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CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombian health officials said on Thursday that they had discovered two cases of microcephaly linked to the Zika virus, the first to be confirmed in the country since the infection began to spread there late last year. But officials said that they did not expect the birth defects to reach the scale seen in neighboring Brazil, which has had more than 1, 000 cases of microcephaly, a disorder that causes infants to be born with unusually small heads. Fernando Ruiz Gómez, Colombia’s deputy health minister, has estimated that 95 to 300 children might be born with microcephaly and that about 380 patients will contract syndrome, an autoimmune condition that has been tied to Zika cases and causes paralysis and, in some cases, death. The total number of Zika infections is projected to reach 200, 000 over the course of the outbreak, Mr. Ruiz said. Colombia recently said its Zika epidemic had peaked, and the new estimates are far below larger projections the government published earlier in the year estimating that as many as 600, 000 people would contract Zika. On Wednesday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed that Zika was the cause of severe birth defects, including microcephaly. Colombian health officials said one of the children with microcephaly had been born in the district that includes the capital, Bogotá. The second case appeared in the Norte de Santander department, whose main city, Cúcuta, borders Venezuela and has a large number of pregnant women who contracted Zika. Colombia has become a second battleground after Brazil in the fight against Zika in South America. It is also a breeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the virus. In addition to Zika, the country has also been combating a wave of related infectious diseases, which include dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. | 1 |
Passionate supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders awoke enraged on Tuesday after learning that his slim hopes for winning the Democratic presidential nomination had been effectively dashed as a batch of superdelegates revealed their support for Hillary Clinton. After months of dancing around the phrase, news organizations on Monday night finally bestowed a label on Mrs. Clinton: presumptive nominee. The Sanders campaign immediately assailed the media for rushing the process and undermining the will of voters who were set to head to the polls in six states on Tuesday. In a email, Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, urged voters to defy the pundits and deliver a stunning series of victories for the Vermont senator. “We should let the voters decide who they want the Democratic nominee to be rather than having the media decide for them,” Mr. Weaver wrote. “I am asking you to continue to stand with Bernie in pushing for the political revolution. ” On social media, supporters of Mr. Sanders fumed at a system that they have increasingly felt is rigged against their candidate. Irate messages poured onto the “Sanders for President” message board on Reddit, an online discussion forum, with users promising to vote for Mr. Sanders regardless of what the superdelegates said. Some said they would vote for Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and others suggested that Mr. Sanders join the Green Party and keep running against Mrs. Clinton. But the momentum that now favors Mrs. Clinton may be too much. The term “presumptive nominee” has no formal definition in politics. Yet traditionally when it is used to describe a candidate, a wave of endorsements carries that person to the nomination. Once The Associated Press, which prodded the superdelegates to come forward, declared Mrs. Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee, the phrase soon reverberated across news outlets around the world. “There’s a bandwagon effect,” Douglas G. Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University, said of being billed as a presumptive nominee. “Everybody starts coalescing around that candidate. ” The A. P. said it uses the term when it becomes clear a candidate for president will be formally nominated at a party’s convention. Television networks, newspapers and online media quickly followed The A. P.’s lead once it was determined that Mrs. Clinton had reached the 2, 383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Mr. Sanders and his campaign were clearly fearful that Mrs. Clinton would be called the presumptive nominee while primary voting was still going on, particularly with Tuesday’s contest in California, where polls have shown the two candidates to be close. But both candidates could be now exposed by The A. P.’s early call, which could dampen turnout among voters who think the race is over. Mrs. Clinton noted the importance of crossing the delegate threshold on Monday night, but avoided marking the moment as conclusive. If her voters stay home on Tuesday, a series of defeats would be an embarrassment and could buttress Mr. Sanders’s argument for why he should continue campaigning until the Democratic convention in July. Although the media was quick to give the designation to Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party did not. The Democratic National Committee has no official definition for the term “presumptive nominee. ” Mark Paustenbach, a spokesman for the committee, would not say if or when the D. N. C. would begin using “presumptive” to describe Mrs. Clinton. On the Republican side, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared Donald J. Trump the presumptive nominee after he won the Indiana primary last month. For the time being, Mr. Sanders is still making arguments for why superdelegates should ditch his opponent and make him the nominee. Polls that show him performing better against Mr. Trump than Mrs. Clinton, and his energized following, form the crux of his appeal. Mrs. Clinton, who eight years ago dropped her presidential bid and supported Barack Obama, can likely relate to the plight of Mr. Sanders despite her desire to focus on the general election. In 2008, Mr. Obama captured a majority of pledged delegates in May, but declined to declare victory. Mrs. Clinton insisted that the contest was not finished and argued that neither candidate would have enough delegates for the nomination. “This is nowhere near over,” Mrs. Clinton said at the time. The race went on for only two more weeks. | 1 |
Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” signed off the air for good on Saturday evening, after 42 seasons, as millions of listeners, many in their cars on a holiday weekend, tuned in via public radio. With the exception of a telephone call from President Obama, the show, which was recorded Friday at the Hollywood Bowl in front of 18, 000 people, ambled along the way it always has. There were pretty songs an ad for Powdermilk Biscuits a “Lives of the Cowboys” skit a heartfelt version of “Every Time We Say Goodbye. ” The phone call was telling. The Mr. Keillor refused to allow the conversation to be about himself. He praised Mr. Obama’s “dignity and wit and humor” and the fact he’d “never had an awkward moment in all these years. ” When the president was finally allowed to speak about Mr. Keillor, he said, “One of the reasons I miss driving is that you kept me company. ” “A Prairie Home Companion,” he said, “made me feel better and more human. ” Mr. Keillor responded with awkward silence. The segment of the show that promised a bit of stronger emotional drama was Mr. Keillor’s final monologue, his concluding “News from Lake Wobegon. ” And it delivered, in its way, by not trying too hard to deliver. It was, to borrow words the former New York Times critic Anatole Broyard once used to describe a middling Philip Roth novel, “reasonably funny, reasonably sad, reasonably interesting. ” If that sounds dismissive, it’s not meant to be. Mr. Keillor has always worn his storytelling gifts casually. Here, he seemed to take a page from “Pontoon” (2007) one of his Lake Wobegon novels, in which he wrote, “You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories. ” Mr. Keillor liked to say that his fictional town’s name, Wobegon, comes from an also fictional Indian word that means “the place where we waited all day in the rain [for you]. ” His final monologue was 17 minutes long and opened with a hymn to rain. About sunny days, he asked, “How many do we deserve?” As a boy, he said, sunny days meant ruined days. He’d have to go dig potatoes or play softball, for which he had no talent. How much more blissful to be indoors with an adventure novel. Mr. Keillor described a day, even as the talk moved into the shadows. This monologue was a ghost tour, a rumination on impermanence. The narrator walked through his hometown and commented: “When you’ve lived in one place for so long, you go back and you are in a museum. Everywhere you go, there are the dead. ” Mr. Keillor’s fictional universe, in his radio shows and books, has often been compared to Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio. ” The comparisons are apt. Like Anderson, Mr. Keillor has a feel for loneliness and isolation. In the final “News From Lake Wobegon,” Mr. Keillor’s narrator walks by the town’s Chatterbox Cafe (“the place to go that’s just like home”) and recalls where various locals, now dead, used to sit. One of these is Jack, from Jack’s Auto Repair, who made appearances in these monologues. In this monologue, Jack stood in for the listeners who dislike Mr. Keillor’s show, who’ve found it to be more Mayberry than Winesburg, an overly sugared Midwestern hot dish. (I sometimes felt this way, and have dialed the show out for years at time. On many other Saturday evenings over the decades, I’ve been overjoyed to find it during a long drive. The show could indeed be good company.) “Jack never cared for my radio show and he told me every time he saw me,” Mr. Keillor said. “He was a jazz guy. He did not care for sentimental songs about home. Though I did point out to him that half the sentimental songs about home are about wanting to leave home. ” Mr. Keillor reported talking to Larry, the owner of the town’s graveyard, who tells him he’ll be buried next to Jack. There’s no escaping one’s critics. As the monologue began to come to its close, Mr. Keillor, 73, spoke about how he might be remembered, if at all. “I am at that age now where people start to use the word ‘legacy,’ although there is no such thing and we all know that,” he said. “Radio has the permanence of a sand castle. Even books that are printed on paper, they tend to migrate toward recycling rather quickly. ” It’s an interesting question, Mr. Keillor’s legacy. He left a lot of uncomplicated pleasure in his wake, and some complicated pleasure, too. For his show’s fans there are always reruns and downloads. For those of us who’ve gravitated more to his prose, which can be savvy and the best news is that he’s said to be working on a memoir. It’s a book that, if he bears down, I’d wait in the rain for. | 1 |
At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Bill Kochevar was able to eat independently for the first time in 8 years. [After a brutal cycling accident left Bill Kochevar completely paralyzed below the shoulders, he spent eight years without the ability to perform the most basic daily tasks for himself. But Dr. Bob Kirsch and his team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University have given Bill — and others like him — hope with the results of a new trial. The trials were part of the “BrainGate2” project, which is focused on improving the lives of paralysis victims using interfaces. Before 36 electrodes could be placed into Kochevar’s arms, he first had to learn to operate a virtual hand with the two electrodes planted in his brain. Those electrodes act as substitute nerve centers, using neuron activity to record signals to manipulate muscle. It took four months of hard work to prepare him for his victory. Kochevar, with the assistance of another support system, was able to lift a cup and drink from a straw on his own. He was also able to feed himself forkfuls of mashed potatoes. And while that may not seem like much to most people, it’s a change for someone whose body doesn’t obey even the most elementary commands. Kochevar said that it was “better than [he] thought it would be,” and that “for somebody who’s been injured eight years and couldn’t move, being able to move just that little bit is awesome to me. ” He didn’t even have to “really concentrate hard on it,” which speaks volumes about the success in and of itself. Dr. Kirsch said that BrainGate2 is “really breaking ground for the spinal cord injury community,” as “a major step toward restoring some independence. ” They are currently holding various trials at Massachusetts General Hospital, Providence Virginia Medical Center, and Stanford University in addition to Case Western Reserve. Their goal is to “provide natural, intuitive, control of assistive devices” with their groundbreaking implants. For people like Bill Kochevar, they’re just heroes. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 1 |
.@GOVHOWARDDEAN: We have to completely change way we approach race in this country as Democrats and as nation #AMJoy https: . Former DNC chairman Gov. Howard Dean ( ) said Saturday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” that Democrats, as well as the rest of the United States, need to “completely change the way we approach race in this country. ” “We have to completely change the way we approach race in this country as Democrats and as a nation, and that will get us back into the power which we deserve and where we can benefit the country,” Dean told host Joy Reid. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Print They should pay all the back all the money plus interest. The entire family and everyone who came in with them need to be deported asap. Why did it take two years to bust them?
Here we go again …another group stealing from the government and taxpayers! A group of Somalis stole over four million in government benefits over just 10 months!
We’ve reported on numerous cases like this one where the Muslim refugees/immigrants commit fraud by scamming our system…It’s way out of control! More Related | 0 |
VIDEO : Sean Hannity “The American People Have Finally Been Heard” VIDEO : Sean Hannity “The American People Have Finally Been Heard” Videos By TruthFeedNews November 10, 2016
Sean Hannity Reacts to Trump’s Historic Victory.
“The Washington Establishment is TERRIFIED and they should be. These people do NOT get it. I’m going to try to explain it to them.”
Watch the video:
Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
LONDON — Theresa May emerged on Monday as Britain’s next prime minister, becoming the second woman, after Margaret Thatcher, to hold that post. She faces multiple challenges as soon as she takes office, from negotiating the nation’s departure from the European Union to addressing deep social and political divisions to reviving a wounded economy. Her victory came on another day of rapid developments in British politics and set in motion a process that officials said would put her in 10 Downing Street by Wednesday night, succeeding David Cameron. Ms. May, until now Britain’s home secretary, is set to take over at a time of immense upheaval. The nation must not only negotiate its withdrawal from the European Union, a process fraught with economic and political risks, but it must also hold itself together amid a renewed clamor from Scotland for independence. Early signs are that Britain’s economy has already taken a substantial hit from the exit vote, or “Brexit. ” A Conservative like Mrs. Thatcher, who governed from 1979 to 1990, Ms. May, 59, has won a reputation for steeliness in her tenure as home secretary. She has pledged to negotiate a deal to leave the European Union that would reassert Britain’s ability to control immigration, a central issue in the referendum on June 23 on whether to leave the bloc. Yet unlike Mrs. Thatcher, Ms. May is seen as a relative moderate and on Monday she promised to address inequality, give workers greater representation on corporate boards and limit tax cuts. Ms. May said that she was “honored and humbled” to be chosen for the job, promised to get the best deal over Britain’s exit from the European Union, and vowed to create an economy that works not for the “privileged few,” but for all. The British referendum on June 23 plunged the European Union into crisis. It left Britain rudderless as the pound sank in value and both the governing and opposition parties engaged in fierce and acrimonious leadership battles. Mr. Cameron, who had supported remaining in the European Union, said after the referendum that he would resign once the governing Conservatives selected a new leader, a process that he had expected to last until September but that was drastically accelerated on Monday. After making a brief statement describing his successor as “strong” and “competent,” Mr. Cameron was caught on a microphone humming as he returned to his office. Mr. Cameron’s statement completed a day of high political drama in which Ms. May’s rival for the Conservative Party leadership, Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister, withdrew from the race. Leading party members quickly coalesced around Ms. May, insisting that the contest should not be reopened. A party committee agreed. Ms. Leadsom had already faced accusations — which she denied — of embellishing her curriculum vitae, but her campaign ran aground over the weekend after The Times of London published an interview in which she suggested that she was a better candidate because she is a mother, while Ms. May is not. Surrounded by supportive lawmakers, Ms. Leadsom on Monday made no reference to that issue, but said that she was quitting the contest and endorsing Ms. May, and that she hoped to see her installed as prime minister “as soon as possible. ” The turn of events meant that Ms. May would become prime minister without a general election and without completing the campaign she and Ms. Leadsom had been waging for the endorsement of the Conservative Party’s members. Last week, the former Conservative cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke described Ms. May as a “bloody difficult woman,” noting that he had worked for another female politician of similar temperament, namely Mrs. Thatcher. Far from being insulted, Ms. May used the comment to suggest that her negotiating stance with European officials would be as tough as that of Mrs. Thatcher, who went into battle on the Continent, particularly over British financial contributions to the bloc. “Ken Clarke might have found me to be a ‘bloody difficult woman.’ The next person to find that out will be Juncker,” she told fellow Conservative lawmakers, referring to the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive, ITV reported. But in a speech on Monday, Ms. May outlined an economic agenda unlike that of Mrs. Thatcher, calling for new mechanisms to curb executive pay and warning big multinational companies that they must pay their share of taxes. Ms. May has also been compared to Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany who, like Ms. May, is the daughter of a clergyman and is known for her methodical and pragmatic approach. The turmoil in Britain has also gripped the opposition Labour Party, prompting a challenge against its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has been accused of not campaigning hard enough against a British withdrawal from Europe. There were growing fears on Monday that the party might split because of the bitter dispute. Nevertheless, opposition politicians called for a general election and questioned Ms. May’s democratic mandate, since she will assume the job on the basis of an internal transfer of power within the governing party. So far, Ms. May has rejected the notion of a quick general election. Her top priority will be to frame a negotiating strategy for leaving the union, after the referendum in which she sided with those who wanted to remain. On Monday, Ms. May insisted that “Brexit means Brexit,” as she sought to reassure that she was committed to the policy, adding that “there will be no attempt to remain inside the E. U. There will be no attempts to rejoin it by the back door, no second referendum. ” But, while 52 percent of voters supported Brexit, they did so for differing reasons, including reasserting national sovereignty and opposition to migration from within the bloc, which guarantees the right to live and work within any member nation. Ms. May is expected to take a tough stance on immigration in part because she is politically vulnerable on the issue. As home secretary, she failed to fulfill a Conservative pledge to control the number of people arriving in Britain. The numbers persistently exceeded targets and included arrivals of which the government had the power to curb. Ms. May has signaled her intention to restrict migration from Europe, even if doing so hurt Britain’s position in negotiating a new trade deal with the bloc. She will also be under pressure from big business to secure the best possible access to Europe’s single market, which normally entails accepting the principle of free movement of workers across national frontiers. One important question for Ms. May is when to invoke Article 50 of the European Union’s governing treaty, which starts the withdrawal procedure. That effectively sets a deadline for a deal to be struck. She has suggested that she intends to wait until her government has settled on its negotiating stance before invoking the article despite pressure from Europe’s leaders to act more quickly. On Monday she said more about her wider political agenda in a speech that offered plans to address some of the economic and social inequalities evident in Britain. Those include populist resentments thought to have motivated many voters in economically depressed areas outside London and in the affluent southeast of England. “There is a growing divide between a more prosperous older generation and a struggling younger generation. And there is a gaping chasm between wealthy London and the rest of the country,” she said, positioning herself in a centrist tradition of “one nation” Conservatism. Speaking in Birmingham, England, Ms. May also called for efforts to increase productivity, for employees and consumers to gain seats on company boards and for votes on executive pay to become binding rather than advisory. Big multinationals should pay their share of taxes, she said, adding: “Whether you’re Amazon, Google or Starbucks, you have a duty to put something back, you have a debt to your fellow citizens, you have a responsibility to pay your taxes. ” | 1 |
Five people were reportedly shot and killed around 8 a. m. in a Florida business, with the attack being viewed as a scene of workplace violence rather than terrorism. [The gunman is also dead and law enforcement officials report the situation is contained. According to WFTV, the business where the shooting occurred is located in a manufacturing where businesses include “Gerber Collision Glass and Fiamma Inc. a manufacturer of RV awnings. ” The Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) tweeted: OCSO on shooting scene multiple fatalities. Situation contained, Now investigating tragic incident will soon have accurate information, — OCSO FL News (@OrangeCoSheriff) June 5, 2017, The FBI is on scene with the OCSO. CNN reports that “Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs and Sheriff Jerry Demings are also on the scene. ” WKMG 6 reports that the gunman was a “disgruntled employee. ” According to the Associated Press, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings says that gunman in the Orlando workplace attack was a former employee who “had been involved in a previous workplace violence incident. ” He said the suspect had also been “accused of battering another employee inside the business. ” UPDATE 3:17 pm ET: Law enforcement identified the suspect in Monday morning’s shooting as John Robert Neumann, Jr. saying he killed five individuals at Fiamma Inc — a manufacturing company in Orlando — then turned the gun on himself. CNN quotes Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings describing an attack where certain people were targeted. The sheriff said, “He was certainly singling out the individuals he shot. ” At some point during the incident the gunman came across a temporary employee and “told her to leave. ” He killed Robert Snyder, Brenda Kevin Clark, Kevin Lawson, and Jeffrey Roberts. 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 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Housing Market , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals , U.S. Economy Comex fraud , First Majestic , Gold , LBMA fraud , silver , silver eagles admin
Gold and silver and the mining stocks still have tremendous YTD gains despite the highly manipulated take-down that has been orchestrated since early Wednesday morning. The smash has been executed entirely in the paper derivatives in London and NYC. De rigeur for the Central Banks.
Eric Dubin discusses why we’ve probably seen the last of the downward manipulative pressure on gold and silver: Gold and Silver Decline Is Fading, Dow Rolling Over and Rory Hall published an article on Trump that accompanies the precious metals analysis and our Shadow of Truth episode to be released later today: The Trump Trojan Horse
I moved checking account cash into my Bitgold account on Saturday, Sunday evening and this morning. I shorted Capital One at the open today and added to my First Majestic calls. At least I put my money where my mouth is, unlike most of the alternative fear porn promoters… Share this: | 0 |
Uber’s grand experiment of a car service in its hometown officially lasted only a week. On Wednesday, Uber ended the autonomous car service in San Francisco after defying California officials who had told the company to stop the service because it was illegal. The company lacked the necessary state permits for autonomous driving, state officials have said. In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it ended the pilot program after the California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the registrations for its cars. “We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules,” the company said. Uber has tended to barrel into new markets by flouting local laws, part of a combative approach to expand globally. Uber began a pilot of its experiment in Pittsburgh in September, which is continuing. Yet the defeat in California on vehicles is one of a growing number of setbacks. The company gave up on its own service in China this year, choosing instead to invest in a local incumbent, Didi Chuxing. It has also turned tail or reduced its presence in other markets, including some cities in Germany. A day before Uber began its pilot, state regulators were explicit about their demands that the company adhere to the rules. In a statement on Dec. 13 about the testing of autonomous vehicles, the Department of Motor Vehicles said: “We have a permitting process in place to ensure public safety as this technology is being tested. Twenty manufacturers have already obtained permits to test hundreds of cars on California roads. Uber shall do the same. ” Nonetheless, as recently as Friday, Uber remained defiant. It said that it had no intention of ending its test and that its cars were still on the road and picking up passengers. Uber officials contended that under the letter of California law, the company did not need a permit because the Motor Vehicles Department defined autonomous vehicles as those that drive “without the active physical control or monitoring of a natural person. ” Uber said its modified, Volvo XC90s required human oversight, and therefore did not fit California’s definition of an autonomous vehicle. Companies such as Google and Tesla Motors have all gotten such permits. “This rule just doesn’t apply to us,” Anthony Levandowski, vice president of Uber’s advanced technologies group, said in a conference call with reporters last week. “You don’t need to wear a belt and suspenders and whatever else if you’re wearing a dress. ” | 1 |
JENSEN BEACH, Fla. — The gunman who committed the massacre at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando used multiple Facebook accounts to write posts and make searches about the Islamic State. “Now taste the Islamic state vengeance,” he declared, denouncing “the filthy ways of the west. ” He even searched for references to the massacre while he was carrying it out, a United States senator said. In his posts, the gunman, Omar Mateen, called on the United States and Russia to stop the bombing campaign against the Islamic State, the extremist group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq. He pledged allegiance to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr and said, “may Allah accept me,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wrote in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive. “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes,” Mr. Mateen wrote, according to the letter. “Now taste the Islamic state vengeance. ” And in what Mr. Johnson described as the gunman’s final post, he wrote, “In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa. ” Mr. Johnson, a Republican who leads the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote in his letter to Mr. Zuckerberg that officials had found that “five Facebook accounts were apparently associated with Omar Mateen. ” The letter asked Facebook to share all data on accounts tied to the gunman. Mr. Mateen frequently used Facebook to search for information on law enforcement agencies and terrorist groups, Mr. Johnson wrote. And on Sunday morning, during the siege at Pulse, “Mateen apparently searched for ‘Pulse Orlando’ and ‘Shooting. ’” More information came to light Thursday about Mr. Mateen’s troubled work and school history, and about his actions leading up to the slaughter at Pulse nightclub on Sunday that left 49 people dead and 53 wounded in the worst mass shooting in United States history. In the weeks before the shooting, Mr. Mateen, 29, went to a gun store here in Jensen Beach, Fla. and tried to buy body armor and at least 1, 000 rounds of ammunition, said a of the store, Robert Abell. He said the store, Lotus Gunworks, did not stock the type of armor sought by Mr. Mateen, who lived nearby, and a salesman grew suspicious of Mr. Mateen’s behavior during a visit that lasted perhaps five minutes, including a telephone conversation he conducted in a foreign language, and refused to sell him bulk ammunition. “Something in his gut told him it was wrong,” Mr. Abell said of the employee. He said the store contacted the F. B. I. but had no information by which to identify the customer only after the killings did an employee recognize Mr. Mateen, who used an assault rifle and a handgun in the attack. “Unfortunately, nobody connected the dots, and he slipped under the cracks, and this is where we’re at now,” he said. School records released under public records requests showed that Mr. Mateen, who was born in Queens and grew up in Florida, was frequently in trouble as a child, and struggled to keep pace academically, especially in the early grades. He was disciplined 31 times in elementary and middle school, with one report when he was in third grade including a sweeping list of concerns. He was “constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive,” the report said, often put his hands on other students, disrupted class and engaged in “much talk about violence sex. ” In high school, he was repeatedly suspended, for a total of 48 days, in a span of less than two years, and attended three different schools. The last suspension came two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Martin County School District found no detailed records of what prompted the penalty, said Kim Sabol, a lawyer for the district, but former classmates have told news organizations that he celebrated the attacks, sparking conflicts with other students. In May 2001, when he was 14, he was suspended twice for fighting, and one of those times he was arrested, according to personnel records from his later work for the State Department of Corrections. In a note explaining the incident to the department, he wrote he was not taken to jail, and “the charge of battery was adjudicated and the charge of disturbing school function was dropped. ” From October 2006 to April 2007, Mr. Mateen worked for the Florida Department of Corrections as a corrections officer trainee, earning $1, 123. 35 every two weeks, according to state records. He was dismissed but the records do not say why, except that it was not for misconduct. He received middling scores on a performance evaluation. He worked for a private security company, where, according to law enforcement officials and a former he talked of killing people, and claimed to support or belong to Islamist extremist groups. He also expressed hatred of gay people. The leader of the Orlando police SWAT team added new detail to accounts of the massacre and defended the handling of the siege, saying that a lot of people believe, wrongly, that “we weren’t doing anything for a long period of time. ” “From the beginning of this, officers were running inside and trying to save people,” Capt. Mark Canty said. “They were setting up around the outside trying to figure out how to get people out. ” Officers rescued people escape throughout a standoff, including removing an air conditioner from a wall to allow several people in one room to climb out. Officials decided to storm the club after Mr. Mateen threatened to strap himself and hostages with explosives, which later turned out to have been a bluff. Law enforcement teams used explosives to try to blow a hole in the outer wall of the club, but they did not completely breach it. Then they used an armored vehicle to make a hole by ramming the building, but they had to do it repeatedly, Mr. Canty said, trying to find the spot where some people were trapped. A battery pack that officers saw through the bomb squad robot camera — which led them to believe there were explosives inside — turned out to have been from an exit sign or a smoke detector, Mayor Buddy Dyer said. Federal law enforcement officials said Thursday that the F. B. I. is increasingly skeptical of reports that Mr. Mateen was gay but “closeted,” that he had been visiting gay clubs or that he had used gay dating apps. The bureau has recovered the Samsung phone he used the night of the attack, and is trying to retrieve data from it. Investigators believe his wife, Noor Zahi Salman, drove Mr. Mateen to Pulse within a week or two of the shooting, apparently to assess the target, the officials said. She has told agents that she tried to talk her husband out of mounting an attack, and Justice Department say it is not clear if she will face criminal charges. Officials and eyewitnesses have said that during the siege at Pulse, Mr. Mateen, a son of Afghan immigrants, declared allegiance to Mr. . Officials say he was influenced by radical propaganda that he found online, but so far have found no direct connection to any larger organization. On Thursday, the Central Intelligence Agency director, John O. Brennan, gave a grim assessment of the prospects for more attacks. Though the Islamic State has been pushed back on battlefields in the Middle East, he said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, “our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capabilities and global reach. ” The Islamic State is intensifying plans to attack in the West, he said, and continues to use propaganda to inspire “lone wolf” attacks like Mr. Mateen’s. | 1 |
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Dear GOP Presidential Candidate Donald Trump,
I just watched a portion of your interview from Sunday night and I was appalled. You seriously need to be put over someone’s knee.
You are running for the highest leadership position in this country and you are carrying on like a spoiled little toddler, stomping your feet and throwing temper tantrums and hollering all over social media. Hollering things like “Stop calling me names!”“I hate you!”“You’re being mean to me!”“I’m telling my mommy!” are not things that an adult man does – those are things that a toddler does.
Here is a prime example : “In what is now a familiar pattern, Donald Trump took to Twitter following his interview in order to trash the interviewer and whine about how the questions were supposedly stacked against him.”
Guess what? Running this country is HARD. It isn’t for whiners. Not once have I heard President Obama whine about you running him through the ringer about his birth certificate. Not once have I heard him whine when people in public office have disrespected him. Not once have I heard him whine when Congress has voted against his programs simply because he is a black man and they don’t like him. Not once in almost seven years has that man whined that Fox News has said something bad about him. Not once. Let that sink in.
I ain’t your mommy, but I am a mom. Nothing more – Just A Mom. I have a normal kid. But for a few minutes here I’m going to pretend you’re my son because you really seem to need a mom’s advice. When my kid has a temper tantrum, she gets sent to her room. When she can talk calmly to adults, she is allowed to come out and we discuss what she did wrong.
I’m thinking that maybe no one ever did that for you. No one ever said “No” to you. You never got a spanking, literally or figuratively.
You are acting like an insufferable ass. The United States is not a dictatorship. It is not a corporation that you can run into the ground and file bankruptcy on. It is a democratic government that is set up with three distinct branches of government. Those three branches of government are designed to act with a series of checks and balances to ensure that no one person has the authority or the ability to make horrid decisions, treat people in a sucky way, and waste our tax dollars on frivolities.
Here is a link to a children’s website , where they spell it out at a level that even you should be able to comprehend.
By saying “ We’ll see “ every time the interviewer reminded you of this system of checks and balances you displayed your ignorance of how our government works. My 12-year-old knows more about government than you appear to.
This is not a media circus for you to use to continue pumping hot air into the atmosphere. Global climate change is already a problem and your constant bloviating is causing more detrimental effects than the farting cows. Stop treating this campaign like your very own little playground. It isn’t. Our government is a democracy – that means that if hell freezes over and you do somehow manage to gain the presidency you work for us, the people of this country.
Here’s a thought – instead of building a wall that will cost billions, why don’t you propose an amnesty program that could be enacted for a couple million? The sheer cost of deporting millions of people, only to turn around and let them back in ‘legally’ is an astronomical burden to place on already over-burdened tax payers. It is also the DUMBEST idea I have ever heard. Does having all that money remove any shred of common sense? Do you possess any ability to think reasonably?
You would be amazed at how many cost-cutting things can be enacted if you think about them and come up with common sense solutions. The end goal is what you want to accomplish.
Since your fellow Republicans are going to be the biggest stopping block on any type of an amnesty program – sell them on what they stand to GAIN from doing this as opposed to booting everyone out and building an asinine wall.
You can’t just think about “The Donald” and how he feels about things. You have to consider each and every person in this country. You have to take our tax dollars and use them in the best way possible to make life better for us. This isn’t all about you. You’re just a potty-mouthed little boy that needs a bar of soap to wash your mouth out and a time-out to reflect on your actions lately.
You can’t act like a spoiled little toddler if you expect to be taken seriously as a GOP presidential candidate. You need to stop that silliness right now. Get your head out of your ass and look around. You have no clue how to run a government. If you want to continue acting like a toddler, no one will ever take you seriously. The voters in this country will not subject themselves to being ruled by a spoiled brat.
Grow up, Donald. | 0 |
Earlier this week, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asked a guest on his show if it were true that the United States government has been “looting” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [His guest, a mortgage industry analyst named Joshua Rosner, described the bailout that has kept alive the two mortgage finance giants since their collapse in 2008 and subsequent need for $187. 5 billion of taxpayer funding, as “a simple theft. ” Not a theft from taxpayers — but from Fannie and Freddie’s shareholders. While it was jarring to see Carlson and Fox not even attempt to challenge an advocate for the two mortgage companies — long the targets of conservative critics who argued they distorted mortgage markets, enjoyed a privileged status of being by the U. S. government even before they were bailed out, and were primary causes of the financial crisis — Rosner’s basic argument is hardly new. Hedge funds and other big investors, including Perry Capital LLC and the Fairholme Funds, have been making similar arguments in federal courts for years — to no avail. The cases have been met by dismissal in four federal district courts and last month a federal appeals court largely rejected the bid by investors to reverse one of those decisions. On Fox, however, Rosner gave the shareholder cause a novel twist — one designed to appeal to conservatives and perhaps the Trump administration despite its lack of grounding in evidence or logic. According to Rosner, the U. S. Treasury is taking funds from Fannie and Freddie to pay for Obamacare — perhaps the one thing loathed more by conservatives than bailouts of putatively private companies. “Essentially, in 2012, to avoid dealing with Republicans on the debt ceiling, on sequester, and to fund Obamacare, the Obama administration took Fannie and Freddie’s profits,” Rosner said. The message: if you hate Obamacare, you should support the cause of the hedge funds seeking to profit by prying Fannie and Freddie out of government hands. And please pay no attention to the fact that the two companies have always needed — and will always need, unless they are eliminated — the backing of the U. S. taxpayer. Fannie and Freddie: The Walking Dead, Fannie and Freddie provide liquidity to the housing market by buying mortgages from lenders, packaging them into securities whose principal and interest payments they guarantee. Prior to their 2008 collapse, Fannie and Freddie were widely viewed as enjoying an “implicit guarantee” from the U. S. government, enabling them to earn enormous profits because investors viewed their bonds as being safe — or nearly so — as U. S. Treasury bonds, The companies were taken over by the U. S. government in 2008 when officials feared their collapse could further destabilize the housing and financial markets. Treasury provided hundreds of billions of funding while the Federal Housing Finance Agency became their conservator. Under their original agreement with the U. S. Treasury, both companies were supposed to pay a dividend equal to 10% of their taxpayer funding as well as a fee on the hundreds of billions more Treasury had pledged to support them. For years, however, neither company earned enough to pay the dividend, which forced them to draw even more from their bailout funds just to send the money back to Treasury as the dividend. This circular draw, as it came to be called, threatened to put the companies into a death spiral, slowly eating away at the remainder of the Treasury backstop. In Treasury and the FHFA agreed to change the terms of the bailout so that Fannie and Freddie would no longer have a fixed dividend — ending the need for circular draws. Instead, each company would have a flexible dividend obligation that would rise and fall with their profits. Because the new dividend is equal to the positive net worth of each company, less a small capital cushion set to decline each year, it is known as the “net worth sweep. ” At the time the net worth sweep was implemented, Treasury Department officials noted that in addition to ending the circular draws and death spiral, the arrangement would facilitate the eventual wind down of the companies by preventing them from using profits to recapitalize as designed a safe, more stable mortgage finance system. Because every attempt at bipartisan mortgage finance reform legislation stalled out on Capitol Hill, neither company has been . Instead, they have remained in conservatorship and supported by taxpayer backing for more than eight years — a situation that nearly everyone involved in mortgage finance reform regards as undesirable. “These companies are zombies. They died in 2008 but they’ve been kept alive by the contaminant of government backing ever since — all because every attempt to build a better system has gone nowhere,” said one former government housing official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Conservatives Balk At Net Worth Sweep For Keeping Companies Alive, The net worth sweep was designed by the Obama administration in part to placate conservative critics of the two companies. Obama housing officials believed that merely lowering the dividend obligation to a level the companies could afford would invite criticism from Republican lawmakers that Fannie and Freddie were getting a second bailout — a bailout from their bailout. Since the net worth sweep would produce larger dividends if the companies were highly profitable and lower dividends when they were not, it balanced the risks to taxpayers with potential rewards, in the view of several Obama administration officials who spoke on background. Nonetheless, the net worth sweep met with initial resistance from Republican lawmaker who feared it would delay the wind down of the companies. “The reduction of the dividend payments for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will ensure the American taxpayers remain on the hook for the bailout of these two failed institutions,” Congressman Scott Garrett ( ) the chairman of the House Financial Service Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Entities, said in a statement. “Instead of devoting time and energy to prolonging bailouts, Obama administration should work with Congress to wind these companies down and create a new and sustainable housing finance system where taxpayers are not at risk,” Rep. Garrett said. This prompted an email, made public in one of the shareholder lawsuits, from an Obama administration official named Jim Parrott to complain that the net worth sweep had been misunderstood. “We’re not reducing their dividend but including in it every dime these guys make going forward and ensuring that they can’t recapitalize,” Parrott wrote to one of Rep. Garrett’s staffers. This didn’t fully satisfy the staffer. “In regards to them keeping additional profits, in my mind that is only an accounting issue, gov recoups now (per new method) or later when we liquidate them and then realize those gains for the taxpayer,” the staffer wrote back. Summarizing the Parrott wrote to the Treasury Department’s Timothy Bowler: “We’ve closed off possibility that they every [sic] go (pretend) private again and sped up the clock on the wind down of their portfolio, all while increasing the stability of the markets by removing concern that these guys run out of support before we have a place to which to transition. ” Despite this initial resistance, however, there was very little sustained opposition from conservatives to the net worth sweep — largely because it was presented as a step toward the wind down of Fannie and Freddie. The Hedge Funds Strike Back, Resistance to the sweep arose from another, unanticipated quarter: hedge fund managers and other large investors who acquired large amounts of the preferred and common shares of Fannie and Freddie — betting that the government wouldn’t succeed in winding them down and that they would eventually be revived. Several hedge funds made a fortune in the wake of the financial crisis by snapping up shares of financial companies, such as failed insurance giant AIG and banking giants Citigroup Bank of America, when many investors still shunned the sector. Investors like Bruce Berkowitz of Fairholme and John Paulson of Paulson Co, who had made a fortune shorting housing before the crisis, came to see themselves as heroic allies of the government’s attempt to rescue the financial companies. Some former Obama administration officials encouraged them to see Fannie and Freddie as presenting similar opportunities. If the government couldn’t wind down the entities, these former officials said, it might wind up recapitalizing them and releasing them to the public — just as it had with AIG. With the common shares trading at pennies a share and the preferred at deep discounts to face value, the upside potential could be huge. Perry Capital, Paulson Co, and Fairholme Funds all acquired stakes in the companies. Later, activist investor William Ackman’s Pershing Square would become the largest holder of the common stock of Fannie and Freddie. Others followed the lead of these prominent investors. The trouble was that the Obama administration did not go along with what the hedge fund managers believed to be the script to their next windfall play. It insisted that the companies remain in conservatorship — and subject to the net worth sweep — so long as no comprehensive housing finance reform was forthcoming. Which meant that instead of acting as allies of government policies, the funds were now fighting it. Perry Capital, Fairholme and Pershing Square all sued the government in federal court. They argued that the ongoing conservatorship violated the law and that they net worth sweep illegally deprived them of the profits of the companies. It quickly became conventional wisdom on Wall Street that the net worth sweep was “obviously illegal. ” Shares of the companies rocketed upward as investors piled into the trade that the “smart money” had endorsed. Top flight legal scholars, such as New York University’s Richard Epstein and Yale University’s Jonathan Macey, added their support to the hedge fund cause — in Epstein’s case, at least, while receiving consulting fees from one of the investors. Hopes for a court room victory were bolstered as Fannie and Freddie turned in record profits in 2013 and 2014, thanks in part to reversals of past losses, of once abandoned deferred tax assets, and legal settlements with large banks. Shareholders gleefully declared the government’s worry about a death spiral as a ruse and described the mortgage giants as “the most profitable companies in the world,” ignoring warnings that the artificially high profit levels would soon fall. In subsequent years, however, profits did fall by enough that both companies would once again have struggled or failed to pay the original 10 percent dividend. The Influence Vultures Take Flight, Paulson Co did not join the lawsuits, although his internal legal advisors believed the courts would side with the investors, according to people familiar with the matter. But that didn’t mean Paulson sat by passively. Instead, Paulson helped finance a behind the scenes lobbying campaign urging the government to relinquish its controls on the mortgage giants, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Lobbying efforts included campaign donations to sympathetic politicians as well as giving cash to minority advocacy groups that voiced support for Fannie and Freddie, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some advocacy groups in Washington, D. C. began offering donations to groups and individuals who agreed to write advocating for the release and recapitalization of Fannie and Freddie, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Raban Group, a Washington lobbying firm, offered a minority trade association $25, 000 contingent on signing its name to an arguing for the of Fannie and Freddie, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2014, John Paulson’s private foundation donated $25, 000 to the Leadership Conference Education Fund, an arm of a coalition of civil rights advocacy groups, the Wall Street Journal revealed. The Leadership Conference has been an outspoken advocate for the release of Fannie and Freddie to private control. The DCI Group, a Washington lobbyist outfit that works on behalf of Fannie and Freddie shareholder pressure group Investors Unite, gave the Leadership Conference a total of $325, 000 in donations, according to the Wall Street Journal. In June of 2016, a group of primarily New York Baptist ministers calling itself ‘Our Loans Matter’ held a rally near Wall Street. Video of the rally was posted on Twitter by none other than Tucker Carlson’s Obamacare funding critic Josh Rosner, who is manging director at Graham Fisher Co. which bills itself as an independent research consultancy. The accompanying hashtag: #ourloansmatter. “Wow. #OurLoansMatter rally in Wall Street w leading Pastors,” Rosner said in another tweet. Wow. #OurLoansMatter rally in Wall Street w leading Pastors pic. twitter. — joshua rosner (@JoshRosner) June 17, 2016, The Our Loans Matter group decried efforts to Fannie and Freddie, saying they would hurt homeownership opportunities for “our parishioners,” in an October 2016 letter to New York’s Senator Chuck S`chumer and the FHFA’s Mel Watt. That same summer, Rosner appeared on Perspectives, a television show “geared to discussing contemporary topics affecting the community. ” His message there was very different than the one he delivered to Tucker Carlson about Fannie and Freddie’s profits allegedly being used to support Obamacare. Instead, he argued that the government is “now in the process of eliminating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, essentially to hand the business to the big banks, who already are the ones who are likely to overcharge borrowers for home loans. ” There’s no evidence that most big banks want to be in the business of being in the position on the types of loans Fannie and Freddie tend to back. In fact, the biggest banks have been losing market share to nonbank lenders and retreating from the riskier parts of the market. Rosner went on to argue that eliminating Fannie and Freddie would reduce minority homeownership — and thereby increase crime, damage the quality of education and reduce people to being “wage slaves. ” Rosner has long been an advocate of homeownership while still criticizing loose credit the practices of banks as well as Fannie and Freddie. Indeed, he was one of the few who understood years before the financial crisis that Fannie and Freddie had taken on — and disguised — far more credit risk than they should. He famously criticized low to no downpayment mortgages by saying, “A home without equity is just a rental with debt. ” Currently, he argues that Fannie and Freddie should become utilities whose profits and practices are stringently regulated but whose shares are owned by investors. His views are not influenced by hedge funds or other investors in Fannie and Freddie, he said. “I put my own views out there and I’ve been remarkably consistent. Anyone who looks at my record knows I’m not for sale,” Rosner said in an phone interview. Crash and Burn, Despite the sums spent on lobbying and litigating against the government, the hedge funds and other investors did not gain much traction. The Obama administration stood firm in its position that Fannie and Freddie would not be released or recapitalized without congressional action. Capitol Hill lawmakers agreed, including in 2015’s omnibus budget “sense of Congress” provision that demanded the the administration make no changes to Fannie and Freddie’s status without congressional approval. The passage of time did not improve the odds for the hedge funds. As recently as last week, a bipartisan group of Senators sent a letter to FHFA director Mel Watt, who oversees the conservatorships of Fannie and Freddie, that he should not allow the companies to recapitalize without congressional approval. The lawmakers warned against “any administrative action that would adversely impact” efforts underway to legislate housing finance reform. If Capitol Hill and the White House have been cool to the hedge funds’ pleas, the reception in federal courts has been even frostier. In the fall of 2014, a federal court completely dismissed a group of shareholder lawsuits, finding that the government acted well within its rights when it implemented the net worth sweep. At first, the decision was derided by shareholders and their advocates but as court after court reached similar conclusions — including the influential D. C. Circuit — hopes for a hedge fund win in the courts withered. Rosner points out that the Obama administration kept from the public over 10, 000 documents investors have sought in connection with the litigation, a practice that the Trump administration has continued. He argues that the documents are likely to show that the motivations for putting in the net worth sweep were different from those stated by government officials. In any case, the public deserves to know what is in those documents, Rosner says. “Let’s see what’s in them. I think it will be . If I’m wrong about the motivations here, I’ll be the first to say so,” Rosner said in a phone interview. Hope Revived, Briefly The election of Donald Trump as President briefly revived hopes that the administration would embrace a policy that would bring the windfall to Fannie and Freddie investors. Although Trump himself has not taken a position on housing finance reform, Fannie investor John Paulson had been a big fund raiser for Trump, hosting a $50, 000 per plate dinner in NYC. Paulson was reportedly picked to be the Trump transition teams advisor on housing policy. What’s more, Trump had reportedly invested between $3 million and $15 million in Paulson’s hedge fund. A day after he was tapped to be Trump’s Treasury Secretary nominee, Steve Mnuchin appeared to bolster the prospects that the hedge funds could finally wrest control of Fannie and Freddie from the government. “We got to get Fannie and Freddie out of government ownership,” Steven Mnuchin said on Fox Business Network in November. “It makes no sense that these are owned by the government and have been controlled by the government for as long as they have. ” “Trump Treasury May Mean Independence for Fannie and Freddie,” the New York Times declared in a headline. The accompanying article was written by columnist Gretchen Morgenson, who 2011’s Reckless Endangerment with Josh Rosner. Shares of Fannie and Freddie soared. Morgenson described the euphoria among the Fannie and Freddie investors that followed these comments: The revival of this particular dream of avarice, however, was quickly quashed. At his confirmation hearing in January, Mnuchin told the Senators his comments had been misinterpreted. “My comments were never that there should be a recap and release,” Mnuchin said. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continued to fight the hedge funds in court — and continued to stack up legal victories. There are no signs that the Justice Department, Treasury, or the FHFA is considering settling with the litigious hedge funds or backing away from the government’s strong hand in these lawsuits. Sources inside the Treasury Department say the administration is still reviewing a wide variety of housing financing reforms options but is not planning on making any changes to the conservatorship or dividend of Fannie and Freddie without congressional authorization. On Capitol Hill, Senators and Representatives are already at work on a new version of housing finance reform legislation — one that is unlikely to leave any value left over for shareholders of Fannie and Freddie, according to people familiar with the matter. “These guys overreached and they’ve accomplished something rare: bipartisan alienation. Both Republican and Democrat leaders can’t stand these Fannie hedge fund guys,” a person close to Capitol Hill housing reform efforts said. Time Traveling Obama Officials and Other Villians, Despite this most recent setback, efforts continue to influence the right to adopt the hedge funds’ position on Fannie and Freddie, in hopes that the Trump administration can still be brought around to changing its views. legal scholars have been recruited and, in some cases, paid to write and conservative outlets such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Daily Caller have run pieces adopting the hedge fund line on Fannie, Freddie, and the net worth sweep. The latest argument appears to lure in conservatives with claims that the Obama administration illicitly diverted funds from Fannie and Freddie to bankroll portions of the Affordable Care Act. Specifically, the funds were allegedly used to provide a substitute funding source after a federal court ruled that some subsidies that had been provided to insurers were improper. The trouble is that the changes to Fannie and Freddie’s bailout that net worth sweep in place were made in 2012, while the judge’s ruling on the Obamacare subsidies didn’t come until 2016. What’s more, the judge in the case has allowed the payments to continue pending appeal, which means there still isn’t a budget gap to fill. Absent a trip in Dr. Who’s TARDIS, it is unlikely the Obama administration foresaw an adverse court ruling four years in advance then put in place a controversial change to Fannie and Freddie’s bailout to avoid it. Another recent tactic has been to target those in the Trump administration viewed as both vulnerable and potential opponents of the hedge fund Fannie and Freddie agenda. Craig Phillips, a former BlackRock Inc. executive who was a big fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, has recently come under fire. Phillips is leading Treasury’s review financial regulations — and many on Capitol Hill worry he is not a supporter of the administration’s agenda to rollback the regulations. Supporters of the hedge fund agenda for Fannie and Freddie have been playing on these concerns and Phillips’ connections to former Obama administration officials in hopes that if conservatives were to force Phillips out, he could be replaced by a more pliant Treasury official. “They’ve flipped from seeking support from the civil rights types to seeking support from conservatives and libertarians,” said a staffer of a Republican Congressman who has been approached about his position on Fannie and Freddie. This type of political flexibility is not altogether unheard of in the nation’s capital. Back in 2011, Josh Rosner, who advocated for preserving Fannie and Freddie to preserve minority homeowners in 2016 and decried the alleged use of their funds to support Obamacare in 2017, appeared before a House oversight panel alongside Dr. Anthony Sanders, a George Mason University finance professor. “I really want to go with what the administration said earlier, which is to start paring them down if not dismantling them,” Sanders told the panel after arguing that Fannie and Freddie’s guarantees were keeping private capital out of the mortgage market. “I totally agree with that,” Rosner said moments later. Editorial Note: This article has been updated to include the comments of Josh Rosner following a phone interview with him after the initial publication. | 1 |
“Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days,” sing the weary residents of Anatevka in “Fiddler on the Roof. ” That will also be the melancholy tune on Broadway in the coming weeks, as several shows, including “Fiddler” and the megahit “Jersey Boys,” prepare to darken their marquees. Here’s a look at what happened during the long runs of five of them. During the run of the revival, the cast went through: 93 pairs of boots and shoes 972 challahs 234 or so haircuts and beard trims 1 onstage marriage proposal (after a show, by Ben Rappaport, who plays Perchik Megan Kane said yes). Other than a misplaced exit, Adrianna Hicks has had very few mishaps as a swing who has covered — or stepped in to play — seven characters in the musical “The Color Purple. ” Unlike an understudy, who usually covers one lead role, a swing steps in “whenever someone is out sick or on vacation, or someone can’t make the train,” as Ms. Hicks put it. Like all swings, Ms. Hicks, 27, is at the theater even when she’s not scheduled to perform, in case something happens to an actor during the show. That’s what occurred at a performance in May when Cynthia Erivo, the show’s star, left after the first act because of illness. “Somebody runs upstairs and was like, ‘Cynthia might be out, so just be prepared,’” Ms. Hicks recalled. “I was like, ‘Nobody talk to me, I just need to focus.’ They announced my name and said the performance would be continued by Adrianna. I remember walking out onstage and with the audience so responsive, loving that moment. ” Ms. Hicks said covering Ms. Erivo’s leading role, Celie, which she has done over 25 times, was the most daunting part of being in the show, her Broadway debut. (She goes next into the Encores! production of “Big River. ”) “In her voice there’s such freedom, because she has it in her body physically,” Ms. Hicks said of Ms. Erivo. “With me, I’m still learning to get it there. ” As for that missed departure, Ms. Hicks said, “Flaws have happened. ” “I have exited off the wrong side of the stage because I’m so set being another character for the entire week, and then, for one show, doing someone totally different,” she said with a laugh. “Thank God we just walk onstage and stand there at certain moments. ” The actor Gerry Vichi thinks “Something Rotten!” might be his last show. He’s 79. He’s developed a hernia that will require an operation, which he put off until after the show closes. He says his memory is fine, but keeping up the energy is a challenge. So what’s next? “Maybe I’ll sit in my chair and drink Scotch and watch TV,” said Mr. Vichi, who made his Broadway debut in 1981 in the Kander and Ebb musical “Woman of the Year,” with Lauren Bacall. “Who knows? There’s always baseball season. ” Mr. Vichi has been with “Something Rotten!” for the show’s entire run — it opened in April 2015 — playing a comedic version of Shylock. (“He speaks a little more modern and he does like to loan money, but he doesn’t look for a pound of flesh,” he explained.) Between shows on a recent Wednesday, he got on the phone to talk about what he called “probably the most fun of any show I’ve done. ” Following are edited excerpts from the conversation. “Something Rotten!” had a good run. Congratulations. We had a nice run. If it weren’t for Ben Brantley, maybe we would have run longer. Put him on the phone. I’ll tell him. Has performing gotten more difficult as you’ve gotten older? that’s fine. Keeping up the energy is a challenge, but it’s fun. It’s a joy to come to work every day. How many people can say that? Do you have any rituals? I will often take members of the cast out to dinner. One night I took a bunch of the girls out. When we fellows get together, we pick a steakhouse, like Quality Meats, and we have a good time. When you say you take members out for dinner, does that mean you pay? I like to pay. I’m a good tipper. Who wants to ask around — who had the borscht? Who had the Caesar salad? Give me a break. How do you feel about the show’s closing? There will be tears, but not from me. I don’t have any illusions about being a star or a big shot. I just like to have fun. Anything else you wanted to say before we close? Tell Ben Brantley I called. When the show wraps up, it will have had: 19 girls featured in the role of Matilda 64 kids employed in the production 1 fresh copy of “Alice in Wonderland” torn up in every show 23, 880 balloons inflated (15 per show) 796 pounds of chocolate frosting shoveled into the face of Matilda’s classmate Bruce, who takes a slice of Miss Trunchbull’s chocolate cake and winds up forced to eat the whole thing. 51 actors have made their Broadway debuts in the show. THREE original Broadway cast members are still in it (Peter Gregus, Mark Lotito and Sara Schmidt). ONE actor has been in it since the engagement at La Jolla Playhouse (Peter Gregus). 29. 8 pounds of gunpowder have been fired onstage. 31 babies were born to company members in the show (22 are girls). 120, 692 times “Oh What a Night” has been said or sung onstage (26 per performance). 157, 828 (34 per performance). | 1 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Denis O’Brien Announces Bid For Irish Presidency November 15, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , POLITICS Share 0 Add Comment
MEDIA mogul and multi billionaire Denis O’Brien has today announced his bid for the Irish presidency 2017.
