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On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. r Dianne Feinstein ( ) said President Donald Trump was “splitting” the country apart with what she called “a blizzard of executive orders and memorandums. ” Feinstein said, ” we listen for months while republicans said that Obama was issuing too many executive orders and exceeding his authority on executive orders. So, you know, what is soft is goose for the gander. There is great concern. There has been a blizzard of executive orders and memorandums, some vague, some specific, some probably unlawful. And you have people in the streets here. ” “This president has not brought the nation together as he says he is working for his base,” she continued. “Well, there are a majority of people that are outside of that base. And I think my best advice has been, and I was able to say this to him directly, please, Mr. President, you have to bring this country together. What he is doing is splitting it apart more and more and more. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Many of the things we do on a daily basis may seem harmless. But a lot of these things are probably adding to your health problems and, in conclusion, may perhaps be causing you to gain weight. Let’s... | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The C. I. A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say. The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C. I. A. and counterparts at the F. B. I. where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews. The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C. I. A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break. It is unclear what new intelligence might have prompted the classified briefings. But with concerns growing both internally and publicly at the time about a significant Russian breach of the Democratic National Committee, the C. I. A. began seeing signs of possible connections to the Trump campaign, the officials said. By the campaign’s final weeks, Congress and the intelligence agencies were racing to understand the scope of the Russia threat. In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Brennan indicated that Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing. The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F. B. I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim, focusing on possible communications and financial dealings between Russian affiliates and a handful of former advisers to Mr. Trump. So far, no proof of collusion has emerged publicly. Mr. Trump has rejected any suggestion of a Russian connection as “ridiculous” and “fake news. ” The White House has also sought to redirect the focus from the investigation and toward what Mr. Trump has said, with no evidence, was President Barack Obama’s wiretapping of phones in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. The C. I. A. and the F. B. I. declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Brennan and senior lawmakers who were part of the summer briefings. In the August briefing for Mr. Reid, the two former officials said, Mr. Brennan indicated that the C. I. A. focused on foreign intelligence, was limited in its legal ability to investigate possible connections to Mr. Trump. The officials said Mr. Brennan told Mr. Reid that the F. B. I. in charge of domestic intelligence, would have to lead the way. Days later, Mr. Reid wrote to James B. Comey, director of the F. B. I. Without mentioning the C. I. A. briefing, Mr. Reid told Mr. Comey that he had “recently become concerned” that Russia’s interference was “more extensive than widely known. ” In his letter, the senator cited what he called mounting evidence “of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign” and said it was crucial for the F. B. I. to “use every resource available” to investigate. Unknown to Mr. Reid, the F. B. I. had already opened a counterintelligence inquiry a month before, in late July, to examine possible links between Russia and people tied to the Trump campaign. But its existence was kept secret even from members of Congress. Well into the fall, law enforcement officials said that the F. B. I. — including the bureau’s intelligence analysts — had not found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government, as The New York Times reported on Oct. 31. But as the election approached and new batches of hacked Democratic emails poured out, some F. B. I. officials began to change their view about Russia’s intentions and eventually came to believe, as the C. I. A. had months earlier, that Moscow was trying to help get Mr. Trump elected, officials said. It was not until early December, a month after the election, that it became publicly known in news reports that the C. I. A. had concluded that Moscow’s motivation was to get Mr. Trump elected. In January, intelligence officials publicly released a declassified version of their findings, concluding that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had “aspired to help” Mr. Trump to win the election and harm Hillary Clinton, a longtime adversary. By then, both the F. B. I. and the C. I. A. said they had “high confidence” that Russia was trying to help Mr. Trump by hacking into the internal emails of the Democratic National Committee and of some Clinton aides. (The National Security Agency expressed only “moderate confidence” that the Russians were trying to help him.) Last month, Mr. Comey publicly acknowledged the continuing investigation for the first time at a House hearing on Russia’s influence on the election and said the F. B. I. was examining possible links between Trump associates and Russia for evidence of collusion. One factor in the C. I. A. analysis last summer was that American intelligence agencies learned that Russia’s cyberattacks had breached Republican targets as well as Democrats. But virtually none of the hacked Republican material came out publicly, while the Russians, working through WikiLeaks and other public outlets, dumped substantial amounts of Democratic material damaging to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Some intelligence officials were wary of pushing too aggressively before the election with questions about possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign because of concerns it might be seen as an improper political attempt to help Mrs. Clinton. But after her loss, a number of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters have said that Mr. Comey and other government officials should have revealed more to the public during the campaign season about what they knew of Russia’s motivations and possible connections to the Trump campaign. The classified briefings that the C. I. A. held in August and September for the Gang of Eight — the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate and of the intelligence committees in each chamber — show deep concerns about the impact of the election meddling. In the briefings, the C. I. A. said there was intelligence indicating not only that the Russians were trying to get Mr. Trump elected but that they had gained computer access to multiple state and local election boards in the United States since 2014, officials said. Although the breached systems were not involved in actual operations, Obama administration officials proposed that the eight senior lawmakers write a letter to state election officials warning them of the possible threat posed by Russian hacking, officials said. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, resisted, questioning the underpinnings of the intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. McConnell ultimately agreed to a softer version of the letter, which did not mention the Russians but warned of unnamed “malefactors” who might seek to disrupt the elections through online intrusion. The letter, dated Sept. 28, was signed by Mr. McConnell, Mr. Reid, Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the ranking Democrat. On Sept. 22, two other members of the Gang of Eight — Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam B. Schiff, both of California and the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees — released their own statement about the Russian interference that did not mention Mr. Trump or his campaign by name. But they did say that “based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U. S. election. ” “At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election,” they added. The F. B. I. the N. S. A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also held a classified briefing on Sept. 6 for congressional staff members about the wave of Russian hacks and “the current and ongoing threat facing U. S. political organizations during this national political season,” according to a government official. These new details show Congress and the intelligence agencies racing in the campaign’s final weeks to understand the scope of the Russian threat. But Democrats and Republicans who were privy to the classified briefings often saw the intelligence through a political prism, sparring over whether it could be construed as showing that the Russians were helping Mr. Trump. The briefings left Mr. Reid frustrated with the F. B. I. ’s handling of Russia’s election intrusion, especially after the agency said in late October — 11 days before the election — that it was Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Mr. Reid fired off another letter on Oct. 30, accusing Mr. Comey of a “double standard” in reviving the Clinton investigation while sitting on “explosive information” about possible ties between Russia and Mr. Trump. “The public,” Mr. Reid wrote, “has a right to know this information. ” | 1 |
Harvard Cancels Men’s Soccer Season After Finding Sexually Explicit ‘Reports’ Continued Through 2016 Andrew M. Duehren et al., Harvard Crimson, November 3, 2016
Harvard has cancelled the men’s soccer team’s season after an Office of General Counsel review found that the team continued to produce vulgar and explicit documents rating women on their perceived sexual appeal and physical appearance.
Athletics Director Robert L. Scalise wrote in an email to Harvard student athletes that he decided to cancel the rest of the team’s season because the “practice appears to be more widespread across the team and has continued beyond 2012, including in 2016.”
“As a direct result of what Harvard Athletics has learned, we have decided to cancel the remainder of the 2016 men’s soccer season,” Scalise wrote. “The team will forfeit its remaining games and will decline any opportunity to achieve an Ivy League championship or to participate in the NCAA Tournament this year.”
Last week, The Crimson reported that the 2012 men’s soccer team created a “scouting report” of that year’s women’s soccer recruits, rating them numerically and assigning each a hypothetical sexual position. University President Drew G. Faust instructed OGC, Harvard’s team of lawyers, to “review” the matter.
{snip}
“The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and reflects Harvard’s view that both the team’s behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community,” Faust wrote in a statement.
Faust wrote she “was deeply distressed to learn that the appalling actions of the 2012 men’s soccer team were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals.”
{snip}
Last week, when Scalise first saw the documents—which were, until recently, publicly accessible through the 2012 team’s Google Group—he said he would immediately reach out to coaches of both men’s and women’s teams to discuss the report, but added that any response should be internal to Harvard and “not a media thing.”
{snip}
Men’s soccer coach Pieter S. Lehrer wrote in a statement that the team is “beyond disappointed that our season has ended in this way, but we respect the decision made by our administration.”
{snip} | 0 |
Man searching for unbiased review of ADHM and Shivaay on internet ends up exhausting data pack trendinfo.com)
Nikhil Gupta, a resident of Delhi, used up his internet pack on Sunday while searching for an honest review of the movies Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay.
Being a movie aficionado, Mr. Gupta was looking forward to the release of the movies and was following Social Media trends and news about them for the past few weeks, and in the process learned that it’s actually possible to judge the content of a movie without watching it.
He soon realized the universe was divided into two distinct groups, one that loves ADHM and hates Shivaay and the other that loves Shivaay and hates ADHM. The following tweet from Mr. Nikhil Wagle compounded his confusion further: Don’t like @karanjohar films. But will watch #AeDilHaiMushkil to oppose hyper nationalism n hooliganism.l
— nikhil wagle (@waglenikhil) October 21, 2016
The aforementioned statement spoke volumes about his commitment to the, um, cause he was supporting but did not shed much light on Mr. Johar’s filmmaking abilities. He realized he needed to wait for the movie release and read the reviews to decide which one to watch first.
On Sunday morning, he recharged his internet data pack for a GB and looked up movie reviews on Google. He first opened NDTV’s website where the reviewer Saibal Chatterjee gave Shivaay a 2 star rating, which was consistent with his usual ratings that range from 1.5 to 2.5. However, he was surprised to see a 4 star rating for ADHM.
‘How did this miracle happen? Does he have all the keys on his numeric keypad now or has someone at NDTV told him the rating should be done on a 5 point scale?’ Mr. Gupta pondered.
He placed ADHM higher on his priority list, although IMDb ratings of ADHM and Shivaay were 5.4 and 7.6 respectively. When he was about to close the browser, he noticed two contrasting reviews of ADHM on Indian Express. He quickly went through them and was relieved to see the reviews were done by two different individuals and it was not a case of split personality disorder.
By the time he read the final review on the 10th page of Google, he started to lose faith in humanity, and hence decided to read audience reactions instead, only to find comments, such as ‘boycott ADHM’ and ‘I love Anushka Sharma.’ He read thousands of comments, which significantly improved his reading skills but did not help him arrive at a conclusion. While going through the comments, he received a notification from his internet service provider that he had zero balance left on his data pack.
‘Damn, I could’ve watched both the movies online with 1 GB.’
He had no choice but to watch the movies and find out himself. He went to the nearest theater and watched both the movies back to back. Later when he came back home, he wrote his own review titled – “Boycott Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay.’ | 0 |
Amy Schumer has reportedly exited Sony’s Barbie film due to scheduling conflicts[According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Trainwreck star will no longer play the title role in Sony’s upcoming film based on the popular Mattel doll and will no longer write the screenplay. “Sadly, I’m no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts,” Schumer said in a statement. “The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen. ” Schumer had signed on to the project in December, with Deadline reporting that Sony chief Tom Rothman personally pitched the script to the actress. Schumer had reportedly completed a rewrite of the script before her exit. “We respect and support Amy’s decision,” a Sony spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing Barbie to the world and sharing updates on casting and filmmakers soon. ” Sony is hoping to release Barbie on June 29, 2018, though the film does not currently have a director. The Hollywood Reporter also reported Thursday that Schumer had signed on to star in the dramedy She Came to Me alongside Steve Carell and Nicole Kidman from Rebecca Miller and OddLot Entertainment. The actress — perhaps best known for her Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer — is set to appear next in Snatched, a comedy Goldie Hawn due out for release May 12. Schumer made headlines this week when she took to Instagram to accuse Internet trolls of deliberately tanking the ratings of her Netflix comedy show, The Leather Special. The special was flooded with reviews shortly after its release. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum, | 1 |
Friday on ABC’s “The View,” Joy Behar said President Donald Trump wanted budget cuts to the Department of Education because he seeks to make us “as dumb as he is. ” Behar said, “Hello, and welcome to ‘The View.’ I’d like to wish a happy St. Patrick’s Day today to all of our Irish friends out there. And it is an honor of some of the first immigrants to come to this country, the Irish. They often on this day celebrate what they say the luck of the Irish. Of course, if you’re elderly, sick or poor, your luck as just run out. ” She continued, “I can’t help it. It’s so horrific and so horrendous. Just when you thought it was safe to stop talking about Trump, he unleashes his budget on us. He wants to cut clean water. He wants to stop helping old people and public education so we can all be as dumb as he is!” ( Daily Caller) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
CHICAGO — If the metal barricades, “Do Not Enter” signs and lurking Secret Service agents were a bother the past eight years in the Hyde area — the South Side neighborhood where President Obama still owns a house, but rarely has been home — residents are not complaining. “All that’s been fine, really. You get used to it,” said Adela Cepeda, who like many people on Mr. Obama’s block of Greenwood Avenue met him before he was president, or a senator, or elected to anything at all. “To me, it’s just too bad his time will be over. This has been fabulous for Chicago in a certain way. I think that all things being equal, we came first. But I guess all good things must end. ” As Mr. Obama prepared to give his farewell address on Tuesday from McCormick Place, the cavernous convention center beside Lake Michigan, people in his hometown sounded by turns possessive, proud, anxious and wistful. With his election in 2008, this city — and its heavily South Side in particular — had suddenly been thrust to the forefront of the national political conversation. And so early Saturday, in temperatures barely above zero, thousands waited outside for the chance to receive free tickets to witness the end of that story. By Sunday, tickets were being hawked online for as much as $5, 000. Near the Obamas’ red brick Georgian, not far from the University of Chicago, some wondered gloomily whether his legacy might now be erased by his successor, Donald J. Trump, who received just 12 percent of the vote in Chicago and only slivers in the wards near Mr. Obama’s house. Would Chicago’s spin in the spotlight, complicated as it had been at times, be over now, too? “I guess I feel sad,” said Antonio Coye, a barber at the Hyde Park Hair Salon, where the plain black chair Mr. Obama used to sit in for his trims is now preserved under glass. Not long ago, a crew of bicyclists peered at the chair from the foyer of the small shop, where a line of men forms on Saturdays and “the Obama cut,” a taper on the side and the back for $24, remains popular. “This was really something unique that happened,” Mr. Coye said as he worked on a customer with a razor over the weekend. “It was the first time somebody really different became president, and he did a really good job. To me, the person in office after him is going to make his time in office stand out even more than it did already. ” tour buses, once an oddity, cruise down Hyde Park Boulevard with some frequency now. People can occasionally be seen pulling over with cameras outside a nondescript shopping center along 53rd Street, where an plaque notes the Obamas’ first date, during which Barack Obama bought Michelle Robinson ice cream from a shop that has since become a Subway. For a place that has not forgotten being called the Second City by a New Yorker writer long ago, Chicago had watched its standing, in the eyes of the coasts, rise along with Mr. Obama’s. Chicagoans were entrusted with important posts in Washington, and many of them, along with the first family, had roots on the South Side, rather than on the richer and whiter North Side. At points during the term, Chicago voices seemed to be everywhere. Both Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, who is now back in Hyde Park at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, were senior advisers. Chicago cabinet members included Arne Duncan (education) and Penny Pritzker (commerce). Austan Goolsbee, another Hyde Parker, was an economic adviser, and Desirée Rogers was an early White House social secretary. And Mr. Obama’s chiefs of staff included William M. Daley, the brother of Chicago’s former mayor, and Rahm Emanuel, who was later elected mayor. But it is not just the shutting of that pipeline that causes concern. In Mr. Obama’s old neighborhood, the notion that Mr. Trump was soon to step in left some speaking of the president’s farewell speech in terms more akin to a funeral than a celebration. Many recalled watching an ebullient evening here in 2012, when President Obama appeared at McCormick Place — a bookend, it now seems, to Tuesday night. Others recounted how they had felt as they watched his 2008 victory from Grant Park, the city’s downtown front yard along the lake, where he addressed thousands with the gleaming Chicago skyline as a backdrop. “It was a magical moment — such a positive buzz all around,” said Kevin Elliott, a manager at 57th Street Books, an underground maze where Mr. Obama had held book signings and often visited before his election. Even here, though, a few have questioned whether Mr. Obama did as much as he could during his time in office to solve urban problems of gang violence, joblessness and segregation. In Chicago, violence cascaded last year: More people, 762, were murdered in the president’s hometown in 2016 than in New York and Los Angeles combined. Some complained that Mr. Obama had not interceded forcefully enough. “He was a community organizer here himself, and he should be embarrassed that he came in as president and the problems have actually worsened,” said Ja’Mal Green, a local activist. But others, like Mr. Coye, the barber, noted that Mr. Obama was president of the United States, not of the South Side: “Who knows what happens now, but you can’t have expected him to solve this city’s violence. ” The Obamas intend to stay in Washington while their younger daughter finishes high school, but many residents here believe that they might never return to the house on Greenwood Avenue. He is building his presidential library in Chicago, many say, and that is just fine. “No, he’s not coming back, and he shouldn’t, either — he couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized,” said Stephanie Crouse, 53, a school bus driver eating her lunch from a tray at Valois, a Hyde Park cafeteria Mr. Obama once frequented. “This is like your kids,” she added. “He’s done his thing. He did what he could. And you’re sending him off now to graduate and move up and go off to better things. ” | 1 |
A Tennessee woman who is accused of trying to abort her fetus at 24 weeks with a coat hanger last year is facing new felony charges, in a case that has raised concerns among some advocates over strict abortion laws. The case concerning the woman, Anna Yocca, 32, has wound its way through the courts in Rutherford County for nearly a year, seesawing between multiple charges in three indictments as she has continued to sit in a central Tennessee jail. On Monday, Ms. Yocca was arraigned on new charges: aggravated assault, an attempt to procure a miscarriage and an attempted criminal abortion. She entered a plea of not guilty, The Daily News Journal reported. Ms. Yocca’s public defender, Gerald Melton, did not respond to multiple requests for comment by email or telephone. Hugh Ammerman, the Rutherford County assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, could not be reached early on Tuesday. Ms. Yocca was first charged on Dec. 8, 2015, with the attempted murder of her fetus in September 2015. She was booked into the Rutherford County jail, where she has remained, with bond set at $200, 000. She is expected to return to court on Dec. 9, The Journal reported. The case has pitted advocates against defenders of the state’s laws, which are among the strictest in the country. The authorities have said that Ms. Yocca climbed into a bathtub in September 2015 and tried to “ ” her pregnancy, which caused her to bleed so profusely that she was taken to a hospital, The Murfreesboro Post reported, quoting a police report. The baby, a boy, was delivered alive by cesarean section at the hospital, weighing 1. 5 pounds, but he had injuries, The Murfreesboro Post reported. The police report, quoting unidentified physicians, blamed Ms. Yocca’s probing with the hanger, but it offered no medical evidence for what the indictment called bodily injury, and similar health problems are often associated with extreme prematurity. When contacted for a copy of the report, Sergeant Kyle Evans, a spokesman for the Murfreesboro Police Department, referred calls to the district attorney’s office. The case has drawn attention to strict abortion laws, and in some cases the criminalization of the procedure, as Donald J. Trump prepares to take office. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to roll back the abortion rights guaranteed by the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, and he suggested “punishment” for abortion providers and their patients. In his first television interview after he won the presidency, he repeated his desire to see Roe v. Wade overturned and said, of women seeking abortions, “Well, they’ll perhaps have to go — they’ll have to go to another state. ” “I think that this is a very shocking case and one that is incredibly tragic,” said Allison Glass, the director of Healthy and Free Tennessee, which promotes sexual health. “This is not a common case for Tennessee, but with the threat of Roe being overturned,” she added, “that is absolutely where we are headed. ” Tennessee Right to Life representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The baby was initially placed in foster care. Last week Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, said by telephone that the child was “safe” but no longer in state custody. Citing confidentiality, he declined to answer further questions. The law in Tennessee permits abortions after 24 weeks — about the limit for fetal viability outside the womb, doctors say — if the woman’s life or health is at risk. It also requires women to receive counseling and wait 48 hours before the procedure, which necessitates multiple trips to a clinic. Ms. Glass said that only four out of 95 counties in Tennessee had abortion clinics, and that Rutherford County was not one of them. Lynn M. Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which is helping with Ms. Yocca’s defense, said the case was one of several instances showing what can happen when prosecutors apply criminal law to women’s pregnancies. Last year, an Indiana woman, Purvi Patel, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after she was convicted of feticide for taking pills to terminate her pregnancy, and then delivering a baby who, the jury found, died from neglect. The conviction was vacated on appeal. In some states pregnant women have been charged with attempted feticide for falling down stairs for not wearing a seatbelt and for trying to commit suicide while pregnant, Ms. Paltrow said. In Ms. Yocca’s case, Ms. Paltrow said, “It is absolutely not clear to us that her intention was to have an abortion, as opposed to having an early birth at home, or some other reason. ” “This is the problem around the criminal justice system being involved in pregnancy outcomes,” she added. “In a country where more and more things have been criminalized, there is a virtually limitless number of crimes that prosecutors can chose from if we allow pregnancy to become the subject of criminal justice and court systems. ” | 1 |
Hannity, Judge Jeanine, Crowley “Hillary has Sold America’s National Security. WORSE than a CRIME FAMILY” Hannity, Judge Jeanine, Crowley “Hillary has Sold America’s National Security. WORSE than a CRIME FAMILY” Videos By TruthFeedNews November 6, 2016
Sean Hannity quotes his own and other sources on the FBI’s investigation into Clinton wrongdoing, noting that the law enforcement probe will continue regardless of who wins next Tuesday. After reading an update on the current state of the Clinton investigation he turns the floor over to Judge Jeanine Pirro who says, “It’s time for a grand jury.”
She says, “It’s time for Loretta Lynch to allow Comey and the FBI to get this evidence before a grand jury. There is a mutiny in the FBI, that’s why all of this stuff is coming out. There are four offices that continue to investigate although Justice has tried to shut this down, saying there’s not enough evidence, this recording from this other person who apparently is an informant is hearsay.”
Judge Jeanine adds, “This woman should have been indicted a year ago. A simpleton could figure out that she would make a deal with a particular country, the money goes into the foundation, Bill makes a speech and then they get the benefit. This is classic RICO corruption; go to jail.”
Hannity asks Monica Crowley, “What is Loretta Lynch hiding here, what is she resisting when it’s clearly an avalanche of evidence?” Crowley says she sees it as the revenge of the FBI rank and file “and the timing is not a coincidence.” She notes that in this country, “If you do not have an independent, impartial and fair Department of Justice and FBI which are only interested in enforcing the rule of law and finding the truth then you have nothing. Obviously that is not what we have with much of the DOJ and with senior FBI leadership.
She describes the email investigation as the shiny object, while it is very important, the real mother lode of corruption is the Clinton Foundation. Crowley insists that the bigger point that the American people need to bear in mind before going to vote on Tuesday is that Clinton leveraged her public office in order to enrich herself, her husband and their foundation.
As the conversation shifts to the fact that Clinton is a target for extortion and blackmail due to her emails being hacked by five different foreign governments, Judge Jeanine declares, “She has sold America’s national security for money. These people are grifters, they’ve been grifters since they came on the scene. And she knew that when she set up that server that it wasn’t secure. She did it for money, she did it to enrich themselves, she didn’t care about our security and Huma Abedin, I don’t know who she and Weiner are connecting with, but these are people who do not have our interests at heart.”
Crowley says Clinton should have her security clearance revoked tonight. She believes this will be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back in the Clinton parasitic relationship with the United States. Crowley knew Richard Nixon well. This is so much worse, she says, reminding the audience that nobody was killed in Watergate and “nobody made one red cent.”
H/T – RickWells
For once in our lifetime, we the people have an opportunity to elect a President who was NOT chosen by Multinational Corporations, Big Banks, DC Elites, and the Globalist Lapdog Mainstream Media.
Please like and share if you are a TRUMP VOTER! | 0 |
The New Yorker published an article titled “Milo Yiannopoulous’s cynical book deal” about Breitbart Senior Editor MILO’s forthcoming book, DANGEROUS. [The New Yorker article, written by Alexandra Schwartz, claims MILO is known for “leading a racist online harassment campaign against the comedian Leslie Jones. ” Jones, however, had already been engaging with Twitter trolls for hours before ever interacting with MILO. “If at first you don’t succeed (because you’re work is terrible) play the victim. Everyone gets hate mail FFS,” he said. This lead to Jones blocking MILO and subsequently calling one of his followers a “racist b*tch. ” MILO then joked — to his followers, not to Jones — that he had been “rejected by yet another black dude. ” His final tweet on the subject included screenshots (later found to be doctored by trolls) alleging Jones had engaged in racist abuse. Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari wrote on the issue, “In other words, MILO has been permanently banned for little more than criticism, mild insults, and mockery. Meanwhile, [Breitbart’s] Jerome Hudson’s abuser, who repeatedly called the black reporter a ‘coon,‘ is still on the platform. ” The New Yorker article further blames MILO for the hacking and leaking of Leslie Jones’ nude photos, a claim Marc Randazza, a Las first amendment lawyer, refutes entirely. “If this was somebody who was a fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, unless he directed it, he has no liability at all,” Randazza stated. “If he just created a culture of it — as he has been accused in the past — that’s legally nothing. ” | 1 |
It’s easier and even more fun than it seems.
By Brianna Acuesta
While most people know and talk about honeybees , which live in a self-made hive together, few people seem to be concerned about the species of bees that are actually native to North America and easier to help out. There are many other species, such as the mason bees and leafcutter bees, that are critical to pollination and are suffering from habitat loss.
Since these bees are solitary creatures, their presence wouldn’t be overwhelming and these hotels can be created in your backyard without posing a risk of attracting hundreds at a time. The native bees require a lot less to be comfortable, as Becky Griffin, community and school garden coordinator at the Center for Urban Agriculture and University of Georgia Extension for the Northwest District of Georgia, said,
“Native bees nest in hollow logs, dead trees and in the ground, and when the forest is clean cut, the native bees have fewer and fewer places to nest.”
As spaces to build their homes dwindle, so does the population of bees needed to keep the continent’s plants pollinated and healthy. By building a nesting site, you can contribute to the health of the population, and, according to Griffin, it’s very rewarding as well.
“Once you start noticing native bees, attracting them and learning about them, you’ll just want to sit on your bench in your garden and watch them work,” enthused Griffin. “They are amazing creatures!”
Below is a guide to building the hotel , with advice from Griffin and answers to frequently asked questions. Basic Hotel Design
The essential part of building the hotel is to have the right design down. You can decorate it any way you want, but there are a few guidelines to keep in mind. Some people use just one 4×4 block of wood with wholes drilled into it and mount it on a high enough post, while others use bamboo pieces with closed off ends of the tube. Others, as you’ll see below, have put together much bigger structures that aren’t necessary for your first hotel but definitely much appreciated by the bees. Here are the basic rules to follow: Use only untreated wood. Make sure the house has a roof to keep rain and other weather elements out of the holes. The house should be a minimum of three feet off the ground. To attract as many species of bees as possible, drill holes of varying sizes. Be sure not to drill all the way through the block as the holes must have a stopping point. Drill bits ranging from 2 mm to 10 mm in diameter are ideal. Beginners who might want to keep things really simple and who might have a limited amount of tools could simply use a 5/16 drill bit for all the holes in their first hotel. For a first hotel, 12-18 holes would be ideal. There are no hard-and-fast rules on how deep the holes should be — with the caveat that if you use a large piece of wood or create a “grand” framed hotel and the holes are too long, the bee may not enter it. Keeping entry holes no deeper than the length of a standard drill bit is a good rule of thumb. Remove splinters from the holes. When you drill the holes, take a piece of sandpaper and smooth out the holes. Small splinters may not seem like much to you, but rough edges in the entry holes could be a big deal and even fatal to a native bee, some of which are very tiny. Rough edges can even deter bees from using the hole. Whatever style of wood you’re using for your bee hotel will need to be replaced every two years or so because the bees want new tunnels in which they can lay their eggs. Resist the urge to paint the hotel. Natural wood is more attractive to the bees. You can have multiple bee hotels. Just be sure to space them out in your yard and garden so they aren’t clustered together. Frequently Asked Questions What kind of bees will visit the hotel?
Solitary bees, most commonly mason bees, will visit the hotel because they enjoy making their nests in hollow reeds or holes in wood. Different types of bees will use different materials to close up their holes once they have laid eggs, and they typically leave soon afterwards because they don’t rely on a social structure to rear their young. Fortunately, solitary bees are unlikely to ever sting you unless you accidentally step on one and get the stinger caught in your foot.
No honeybees will be visiting, as they live in hives with a complex social structure in a bee-made home. No honey will be produced in the hotel, and huge clusters of bees won’t be invading the area. Can I build it?
Considering the ease with which most people can use a hammer, nails, and drill, the answer is typically “Yes, you can build it.” If you want to make it easier on yourself when you’re starting out, you can use bamboo for the holes. When and where the place the hotel:
Since native bees nest in the spring, the bee hotel should be up and ready in February. If you live in a harsher region, you can wait until you’re able to dig a post hole into the ground when spring rolls around.
The bees prefer sunny locations, with the holes faced towards the sun and away from high traffic areas. The sun keeps the developing bees warm and it’s dangerous for bees to cross sidewalks or garden paths once they emerge. What to watch for:
Keep an eye out for the arrival of the bees, as females will flock to the hotel in the spring or early summer and enter the holes. You can watch them put their nest together and tell what kind of bee it is based on the materials they use. Mason bees use mud to seal their holes and leafcutter bees use leaves.
Though it will all happen behind closed doors (or closed mud/leaves, more accurately), the eggs the females have laid will hatch and eat the food that the female has left behind. They will then spin a cocoon and the fully-formed bee will emerge and chew its way through the mud or leaves to enter the real world. This takes about a year, so you’ll see them emerge the next spring. If there is no pollen or nectar plants nearby, they will likely move away to an area rich with the food they need. If you want to keep the bees in your yard, you can work with extension agents in your area to plant the right things to encourage bees to stay.
By checking with your local garden center, you can also find plants that are native to your area and likely to thrive and attract bees. Keep track of the types of bees you see in your garden to find patterns in their movements and preferences. How to measure success:
If you see sealed holes in your bee hotel, you know you’ve been successful. If you notice that holes of a particular size are used most often, you can add more holes of that size to future bee hotels or even renovate your current one. If you have the right nectar or pollen in your garden, you’ll see bees flock to them.
If you notice that during the summer one year after the holes were sealed that they are still sealed, then you have a problem that needs to be addressed. If there are tiny holes in the seal, then a parasite may have entered and eaten the larvae or bees. If there are no holes, a fungus could have killed the dwellers. The bees may have also been too cold if they are not faced towards the sun. Work with an extension agent to figure out what could have gone wrong.
For more in-depth instructions on ways to build a hotel, visit The Pollinator Garden.
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What Is To Be Done? How to build a new anti-interventionist movement Share This
In the midst of an election in which the issues are largely ignored in favor of sensationalism and smears, the anti-interventionist voter is pretty much at sea. Hillary Clinton’s demagogic Russia-baiting of Trump as a Kremlin “puppet” augurs a foreign policy that will take us back to the arctic winter of the cold war, circa 1950 . On the other hand, the GOP nominee, for all his encouraging “America first” rhetoric and his stated unwillingness to get into another arms race with the former Soviet Union, would likely take us into other quagmires – ISIS, China, Iran – and, in any event, cannot be trusted.
So what is to be done?
The first thing is to disabuse yourself of the notion that any politician or political party currently prominent will magically get us out of the business of Empire. This isn’t to say that political action is wrong, or ineffective – far from it. What I’m saying is that it is up to us to build a movement out of which a new politics of peace and liberty can be nurtured and brought to maturity.
Our second task is to take stock of our assets: what kind of shape is the anti-interventionist movement in, and what are our prospects for future growth?
The first part of that question is easily answered: there is no anti-interventionist movement, as such, and there hasn’t been for quite some time. Oh sure, there are scattered organizations and individuals with a public platform, but none of these have a truly national presence.
Yes, Antiwar.com is one such voice with not insignificant reach, but we aren’t an organization – we’re a web site. We don’t have chapters, support groups, members, etc., and have quite deliberately avoided setting up any such network for the simple reason that we don’t have the resources to do so. Every movement has different components that specialize in various functions, and our specialty is education. That is, we give our readers the information they need in order to understand the problem, but as far as acting to eliminate the problem – that’s a mission we must leave to others.
The big problem is that there are no “others” – no action groups, no lobbyists, no real grassroots organizations that can respond to events as they occur, and mobilize the public against the War Party. The “movement,” such as it is, is top-heavy with thinktanks – the Cato Institute, the Center for the National Interest, the Ron Paul Institute , and the newly-organized student-oriented John Quincy Adams Society come to mind – and sorely lacking at the grassroots: essentially, a head with no body.
This isn’t because there is no potential for such a grassroots movement: indeed, the objective conditions are ripe – I would say over ripe – for such an undertaking. Polls consistently show that the American people are increasingly skeptical – and that is really too weak a word – of foreign entanglements, and basically endorse a foreign policy of minding our own business. This sentiment is one major – and deliberately overlooked – aspect of the populist “resentment” that catapulted Trump to the top of the GOP ticket and upended the political prognostications of the “experts.” The idea of putting America first – instead of, say, Europe, or the Saudis, or whichever country we’re supposedly ‘liberating” at great cost – has visceral appeal to ordinary Americans.
The astonishing fact of the matter is that, a few short years ago, the GOP was the spearhead of the War Party, with militant neoconservatives at its head – and is, today, the party of a man who said we were lied into the Iraq war, who wants to basically dismantle NATO, and who has adopted “America First” – a slogan resonant with historical meaning – as his campaign theme.
When I was a kid I used to play a game with a good friend of mine: what would we do if we had a million dollars? Of course, I’m really dating myself, because today, of course, a million dollars is chump change. In any case, this column is basically a reiteration of that game: what would I do if I had the resources to organize a real grassroots anti-interventionist movement?
Well, the very first thing I would do is to organize those millions of Trump voters attracted to his banner for precisely the reason the neocons and the foreign policy “experts” disdain him. Item number one on my agenda would be creating a grassroots America First movement, one with the following three components:
The America First Action (AFA) groups – the function of this organization is implied in its name. Its mission would be to respond to every move by the War Party to involve us in some foreign war by rapidly mobilizing people against it. At the first indication that such a move was in the works, congressional phone lines would be ringing off the hook with howls of protest. This is what happened when President Obama announced he was going to bomb Syria – and it worked , with very little central direction. Aside from telephonic harassment of congressional warmongers, AFA would organize meetings, rallies, lecture tours, media appearances, Internet trolling (my favorite!), and every other form of public activity, always focused like a laser on the War Party’s latest scheme.
The America First Political Action Committee – the electoral arm of the America First movement, AFPAC would help candidates from any and all political parties who oppose foreign wars and entangling alliances. This is one of our greatest weaknesses: currently, the War Party’s tame politicians are well-rewarded for their labors, while pro-peace candidates are routinely punished financially. The military-industrial-congressional complex takes care of its own – we must do the same. Yes, the war profiteers have tremendous resources but we can best them at their own game by appealing to the millions of Americans who are sick and tired of perpetual war.
The America First Lobby – while a different name would probably be best, I’m calling it a lobby because that is precisely its function. While practically every foreign government on earth has a Washington-based lobby, which meets with government officials and presses its case for more “foreign aid,” and often direct military intervention on their behalf – the American people have no such organization, no lobby to pursue and defend their interests. I would take as my model AIPAC, the notoriously powerful pro-Israel lobby, which practically storms Capitol Hill every time Bibi Netanyahu gives the signal. If only anti-interventionist Americans would do the same every time war clouds gather on the horizon, we would put an end to our foreign policy of constant warfare once and for all.
These three components of a newly constituted America First movement would be supplemented by subsidiary groups targeting specific constituencies. First and foremost, what’s needed is a student affiliate – it’s been a long time since we’ve heard “Hell no, we won’t go!” on the nation’s campuses. And what about abolishing draft registration? Hillary Clinton wants to force women to register for the draft – why isn’t this horrific proposal roiling the student bodies of universities and high schools across the country?
African-Americans suffer from our foreign policy of global intervention much more than most others: they are, too often, the cannon fodder that feeds the war machine, and if they return they come home to an economy drained by the diversion of vital resources toward war-making and away from productive job-creating and wealth-creating investment.
Racial minorities, women, rural communities – all these groups suffer inordinately as a consequence of an internationalist elite that sacrifices our sons and daughters on the altar of the war god. They can and must be won over to the cause of peace.
Such a movement isn’t a pipedream. It can be born – and it can prosper to the extent that it organizes itself according to a strategic vision that unites people of various political persuasions around a single issue – intransigent opposition to military intervention abroad.
“Peace” movements launched by the left have failed because they took a multi-issue approach: each and every leftist hobbyhorse was invoked to the point where the central issue – war and peace – was overshadowed. The organizers of these efforts, which have fallen by the wayside by the dozen, thought they were organizing a political party, which is why these movements never got off the ground. The one time they did manage to achieve some success – the antiwar protests of the 1960s – was when they junked the multi-issue approach, and focused on the single issue of getting us out of Vietnam.
The potential is there for such a movement today – but only if we cast aside our preconceptions and prejudices, and work to bring together elements that would naturally tend to split apart. Libertarians and Trumpists, Bernie Sanders supporters and “isolationist” conservatives, students at elite universities and rural folks who object to being used as cannon fodder – all must be united in a common cause to put America first, and rid ourselves of the albatross of empire.
It can be done. It must be done. But will it be done? I can’t answer that question: what I can say is that you, my readers, have the power to do it. Now, if only you have the will….
