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Boiler Room EP #124 – Weather Warfare & CNN Goblin PitsTune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jay s Analysis and Andy Nowicki the Nameless One, for the hundred and twenty fourth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing the ongoing aftermath of the Charlottesville protests, Hurricane Harvey, weather warfare, geoengineering, movies, CNN faking flood rescues and more.Direct Download Episode #124Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:

THREE THEORIES On Why FBI’s Comey Reopened Clinton Email Probe…Why Now?NBC reports:The FBI is reviewing a new batch of Hillary Clinton emails, bureau director James Comey said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday: In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation, he wrote.The very first thing to note is that Comey made no mention of a grand jury. The emails whose existence he learned of may have been the result of a subpoena in another investigation (Anthony Weiner). It was announced ten days ago that grand jury would be convened to investigate Weiner s sexting by the end of the month. The timing of Comey s letter strongly suggests that the devices containing new emails were obtained through a grand jury subpoena, with no immunity deals or evidence destruction needed. If that is the case, further subpoenas are quite possible, a tool that was left unused in the investigation to date.There are 3 competing theories as to why he might be doing this now that come to mind. He might be seeking to restore his badly damaged reputation, recognizing that the damage he has inflicted on the FBI is substantial. Three days ago, American Thinker published an open letter from a retired FBI Agent, Hugh Galyean, that laid out some of the damage Comey has inflicted on the institution he leads. There is little doubt that this reached many in the FBI family, putting in print what people have only whispered about. If those silenced voices start speaking out, Comey could face a serious loss of face. In this scenario, he is heading off a staff rebellion, possibly including mass resignations. Rush Limbaugh today discussed an alternative theory, that by announcing an FBI Investigation resuming, Comey is putting a lid on further attention to Wikileaks. I guess this means that Clinton forces will argue we must wait for the investigation to be complete (after the election) before speaking about what the evil Russians are planting into our politics. It is possible that something so dramatic came up in the pertinent emails that postponing a public reaction by not announcing the reopening of the investigation would, be regarded as political interference by covering up a smoking gun until after the election. In this scenario, Comey is assuming the evidence cannot be suppressed, and that he would be held accountable after it comes out.This scenario also indicates that we could be headed for a constitutional crisis, involving the possible indictment of a president-elect before an election. Or the evidence being turned over to the House of Representatives for impeachment hearings. Read more: American Thinker

Congressman Jim Jordan stops CNN gatekeeper Chris Cuomo on Benghazi cover-up 21st Century Wire says Once again, Operation Mockingbird has been deployed in order to bury another damaging White House scandal. It happened on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s watch: the 2012 attacks on the covert US facility in Benghazi, Libya has been covered up from the beginning, and according to Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, that should disqualify her from being commander in chief. I ve said all along I m for the nominee, for Mr. Trump, but we also have to remember when you compare Mr. Trump s positions with Secretary Clinton s, there s a big difference, said Jordan, to Chris Cuomo on CNN s New Day program.SEE ALSO: CIA GATEKEEPER? CNN s Chris Cuomo says Americans are criminals for reading WikiLeaks Clinton email dumpIn order to cover-up 2011-2012 US gun-running through Libya and into Syria, and to help deflect another scandal away from Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, the White House turned again to Obama appointee Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who then ordered the DOJ to drop all charges against the State Department and CIA middleman and arms dealer, Marc Turi, who brokered many of Washington s illegal weapons deals in Benghazi,. Federal court records obtained by Politico confirm: The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi. The fact that CNN and its media operative Chris Cuomo did not pursue this clear scandal of a politicized DOJ working to whitewash illegal US government activities in Benghazi proves that CNN is not interested in journalism and more interested in protecting those guilty parties within the establishment.Watch as Congressman Jordan knocks back media gatekeeper Cuomo when the CNN host tries desperately to deflect away from any accountability by Hillary Clinton and the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWn23jxe630. Have CNN s production ranks been infiltrated and taken over by CIA operatives? One would think so, judging by how they covered this, and other important stories.How long can CNN and their media operatives like Chris Cuomo keep up this pseudo media facade?READ MORE LIBYA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Libya FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