Following in the footsteps of American businessman and peer, Donald Trump, Mr. O’Brien stated he will begin campaigning early next year in what is expected to be the hottest Irish presidential election since the foundation of the state.
“I’m really looking forward to making Ireland okay again,” he said, wearing a baseball hat with the same phrasing, “I’m going to build a wall around my financial affairs – made from solicitors. Believe me, this wall will be impervious to poorer people. It will be great. Okay?”
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was the first to offer his support to the Cork man, who currently resides in Malta because it’s nice and warm and no other reason, stating O’Brien will be a perfect contender to represent Ireland’s current climate.
“He’s a lovely man, Denis, and he will make a great president if elected,” Mr. Kenny said with his mouth, “Sure, he’s basically representing the country already with his large stake in the Irish media. It would only make sense that such an influence would put themselves forward for such a position”.
Mr. O’Brien then added that first things he will do in office is to abolish the current government. | 0 |
President Trump warned former FBI Director James Comey Friday morning, after accounts surfaced in the press about a dinner they had in January, attributed to Comey associates. [“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump tweeted. James Comey better hope that there are no ”tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017, Trump fired Comey on Wednesday, setting off a slew of speculation and leaks over why the former FBI director — who had been disliked on both sides of the aisle — was fired. On Thursday, the New York Times published an account of a dinner, sourced to two Comey associates, that differed from the president’s account. It’s not clear yet whether Trump has any recordings of the conversation that took place. Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt on Thursday Comey had requested the dinner on January 27, because the wanted to stay on as FBI director. He said at that dinner, Comey told him he was not under investigation. But according to Comey’s associates, Trump requested the dinner, and pressed him to pledge his loyalty. “Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not ‘reliable’ in the conventional political sense. ” Comey’s people added that Comey was wary about dining with the president, but believed he couldn’t turn him down. The White House disputed the account. “We don’t believe this to be an accurate account,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary. “The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people. ” According to the White House, one of the many reasons Comey was fired was because he failed to stop sensitive leaks of information to the media. | 1 |
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Just 11 days before the election, the FBI has re-opened its investigation into Hillary Clinton. According to The Political Insider , the news broke just as Donald Trump took the stage in New Hampshire, and it was the first thing he mentioned.
Watch: BREAKING: Trump begins New Hampshire rally by reacting to FBI saying it's probing new Clinton emails: âPerhaps finally justice will be doneâ pic.twitter.com/iiCU5PeF4d
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) October 28, 2016
Here is Trump’s full statement:
I need to open with a very critical breaking news announcement. The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails pertaining to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s investigation. And they are re-opening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United Staes of America.
Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood and it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.
So that is a big announcement that I heard ten minutes ago, and I guess obviously most of you folks have heard about. And in all fairness, for all of the people that have suffered for doing so much less, including just recently 4-Star General James Cartwright, General Petraeus, and many others. Perhaps finally justice will be done.
With that being said, the rest of my speech is going to be so boring. Should I even make the speech? We will talk about borders, right? We will talk about trade. We’ll bring back our jobs, we’ll strengthen our military…
Twitter reacted accordingly. Trump, at Manchester, N.H. rally, says FBI decision to reopen Clinton email case suggests "the system might not be so rigged"
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) October 28, 2016 The crowd at this Trump rally is literally going insane.
— Andrew Clark đ (@AndrewHClark) October 28, 2016 On HRC Trump said at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. "We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office." @BillKristol
— Robert Fischl (@robtdfischl) October 28, 2016 Unlike Trump, Clinton did not address FBI letter at start of her rally. She said she's glad to be back in Iowa, talked about recent flooding
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 28, 2016 Trump calls Clinton's email investigation 'bigger Than Watergate' https://t.co/nuHKoqtZDS
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 28, 2016
SHARE this news if you are glad that the FBI is finally doing its job by investigating Hillary Clinton! | 0 |
A lot of these creeps are going to be looking to flee like roaches over to Syria. Syrian forces need to set up blockades to ensure they cannot slip in. And as far as after this city is liberated and free from Satan's grip, there doesn't need to be one power control structure implemented. I think this city is and should be a completely dynamically diverse and peaceful enclave. No power trips, no hate, no sectarian strife. Food, water, power, etc. those are all things every resident needs and wants and no government body can or shoud try to play tough guy. I honestly think Mosul can be the city of miracles. I really hope that all the nasty people that are salivating to move in and try to dominate this enclave will back off and contribute only good will and objective and benevolent efforts. It could truly be an amazingly beautiful, simple and harmonious place if only the evil troublemakers were not allowed to take root | 0 |
Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in several cities across the country for a second night on Thursday in protests against the election of Donald J. Trump as president. In Portland, Ore. the police arrested 29 people while contending with what they described as an “aggressive” crowd of about 4, 000 protesters and widespread reports of vandalism, fires and broken windows. “Due to extensive criminal and dangerous behavior, protest is now considered a riot,” the Portland Police Department said on Twitter. Sgt. Pete Simpson, a police spokesman, said Thursday that there were accounts of protesters with bats and drivers being attacked, but there were no reports of injuries. Photos and videos posted to social media showed vandals buildings and cars, and the police later said on Twitter that they had deployed “less lethal munitions,” including pepper spray and “rubber ball distraction devices. ” Sergeant Simpson said that the overwhelming number of participants were citizens but that “a smaller segment are ” who were hiding in the crowd. “We’re constantly assessing what’s happening and trying to figure out where they’re going next,” he said. Protests took place in other cities, including Baltimore, Denver, Milwaukee, Oakland and Philadelphia. Some demonstrations started early Wednesday after election returns showed the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, losing to Mr. Trump, a Republican. On Twitter on Thursday night, Mr. Trump expressed his dissatisfaction at the protests, which he said were “incited by the media. ” On Friday morning, however, Mr. Trump reversed course with a post on Twitter that praised the demonstrators and echoed the themes of unity he expressed in his victory speech. “Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country,” he wrote. “We will all come together and be proud!” Remigio Mateo, 31, a social worker in Los Angeles, said he was stunned by the results and wondered how a candidate who had used such language during the presidential campaign could win election to the White House. He wanted to be with people who would understand. When a friend mentioned a protest on Wednesday night at City Hall, Mr. Mateo said he knew he needed to be there. “This election was a real call that things aren’t anywhere near as progressive as we thought they were,” he said. “I feel confused, disheartened, shocked and afraid of what comes next. I felt I needed to be around others who felt the same way, not only to protest, but to think of how to move forward. ” | 1 |
Matt Drudge has called Florida for Donald Trump. Major news channels still holding back on their call but have noted that she’s not making any gains as final votes are counted.
The race now comes down to Michigan.
Donald Trump is projected to win Michigan but the race is tight with 2.8 million votes remaining.
Michigan is not yet a win for Trump.
| 0 |
[White might burning courtesy Informed Content .] =By= Juan Cole W hether Trump wins or loses (and in my view there isn’t much chance he can win), he will leave behind a toxic legacy of increased racial and religious hatred, which he has deliberately stirred up in order to take the focus off his policies– policies that will hurt workers and will throw even more money at the super-wealthy. This use of racism to divide the working class and whip up support for the business classes is as old as American capitalism.
Trump has whipped up sentiment against Latinos and immigrants (a minority of Americans of Latino ancestry is first-generation immigrants) by loudly proclaiming that they are guilty of all kinds of crimes. In fact, violent has fallen 48% in the US since the early 1990s, yet in the past 25 years immigration has soared. Research shows that immigrants commit less crime than the native-born. It isn’t hard to figure out why. First, those who don’t yet have citizenship are afraid of being deported, so they keep their noses clean. But more importantly, and contrary to what Trump alleges, immigrants are go-getters who have taken the big step of leaving home to accomplish something. They are highly motivated to succeed and often bring with them a great deal of human capital. As for jobs, immigrants aren’t stealing them from the native born. They are doing different jobs than locals with the same educational attainments. That’s because they often don’t have as good English skills or can’t afford to turn down menial jobs. The hatred against immigrants Trump has fostered is based on a set of lies, lies that are easily shown to be falsehoods. But it is a little unlikely that this hatred of foreigners will subside Wednesday , whatever happens.
Trump has given aid and comfort to the American far right. With his racist dog whistles (and often just unadorned racism) he has emboldened the Ku Klux Klan, Alt-right and other disgusting organizations. David Duke of Louisiana has been encouraged to run for the senate and is pledging to be Trump’s biggest supporter. This genie will be hard to put back into its lamp.
Trump has encouraged hatred for Muslims in the US on an unprecedented scale. Hatred for Muslims has already been adopted as a latent platform by the Republican Party, but they are usually at least a little more subtle about it. If Trump can succeed in discriminating against Muslim-Americans, he can then proceed to discriminate against the rest of us on one pretext or another. Muslim-Americans are only 1% of our population. There isn’t actually any danger of them taking over the country or imposing their religious law, and most terrorism comes from the far right or from overseas, not from native-born Muslim-Americans. Trump supporters have already burned down a mosque in Florida, have assaulted Muslims (and Sikhs, whose men wear turbans) all over the country, and some Trumpists have plotted terrorism against Muslims.
Trump has left a legacy of contempt for women and a resurgent patriarchy. He has juvenilized women and hurled slurs at them. He accused Megyn Kelly of being on her period when she asked him sharp questions. He boasted about grabbing strangers by the genitals. His message is that women should be judged not by their intelligence, hard work, or character but by their breast size and figure and the symmetry of their faces.
Trump has taken optimistic trend lines and pulled them down into Sheol with him. He has diminished our country, traumatized our children, and made us laughingstocks in the urbane capitals of the world. He leaves us a large bequest, tied up with a bow, of hatred and prejudice, smelling like the piece of dog shit that is Donald Trump
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This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics. com, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, ‘This attack by the United States of America is understandable, given the aspect of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people and given the logjam in the UN Security Council.’ The events of the past week were not only a major humiliation to Russia, but will also have to trigger a major strategic change in Russia’s foreign policy. The unexpected US cruise missile strike in response to the horrific Sarin gas attack by Syria’s president Bashar on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, killing up to 100 people, left Russia scrambling to take measures. So Russia canceled its “deconfliction agreement” with US designed to prevent accidental clashes between the two air forces in Syria, though this agreement will almost certainly be restored within weeks. War criminal did his part by ordering new air strikes on the same town, Khan Sheikhoun, but this with conventional weapons. However, to bring the point home, committed a new war crime when his missiles struck a hospital where people are recovering from ’s Sarin gas attack. Russia, Syria and Iran may take further retaliatory moves. However, the big picture is that this week’s events will require a strategic change in Russia’s policies. As I reported in April, 2011, Russia at that time adopted a policy of using the United Nations Security Council to cripple Nato and US foreign policy, a strategy that has been very successful for them for six years. Early in 2011, Russia had abstained on the UNSC resolution authorizing a “humanitarian” military action in Libya. As the Libyan intervention unfolded, Russia viewed the increasingly complex situation as “mission creep,” and regretted not vetoing the resolution. After that, Russia demanded that Nato and the US strictly limit their activities, and Russia would back up this demand by vetoing any attempt to go further than Russia desired. This would allow Russia to effectively control many activities of Nato and the US, since only activities approved by the Security Council, and hence by Russia, could ever be permitted. This set up a “double standard,” because Russia would do what it wanted, without seeking approval from the UNSC. Russia invaded Georgia and took control of two provinces, without asking the UNSC. Russia invaded East Ukraine and took control of two provinces, without asking the UNSC. Russia invaded Crimea and annexed it, without asking the UNSC. At the same time, any military action by the West would have to be approved by the UNSC. Now President Trump has done the same thing, ordering a military strike without asking the UNSC. This act nullifies the policies adopted by Russia in 2011, and requires a change in direction, though the nature of that change remains to be seen. AP and CNBC and CNN, Related Articles, Russia now has to throw out that “double standard” strategy, because the new US administration is willing to do what Russia has been doing all along — take military action when considered necessary, without asking permission from the UN Security Council (nor, by the way, from the US Congress). President Donald Trump seems willing to reinstate the “Truman Doctrine” that had been repudiated by President Obama. President Harry Truman announced the Truman Doctrine in 1947, essentially making America the “policeman of the world. ” Truman’s justification is that it is better to have a small military action to stop an ongoing crime than to let it slide and end up having an enormous conflict like World War II. The Truman Doctrine was reaffirmed in President John Kennedy’s “ask not” speech, and every president since WW II has followed the Truman Doctrine, up to and including George Bush. Barack Obama is the first president to repudiate the Truman Doctrine, essentially leaving the world without a policeman. The concept of America being the “world’s policeman” was very controversial in 1947 and it is very controversial today. And yet, we have seen what has happened in the last eight years, when the world had no policeman. There are news reports of a power struggle in the White House, and that power struggle can be interpreted as a disagreement over reinstating the Truman Doctrine. Reportedly, Steve Bannon opposes military actions like the one this week in Syria, while Jared Kushner favors it. The outcome of this power struggle, which goes to the heart of the Truman Doctrine concepts, could have a defining effect on American foreign policy, as well as on Russia’s foreign policy. Guardian (London) Related Articles, America’s missile strike in Syria has received widespread praise as a valid response to Bashar ’s war crimes, but not with President Trump’s base. I saw this myself in the stream of comments to the Breitbart version of my April 6 article “President Trump plans military action on Syria after horrific nerve gas attack on civilians. ” Most of the comments appeared from people among Trump’s strongest supporters, but they were shocked by this article, because they believed that Trump would never order a military intervention in the Mideast, something that many of them oppose. A lot of anger was directed at me, accusing me of “fake news,” and accusing me of being a “Libtard” and trying to mislead people. But all that changed on Thursday evening around 10 PM ET, when reports of the military action started coming out, proving that the article was completely accurate. At that point, the anger that many of the commenters had directed at me began to be directed at President Trump. Some of the comments were completely delusional, such as describing the Sarin gas attack as a “false flag” operation, sometimes going so far as to accuse Trump of ordering the Sarin attack himself in order to have an excuse to bomb Syria. Probably the angriest comments were some variation of the delusional “false flag” claim. At the other end of the spectrum were comments that were very thoughtful. Many people posted variations of “I voted for Trump, but I didn’t vote for this. ” There were some detailed analyses of why we should never go into the Mideast, saying that we have tried in the past and never accomplished anything, and one person saying that we should let them kill each other so that they won’t try to kill us. However, in the mainstream media, in the US, Europe and the Mideast, comments by world leaders have been extremely supportive, almost verging on euphoria that the US is showing leadership once more. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, both the controversy and the euphoria are to be expected at a military attack that could begin an war. Any military attack is going to be controversial, but the population can also easily become heavily invested and become euphoric. Here’s how historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes how the euphoria at the beginning of a war is itself highly delusional in his 2001 book, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery: The passions excited in the national psyche by the onset of war show how deeply invested the masses now were in its potential outcome. Propaganda had reinforced their conviction that “everything was at stake,” and the threat of death and defeat functioned like a tightly coiled spring, further heightening the tension. The almost festive jubilation that accompanied the declarations of war in Charleston in 1861 [American Civil War] Paris in 1870 [ war] and the capitals of the major European powers in 1914 [World War I] were anticipatory celebrations of victory — since nations are as incapable of imagining their own defeat as individuals are of conceiving their own death. The new desire to humiliate the enemy, noted by Burckhardt, was merely a reaction to the unprecedented posturing in which nations now engaged when declaring war. The deployment of armies on the battlefield is the classic manifestation of collective . If both sides are not convinced of their military superiority, there will be no confrontation rather, those who lack confidence will simply flee the field. Accordingly, the battle is decided the moment the confidence of one side fails. The will to fight (“morale”) evaporates, the military formation collapses, and the army seeks salvation in flight or, if it is lucky, in organized retreat. The Greek term for this point in space (on the battlefield) and time (the course of the battle) was trope. The victors demarcated the spot with the weapons of the vanquished and later with monuments, yielding the term tropaion, from which we get our word trophy. (p. ) The euphoria goes on until something goes wrong, usually some kind of military disaster, such as the Battle of Bull Run in 1861 or the Bataan Death March in 1941. The panicked reaction can be much greater when a military disaster occurs. In his 1832 book, On War, General Carl von Clausewitz describes what happens: The effect of defeat outside the army — on the people and on the government — is a sudden collapse of the wildest expectations, and total destruction of . The destruction of these feelings creates a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled by a fear that grows corrosively, leading to total paralysis. It’s a blow to the whole nervous system of the losing side, as if caused by an electric charge. This effect may appear to a greater or lesser degree, but it’s never completely missing. Then, instead of rushing to repair the misfortune with a spirit of determination, everyone fears that his efforts will be futile or he does nothing, leaving everything to Fate. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the events that cause this “sudden collapse” and “total destruction” of are called “regeneracy events,” because they regenerate civic unity for the first time since the end of the preceding crisis war. You do not need any particular methodology to understand that the whole world has become increasingly unstable in the last ten years. Because the political atmosphere is already extremely vitriolic and is likely to worsen further, it is worth repeating what I’ve written many times: Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. This is coming with 100% certainty, irrespective of who is president. Furthermore, the president can neither cause nor prevent this outcome. Maybe Trump’s missile attack will speed up this war, or maybe it will delay it. It could go either way. If Hillary Clinton had won, she might have made the same missile attack for the same reasons that Trump did. It is impossible to tell. The only thing that we can be sure of is that we have no way of knowing what the scenario will be, only that a regional war will be the result, in this generational Crisis era. CNN and philly. com, Related Articles, KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Syria, Bashar Germany, Angela Merkel, UN Security Council, Harry Truman, Truman Doctrine, John F Kennedy, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Battle of Bull Run, Bataan Death March, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Carl von Clausewitz Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by | 1 |
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough sent a subtly coded message Tuesday morning to an audience of one: President Donald Trump, you should fire Steve Bannon. [This week, Scarborough has been on a tear against Bannon — a populist firebrand, top aide to the president, and former executive chairman of Breitbart News. The Morning Joe talk show host, twice in the span of three minutes, summed up Bannon’s political philosophy as “Leninist” — that is, wanting to “destroy the American republic. ” This meme is based on a quote which Daily Beast author Ronald Radosh, an octogenarian this year, attributed to Bannon based on a conversation that Radosh claims took place in 2013. Bannon said last year that he did not remember either meeting Radosh or having that conversation. Scarborough linked a poll showing President Trump’s approval at 36 percent to Bannon’s role as White House chief strategist. Trump is stuck at that number, he argued, “because he has simply refused to listen to everybody that has told him you need to reach out and be more inclusive. ” One of the people most responsible for Trump overestimating his support, Scarborough continued, is “our favorite player of the week, Steve Bannon. [in, apparently, a Steve Bannon voice] ‘Oh, they’re going to want me to be Vladimir Lenin and tear down the government because 65 percent of Americans are against us.’ I mean, what idiots. ” “If he wants to get his 36 [percent approval rating] to 56,” Scarborough concluded, “he’s gonna have to fire Steve Bannon and anybody else who calls themselves a Leninist who wants to destroy the American republic and government and start working with Republicans and Democrats and doing what 78 percent of Americans told NBC News a week ago. They want their leaders to compromise and work with the other side and make Washington work again. ” Trump will need to take this warning seriously, given Scarborough’s impressive political chops. He served in the U. S. Congress for the better part of seven years, resigning in 2001 to spend time with his family. For a time, renowned conservative pundit Bill Kristol floated Scarborough as his pick for the 2016 presidential race — eventually settling on a National Review editor who did not run, then settling on a CIA staffer. As for expanding his populist appeal, the president would do well to seek out Morning Joe‘s invaluable look into “what the smart set in Washington and Manhattan are thinking” every day. Scarborough’s advice to President Trump has, so far, focused on surrendering to the establishment that has called him a spy since the start of his campaign: January 27, 2017: “The press always wins. Washington always wins. You figure out how to work with them or you’re going to get crushed. ” January 31, 2017: “[Trump aide Stephen Miller]’s not good on television, you guys should probably keep him off television. ” February 6, 2017: “I suggest somebody at the White House get him to write a statement — a very strong statement letting the world know that he condemns the assassination of journalists and political rivals. ” February 17, 2017: “Don’t fight the press, the press always wins. Ask Richard Nixon. The press always wins!” February 28, 2017: Trump should use his Joint Address to Congress to announce “sweeping immigration reform” (i. e. amnesty for illegal immigrants). March 22, 2017: “Next time a voice inside your head says ‘screw with the FBI,’ just stop. ” Unfortunately, Trump has signaled that he will ignore Scarborough’s tips on appeasing the media elite. A few weeks ago, the president’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account stopped following Scarborough and his partner Mika Brzezinski. Nevertheless, the MSNBC host persists with his invaluable hot takes and armchair governance. | 1 |
Waking Times
I find it easy to imagine a better world, one in which compassion and brotherhood reign supreme. Where greed has been dethroned and truth is respected and revered. A world where our resources are applied creatively, where technology liberates people instead of killing them, and where the natural world is as precious as the human body.
On and on it goes. It’s a beautiful vision.
It’s simple to imagine, because it resonates so deeply with what we know to be true about humans: at our root, we are beings of love. What’s difficult, though, seemingly impossible at times, is to envision the transition from today’s world to this high vision.
What is the missing link? What is the secret? Must we overthrow something or someone? Is a revolution in order? Against whom, precisely? Or do we just start building amid the chaos, division and decay surrounding us? How do we get there from here?
If you follow the thread of scientific reason on human consciousness all the way to its essence, you eventually arrive at the revelation that we create reality , and that the world at large is a macrocosmic representation of the experiences of the individual. Everything conscious and unconscious that lives and breathes within the self, is mirrored as fractals in our collective experience. In this way we share each other’s pain, and in this way we contribute to each other’s greatness.
Observation of the world in this light is a diagnosis of the individual. The sicknesses manifest in our shared reality are to be found within the mind and spirit of all people. When we grasp this as the true nature of reality, the path to a better world suddenly appears. The healing of the one is the healing of the whole. The way is clear now. False Cures and Phony Pharmaceuticals
We live in the age of phony solutions, misplaced hopes and false cures. Shallow is the new deep. Substance is nothing in the company of style. Medicines don’t heal, they harm by making themselves necessary. Cures now perpetuate disease, and the root is rarely unearthed, the source rarely revealed.
The disease that keeps us on the path of self-destruction is a spiritual one, for, each and every human being is a container for personal and collective history, trial and trauma. The contents of our past help to color our future. Suffering buried within creates disharmony without. This is one of the fundamental truths about the spiritual essence of human beings. We carry our past with us, never thinking to let go of that which no longer serves us well.
Our heritage as beings of nature includes the medicines which can release us suffering. These are mother nature’s spiritual medicines which serve as tools for personal, community and planetary renewal . Medicines to explore consciousness and one’s truest nature, but deemed illegal in the matrix, and now only available to those who seek them out. For those that do, a glimpse of the deepest areas of the self is possible, bringing extraordinary understanding of the value and meaning in life. “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” ~ Eckhart Tolle First Let Go, Then Receive, Then Integrate
My personal experience with shamanic plant medicines in their proper ceremonial context has led me to the understanding that to be happy one must be free. And to be free, one must be unencumbered and unaffected by fear. To be unaffected by fear, one must have looked intently into the darkest regions of oneself, thereby expanding the range of the possible, so that a rebound can occur allowing for a unfathomably grand new vision of the self.
I have a good friend who works to preserve the culture and medicine traditions of an Amazonian tribe who is being driven into extinction by our consumeristic way of life. I’ve seen firsthand how their sacred plant medicine tradition can positively and permanently change someone’s life, rescuing them from victimhood, and releasing them to their true purpose and greatness.
Another friend of mine, a shaman whose work with a powerful plant medicine tradition from the African rainforest , works everyday providing an opportunity for people like you and I to explore the vast depths of consciousness and memory, Creating a space that allows us to hold communion with our very own souls and letting us see the full depth, richness and vividness of contents stored in the subconscious mind. READ: Matrix Deprogramming and the Prohibition of Nature’s Red Pill
These sacred healing traditions are mostly unknown and widely misunderstood in the culture of contemporary consciousness. These are the spiritual medicines and experiences outlawed by the matrix . Verboten because they have the power to free us from the death grip of self-destruction .
The core message of these plant medicines, as I’ve come to see it, is three-fold: let go, receive, integrate.
First you are called to let go of that which weighs you down, of the fear which prevents you from accepting truth, and of the expectation of having control.
Then to receive. Receive knowledge of self, both sacred and profane. Receive knowledge of the natural world, without which we are nothing. And receive knowledge of the infinitely complexity, and inspiration inherent in the cosmos within.
Then we must integrate these lessons or they are meaningless. We have to walk with these teachings and these revelations, carrying them with each day, in each interaction with others, forever forward as our lives grow more rich. We must actively rise to the challenge of creating the highest versions of ourselves. Final Thoughts
This is the age of chaos, division and decay, when the sickness within colors darkly the world without.
Culture has worked itself into a destructive and frustrating loop, and as the pattern of stress repeats itself, it leads us ever further away from our true nature. Largely cut off from spiritual medicine and deep spiritual experience, we don’t know which direction to turn for inspiration and strength, and are unable to see the way towards that great vision of our future. Yet, to dig ourselves out of the current trap of destruction the individual must be healed. Read more articles by Dylan Charles . About the Author
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at . This article ( Spirit Medicine for the Age of Chaos, Division and Decay Dylan Charles | 0 |
Bill White November 17, 2016 Product Review: Power Whisperer Pro Version
The folks at Independent Living have done it again. They’ve taken their popular Power Whisperer emergency power generator and done a second upgrade, making it even better than before.
This new upgrade essentially doubles the capacity of the original unit, meaning that it will provide power to meet even more of a family’s needs, for an even longer period of time.
I’ll tell you more about this update so keep reading the article below!
One of the biggest risks we face today is that of an EMP attack. As a nation, we have enemies who are working hard to develop the technology necessary to allow them to hit the United States with such an attack. If they ever get to that point, a successful attack will set this country back over 100 years. Most electronic devices will be destroyed, but worse than that, the electrical power grid that we all depend on will be out of commission; probably for the rest of our lives.
The only electronics which will survive such an attack are those which are shielded from EMP. Outside of the military, there is little that is made, which is shielded in such a manner. Yet the Power Whisperer has been designed with this possibility in mind, and is encased in 5052 aluminum. That’s more than enough to stop the EMP from touching the unit, ensuring that you’ll have electrical power, when everyone else’s lights are out.
I was impressed with the quality of the original Power Whisperer and the M model. These are well-built, rugged units, designed to, as Timex says, “Take a licking and keep on ticking.” But I don’t think even the designer of the Power Whisperer realized how rugged a unit he built.
See below a video of a Power Whisperer M (Classic Model) that had a disagreement with a truck. Apparently the unit was being shipped when this happened. I don’t know if the truck was trying to take the unit to the wrong address and it refused to be shipped there or the two of them got into a political argument.
All I know is that the truck and the Power Whisperer tried to break a law of physics and occupy the same place at the same time. To be fair, the Power Whisperer was there first, and I really can’t say that the truck had any excuse, like not seeing the unit, after all, it hit it head on.
Well, the results of that altercation left the Power Whisperer looking like a pile of scrap. In the video, someone in the Independent Living warehouse decided to unwrap the pile of scrap and test it out. Amazingly enough, it still provided power. That’s after being hit by a truck, all but torn limb from limb and then sitting in the warehouse, being ignored for a couple of months.
I hope my Power Whisperer never has to be tried by fire like that, but it’s nice to know that the one that was survived its trial. Granted, it doesn’t look too good now, but at least it works. In an emergency situation, that’s what’s important.
So now they’ve decided to go ahead and upgrade this rugged beast. That intrigued me when I heard about it, because I really wasn’t sure what they’d upgrade. But I’ll have to say, they did it right. They didn’t add whistles and bells that you don’t need, they increased the capacity.
Let’s Upgrade!
As far as I’m concerned, electrical power in a grid-down situation is like memory in a computer… you’ve never got enough. While the Power Whisperer M (Classic Model) had enough power to make it through an emergency caused by a power outage, the new one – PowerWhisperer PRO , has double that capacity but also some other features that I’m going to address in seconds.
The Power Whisperer M (Classic Model) comes with a 100 amp-hour capacity. That means that it can run an electronic device that requires 100 amps of 12 volt power for 1 hour or that it can run a device that requires 1 amp of 12 volt power for 100 hours, or anything in between. There’s also a Power Whisperer M-Plus model that comes with an extra solar panel and battery that literally double your power, while all the specifications are the same.
The Power Whisperer PRO model comes with the same voltage inverter, so you still have 2000 watts of 120 volt power available at any one time. In addition, there is a 12 volt outlet, so that you can power devices which are intended to run off of 12 volts.
Do you have any camping equipment, tools or electronics which are intended for running off your car’s cigarette lighter/accessory connector? They’ll all plug into either the M model or the new Pro model as well.
To help with recharging the larger storage capacity, Lee Bellinger, the designer of the Power Whisperer has also added a second, 100 watt solar panel, increasing the charge capacity as well. You can either recharge the Model M in half the time or recharge both the M model and the extra power pack at the same time. With this extra solar panel, you can charge both in the time that it used to take to charge the Model M alone.
And the unit is expandable beyond that as well. The M model generator has enough connectors to attach up to four solar panels, increasing the recharge rate and total power available from the unit. You can also add another auxiliary power pack if you desire, increasing the overall power you have available in an emergency situation even more.
These units are totally safe, using proven battery and battery charging technology which avoids “thermal runaway.” I’m sure you’ve heard of the problems that people have been having with the Samsung phones, well the charge technology used in the Power Whisperer prevent the possibility of that happening. The unit is not only safe from being hit by a truck, but from exploding as well.
Seeing as the Power Whisperer was inspired by military technology and intended for survival use, it even comes complete with a camouflage net system, so that you can keep your unit away from prying eyes, whether you are using it for a bug in or you’re providing power to your survival retreat in a bug out.