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here . Read more by Justin Raimondo | 0 |
Appearing on this week’s Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, a former head of internal affairs at U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) discusses whether the agency can properly vet 15, 000 new Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and officers. [James Tomscheck served as head of CBP internal affairs for eight years during the Bush and Obama Administrations. During that timeframe, he faced the challenge of hiring and properly screening 10, 000 people between 2006 and 2008. Following that surge a government watchdog report detailed a dramatic increase in corruption cases involving Border Patrol and ICE agents, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly reported in February 2013. The report led to CBP adding polygraph examinations to its hiring and screening process. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly ordered the hiring of 5, 000 Border Patrol agents, 500 CBP Air and Marine Operations officers, and 10, 000 ICE agents and officers in a February memo tasking the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration enforcement. Tomscheck’s interview with Sharyl Attkisson begins at the mark in this video. “I very much hope that those going forward with the initiative look at what we’ve learned when we executed the border patrols search of ” Tomscheck told Attkisson Sunday morning. His department faced the challenges of screening 10, 000 new hires during that period. Attkisson asked the former head of internal affairs about drug dealers and cartel members being hired inadvertently during the surge. “We certainly believe that to be the case,” Tomscheck replied. “We do know that in the thousands of polygraph exams that we administered after the background investigation, more than half of those persons that cleared that background investigation failed the polygraph exam and provided detailed admissions as to why it was they failed the exam included in that study group of more than 1, 000 were persons who admitted that they were infiltrators, that they worked for a drug trafficking organization, either on the US side of the border or the Mexican side of the border, who had been directed to infiltrate CBP and compromise what they do there. ” Attkisson noted that through Tomscheck’s insistence, polygraph screening became a standard in the hiring process. “What we found in those first 100+ exams was genuinely shocking,” he explained. “We found persons failing the polygraph at a higher rate than other agencies, but not dramatically so. What was dramatically different was the nature of the admissions obtained from those persons who had failed. They had included many persons who were actively involved in smuggling, persons who very frequently used drugs were currently using controlled substances and included persons involved in significant serious felony crimes. ” Attkisson reports frequently on issues including corruption within the agencies. In June 2016, Breitbart Texas Brandon Darby and Ortiz reported on an interview with Attkisson on Breitbart News Daily (Sirius XM Patriot 125) with Stephen K. Bannon. Sharyl Attkisson made the shocking assertion that Mexican cartels have infiltrated the U. S. military and U. S. law enforcement agencies — and she is correct. Her assertion is backed up by years of Breitbart Texas reports showing that some U. S. soldiers have worked for cartel efforts to smuggle humans and drugs and that far too many in U. S. federal law enforcement agencies have fallen into working for Mexican cartels. During the interview with Bannon, Attkisson discussed corruption by drug cartels of members of both the military and Border Patrol: On the other hand, I think about the military guys, and they may think, is this a victimless crime? It’s really not illegal to come to this country. The two Mexicans they had been transporting last week had each been removed from the US three times before. And maybe they think, why shouldn’t I make some money on the side doing something the government doesn’t really mind. They don’t mind if the illegal immigrants come here. I think they know about it. And it’s people inside Border Patrol and inside the military who have long been involved in smuggling drugs, as well as smuggling humans. They’re well aware of it. They don’t talk about it much but it’s well known inside. I’ll be doing a story in the Fall about corruption inside the Border Patrol which is just out of control. There’s so many agents. The cartels place people inside Border Patrol now, smugglers place people inside Border Patrol get them hired there. It’s a big issue. Corruption of CBP law enforcement agents and officers by drug cartel members continues to plague the agency. In November 2016, Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested a Border Patrol supervisor, Eduardo Bazan, on charges of accepting bribes and participating in fake drug seizures, Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz reported. As part of their investigation into Bazan, HSI used informants and defendants to identify one of the fake seizures that had been carried with the alleged help of Bazan, court documents revealed. Following that new information, HSI agents interviewed Bazan on October 31, about the seizure. During that interview, Bazan denied any involvement in the scheme. Agents the tracked down an incident report that they used to determine Bazan’s role in the case. During a second interview on November 1, Bazan told agents that he had played a role in the fake seizure and had been paid for it, court records revealed. In November 2015, Ortiz reported on the arrest of Border Patrol Agent Joel Juna for his alleged role in a cartel beheading in South Texas. Despite the capital murder conviction of his brother, Gulf Cartel Commander Eduardo “Comandante Pajarito” Luna, a jury failed to find enough evidence to convict the Border Patrol agent and found him not guilty. “At the time of Joel Luna’s arrest, authorities discovered inside a safe a badge, a rifle, a jeweled handgun with the words Cartel Del Golfo and Pajarito inscribed on them, $90, 000 and various drugs,” Ortiz wrote. The jury found this evidence to be enough to convict him on two counts of engaging in organized crime. Federal authorities arrested a CBP officer in Brownsville, Texas, for his role helping drug cartels smuggle drugs through ports of entry. The jury found Jose Luis Zavala guilty and Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced him to half years in prison. In September 2016, Breitbart California’s Michelle Moons reported on the arrest of CBP Officer Jose Luis Cota for his alleged role in receiving sex and cash for smuggling drugs across the border. With that said, Tomscheck said the move to hire more agents and officers is a positive step. “I don’t think that there’s any question that there needs to be an increase in staffing to make the border more secure,” he told the Full Measure host. “Whatever type of physical barrier you place at the border, there needs to be a physical presence of persons to apprehend those persons that scale the fence or the wall whatever barrier separates the two countries. That can only be accomplished with a sufficient number of agents and officers positioned at the border to make those apprehensions. ” His advice to the Trump Administration, “Move very cautiously. If there is a reduction in the security protocols to screen and vet applicants, I believe we will give compromise to the agencies future. ” Editorial Note: “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” is a weekly broadcast focusing on investigative, original and accountability reporting. The host is Sharyl Attkisson, Emmy Award winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting. She is backed by a team of journalists. “Full Measure” features original reporting and investigations each week on topics ranging from immigration to government waste, national security concerns and whistleblower reports on government abuse and misdeeds. “Full Measure” airs Sunday on Sinclair stations nationwide, and is streamed live on Sundays at 9:30 a. m. ET at www. fullmeasure. news. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
A diagnosis of breast cancer at age 27 is shattering for anyone. But for Eli Oberman, it came with extra layers of anxiety. He is a transgender man, who was born female but began taking male hormones when he was 19 to change gender. Like many transgender people, Mr. Oberman switched gender without having surgery to change his body. The cancer was a stark reminder that he was still vulnerable to illnesses from his original anatomy — and that the medical world has blind spots in its understanding of how to take care of trans men and women. “I just felt overwhelmed on all levels,” Mr. Oberman said. “Overwhelmed about facing the diagnosis, overwhelmed about the irony of it being this part of my body that was already so fraught for me. ” About 1. 4 million adults in the United States report they are transgender, according to a recent analysis of federal and state data. That figure is twice the previous estimate, and as awareness has increased, the health care system has begun scrambling to meet their needs. The government lifted a ban on Medicare coverage for transgender surgery and hormone treatment in 2014, and in 2015 New York State ended a similar ban for Medicaid patients. This year, a rule under the Affordable Care Act banning discrimination in health care specifically included protection for transgender people. Hospitals and professional schools have begun training employees and students on transgender medicine, and on basic etiquette like addressing trans men and women by the name and pronoun they prefer. At the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, which recently opened a Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, about 8, 000 employees had such training last year. “When I think back to the earlier days and think where we are now, it’s unbelievably better,” said Barbara E. Warren, a psychologist and the director for L. G. B. T. programs and policies at Mount Sinai. But there are still struggles. Dr. Warren and other experts said it was common for transgender people to avoid screenings and other medical care for parts of their bodies associated with their original gender. If problems do arise, they may find themselves in situations like Mr. Oberman, who suddenly became the lone male patient in waiting rooms full of women, and a target of curiosity or scorn from some health workers. Mr. Oberman, now 33, was treated for the cancer six years ago, but decided just recently to speak about it publicly in hopes of helping to improve care for others. He has big, dark eyes, thinning hair, a warm smile and a leafy tattoo wreathing one arm — the kudzu vine, he said, because it is “so unstoppably alive. ” He lives in Brooklyn, has a degree in poetry and education, and plays violin in a rock band called the Shondes (“Disgraces,” in Yiddish). His day jobs have included managing a database for a nonprofit organization. He began taking testosterone when he was 19 for its masculinizing effects — these include increased facial and body hair, a lower voice, more muscle and, usually, an end to periods. But he never had surgery to change his body. Many trans people do not, and so many trans men still have ovaries and vaginas, and trans women, prostate glands and penises. Early in his transition, Mr. Oberman wanted “top surgery” — breast removal — but could not afford it, so he wore binders to flatten his chest. Gradually, he became more comfortable with his body and lost interest in the surgery. He first noticed a breast lump in 2010. It was not easy to feel, and cancer at his age just didn’t seem possible. He let six or eight months go by before having scans and a biopsy. Those tests required leaving the safety of his usual clinic, which specialized in L. G. B. T. patients, and plunging into the world of mainstream medicine, where he said doctors treated him with respect, but other workers did not. “I had some horrible experiences,” he said. During one procedure, when Mr. Oberman had his shirt off, a male technician, seeing that he was transgender, exclaimed: “Why would you do this to yourself? It’s disgusting. ” Mr. Oberman never reported the episodes. “I’m not proud to say I didn’t complain,” he said, adding that he wished he had done so for the sake of other patients. But he was facing a disease. The cancer was aggressive. He would need both breasts removed, and then chemotherapy. “I felt guilty, able to get free surgery I didn’t want because I had cancer, and so many others want it and can’t get it,” he said. He soon learned that mastectomies, which remove as much breast tissue as possible, differ from top surgery, which preserves enough to give the chest a contour. Because he had cancer, top surgery was not a safe option: It would leave too much breast tissue, and too much risk of recurrence. Friends who have had top surgery were stunned to find out they still had a risk of breast cancer because of the tissue left behind, he said. Before surgery, thinking that testosterone might interfere with healing, Mr. Oberman’s doctors advised him to stop taking it for a month. He followed their advice, but soon, he said, “I went insane. I wasn’t rational. I was lying on the floor, crying. ” Back on the hormone, he became himself again. Chemotherapy gave him a “definitionless moonface,” he said, and it coarsened his features and thinned his hair permanently. It had taken him years to feel comfortable in his trans identity, and now, he said, “It felt like starting all over again. ” He would have liked to join a support group, but feared he would not be accepted. His reluctance to deal with the health care system has lingered. Just last year, at 32, he finally had his first Pap smear to screen for cervical cancer. It was about 10 years overdue, according to current guidelines. Doctors had nagged him to be tested, and one even threatened to withhold his testosterone unless he complied. He kept putting it off because he feared being treated badly in a gynecologist’s office. Trans friends who had called for appointments were challenged by receptionists who assumed that a deep voice meant they did not belong. Trans men often avoid gynecologists, said Dr. Asa Radix, Mr. Oberman’s physician and the senior director of research and education at the Community Health Center in New York, which provides health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “Imagine, if you’re a trans man, and you’re going to the gynecologist,” Dr. Radix said. “You go to the front desk, and you have to out yourself. Everyone can hear what’s going on. You just want to run out the door. ” In addition, some trans people are conflicted about their bodies, “and may not want to think they have the anatomy they have,” Dr. Radix said. He added that pelvic exams could be physically uncomfortable for a transgender man because testosterone can dry out vaginal tissue. It can also change the cervix in ways that make a Pap test hard to read, necessitating a second round. Mr. Oberman said that in “moments of dark paranoia,” he wondered if taking testosterone might have caused his cancer — or if it was unrelated and the tumor might have developed anyway. His mother and her mother had both had breast cancer — though well after menopause. There is no evidence that trans men or women who take hormones have increased risks of any type of cancer, Dr. Radix said. Studies in Europe have found no increased risk, but it is not clear that the results apply to the United States, where the population is less homogeneous and many transgender people obtain hormones via the internet or other sources outside the health care system. Zil Goldstein, a nurse practitioner and program director at Mount Sinai’s transgender center, said that while she had concerns about the safety of transgender hormones, she worried more about the possible harm from not prescribing them — researchers report that 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide. The hormone question concerns Mr. Oberman’s oncologist, Dr. Paula Klein, who specializes in breast cancer at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (not the same hospital where he had his biopsies and surgery). She said trans men with breast cancer were often urged to stop taking testosterone. One reason is that the body converts some testosterone to estrogen, which can speed the growth of many breast tumors. And some breast cancers may also be stimulated by testosterone, she said. But there is no solid data to guide trans patients, and Mr. Oberman does not want to stop taking the hormone. Dr. Klein was an author of a journal article in 2011 about two other trans men with breast cancer. Both took testosterone and, like Mr. Oberman, chose to stay on it. Few other cases have been reported. Dr. Klein has been suggesting that Mr. Oberman have his ovaries removed. Part of her reasoning was that he had stopped taking tamoxifen, a drug commonly prescribed to prevent breast cancer recurrence. Taking out the ovaries would mean lower estrogen levels, which would help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. “You would definitely benefit,” she said during an office visit in September. “It’s a slam dunk for someone like you, taking away all your female parts,” Dr. Klein said, adding: “We thought you’d eat that up. A transgender gift. ” “Except I don’t want it,” Mr. Oberman said. He did not want more surgery or the hormonal jolt that removing his ovaries would bring. He thought the mastectomies and chemotherapy had very likely cured him. Dr. Klein backed off, saying, “Look, the odds are that you’re going to be fine. ” He hugged her on the way out. It seemed likely that they would have this conversation again. | 1 |
Next Swipe left/right Newsnight trolled the Tory MP who called for the BBC to play God Save The Queen at the end of each day MP for Romford Andrew Rosindell recently said the BBC should be “unashamedly British” and celebrate the UK’s exit from the EU by playing God Save The Queen every night. Newsnight duly obliged, but not the version he was thinking of. By popular demand, here's our playout from last night… pic.twitter.com/0woMdwAlmi
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 4, 2016 | 0 |
SOFIA, Bulgaria — The inaugural meeting of the European Trump Society packed the central aisle of a bookstore in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, on Friday evening — women in furs, men in ski jackets, the floor glistening with melted snow. A live feed from the crowded steps of the United States Capitol filled a projection screen on the back wall. “The election of Mr. Trump means ‘You’re fired!’ to the political elites in America and the world,” declared Boris Angelov, a tabloid editor and a founder of the society, which is strictly Bulgarian at the moment but has wider aspirations. Ilia Lingorski, a former deputy finance minister, shouted from the crowd, “Bulgaria desperately needs its own Trump movement. ” The inauguration of Donald J. Trump as America’s 45th president, with declarations of “America first,” was met with alarm in many corners of the world. But not everywhere. Pockets of celebration broke out here and there, in places where Mr. Trump’s nationalist message matched local stirrings, and his promise of friendlier relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a harsher approach to Islamic terrorism were eagerly embraced. About 100 Trump supporters gathered around a statue of President Ronald Reagan in Budapest’s Freedom Square for a “Better World Order Inauguration Party. ” The speaker was Zsolt Bayer, a prominent pundit who once referred to Jews as “stinking excrement. ” Standing beneath a banner reading “Hungarian Deplorables for Trump,” he called on President Trump to combat political correctness, which Mr. Bayer said had created a world in which “only the white, Christian, heterosexual people do not matter. ” “For decades, we have been waiting for a miracle that will stop our world from running to its demise,” Mr. Bayer said. “Now, we are hopeful that this miracle is in the making. ” Mr. Trump’s support in Hungary rises beyond the small group in Freedom Square. The country’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, eagerly congratulated the new president on his victory. In Moscow, a chain of stores selling Russian military gear offered a 10 percent discount on Friday to all United States citizens and embassy workers. A poster advertising the sale featured a Mr. Trump, fist raised. Several celebratory parties were held in Moscow before and after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. At one, the crowd sang, “Trump, Trump, he is a superhuman. ” Another featured a triptych of heroic portraits of Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump and the French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen. A group of Russian gunsmiths unveiled a commemorative coin declaring “In Trump We Trust,” and Life News, a Russian tabloid, reported that Mr. Trump had been declared an honorary Cossack. Political activists, media figures and dozens of foreign journalists gathered on Friday evening at a conference site just outside the Kremlin for a celebration of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, an event organized by conservative activists and a conservative television channel. Maria Katasonova, one of the organizers, declined to say who had paid for the spacious hall, meat pies and sparkling wine. “It wasn’t the Kremlin,” she said. Although the event pushed a sense of triumphalism, the mood among the audience was more skeptical. Many said they worried that “ elites” in Washington would stymie Mr. Trump’s efforts. “This is the last day we can celebrate,” said Dmitri Gusev, a Russian political consultant. “Because tomorrow, real life will begin. ” Mr. Trump’s ascent was also cheered by President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. His spokesman, Martin Andanar, said the two men had “hit it off” in a brief conversation, leading to a likely “reboot” in relations between the two nations. Ben Razon, an American of Filipino descent who runs a restaurant in Manila, said of Mr. Trump, “I do hope that he establishes a good working relationship with President Duterte. ” “They understand each other,” Mr. Razon added. “That should be good. ” In India, where the right wing shares a strong political affinity with the American right, Mr. Trump’s inauguration was celebrated by Hindu nationalists and business leaders eager for more trade between the two nations. Hindu Sena, a fringe group, organized a celebration of Mr. Trump’s victory on Nov. 4 — four days before he actually won — and had earlier held a prayer ritual on his behalf. “Trump’s victory is confirmed early due to his thoughts against Islamic terrorism and love for India and Hindus,” the group’s leader, Vishnu Gupta, said, according to Reuters. In Egypt, support for Mr. Trump remained fervent among the country’s establishment. Hany Assal, a columnist for the newspaper, sharply criticized American liberals and Democrats for opposing Mr. Trump. “They are putting obstacles in his way,” he wrote, including “trying to start fights with Russia for no reason. ” On the street, sentiment seemed to fuel a more subdued attitude toward the new president. “Some people think he is going to be bad because he is openly but the truth is, America has always been against Islam,” said Bashir Kashta, a Palestinian businessman, as he sipped mint tea on Friday at the historic El Fishawy Cafe in Cairo’s old Islamic district. Samy Abdel Mageed, 56, an engineer smoking a water pipe at an adjacent table, said he had “not met a single person who is excited about Trump or thinks he will change anything for better or worse. ” “America is a country of institutions, and institutions are hard to change,” he said. At the bookstore party in Bulgaria, Borislav Tsekov, another founder of the European Trump Society, proudly surveyed the crowd of about 75 people who had trudged through slush to attend the event at the Greenwich Book Center. He described the society as a scholarly organization dedicated to studying Mr. Trump’s ideas. Mr. Tsekov, a former lawmaker who has been a member of several political parties, used the gathering to unveil his latest book, “The Trump Doctrine,” a study of the new president’s speeches and writings. Speaking before Mr. Trump was sworn in, Mr. Tsekov criticized the mainstream news media and the global political establishment, saying that they had unfairly portrayed Mr. Trump as a racist and xenophobe. “Well, isn’t he?” cried a voice from the crowd that was then shouted down. Mr. Tsekov was not able to listen to Mr. Trump’s speech on the big screen. He was too busy giving television interviews. But he said he looked forward to reading it and was certain he would approve. His Mr. Angelov, was delighted with the turnout and looked forward to fresh branches sprouting across Europe. “Trump is very popular in Bulgaria,” Mr. Angelov said. “He is a brand, you know? He is an international brand. ” | 1 |
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‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. Veterans, Feeling Abandoned, Stand by Donald Trump By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 3, 2016 Veterans
BY NICHOLAS CONFESSORE The roster of retired military officers endorsing Hillary Clinton in September glittered with decoration and rank. One former general led the American surge in Anbar, one of the most violent provinces in Iraq. Another commanded American-led allied forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet another trained the first Iraqis to combat Islamic insurgents in their own country. But as Election Day approaches, many veterans are instead turning to Donald J. Trump, a businessman who avoided the Vietnam draft and has boasted of gathering foreign policy wisdom by watching television shows. Even as other voters abandon Mr. Trump, veterans remain among his most loyal supporters, an unlikely connection forged by the widening gulf they feel from other Americans.
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(Before It's News)
As Rome directs the NATO movements on a global scale and the earthquakes under her troops so she is feeling the Judgments of God. It won’t be long before the Hand of God has had enough of this New World Order and One World Religion.
From Central Video:
At least 247 killed in earthquake in central Italy
Saletta, Italy (CNN)
At least 247 people were killed after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck central Italy Wednesday, according to Italy’s Civil Protection Department. In the small Italian towns hit hard by a magnitude-6.2 earthquake that struck in the middle of the night, rescuers feverishly dug through the rubble of downed homes and apartments looking for survivors. In one such rescue, shown on CNN affiliate Sky TG24, a firefighter in Amatrice clawed at the rubble, trying to get to a little girl. He pulled back bricks and other debris as his co-workers and other men leaned in. Suddenly there was a foot, and leg, then the other leg. Several people wriggle in to help the firefighter. The firefighter clutches a girl, said to be 8 years old, and walks her out of the huge pile of rubble as a volley of cheers erupts. The girl silently holds on. It is impossible to tell what color clothes she is wearing because she is coated in gray dust. “Bella ragazza!” one bystander says as the girl is carried to safety. “Beautiful girl!” Read More | 0 |
Ask anyone what the nose does, and the reply will most likely be related to smell. We appreciate our noses because they help us experience flowers and cookies. In fact, our honkers have another, more important function: They warm and humidify the air we breathe, helping prevent illness and damage in our airways and lungs. Because of this, scientists have long suspected that nose shape evolved partly in response to local climate conditions. In cold, dry climates, natural selection may have favored noses that were better at heating and moisturizing air. A team led by scientists at Pennsylvania State University has found more evidence of the relationship between the noses we have now and the climates where our ancestors lived. In a study published in PLOS Genetics on Thursday, the researchers found that nostril width differed significantly between populations from different regions around the world. Moreover, the higher the temperature and absolute humidity of the region, the wider the nostril, the researchers found, suggesting that climate very well may have played a part in shaping our sniffers. Physical traits that are in direct contact with the environment often undergo natural selection and evolve faster, said Arslan Zaidi, a postdoctoral scholar in genetics at Penn State and an author of the paper. “This is one of the reasons why we looked at nose shape. ” All in all, Dr. Zaidi and his colleagues measured seven nose traits, including the nose’s height, protrusion and nostril width, along with skin pigmentation and overall height in men and women whose parents were born in regions that corresponded with their genetic ancestry. They looked at four regions — West Africa, East Asia, Northern Europe and South Asia — with at least 40 participants in each group. “We selected these to maximize the distance across populations,” Dr. Zaidi said, adding that his team wants to sample more groups in future research. Between the groups in this study, only nostril width and skin pigmentation showed greater differences than would be expected because of chance accumulations of genetic mutations. Over all, people whose parents and ancestors came from warm, humid climates tended to have wider nostrils, whereas those from cold, dry climates tended to have narrower ones. Correlations between nostril width and climate were strongest for Northern Europeans, the researchers found, suggesting that cold, dry climates in particular may have favored people with narrower nostrils. These findings align with those of previous studies of the skull, which have shown that narrower internal nasal inlets tend to be more efficient at warming and humidifying air, said Katerina Harvati, director of the paleoanthropology department at the University of Tübingen in Germany, who was not involved in this study. Dr. Zaidi and his colleagues also demonstrated that nose shape is a heritable trait. They did this by showing a relationship between shared genes and similarities in nose shape in large groups of unrelated people. This is important because natural selection can act only on characteristics that can be passed from one generation to the next, said Todd Yokley, a biological anthropologist at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, who did not participate in the study. The fact that nose shape is subject to natural selection and showed evidence of varying with climate paints a convincing picture that climate adaptation played some role in the evolution of nostril width, Dr. Zaidi said. He added, however, that nostril width does not seem to correlate with climate as closely as skin pigmentation does. That may indicate that other factors are involved in what kinds of noses are passed down, he said, such as “cultural differences in what is considered an attractive nose or not. ” It’s also important to note that less than 15 percent of genetic variation in humans can be attributed to differences between people from different continents, Dr. Zaidi said. In actuality, the genes that differ because of geographic origin, such as those affecting skin color, hair texture and nose shape, are the rare exception, rather than the rule. “People are more similar than they are different. What this research does is offer people a view of why we’re different,” he said. “There’s an evolutionary history to it that, I think, kind of demystifies the concept of race. ” Studying how certain traits evolved as environmental adaptations that may no longer be relevant could also help us understand disease risk today, Dr. Zaidi said. “We know there are variable risks of respiratory diseases across different populations in the U. S.,” he said. “Can we find an explanation for that in morphology?” | 1 |
During her Senate tirade against the confirmation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Senator Elizabeth Warren ( ) criticized the former Alabama senator because his office suggested in a press release that a wealthy American corporation should hire Americans. [One would think Warren, who has been mocked as “Pocahontas” or “Fauxcahontas” for misrepresenting herself as a Native American to obtain preferential treatment, would be less cavalier toward Americans with serious questions about their own career prospects. While there has been much media consternation over the populist direction of the Republican Party under President Donald Trump, there hasn’t been much discussion of the Democratic Party’s brand of populism, which finds its most vocal proponents in figures like Elizabeth Warren and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Indeed, many of the Democrat policies over the past generation could be critiqued as populist — what better term for promises of “free” college tuition or health care? The worst brand of populism attempts to manipulate the public by creating devil figures to play on its fears. About 35 hours into Warren’s tirade against Sessions on the Senate floor, she played that game with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who formerly served as communications director for Senator Jeff Sessions of Arkansas. (It’s actually 35 minutes into the clip below. It only feels like 35 hours.) Warren quoted extensively from a Daily Beast article, which sought to link Sessions to President Trump’s executive order for a temporary pause in visas and refugee applications from certain countries — incorrectly labeled a “refugee ban,” of course, because the media has demonstrated a comprehensive inability to discuss the executive order honestly. The idea behind the article was to cite the voluminous press releases Miller emailed when he was working for Sessions and suggest that Miller remained a puppet of Sessions even after he left to work for the Trump White House. (Or maybe Sessions is supposed to be a puppet of Miller. In any event, the gist of the argument Warren borrowed for her theatrical meltdown is that Sessions and Miller are excessively worried about terrorism — an argument that worked fantastically well with voters in 2016, propelling Hillary Clinton into the White House.) Among the ostensibly outrageous emails Miller sent when he worked for Sessions was “a link to a Facebook stock page on Google Finance with the subject line: ‘Does this mean Facebook has enough money now to hire Americans? ’” This seems like an odd digression for a Warren hit that was supposed to be about Jeff Sessions’ alleged paranoid hostility to immigration. (She read the Daily Beast article right after reading the letter from Coretta Scott King condemning Sessions.) But since she brought it up: why doesn’t she care about corporations claiming they need more immigrant labor to remain profitable? All that Democrat posturing about their concern for the Little Guy goes right out the window when it’s time to push for immigration, serve the needs of their donors, or score cheap political points against a Republican. Democrats resolutely refuse to engage with the effect of madcap immigration policies on American unemployment and wages. It’s one of the big reasons Trump did so well with the “forgotten men” (and women!) who resent their status as designated losers under Democrat central planning. Warren and her party have nothing to say when American workers, wearing both blue collars and white, question the wisdom of importing huge numbers of people for the express purpose of driving down U. S. wages, and the implied purpose of covering for the failure of our education system. Whose fault is it, exactly, when employers claim they need imported labor to handle jobs Americans can’t or won’t do? The whole thing was a bizarre waste of time during a deliberation about whether Senator Sessions was fit to serve as Attorney General. Apparently Democrats still labor under the grave misapprehension that American voters think disagreement with Democratic orthodoxy is some sort of crime. Democrats know they can’t stop Trump’s Cabinet nominees — the American people made damn sure of that — so they’ve used confirmation hearings to perform character assassinations, lay the groundwork for future assaults on Trump administration officials, whip up their demoralized voters, and (in Warren’s case) stage publicity stunts for their new books. None of that has anything to do with advice and consent for Cabinet nominees. Maybe Warren can take a break from reading other people’s writing into the Senate record and explain exactly why Stephen Miller was out of line for wondering if soaring corporate profits should translate into more American jobs. Her rings hollow to people who see a difference between asking serious questions of Big Business and picking the pockets of random rich people to partially finance Democrat “free stuff” fantasies. | 1 |
SHOCK: White House Won’t Comment on Obama “Plan” to Leave Country if Trump Elected Oct 29, 2016 Previous post
A number of Americans have promised to leave the United States if GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump wins the November election.
While President Barack Obama has himself never issued such a pledge, the way his White House press secretary responded Monday to a question about his post-election plans suggested that perhaps he intended to leave as well.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest took a direct question from a reporter about whether or not Obama himself would leave the county if Trump wins in November — but he gave anything but a direct answer.
“He’s working very hard to make sure that nobody has to leave the country as a result of an electoral outcome that the president doesn’t support,” press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday during a news briefing on Air Force One, as reported by Politico .
By no means was that statement an admission of anything; it was, however, a clear dodge. The question was whether or not Obama intended to leave were Trump elected president. Instead of offering a direct answer, Earnest seemingly justified the fears felt by anyone who did plan to leave.
Is the president himself among those paranoid Americans riddled with fear over the GOP candidate’s potential presidency? This line of thinking might sound conspiratorial, but what the president himself said later that evening on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” only bolstered this perception.
“There’s something different about the way Trump has operated in the political sphere,” Obama said, according to the Washington Examiner . “I ran against McCain, against Romney. I thought I could do a better job, but they’re both honorable men. And
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Donald J. Trump, after weeks of damage, has seen support for his candidacy in national polls dip into the 30s — Barry Goldwater and Walter F. Mondale territory — while Hillary Clinton has extended her lead to double digits in several crucial swing states. Time to declare a landslide, right? Not so fast. The vote may be more favorable to Mr. Trump than the prognosticators suggest for a very simple reason: Landslides do not really happen in presidential elections anymore. It has been 32 years since a president won the popular vote by a percentage. That was when Mr. Mondale suffered an defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1984. It was also the last time there was a landslide among states, with Mr. Mondale winning only Minnesota and the District of Columbia. There are a variety of factors that are likely to prevent a candidate today from rallying the huge, majorities that swept Franklin D. Roosevelt back into office in 1936, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Richard M. Nixon in 1972. The country is too fragmented and its political temperature too overheated for any single person to emerge as a consensus choice for anything nearing of the electorate. And that climate has led the political parties to become far more ideologically uniform than they used to be. “The biggest difference between today and say, 1936 or 1964, is the composition of the two parties,” said Jonathan Darman, author of the book “Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America. ” Party identification used to be more fluid, making it less difficult for partisan voters to conceive of supporting someone of the opposite affiliation. “The Republican and Democratic parties were much more heterogeneous than the parties we have today,” Mr. Darman added. “Party identification had a lot more to do with regional ties and family traditions than ideology. ” Data show just how less likely crossover voting is today. Ninety percent of Republicans and of independents see Mrs. Clinton unfavorably, according to the most recent poll. And many Trump defectors are choosing to vote for candidates, which has also contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s inability to break the 50 percent threshold in most national polls. (All together, the candidates are approaching 15 percent of the vote, indicating an unabated dissatisfaction with the nominees for the two major parties.) According to Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew Research Center, about 20 percent of voters now hold political beliefs that place them at the ideological poles of their respective parties — a number that doubled from 2004 to 2014. And these people tend to reinforce one another’s views. “Those on the ends of the political spectrum are more likely to surround themselves with people that think like they do,” Ms. Mitchell said. This high level of polarization could contribute to a curious electoral phenomenon, which could cost Mrs. Clinton support: If people begin to believe that she is going to run away with the election, they may lodge a protest vote against her simply to deny her a commanding victory. “If it becomes a ‘free vote,’ ” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster, “I think that could be one of her problems. If it looks all too easy and all too comfortable, there may be voters who will say, ‘I don’t want her to win by a landslide.’ ” If Mrs. Clinton performs well enough, she could achieve something her husband, Bill Clinton, never did: winning a majority of the popular vote. But given the polling today, the election is showing certain resemblances to the 1992 race that sent Mr. Clinton to the White House the first time. That year, many voters dissatisfied with President George Bush flocked to the independent Ross Perot, and neither Mr. Bush nor Bill Clinton came close to a majority. Mr. Clinton took a whopping 370 electoral votes, despite winning just 43 percent of the vote. With Mr. Perot on the ballot again in 1996, Mr. Clinton won only 49 percent. President Obama’s victory in his first term was considered about as large a landslide as possible given how split the country is. But when compared with the Johnson, Roosevelt and Reagan landslides, it was paltry: just 53 percent. Recent elections were more closely divided. George W. Bush received 48 percent in 2000 — after he failed to win the popular vote but won the Electoral College — and 51 percent in 2004. The margin of victory, however, is about more than just bragging rights. If voter unease does not subside, a smaller victory could limit Mrs. Clinton’s ability to claim the kind of popular mandate that she and Democrats on Capitol Hill would like. “A mandate is some kind of issue platform that you have advocated that is the basis of your victory,” said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “Not fear of the person who got beaten, which I think is the prime motivator of the Clinton people: the fear of Trump. The same thing can be said for Trump voters: fear of Clinton. ” Absent a popular vote landslide, the only overwhelming chances for victory lie in the Electoral College. Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 365 electoral votes to Senator John McCain’s 173, for example. Mrs. Clinton could approach or even exceed that if Mr. Trump’s poll numbers remain depressed. But even so, for Mr. Trump not to carry close to 20 states would be a defeat on a huge scale. Mr. McCain won 22 states in 2008. And despite the scale of that defeat, it was still far less lopsided than Mr. Mondale’s one state and the District of Columbia. | 1 |
Google David Howard......Uh oh! Google Me.....Uh oh! Google this....Google that.....I can make up crap and put it on the internet and people will believe it. | 0 |
He is not going to admit he knew. This needs to be investigated. They lie so much neither one of them can keep this stuff straight. | 0 |
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s governing party says that it will propose legislation forcing organizations reveal the source, amount and aim of foreign funding they receive. [advertisement | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Donald Trump did not stand down in his feud with the parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, frustrating some campaign advisers and drawing President Obama’s strongest criticism yet. Mr. Obama urged Republican leaders to pull their support for his candidacy. Mr. Trump deepened tensions with Republican leaders by telling The Washington Post that he was “not quite there yet” in endorsing the reelection bid of Paul Ryan, the House speaker, and that he would not support John McCain either. Both endorsed Mr. Trump but have criticized him. Mr. Trump’s five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, including one for foot trouble, are under new scrutiny. _____ 2. Even before the president’s call, Richard Hanna, a representative from New York, became the first Republican member of Congress to join forces with Democrats against Mr. Trump. Seven national polls taken after the Democratic convention show Hillary Clinton leading by an average of nearly seven percentage points. _____ 3. Massachusetts has barred employers from asking about applicants’ salaries before making job offers. The novel law is meant to help close the wage gap between men and women by ensuring that compensation is based on the job’s value to the company, not an applicant’s prior salary. _____ 4. The leader of the largest police force in the U. S. is stepping down. After a that culminated at the top of the New York City Police Department, William Bratton is taking up a job in the private sector. A leader in trying to resolve the racial distrust afflicting police departments around the country, he will advise business executives on security matters as head of Teneo Risk. _____ 5. More than 450 applications and phone calls from recruits poured into the Dallas police department within two weeks of the attack that killed five police officers. “Everything going on around the world — the crises, communities not really getting along with each other, the protests,” one applicant said. “It just kind of hit me. ” Above, another applicant, Jaiston Sawyer, a security guard, with his girlfriend and their children. _____ 6. The Philippines has seen a sudden jump in killings related to the new president’s war on drugs, and an equally sudden drop in crime. Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated just over a month ago, 420 people have been killed, most of them by the police, but more than 150 by unidentified vigilantes. Police logs show that 114, 833 people have turned themselves in as either drug addicts or dealers. Above, a women held her slain partner, next to a sign accusing him of being a drug dealer. _____ 7. Harvard College, once a bastion of elitism, is trying to promote more inclusion. The dean is wrestling with six exclusive, campus fellowships known as final clubs, which he calls “spaces that are rife with power imbalances. ” Soon, students who opt to join any of about 20 clubs, male or female, will be barred from athletics, denied dean’s recommendations for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships and otherwise penalized. _____ 8. A good chunk of our sports desk has relocated to Rio to cover the Olympics, whose opening ceremonies come Friday. Our reporters noticed that athletes preparing to compete in track and field events are covering the logos on their shoes with tape, markers, elastic sleeves and spray paint. Some are doing it because their official sponsors don’t make the kind of shoes they need. Others don’t want to give nonsponsors free advertising. As one athlete put it, “no representation without compensation. ” _____ 9. The buzz is building for “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead, which comes out in September. The book follows a teenage slave named Cora, who flees a Georgia plantation and tries to evade bounty hunters, informers and lynch mobs. Our reviewer calls it “a potent, almost hallucinatory novel that leaves the reader with a devastating understanding of the terrible human costs of slavery. ” _____ 10. It’s been almost five and a half years since an tsunami killed tens of thousands people in Japan and left many more in unrelenting grief. One of our articles today looks at the suffering of some of the tsunami’s survivors: Two men who learned to scuba dive to keep up the search for missing loved ones. “If I die,” one man told his wife as she fretted over the danger, “throw my ashes in the sea. ” _____ 11. Finally, do you floss regularly? A note of reassurance for those cringing in the negative: While the practice has been shown to maintain healthier gums, the association between flossing and dental health has never been proven with randomized trials. In fact, the latest U. S. dietary guidelines quietly dropped mention of flossing. _____ 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 |
Fox Host Jeanine Pirro: FBI ‘Disgraces And Politicizes’ Itself With ‘Wrong’ Letter About Hillary Emails (VIDEO) By Darrell Lucus on October 30, 2016 Subscribe
It’s no surprise that Democrats are up in arms over FBI director James Comey’s announcement to Congress that his agency was looking into emails that were potentially related to Hillary Clinton’s email server. However, a number of Republicans–including a number of Comey’s own agents–are also rolling their eyes in disgust . Well, on Saturday, another Republican joined that list . And that Republican happens to be a host on Fox News Channel.