HANNITY TEARS IT UP IN HIS BEST EVER RANT: ‘Hillary Clinton and Her Husband Sold Out America to the Russians!’ [Video]Sean Hannity was on fire with his opening comments on the Clinton-Uranium One deal bombshell last night. He ripped the Clintons and called on Trump s intelligence and law officials to investigate the scandal. It s a classic Hannity rant: After President Trump won in November, President Obama and his administration they were telling anyone who would listen, Russia! Russia! Russia! Russia interfered with our election. Russia was creating a direct threat to American democracy Hannity mocked. Well if that s the case, why when they have mountains of evidence that we will reveal tonight of Russian bribery going back to 2009, why then would the Obama administration and Hillary in particular sign off on the sale of 20% of America s uranium to Vladimir Putin and the Russians? Tonight, with this new evidence, what we have discovered is that the evidence against the Clintons is overwhelming, it is incontrovertible, Hannity continued. Hillary Clinton and her husband sold out America to the Russians while millions of dollars flowed to their family foundation. And in the process, Clinton created a massive national security risk for every man, woman, and child giving Vladimir Putin control over American uranium. IN CASE YOU HAVEN T HEARD ABOUT THE LATEST ON THE CLINTON-URANIUM ONE BOMBSHELL:Yesterday, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange sent a cryptic tweet that contained a series of number and letters. Someone out there knows what that code means, and they are very likely shaking in their boots today.4767 5774 6a7a 4d6c 6330 666b 314a 3453 0000 0907 84b4 f787 7616 86f7 a737 5707 5736 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) October 15, 2017On another front, two writers from separate publications were set to publish what Sean Hannity was calling a huge bombshell story that was due to break today.Last night on Fox News Hannity show, Sean Hannity warned that a huge bombshell would be breaking today. Sean told his audience that Circa News Sara Carter and The Hill s John Solomon have HUGE BREAKING NEWS. Hannity told his audience, Let me put it this way, if I m Hillary or fake news, I won t be sleeping well tonight. Watch:.@seanhannity TICK TOCK Tonight Folks Get ready @HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com/PxbRCgyPwm 'GITMO' BAMA (@President1Trump) October 17, 2017Well, John Solomon and Alison Spann s story did indeed break first thing today in The Hill, and it s a doozy. Will justice finally be delivered to these corrupt, anti-American, self-serving and lying players? Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them. The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking. Former House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI)The Hill Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.They also obtained an eyewitness account backed by documents indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.The racketeering scheme was conducted with the consent of higher level officials in Russia who shared the proceeds from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefitting Putin s commercial nuclear ambitions.The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America s uranium supply.When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she never intervened on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter. In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program. The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions, a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.The Obama administration s decision to approve Rosatom s purchase of Uranium One has been a source of political controversy since 2015.That s when conservative author Peter Schweitzer and The New York Times documented how Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and his charitable foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI, in fact, had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee s decision that Vadim Mikerin the main Russian overseeing Putin s nuclear expansion inside the United States was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.Spokesmen for Holder and Clinton did not return calls seeking comment. The Justice Department also didn t comment.Mikerin was a director of Rosatom s Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, where he oversaw Rosatom s nuclear collaboration with the United States under the Megatons to Megwatts program and its commercial uranium sales to other countries. In 2010, Mikerin was dispatched to the U.S. on a work visa approved by the Obama administration to open Rosatom s new American arm called Tenam.Between 2009 and January 2012, Mikerin did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion, a November 2014 indictment stated.His illegal conduct was captured with the help of a confidential witness, an American businessman, who began making kickback payments at Mikerin s direction and with the permission of the FBI. The first kickback payment recorded by the FBI through its informant was dated Nov. 27, 2009, the records show. The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.On August 6, 2017, The Washington Times questioned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein s fishing expedition aimed at digging up dirt on President Trump in his investigation in the Trump-Russia investigation. The special counsel is subject to the rules and regulations of the Department of Justice, and we don t engage in fishing expeditions, Mr. Rosenstein said on Fox News Sunday. In his first Sunday show interview, Mr. Rosenstein added that special counsel Robert Mueller understands and I understand the specific scope of the investigation and so, it s not a fishing expedition. Mr. Rosenstein s comments come amid reports citing unnamed sources that the investigation has expanded into Mr. Trump s finances unrelated to possible Russian interference in last year s election.Mr. Rosenstein played down the reports: That s not anything that I ve said. That s not anything Director Mueller has said. We don t know who s saying it or how credible those sources are. Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven collusion between Russia and Donald Trump s campaign during the 2016 election.McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI.The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, who Trump fired earlier this year.Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency s cap.But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.The only public statement occurred an entire year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.On Dec. 15, 2015, the Justice Department put out a release stating that Mikerin, a former Russian official residing in Maryland was sentenced today to 48 months in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $2.1 million.Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway, told The Hill he did not recall ever being briefed about Mikerin s case by the counterintelligence side of the bureau despite the criminal charges that were being lodged. I had no idea this case was being conducted, a surprised Hosko said in an interview.Meanwhile, Julian Assange is jumping on the bandwagon, as he teases that he has a major announcement of his own that is coming soon Russian nuclear bribery investigation reveals that Russia routed millions to the Clintons https://t.co/ti7ycn7auf Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) October 17, 2017