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This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia. 1 total views, 1 views today | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS — Russia and the Trump administration clashed in a vote at the United Nations Security Council for the first time on Tuesday, as the Kremlin vetoed a measure backed by the United States and its Western allies to punish Syria for using chemical weapons. While the Russians had long signaled their intent to block the resolution, which was supported by dozens of countries, the clash offered insights into the big divisions that remain between the Kremlin and President Trump, who has vowed to improve ties. Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the Council, blocked the measure. It was the Kremlin’s seventh Security Council veto in defense of President Bashar of Syria over the war that has been convulsing his country for nearly six years. The American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who has called chemical weapons attacks in Syria “barbaric,” accused Russia and China of putting “their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security” in her blunt rebuke of the vetoes. “It is a sad day on the Security Council,” Ms. Haley said after the vote. “When members start making excuses for other member states killing their own people, the world is definitely a more dangerous place. ” Diplomats said that Ms. Haley had insisted on putting the measure up for a vote this week, signaling a desire to take a tough stand on Russia. In recent weeks, Ms. Haley has condemned what she called Russia’s “aggressive actions” in eastern Ukraine, vowed to maintain sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and, in her Senate confirmation hearing, went as far as saying that Russia was guilty of war crimes in Syria. Her comments on Russia have sometimes contradicted the more conciliatory language of Mr. Trump, who has made clear his desire to increase cooperation with Russia. Ms. Haley, by contrast, has often echoed the talking points of the previous administration, as well as the concerns of Republicans in Congress who distrust the Kremlin. The resolution, proposed by Britain and France months ago and endorsed by the United States last week, would have imposed sanctions on a handful of Syrian military officials and entities for having dropped barrel bombs on areas on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015, according to a United Nations panel. Russia’s envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, defended the veto, calling the resolution “politically biased” and asserting that Russia’s concerns about the draft language had not been addressed. “This is railroading the draft by the Western troika,” he said. China’s ambassador, Liu Jieyi, recalling the American warnings of Iraq’s “ W. M. D. s” in 2003, criticized the resolution as an example of “hypocrisy” by the Western powers. “It was forced through to a vote while Council members still have differences,” he said. “This is in no way helpful to finding a solution. ” Chlorine is banned as a weapon under an international treaty that Mr. Assad’s government signed in 2013. The French ambassador, François Delattre, said he welcomed the solidarity from Ms. Haley on the resolution. “The Trump administration has a very clear position that is also our French position, the British position and the position of the majority of members of the Security Council,” he said. “We’re exactly on the same page. ” Britain’s ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said: “This isn’t even about Syria. It’s about taking a stand when children are poisoned. ” The arguments and vote over the resolution were important because they shed light on how Mr. Trump would deal with the Kremlin over the Syria war. Russia is Mr. Assad’s most important foreign ally. Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and said he wanted to strike a deal with him to stop the Syrian war and focus on fighting terrorism. But disagreements within Mr. Trump’s administration appear to have complicated that goal. A former governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley has by her own admission limited foreign policy experience. Since she was confirmed on Jan. 24, she has limited her comments to a handful of foreign policy issues that plainly deliver political dividends at home. She has maintained a tough line on Russia and Iran, pledged to defend Israel and promised more oversight of how American funding for the United Nations is spent. She has said nothing about the Trump administration’s travel ban on refugees and visa applicants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has criticized. Ms. Haley, an American of Indian descent who grew up in a small South Carolina town, also has been silent on the attack on two Indian engineers in Kansas last week, which is suspected of being a hate crime and which threatens to cloud relations. The conflict over the Syria resolution was in sharp contrast to a consensus on the need to contain Syria’s use of chemical weapons. After a sarin gas attack on a suburb of Damascus in August 2013, Moscow and Washington struck a deal to force Mr. Assad to sign the chemical weapons treaty and dismantle his stockpile of the poisonous munitions under international supervision. The Syrian government, though, violated the deal, according to a United Nations panel set up by the Security Council, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism. It found that the government had used chemical weapons at least three times. Russia helped to create the panel but questioned its findings when it implicated the Syrian government. The panel also found that Islamic State militants in Syria used mustard gas in August 2015. Moscow made clear last week that it would defeat the draft measure to impose sanctions on the Syrian government, calling it unbalanced. The Russian veto signaled how far Russia was willing to go to shield its ally in Damascus. Mr. Putin reinforced his opposition before the vote on Tuesday, adding that any Security Council penalties on the Syrian government would complicate diplomatic efforts underway in Geneva aimed at halting the war. “As for sanctions against the Syrian leadership, I think the move is totally inappropriate now,” he told a news conference while visiting Kyrgyzstan. “It does not help, would not help the negotiation process. It would only hurt or undermine confidence during the process. ” Human Rights Watch concluded in a recent report that the Syrian military had not only violated its promises not to use chemical weapons but had systematically dropped chlorine bombs in the final weeks of the battle to take the northern city of Aleppo last fall. | 1 |
His newest showstopper, a hotel near Miami, has three pools, a spa and eight restaurants, including a seriously upscale steakhouse. That electric blue sculpture in the lobby? You’d swear it was by Jeff Koons. Over near Orlando, work has started on his $800 million family resort, which will include a water park and 1, 200 homes priced at up to $1 million apiece. His company, which had $1. 5 billion in sales last year, is introducing a line of jewelry. He has one of America’s craft beers. A team — led by a former Google executive — is working to transform his digital media business. The man is Jimmy Buffett. And it’s time to toss whatever you thought you knew about his lazy, hazy Margaritaville out the window. Forget the ville. This is a Margarita World. “People are always shocked when they find out how big we’ve gotten,” Mr. Buffett said recently over lunch, grinning and splashing Tabasco on a modified Cobb salad. “We just kept quietly doing our thing. Not saying much. And now — bam! — here we are. ” Margaritaville, with its themed restaurants (erupting volcanoes, booths) started as a tropical cousin to T. G. I. Friday’s. Through trial and error, Mr. Buffett and a partner, John Cohlan, have since expanded Margaritaville Holdings to include four booming divisions: lodging, alcohol, licensing and media. Now, as they pursue growth for the first time overseas, where Mr. Buffett has a much softer fan base, they are trying to recast Margaritaville as a broad, aspirational brand — the Ralph Lauren of leisurely escape, if you will. “The stroke of genius was making Margaritaville a feeling, not a place,” said Mindy Grossman, the chief executive of the behemoths HSN and Frontgate, where Margaritaville items include a $799 hammock and $159 penny loafers. “If you don’t take the name so literally, growth could be endless. ” Endless? “O. K. not endless,” Ms. Grossman said. “I wouldn’t suggest doing fake fur coats. But almost. ” Mr. Buffett, patron saint of the untroubled, has long been known for his business acumen. In some ways, with his approach to concert merchandise and tour sponsorship in the 1980s, he created the model of that managers for artists like Madonna and Dave Matthews have pursued more recently. Other singers have parlayed their personas into business empires — Dolly Parton, for instance, with her Dollywood theme park, Dixie Stampede dinner theaters, Dolly slot machines and “Coat of Many Colors” merchandise — but none are as singularly sprawling as Mr. Buffett’s Margaritaville. “He understands his brand, which has a substantial reach,” Warren E. Buffett, a friend (but not a relative) said by phone. “One of the secrets to his success is that he never really loses any fans. ” Still, a thriving brand needs to steadily recruit new devotees, and that may be Margaritaville’s biggest challenge. While Mr. Buffett’s fan base includes young people — drunkenly singing along to “Margaritaville” in a college bar is practically an American rite of passage — his core followers are baby boomers. How does Margaritaville make itself more relevant to people in their 30s? What fuels sales of those licensed products once Mr. Buffett, 69, has warbled his last warble? It’s a subject that Mr. Cohlan, who is Margaritaville’s chief executive, was not especially keen to discuss. Asked about how the company thinks about a future without its public face, Mr. Cohlan said, “Jimmy Buffett is an American treasure,” and changed the subject. A more robust media presence beyond Mr. Buffett seems to be one answer. Last year, Mr. Cohlan expanded the company’s digital media efforts, which already included a SiriusXM satellite radio channel. He hired Laura Lee from the Google ranks, where she was a senior executive at YouTube, and charged her with building a digital content studio, improving Margaritaville’s social media presence and introducing mobile games. (One casual game coming in July will have users searching for their lost shaker of salt.) The goal is a fully formed ecosystem. Last year, an estimated 15 million people ate at one of Mr. Buffett’s 67 restaurants or stayed at one of his seven hotels and resorts. The company also wants the masses to buy Margaritaville food at their local grocery store (items like iced tea, frozen shrimp and tortilla chips are already on shelves) watch videos on their phones (“The Best Beach Bars of the Caribbean” is one idea in development) and maybe even sleep on Margaritaville bedsheets (in various designs, including “Strawberry Daiquiri” coral, starting at $19. 98). Ms. Lee’s efforts could also lead to more traditional TV programming. A model is Vice Media, which began as a video company and went on to sprout an HBO series and Viceland, a cable channel. Not by coincidence, Margaritaville in 2014 sold a minority stake to the Raine Group, a merchant bank known for its investment in Vice and ties to the William Morris Endeavor talent agency. “The international opportunity for the Margaritaville ecosystem is really exciting,” said Joe Ravitch, Raine’s . Mr. Buffett and Mr. Cohlan are of the rest of Margaritaville. In success, could Margaritaville be a candidate for a public offering? “The brand isn’t yet for everybody,” said the political polling expert Douglas E. Schoen, who has conducted extensive consumer research for Margaritaville. “It’s not for me, and it’s not for most journalists. But it’s much, much bigger than I initially thought. ” Mr. Schoen added, “It has the potential to be a major global brand. ” To understand the evolving Margaritaville, consider the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort (that’s Hollywood, Fla.) which cost $190 million to build and held its grand opening in November. Relying almost entirely on word of mouth, the hotel has reached an occupancy rate of 93 percent, the lodging equivalent of a smash hit. Euphoric Margaritaville executives estimate that Parrot Heads, as Mr. Buffett’s fans are known, make up less than 50 percent of the bookings: The hotel is attracting people that Mr. Buffett was probably not reaching before. “I personally sweated every freaking detail of this place for eight years,” said a beaming Mr. Cohlan in March, as he held court in the hotel’s lobby, which is accented with palm trees and a lime green and turquoise carpet. “Hey! Good to see you!” he hollered to an employee as she stopped to tell him how proud she was to work at the hotel. “Thank you, doll,” he said. “That means the world. ” Located about 40 minutes north of Miami Beach, Hollywood is still Old Florida, land of grim souvenir shops, jai alai courts and cinder block motels. And some residents worried that Mr. Buffett’s arrival would make it worse. “We don’t need people being wasted away in Margaritaville,” Audrey Joynt, a past president of the Hollywood Beach Business Association, told The Miami Herald in 2010, as Mr. Cohlan was pushing city managers to approve the project. But Margaritaville surprised critics by building a quite upscale resort. Envisioning a hotel sound system that blares “Cheeseburger in Paradise” until you want to lose your mind? Think again. Mr. Buffett’s songs play very sparingly. In fact, his persona often seems a half step removed. Rooms, decorated with white shutters, aqua blue accents and hardwood floors, start at nearly $300 and go up to $1, 800 for oceanfront suites. The steakhouse, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, could hold its own in Manhattan. “Hotel companies always make the same mistake when the budget gets tight at the end of a project,” Mr. Cohlan said. “The last coat of paint gets cut. But guess what? That’s what your guests see. ” Pat McBride, whose McBride Company designed the hotel, noted the lobby chandelier, made from dozens of margarita glasses. “It looks almost like Lalique,” he said by phone. Go ahead and roll your eyes. But see it and you realize that he was kind of right. There is a boozy, ’ ’ clientele, for sure. But there are also men and women in business suits — the hotel has 30, 000 square feet of meeting space — and guests like Lynn and Pam Wilken, visitors in their 50s from Ashkum, Ill. where they farm soybeans and run a candle business. “We don’t follow Jimmy Buffett’s music, but his name gave me comfort about booking a hotel online that we didn’t know anything about,” Mrs. Wilken said, as she lounged poolside with her husband. The couple, finishing a weeklong stay at the resort, vowed to come back, despite a caveat or two. “You don’t want to wander too far down the beach, particularly at night, but that’s fine with us. ” Mr. Wilken added: “It’s hard to put your finger on, but there is something authentic about this place. It doesn’t feel forced on you. ” That may be the biggest compliment of all. For a lifestyle brand to flourish, it cannot feel as if it was created by a corporate focus group. That genuineness is a difficult trick to pull off, as hotel giants like Marriott and Hyatt have learned with their attempts to build boutique chains like Edition and Andaz. “We somehow got it right,” Mr. Buffett said of the Hollywood property. “Thank you, Baby Jesus and John Cohlan. ” Fittingly, the Margaritaville empire started with a nap. The year was 1996, and Mr. Cohlan, then working for the corporate raider Nelson Peltz, known for targeting companies like Snapple and Arby’s, had gotten to know Mr. Buffett’s wife, Jane, on the Palm Beach, Fla. society circuit. One day, Mr. Cohlan turned up at the Buffetts’ home to talk about the potential growth of Margaritaville, which was then just a popular song — released in 1977, it peaked at No. 8 on the pop charts — and a chainlet. But the singer was asleep. “Had it not been for Jane, who went to wake Jimmy up, this extremely successful partnership might not have happened,” said Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, who knows both men. Asked about this anecdote, Mr. Buffett smiled sheepishly and said: “I do like a good nap. That’s true. ” Mr. Buffett opened his first Margaritaville restaurant in 1987 in Key West, Fla. It found instant success — so much, in fact, that he opened a second location in New Orleans in 1993. But the sequel was a relative dud, and Mr. Buffett applied the brakes, rebuffing an offer from the Walt Disney Company to build a lavishly themed Margaritaville at a Walt Disney World shopping mall. Enter Mr. Cohlan. He had recently experienced the Parrot Head phenomenon for himself — their wild tropical clothing, their endless tailgating — and had an epiphany. “All I really knew before I went to that concert was that girls would put on halter tops and play his songs when the weather turned nice,” he said. “When I saw him perform, I said to myself, ‘Whoa. Holy . This is a brand. ’” Mr. Buffett took on Mr. Cohlan as a partner, and together they began to expand Margaritaville, beginning at the Universal Orlando Resort, which at that time was owned by Seagram. Mr. Buffett recalled how he told Seagram during negotiations that he had one final request: “Can you just tilt that bridge a little so that people leaving your park literally roll into the front doors of my restaurant?” Mr. Cohlan and Mr. Buffett cracked up recalling the look on the Seagram team’s face. Just before the Orlando opening, Mr. Cohlan played hardball with Seagram over a liquor matter and inadvertently started a new line of business. Seagram, which also owned Mr. Buffett’s record company then, had introduced Parrot Bay rum, which Mr. Buffett felt his band’s Parrot Head imagery. Mr. Cohlan — quite seriously, this time — told Seagram that Margaritaville would boycott its alcohol. In a matter of weeks, Margaritaville had its own tequila and beer brand. The theme park Margaritaville has been a runaway hit since opening in 1999. Last year, according to Mr. Cohlan, the restaurant generated about $22 million in sales. Something about Mr. Buffett’s mellow, unchallenging persona seems to make parents feel O. K. about tying one on with their children in tow. “Believe me,” Mr. Buffett said, “I didn’t know I was going to end up as family entertainment, either. ” Not everything has gone Margaritaville’s way. For starters, that early beer, Lone Palm Lager, named after one of Mr. Buffett’s songs, did not sell as they had hoped. “We only found out later, after we did consumer research to figure out what was going on, that the name bummed people out because it made them think about drinking alone,” Mr. Cohlan said. They renamed it LandShark Lager, a nod to Mr. Buffett’s song “Fins. ” : Sales started to take off. The company’s first resort, a planned $700 million casino and hotel in Biloxi, Miss. was delayed by the economic collapse. Margaritaville eventually opened a much smaller hotel in Biloxi, but it went belly up, perhaps because the company picked a bad location. This month Mr. Cohlan announced a third attempt, set to open later this year. This time, there will be more of a family focus, and no casino. Eight more Margaritaville hotels, including one in Grand Cayman, are in various stages of development. Margaritaville’s signature restaurant chain is expanding quickly — it will soon push into California for the first time, opening at Universal Studios Hollywood — but a spinoff series of restaurants in the Midwest called Cheeseburger in Paradise has struggled. Margaritaville sold its Cheeseburger stake in 2005 and, since then, roughly half the locations have closed as the brand was lobbed between owners. Still, Margaritaville has mostly had smooth sailing, building a unique corporate culture — employees all use the same valediction in emails: “Fins Up!” — and drawing fanatic customers like Carol and Butch Wayland, who live in St. Catharines, Ontario. The Waylands, who own a trade school, have made it their mission to visit as many Margaritaville outposts as possible in May they plan to try their first Margaritaville at Sea, a new offering by Norwegian Cruise Line. “We’re not Parrot Heads,” Mrs. Wayland said. “We’re just normal, everyday people who happen to be residents of the Margaritaville state of mind. ” Mrs. Wayland, who is in her 50s, added that she had “spent a fortune” on Margaritaville products, including hats, dress shirts, shorts, clocks, coffee mugs, barware, a blender and underwear. They also have a framed photograph of themselves popping out of a Jacuzzi, snapped at a Margaritaville location in the Caribbean. If all of this sounds like maybe Mrs. Wayland sometimes has one margarita too many, she wouldn’t entirely disagree. “That too!” she said. “I once fell off a bar stool at the Margaritaville in Turks and Caicos and landed right in the water. Kerplop. ” | 1 |
BUSTED: Clinton Foundation Directly Tied To Plot To Steal Election Posted on October 27, 2016 by Prissy Holly in Politics Share This
Ever since early voting began, numerous reports are claiming that the electronic voting machines are rigged, as votes for Donald Trump are automatically switched to Hillary Clinton. We’ve all begun to suspect that Hillary is behind the scam, and now, we have further proof that Democrats are the ones tampering with these machines as part of their intricate plan to steal the election.
We recently reported how Hillary’s evil billionaire funder George Soros owns the voting machines in 16 key states, which immediately set off warning bells nationwide. Disturbingly, the massive fraud taking place is not just confined to those 16 areas, as another crooked player in Hillary’s election-stealing plot has just been revealed.
In a bombshell just unearthed by independent researcher Micro Spooky Leaks , A Canadian company by the name of Dominion Voting provides the voting machines to 600 jurisdictions in 22 states and is directly linked to the Clinton Foundation as one of their massive donors.
On their homepage, the company alludes to how they help rig elections, stating “ we strive to change elections for the better!” which is a chilling statement considering they supply 50% of the electronic voting machines on the U.S. voting market.
Right after this startling information was revealed, however, it appears as though Democrats immediately began white-washing the information, as the link to the statement on the Wikipedia page that corroborated the bombshell information was mysteriously removed.
Hillary has played dirty for years, and it appears as though her antics aren’t stopping now. After murdering many people close to exposing her scandals as a way to prevent them from ruining her presidential bid, the only thing left now is to steal the election through massive voter fraud.
The picture at this point is becoming bleak. There’s no doubt that Donald Trump can defeat Hillary, as evidenced by his early lead in many historically blue states, and the recent bombshell that Hillary’s lead across many polls is completely fake.
However, fighting back against electronic voting machines that have been calibrated by Hillary operatives to switch votes from Republican to Democrat will be extremely difficult. The only thing we can do at this point is demand a paper ballot when we vote. Dominion Voting machines that will be used in 22 states
We are coming down to the wire here. Every day, more information surfaces on Hillary and the Democrats’ crooked scheme to steal the election. Continue to share stories like this and help fight back and spread the information.
Knowledge is power, and with the ability to instantly share information with the internet, we can help expose what’s going on by constantly barraging our clueless friends and family members with the truth. | 0 |
By Suprabha Seshan / localfutures.org
For many years, I’ve seen more and more of my rural and tribal neighbors pack their children off to school. Now, every morning between 8:00 and 9:00 am in this upwardly-mobile-yet-backward district, the country roads are full of children commuting to school, hoisting bags laden with what they believe is the wisdom and knowhow of modern culture. They are going for vidyabhyaasam (education, or more literally speaking, ‘the exercise of knowledge’), and they go to the keepers of this knowledge – to teachers in schools. Everyone (parents, children, the state and society) deems this to be good and necessary.
While I’ve long been a champion of equal opportunities, I’m now starting to believe that a dark and dangerous psychic predicament is falling upon this land, in part aided by the simultaneous entry of television into village homes, and a slew of fickle government policies aimed at progress, modernity and the end of poverty.
The result is that self-reliance and land-based sustenance have been, more or less, replaced by a mobile populace commuting daily in the hope of finding skills, knowledge, support, wisdom and security elsewhere. A perverse notion – that the ‘other is better’ than self and home, that this ‘other’ can be acquired through hard work, enterprise, subsidies and bank loans, that everyone is now entitled to this ‘other’– is now here in our midst.
Since mental and social strife are also increasing, perhaps this version of modernity, underneath all the glitter and promise, needs some examination. Is it for instance, instilling aspirations that can never be truly fulfilled? Is it exchanging one type of poverty for another? What happens to family and community relations once the young leave? What do these children do, once schooled?
The subsidiary thesis of this essay is that modern education serves a version of Gulag, by forcing our young to suffer unspeakable conditions at an early age, by compelling them to do school work and homework for a greater part of their day. By sustaining this over long periods, at the most crucial time in their vulnerable years, it breaks them, in order to refashion them into a pliable workforce. By the end of schooling, if they succeed, the young are yoked, through fear and the promise of salvation. (If they fail, as indeed most do, they are consigned to lesser destinies). This arduous entrainment is essential for the great global workplace, and can only happen with various forms of rewards, promises, threats, violence and incarceration.
Incarceration (both voluntary and involuntary), when sustained and normalized, leads to a range of issues—shutdown, frustration, disorder, escape, split psychologies, helplessness, dissociation, physical ailments and phobias. These can be seen amongst children, prisoners, slaves, caged and beaten animals, controlled peoples.
The primary thesis of this essay is that the psychic predicament just outlined goes hand in hand with the destruction of life, with the catastrophic end of the biosphere.
A DIY manual for colonizing a new land might read:
• First persuade, seduce, bribe or devastate the people. Break up their society, their beliefs, and their ways of life.• Take over their rivers, and their forests. Do this by hook or crook. Or use plain force, no pretense.• Convince them that it’s for their own good. Even better, work on the young. Instill the idea that you have something supremely better to offer.• Draw them into the concrete jungle, into the cyber machine, into the factorial workplace, into the idea of the good life in the shining city.• At all times control their food and water: this instills fear and compliance.• Then, sever their allegiance to their bodies and psyches; hook them to the machine.• Be the mighty provider.
Evicted populations, trans-located communities, weakened land-based cultures, and migrant workforces need to be fed, watered, educated, employed, housed and kept docile with entertainment. You have them when you’ve sold them the idea of choice while you’ve closed all the exit points, and they eat what you supply. Enter a new species of human bred on petroleum-driven food, petroleum-driven water, petroleum-driven health, petroleum-driven culture, petroleum-driven mind.
Little bodies I’ve known, bodies tumbling, climbing, swimming, running, now sit still for long hours, with book/notebook/pencil in hand, in thrall, if not of the authority at the far end of the classroom, then of their fantasies. Little minds I’ve known, curious, aware, sensitive, attuned to the lives of creatures, rivers, land and each other thrown into the maw of the global machine, to be carried away to faraway lands and cities.
The young are given thoughts, ideas and behaviors to follow or imitate, and to believe without question, to accept without dispute, and to ignore the call of their own bodies. By the end of schooling students take the following to be truths: everything comes with a price tag; it’s possible to have an economy without an ecology; the earth is irrelevant; other humans are irrelevant; life is a matter of goods, gadgets, cash transactions and services.
It’s a rare community that does not send its children away to the cold vigilant ‘care’ of ever-distant adults of varying backgrounds and temperaments, teaching ever-distant things, for the sake of progress and human betterment. This sending away, experienced by children variously as severance, uprooting or exile, is done with good intention, and full conviction.
The Left, the fringe, the rebels and the spiritually-minded have clearly outlined how schools breed factory workers, zombies and psychopaths. I’d like to propose that schooling is necessary for building a hierarchy of egos by destroying the individual’s inherence in community through an insidiously brutal system of reward and punishment normalized in the name of education and social advancement. This hierarchy of egos, with an elite at the top commanding much of the world’s wealth and people, is essential to genocide and ecocide.
Today, I’m on a journey with a friend of mine, a Kurchiya tribesman. We’ve just come out of a forest to a town bursting with tourist operations, shops selling trinkets, hippie clothing, multinational beverages. I look back towards the jungle, with its thousands of species of living beings, its hills, rivers, valleys, and rain clouds swirling, upswelling. Then my gaze cursorily moves over a famous quote from Nelson Mandela, painted on a compound wall, “Education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world”.
My first thought is that different realities can be juxtaposed in one eye-sweep. Second, Mandela was not a pacifist. Third, there’s a premise here that education is a positive thing, and that there is a shared definition of education. Fourth, Hmmm, that sounds like propaganda, it’s a statement aiming to change the world. Fifth, if the word ‘weapon’ is being used, surely there’s a war going on, or theft, injustice, or unspeakable violence, and that education is part of a militant struggle. My sixth thought is that that quote is now used by liberals, right-wingers, leftists, corporate-types and has over two million hits on Google! Just goes to show how great quotes can be co-opted to serve any agenda!
Are the following true or false, or just inconvenient?
• Modern education serves the corporate mindset, which serves a psychopathic mind-set that is behind planetary destruction.
• Modern education feeds young minds and bodies into the industrial machine. It does this, overtly or covertly, by destroying traditional forms of community and replacing them with notions of the global workforce, the global market. By doing this it ends up serving forces of capitalism, industrialism, and a system that rewards the elite.
• Modern education fetishizes abstraction. It rewards adepts of abstraction and standardization. By starting this early in life, the body becomes subservient to concept and clock, to the virtual, the distant and the measurable.
Modern schooling fractures the individual in a number of irreparable ways. The fractures are complex, and many: the child from sustained intimate body contact with mother, with family; the child from neighbors; the child’s mind from its body, from the natural environment, common/community sense, the land-base; the child from the real and the multi-dimensional (to the abstract and the virtual); from local history (to someone else’s future or past); the child from wholeness (towards a fragmentedness); the child from magic, oral histories, gleaming cosmologies, peopled and alive (to facts derived by unknown people and machines); the child from living beings (to inanimate things); the child from rootedness and sense of place; the child from natural, cyclical, expansive time.
Life is thus reduced to a matter of negotiating between split worlds, split mind-bodies, split communities, split realities, split values, split responsibilities, split knowledge domains, split geographies, split identities, split loyalties. How can a little human being possibly tolerate this?
R D Laing wrote:
“In order to rationalize our industrial-military complex, we have to destroy our capacity to see clearly any more what is in front of, and to imagine what is beyond, our noses. Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste to our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high IQs, if possible.”
Is it a stretch of imagination that school life is a continuous process of disintegration and estrangement? Study after study guarantees that, by the end of formative education, few children have healthy levels of self-esteem and self-worth, including the ones who worked hard and proved to themselves that they could achieve their goals and desires. How many students leave school with vibrant connections to a community that they will contribute to, as it has contributed to them? How many are comfortable in their skins? How many remain ‘whole’? The subtext for graduates of schooling goes thus: her body is better than mine, their body type is better than our body type; his mind is better than mine; their minds are better than ours. Their culture is better than mine: television says it’s so.
My Kurchiya friend, a superlative tracker, now raises his children on a diet of Animal Planet and Discovery channels, homework, white rice, white sugar. No jungle meat, no walks on the wild side. I ask him if he intends to teach his jungle craft to his children. He says he will, that he wants his children to know healing with plants and the ways of animals, but that he also wants them to go to school. Vidyabhyaasam is a good and necessary thing, he declares. I ask him about Kurchiya vidyabhyaasam . He misunderstands me and says they have no schools. I ask him how they teach their young. He replies that girls and boys are socialized to become responsible members of their community, with different sets of instructions for either sex, offered by elders in the community or their parents, through a variety of rituals, celebrations, guidance and tasks. Boys, for instance, have bows made for them when they are very small, just to play with, and then they start accompanying the men to the forest, where there is a lot to learn about every animal, and about the forest.
The Kurchiyas were fierce rebels and proud fighters. They could read the forest better than you and I can read a book. Now they work for wages, and their children go to school. Once they’ve been educated and urbanized, their bows will be mass-produced for tourist outlets; their elders will recount tales of valor to travelers in homestays, between television commercials; and their amazing bodies will succumb to various forms of civilization-induced diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cancer.
An oft-touted development mandate goes something like this, “Get the children in school, and crime rates will drop”. The more I see the effects of modern civilization the more I think, “Get those children in school, make them extensions of the machine, and the living world, the real world, including themselves, will drop.” | 0 |
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During a meeting with governors, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, emphasized that, the job of a governor is not limited to the governmental representation in the province, but it is also important that the citizens feel that the Governor is their representative in the government. This is an opportunity for deeper and greater cooperation between governors, citizens and local councils.
He also noted the importance of Law enforcement for all, justly and similar. It is an issue, that requires more research, to uncover corruption in the offices first, and then to fight with it. It also requires exclusion for personal usage of public funds in governmental institutions, creating a cooperation system between public and private institutions and protection of customer rights by removing price fluctuations.
The President also stated the need for a great attention to the affairs of the families of martyrs and war veterans is to repay at least a small part of the sacrifices that they made for Syria. He also announced that Syria will continue the fight against terrorism. | 0 |
Even the New York Times Magazine, a liberal outlet, is convinced that Facebook’s new manifesto — influenced by none other than former president Barack Obama — will be considered politically partisan. [The NYT Magazine notes in its story “Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug?” that changes Facebook is looking to make, especially to its News Feed, “are bound to be considered partisan. ” But if the company pursues the admittedly airy aims outlined in “Building Global Community,” the changes will echo across media and politics, and some are bound to be considered partisan. The risks are especially clear for changes aimed at adding layers of journalistic ethics across News Feed, which could transform the public’s perception of Facebook, not to mention shake the foundations of its business. According to NYT Magazine, Zuckerberg was “dismayed” that the planned changes might be seen as an attack on President Donal Trump and took the opportunity to “shoot down” rumors that the Facebook CEO plans to run against the President in 2020. At the time of our second interview, the manifesto was still only a draft, and I was surprised by how unsure Zuckerberg seemed about it in person. He had almost as many questions for us — about whether we understood what he was trying to say, how we thought it would land in the media — as we had for him. When I suggested that it might be perceived as an attack on Trump, he looked dismayed. He noted several times that he had been noodling over these ideas since long before November. A few weeks earlier, there was media speculation, fueled by a postelection tour of America by Zuckerberg and his wife, that he was laying the groundwork to run against Trump in 2020, and in this meeting he took pains to shoot down the rumors. Nevertheless, as NYT Magazine points out, pressure to change Facebook’s algorithms and tackle “fake news” came about as a direct response to the election of Trump and the popularity of Breitbart News’ election coverage on the social media platform. After studying how people shared 1. 25 million stories during the campaign, a team of researchers at M. I. T. and Harvard implicated Facebook and Twitter in the larger failure of media in 2016. The researchers found that social media created a right wing echo chamber: a “media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyperpartisan perspective to the world. ” The findings partially echoed a long held worry about social news: that people would use sites like Facebook to cocoon themselves into self reinforcing bubbles of confirmatory ideas, to the detriment of civility and a shared factual basis from which to make collective, democratic decisions. A week and a half after the election, President Obama bemoaned “an age where there’s so much active misinformation and it’s packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. ” Read the full piece at the New York Times website. You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Election WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 23: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the Center for American Progress March 23, 2015 in Washington, DC. Clinton joined a panel in discussing challenges facing urban centers in the United States. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) FBI Investigators “99% Sure” 5 Foreign Intelligence Agencies Hacked Clinton’s Private Server Shane Ashton November 2, 2016 FBI Investigators “99% sure” 5 Foreign Intelligence Agencies Hacked Clinton’s Private Server. Hillary Clinton has a lot of explaining to do! As reported by Lou Dobbs on Fox News:
Breaking new developments tonight in the FBI investigation. Investigators are now, as I said to you at the outset, 99% sure that as many as five foreign intelligence agencies, were able to hack into the Clinton email server and did put national security in jeopardy. That according to FBI sources. A direct contradiction, of course, of president Obama’s assertion to CBS News just last October.
Previous reporting from FBI Director James Comey in his July 5 press conference concluded that there was no evidence that any foreign enemies had gained access to the server.
Perhaps the newly discovered laptop owned by former Congressman Anthony Weiner and top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin contained new information that shows that foreign actors did indeed gain access to the server.
Republicans were dismayed at the original decision to not charge Secretary Clinton, arguing that just the mere presence of a private server put national security at risk. Director Comey argued that there was no evidence of intent to unknowingly share classified information. However, 18 U.S. Code § 798 – Disclosure of classified information states:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information […] Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
This statute could be argued that intent is not necessary for prosecution, merely the making available of classified information is grounds for prosecution.
These new developments will be another boon to an already horrible week for the Clinton camp, as the new FBI investigation has led to the tightening of polls.
REGATED will cover the latest developments as they come along. The following two tabs change content below. Latest Posts Shane Ashton Shane Ashton is a writer for REGATED, interested in political theory, conservatism, and all things Boston. He is consistently seen at Fenway Park and has been known to sleep outside for World Series tickets. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneRegated Latest posts by Shane Ashton ( see all ) | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. A second night of protests over a police shooting turned violent in Charlotte, N. C. Gunfire at a demonstration left one man critically injured on life support and prompted law enforcement authorities to fire tear gas on the crowd. The episode that set off the protests was the killing of a black man, Keith Scott. He was the third African American fatally shot by police officers in a week. _____ 2. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to save a “shattered” in Syria, two days after a lethal airstrike destroyed much of an aid convoy destined for Aleppo. He expressed frustration with Russia, which the U. S. holds accountable for the strike, and bluntly lashed out at the Syrian government. “How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals and drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again and again and again?” he said at a meeting of the U. N. Security Council. _____ 3. A notebook kept by the suspect in the weekend bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey includes a list of international terrorist leaders, suggesting that he was inspired by both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Above, an image from a Homeland Security video. And investigators are hunting for two men who happened upon a second bomb left in Chelsea on Saturday — and who walked off with the bag it was in, leaving the wrapped bomb behind. Some law enforcement officials said their jostling might have disabled the bomb, averting greater carnage. _____ 4. Only now is it becoming clear how seriously European terrorism investigations were damaged by a deliberately set fire at Belgium’s main forensic storehouse last month. The fire — set by three people who simply cut through a perimeter fence in the middle of the night — destroyed thousands of pieces of evidence critical to the prosecution of some suspects in the Paris and Brussels attacks, along with hundreds of other criminal and terrorism cases. _____ 5. In the presidential race, Hillary Clinton outlined both a plan to fight poverty (create jobs and affordable housing) and her vision of an “inclusive economy” that expands job options for Americans with disabilities. The unspoken undercurrent of that second plan: one of Donald Trump most unpopular moments, when he mocked a Times reporter who has a physical disability. _____ 6. Mr. Trump had a couple of stumbles in his attempts to raise his historically low support from voters. He urged a nationwide effort, saying the practice had worked well in New York. In fact, it was deeply controversial in New York and has been halted. And Mr. Trump’s appearance at a meeting of black pastors in Ohio suffered when Don King, the boxing promoter, shifted from “Negro” to a racial epithet in his introduction. _____ 7. “What once seemed impossible now appears inevitable. ” That was the U. N. secretary general, Ban announcing that the Paris climate agreement would almost certainly go into legal force this year after a remarkably rapid collection of commitments from signatory nations. Here is our full coverage of the United Nations General Assembly. _____ 8. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, set a high bar for philanthropy last year when they pledged to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity. Their first major science initiative is, to say the least, ambitious. They are dedicating $3 billion to prevent, cure or manage all diseases by the end of the century. _____ 9. What do Basques, African pygmies, Sherpas and Cree Indians share? Apparently — along with the rest of us — origins in a single population that emerged from Africa between 50, 000 and 80, 000 years ago. Three teams of researchers who analyzed genomes from around the world have solved one of the most important mysteries of human history. “We know there were multiple dispersals out of Africa, but we can trace our ancestry back to a single one,” a genome expert said. _____ 10. There were also revelations from sometime around the first century A. D. Experts using a new computer imaging program were able to virtually unwrap a burned, fragile ancient scroll, revealing the earliest known example of the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible. “We have never found something as striking as this,” an expert on the Dead Sea scrolls said. Above, a composite of the scroll. _____ 11. Whether Deflategate rises in importance to the level of history may be debated by New England Patriots fans. But rigorous science applies there, too. Researchers whose work led to Tom Brady’s suspension are finally talking about their careful tests and retests. “We knew this was going to get a lot of scrutiny, from your science classes to your physics professors,” one said. In the end, they failed to turn up any plausible reason outside of tampering for why the Patriots’ game balls were underinflated in a crucial game in January 2015. _____ 12. Finally, what are Finnish postal workers encouraged to do for patrons besides delivering mail: mow the lawn, tutor basic math and reading, share other patrons’ magazine or play charades? The question is not out of the blue — it’s from our international desk’s quiz in honor of its 100th What in the World feature. (The answer is “mow the lawn,” so you’re already one up!) _____ 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 |
Europe, the United Kingdom, and Russia have witnessed terror attacks or attempted attacks every nine days in 2017 on average, analysis of security incidents has revealed. [Since January, around 52 people have been killed by mostly Islamic terrorists, while almost 250 have been injured. The only known incident not linked to jihadism in 2017 was the attack on the Borussia Dortmund soccer team by a national attempting to profit from stock in the company. Attacks and attempted attacks have taken place in Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. Security services in Britain — population 65 million — believe there to be around 23, 000 potential terror suspects or persons posing a threat. Meanwhile Belgium, with its population of just 12 million, is officially tracking around 18, 000 potential jihadists, though this number has not been updated in some time. A further minimum of 14 terror attacks have occurred in Turkey in 2017, a NATO member country currently being considered for European Union membership. Note: This post has been updated to reflect the London Bridge attack as well as the attempted Notre Dame hammer attack. Details: | 1 |
Who’s laughing now?
( Watch at Youtube )
And for some good comedy from Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle On Saturday Night Live’s Election Nigh wrap-up:
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As many as 2, 000 veterans planned to gather next week at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to serve as “human shields” for protesters who have for months clashed with the police over the construction of an oil pipeline, organizers said. The effort, called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, is planned as a nonviolent intervention to defend the demonstrators from what the group calls “assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force. ” The veterans’ plan coincides with an announcement on Tuesday by law enforcement officials that they may begin imposing fines to block supplies from entering the main protest camp after a mandatory evacuation order from the governor. Officials had warned earlier of a physical blockade, but the governor’s office later backed away from that, Reuters said. Protesters have vowed to stay put. Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline have gathered for months at the Oceti Sakowin camp, about 40 miles south of Bismarck. The Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes fear the pipeline could pollute the Missouri River and harm sacred cultural lands and tribal burial grounds. The evacuation order issued on Monday by Gov. Jack Dalrymple cited “anticipated harsh weather conditions. ” It came before a winter storm dumped about six inches of snow and brought strong winds to the area on Monday, making roads “roads nearly impassable at the camp sites,” according to Doualy Xaykaothao of Minnesota Public Radio, who was cited by NPR. The governor’s statement said, “Any person who chooses to enter, or stay in the evacuation does so at their own risk. ” The order was effective immediately and was to remain in place indefinitely. The veterans’ effort will also run up against a plan by the Army Corps of Engineers to close off access to the protesters’ campsite and create a “free speech zone. ” Federal officials said anyone found on the land after Dec. 5 could be charged with trespassing. “Yeah, good luck with that,” Michael A. Wood Jr. a founder of the veterans’ event, said in an interview. Mr. Wood, who served in the Marine Corps, organized the event with Wesley Clark Jr. a screenwriter, activist and son of Wesley K. Clark, the retired Army general and onetime supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO. Mr. Wood said he had initially hoped to attract about 500 veterans he had to stop when they reached 2, 000. He said volunteers are from diverse backgrounds: “We have every age, we have every war. ” An online has drawn over $570, 000 in pledges as of Tuesday afternoon to pay for food, transportation and supplies for the veterans’ “muster,” which was planned for Dec. . One veteran, Loreal Black Shawl, said the mission to support the protesters was intensely personal. Ms. Black Shawl, 39, of Rio Rancho, N. M. is a descendant of two Native American tribes, the Oglala Lakota and Northern Arapaho. She served in the Army for nearly eight years, finishing her career as a sergeant. “O. K. are you going to treat us veterans who have served our country in the same way as you have those water protectors?” Ms. Black Shawl said, referring to the protesters. “We’re not there to create chaos. We are there because we are tired of seeing the water protectors being treated as . ” The authorities have used rubber bullets, pepper spray and water cannons against demonstrators, hundreds of whom have been injured, according to protest organizers. The clashes have been highly contentious, with the police and demonstrators leveling accusations of violence at each other. Some protesters filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Morton County police and others, alleging excessive use of force and seeking a court injunction to prevent the authorities from using rubber bullets, explosive grenades and water cannons, according to The Atlantic. One woman was injured and in danger of losing her arm after an explosion at the protest site this month. By spotlighting issues such as the use of force by the police, national energy policies and the treatment of Native Americans, the protests have garnered national headlines and widespread attention on social media. Ms. Black Shawl acknowledged that the operation could prove problematic because the veterans and the police both have military or tactical training. She said she had a “huge, huge nervousness and anxiety” about possibly being injured and what could happen to other veterans. An “operations order” for participants outlined the logistics with military precision and language, referring to opposing forces, friendly forces and supporting units. Organizers encouraged attendees to wear their old uniforms. Mr. Wood said they were discouraging service members from attending. “There’s no reason for them to get into hot water,” he said. In a break from military custom, the gathering will have a “chain of responsibility” instead of a chain of command, he said. There are no ranks, and participants will refer to one another by their given names. Mr. Wood said the early stages of the event will be logistical: setting up tents and organizing food supplies. The first arrivals are expected on Wednesday. The premise is for the veterans to be fully he said. “There will be civilian and tribe members watching us from behind but nobody supporting us,” the operations order said. “We are the cavalry. ” A spokesman for the North Dakota State Highway Patrol, Lt. Thomas O. Iverson, said in an email on Monday, “Law enforcement is aware of the upcoming event planned for December . ” He added, “If the group remains lawful and refrains from blocking the roadway, there will be no issues. ” Some officials expressed the hope that the demonstrators would move on. “The and property of ranchers, farmers and everyone else living in the region should not be threatened by protesters who are willing to commit acts of violence,” Senator John Hoeven, a Republican, said in a statement on Friday, The Associated Press reported. The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Dave Archambault II, said in an email that he had no concerns that tensions could escalate. “Everyone that comes knows our intent — to remain in peace and prayer,” he said. | 1 |
If Hillary Clinton is elected president on Tuesday, and if what Bret Baier is reporting from FBI sources on Fox News is true, America is headed for a constitutional crisis.
