engaged in a pattern of unprofessional conduct and exhibited serious lack of judgment, including most recently showing disrespect for the victims of Pearl Harbor and ” the paper’s statement read according to NBC Sports. Now Hubbuch insists in his filing that the Post violated New York labor laws. The fired writer’s attorney said the paper violated New York Labor Law Section which makes it “unlawful for any employer . . . to discharge from employment . . . an individual . . . because of . . . an individual’s legal recreational activities outside work hours, off of the employer’s premises and without use of the employer’s equipment or other property,” NBC reported. Hubbuch again notes that he posted his tweets on his own time, from his private computer, and did not use company time or resources to attack Trump. The lawsuit also pointedly notes that the New York Post constantly engages in “tabloid style” sensationalism and his tweets are mild by comparison. “In keeping with its tabloid style, the Post has sensationalized the actual or perceived the fault of democratically elected leaders by running covers showing them dressed up like tyrants responsible for murder, torture and repression,” Hubbuch’s filing says. Hubbuch also claims he was told he would not be fired if he apologized for the tweets, which he did, but was fired anyway. He also charges that his employer fired him to curry favor with Donald Trump. The argument comes down to whether the paper had the right to fire him for things he did on his own time. Hubbuch demands a monetary award for damages, as well as reinstatement to his job. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
Clemson University Student's Welcome: 'Ben Shapiro Is A Pig' By: Hank Berrien November 1, 2016
Apparently word has been passed to leftists that Daily Wire Editor-In Chief Ben Shapiro will be speaking at Clemson University tonight. "Ben Shapiro Is A Pig" was chalked in a Clemson classroom this morning. Looks like the SJWs are very excited to hear @benshapiro tonight! pic.twitter.com/hkd3YgIwMn — Caleb Ecarma (@calebecarma) November 1, 2016
There has been no explanation as to who decorated the chalkboard, nor whether the culprit wanted to issue a more eloquent denunciation of Shapiro but was hindered by the limits of his/her vocabulary, thus being restricted to words of three letters or less.
Shapiro’s usual denunciation of political correctness is likely the reason for the gratuitous insult; in October 2015, Clemson was plagued by PC when a few students protested Clemson Dining’s "Maximum Mexican" night, tweeting their displeasure with such a "#CUlturallyInsensitive" event. Clemson senior Austin Pendergist told Campus Reform the post-event uproar was “ridiculous … This is something that Clemson Dining has done for years without any sort of backlash. People love the cultural nights in the dining halls. What's next? Are they going to take away all potato based food as to not offend students from Irish decent? Remove the stir fry station so Asian-American students don't feel as if they are being misrepresented? When does it end?”
But the administration wound up apologizing for the event; Dr. Doug Hallenbeck, Clemson University’s Senior Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, said the event displayed a “flattened cultural view of Mexican culture … It is the mission of University Housing & Dining to create supportive and challenging environments that enrich and nourish lives. We failed to live out our mission yesterday, and we sincerely apologize,” adding that the university “will continue to work closely with [its] food service provider to create dining programs that align with Clemson University’s core values.”
The administration also apologized on the Clemson Dining Services Facebook and Twitter pages.
Pendergist said the event had only featured “a couple balloons, sombreros, and some tacos,” adding, “For as long as I've been here, and probably for much longer, Clemson dining has put on certain culinary theme nights, where they decorate the dining halls and serve whatever kind of food. They have Italian night, Mexican night, seafood night, midnight breakfast, all kinds of events.”
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=By= Simon Wood Editor's Note Simon Wood writes an excellent dissertation on lesser evilism and how it integrates with the current rendition of destructive capitalism. He is very correct that people in the US are too easily convinced that they only have a choice of two candidates – the two put forward by they duopoly. There are other parties and candidates, and voting for them is not a waste of a vote. Of course, it helps a lot if folks get involved before they submit their ballot. “How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?” – Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72) “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” – John Lydon
People died for your right to vote!
This admonition – an example of social shaming (and hence control) – will be familiar to all thinking citizens daring to suggest that voting is meaningless when no viable candidate holds views or proposes policies that come anywhere close to their own.
As with most methods of social control, the premise is a misrepresentation – in other words, a lie. Those brave, worthy souls who gave their lives died not for the right to vote, but the right to a meaningful and representative vote. It follows that there is no worse debasement of their sacrifice imaginable than the idea of voting for a perceived lesser evil; the ultimate insult to these martyrs is that people in their tens of millions vote willingly for evil because they feel they have no other choice – especially when the only candidates who stand a chance of winning represent no one but the most privileged and protected people in society.
Political control of the US has long been dominated by the two main parties. Administrations are dominated by men and women connected through revolving doors in a bewildering array of networks, lobby groups, think tanks, banks, corporations and institutions. All are rich and all benefit from the continuation of the status quo. Serious studies have concluded what every sentient American already knows: That the US is an oligarchy. That the two-party system is the means of offering the illusion of democratic choice. That a powerful elite remains in power whoever claims electoral victory.
This fact alone renders irrelevant the vapid, insipid rants of ‘analysts’ and ‘experts’ on the relative strengths and flaws of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on mainstream cable shows and throughout the corporate media. It is distraction: white noise designed to elevate emotional responses and to reinforce loyalty to a viewer’s chosen team and disgust toward the enemy. In short – we are all being played.
The term lesser evil is itself a misnomer. The principle of lesser evil is a key feature of realpolitik – a Machiavellian form of politics closely associated with the likes of war criminal at-large (and Nobel Peace Prize recipient) Henry Kissinger. It states that when faced with two unpleasant choices, it is rational to choose the least unpleasant. US voters are faced instead with what is known as a false dilemma – a situation where only limited choices are seriously considered, while in fact other choices are available like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson et al.
Many Americans can be forgiven for being unaware of this, conditioned as they are to dismiss as a ‘wasted vote’ the other available options: Namely third-party candidates and – the option most likely to earn you a people-died-for-your-right-to-vote scolding – the perfectly moral choice of spoiling one’s ballot or not voting at all, moral in that if a system in which you participate leads to unacceptable actions on the part of your government whoever you choose, you have the moral right – some would say responsibility – to refuse to participate.