OBAMA’S BROTHER Will Vote For Trump: “Deep Disappointment” In Barack’s Presidency…Wants To “Make America Great Again”The tsunami has started President Obama s Kenyan half-brother wants to make America great again so he s voting for Donald Trump. I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart, Malik Obama told The Post from his home in the rural village of Kogelo. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him. Obama, 58, a longtime Democrat, said his deep disappointment in his brother Barack s administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to the party of Lincoln. The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not prosecuting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail servers while secretary of state. She should have known better as the custodian of classified information, said Obama.He s also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama killed Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, whom he called one of his best friends.Malik Obama dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Khadafy and others who were making this world a better place. I still feel that getting rid of Khadafy didn t make things any better in Libya, he said. My brother and the secretary of state disappointed me in that regard. But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party s support of same-sex marriage.Obama plans to trek back to the US to vote for Trump in November. Obama used to live in Maryland, where he worked for many years as an accountant and is registered to vote there, public records show. Mr. Trump is providing something new and something fresh, he said.For entire story: NYP

Clinton Foundation to bar foreign, corporate funding if Hillary Clinton elected presidentWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clinton Foundation will stop accepting foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton is elected president and will stop holding the annual Clinton Global Initiative meetings whatever the outcome of the November election, a foundation spokesman said on Thursday. Former President Bill Clinton told staff members on Thursday he would resign from the foundation’s board and that it would only accept donations from U.S. citizens and independent charities. The former president also said he would hold the 12th and final Clinton Global Initiative in September. The annual meetings have included current and former heads of state, corporate leaders and celebrities who discussed poverty, healthcare, development and other issues. Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian confirmed the moves, which were first reported by the Associated Press. The foundation has come under fire during Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign, with Republicans charging that donors were rewarded with access to her and her aides as well as her husband while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Other critics have said the foundation’s reliance on millions of dollars from foreign governments created conflicts of interest for a would-be U.S. president. Clinton resigned from the foundation’s board after launching her successful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. She will face Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, founded in 2001, has raised more than $2 billion for causes that focus on health and environmental issues, mainly in the developing world.

Final results in banned Catalan independence vote put 'yes' on 90.18 percent: regional governmentBARCELONA (Reuters) - Final results in last weekend s banned Catalan referendum on independence from Spain showed yes votes winning 90.18 percent of votes cast against 7.83 percent of no votes, the Catalan regional government said. The Catalan government put voter turnout at nearly 2.3 million people, or around 43 percent of registered voters. The referendum was declared illegal by the Spanish government and courts. Catalans who favor remaining part of Spain mainly boycotted the ballot and many polling stations were closed.