Indeed, it would seem imperative that FBI Director James Comey, even if it violates protocol and costs him his job, should state publicly whether what Baier’s FBI sources are telling him is false or true.
The people have a right to know — before Tuesday.
For, if true, Clinton could face charges in 2017 and impeachment and removal from office in 2018.
According to Baier, FBI agents have found new emails, believed to have originated on Clinton’s server, on the computer jointly used by close aide Huma Abedin and her disgraced husband, Anthony Weiner.
Abedin’s failure to turn this computer over to the State Department on leaving State appears to be a violation of U.S. law.
Moreover, the laptops of close Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, thought destroyed by the FBI, were apparently retained and are “being exploited” by the National Security division.
And here is the salient point. His FBI sources told Baier, “with 99 percent” certitude, that Clinton’s Chappaqua server “had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence services…”
If this is so, Hillary Clinton as security risk ranks right up there with Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, though they acted out of treasonous ideology and she out of Clintonian hubris. What do these foreign intelligence agencies know about Clinton that the voters do not?
The second revelation from Baier is that the Clinton Foundation has been under active investigation by the white-collar crime division of the FBI for a year and is a “very high priority.”
Specifically, the FBI is looking into published allegations of “pay-to-play.” This is the charge that the Clinton State Department traded access, influence and policy decisions to foreign regimes and to big donors who gave hundreds of millions to the Clinton Foundation, along with 15 years of six-figure speaking fees for Bill and Hillary.
According to Baier’s sources, FBI agents are “actively and aggressively” pursuing this case, have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple persons, and are now being inundated in an “avalanche of new information” from WikiLeaks documents and new emails.
The FBI told Baier that they anticipate indictments.
Indeed, with the sums involved, and the intimate ties between high officials of Bill’s foundation, and Hillary and her close aides at State, it strains credulity to believe that deals were not discussed and cut.
Books have been written alleging and detailing them.
Also, not only Fox News but also The Wall Street Journal and other news sources are reporting on what appears a rebellion inside the FBI against strictures on their investigations imposed by higher ups in the Department of Justice of Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Director Comey has come under fire from left and right — first for refusing to recommend the prosecution of Clinton, then for last week’s statement about the discovery of new and “pertinent” emails on the Abedin-Weiner computer — but retains a reputation for integrity.
And he knows better than any other high official the answer to a critical question that needs answering before Tuesday: Has Baier been fed exaggerated or false information by FBI agents hostile to Clinton?
Or has Baier been told the truth?
In the latter case, we are facing a constitutional crisis if Clinton is elected. And the American people surely have a right to know that before they go to the polls on Tuesday.
What is predictable ahead?
Attorney General Lynch, whether she stays or goes, will be hauled before Congress to explain whether she or top aides impeded the FBI investigations of the Clinton scandals. And witnesses from within her Justice department and FBI will also be called to testify.
Moreover, Senate Republicans would block confirmation of any new attorney general who did not first promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the email and pay-to-play scandals, and any pressure from Lynch’s Justice Department on the FBI.
Even Democrats would concede that a Department of Justice, staffed by Hillary Clinton appointees, could not credibly be entrusted with investigating alleged high crimes and misdemeanors by former Secretary of State Clinton and confidants like Abedin and Mills.
An independent counsel, a special prosecutor, appears inevitable.
And such individuals usually mark their success or failure by how many and how high are the indictments and convictions they rack up.
However, these processes proceed at a torpid pace.
First comes the setting up of the office and the hirings, then the investigations, then the grand jury appearances, then the indictments, then the prosecutions, then the horse-trading for the testimony of the accused and the convicted in return for immunity or leniency.
Steadily, it moves up the food chain. And when a head of state is involved, it is a process deeply debilitating to the nation.
We have gone through this before, twice.
Do we really want to go through it again?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2016 Creators.com. | 0 |
By wmw_admin on November 5, 2016 End Times Daily — Nov 1, 2016 St. Rosalie’s Parish Eucharistic Chapel, Hampton Bays, NY Our Lady of Light My dear son, On this very important feast day in the Church of My Son Jesus, the Redeemer of the world, I come to you with greetings from not only your Heavenly Mother, but also from your brothers and sisters, who are now united with us in the Eternal Kingdom of the Father in Heaven. You must know that your brothers and sisters are particularly saddened by the events that are taking place in your world, but your brothers and sisters in Heaven know resolutely that all will be fulfilled in the end according to the Word of the Father in Heaven. But your brothers and sisters know the challenges that you are going through in your world, particularly in the United States of America, where the evil one, the demon from hell, is currently waging his battle for the future of your country, and his minions are working overtime to keep the evil one in power and control over the rest of you. The challenge for you living here on Earth, not only in America, but throughout the world is to identify and defeat the minions of satan, who are stealthily going about their plans to create a draconian new world order to dominate and control the rest of you. Alas! Now the minions of satan are becoming exposed to the rest of you, as it has been ordained through the intervention of the Father in Heaven through His Son, the Redeemer of the world. In your governments, your institutions, your foundations, your places of higher learning, as well as through your commercial businesses and entities, and in your media and entertainment, you are seeing the work of the evil one stripped bare and the minions of the evil one fully exposed now. This dressing down of the minions of satan has been made necessary for the Father’s plans for mankind to be realized. However, the Father in Heaven and His Son, the Redeemer of the world, are relying on you, the sons and daughters of all that is good, to stand up to the challenge presented by those who are supporting all that is evil. Never before has it been so clear to you, who among your public figures have sworn their allegiance to the evil one, so it is imperative upon humanity in these times to remove these evilly motivated and controlled individuals from places of power and authority, for such is the will of your Father in Heaven. You have been given a unique opportunity in the history of mankind to reduce, nay to eliminate, all the evil in the world that comes from satan, but that is implemented and fueled by his minions. Do not avoid the truth at this point! Now is the time to remove the despots from their positions of power and authority and to replace them with those who can align themselves with the Heavenly Father and His Son to usher in a New Heaven and a New Earth, as opposed to the new world order of the evil one. So be it! | 0 |
The NFL’s second season is here with the Wild Round Playoff Weekend upon us. [For you patriots out there, only two national anthem kneelers remain, Miami’s Michael Thomas and wide receiver Kenny Still. So if the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dolphins on Sunday, you won’t have to deal with this anymore. Of the four games this weekend, the best one might be the last one, the New York Giants battling the Green Bay Packers at 4:40 PM on Sunday. Here is a breakdown of the Wildcard . . . Oakland Raiders ( ) at Houston Texans ( ) Saturday, January 7, 4:35 PM on ESPN NRG Stadium, Houston, Texas, With their top two quarterbacks (Derek Carr and Matt McGloin) injured, the Raiders have to start rookie Connor Cook. Watch Cook for great theater in his first ever NFL start. Nobody really knows what to expect. He certainly looks the part at 230 with a rocket arm, and is used to playing in situations as a starter for Michigan State in the Big Ten Conference. Playing road games at places like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State has certainly thickened his skin. And the Raiders don’t have the only intriguing QB situation entering this game. The Texans will start Brock Osweiler, who they signed to last but then benched late in the regular season due to ineffectiveness. Now he’s back in the saddle after his replacement, Tom Savage, got concussed in Week 17. Perhaps Osweiler put too much pressure on himself trying to live up to his $72 million contract, so this time around, he’s just going to enjoy himself. “I told myself, ‘If you get an opportunity to go back in, just go have fun,’” Osweiler said “Get back to the joy of football. Get back to what drew you into this sport at such a young age.’ I think when you’re able to play for the fun of the game, for the love of the game, passion comes with that. ” Anybody who thinks they can pick this game is nuts. Nobody knows what to expect from either quarterback. So this game has to be considered a . Detroit Lions ( ) at Seattle Seahawks ( ) Saturday, January 7, 8:15 PM on NBC CenturyLink Field, Seattle, Washington, The Lions enter the playoffs losers of three straight. The Seahawks have proved wildly inconsistent, and their vaunted defense certainly misses superstar safety Earl Thomas. Before his season ended in Week 13 with a broken leg, Seattle was giving up 15. 6 points per game. In the games that followed the injury, they’re yielding 24. 5. And facing Lions QB Matt Stafford will be no easy chore for the secondary. The Lions also have secondary issues, coming off a torching at the hands of Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers. In early December, Deroit lost slot cornerback Quadre Diggs, and last week they lost his replacement Asa Jackson, so expect Seahawks QB Russell Wilson to target whoever is playing nickel back for Detroit. The Seahawks, with perhaps the loudest NFL stadium, are at home this season, and should make that . Miami Dolphins ( ) at Pittsburgh Steelers ( ) Sunday, January 8, 1:05 PM on CBS Heinz Field, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, In Week Six, the Dolphins beat the Steelers . Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger hurt his knee and had to leave the game for a stretch, so that certainly hurt Pittsburgh a great deal. But “Big Ben’s” injury had nothing to do with the Steelers’ run defense that day, which surrendered 204 yards to British tailback Jay Ajayi. While the Steelers defense has improved since then, Ajayi could still be a problem for them. First of all, standout Steelers defensive end Cam Heyward is on injured reserve, and his replacement, Ricardo Mathews, is sidelined with ankle injury. Combine the Steelers issues with Miami having one the NFL’s best offensive lines, Ajayi could be poised for another big day. But while the Dolphins should be able to run on Pittsburgh, what could lead to their downfall is their pass defense. Led by Roethlisberger, the Steelers finished the regular season as the NFL’s passing attack, and the Dolphins have major secondary issues. They gave up six touchdown passes in the last two weeks, and will be without starting cornerback Byron Maxwell. Led by Roetlisberger, wide receiver Antonio Brown and their potent passing attack, the Steelers should win this game. New York Giants ( ) at Green Bay Packers ( ) Sunday, January 8, 4:40 PM on FOX Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Packers QB Aaron Rodgers is coming off a remarkable season, tossing an 40 touchdowns to just seven interceptions. He is the NFL’s best QB at extending plays to create extra throwing time. “It’s almost like a second play during the play,” said Jets linebacker Jonathan Casillas. The Giants’ defense might be the best equipped in the NFL to deal with Rodgers, because they’re loaded at cornerback with Janoris Jenkins, Dominique and Eli Apple, three cover guys. Speaking of cornerbacks, the Packers are painfully thin at the position with starter Quinten Rollins out, and two other key corners on injured reserves, so Giants QB Eli Manning should be able to have success throwing at Lambeau Field. This should be a great game, but the Packers will probably win a close game since they’re at home, and Rodgers is playing much better than Manning right now. | 1 |
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D. ) sent a letter Tuesday to Speaker Paul Ryan (R. .) demanding to know the contents of his American Health Care Act, or RyanCare, before it passes the House — a rich hark back to what she said when Congress was considering Obamacare seven years ago. [“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” is what Pelosi said March 9, 2010 to the National Association of Counties. Tuesday, Pelosi wrote: “Members must not be asked to vote on this legislation before the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation have answered the following questions about your legislation in 2018 and 2019, over the budget window, and in the decade after: How will this bill measure up to the Affordable Care Act and current Medicaid law on coverage, quality, and cost? And how will it impact Medicare solvency?” Pelosi said Ryan should appreciate her concerns. “Mr. Speaker, as a former Chair of both the Committee on Ways and Means and the Budget, you understand the importance of having the numbers as well as anyone,” she wrote. “The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House,” she wrote. “These are critical questions and I hope that Republicans will honor their responsibility to the American people both before the Committees vote and before the final bill goes to the House floor. ” What a difference seven years makes. | 1 |
David Duke October 29, 2016
Today Dr. Duke and Professor Kevin MacDonald talked about the tide turning in Donald Trumpâs direction. In spite of the efforts by the Zio media to divert voter attention to Donald Trumpâs alleged problems with women, Hillaryâs treasonous crimes are increasingly difficult to hide.
The fact is that Hillary should be prosecuted, not inaugurated. She has supported ISIS in its war against Syria its terrorism against America. She has sent paid thugs to disrupt Trumpâs political events. She has used her government positions to peddal influence. She really should be in prison.
This is an extremely educating and enlightening show. Please share it widely. | 0 |
I'm waiting for the one that puts a pussy on my face | 0 |
November 7, 2016 Influential Journalist Nails It: Trump Will Be In Jail Soon, But A Clinton Win Means Stalemate Term
In an interview with The National , New Yorker journalist and New York Times best-selling author, Malcolm Gladwell, was asked by Wendy Mesley to predict what the next four years will look like after tomorrow’s votes are in.
With understandable trepidation, the show’s host inquired what would happen if Trump wins, to which the English-born Canadian writer’s answer was simple:
“I think he’ll be in jail within a year. We’ve got the Trump University fraud case, we probably have criminal charges coming out of his charitable donation. We’ve got all of the Russian ties we don’t know much about. He’s got so many legal problems, I suspect he’ll spend the next few years huddled with his lawyers.”
So, what does Gladwell think will happen when Hillary is elected?
“Republicans in Congress will start an investigation of her on day one, which will only end when she leaves office four years later. The forecast for the next four years is just stalemate. Their hatred will not be satiated by a Hillary Clinton victory, it will be enhanced. For twenty years they have been coming after this woman and they’re gonna keep coming after her.” Adding, “It will result in some kind of political paralysis for sure.”
Gladwell does not paint a very inspiring picture of a Clinton win, for sure, but it is better than the alternative. We all know Trump belongs in jail, but he can’t be allowed to bring the entire nation down with him. In short, get your ass out and vote!
Also, watch the full CBC interview where Gladwell discusses sexism, elitism, racism and the baffling media obsession with Hillary’s emails:
Featured image via video screengrab Share this Article! | 0 |
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than $10 million. Through a foundation, so did the of a former Ukrainian president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder of journalists. A developer with vast business interests contributed as much as $5 million. For years the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation thrived largely on the generosity of foreign donors and individuals who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the global charity. But now, as Mrs. Clinton seeks the White House, the funding of the sprawling philanthropy has become an Achilles’ heel for her campaign and, if she is victorious, potentially her administration as well. With Mrs. Clinton facing accusations of favoritism toward Clinton Foundation donors during her time as secretary of state, former President Bill Clinton told foundation employees on Thursday that the organization would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations should Mrs. Clinton win in November. But while the move could avoid the awkwardness of Mr. Clinton jetting around the world asking for money while his wife is president, it did not resolve a more pressing question: how her administration would handle longtime donors seeking help from the United States, or whose interests might conflict with the country’s own. The Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department — before, during and after Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary — criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other issues. The countries include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei and Algeria. Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor. The kingdom gave between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. (Donations are typically reported in broad ranges, not specific amounts.) At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia, which was by a Saudi prince. Saudi Arabia also presents Washington with a complex diplomatic relationship full of strain. The kingdom is viewed as a bulwark to deter Iranian adventurism across the region and has been a partner in the fight against terrorism across the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East. At the same time, though, American officials have long worried about Saudi Arabia’s suspected role in promoting a strain of Islam, which has some adherents who have been linked to violence. Saudi officials deny any links to terrorism groups, but critics point to Saudi charities that fund organizations suspected of ties to militant cells. Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said the Clintons and the foundation had always been careful about donors. “The policies that governed the foundation’s activities during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state already went far beyond legal requirements,” he said in a statement, “and yet the foundation submitted to even more rigorous standards when Clinton declared her candidacy for president, and is pledging to go even further if she wins. ” Mrs. Clinton’s opponent, Donald J. Trump, could face his own complications if he becomes president, with investments abroad and hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate debt — financial positions that could be affected by moves he makes in the White House. And on Friday, Paul Manafort resigned as chairman of the Trump campaign, in part because of reports about his lucrative consulting work on behalf of Ukrainian politicians. Still, Mr. Trump has seized on emails released over the past several weeks from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, in which a handful of donors are mentioned. He has attacked her over an email chain that showed Douglas J. Band, an adviser to Mr. Clinton, seeking to arrange a meeting between a senior American government official and Gilbert Chagoury, a real estate developer who donated between $1 million and $5 million. Mr. Chagoury explained through a spokesman that he had simply wanted to provide insights on elections in Lebanon. Some emails and other records described donors seeking and in some cases obtaining meetings with State Department officials. None showed Mrs. Clinton making decisions in favor of any contributors, but her allies fear that additional emails might come out and provide more fodder for Mr. Trump. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the foundation, said the decision to forgo corporate and foreign money had nothing to do with the emails. The foundation will continue to raise money from American individuals and charities. “The only factor is that we remove the perception problems, if she wins the presidency,” he said, “and make sure that programs can continue in some form for people who are being helped. ” But Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that has sued to obtain records from Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department, said that “the damage is done. ” “The conflicts of interest are cast in stone, and it is something that the Clinton administration is going to have to grapple with,” Mr. Fitton said. “It will cast a shadow over their policies. ” And in an election year in which a majority of Americans say they do not trust Mrs. Clinton, even some allies questioned why the foundation had not reined in foreign donations sooner, or ended them immediately. A Bloomberg poll in June showed that 72 percent of voters said it bothered them either a lot or a little that the Clinton Foundation took money from foreign countries while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. In a International Poll the same month, 38 percent of voters said Mr. Clinton should completely step down from the foundation, while 60 percent said he should be able to continue working with the foundation if his wife became president. Mr. Clinton said Thursday he would leave the foundation’s board if Mrs. Clinton won. Edward G. Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the foundation should be disbanded if Mrs. Clinton wins, and he added that it would make sense for the charity to stop taking foreign donations immediately. “I think they’ll do the right thing,” Mr. Rendell said, “and the right thing here is, without question, that the first gentleman have nothing to do with raising money for the foundation. ” Mr. Minassian said ending foreign before other sources of money could be found, and without knowing who will win the election, could needlessly gut programs that help provide, for instance, H. I. V. medication to children in Africa. Begun in 1997, the foundation has raised roughly $2 billion and is overseen by a board that includes Mr. Clinton and the couple’s daughter, Chelsea. Mrs. Clinton joined when she left the State Department and stepped down in 2015 before beginning her campaign. Its work covers 180 countries, helping fund more than 3, 500 projects. Having a former president at the helm proved particularly productive, with foreign leaders and business people opening their doors — and their wallets — to the preternaturally sociable Mr. Clinton. Among the charity’s accomplishments: Its Clinton Health Access Initiative — which is run by Ira C. Magaziner, who was a White House aide involved in Mrs. Clinton’s failed effort to overhaul the health care system in her husband’s first term — renegotiated the cost of H. I. V. drugs to make them accessible to 11. 5 million people. The foundation helped bring healthier meals to more than 31, 000 schools in the United States, and it has helped 105, 000 farmers in East Africa increase their yields, according to the foundation’s tally. In December 2008, shortly before Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state, Mr. Clinton released a list of more than 200, 000 donors to defuse speculation about conflicts. Soon after, Mrs. Clinton agreed to keep foundation matters separate from official business, including a pledge to “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect upon” the foundation without a waiver. The Obama White House had particularly disliked the gatherings of world leaders, academics and business people, called the Clinton Global Initiative, that the foundation was holding overseas. The foundation limited the conferences to domestic locations while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. On Thursday, Mr. Clinton said the gathering in September in New York would be the foundation’s last. One of the attendees at these conferences speaks to the stickiness of some donor relationships. Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton’s 65th birthday celebration. Between September 2011 and November 2012, Douglas E. Schoen, a former political consultant for Mr. Clinton, arranged about a dozen meetings with State Department officials on behalf of or with Mr. Pinchuk to discuss the continuing political crisis in Ukraine, according to reports Mr. Schoen filed as a registered lobbyist. “I had breakfast with Pinchuk. He will see you at the Brookings lunch,” Melanne Verveer, a then working for the State Department, wrote in a June 2012 email to Mrs. Clinton. A previously undisclosed email obtained by Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group, through public records lawsuits shows the name of Mr. Pinchuk, described as one of Ukraine’s “most successful businessmen,” among those on an list of influential people invited to a dinner party at the Clintons’ home. Earlier in 2012, Ambassador John F. Tefft wrote to Mrs. Clinton about a visit to Ukraine by Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, “at the invitation of oligarch, Victor Pinchuk. ” Mrs. Clinton replied, “As you know, hearing nice things about your children is as good as it gets. ” In July 2013, the Commerce Department began investigating complaints that Ukraine — and by extension Mr. Pinchuk’s company, Interpipe — and eight other countries had illegally dumped a type of steel tube on the American market at artificially low prices. A representative for Mr. Pinchuk said the investigation had nothing to do with the State Department, had started after Mrs. Clinton’s tenure and been suspended in July 2014. He added that at least 100 other people had attended the dinner party at Mrs. Clinton’s house and that she and Mr. Pinchuk had spoken briefly about democracy in Ukraine. A deal involving the sale of American uranium holdings to a Russian enterprise was another example of the foundation intersecting with Mrs. Clinton’s official role in the Obama administration. Her State Department was among the agencies that signed off on the deal, which involved major Clinton charitable backers from Canada. There was no evidence that Mrs. Clinton had exerted influence over the deal, but the timing of the transaction and the donations raised questions about whether the donors had received favorable handling. Even if Mr. Clinton steps down, there could be remaining complications about a potential president’s name being affixed to an international foundation. And Chelsea Clinton, who is its vice chairwoman, would continue her leadership role. “It is very difficult to see how the organization called the Clinton Foundation can continue to exist during a Clinton presidency without that posing all sorts of consequences,” said John Wonderlich, the interim executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group in Washington. “What they announced only addresses the most egregious potential conflicts. ” Considering the scale and scope of the foundation, Mr. Wonderlich said it was easy to “name a hundred different types of conflicts. ” The reality is, he added, “there are no recusals when you are president. ” | 1 |
Mobile users should click the link below to visit our mobile site. The site is a better fit for your screen and you will get all the articles without having to scroll all the way down. ← Prepper Website home Conspiracy Galore –Page 4
The page for all the conspiracy nuts out there! Here you will find a ton of links to articles all in one place. If I’m missing a website, please let me know – todd [dot] sepulveda @ prepperwebsite [dot] com.
Ron Paul Warns Trump That 'Shadow Government' Seek To Destroy Him 11/12/2016 | 0 |
On Monday’s Breitbart News Daily, Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, discussed her group’s upcoming protest against a speech by Muslim activist Linda Sarsour at City University of New York. [“I’m a free speech activist. This is not about free speech,” Geller explained. “Linda Sarsour is free to speak on college campuses and, by the way, frequently does. ” “We are protesting the invitation by CUNY, City University of New York — a university, and by the way, with a student body that’s over 25 percent Jewish — of a vicious a leader of the BDS movement, Boycott Divestment and Sanction of Israel movement, a supporter of sharia,” she continued. “The idea that this was the best that CUNY could do, this is the role model that they are holding up to our children to emulate, is just obscene,” Geller declared. “If you look at history, this idea of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement, the inspiration was the German boycott of the German Jews, which preceded Kristallnacht, the economic boycott,” she said. “This is the same thing, and the Nazi boycott of the Jews was the antecedent to BDS. ” “Here you have a woman, Linda Sarsour, who has said that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel deserve an and should have their vaginas cut off,” Geller said of Sarsour. “She has said that the Christmas Day underwear bomber who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day over Detroit was a CIA plot. We could go on and on. This is who CUNY University of New York is holding up as the example? She stands on a stage with a convicted terrorist who murdered Jews, Rasmea Odeh. She stands on a stage with her. Her family has been convicted of jihad terror. Her brother, I think, is still in jail. ” “I could go on and on,” said Geller, before proceeding to do so. “There’s a list of things. She has said nothing is creepier than Zionism, Israel is an apartheid state, Prime Minister Netanyahu is a waste of a human being and a racist, and on and on. She faked a hate crime against herself to score political points nationally by portraying a mentally ill black homeless man as a violent racist. By the way, everyone in the neighborhood knew the man and sort of likes the man. ” “It really was a disgusting display, a P. R. stunt — which, by the way, she’s very good at,” Geller continued. “When she supposedly raised money after there were hundreds of Jewish cemetery gravestones — I think it was in Philly — that were desecrated they’re knocked over. She pulled off this publicity stunt, which, by the way, the media loves, to raise money to help restore the stones. She loves dead Jews, okay? Live ones, not so much. ” “So yes, this Thursday at noon — so if you’re in New York, it’s your lunch hour, no excuses! — you come to the CUNY offices, which is 205 East 42nd street,” she announced. “We’re having a demonstration against the invitation of this to give the keynote speech, when universities have disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, disinvited Nonie Darwish, disinvited Ann Coulter. ” “We cannot sanction this. This is the mainstreaming. This is the norming of evil. This is the norming of ” she contended. “Milo is coming in to speak — yes, Milo!” said Geller, referring to former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos. “Assemblyman Dov Hikind is speaking. Nonie Darwish is flying in to speak. My friend Caroline Glick is giving me a statement. She’s in Israel. John Guandolo, the counterterrorism expert and founder of Understanding the Threat is speaking. ” “Ambassador John Bolton is trying to come in to speak,” she continued. “We have Lauri Regan for the Endowment for Middle East Truth and National Women’s Committee [of the Republican Jewish Coalition]. We have David Wood, Acts 17 Apologetics. ” “You have to come!” she urged. “Because if you don’t come, what you’re saying is you don’t care. Silence is affirmation. ” “It reminds of in the 1920s, Hitler’s party. Before it was the National Socialist Workers’ Party, it was the National Socialist Party — and they were a violent group of rabble that were on the absolute fringe of German society,” she recalled. “They were not taken seriously. He had some popular following in the beer halls — German white trash, as it were. He was nowhere. It was not until 1929 when a coalition of political parties invited him to join them in the German referendum of 1929 it was a referendum against the Versailles treaty. It was at that moment, in my estimation of studying history, where history turned, where you normed Hitler, where you sanctioned Hitler. You invited him to join the mainstream. Everything changed for him after that. ” “This is what I see happening now, where voices of freedom like myself and my colleagues are marginalized, demonized, and rendered radioactive — and you norm a Linda Sarsour, who made her bones on the backs of Jews, who made her bones on . That’s her racket. ” “And for CUNY, whose student population is over 25 percent Jewish, to invite her to keynote the commencement on Shavuot they made it on a Jewish holiday!” Geller exclaimed. “That’s the Jewish holiday where God gave the Jews law, Jewish law. To make it on that day — what are observant Jews supposed to do? Choose between Sarsour and Shavuot? The whole thing is vile and disgusting, and it needs to be opposed. ” Marlow suggested it was the provision of public funds for Sarsour’s “ garbage, garbage” that was supremely objectionable when so many other speakers have been turned away in recent years. “They couldn’t find anyone better?” Geller asked rhetorically. “Go to Facebook. Just search ‘Sarsour protest.’ All the information is there. Bring signs. Bring your friends. Stand up. Show them we will not be steamrolled by this alliance. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
QUEBEC — In a world often hostile to migration, Canada has stood out, welcoming thousands of refugees fleeing war and seeking a haven. It has been a time for Canada, proud of its national tolerance. On Sunday, that was upended when a man walked into a mosque and started shooting, killing six people and wounding eight. The man accused of being the gunman, Alexandre Bissonnette, was charged with six counts of murder on Monday. The nation quickly rallied after the attack. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it an act of terrorism, and there was a collective outpouring of remorse and empathy. But the attack also forced Canadians to confront a growing intolerance and extremism that has taken root particularly among some people in this corner of the country. It was also a wrenching event for a country not accustomed to mass killings and even less used to the acrimonious immigration debate that has echoed from across the United States. Before Sunday, many Canadians were watching the immigration ban there with fascination and, for the most part, disgust. “Muslim Canadians are valued members of every community and wherever they live they deserve to feel safe they are home here,” Mr. Trudeau said at a memorial near the mosque in the Ste. Foy neighborhood in Monday evening’s biting cold. “We are all Canadians. Let peace unite us all. ” Yet while Canadian public figures of all stripes closed ranks quickly to reaffirm their solidarity with Muslims in Canada and tighten their embrace of multiculturalism, the killings remained a tear in the fabric of a nation in transformation. “Canada took in roughly 30, 000 Syrian refugees in a period — proportionate to the U. S. taking in 225, 000 over that time,” said David B. Harris, a lawyer and a director at Insignis Strategic Research, a counterterrorism consultancy. “These are dramatic developments in the life of any nation. ” Mr. Bissonnette, 27, who was also charged with five counts of attempted murder, appeared at the Quebec City courthouse looking boyish in a white jumpsuit. He was not charged with terrorism, which under Canada’s Criminal Code requires a broad proof of intent to intimidate the public. The shooting was the first time anyone had been killed in a mosque in Canada in such circumstances and was, at least in recent times, a rare event outside the Muslim world. The attack was particularly shocking for Quebec City, where the bulk of the population of 750, 000 works for the provincial government, universities or in tourism. Until Sunday there had not been any murders in the city for 21 months. Mr. Bissonnette was well known to people who monitor groups in Quebec, where he frequently commented on sites speaking about immigration and Islam. He was a particularly vocal supporter of Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far right, when she visited the city last year. He was a student of anthropology and political science at Laval University, just minutes from where the shooting took place, according to people who monitored his online activities. “He was not a leader and was not affiliated with the groups we know,” said François Deschamps, a job counselor at Carrefour Jeunesse, a community organization that helps young people find jobs. Mr. Deschamps, who also runs an online group to help refugees called Bienvenue aux Réfugiés, said he had watched Mr. Bissonnette’s postings for about a year. “The minute I saw his picture this morning, I recognized him,” Mr. Deschamps said by telephone, adding that Mr. Bissonnette used his real name online. Mr. Bissonnette and his family live in a western suburb of Quebec City that lies in the shadow of a towering railroad trestle. Neighbors said there was nothing remarkable about the quiet young man. “We knew the family for 30 years,” said Alain Dufour, a neighbor. He said Mr. Bissonnette and his brother were “normal kids, nothing indicating bizarre behavior. ” Even outspoken critics of the religion recoiled at the prospect that an increasingly acrimonious debate over rising Islamic immigration may have contributed to the violence. Kellie Leitch, a conservative member of Parliament who has proposed screening immigrants for “Canadian values,” issued a statement calling the attack “not just on those gathered in a house of worship but on the very fabric of Canadian society. ” Quebec has had a history of confrontations with the Muslim community. In 2005, the province became the first to explicitly ban the use of Shariah law and, less than a decade later, the Parti Québécois government tried to pass a “charter of values” that would have banned provincial employees from wearing Muslim head scarves and other “overt” religious symbols. Quebec City, meanwhile, is a conservative bastion within the province and home to radio talk shows that push an agenda — unusual for Canadian broadcasters. Lise Ravary, a columnist for the tabloid Journal de Montreal, said it might be time for the debate to calm down. “I am a very vocal opponent of Islamism, and I realize now that whenever I condemn ISIS a lot of people view this as me condemning every Muslim on earth,” she said by telephone on Monday. “ looms for the common good. ” Mohammed Amin, in charge of social activities at the mosque, said the community had a “cordial relationship” with its neighbors. He dismissed the pig’s head that was left at the mosque’s door last year as “a small incident” that could happen anywhere. But other leaders at the mosque said there have been hate letters, and swastikas painted on its door, episodes that led to the installation of eight security cameras. “We’ve had to be very, very vigilant, careful for our community,” said Boufeldga Benabdallah, a of the mosque. Of the victims, he said, “The prayed beside us and they were shot in the back because they prayed. ” Ste. Foy, the postwar suburb where the attack occurred, is far from the walled city center, which is stuffed with historic buildings and tourists. The victims came from a variety of countries of origin and occupations. Azzeddine Soufiane, 57, was a butcher with a shop down the street from the mosque. Khaled Belkacemi, the oldest victim at 60, was a professor of soil and engineering at Laval University, according to members of the mosque. Mamadou Tanou Barry, an information technology worker, and Ibrahima Barry, a provincial public servant, were brothers, reported. Aboubaker Thabti, 44, came to Canada in 2011 from Tunisia and had two children. A programming analyst with the provincial government, Abdelkrim Hassane, 41, was father to three daughters. “Certainly Islamophobia has been increasing for some time,” Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum, said by telephone from Montreal. But he said the attack was nonetheless shocking. “It is overwhelming, unthinkable,” he said. | 1 |
By Daily News Bin | November 2, 2016 | 9 14728 SHARES
For all the fact-free cable news punditry this week about supposed momentum on the part of Donald Trump, it’s easy to miss the fact that Hillary Clinton is overwhelmingly likely to win the election according to every polling average and predictive model. But even as Trump supporters and the pundits continue pointing to the turnout at his rallies (many of which are in states he’s losing), it turns out Hillary Clinton just pulled off one of the biggest crowds of the entire election – and she did it in a key red state.
Hillary Clinton held a rally in Arizona today, a state that hasn’t been won by a Democrat in a Presidential election in a generation. It’s a sign that she’s still playing offense. And she’s within the margin of error in the polling averages in Arizona, a sign of strength. Moreover, she managed to draw a crowd of twenty thousand people in the red state tonight, a sign of momentum. Adam Parkhomenko posted a photo to Facebook which captured the sheer size of the outdoor crowd:
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton will be in North Carolina on Thursday and Pennsylvania and Michigan on Friday, even as Bernie Sanders heads to Ohio and President Barack Obama heads to Florida. If you enjoy Daily News Bin, consider making a contribution: Contributed by Daily News Bin staff 14728 | 0 |
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LONDON — Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic runner who shot his girlfriend to death in 2013, is unfit to testify at his sentencing for murder, a defense psychologist said as a hearing opened on Monday in a court in Pretoria, South Africa. “Currently, in my opinion, he is not able to testify,” the psychologist, Jonathan Scholtz, told Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa of the High Court in Pretoria, arguing that Mr. Pistorius should be hospitalized rather than imprisoned. “His condition is severe. ” Under questioning from Mr. Pistorius’s defense lawyer, Barry Roux, Dr. Scholtz gave a largely sympathetic account of Mr. Pistorius’s background, personality and mental health. Dr. Scholtz said Mr. Pistorius showed symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress disorder. He also said Mr. Pistorius was taking psychiatric medication and had problems with memory. Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, rejected that argument, saying that Mr. Pistorius had not expressed remorse for the death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Mr. Nel also questioned Dr. Scholtz’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius was unable to testify, given that Mr. Pistorius recently gave an interview, his first about the killing, to the television network ITV. The interview is scheduled to be broadcast on June 24, which is probably after his sentencing. Guidelines call for a sentence of at least 15 years, but the judge has discretion to render a lighter or tougher sentence. The decision, which is not expected until later this week, will bring to a close a case that has riveted and divided South Africa. Mr. Pistorius, 29, was found guilty in December of murdering Ms. Steenkamp after South Africa’s top appeals court overturned a lower court’s conviction on the lesser charge of manslaughter. The court found that the earlier conviction had been based on a misinterpretation of laws and an erroneous dismissal of circumstantial evidence. The appeals court said Mr. Pistorius, who insists that he accidentally killed Ms. Steenkamp under the mistaken belief that an intruder had broken into his home, should have foreseen that his actions would kill someone. He fired four shots through a locked bathroom door, killing Ms. Steenkamp, who was on the other side. In a country with a high crime rate, the fear of home intrusion cuts across social and racial lines, and high walls and security guards are common in gated communities like the one where Mr. Pistorius lived in Pretoria. Mr. Pistorius’s arrest in the killing of Ms. Steenkamp on Feb. 14, 2013, sent South Africans reeling. Known as the Blade Runner for the flexible prosthetic legs he used when competing, Mr. Pistorius achieved worldwide fame by challenging athletes, most notably at the 2012 London Games. He won medals at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Summer Paralympics. Ms. Steenkamp, who was 29 at the time of her death, was a model, a law school graduate and a budding star. In September 2014 — after a lengthy and highly publicized trial that was likened to the trial of O. J. Simpson in the United States — Judge Masipa convicted Mr. Pistorius of culpable homicide but found him not guilty of murder. She found that prosecutors had failed to present “strong circumstantial evidence” and to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Pistorius had shown intent to kill. Prosecutors, and Ms. Steenkamp’s family, argued that Mr. Pistorius had deliberately killed his girlfriend after an argument. Although Mr. Pistorius was regarded as a hero to many in South Africa, the trial revealed another, darker side: a man with a mercurial temper, given to jealousy and occasional anger an aggressive driver an irresponsible gun owner and a celebrity who was used to getting his way. In their appeal, prosecutors argued that Judge Masipa had misinterpreted a crucial legal concept in finding Mr. Pistorius not guilty of murder. They argued that, under a legal principle known as dolus eventualis, Mr. Pistorius should be found guilty because he should have known that firing through the locked door would kill the person inside. The Supreme Court of Appeal, in Bloemfontein, agreed. Mr. Pistorius was released from prison in October after serving one year of the sentence for manslaughter, and he has been living under house arrest. Dr. Scholtz called Mr. Pistorius’s relationship with Ms. Steenkamp “a normal, loving relationship,” with “no signs of abuse or coercion. ” Dr. Scholtz said that Mr. Pistorius “has found some solace in the belief that the deceased is with God,” and that he was enrolled in a degree program at the University of London. He argued that further incarceration “would not be psychologically or socially constructive” and that Mr. Pistorius was not a threat to society. Mr. Pistorius, once a gun enthusiast, has sold his firearms, Dr. Scholtz said. “He is adamant that he never wants to touch or handle a firearm again,” the psychiatrist said. But Mr. Nel, who Dr. Scholtz, suggested that Mr. Pistorius had not expressed remorse. “Does he understand that he committed murder?” Mr. Nel asked. “Yes,” Dr. Scholtz said. “In what way?” Mr. Nel asked. The prosecutor then made it clear that he was unconvinced. | 1 |
Home › SOCIETY | US NEWS › CHARLESTON ‘ON EGGSHELLS’ ON EVE OF TWO RACIALLY CHARGED TRIALS CHARLESTON ‘ON EGGSHELLS’ ON EVE OF TWO RACIALLY CHARGED TRIALS 0 SHARES [10/20/16] Two South Carolina shootings that rocked the country last year and raised questions about race in America are now headed for trial, putting the historic city of Charleston on edge as the community awaits the testimony and juries’ decisions.
Jury selection begins on Monday in the case of Michael Slager, a white former policeman in North Charleston charged with murder in state court after he fatally shot unarmed black motorist Walter Scott in April 2015.
One week later on Nov. 7, a federal death penalty trial is slated to start for avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine black parishioners during Bible study at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015.
The nearly simultaneous proceedings will take place at courthouses across the street from each other in the heart of Charleston’s downtown district. Black community activists said the outcomes will test the calm that prevailed after the shootings and could trigger unrest if those angry about the killings feel justice is not served.
“The community is, for lack of better words, on eggshells,” said Justin Bamberg, a state legislator and lawyer who represents Scott’s family.
Both trials are expected to last several weeks and draw national attention to the port city of about 133,000 people that is known for its cuisine and well-preserved 18th and 19th century architecture. But Bamberg said the cases have important distinctions.
Roof’s trial is less about his guilt or innocence than whether he will be sentenced to life in prison or death, Bamberg said. Roof’s lawyers have said he would plead guilty to 33 counts of hate crimes, obstruction of religion and firearms charges if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Slager’s case, on the other hand, could produce a rare result: a guilty verdict against a U.S. police officer charged with murder or manslaughter. Post navigation | 0 |
November 6, 2016 at 11:31 am
I hope the next one really try to tie the 2 you just equated. An ancient cult linked directly to something today is more far fetched than just stating they do crazy stuff and thats about it.It would do you some good to study a little more about how theological perspectives evolve. Not even cults that are proeminent and known throughout history can be linked directly, such as Christianity and Islamism. Why that would be different for any idiotic satan cult? | 0 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — Vice President Mike Pence honored veterans this Memorial Day from his residence at the Naval Observatory, where about 200 vets attended and Project Hero launched its 10th Annual Memorial Day bike ride to Virginia Beach. [Pence stepped out and greeted the close to 100 riders to cheers from the crowd. He was joined by Karen Pence and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin. Project Hero President John Wordin addressed the crowd, noting it was the fourth year in a row the ride began at the Vice President’s residence. He pointed out the problem of suicide among veterans and Shulkin’s work in partnership with Project Hero to address it. Shulkin told the crowd, “If it’s for veterans, they’re going to be there for us. ” He continued, “Both he and Karen are passionate and relentless when it comes to veterans’ issues. ” Pence then took to the podium saying, “This is a day we remember those who served and did not come home … To be able to welcome you here on this most hallowed of days is profoundly humbling to Karen and I. ” The Vice President thanked the veterans in attendance for their service and thanked Project Hero. “We’ll be joining the president in just a few moments at Arlington National Cemetery,” said Pence, adding that he and Karen, as avid cyclists themselves, were slightly jealous of the riders who would be setting out for Virginia Beach shortly. Karen and I are so grateful to have you here at the Vice President’s residence. It is deeply humbling to be with you to mark Memorial Day. pic. twitter. — Vice President Pence (@VP) May 29, 2017, Today all Americans show their thanks to the generations of brave men women who gave the last full measure of devotion for our freedom. pic. twitter. — Vice President Pence (@VP) May 29, 2017, The Vice President took a moment to hail the President’s recent “extraordinary trip” to Europe and the time he spent with military troops in Italy. He highlighted Trump’s veteran health care executive order. Pence also lauded Project Hero’s work when it comes to the “unseen wounds” and prevalence of PTSD. Pence wished the riders “Godspeed, safe travels all the way to Virginia Beach and for Project Hero and all of those that it helps all the way to a full recovery in an America that cherishes all those who serve. ” Second lady Karen Pence offered a brief prayer directly after her husband concluded his message. She encouraged the riders to take oranges and bananas that were set out for them. Vice President and Mrs. Pence as well as Shulkin were presented with blue Project Hero biking jerseys to commemorate the ride. “That’ll give me a year to fit into it,” joked Pence. Thank you, Project Hero, for the new biking jerseys for Karen and me. May you all have a safe ride to Virginia Beach! #MemorialDay pic. twitter. — Vice President Pence (@VP) May 29, 2017, Project Hero is a national nonprofit which describes itself as an “organization dedicated to helping Veterans and First Responders affected by PTSD, TBI and injury achieve rehabilitation, recovery and resilience in their daily lives and increasing awareness to combat the national mental health emergency posed by PTSD and TBI. ” Riders set out from the Vice President’s residence shortly after Pence departed to join President Donald Trump for a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. The riders headed toward their Virginia Beach destination. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 1 |
Freitag, 4. November 2016 Wow! Wow! Wow! Das neue Postillon-Buch ist da! Kaufen! Kaufen! Kaufen! Halleluja! Dieses himmlische Werk muss jeder Mensch besitzen! Für nur 15,99 Euro präsentiert Ihnen der Postillon eine 192 Seiten starke Sammlung der besten Artikel, Reportagen und Enthüllungsstorys. Kaufen Sie sich jetzt das noch bessere Beste aus über 170 (=10 Jahre gratis im Vergleich zum letzten Buch) Jahren! FAQ: Das Buch kostet nur 15,99 Euro und ist damit deutlich günstiger als ein Kleinwagen! Gibt es das Buch überhaupt wirklich? Ja, jetzt echt mal ohne Scheiß, auch wenn uns das nach über einem Jahr PamS niemand mehr glaubt. Lohnt es sich? Aber sowas von! Sie erhalten 192 Seiten geballte Information in seriösesester Postillon -Qualität! Mit einem Seitenpreis von ca. 8,848958 Cent kommen Sie sogar noch günstiger weg als beim letzten Buch ! (← trotzdem kaufen!) Warum sollte man den Postillon in Buchform kaufen, wenn man die Artikel doch im Internet lesen kann? Boah! Was für eine fiese Frage! Also: Erstens gibt es jede Menge Bonusgags (Vorwort, Anzeigen, Gimmick usw.), die so noch nie im Internet erschienen sind und außerdem ist das Buch das perfekte Geschenk für Weihnachten, Geburtstage, Goldene Hochzeiten und gelungene Blinddarmoperationen. Wo bekomme ich das Buch? In jeder guten Buchhandlung (kann auch dort bestellt werden) oder | 0 |
By Michael Snyder, the Economic Collapse Blog .