For those who support neither of the two candidates who can realistically win, this is a classic catch-22 situation – you lose whatever, and the establishment elites win whatever. At this point you are faced with a moral choice: Do you accept that you live in a fixed system or not? Do you want to live in a democratic society where every person has an equal voice or not? Are you OK living in a de facto tyranny of the rich and powerful?
Motivated – as most are in our late-stage capitalist societies – by self-interest, those sufficiently well-off, privileged or protected are likely to either accept this or at least avoid answering the question. Those who suffer under the system – and those motivated by conscience or altruism – will probably demur. But the evil genius in the apparatuses of indoctrination (education, media etc.) is that those who suffer – even those who suffer greatly – can be easily coaxed into supporting – often fanatically – one of the two wings of the Republican-Democrat duopoly. This is aided by the cognitive bias known as system justification , a social psychology construct that ‘proposes that people have several underlying needs, which vary from individual to individual, that can be satisfied by the defense and justification of the status quo, even when the system may be disadvantageous to certain people’.
In practice one cannot escape from the fact that within the system as it stands, the duopoly – and therefore the power elites – will win. A simple glance at the current betting odds for all the presidential candidates makes that clear. Even if one votes with one’s conscience for, say, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, one does so in the knowledge that it can only ever be a protest vote and the duopoly will still win . One can discuss the many serious flaws in the US electoral system all day long but the duopoly will still win .
We return then to ‘lesser evil’. Proponents of this principle who say that it is the only realistic choice ignore two vital points:
First, the definition of lesser evil itself is debatable when one compares Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have unfavorability ratings currently averaging 59% and 52% respectively, according to Real Clear Politics. [Note: polls like these can only be taken as a barometer].
The establishment line is firmly against Trump, targeting his contradictory and sometimes overtly fascistic or racist comments, his obvious boorishness and overall personality flaws, and his – real or not [which no longer matters in modern political discourse] – alleged indiscretions with women.
For all these serious flaws, however, Trump has never held public office and can not therefore be judged on his record at the very highest echelons of power as Clinton can. Given that Clinton is strongly favored [according to bookmakers] to win the election, an objective analysis of her record is necessary for her supporters. This is not necessary for Trump, whose flaws are plastered all over the media daily in fine detail: Trump is Trump and the whole world knows it. The opposite holds for Clinton, who continues to benefit from media deflection of the recent WikiLeaks disclosures (where all emails are – according to the various talking heads and with zero evidence – either doctored or part of a Russian plot). Other WikiLeaks disclosures are simply ignored, and one CNN reporter even went so far as to lie outright to his viewers, telling them it was illegal to read the emails.
The recent bombshell announcement by James B. Comey, the head of the FBI, that the Clinton email investigation – which was thought to be dead and buried in July – has been re-opened is potentially more damaging for Clinton, with the media unable to ignore the story. The response of the Clinton campaign and its sympathetic media has been to deflect attention away from Clinton and pile pressure on Comey, suggesting that he may have broken the law.
Clinton was rebuked at a July press conference by Comey for the ‘extremely careless’ way in which she handled emails containing classified information on insecure servers, a violation of statutes. He nevertheless said at the time that the FBI would not recommend that prosecutors seek criminal charges against Clinton.
Suspicions that the FBI was going light on Clinton in return for undisclosed concessions were bolstered by a report in the Wall Street Journal this week: The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use. Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI. The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in the effort.
.. Mr. McAuliffe has been a central figure in the Clintons’ political careers for decades. In the 1990s, he was Bill Clinton’s chief fundraiser and he remains one of the couple’s closest allies and public boosters. Mrs. Clinton appeared with him in northern Virginia in 2015 as he sought to increase the number of Democrats in the state legislature.
… At the end of July 2015, Mr. McCabe was promoted to FBI headquarters and assumed the No. 3 position at the agency. In February 2016, he became FBI Director James Comey’s second-in-command. As deputy director, Mr. McCabe was part of the executive leadership team overseeing the Clinton email investigation, though FBI officials say any final decisions on that probe were made by Mr. Comey, who served as a high-ranking Justice Department official in the administration of George W. Bush.
Professor of History Gary Leupp provides in his article ‘The Warmongering Record of Hillary Clinton’ a useful overview that should concern every citizen on the planet, including a more detailed description of her part in the destruction of an entire nation state: Libya. Highlights include: Clinton has been a keen advocate for the expansion of an antiquated Cold War military alliance that persists in provoking Russia. As New York senator Clinton endorsed the murderous ongoing sanctions against Iraq, imposed by the UN in 1990 and continued until 2003. She was a strident supporter of the Iraq War. She actively pursued anti-democratic regime change in Ukraine. She wanted to provide military assistance to the “moderate” armed opposition in Syria, to effect regime change, and after leaving office criticized Obama for not supplying more than he did. She has been an unremitting supporter of Israeli aggression, whenever it occurs. Hillary tacitly endorsed the military coup against elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in 2009, refusing to call it such (even though Obama did). [Please read original article for full details] Salon notes that a British Parliament report concluded that the NATO attack on Libya was based on an ‘array of lies’: “We have seen no evidence that the UK Government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya,” the report states. “UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.” The Foreign Affairs Committee concludes that the British government “failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element.”
A Vox analysis of the recent WikiLeaks disclosures concluded that ‘leaked emails confirm Clinton Foundation blurred public/private lines and that the ‘disclosures detail Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street and top donors’.
A group of Reddit users compiled a sourced list of the 100 most serious WikiLeaks disclosures that – when read – utterly damns Clinton as one of the most corrupt politicians ever to run as US president – if not the most.
The second truth that lesser evilists ignore is the undeniable fact that decades of pressing the lesser evil argument has succeeded only in bringing about more and more evil. Artist and filmmaker Mara Ahmed writes : Police brutality, mass incarceration, the breakup of families via record deportations, pre-emptive wars, remote-control wars, dirty wars, the deepening of the surveillance state and the widening of economic disparity, the continuing corporatization of the government and the poisoning and pillaging of the planet–these didn’t just start with Bush or slow down during Obama’s presidency. If anything, these policies were turned up a notch over the last eight years.