Russia and North Korea to discuss nuclear crisis in MoscowMOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian and North Korean officials will meet in Moscow on Friday to discuss the North Korea crisis, a move welcomed by the United States, which has been locked in am increasingly heated war of words with Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs. Russia s Foreign Ministry said Oleg Burmistrov, Russia s ambassador-at-large, would meet Choe Son-hui, director-general of the North American department of North Korea s foreign ministry. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declined to give details, but said her ministry would issue a statement after the meeting. The United States welcomed the planned meeting, with U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying: I can t see that as a bad thing. Diplomacy is our preferred approach, Nauert told a regular briefing. If Russia can be successful in getting North Korea to move in a better direction, we would certainly welcome that. Privately, however, U.S. officials have played down the likely effect of the Russian effort. Recent days have seen exchanges of heated rhetoric and threats between U.S. President Donald Trump s administration and North Korea over the latter s bid to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. Nauert said Friday s talks would follow a visit to Moscow by the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Joseph Yun, about two weeks ago. Attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pushed a proposal by Moscow and Beijing for a dual suspension of North Korean weapons tests and the U.S.-South Korean military drills to kick-start negotiations. He suggested then that a neutral European country could mediate. Washington has said its joint military drills are essential to guard against North Korea and that Pyongyang must show it is serious about giving up its nuclear weapons before any return to talks. North Korea, for its part, says it needs to develop its weapons to defend itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression. Last week, Lavrov said North Korea and the United States should tone down their bellicose rhetoric, calling the exchange of threats between the two quite bad, unacceptable.

SNOPES IMPLODES! Liberal “Fact-Checker” Turns To GoFundMe To Keep Business Alive…LOL!Where s George Soros when his top fact checkers, aka conservative news slayers , need him?Snopes.com is a liberal blog from 1994. The website claims to be the internet s oldest and most popular fact-checking site. Last year, Snopes Co-Founder was accused of embezzling company money, and spending it on prostitutes.Now you can find the blog begging for $500k in funding via GoFundMe. So, far the campaign has raised $18,000 in 3 hours via 710 people Zero HedgeFacebook users who are too stupid to figure out if a story is fake or real can now rely on a porn star with an escort service and her husband as well as a woman who admits to smoking to pot while fact checking stories .In December of 2016, Facebook announced plans to check for fake news using a series of organizations to assess whether stories are true.Here are a few facts most Snopes users probably don t know about fact-checker Snopes: One of them is a website called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web s essential resources and painstaking, scholarly and reliable It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research Now they are divorced with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on himself and prostitutes In a lengthy and bitter legal dispute he is claiming to be underpaid and demanding industry standard or at least $360,000 a year The two also dispute what are basic facts of their case despite Snopes.com saying its ownership is committed to accuracy and impartiality Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson s new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator She has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a Dump Bush platform Its main fact checker is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog ViceVixen says she is in touch with her domme side and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking potOne of the websites Facebook is to use to arbitrate on fake news is involved in a bitter legal dispute between its co-founders, with its CEO accused of using company money for prostitutes.Snopes.com will be part of a panel used by Facebook to decide whether stories which users complain about as potentially fake should be considered disputed .Popular myth-busting website Snopes originally gained recognition for being the go-to site for disproving outlandish urban legends -such as the presence of UFOs in Haiti or the existence of human-animal hybrids in the Amazon jungle.Recently, however, the site has tried to pose as a political fact-checker. But Snopes fact-checking looks more like playing defense for prominent Democrats. Its political fact-checker describes herself as a liberal and has called Republicans regressive and afraid of female agency. Snopes main political fact-checker is a writer named Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that oddly enough is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.While at Inquisitr, the future fact-checker consistently displayed clear partisanship. Go HERE for entire story on Kim Lacapria and her liberal background that was exposed by the Daily Caller.