In the world of politics, the cover-up is often worse than the original crime. It was his role in the Watergate cover-up that took down Richard Nixon, and now Hillary Clinton’s cover-up of her email scandal could send her to prison for a very, very long time. When news broke that the FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, it sent shockwaves throughout the political world . But this time around, we aren’t just talking about an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents. I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, but if the FBI discovers that Hillary Clinton altered, destroyed or concealed any emails that should have been turned over to the FBI during the original investigation, she could be charged with obstruction of justice. That would immediately end her political career, and if she was found guilty it could send her to prison for the rest of her life.
I have not seen a single news report mention the phrase “obstruction of justice” yet, but I am convinced that there is a very good chance that this is where this scandal is heading. The following is the relevant part of the federal statute that deals with obstruction of justice …
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
If Hillary Clinton is sent to prison for 20 years, that would essentially be for the rest of her life.
I have a feeling that the FBI is going to find a great deal of evidence of obstruction of justice in Huma Abedin’s emails. But unfortunately there is not likely to be a resolution to this matter before November 8th, because according to the Wall Street Journal there are approximately 650,000 emails to search through…
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton ’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
Of those 650,000 emails, an inside source told Fox News that “ at least 10,000 ” would be of interest to the investigation.
At this point, FBI officials have not even begun searching through the emails, because a search warrant has not been secured yet. The following comes from CNN …
Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.
Either way, government lawyers plan to seek a search warrant from a judge to conduct the search of the computer, the law enforcement officials said.
But the FBI is reportedly already searching a laptop that was co-owned by Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, and no warrant was necessary for that search because Weiner is cooperating with the FBI.
Many have been wondering why FBI Director James Comey would choose to make such a bold move just over a week until election day. Surely he had to know that this would have a dramatic impact on the election, and it is unlikely that he would have done so unless someone had already found something really big. In addition, Comey was reportedly eager to find an opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his peers at the FBI. The following is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article that was written by Ed Klein, the author of a recently released New York Times bestseller about the Clintons entitled “ Guilty As Sin “…
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
So what happens next?
In the most likely scenario, the FBI will not have time to complete the investigation and decide whether or not to charge Hillary Clinton before the election. This means that we would go into November 8th with this scandal hanging over the Clinton campaign, and that would seem to be very good news for Donald Trump.
However, it is possible that once the FBI starts searching through these emails that they could come to the conclusion very rapidly that charges against Clinton are warranted, and if that happens we could still see some sort of announcement before election day.
In the unlikely event that does happen, we could actually see Hillary Clinton forced out of the race before November 8th.
Once again, this appears to be very unlikely at this point, but it is still possible.
If Clinton was forced to step aside, the Democrats would need to come up with a new nominee, and that process would take time. In an article later today on The Most Important News I will reveal who I believe that nominee would be.
In such a scenario, the Democrats would desperately need time to get their act together, and so we could actually see Barack Obama attempt to delay or suspend the election . The legality of such a move is highly questionable, but Barack Obama has not allowed a little thing like the U.S. Constitution to stop him in the past.
This week is going to be exceedingly interesting – that is for sure.
The craziest election in modern American history just keeps getting crazier, and I have a feeling that even more twists and turns are ahead.
It sure seems ironic that Anthony Weiner is playing such a central role this late in the story, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the season finale. | 0 |
General Motors announced Tuesday that it will invest $1 billion in U. S. plants amid pressure from Donald Trump to keep jobs in the U. S.[GM said the $1 billion investment, along with the 1, 500 new jobs the company expects to create or retain in the U. S. is in addition to the $2. 9 billion investment the company announced in 2016 and more than $21 billion the company has invested in the U. S. since 2009, the Detroit Free Press reported. GM also said it will start moving axle production for its pickup trucks in the U. S. including work previously done in Mexico, to plants in Michigan. The company expects that move will create an additional 450 jobs. The company said it plans to create a total of 7, 000 new jobs over the next two or three years, including the 450 jobs on axle production, the 1, 500 new jobs announced with the investment, and more than 5, 000 jobs related to engineering, GM financial, and advanced technology, Reuters reported. GM also said it plans to bring back information technology jobs that were previously outsourced to foreign countries in a move that will create 5, 000 new IT jobs in the U. S. over the next few years. “All of the decisions behind today’s announcement are good business decisions and they have been in the works for some time,” said GM spokesman Pat Morrissey. “There’s no question there is an emphasis on job creation in the U. S. right now. This was good timing for us to share what we are doing, including our ongoing commitment and track record for U. S. investment over the last several years. ” Trump congratulated GM for it’s push to bring jobs back to the U. S. Tuesday afternoon. Thank you to General Motors and Walmart for starting the big jobs push back into the U. S.! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017, “Thank you to General Motors and Walmart for starting the big jobs push back into the U. S.!” Trump wrote on Twitter. | 1 |
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“IT’S not like I’m getting my deposit back anyway,” said a deflated-sounding Barack Obama earlier today, messing around with the handle of a White House toilet cistern that never really worked right, but is now completely broken.
Obama had intended to repair the faulty cistern months ago, but with just weeks left in his tenure as the president of the United States, he confided in WWN that he’s probably not going to bother.
“There’s a few jobs that I said I’d get to; fix this fucking cistern, number one,” said Obama, who leaves the White House with several hinges still in need of oiling.
“Just small things, here and there. I was going to give the place the once over; fill a few holes where the kids put posters on their walls, change the lightbulbs in the utility room, that kind of thing… but even if you do all that, the owners will find a way to goose you out of your security deposit. To be honest, the money you’d get back isn’t worth losing a whole weekend doing odd-jobs over”.
Other odd-jobs, including stability in the Middle East, health care, gun control, poverty, weeds between the patio slabs out the back, and taxation reform will all be ‘left to the next lad’, confirmed Obama. | 0 |
By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley T he world’s most reactionary regime, the head-chopping, terror-sponsoring Saudi Arabian kleptocracy, was awarded the chair of the UN Human Rights Council, while Russia has been kicked out. The travesty was engineered by the Superpower of Lies to punish Moscow for resisting the U.S.-led war of sectarian massacre and regime change in Syria. The War Party is on the march, to the cheers of corporate media – and Hillary hasn’t even been elected yet. “All attempts to stop the fighting were rejected by the U.S. and NATO and sealed the fate of the Syrian people.” Did Russia invade Iraq and kill one million people? Does Russia have a greater percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world? Did Russia occupy Haiti after kidnapping its president? Are Russian police allowed to shoot children to death without fear of repercussion? Is Russia entering its 20 th year of a terror war against the people of Somalia? All of these crimes take place in or at the direction of the United States. Yet the full force of propaganda and influence on world opinion is directed against Russia, which whatever its shortcomings cannot hold a candle to America in violating human rights.
Simply put, Hillary Clinton must be denied a victory of great magnitude and any opportunity to claim a mandate. The dangers presented by a Hillary Clinton presidency cannot be overstated. She and the war party have been steadily working towards a goal that defies logic and risks all life on earth. Regime change [3] is once again their modus operandi and they hope to make it a reality against Russia. Nearly every claim of Russian evil doing is a lie, a ruse meant to put Americans in a fighting mood and lose their fear of nuclear conflagration. It isn’t clear if Clinton and the rest of the would-be warriors actually realize they are risking mushroom clouds. Perhaps they believe that Vladimir Putin will be easily pushed around when all evidence points to the contrary. “Regime change is once again their modus operandi and they hope to make it a reality against Russia.” The unproven allegations of interference in the presidential election and casting blame on Russia as the sole cause of suffering in Syria are meant to desensitize the public. It is an age old ploy which makes war not just acceptable but deemed a necessity. The usual suspects are helping out eagerly. The corporate media, led by newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post , are front and center in pushing tales of Russian villainy. Human Rights Watch and other organizations who care nothing about abuses committed by the United States and its allies are also playing their usual role of choosing the next regime change victim. Russia lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council in part because of American pressure and public relations assistance from the human rights industrial complex. The UNHRC is now chaired by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that funds the jihadist terrorist groups who caused 500,000 Syrian deaths. The Saudis are causing dislocation, death and starvation in Yemen, too, but they are American allies, so there is little opposition to their misdeeds. The openly bigoted Donald Trump has been the perfect foil for Hillary Clinton. That is why she and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership preferred him as their rival. He made the case for the discredited lesser evilism argument and his sensible statements about avoiding enmity with Russia made him even more useful. “Newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, are front and center in pushing tales of Russian villainy.” The United States and its allies are the cause of Syria’s destruction. Their effort to overthrow president Assad created a humanitarian disaster complete with ISIS and al Nusra fighters who love to chop off heads for entertainment. Far from being the cause of the catastrophe Russia left its ally to fight alone for four years. They even made overtures to negotiate [4] Assad’s fate with the United States. All attempts to stop the fighting were rejected by the U.S. and NATO and sealed the fate of the Syrian people. The people of east Aleppo are being shelled by American allies but one wouldn’t know that by reading what passes for journalism in newspapers and on television. The American role in the slaughter is barely mentioned or is excused as an effort to protect the civilian population. The bloodshed was made in the U.S. and could end if this government wanted it to. Nearly every claim of Russian evil doing is a lie, a ruse meant to put Americans in a fighting mood and lose their fear of nuclear conflagration. It isn’t clear if Clinton and the rest of the would-be warriors actually realize they are risking mushroom clouds. Perhaps they believe that Vladimir Putin will be easily pushed around when all evidence points to the contrary. The anti-Russian propaganda effort has worked to perfection. NATO is massing troops on Russia’s borders in a clear provocation yet Putin is labeled the bad guy. He is said to be menacing the countries that join in threatening his nation. The United States makes phony claims of Russian war crimes despite having blood on its hands. The latest Human Rights Watch canards about prosecuting Assad come straight from the White House and State Department and have nothing to do with concern for Syrians living in their fifth year of hell. “Donald Trump has been the perfect foil for Hillary Clinton.” There is no lesser evil between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She is fully supported by the war party in her desire for a more “muscular” foreign policy. That bizarre term means death and starvation for millions more people if Clinton wins in a landslide. She must be denied a victory of that magnitude and any opportunity to claim a mandate. Peace loving people must give their votes to the Green Party ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. They are alone in rejecting the premise of an imperialist country and its endless wars. The United States is the most dangerous country in the world. If it has a reckless and war loving president the threat becomes existential. That is the prospect we face with a Hillary Clinton presidency. If the role of villain is cast on the world stage she is the star of the show. Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/russophobia_war_party_propaganda | 0 |
While Rep. Keith Ellison ( ) touted on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” Saturday why he is a better candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, host Joy Reid tacked on that what he accomplished was done while being black and Muslim, “two things in the crosshairs of Trumpworld. ” “You managed to do that while being two things in the crosshairs of Trumpworld — being black and being Muslim,” Reid told Ellison. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Elon Musk entertained the 2017 TED Conference by previewing how Tesla intends to solve almost all vehicle congestion by massive boring under cities to create an tunnel transport system. [TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a media group that every year since 1990 has created and freely distributed a series of interviews that feature innovative TED figures under the motto “ideas worth spreading. ” Musk, who originally hails from Canada, sat down with TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson in Vancouver to talk about solving his new The Boring Company which will solve transportation congestion through a system of robotic transporter sleds that will lower vehicles to underground tunnels, and then whisk them to their destination at 130 miles per hour. Musk gave as an example the of Los Angeles, where an trip from downtown to Westwood usually takes about 40 minutes. Riding in his electric powered tunnels, travel time would be slashed to a 5 to hop. Andersson asked him why he was not onboard for the development of flying cars that have been all the rage lately, due to announcements by Google, Uber, and others that the world of the series the Jetsons is about to arrive. Musk answered, “I do rockets, so I like things that fly. There’s a challenge of flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. If something’s flying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars going all over the place, that is not an situation … You’ll be thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off and guillotine me? ’” Musk referred to the jumbotron and played a video simulation of how a vehicle would drive on to a robotic electric powered cart that would be lowered to the appropriate tunnel level and then quickly accelerate. Musk commented that the greatest advantage of a system is that the carts can move at unlimited speeds in tunnels without generating huge externality complaints. Andersson asks Musk how tunnels would meld with Musk’s Hyperloop initiative. Musk commented that the SpaceX’s Hyperloop test track being built in Reno, Nevada, adjacent to his Gigafactory is already the second biggest vacuum chamber in the world. The only one bigger is the Large Hadron Collider under the France — Switzerland border that is used as an atomic particle accelerator that cost $7. 5 billion. For transportation, Musk believes a vacuum tunnel system can transport people, freight, and vehicles in capsules at a fraction of the current time and costs. Musk said that based on initial Hyperloop testing, “We’re cautiously optimistic that it’ll be faster than the world’s fastest bullet train, even over a . stretch. ” Asked by Andersson, “What’s happening at Tesla?” Musk said that the company’s $35, 000 Tesla Model 3 will arrive in July, and it will have the same autopilot features as Tesla’s $100, 000 vehicles that claim to offer driving. “Once you solve cameras for vision, autonomy is solved if you don’t solve vision, it’s not solved … You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras. ” Musk stated that Tesla will have a large enough charging network that they will conduct a LA to New York test national test by the end of 2017: “November or December of this year, we should be able to go from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. ” Musk displayed the first picture of the Tesla Semi truck, which he recently unveiled as part of his Master Plan, Part Deux: “With the Tesla Semi, we want to show that an electric truck actually can any diesel semi. If you had a tug of war competition, the Tesla Semi will tug the diesel semi uphill. ” Musk suggests will be quick and nimble, “like a sports car,” he says. Musk sees solar electricity as the fuel source of the future that will powerhouses, vehicles and almost all terrestrial corporate activity. With the spiking demand, Tesla plans to announce four more Gigafactories by the end of the year. | 1 |
Walling them out, or walling us in? Shall we wall off Canada, too? By Jim Hightower Posted on November 3, 2016 by Jim Hightower
Evading security cameras in the remote expanse along the U.S. border, three Guatemalans waited till dusk to slip illicitly into our country.
This is the stuff of Donald Trump nightmares—and if he were to witness such a scene, we can only imagine the furious rants that would follow.
But Trump will never see this scene or even know about it, because he’s facing south, fulminating against Mexicans and assuring his faithful followers that he’ll stop illegal entry into the U.S. by building a “ beautiful, impenetrable wall ” across our 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Meanwhile, the scene described took place way up north, where rural Vermont connects to Canada. As the New York Times recently reported , “This area is a haven for smugglers and cross-border criminal organizations.”
With so many of our nation’s political and security officials obsessed with the southern border, more and more criminal action—including the smuggling of people, drugs, and weapons—has plagued our 5,500-mile Canadian border, the longest in the world between two countries.
Running from the Atlantic to the Pacific through sparsely populated and heavily wooded terrain, there’s often no clear demarcation of where Canada ends and the U.S. begins. Some farms, homes, and businesses actually sprawl across the border.
Only about 2,000 agents patrol this vast stretch, and officials concede they don’t even have a good guess of how many people and how much contraband is coming across, or where.
So, the question for Mr. Trump is: Shall we wall off Canada, too? And how much of our public treasury, democratic idealism, and international goodwill shall we dump into the folly of militarizing both borders?
By simply thinking we can wall the world out, we’ll be walling ourselves in—and that’s suicidal.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown . Distributed by OtherWords.or g . Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 0 |
“I’m the first person who’ll put it to you,” Bob Dylan said in a 1978 interview, “and the last person who’ll explain it to you. ” The Swedish Academy, which awarded Mr. Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, has put it to us, and it has no explaining to do to most readers and listeners, however much they might have been pulling for Philip Roth or Don DeLillo or Margaret Atwood. This Nobel acknowledges what we’ve long sensed to be true: that Mr. Dylan is among the most authentic voices America has produced, a maker of images as audacious and resonant as anything in Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. [ Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature | Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician ] It has never hurt that Mr. Dylan’s words were delivered, as the English poet Philip Larkin once put it, in a “cawing, derisive voice” that seemed to carry the weight of myth and prophecy. Mr. Larkin was not Mr. Dylan’s greatest fan. He found the lyrics to “Desolation Row” to be “possibly . ” It took a different Englishman, the venerated critic and scholar Christopher Ricks, to make the case most fully for Mr. Dylan as a complicated and complicating poet. In Mr. Ricks’s sly 2004 book “Dylan’s Visions of Sin,” he persuasively compared Mr. Dylan at various points with personages as distinct as Yeats, Hardy, Keats, Marvell, Tennyson and Marlon Brando. “Dylan’s in an art in which sins are laid bare (and resisted) virtues are valued (and manifested) and the graces brought home,” Mr. Ricks wrote. He added, “Human dealings of every kind are his for the artistic seizing. ” Mr. Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minn. in 1941, was inspired when young by potent American vernacular music, songs by performers like Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. When his voice became fully his own, in his work of the 1960s that led up to what is probably his greatest song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” no one had ever heard pop songs with so many oracular, tumbling words in them. When Bruce Springsteen inducted Mr. Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, he described the opening seconds of that song this way: “That snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind. ” The words that followed pulled that door from its hinge. In the chorus, they posed a question that has not stopped ringing over American life: “How does it be on your no direction home. ” At the time, Dylan wrote in his masterful memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004) “I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. ” That memoir demonstrated that Mr. Dylan could write prose as fluently as lyrics. This needed proving only because Mr. Dylan’s sole novel, “Tarantula” (1966) written when he was 25, is a largely unreadable wordstew, written so as to defeat the hardiest of his idolators. As Elvis Costello said in his own recent memoir, “If you want a long career, you have to drive people away now and again, so they realize they miss you. ” Everyone has his or her own private anthology of favorite Dylan lyrics. Mine come from songs including “Idiot Wind” (“blowing every time you move your teeth”) “Brownsville Girl” (“Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content”) “Hurricane,” written with Jacques Levy (“How can the life of such a in the palm of some fool’s hand? ”) “Sweetheart Like You” (“It’s done with a flick of the wrist”) and “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread,” written with the Band (“Pack up the meat, sweet, we’re headin’ out”). Then there’s this, from “Blind Willie McTell”: Before this Nobel Prize, Mr. Dylan has been recognized by the world of literature and poetry. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power. ” His songs have always packed social and political power to match the imagery. In his book “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood,” Coates spoke of what Mr. Dylan’s songs meant to his father as well as to a generation: “Dylan’s voice was awful, an aged quaver that sounded nothing like the or silky RB that Dad took as gospel. But the lyrics wore him down, until he played Dylan in that addicted manner of college kids who cordon off portions to decipher the prophecies of their favorite band. Dad heard poetry, but more than that an angle that confirmed what a latent part of him had already suspected. ” What was confirmed was this: The Vietnam War was a moral disgrace. Songs are not poems, exactly. Songs prick our senses in different manner. Many of Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can no doubt, as Mr. Larkin put, look when set starkly alone on a white page. But Mr. Dylan’s work — “with its iambics, its rhymes, and its scattergun images,” as the critic Robert Christgau wrote — has its own kind of emblematic verbal genius. His diction, focus and tone are those of a caustically gifted word man his metrical dexterity is everywhere apparent. He is capable of rhetorical organization more often he scatters his rhetoric like seed, or like curses. This award is also a sign — after last year’s laureate, Svetlana Alexievich, whose work is made up of interviews — that the Swedish Academy is increasingly open to nontraditional forms of writing. In what feels like a blow for common sense and scalding wordplay, the academy has attended to Mr. Dylan’s lyrics in “Lay Lady Lay,” to wit: “Why wait any longer for the one you he’s standing in front of you?” In a 2004 interview in The New York Times, Mr. Ricks summed up my sense of the best of Mr. Dylan’s oeuvre: “I just think we’re terrifically lucky to be alive at a time when he is. ” | 1 |
259 Views November 17, 2016 1 Comment Analyses The Saker
This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/putin-is-finally-purging-the-medvedev-government/
While the word was focused in rapt attention on the outcome of the US Presidential election, Vladimir Putin did something quite amazing – he arrested Alexei Uliukaev , Minister of the Economy of the Medvedev government, on charges of extortion and corruption. Uliukaev, whose telephone had been tapped by the Russian Security Services since this summer, was arrested in the middle of the night in possession of 2 million US dollars. Putin officially fired him the next morning.
Russian official sources say that Uliukaev extorted a $2 million bribe for an assessment that led to the acquisition by Rosneft (a state run Russian oil giant) of a 50% stake in Bashneft (another oil giant). Apparently, Uliukaev tried to threaten Igor Sechin , the President of Rosneft and a person considered close to Vladimir Putin and the Russian security and intelligence services.
Yes, you read that right: according to the official version, a state-owned company gave a bribe to a member of the government. Does that make sense to you? How about a senior member of the government who had his telephone tapped and who has been under close surveillance by the Federal Security Service for over a year – does that make sense to you?
This makes no sense at all and the Russian authorities fully realize that. But that is the official version. So what is going on here? Do you think that there is a message from Putin here?
Of course there is!
Remember the corrupt Minister of Defense Anatolii Serdiukov ? He was first fired from his position and only then arrested. But this time around, it is a member of the government which is arrested in the middle of the night. For a few hours, his subordinates could not even reach him – they had no idea what had happened to him. Was that a mistake? Hardly.
The way Uliukaev was detained was carefully choreographed to instill the strongest sense of fear possible in all the other 5 th columnists still in power because in so many ways Uliukaev was a symbol for all the the “Atlantic Integrationists” (those in the Kremlin who want to integrate Russia into the US controlled international security system): Uliukaev was a known liberal, just like Nikita Belykh , governor of Kirov Region, who was detained in a high-publicity arrest in June for taking a 400’000 Euros bribe. I would even say that Uliukaev could be considered the ultimate symbol of the Atlantic Integrationists and a faithful member of the Russian “liberal” (meaning the “Washington consensus” type) sect who, in the past had worked with Egor Gaidar and Alexei Kudrin and who now has been brought down by the Russian “ siloviki ”, the top officials of the so-called “power ministries” (defense, state security, intelligence). Sergei Korolev, the Head of the Economic Security service of the FSB
This was immediately recognized by everybody and the main headline of the popular website Gazeta.ru could not be clearer, it read: “ The Siloviki brought down Uliukaev ” and featured a photo of the key actors of this drama, including the tough-looking man thought to have brought Uliukaev down, Sergei Korolev, the Head of the Economic Security service of the FSB (shown on photo here).
In April, I predicted that a government purge was in the making . I have to admit that I thought that this would have happened earlier. Apparently Putin decided to take action while Uncle Sam was busy with his own, internal, problems. If that is indeed the reason for the late timing, that says a lot about the power of the USA still wields in Russia. Some observers noticed that the arrest of Uliukaev took place after the telephone conversation between Trump and Putin, hinting that Trump might have given Putin the go ahead for the arrest. That is, of course, utter nonsense, but if that can make Putin look bad – it’s good enough for the 5 th columnists.
The list of potential ‘candidates’ to be purged next is still long and includes names like the Deputy Prime Minister Arkadii Dvorkovich , the First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov , the Governor of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina , the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov and, of course, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. Uliukaev was only one amongst many more. Still, he was definitely a top-level target and the manner in which he was arrested must have sent a chill down the spine of all the other 5 th columnists in the Kremlin. Just the fact that his phone was tapped for so long is quite unthinkable and clearly points to the fact that nobody is safe from Putin’s purges. And that, by itself, is truly a most welcome change: every member of the Medvedev government now has been put on notice that his/her life is now spent under the close scrutiny of the FSB.
It really matters little what will happen to Uliukaev next. He has be formally arraigned, now his case will be further investigated and then Uliukaev will have his day in court (right now he has only be detained and he will be kept under house arrest for the next two months). Potentially, he faces 15 years in jail and a fine equivalent to 70 times the amount of the bribe he took. Judging by the case of Serdyukov, who is managed to escape any prison time thanks to a Presidential Amnesty for the 20 years of the Russian Constitution, Putin seem to be reluctant to inflict any form of retribution upon his enemies. But even if Uliukaev does not get to enjoy the fresh air of the Siberian taiga, he is already finished as a power broker, and that is all that really matters to Putin.
What matters here is that in the course of one night, a top level Russian Minister went from his Ministerial Offices to a holding cell and that absolutely nobody saw it coming or could prevent this. Yet again we have a case of 100% Putin style: no warnings of any kind, no hints even, just sudden dramatic action with an immediate result. His “handwriting” is clearly all over the case. Uliukaev ain’t laughing no more…
The reaction to this arrest in Russia was predictable, especially after sources in the security services told the Russian media that Arkadii Dvorkovich and Andrei Belousov were also under investigation. Anatolii Chubais, for example, declared that he was in “total shock”. Even better was the reaction of Prime Minister Medvedev who said that this development was at the “edge of his understanding”.
It will be interesting to observe the inevitable reaction from the Atlantic Integrationists: if they really feel defeated, they will pay lip-service to the need to “fight corruption on all levels” and generally keep a low profile. If they still have some fight in them, they will denounce a “Stalinist” crackdown, the return to “1930’s -like purges” and a “new campaign of terror” against democracy. The western corporate media, whose only “value” is money, will write about how the Russian “secret police” is cracking down on “business entrepreneurs” and how that will end up damaging the Russian economy. Basically, a repeat of the whining which we all heard when Putin dismantled the infamous semibankirshchina . As Elton John would say, we “have seen that movie too…”
As for the rabid Putin-hating nationalists, they will say that this is too little too late. For years they have been complaining about corruption and how top level officials were never investigated, and now that they seem to have gotten their wish, it’s “too little, too late”. But that doesn’t really matter, since they have almost as little credibility with the Russian general public as the pro-western parties like Iabloko or Parnass.
The main media outlets and political commentators are all giving Putin a standing ovation right now. That is hardly surprising since they are the ones who for many months now have been loudly and constantly complaining about the “economic bloc of the government”, meaning the pro-US 5 th columnists inside the Medvedev government. Quite literally all the main political commentators have been begging and demanding a purge of this “economic bloc” and a radical change in the economic policies of Russia. Well, they got one villain purged, which is a good start, but there are no signs that more heads will roll or that the economic course of Russia will finally break from the Washington consensus kind of policies and be replaced it with much needed policy of internal growth. But then, knowing Putin, we should not expect any signs – only action.
In Russia, just as in the USA, changing the people is far easier than changing the system while the only way to achieve real change is, precisely, to change the system, not the people. So far, Putin has only succeeded in kicking some of the worst people out and, to his credit, getting some very good people in. Now that a threat of war with the USA is very substantially reduced and that Uncle Sam will be busy with his own, internal, struggles, I hope that Putin will finally take some very strong action to liberate Russia from the Washington consensus types and replace them with real patriots who will finally make it possible for Russia to become a truly sovereign country, even in the economic sense.
The Saker The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 0 |
Search The Left in Power : Clinton to Obama David Horowitz explains how the Democrats became a leftwing party in Volume VII of the Black Book of the American Left. October 28, 2016 Richard Baehr
Below is Richard Baehr's review of David Horowitz's new book, The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama (reprinted from American Thinker with permission). The book is volume 7 of The Black Book of the American Left , a multi-volume collection of David Horowitz's conservative writings that will, when completed, be the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to define the Left and its agenda. (Order HERE .) We encourage our readers to visit BlackBookOfTheAmericanLeft.com which features Horowitz’s introductions to Volumes 1-7 of this 9-volume series, along with their tables of contents, reviews and interviews with the author.
Every year, there is some report of the blissful ignorance of American history demonstrated by the supposedly best and brightest at elite American universities. Suffice it to say the collected writings of David Horowitz on the American Left, which constitute part of a solid foundation for understanding the last half century of American politics, are nowhere to be found on any college or high school reading list.
Horowitz’s latest book, The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama , is the seventh volume in his nine-volume collection, The Black Book of the American Left . This new volume provides a collection of his writings over the last quarter century, focusing primarily on the Left’s control in our government and culture. As Horowitz reveals, even during the Bush years, conservatives were on the defense and leftists controlled the narrative as they attempted to destroy Bush and his chances for re-election in 2004. Their primary mode of attack was to undermine America’s efforts in Iraq almost from the start of the conflict, when just months earlier a majority of Senate Democrats and near half of House Democrats had supported the President. The Left then destroyed Bush’s second term with bogus charges of racist neglect in the handling of Hurricane Katrina. There was plenty of incompetence in the response to Katrina, but local and state officials — all Democrats, of course, and many of them African American — were the principal operators on the ground during the crisis.
The immediate abandonment of support for the Iraq war effort was a signal event in American history, sending a message that a large part of the Democratic Party was not remotely concerned about the morale of our men and women fighting overseas. The weak effort by some Democrats to hold onto an ounce of patriotic resolve -- “end the war, support the troops” -- was designed more for campaign speeches than any meaningful attempt to convey national unity for the effort underway by our armed forces. So too, the obsession with Abu Ghraib gave the lie to the Democrats’ “support our troops” message, as a broad brush was used to paint the incident as somehow what you would expect from our military on a routine basis.
Horowitz outlines this narrative, faulting the Bush administration for failing to fight harder to present its story of why we went into Iraq and the risks if we had done nothing. Regrettably, the Bush administration never had a chance to get a better defense of the Iraq war out to the media. Most in the media considered the Bush administration illegitimate due to its narrow victory in the 2000 presidential contest, a lie to be sure . Unfortunately, it is almost certainly true that the media today are far more in the bag for the left than ten or twenty years ago and work harder at pushing the left’s agenda. The soft liberalism of Walter Cronkite has been replaced by cable and national network anchors who routinely bury stories embarrassing to their side and focus on those that can do damage to the other side. During the current Presidential election cycle, we have seen the most prestigious media organs explain why it is necessary and appropriate for them to be biased this year. It is a special time, they argue, because Trump is, in their view, a unique threat to the Republic.
On the other hand, the media have been loath to consider the damage to the country caused by Barack Obama -- the loss of respect abroad for America’s will to fight, the degradation of our military readiness, the fraying of ties with allies, and the near obsessive outreach to America’s enemies that led to agreements such as the nuclear deal with Iran, best described as an abject surrender of American interests that will lead to the funding of fanatical nuclear regime. About 85% of those supposedly sensible pro-Israel Democrats walked the plank behind their great leader on that deal, with no visible regrets to date. There was simply too much political risk to oppose the first black president of their party. The media were happy to parrot the administration’s talking points for the nuclear deal, something the manipulators crowed over at the White House.
At least in the propaganda use of Abu Ghraib, the Left was honest in revealing what it thinks about the military. As Horowitz outlines in article after article, the Left is fighting a war that most Americans do not see, disguising its intentions through its aggressive, unceasing promotion of “progressive” policies “to make America a better place.” This commitment to deception emerges, Horowitz reveals, from the allegiance to the ideology of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” a formative doctrine for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The progressive goal is to achieve a new society that has never been seen before in this country, though it has been promised and has catastrophically failed in many places around the globe. In America, the Left is not only unconcerned with selling their program to the public, but also, Horowitz argues, it is fearful of the result of voters knowing what it is pursuing. One prime example was the admission of MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber that health care law would never have made it through Congress if it had been presented honestly.
The Left is also busy at work making it easier for itself to win politically. Horowitz provides chapter and verse on the Left’s efforts to rapidly change the composition of the voting pool -- motor voter registration with no birth certificate required, fighting every effort to combat voter fraud with charges of racism and “turning the clock back,” even when states were willing to pay for potential voters obtaining the needed documents to register, support for open borders, expansion of legal immigration, and amnesty and citizenship (and voting rights) for more than ten million already in the country illegally. Here the Left’s mentor and financier is George Soros and his buddies, who have funded dozens of organizations which fight on multiple fronts every day to advance the left politically. And Horowitz has done a great public service by his Discover the Network listing of the people responsible for America’s steady drift to the radical Left.
The Left uses the racism charge in many of the confrontations it creates. Of course, the problems of America’s inner cities, all under complete control of one political party for half a century, have never been of even near equal interest to the Democrats as their ability to continue to win enormous majorities among inner city voters, particularly African Americans. The Left has fully endorsed the teacher unions’ opposition to charter schools, and voucher programs, though both are popular with minority group parents and children. The two major teachers unions are simply too powerful a support group for the Democratic Party (campaign cash, votes, and volunteers) for the Left to support policies that might lead to a better future for kids as opposed to continued growth in expenditures for the teachers unions and their workforce.
In the last two years, the Soros-funded Black Lives Matter movement has created a near national hysteria over the alleged systematic effort by police to kill unarmed black men. Between two and three dozen unarmed blacks are killed by cops each year, many of them in situations where the ”victims” were almost certainly responsible for what happened to them -- Michael Brown in Ferguson is a prime example. One wonders where the news media are to report on the police shooting of unarmed whites, which greatly outnumber those of unarmed blacks. Perhaps because there are no riots, or looting, these incidents have no cachet. More likely, they do not fit the systemic racism charge now routinely thrown around by everyone from the current President to Hillary Clinton.
In Chicago in 9 months this year, over 400 blacks, mostly men, have been shot and killed, almost exclusively by other black men. By year end, over 4,000 Chicagoans will have been shot. One might think this was a bigger story of urban calamity and civil society breakdown than a shooting in Charlotte. Chicago’s mayor says that police “have gone fetal,” avoiding making stops in crime ridden neighborhoods, with the ACLU looking over their shoulder demanding a report for every stop, and activists in the neighborhoods treating the police with scorn and abuse, following a bad police shooting captured on video and kept hidden from the public by Chicago’s mayor to protect his re-election bid. Rahm Emanuel must also have read Alinsky, for he knows whose hide to protect first and foremost. The victims of the police pullback in Chicago, Baltimore, St, Louis and other cities, called “the Ferguson effect,” are many more dead black men, killed in crime waves that are reminiscent of the 1990s. Even the FBI Director admits the Ferguson Effect is real, when not covering for Hillary Clinton.
Horowitz’ latest book is full of insights and straight talk on the goals and the mission of the Left, and how it has advanced its cause this last quarter century. He provides the kind of arguments that keep his books from getting reviewed by the New York Times. And there is always a horrible slur available from the Left to describe a viewpoint that counters one of its missions. The Left chooses to ignore the argument and uses character assassination for the people making it. It argues that these are people (Horowitz included) unworthy of serious consideration, or respect.
Silencing the critic or the dissident or limiting his visibility has been a long time weapon of the Left. So far, Horowitz keeps writing, and America is free enough that the Left, though it clearly wants to, cannot ban his books. George Soros and his family have another $20 billion to spend on changing America. The Alinsky acolytes have their mission laid out to make use of the funds and create an America where the smart bureaucrats can organize society and distribute its wealth, so results are all equal. And we can all sing along with the Pete Seeger songs as we turn away from any role overseas (where of course we have primarily been an agent of evil) and disinvest in defense every year.
Let’s hope that some of America’s young will read Horowitz’ books,and learn what their professors and teachers won’t teach them. | 0 |
By wmw_admin on November 2, 2016 henrymakow.com — Nov 1, 2016 Salman Hossein was forced to flee Canada in 2010 with police on his tail for antisemitic activities. From his exile in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he says Hillary will win and lead the US to world war. Masonic Jewish central bankers can’t allow Trump to win because he will turn on them. They are already losing world control and Trump would be the final nail in their coffin. CIA, Mossad, please phone. Salman Hossein is available for false flags, drug running, wet operations etc. by Salman Hossein — (henrymakow.com) After 9-11, there were eight regimes that had not submitted to the authority of the Jewish bankers. Four of them either got taken out or bullied/bribed/coerced into bowing down – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. The only problem is that recently China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Turkey have broken out of the sphere of control. Syria is still independent and fighting to maintain its sovereignty against Israeli expansionism and Banker domination. Putin recently put out an arrest warrant for George Soros for currency manipulation and has issued a decree banning the Rothschild clan from Russia. Russia is also causing problems for the Israelis and the West by defending the regime of Bashar Al Assad from Nusra and Da’esh/ISIS. Israeli expansionism has been kept in check by Russia. China has also more or less wrested free of control from the International Jewish oligarchy. As a pro-Israeli asset , Trump is not a threat to Israeli expansionism in Gaza and the West Bank. He has even opened up a campaign office in Israel. He is essentially aligning white gentile power with the Israeli-Jewish supremacist camp. He only cares about Israel and will facilitate even worse oppression of Arabs and Muslims not only in Palestine and the rest of the Greater Middle East but in the Western world as well. He consistently repeats the false “ Muslim terrorist “ narrative. He is even worse than George W. Bush Junior . As the alternative to the US Dollar, the new BRICS monetary system is also challenging Jewish control of international finance. The heavyweights in the BRICS alliance are Russia and China. There are those who claim that BRICS is also covertly run by the Jewish bankers. I don’t buy this. The Chinese are fully aware of the Jewish question . The Russians kicked out Jewish criminals . They won’t be able to penetrate the economy as well as they have done in the Western world. THE DILEMMA OF JEWISH SUPREMACISM | 0 |
Last week our 2016 electoral projection map had Trump at 235 electoral votes and Clinton at 230. Today’s update includes several state category changes that benefit Trump should they play out as projected on election day next Tuesday.
The following changes are reflected in the new projections. Utah moves from toss up to Trump New Hampshire moves from Clinton to toss up Virginia moves from Clinton to toss up Michigan moves from Clinton to toss up Ohio moves from toss up to Trump
UTAH
While long shot candidate Evan McMullin has proven to be a thorn in Trump’s side in Utah, all polls now indicate Trump will end up triumphant on election day. The media is hyping Utah in an attempt to cast a negative light on Trump’s overall standing with more conservative GOP voters, but there is no solid evidence McMullin will actually pull off a win.
We strongly believe Trump will ultimately win Utah and have moved this state into the Trump corner accordingly.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
New polling out of New Hampshire has Trump and Clinton tied, with the latest poll showing Trump at +3. There is no early voting in New Hampshire so we don’t have a sense of where things stand in terms of turnout.
With no early turnout data and tightening polls we’ve decided to move New Hampshire back into toss up territory.
VIRGINIA
Perhaps the most surprising move is Virginia. Of all the states we’re watching in the toss up column, Virginia is probably the toughest pick up for Trump. The big government vote in northern Virginia is a mountain not easily climbed for a Republican candidate.
Clinton has a lot of advantages in Virginia. There are wide spread reports of voter fraud in favor of Clinton, the northern Virginia blue vote will be a huge benefit and her running mate Tim Kaine has deep organization across the state.
That said, Clinton should be dominating in the polls and instead they’re tightening across Virginia in ways they shouldn’t all things considered. On October 19th Clinton lead in the average by nearly 10%. That lead has been cut to just 4.7%, nearly within the margin of error.
MICHIGAN
Our sources in Michigan are telling us Trump is gaining massive steam in the state. It’s all about turnout and according to FiveThirtyEight if the popular vote is within 2 points Donald Trump has a 40% chance of picking off Michigan.
On October 18th the Fox 2 Detroit poll had Clinton up by 13%. Two days ago that same poll had Clinton up by 3%, a lead that sits within the margin of error.
OHIO
In pretty much all polls for Ohio over the past several weeks Donald Trump has consistently held a 5% advantage. This plus the fact that there has not been a major poll released after the bombshell FBI news has us confident Ohio is now in Trump’s favor.
If our projection holds, Trump only needs 11 electoral votes for victory at the 270 mark. And as you can see below, there are a plethora of ways he can accomplish that. All of them, however, are very challenging.
That challenge exists for Clinton as well.