Any objective comparison of the US along with the overall global situation pre-9/11 and now shows a marked deterioration in all areas, with widespread violence at home and abroad now the norm.
A vast tissue of poor judgment, obfuscation and outright corruption. A long history of support for illegal wars and violent interventions based – again – on lies. Alleged collusion with terrorist groups for geostrategic gain. There are Americans who have received life sentences for crimes such as stealing socks, baby shoes or a slice of pizza under the Three-Strikes Laws of the 1990s, yet Clinton is not only spared investigation for this unfathomable web of likely criminality, but has even been allowed to run for the highest office in a nation of over 300 million people, where she would have executive control over the world’s most powerful military as well as the nuclear codes. Even worse – for the rest of the planet’s inhabitants – she has made no secret of her desire to pursue a more ‘muscular’ foreign policy than Obama.
To any right-thinking, peace-loving person this is insane. Don’t expect many in the corporate media to agree with that analysis, however, as WikiLeaks has revealed the names of ‘at least 65 MSM reporters [who] were meeting with and/or coordinating offline with top Hillary advisors’.
Jim Hoft writing at Gateway Pundit added: They were invited to top elitist dinners with Hillary Campaign Chairman John Podesta or Chief Campaign strategist Joel Benenson. The Clinton campaign sent out invites to New York reporters in April 2015 on their off-the-record meeting on how to sell Hillary Clinton to the public.
Those with experience debating Clinton supporters can confront them with all this and more but the response is always the same: “She might be bad, but Trump is worse”.
Mara Ahmed writes : Lesser evilism is one thing but hardcore Clintonism is another. The complete break from reality (couched in inclusive, feminist language), the privileged belief that as long as we recycle our trash and drive fuel-efficient cars, we are going to be okay, and the lack of empathy with the pain we create in the world and at home, astonishes me.
There is a larger issue here. Lesser evilism is a symptom of human malaise under the dominant system of predatory capitalism. That millions of people can even consider willingly casting a vote for a candidate as demonstrably corrupt as Clinton, whatever the justification (fear of Trump), instead of demanding something better only demonstrates how whipped into timidity and passivity the human spirit has become.
Instigators like Edward Bernays and others that have brought to life this monstrous system of control through fear and distraction are guilty of the single greatest crime in human history. For pay, power and fame, they have employed their knowledge and research of psychology and propaganda methods in full awareness of what the results would be. They have reduced vast swathes of humanity to mindless consumption addicts, have attempted to destroy the social bonds that define our species, and have caused the waste of billions of lives. The human brain – one of the greatest wonders in nature – which, through the ineffable interactions between intelligence, emotions and inspiration is capable of genius could have been employed to raise humanity into an enlightened age; instead it has been utterly wasted, used instead as a tool for dreaming up new ways to consume, as well as new ways of deceiving people to consume.
That in itself is a horror, but this malaise has spread throughout the world and multitudes suffer hideously for it. The 21,000 people (many of whom are children) who die of hunger – an easily preventable condition – every day – a silent holocaust of the meek far removed from Western cameras. The children who die in US-instigated wars. The democratically elected governments subverted in CIA coups, often leading to decades of killing, torture and rape of the people. The environmental catastrophes. The mass extinctions. The use of torture. The use of depleted uranium and chemical weapons. The list is endless.
The lesser evil scam has to end because the world is now at a critical juncture. The US elites, through their presidential puppets, are drawing the world into a potentially deadly confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Russian military doctrine makes it clear that nuclear weapons can be used as a response even to conventional attack on its soil: The Russian Federation shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy. The decision to use nuclear weapons shall be taken by the President of the Russian Federation.
Even a limited nuclear exchange could be catastrophic for life on earth. Lesser-evilists who lack the courage, foresight and historical awareness to try to force radical change from outside the system, to demand change in a mass, organised assault on the power elites, could soon be faced with a very unpleasant radical change not of their choosing sooner than they expect. If – when – Clinton presses for war with Russia, how will the lesser evil argument sound in the depths of a nuclear winter?
There is lesser evil writ large. The US electoral system is gamed to ensure a win that means the psychopaths in Wall Street and the certifiable lunatics in the Pentagon and the CIA get to carry on doing what they’ve been doing for all our lifetimes. These people have demonstrated their disdain for risk, their greed, hubris and incompetence again and again. They are perfectly capable of bringing the whole planet down and us with it.
The concept of freedom – a word now coughed out with a cynical laugh – has been replaced by a forest of empty slogans – soundbites for the soundbitten generation – that ape the commercial mantras which now dominate every facet of human existence. People trapped in the party political paradigm believe – with earnest naivete – that change can come from within the system, that if they wait long and ask politely enough, the elites will voluntarily – in some inexplicable act of humanitarianism – relinquish their stranglehold and hand over power to the humanitarians.
This is dangerous idiocy. Change will never come from within. The key institutions are too deeply corrupted, infested with precisely the wrong types of people. Any short-term progress will be superficial and swiftly subsumed; any protest brutally crushed and/or co-opted. Inquire of Occupy. With a nuclear exchange now a real possibility – one that would kill almost every living thing on the planet – the time is now or never to stop playing the game.
“What has happened,” asks John Pilger, “to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature? Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?” Syrian home reconstructed from bombed remains.