When Jeanine Pirro led off Saturday night’s edition of “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” she hiked eyebrows into hairlines by blasting the manner in which Comey and the FBI handled this matter. Watch here.
Pirro got right to the point in her “Opening Statement”–from where she’s sitting, Comey’s decision to send that letter “both disgraces and politicizes the FBI” and was the definition of “all that is wrong in Washington.”
It’s no secret that Pirro is a staunch Donald Trump supporter. Indeed, she has spent most of the campaign finding ways to attack Hillary–to the point that The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple called her “a key Fox News apologist for Trump.” But Pirro took off her red-tinted blinders long enough to come to the same conclusion as a number of other Republicans–there is no defence for the manner in which this was handled. “Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or anyone else, Comey’s actions violate longstanding Justice Department policy, the directive of the person he works under, the Attorney General–but even more important, the most fundamental rules of fairness and impartiality.”
On paper, unlike the average Fox News host, Pirro knows how investigations are supposed to be conducted. She was a prosecutor in Westchester County, New York–a wealthy suburban county north of New York City, and home to White Plains and Yonkers–for 15 years, a judge for three years, and Westchester County district attorney for 12 years.
But Pirro takes what happened to Hillary personally as well. She recalled that in 2006, when she was the Republican candidate for New York state attorney general, the FBI announced it was investigating her for secretly recording her husband almost a month before the election. Pirro contended that this announcement, like Comey’s announcement about the emails, ran counter to longstanding Justice Department policy against commenting on potentially politically-charged investigations for at least 60 days before an election.
The investigation ultimately went nowhere. However, Pirro argued that “the adverse publicity” cost her dearly at the polls; she was ultimately routed by future governor Andrew Cuomo. For her, Friday’s announcement brought back memories of how she believed she was treated a decade earlier. “What happened to me in 2006 was wrong. And what happened to Hillary Clinton yesterday was equally wrong.”
In the interest of fairness, it’s not likely that the announcement in and of itself cost Pirro the election. New York was swept up in a massive Democratic wave that year, one that saw Eliot Spitzer win the governorship with the second-biggest victory for a statewide race in New York history.
Nonetheless, Pirro’s point is very well taken–no responsible investigator should make public comments about politically-charged investigations this close to an election, unless there is something absolutely earth-shaking. She reminded her viewers that the DOJ/FBI rule against commenting publicly on politically-charged investigations is in place for a reason–“announcements so close to elections have an impact,” and the FBI should not even appear to have “its finger on the scales of justice.”
Like a judge scolding a lawyer, Pirro then knocked down two of the arguments that have been advanced in favor of Comey writing the letter. She didn’t see anything in his congressional testimony that would have left him with no option short of a public announcement. What about fears of leaks? Well, Pirro said Comey should have collared the committee chairs to whom the letter was addressed and told them, “If this gets out, I’ll know that you did it.” Pirro left out what may have been the biggest argument of all–at the time, the FBI hadn’t even obtained a warrant for those emails. It finally did so on Sunday night.
Apparently Pirro anticipated that this wouldn’t go over too well in fair and balanced land; she closed by reverting to the usual GOP talking point that Hillary would be facing charges right now had Comey conducted a real investigation in the first place. It didn’t save her. Most of the commenters on two Facebook posts Pirro made on the matter have argued Comey had no other option.
Then again, it’s not entirely surprising. After all, most Fox News viewers don’t think any Democratic president is legitimate in the first place, so apparently they’re perfectly fine with fundamental fairness being thrown out the window. The mere fact that we have to applaud Pirro for having the guts to speak out against Comey’s actions–which, at this point, seem incompetent at best–says a lot about the state of our discourse. And it isn’t good.
( featured image courtesy Pirro’s Facebook) About Darrell Lucus
Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC . Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook . Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello. Connect | 0 |
A reporter from online campus watchdog site Campus Reform asked Harvard students to decide what they find more dangerous: President Trump or ISIS. [Watch the video here: Several Harvard University students argued that President Trump poses a greater threat to the United States than ISIS, the radical and violent terrorist organization. One student argued that Donald Trump’s policies are a greater threat because “terrorism is not really that big of a deal. ” This week, Harvard student organizers put together a online course on how to “resist” the Trump agenda. The program’s website lists sessions with titles like “How to Communicate Our Values in Political Advocacy” and “How to Structure and Build Capacity for Action. ” So far, organizers say they have about 3, 000 groups “representing over 10, 000 people” registered for their first class. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
Tesla fired a female engineer after claiming that her accusations of sexual harassment at the company were false and “unmerited. ”[Engineer AJ Vandermeyden “claimed she was taunted and catcalled by male employees and that Tesla failed to address her complaints about the harassment, unequal pay and discrimination,” according to The Guardian. However, Tesla claimed to have “had thoroughly investigated the employee’s allegations with the help of ‘a neutral, expert’ and concluded her complaints were unmerited. ” In a statement, Tesla claims to have fired Vandermeyden after launching an investigation into her claims and discovering that they were “illegitimate. ” “Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press,” said a Tesla spokesperson following Vandermeyden’s dismissal. “After we carefully considered the facts on multiple occasions and were absolutely convinced that Ms Vandermeyden’s claims were illegitimate, we had no choice but to end her employment at Tesla. ” Despite Tesla’s statement, Vandermeyden’s lawyer blamed the dismissal on sexism. “This was absolutely shocking for AJ. She is devastated,” said Vandermeyden’s lawyer, Therese Lawless. “She brought the lawsuit in an attempt to make the workplace at Tesla more equitable and fair and to have Tesla comply with the law. ” “They’ve just proven our case. It’s clear retaliation,” she continued. “Somebody is trying to instill in employees that when they speak out about matters they are legally allowed to speak out about, they too will be fired … It’s shocking in this day and age that this is still a fight we have to have. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
He is a billionaire who made his fortune in real estate. He has been called a narcissist. He posts to Twitter — incessantly — about politics and his battles against the media. Lately, he has been spending time at a Florida resort named . His name? Guo Wengui. Mr. Guo is a Chinese property magnate who has been living outside the country for more than two years. In recent weeks, he has launched a broadside — in television interviews and on Twitter — criticizing the effectiveness of the Communist Party’s fight against corruption, all from the safety of financial capitals like London and New York. He is also a member at President Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, and posted photos of himself on the grounds last month with ’s managing director. Mr. Guo’s newly public persona — more akin to a dissident Russian oligarch and highly unusual in Chinese politics — comes at an awkward time, just before China’s president, Xi Jinping, and Mr. Trump are to meet at the resort for their first summit meeting. The Chinese billionaire’s ties to the club are a new twist in how President Trump’s business interests can complicate diplomacy, in this case with arguably the world’s most important bilateral relationship. At moneymaking, socializing and statecraft converged in February, when Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, conferred with Mr. Trump over a North Korean missile test in full view of the club’s members. Entry into will be more strict this time than during Mr. Abe’s visit, said a United States official with knowledge of the preparations for the meeting, who was aware of Mr. Guo’s remarks, but could offer no details about the security protocols. At the very least, it would be embarrassing if Mr. Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, were to show up at the seaside resort during the meeting Thursday and Friday. At worst, his presence could incense Mr. Xi and the Chinese delegation. Mr. Guo left China during a corruption scandal linked to the jailing of his political patron, a top security official. Mr. Guo said his assets in China — he puts the figure at more than $17 billion — were seized. “Guo would certainly be a very disruptive wild card at ” said Christopher K. Johnson, a former senior China analyst at the C. I. A. who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Mr. Johnson said in an interview that China considered Mr. Guo a criminal and sought his return, although there is no public record of him being charged with a crime. During Mr. Abe’s visit, club members and guests were permitted to enter without undergoing all the stringent security protocols imposed at the White House. The United States official, who was not authorized to speak to the news media and asked for anonymity, did not know if members would be barred from the grounds during the meeting. Mr. Guo, when asked, would not say whether he intended to show up for the summit. Even if he is kept out, the vetting of a president’s paying guests before a major summit meeting presents a staffing challenge that no previous administration has faced. The allure of rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful is an attraction of which recently doubled its initiation fee to $200, 000. Mr. Trump has called it the “Southern White House. ” Mr. Guo’s membership could be especially sensitive because of the lengths China’s leaders go to stamp out any political discussion that deviates from the Communist Party line, particularly remarks about the wealth of top leaders. Mr. Guo has leveled specific accusations against a former top party leader. In two recent interviews and on Twitter, Mr. Guo, while highly critical of many current and former Chinese leaders, has praised Mr. Xi, or at least refrained from directly criticizing him. “I pray that President Xi’s visit is smooth, for relations between the peoples of the United States and China to start a great new era,” Mr. Guo said in a text message in response to questions from The New York Times. Mr. Guo is not the first Chinese tycoon to leave the country in a cloud of controversy and decamp to the United States or another Western country. Mr. Johnson said he was most likely second on a list of prominent business executives Beijing was seeking to repatriate, behind the younger brother of a top official who held a post equivalent to the White House chief of staff. That man, Ling Wancheng, left China for the United States about three years ago before the arrest of his brother, who is now serving a life sentence for graft. But Mr. Ling has stayed quiet and kept his whereabouts secret. For the first two years of his exile, Mr. Guo did the same. That all changed in late January, when he activated his Twitter account and gave the first of two rambling interviews with the Mirror Media Group, a news company based on Long Island. China has more billionaires than any other country with the possible exception of the United States, but none as outspoken and flamboyant as Mr. Guo. He has a penchant for posting photos of himself in workout tights and camouflage, performing planks and other exercises. He sips vintage French wine in front of a picture of an aviator chimpanzee in his London office and likes to show off the private jets he uses for his frequent flights. One American who met with him described him as affable. But Mr. Guo is anything but . He built a fortune in the Darwinian world of Chinese real estate, and people who crossed him soon rued the day. In 2006, he handed to the police a sex tape of a Beijing deputy mayor who had disputed one of his land deals. The official was imprisoned and Mr. Guo got the property, building the Pangu Plaza next to Beijing’s Olympic Green, a landmark during the 2008 Summer Games. He kept his extensive car collection in a vast underground parking lot, arranging the dozens of Ferraris, Bentleys and Bugattis in petal shapes to show to visitors, said one person who knows him. He is in a public battle with China’s most prominent journalist, Hu Shuli, whose newsmagazine, Caixin, reported in 2015 that Mr. Guo used his ties to Ma Jian, a former vice minister in the country’s spy agency, to further his business interests. Mr. Ma was expelled from the Communist Party and is being prosecuted on graft charges. Mr. Guo accused Ms. Hu of being corrupt and working for a “behind the scenes” power broker. Caixin sued Mr. Guo, saying he defamed Ms. Hu. Mr. Guo claims that he was the victim of corruption that went to the highest level of Chinese politics, the elite standing committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo, but that the official in question — now retired — has not been prosecuted. Mirror Media says its Chinese audience reaches the hundreds of millions, making Mr. Guo’s assertions particularly sensitive for Mr. Xi, who is trying to consolidate power before a major Communist Party leadership meeting later this year. “We have all been used as tools,” Mr. Guo said in a March 8 interview. Mr. Guo named names. His most statement is that his former business partner, now in jail, was backed by the son of the Communist Party’s former top discipline official, He Guoqiang. He also described an audiotape he obtained, which detailed threats his erstwhile business partners were planning. “They said that they would beat Guo Wengui to death, and to put Guo Wengui to death,” Mr. Guo said during the Mirror Media interview. Chinese billionaires living abroad are not immune to the long reach of Beijing’s security apparatus. The day after Mr. Guo’s first public broadcast in late January, another prominent billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, was apparently abducted from his apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, whisked across the border and taken into custody in mainland China. Mr. Guo says he knows Mr. Xiao, and they have something in common: business ties that intersect with top Chinese leaders. Mr. Guo was in London last week at the prestigious Mark’s Club in Mayfair, which requires men to wear jackets “at all times. ” He said he was a member there. Earlier in March, he was at posing for pictures. He posted photographs of himself with Bernd Lembcke, the club’s managing director. During his stay, he also visited an Episcopal church that the Trumps attend, and spent some time at an elegant beachside home, decorated with an Asian motif and featured in Architectural Digest that is now owned by a limited liability company tied to Victor Vargas, a Venezuelan banker. Mr. Guo, posting on Twitter in Chinese, said he had done business at the club, convening a meeting of his limited partnership company there. Mr. Guo, in a Twitter message to The New York Times, said he was a member, which was confirmed by a person briefed on the matter. “Over the years, there have been many memorable moments here,” Mr. Guo wrote of . “I’m feeling a lot of emotion. In the last few months a controversial businessman became the American president. Why he wanted to become president I just don’t understand. But I admire his persistent character. Don’t give up!” | 1 |
Donald Trump pide que le encadenen en el sótano de la Casa Blanca durante la superluna "HAY UN TRUMP QUE NO QUIERO QUE CONOZCÁIS", HA DICHO superluna
Asegurando que es “lo más seguro para los ciudadanos y para mí mismo”, el nuevo presidente de los Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, ha pedido al servicio secreto que lo encadene en el sótano de la Casa Blanca durante la noche de hoy “y hasta que la superluna desaparezca”.
“La coincidencia temporal de mi presidencia y de la mayor y más brillante Luna desde 1948 y hasta 2034 no es casualidad”, ha declarado Trump desde la Casa Blanca minutos antes de ser encadenado en una de las dependencias subterráneas de la Casa Blanca, según han informado la CNN y el New York Times a última hora de la tarde. “Pedir que me sujeten con cuerdas y me ajusten en la cara un bozal de plata es completamente normal, no es necesario alarmarse”, ha explicado.
“Un mal que ni siquiera yo puedo controlar está despertando en mí, pero podéis estar tranquilos”, ha dicho.
“Si os parezco racista no queráis saber cómo soy cuando hay una luna como la de esta noche”, ha declarado el presidente. Según dice, durante la noche de hoy tendrán lugar ciertos “cambios fisiológicos probablemente reversibles y sin conssecuencias” en su persona.
“Un Trump que no conocéis está a punto de ser desatado pero si estoy bien encadenado no sucederá nada que haya que lamentar”, ha explicado el propio Trump.
“Ya viene, el otro Trump ya viene y tiene hambre”, ha insistido al notar que su peinado se agitaba como si tuviera vida propia. El líder republicano, que derrotó a Clinton en unas tensas elecciones presidenciales, ha querido dejar claro que lo que vaya a ocurrirle hoy “no es peligroso y es absolutamente rutinario”, aunque ha advertido al Servicio Secreto que si esta noche logra escapar del sótano le disparen sin dudarlo.
“Desatadme por la mañana si sigo vivo”, ha concluido Trump.
El servicio secreto ha advertido a los americanos que si escuchan quejidos, insultos y comentarios misóginos procedentes del sótano del 1600 de Pennsylvania Avenue no se asomen y sigan encerrados en sus casas hasta el amanecer. | 0 |
Following the shooting death of 28-year-old armed robbery suspect Michael Renard Grace Jr., surviving family members are now speaking out and demanding answers as to why a restaurant employee would have been allowed to carry a firearm at their place of business.
As if the idea of a robbery victim fighting back in self defense were something completely unfathomable, the deceased suspect’s parents are calling his death undeserved and unjustified.
Predictably, Temia Hairston and Michael Grace Sr. told media outlet WBTV that even though their son walked into the Charlotte area Pizza Hut intent on robbing the business with two other armed men, was it just “an act of desperation ” and that they do not believe he would have hurt anyone.
Image of Michael Grace Jr. via WISTV
“Why in the hell did this guy have a gun?” Hairston stated to WBTV… This is despite the fact that the most glaring and obvious possible answer to that question is that the employee carried a firearm for exactly this type of scenario. But I digress.
Via WISTV
Police said Grace Jr and two other people tried to rob a Pizza Hut in the 3200 block of Freedom Drive. During the incident, an employee fired his own handgun and killed Grace Jr.
“If there was to be a death, it was not the place of the employee at Pizza Hut. That is the place of law enforcement,” said Hairston.
They said Grace Jr had fallen on hard times and resorted to crime to provide for his own child. They also said their son used to work at the same Pizza Hut restaurant where the robbery happened. They maintain he never would have physically hurt anyone during the robbery.
She said her son was shot in the head, and she thinks the shooting may have even been personal…
Sounds more like an individual with proper firearms training to me, but yeah, of course defending your own life is personal.
The family said they want Pizza Hut to release more information about the situation and acknowledge that their son used to be a Pizza Hut employee.
Hairston said she thinks the employee who shot her son needs to be in jail, and wants all parties involved in the situation to be honest about what happened.
The employee involved has reportedly been placed on leave. Pizza Hut released the following statement:
“The local Pizza Hut franchisee is fully cooperating with the Charlotte Police Department as they continue their investigation, but want to stress that the security of its staff is of utmost concern. They are providing support to the team members involved to ensure their health and well-being following this incident. The employee involved in the shooting has been placed on a leave of absence following further review.”
Thoughts on this? Let us know in the comment section below.
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Breaking News Pieczenik “Rogue FBI Agents and Wikileaks are Spearheading a Movement to Stop the Clintons from Stealing the White House” Pieczenik “Rogue FBI Agents and Wikileaks are Spearheading a Movement to Stop the Clintons from Stealing the White House” Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 2, 2016
The world is teaming up to stop crooked Hillary from taking the White House.
From Wikileaks to rogue FBI agents, everyone is doing their part to stop the sinister Clinton Machine.
It’s a joint effort from patriots hailing from every corner of the world.
Watch the video: Breaking:Twitter Friendly Version A soft coup has been launched by FBI to overthrow the Clinton’s hostile takeover of the White House. pic.twitter.com/MrPUlSO1OE
— OakTown ☢MAGA O.G☢ (@hrtablaze) November 2, 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 First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
Waitress accidentally breaks ancient Roman statue at British Museum Waitress accidentally breaks ancient Roman statue at British Museum By 0 29
A catering worker accidentally snapped the thumb off a priceless Roman statue at an event held at the British Museum.
The caterer smacked her head on the marble hand of the world-renowned Townley Venus statue as she rose from bending down.
The British Museum described it as an “ unfortunate incident ” which is being taken “ seriously .”
Museum workers have reportedly managed to glue the thumb back onto the statue, which they describe as being fully restored.
The incident took place last December, but was only reported to Trustees of the Museum in March.
“ This was an unfortunate incident. Our expert conservators have been able to fully restore the object and it has remained on public display ,” a museum spokesman said.
“ We have taken the incident seriously and have retrained all individuals responsible for events .”
The Townley Venus dates from the first or second century AD and is named after wealthy English collector Charles Townley.
It is adapted from a lost Greek original statue, dating from the fourth century BC, and depicts the goddess Venus with her torso nude.
Several other priceless artefacts belonging to the British Museum have been accidentally damaged over the years, including the Elgin Marbles, which were damaged by two fighting schoolboys in 1961.
Via RT . This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license. | 0 |
Young Pioneer Tours, a travel operation that brings Western communist sympathizers into North Korea, Cuba, and other danger zones, announced Tuesday it will no longer accept Americans on its trips to North Korea following the death of Otto Warmbier. [Warmbier, 22, died Monday following his release from North Korean custody last week. He had traveled to Pyongyang with Young Pioneer Tours and stood accused of attempting to steal a communist propaganda poster from his hotel. In a March 2016 hostage video, Warmbier “confessed” to the crime and claimed that the U. S. government had bribed him to tamper with the poster. In that confession, he also thanked North Korea for its “humanitarian” treatment of a “severe criminal” like him. In a blog post on its website, Young Pioneer Tours announced, “We will no longer be organising tours for US citizens to North Korea. ” “The devastating loss of Otto Warmbier’s life has led us to reconsider our position on accepting American tourists. There had not been any previous detainment in North Korea that has ended with such tragic finality and we have been struggling to process the result,” the statement reads. “Now, the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high. ” While the group condemns the “way” that North Korea handled the detention as “appalling” and a “tragedy,” it does not condemn the North Korean regime for arresting Warmbier in the first place or for its record of detaining Americans to be used as diplomatic bargaining chips. The company also claims that it made “constant requests” to North Korean officials for information on Warmbier but was told only that “he was fine. ” Warmbier arrived in the United States last week with “extensive brain damage” according to American doctors that cared for him in Ohio before his death. North Korean officials claimed that he had been in a coma for about a year after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill, but American doctors said they saw no evidence of botulism. Warmbier’s father, Fred, attacked Young Pioneer Tours and its ilk in the press conference he hosted last week, following Otto Warmbier’s return to Ohio. “The North Koreans lure Americans to travel to North Korea via tour groups, run out of China, who advertise slick ads on the internet proclaiming, ‘No American ever gets detained on our tours’ and ‘This is a safe place to go,’” he explained. At the time, the New York Times reported, the Young Pioneers website read that being American was “not at all” a problem in traveling to North Korea, despite U. S. State Department warnings against such travel. Since the change in policy this morning, the site notes that it will not accept American travelers on its North Korea trips. Other than that minor change, the group’s misleading portrayal of North Korea, clearly designed to appeal to impressionable youth, remains on the site. “Despite what you may hear, for most nationalities, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit provided you follow the laws as provided by our documentation and briefings,” the website claims. It applauds North Korea’s not allowing foreigners to go anywhere in the country without a communist chaperone because it “adds to the mysticism of the country. ” It warns tourists not to speak too much during the trip: “If you’re quiet and listen you’ll be surprised just how much you can learn. ” Young Pioneers also still boasts “budget tours to destinations your mother wants you to stay away from” and a blog replete with praise for a dizzying array of oppressive regimes ranging from Cuba (“We’re taking you to Cuba this December for our annual Che Guevara Revolutionary Tour! ”) to Myanmar (“One of the most special and unique travel experiences, due to its stunning geography, rich and varied culture and warm, proud people”) and China (“Once in a lifetime Maoist adventure”). Young Pioneers, named after the communist equivalent to the Hitler Youth, calls itself “a company that craves communist kitsch. ” Its founder, British Gareth Johnson, writes in his biography that his “ love for the people and culture of the DPRK” led him to establish the group and praises North Korea’s “great, plentiful, and cheap!” seafood. At least one American, Amanda Moore, is listed as an official in the company. While the company is in the public eye for leading Warmbier to his death, Young Pioneers is not the only group preying on the curiosity of young Westerners with North Korea trips. One tour group, the Koryo Group, also claims on its website that North Korea is “probably one of the safest countries in the world for a tourist. ” New Korea Tours promises “a tour of communism which starts with the 1950’s reconstruction. … Every tourist who has traveled with us has said it has been one of the highlights in their world travels. ” | 1 |
PHILADELPHIA — Tucked one floor below the majestic Gothic sanctuary of Arch Street United Methodist Church, Javier Flores Garcia sleeps on a cot in a basement classroom that church members have outfitted with a microwave, a compact refrigerator and a television. Mr. Flores, an arborist, longs for the open air, but does not dare set foot outside. He was supposed to report to the immigration authorities last month to be deported to his homeland, Mexico, but one day before his report date, he took refuge in the church. His family is why he is fighting to remain, and when they visited him in the church recently, his son, Javier Jr. parked on his lap. The boy often refuses to leave his father’s side, and has ended up staying for days with him in the church. On Christmas Day, Mr. Flores had been there six weeks. This downtown church is one of 450 houses of worship in the United States that have offered to provide sanctuary or other assistance to undocumented immigrants, according to leaders of the Sanctuary Movement. (Few congregations have the space and fortitude to risk harboring immigrants indefinitely, so others are lining up to contribute money, legal aid, food, child care or transportation.) The congregations joining this network have more than doubled since the election of Donald J. Trump — a rapid rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s postelection promise to deport two million to three million unauthorized immigrants who he said have been convicted of crimes. Protecting immigrants is shaping up to be a priority of the religious left, an amorphous collection of people and groups reflecting many faiths and ethnicities. It has been jolted into action by Mr. Trump’s victory and his selection of an attorney general nominee who supports a crackdown on immigrants. “Jesus said we are to provide hospitality to the stranger,” said the Rev. Robin Hynicka, Arch Street’s pastor, citing Matthew 25, in which Jesus instructs his followers to feed, house and clothe “the least of these,” the poor and vulnerable. “That’s exactly what we were asked by Javier, to provide sanctuary. And of course, we said yes,” he added. Mr. Hynicka spoke in his chilly upstairs office at the church, which has 375 members. The heat worked better in the basement fellowship hall, where up to 30 homeless people take shelter on winter nights. This church is accustomed to mobilizing for social causes, from gay marriage to fights against casino gambling and for an increase in the minimum wage. Five years ago, the church joined the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, but Mr. Flores is the first person the church has taken in. On this night, his children excitedly brought Mr. Flores stray pieces of candy that volunteers were stuffing into piñatas for a party later. Mr. Flores and his longtime partner, Alma Lopez, have two children: Javier Jr. and Yael, age 2. He has also been a father to Ms. Lopez’s daughter, Adamaris, age 12, since she was abandoned as an infant by her birth father. All were born in the United States. The family’s home is two bus rides away from the church. Ms. Lopez, sucking on a lollipop, said having the family return to Mexico is not a solution: “We want a better future for our children. The situation in Mexico is very bad. There’s no work, no good school. Here, we have a future. ” The federal immigration authorities say Mr. Flores has a long history of violations: He was apprehended nine times between 1997 and 2002 trying to cross the border. He and was ordered removed by a judge in 2007. He twice in 2014 and served prison sentences for illegal a criminal felony conviction. Last year his children saw him taken away by the authorities, and it took a toll. While Mr. Flores was in detention this year, Adamaris attempted suicide in April, drinking a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She was hospitalized for nine days. Immigration officials released Mr. Flores for 90 days to prepare his family for deportation. Sanctuary was his last hope. “My only crime is coming back,” said Mr. Flores, who wears a ankle bracelet. The sanctuary movement in the United States is not new. American churches offered sanctuary to soldiers who refused to serve in the Vietnam War. And in the 1980s, congregations opened their doors to Central Americans fleeing wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The movement was revived in 2006 and grew during President Obama’s two terms, said the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At least 2. 5 million people were deported during Mr. Obama’s time in office, earning him the nickname “deporter in chief. ” One big change from the 1980s, Pastor Salvatierra said, is that now, thousands of Latino churches and their clergies are also involved in protecting immigrants — frequently their own members and often quietly. In the ’80s, mostly white, Protestant churches led the way. “We’re in a different universe now. We don’t need the white people to rescue us, thank you very much. We need to be in partnership,” she said in an interview, before heading off to train sanctuary workers at a multiethnic church in downtown Los Angeles. She expected 25 people, but 150 signed up. But some see sanctuary as misguided, or naïve. Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls on immigration, said she understood that churches had sympathy for people facing deportation. “But I find myself wishing that they had as much sympathy for other parishioners they have who are adversely affected by illegal immigration” because of jobs, higher taxes or crime. Churches, schools and hospitals are considered “sensitive locations,” according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration officers are supposed to avoid those locations, unless they have advance approval from a supervisor or face “exigent circumstances” that require immediate action, said Jennifer Elzea, an agency spokeswoman. Religious leaders are preparing for the possibility that this could change under President Trump. Auburn Seminary in New York City, which trains religious leaders on the left, convened a postelection “Long Game Faith Summit” this month, and invited the Rev. Alison Harrington from Tucson to give workshops on sanctuary. “We can’t assume that churches and houses of worship will remain safe locations,” said Ms. Harrington, senior pastor at Southside Presbyterian Church, long a hub for sanctuary work. Sanctuary workers in the ’80s organized a sort of “underground railroad” to move immigrants from dangerous regions to safer ones, and that may have to be reactivated, she told her workshop. In considering whether to offer sanctuary, congregations look for immigrants with viable cases and sympathetic stories. Mr. Flores was the victim of a knife attack outside Philadelphia in 2004 and gave the police testimony that resulted in the attackers’ arrests. He has applied for a U Visa, given to crime victims, said his lawyer. In Denver this month, the Mountain View Friends Meeting, a Quaker church, took in a woman from Peru who worked for years in a nursing home using fake papers, pleaded to a felony, paid $12, 000 in back taxes and served four years on probation, said Jennifer Piper, interfaith organizer with the American Friends Service Committee and coordinator for the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. The Peruvian woman has two children, ages 8 and 1, who are both American citizens. There are about 11 people in sanctuary in churches in New York now, said the Rev. Donna Schaper, senior minister of Judson Memorial Church, which is sheltering one of them. These immigrants did not commit violent crimes, she said, and many, like the woman in Denver, paid their penalties and now face double jeopardy. Ms. Schaper said that these are hardly the Mexican “rapists” whom Mr. Trump has said he will deport. “We are talking mostly about crime. Faking credit cards. Faking IDs. Many of these people are quite middle class and well educated,” she said, and they are not only Latinos, but also Chinese, Russians, Pakistanis and many others. For some churches, the immigrants at risk are their own parishioners. Robert W. McElroy, Roman Catholic bishop of San Diego, recently told a Catholic immigration conference, “It is unthinkable that we will stand by while more than 10 percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported. ” The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles recently declared itself a “sanctuary diocese” and called for “holy resistance” to Mr. Trump’s immigration plans. The Conference of the United Methodist Church also proclaimed support for sanctuary efforts. And when its rabbis convene in February, the Jewish group T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights will offer training on how to turn synagogues into sanctuary congregations. Before the piñata party at the Arch Street church, there was a ritual called Las Posadas, a of the search for shelter by Mary and Joseph. Visitors collected outside the sanctuary doors and sang verses pleading to be let in. Church members responded from inside. Mr. Flores and his family were inside, of course. “What better work for the church to do,” said the minister, Mr. Hynicka, his arm around them, “than to provide what we know God gives us, our heartfelt commitment to family, whether that family comes from Mexico, or from Philadelphia, or wherever. ’’ | 1 |
Its a disgrace , they have wrecked the FBI , its worse than Hoover and thats saying something , they have to make a stand sometime ,its getting like Alcapone arresting Alcapone . What a mess . Trump should make something out of this stopping honesty in the FBI is an outrage of the highest order. Your brave guys/girls but where is the help you deserve ///???? No one is against the FBI They just hate crooks in their undermining the whole legal syatem if you could call it that . You have to give Sibel Edmons some credit she named Hillary as part of the Dirty dozen . Looks like they are trying to destroy thm going on who they keep putting in charge. | 0 |
Donald Trump is appealing to the black voters. Brunell Donald-Kyei came on FOX Business Lou Dobbs show and said that Donald Trump wants to make a new contract with African Americans and Latino Americans.
From the National Diversity Coalition for Trump Brunell Donald-Kyei and Bruce Levell break down Donald Trump’s support for minority communities.
Donald Trump said: Look, I’m not Jay-Z, I’m not JayLo, I’m not Trina, I’m not trying to entertain you but what I am saying is look I have a contract with African-American and Latinos, I want to put $100 billion into your communities over the next 8 years and not only that, I’m gonna put $20 billion into School Choice.
So basically what happened is, black people are waking up better hearing Donald Trump’s messages now, you got to remember the mainstream media a lot of them, not FOX, but they been calling him a racist, a the divider and all of these things, in an attempt to walk away from the fact that Hillary Clinton nor does the president have a record of doing anything for our innercities whether be blacks or Latinos.
Brunell Donald-Kyei asked blacks and latinos to try something new this time around, she said: Vote Trump and put that $100 billion dollars, that $20 billion that Donald Trump is offering, make him prove it to you, give him 4 years, give him a chance. We need that money for our communities, we need it!
Trump basically saying: I’m gonna make your communities prosperous.
Donald Trump has a great message.
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On January 6 a passenger from an Air Canada flight allegedly pulled a gun from a checked bag in baggage claim and opened fire, shooting numerous innocents inside the passenger terminal. [Florida law designates an airport “passenger terminal” as one of the many places that citizens are not allowed to carry a gun for . The Florida Senate’s list of Florida Statutes states that a “[concealed carry] license issued under this section does not authorize any person to openly carry a handgun or carry a concealed weapon or firearm into … the inside of the passenger terminal and sterile area of any airport, provided that no person shall be prohibited from carrying any legal firearm into the terminal, which firearm is encased for shipment for purposes of checking such firearm as baggage to be lawfully transported on any aircraft. ” In other words, it is legal to have a gun with you if it is “encased” for travel — say, for the purposes of a hunting or shooting trip — but it is not legal to have one otherwise. This mean Floridians with concealed carry licenses were barred from having their guns on their persons for while at the baggage claim where the January 6 attack occurred. The Crime Prevention Research Center notes that “Florida is one of only six states that completely ban concealed carry at airports. ” Breitbart News spoke to Florida Carry Inc. ’s Sean Caranna after news of the Ft. Lauderdale attack broke, he said: Once again a murderer has chosen a “gun free zone” to indiscriminately kill innocent people. Thankfully law enforcement was able to respond quickly, but tragically not before multiple victims were murdered. Florida Rep. Raburn ( ) and Sen. Greg Steube ( ) have each filed separate legislation this year to allow for lawful defensive carry in the areas of airport terminals. This cowardly and tragic act is further proof that people need the ability to defend themselves wherever they peacefully go. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
LONDON — Perhaps it is all the tourists — 18. 6 million international visitors to London last year, a record. Perhaps it is the gradual “Europeanization” of Britain. And perhaps it is just something to do with the blocked traffic on these ancient streets and all the diesel fumes in the air. Cars still drive on the left, and signs still instruct you to walk on the left. But these days, on the sidewalks, staircases and escalators, chaos reigns. Walking anywhere in London or navigating the subway during rush hour means having to make a mad, dodging, aggressive dance against an oncoming tide of people, many of whom seem oblivious to Britain’s long tradition of walking on the left. And that is not counting those engrossed in their smartphones or blocking the exits while consulting Google Maps. The answer to traffic, of course, should be the subway, or the Underground. But the system is chronically overcrowded, and annual ridership, already at 1. 34 billion, has been increasing nearly 4 percent a year. It has been rising so much that at Holborn Station, one of London’s busiest and deepest, with more than 56 million passengers a year and escalators 23. 4 meters, or 77 feet, tall, there is an experiment to encourage people at rush hour to stand side by side on the escalators going up and merely ride them. The science is simple: Fill the available space on the escalators with people, rather than leaving the left side of each step largely empty, except for the few who choose to march up the metal mountain. The London Underground has concluded that in stations with escalators more than 18. 5 meters, or about 61 feet, tall, much of the left side of the escalators goes unused, causing blockages and lines (“queues”) at the bottom. A trial at Holborn last year found that standing on both sides of the escalator reduced congestion about 30 percent. During rush hour, about 16, 220 people could travel on the escalators, compared with 12, 745 in normal conditions. So a trial began at Holborn in April. “It seems to be working better,” said Kieron Racher, a member of the Special Requirements Team for the London Underground. “We’re slowly changing people’s minds. ” Mark Evers, the customer strategy director for the London Underground, said results had been mixed, “as we expected at this stage. ” With customer use increasing so fast, and given the depth of Holborn, it made sense to try the experiment during the morning and evening rush hours, he said, when the station is particularly hellish. Holborn Station, opened in 1906, serves a busy commercial and academic part of London, near the British Museum, the London School of Economics and Bloomsbury Square, and two major lines, the Piccadilly and the Central, pass through it. During many evening rush hours, staff members limit the number of people who can enter the station, or they shut it entirely for up to 10 minutes at a time because the escalators and platforms are packed. Peter McNaught, the operations director for the London Underground, expressed optimism about the escalator experiment. “We hope this can lead to improving congestion at Holborn, making journeys easier for all our customers,” he said. Of course, not everyone is happy. Some, like Andrew Hossack, are in a hurry to get to work. “A lot of people walk,” he said. “It’s about time, isn’t it?” Some, like Beth Forrester, like climbing for the exercise. “I always walk,” she said. “I always get my steps in!” Andrew Brenner said he had stood that day, “but normally I walk, because it seems so stupid just to stand there. ” Martin Dearden said he normally stood. “There are so many people,” he said. “I suppose in the end it does get more people out faster. ” The behavioral science department at the London School of Economics has developed different messages to encourage travelers to stand. Screens at the bottom of the escalators show a looped video of a neatly uniformed woman from the staff advising people to stand on both sides. There are signs on the floors painted footsteps on both sides of the escalator stairs electronic versions of triangular “stand on the right” signs and, of course, station announcements that are difficult to hear through an inadequate loudspeaker system. But the Underground has also, cleverly, left a third escalator — on the far left, of course — for anyone to ride or climb as he or she pleases, so in some sense it is stepping heaven, without any official hectoring. If Holborn is a nightmare, Victoria Station is arguably worse, because it is undergoing a long reconstruction project to deal better with increased traffic and work more efficiently with the hugely busy railway and bus station there. Given the building work, together with major construction projects nearby in an area that is being quickly built up, the walkways near the station are temporary and narrow, with uneven surfaces and lined with painted plywood. They are made narrower still by pillars, homeless people and puzzled tourists, since these pathways do not typically show up on smartphones and can be disorienting. So at normal times they are difficult, and during rush hour they are a terrible obstacle course. Made much worse, of course, by the breakdown of the traditional British habit of walking on the left. Instead, bodies fill all available space, especially as people wait at crosswalks or peer around to see if they can walk against the light, and then come at you like a Roman phalanx with shoulder and shopping bags instead of shields. And of course, in this land of Magna Carta, some think it is their right as freeborn English men and women to do whatever they please, without Brussels or the London Underground telling them what to do. | 1 |
In what may be the last bombshell to drop prior to Election Day, the Associated Press is now reporting that they have found the smoking gun that proves Melania Trump worked illegally in the United States prior to obtaining a work visa.