Note : Our projection is based on corrected sample weight for a broad variety of polling combined with early voting statistics. CURRENT PROJECTED ELECTORAL VOTE STANDINGS HILLARY CLINTON DONALD TRUMP 259 ELECTORAL VOTES
Note: Orange denotes states that cannot yet be projected. Hover over each state to reveal electoral vote counts. AL | 0 |
Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment. 1. If forcing a girl to wear hijab is against her freedom and “feminism,” what about forcing her not to wear hijab when she wants to? Isn’t it also against her freedom of choice? — Aysha Jahan on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about efforts by the police in several French beach towns to enforce a ban against the “burkini,” a modest swimsuit worn by observant Muslim women. This comment received more than 2, 450 likes. 2. A 6. 2 magnitude earthquake, while not small, is not particularly large. The reason it caused so much damage is that many of the beautiful ancient buildings are composed of unreinforced masonry (stone). These are the most dangerous buildings to be in during an earthquake as they have very little sheer strength, and therefore collapse when exposed to lateral ground accelerations. Such buildings can undergo seismic retrofitting, but the process is expensive and I suspect that most buildings in Italy have not undergone such a procedure. So therefore it is likely an unaddressed infrastructure issue that led to wide such spread devastation. — Geoscientist in Tallahassee, Fla. reacting to an article about the earthquake that struck central Italy, killing more than 200 people. 3. I grew up in Southern California. I remember when the Whittier Narrows quake crumbled parts of my hometown and what it felt like to be thrown out of bed for the Northridge quake and being forced to crawl on my hands and knees to safety as my mother screamed from her room down the hall. We were fine, just broken dishes and books everywhere, but I remember the terror. I can’t imagine how these people felt as their houses collapsed around them. My heart goes out to Italy. Know that many Americans who have lived through earthquakes themselves are thinking of you. We hope many are pulled from the rubble alive. And hopefully you can rebuild stronger. Peace. — Dr. A. in Texas. 4. The triple standard continues — woman, a Clinton and Democrat. Whitewater, a conspiracy theories, Benghazi, and now “the emails. ” All of these have produced nothing other than a normal human being with a long track record of excellent service who has made a few errors and has a few flaws. Bernie Sanders had a lot of things right, including letting the spinning of the emails fall by the wayside. If this were a man, not a Clinton, and not a Democrat, this wouldn’t even be news. — 6Strings in North Carolina, reacting to an article about a judge’s order to the F. B. I. to release nearly 15, 000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails that it collected off her personal server. This comment received more than 4, 300 reader recommendations. 5. In economics, educational achievement, social status, in those measurable areas, this ethnic group has a large portion of its population at the bottom. Look at the public schools and how Democratic factions like teachers’ unions and organizations like the N. A. A. C. P. have a stranglehold on this group’s children. Trump’s remarks are correct — just look at these urban cities that have been under Democratic control for decades. One could go on and on, but why not admit the overall accuracy of what Donald Trump stated? I’m voting for Donald Trump. — Pianki in St. Louis, reacting to an article about Donald Trump’s attempts to reach out to black voters. 6. It should surprise no one that white people just don’t want to live with blacks, regardless of income. And yet everyone still treats this fact as though it were new, or they bend over backwards trying to deny it all together. Face it. It makes no difference if you are a professional, black person — because in the end, you’re still black. — N. Smith in New York, reacting to an article about racial segregation in cities like Milwaukee, where 59 percent of black families with household incomes over $100, 000 a year live in poor areas. This comment received more than 190 reader recommendations. 7. My son will now attend elementary school without an EpiPen. I pray he doesn’t touch anything with . .. have considered home school now. How long will the people of this country suffer to Big Pharma until we rise up against it? — Jennifer Ericksen on The Times’s Facebook page, reacting to an article about the sudden and steep increase in the price of an EpiPen, an injection device that delivers a dose of epinephrine to a user suffering an anaphylactic allergy attack. 8. I am a chemist by training and trade. As far as the bagels are concerned, the lye (i. e. NaOH) reacts with the proteins and sugars in the flour and causes (I am guessing) carmelization reactions. By the time the bagels are boiled and baked, the lye has been completely neutralized and there should, in fact, be no free lye remaining. If you want to follow the recipe that uses lye, be careful (generally speaking, kitchens can be dangerous places if you aren’t careful) but don’t worry about having remnants of a toxic chemical in your food. — Perry Brown in Salt Lake City, reacting to an article about whether lye is a key ingredient in bagel baking. 9. As for Facebook, I’ve found that it has both fostered all sorts of very productive (i. e. polite and reasonable) political discourse and also led to some personal disappointment. On the one hand, you can speak with people about political matters in a way that would be far too awkward in person (“no religion or politics” is still the standard rule of etiquette for most social gatherings, I find). On the other, it means I now have to see how much my grandfather loves Trump. It stings every time I see him post something, but what can you do? You have to let people be themselves and have the emotional restraint to not respond to everything you see online. Facebook, like most digital media, is nothing but what you make it. — Jonathan Krause in the United Kingdom, reacting to an article about Facebook’s role in political news coverage during this election cycle. 10. This is what happens when get more access to the same funding and facilities get, beginning in middle and high school and on through college. This is why women’s rights are human rights. The benefits of empowering can be felt all across the societies that choose to do so. — Leanne Harpin on The Times’s Facebook page, reacting to an article about American female athletes in the Rio Olympics, where they won 61 medals. Had the women been a separate country, they would have been third in the overall medal count. This comment received more than 550 likes. | 1 |
CHICAGO — Chicago’s police superintendent has called for the firing of seven officers for their response to a colleague’s fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014, a case that roiled the city and laid bare longstanding tensions between the police and black Chicagoans. Superintendent Eddie Johnson’s decision, announced Thursday by a Police Department spokesman, comes nearly two years after Officer Jason Van Dyke fired 16 shots at Mr. McDonald, a . The dashboard camera video of the shooting that was released, under public pressure, in November incited widespread protests and exposed an entrenched “code of silence” among officers who had sworn to a far different account of the shooting from what the video captured. The case has led to increased scrutiny and skepticism of the department, including a Justice Department investigation into Chicago police practices and the firing of the previous police superintendent last year as protests intensified. Mayor Rahm Emanuel remains under pressure to provide more transparency and overhaul the police disciplinary system. The call to fire the officers broadened the departmental fallout as the force struggles to restore public trust. The seven officers recommended for firing were accused of making false reports. They had backed up Officer Van Dyke’s account that Mr. McDonald had moved menacingly toward him with a knife. But their story was contradicted by the video of the shooting while Mr. McDonald had a knife, he seemed to be veering away from the police when Officer Van Dyke shot him, and the gunfire continued after the teenager collapsed to the ground. Officer Van Dyke, the only officer who fired his gun that night, has been charged with murder and is awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty and said he feared for his life. To the department’s critics, the significance of the video of Mr. McDonald’s shooting was not just in showing how wanton and unnecessary his killing had been, but in starkly demonstrating how blatantly and casually police officers had lied about the circumstances of another officer shooting a man. Such “code of silence” of misconduct, critics said, had rarely been made so plain as in the discrepancy between the officers’ accounts of the killing and what the video later showed. Craig B. Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who directs a civil rights and police accountability project at the law school, said the move to fire the officers was a start. “This is an important and necessary step,” he said. “But it can’t be a . It has to be a consistent practice that if you lie, you are fired. The sad fact is that lying has become a regular and entrenched practice when police misconduct occurs, and disciplining or firing officers for engaging in that practice has rarely happened. ” In an email to Chicago police employees announcing his decision, Superintendent Johnson said he believed “that through these challenges we can take the lessons learned to become a better department. ” “While I know that this type of action can come with many questions and varying opinions, please know that these decisions were not made lightly,” he said. “Each of these decisions was based on a methodical and substantive review of the facts by both internal and external counsel. Each officer will have their right to due process. ” Mr. Emanuel said in a statement that he supported the superintendent’s decision. “As the city takes these important steps to hold individuals accountable, we must also recommit ourselves to partnering together to rebuild trust between our police department and our residents,” Mr. Emanuel said. The president of the union representing officers did not immediately respond to messages on Thursday seeking comment. Mr. Futterman said the discipline should not stop with the . “The code of silence goes far higher than that, and goes far higher in this case,” Mr. Futterman said. “It’s even more important that those at top of the food chain are held accountable. ” He said it remained to be seen whether the department’s response is unique to the highly scrutinized McDonald case — or whether it signals that lying to investigators to protect another officer’s misconduct will no longer be tolerated. With making up one third of the city, the question is critical to the department and the city. Public hearings this summer on the Justice Department’s investigation revealed deep rifts, as frustrated and angry minorities recounted tales of victimization. But many said getting dangerous and abusive police officers off the streets was only part of the issue. Equally significant, residents said, was fixing a broken, or nonexistent, disciplinary system so it would bring accountability after cases of police abuse. The seven officers Superintendent Johnson recommended firing were made to turn in their badges until the Police Board made its decision. But he cannot terminate them unilaterally. The officers, who were not named, will have a chance to contest the action before the city’s Police Board, whose members are appointed by Mr. Emanuel. The Police Board’s executive director, Max A. Caproni, said Thursday that his office had not yet received formal charges against the officers. Once those charges are filed, the officers will have the option to hire lawyers and contest the findings. The disciplinary process can take months to play out. Mr. Caproni said the median time for a hearing was about four months after charges are filed, and the median time for a disciplinary decision was about seven months. Without any lawsuit being filed, and long before criminal charges were filed and the video was made public, Chicago’s City Council approved a $5 million settlement for Mr. McDonald’s family. But his death is just one of several noteworthy police shootings here in recent years. Since 2004, Chicago has spent more than $500 million to settle cases of alleged police misconduct. Those payments, which have come as Chicago has struggled to fund its school system and meet its pension obligations, have frustrated residents. During protests last year after Officer Van Dyke was charged, demonstrators repeatedly chanted “16 shots and a ” and many urged Mr. Emanuel to resign. The Department of Justice investigation includes an examination of how the Chicago police treat minorities and punish misconduct in its ranks. It could eventually lead to a legally binding agreement with the city imposing significant changes in how the police operate. The City Council has also been holding hearings on the creation of a new agency to investigate police abuses community activists are waiting to see whether the proposal by the mayor and his Council allies has real teeth and independence, or whether the structure of the new agency would be as ineffective as the existing police review authority that it would replace. In the aftermath of the McDonald case, the city’s inspector general issued a report recommending the firing of eight officers, said Anthony Guglielmi, a police spokesman. The department “respectfully disagrees” with the recommendation to fire the eighth officer, Mr. Guglielmi said in an email, “and feels that there is insufficient evidence to prove those respective allegations. ” Two other officers cited by the inspector general have since retired, Mr. Guglielmi said. The inspector general’s report has not been published. Mr. Guglielmi also said the officers’ names would not be released until formal charges were filed with the Police Board. Both the Police Department and the Office of Inspector General said they could not release the report recommending the firings or Superintendent Johnson’s response. Federal investigators said they were also investigating Mr. McDonald’s shooting, and a special prosecutor has been appointed in state court to investigate whether officers who witnessed the shooting committed crimes. | 1 |
As Calais "Jungle" Burns, Refugees Try To Storm Their Way Back In Source: Zero Hedge
It has been a harsh week for the 8,000 refugees inhabiting the Calais "Jungle" camp.
Continuing an operation which began on Monday, workers ramped up demolition of France's notorious Calais "Jungle" on Wednesday after fierce blazes cut through a swathe of the camp overnight, sending migrants fleeing for safety. Fabienne Buccio, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, said it was "mission accomplished" for the demolition.
However his assessment may have been premature as charities said many unaccompanied minors had not been processed and BBC reporters at the camp said groups of adults remained.
Wearing hardhats and orange overalls in the morning fog, a team of around 15 workers resumed tearing down tents and makeshift shelters at the camp that has become a symbol of Europe's migrant crisis.
As recounted by AFP reporters, a new fire threw black smoke into the sky as several dozen wood shacks smouldered on a main thoroughfare of the sprawling slum. "Someone burned our tents. Maybe they used petrol or something, I don't know, but the fires spread fast. We had to run out in the middle of the night," said Arman Khan, a 17-year-old Afghan. "I left all my things behind, I have nothing now."
Riot police had cordoned off the demolition area while aid workers and government officials checked that the dwellings were empty. Others carted away the debris and abandoned belongings - mattresses, multi-coloured blankets, supermarket trollies and so on - in small earth-movers. Gas canisters, sinks, refrigerators and other metal objects lay scattered across the desolate scene.
The fires spread just hours after workers moved in Tuesday to clear the squalid camp that has been home to an estimated 6,000-8,000 migrants, many with hopes of reaching Britain.
A local official played down the blazes, telling AFP: "It's a tradition among communities who set fire to their homes before leaving." Located next to the port of Calais, the Jungle has for years been a launchpad for migrants attempting to make it to Britain by sneaking onto trucks or jumping onto trains heading across the Channel.
Since Monday, 3,242 adults have been transferred to centres around France and 772 unaccompanied minors have been moved to shipping containers converted into temporary shelters in the Jungle, the interior ministry said. The numbers represent around half the camp's estimated population before the operation began, according to official figures.
The authorities have said those who agree to be moved can seek asylum in France. Those who refuse risk deportation. The fate of more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors is of particular concern.
Meanwhile, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday that all those "with proven family links in Britain" would eventually be transferred and that London had committed to reviewing all other cases where it was "in the child's interest" to settle across the Channel.
* * *
However, not all are seeking to rush back. Many inhabitants of the camp attempted to break through the police line and storm back into the camp, which is being demolished by the authorities, according to RT's reporter on the ground. Inhabitants break through police line to storm back into #Calais camp. pic.twitter.com/fb1aQSVh99
— Harry Fear (@harryfear) October 26, 2016
Sky News also said that migrants were returning to the “Jungle.” Migrants are returning to the 'Jungle' camp in Calais following fires during demolition at the site
— Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) October 26, 2016
A migrant child, who was among those returning to the camp, waved a cricket bat and shouted: “Jungle is not dead! Jungle is not dead!” according to the British Express newspaper. “It’s chaos with these ongoing fires and plumes of smoke [across the camp],” Harry Fear reported from the scene.
“The police line was broken by migrants wanting to enter back in,” he said, adding that it appears new fires have been set across the camp.
According to the RT correspondent, the operation to clear Calais looks much like a failure, despite claims of its complete success by the French authorities. He said that fire brigades on site have been working “quite slowly” to put out the fires. The RT crew also noticed “uncontrolled gas canisters [at the camp’s territory], which haven’t yet been secured by the authorities,” Fear added.
According to an unnamed regional official, the authorities will be able to shut down the processing center, which is dispersing migrants to different locations in France until the end of the day. Fires keep burning in many locations around the camp as some migrants set fire to the camp in response to government actions.
— Jonathan RT France (@Jonathan_RTfr) October 26, 2016
The demolition of tents and wooden structures, which the residents had used as shelter, started at the site on Tuesday. Violent clashes between the police and the inhabitants were reported, with tear gas deployed by officers. The camp was set ablaze last night by refugees displeased with the demolition. The flames caused several explosions of portable gas, with four migrants arrested over the incident. Cette partie de la #Jungle a été rasée au tractopelle #Calais pic.twitter.com/somJBNNkKy
— Jonathan RT France (@Jonathan_RTfr) October 26, 2016
Thousands of hopeful migrants, many of whom are now homeless, are looking to cross the English Channel to find asylum in the UK have been holed up at the camp for months. Britain, however, only agreed to take in around 1,000 migrant children from the camp who have relatives in the UK.
On Wednesday, almost 40 councils in England refused to accept any of the child refugees evacuated from the camp.
Meanwhile, with the UN warning that the recent attack on Mosul may unleash up to another million refugees in the coming weeks, Europe's migrant crisis is about to get even worse. | 0 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The evacuation of civilians and fighters from the last part of Aleppo concluded on Thursday after long delays because of frigid weather, putting all of Syria’s industrial capital back in the hands of President Bashar ’s forces for the first time since 2012. The last buses carrying residents from eastern Aleppo left the city late Thursday night, according to the Syrian state news agency. Tens of thousands of people have been removed from eastern Aleppo since Dec. 15. Before the last buses left on Thursday, the Red Cross said that 34, 000 people had left the city, including 4, 000 fighters who had left in their own vehicles the previous night. A separate convoy was waiting to carry residents out of two villages in neighboring Idlib Province that have been surrounded by rebels for years. It was unclear late Thursday whether the convoy had completed its trip. The seizure of all of Aleppo by Mr. Assad and his allies signals a turning point in the nearly conflict. Mr. Assad’s army relied heavily on foreign military support from Russia, Iran and Shiite militias like Lebanon’s Hezbollah to surround the area. Months of shelling and airstrikes that killed hundreds of people and reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble finally routed the rebels and pushed the area’s inhabitants to leave under an agreement brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran. Throughout the conflict, Mr. Assad has characterized the rebels seeking his ouster as terrorists, and he hailed the retaking of Aleppo on Thursday as a blow to those forces. He also thanked the international backers who helped. “Liberating Aleppo from terrorism is a victory not only for Syria, but also for those who really contributed to the fight against terrorism, especially Iran and Russia,” Mr. Assad said at a meeting with a visiting Iranian delegation, according to the Syrian state news service, SANA. Many in the western part of Aleppo also celebrated the routing of the city’s rebels, who often fired improvised rockets at their neighborhoods, flooding hospitals with the dead and wounded. And as hundreds gathered on Tuesday to see the lighting of a Christmas tree, a bomb exploded in western Aleppo, wounding no one but sending residents fleeing. The evacuation was bitter for residents of the other half of the city, both rebel fighters seeking to topple Mr. Assad and the civilians who left their homes, unsure of when — if ever — they would return. Residents reached by phone and messaging apps after arriving in areas described cold, disorderly conditions where many were struggling to find shelter. “People went from one hell to another,” said Nadaf, a rebel fighter who had left eastern Aleppo for Idlib Province. “We are all tired, and the displacement was really tough. The snow and cold made things worse. ” Many people there had left their belongings behind and had arrived with no money, he said. The ordeal had changed his thinking about the rebel movement, and he criticized its commanders for the infighting that had long sapped their movement and for the Islamist agenda that some had adopted. “I might stop fighting. I lost the motivation,” Mr. Nadaf said. “The goals changed — the situation on the ground changed. ” Under the agreement, civilians removed from eastern Aleppo could remain in areas or continue on to areas elsewhere. Most have ended up in Idlib, which already held many people displaced from elsewhere in Syria, raising concerns about the humanitarian situation there. The evacuated fighters were allowed to keep light arms and had to go to other areas. Aid workers fear that because of the concentration of rebel fighters in Idlib, it is only a matter of time before the government and its allies attack there, endangering civilians. Almost all of the province is held by rebel groups, including the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and other extreme Islamist groups. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy to Syria, said on Thursday that only a deal to end the war could prevent a repeat of the carnage in Aleppo and protect the displaced. “Many of them have gone to Idlib, which could be in theory the next Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. But the prospect of such a deal remained unclear. While the victory in Aleppo will bolster the morale of Mr. Assad’s troops, he is widely seen as lacking enough military capacity to both hold his ground and seize other territory held by rebels and by the jihadists of the Islamic State. This week, Russia and Iran, which support Mr. Assad, and Turkey, which has supported the rebels, met in Moscow and agreed to a framework for ending the conflict. Officials from the United States, the United Nations and the Syrian government were not included in the talks. For his part, Mr. de Mistura has announced a new round of United peace talks in Geneva in February. | 1 |
Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment. 1. This is what unqualified looks like. [Trump] never expected to win and never planned to govern — he just loved the adulation he got from spreading his brand of hate. Now we have a completely unprepared administration trying desperately to do in 7 weeks what it should have been preparing for over the last 18 months. The disaster begins. — Mike K. in Santa Clara, Calif. reacting to an article about strife within Donald J. Trump’s transition team this week. This comment received more than 4, 700 reader recommendations. 2. It seems that Billy Bush has been one of the few to be held accountable for his words and participation in the onslaught of racism and misogyny in the campaign and now appointments. All others are ascending to the highest offices in the land. As a teacher I am already seeing the repercussions of having Teflon individuals in high office have no consequences for their bigoted remarks. When a student in my diverse classroom does not understand why it is hurtful to yell “build the wall” in the middle of class I can blame our leaders. The racism, misogyny will continue if we do not hold people accountable. — Sarah in Santa Rosa, Calif. 3. Bravo! Someone who understands the threat that Islam poses to the West. Let’s avoid the mistakes of France, Belgium and other countries where the dominating instincts of the world’s most dangerous religion have been allowed to flourish. — Mark in Los Angeles, reacting to an article about Trump’s choice of Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security adviser. 4. Hey, I find it really ironic that all the groups that think they have a mandate to enforce “tolerance” are so intolerant of controversial views and people that run counter to their own. Maybe the moral and ethical standards of Mr. Bannon are not that repugnant in the end, like Trump who has said some unfortunate things, as has everyone, that he regrets? If political correctness gets pushed to the maximum, business and progress grinds to a halt in fear of legal accusations that become paralyzing. How many lives have to be ruined by such enforced “correctness”? And what about the controversial manipulators on the other side like [George] Soros, who will hold them to account? — Nutmeg in Brookfield, Mass. reacting to an article about Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, whom Trump selected as his chief strategist. This comment received more than 100 reader responses. 5. Infrastructure spending, child tax credits, paid maternity leave and dismantling trade agreements. ...hmm, sounds a bit like some of Bernie’s platform. Slice and dice identity politics are all well and good but, in the end, it is all about the economy. And too many of our fellow citizens are hurting. Wake up, Dems, and return to the party’s FDR roots, or continue to lose. — Ellen Liversidge in San Diego. This comment received more than 390 reader recommendations. 6. This sad news hurts like the loss of a family member. Gwen Ifill’s clarity and moderate tone brought so much to the frantic Washington scene. This is the worst possible moment to lose her special gift for analyzing politics and bringing contending parties together in a civil conversation. — JL in Brooklyn, reacting to an article about the death of Gwen Ifill, the political reporter and PBS “NewsHour” on Monday. This comment received more than 2, 200 reader recommendations. 7. I am considering many grad schools in the U. S. for my master course next fall. Before the election, I only looked at the ranking, the alumni’s feedback, the requirements and the fee and campus life. Now, I really have to think about the safety. As an Asian woman, I don’t expect anyone to stop me in the street and tell me to get back to China (which I am not from). So now, although I was so sure about some schools in Texas and Wisconsin, I have to sit down once again, and closely look at the cities, and hope that they are not too red. This election changed my mind about America. — Huyen Phuong Le on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about foreign students questioning whether they should pursue a college education in the United States during the Trump administration. This comment received more than 60 likes. 8. Imagine, for a moment, you are a white male somewhere in America who just lost his job at a factory. Your mortgage is in default, your car is being repossessed, and you wonder whether you’ll be able to find a job, much less one that pays a decent wage. You have no particular animosity towards blacks, gays, women, but you constantly hear the message that as a white, straight male, you are the paragon of privilege and that the hardships in your life are irrelevant or made up. You don’t feel so privileged. Are your struggles and fears really so different from those of the minority groups? It’s easy to see why that person voted for the candidate who acknowledged his fears and against the candidate (and party) who dismissed his concerns because he was not a minority. — Andy in Scottsdale, Ariz. reacting to an essay about whether a focus on identity politics distorted the left’s message during the election. 9. I’m less patient with sexism and talking down and more likely to stand up for others. the day after the election, all of the young women in my office dressed in head to toe black. No one coordinated, no one knew that the other women would be dressed similarly, but we all were sending a conscious (sartorial) message of mourning, and it was comforting to see and feel that kind of solidarity. — Katey Laubscher on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about the small gestures in which women found comfort in the days after the election. 10. This is a what locker room talk should be. — Alexa Carey on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about three University of Wisconsin basketball players who have used their status as college athletes to boost political causes. | 1 |
After months of flailing attempts, Donald J. Trump has begun to recast his political message in more structured terms and wrestle with his temptation to go off script, as his campaign seeks to revive his fading candidacy and turn the focus this fall to Hillary Clinton’s honesty and integrity. Working off a script from his reshuffled team of advisers, Mr. Trump is also drastically tempering his language about the signature issue of his campaign: immigration. After winning the Republican nomination on a promise to deport all 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, he indicated on Wednesday night that he was considering allowing some to stay if they had lived in the United States for many years, lacked criminal records and paid back taxes. “We are going to come out with a decision very soon,” he said on Fox News, signaling flexibility on an issue that sharply divides undecided voters. He is expected to deliver a speech on immigration next week in Phoenix. Mr. Trump is also spending far less time attacking his fellow Republicans and picking fights with people other than Mrs. Clinton, instead hammering away at her State Department tenure and her family’s charitable foundation. And he is aligning his stump speeches with his television advertising, vowing to crack down on violent crime and improve border security. Aware of his unpopularity with white moderate voters, especially women who have been turned off by his racially charged words, he is trying to show interest in the lives of and Hispanics, too, even as he uses language that offends those groups. Many Republicans, weary of repeated promises of a reborn Mr. Trump, remain skeptical that he can stick to his message over the next 11 weeks, and some say it is too late to persuade most voters to see him anew. And the message he has delivered with fresh rigor, especially his emphasis on crime, still diverges widely from what most Republicans view as a winning pitch. Even Mr. Trump is not sure he can be . He said in an interview that he still loved his freewheeling rallies of old, even when they got him in trouble, and that he would not always rely on prepared remarks or stop waging warfare with his Twitter account, even if he ended up overshadowing his advisers’ preferred arguments. Yet Mr. Trump seems to be confronting the reality that his political fortunes could rise or fall on his ability to show restraint. Over the last week, his new political team shared grim polling data with Mr. Trump and told him directly that he was in grave danger of losing if he did not sharpen and steadily prosecute strong arguments against Mrs. Clinton. He came away persuaded and has been heartened by upticks in some recent polls. “I have been staying on message more now because, ultimately, I’m finding that I do better with voters, do better in the polls, when I’m on message,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Mr. Trump ousted his chief strategist, Paul Manafort, last week and appointed two advisers who had more expertise with his brand of public relations: Kellyanne Conway, a veteran pollster and cable news commentator, and Stephen K. Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, a conservative website. Mr. Trump sees Ms. Conway as a polished and energetic defender who can help him attract female voters and shape the message that he wants to deliver, rather than impose one on him. She, in turn, wanted him to have prepared remarks at rallies, and he decided to use teleprompters to help stick to those scripts. “Ultimately, I said I want to do this my way,” he said. “I had 80 days at the time, and I want to do it my way. ” Few presidential candidates have indulged their impulses and spoken as much as Mr. Trump, a political outsider who is used to playing the tough guy in boardrooms and business negotiations. Assuming the role of party has been a struggle for him, and even now, as he tries to follow a new script, he has not abandoned the caustic tone that has defined his candidacy. His evolving language on immigration reflects his conflicting desires: In the space of a few hours on Tuesday, he said he was open to “softening” his policies toward some people who had entered the country illegally and then whipped up a rally in Austin, Tex. with promises to make Mexico pay for a border wall. His new pleas for support from black voters have also carried a hard edge, including last week in Wisconsin, when he questioned why they would not vote for him. Describing blacks as besieged by crime and bereft of economic opportunity, he asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?” In Ohio on Monday, he described American cities as more dangerous than war zones, and in Mississippi on Wednesday night, he called Mrs. Clinton a “bigot” who courted minorities only for their votes. And at a rally in Tampa, Fla. on Wednesday, Mr. Trump still showed a penchant for going off script, reading the word “premeditation” as “premedication” during an attack on Mrs. Clinton — and then, after a pause, saying he preferred “premedication,” an apparent nod to conspiracy theories that his allies have spread about her health. Several Republican leaders and strategists, including those critical of Mr. Trump, said they had noticed adjustments in his performance since Ms. Conway became his campaign manager last week. Where previous advisers have sought to recraft the basics of his message, the new team around him appears intent mainly on arranging his favorite themes in a more consistent, linear format. Still, with early voting set to begin in many states in late September and October, and given Mr. Trump’s history of popping off on Twitter, at rallies or in cable interviews at any moment, they said it was impossible to say whether his current message would endure and help turn the focus to Mrs. Clinton’s character. “Is what he’s doing enough for him to win? We’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt, so it will have to be enough, but it’s very hard to know,” said Matt Borges, the head of the Ohio Republican Party, who has urged Mr. Trump to adopt a more positive tone. “He just needs to focus on all of Hillary Clinton’s problems. But look, we’ve all been saying that for months. ” John Brabender, a Republican strategist who has worked extensively in swing states, said there was clearly an effort in progress to guide Mr. Trump toward a “more focused and more consistently delivered message,” within the limits of what comes naturally to him. But Mr. Brabender also suggested that Mr. Trump needed to do more. “He should be talking about: What is the vision of what America is going to look like after four years of Donald Trump, and what does that mean for people’s lives?” Mr. Brabender said, allowing that Mr. Trump had improved on his practice of “making it up at every campaign stop they have. ” Mr. Trump, in the interview, argued that it took “more talent to do freethinking rallies” than to stick to a script, noting that he had to remember to make points about jobs and immigration while also engaging his audiences. He said that he was adjusting to his latest style of communicating, and that it sometimes felt at odds with his desire to entertain the crowds at his rallies. Yet as he mulls important shifts on immigration, he is still making muddled statements and remains far from clear on policy details. There are signs of change. In an interview last month, shortly after the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, issued scathing comments about Mrs. Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state, Mr. Trump said he could not “spend more than five minutes talking about her emails at my rallies, because people will lose interest, and you have to talk about other things to keep their attention. ” But in the interview this week, he said he needed to “give people a mix of things at the rallies” and wanted “to be more on message. ” “Now we’re getting to Labor Day, and things will be different,” he said. Still, if aides have helped bring new focus to Mr. Trump’s stump speech, they have been unable to tame him on social media, where he continues to deliver outlandish attacks on all manner of adversaries, especially in the news media. He attacked the MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Monday in extraordinarily personal terms and threatened to “tell the real story” about them. Mr. Trump said he would not hesitate to do so again if they criticized him, or to consider taking on others — even if that meant stepping on his scripted message. “If people hit me, I will certainly hit back,” he said. “That will never change. ” | 1 |
More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job By Michael Snyder, on April 7th, 2013
The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth. The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. But even though the employment level in the United States has consistently remained very low over the past three years, the Obama administration keeps telling us that unemployment is actually going down. In fact, they tell us that the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10.0% all the way down to 7.6%. And they tell us that in March the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% even though only 88,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. But it takes at least 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So how in the world are they coming up with these numbers? Well, the reality is that the entire decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years can be accounted for by the reduction in size of the labor force. In other words, the Obama administration is getting unemployment to go down by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans simply do not want jobs anymore. We saw this once again in March. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 600,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market during that month alone. That pushed the labor force participation rate down to 63.3%, which is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. So please don’t believe the hype. The sad truth is that there has been no jobs recovery whatsoever.
If things were getting better, there would not be more than 101 million working age Americans without a job.
So exactly where does that statistic come from? Well, the following explains where I got that number…
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed.
In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are 89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”. That is a new all-time record, and that number increased by a whopping 663,000 during the month of March alone.
When you add 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed to the 89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”, you come up with a grand total of 101,709,000 working age Americans that do not have a job.
When you stop and think about it, that is an absolutely staggering statistic.
And anyone that tells you that “a higher percentage of Americans are working today” is telling you a complete and total lie. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell dramatically, and since then we have not seen that number bounce back at all. In fact, this is the very first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back after a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been under 60 percent for 49 months in a row…
Since the end of 2009, the employment-population ratio has been remarkably steady. Just check out these numbers…
March 2008: 62.7 percent
March 2012: 58.5 percent
March 2013: 58.5 percent
We should be thankful that the percentage of working age Americans with a job did not continue to decline, but we should also be quite alarmed that it has not bounced back at all.
If there was going to be a recovery, there would have been one by now. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and that is going to push the employment-population ratio down even farther.
So why is the U.S. economy not producing as many jobs as it used to? Well, certainly the overall decline of the economy has a lot to do with it. We are a nation that is drowning in debt and that is getting poorer by the day.
But since the end of the last recession, corporate profits have bounced back in a big way and are now at an all-time high . So you would figure that the big corporations should be able to hire a lot more workers by now.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things work anymore. Big corporations are trying to minimize the number of expensive American workers that they have on their payrolls as much as possible these days.
One way that they are doing this is through the use of technology. Thanks to robots, computers and other forms of technology, big corporations simply do not need as many human workers as they used to. In future years, this trend is only going to accelerate. I wrote about how this is changing the world of employment in one of my previous articles entitled “ Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs? ”
Another way that big corporations are replacing expensive American workers is by shipping their jobs off to the other side of the globe. Big corporations know that they can make bigger profits by making stuff in foreign countries where they can pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits. How in the world are American workers supposed to compete with that?
For much more on how U.S. jobs are being killed by offshoring, please see this article: “ 55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America “.
And of course immigration is having a dramatic impact on the labor market in some areas of the country as well. Cheap labor has dramatically driven down wages in a lot of professions. For example, once upon a time you could live a very nice middle class lifestyle as a roofer. But now many roofers really struggle to make a living.
When you add everything up, it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the American worker.
The cost of living keeps rising much faster than wages do, and the competition for good jobs has become incredibly fierce.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make things even easier for those that are not working. This has caused some Americans to give up completely and to be content with letting the government take care of them. The following is from a recent article by Monty Pelerin …
As we make it easier to get unemployment benefits for longer time periods, more people take advantage of the system. So too with food stamps and disability. All programs are at or near record levels in what is supposed to be four years into an economic recovery. For many, the benefits of becoming a government dependent exceed what they can earn. One study reported that a family of four, collecting all the benefits for which they were entitled, would have to earn $65,000 per annum to have the same after-tax purchasing power.
If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.
In some areas of the country, it actually pays not to work very hard. According to Gary Alexander , the Secretary of Public Welfare for the state of Pennsylvania, a “single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”
But the truth is that most Americans still want to work hard and would gladly take a good job if they could just find one. The following is one example that was featured in a recent Fox News article …
After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.
She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.
Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.
“I’m not proud of it,” says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. “The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on.”
And that is how most Americans feel.
Most Americans do not want to be dependent on the government .
Most Americans want to work hard and take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone and it never will again.
So there will continue to be millions upon millions of Americans that find that they cannot take care of themselves and their families without government assistance no matter how hard they try.
And this is just the beginning – things are going to get much worse during the next major wave of the economic collapse.
Yes, at the moment there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, but that number is actually going to go much higher in the years ahead. The anger and frustration caused by a lack of employment opportunities is going to shake this nation.
That is why it is important to try to become less dependent on your own job. In this economic environment, a job can disappear at literally any moment. Anything that you can do to become less dependent on the system would be a good thing. 21 Statistics About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Everyone Should Know » Rodster
The best advice is to try and start your own business. It’s funny how just prior to the crash of 2008 I always felt at a disadvantage not earning a regular paycheck and was tempted to give up my business and get a full time job.
After 2008 I thank my lucky stars I continued on with my business and now I feel i’m at an advantage because I can earn a living fixing cars. RICHARD
Why would any one want to go out and get a job when they can sit on there duff and make more money drawing unemployment and food stamps, plus I am sure there working on the side to. Syrin
This is EXACTLY the point. FunkYou FunkMe
Heck yeah, why work full-time with a company that covers their part of taxes and might offer benefits further bettering my compensation when I can work for myself without a guarantee of getting anything tomorrow. I mean sure it works for some, but we all can’t run our own businesses. More power to the people that do, but again it isn’t for everyone. LifeandLiberty
Obama’s transformation of America is working as planned. charlie
This is WAY bigger than Obama. He’s pushing the agenda, but he’s not the one giving the ques. Look to the secretary General of the United Nations if you want a clear path to start from. Jack White
No….. Even farther back… Think creation of Fed Reserve, then you are gettin to the root/heart of the problem…
Well, Bernanke has no wiggle room to accommodate higher rates for savings.
The Fed will have to quit printing $85 billion per month or finance such expansion through sales of treasuries if the fed rate is to rise and lift saving rates. The printing continues under the folly of needing to continue monetary expansion until unemployment gets down to a certain level.
The next big delay in change will be based on “we gotta keep printing until the unemployment figures are solid”! Presently it just sticks an IOU in the drawer and waits for better times
So, seniors are lured into risks of an inflated stock market.
Start learning to earn online folks, go to EarnCashSecrets dot com to start your free training.
I do not see the employment situation improving in the next 10 years. Cheap labor is available all over the place, both overseas, and inside the USA itself (imported from south of the border). Ralfine
Yes, replace Obama with a white supremacist and everything will be well. Put the women back in the kitchen and you suddenly have zero unemployment. As you have now more jobs than workers, get in some mexican slaves, but without their families. Return them when they are worn out. Cut all welfare. But only the welfare to the poor. Cut all taxes to the rich. Force unemployed to work for free to get necessary work experience. Promote wars for American-style democracy and let the soldiers get their spoils directly on-site. Billy G
Your ideas are intriguing to me, I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter. Ralfine
History repeats itself. Read some books about the Third Reich. The BBC also has made some good documentaries. And dont forget to read Mein Kampf, which was mandatory reading, so every German should have known what was happening.
Read some American history, maybe Howard Zinn: A people’s history of the United States. jaxon64
You forget–Obama is a member of the party which created white supremacists in the USA, started the KKK, were the southern democrat slave holders, voted against the civil rights act 4 times from the 1860’s until the 1960’s and were even willing to die and have their sons die so that they could keep their slaves….etc.
I think the most surreal moment of 2011 was watching Obama give such a moving eulogy at WV senator (D) Byrd’s funeral. I still can’t figure out which was more mind-boggling. Having a man who is 1/8th black/african as the honored speaker at a KKK Grand Dragon’s funeral or.. vice versa- that a man who stirs the racial pot every chance he gets saying such glowing things about an ignorant Dem who hated blacks….
PS: I’m not a supporter of the neo-cons like bush, mcCan’t or Obamney either so don’t waste your time with an attack as you defend “your blue team” Ralfine
Yes, America is a strange place on earth.
I also found this on wikipedia:
“In 1997, Byrd told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics but also: “Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t get that albatross around your neck. Once you’ve made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena.”[20] In his last autobiography, Byrd explained that he was a KKK member because he “was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision—a jejune and immature outlook—seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.”[21] Byrd also said, in 2005, “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”[10]” markthetruth
Mr Bill : Mrs Obama is rich. Hope Your in DC Plenty of move where that one comes from.
the end…
Can we do worse than Bush? How about Carter? Yes we can! Paul
Michael, I think it would be very interesting to see an article written by you discussing how the provisions of Obamacare kicking in 2014 will affect the U.S economy. I enjoy reading your articles. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
That is a good suggestion. Certainly Obamacare is not going to help things one bit.
Michael Stacey
Michael , alot of people are already feeling the effects of Obamacare. Workers are being reduced to part time. Under 30 hrs due to a provision in Obamacare which states employers have to provide health coverage to employees who work full time, 30 hours or more a week.
Obamacare is already bending over the elderly even thou that was one of the arguements of the stupidcrats… They say it isn’t, but the boots on the ground say a different story…. markthetruth
Only 1/3 of the 315 + 25(illegal) 340 million People in the U kfilly
We know what it will look like. It will be ugly! markthetruth
and it won’t be natural either, man made ugly!
the end.
Think 3rd world for a good idea of tomorrow in America. markthetruth
Everything is a SCREEN . Try and Go a day with out seeing one.
The:
the end… Mondobeyondo
The next time you see a teenager, make note of whether he or she is plugged into an Android, or iPhone, or MP3 player, or some other digital device.
Then hand them an old fashioned book, and explain to them what it is. Heh! markthetruth
Yep ! the Smart Andriods are making humans FAT, LAZY and DUMB.
the end… FunkYou FunkMe
Meanwhile you’re using a computer, tablet, laptop, phone, etc. Hmmmm. These devices aren’t making humans fat, lazy, and dumb. It’s our society that does that. If our society geared these technological advances to be mainly the pathway to higher knowledge and productivity then we would be in a better position. In some ways it’s an individual thing for different people. I know some people that grew up loathing to read, but found joy in reading once they discovered eBooks. There are so many apps and potential apps that can help better organization and motivate people better, but it does no good if people don’t care. Simple fact is people just don’t care. This isn’t to generalize everyone. Some people care, but the majority of people don’t care. James
How many of those people are stay at home moms or people in college etc… MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
James:
Yes, those are certainly included in the working age population, so we will never have a time when all of them are working.
But what is alarming is that the percentage of the working age population that is working has not gone back up at all after falling so dramatically during the last recession.
Michael razorbacks
Its easy to get caught up in keeping up with the Jones’ and chasing the dollar. I struggle with how far to go in preparing for the next wave of economic problems. I live on a small farm (paid for) and have a garden spot, springs on the farm, nickels, ammo and guns…Problem is my work requires being gone for months at a time. My biggest concern is getting home if it gets very bad. So how much money stashed away is enough? That’s the million dollar question. K
Michael, once again you have touched on every major point. I believe you are totally correct. It is just another case of the numbers being rigged. Whether it is unemployment or the stock market, or the cost of living. All the numbers are rigged anymore. If more people were capable of critical thinking, the rigging of numbers, would have stopped working a long time ago. Remember, what is now called normalcy bias. We used to call, not being in contact with reality. And it was considered a mental disability. Jodi
Things are about to get much, much worse for those counting on unemployment benefits. This morning I logged onto my unemployment account & noticed a message saying that after April 1st unemployment benefits will be reduced to a certain percentage due to sequestration. Luckily, I found a job in November but anybody else who hasn’t been fortunate enough to find a job yet is going to feel the pain even more now. But interestingly enough no reduction in Obama’s golf outings & he doesn’t seem to care much. Mondobeyondo
Yes Jodi, things are about to get very bad. Obamacare is going to be a job killer, for those who are still employed. For the long term unemployed, like moi… well… Jodi
Mondo, I’m sorry you’ve been unemployed for a long time. It took me 14 mos to find work after I lost my good paying job for 13 years. God Bless you, I hope you find work soon.
I feel fortunate to have found a job but I only work 30 hrs a week & $5.00 less per hour than my old job. The reason why I’m working 30hrs…Bingo, that’s right Obamacare. Annoynimus
And because you continue to collect unemployment while working? Jodi
I know longer collect unemployment, I still have an account with the unemployment office. JackWms
She didn’t say she was still collecting, prehaps you need to learn to read. Alika Nganuma Toshihiko Cripe
Ive bee tirelessly on my bicycle looking for job North and sout of Melbourne FL. I cant get a job no matter how hard I try. They dont even count those who are trying reimburse their past crimes to better themselves. I have a felony and i cant find a job no matter how hard i try.