Simon Wood is a freelance writer covering human rights, geopolitics, civil liberties, democracy, propaganda and media criticism. His articles can be found at The 99.99998271% and The Daily 99.99998271% . You can also follow Simon through twitter or Facebook . Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: [email protected]
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It is New York’s own version of hitchhiking: asking for a swipe of a stranger’s MetroCard. And just like the hitchhiker’s thumb, it has its own distinctive hand signal, which, if all goes well, results in a free subway ride. If all does not, it often leads to handcuffs. “The defendant moved his hand in a motion, which, based on my training and experience, is typical of asking to be swiped into the subway system,” Officer Kentrevo Mills of a transit counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department stated in an arrest affidavit for a man beseeching swipes in February in the station at Lexington Avenue and 125th Street. For years, the police have been arresting people for asking for swipes in front of the turnstiles. That changed last month, when the police decided to try a more lenient approach against and other rule breakers, at least in Manhattan. Now officers are supposed to issue a ticket or court summons rather than make an arrest. But new statistics and a review of court records show, for the first time, the lengths the police had previously gone to try to stamp out the practice of . Even counterterrorism officers had arrested violators. Since 2013, the police have made more than 10, 000 arrests of people for asking for swipes and, therefore, impeding the flow of subway passengers, according to statistics from the police. There were 800 arrests this year alone, before the policy change. In explaining the more lenient approach last month to the rank and file, the Police Department’s internal order said the new policy was the result of a decision by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to no longer prosecute people arrested for minor infractions such as smoking in the subway, or taking up two seats on a subway car. In a statement announcing the change, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. the Manhattan district attorney, cited a desire to free the police, prosecutors and courts from processing the most minor cases. “And by reducing unnecessary incarceration, we make our criminal justice system fairer for all New Yorkers,” he said in the statement. In interviews, said they are more orderly than the police give them credit for. They are, after all, asking for admittance to the subway system, rather than hopping the turnstile, a misdemeanor. “They don’t want you to hop and they don’t want you to ask for a swipe,” James Green, 22, said as he begged for a swipe in the station at St. Nicholas Avenue and 125th Street this month. “What exactly are you supposed to do?” And with a single subway ride costing $2. 75, they see themselves not as scofflaws but as people who simply cannot afford public transportation. “Some people don’t have money on them,” Mr. Green said. “But they have places to get to. They might even have an emergency, you feel me?” “Once I have a job, I’ll never do this again,” William Rios, 50, said on a recent afternoon as he asked for a swipe in the station at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. “I’ve been since 10:30 a. m. and I got tired and now I want to go home,” he said. Mr. Rios said he had been arrested for in the past — a common complaint among men interviewed as they stood outside the turnstiles beseeching exiting passengers with, “Can I get a swipe?” Some forlornly flicked their wrists others, with more gusto, shot their hands far forward, elbows fully extended and flicked an imaginary MetroCard through the world’s longest card reader. Some stood politely to the side of the turnstiles others blocked the way. Between trains, a few scoured the ground for discarded MetroCards. From the police’s perspective, asking for swipes violates two rules: one against begging and another against blocking “free movement” in a station. (The New York City Transit Authority says that, though it is deprived of a fare, it has no problem with people using unlimited MetroCards to swipe in strangers.) Enforcement of these rules is “integral to maintaining the civility for each of our millions of riders,” Joseph Fox, the chief of the Police Department’s Transit Bureau, said in a statement. “Riders have come to expect, as they rightly should, to travel without harassment, without interruption, and without being subject to overt acts of criminality and disorder. ” Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has long regarded the subway system as the front line in the city’s struggle with criminals. In the early 1990s, Mr. Bratton, then chief of the subway police force, began cracking down on turnstile jumping, with great success. Turnstile jumpers, the police discovered, were sometimes armed and often wanted on warrants for more serious crimes. It turned out to be a very effective way to arrest criminals and, in Mr. Bratton’s telling, was the start of a policing strategy that has succeeded in beating back crime for more than 20 years. When Mr. Bratton became commissioner in 2014, he vowed to rid the subways of all kinds of rule breakers, from panhandlers to “acrobats,” as he called the subway dancers. were put on notice. The police say that a full of those arrested for asking for swipes are known as “transit recidivists. ” A review of arrests of dozens of revealed a few names matching those of registered sex offenders. But some who have been arrested for describe themselves as New Yorkers with little more than a few hopped turnstiles in their past. “They consider this panhandling, but this is just people getting home,” Chaazaq Washington, 20, said this month after his court appearance for a February arrest for soliciting a swipe. “It’s so petty — just because you make a hand gesture or ask for a swipe, they say this is breaking the law. ” now face a ticket with a fine of at least $25 and as much as $50, or a notice to appear in court in Lower Manhattan at a later date. “They are given a ticket because they can’t afford a swipe and now they have to get to a courthouse?” mused Stephen Pokart, a Legal Aid lawyer who has been defending the poor in court for 42 years. “Now they’ll have to ask for a swipe both ways. ” | 1 |
MELBOURNE, Australia — It was Roger Federer’s unlikeliest victory in a Grand Slam tournament — quite a statement for a who has now won 18 of them. But where else should one rank this Australian Open, where Federer was rightfully viewed as an underdog? Where he arrived seeded just 17th, having not played an official tournament for more than six months? Where he faced his friendly rival Rafael Nadal in the final on sore legs? Even Federer’s own expectations were tempered for a change. “I would have said a great event would be quarters,” Federer said. “Fourth round would be nice. ” Federer would get a great deal more than that in Melbourne, a city where his success has mingled with plenty of heartache and tears through the years. He wiped away a few more on Sunday as he became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam singles title in 45 years. He managed it by defeating Nadal, to win the Australian Open for the fifth time. “You don’t know if they ever come back, these moments,” said Federer, who had not won a major title since Wimbledon in 2012 and who had not beaten Nadal in a Grand Slam final since Wimbledon in 2007. Federer played here with verve and precision but had to scrap his way through three matches in the final four rounds, receiving plenty of treatment between duels. Although he did not have to deal with the world’s two leading players, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, who were upset in the first week, Federer did face top 10 opponents aplenty. He defeated four of them: Tomas Berdych, Kei Nishikori, Stan Wawrinka and — most important — Nadal, the swashbuckling Spanish who has so often thwarted Federer on big occasions but who failed to seal the deal on Sunday despite taking a lead in the fifth