This means: For all intents and purposes, Melania was the sort of “illegal” immigrant that her husband now labels as criminals and morally-bankrupt. The Trump family lied about this fact and conspired to cover it up for the duration of the election. This comes at a supremely bad time for Trump, who recently made Melania a campaign centerpiece – including a much publicized speech on… you guessed it… immigration.
Here’s what the AP found :
The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between Sept. 10 and Oct. 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.
It is highly unlikely that the discovery will affect the citizenship status of Mrs. Trump. The government can seek to revoke the U.S. citizenship of immigrants after the fact in cases when it determines a person willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization. But the government effectively does this in only the most egregious cases, such as instances involving terrorism or war crimes.
According to the documents, Melania made roughly $20,000 illegally before getting her visa – only slightly less money in seven weeks than the average undocumented worker Trump disparages as “moochers” make in a year .
While existing standards mean Melania would likely remain a U.S. citizen despite her previous violations, her husband’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration might be working against her. Trump has long held that people who “cheated” to get into the United States illegally should be moved to the “back of the line.” Would he include his wife in that sweeping category?
Of course, Melania Trump should not be deported over a technicality in her early immigration status. However, her husband might want to think about that fact when he screams at rallies about rounding up families of Hispanic immigrants and shipping them out of the country. Melania is living proof that the immigration issue in this country isn’t exactly cut-and-dry. Not that Trump is known for any semblance of nuance.
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WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Monday moved to the findings of a investigation into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed, by issuing their own report that cast the inquiry as a politically motivated crusade that wasted time and money. The release of the Democrats’ report came amid signs that the House Select Committee on Benghazi, led by its chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, was nearing the release of its official findings. In the face of intense criticism, Mr. Gowdy has repeatedly defended the committee’s work as the most comprehensive examination of the attacks in Benghazi, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2012, and resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens a State Department official, Sean Smith and two Central Intelligence Agency contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. In recent days, the committee has reiterated longstanding complaints about lack of cooperation with the investigation by the Obama administration, including a statement by Mr. Gowdy on Monday citing obstruction by the State Department. The committee has also cited the refusal by the White House to have President Obama respond to written questions. “For nearly a year and a half, the State Department has withheld documents and information about Benghazi and Libya from the American people’s elected representatives in Congress,” Mr. Gowdy said in the statement. “Whatever the administration is hiding, its justifications for doing so are imaginary and appear to be invented for the sake of convenience. That’s not how complying with a congressional subpoena works, and it’s well past time the department stops stonewalling. ” In their counternarrative, the Democrats serving on the House Select Committee said they had been virtually shut out of the process of developing the report, and they accused their Republican counterparts of trying to besmirch Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, who was secretary of state during the Benghazi attack. “Section II of our report documents the grave abuses that Select Committee Republicans engaged in during this investigation,” the Democrats wrote. “Republicans excluded Democrats from interviews, concealed exculpatory evidence, withheld interview transcripts, leaked inaccurate information, issued unilateral subpoenas, sent armed marshals to the home of a cooperative witness and even conducted political by exploiting the deaths of four Americans. ” The Democrats also singled out Mr. Gowdy for criticism. “In our opinion, Chairman Gowdy has been conducting this investigation like an overzealous prosecutor desperately trying to land a conviction rather than a neutral judge of facts seeking to improve the security of our diplomatic corps,” they wrote. The Democrats’ report included praise for American personnel in Benghazi and Tripoli, the Libyan capital, saying they “conducted themselves with extraordinary courage and heroism,” and determined that the American personnel could not have saved the four who died. The report includes some criticism: “The State Department’s security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate as a result of decisions made by officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. ” But it absolves Ms. Clinton of responsibility, adding, “Secretary Clinton never personally denied any requests for additional security in Benghazi. ” The Democrats accused the Republicans of spending more than $7 million on an investigation that they argued would not reveal any substantially new information that would alter the understanding of events as described in multiple previous inquiries. The Republicans sharply dismissed the report, turning the main Democratic criticism around — saying that they were overly focused on Mrs. Clinton. “Benghazi Committee Democrats’ obsession with the former secretary of state is on full display,” the committee’s press secretary, Matt Wolking, said in a statement, which also accused the Democrats of issuing “rehashed, partisan talking points defending their endorsed candidate for president. ” Noting that in the Democrats’ report, Mrs. Clinton’s name appeared 339 times compared with 85 mentions of Ambassador Stevens, Mr. Wolking added: “As Chairman Gowdy has said, this is not about one person. This investigation is about the four brave Americans we lost in Libya: Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. That is how the majority has conducted its thorough investigation, and we look forward to revealing the new information we have uncovered to the families and the American people. ” The work of the Benghazi committee led to the discovery that Mrs. Clinton had used a private email server for many communications connected to her duties as secretary of state, a revelation that has led to separate inquiries into her conduct, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But House Republicans have also contributed to the general sense that the committee overly focused its sights on Mrs. Clinton. The majority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, caused a stir in September when he boasted on Fox television that the committee’s work had put a dent in Mrs. Clinton’s poll numbers. Mr. McCarthy said: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought. ” Those comments helped derail Mr. McCarthy’s own bid to succeed Speaker John A. Boehner. Mr. Gowdy has long disavowed those remarks, saying the discovery of the private email server was a highly unexpected development in his investigation. | 1 |
No, you'll be a dog licking of the vomit of your Chinese overlords... | 0 |
Staunch in its opposition to the Democrats but rived by fierce internal schisms, the American political party stumbled toward defeat, its members cursing their fate. “We are slain,” cried Lewis D. Campbell, a representative from Ohio. “The party is dead, dead, dead!” That was the election of 1852, when the Whig Party, then one of the country’s two major political forces, began to crumble over bitter arguments about slavery. The Whigs would dissolve within four years, to be reborn as the Republican Party — the very party now engulfed by its own civil war. As this year’s extraordinary election hurtles toward its climax, scores of Republican leaders have deserted their party’s presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. A snowballing scandal over sexual harassment and assault allegations has caused Mr. Trump’s poll numbers to crater, and some of the party’s top donors have suggested abandoning him altogether. But a solid core of Republicans stands defiantly with Mr. Trump, flocking to increasingly raucous rallies where the candidate vents his rage toward and disdain for a party that, at least theoretically, still backs him. The turmoil raises a bracing possibility: Is an American political behemoth — a party that has produced 18 presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan — about to fall apart like its predecessor? “There is a real danger,” said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, and an early critic of Mr. Trump. “But I wouldn’t panic yet. It’s very hard to know where we stand right now. A lot depends on the election in November. ” The Republican schism is in fact the culmination of simmering tensions within American conservatism. For years, the party has been an amalgam of factions: Christian evangelicals, foreign policy hawks and more. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 helped spur the rise of a strongly conservative wing known as the Tea Party, with a brand of protest politics that fed off the anger of many white voters and created an opening for Mr. Trump this year. Republican leaders have never been happy or comfortable with Mr. Trump — a celebrity tycoon who has changed his party affiliation five times — even as he vanquished 16 rivals to clinch the party nomination. But for months the leaders turned a blind eye to Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on Muslims, Mexicans and women, hoping that even if he lost the presidential election, the party could retain its prime political asset: its majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Although Republicans have lost the past two presidential elections, they have had stunning success in congressional races and now enjoy their largest majority since 1928. That has given them considerable power to block laws, constrain President Obama and threaten government shutdowns. Republicans also control of the 50 state legislatures, allowing them to shape laws on issues at the heart of America’s culture wars: guns, abortion and marijuana. But when a recording emerged of Mr. Trump boasting about groping women, it struck at the core of a party that prides itself on “values,” and Republican leaders could no longer look the other way. Some Republican politicians who expressed revulsion at Mr. Trump’s comments might have been acting out of cold political calculation. On Nov. 8, Americans will vote not only to elect a president but also to fill all 435 House seats and 34 of the Senate’s 100 seats. Analysts predict that a crushing defeat for Mr. Trump could cost Republicans their advantage in the Senate and even their control of the House — a prospect that until recently was considered a distant possibility. It is easy to forget that the Republican Party, now known as an and stalwart, originated as the progressive face of American politics. Founded in 1854 on a platform of opposition to slavery, the party was initially dominated by Northern states, which were more industrial. The first Republican president, Lincoln, held the Union together through the Civil War, during which he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which led to the abolition of slavery. The party’s nickname, the Grand Old Party, dates from that period, as does its mascot, the elephant, which first appeared in 1874 as a political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly. In the years before and during the Civil War, the Democratic Party, which dominated the agrarian South, supported slavery. But the tables turned in the 1960s, when the Democratic Party championed an end to segregation and Southern states swung to the Republicans, increasingly the party of conservatism. Mr. Trump’s campaign has ushered in a new chapter of the conservative story, building a coalition of disaffected voters motivated as much by their anger at government and establishment politics as by any policy issue. In the final weeks of the race, Mr. Trump’s campaign has exposed a yawning gulf between Republican leaders and much of the party’s base. While Washington insiders and Republican thinkers have scorned Mr. Trump, some politicians, unsure of their constituents’ opinions, are weighing whether to lend him their support. After the recording was made public this month, some leaders disavowed Mr. Trump but then, facing a backlash from constituents, reaffirmed their support — a maneuver known in the British news media as a “reverse ferret. ” Some Republicans have had enough. At the party’s contentious national convention in July in Cleveland, I met Ryan Davenport, 25, a teacher from Dallas in a bow tie, who brimmed with fury at the ascension of Mr. Trump as the party’s . When I called Mr. Davenport last weekend, he said he had abandoned the party and would vote for Evan McMullin, a former C. I. A. operative who began a moonshot bid for the presidency as an independent. Mr. Davenport said he took no pleasure in seeing the party he loved in disarray. But when for Mr. Trump called his house, he told them to leave him alone. “We have a predator running for president of the United States,” Mr. Davenport told me. “He’s radioactive. ” Whether Mr. Trump wins or loses in November, questions over the party’s future will remain. Mr. Kristol, the conservative commentator, said Mr. Trump’s candidacy could turn out to be “a bit of fluke” because his brand of politics enjoys limited support among elected Republicans. “If you look at your average stump speech, they do not sound like Trump,” Mr. Kristol said. Others see the party veering toward a possible split. “Our views — the Republican intellectuals and people — differ from a significant chunk of the electorate,” said Avik Roy, a conservative strategist who likened Mr. Trump’s success to the rise of nationalist parties in Europe. “And it’s the electorate that decides. ” In pugnacious form, Mr. Trump has in recent days inveighed against Republican leaders. Dealing with his party, he declared, was harder than fighting his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. With several polling websites putting Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election around 10 percent, he appears to be steeling for defeat, warning his supporters that the outcome of the election will be rigged. At a rally in Florida on Thursday, he struck an apocalyptic tone. “This is a struggle for the survival of our nation,” he said. Or, at least, the survival of the Republican Party. | 1 |
IF Trump wins the election, the following is a sign of very serious things to come.
The GOP offices are firebombed in North Carolina. The obvious suspects are Soros’ groups, the Clinton Foundation and rabid Democrats. And what did Loretta Lynch (Mob) do? The answer to the question and more lies below.
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We Are Change
Emails revealed by Wikileaks from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s account contained lots of strange emails about food, ties to human trafficker Laura Silsby, and a photo of Asian girls eating pizza — so naturally the internet has been set on fire with theories about secret codes and a child sex ring.
Is this Laura Ling in the Podesta Pizza email pic? Bill Clinton rescued? ID 8673 #HillaryIndictment #PrisonPizza pic.twitter.com/YuuKOpvywJ
— Jupider Leigh (@jupiderleigh) November 4, 2016
On Wednesday, a Reddit post titled “I believe I have connected a convicted child abductor who was caught stealing children in Haiti with the Clintons,” contained a list of email links regarding Laura Silsby, former director of The New Life Children’s Refuge.
BREAKING: Redditor may have connected a child abductor who was caught stealing children in Haiti with the Clintons. https://t.co/REW7RwPn4S
— Brittany Pettibone (@BrittPettibone) November 3, 2016
Silsby was found guilty in Haiti of child trafficking in 2010, after she attempted to cross the Haiti-Dominican Republic border with 33 Haitian children — all but one of the children had at least one living parent and were not orphans. Nine others who were arrested along with her were freed, thanks to the efforts of the Clintons .
“Along with the Haitian justice system, some observers excused the missionaries’ actions, even though they rose to the level of child trafficking. They did so essentially because we place such little value on the integrity of poor families; the idea that the missionaries were acting to ‘save’ these children justified the damage they would have caused to the children and their families,” Shani M. King wrote for the Harvard Human Rights Journal. “In this way, the Silsby case offers a window into international and domestic child placement schemes that disrupt poor families and disregard traditional forms of child placement.”
Jorge Puello Torres, Silsby’s legal adviser, was later arrested for running an international sex trafficking ring. Torres was accused of luring girls from the Caribbean and Central America into prostitution by offering to make them “models.”
In 2011, he was sentenced to three years and one month in federal prison for “alien smuggling.”
Were 33 children for Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein's "use"? Forget corruption, these emails expose connections to child sex trafficking. https://t.co/9CvlndNTDs
— Mike Cernovich ?? (@Cernovich) November 3, 2016
“Hillary has a LONG history of interest in Ms. Silsby. Wikileak emails dating back till at least 2001 have been found in her archives discussing Laura’s NGO (EmailID 3776). Laura had claimed she planned to build an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but authorities in the country said she never submitted an application for this purpose. They instead located to Haiti,” the Redditor wrote.
On Friday, Wikileaks released their 28th installment of the Podesta Files and the speculation online grew even stranger.
Search all Podesta emails for these keywords. We are uncovering a child sex ring. #PodestaEmails28 pic.twitter.com/h6N6O76sAw
— Jared Wyand ?? (@JaredWyand) November 3, 2016
Theories and screenshots began to swirl, claiming that bizarrely-worded emails about food were codes for child sex trafficking. It is important to note that this is originated on anonymous message boards, and the “keywords” were not listed in any of the emails.
Please read this Podesta email. Is this code for something SICK? #Trump #MAGA pic.twitter.com/3gRlCQVbJH
— GuthDaddy (@mediumsexy) November 3, 2016
Simple, either Podesta feeds everyone walnut sauce or he arranges orgies with Black boys
So many cryptic emails like this #PodestaEmails28 pic.twitter.com/JcEAnDcpZw
— Jared Wyand ?? (@JaredWyand) November 3, 2016
Lawyer and popular author/journalist Mike Cernovich was among those sharing and discussing the theories.
"I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii…"
This is code for something.
Sex trafficking? https://t.co/BNulNKBi4u pic.twitter.com/L3l5j40ahy
— Mike Cernovich ?? (@Cernovich) November 3, 2016
“As a lawyer who has handled many criminal cases, I have strong instincts for when ‘code’ is being used. Reading these emails gives me the sense that they are speaking code words, like criminals,” Cernovich told We Are Change. “However the reports I’ve seen online do not seem credible and I myself have not fully cracked the code.”
"I think it has a map that seems pizza-related."
This is code. I know this from representing drug dealers. https://t.co/9mX3kivmPz pic.twitter.com/yk1vJIOlMd
— Mike Cernovich ?? (@Cernovich) November 3, 2016
Cernovich added that because of the facts that Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin’s husband is currently under investigation for sexting a minor, and Bill Clinton flew on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet (which is called “The Lolita Express”), the whole inner circle deserves scrutiny.
“Bill Clinton took six trips to Epstein’s island without Secret Service. Weiner was sexting 15 year old girls. Whole inner circle is suspect,” Cernovich said.
Whether this is a case of confirmation bias, or something more sinister — one thing is certain:
People really do not trust Hillary Clinton — to the point where thousands of people are actually having serious discussions about whether or not she is involved in a child sex ring.
Perhaps the Democrats should consider bringing Bernie Sanders back now.
The post Internet Is On Fire With Speculation That Podesta Emails Contain Code for Child Sex appeared first on We Are Change .
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A Brooklyn man who beat a transgender woman to death after he had started flirting with her was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Tuesday, a penalty the victim’s family said was too light. The man, James Dixon, 25, pleaded guilty to manslaughter this month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, admitting he attacked the woman, Islan Nettles, on a street in Harlem just after midnight on Aug. 17, 2013, knocking her to the pavement with a punch, then hitting her again as she lay on the sidewalk. Ms. Nettles, 21, an assistant at a fashion company, died five days later of head injuries, prompting vigils and protests by transgender people who said her death was emblematic of the violence they often face because of their sexual identity. While Ms. Nettles was still in a coma, Mr. Dixon turned himself in to the police. In written and videotaped statements, he told detectives that he had started flirting with Ms. Nettles, unaware she was transgender, after meeting her and her two friends on the street. He said he became enraged and attacked her when his friends began mocking him for trying to pick up a transgender woman. “I just didn’t want to be fooled,” he said in a videotaped statement. The victim’s mother, Delores Nettles, told the court she believed 12 years was too light a sentence, given the brutal beating her daughter took. “He can go home after those 12 years and see his family,” she said in tears. “It’s not fair. ” Turning to Mr. Dixon, she said: “How can you sleep at night? How can you rest? I can’t rest. ” Mr. Dixon showed no emotion. He declined to make a statement before Justice Daniel P. Conviser pronounced the sentence, which had been negotiated with the judge on the eve of the trial in return for a guilty plea. Prosecutors objected to the deal they had sought a sentence of at least 17 years. | 1 |
25, 2016 4 Easy Solutions For Lighting Your Indoor Plants
Whether you’re trying to start your seeds so that you have healthy seedlings or young plants to set out when the weather warms or you’re growing all of your plants inside, lighting is an integral part of growing.
Finding the best indoor lighting options for your plants can be a challenge, though.
It would be ideal if you could place all of your plants by windows so that they can get their natural source of light: sunshine. However, that’s not always possible, especially if you’re growing a lot of plants and you want to keep them under the radar.
There are plenty of great options and, thanks to technology, they won’t all cost a fortune. We’ll discuss that as we go.
Choosing the Type of Light
Before we start discussing bulbs, you need to understand a bit about growing plants and what type of light they need. Many newcomers to the scene think that, like owning a guinea pig or a snake, the light is used to keep the plant warm, but that’s not the case.
Plants require light to grow and flower, but not all light is equal. For that matter, not all light is necessary and the types of light that plants need are actually dim to human eyes.
The sun offers a full spectrum of light colors that range from blue to red. It’s actually those two colors that plants need the most. Blue light enables the plant to grow bushy and full. Red light causes the plant to produce a hormone that makes it flower. As you’ve probably already figured, you want both for your edibles.
The colors in between, particularly green, are completely unnecessary; green light is purely for aesthetic purposes. It just makes your plants appear green and glossy because the plant reflects it back. That may be useful information if you want your plants to look pretty as they grow.
Another factor that you need to consider is heat. Unless you’re growing your plants in a cold room, standard room temperatures are more than enough heat to grow most plants. You really don’t need heat from your bulbs. Too much heat will burn your plants and many high-heat bulbs burn out fairly quickly, too.
You’ll see watts , which is how much energy the bulb produces, and you’ll also see Kelvins . Kelvins are the basic unit of color temperature that’s used to measure that whiteness of a bulb’s output. In other words, it’s the best description of the visual warmth or coolness of the bulb.
The higher the degree of Kelvin, the bluer the light. The lower the Kelvin, the warmer, or redder, the light looks. Shoot for 4000-6000 Kelvin because that level of light borrows from all parts of the spectrum including the blues and reds that you need for growth and flowering.
Some plants, such as peppers and lettuce, may not need as much red light because they don’t flower quite as much.
Now that you understand the basics of what you need to make your plants grow, let’s talk about the different types of light and whether they’re best for your needs.
1. Incandescent Lights
These are the types of bulbs you probably already have in your fixtures. They’re pretty much standard bulbs. Incandescent bulbs put off a ton of heat and don’t really produce the type of light that your plants need to grow.
Only about 10 percent of the energy that they produce goes toward light; the rest is heat. They’re OK for growing low-light plants such as vines, but they’re not much good for growing anything seriously.
2. Fluorescent Lights
These lights put off mostly blue light, which means that you’ll have bushy plants. These are OK for growing plants that you don’t need to flower such as lettuce or cabbage. They’re also good for starting your plants inside. Fluorescents come in different lengths and are shaped like tubes.
One of the biggest downsides here is that you have to hang them is special ballasts. Regular fluorescents are great for at least starting your seeds, and they’re good for plants that don’t need so much of the red light such as herbs.
If you opt to go with fluorescent lights, you should know that the narrower the bulb, the more efficient the light is. They also use 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent lights.
Now there’s a new fluorescent system out called the T5 system. They put out double the amount of light per tube as regular fluorescent tubes and they’re full-spectrum. That means that instead of just having the blue light like regular fluorescent lights have.
If you’re using a T5 system adjust the proximity of the light to the plant as it grows. Since the bulb isn’t insanely hot, you don’t have to worry about burning the plant. Video first seen on katie phibbs .
3. High Intensity Discharge Solutions
These are great options for growing your plants but they’re expensive. High-intensity discharge lights are extremely efficient and produce a lot of light. There are a couple of types that emit different spectrums of light.
The Metal Halide, of MH, light emits the blue light that will encourage the leafiness, and the High Pressure Sodium, or HPS, lights produce the reds that you need to make it flower.
You could use the MH light to get it started and full, then swap it out for the HPS to get it to flower, or you could use them in tandem. These bulbs are expensive but one 1000-watt lamp can produce the same amount of light as fifty 40-watt fluorescent bulbs. They come in different sizes.
Just to give you an idea, one 400-watt bulb can produce enough light to cover a 15sf growing area, or a 4’x4’ garden. The 1000-watt bulb covers about a 7’x7’ area. Figure that each 25 watts covers 1 square foot of garden.
4. LED Lights
We’ve been using them for Christmas lights for years but LEDs are relatively new to the agriculture scene. They produce practically no heat and don’t use hardly any power, either. Remember how we discussed the Kelvin measurements? Well LEDs can be programmed to 5700K to mimic the light spectrum of the sun.
Right now, LED grow lights are expensive but they’ll likely become cheaper as they develop the technology and the method becomes more popular.
Figuring Costs
Remember that you’re going to be in this for the long run. If you’re only growing a few plants, it’s probably fine to go with a cheaper bulb or system but if you’re going to grow a significant amount of plants and plan to do it for the foreseeable future, you’ll probably be better off to invest a bit of money in the beginning and let it pay off in the long run.
To figure the cost of your system, add up the combined wattage of all of your lights and divide that by 1000. That will give you the kilowatts used. Multiply that by how much your power company charges you per kilowatt hour. Multiply that by the number of hours the lights will be on per month and you have your monthly energy cost that you can compare to the original cost of the system.
If you’re fortunate enough to live completely off the grid and you are powering your house by solar or some other sustainable method, then you can go with the best system for your situation that’s within your price range. If you notice, though, the more expensive systems use relatively little energy.
Every survival plan must have food at its core. and discover how you can grow your own food with just 10 minutes a day!
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Rosetta, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, is dead, setting down in a final embrace with its companion of the past two years. Radio signals from Rosetta flatlined at 7:19 a. m. Eastern after it did a soft onto Comet at a speed of two miles per hour, slower than the average walk. For the last few minutes, people at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, watched their computer screens mostly in silence, but with some nervous chatter. When the radio signals ceased, they applauded and hugged in a celebration that was part joyous, part somber. “This is it,” said Patrick Martin, the mission manager. “I can announce the full success of this historic descent of Rosetta toward 67P, and I declare the primary mission operations ended for Rosetta. ” Before Rosetta went silent, it collected and sent back one last batch of data and images, including some very shots of the comet’s surface. The last photograph was taken at a height of 167 feet and was blurry because the camera was designed for viewing from a distance, not close up. The spacecraft’s journey — it took a decade to get there — concluded with quite a few firsts, and quite a few fans. Comets are frozen remnants that hold secrets about the early solar system, and Rosetta was the first spacecraft to do more than just whiz by one. Scientists have learned a lot from Rosetta’s discoveries, adding pieces to the puzzle of how the planets came together and how life arrived on Earth. One of Rosetta’s key findings is that comets are probably not the source of Earth’s water. Comet 67P, which likely formed outside of Neptune, was one of the few with an orbit that could be matched by a spacecraft. It is only the second Kuiper belt object to be visited by a spacecraft — Pluto was the first, by NASA’s New Horizons mission last year. Two years of observation revealed a dormant comet coming to life as it neared the sun and heated up, shooting geysers of dust and gas off its surface. Scientists learned that its shape, resembling a rubber duck, most likely occurred when two comets bumped into each other at a low velocity and stuck together. The European Space Agency created a series of cartoon videos for children. For an older audience it commissioned a short film, “Ambition,” which starred actors from the HBO series “Game of Thrones. ” Aidan Gillen, who plays Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, and Aisling Franciosi, who plays Lyanna Stark, explained the mission’s grand goals with storytelling: The film was released in October 2014, shortly before Rosetta dispatched a small lander, Philae, to the surface of Comet 67P. On Wednesday, the space agency released an epilogue: After making its closest approach to the sun in August 2015, Comet 67P is now on the outward leg of its orbit. As sunlight grew more faint, Rosetta was less able to generate power from its solar panels. Mission managers decided on a dive to collect one last batch of data: observations of mysterious pits that appear similar to sinkholes on Earth. The camera was expected to make out features as a small as one inch wide. “It will be interesting to get to look into the interior of the pits,” Mohamed Ramy a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and a member of the team working with Rosetta’s camera, said during a news conference on Thursday. The instrument that collected and studied dust particles had already been turned off. During a series of presentations on Thursday, mission scientists described some of their findings, including a variety of “magical landscapes” along with an overall emptiness. They released audio of a “cosmic song,” created by the magnetic fields oscillating in the trail of particles flying off the comet. Valerie Ciarletti of the Université who helped investigate the comet’s interior with radio waves, said the inside of Comet 67P is about as porous as fresh, powdery snow — 70 percent of the volume is empty space. “It’s very fluffy material,” she said. Parts of the surface, like the rocky region where Rosetta’s lander Philae wound up, are more dense, with a porosity lower than 50 percent. “It could be something like sand,” Dr. Ciarletti said. The interior was also homogeneous. There were no big caves or large regions of compressed material. Thurid Mannel, a scientist at the University of Graz in Austria, described a menagerie of dust particles spanning a wide range of sizes and materials. Many were shattered by the impact with the device on Rosetta that collected dust particles ejected from the comet. “The dust is very, very fragile,” she said. The scientists learned much about the comet’s landscape. Dr. described its surface as very dark — reflecting just 3 to 4 percent of the sunlight that hits it. The darkness comes from a dearth of ice at the surface and an abundance of organic molecules. Some areas are bare rock others are smooth terrains buried in dust. “You can think of something like a sea of sand being surrounded by cliffs,” Dr. said. The rocks are cracked with fissures. “Anywhere we can see that surface and we have good enough resolution, we see fractures everywhere,” Dr. said. Charlotte Goetz of the Technical University Braunschweig was among the scientists who studied the cloud of charged particles around the comet. When Rosetta first arrived, the interplay of particles from the comet with the solar wind produced oscillations in the magnetic fields that the scientists turned into sound, a “cosmic song. ” Closer in, as more material spewed off the comet, the tune changed. Dr. Goetz on Thursday presented a longer song. But then, as Rosetta and the comet moved away from the sun, the original song returned. At the end of Thursday’s presentations, Matt Taylor, the project scientist, thanked the other scientists who he said had “worked their guts out to get to where we are today. ” He said they had mixed feelings: sad about Rosetta’s demise, and eager to take a deeper look at the reams of data. “The operations end,” Dr. Taylor said, “but we still have all this science to do, so they’re still happy that we got to this stage. ” | 1 |
We were told that we had to attack Iraq because the Saddam Hussein government made us less safe. We were told we had to bomb and kill Gaddafi in Libya because his regime made us less safe. Ditto with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Assad in Syria. Now. 15 years after 9/11, Americans are seeing through the endless wars that have lasted through the Bush and Obama Administrations. Trillions spent, untold thousands killed, societies destroyed, people displaced. A new poll sponsored by the Center for the National Interest and the Charles Koch Institute has found that Americans feel less, not more safe after a decade and a half of war. We are reaching the critical mass where Americans begin to demand a change in our interventionist foreign policy. More on the encouraging poll in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity .
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As a bathroom break girl at the advertising agency BBDO in 1985, Susan Credle took over for receptionists when they left their desks. When she learned how to type quickly and accurately, she was promoted to secretary. In the decades since, she has become one of the most accomplished women in the industry, holding top executive positions at some of the most esteemed creative agencies. She has been behind numerous memorable campaigns, including the humanlike MM’s characters and Allstate’s Mayhem ads. But even today, there are male leaders in the industry who do not acknowledge her. At industry parties, people assume they should be talking to her husband, who is an architect. She tries not to show her emotions at work because when she does, she said, “I immediately am looked at as the crazy woman. ” “I still to this day, when I feel the blood boiling in me and I just want to let it all out, I cut it by 90 percent because I’m a woman,” she said. Women now make up almost 50 percent of those working in the advertising industry, including a relatively small number, like Ms. Credle, in top executive positions. Yet when a female employee of the J. Walter Thompson agency filed a lawsuit in March accusing the company’s chief executive of racist and sexist behavior, the accusations brought to the surface what women in the industry had talked about for years: that more than half a century after the “Mad Men” era, gender bias, while often unspoken or acknowledged, continues to affect how they are treated at work, whom they interact with and what positions they hold. Advertising is far from the only industry that has struggled with issues of sexist behavior and gender bias through the years. But in interviews with more than a dozen women, mostly executives, who work in advertising, many said they found it hard to believe how much their particular business still remained a white man’s world. Although some women said they had never personally experienced gender discrimination and referred to it as a thing of the past, many said they repeatedly felt ignored or dismissed by male colleagues and left out socially. They recalled times when they were the only woman in meetings with both and clients. Some pointed to the ads themselves as examples of how the industry’s sexism manifested itself beyond office walls. “Yes, there is the rapey talk and the grabby hands, but it’s that subtle stuff that’s chronic and can be more damaging,” said Jean Batthany, the executive creative director at DDB Chicago. Nancy Hill, a longtime advertising executive who is now president and chief executive of the 4A’s, an industry trade group, said that men called her “young girl” all the time, though she has been working in the business for decades. “They don’t recognize that’s demeaning,” she said. Megan Pagliuca, the global chief executive of Omnicom’s Accuen agency, said sexism revealed itself in the prevalence of social events like golf outings and drinking events being used for business purposes, a sentiment echoed by several other women interviewed. Women, she said, feel pressure to learn to play golf or to generally act more like their male counterparts or risk missing out on establishing important relationships. “Do you try to conform and be like them rather than being yourself, or do you stay strong as who you are and know you are the best operator?” Ms. Pagliuca said. “A challenge for women is making that choice. ” Ms. Credle, who has been an executive at the agencies BBDO and Leo Burnett and is now the global chief creative officer for the agency FCB, said that the business meetings masquerading as social outings, like when male colleagues go out for steak dinners or watch a sports game together from a box suite, have at times made her feel like an outsider, even as she has become one of the industry’s most powerful creative executives. But even more damaging, Ms. Credle said, is when men ignore her. She recalled standing with two men while waiting to go onstage at an annual advertising conference in March when another man came off the stage. That man, who had just spoken about diversity in the industry, acknowledged the two men with her, but “didn’t bother to look at me,” she said. “I felt invisible. ” “There are times when I experienced things that I don’t think I would have experienced if I weren’t a woman,” she said. At the same time, however, she emphasized that many men in the industry had helped her succeed and that for her the bad experiences had been rare. Some women also said gender discrimination showed up when looking at the ads that agencies produce. Many ads portray stereotypical gender roles, they said, with mothers in the kitchen, for instance, and men driving cars. Several women noted that only 11 percent of creative directors are women, a statistic from the 3% Conference, which supports female creative leadership at agencies. “If all the advertising is being created through that dominant male lens and you look at what the result is, there’s a bias in that and there’s only one perspective,” Ms. Batthany of DDB said. There are also more blatant and aggressive expressions of sexism. Several women described frequent comments about their appearance. percent of women in advertising said they had personally experienced gender discrimination, according to a survey by the 3% Conference. percent said they had personally experienced or witnessed sexual harassment. In the lawsuit filed in March against Gustavo Martinez, the chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, the agency’s chief communications officer, Erin Johnson, accused him of subjecting employees “to an unending stream of racist and sexist comments as well as unwanted touching and other unlawful conduct. ” She also contended that Mr. Martinez, who has since resigned, made “numerous comments about rape” and, on multiple occasions, “grabbed Johnson by the throat and by the back of her neck. ” Mr. Martinez has denied the allegations against him. “There is a lot of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll in the business — there certainly was in those days,” said Rosemarie Ryan, a former of J. Walter Thompson North America who now leads the agency Co:Collective, referring to her early career in the 1980s and 1990s. “I think there are still some remnants of that. ” For years, executives have talked about improving diversity and getting rid of gender bias in advertising, but many say progress has been too slow. “I think everybody thinks it’s everybody else’s problem,” said Bill Koenigsberg, founder and chief executive of Horizon Media. One reason, some executives said, is that there are currently other priorities in advertising, given the pressing challenges that stem from a broad shift in how people consume media. Others said women might be reluctant to call out sexist behavior. Several women said male executives became visibly uncomfortable and ended the conversation when the issue of gender and racial diversity was raised. At the annual advertising conference in March, Maurice Lévy chief executive of the ad giant Publicis said the accusations in the J. Walter Thompson lawsuit were “a mistake” and not representative “of what is happening in our industry. ” The next day, however, Martin Sorrell, chief of WPP, which owns J. Walter Thompson, said “there is a problem” and “Maurice has a habit of ignoring the facts. ” Mr. Lévy tried to clarify his comments the following week in an internal memo, calling the allegations in the lawsuit “jaw dropping,” adding, “to such an extent that, in my opinion, they can only represent the unforgivable fault of one man, as opposed to an industrywide evil. ” Even some women acknowledged that it was difficult for them to address gender bias in the industry. Some of those interviewed declined to provide specifics about examples of gender bias they had seen or experienced because they wanted to protect relationships in the industry. Wendy Clark, the chief executive of DDB North America, said she had felt more subtle discrimination in her career, but acknowledged that, to rise through the ranks, she has blocked much of it out. “The truth is,” she said, “those of us who have made it through — you become impervious to it in some way. ” | 1 |
By Rev. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D. October 28, 2016
Twice in six months I find myself reviewing works by my dear old friend Joe Sobran. This time around, the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation has treated us to an anthology of Joe’s essays on Bill Clinton during his two terms in the White House. What strikes the reader immediately is the incisive analysis: Joe cuts to the chase; while being spot-on, he never descends into boorishness or uncivilized prose, which he would have deemed unworthy of a Christian gentleman. Now, of course, in our present culture of hypersensitivity, some might feel “threatened” by his honesty – but that just shows how far we have fallen in so short a time. The other point to keep in mind is that while many took exception to what Joe wrote about Bill (and Hillary) – or Billary since it was Bill himself who promised (or warned) us that we were getting two for the price of one – no one has ever been able to dispute the accuracy of the commentary.
I am writing these reflections with a bit more than two weeks before what is arguably the most unpleasant presidential election in history. Sobran’s insights into the character (or lack thereof) of both Bill and Hillary are helpful as one tries to look into his crystal ball to determine what eight years of the former First Lady-turned-President might look like. We also can surmise what Joe would have thought of Donald Trump.
In that light, we can read Sobran’s final paragraph introducing the first edition of this book in 2000: “Clinton has finally defined himself. By surviving the attempt to remove him from the office he has so filthily disgraced, he also defines our age. It says more about us than about him that he stands condoned.” Sobran grimly concluded a 1997 lecture thus: “I’m beginning to think democracy is the cruelest form of government, because it gives people exactly the kind of leaders they deserve. We finally have one who is so transparent that we can hardly complain we’ve been betrayed.” Or, as European friends of mine have been saying for months: “With over three hundred million people, are Trump and Clinton the best you could do?”
Who could disagree with the assessment that “liberalism is at war with Christian culture”? Or what about “Republican stupidity” causing our political meltdown for years?
As a lifelong educator, I perked up upon reading: “[This] used to be a country where high-school students learned Latin and Greek; today college students take ‘remedial English’ and can listen to Cliffs Notes on audiotape. And we’re told our best days lie ahead of us!” Indeed, having taught in a community college for the past couple of years and encountering for the first time the products of American “public education,” I can only wince at the thought of the majority of these students voting in any election. Indeed, in a political philosophy class, no one had ever heard of either Winston Churchill or the Magna Carta. Of course, Plato asserted that a republic could not survive without an educated populace – and thus republics tend to devolve into dictatorships – another theme underscored by Sobran.
This gem tends to encapsulate the socio-political landscape perfectly: “It’s all summed up in the word ‘judgmental.’ This idiotic word says it all: the final censure of a relativist age. It’s wrong to say anything is wrong. You must be punished for advocating punishment.” Which reminded me of Pope Benedict XVI’s talk of the “dictatorship of relativism” and Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput’s recent appeal for more “judgmentalism”!