Im about to go homeless, loose my phone, my fiance, and my future. I cant even goto school i feel so helpless. El Pollo de Oro
“Obamacare is the perfection of crony capitalism that’s being sold as something that’s wonderful for the people. Insanely expensive care provided by crony capitalist cartels that have totally opaque pricing and are in cahoots with the central state that supposedly regulates them.”—Charles Hugh Smith
“Obamacare is essentially forcing us to buy a defective corporate product.”—Chris Hedges
“I share the right wing’s critique of Obamacare. It’s a disastrous bill. It was written by corporate lobbyists.”—Chris Hedges
“You need some health insurance? We’re going to privatize it. We’re going to make you buy from our pals that sell insurance. That’s what they call Obamacare.”—Gerald Celente Handog
Disturbing. Jodi
It is very disturbing. I logged in for the heck of it yesterday to see if there has been any changes to unemployment & I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how much of a percentage they will be reducing it too but it’s already barley enough to make ends meet. LazyIke
When a person runs out of unemployment, unless they register with the useless unemployment off, they are considered by the BLS as not looking for a job. Not necessarily true! charlie
Things are far worse than many know. We live in the rural area’s & we are being attacked at every turn by Agenda 21 AKA: Corporate farmers & others. Had 2 UN soldiers on our property. animals poisoned and slaughter as early as yesterday 2 calves killed in the same night, They have tried to burn down our place & attempted to kill us by running us off the road. We are very much on our own, as it is apparent the law enforcement is protecting them. It is very sad that people think this is a thing to save the environment because if they were out here in the war zone they would see it is exactly the opposite. Fact is it is a HUGE reason everyone’s standard of living is dropping and America is falling into a very dark abyss. Unless people wake up and get the UN out of the US it is going to get even worse real fast. I have been fighting these monsters for many years. AMERICA! WAKE UP! They are NOT your friends! If you have a problem, you isolate it and then resolve it. Everytime people isolate it, they push out a distraction to get minds on something else, but fact is Agenda 21 IS the problem & Americans need to get focused and stop them. Tex May
charlie… make an appointment to see your Doctor. You need help man! charlie
You do realize that those involved in this agenda all do the same things & say the same things, right, TEX? For the past 40 years it has been repetitious. The crazy card has been played to death to cover all this up. Fact is when people educate themselves on the happenings you are all very easy to spot. I find it amazing that so many Americans are willing to assist in the overthrow of their own country on a premise of a Utopia that will never exist the way you all think it will. charlie
Hey Tex, I woke up to DEAD ANIMALS all over my farm this morning along with a bunch stolen again. I wake up EVERY DAY with trucks reving their engines all the way around my house, now let me tell you something if I wasn’t TRAUMA BASED RAISED BY SATANISTS & COMMUNISDTS this would drive me absolutely in sane, but FACT IS it is just another day for me because it is the ONLY LIFE I personally know. I am a CHRISTIAN. I KNOW why I am being stalked and tormented. These people have killed everything I love my entire life. I grew up in your so called Utopia and used to just watch your lives and became happy in doing so. My point is the actions happening in my life is NORMAL so though I may cry and be sad about what’s happening, being trauma based raised it’s not as traumatizing to ,me any longer what is sad for me is watching so many others enduring what I had screamed my bloody head off for years warning about and being called crazy which hurt my feelings at first but now I see what so called sane is and being crazy is an honor. Well, I have more dead animals to bury, so here I go again. Just another day, same thing over and over again. Euhill
Agenda 21 is just the tip of the ice berge. What is happening is a whole lot worse than that. What is happening is in the Book of Revelation. charlie
I also believe it is bigger than Agenda 21 ,I also believe they are a huge “player”… but do NOT believe this is the book of Revelations (yes, I am VERY familiar with my Bible),I admire the walk of CHRIST like no other…I can see why the world would be so jealous of him….. I believe this is one huge ((HOAX)) by the whore of Babylon played on the world & a great theft of the people. NONE of this is new to me as it is to many others, I have seen all this before. These monsters enjoy ” Crossing the centerline” when they drive….. over and over again. Euhill
You’re the one that needs help if you can not see what is happening as a whole in the US, Europe, and UK. But then again you’re probably the type of person who would tell the Argentines what they went through in 2001 was a figment of their imaginations. What did happen in Argentina in 2001 is our future and when that time comes, may you get all you have coming to you, Tex May. seth datta
Secrets are kept in plain sight. Did you know Obama is the puppet that heads the UN?
So he has to make a choice. Is he truly the leader of the free United States, or is he the leader of an anti-freedom, anti-US communitarian government?
And do we trust a leader who lies about his birth certificate and lies about his religion. Two basic things. What else is he lying about?
It only takes one true ideal, one real direction and even just one person to change the nation. Unfortunately, we have the wrong one. Roger Smith
Some call him President….I call him a one-man sleeper cell. Tex May
I call you NUTS! Makati1
Didn’t mention that those 101 million also do not have money to spend to increase demand so that corporations need to hire. And the others that are employed are getting shrinking paychecks and buy less and less. No corporation is going to hire and increase production when there is no market for their product. That is the ‘Catch 22′ of the current situation. But, then the other mentioned reasons also fed the collapse in jobs. Welcome to ‘for profit’ capitalism. Do you have your food stamps card? You soon may. quercus454
I have talked that same point over and over again with my more liberal family members. Some 30 plus years ago corporate American found it was cheaper and easier to cut labor, rather then build a better mouse trap. They pushed the idea of free trade to increase profits and because of that today we have lost millions of well paying jobs. At first the effect was not so noticeable. Families with declining incomes borrowed on their homes and credit cards to try to keep their standard of living at the same level it was. Now the effects are really kicking in. Those who tried to keep up their standard of living by increasing their debt, lost on that gamble, the economy never picked up.
By essentially destroying most of the middle class, corporate America killed the goose that laid the golden egg. As more and more people lost their jobs or had their wages decline because of foreign competition, their ability to purchase good and services also declined. Credit is no longer viable for many. Factor in Obamacare cutting employee hours and inflation and it is no surprise that many of America’s biggest and oldest retailers are closing stores. In order to prosper and be successful businesses need customers. If you remove a large segment of your customer base either by unemploying them, reducing their wages or displacing them with low wage foreign labor, you are going to fail.
Corporate American brought this on themselves by being greedy and short sighted. Congress hasn’t a clue as they still think increasing the population thru immigration will some how solve or negate their previous bad decisions. Adding more low income consumers will not replace the millions of middle class incomes that have been lost. Fred Montgomery
People want to work for a living; a man does not want a handout. The problem is there are no jobs and the few jobs out there don’t pay anything. No one can live off of nothing. Now, we are now promoting welfare and food stamps over hard work and perserverance. Meanwhile, the robber barons who started all of the economic misery keep robbing us blind. Syrin
To quote Monty Perelin, “If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.” Syrin
From zerohedge, ” Now we finally know that the very bottom of the entitlement food chain also makes out like a bandit compared to that idiot American who actually works and pays their taxes. One can only also hope that in addition to seeing their disposable income be eaten away by a kleptocratic entitlement state, that the disappearing middle class is also selling off its weaponry. Because if it isn’t, and if it finally decides it has had enough, the outcome will not be surprising at all: it will be the same old that has occurred in virtually every revolution in the history of the world to date.” Syrin
Michael, why do you say most people don’t want to be dependent on gov’t? This is the age of the GARYs. Back in the 30’s, one would get gov’t assistance as a last resort with one’s head hung low in shame. Now it’s a career decision. People “work” to find the best way to milk the system for all they can.
Want to fix the problem? If you receive gov’t assistance in the form of welfare, food stamps or medicaid, YOU LOSE THE RIGHT TO VOTE BECAUSE IT’S A CONFLICT OF INTEREST. That way those who PAY for all these leeches get to decide how much they are willing to surrender. Two YEARS of unemployment? I don’t think so. Hank Kingsley
So anyone who works for these parasitic Wall Street scumbanks shouldn’t be allowed to vote? I quite agree. Not American
I love your profile picture, it fits you! FunkYou FunkMe
Conflict of interest?! We vote so that our voices (THE PEOPLE) are heard. Whether you like it or not, they are just as much part of the people as you are. Colin
I am reading Aristotle. He speaks of a continuum. On one end, there is excess, and,. on the other, there is deficiency. In the middle, there is the intermediate. Now applying this to the job market – there are people who are unemployed (the deficiency), who aren’t fully unemployed nor employed (the intermediate), and who are fully employed (the excess). For many on government dependence, they are attempting to reach the intermediate, but are not succeeding.
My mother is deficient – she has no job. She wants to be employed, she wants to be on the other side of the continuum. She receives unemployment assistance. The state says, “You want money from us, look for a job.” She does, but hasn’t got a job.
There was a belief in Aristotle’s time that the wealthy had an obligation to the city-state (the polis). They paid for the city’s defenses, for the construction of public works, and so on. It seems to me that we as a nation have failed to persuade the wealthy that they have an obligation to their homeland. I am not speaking of taxes solely, as Gary2 does; I am thinking of construction projects that could rebuild this country’s infrastructure and get people to work.
Aristotle considered munificence to be a intermediate between vulgarity and shabbiness. Far too many of our wealthy are shabby.
There are Senators and Representatives in the Congress who recognize that this country’s poor have become “Invisible”. However, they are few in numbers, and the majority opinion dominates the political discussion. Mondobeyondo
A sad commentary of America, circa 2013.
The ONLY reason why the “unemployment rate”dropped one tenth of a percentage point for March, is that so many people have given up looking for work.
Obamacare will certainly not help matters. It makes an already bad business environment downright horrific. kfilly
Obamacare might help with the unemployment numbers as every full-time job is likely to become 2 part-time jobs. Boy, those job number will be looking better once it goes into full effect. Sigh! chilller
It was all Obama’s hope to change us into a subservient nation under the thumb of big gov…without all of the extensive entitlements, the masses of unemployed would have overthrown the system by now, hence the gub-mint has bought time to put itself into a defensive posture for when the music stops and there’s 101M+ people trying to find 10 chairs. Mondobeyondo
101 million working age Americans, are 101 million working age Americans who are not able to contribute to the economy.
They can not buy furniture. They can’t afford cable TV, so they’re stuck watching “The Voice” on network television. They can’t afford new clothes, a new car, jewelry, or a professional sports game. What are these people concerned about the most? Food. A roof over their heads. Keeping their children (if they have children) educated and healthy, and keeping themselves sane in spite of the Mess we’re all stuck in.
There will be NO real economic recovery, unless and until our nation’s manufacturing base is rebuilt and restored – and there are serious doubts about that happening soon, if ever. Everything else – the stock market, low wage service jobs, etc – is just chasing after rainbows. El Pollo de Oro
Mondobeyondo: Excellent points. There will be no economic recovery in the BRA if the only jobs being created are crap service jobs. When millions and millions of people are working 50 or 60 hours a week and still cannot make ends meet, what you have is a Third World economy. There are plenty of low-paying jobs in Guatemala and Bolivia, but not nearly enough jobs that pay a decent wage. And good luck starting a small business in the BRA. The deck is totally stacked against legal small businesses in this banana republic.
So what happens when you have millions of people who have a strong work ethic, realize that the game is totally rigged and are sick of their miserable, desperate, hopeless circumstances? They join the underground economy, which (as we’ve seen in México) can have horrifying consequences. Unless this country rejects corporatism, returns to true capitalism and free enterprise, rebuilds its manufacturing base and becomes friendly to small businesses, the only growth areas will be: (1) dead-end crap service jobs, and (2) crime and the underground economy. I’m not optimistic. Mondobeyondo
One final observation, before having my fourth can of “Red Bull” energy enhancing beverage:
Illegal immigration. It has a huge affect of the legal working American. It’s a huge topic here in Arizona (and frankly I’m sick of hearing about it every day, but nevertheless…)
If you’re unemployed, you are competing with illegal immigrants who are willing to work for $3, $4/day. They don’t mind a bit. It’s far more money than they made in their homeland. Perhaps YOU can’t live on that, but they’re fine with it.
So your professional American roofer guy who maybe earns $20 or $25 an hour, is getting replaced by some guy from Michoacan or Guadalajara, maybe Honduras, who’s willing to work for $5/hour. His employer does not have to pay licence/bonding fees, nor insurance, nor health care, nor Social Security, nor TAXES!!
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for LEGAL immigration. But not ILLEGAL immigration! quiet_forest
Uh, I wouldn’t be so keen on legal immigration anymore either. The Federal government runs four work visa programs. Three of those programs do not require the employer to pay any taxes or benefits.
So, who do you think businesses hire first? The American that the government makes them pay taxes on, or the foreign worker who, because of his status, can’t quit? They can treat him like an indentured servant, cheat him on wages, pay no taxes for him, and it’s (mostly) legal.
Everything that is happening now is deliberate, top down bottom up. Government regulation crushes small business and stifles competition, while welfare programs demolish the work ethic, creating a defeated, compliant population. We are literally being turned into sharecrop tenants in our own country. If this next amnesty goes through, we are finished. The future of the whole country is already being showcased in California. We were never the land of fruits and nuts. It only looks that way. The reality is that, thanks to the machinations of people such as George Soros, California was the first state to become the land of rigged elections. FounderChurch
DEMOCRAT GOVERNMENT TRAINED BUMS:
Where we started to go wrong was back in the Great Depression. Our moral center broke and we put everyone on welfare that whined for it, and it ruined the country permanently.
It taught the people they didn’t need to fend for themselves and that the government would provide for them, if they would just sit on their rear ends and yelp like dogs waiting to be fed.
What those unemployed workers needed in the depression was to be kicked in the rear end, and told to “root hog, or die.”
At the same time we were putting these bums on relief, we had millions of acres of good land laying unplanted, and people’s yards surrounding their houses just laying there. Why should people even plant a garden in their backyard when the government will feed them? CitizenS
Things are starting to really hit here in WV. My misses was laid off 2 weeks ago and she was the person that put miners for certain coal companies to work. Guess if they don’t need miners, they don’t need someone to call them in. but I met a friend the other evening (Friday night) to drop some things off to him @ the local movie house. The place was a ghost town! The entire strip was near vacant. This included multiple resteraunts, the big box stores, and multiple small shops. Batten down the hatches because when the poor state starts to see it, its gettin rough. Lucy Goldstein
Coal mining is such a source of contamination to our planet it needs to be eliminated! CitizenS
Lucy I won’t argue that coal is dirty. However, the power plants in our area have upgraded to the point that the only byproduct of firing with coal is gypsum, which they make drywall mud with and water vapor. Done correctly most of the land mined is reclaimed into something useful instead of an area that was previously all but inaccessible. That being said, yes its dangerous and dirty, but its a livelyhood for the men that work in the coal fields. billy
Homeless Bill lives in Anchorage, AK. He has an apartment, and is a professional panhandler. I don’t feel sorry for people like Homeless Bill, because he is a fraud. I do feel sorry for the millions of others not like homeless bill. Harold
The nation of sheeples will continue to support this WH incompetent fool Tim
This article is on Zero Hedge! Congratulations. none
Thank God President Obama has expanded the immigration numbers!
Also now, they will be able to get government guaranteed loans to buy up all the small business that they own! This is why you always see foreigners running the gas stations and small convenience stores.
And I was about to start off with GOOD NEWS: Michael. Jagrick
Stuff like this tells me that a lot more (deemed) illegal activity will go on in the future. Euhill
Yes it will until the end game has been achieved. And when that has happened, things will not be like they once were. 2Gary2
Michael=–are you still pretending to be named Bill and holding that sign? 2Gary2
Michael–you are correct in what you say in this post. By any definition Obama is an abject failure. His problem is that he is a moderate republican posing as a dem. Before everyone starts calling me names stop and think of what Obama has done and compare it to Nixon/Ford. Robert (qslv)
Gary, are you getting gun-shy? Oops, politically incorrect choice of words, lol…….I actually agree with you that Nixon Ford was a bad choice …off the silver standard, dollar devaluation, stagflation, the phony oil crisis. Republicrat or Demmican, they all suck equally….Where you err is to take sides in the phony two party illusion. You refuse to see those behind the curtain. Mondobeyondo
Another job fair coming up this Thursday. Maybe THIS will finally be the one… Zaboomafoo
economic recovery is a house of cards; illusory. Craig Stacy
Like the pic of the bum above… he says it all –
101 Million Working Age Americans are too lazy to work or even look for jobs Fred Sheetz
I agree Craig… Here in PA there are tons of high paying jobs in the gas drilling industry, from skilled truck drivers to folks with no experience… People are just too lazy to work. Bruce
I have read all the comments and it is obvious that NO PRESIDENT is responsible. NO MATTER who is in office or gets into office they are nothing but puppets. Listen, the economy has NO way of recovering, PERIOD!!! Manufacturing is in shambles, wages have dropped to slave levels for many. What company wants to pay 10-15 bucks an hour when they can get the assembly or machining done for pennies on the dollar? Not to mention not having to pay unemployment taxes, matching Social Security, holiday pay, sick pay or vacation plus higher corporate taxes within the US. Employment will NEVER come back. It can’t come back. Unless and until we place significant tariffs on all overseas products we are DONE. No other way will we ever be competitive or even hope to be. Who amongst you will work for 1.25 an hour with no benefits? Now is the time to prepare seriously to avoid hungry bellies in your family. I don’t think ANY commentator, politician, or genius can dispute the fact that we are in a perfect storm. The truth in the matter is Clinton started all this with NAFTA and other free trade agreements. We are screwed, with NO WAY OUT!!!
Bruce, Bush Sr allowed NAFTA to go through, but it was a Democrat strictly sponsored bill. Clinton unleashed the real monster. The WTO. Mondobeyondo
This is a brief excerpt from Jon Talton’s excellent blog (he was a former economic columnist for the “Arizona Republic” newspaper, until management forced him out. He now lives in Seattle.)
“…Some macro realities will not go away: most Americans are much poorer after the recession; wages are stagnant and have been falling on average for years; unemployment remains high and many may never find work again; “consumers” are still carrying more debt than historic norms; changing tastes and demographics, with talented young people and many boomers preferring real cities, not Sun City; Phoenix still has a low-wage economy…”
The same thing can be said for the entire country. Don_in_Odessa
Now, this is the way to write a story on the internet. References posted with links to the actual dot Gov web sites. Little good it does these days though. The “Revolution” took a little over two hundred years and it looks like we have laid down our pitch forks and rocks, and retired to the latest news about Lindsay Lohan. Oh,…….we lost! SalMoanella
School maybe, retirement no. The age 55 plus group is actually increasing in the labor force. Make no mistake about it. It’s the obama non economy. Alasha Tim Mullins
It’s good that somebody has the knowledge to mention the Third Reich. America is no longer the America of my youth. But any of the comments slamming capitalism, supremacism, or anything else from an earlier era is off base.
Check the voting records of congress, as well as what was being passed, what it meant, and what riders were attached to the legislation. After that thoroughly confounds you, look up the definition of political far left, political far right, observe the real world results, and ask yourself why there is no real difference between the two.
The problem is government period. We need less of it. Politicians need to learn that their job descriptions cover far more than simply passing laws. We don’t want our nation changed, we want it fixed.
The American People have spoken, but President Obama has not listened. And who comes next? He bought MRAPS for DHS, what will the next person buy? Attack Helicopters? gary larson
MICHAEL. Your article is misleading..
The 89,967,000 figure is the number of Americans “not in the labor force”. That includes those too young to work, the retired , those institutionalized and those in the military.
Those numbers have always been high.
Pease correct your mistake. gary larson
MICHAEL. Your article is misleading..
The 89,967,000 figure is the number of Americans “not in the labor force”. That includes those too young to work, the retired , those institutionalized and those in the military.
Those numbers have always been high.
Pease correct your mistake Victoria
Our total population is a little over 300 million according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you take out children and the elderly that aren’t working that only leaves a little over 210 million working age adults. It is not possible half of all working adults are unemployed or not in the workforce. This article is full of crap. priya
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I honestly believe the government needs to create more jobs. You can nag and complain about it all you want, but let’s think about it. Sales Revenue in US soon will reach $5 trillion/year if it hasn’t already. I remember looking that up. I’m not sure if this is just in retail alone, but if it is then the numbers alone help my case. $50 billion plan to job 1.25 million Americans. This can be accomplished by a 1% federal sales tax. Pay could range from 30,000-50,000. 2% sales tax to extend the number of workers or including cost beyond labor.
As a developed country we should pride ourselves in having a nation where a larger percentage of working age people are working, the community are clean, and advancements are made to better our communities. All my life I’ve gone up and down streets acknowledging trash littered throughout the sides of roads and even in creek/river areas. I never could understand how we let ourselves become so filthy. Growing up I was always told that people volunteer and serve community service through their probation officer after doing a crime. With that said I always remember seeing the same trash stay in specific spots for weeks. To this day I continue to see trash remain in spots for days. I never make an uproar about it because I know I could very well spend a day off from work to walk down my community and clean it up. Honestly I keep telling myself I’m going to do it, but after working a full week sometimes I don’t feel like doing anything. So I talk myself out of doing anything.
This probably seems like a small insignificant task to consider a job, but it’s not much different than places that have janitor/maintenance workers/contractors. This is only one example. There are probably way more ideas to better our nation in multiple ways. I just know that creating that many jobs in a short period of time would be an immediate benefit to the economy and help it continue to grow. Now that we are working on getting out of a recession it is absolutely necessary that we figure ways to improve the economy. 1.25 million jobs added means 1.25 million potential more people to turn back around, pay taxes through income and sales, and contribute to businesses(big and small). The better business becomes for businesses the better their able to provide for their workers and themselves create more jobs. If I’m a small business owner gaining a lot of business with my one location open, eventually that would lead to opening more locations, this would involve creating more jobs. This problem with no jobs actually created is the result of many jobs disappearing. Tons of layoffs result in the image and reality of job growth not occurring. That is sadly the case of what we’ve experienced over these years. We need to let our voice be heard to move forward.
BTW looking at federal sales tax wasn’t to necessarily say it’s the way to go. I’m a fan of the idea that our high sales in America can do wonderful things for our economy and our future. With that said I’m not naive enough to say it could replace the income (personal/corporate) altogether with what our current spending is. peggie gor
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Free Thought Project – by Jay Syrmopoulos
Cannon Ball, ND – Pipeline opponents attempting to protect their water supply from the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL), as well as prevent the continued destruction of burial grounds and cultural sites, are anticipating a confrontation with police today. This news come after “water protectors” refused law enforcement requests to vacate reoccupied land in the pipeline’s path, owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.
Last week, native activists took the bold action of declaring eminent domain over their traditional territory and set up a new camp “Front-Line” camp directly in the pipeline’s path. Pipeline opponents say they have simply reclaimed the land under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, clearly noting the Sioux never ceded that territory. The new encampment lies across Highway 1806, where pipeline security guards armed with guard dogs and pepper spray attacked protestors attempting to stop the bulldozing of cultural sites and burial grounds on September 3.
The impending crisis comes after nearly 200 water protectors set up the new camp on land that Energy Transfer Partners last month purchased from a local rancher in an effort to bolster strategic and tactical control of areas surrounding construction of the controversial pipeline.
According to the AP , however, the Native Americans claim the land is theirs by way of an “1851 treaty and they won’t leave until the pipeline is stopped.” “We never ceded this land,” said protester Joye Braun.
This latest flashpoint in the ongoing conflict is north of the larger and more permanent encampments, which have been constructed on federally owned land where over 200 Native American tribes have gathered to oppose the pipeline’s construction.
On Wednesday, a heavily militarized law enforcement presence began mobilizing heavy equipment, including Humvees, armored personnel carriers, buses and demanded the protestors leave the occupied area.
In an ominous sign, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has restricted flights , and banned the use of drones within a radius of about 4 ½ miles of Cannon Ball. The FAA declared that only aircraft affiliated with the North Dakota Tactical Operation Center are allowed within the restricted airspace. The flight restriction went into effect Wednesday and will last until November 5.
Indian Country Today reports :
What began with prayers and a single tipi alongside Highway 1806 quickly grew to more than a dozen tipis surrounded by tents, buses, cars and hundreds of water protectors. Some are calling it the “1851 Treaty Camp” to acknowledge their Treaty rights.
Across the road is the encroaching pipeline and a heavily militarized police force with armored vehicles, helicopters, planes, ATVs and busloads of officers. Tensions are growing as unarmed citizens worry that police will use unnecessarily harsh tactics.
In recent weeks, nearly 300 unarmed water protectors who were arrested have been subjected to pepper spray, strip-searches, delayed bail, exaggerated charges and physical violence, according to interviews with several who were taken into custody. The ACLU and National Lawyers Guild recently sent attorneys to Standing Rock to help the Red Owl Collective, a team of volunteer lawyers headed by attorney Bruce Ellison, who are representing many of those arrested.
The massive law enforcement contingent, consisting of sheriff’s deputies and officers from numerous other states and counties, as well as National Guard, began staging near the encampment — with scores of Armored Personnel Carriers, buses and Humvees poised at the ready.
“At some point the rule of law has to be enforced,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said Wednesday. “We could go down there at any time. We’re trying not to.”
Dakota Access LLC, the pipeline developer released a statement encouraging trespassers to “vacate the land immediately” or be “removed from the land.”
“Alternatively and in coordination with local law enforcement and county/state officials, all trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and removed from the land,” the company said. “Lawless behavior will not be tolerated.”
Just days ago, sheriff’s officials had said earlier they didn’t have the resources to immediately remove activists from the private land, about 50 miles south of Bismarck. Subsequently, law enforcement officials put out a call for reinforcements, with hundreds of officers from out of state responding.
On Wednesday, actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo and civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson went to the new camp to speak and pray with the water protectors. Ruffalo had arrived the night before to speak on an anti-DAPL panel with Native activists at the Prairie Knights Casino and Hotel, according to Indian Country Today.
After touring the camp Jackson spoke to the crowd, reminding people that nonviolence is key to winning the battle for justice.
“With promises broken, land stolen, and sacred lands desecrated, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is standing up for their right to clean water. They have lost land for settlers to farm, more land for gold in the Black Hills, and then again even more land for the damn (sic) that was built for flood control and hydro power,” Jackson said.
When will the taking stop? When will we start treating the first peoples of these lands with the respect and honor they deserve?
The rerouting of the pipeline away from Bismarck to its current route is “the ripest case of environmental racism I’ve seen in a long time,” Jackson said. “Bismarck residents don’t want their water threatened, so why is it okay for North Dakota to react with guns and tanks when Native Americans ask for the same right?”
The pipeline was originally scheduled to run north of Bismarck until local residents expressed displeasure with the plan, with the DAPL ultimately being rerouted to its current trajectory near the Oceti Sakowin Standing Rock Reservation.
With an impending militarized police raid of the camp, Mekasi Camp-Horinek, one of the camp coordinators, told officers the protesters planned to stand their ground, saying “Do what you’ve got to do,” according to the Bismarck Tribune
“I don’t have a crystal ball to know when it will happen, but we know it will happen,” said Mekasi Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca tribe in Oklahoma. “We’re going to hold this ground.”
Water protectors could be heard chanting, “Stand in peace against the beast.”
“I’m here to die if I have to. I don’t want to die but I will,” said Didi Banerji, who lives in Toronto but is originally from the Spirit Lake Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
The protesters are simply trying to keep law enforcement from preventing their efforts to stop the pipeline said David Red Bear Jr., 30, from the South Dakota side of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
“If we don’t stop them here, they’re going to cut us off closer to the pipeline. We can’t let that happen,” Red Bear said. “We’re not trying to force anybody’s hand. We’re just trying to stand up for what we believe in.”
The reality is that the citizens of North Dakota are funding a protection force, in the form of police, for a multi-billion dollar corporate entity. North Dakota’s Emergency Commission previously approved $6 million in emergency funding for law enforcement costs related to the protest — with almost all of those funds having been used already. The Department of Emergency Services plans to ask for more, spokeswoman Cecily Fong said.
Do North Dakotans want their tax money spent on police acting as paid enforcers for Wall Street and big oil interests?
While law enforcement claims they are just doing their job and enforcing the law, in reality, they are acting as enforcers for an unjust corporate oligarchy that consistently puts money over people. The financial elite are the ones who the police are truly protecting and serving — not the American people. Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/militarized-police-mobilize-assault-standing-rock/#PSrb86pVTC4uQDzq.99 Share this: | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Viewed one way, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch’s confirmation will not do much to change the dynamics of the Supreme Court. His appointment is a swap, a conservative replacing another conservative. But there is a more instructive way to think about what Judge Gorsuch’s impact will be after he is sworn in on Monday. It is to consider how the court would have been reshaped by President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Judge Merrick B. Garland. The answer shows just how polarized the Supreme Court has become. The titanic struggle over who would replace Justice Antonin Scalia was nothing if not partisan, and for good reason — the Supreme Court is just as divided as the rest of the nation. Had Judge Garland replaced Justice Scalia, the court would have immediately shifted to the left. A majority of its members would have been Democratic appointees for the first time in almost 50 years. And, in a shift in recent years, partisan affiliation has become a very strong predictor of voting trends for all its members. All four of the court’s current Republican appointees are more conservative than all four of the Democratic ones, and that familiar dynamic seems very likely to hold when Judge Gorsuch joins the court. But it has not always been thus. As recently as 2009, two Republican appointees to the court, Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter, were members of the court’s liberal wing. In losing the 2016 presidential election, Democrats may have given up the chance to change the balance of power on the Supreme Court for a generation. Judge Gorsuch is 49. If he serves as long as Justice Stevens, the last member of the court to retire, he will still be hearing cases in 2052. He would be 84, as old as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now. Actuarial realities suggest that President Trump will have additional chances to move the court to the right. The court’s three oldest members are Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, 80, a moderate conservative who holds the decisive vote in many closely divided cases, and the court’s two senior liberals, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 78, and Justice Ginsburg. Were Mr. Trump to replace any of the three, a court that generally leans right would have a conservative majority. Were Mr. Trump to replace all three, the court’s remaining liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, 62, and Elena Kagan, 56 — could find themselves writing lonely dissents for years to come. Until the Democrats’ surprise loss on Election Day in November, liberals had been anticipating something entirely different. “A Garland appointment would have swapped a centrist justice for a conservative one,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University. “This means Garland would have been more likely to be a key vote on more issues than Gorsuch is likely to be, because Kennedy remains the critical vote for a conservative bloc, while Kennedy or Garland could have been the fifth vote for a liberal result. ” Not only would Justice Kennedy have been ousted from his central role, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would have been thrust into the ideological minority. That would have put the Roberts court’s least popular precedent in immediate peril, said Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia. “The biggest substantive change would probably have been in the area of campaign finance,” he said. “Citizens United would almost immediately have been on the chopping block with a liberal majority. ” That decision allowed corporations and unions to do what individuals had long been able to do: independently spend as much as they liked to support or oppose political candidates. “I can even imagine a court with Garland on it chipping away at the rule that forbids limits on individual campaign expenditures,” Professor Greene said. A range of other liberal policy priorities could also have been preserved, even though Judge Garland is not especially liberal. “With a Justice Garland,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, “the right for women to choose an abortion and exercise equal citizenship would have been comfortably protected. The ability of agencies to safeguard clean air and water, civil rights and workplace safety would be less threatened. Gay men and lesbians would rest secure in their marriages and not feel vulnerable to discrimination based on who they love. ” On the other hand, some said that Mr. Trump delivered on his campaign promise and found a nominee whose views reflected, among other things, his hostility to the administrative state, a position Judge Garland does not share. “Garland has a record of deferring to the government on pretty much everything, be it labor regulation or law enforcement, while Gorsuch is much more skeptical both of government action and of judicial deference to executive agencies,” said Ilya Shapiro, a fellow at the Cato Institute, the libertarian group. Judge Gorsuch is very likely to be precisely the sort of conservative Mr. Trump promised his supporters. “The justices that I’m going to appoint will be ” Mr. Trump said at the third presidential debate in October. “They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment. ” Liberal despair over the future of the Supreme Court is compounded by hostility to Mr. Trump. “A president with unprecedented ignorance of, and contempt for, fundamental constitutional values has gotten the opportunity to fill Justice Scalia’s seat with a nominee who is likely to have a career of moving the court to the right,” Professor Karlan said. In some ways, Judge Gorsuch’s impact in the short term will be modest. He will very likely vote much as Justice Scalia did. The court will thus be basically unchanged since 2006, when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. ’s appointment moved it to the right. Justice Kennedy will remain at the court’s center, generally leaning right but occasionally joining the court’s liberal bloc, as he did in important decisions on gay rights, abortion and affirmative action. Those decisions are probably secure for now, but a newly empowered conservative majority is likely to continue the signature projects of the Roberts court: deregulating campaign finance law, allowing states to limit voting, expanding gun rights and viewing decisions by the government with skepticism. A threat to public unions, averted by a deadlock after Justice Scalia’s death, is likely to . Justice Breyer’s campaign to do away with the death penalty will founder. Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said the array of cases in which the actual Justice Gorsuch and the hypothetical Justice Garland might differ is vast, including on campaign finance, affirmative action, voting rights, religious freedom, class actions, and aspects of criminal and immigration law. But he cautioned in an email that the two judges should not be reduced to stereotypes. “Neither Gorsuch nor Garland has written opinions in most of these areas,” he wrote, “but if you treat them as place holders for ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ outcomes — which is too simplistic and unfair to both of them — these are where those fault lines have been in recent years. ” | 1 |
A man disguised in a burka allegedly lured an boy from a mosque before raping and murdering him. [Azan Majid Janjua was killed after being kidnapped from the mosque he visited in Abu Dhabi for afternoon prayers two weeks ago during Ramadan, the Daily Mail reported. “He as a woman because he knew that the boy would not go with a man without permission from his parents,” Major General Maktoum Al Sharifi of the Abu Dhabi Police Department said. Surveillance footage shows the suspect with a purse getting into an elevator with a young boy. Shortly after they reached the roof of the block of apartments, police allege the suspect raped and strangled the to death. Police say they believe the suspect is a Pakistani immigrant. Gulf News reports that technicians found the boy’s body with a Quran May 31 on the roof of his residence. Azan’s father, Dr. Majid Janjua, said he was “shocked” when he received the news of his son’s death. “He was fasting and he went to the mosque for Asr prayers and Quran recitation and then went missing,” Janjua said. Police arrested the suspect 48 hours after the workers found the body. Detectives say the suspect has confessed. | 1 |
President Donald Trump reassured supporters that he was still planning to build a wall in his first term as president, despite reports that he was willing to drop wall funding during FY2017 budget negotiations. [“I don’t know what people are talking. I watch these shows, and the pundits in the morning. They don’t know what they’re talking about. The wall gets built, 100 percent,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday. Reporters asked Trump if he would sign a continuing budget resolution if it didn’t include funding for the wall. “The wall’s going to get built, folks. In case anybody has any questions, the wall is going to get built,” Trump replied. He added that construction for the wall would start “soon. ” “We’re already preparing. We’re doing plans, we’re doing specifications, we’re doing a lot of work on the wall, and the wall is going to get built,” he added. Democrats seized on reports that Trump said during a meeting with conservative media on Monday that he could get funding this week or in September budget negotiations for FY2018, as a sign that he was caving on his priorities. Senate Democrats insist that they will not support any budget that includes wall funding. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted that nothing had changed in the president’s priorities. “No one said ‘delayed,’” Spicer said, when asked if the president was willing to delay wall funding. Behind the scenes, White House aides are reluctant to play “shutdown theater” with Democrats, telling reporters that they are not going to negotiate budget deals with the Democrats through the media. Spicer did not say whether funding for the wall was a firm requirement for the president’s budget, suggesting to his opponents that it was open to interpretation. “I don’t think anything has changed,” Spicer said, adding that discussions were ongoing with both houses of Congress. The wall, he insisted, would be built, but he did not offer a construction timetable. “It’s not a question of wait until the fall. I think that there’s a lot of things that have to happen,” Spicer said. “It’s like any construction … we will take the first steps now and we will continue to seek funding through the FY2018 and further budget to make sure that it’s completed. ” | 1 |
Is your workout getting you nowhere? Research and lived experience indicate that many people who begin a new exercise program see little if any improvement in their health and fitness even after weeks of studiously sticking with their new routine. Among fitness scientists, these people are known as “nonresponders. ” Their bodies simply don’t respond to the exercise they are doing. And once discouraged, they often return to being nonexercisers. But an inspiring and timely new study suggests that nonresponders to one form of exercise can probably switch to another exercise regimen to which their body will respond. And a simple test you can do at home will help you determine how well your workout is working for you. One of the first major studies to report the phenomenon of nonresponders appeared in 2001, when researchers parsed data from dozens of previously published studies of running, cycling and other endurance exercise. The studies showed that, on aggregate, endurance training increased people’s endurance. But when the researchers examined individual outcomes, the variations were staggering. Some people had improved their endurance by as much as 100 percent, while others had actually become less fit, even though they were following the same workout routine. Age, sex and ethnicity had not mattered, the researchers noted. Young people and old had been outliers, as had women and men, black volunteers and white. Interestingly, nonresponse to endurance training ran in families, the researchers discovered, suggesting that genetics probably plays a significant role in how people’s bodies react to exercise. Since then, other researchers have found that people can have extremely erratic reactions to weight training regimens, with some packing on power and mass and others losing both. And a study published last year concentrating on brief bouts of intense interval training concluded that some people barely gained endurance with this type of workout, while others flourished, greatly augmenting their fitness. These studies, however, were not generally designed to tell us whether someone who failed to benefit from one form of exercise might do well with another. So for the new experiment, which was published in December in the journal PLOS One, researchers from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Ottawa decided to focus intently on whether a nonresponder to one form of exercise could benefit by switching to another. They began by gathering 21 healthy men and women and determining their VO2 max, a measure of how much oxygen the lungs can deliver to the muscles heart rates and other physiological parameters related to aerobic fitness. Then they had each volunteer complete two very different types of workouts. Each training regimen lasted three weeks, and the researchers waited several months before starting the next regimen, so that volunteers could return to their baseline fitness. One routine involved typical endurance training: riding a stationary bicycle four times a week for 30 minutes at a moderately strenuous pace. The second type of exercise revolved around intervals. Each volunteer completed eight intervals of very hard pedaling on a stationary bicycle, with 10 seconds of rest after each bout. The intervals were brutal but brief. At the end of each session, the researchers again checked each volunteer’s VO2 max and other fitness measures. As a group, they had gained admirable amounts of fitness from both workouts and to about the same extent. But individually, the responses varied considerably. About a third of the people had failed to show much if any improvement in one of the measures of fitness after three weeks of endurance training. Similarly, about a third had not improved their fitness much with interval training. And after each type of workout, some participants were found to be in worse shape. A majority of the participants, in other words, had failed to respond as expected after one of the workouts. But, importantly, no one had failed to respond at all. Every man and woman had measurably improved his or her fitness in some way after one of the sessions, if not the other. Those who had shown little response to endurance training generally showed a robust improvement after the interval sessions, and vice versa. These data suggest that “there is no approach to exercise,” says Brendon Gurd, an associate professor of kinesiology at Queen’s University who oversaw the study. “But it does seem as if there is some size that fits everyone. ” The question is how to determine which form of exercise best fits you. The answer, Dr. Gurd says, is simple trial and error. Before beginning a new exercise routine, he says, measure your fitness. You can do this by briskly walking up several flights of stairs or quickly stepping onto and off a box three or four times. Then check your pulse. This is your baseline number. Now start working out. Walk. Jog. Attend interval training or spin classes. After about a month, Dr. Gurd says, repeat the stair or step test. Your pulse rate should be slower now. Your workout sessions should also be feeling easier. If not, you may be a nonresponder to your current exercise routine. In that case, switch things up, Dr. Gurd recommends. If you have primarily been walking, maybe try sprinting up a few flights of stairs and walking back down, which is a simple form of interval training. Or if you have been exercising with intervals and feeling no fitter, perhaps jog for a month or two. The message he hopes people will glean from his and other studies of exercise nonresponders “is not that you shouldn’t bother exercising because exercise might not help you,” Dr. Gurd says. “It does help everyone, once you find your own best exercise. ” | 1 |
After the police in Tulsa, Okla. released video footage of an officer fatally shooting an unarmed man, and then standing back rather than tending to the man’s wounds, many people had the same reaction as a local activist, Marq Lewis, who voiced outrage that “they let him lay there minutes, bleeding. ” Anger at the treatment of the man, Terence Crutcher — not only his shooting last Friday, but also how officers behaved afterward — echoed concerns over other recent cases, mostly involving black males who died at the hands of the police. Notably, when Tamir Rice, a boy with a pellet gun, was shot to death in 2014 in a park in Cleveland, officers stood around for several minutes, waiting for an emergency medical team and offering no first aid. So what should officers do? Experts in policing agree that the way officers respond, or fail to, is often a problem, but they say that such failures are not necessarily the fault of the officers, and that law enforcement agencies are starting to address them. “It is reasonable for people to assume that when it is safe for the officers to do so, that they would render first aid to somebody they’ve just shot,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief who is president of the Police Foundation, a research group that advises law enforcement agencies. “But a lot of departments do not have policies that clearly articulate the officer’s responsibilities in that situation, and some have no policy at all. ” This year, the Police Executive Research Forum, another research group, issued a list of 30 policies that police departments should adopt, including a requirement that officers render first aid when they can. Officials and officers have raised objections to other recommendations on the list, but not to that one, said Chuck Wexler, the group’s executive director. “Cops have to be able to pivot immediately from using deadly force to trying to save a life,” said Mr. Wexler, a former police officer. “That is tough, we know that, but it’s what’s needed, and it’s not happening. ” Officers get training at police academies, but experts say it is often rudimentary, and not reinforced through their careers. A New York City officer, Peter Liang, who was convicted of manslaughter for fatally shooting a man in an apartment house stairwell, said he did not give the man CPR because he had not been properly trained in the procedure, a claim the department upheld. Even when agencies do instruct officers to give first aid, as many police departments in large cities do, officers often lack the training or equipment to handle gunshot wounds. “It’s typically geared toward, you come across an auto accident, or someone is having a heart attack or choking,” said William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, a coalition of police officer unions. “If there’s a gunshot wound, the typical training is for the officer to call for medical help. ” Some agencies have increased medical training in recent years, and others, like the police departments in Cleveland and Los Angeles, have equipped officers with trauma kits that contain items such as tourniquets, bandages and sterile gloves. “In my 20 years in the Newark Police Department, not once did we ever have the equipment to deal with something as serious as a gunshot,” said Jon Shane, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Mr. Shane questioned the wisdom of adding yet another set of responsibilities to officers he said were already overburdened. “The more you spread yourself thin like that, the worse you become at your job,” he said. But Brigitt Keller, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild, said that when officers fail to aid someone who is dying, something far worse than poor policies, training and equipment may be at work. “I’m appalled that someone can stand there and watch somebody die without the impulse and the humanity to render aid,” she said. “It’s an indication of how far removed some police officers are from the communities they serve, that you can watch someone die in front of your eyes and remain detached. ” Yet others say that what looks like disregard for life may just reflect human nature. A person who has just shot someone is flooded with adrenaline, sometimes traumatized, and often not thinking clearly. What seems like callousness could also be a product of training. Officers are taught, above all, to secure the scene when force is used — to make sure the person, a suspect, is unarmed and that there is no one else around who can pose a threat. In some places, department policy calls for handcuffing the shooting victim. “There’s a difference between officers just standing around while somebody is bleeding to death, and being sure you can safely approach the individual who’s been shot,” Mr. Bueermann, the Police Foundation president, said. | 1 |
Failed Investigations of JFK’s Murder November 21, 2016
More than a half century later, John F. Kennedy’s assassination still resonates not only because of its historical importance but because the investigation was more a cover-up than a pursuit of truth, says researcher Gary Aguilar.