set. That was perhaps when Federer’s tempered expectations helped him most. This really did feel like gravy after all the major meals he has enjoyed through the years, and he stuck with the game plan he and his coaches, Severin Lüthi and Ivan Ljubicic, had discussed. “I told myself to play free,” Federer said. “You play the ball. You don’t play the opponent. Be free in your head. Be free in your shots. Go for it. The brave will be rewarded here. I didn’t want to go down just making shots, seeing forehands rain down on me from Rafa. ” Few could have foreseen this final when the Australian Open began. This was Federer’s first official tournament after a long break because of knee problems in 2016. Nadal ended last season early, too, after an injury to his left wrist. And yet the occasion felt so familiar, inciting global interest and nostalgia for the days when summit meetings were a staple. But this was not business as usual for Federer on a court that he repeatedly maintained was playing quicker than in past years. His backhand has long been his weak link against Nadal, whose whipping topspin forehand has forced Federer to hit too many backhands above the shoulder — and too many backhands, period. Federer took a more proactive approach Sunday, driving his backhand for much of the match instead of relying on his more neutral slice. He ripped through his backhand returns as well, and Nadal — not quite at his relentless best — was unable to grind him down. With the match in his grasp, Nadal wavered while Federer let his elegant strokes fly. “He did not surprise me,” Nadal said. “He was playing aggressively, and I understand that in a match against me. I don’t think it would have been intelligent to try to get into too many long rallies from the baseline. I don’t think he would have won. He went for it, and it was the right thing for him to do. ” The result was a brisk by Nadal’s standards. The Spaniard required 4 hours 56 minutes to beat Federer’s stylistic acolyte, Grigor Dimitrov, and his backhand in the semifinals. Sunday’s final lasted 3:38, and that included a medical timeout that Federer took off court after losing the fourth set. Federer has rarely taken that liberty through the years, but he did the same before the fifth set of his semifinal victory over his Swiss compatriot Wawrinka, citing a groin injury. Federer’s decision to take a timeout again on Sunday drew criticism from the former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash of Australia, who said on BBC Radio that it was “legal cheating” to interrupt a long match because of weariness. Federer disagreed and explained that his leg had been bothering him since he beat the young American Noah Rubin in the second round. Federer said that on Sunday, he had begun feeling pain in his right quadriceps “midway through the second set” and that “the groin started to hurt midway through the third set. ” “I just told myself, ‘The rules are there that you can use them,’” he said. “I think I’ve led the way for 20 years, so I think to be critical there is exaggerating. I’m the last guy to call a medical timeout. ” The break did not help Federer start quickly in the fifth set. Nadal broke his serve in the opening game and jumped out to that lead. But with his chances appearing to fade, Federer took control, breaking Nadal’s serve in the long and edgy sixth and eighth games of the set. All Federer had to do then was serve out the championship at but he quickly fell behind by before saving one break point with an ace and the next with a forehand winner. On his first match point, he made a shaky forehand error, but he converted the second with a looping midcourt forehand that appeared to land on the sideline for a winner. Nadal challenged and shrugged, hands on his hips. The review upheld the initial call, and Federer pumped his arms over his head and leapt with delight. “Of course it’s slightly awkward to win this way,” Federer said. “Nevertheless, emotions poured out of me. I was incredibly happy. ” This victory, he said, was unique. “I can’t compare this to any other one except maybe the French Open in ’09,” Federer said, referring to his only championship in that event, which came after Nadal had been upset in the fourth round. Federer is the man to win a major singles title in the Open era, behind Ken Rosewall, who won the 1970 United States Open when he was approaching his 36th birthday, the 1971 Australian Open at 36 and the 1972 Australian Open at 37. Federer has long admired Rosewall, Rod Laver and the leading players of Australia’s golden tennis era. Federer has helped create a new team competition, the Laver Cup, that will start in September, and Laver presented the trophy to him on Sunday night — at Rod Laver Arena. The victory over Nadal significantly increased Federer’s chances of remaining the career leader in men’s Grand Slam singles titles. With 18, he has a more comfortable lead over Nadal, who is tied with Pete Sampras for second on the list, at 14. “That’s the smallest part, to be honest,” Federer said. “For me, it’s all about the comeback, about an epic match with Rafa again. ” Nadal has long dominated their series and still leads, . But on matches played off clay, a surface on which Nadal has a huge edge, the tally is now . Nadal won their most memorable final, a at Wimbledon in 2008 that ended in the twilight and is a candidate for the greatest match ever. But Sunday’s extended test of talent and perseverance will surely make the short list as well, especially if it turns out to be their last mutual hurrah in a Grand Slam final. “Being honest, in these kinds of matches I won a lot of times against him,” Nadal said. “Today he beat me, and I just congratulate him. ” Nadal is just 30, five years younger than Federer, who made an intriguing comment to the crowd at the award ceremony. “I hope to see you next year,” he said. “If not, this was a wonderful run here, and I can’t be more happy to have won here tonight. ” The last man to claim a Grand Slam singles title as a 17th seed was Sampras, when he won the 2002 United States Open. He eventually retired without playing another match on tour. Federer, married and a father of four, has a full schedule planned for this season, and he emphasized later that he hoped to return to Melbourne in 2018. But he still sounded much, much closer to the end than the beginning, as he and his entourage prepared to, in his words, “party like rock stars” in the predawn hours. “I mean, this is all about knowing that I have only so much tennis left in me,” he said. He no longer needed to wonder if there was an 18th Grand Slam left in him, too. | 1 |
Tweet Widget A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The capitalist ruling class is frightened, for good reason: the empire cannot peacefully contain the rising economic powers of the South and East. “The Lords of Capital know there is no future for them in a world where the dollar is not supreme and where Wall Street’s stocks, bonds and derivatives are not backed by the full weight of unchallenged empire.” War is the only card they have left to play – and Hillary Clinton is their favored dealer. The Lords of Capital Sic Crazy Hillary on the World A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
“The Lords of Capital are creatures of U.S. imperial dominance; they go out of business when the empire does.”
By virtually every measurement, the United States is in deep crisis, as both a society and as the headquarters of global capitalism. We can roughly measure the severity of some aspects of the crisis with the tools of economic analysis. Such an analysis is quite useful in explaining why Washington is so eager to risk war with Russia and China, whether in Syria or the South China Sea or along the ever expanding borders of NATO. To put it simply, the U.S. and western Europe become smaller, in terms of their economic influence, with every passing day, and cannot possibly maintain their political dominance in the world except by military force, coercion and terror. Those are the only cards the imperialists have left to play. The ruling circles in the U.S. are aware that time is not on their side, and it makes them crazy -- or crazier than usual.