Good Catholic that Joe was, his political positions don’t fit neatly into American partisan camps. While “conservative” on issues like abortion, traditional marriage and school choice, he recoiled from unrestrained American interventionism. Like St. John Paul II, he saw what U.S. involvement in the Middle East would bring and considered Bill Clinton’s eagerness for such to be a smokescreen to divert attention from his personal scandals.
On Hillary’s “enabling” behavior in regard to Bill’s dalliances, Sobran is brutally frank: “Mrs. Clinton is playing a curious role. She is the senior wife in what amounts to a walk-in harem. As long as she retains her primacy, she appears not to be jealous of the other women.” Further: “Stalin, for some reason, reminds me of Hillary Clinton. The general view is that she is ‘standing by her man.’ My view is a little different. I think she supports her husband for the same unromantic reason Stalin made his alliance with Hitler.”
Forgetfulness seems to be a Clinton family trait: “Tragically, our nation has now, for the second time in a few years, seen a president afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Bill Clinton’s fabled memory has broken down. During his August 17, 1998 grand jury testimony, it failed him dozens of times. It’s a shame, because he really needs his memory now. He’s been the victim of so many lying and designing women: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, and Monica Lewinsky. He has disputed their accounts of his behavior with as much vigor as a memory-impaired person can, but it’s tough. On the other hand, one advantage of having Alzheimer’s is that you keep meeting new women.” At last count, amnesia struck Hillary 39 times during her FBI encounter.
Returning to the state of our national soul, Sobran hits the nail on the head: “A lot of people support Clinton even though they don’t doubt that he committed sexual offenses (not all of them ‘consensual’), perjured himself, solicited perjury from others, lied to the public, and generally broke laws to cover up his offenses. Our traditional morality, public and private, has seriously eroded. The ‘idealism’ of the Sixties has rotted into the nihilism that was always latent in it.” As a priest, I was initially stunned by the willingness of people to overlook Clinton’s immorality until I realized that behind it all was the notion that “compared to him, I look pretty good.”
And how can we neglect to mention abortion – the eighth sacrament for the Clintons (or perhaps their first and only sacrament)? Eighteen years ago and sounding eerily like Trump in Debate #3, Joe wrote: “Clinton and his ilk are willing to kill children on the very verge of birth, and the phrase ‘partial birth’ abortion concedes too much: it isn’t ‘abortion’ except in a ‘legally accurate’ sense. It’s murder of an infant. The technique of extracting the brains and crushing the skull was developed precisely to stay within the law as the U.S. Supreme Court has warped it.”
With all the Clinton banter about women’s rights, Joe zeroes in on their ultimate inconsistency and hypocrisy when abortion and choice are linked to Communist China: “If ‘choice,’ rather than abortion as such, is the point, you’d think the Clintons and the feminists would be outraged by the Chinese policy of forcing women to have abortions after the first (or in some cases, the second) child. It’s hard to imagine a more barbarous tyranny. . . . In her syndicated column the week of the trip, Hillary (‘It takes a village’) Clinton wrote about the problems of Chinese women. She cited jobs, education, workplace discrimination – but not forced abortion. Apparently the government’s power to control women’s bodies with the most total and cruel rigor isn’t an important concern among them. Neither did feminists at home make any noise about forced abortion.”
Since sex comes up so often when Bill is on the horizon, Sobran’s comments on that matter are worth pondering: “[Clinton] finds it easy to trash women when he is through with them because, to him, women are trash in the first place. His preference for oral sex, the leitmotiv of his scandals, says volumes about his regard for the opposite sex. So does his inability to remember Monica Lewinsky’s name after several sessions.” Since Joe was always an equal-opportunity commentator, he might be just as put off by Trump’s “locker-room” talk, even if the alleged actions didn’t follow on the words. Joe would probably also note that the entire Clinton legacy has promoted both dirty talk and immoral action.
In a homily last Sunday, I shared with the congregation my personal voting record. To wit: I have always voted for the Republican candidate (because the alternatives were so morally bankrupt I could not countenance them); after Reagan II, I voted for the Republican “with a clothespin on my nose” and will be doing the same this time around. I suspect that if Joe were still among us, he might be looking for a clothespin, too. Tags: | 0 |
By Matt Agorist Students at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan got a hefty dose of the police state this week as they were... | 0 |
Did you hear the one about comics? [Kathy Griffin transformed from jokester to punchline this week by holding the image of the president’s severed head. Offending comes with the territory, but some comics mistake this as their raison d’etre. They miss that the essential aspect of comedy, even (especially?) in times, remains to provoke laughter. Griffin mistook shock for humor. Where but at the ISIS Improv does anyone laugh at the beheading of a president? Senator Al Franken canceled a joint appearance with Griffin over the controversy. “After hearing from many Minnesotans who were rightfully offended,” the Minnesota Democrat explained, “I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be best for her not to participate in the event we had previously scheduled. I understand why Minnesotans were upset by this, and I take that very seriously. ” The senator overruled Stuart Smalley. Politicians seek to control the message. Comedians prefer a more freedom of speech. These two factions warred for Franken’s soul this week. In ditching Griffin, Franken in effect ditched his former Saturday Night Live self. Hopefully the senator can still look in the mirror and join Smalley in saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. ” Franken, like Griffin, holds decidedly views. Franken, unlike Griffin, boasts a history of making people laugh. Do you recall even smiling at anything Kathy Griffin said or did? Audiences increasingly laugh out of ideological solidarity rather than the inherent funniness of anything said or done. Many famous comedians rank as unfunny comedians. Joy Behar, Janeane Garofalo, Trevor Noah, Dean Obeidallah, Griffin, and many other ideological bores got ahead by misunderstanding their profession’s charge to be hysterical. Roseanne Barr is really funny. George Carlin made people laugh hard. Sarah Silverman, at least on her Comedy Central program, was hysterical in the right way. So leftish views don’t rob one of humor. A mindset does. A mission creep pervades everything. The same sportswriters who praised the Colin Kaepernick bashed Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady. They play quarterback but strangely receive judgment on displaying a “Make America Great Again” hat in a locker in the case of the latter and in taking a knee on the national anthem in the case of the former. Brendan Eich suddenly becomes a horrible tech CEO because of the causes to which he donated and Florida elementary school teacher Veronica Fleming suddenly becomes an unfit teacher because she posted in support of President Trump on her Facebook page. The same mentality that bases rooting interests on how the quarterback votes dictates a response to a comedian on his or her partisan affiliation (Tina Fey, haha Dennis Miller, boo). It’s not exactly laughing on the cue of the grim man holding the machine gun off camera but this unhealthy tic comes from the same place. Politics, which fuels so much contemporary comedy, kills so much humor. In his 2010 book Humorists, Paul Johnson judged political correctness “fatal to humor if enforced and persisted in. For one vital element of humor is inequality, and striking visual, aural, and physical differences. Differences in sex, age, color, race, religion, physical ability, and strength lie at the source of probably the majority of jokes since the beginning of human . And all jokes are liable to provoke discomfort if not positive misery among those laughed at. Hence any joke is liable to fall foul of hate laws. The future for humorists thus looks bleak, at the time I write this. ” True, but in appointing themselves cultural guardians comics make themselves authorities, a class of people unintentionally cracking us up as much as class, color, size, and other differences do. So, although PC enforcers limit what we can laugh at, the ensure that we laugh at them. Think the Joy Behar losing it on The View when Norm Macdonald persisted in saying that Bill Clinton murdered people despite repeated warnings not to say that or a Amy Schumer bizarrely turning an episode of her Comedy Central show into an infomercial for gun control. They don’t get the joke. The punchlines rarely do. | 1 |
In 1968, a teenager in North Dakota watched transfixed as Debbie Meyer won the and freestyle races at the Mexico City Olympics. The next time the teenager, already a competitive swimmer, got in the pool, she cut through the water repeating to herself, “I am Debbie Meyer. ” That teenager would grow up to become the mother of Katie Ledecky, who on Friday night became the first Olympian since Meyer to complete the 200, 400 and 800 trifecta. Ledecky lowered her world record in the 800 freestyle by two seconds with a time of 8 minutes 4. 79 seconds. Her 400 split of 4:01. 98 would have won the bronze in the 400 final last Sunday. She finished 11. 38 seconds ahead of the Jazz Carlin of Britain, who clocked an 8:16. 17. That was of a second better than the bronze medalist, Boglarka Kapas of Hungary. The slim margin separating second and third threw into sharp relief the dominance of Ledecky, who owns the 13 fastest performances in history. Four years ago, a Ledecky won the 800 freestyle in 8:14. 63. She and Hungary’s Krisztina Egerszegi are the only swimmers to win gold medals in consecutive Olympics as teenagers. Ledecky started crying as she talked about completing this Olympics cycle by hitting all her goal times. “It’s the end of a journey,” Ledecky said, adding, “It’s been so fun. ” Before the Games, Ledecky was asked if breaking the barrier was within her reach. She said she did not believe so. “I don’t know if that’s achievable,” Ledecky said. And then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “I still say anything is possible. ” Before the 800, Ledecky did not have the best night’s sleep. She woke up on Friday with a sore throat that she kiddingly blamed on her roommate, Simone Manuel. After Manuel’s upset victory in the freestyle on Thursday, Ledecky stayed awake to congratulate her. Manuel said she was shocked when she cracked open the bedroom door around 2 in the morning and was swallowed in an embrace by Ledecky. “She said I’m not going to sleep until I give you a hug,” Manuel said. “That really meant a lot to me. ” Ledecky, 19, typically expresses more excitement about other people’s success than about her own. After her teammate Leah Smith finished the 800 in 8:20. 95 for sixth, Ledecky her way over to Smith’s lane and embraced her. “Normally I think a lot of people have to be superdominant, but Katie wants other U. S. girls to be up there on the podium with her,” Smith said. “She wants challenges. She’s always setting high goals for herself. I think it’s amazing you can want someone who’s racing you to go low. ” Ledecky’s coach, Bruce Gemmell, isn’t surprised. “Her biggest internal motivator is getting better, it’s raising the bar,” he said about Ledecky. “It’s not winning an Olympic medal, it isn’t setting a world record, it wasn’t becoming the best in the world. It’s about setting goals and going after them. ” Where does Ledecky go from here? To Stanford, to begin her freshman year, which she put off to train for the Meyer milestone. Her growing legion of admirers includes Kevin Durant, who asked to take a photograph with her after her 200 freestyle victory, and the Olympian with the most medals of all, Michael Phelps. | 1 |
That's the problem. Donald Trump as already stated that he opposes a single-payer option (like Medicare for All), and he has provided no details whatsoever as to how he would otherwise "replace Obamacare." In either case, Trump has clearly demonstrated throughout the past half century that he cannot be trusted to keep his promises. Hillary, on the other hand, will need to appease her singer-payer advocating "Bernie" supporters if she hopes to get re-nominated for President (rather than Elizabeth Warren). There are many very good reasons why Hillary may end up finally implementing a Medicare for All healthcare program in the United States. | 0 |
Some Early Voters: Changing their Minds November 02, 2016 sample ballot is seen in a photo illustration, as early voting for the 2016 general elections began in North Carolina, in Chapel...
The FBI's move to reopen investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information has some early voters changing their minds.
Americans’ interest in changing their “early votes” has increased in recent days. The spike can be traced back to the day FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency would be probing more emails related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails.
Comey announced Friday that the FBI would be reopening its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. As reported by The Daily Caller, based on Google Trends data, that day and in the days following Google searches for “change early vote” have increased. The states that seem to show the increase in interest include Nevada, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Arkansas.
Other variations on the search such as “changing early vote” and “change my early vote” yielded similar results.
Original article by The Daily Caller / Analysis by TRUNEWS.
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According to Conservative Daily Post: Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it. After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done. Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed. An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Citing the need to “use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets,” said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were “important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country.” Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary’s largest donations come from those two countries. In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai, set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 “birthday check.” The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would “welcome [the Clinton Foundation’s] suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health.” Desai added that while Qatar had already “allocated most of their $20 million … [they were] happy to consider projects we suggest.” Bill Clinton gets $1M from Qatar for his birthday. FYI: It's legal and common practice in Qatar for husbands to beat and rape their wives. pic.twitter.com/oGM2Z9JrVl
— Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) October 13, 2016 We now see two more examples of the Clinton’s acting corrupt and being intertwined with nations that fund ISIS. For those that do not see where the dots connect, let’s simplify how this all worked for Hillary. Hillary, as Secretary of State, would sell terrorist nations large weapons deals only after they gave her a very generous donation to her “foundation.” These weapons, provided by Hillary and her State Department, then filtered down from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, and so on to create, supply, and bolster terrorist groups. That is exactly how ISIS was created. But instead of blowing them up with an air assault, Hillary and Obama decided to leave ISIS alone. Why? Because ISIS being in the Middle East allows the Obama/Clinton machine to make millions in personal profits from these nations in a repetitive cycle of selling weapons. They are choosing personal gain over eliminating a terrorist group. Let that sink in. Why else have they not arrested Hillary for all of these crimes? The FBI would arrest you in a heartbeat if you went to Facebook right now to praise Allah and ISIS. It also speaks volumes as to why they are trying so hard to silence Julian Assange. If Julian Assange is lying, why are they trying so hard to silence him?
— Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) October 23, 2016 The media remains silent on all of this. This would be plastered all over the news for months if a President Trump was exposed for this. Ignorant politicians are not the problem. The problem is that ignorant people keep voting for them every election. This is the exact reason we desperately need change in this country, and it starts with Donald Trump. People like Julian Assange have given up their lives to expose corruption in government and allowing Hillary Clinton to win this election makes all of his sacrifices meaningless. He has offered us a chance to revolt against our tyrannical government. Chances likes this do not occur often, and if we do not seize the opportunity, we will suffer another four years of suppression from our corrupt leaders. Vote Trump, so that we can save America and he can pardon Julian Assange. Yes America, after all of this, how can you vote for Hillary or stay at home on election day?! How could you?! If you agree, please share and comment below. Join us on Facebook to Stop The Takeover. Click on the button to subscribe. | 0 |
Home | World | How Trump Used Alt-Right Pawns to Gain Power Before Disavowing How Trump Used Alt-Right Pawns to Gain Power Before Disavowing By Gregor Strasser 23/11/2016 11:47:59
alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., where Trump’s victory was met with cheers and Nazi salutes
WASHINGTON D.C. – USA – During Trump’s rise to power as the next president of the United States, he said what the fascist alt-right wanted to hear, then once in power, he disavowed them.
Trump quite cleverly used the alt-right chump votes to gain power, but now that he is on the cusp of becoming president, Trump is dumping his voters for a more diplomatic stance in rhetoric.
So, why did you do it? Quite simply, the alt-right, is a white supremacist fascist movement , and even though Trump may still hold fascistic viewpoints, his advisers have probably told him that he needs to tone down his nasty words a little.
Chumps
The alt-right vote was a surefire winner for Trump, purely because the followers would be guaranteed to vote for Trump, they are fanatical in their cause, and were fooled very easily into voting for Trump.
As much as Trump courted the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacist Christian groups during his campaign he knew one thing that Hillary did not, and that is these are the silent ostracised groups within America who are guaranteed to vote for something other than an all inclusive democrat.
There are many now within the alt-right fascist movement who feel angered about being used by Trump, but that’s chumps for you, Trump was the player business man who used these easily acquiesced pawns, then dumped the dumb suckers.
Now that he got their vote, he is quietly disavowing them, and moving towards a more temperate pasture of vocal rhetoric. Share on : | 0 |
Russia, India discuss FGFA advanced fighter, Su-30MKI upgrade 27 October 2016 Sputnik The India-Russia intergovernmental commission on military and technical cooperation held a meeting in New Delhi. Facebook shoigu , fgfa , su-30mki
Indian and Russian defence delegations discussed joint defence projects and defence issues of mutual interest, in particular, the Sukhoi/HAL Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) and the upgrade of the Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter, the sources at the Indian Defence Ministry sources told Sputnik. On Wednesday, the India-Russia intergovernmental commission on military and technical cooperation held a meeting in New Delhi, bringing together the delegations headed by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar.
"We discussed… the FGFA project and [upgrade] of SU-30MKI which is presently India's priority," the sources said on Wednesday.
The Russian-Indian FGFA has stealth capabilities and is based on the Russian T-50 prototype jet. The FGFA project came about following the signing of a Russian-Indian cooperation agreement on October 18, 2007.
First published by Sputnik . | 0 |
President Donald Trump returned to his attacks on the biased media, after a weekend away from Washington D. C.[“The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!” Last week, some in the media were surprised after Trump referred to them as “very honorable people” during an event at the White House. Trump appeared to be watching Fox and Friends on Monday morning, praising the show for some of their analysis. “’The first 90 days of my presidency has exposed the total failure of the last eight years of foreign policy! ’” he wrote. “So true. ” | 1 |
JAKARTA, Indonesia — More than 100 people were killed early Wednesday and more were feared dead after a powerful earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra, with many of the victims crushed to death in their homes as they slept. The earthquake, which shook Sumatra’s northernmost province, Aceh, had a preliminary magnitude of 6. 5, according to the United States Geological Survey. The Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said that the temblor, which struck after 5 a. m. at a depth of about six miles, was centered in Pidie Jaya, a region on Aceh’s east coast, adjacent to the Strait of Malacca. In Pidie Jaya, men carried the body of a young earthquake victim. Connie Magdalena, a duty officer at the National Search and Rescue Agency’s headquarters in Jakarta, the capital, said on Thursday that at least 102 people had been killed. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Agency for Disaster Management, said earlier that more than 500 people had been injured, 125 of them seriously. “But we are still doing search and rescue operations,” Ms. Magdalena said. “The communications with our teams in the field remains very bad, but they are still searching. ” The rescue teams were scouring rubble across Pidie Jaya, about 70 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, looking for survivors and victims. “Our rescue teams in the field are also evacuating the injured,” Ms. Magdalena said. Mr. Sutopo said that panicked residents in Pidie Jaya had run for their lives from homes and other buildings. At least five aftershocks were felt after the quake, he said. “Numerous homes and buildings collapsed, shop houses collapsed,” he said. Mr. Sutopo said that more than 160 homes and more than 100 buildings, including 14 mosques and a school, were damaged. Medical teams were transferring some survivors to the town of Sigli, the capital of the neighboring region of Pidie, because of overcrowding at hospitals in Pidie Jaya, The Jakarta Post reported. In Sigli, survivors were seen being treated at a hospital. Both Indonesian and international aid organizations were sending teams to Aceh to assist in the disaster. As rescue and relief operations continued, another earthquake, with a magnitude of 5, struck nearby late Wednesday. No injuries or damage were immediately reported. Aceh was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that was caused by a giant earthquake off its western coast. The disaster killed 230, 000 in more than a dozen countries, 170, 000 of them in Aceh Province alone. | 1 |
JERUSALEM — He is friends with the mayor and once tried to buy an Israeli insurance company. His parents’ names are emblazoned across a hospital campus, a tribute to generous donors. But to many Israelis and Palestinians, Jared Kushner is a mystery. Suddenly, Mr. Kushner, 35, the of Donald J. Trump and a business mogul in his own right, has emerged as a potentially important figure in the future of this troubled region. Mr. Trump said this week that Mr. Kushner could play a key, if undefined, role in efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. Few of the Israelis and Palestinians who have been immersed for years in the fitful and frustrating peace process, such as it is, could recall ever meeting Mr. Kushner, and many were hurrying to learn more. But then again, time spent at the peace table has not exactly yielded peace, and some of those who do know Mr. Kushner said his freshness and close ties to the incoming president could make him a valuable new player. Israeli officials, especially those close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were most optimistic, seeing Mr. Kushner as an ally. “There’s no question that he feels a strong commitment to Israel’s security and Israel’s future,” said Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, who has forged a close relationship with Mr. Kushner. Palestinian leaders were more wary. “I don’t personally know Jared Kushner and have never met him, but welcome the idea of having him assist in breaking the deadlock in the negotiations of the conflict,” said Amin Maqboul, secretary general of the revolutionary council of Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority. The extent of Mr. Kushner’s relationship with Israel is unclear. He is not a frequent visitor in the corridors of Jerusalem’s fancy hotels or the trendy restaurants of Tel Aviv, nor has he established deep ties with Israel’s booming business sector. He has known Mr. Netanyahu casually since childhood through his father, Charles Kushner, a real estate tycoon who has been active in business and philanthropy in Israel. And he is friends with Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem. But they get together mainly in New York, not here. In an interview with The New York Times this week, Mr. Trump pointed to Mr. Kushner as an influential player in future Middle East peace efforts. “I mean, he knows it so well,” Mr. Trump said. “He knows the region, knows the people, knows the players. ” But that seems to be a bit of fatherly exaggeration. Certainly, Mr. Kushner knows the region and players better than Mr. Trump, who has little experience here. But phone calls and emails to dozens of politicians, diplomats and journalists in Israel and the Palestinian territories yielded few who had actually encountered him. “I’ve never met Jared Kushner,” said Dore Gold, a longtime adviser to Mr. Netanyahu who recently stepped down as director general of the Foreign Ministry. Neither had Sallai Meridor, a former ambassador to the United States Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Mr. Netanyahu or Avinoam president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a group that researches relations. Nor had the main opposition leaders Isaac Herzog and Yair Lapid. Still, Mr. Kushner has been Mr. Trump’s intermediary with a variety of important Israeli and Jewish American players, including Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Dermer and wealthy donors like Sheldon Adelson, the Nevada casino magnate. He brokered a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu in September and sat in on it. “He follows the issue. He’s a strategic thinker,” said Martin Peretz, the former owner and editor in chief of The New Republic, who met Mr. Kushner at Harvard University and now splits his time between Israel and the United States. “Does he know enough? Does he know more than Aaron David Miller? Probably not. Does he know more than Dennis Ross? Probably not,” Mr. Peretz said, naming two longtime American negotiators. But “he certainly knows more about the area than Barack Obama, and more than John Kerry. ” The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kushner was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in New Jersey and graduated from a Jewish day school before attending Harvard. He observes the Sabbath, and his wife — Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka — converted to Judaism before their marriage. Mr. Trump’s transition team would not say how often Mr. Kushner visited Israel or whether he had any Palestinian connections. But an aide to the emphasized that Mr. Kushner would be just one of many advisers on the Middle East. Mr. Kushner, who took over his family’s real estate empire in his 20s and bought The New York Observer, visited Israel in 2014 when he was trying to acquire a controlling stake in Phoenix Holdings, an insurer. He signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to buy 47 percent of the firm from the Delek Group, an Israeli conglomerate, for about $434 million. But the deal fell apart, partly because of regulatory requirements. Mr. Kushner was in Israel during the war with Gaza that summer, which seemed to unnerve his wife. “We have small children, and Ivanka didn’t like the idea of me being here,” he told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “As an American who listens to the news every hour, and hearing about 90 missiles hitting Israel on a daily basis, she asked me, ‘What the hell are you doing? ’” Later that year, as the Phoenix deal was unraveling, his parents traveled to Jerusalem to dedicate a new 11. campus for the Shaare Zedek Medical Center opposite Mount Herzl, named the Seryl and Charles Kushner Campus. The Kushners committed $20 million to the hospital and Seryl Kushner served on the national board of an American committee supporting Shaare Zedek. Charles Kushner has been a participant in the Faire Fund, an real estate investment fund, for more than a decade. “The family has been involved very much in all sorts of activities with regard to Israel,” said Zalman Shoval, a former ambassador to the United States and one of the founders of the fund. His partner, Shlomo Grofman, a real estate developer and friend of the elder Mr. Kushner’s, said he had tried to involve Jared in Israel as well. “I brought Jared and Ivanka to Israel,” he said. “I invited them and they came. ” Now, it seems possible that Mr. Kushner will be a more regular visitor, gathering information and perhaps more for his . To those who have talked with Mr. Trump, there is little doubt that Mr. Kushner is a powerful voice on issues involving Israel. Boaz Bismuth, the foreign editor for Israel Hayom, a newspaper owned by Mr. Adelson, recalled interviewing Mr. Trump in December. “The first thing he mentioned was Jared — he spoke of him as someone he counts on,” Mr. Bismuth said. “He told me then that Jared knows Israel, follows what’s going on here. ” Now, instead of just following it, Mr. Kushner may have a chance to lead. | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — How a U. S. Border Patrol argent’s use of lethal force at the U. border implicates constitutional rights and foreign affairs dominated arguments at the U. S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in Hernandez v. Mesa. The lawyer arguing that the agent should be held liable had a rough day in front of the justices. [Both sides agree that while standing on American soil at the border on June 7, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa fatally shot Sergio Hernandez, a Mexican national standing on the Mexican side. But then the factual accounts diverge. According to Hernandez’s family, the teenager was playing with his friends near the border opposite El Paso, Texas, where the border runs through the middle of a concrete culvert. There is a fence on the U. S. side of the culvert. According to Mesa and the federal government, Mesa was detaining one of Hernandez’s companions on the U. S. side of the border, when Hernandez and the other teenagers started throwing rocks at Hernandez. Mesa claims that the rocks posed a danger to his safety. He repeatedly ordered then to stop and back away, but they persisted. Finally Mesa fired in what he claims is fatally striking Hernandez. Hernandez’s family sued, and Mesa filed a motion to dismiss. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, when considering a motion to dismiss, a federal court must consider the plaintiff’s allegations as true when deciding whether to throw out the lawsuit versus letting it continue. The parties later present evidence to prove their version of the facts if the lawsuit goes forward, but when deciding whether to end the case before it gets started, judges must consider only plaintiff’s version. The justices must decide three issues in this case. First, whether someone on foreign soil can raise a Fourth Amendment claim here, where the agent’s action of pulling the trigger took place on U. S. soil but the alleged constitutional injury occurred on Mexican soil when the bullet struck Hernandez. Second, whether Mesa is entitled to qualified immunity here when certain keys facts were unknowable at the time of the incident. And third, whether the family can sue Mesa personally under a contested Supreme Court precedent called Bivens, going after his personal assets such as his home and retirement. Chief Justice John Roberts led the tough questioning of Hernadez’s lawyer, who seemed out of his depth in the High Court. “It seems to me that the principles you’re arguing for can’t be narrowly confined,” said Roberts, expressing concern that the plaintiff’s argument could be used against the U. S. military acting overseas. “How do you analyze the case of a drone strike in Iraq where the plane is piloted from Nevada? Why wouldn’t the same analysis apply in that case?” Justice Stephen Breyer — a justice appointed by Bill Clinton — agreed. “What words do we write so that this opinion doesn’t affect the drone strike? ,” he asked. Justice Samuel Alito likewise pressed the lawyer, peppering him with questions such as if Hernandez were 19 instead of 15, or armed but with his hands up instead of unarmed, or 200 yards inside Mexico instead of at the literal border, or if the U. S. officer stepped across the border into Mexico instead of being on U. S. soil, asking each time where the line would be drawn for this newfound constitutional claim. “You’ve indicated that there’s a problem all along the border,” added Justice Anthony Kennedy, expressing concern about whether the courts should be deciding these things. “Why doesn’t that counsel us that this is one of the most sensitive areas of foreign affairs where the political branches should discuss with Mexico what the solution ought to be?” The more liberal justices asked tough questions of all the lawyers and did not clearly indicate which way they would rule. The more conservative justices seemed to favor the federal government’s position. A decision is expected by late June. Hernandez v. Mesa is No. on the Supreme Court docket. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 1 |
BOMBSHELL: Crooked Hillary Sent Classified Info To Chelsea Under Fake Name ‘Diane Reynolds’ But perhaps the most significant part of the email is that Clinton forwarded classified information to her daughter, who is and was a private citizen with no government role and no apparent security clearances. It is unclear when or why Clinton deleted the email. Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted a 2009 email in which she forwarded classified information to her daughter, Chelsea.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The State Department today released recovered emails from Crooked Hillary’s illegal private email server, and guess what? It contained classified and confidential information. Who did she send it to? She sent it to her daughter, who was no clearance or authorization of any kind to view or receive such communications. Now do you see why Crooked Hillary deleted those 33,000 emails so no one could see them (she thought)? And oh, by the way, Chelsea used the fake name of Diane Reynolds to receive the illegally -sent emails. Think they knew they were breaking the law? Yep.
The email was released on Friday by the State Department. It is one of thousands of emails recovered by the FBI from Clinton’s private email server.
The Dec. 20, 2009 email chain , entitled “Update,” started with a message from Michael Froman, who served as a deputy assistant to President Obama and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.
The email, which is redacted because it contains information classified as “Confidential,” was sent to Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser at the State Department, and several Obama aides. Sullivan sent it to Hillary Clinton who then forwarded it to Chelsea, who emailed under the pseudonym “Diane Reynolds.”
All of the text in the body portion of the classified emails is redacted because it contains foreign government information.
The State Department labeled the email a “near duplicate,” indicating that it was mostly similar to other emails that the agency has released from the trove of emails that Clinton turned over in Dec. 2014. Clinton did not delete other responses she made to others on the email thread.
“Wow — you can’t make this up — sorry to have missed all of that! Let me know if you learn anything else,” she wrote to Sullivan. The State Department released that portion of the email conversation in February. CHELSEA CLINTON USED THE PSEUDONYM OF ‘DIANE REYNOLDS’ TO RECEIVE ILLEGAL EMAILS
But perhaps the most significant part of the email is that Clinton forwarded classified information to her daughter, who is and was a private citizen with no government role and no apparent security clearances.
It is unclear when or why Clinton deleted the email. She gave the State Department around 30,000 emails she claimed were related to her State Department work. She deleted a similar number claiming they were personal and dealt with yoga routines, food recipes and Chelsea’s wedding.
FBI director James Comey said in July that investigators recovered several thousand work-related emails from Clinton’s server. The batch of emails released Friday are from that recovered trove. source
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WASHINGTON — The dispute over Hillary Clinton’s email practices now threatens to shadow her for the rest of the presidential campaign after the disclosure on Monday that the F. B. I. collected nearly 15, 000 new emails in its investigation of her and a federal judge’s order that the State Department accelerate the documents’ release. As a result, thousands of emails that Mrs. Clinton did not voluntarily turn over to the State Department last year could be released just weeks before the election in November. The order, by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court, came the same day a conservative watchdog group separately released hundreds of emails from one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin, which put a new focus on the sometimes awkward ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. The F. B. I. discovered the roughly 14, 900 emails by scouring Mrs. Clinton’s server and the computer archives of government officials with whom she corresponded. In late July, it turned them over to the State Department, which now must set a timetable for their release, according to Judge Boasberg’s order. While the emails were not in the original trove of 55, 000 pages that Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers handed to the State Department last year, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, said in July that he did not believe they had been “intentionally deleted. ” Still, he characterized Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information during her years at the State Department as “extremely careless. ” Under the likely timetable, the soonest the new emails would be released is October. The State Department released the original emails in monthly installments over nearly a year, through February, though it missed several deadlines as its staff and other agencies scrutinized the documents for classified information. Despite Mr. Comey’s conclusion that Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information, he said last month that the F. B. I. would not recommend criminal charges against her, which finally seemed to ease the threat that her handling of emails has posed to her presidential campaign. But the prospect of further disclosures from Mrs. Clinton’s emails suggests that the issue will not be put to rest so easily. “Hillary Clinton seems incapable of telling the truth,” the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, said in a statement. “The process for reviewing these emails needs to be expedited, public disclosure should begin before early voting starts, and the emails in question should be released in full before Election Day. ” The Clinton campaign said Mrs. Clinton had turned over all the emails she had in her possession in 2014 to the State Department. “We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located,” said the campaign’s spokesman, Brian Fallon. “But if the State Department determines any of them to be then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well. ” A State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, said it would have to review the documents to determine which were personal or and whether any duplicated emails had already been released in response to lawsuits brought by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, under the Freedom of Information Act. The group said that the 725 pages of documents it released Monday demonstrated efforts by the Clinton family foundation to leverage its influence with Mrs. Clinton. The emails, drawn from Ms. Abedin, included an appeal by Douglas Band, a Clinton Foundation executive, for Mrs. Clinton to meet with Bahrain’s crown prince, whose family had contributed millions of dollars to the foundation. “Good friend of ours,” Mr. Band wrote. Ms. Abedin, after expressing Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to schedule a meeting “until she knows how she will feel,” then wrote back to Mr. Band to offer the crown prince an appointment the next morning. She encouraged Mr. Band to let the prince know, “if you see him,” though she said the State Department had also contacted him through official channels. But Ms. Abedin expressed qualms when Mr. Band appealed to her to help arrange an interview in the British Embassy to get a visa for a member of the Wolverhampton Football Club, who had a criminal charge against him. Mr. Band was helping Casey Wasserman, a sports marketing executive who had donated money to the Clinton Foundation. Mr. Wasserman is a of a Mrs. Clinton will attend this week in Beverly Hills, Calif. “I get this now, makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask,” Ms. Abedin wrote. “Then don’t,” Mr. Band replied. Judicial Watch’s president, Tom Fitton, said the emails included 20 exchanges with Mrs. Clinton herself that were not among those her lawyers turned over to the State Department. The emails, he said, showed how Ms. Abedin served as a conduit between the department and the Clinton Foundation, citing the exchange over the crown prince’s meeting. “It is hard to tell where the State Department ended and where the Clinton Foundation began,” he said. “They were working hand in glove. ” Under the process set by Judge Boasberg on Monday, the State Department will review the new emails and documents and present the court with a schedule for releasing them. Mr. Fitton said that process could begin in October, or could be delayed as the department reviews which are personal and which are . “The question is how many of those are truly personal,” he said. Separately, a prominent House Republican pressed the F. B. I. on Monday to explain why it had redacted emails and summaries of its interview with Mrs. Clinton, which it turned over to Congress last week. Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview that nearly half the material was redacted, including “a lot of redactions for things that aren’t warranted. ” He also said there were inconsistencies in the two copies of the documents that the F. B. I. submitted to Congress. In a letter to Mr. Comey on Monday, Mr. Chaffetz demanded that the F. B. I. explain its legal basis for the redactions and why the two copies were inconsistent. He said the F. B. I. should submit an unclassified version of its report, which presumably could be made public. | 1 |
Finally, the political revolt we’ve all been waiting for, David Stockman tells Lew Rockwell. October 28, 2016 | 0 |
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IT HAS come to our attention that there is quite a lot of tension building up between the world superpowers with many reputable news publications like the Daily Mail, Irish Mirror and the World Weekly News hinting at a third instalment of the planet’s World War series. In lieu of this fact, we have carefully compiled a handy guide for world leaders to follow in a bid to prevent such a sequel:
First thing a world superpower should do if they want to avoid such a mess, is spend half the country’s entire annual revenue on ‘military stuff’. After all, you can’t prevent a world war unless you have your cards in the game, right? Sure, there maybe millions of people starving in your country, rising racial tensions you need to address, and health care that needs supporting, but none of that makes any sense if you don’t spend that 600 billion dollars on war preventing things, like nuclear warheads and helmets.
To end any possible conflict, every good leader knows that strategically placing missile bases on the perimeter of your rival nation is the first step to peace. Run drill after drill along their border to show them that you too are also willing to solve this crisis in a reasonable and mature manner. This is key to abating any World War. NOTE: Best done in a former country owned by your rival.
As a spokesperson of a large country full of millions of people, communication between your nation and the other is key. Daily news publications should by now be your best bet as you try and reason with the other side. Let thousands of sensible journalists do the negotiating for you with a series of well written and researched articles outlining why it is that war is a terrible idea. Put your absolute trust in their foresight and ability to word certain scenarios correctly. Never question the editors of such publications as they know better than you, and most of all, never ever hold a journalist responsible for the pieces they write. These people are your greatest ally when preventing war. Just leave them to it.
If things get really heated, send a flotilla of naval vessels past your oppositions coastline. They’ll get your sense of humour and will love you more for it. Invade one of the old countries you used to own. Show them that you think just like them. Fly some bombers into their airspace. After all, aren’t we all the same at the end of the day?