By Gary Aguilar
November 22 marks the 53 rd anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. If history is any guide, it’s likely some mainstream outlet will commemorate that dark day with reassurances that the Warren Commission was right that Lee Harvey Oswald did it alone, and that most doubters, who have been in the majority since the mid-1960s, are randy conspiracy theorists. That is the essential message by one of the experts likely to be cited this year, attorney Howard Willens. President John F. Kennedy in the motorcade through Dallas shortly before his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. (Photo credit: Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News)
One of the few still-living Warren Commission staffers, Willens followed up his 2013 book, History Will Prove Us Right, with a spirited defense of the Commission in the summer, 2016 issue of the journal, The American Scholar , which he co-wrote with another Commission staffer, attorney Richard Mosk. The piece , “The Truth About Dallas, ” is a celebration of the work and conclusions of the original investigation.
But Willens’s and Mosk’s defense of the work of the Warren Commission they served on is more notable for what they omit from the official record than what they include. “What the critics often forget or ignore,” they write, “is that since 1964, several government agencies have also looked at aspects of our work,” (p. 59) as if the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had reviewed and applauded the Commission’s work.
Indeed, they did look at it. But rather than plaudits, they issued stinging rebukes, principally for the Commission’s having been rolled by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and to a lesser extent, by the CIA and the Secret Service.
“It must be said that the FBI generally exhausted its resources in confirming its case against Oswald as the lone assassin,” the HSCA concluded, “a case that Director J. Edgar Hoover, at least, seemed determined to make within 24 hours of the of the assassination.”
In essence, the experienced investigators concluded that Hoover had divined the solution to the crime before starting the inquiry, and then his agents confirmed the boss’s epiphany. The intimidated Warren Commission went right along. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
And with good reason, only part of which Willens and Mosk tell. They admit that the “FBI had originally opposed the creation of the Warren Commission” and that Hoover “ordered investigations of commission staff members.” But they don’t tell that Hoover deployed one of his favorite dirty tricks to deal not only with support staffers, such as Willens and Mosk, but also with the commissioners themselves.
“[D]erogatory information pertaining to both Commission members and staff was brought to Mr. Hoover’s attention,” the Church Committee reported . (emphasis added)
Hoover’s Spy
Willens and Mosk also forgot to mention that Hoover had a personal spy on the Warren Commission, then Rep. Gerald Ford, who tattled on Commissioners who were (justifiably) skeptical of the Bureau’s work.
“Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the Commission,” FBI Agent Cartha DeLoach wrote in a once secret memo. “He stated this would have to be done on a confidential basis, however he thought it should be done.” Autopsy photo of President John F. Kennedy.
At the bottom of the memo, Hoover scrawled , “Well handled.” The success of Hoover’s machinations was obvious to subsequent government investigators. (Ford, of course, later became President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.)
The HSCA’s chief counsel, Notre Dame Law Professor Robert Blakey, a criminal investigator and prosecutor with vastly better credentials than either Willens or Mosk, was impressed with neither the Commission’s vigor nor its independence.
“What was significant,” Blakey determined, “was the ability of the FBI to intimidate the Commission, in light of the Bureau’s predisposition on the questions of Oswald’s guilt and whether there had been a conspiracy. At a January 27 [1964] Commission meeting, there was another dialogue [among Warren Commissioners]:
“John McCloy: ‘… the time is almost overdue for us to have a better perspective of the FBI investigation than we now have … We are so dependent on them for our facts … .’
“Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin: ‘Part of our difficulty in regard to it is that they have no problem. They have decided that no one else is involved … .’
“Senator Richard Russell: ‘They have tried the case and reached a verdict on every aspect.’
“Senator Hale Boggs: ‘You have put your finger on it.’ (Closed Warren Commission meeting.)” [Blakey & Billings, Fatal Hour– The Assassination of President . See also: North, Act of Treason ]
Testifying before the HSCA, the Warren Commission’s chief counsel J. Lee Rankin shamefully admitted , “Who could protest against what Mr. Hoover did back in those days?” Apparently not President Lyndon Johnson’s blue-ribbon commissioners.
The HSCA’s Blakey also reported that “When asked if he was satisfied with the (Commission’s) investigation that led to the (no conspiracy) conclusion, Judge Burt Griffin (a Commission staff member) said he was not.” [Blakey & Billings, Ibid.]
And author Gus Russo reported that Judge Griffin also admitted, “We spent virtually no time investigating the possibility of conspiracy. I wish we had.” [Russo, Live by the Sword ]
Clear Misgivings
Thus, despite their clear misgivings, the Commissioners bowed to the imperious FBI chief rather than conduct a thorough investigation. Notably, the Commission never once employed a rudimentary investigative tool . “The Commission,” the HSCA reported, “failed to utilize the instruments of immunity from prosecution and prosecution for perjury with respect to witnesses whose veracity it doubted.” [US Cong. House of Reps. Report of Comm. on Assassinations, 1979] Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
This policy had serious repercussions when the Commission confronted two key issues: published claims that Lee Harvey Oswald had been an FBI informant, and the possibility that Jack Ruby was mobbed up.
“The Commission did not investigate Hoover or the FBI, and managed to avoid the appearance of doing so,” the HSCA determined . “It ended up doing what the members had agreed they would not do: Rely mainly on the FBI’s denial of the allegations (that Oswald had been a Bureau informant).”
Hoover merely sent the Commission his signed affidavit declaring that Oswald was not an informant and also “sent over 10 additional affidavits from each FBI agent who had had contact with Oswald.” And with that, case closed.
Regarding Jack Ruby, the FBI had his phone records, yet failed to spot Ruby’s obvious, and atypical, pattern of calls to known Mafiosi in the weeks leading up to the assassination. After performing the simple, obvious task of actually analyzing those calls, the HSCA determined that, if not a sworn member of La Cosa Nostra, Ruby had ongoing, close links to numerous Mafiosi.
Thus the HSCA roundly rejected the Warren Commission’s conclusion that, “the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime.”
The list of Warren Commission shortcomings that the HSCA assembled is not short. A brief summary of them runs some 47 pages in the Bantam Books version of the report (p. 289–336), which outlines what required much of the 500 pages of HSCA volume XI to cover ( available on-line ).
“The evidence indicates that facts which may have been relevant to, and would have substantially affected, the Warren Commission’s investigation were not provided by the agencies (FBI and the CIA). Hence, the Warren Commission’s findings may have been formulated without all of the relevant information.”
The Church Committee said that the problem was that “the Commission was perceived as an adversary by both Hoover and senior FBI officials.” “Such a relationship,” the Committee dryly observed , “was not conductive to the cooperation necessary for a thorough and exhaustive investigation.”
But the FBI did more than just withhold evidence from the Commission. Although they admit that the FBI destroyed a note Oswald wrote to Agent Hosty, and withheld that information from the Commission, Willens and Mosk don’t mention that Agent Hosty reported that his own personnel file, and other FBI files, had been falsified. [Hosty, Jr. Assignment: Oswald ]
Nor that author Curt Gentry learned from assistant FBI director William Sullivan that there were other JFK documents at the Bureau that had been destroyed. [Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover– The Man and His Secrets ]
Perhaps one of the reasons the public has remained mistrustful of the government’s conclusions, and the mainstream media reassurances, is the sort of selective presentation of evidence by ax grinders like Willens and Mosk who get heralded by our “responsible” media.
Gary Aguilar is one of the few physicians outside the government ever allowed to see the still-restricted JFK autopsy photos and X-rays. He has published and lectured on the topic of the JFK assassination for many years. | 0 |
Economic Breadth Is Significantly Deteriorating in the US
by CHRIS PUPLAVA
Philly Fed state coincident data came out today and more states across the country are starting to contract (shown in red). Looking at the snapshot below, positively growing states still dominate the map (and don’t give much of an alarming picture), but a different story emerges when we look at the trend.
Here’s a look at how this data has trended over the past 36 years compared to the S&P 500. As you can see, states showing positive growth tend to rollover prior to economic recessions (red bars) with corresponding declines in the S&P 500. The latest data puts us near the weakest levels during this entire economic cycle and matches prior market tops.
There was a strong increase in the number of states with negative monthly changes this year. As shown below, this data typically leads US initial unemployment claims and suggests we could see a pickup in jobless claims (layoffs) in the near future.
M&A deal activity (shown inverted below) tends to exhibit a euphoric peak and mark the end of an economic/bull market cycle. In terms of transaction values, M&A activity peaked earlier this year and also argues for a pickup in layoffs ahead. | 0 |
David Swanson | 0 |
Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). Tell us about the issues that matter to you — and what you’d like to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. Want to receive California Today by email? Sign up. Insults are just part of life in California, according to many Native Americans in the state. Last year, for example, there was the Senate candidate caught on video making a “whooping” gesture in reference to an American Indian, and then there was the pope’s canonization of the Rev. Junípero Serra, viewed by prominent Native Americans as a far from saintly figure. Then there are the mascots. Pressure to eliminate Native nicknames and mascots from California’s schools has been around since at least the 1960s. Scores of schools have gotten rid of them, and last year the state banned the use of “Redskins” as a team name or mascot. Yet, according to a survey out of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at Cal State San Marcos, more than 140 of the state’s public schools were still using such mascots as of 2015, a great many accompanied by imagery of Indians in feathered headdress. They have names like the Durfee School Warriors, the Washington Elementary Little Aztecs, the Ripon High Indians and the Cherrylee School Chiefs. Native American leaders say such mascots perpetuate ethnic stereotyping that goes back centuries. “My big issue is, if you dehumanize us, then you’re never going to make policies for us,” said Joely Proudfit, who leads the Cal State center. “You’re never going to give us a seat at the table. You’re never going to see us as human beings. ” Dr. Proudfit said she hoped the survey, published as a map showing the mascots peppered across California, would draw attention to how widespread the practice remains. School leaders who have refused to budge on the mascot issue talk about deeply felt pride, sporting legacies that date back decades, and support from individual Native Americans who see them as a tribute. Racism, they say, plays no part in it. At Chowchilla High School, outside Merced, one of four schools across the state affected by the Redskins ban, officials said their intentions in using the mascot were misunderstood. “Here, the Chowchilla Redskins emboldens the spirit of strength, honor and respect,” said Marty Piepenbrok, a community relations spokesman. “There is nothing disparaging about it whatsoever. ” At the high school’s graduation ceremony in June, the biggest cheer rose up at the mention of “Redskins,” The Fresno Bee reported. The school has until January to drop the mascot. Even without a broader ban, however, many schools have responded voluntarily to the concerns of Indian tribes by swapping out their Native American mascots. Others have tried to sidestep the issue by dropping just the imagery associated with the names. For Winters High School, home of the Warriors, that has meant a phasing out of the school symbol depicting an Indian man in headdress. The name will stay, said Todd Cutler, the superintendent of the district outside Sacramento. But when it comes time to replace the gym floor and the sign in front of the school, the Indian imagery that adorns them will become, simply, “W. ” “It’s really a delicate, careful road we are moving down,” Dr. Cutler said. • A battle has broken out in Los Angeles over the fundamental nature of the distinctively and city, writes Los Angeles bureau chief Adam Nagourney. [The New York Times] • A firefighter was killed while heading to a blaze near Vandenberg Air Force Base. [Ventura County Star] • An illegal shelter in Lunada Bay built by the Bay Boys, a group of surfers, will be demolished. [Los Angeles Times] • A stretch of winding highway in Orange County has killed six motorcyclists in seven weeks. [Orange County Register] • Victor Scheinman, a pioneer in robotics, died in Petrolia. He was 73. [The New York Times] • An oil spill was discovered in San Pablo Bay after a mystery odor sent dozens of people to the hospital. [East Bay Times] • The release of police footage in the fatal shooting of a homeless man set off protests in North Sacramento. [Sacramento Bee] • California farmer: “We have to raise the price of goods and people have to be O. K. with it. ” [The Guardian] • Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged $3 billion to fighting disease. The effort will involve a “biohub” in San Francisco. [The New York Times] • Google will be opening a technology lab in Oakland to mentor black and Latino computer scientists. [USA Today] • Apple is said to have discussed a partnership with McLaren, the racecar builder. [The New York Times] • Check out this aerial view of the recent Dragon Boat festival in Oakland. [ High Oakland] Capital punishment has long been one of the most contentious issues in California. In November, voters will decide between two competing ballot measures: Proposition 62, which would end the death penalty, and Proposition 66, which would speed up the executions. Jennifer Medina, a national correspondent for The New York Times in Los Angeles, takes a close look at both propositions. A group devoted to creating play areas has awarded $1 million to spur 50 new projects that create opportunities for urban children to play at places like bus stops, barber shops and Laundromats. The winning projects were announced this week by KaBoom, a nonprofit group that has built 2, 700 playgrounds across the country since it was founded in 1996. Four of the winners hail from California. McFarland, north of Bakersfield, proposed adding a play space to a bus stop. In Kerman, outside Fresno, city officials said they would enliven sidewalks and crosswalks with interactive designs like hot lava and hopscotch squares. Richmond proposed a “play street” in a neighborhood. And Family Friendly Oakland said it would make the city’s drab, cement trash cans into canvases for colorful murals. “By adding art and whimsy we’ll provide surprising moments of wonder where children and adults least expect,” wrote Tiffany Eng, the group’s founder. You can see more of the winning designs. — Gail Cornwall and Mike McPhate California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
On Saturday, Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekial Elliott was caught on camera at a Dallas St. Patrick’s Day parade exposing a woman’s breast. The woman was interacting with paradegoers and pointing at her chest when the running back reached over and pulled her shirt down. TMZ Sports reported that, according to Elliott’s representative, the woman is not upset with Elliott over the incident, and hung out with him and a group of friends shortly after the incident. The incident is not a good look for Elliott because he is currently under investigation for domestic violence allegations made against him last year. Follow Breitbart. tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo | 1 |
On March 27, Breitbart News reported that “Footy McFoot Face” was leading all other possible names for San Diego’s Major League Soccer team by a wide margin. [On April 1, KGTV reported the name’s surging popularity was the result of Los Angeles FC fans who had trolled the poll to decide what to name the new team. KGTV previously reported that other possible names for the team included “San Diego Bad Hombres,” “San Diego Surf,” “Mission San Diego FC,” “San Diego Football Club (SDFC),” and “San Diego Armada. ” Votes for the various names were being cast and tallied on SoccerCity SD’s Facebook page. On April 1 — after voting had ended — SoccerCity SD posted a video announcing “Footy McFooty Face” as the winner, only to follow the announcement by admitting it was an April Fool’s joke. SoccerCity SD’s Landon Donovan said, “Alright guys, calm down, ‘Footy McFooty Face’ is not going to be our team name. ” FS investors’ Nick Stone explained that LA soccer fans found the San Diego poll “and voted thousands of thousands of times for Footy. ” Donovan said, “We appreciate your voting, even if you’re trolling us. Fortunately for us and San Diego, our fans here are much classier than that, so Footy will unfortunately not be the team name. ” The actual name for the team has not been decided. SoccerCity SD social media coordinator Andy Altman said the top 10 names will be submitted to MLS for approval and “Footy” will be included because it leads the pack. The Washington Post announced the mournful news: “RIP Footy McFooty Face: San Diego soccer team will be called something less awesome. ” 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 |
It’s all old news to those of us who, unlike Democrat LIVs (low information voters), pay attention to the Alternative Media. But it’s still significant because the information made it to Fox News’ Hannity Show .
His name is Jeff Rovin .
After decades as one of Bill and Hillary Clintons’ many retainers, Rovin is outing himself as the Clintons’“ fixer ”— defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “ A person who makes arrangements for other people, especially of an illicit or devious kind. ” In Rovin’s case, he claims to have been employed by the Clintons to suppress and remove from the media any scandalous news of their sexual affairs. Note: For a few of the Clintons’ other retainers, see “ Hillary Clinton’s medical handler, cleaner, & prompter were all at the last presidential debate ”.
Rovin says he was paid $4,000 a month to keep the Clintons’ open marriage and their respective adulteries from the news. In Hillary’s case, she had “affairs” with Vincent Foster and with a female Hollywood honcho. Note: On July 20, 1993, Foster — who was Bill Clinton’s deputy White House counsel at the time — was found dead on a park bench in D.C.’s Ft. Marcy Park, supposedly from a self-inflicted gun shot. See “ FBI files linking Hillary Clinton to Vince Foster suicide vanished from National Archives “. Note: According to the Clintons’ former assassin Larry Nichols, when she was First Lady, Hillary regularly went to California on weekends to be with Hollywood producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and other women to “worship” Satan at “a church”. See “ Clinton friend and assassin Larry Nichols: Hillary is a satanist ”. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason , 69, is a television producer who, with her husband Harry Thomason, is best known for creating, writing, and producing the TV series, Designing Women . The couple are notable for their friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, which dates back to Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. The Thomasons created several short-subject political propaganda films for Bill, the most famous of which was The Man from Hope that introduced Bill at the 1992 Democratic Convention. The Thomasons did similar propaganda films for Hillary’s run for the U.S. Senate and for other candidates, such as General Wesley Clark’s presidential bid. Clark has endorsed Hillary for president. (See “ Obama-supporter Gen. Wesley Clarke: Disloyal Americans should be put in concentration camps ”)
Here’s Rovin on Hannity , on Oct. 24, 2016:
The National Enquirer first broke Jeff Rovin’s story. Here’s what Rovin told the Enquirer :
During the 1980s and 1990s, I was working in Hollywood as a reporter for several national magazines and newspapers. Because of my good relationship with stars, publicists and the press I became “a fixer”: someone who helps stars keep embarrassing stories out of the press. I helped keep secrets safe for some of Hollywood’s leading men.
In 1991, my reputation was such that I was asked to work on behalf of a fast-rising figure on the national stage: Arkansas Gov. William Jefferson Clinton. I attended a meeting in Hollywood where I was told by an intermediary: “There will be a lot of stories coming out in the tabloid press. We want them buried.”
I was informed that these stories would involve rumors of Bill Clinton‘s many sexual dalliances and an alleged ongoing affair of Hillary Clinton with a male member of her law firm, Vince Foster, as well as a female mover-and-shaker in Hollywood.
For a retainer of $4,000 a month — paid by a third party, not the campaign — I was told to keep these stories hush-hush in one of two ways: by trading access to the Clintons for “positive” interviews, or by paying the reporters.
The payments were always cash, usually delivered in a movie theater or restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and came in two denominations: $100 for a heads-up that a bad story was coming; or considerably more to kill the piece.
It did not appear that the job would be terribly time-consuming: After all, Hillary reportedly had just one lover, and Bill’s girlfriends were all in the past.
Not so. The sexual dalliances were ongoing — and so my communications with the West Wing, Air Force One and Camp David continued through 1998 — a stunning length of time when one considers that both the president and the first lady were supposed to be devoting their full energies to the business of the people of the United States!
The gravest example of a Clintonian lack of judgment occurred in March 1994. Presidential brother Roger Clinton was marrying his eight-months-pregnant bride Molly. There was a bachelor party. Prostitutes were involved. Recordings were made. Recordings involving Bill Clinton.
Arrangements for a meeting between Bill and a 26-year-old brunette were discussed when the president was to arrive in Dallas for the ceremony.
The tape recording was offered, for sale, to The National Enquirer . Before the publication and its then-editor could publish a transcript, I swooped in and negotiated for the White House to give this paper exclusive access to the ceremony itself. Not even The Washington Post or The New York Times had that. The Enquirer was given leave to publish exclusive White House photographs.
At the reception, while Bill Clinton sang with the piano player, Hillary was introduced to The Enquirer reporter. Her expression fierce, voice tight, she took and tightly held the reporter’s hand and demanded, “Are we done now?” The reporter replied, “Madam First Lady, with this incident, yes.”
Of course, we were not done. This was one of many in an endless string of sexual stories arising from what effectively was the Clintons’ open, polyamorous marriage.
I have kept these secrets for a quarter-century because Bill Clinton had become an elder statesman with heart trouble and Hillary Clinton seemed to be focused, at last, on the business of doing her job — for better or for worse.
I am coming forward now because of the endless attention the alleged indiscretions of Donald Trump have received. Nothing I have heard comes close to the sexual and moral corruption of the Clintons — many of which have yet to be revealed.
Predictably, the liberal media is focusing on one man’s alleged misdeeds and ignoring another’s proven sins.
I mention some of these here and now because we have only two serious candidates for the presidency. In the few weeks remaining until the election, we should not be weighing whose corruption is worse (the Clintons win by a landslide, if all were to be told), but who has the best ideas and leadership skills to become president of the United States. Hillary Clinton is transfixed by Christina Aguilera’s boobs, confirmed by the singer on the Ellen Degeneres Show in May 2016.
See also: | 0 |
As the allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump rack up, the question of how often women face this horrible tragedy is being raised to a national level. One of the biggest questions these... | 0 |
Migrant Crisis Disclaimer
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Anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned, permanently. Daily Stormer Presents: Dr. David Duke Š Copyright Daily Stormer 2016, All Rights Reserved | 0 |
Hillary Clinton appeared to stumble or nearly miss a step as she boarded her campaign plane on Thursday.
Clinton was flying to a rally in Winston Salem, North Carolina when she boarded in rainy weather.
From the time she departed her motorcade van, which was positioned right at the bottom of the stairs, all the way to the top of the steps, she appeared to be wobbly and unsteady, and laboring during the trek.
Maybe it was because she had the extra — arduous — task of carrying an umbrella?
Live Satellite News, which posted the video, noted she was “mumbling to herself.”
Yesterday, she required assistance going up one step onto a riser to greet supporters in Lake Worth, Florida.
She needed assistance to get onto it as she could be seen reaching her hand out for a boost or some added steadiness. | 0 |
Florida for Trump! | 0 |
LEAWOOD, Kansas — Erica Massman, a moderate Kansas Republican, refers to the building where her daughter attends fourth grade as a public school. Ms. Massman’s mother, whose politics tilt further to the right, calls it something else: a government school. “My mother, who is a Tea Party person, started saying ‘government schools’ all the time,” said Ms. Massman, recalling when she first heard the phrase around 2010. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow. ’” Kansas has for years been the stage for a messy school funding fight that has shaken the Legislature and reached the State Supreme Court. Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, and his political allies threatened to defy the court on education spending and slashed income taxes in their effort to make the state a model of conservatism. Somewhere along the way, the term “government schools” entered the lexicon in place of references to the public school system. “Our local grade school is now the government school,” State Senator Forrest Knox wrote in an article last year, echoing conservative concerns that the government had inserted itself unnecessarily into education. The intent was obvious to her, Ms. Massman said. “They are trying to rebrand public education,” she said. The use of the term has set off alarms even among some Republicans, who fear that it signals still less support, financially and otherwise, for the public schools in a state that had long felt pride over the quality of its education system. The recent adoption of a school finance plan that was acceptable to Mr. Brownback, the Legislature and the Kansas Supreme Court has not entirely assuaged those concerns. Davis Merritt, a columnist for The Wichita Eagle, said in a column in May that state legislators’ “deaf and blind” ideology was threatening public schools. “Some have begun to call public schools ‘government schools,’ a calculated pejorative scorning both education and anything related to government,” he wrote. That elicited a response from Bob Weeks, the host of “WichitaLiberty. TV,” a show about Kansas politics and public affairs. “It is surprising to me that liberals and progressives object to the term ‘government schools,’” he said on the show. “They like government, don’t they? These people want more taxation and government spending, don’t they? Well, when we think about our public schools, we find they have all the characteristics of government programs. ” Dave Trabert, the president of the Kansas Policy Institute, which advocates limited government, said in an interview: “It’s certainly something that some people use to kind of separate between what’s government and what’s not. Technically, it’s accurate. ” It would not be the first time that conservatives have used semantics to sway public opinion, experts said. George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has been tracking the trend for decades. He pointed out that the right has been more successful than the left at framing issues related to abortion, health care, labor unions and the concept of government itself, among other issues, with carefully contrived catchphrases: “Tax relief. ” “ . ” “The Democrat Party. ” “Death panels. ” (“Obamacare” was originally an attempt by the right to saddle President Obama with the repercussions of the Affordable Care Act, until he embraced the term himself.) Besides coining phrases, Dr. Lakoff said, the right has certain words — a practice that was demonstrated, he said, in President George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, which used “freedom,” “free” or “liberty” 49 times in 20 minutes. “The right has taken over the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty,’” Dr. Lakoff said. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, recalled the 1986 speech in which President Ronald Reagan framed perceptions of “government,” to great effect. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” he said. “People tend to trace the demonization of government to Reagan,” Dr. Tannen said. “That’s kind of iconic, how he was using it. He set the government up as the enemy. ” Conservatives in Kansas have extended the semantical positioning of “government” to education, conveying the message that public schools are a form of government imposition, Dr. Lakoff said. The phrase “government schools,” a common reference overseas to national school systems, has been around for decades as a way to differentiate them from privately financed schools. It has also been a label for schools on Native American reservations, and long used to influence debate. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York used the phrase in 1978 to make the case for federal aid to private schools. “We have succeeded in providing equality only to those who enroll in government schools,” he said in a speech in New York. “We have failed the parents who prefer to send their children to the schools that are descended from the older, private school systems. ” The Libertarian Party borrowed that for its party platform in 1980. “Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals,” the platform said. But only recently — and mostly in reliably conservative Kansas — has the term been used regularly and clearly as a political wedge. Education advocates in Kansas said they had heard it in conversations with state legislators (though few use it in public statements) in discussions about public schools on Facebook and on some conservative news sites. The use of the term “government schools” is part of a broad education agenda that includes restraining costs. The and libertarian wings of the Republican Party are pushing the state to loosen its laws to allow more charter schools. They oppose programs that offer free or breakfasts and lunches, believing that schools have become part of the “nanny state” — another politically charged term — and are usurping the role of parents. Last year, Mr. Knox lamented in his article, published in a southern Kansas newspaper, that the government had become too intrusive in education. “Our children have become government children,” he wrote. John Locke, a professor of linguistics at the City University of New York, said that in some contexts the use of the word government had a positive connotation: government bonds and programs, for example. “But among those archconservatives who, by nature or disposition, want less government, it can have a negative effect,” he said. He suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek, that swapping “government” for “public” could become a trend, with references to “government libraries,” “government parks” — even “government universities. ” “It’s austere,” Dr. Locke said. “It has an oppressive ring to it. It sounds rigid, the opposite of open or friendly or charming or congenial. The people who use that term are hoping those words will come to mind. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Kentucky’s Democratic primary is underway, and both parties are voting in Oregon. Bernie Sanders is under pressure from Democratic leaders after his supporters caused an uproar at the Nevada Democratic Party’s convention over the weekend, above, and unleashed a torrent of threats at the state party chairwoman. Mr. Sanders condemned violence but defended his supporters, accusing the state’s “Democratic leadership” of misusing its power. _____ 2. The Fox anchor Megyn Kelly launched her first special on Fox with a special guest: Donald Trump. It was a convivial, easygoing interview that was taped more than two weeks ago. _____ 3. The National Transportation Safety Board announced its findings in last year’s Amtrak crash in Philadelphia, which killed eight. The engineer, distracted by reports of damage to another train, sped into a dangerous curve, thinking he was on a straightaway, with a speed limit of 110 m. p. h. The board’s chairman called for the installation of a system that automatically slows speeding trains, “because humans make mistakes. ” _____ 4. The Justice Department is investigating allegations of doping involving many top Russian top athletes, following a buildup of accusations. One former Russian official, above, has described a broad and intricately managed doping scheme that he said culminated at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which Russia dominated. _____ 5. The Senate unanimously passed a bill that would allow the families of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, to sue Saudi Arabia over suspicions that its officials played a supporting role in the attacks. If the bill passes the House, President Obama has promised a veto, but some in Congress believe they could pull off a rare override. _____ 6. “It is sad and embarrassing for the Australian government. ” That’s a NASA scientist adding his voice to the international uproar over the layoff of one the world’s most authoritative experts on sea levels. John Church is one of 275 experts who are losing their jobs as Australia reorients its national science agency toward more commercial enterprises. _____ 7. The U. S. military has said that its lethal airstrikes on a hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz last year were a mistake. But a Times special report finds that Afghan forces’ distrust of the hospital’s operator, Doctors Without Borders, might have played a central role. Some in the Afghan military see the group’s focus on treating the injured as helping and sometimes hiding the enemy. _____ 8. The Senate passed a measure calling for $1. 1 billion in emergency funds to combat a feared U. S. outbreak of the Zika virus. That sets up a confrontation with House Republicans, who have agreed on just $622 million reallocated from other programs. Neither measure is anywhere near President Obama’s request of $1. 9 billion. _____ 9. A comprehensive analysis by an influential national scientific group concluded that genetic engineering does not make crops unsafe to grow or eat. But the findings had caveats, and the report is unlikely to end the debate over what are known widely as G. M. O. s, for genetically modified organisms. _____ 10. Finally, TV networks are going retro. The upfronts — presentations to advertisers on coming offerings — include new versions of old hits like “Twin Peaks,” “MacGyver,” “Tales From the Crypt” and “Gilmore Girls. ” As a TV executive put it, “Where you have a title that people recognize, value and appreciate, that’s something we want to take advantage of. ” _____ 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 |
A Tennessee jury convicted a former Vanderbilt University football player of rape charges on Saturday after weighing evidence that he invited three teammates to sexually assault an unconscious woman in his dorm room. Over five days of testimony in a Nashville courtroom, prosecutors portrayed Brandon Vandenburg, 23, as encouraging the 2013 attack, passing out condoms and recording video that he sent to friends. Reporters in the courtroom said Mr. Vandenburg shook his head as the jury foreman read the verdict: guilty on all counts, five of aggravated rape, two of aggravated sexual battery and one of unlawful photography. In a front row, his mother sobbed. “It’s impossible to not to be emotional about this case,” Jan Norman, an assistant district attorney, said after the verdict. “The facts of it are horrific. ” Prosecutors say three other men were present in Mr. Vandenburg’s room during the attack in June 2013. One, Cory Batey, was convicted along with Mr. Vandenburg last year during a joint trial. Those verdicts were thrown out after it was revealed that one of the jurors had not disclosed during the trial that he had once been a victim of statutory rape. During a retrial in April, Mr. Batey was again found guilty of aggravated rape and other charges. The two other men, Jaborian McKenzie and Brandon Banks, have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. The trial, conducted against the backdrop of a national discussion about sexual assaults on college campuses and the conduct of gained intense public scrutiny because of the accusations against the defendants, who were Division I athletes at Vanderbilt, a private university. It also drew comparisons to another recent trial. In that case, Brock Turner, a former swimmer at Stanford, was sentenced to six months in jail after being convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in 2015. The punishment, which many critics denounced as lenient, set off protests that echoed across the country and, on Wednesday, in Congress, where members of the House took turns reading a letter written by the victim. Mr. Vandenburg and Mr. Batey are both facing minimum sentences of 15 years. The law also provided a mandatory minimum in Mr. Turner’s case — two years — but the judge had discretion to deviate from it. The victim in Nashville, at the time a neuroscience major, testified that she had been drinking with Mr. Vandenburg at a bar. The next thing she recalled, she said, was waking up alone in his bed, in pain. Questioned by the police four days later, Mr. Vandenburg acknowledged that he had watched the attack. “She got sexually assaulted right in front of me. And I didn’t do anything,” he said during the interrogation, according to The Tennessean. “I should’ve called someone. ” Mr. Vandenburg’s defense argued that he was intoxicated and could not be held responsible for his teammates’ actions. While the state did not accuse Mr. Vandenburg of touching the woman, it argued that he coaxed others to do so. In that regard, said Tom Thurman, the deputy district attorney general, the videos taken by Mr. Vandenburg, some of which were recovered by investigators and shown during the trial, established his culpability beyond any doubt. Randall Reagan, a lawyer for Mr. Vandenburg, said he would appeal. | 1 |
Just days before the start of a new school term, ITT Educational Services, one of the nation’s largest educational companies, closed nearly all its campuses on Tuesday. The company cited the Education Department’s recent decision to bar the chain of colleges from using federal financial aid to enroll new students as the reason for the sudden shutdown. Except for a small school that operates under a different name, the move puts an end to an operation that has been accused of widespread fraud and abuse, leaving roughly 35, 000 students and 8, 000 employees in the lurch. ITT Educational Services, whose recruitment, lending practices and educational quality have been under scrutiny by federal regulators and state prosecutors for years, said in a news release that it had “exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a nonprofit or public institution. ” It denounced the Education Department’s decision to restrict the use of federal funds, calling it “inappropriate and unconstitutional” and “taken without proving a single allegation. ” Nicole Elam, an ITT spokeswoman, declined to make any further comment. Ted Mitchell, the under secretary for the Education Department, denied assertions that ITT was being targeted for political reasons, saying that the issues surrounding its educational programs and financial stability gave the federal government little choice. “The risk presented by ITT to both students and taxpayers made it irresponsible for us to allow them to enroll new students and not have additional oversight,” Mr. Mitchell said. He also noted ITT’s independent accreditor had concluded that the schools were unlikely to be able to comply with the accreditor’s standards. Current ITT students and those who withdrew in the last 120 days essentially have two options, neither of them particularly appealing, Mr. Mitchell said. Students can try to transfer their credits to another school in a bid to finish their education. Few quality schools may be willing to accept those credits, but Mr. Mitchell said education officials were encouraging community colleges to reach out to former ITT students and to be flexible in transferring credits. Students who are successful in continuing their studies would still be obligated to pay off their student loans. The other alternative would be for students to apply for a loan discharge. That would essentially wipe out their federal student debt, but also deny the students any of their educational credits. If everyone at ITT who was eligible took that route, the cost could run as high as $500 million, Mr. Mitchell said, though about $90 million of the final bill to taxpayers is expected to be defrayed by a surety bond ITT had to post with the government. Any borrowers who believe they have been defrauded can also apply under a separate loan forgiveness program. Chris Blank, a former Marine who used the G. I. Bill to complete three years of a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at ITT’s Vista campus in California, said he did not know what he was going to do. “I’m still trying to take it all in,” said Mr. Blank, who attended school at night while working full time as an engineering aide at an aeronautical company. “I can’t get promoted until I get my bachelor’s degree. ” He worried not only about the lost time and possibly useless credits, but also the potential exhaustion of his veteran’s educational benefits. “This is something I worked so hard on, and it’s basically all gone,” Mr. Blank said. The department has set up a website, studentaid. and a telephone number, ( ) for ITT students to obtain more information. After Corinthian Colleges, a giant educational company accused of widespread fraud, was suspended from the federal student aid program in 2014, education officials helped broker the sale of dozens of its campuses and online programs to the Zenith Education Group, a nonprofit. Corinthian later filed for bankruptcy. Since then, Zenith has lost money, students and staff members. Mr. Mitchell said that the circumstances surrounding ITT were different. Despite informal conversations with company officials and potential buyers, he said, the Education Department “never saw a path forward. ” The actions against Corinthian and ITT are part of a wider push by education officials to hold the education industry more accountable after growing complaints about unwieldy student debt, deceptive advertising and feeble graduation and job placement rates. The Obama administration has adopted a series of regulations aimed at protecting students as well as taxpayers, who will end up being stuck with the bill for unpaid student loans. The crackdown has elicited protests from the industry and its supporters, who say the government has overreached. Last week, the owner of a chain of colleges, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing the Education Department of pursuing a political agenda and trying to put the chain of formerly colleges out of business. Student and consumer advocates said they were encouraged by the end of ITT Technical Institutes. (Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire, also owned by the ITT parent company, is still open and enrolling students, according to a receptionist who answered the phone there. The college’s president did not respond to repeated messages.) At the same time, critics of the industry expressed concern that some unscrupulous colleges would be working hard to persuade former ITT students to enroll, enlarging their student debt and offering poor training. “There’s nothing to celebrate,” Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said of the closings. “It’s a good thing in the sense that it was a real terrible performer and it won’t be around to victimize others,” Mr. Nassirian said. But he noted that many faculty members and employees were going to lose their jobs and many former students were stuck with unmanageable debts. “It would have been better to have better oversight and decent gatekeeping,” he said, “so that we don’t reach the point where you have to wish for an operation to go under. ” | 1 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] “I’ve Always Been An Admirer Of Donald Trump”– Taoiseach November 9, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , POLITICS Share 0 Add Comment
TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has congratulated US president-elect Donald Trump, after he beat Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in a dramatic election count result this morning.
Mr. Kenny said the people of the United States have made a very clear choice and that he always knew Trump would win the presidency, stating he looks forward to meeting him soon.
“I’ve always been an admirer of Donald Trump,” Mr. Kenny opened up, scratching his nose, “Such a lovely man and a deserving president. I was rooting for him from the very beginning of this campaign, and I hope to meet him and his beautiful first lady very soon”.
However, sources in Leinster House confirmed that an emergency Government meeting was called early this morning in a bid to decide who goes to the US for St. Patrick’s Day 2017.
“The Taoiseach requested a box of straws and a scissors,” one insider said, “I think Leo Varadkar picked the short straw and may have to meet Mr. Trump with a bowl of Shamrock in the White House next year”.
Asked about his comments about Mr. Trump being ‘racist and sexist’ earlier this year, the Taoiseach claimed he was only messing at the time and that he was only poking fun at the future president of the United States.
“Donald will know I was only blaggarding with him,” Kenny stated, “we’re always messing and joking like that in politics. I look forward to playing a round of golf with him in Clare,” adding, “I’m more concerned about making the Irish recovery great again”. | 0 |
Email US President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “founded” the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group in the Middle East region, according to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Addressing supporters at a rally in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on Wednesday, Trump said Daesh is "honoring President Obama." “He’s the founder of ISIS. He's the founder! He founded ISIS,” the real estate tycoon said, using an alternative acronym for the terrorist group. “I would say the co-founder would be ‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton,” Trump added. He went on to criticize Obama’s decision to withdraw American military forces from Iraq and leaving behind a void for Daesh terrorists to fill. “We should never have gotten out the way we got out,” he said. “We unleashed terrible fury all over the Middle East." “Instead of allowing some small forces behind to maybe, just maybe, keep it under control, we pulled it out,” he continued. Daesh terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, still control parts of Iraq and Syria. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in areas under their control. They have been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all communities, including Shia and Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and Christians. In a statement last week, Mike Pence, Trump’s vice presidential candidate, also said that the policies of Obama and Clinton led to the rise of Daesh. He blamed Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for the “disastrous decisions” that led to the death of Captain Humayun Khan in Iraq. On July 28, Captain Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, addressed the Democratic National Convention, denouncing Trump as unpatriotic and selfish over his statements against immigrants and Muslims. | 0 |
Posted on November 1, 2016 by Edmondo Burr in Middle East , News // 0 Comments The Turkish military have begun deploying tanks and military hardware to towns in the Sirnak province bordering Iraq, according to military sources on Tuesday.
Reuters reports:
The sources did not give a reason for the deployment, but President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey was aiming to reinforce its troops there, saying Ankara would have a “different response” for Shi’ite militia groups if they “cause terror” in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. RELATED CONTENT India Deploys 100 Tanks In Remote Border Region With China
Photos from the military sources showed a long column of vehicles, including tanks, tank rescue vehicles and construction vehicles in single file on a dual carriageway.
The deployment coincides with an Iraqi operation to drive Islamic State from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and after Iraqi Shi’ite militias launched a related offensive to push the jihadists out of the town of Tal Afar further west.
Ankara has warned against such a move toward Tal Afar, which is some 170 km (106 miles) from Silopi and home to a sizeable ethnic Turkmen population with historic and cultural ties to Turkey.
Sirnak province, where Silopi is located, is also one of the main areas of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, who have bases in northern Iraq. | 0 |
VIA American News “I didn’t share them when the Democrats were complaining about election results and I don’t share them when the Republicans are either,” Gowdy commented. “I have confidence in the integrity of South Carolina officials that are in charge of voting.” “I’ve just always kind of felt like if you do your job then people will decide whether or not they want to hire you for another two-year contract,” he continued. “The day is spent doing the things you’re supposed to do as a member of Congress as opposed to trying to get another gig.” “You have to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at,” Gowdy asserted. “I enjoy the committee work. I enjoy coming home on weekends and seeing my
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