The ruling class’s own analysts tell them that the center of the world economy is moving inexorably to the East and the South; that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future; and that the U.S. is already number two by some economic measures -- and dropping. The Lords of Capital know there is no future for them in a world where the dollar is not supreme and where Wall Street’s stocks, bonds and derivatives are not backed by the full weight of unchallenged empire. Put another way, U.S. imperialism is at an inflection point, with all the indicators pointing downward and no hope of reversing the trend by peaceful means.
Now, that’s actually not such a bad prognosis for the United States, as a country. The U.S. is a big country, with an abundance of human and natural resources, and would do just fine in a world among equals. But, the fate of the Lords of Capital is tied to the ongoing existence of empire. They create nothing, but seek to monetize and turn a profit on everything. They cannot succeed in trade unless it is rigged, and have placed bets in their casinos that are nominally seven times more valuable than the total economic activity of planet Earth. In short, the Lords of Capital are creatures of U.S. imperial dominance; they go out of business when the empire does.
Beat the Clock
The rulers are looking class death in the face -- and it terrifies them. And when the Lords of Capital become frightened, they order their servants in politics and the war industries and the vast national security networks to take care of the problem, by any means necessary. That means militarily encircling Russia and China; arming and mobilizing tens of thousands of jihadist terrorists in Syria, in an attempt to repeat the regime change in Libya; waging a war of economic sanctions and low-level armed aggression against Iran; occupying most of the African continent through subversion of African militaries; escalating subversion in Latin America; and spying on everyone on earth with a digital connection. All this, to stop the clock that is ticking on U.S. and European world economic dominance.
Left political analysts that I greatly respect argue that Hillary Clinton and the mob she will come in with in January will pull back from apocalyptic confrontation with Russia in Syria -- that they’re not really that crazy. But, I’m not at all convinced. The ruling class isn’t just imagining that their days are numbered; it’s really true. And rulers do get crazy when their class is standing at death’s door.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] . | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / FBI Insider Reveals Agent Revolt Inside the Bureau Made Comey Reopen Clinton Investigation to ‘Save Face’ FBI Insider Reveals Agent Revolt Inside the Bureau Made Comey Reopen Clinton Investigation to ‘Save Face’ Jack Burns October 31, 2016 Leave a comment
Just after the FBI opened a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, the Free Thought Project spoke with a high-level FBI agent (retired). He said if Clinton wasn’t eventually indicted, it was almost certain there would be a data dump ( click for related story ) from within the FBI, from agents who were upset with James Comey’s decision not to recommend Clinton be indicted for mishandling classified information. When Comey, in July, didn’t recommend to Attorney General Loretta Lynch that Clinton be indicted, a data dump of sorts did take place when the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked.
Could it be that the DNC hack was done from within the federal government? After its server’s emails were hacked for the whole world to see, the DNC was exposed for working with mainstream media members to rig the primaries for Clinton against Bernie Sanders, and a concerted effort was made to paint him in a negative light (something that led to the resignation of DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz). But the Democrats responded by declaring the intrusion was the work of Russian hackers — an allegation the Russians deny.
But now, it seems, the effects of not recommending Clinton for indictment are far worse than predicted. On Friday, James Comey conveyed to members of Congress that the once closed investigation of Clinton’s private email server is now open again, just days before Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected as the next U.S. president. The announcement was made after more Clinton emails turned up in an investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting of a 15-year-old girl from NC . Weiner is Huma Abedin’s estranged husband and Abedin is Clinton’s closest confidant.
But according to The Daily Mail, there exists an even greater problem Comey is facing which prompted him to reopen the case; the wholesale resignation of disgruntled FBI agents. One source close to Comey says it’s his last ditch attempt to save face for himself and the reputation of the FBI.
According to the Daily Mail , and a source close to James Comey, the decision, at least in part, came after he “could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI” who “felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.”
Ed Klein, journalist for the Mail, described Comey as being depressed over the mounting stack of resignation letters he’s received as a result of his decision not to recommend charges be brought against Clinton. Klein quoted a close friend of Comey’s as saying, “’The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.”
Klein’s source continued, “’Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’”
The DM journalist continued quoting his informant as saying, “’When new emails that appeared to be related to Hillary’s personal email server turned up in a computer used [her close aide] Huma Abedin and [Abedin’s disgraced husband,] Anthony Weiner, Comey jumped at the excuse to reopen the investigation.’”
But Comey’s problems aren’t isolated to his workplace. He reportedly has problems at home as well. Klein’s source continued, “’The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him…that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state.’”
Comey’s friend told Klein he’s being shunned by many within the FBI and that President Obama and Lynch are “furious” with him for reopening the case against Clinton. According to the DM’s source, “’Lynch and Obama haven’t contacted Jim directly…they’ve made it crystal clear through third parties that they disapprove of his effort to save face.’”
But the reopened investigation may be too little too late. The damage to the FBI’s investigation appears to be done, and no amount of scrambling to save face is likely to fix it. In the mind of many Americans, when former president Bill Clinton met AG Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona, the fix was in for Hillary. Comey proved to be a pawn and has passed himself off as an impotent benefactor of the Clintons. Share Social Trending | 1 |
The Source Of Our Rage The Ruling Elite Is Protected from the Consequences of its Dominance By Charles Hugh Smith
Please read my election note at the end of the essay.
November 10, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Of Two Minds " - There are many sources of rage: injustice, the destruction of truth, powerlessness. But if we had to identify the one key source of non-elite rage that cuts across all age, ethnicity, gender and regional boundaries, it is this: The Ruling Elite is protected from the destructive consequences of its predatory dominance.
We see this reality across the entire political, social and economic landscape.
If I had to pick one chart that illustrates the widening divide between the Ruling Elite and the non-elites, it is this chart of wages as a share of the nations output (GDP): 46 years of relentless decline, interrupted by gushing fountains of credit and asset bubbles that enriched the few while leaving the economic landscape of the many in ruins.
The Ruling Elite once had an obligation to uphold the social contract as a responsibility that came with their vast privilege, power and wealth (i.e. noblesse oblige ).