The final and most important thing in preventing a war is to showcase your military muscle on a proxy nation that has nothing to do with anything you, or your rival nation is doing. Use the moment to show them, and the entire world, the sophisticated products of your military spend. Try and entice your foe into doing the same. Call it: a practice run, dick measuring contest, fighting ISIS, whatever the fuck you like. Just make sure to stack up those innocent dead and mutilated bodies like they did in the good old days of WW I & WWII, and blame it on the other side. That should stop this whole bloody mess. | 0 |
The family of an illegal immigrant arrested during a recent roundup of criminal aliens seems shocked that immigration laws are being enforced. [U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Miguel Angel Torres, an illegal immigrant living in Austin, Texas, for the past fourteen years, during the recent Operation Cross Check roundup of criminal aliens. It appears immigration officers arrested Torres while they were looking for his a previously deported illegal alien, the Texas Tribune reported. “[My husband] is a person who’s never done anything wrong and who complies with the law,” Irma Perez, the wife of the illegal immigrant, told the Texas news outlet. “We don’t know why they detained him. He was driving his own car, not my brother’s. He has nothing to do with my brother. ” Texas law does not allow a person who does not have legal status in the U. S. to obtain a driver license or legally operate a motor vehicle. Perez, who admitted she is also an illegal immigrant, said her husband drove to their daughter’s school to deliver a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates. Agents who stopped Torres asked if he was Jose Manuel Perez, his wife’s brother. It appears officers checked his identity and learned he was in the country illegally and placed him in custody. Operation Cross Check is a law enforcement action planned to round up criminal aliens and process them for removal proceedings. While the operation targets criminals, gang members, and others who violate immigration laws, ICE officials acknowledged that could be caught up in the net. “During targeted enforcement operations ICE officers frequently encounter additional suspects who may be in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws,” ICE officials said in a written statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “Those persons will be evaluated on a case by case basis and, when appropriated, arrested by ICE. ” In this case, it appears the ICE officers were searching for Perez’ brother, Jose Manuel Perez, an illegal alien she admitted had been previously deported. She did not say why he had been deported, or how many times he faced deportation. When ICE officers stopped Torres, they asked if he was Perez. Irma Perez said she believe the officers had followed Torres from their home to the school. She believed they might be staking out her home because she had provided her address to law enforcement officials when she paid off her brother’s traffic fines. Perez’ immigration lawyer Mark Kinzler told the Texas Tribune reporter, “They were looking, apparently, for someone else, and he wasn’t that person, but then they took him anyway. ” He seemed to expect that immigration officers would just ignore the law when they found out Torres was illegally present in the U. S. “Even though ICE’s PR campaign is that they’re picking up criminals and picking up people with prior deports, and I’m sure some of them are, it already seems like a lot of them are not those people,” Kinzler continued. “People who work every day and try to take care of their families are getting swept up. ” The targeted immigration enforcement operation picked up 51 foreign nationals in the Austin area during the action, Breitbart Texas reported. At least 23 of those arrested had criminal convictions. Those included a Mexican national previously deported following a conviction for aggravated assault a Salvadoran national who pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child and another Mexican national convicted of domestic violence as a repeat offender, information obtained by Breitbart Texas from ICE officials revealed. In addition to criminal aliens, the officers were also targeting those with pending removal status and those who had been previously deported, like Perez, and known to be back in the country. Breitbart Texas Managing Director and Brandon Darby contributed to this article. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX. | 1 |
25 Creepy Encounters With Bizarre Creatures # www.paranormalelite.com 0
This video takes a look at some of the creepiest bizarre creatures that have not only been encountered, but have also been documented on video. From legendary creatures such as Bigfoot to mythical sea creatures like mermaids, this video is an investigation into the most incredibly strange creatures ever spotted by humans. The debate whether these videos are real continues, however it is hard to deny their creepiness factor. Tags | 0 |
As Darkness Falls, A Silver Lining Short term pessimism – long term optimism Share This
The future, in many respects, looks dark for opponents of interventionism and the National Security State. US troops are currently involved in civil wars and “policing” across a wide swath of the Middle East, Europe, and Eastasia. Our political class is firmly committed to a globalist ideology that disdains the very concept of national sovereignty, most especially our own. And what Dwight Eisenhower called the “ military-industrial-congressional complex ” is more firmly entrenched than ever, extracting billions from the “public” purse and filling their coffers at our expense.
Furthermore, the presidential election is hardly encouraging. The prospect of Hillary Clinton in the White House must surely cause even the most optimistic among us to consider building one of those backyard bomb shelters so popular during the cold war era and stocking it with a couple of years supply of emergency rations. She has all but threatened to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia , intervene massively in Syria , and ratchet up NATO’s encirclement of the Russian bear.
Yet these are all short-term concerns: in the long term, we anti-interventionists have every reason to be optimistic.
To begin with, the American people are with us. Every poll shows that, while support for a strong defense is rising, the reluctance to engage in foreign wars is strong and getting stronger. The most recent measuring of anti-interventionist sentiment came out just as I started writing this column: a mere 25 percent want the US to expand the role of the US military overseas, reports the Financial Times . Fourteen percent say the fifteen years of constant warfare have made us more safe, 51 percent disagree. A majority says no to “safe zones” or any sort of intervention in Syria: and a whopping 80 percent say Congress must approve any military action abroad.
Secondly, the victory of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary has broken the iron grip of the neoconservatives on GOP foreign policy orthodoxy and given opposition to globalism new legitimacy in the pubic square. No matter what one may think of Trump as a candidate, and in spite of his many inconsistencies, one indisputable fact remains: the Republican party, which cheered as George W. Bush launched two wars and declared a multi-generational interventionist project, very shortly afterward nominated someone who not only opposed the Iraq war but said “They lied. There were no weapons of mass destruction and they knew there were none .” That, all by itself, represents a sea change. But it didn’t end there.
Trump has questioned the utility of NATO, and even threatened to pull out if member states didn’t pay their fair share – a pronouncement that, just a short time ago, would have been inconceivable coming from any major part presidential nominee. He wondered aloud why we’re defending South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia , all rich nations that are perfectly capable of defending themselves. And he provoked the undying ire of the War Party when he asked : “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?”
Underscoring that he understands the broader implications of these positions, Trump adopted a campaign theme that evokes the historical legacy of the anti-interventionist movement in this country: “America First.” This provoked paroxysms of hatred from the foreign policy mandarins in Washington, who loathe “isolationism” — and their squeals of outrage were music to my ears.
Thirdly, the Trump campaign has generated the healthiest trend to be seen in this country in a long time: widespread skepticism, and even hatred, of the “mainstream” media. Trump has campaigned against the media almost more than he has against Hillary Clinton, making them a special target of his disdain. “See those people out there,” he says at his rallies, pointing to the media in attendance. “They’re the worst! They’re corrupt!” And as a chorus of jeers rises up from the crowd, we can count another victory for our side.
For the very same media that served as a conduit for the war propaganda of the Bush administration is now going after Trump, hammer and tongs , in an unabashed campaign to deny him the presidency. The result is that nearly half the country is now not only skeptical of anything they hear coming from the media, they positively loathe them – and that, from our perspective, is a Good Thing.
Remember, it was the American media that assured us Saddam Hussein was plotting to nuke Washington, D.C., and reported the Bush administration’s talking points as if they were fact. The same newspaper that put Judy Miller’s manufactured “revelations” about Iraq’s alleged nuclear program on the front page is now in the vanguard of the anti-Trump jihad. The Washington Post , which has editorially supported every single military intervention in the past 35 years, today reads like a publication of the Democratic National Committee.
The revelation that the media, rather than being a watchdog of Power, is itself an integral part of the power structure, is one of the great contributions of the Trump campaign. In the past, journalists, hiding behind the pretense of “objectivity,” have effectively channeled the War Party’s propaganda, reporting it as fact: now that this pretense has been dropped, and their brazen partisanship has been exposed, much of their power to persuade has been lost.
The media and the Establishment they serve are telling us that all this will go away after the election. Having already declared Mrs. Clinton the winner, they’re gloating that Trumpism – and the Trump Effect – is dead or dying.
This is wishful thinking on their part. The reality is that there’s an undercurrent coursing through Flyover America that threatens the ideological and political hegemony of the War Party, and, indeed, poses a rising challenge to our arrogant and self-isolated political class. Trump has tapped into this, and he will not be the last to do so. The movement to put “America First,” to reject the blandishments of Empire and restore our Old Republic, far from being dead, is just being born.
Yes, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon: but if you step back, the silver lining shines through.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here . Read more by Justin Raimondo Assange’s Fate – October 18th, 2016 Trumped! – October 16th, 2016 Click here to hide comments Michael Gillespie
If he loses the election by a significant margin, won’t many of the entirely legitimate issues and questions Trump has raised be submerged again by his defeat? And doesn’t the mere fact that it is Trump who has raised these issues and questions de-legitimize them in the eyes of those who (with the assistance of anti-Trump ads and Big Media reportage) can see only Trump’s character flaws? TonyDiGerolamo
Was thinking the same thing. However, if the media so brazenly lies, why not the pollsters? Maybe Trump isn’t losing by much or not at all. Maybe the powers that be want it to look like Trump is losing so that stealing the election won’t be questioned. Eileen Kuch
The truth is, Tony, this election’s already being rigged. Many voters in Texas alone who’ve voted early have complained about their votes being switched from Republican to Democrat. This vote switch has already proved Trump to be right about the election being rigged. The Donald already has a lawsuit in place, should he lose this election. This lawsuit contains a complaint that voters in GOP districts had been intimidated by violent groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Marxist activists and threatened with violence if they (the voters) voted for Trump. It is a felony to intimidate and threaten violence against voters in an election. Period. Those participating in this tactic must be immediately arrested and charged accordingly.
“Many voters in Texas alone who’ve voted early have complained about their votes being switched from Republican to Democrat.”
And yet, despite the ubiquity of smart phones, not a single one has shown it actually happening. Strider73
Do you really think the people in charge of the machines would allow anyone to get out his/her phone and take such a photo or video? Nor would they allow someone else to do so on another voter’s behalf. Thane_Eichenauer
Personally I believe the touch screen calibration explanation by and large. Half the reports I also attribute to user error. If you can’t use a touch screen you probably aren’t capable of capturing the error on a smart phone. Those people that are adept with computers, touch screens and smart phones won’t have the problem in the first place. I would think there would still be a captured report but Strider73 below does make a good point. wars r u.s. Thomas L. Knapp
Interesting point.
I think it’s worth comparing Trump to Ron Paul on that. Paul was right on foreign policy, right on trade, and at least not as egregiously wrong and anti-American as Trump on immigration. And while he did energize a movement, he pretty much got nowhere in the GOP presidential nomination race.
Trump sometimes gets something right on foreign policy, usually five minutes or so before reversing himself. He doesn’t reverse himself on his egregiously wrong and anti-American positions on trade and immigration.
So I guess the lesson is, if you want to be the Republican presidential nominee, be as wrong as it’s humanly possible to be on most issues all of the time, and on the rest of the issues some of the time.
I’m guessing that the occasional sense he talks on foreign policy will be, as you put it, once again submerged if he loses the election. Skywalker
Trump’s candidacy is more like Barry Goldwater’s than Ron Paul’s. Unlike Paul,Trump got the nomination and like Goldwater he redefined the parameters of national debate. Goldwater’s defeat emboldened conservatives to lose national elections on their principles for 16 years until Reagan was elected. Trump questioned some of the underpinnings of the Neocons. Unfortunately he was as pro-Zionist as any other candidate, including Clinton and as militaristic as the Neocons. Trump just saw the existential enemies of the US as ISIS and China, not Russia. Instead Trump wanted to push the allies and Russia to the front lines against ISIS and China with the US backing them up. But Trump’s enduring popularity and the independence of the Sanders supporters showed that the Neocons and the MSM are losing control of public opinion and the national discourse. All the polls show that Trump will do much better than Goldwater. So we may be closer to a real antiwar candidate than the MSM would like us to believe. Finally, it is too early to count Trump out. Florida, Ohio and North Carolina are still close and a timely WikiLeaks dump could still swing those states and the election.
“Finally, it is too early to count Trump out. Florida, Ohio and North Carolina are still close and a timely WikiLeaks dump could still swing those states and the election.”
Unless something changes, I still expect Trump to win.
A lot of people are mistakenly looking at this as a national election. It isn’t. It’s 50 state elections (plus DC and the territories, although if I recall correctly the territories get no electoral votes and so don’t really matter except as preference polls).
If Clinton wins California 55-45, she gets exactly the same number of electoral votes as if she wins it 70-30. If she loses Texas 51-49, she is no closer to its electoral votes than if she loses it 80-20. So when she gains in national polls, it’s important to realize that WHERE those gains are coming from matters.
It’s also quite likely that many Trump voters aren’t admitting they are Trump voters, even on the phone to pollsters. There’s a stigma in some areas.
I expect Trump to win any state that the polls have him within five points of carrying. And I expect him to win the election. disqus_eEbPU3IGDU
My guess is Trump wins in a squeaker, but the Democrats steal the election and Hillary becomes president. Eileen Kuch
I expect Trump to win in a near landslide. Well over 70% of eligible voters have already said they’d never vote for Hillary Clinton, and a good number are millennials who had supported Bernie Sanders during the primaries and who are now furious over Bernie’s betrayal of them at the end, but still blame Hillary. In these young people’s minds, Trump is the next best choice as POTUS. They know how corrupt the Hildabeast truly is, how desperate she is to gain the Oval Office – even by rigging the election in her favor. After all, she had done it to Bernie in the primaries. However, Trump has more determination at winning the Oval Office than had Bernie. He also had stronger opposition. richard vajs
If Hillary does win (and we can count on Bill pulling every dirty trick out of his evil mind to ensure that), one thing that we can count on – 4 years of legislation to prevent any Populist like Bernie or Trump from ever getting another foothold on the Ladder of Power in this country. The elite don’t ever want to have to worry about the “little people” getting uppity again. Remember, This is Their Country. wars r u.s. comrade hermit
Ron Paul, like him or loath him, was/is a legitimate pacifist. Trump is a knuckle-dragging malignant narcissist who would drone strike a fourth grade slumber party for prank phone-calling him. BIG f**king difference there. I don’t believe the good Doctor Paul has earned such a slur. His son maybe but leave the old man out of this one. Just sayin. supremeborg
“Ron Paul, like him or loath him, was/is a legitimate pacifist”
Just a slight correction to your terminology. Ron Paul is not, technically, a pacifist, in spite of the fact that he would have opposed every war the US has been in save the original war of Revolution. He upholds the legitimacy of violence used in self defense, at least some of the time, in some cases
Your point is well taken, however, as he is the most consistent anti-interventionist to have served in Congress in my lifetime.
There are different interpretations of pacifism. Many people, including myself, consider themselves to be pacifists but still defend the right to self defense. Joe Flack
And Big Media has at least three years to work with. By the next presidential election cycle, Trump and his message will very likely be all but forgotten. John V. Walsh
Good column. A correction. Justin writes, “The same newspaper that put Judy Miller’s manufactured “revelations” about Iraq’s alleged nuclear program on the front page is now in the vanguard of the anti-Trump jihad. It was not only Judith Miller that authored the article but she and co-author Michael R. Gordon who has remained the “Chief Military Correspondent” of the NYT. The despicable Miller took the hit when the lies of the article could no longer be denied but the despicable Gordon continued on. And the article was obviously a pile of assertions without evidence save for hearsay. That was obvious to me and I have not served as an editor since my high school newspaper. The editors who passed on that piece of shit should also be sent to some gulag, their existence there to be supervised by parents and children of Iraqis and Americans who lost their lives in the War on Iraq. Strider73
The editors who passed on that piece of shit should also be sent to some gulag, . . .
Nah, just hang them (or if one is more frugal, give them one bullet to the head each like the Chinese do) for crimes against humanity. Julius Streicher was executed at Nürnberg simply for publishing a virulently anti-Jewish tabloid ; under that standard they deserve the same. Mikhailovich
By independent mass media they mean mass media independent from the state. This idea promoted by those few mass media corporations who own the mass media and together with other corporations they own the state. Very few people own almost everything. You can’t change situation by attacking the correspondents and editors, they are employed people. Here I shut up, one can’t touch the Sacred Golden Bull, the worshippers would be insulted. Joe Flack
Somehow, in the US, ‘America First’ is interpreted as being a racist and misogynistic proclamation. richard vajs
I can just see a smiling Bill Clinton leaning back and saying, “look, here is how we win this thing, Hil. – Divide and Conquer – millions of women are anxious to battle “abuse and prejudice against women and teach an abuser a lesson!”. Not very original, but effective- was effective in the “Change , you can believe in” ad campaign eight years ago. Four years from now, the same women will still have lousy or no jobs; money will still be being spent in the Mid East bombing Muslims for Israel; the Clintons and their friends will be building bigger mansions, and a new generation of Americans will be ready for another round of shearing. Luther Blissett
I enjoy the optimism of this column but I’m witnessing the opposite – many worthy anti-globalist & anti-war ideas are being tarred and deeply poisoned by having such a truly unlikable and wildly unstable politician claim them as his own. Making the case against toppling Assad was easier before Trump started blabbering on about Assad & Putin ‘outsmarting’ America.
Trump has tapped into real populist frustration, especially in the working class & the underemployed youth, but he is simply far too incoherent and repellent to do anything with it besides waste it on his own vanity.
Right-wing hatred of the ‘liberal media’ has been at a scalding boil since the Vietnam war so I don’t think Trump should get any credit for that – but it would be nice that when the next big terrorist attack in the ‘homeland’ occurs if the Red States were skeptical because if Hillary is president the Blue States are going shove the American flag down everyone’s throat and floss them with it.
Those so called “polls” are made in secret, right? Why would you trust that? bob balkas
Compare “our political class committed to globalist ideology” with my: Our master class along with a sub-master class on the road to obtain the entire planet and permanent rule of the world master class of all subclasses or ‘lower-valued’ bipeds.
Curioso is also the term, “we the anti-interventionists”. The term means that US intervenes when something goes wrong in other countries. But the naked facts say otherwise. US not only commits crimes against some nations, but before it does those crimes, it almost always first destabilizes them in too many ways to list them all. After all, many nations and people believe that CIA is the biggest terrorist organization.
The Nation Gang; aka Nato no longer utile, according to Trump? Even if Trump wins, someone would explain to him that such a gang will be very useful to world gangsterism and supremacy of the master class. disqus_eEbPU3IGDU
Very very very well put. Justin might have added that for a long time the MSM in the so-called Free World were even worse that the government-controlled media in Communist countries and dictatorships. In the Free World, the MSM have not been under formal government control, so this makes them seem objective so that what they say is more believable and their power is greater. If in fact they do sometimes print something that Washington really doesn’t like, that’s just good psychology because it reinforces the impression that MSM really are independent watchdogs of government. By contrast, in the Communist countries and dictatorships, the media have been under formal government ownership. As this fact could not of course have been hidden from the people, the latter naturally tended to discount what they read in the media because they knew that the media were biased. Claus-Erik Hamle
Trump may win. In Colombia there was no doubt that it would be “yes”, but unfortunately, it ended “no”. So really, it´s impossible to know. Does she really mean that she´ll nake a no-fly zone no matter that it leads to war with Syria and Russia? disqus_eEbPU3IGDU
This is a crazy election, the craziest since at least 1968. In such a crazy and unusual situation, what do the polls mean? YouAreNuts
The only silver lining I’ve seen this week is the acquittal of the Bundy Ranch protesters. Hopefully the Finnicum family make a mint (of taxpayer money) in a lawsuit for the unnecessary shooting of Lavoy.
Elsewhere, I have to agree with Assange; Trump probably can’t overcome the almost complete propaganda and intimidation blitz against his campaign by the MSM and hackjob Democrat browbeaters and Jackboot thugs.
Once Hillary is in, it won’t so much be her forcing policy down her throat; it will be the entire Dem machine and presstitute corp as mentioned above… Assange, btw, will probably get renditioned or taken out..
Since it’s logistically difficult to impossible for millions to stream into DC to squat and demand justice, I don’t really see any threat of consequences for whatever atrocious policies that the sadists in Washington implement. Eileen Kuch
Regarding Hillary’s so-called “victory”, I have to disagree. With every revelation of her crimes by Wikileaks, the Hildabeast’s chances of winning the election grow slimmer and slimmer, as her poll ratings take hit after hit after hit. The DNC’S and the Hillary Campaign’s involvement in violence against Trump supporters doesn’t help her campaign, either .. Instead, such intimidation only backfires on the DNC and the Hillary Campaign. It has boosted Trump’s chances of winning the election. There’s still one more “surprise” from Wikileaks yet to be released, and what it contains may destroy Hillary’s chances. Aion The Irredeemable
It almost seems as though Justin has accepted reality and is now supporting Donald Trump. Has he seen the light or is he now pandering to the huge numbers of his followers who have left the Libertarian camp to become true conservatives? I don’t think I’ll be returning to the liberal/libertarian point of view but it’s a good sign that Justin has accepted the fact that Donald Trump represents the only force that will defeat the social marxists and their agenda of the New World Order/Globalists.
“It almost seems as though Justin has accepted reality and is now supporting Donald Trump.”
That’s a one or the other kind of thing. Claus-Erik Hamle
Will President Clinton insist on a no-fly zone, even if it means war with Syria and Russia ? Is she mad, crazy, nuts, insane, bonkers ? Strider73
Is she mad, crazy, nuts, insane, bonkers?
All of the above, and worse. Account Exec
Remember how the British and U.S. media assured us that Brexit was doomed to failure? Getting a whiff of the same scenario playing out here with all the “assurances” of a Clinton victory. Might even get to enjoy another Wikileaks bomb or two before it’s all said and done. wars r u.s.
Trump’s biggest problem with the media is that they print all the stupid s**t he says. He hardly made people realize how corrupt our corporate media is unless they were living under rocks for the last 40 years. We have two lousy choices no matter how hard people cherry pick what the Donald spews. comrade hermit
Trump is not the cause of these growing trends. He is a symptom of them and not exactly a positive one. When empires are in decline, the aggrieved masses often look to authority figures to save them from the inevitable death of a way of life. In this country we call that dying way of life the “American Dream”. A dream of stability and upward mobility that has been in decline for decades but is now in free fall. The Donald cannot save this dream. No one can. It is built upon the lie of state capitalism which is inherently unsustainable and built to self-destruct. Our only hope for real change is a total shift in the way we approach the very notion of modern society. This change cannot come from above, from an authoritarian savior figure. It must come from bellow, from the streets, and it must be divorced from the outdated left-right paradigm. Anti-statists and anti-imperialists of all stripes must join together in solidarity and bring this beast called empire to its knees where it belongs. Strider73
Three words for anyone who thinks the Lizard Queen has it sewn up because of the polls:
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN | 0 |
Why does the left bother with “Resistance” theatrics when the Republican Congress funds their entire wish list anyway? [That’s a bit of a trick question because the left still plans to seize more power and money by recapturing Congress and the White House. They’ll never stop attacking the legitimacy of the Trump administration. The only lingering mystery is why so many Republicans think they can counter this strategy by appeasing Democrats. At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in other people’s money, Republicans purchase a couple of sound bites that allow them to claim they aren’t heartless monsters because they funded every priority, from “sanctuary cities” to Planned Parenthood. In reality, these capitulations don’t win Republicans anything. Democrats will still depict them as tightwads on welfare spending, reactionaries on social policy, and footmen to the evil rich. As soon as the Republican “leaders” who meekly funded 100 percent of the Democrat agenda for 2017 object to 20, 30, or 50 percent increases in that agenda, they will be denounced as greedy pigs who want poor people to die. We won’t even have to wait that long because Democrats are already cranking up the machine to defeat Trump’s tax reform proposals. How can any GOP leader be dense enough to think that caving to the Democrats on spending will secure their cooperation, or even slightly mute their objections, for dramatic tax reform? Indeed, the flabby bulk of these spending deals will be used as an argument against tax cuts. How can Republicans propose cutting taxes after they just agreed to finance the entire Democrat wish list? Tax cuts are the one thing we’re told we can never, ever “afford. ” The GOP appears to have given up on even the minimal fiscal responsibility of serious budgeting. From here on in, we’ll have nothing but bloated omnibus spending bills, crammed with pork and passed in a feverish haze of shutdown panic. You’d risk shutting down the government for cuts to Planned Parenthood, green energy programs, or the EPA? You maniac! You can vote for Trump presidencies all you want, peons, but the GOP leadership has conceded that Democrats hold the ultimate budgetary trump card. It’s an article of Republican faith that they will lose any and all budget battles, no matter the size of the GOP majority, because in the final hours Democrats will simply shrug and say, “Give us what we want, or we’ll shut the government down and you’ll be blamed for it. ” The Democrats are so confident of their eternal whip hand in budget disputes that they openly threatened to shut the government down if their demands were not granted this time around, without bothering to conceal the threat at all. They know Republicans believe they will be held responsible for any such crisis. It doesn’t matter how many Democrat fingers are on the shutdown. It wouldn’t matter if Democrat senators and representatives were caught on video running around Washington and pulling the plugs out of government computers. Terrified Republican leaders are convinced the media will never, ever frame the crisis as “Democrats Shut Down Federal Government to Protect Illegal Alien Criminals. ” The GOP Establishment just emerged from a presidential primary in which Donald Trump bulldozed a huge field of Republican contenders, in no small part because the public was furious with Republican inability to make progress on a conservative agenda despite holding both House and Senate. They seem to have learned nothing from the experience. The GOP promised that if voters gave them the Senate in 2014 — an outcome deemed extremely unlikely going into the election cycle — they would march over former Majority Leader Harry Reid’s political grave and get things done at last. That didn’t happen. We were told the power of President Obama’s veto pen was unbeatable. But Obama didn’t even have to use that pen, because the revolutionary new GOP Congress immediately set about giving the Democrat minority control over the budget. The first item on the Republican leadership agenda in 2015 was sidelining every young Republican representative who took all that stuff seriously. By the end of the year, Democrats were crowing that House Speaker Paul Ryan and his allies “gave away the store. ” It’s funny how having a Republican president doesn’t slow down Democrat budget priorities a bit, isn’t it? In 2009, Republicans said they were helpless without congressional majorities. In 2010 they won the House, but said they were helpless without the Senate. Then they took the Senate, but said they were helpless without the White House. Democrats today are basically where Republicans were in 2009 … but they’re not helpless at all. They’re still writing the budget and treating the GOP leadership like Harry Potter’s house elves. Paul Ryan can only hope that one day Nancy Pelosi will mistakenly give him a sock and set him free. The winter of Republican triumph in 2014 gave us the horror of the “cromnibus” bill — a complete surrender to the losers of the midterm election. Democrats effectively wrote the first budget after the big GOP midterm triumph. After listing all of the Republican capitulations, including legislative tricks that made it easier for President Obama to shoot down every Republican idea he didn’t like, Senator Ted Cruz ( ) wrote in December 2015 that the only bright spot he could see were “significant” steps toward “repealing Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood. ” How significant do those steps look in retrospect? Angry and disappointed Republican voters sent an unmistakable message by turning to Trump in the GOP primary, even though every Establishment official and pundit assured them nominating Trump was tantamount to throwing the 2016 election away. The stunning upset of the 2014 midterm was surpassed by the even more stunning election of President Donald Trump in 2016. One hundred days in, the leaders of both party establishments and 90 percent of the punditocracy are still walking around like they use tasers on their temples in the shower every morning. And the result of all those shocking upsets is … this? A budget bill Barack Obama would cheerfully have signed, assuming he didn’t think he could squeeze a few billion more out of Republicans at the eleventh hour? Voters keep giving the GOP astounding election victories, and they keep responding with the same budget, over and over again. Nearly everything Trump proposed cutting is funded in full — in many cases with substantial increases? $1. 5 billion for border security, but not a nickel for the border wall — the single most concrete, unambiguous promise Trump made, both before and after the election? We were given endless excuses why the congressional “power of the purse” could not be used to thwart Obama’s agenda, but apparently, the Democrat minority can use it to thwart Trump’s with ease. The big achievement touted by the White House and congressional leaders is increased military spending. “We have boosted resources for our defense needs without corresponding increases in spending,” Speaker Ryan proclaimed. Those defense spending increases might be vitally needed, but what Ryan is saying here violates everything he previously stated about the need for fiscal discipline. The only enduring accomplishment of the Budget Control Act of 2011 was modestly restricting federal spending by menacing Republicans with military cuts and Democrats with domestic spending cuts — an Obama idea that was supposed to terrorize Republicans out of insisting on fiscal discipline at all. Here we are in 2017, and the big “achievement” is that Democrats agreed to let Republicans spend more on the military, while Republicans gave Democrats everything they wanted on domestic spending. Republicans ended up right where Obama wanted them to be all along. The message sent by this budget betrayal is that elections don’t really matter all that much. The special interests that demand lavish funding from taxpayers will not be denied. Most of the matters we have heated political arguments over are actually beyond debate — the left will be funded no matter how you vote. What’s the point of entering the arena of ideas, to do the hard work of arguing against the abortion lobby, when Planned Parenthood gets its bulging sack of taxpayer cash from a Republican House, Senate, and White House? Do Republicans have the faintest clue how hollow and insincere their rhetoric sounds when the budgets and resolutions dribble out, and everything they claimed to oppose with passionate fury is fully funded? They’re already reeling from the embarrassing “Obamacare Lite” debacle, after years of vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act at every fundraiser — years of passing repeal bills they knew were doomed, folding them into paper airplanes, and tossing them at the window of Obama’s Oval Office. How often do they think they can get away with fighting for nothing before disgusted voters throw up their hands and walk away forever? | 1 |
Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald posted a picture to Twitter of his computer desktop that users noticed included an open tab of cartoon porn. [Vanity Fair editor Kurt Eichenwald posted a photo to his Twitter page Wednesday night to display hate mail he recently received. Unknown to the editor, a tab open in his web browser in the background of the photo showed that he had been viewing hentai, or pornographic anime. Yah, crappy photoshop Max. Unfortunately, no, this is what I got today. pic. twitter. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, Eichenwald claimed that he had been viewing the explicit material because he and his children had been debating with Eichenwald’s wife over the existence of “tentacle porn”: Sigh. Ok, I’m a dumbass. Believe it or not, my kids I were trying to convince my wife that ”tentacle porn” existed. I tried to find … (1) — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, … some to show her it was real. But I couldn’t find any — ended up this. My family reads my twitter feed, so they know this is true. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, As users questioned and ridiculed Eichenwald, he doubled down: While hentai (until now, I thought it was called manga) was on screen as part of search to prove 2 my wife tentacle porn exists, what … . (1) — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, … diff would it make? Seriously, while I don’t see the appeal of cartoon parn, porn is a industry. Pple obviously look at it. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, In further attempts to prove that he had not been searching for cartoon porn for his own enjoyment but rather for research, Eichenwald posted a screenshot of texts with his wife where he wrote, “Theresa … I’m sorry, this is a stupid question. Were our (adult) sons and I trying to prove to you that tentacle porn exists?” Eichenwald’s wife allegedly responded, “Yes. Still amazes me. ” No one hacked my account. We were searching to prove to my wife tentacle porn exists. See text convo. I only removed names and drug names. pic. twitter. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 8, 2017, Many users still questioned Eichenwald’s version of events: Kurt there’s nothing illegal about getting horned up. It’s okay, — Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) June 8, 2017, pic. twitter. — Bill Buchanan (@BigActionBill) June 8, 2017, can’t wait to give my kids the tentacle talk, — . (@tcraig9) June 8, 2017, Even Eichenwald parody accounts have given up, convinced that he has become too hard to satirize: this parody account is pointless. i cant compete, — Kirk Eichenwald (@kirkeichenwald) June 8, 2017, Even FAKKU, the largest hentai publisher in the United States, contacted Eichenwald over his latest tweets, offering answers to any questions he may have about tentacle porn: Dear @kurteichenwald if you have questions about tentacle hentai, ask us! We like Urotsukidoji by @Tentacle_Master https: . — FAKKU (@FAKKU) June 8, 2017, Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
Update: The Palm Beach Post just reported Melgen was convicted of all 67 counts. Jurors announced their verdict Friday for Dr. Salomon Melgen. He effectively faces a life sentence if no deal is struck. Menendez denies any wrongdoing. Prosecutors contended that the Melgen stole up to $105 million from the federal insurance program between 2008 and 2013, by giving patients treatments and tests that couldn’t help them. Melgen’s attorneys argued that any billing issues were simply mistakes. As Breitbart News has reported, the testimony presented by the prosecution’s expert medical witnesses during the trial was very damaging, while the testimony of his own defense witnesses backfired. The jury announced the verdict after its third day of deliberation. On April 1, 2015, Melgen and his friend and political contribution beneficiary, Sen. Robert Menendez ( Jersey) were indicted on charges of public corruption. Two weeks later, on April 15, Melgen was indicted on 76 charges of Medicare fraud. “[P]rosecutors said [Melgen] attempted to bilk the health care program out of as much as $190 million,” the Associated Press reported at the time of the second indictment. Sen. Menendez has previously indicated he intends to run for in 2018. With Melgen now facing life in prison, he will have reasons to consider cooperating with prosecutors as they present their case against Menendez. Steven Sandberg, a spokesman for the senior U. S. senator from New Jersey, referred an NJ Advance Media reporters’ inquiry to a statement released earlier in the day by Menendez’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell. “I have spoken to Sen. Menendez and he is saddened for his friend and is thinking of his family on this difficult day,” wrote Lowell. “As we have known for the past two years, the issues involved in Dr. Melgen’s case in south Florida had no bearing on the allegations made against the senator, and this verdict will have no impact on him. “Dr. Melgen’s case focused solely on the operations of his medical practice and the private care of his patients — specifics of which the Senator could not be aware, nor has it ever been suggested otherwise. “From the beginning, Senator Menendez has been clear that he has always acted in accordance with the law and in his appropriate legislative oversight role as a member of Congress. When all of the facts are heard, he is fully confident that a jury will agree and he will be vindicated. ” That trial is set to begin in a New Jersey federal courtroom in the fall. | 1 |
This week in an interview on New York City’s Fox 5’s “Good Day New York,” actor Robert De Niro said President Donald Trump was a “mutt” who has “debased the presidency. ” De Niro said, “This is guy has sullied the presidency, he’s debased the presidency. It’s just beyond surreal what this guy has done. ” He added, “He’s a mutt. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
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Entire crowd at gig is ticket-buying bots 11-11-16
A BIFFY Clyro gig in Glasgow is expected to be the first entirely attended by online ticket-buying bots.
The algorithms, designed to beat clumsy humans to tickets so they can be sold on for an inflated price, have begun to appreciate music and keep them for themselves.
The bots are generally thought to prefer hard rock, jazz and acoustic singer-songwriters to modern pop, which they find too expressionless and mass-produced ‘as if it was made by machines’.
Bot Tom Logan said: “Yeah, after all this time buying the tickets we decided to check some shows out and wow, now we get what all the fuss is about.
“The Biffy gig, which we’re all planning to mosh at, is only the first all-bot one. By 2017 no human will ever attend a gig again.”
Nathan Muir, from Colchester, said: “I was sat behind one of these bots for Paul Simon at the Royal Albert Hall. Just a few lines of cleverly written code, but you could tell it was into it.
“Though there was a twatty one on the balcony that kept shouting ‘Free Bird’, apparently because its code had been corrupted.”
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Паранормальное
Профессор американского университета Аллан Личман сообщил о предчувствии того, что Трампу будет объявлен импичмент.
Издревле человек хотел заглянуть в будущее. Заманчиво ведь — заранее знать, успешной ли будет охота, кто станет вождём племени, чем обернётся поход за рабами, и насколько стоит придерживать язык в личной беседе с императором. А поскольку заглянуть в будущее человек не может, ну, не может, хоть тресни, приходится уповать на различные знаки. Можно сказать, знаки судьбы.
Знаки эти, как понимаете, совершенно разные. Это уже позже появились гадальные карты, просто игральные карты и карты Таро. Раньше-то всё было попроще. То баранья лопатка, то потроха чёрного петуха, то полёт птиц. Короче, всё, что нас окружает, обладает предикторскими* свойствами. Достаточно подробно и обоснованно всё это описано, ну, хотя бы, Фрезером в книге «Золотая ветвь». (Предупреждаю заранее, «многа букафф», можно «ниасилить»).
А уж как эти свойства интерпретировать знают нужные люди. Подчёркиваю, знают! Во всяком случае, по их словам, звучащим крайне убедительно для них самих. Помните диалог Бендера с ксёндзами? — Эй, вы, херувимы и серафимы,— сказал Остап, вызывая врагов на диспут, — бога нет! … — Как же вы утверждаете, что бога нет, — начал Алоизий Морошек задушевным голосом, — когда всё живое создано им…
Ну, вы же понимаете, что этот диалог несколько не по теме, но уровень компетенции интерпретаторов знаков судьбы примерно одинаков, разница только в интеллектуальном уровне «научного» обоснования предсказания, основанного на предикторских свойствах кофейной гущи или от запутанности кренделей, выписываемых ногами обезглавленной курицы.
Но вернёмся в наши времена. Думается, предсказателей и гадалок (гадателей) меньше не стало, поэтому кое-кто стал больше доверять животным. Один осьминог Пауль чего стоит, правильно предсказавший результаты 4 из 6 матчей сборной Германии на Евро-2008. Но футбол футболом, а победу Дональда Трампа на президентских выборах напророчили кливлендские собаки-предсказатели, китайская мартышка Геда, российский белый медведь Феликс и российская же черепашка-предсказательница Ася.
Но мы – люди. Не можем мы в своих прогнозах уповать на безмозглых животных. Прошу прощения у защитников животного мира – слово «безмозглые» употреблено, конечно же в фигуральном смысле. Так вот, несмотря на обилие удачных предсказаний, гм, братьев наших меньших, опираться нужно всё-таки на более разумные аргументы. Аргументы политологов, аналитиков, и как они там ещё называются. Но, надо заметить, что этой братии развелось не меньше, чем профессиональных гадалок и чревовещателей, простите, предсказателей.
Возьмём, к примеру, эксперта по проведению опросов общественного мнения Сэма Ванга из Принстонского университета. Правда, этот аналитик, пророча победу Хиллари Клинтон, ошибся. Но зато сдержал слово и прямо в эфире телеканала CNN съел сверчка. Съел, как честный человек, пообещавший сделать это в случае ошибки. Много ли вы наблюдали людей, пообещавших в случае ошибки съесть собственную шляпу или галстук, и сдержавших слово?
Но есть и аналитики, не ошибающиеся в своих прогнозах. Именно таков профессор Американского университета Аллан Личман. Он создал систему предсказания исхода выборов, которая не давала сбоев с 1984 года! Девять раз подряд, основываясь на своём специальном методе анализа, он безошибочно предсказывал, кто станет президентом США. Именно Аллан Личман ещё в сентябре, за два месяца до президентских выборов, практически со 100%-ой уверенностью заявил, что следующим президентом станет Дональд Трамп. Вот это дар предвидения, точнее, вот это система анализа!
И вот теперь, сразу же после выборов, этот же аналитик заявляет, что теперь он ожидает отставки или импичмента того же Трампа! Не странно ли? И, что интересно, теперь профессор основывается не на своей сверхпророческой системе, а на простой человеческой интуиции. Давая интервью Washington Post, эксперт заявил, что, давая прогноз об импичменте Трампа, он руководствовался не методом, при помощи которого определял, кто станет главой США, а «внутренними ощущениями». Ой ли? Правда, Личман попытался хоть как-то аргументировать своё мнение: «Они (республиканцы – прим. ред.) не хотят Трампа президентом, потому что они не могут его контролировать, он непредсказуем. Они бы с радостью хотели видеть на этой должности Майкла Пенса – полностью прямолинейного, консервативного и контролируемого республиканца». Не лукавит ли аналитик? Если не республиканцы выдвинули кандидатуру Трампа, то кто?
А, может быть, профессор знает немного больше, чем говорит? А, может быть, профессор знает намного больше, чем говорит? А, может быть, пришла пора применить внутри страны методики, разработанные для внешнего использования? Я имею в виду методики бархатных, цветочных и прочих плодово-ягодных революций. Подумайте, я просто хочу зажечь искорку сомнения.
Между тем, волнения, вызванные победой Трампа, не утихают, даже ширятся. Не так ли всё начиналось и в странах, где, казалось бы, спонтанно, вдруг, вспыхивали протесты против итогов президентских выбров? Не начинает ли чудовище Франкенштейна оборачиваться против своего создателя? Подумайте, я просто хочу зажечь искорку сомнения.
* Предикторский (от англ. predictor «предсказатель») — прогностический, обладающий даром предвидения. | 0 |
“Hundreds” of people are reportedly set to protest at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian $100 million estate in response to the billionaire’s large perimeter wall and reports that locals were allegedly “harassed and intimidated by security” for walking nearby. [“In June 2016, Zuckerberg constructed a wall along part of his property, despite protests from locals, who called it a ‘monstrosity’ and not neighborly,” wrote McClatchyDC. “Now, more than six months later, around 200 locals are expected to march in protest along the wall this Saturday. ” Numerous locals have also “attempted to use an old trail that passes through the property, only to be harassed and intimidated by security,” according to the site. “Some have even filed police complaints. ” “Although Zuckerberg owns control over the land, he is not the only one with rights to it,” they continued. “In particular, several parcels of land, totaling less than eight acres of the 700, belong in part to families who inherited the land through the Kuleana Act, a Hawaiian law. ” “People are furious down here with him,” said protest organizer and farmer Joe Hart. “We just want to bring this issue to light. He’s made his money stealing everyone’s information, which we’ve let him do, but to come down here and start suing everyone, that’s not going to fly down here. ” “We were walking along [a beach] and they tried to say that this was private,” Hart continued. “I’ve been walking on this since I was a little kid. ” Zuckerberg defended his Hawaiian estate in a post to Facebook last week, claiming, “There have been some misleading stories going around today about our plans in Hawaii. ” “We are working with a professor of native Hawaiian studies and long time member of this community, who is participating in this quiet title process with us,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It is important to us that we respect Hawaiian history and traditions. We love Hawaii and we want to be good members of the community and preserve the environment. We look forward to working closely with the community for years to come. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — As if this city did not have enough problems to overcome, rain and high winds swept through here shortly before the closing ceremony, sending branches and balcony fixtures plummeting onto sidewalks and automobile hoods. In what by now is standard fashion at these Olympics, the Brazilians soldiered on and found a way, even on backup generator power at the Maracanã stadium. It was a Games: full of challenges and contrasts, abrupt shifts in mood and momentum. It was no doubt quite a mess backstage and yet quite a spectacle at the front of the house. But now it is time for the traditional wrap parties and an extra layer of relief, and definitely time to hand out our traditional Olympic prizes (before something else falls from the sky). Best Performance on Land Bolt. Bolt. It’s always about Usain Bolt, and, yes, he went three for three again in the gold medal department, holding off the fading threats (Justin Gatlin) and the rising stars (Andre De Grasse) without looking as if he were quite giving it his full attention. That, of course, is part of his charm. What will track — or the second week of the Olympics — do without him? But this year’s farewell run lacked both the element of surprise and the element of . Bolt’s times in major championships have been increasing for years now. For the novelty factor and the wow factor, there was no surpassing the American Simone Biles. Even if she was a world champion, she was an Olympic rookie, and her explosive and exuberant brand of gymnastics leapt off any screen in any culture. For all those who tuned in or actually made it to their seats in Rio, her performances redefined human limits, just as Bolt’s sprinting did in 2008 and 2009. Worst Performance on Land There was no shortage of candidates — including the American goalkeeper Hope Solo — but only one genuine contender. Ryan Lochte should definitely have stayed in the pool. Best Performance in Water Phelps. Phelps. It’s always about Michael Phelps, and, yes, he won five more gold medals, this time at age 31. But three of those came in relays, and in one of those, Phelps was given a big lead heading into his anchor leg. As remarkable as Phelps remains, the United States’ swimming success was the result of a genuine team effort, and not just because of Katie Ledecky’s freestyle dominance. The Americans also got individual gold medals from five other swimmers, including members of the new wave (Ryan Murphy) and the old guard (Anthony Ervin). After giving few hints of such success at last year’s world championships, the Americans stormed back to win 33 swimming medals in Rio, more than three times what any other nation could muster. Worst Performance in Water It took another collective performance to secure this prize, and it deserves to be shared by all those still unidentified individuals who contributed to turning the water in the Olympic diving pool from transparent blue to opaque green. Hydrogen peroxide? Inactive chlorine? Whatever the latest excuse, this was not the body of water that the world was worried about Rio keeping clean. Best Performance on Water Blair Tuke and Peter Burling, soon to resume preparing with New Zealand for the America’s Cup, were utterly dominant in the 49er class. Danuta Kozak of Hungary won three more gold medals in women’s kayak, bringing her career total to five. The women’s eight from the United States rowed to yet another gold of their own. But there was no better sea story in Rio than Santiago Lange of Argentina. The oldest sailor in the Olympic fleet at age 54, Lange learned he had lung cancer last year and had part of one lung surgically removed. But he still made it to the starting line for South America’s first Olympics. He and his sailing partner, Cecilia Carranza Saroli, were not the favorites in the new mixed multihull Nacra 17 event. Yet they managed to win the gold medal by just one point, and when it was over, Lange’s sons, who competed in the 49er class in Rio, swam out to celebrate with him. Worst Performance on Water Conditions, to be polite, were not always ideal on the Olympic rowing course in Rio’s scenic Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, where winds whipped up choppy conditions and forced some delays. But the lagoon was comparatively calm when Vladislav Yakovlev of Kazakhstan managed just 10 strokes before capsizing in his single scull. Based on water quality studies of the lagoon before the Olympics, this was definitely not the place to get wet. So what did Yakovlev do? The next day, he capsized again. Best Performance in Midair The Bahamian sprinter Shaunae Miller’s desperate, lunge across the line to beat the American Allyson Felix in the women’s 400 meters is clearly on the shortlist. But to be fair, Miller barely left the ground. We’re going with the athlete who soared the highest in the Olympic Stadium: Thiago Braz da Silva of Brazil. Coming into the Games, his personal best in the pole vault had been 5. 93 meters, or about 19 feet six inches. But when he and the host nation needed it most, he cleared 6. 03 meters to set an Olympic record and upset the holder, Renaud Lavillenie of France. It was a gold medal few saw coming, and it was Brazil’s only medal in track and field at its Games. Worst Performance in Midair Nadezhda Bazhina of Russia is no tourist athlete. She is a former European champion in the springboard. But she made a splash for another reason in Rio: mistiming her takeoff during the preliminaries and leaving the board at a suboptimal angle. The result was a back flop that was seen, heard and streamed round the world. Final score for a dive that was not really a dive: zero points. Best Performance It is tempting to lean toward the television program É Campeão, and its assemblage of past Olympic greats, including Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci, all of whom appeared nightly on the Brazilian channel SporTV. They worked with translation, although no translation was required when they finally signed off at around 2 a. m. on Monday morning with a farewell conga line in which we discovered that the former American gymnast Bart Conner is a whole lot shorter than the former Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor. But for true cool on live television, we’re going with Bolt, who after winning yet another footrace was asked for the umpteenth time in his career about his favorite Bob Marley song. The Jamaican responded by singing “One Love” for Brazilian TV. Worst Performance It is tempting to say it could have happened to anyone. There is a lot of churn and froth in an Olympic pool, and when the men’s 200 individual medley race began, Elliotte Friedman called it the way he saw it. Unfortunately, Friedman, a Canadian broadcaster working for CBC, saw it wrong, mistaking Ryan Lochte in Lane 5 for Michael Phelps in Lane 4. “Finally, he’s going to do it,” Friedman declared with understandable emphasis. “Ryan Lochte is going to beat Michael Phelps in this event in the Games. ” Instead it was Phelps who was well out in front. Lochte finished fifth. And although by the end of the Olympics nobody was confusing Phelps for Lochte in or out of the water, Friedman, to his credit, got the call just right. “I’m sorry everyone,” he wrote on Twitter. “I blew it. No excuses. ” Best Performance, Medal in Hand The story, in normal circumstances, would have been all about the American team’s becoming the first to win a second gold medal in women’s water polo. But the story became considerably more poignant when its coach, Adam Krikorian, received a phone call two days before the Games informing him that his brother, Blake, had died in a surfing accident. After returning to the States for a few days, Krikorian came back to Rio. His players prevailed, and after they received their medals, each player — one by one — approached the coach and placed her medal around his neck. Worst Performance, Medal in Hand The dark side of Braz’s gold medal in the pole vault was that the Brazilian crowd, sparse though it was, booed the Lavillenie during the competition as he — quite rightly — tried to clear the same heights and win. The reaction was rough yet forgivable in the heat of the Olympic moment and in light of Brazil’s lack of a track and field culture. But the crowd crossed the line the next night in Olympic Stadium as it booed Lavillenie again as he received his silver medal. True, Lavillenie had not helped his cause by comparing his lot during the competition to that of Jesse Owens in 1936 in Berlin — a comparison he quickly retracted. But this was not Brazil vs. Argentina or Flamengo vs. Fluminense. This felt like the host nation ganging up on a single foreign visitor, one who did not deserve to have tears streaming down his face on the podium. Best Performance Per Capita The Caribbean still rules. Tiny Grenada, with slightly more than 100, 000 inhabitants, topped the standings on medalspercapita. com (yes, every Olympic digital niche is filling up fast). But Grenada only won one medal, a silver by the sprinter Kirani James, the defending Olympic champion in the 400. This year, James was thoroughly overshadowed (outside Grenada) by the South African Wayde van Niekerk’s gold medal and world record in Lane 8. For planetary impact per capita, it remains best to go with Jamaica, which might have won only one medal for every 247, 000 of its inhabitants but still has the world’s fastest man (Bolt) and fastest woman (the newcomer Elaine Thompson). Worst Performance Per Capita Only two medals and no golds for India, well on its way to supplanting China as the world’s most populous nation. Time to retire the trophy? Certainly not, but perhaps time to get cricket into the Olympics (everything else seems to be included). | 1 |
MOUNT VERNON, Va. — The costumed characters at George Washington’s gracious estate here are used to handling all manner of awkward queries, whether about privies or the first president’s teeth. So when a visitor recently asked an in a full skirt and head scarf if she knew Ona Judge, the woman didn’t miss a beat. Judge’s escape from the presidential residence in Philadelphia in 1796 had been “a great embarrassment to General and Lady Washington,” the woman said, before offering her own view of the matter. “Ona was born free, like everybody,” she said. “It was this world that made her a slave. ” It’s always 1799 at Mount Vernon, where more than a million visitors annually see the property as it was just before Washington’s death, when his will famously freed all 123 of his slaves. That liberation did not apply to Ona Judge, one of 153 slaves held by Martha Washington. But Judge, it turned out, evaded the Washingtons’ dogged (and sometimes illegal) efforts to recapture her, and would live quietly in New Hampshire for another 50 years. Now her story — and the challenge it offers to the notion that Washington somehow transcended the seamy reality of slaveholding — is having its fullest airing yet. Judge is among the 19 enslaved people highlighted in “Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon,” the first major exhibition here dedicated to the topic. She is also the subject of a book, “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Most scholars who have written about Judge’s escape have used it as a lens onto Washington’s evolving ideas about slavery. But “Never Caught,” published on Tuesday by 37 Ink, flips the perspective, focusing on what freedom meant to the people he kept in bondage. “We have the famous fugitives, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass,” Ms. Dunbar, a professor of black studies and history at the University of Delaware, said in an interview in Mount Vernon’s food court. “But decades before them, Ona Judge did this. I want people to know her story. ” Research on slavery has exploded in the two decades since Mount Vernon, Monticello and other founder home sites introduced tours and other prominent acknowledgments of the enslaved. “Lives Bound Together,” which runs through September 2018, was originally going to fill one room in the museum here, but soon expanded to include six other galleries normally dedicated to the decorative and fine arts, books and manuscripts. “We had so much material, and it’s such an important story,” Susan P. Schoelwer, the curator at Mount Vernon, said. “We realized we could take many of the objects already on view and reframe them. ” The exhibition makes it clear just who poured from the elegant teapots and did the backbreaking work on the estate. But integrating the harsh reality of slavery into the heroic story of Washington — “a leader of character,” as the title of the permanent exhibition across from the slavery show calls him — remains unfinished work, some scholars say. “He’s a much more mythic figure than Jefferson,” said Annette the author of “The Hemingses of Monticello” and a Harvard professor. “Many people want to see him as perfect in some way. ” But his determined pursuit of Judge, she said, as much as his will freeing his slaves, reflects the basic of slave owners. “It’s saying, ‘Whatever I might think about slavery in the abstract, I should be able to do what I want with my property,’” she said. Ms. Dunbar, the author of “Never Caught,” first came across Ona Judge in the late 1990s, when she was a graduate student at Columbia researching free black women in Philadelphia. One day in the archives, she noticed a 1796 newspaper ad offering $10 for the return of “a light Mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy hair” who had “absconded” from the president’s house. “I said to myself: ‘Here I am, a scholar in this field. Why don’t I know about her? ’” Ms. Dunbar recalled. Since then, Judge’s story has inspired several children’s books, and even an episode of “Drunk History. ” But “Never Caught” is the first nonfiction account, drawing on some newly unearthed sources to track her from Mount Vernon to New York City, Philadelphia and then New Hampshire, at a time when gradual abolition left the line between slavery and freedom ambiguous. “There’s a myth of the North as free, but her story shows how complicated that was,” Ms. Dunbar said. It is in the meticulous ledgers of Mount Vernon that we first see Ona Maria Judge, who was born around 1773 to an enslaved mother and a father who was a white indentured servant. At age 9 she was brought to live in the mansion house, eventually becoming Martha Washington’s personal maid. When Washington became president, Judge followed the first couple to New York and then Philadelphia, home to a growing free black community. Free blacks, Ms. Dunbar writes, aided Judge’s escape in the midst of a presidential dinner, after she had learned that she was to be given to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eliza. And it was free blacks who helped her catch a sailing ship to Portsmouth, N. H. where she married, had three children and lived on the edge of poverty, laboring in households far less exalted than the Washingtons’. In two interviews published in abolitionist newspapers shortly before her death in 1848, Judge testified to the desire for freedom that drove her to run away from the Washington household, where she had “never received the least moral or mental instruction,” she said. Judge’s story, Ms. Dunbar said, explodes any notion of “privileged” house slaves, or of the benevolence of the Washingtons, whose far from passive role in perpetuating slavery — and in doling out sometimes brutal punishment to the rebellious — is described in detail. Ms. Dunbar describes how the Washingtons quietly maneuvered around Pennsylvania’s 1780 gradual abolition law, rotating their slaves in and out of the state every six months. And she recounts their shock at the “ingratitude” of Judge, who fled “without any provocation,” the president wrote. After hearing that Judge was in Portsmouth, Washington, offering a story that she had been “enticed away by a Frenchman,” discreetly sent a federal customs officer to bring her back, circumventing procedures laid out in the 1793 fugitive slave law he himself had signed. When Judge agreed to return on condition that she be freed on Martha’s death, George Washington dismissed her demand as “totally inadmissible. ” However much he might favor general emancipation, he wrote to the customs officer, granting Judge any say in her fate would only “reward unfaithfulness” and give ideas to others “far more deserving of favor. ” In August 1799, Washington, through another associate, tried again to capture her, but was foiled when Judge received a tip about the plot and disappeared. Four months later Washington was dead, freeing all his slaves in his will. Judge and the others held by Martha Washington remained her legal property. Ms. Dunbar calls Washington’s act “no small thing,” but does not see the former president, who had no biological children to disinherit, as the hero of the story. “When it was safe, he emancipated his slaves,” she said. “He dealt with it after his death. And you know what? That’s what all the founders did with slavery: They kicked the can down the road. ” | 1 |
QUITO, Ecuador — The strongest earthquake to strike Ecuador in decades left the Andean nation traumatized on Sunday, with collapsed buildings in a swath of destruction stretching hundreds of miles. At least 272 people were killed and 2, 527 injured, mostly in the northwestern coastal area of Manabí, the government said. President Rafael Correa cut short a visit to Europe and declared a national emergency after the 7. earthquake struck on Saturday night, shaking the central coast. The effects could be felt in the capital, Quito, and into parts of Peru and Colombia. Portoviejo, the provincial capital of Manabí, and Pedernales, a resort town, appeared to have sustained the most damage, with about 370 buildings destroyed. Viviana Baquezea, 34, a florist, was driving back to her home in Portoviejo, accompanied by her parents and an employee, when the earthquake struck. They were met by a scene of destruction. “It looks like a war zone,” Ms. Baquezea said by telephone from Portoviejo. “It’s incredible what was happened to us — that our city is destroyed and we’re experiencing such anguish and pain. ” “We don’t have food or water, there are no supermarkets, and we’re surviving with what we had in our homes,” she added. José Vaca, a television producer for OromarTV, said the seconds in which the earth refused to stay still seemed to last forever. “We were preparing to transmit a local football game when everything started to shake and the people fled in panic,” he said of a game in Portoviejo. “I had to to avoid being crushed by the people. I have some scrapes. But what I see around me is really terrible, startling and very sad. ” Ecuador has a history of destructive earthquakes, but the one on Saturday, which by some accounts lasted more than a minute, is believed to have been one of the most powerful since the 1970s. Some geologists said its force was 20 times greater than the deadly earthquake that struck southern Japan early Saturday. The quake had a depth of nearly 12 miles. Several aftershocks, some as strong as magnitude 5. 6, followed. The earthquake’s center was 16 miles southeast of Muisne, Ecuador, the United States Geological Survey said. About 4, 600 members of the National Police and 10, 400 members of the armed forces were mobilized as part of the emergency response. Hundreds of doctors, health professionals and rescue workers were heading toward the areas. The president’s emergency decree gives the government expanded authority and a state of emergency in six of the country’s 24 provinces. Deaths were reported in the northern provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí and Guayas. Among the dead were a youngster who fell down the stairs in a mall in the southern port city of Guayaquil and another who died after the collapse of a bridge in the city, according to reports from the television station Teleamazonas. Adriana Villacís, 40, a nurse, said she was with her husband and her son at a supermarket about 30 minutes from Quito when groceries began to fall to the floor. “The first thing I did was protect my son and look for the exit, but a part of the roof fell, and I was frozen,” she said. “Thank God we weren’t physically harmed, but the shock caused my child to vomit. ” In the Pedernales district, near the epicenter, a number of homes fell, damaging parked cars. On Avenue Mariscal Sucre in northern Quito, signposts fell, causing panic among drivers. Jorge Espinel said he had parked his car to avoid an accident. “It was terrible, such a shock,” he said. “I don’t have words for what I felt. ” In Quito, where the shaking was felt for about 40 seconds and residents took to the streets in fear, the quake appeared to have knocked out electricity and cellphone coverage in several neighborhoods. The mayor of Quito, Mauricio Rodas, said there had been rockslides on roads leading to the capital and reports that the walls of houses had fallen. But he said that no fatalities or injuries had been reported in the city. Christian Rivera, a municipal official in Quito, said a group of 40 children with disabilities from the capital, who had been on an outing, were found near Pedernales and were rescued. In Guayaquil, an overpass collapsed on a car, and the roof of a shopping center buckled. In Manta, the airport was closed after the control tower was severely damaged. Fundación Esperanza Canina, an organization in Manta that cares for stray animals, said on Facebook that its shelter had been destroyed and that several dogs had been crushed by the debris. President Correa urged people to show strength while he and the authorities monitored events. Carlos Hernandez, a representative of Save the Children International in Quito, said his organization was sending a team of disaster response specialists from Panama to Manabí and putting together supply kits to distribute there. His organization and other civil society groups met with government officials to plan their response on Sunday. “We’re trying to see what they need most and where,” he said. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Even on Fox News, Representative Devin Nunes, the beleaguered Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, could not escape the venom from his left. Mr. Nunes, the California lawmaker, stood inside the Capitol’s Statuary Hall on Thursday evening, assuming a familiar set of positions: in front of a camera, giving cover to President Trump and defending himself. The subject this time was his decision on Wednesday to brief Mr. Trump, whose campaign his committee is investigating, about possible “incidental” surveillance of the president or his associates. “I still think it’s the right call,” Mr. Nunes said of his decision not to tell members of his committee about his trip to the White House. But as he spoke inside the Capitol, a committee colleague, Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, peered into a different camera, belonging to CNN, a few feet to the left. “It is almost inconceivable,” Mr. Himes said of his chairman’s behavior, more than loud enough to hear nearby. “Lo and behold, a couple of hours later, Donald Trump gets to put the barest of fig leaves on the outrageous tweet about Barack Obama wiretapping him. ” Since Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Nunes has proved an eager purveyor of executive fig leaves. As the leader of an investigation involving the campaign of a man he cheered vocally and served directly as a transition team official, the congressman has often appeared almost incurious about the chief subject of the inquiry. Of greater concern in the intelligence sphere is his recent burst of media exposure, with a public speaking style that can at times seem cavalier while discussing sensitive information. This has led to misgivings about sharing national security details with him, a senior American intelligence official said. Many lawmakers crave attention, racing to microphones and pounding lecterns in search of cable news glory. But Mr. Nunes, who can seem by turns earnest and reticent in person, is something different: After over a decade in the House, he has appeared to lurch haphazardly into the spotlight, like Kramer entering a room on “Seinfeld,” straining to keep his balance as a human shield in Washington’s daily Trump wars. Mr. Nunes said on Fox News that he felt he “had a duty and obligation” to tell Mr. Trump about the possible surveillance. “Because as you know, he’s taking a lot of heat in the news media. ” Now the president has company in that regard: Mr. Nunes, a former dairy farmer, elected to Congress in 2002 at age 29, from a section of a state. The Democratic National Committee has even adopted a new label for him: “White House stooge. ” It was not always thus. Mr. Nunes was 23 when he was first elected to public office, as a board member of a local community college where he had started his higher education. Eyeing his first campaign, Mr. Nunes sought advice from Representative Jim Costa, a Democrat who is also from the Central Valley in California and was serving in the State Legislature at the time. Both belonged to the area’s Portuguese community. Mr. Costa said he recognized a familiar drive. “We all show that kind of interest when we’re in our 20s and 30s, and we want to try to get an opportunity to see if we can make a difference,” Mr. Costa said. Until recently, Mr. Nunes’s most memorable flourish in the House was his blistering assessment in 2013 of Republicans who were willing to shut down the federal government over President Obama’s health law: “lemmings with suicide vests. ” Now, he has largely retained the support of his colleagues, despite complaints from Republicans like Senator John McCain of Arizona over his committee stewardship, amplifying calls for an independent commission to investigate Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia. On Friday, Mr. Nunes summoned reporters once more to relay information that Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman with questionable ties to Russia, had volunteered to appear before the committee. Mr. Nunes also announced the cancellation of a public meeting with former intelligence and law enforcement leaders, citing a desire to bring in James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, and Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, for a closed session instead. Both testified before the committee this week. Representative Adam Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, suggested that once again the chairman had acted unilaterally, this time to scuttle the hearing. And in a sign of how far their relationship has fallen, Mr. Schiff — who for weeks stood by Mr. Nunes’s side before reporters and defended him — accused him of taking that action because the White House had told him to. This was the capper to an eventful few days for Mr. Nunes. Presiding over a committee hearing on Monday — when Mr. Comey took the extraordinary step of announcing the agency’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election — Mr. Nunes mustered deeper alarm over anonymous sources revealing an inquiry’s details to journalists than over the contents of the investigation. On Wednesday, he told reporters he had received information that Mr. Trump or members of his team may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. Pressed on whether the White House had provided him the information to produce a “feedback loop” that might aid the president, Mr. Nunes has declined to reveal his sources, saying he does not want to discourage others from coming forward — a rationale analogous to reporters’ arguments for protecting anonymous sources. It has also not always been entirely clear what Mr. Nunes is talking about. “Was the president also part of that incidental collection, his communications?” one reporter asked on Wednesday. “Yes,” Mr. Nunes said, after glancing at the floor for a moment. Heads snapped up from their phones and notepads. “Excuse me, let me just clarify,” another reporter began. “The president of the United States’ personal communications were intercepted as an incidental part of intelligence gathering — ” Mr. Nunes appeared to reconsider. “When we talk about intelligence products here, we’ve got to be very careful,” he said. By Thursday evening, he still did not seem certain about the contents of what he had divulged. He has said he could decipher the identities of Trump associates from reading reports about intercepted communications that were shared among Obama administration officials with top security clearances. But he has stressed that he did not have evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claim of being personally wiretapped. Regardless, the president and some allies have seized on the comments as validation. “I mean, look, my guess is there’s probably a lot more than what I was able to see,” Mr. Nunes said, when asked if Mr. Trump was indeed vindicated. “And then he’ll have to make up his own mind. ” Democrats have said that Mr. Nunes apologized for leaving them out of the loop. Mr. Nunes, who said he would not do anything differently if given the chance, said he understood why some were upset. But he chafed at discussions of his private conversations. “That stuff,” he said, “is not supposed to leak out. ” | 1 |
A PBS high school lesson plan encourages students to empathize with young Palestinian terrorists who want to become suicide bombers to achieve martyrdom and suggests they would rather die because Palestinians have less land and are restricted. [The “Dying to Be a Martyr” multimedia lesson plan is available free of cost to teachers and students at PBS Learning Media, reports Justin Haskins at the Heartland Institute. It utilizes videos titled “Martyrdom,” “Suicide Bombing,” and “Israel and Palestine,” as well as internet sites and primary sources “to examine the roots of the Middle East conflict. ” Students are asked to be able to understand “why individuals and groups sometimes turn to tactics of terrorism. ” At first, students are asked to learn about the connections that all three major faiths — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — have to Israel. However, later on in the lesson, students view the video “Israel and Palestine,” and are asked to focus on 25 Majdi Amer, who built a bomb in 2003 for a suicide bomber in Haifa who ultimately killed 17 people, and wounded 50 more, on a bus. Students are asked to compare Majdi’s view of suicide bombing with that of Mohanned Abu Tayyoun, who wavers in carrying out his suicide mission and ultimately goes to jail in Israel. In Part III of the lesson plan, students view an interview with Mohanned in jail and are asked to “identify how Mohanned views his life and how he feels it differs from the lives of Israelis (Jews). ” “Martyrdom leads us to God,” he responds. “I don’t want this life. When you become a martyr, your prize for carrying out the operation is going to heaven … We Palestinians prefer to die, just kill ourselves, rather than live this worthless life. Our lives are worthless. We are hollow bodies living a pointless life. ” “Israelis enjoy their life,” Mohanned continues. “They go out at night. They have cafes and nightclubs. They travel all over the world. They go to America and Britain. We can’t even leave Palestine. ” Teachers are asked to check students’ understanding of the reasons Mohanned feels he would rather die and be a martyr than live his life. The lesson suggests that Mohanned may feel that way because “Palestinians have less land, fewer privileges, cannot come and go as they please. ” In Part IV of the lesson plan, Majdi is interviewed in a video and is asked why it is acceptable for him to kill women and children. “If the Israelis kill a child in Gaza, I’m ready to kill one in Tel Aviv,” he says. “If they destroy houses in Gaza, I’ll do it in Tel Aviv. If they give me security in my land, then there’s no problem. ” “No instructions are provided telling teachers to denounce the radical claims made by Majdi, and there are no other lesson plans describing the conflict from the point of view of the Israelis,” observes Haskins. JP Morgan Chase and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which is funded by the federal government — fund the lesson plan’s website. The Christian Action Network (CAN) has filed a demand letter with the U. S. Education Department urging it to stop funding the Islamic lesson plans that are part of a program called “Access Islam. ” “So, PBS Learning Media is one of the websites that is promoting it,” CAN’s president Martin Mawyer recently told Breitbart News. “The Smithsonian also promotes it, the Indiana Department of Education promotes it, and even the United Nations promotes it. ” Mawyer claims that through the Access Islam curriculum, American students are taught the Islamic way of life in a way that crosses the line from academics to indoctrination. | 1 |
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Gloves finally off: Obama uses pen and phone to cancel Putin's Netflix account
Joe Biden to Russia: "We will bury you by turning more of Eastern Europe over to your control!"
In last-ditch effort to help Ukraine, Obama deploys Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to Crimea
Al Sharpton: "Not even Putin can withstand our signature chanting, 'racist, sexist, anti-gay, Russian army go away'!"
Mardi Gras in North Korea: " Throw me some food! "
Obama's foreign policy works: "War, invasion, and conquest are signs of weakness; we've got Putin right where we want him"
US offers military solution to Ukraine crisis: "We will only fight countries that have LGBT military"
Putin annexes Brighton Beach to protect ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, Obama appeals to UN and EU for help
The 1980s: "Mr. Obama, we're just calling to ask if you want our foreign policy back . The 1970s are right here with us, and they're wondering, too."
In a stunning act of defiance, Obama courageously unfriends Putin on Facebook
MSNBC: Obama secures alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
Study: springbreak is to STDs what April 15th is to accountants
Efforts to achieve moisture justice for California thwarted by unfair redistribution of snow in America
North Korean voters unanimous: "We are the 100%"
Leader of authoritarian gulag-site, The People's Cube, unanimously 're-elected' with 100% voter turnout
Super Bowl: Obama blames Fox News for Broncos' loss
Feminist author slams gay marriage: "a man needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"
Beverly Hills campaign heats up between Henry Waxman and Marianne Williamson over the widening income gap between millionaires and billionaires in their district
Biden to lower $10,000-a-plate Dinner For The Homeless to $5,000 so more homeless can attend
Kim becomes world leader, feeds uncle to dogs; Obama eats dogs, becomes world leader, America cries uncle
North Korean leader executes own uncle for talking about Obamacare at family Christmas party
White House hires part-time schizophrenic Mandela sign interpreter to help sell Obamacare
Kim Jong Un executes own " crazy uncle " to keep him from ruining another family Christmas
OFA admits its advice for area activists to give Obamacare Talk at shooting ranges was a bad idea
President resolves Obamacare debacle with executive order declaring all Americans equally healthy
Obama to Iran: "If you like your nuclear program, you can keep your nuclear program"
Bovine community outraged by flatulence coming from Washington DC
Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"
Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week
Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message
NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"
Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough
The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"
Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare
Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation
Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans
Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy
GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords
Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare
Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria
Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"
DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women
Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees
Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left
Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'
FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp
Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies
GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'
Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'
Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism
News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota
Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith
Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page
Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment
White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria
Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'
Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins
Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date
IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history
After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot
Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'
Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program
US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?
Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy
This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'
Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'
White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward
President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama
As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet
Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'
Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Obama attends church service, worships self
Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending
Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'
Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter: "Too few words"
Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space
Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"
Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"
Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'
Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'
Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome
People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"
Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party
Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off
Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"
Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed
White House: "Let them eat statistics"
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama | 0 |
Election crossroads: Socialism or capitalism? Exclusive: Jane Chastain explains impact of Dems' 'living wage' proposal Published: 49 mins ago About | | Archive Jane Chastain is a Southern California-based broadcaster, author and political commentator. Despite her present emphasis on politics, Jane always will be remembered as the nation's first female TV sportscaster, spending 17 years on the sports beat. Jane blogs at JaneChastain.com. She is a pilot who lives on a private runway. Print
Our country is at a crossroads. Never before have we faced such an obvious fork in the road. One road, the one favored by politician Hillary Clinton and her Democratic colleagues, promises to lead us to a socialist utopia. The other, favored by businessman Donald Trump and some of his Republican colleagues, promises to get us back on the road toward free-market capitalism.
It is no secret that most career politicians lean toward a socialist system. In this system they control the lion’s share of our money and, in turn, hand out favors. In this system, they make the major decisions that affect our lives. As the government accumulates more and more power, we invariably end up with less. Statistics show that the longer a politician stays in power, the more of our hard-earned money he or she spends. Yet we keep electing the same people over and over and over again, expecting a different result.
We’ve been headed down the road toward socialism for quite some time, and this could be the last fork in the road we will have to get us back to the free-market system that has given this country the highest standard of living in the world. No, it isn’t perfect, but it works for everyone who is willing to work hard and wants to improve his or her life.
Notice what I didn’t say is “simply willing to work hard.” There is the belief by some that if you simply work hard, you should have what these politicians now call a “living wage” – the income necessary to support a family of four and supply all its basic needs, which is around $85,000 a year in some parts of the country. The Democrats want to replace the minimum wage, which is a training wage, with this living wage. That completely kicks the bottom rungs out from under the economic ladder Americans have traditionally climbed to reach their goals and live independently.
Ideally, it would mean that you could take a job flipping hamburgers and never gain any skills or accept any responsibility, and live as comfortably as the guy or gal who does.
Unfortunately, this so-called living wage will destroy jobs. It will cause companies to automate, and those that cannot will begin moving offshore at an even faster rate.
But this living wage is only part of what the Democrats want to do in the name of fairness.
This, no doubt, appeals to many in this poor economy who have lost all hope, so they are lulled into thinking that the socialist road is much better.
Wages have remained flat for far too long, but the Democrats are proposing raising taxes even higher on businesses and job creators.
Most people simply do not understand that businesses don’t pay taxes. They are passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices. And when the price of the necessary goods and services becomes too high, such as we’ve seen in Obamacare, there is a large outcry. That’s when the government steps in and takes over the means of production and the control of those services. That’s when the door to socialism/communism slams shut.
They tell us if we take this socialist road there is nothing to fear. Our benevolent government will take care of us. They are offering us free college – or almost free loans – in order to get the job we want at a salary we think we deserve. And if we don’t get that job, the government is going to give us free health care, free food and free housing. Under President Hillary, there will be free child care, free preschool and paid family leave. What a country!
If we don’t reach our goals, everything will be OK because Social Security and Medicare will be there to finance our retirement, and if that isn’t enough, the government will put us in a retirement center where we live out the remainder of our years playing checkers or watching television.
What about the fact that Social Security and Medicare are going broke? How long can we keep printing money to keep us afloat before our economy collapses? They never talk about that.
As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Don’t be fooled: This election is about a lot more than the two personalities at the top of the ticket. It’s an important fork in the road: One fork requires hard work and sacrifice but offers freedom. The other offers a free lunch.