Americas Ruling Elite has transmogrified into an incestuous self-serving few unapologetically plundering the many. In their hubris-soaked arrogance, their right to rule is unquestioningly based on their moral and intellectual superiority to the little people they loot with abandon.
Rather than feel a responsibility to the nation, Americas Elite views the status quo as a free pass to self-aggrandizement.
Much has changed in America in the past 46 years. Not only have wages and salaries declined as a share of economic growth, but the wealth that has been generated has flowed to the top of the wealth/power pyramid (see chart below).
Social mobility has also declined drastically: Restoring Americas Economic Mobility , as has trust in government and key institutions.
As Frank Buckley, the author of The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America observed:
In a corrupt country, trust is a rare commodity. Thats America today. Only 19 percent of Americans say they trust the government most of the time, down from 73 percent in 1958 according to the Pew Research Center.
The top .01% has seen its share of the household wealth triple from 7% to 22% in the past four decades, while the share of the nations wealth owned by the bottom 90% has plummeted from 36% to 23%.
As I described in Americas Ruling Elite Has Failed and Deserves to Be Fired and Now That the Presidential-Election Side Show Is Finally Ending . , the economy is rapidly undergoing structural changes that tend to reward the top 5% class of technocrats and managers and the top .1% with millions in mobile capital, while leaving the bottom 95% in the dust.
Rather than address this rising inequality directly and honestly, the Ruling Elite has parroted propaganda and policies that protect their gains while obfuscating the reality that most American households have been losing ground for decades, a decline that has been masked by replacing real income with rising debt.
The ceaseless parroting of the Ruling Elite and the Mainstream Media that prosperity has been rising for everyone is nothing less than the destruction of truth. This propaganda has one purpose: to mask the inequality and injustice built into the American status quo.
The rapid concentration of wealth has also concentrated political power in the hands of a few who seamlessly combine public and private modes of power.
This wealth and power protects the Ruling Elite from the perverse consequences of their dominance. Their precious offspring rarely serve at the point of the American militarys spear, they never lose their jobs or income when corporations shift production (and R&D, etc.) overseas, and they are never replaced with illegal immigrants paid under the table.
Rather, the Ruling Elite is pleased to pay immigrants a pittance to care for their children, clean their luxe homes, walk their dogs, etc.
This is why were enraged: we bear the consequences of the Ruling Elites dominance. The system is rigged to benefit the few, who use their wealth and power to protect themselves from the destructive consequences of their self-serving dominance.
This rage is as yet inchoate, sensed but not yet understood as the inevitable result of a broken system and a predatory Elite that exploits the system to maximize their private gain by any means available .
ELECTION NOTE: As I write this Tuesday evening, it appears Donald Trump may win the presidency. For those who cannot understand how anyone could possibly vote for Trump, please read the above essay again and ponder what people were voting against by voting for Trump .
They may well have been voting against the corrupt, self-serving status quo rather than voting for the individual Donald Trump.
There are very few opportunities for powerless non-elites to register their disapproval of the nations Ruling Elite and the corrupt status quo. Voting for an outsider in a national election is one such rare opportunity.
As I noted in October, The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed (October 20, 2016).
If you still dont understand how Trump could win, please read the above essay as many times as is necessary for you to get it: the status quo of corrupt self-serving insiders generates injustice and inequality as its only possible output.
My new book is #8 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the books website . http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html | 1 |
MARTIN R. ANDERSON, 65, squints to appreciate the geometry of paintings at the museum. Kate Davis, 24, says the sunlight that bounces off museum walls and onto the art can’t be reproduced. Stan Kaplan, 65, flies across the country just to see a Leonardo da Vinci drawing “more beautiful” than the Mona Lisa. And an elderly woman posts to Facebook a selfie of herself beside a masterwork, presumably commencing an avalanche of approval. These were observations collected during a summer at New York City’s “newest” museum, the Met Breuer, an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that opened in March in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. There’s not much theatrical about the scenes — unlike, say, the one that featured two teenagers in San Francisco who placed eyeglasses on the floor of an art museum so they could watch tourists gather around their “installation” with fascination. But taken together, they are a gauge — imperfect and impressionistic — of what draws people to museums and what they see when they get there. They are reflections of the times, too, reminders that art is digested in ways it wasn’t. Art rewards internalization, but distractions surround us. Cultural critique is instant, impulsive, and travels virally. We tried to find out what goes on in the mind of the modern museumgoer, unscientifically, by staking out the Met Breuer and interviewing nearly 50 art gazers over the course of two months, their pensive moments pierced by our questions as they peered at works. The setting was the Breuer’s big inaugural exhibition “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” as provocative a springboard for opinions as any. It focuses on the notion of “unfinished” art and does so broadly, displaying works that were never finished, works that are intentionally incomplete (non finito) and art that prompts conceptual discussion about what is complete, like a Jackson Pollock drip painting. The exhibition — which ends its run next weekend — spans the 1400s to today and features artists as varied as Titian, Andy Warhol and a teenage Pablo Picasso. As for those interviewed, they included students who said museums were like “eating your vegetables” and romantics who cherish their lunch breaks, when they can hop in a cab to go steal a few quiet minutes in front of a beloved painting they have already gazed at dozens of times before. A handful of works in particular generated the most comment (a deathbed portrait of an artist’s mistress, a painting of someone being skinned alive) and common themes emerged over time (the ubiquity of technology, people’s short attention spans). Here’s what museumgoers said. The artwork: “James Hunter Black Draftee” (1965) by Alice Neel Mr. Anderson’s take: “He probably did get killed because his family would have heard about this painting and said something by now. ” Another perspective: “When I saw this image in the advertisements, I saw it as contemporary, like an album cover. ” — Steve Wolkwitz, 25, a student The artwork: “ With Wig” ( ) by Pablo Picasso Ms. Kops’ take: “He was probably drunk. ” Another perspective: “I didn’t know it was a Picasso. And then like, whoa. It’s a Picasso. ” — Normandie Syken, 20, an illustrator The artwork: “Untitled (Green Paintings)” (circa 1986) by Cy Twombly Mr. Meyerhofer’s take: “I want to hate it, but it’s so good. ” “It’s awful algae green. But you can’t deny it. It grabs you. But part of me thinks it is so crude. ” The artwork: “The Flaying of Marsyas” (probably 1570s) by Titian Mr. Meyerhofer’s take: “It’s so violent and awful. My husband would say, ‘I wouldn’t want this on the wall of my living room.’ This must have been the equivalent of a horror movie back in the day. ” Another perspective: “You’re imagining what is he going to do with that knife. The bucket: Is it enough to hold? And his eyes — he can see the pain coming. ” — Stan Kaplan, 65, Los Angeles The artwork: “The Vision of Saint John” ( ) by El Greco Ms. Campbell’s take: “It could have been a blue sky, but maybe it was going to be dark and stormy. ” Another perspective: “It’s so modern. And what’s with these crazy babies floating around?” — William Meyerhofer The artwork: “Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata)” ( ) by Leonardo da Vinci Mr. Miozzo’s take: “This is unfinished, but you can see the psychology of a character. It forces you to think what is in the mind of this young woman. It makes me think, Who was she? What was she thinking?” Another perspective: “I think about how much more beautiful she is than the Mona Lisa. ” — Stan Kaplan Another perspective: “You need to see this one with your own eyes. No reproduction I’ve seen comes close to this. ” — Martin R. Anderson The artwork: “You or Me” (2005) by Maria Lassnig Ms. Choi’s take: “It made me think about women in Korea, where I read that the suicide rate is [very high]. For some reason, I thought about that. ” Another perspective: “This is brave. She’s old. She’s overweight. Think about how courageous this is. ” — Michele Miozzo The artwork: “Cart Full of Action” (1986) by Cady Noland Ms. Davis’ take: “I don’t like this. I think the question is not even if it is finished but is this even art? I could see this in a parking lot. ” Another perspective: “This is what the artist is putting into the world. Nothing is a waste of space. ” — Tony White, 29, Louisville The artwork: “Gardanne” ( ) by Paul Cézanne Michelle Oliveira’s take: “The curious thing to me is why are these unfinished. What better thing did Picasso or Cézanne feel they needed to go and do? Grab a coffee? Go kiss a girl?” Nilza Oliveira’s take: “An artist is never finished so their art is never finished. When you finish it, you kill it. Leaving it unfinished, you keep it alive. ” The artwork: “Bouquet of Peonies in a Green Jar” (1898) by Paul Cézanne Mr. Scotch’s take: “Those empty spaces could be light. If you put more there, it’s almost too much information. Like this it is allowed to breathe. ” Another perspective: “There are only a few strokes here. But I can tell the petals feel velvet. ” — Michele Miozzo The artwork: “Valentine on her Deathbed” by Ferdinand Hodler Mr. Breed’s take: “It’s not begging to be finished. ” Other perspectives: “I’ve seen a bunch of deathbed paintings. I didn’t realize it was a woman until I saw the feet. ” — Jeremy Cole, 24, designer, Toronto “There was something about coming out as a gay man in the ’80s and seeing so many of my friends dying that reminds me of this. ” — William Meyerhofer | 1 |
Posted on October 29, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn
Earlier this week, on October 24, 2016, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford sent a fascinating piece of communication, titled “ Upholding Our Oath ,” to every member of the U.S. Armed Services.
Note: General Joseph Dunford Jr. , 60, was the 36th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Nominated by Obama, Dunford became the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1, 2015.
This is what Gen. Dunford wrote :
“As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…as our country again prepares for a peaceful transfer of power to a new administration, I write to share my views regarding our mutual obligations as military professionals and rights as citizens during this election season.
Every service member swears “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” This oath is embedded in our professional culture and underpins the values that shape and define our all-volunteer force. Beginning with General George Washington resigning his military commission, our deliberate and disciplined commitment to upholding the principle of civilian control of the military underpins not only our warrior ethos but also the expectations of how we conduct ourselves while in uniform.
While we must always safeguard our professional integrity, extra vigilance is required during any political transition. Our individual and collective obligation during this election season is twofold. First, we must recognize that we have one Commander in Chief, and until authority is transferred on January 20, 2017, the Joint Force must remain clearly focused on and responsive to the existing National Command Authority. Second, the Joint Force must conduct itself in such a way that the new administration has confidence that it will be served by a professional, competent, and apolitical military. This is especially important in the context of delivering the best military advice.
Every member of the Joint Force has the right to exercise his or her civic duty, including learning and discussing — even debating — the policy issues driving the election cycle and voting for his or her candidate of choice. Provided that we follow the guidance and regulations governing individual political participation, we should be proud of our civic engagement. What we must collectively guard against is allowing our institution to become politicized , or even perceived as being politicized, by how we conduct ourselves during engagements with the media, the public, or in open or social forums.
We are living in the most volatile and complex security environment since World War II. Whether confronting violent extremist organizations seeking to destroy our way of life or dealing with state actors threatening international order, threats to our national security require a Joint Force that is ready, capable, and trusted. To that end, I have a duty to protect the integrity and political neutrality of our military profession. But this obligation is not mine alone. It belongs to every Soldier, Marine, Sailor, Airman, and Coastguardsman. Thank you for joining me in honoring our history, our traditions, and the institutions of the U.S. Armed Forces by upholding the principle of political neutrality .”
Even without reading between the lines, General Dunford clearly has concerns about politicization of the military and its obligation and commitment to political neutrality and noninterference in politics. That the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must remind members of the Armed Forces that they must “uphold” their oath both suggests and implies that the opposite is going on, i.e., the military is politicized and there are fears that it will intervene in civilian politics.
If this pic (below) of a young U.S. Marine is any indication, Gen. Dunford has good reasons to issue the “Upholding Our Oath” communication.
A year ago, a Rasmussen Reports national survey of active and retired military personnel found that only 15% had a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, with just 3% who viewed her very favorably. A staggering 81% had an unfavorable opinion of her , including 69% who had a very unfavorable view of her.
A similar survey today is sure to find even higher unfavorable ratings for Hillary among those whom she would command as their Commander in Chief.
H/t GiGi and TruthFeedNews | 1 |
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