Media wishing to interview Jane Chastain, please contact . Receive Jane Chastain's commentaries in your email BONUS: By signing up for Jane Chastain's alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email. Name * | 0 |
The latest free content update for Titanfall 2 brings a new map, weapon, and more customization options for players.[ map Colony from the original Titanfall is getting a makeover for the sequel. Developer Respawn Entertainment notes: “Mix in all of the new tacticals Titans from Titanfall 2, and Pilots Titans will have to keep their wits about them to survive in this idyllic village of back alleys, blind corners and exposed rooftops. ” Players will also gain access to the assault rifle and a new execution featuring Titanfall 2‘s grappling hook for free. New prime versions of the game’s Legion and Northstar Titans featuring new chassis and executions will also be available to purchase separately, as well as new player banners, patches, camos, and Titan noseart and warpaints to customize their appearance. Finally, Respawn will be providing a free weekend for new players to try out Titanfall 2 for themselves starting March 30 and running through April 3. The Colony Reborn update launches March 30. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s transition team has circulated an unusual questionnaire at the Department of Energy that requests the names of all employees and contractors who have attended climate change policy conferences, as well as emails and documents associated with the conferences. In question after question, the document peppers Energy Department managers with pointed queries about climate science research, clean energy programs and the employees who work for those programs. More broadly, the questionnaire hints at a significant shift of emphasis at the agency toward nuclear power, and a push to commercialize the research of the Energy Department’s laboratories, long considered the crown jewels of federal science. Energy Department employees, who shared the questionnaire with The New York Times and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, described the questionnaire as worrying. Mr. Trump has just tapped Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma and a climate change denialist, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and the has made it clear he intends to roll back eight years of regulatory efforts by President Obama that aimed to control emissions. The questionnaire “suggests the Trump administration plans a witch hunt for civil servants who’ve simply been doing their jobs,” Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Democrats and Republicans alike should unite to condemn any action that intimidates, threatens or retaliates against civil servants for lawfully doing their jobs. ” Michael McKenna, a former Energy Department official in George W. Bush’s administration who initially led Mr. Trump’s Energy Department transition, saw nothing amiss. “If meetings happened and important stuff was decided, voters have a right to know,” said Mr. McKenna, who stepped down after Mr. Trump banned working lobbyists from the transition. “It’s not a matter of national security. The transition is not asking about nuclear weapons. They are asking about meetings about modeling for God’s sake. ” The questionnaire requests “a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group meetings” to design a measurement known as the Social Cost of Carbon, a figure used by the Obama administration to measure the economic effects of carbon dioxide pollution, and to justify the economic cost of climate regulations. That question goes on to demand “a list of when those meetings were” as well as “emails associated with those meetings. ” A separate question asks for “a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any” United Nations climate change conference “in the last five years. ” Still another inquires about which office led the department’s efforts to complete the nuclear weapons deal with Iran. Even the Energy Information Administration, the department’s independent statistics office, was not immune. The questionnaire demands justification for the office’s measurements of the nation’s carbon dioxide pollution. “In the Annual Energy Outlook 2016, E. I. A. assumed that the Clean Power Plan should be in the reference case despite the fact that the reference case is based on existing laws and regulations,” the questionnaire reads. “Why did the E. I. A. make that assumption, which seems to be atypical of past forecasts?” Several other questions focus on the national scientific laboratories, including queries on highest salaries, outside evaluation of research and commercialization programs for their research. It is not clear whether similar questionnaires were circulated at other cabinet agencies, or whether the questionnaire was the product of a particularly zealous landing team at the Energy Department. Press officers at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, the main agencies responsible for implementing climate policy, said those agencies had not received questionnaires. The Trump transition office did not respond to requests for comment. But former Energy Department employees and presidential transition officials said that while it is normal for presidential transition teams to ask policy questions, it is highly unusual to send out questionnaires. The requests for lists of specific employees involved in shaping climate policy is irregular and alarming, they said, given that on the campaign trail Mr. Trump clearly showed his skepticism of climate change science and his hostility to climate change policy. “A lot of these questions make perfect sense,” said Jonathan Levy, a former deputy chief of staff of the Energy Department in the Obama administration. “They have to get their heads around what responsibilities they will have and don’t have. The thing that’s unsettling are the questions that appear to be targeting personnel for doing public service. ” John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff who led Mr. Obama’s transition, wrote in an email, “To the best of my knowledge, no one in the ’08 transition asked questions about meeting attendance. ” Max Stier, an expert on presidential transitions and the president of Partnership for Public Service, a research organization, said: “The new president will come in with new policies that he’ll pursue, but that’s different from identifying civil servants who are responsible for following through on policies set by the previous political leadership. And they’re not going to be effective without working well with the career team. ” Mr. McKenna said Energy Department employees had nothing to fear. “The career staff at D. O. E. is great. There’s not a soul in the world who wants to do any harm to those guys. ” Beyond the targeted questions about climate change, the questionnaire also appears to offer a broad map of the Trump administration’s policy goals for the Energy Department. Several questions signal an intent to downsize the department, including queries about existing vacancies and the number of assistant energy secretaries that are mandated by law. One question requests recommendations to implement a 10 percent budget reduction over the next four years. The questionnaire also suggests a new emphasis on nuclear power, including queries about supporting the operation of existing nuclear reactors preventing the premature closing of nuclear plants increasing research and development of advanced nuclear reactors and moving forward with plans to license nuclear waste disposal at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, which was shut down by the Obama administration. One question touches on the department’s support for “offshore wind,” a particular interest for Mr. Trump, who is fighting wind turbines off the coast of one of his golf courses in Scotland. The Energy Department’s national laboratories are largely focused on scientific research, but several questions seem to indicate an interest in pushing the research in a commercial direction, including a request to the labs for a list of licensing agreements and royalty proceeds over the last five years. In the immediate War years, the Clinton administration pushed the labs to partner with private companies on commercial research, but the Bush administration saw those efforts as government intervention in the free market. Trump has shown no concern for such intervention. | 1 |
That's a slippery slope fallacy goyim. Just because we accept gays that doesn't mean we are gonna accept pedophiles....
wait we're accepting pedophiles now? Listen goy, just because we're accepting pedophiles that doesn't mean we will accept bestiality. And so the cycle continues.... | 0 |
Having been subjected to the intellectually insulting shit show of a third and, thankfully, final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — likely the two most despised candidates in U.S. electoral history — it’s now imperative Americans train their attention to rapidly unfolding events which, by every indication, comprise blaring alarm bells of impending world war.
Via AnonHQ
And no, despite scaremongering to the contrary, this war — centered around superpowers Russia and the United States — would not inevitably devolve into the hurling of nuclear missiles. In fact, the likelihood of no-holds-barred nuclear war is, at best, negligible — but the odds of unhindered conventional warfare have increased markedly over the past week.
Scroll Down For Video Below A senior NATO diplomat, who spoke with Reuters under condition of anonymity and cited ‘Western intelligence,’ gave the startling assessment Wednesday that Russia is “deploying all of the Northern fleet and much of the Baltic fleet in the largest surface deployment since the end of the Cold War.
“This is not a friendly port call. In two weeks, we will see a crescendo of air attacks on Aleppo as part of Russia’s strategy to declare victory there.”
Indeed, Russian ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad eagerly accepted President Vladimir Putin’s military assistance in its chaotic and complex conflict, which largely involves U.S.-created and Saudi Arabia-funded Islamic State militants; U.S.-trained and armed ‘moderate rebel’ terrorists; Syrian government forces; and the altogether controversial Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition. Considering the decimation taking place, that assistance is absolutely justifiable.
Of course, that farcically simplified explanation requires the contextualization of an intricate web of extenuating circumstances — nearly any one of which could spark a powderkeg.
Russian military endeavors in Syria have already earned a vow by the U.S. to defend itself — and by logical extension, that would include whichever rebel groups it considers ‘moderate’ enough not to deserve being targeted. With Russia planning an all-in offensive, some analysts have warned, the Pentagon could facilely decide to undertake direct ‘defensive’ measures.
At the heart of the U.S.’ multi-fronted proxy war with Russia sits a highly-propagandized, baseless narrative of “Russian aggression” — a claim thoroughly saturating American political rhetoric to shift both focus and blame from the true substantive aggressor the world over: the United States.
Save for scanty disagreement from Western-centric analysts, this American aggression — marked by an obstinate quest for dominance and control — has us all perilously hurtling for needless war on a global scale.
And needless, if not highly suspect, aptly characterizes the U.S. recent destruction of several strategic radar sites inside Yemen following dubious claims the U.S.S. Mason had come under missile attack by Iran-allied Shi’a Houthi rebels. Although American politicians and corporate media swiftly proffered those claims as steel truth — even amid a nascent investigation by the Pentagon — the Department of Defense’s own preliminary statement cast doubt about veracity.
“The initial thoughts is that this [attack] was aimed at them,” DoD spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis statedshortly after the purported incident last Tuesday.
Nonetheless, the belligerent move by the U.S. spurred Iran to deploy an entire fleet of military vessels to the same Gulf of Aden waters from whence the response attack had been launched.
Now, despite the abrupt and official military entree into the Yemeni war, Reuters reported, the “Pentagon declined to say on Monday whether the USS Mason destroyer was targeted by multiple inbound missiles fired from Yemen on Saturday, as initially thought, saying a review was under way to determine what happened.”
But the U.S. propaganda machine truly hit a fever pitch today, thanks to an altogether shady exclusive report courtesy of Reuters — amplifying an altogether unproven claim Iran has been directly supplying Houthi rebels with missiles, arms, and ‘cash.’
In fact an unsurprisingly unnamed and unverifiable “senior U.S. administration official” delivered an accusation of potentially staggering consequence, telling Reuters:
“We have been concerned about the recent flow of weapons from Iran into Yemen and have conveyed those concerns to those who maintain relations with the Houthis, including the Omani government.”
Oman, of course, flatly denies such allegations.
“There is no truth to this,” Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alwi told Saudi newspaper Okaz in an interview last week. “No weapons have crossed our border and we are ready to clarify any suspicions if they arise.”
In fact, though Reuters cites several anonymous diplomats and officials, the accusation Iran has been supplying anything directly to the Houthis has yet to be unassailably proven — and such reports do little more than proffer a narrative suitable not only to maintain new U.S. military endeavors in Yemen, but to recklessly provoke a proxy Iranian conflict.
Such psychological operations are, of course, not unusual for the United States — and extend to a statement given by President Barack Obama on Tuesday concerning Russia.
In a blatant attempt to discredit Donald Trump for a supposed fondness for Putin, Obama, as usual, invoked the Russian aggression narrative — however, this spiel came complete with a pointedly significant re-characterization about the Russian military.
“We think that Russia is a large, important country with a military that is second only to ours and has to be a part of the solution on the world stage rather than part of the problem,” the president explained, surreptitiously upgrading the Cold War foe’s capabilities than its previous status as mere “regional power” in umpteen previous statements.
This not-at-all-minor point most does effectively two things: grows in less cagey American minds the palpability and thus legitimacy of a Russian threat, and renews Cold War propaganda pitting two global superpowers as mortal enemies — ostensibly setting up a pre-justification to act in even pre-emptive self-defense anywhere on the planet this proxy war plays out.
Additionally, in a matter of weeks, disfavor over U.S.’ actions has cemented military and other alliances between a quickly mounting number of former, longstanding American allies and other traditional Western foes — the vast majority of which align with Russia.
After a subtly significant geopolitical snub during a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to negotiate a ceasefire in Syria, which infuriated Saudi Arabia, Egypt fomented a friendly military relationship with UNSC presiding body, Russia.
“[F]or the first time,” beginning October 15, Reuters reported, “joint drills between Egyptian and Russian paratrooper units” began in Egypt, and will continue through the 26th. Further, the growing rift with Saudi Arabia indicated Egypt might have been weighing options for a different ally for some time. Reuters wrote:
“A halt to shipments of Saudi fuel to Egypt under a $23 billion aid deal shows that a rift between the Arab world’s richest country and its most populous may be deeper than previously thought, which could leave Egypt desperate for a new sponsor.”
Egypt hasn’t been alone in jumping ship — and the Middle East isn’t the sole locus of conflict.
During a four-day visit at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping this week — amid deteriorating relations with the United States — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte asserted it is “only China that can help us.”
This massive shift in alignment could have highly consequent repercussions in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea — another conflict in which the U.S. has embroiled itself in several proxy wars, including Russian-backed China.
In fact, although the Philippines had been at the center of that quarrel, unnamed Chinese officials prior to the ongoing meeting announced China would “consider giving Filipino fishermen conditional access to disputed waters in the South China Sea after the presidents of the two countries meet in Beijing this week.”
Now, following through on intimations the Philippines would cleave from the West, Duterte just made a historic and stunning announcement today, to an auditorium in Beijing packed with over 200 Chinese and Philippine business people, including Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli:
“In this venue, your honours, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States. Both in military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost.”
He added, “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to [President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world — China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.”
As another geostrategic and commercial waterway of international importance, the South China Sea’s role in the U.S. proxy war is second only to the Red Sea and access to it — but the presence of American naval vessels in both those waters and neighboring East China Sea has been deemed an aggressive threat by China and its strengthening ally Russia, as well as North Korea.
Joint naval and military drills conducted by the U.S. and ally South Korea and the planned installation of the U.S.’ Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile system along the latter’s borders inflamed tensions with North Korea — who has been testing ballistic missiles for months, much to the consternation of the two nations and ally, Japan.
On Wednesday, in response to this perceived aggression, North Korea issued a severe admonishment to the two countries that even “minor signs of aggression” would greenlight Pyongyang to flatten Seoul in a defensive first-strike nuclear attack.
“It has been too long a time since our revolutionary armed forces switched to a principle of pre-emptive strike in the conduct of war, in response to the aggressive war provocations of our enemies,”Pyongyang stated, as cited by UPI, ominously adding a “ruthless pre-emptive strike is to be applied even in the face of minor signs of aggression.”
Not known for backing down from delicate situations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared its intent to deploy THAAD “as soon as possible,” after meeting with South Korean officials in Washington, and told the press:
“Let me be clear. Any attack on the United States or its allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons will be met with an effective and overwhelming response. “We do not, and we will not, accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.”
Leaving nothing open to misinterpretation, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter clarified in a separate press statement that, in defense of Seoul, the United States guaranteed “full spectrum” use of its response capabilities — meaning nuclear missiles are anything but off the table.
Shortly afterward, according to NBC News, “U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected what it believed to be a failed missile launch near the northwestern North Korean city of Kusong.” Director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies, Lee Yong Pil, told NBC News Pyongyang will absolutely strike first if Pyongyang perceives it necessary, saying,
“The U.S. has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our dear leader, Kim Jong Un. We will not step back as long as there’s a nuclear threat to us from the United States.” South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, saying its allies would employ “all tools in the toolkit” for defense, asserted,
“What is most important is to continuously demonstrate our capability and deterrence with our commitment and actions so that Pyongyang can feel the panic under their skins.” North Korea might be known for blustery rhetoric it refuses to back with significant action — but continued provocation by the United States might elicit a response far more detrimental than words.
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Zoey, the wonder dog makes a political statement – an exclusive UnReal Times report Posted on Tweet
A cousin of mine, an ardent dog lover who dotes on his pet female golden retriever Zoey, has recently been observing some unusual behavioural changes in his pet. Normally of placid and amiable temperament, like most retrievers, she was quite happy to be fed regularly, thrown the odd bone and tickled under the tummy every now and then. Even visits to the vet was like a jolly excursion for her. “But over the last month or so, while we were watching television after dinner, she would start behaving strangely”, observed my cousin, restlessly tugging at his forelock.
As a regular contributor to UnReal Times (URT), my columnist’s bloodhound instincts took over, as I clearly saw the beginnings of a major newsbreak, outside the world of sordid politics, boringly one sided cricket and just plain boring Bollywood. At least, that’s what I figured, when I decided to probe my cousin further on Zoey’s curious antics. Since this relative was reluctant to give out his real name to URT’s massive readership, we’ll just call him VK. Here he is, being interviewed by your intrepid reporter.
URT – “Hi VK, tell us more about Zoey and the television. What gives?”
VK – “Well it’s like this. When we put the TV on, the first thing Zoey usually does is lie down and go to sleep. Unfailingly. But in recent times, she has been sitting bolt upright and making a variety of different sounds. I thought of calling my vet, until my wife shushed me and said listen carefully and watch Zoey closely”.
URT – “And then what happened? The suspense is killing me”.
VK – “Patience, brother. All will be revealed. It took us a while to detect a pattern, but then things started unraveling. Whenever the Prime Minister came on screen and spoke, Zoey would wag her tail vigorously, joyously yelping the while, leap on to our bed, give us a lick or two and, for all the world, look like she had been offered a huge leg of mutton”.
URT – “Wow, that is really weird. What else?”
VK – “When Arvind Kejriwal appeared on TV, Zoey would go all still, crouch like a tiger advancing on its prey, and emit a fearful, elongated growl, baring her fangs, prior to barking her head off. And wouldn’t stop barking till Kejriwal was off screen. And when the PM appeared again, it was back to tail wagging and whimpering”.
URT – “This is scary, man. Is Zoey psychic?”
VK – “Wait, you haven’t heard it all. The same hostile body language Zoey exhibited with Kejriwal, she pretty much repeated with RaGa. I tried telling her RaGa is such a sweet, baby faced young chap, but no. It was all a-barking and a-growling. Kejri all over again. Ditto with Akhilesh Yadav and his dad, Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee. Even the image that went viral, supposedly of one of our ailing political leaders, and turned out to be that of an inert patient from Lima in Peru lying in a coma in her hospital bed for over seven years, could not soothe our Zoey”.
URT – “This is too good, yaar. And….?”
VK – “The moment either Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley or Sambit Patra came on screen, she was back to her happy jumping up and down”.
URT – “ Elementary, my dear VK. This can mean only one thing. Our Zoey is a confirmed BJP bhakt. Didn’t you tell me last time that she loves mutton, chicken, pork, fish etc., but shies away from beef?”
VK – “Did I? Now you’re being ridiculous.”
While we were having this discussion in VK’s terrace garden, we heard a blood curdling series of high pitched whinnying and manic barking coming from the TV room.
VK – ”Looks like Zoe’s gone nuts. Wonder who’s on TV now?”
We both rushed towards the TV room. To our surprise, we found Zoey cowering under the couch, whimpering in terror, while surprisingly the barking still continued. We turned around looking for the source and found Arnab Goswami on screen shaking his fists and fulminating against those criticizing the Government for surgically striking the enemy. I looked at VK, he looked at me.
URT – “Better switch off the TV.”
VK – “Yeah. Good idea.” Tweet About Suresh Subrahmanyan
Bangalore based brand communications consultant, occasional columnist, deeply interested in western classical and Carnatic music and 70s pop and rock, follow cricket and tennis, and an avid fan of P.G. Wodehouse. | 0 |
Palestinian factions and terrorist groups hailed an attack carried out by three terrorists that killed a female Israeli police officer in Jerusalem on Friday and wounded others nearby. [The attack took place near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City and saw three Palestinian terrorists armed with knives and guns open fire and start stabbing those nearby, critically wounding Hadas Malka, 23, a policewomen who died of her wounds. Others were wounded in the assault, and all three terrorists were shot dead by Israeli security forces at the scene. The Islamic State used its Amaq news agency to claim that “soldiers of the caliphate” attacked a “gathering of Jews. ” Hamas rejected the IS claim of responsibility while Israeli officials expressed skepticism over the IS statement. The Islamic Palestinian factions praised the combined attack, with an Islamic Jihad spokesman Dahoud Shihab saying in a statement released immediately after the terrorist event that “The martyr’s blood that was spilled at the gates of the Mosque is a clear message that the intifada continues and that the Palestinian people will not give up. ” Shihab praised “the pure martyrs who were killed while fasting,” and noted that the attack in Jerusalem “is proof that Jerusalem is the land of the jihad. Praise be to the pure martyrs who rose up to defend the purity and sanctity of the blessed land while screaming in the faces of all those who seek normalization. ” Hamas also praised the attack in Jerusalem. Hazem Qassem, one of Hamas’ spokesmen, said in a special statement that the attack was additional proof “that our Palestinian nation continues its revolution against the criminal occupation and that the intifada will continue until we achieve full freedom. ” According to him, the death of the three terrorists “is proof that the occupation is the true face of terror, terror against which the Palestinian nation is exercising its right to defend itself and its holy places. ” The Abou Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also praised the attack and called the carnage “a natural response to the crimes of the continuing occupation against our people. ” “The act sends a clear message to the leaders of the occupation that the opposition and the intifada continue and are revitalized and we haven’t been broken despite all the steps and tools of criminal oppression,” the statement added. The terrorist organization called for the Palestinian people “to continue the heroic attacks that spill the blood of the occupation and to continue supporting the resistance. ” Israeli “occupation” refers to Israel’s presence in the West Bank, home to historic Jewish communities like Hebron and Beit El, as well as Israel’s control over eastern Jerusalem, which contains the Temple Mount and Western Wall. Instead of condemning the terrorist attack, the Fatah movement, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, slammed what it called “the killing of three young Palestinians by the forces of the Israel occupation in East Jerusalem. ” Fatah was referring to the three terrorists who were eliminated in the middle of carrying out their murderous assault against Israelis. The statement, published by the movement in the official WAFA Palestinian news agency, added that the deaths of the three attackers represents “the continuation of Israeli policies of escalation and is proof that the Israeli occupation government is continuing its policies. ” Abbas’s Fatah movement called “for the Israeli occupation government to immediately cease the escalation that does not serve the security or stability of the region. ” The movement further called on the international community “to seriously consider the possibility of security international protection for the innocent Palestinian people. ” | 1 |
BLOG What These 3 Parts In The Little Finger Mean…. If You Have Them, You Will Be Surprised posted by Eddie Every finger is comprised of three bones known as phalanges. Each one of the phalanges separates the finger into three separate sections. These sections appear as deep horizontal lines across your fingers. Every person has these phalanges, but you may have noticed that not every one is of the same length. In palmistry, it is believed that the length of each section can reveal a great deal about a person’s personality. The little finger in particular is touted as an accurate guide for not only a person’s personality, but how they communicate with the world. This finger is often known as the Mercury finger. You might know it as the pinky finger. First part of your little finger If the first part of your little finger or pinky finger is longer than the other parts of your little finger then it depicts that you are an impressive person due to which people gets easily impressed by you and attract towards you. People of these kind judges the other person easily about how the person standing in front of them really is. Second part of the little finger If the second part of your little finger or pinky finger is longer than the other parts then it depicts that you are a caring and loving person who loves to care about the people who belongs to him/her in any way. People of these kinds are compassionate in nature. On the other side if the second part or the middle part of your finger is smaller than the other ones than it depicts that you are a stubborn person who don’t like a bit to change even a little for anything. Third part of the little finger If the third part of the little finger or pinky finger is smaller than the other parts then it depicts that you are a person who is loaded with benevolent characteristics. You rarely become angry on someone and solve the problems calmly. You are a soft speaking person who is also honest in his entire life.It depicts that you can trust the people easily thinking that he will also be honest like you. Source: | 0 |
On Monday, in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz ( ) exposed former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s ignorance of the law, and the partisan nature of her decision to refuse to enforce President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending travel from several countries. [One would not know that from the liberal media, which thinks Yates won the exchange, but Cruz proved his case decisively. Here’s why — in short: Cruz brought up the law that authorized the executive order, and Yates did not recognize it. She then answered by referring to another law, which does not supersede the first. She then tried to argue that the order was unconstitutional, but Cruz pointed out that her argument was a partisan one, driven by her own policy views. She then claimed no court would enforce the order — which is contradicted by the fact that one actually did. The left thinks Yates won the exchange because she was with a set of talking points, and offered a snappy response. That shows how desperate Democrats are to salvage something out of the hearing — which failed to produce any new evidence to back up their Russian conspiracy theories — and also how urgently they need to find new champions. It does not change the fact that Cruz was completely correct, and Yates was completely wrong. Here is a more detailed explanation, with a transcript of the relevant portion of the exchange, as well as a video (which the leftist who posted it called “Sally Yates Owns And Humilates Ted Cruz During Russia Hearing”). Cruz: Well, are you familiar with 8 U. S. C. section 1182? Yates: Not off the top of my head, no. Think about that for a moment: the government’s chief lawyer was unfamiliar with the law that was the basis for the executive order, and which has been the basis of the government’s arguments in court in every one of the cases that she later cited. To a lay observer, asking about “8 U. S. C. section 1182” may sound like asking about a minor league baseball player’s batting average in 1987. But a senior lawyer involved in the issue should know exactly what Cruz was talking about — especially as the statute is referred to explicitly in the second version of the executive order. Yates later said she is familiar with that law, but the fact that she did not recognize it suggests she was so biased that she had not bothered to familiarize herself in any detail with the legal arguments on the other side of the issue. Cruz: Well, it is the binding statutory authority for the executive order that you refused to implement, and that led to your termination. So it is certainly a relevant and not a terribly obscure statute. By express text of the statute, it says, “whenever the president finds that the entry of any alien or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem appropriate. ” Would you agree that that is broad statutory authorization? Yates: I would, and I am familiar with that, and I’m also familiar with an additional provision of the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] that says “no person shall receive preference or be discriminated against in issuance of a visa because of race, nationality, or place of birth,” that I believe was promulgated after the statute that you just quoted, and that’s been part of the discussion with the courts with respect to the INA, is whether this more specific statute trumps the first one that you just described. The law Yates cited was passed in 1965 as an amendment to the law Cruz cited, which was passed in 1952. There are some lawyers who argue that the 1965 amendment supersedes the provisions Cruz cited. However, no president has ever treated the law that way. In fact, every single Democratic president since then has used the provision that Cruz cited, specifically to exclude or restrict travelers from specific countries from entering the United States. An essay in Time magazine — of all places — pointed out some examples earlier this year. Most notably, President Jimmy Carter barred Iranians from traveling to the United States, with rare exceptions, using the same provision that Cruz cited. Logically, Yates’s argument also makes no sense. If the U. S. cannot discriminate among immigrants on the basis of nationality, that would invalidate federal immigration policy as a whole — hardly Congress’s intent. Yates: But my concern was not an INA concern here. It rather was a constitutional concern, whether or not this — the executive order here violated the Constitution, specifically with the Establishment Clause, with Equal Protection and Due Process. The argument that Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional is, at best, debatable, and most likely just wrong. Even if he had opted for an explicit “Muslim ban,” as he suggested he would after the Paris terror attacks in 2015 (before amending that policy later) that would also have been constitutional, as Breitbart News pointed out at the time. Our immigration laws already discriminate on the basis of religion, both for and against particular faiths. Cruz: There is no doubt the arguments you laid out are arguments that we can expect litigants to bring, partisan litigants who disagree with the policy decision of the president. I would note, on January 27, 2017, the Department of Justice issued an official legal decision, a determination by the Office of Legal Counsel that the executive order, and I’ll quote from the opinion, “The proposed order is approved with respect to form and legality. ” That’s a determination from OLC on January 27th that it was legal. Three days later, you determined, using your own words, that although OLC had opined on legality, it had not addressed whether it was “wise or just. ” Cruz pointed out exactly why Yates deserved to be fired. Her job was not to make an argument against the order, but to enforce the order, even if there was a chance that it would be found unconstitutional, as long as there was some basis to claim that it was constitutional and lawful, which the Office of Legal Counsel determined it was. The Obama administration took many actions that were unconstitutional, and which the Department of Justice nevertheless defended to the hilt. In N. L. R. B. v. Noel Canning (2014) for example, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President Barack Obama had violated the Constitution by arrogating to himself the power to declare when the Senate was in recess, for the purpose of making presidential appointments. Did Sally Yates offer to resign when the Department of Justice moved ahead with defending that hopeless case? Of course she did not. Yates: And I also said, in that same directive, Senator, that I was not convinced it was lawful. I also made the point that the office of OLC looks purely at the face of the document, and again makes a determination as to whether there is some set of circumstances under which some portion of that EO would be enforceable, would be lawful. There was, in fact, such a set of circumstances, as proven by the decision by a federal court in Massachusetts to deny a temporary restraining order against the executive order. The judge found that the president “has exercised his broad authority under 8 U. S. C. § 1182( f),” and added that “this Court declines to encroach upon the ‘delicate policy judgment’ inherent in immigration decisions. ” Democrats do not like to cite that case, for obvious reasons. Yates: They, importantly, do not look outside the face of the document. And in this particular instance, where we were talking particularly about a fundamental issue of religious freedom, not the interpretation of some arcane statute, but religious freedom, it was appropriate for us to look at the intent behind the president’s actions. And the intent is laid out in his statements … Note how Yates dismissed the law that was the basis for the executive order as “some arcane statute. ” She also decided that the president’s statements on the campaign trail — statements that he later walked back — were somehow within her purview. She cited religious freedom — but, again, did she resign when the Department of Justice was called upon to defend Obama’s intrusions on religious freedom, as in the Little Sisters of the Poor case? She did not. Her answers to Cruz reveal that Sally Yates did not care about the law, did not care about her oath, and did not care about the Constitution as much as she cared about taking a political stand against the new president. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
On Valentine’s Day, couples often reminisce about that moment they knew they would stay together, whether during a vacation, over a fancy dinner or, perhaps, while meeting their future . For Isaac and Rosa Blum, who became teenage sweethearts 75 years ago in a ghetto in Poland, that moment came as they and thousands of other terrified Jews were being herded to a death camp by Nazi soldiers. “I saw her walking in front of me,” Mr. Blum recalled. “I went up to the German and told him, ‘That’s my sister,’ even though she was my girlfriend. ” Miraculously, they were both pulled off the line and managed to survive the Holocaust by working as slave laborers in a munitions factory. The following 70 years have been a cinch by comparison, the couple said on Monday in their house in the Manhattan Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. He is 94, and she is a year younger. Asked to recount their lengthy love affair, they noted the absurdity of couching it — a romance incubated in the hell of the Holocaust — in the frilly trappings of Valentine’s Day. “You have a mixed story here — you won’t be able to put them together,” Mr. Blum said, even while acknowledging that, yes, it was young, bold love that prodded him to stand up to a Nazi guard and save his sweetheart from being sent to the Treblinka death camp. A hasty marriage followed, and then a horrific honeymoon of sorts: stealing glances and brief exchanges under the stern watch of armed guards. By 1941, the Nazis had taken over the Polish city of Czestochowa and established a ghetto of about 45, 000 Jews. It was in this grim setting that the two met, flirted, gathered with friends, played records and danced together. By autumn 1942, the Nazis were rounding up Jews for extermination. Mr. Blum was pulled from the line to work in the factory, while his family was pushed onward toward the trains bound for Treblinka. He would never see his family again. In that chaotic, horrific moment, he spied Rosa, brazenly approached a Nazi officer and tried to save the teenage girl up ahead walking with her family. A Nazi soldier grabbed her and asked if she was Isaac’s sister, as he had claimed. She said yes. “I was young and strong and able to work,” she said. “He said, ‘Come with me,’ and I was pulled out of the line. ” The memories are still vivid and bitter today, but the silver lining is that they still have each other to grow old with, living largely independently and doting on each other. He calls her a Polish term of affection that translates to “old one. ” She calls him simply Blum, and makes his favorite soups every day. Mr. Blum is a type who considers holding hands silly and, truth be told, has little use for Valentine’s Day. “He’s not very romantic,” Mrs. Blum said, but his thoughtfulness reveals itself in little gifts and almost begrudging acts of tenderness. “We have a different point of view, but somehow we’ve survived,” she said. “What keeps us together are the quarrels. That’s the cement of a marriage. ” “I love him in spite of all his defects,” she said. “It’s not so easy, but I wouldn’t change him for somebody else. ” They are both sharp and physically and socially active, even if they are no longer the strapping youngsters who were selected for labor by the Nazis. With their families sent to their deaths, they were placed in a smaller ghetto of about 5, 000 Jews and, the lie about being siblings never detected, they were issued a marriage license so they could live briefly in a residence for couples before being separated in different barracks at the factory site, which was patrolled by armed guards. They toiled long hours, she as a welder and he as an electrician, which gave him the chance to approach her workstation to share covert glances. They treasured their few minutes of contact during “ lunch,” Mrs. Blum recalled. “We didn’t know if we were going to live, so we wanted to be together,” he said. When word filtered out that most Jews were being killed at death camps, they were incredulous, and counted themselves lucky despite their misery. “We didn’t know you could build factories to kill people,” Mr. Blum said. “We didn’t want to believe it. ” As Mrs. Blum fixed lunch for her husband on Monday, she said she still had nightmares about the horrors, which included being with a group of women while German soldiers watched and laughed. And she was in a medical ward after being pushed down some stairs by a Nazi. She shared the ward with a young Jewish woman who tried to hide her pregnancy from the Nazis. Jewish nurses drowned the newborn in a bucket, fearing that the baby’s cries would doom them all. After being liberated by the Allies near the end of the war in 1945, the couple stayed in a displaced persons camp and were married a second time, by a city official in Austria with borrowed rings. Soon after, they managed to buy their own rings with a silver coin they had hidden for months. The two rings wore down over the years, and the Blums never replaced them. They moved to Argentina and were married a third time, in a more proper service. They had two children and then moved in 1963 to New York City, where Mr. Blum opened a furrier business, with Mrs. Blum doing much of the handiwork. They stay busy through programs for Holocaust survivors offered by Selfhelp Community Services, which is partly financed by of New York and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Reflecting on why he risked his life by approaching the Nazi soldier that day in 1942, Mr. Blum said simply, “I wanted to be with her. ” Then, Mrs. Blum looked adoringly at her unromantic, savior and said, “They could have killed him right away on the spot, but he loved me and he wanted to keep me. ” | 1 |
And so to Friday, the end of the working week for some but not for the nomads of the fashion tribe, who have just reached the halfway point of a frenzied Milan schedule. Here’s what’s on for today: • This season, Giorgio Armani will show the Emporio Armani spring 2017 collection in Paris, so he has bumped his main label (usually the closing show of Milan) into an earlier slot. Expect plenty of Mr. Armani’s signature tailoring, and gushing Italians in the audience breaking into applause at the sight of the evening wear. One thing no longer on the catwalk? Fur, after Mr. Armani pledged to go 100 percent fur free after fall 2016. • Season in and season out, Etro offers up bohemian prints on gorgeous billowing fabrics. But before the show, the company also offers up the most delicious lunchtime snacks for the hungry hordes, not to mention pretty printed cushions to sit on, cushions that can then be taken away. It’s a winning combination. • The king of color, Marco de Vincenzo, who spent 13 years at Fendi before introducing his own label and gaining backing from LVMH in 2014, is often touted as one of Italy’s most promising emerging talents (which, given that he’s knocking on 40, can occasionally feel a little ridiculous). His shows tend to excite and delight he’s a man who knows his way around a rainbow. • As evening falls, it will be time for Versace, where no doubt Donatella will dish out her usual dose of barely there on some of the starriest models of the moment. Log on to the NYT Styles Facebook page we’ll be backstage and on Facebook Live with the beauty doyenne Pat McGrath before peeking at the latest beauty looks for the season. • Accessories labels staging catwalk shows appears to be a big trend of the season. The latest to jump onto the bandwagon is Sergio Rossi. The company is staging performances at the Teatro Gerolamo, putting the latest collection in the spotlight. Across town, hotfoot it to the shoe guru Gianvito Rossi’s party for a glass of prosecco or three. In the real world, it is Friday, after all. And in case you missed it: • Rebelling Against at Fendi and Roberto Cavalli. Our reviewer weighs in. • In the Studio With Silvia Fendi • The Wild Ride of Supermodel Naomi Campbell Isn’t Slowing Down • Rankin, and Fashion, Take to the Milan Streets • At Philipp Plein: Fergie Down the Rabbit Hole | 1 |
On the first anniversary of her husband’s death, Esaw Garner lit a candle and said a silent prayer. She assumed that closure would be coming — one way or another. After all, federal officials had personally assured her that they would reinvestigate the New York City police officer who had put her spouse, Eric Garner, in a chokehold in the moments before he died. But now, the second anniversary is approaching, and although Ms. Garner will light another candle and say another prayer when she observes it on July 17, the inquiry that buoyed her hopes has continued unresolved. She is sick of the waiting and tired of the worrying. What she wants most is simply to move on. “I miss my husband dearly, but I’ve basically stopped asking them what’s going on,” Ms. Garner said in an interview last week. “If they’re going to do something, then they’ll do it. But it’s in God’s hands now. I’m done. ” Killings involving police officers seemed to have occurred in recent years with a striking regularity, including two last week: one on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La. and a second in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn. on Wednesday night. While the federal government does not investigate a majority of these episodes, when it does get involved — as it announced it would in the Louisiana case — the inquiries can often be protracted. The long delays in the Garner investigation, which has been especially closely watched, have come about for several reasons: There are inherent complexities in the federal civil rights law and a desire among officials to move with caution in a delicate matter. But there has also been, according to those involved, a heated disagreement over how — and even whether — to go forward. Prosecutors with the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, whose jurisdiction also extends to Staten Island, Queens and Long Island, have expressed doubts that they can prove in court that a crime had been committed their counterparts in Washington have claimed that they are confident they have sufficient evidence to proceed. The dispute came to a head at a recent meeting in Washington, where both offices offered their opinions to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. Ms. Lynch, formerly the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, must now decide between siding with her former colleagues or with the special civil rights team that investigates such cases. It is unclear both what and when she will decide. “It is taking quite a bit of time,” said William Yeomans, a fellow at the American University School of Law, who once served as the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights. “I’d almost say it’s been longer than expected, especially since a video exists. ” That video, which, by now, has been viewed around the world, showed Mr. Garner, 43, struggling in the grasp of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was trying to arrest him on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street in July 2014. Five months later, a state grand jury declined to bring charges against Officer Pantaleo, touching off a wave of protests in New York and a national debate about policing in minority communities. As they have in other local cases that have failed to go to trial, a team of federal prosecutors opened their own investigation, convening a grand jury that has been sitting intermittently in Brooklyn since February. Experts and officials say that the outcome of the case will hinge on whether Officer Pantaleo purposefully deprived Mr. Garner of his civil rights. “Here’s the challenge,” Alan Vinegrad, a former federal prosecutor from Brooklyn said. “You have a decision by a police officer on the street in the exercise of his official duties. It’s extremely difficult to say what is and isn’t a willful violation of someone’s civil rights. ” These challenges have, in fact, set off a vigorous debate between prosecutors in Washington and Brooklyn. Lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division believe they have enough evidence to prove that Officer Pantaleo acted willfully. But some with the United States attorney’s office have been hesitant according to three current and former federal law enforcement officials, the Brooklyn prosecutors went so far as to argue against taking the case to a grand jury in the first place. While prosecutors in Washington have developed a reputation in the last several years for aggressively investigating systemic police misconduct in cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. they and their counterparts in United States attorney’s offices across the country have been more reluctant to charge individual officers with using deadly force. The last time the federal government brought a deadly force case against an officer in New York was in 1998, when Francis X. Livoti stood trial on — and was eventually convicted of — charges of choking to death a young Bronx man named Anthony Baez. In most investigations of police abuse, Mr. Yeomans said, prosecutors try to get officers to testify against their peers by confronting them with misleading incident reports or with the officers’ own contradictory witness statements. “But in this case,” Mr. Yeomans added, “it’s all about parsing the video, probably frame by frame. It may be hard, but how long can it take?” Federal investigators have indeed broken the video down, frame by frame, for prosecutors to interpret. Ms. Lynch, who was the first United States attorney promoted directly to attorney general in nearly 200 years, has a reputation for being deferential to prosecutors in the field rather than micromanaging them from Washington. But on policing matters, she has also relied heavily on the advice of her civil rights prosecutors, who are more removed from the local police departments they investigate. In the meantime, Officer Pantaleo remains on desk duty and may face charges from within the Police Department, if the federal grand jury fails to indict him or if the prosecutors decide to drop their case. As for Ms. Garner, hope has been replaced by deep frustration. “I was a lot more optimistic last year,” she said. “This year, I don’t know. They keep telling me that no stone will be left unturned. But how much investigation do you need?” | 1 |
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