SHERIFF CLARK Tweets Most BLISTERING Response Ever After Barack Obama Boasted He Would’ve Beaten Trump In ElectionPresident Obama said in an interview released Monday that he could have beaten Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump if I had run again. In his most pointed critique yet, Obama said Hillary Clinton s campaign acted too cautiously out of a mistaken belief that victory was all but certain. If you think you re winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer, Obama said in the interview with former adviser and longtime friend David Axelrod, a CNN analyst, for his The Axe Files podcast. The president said Clinton understandably . . . looked and said, well, given my opponent and the things he s saying and what he s doing, we should focus on that. Trump took exception to this critique, tweeting out later in the day that President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! jobs leaving, ISIS, Care, etc. WPPresident Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016Yeah right. He would have won the 2016 US Open golf if he had played too. Obama couldn't win N. Carolina for Clinton https://t.co/sn0XrCZo2z David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) December 27, 2016Ouch! That s gonna leave a mark

Comoros lawmaker leading citizenship inquiry attackedNAIROBI (Reuters) - Unknown attackers torched a car belonging to deputy head of the parliament of Comoros late on Sunday, the latest in a series of threats apparently aimed at derailing an investigation he is leading, the lawmaker said. Dhoulkamal Dhoihir, vice president of the National Assembly, is leading an inquiry into a plan to sell Comoros citizenship to stateless people in Gulf states. The scheme would earn Comoros, an island state off Africa s eastern coast, $200 million to $300 million, but it has been dogged by allegations of corruption. The incident comes a day before the commission Dhoihir heads is due to question two former presidents - Ikililou Dhoinine, who left office last year, and Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, who launched the citizenship scheme in late 2008. As I was finishing up my dinner I heard a loud noise and the car alarm go off. I opened the door and saw my car on fire. Everything was destroyed, Dhoihir told Reuters on Monday. It was definitely linked to my work. There are lots of people who don t want this information to come out, he added. Abdoul-Kader Mahmoud, the director of the police, said the investigation was continuing, but officers had not yet identified the cause of the incident. It could have been a technical problem, but we are not ruling out any explanation, he told Reuters. Dhoirir said that he had faced threats via social media and a group of MPs have tried to shut down his commission of inquiry, which began work in the summer and is due to submit its report next month. Dhoirir said that the commission had requested extra security after coming under increased pressure as the investigation advanced. None was provided until Sunday night, after the fire, he said. Mahmoud denied commissioners had requested extra security before the incident but said officers had been dispatched to the residences of members of the commission. We have taken the measures. We have sent more men to protect these people, he said. Under President Azali Assoumani, the Comoros government has suspended the issuing of new citizenships until the commission completes its work. This is a very serious incident. Those who risk being exposed are sending a very clear message, a former top government official said.

Role of tech who set up Clinton's server unknown to bosses at StateNEW YORK (Reuters) - Soon after Hillary Clinton’s arrival at the State Department in 2009, officials in the information technology office were baffled when told that a young technician would join them as a political appointee, newly disclosed emails show. The technician, Bryan Pagliano, was running the off-grid email server that Clinton had him set up in her New York home for her work as secretary of state. But even as years passed, Pagliano’s supervisors never learned of his most sensitive task, according to the department and one of his former colleagues. Pagliano’s immediate supervisors did not know the private server even existed until it was revealed in news reports last year, the colleague said, requesting anonymity because of a department ban on unauthorized interviews. Clinton’s decision to side-step the official state.gov email system has since shrouded her campaign for the U.S. presidency this year in controversy and legal uncertainty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting one of several inquiries into the arrangement, which saw classified information passing through her unsecured clintonemail.com account. The newly disclosed emails show Patrick Kennedy, the department’s under secretary for management, oversaw the hiring of Pagliano. But Clinton and the department continued to decline this week to say who, if anyone, in the government was aware of the email arrangement. “There was no permission to be asked,” Clinton said earlier this month. State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to say whether this was correct, citing the ongoing inquiries. Before joining the department, Pagliano had worked on Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign the previous year, and Clinton paid him separately to maintain the server, her campaign staff have said. Pagliano is cooperating with the FBI in exchange for a promise of a form of prosecutorial immunity, but it remains unclear whether even he knew Clinton was using the server for her work as the nation’s most senior diplomat. Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon declined to answer questions, but said in an email he was glad that Pagliano was speaking with the FBI because “there was nothing inappropriate about the IT services he provided.” The department gave copies of the emails to the Senate’s Republican-led Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the email arrangement, and they are cited in a five-page letter that the committee chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, sent last week to Kennedy, who remains the department’s most senior manager. Kennedy shared Pagliano’s résumé in 2009 with Susan Swart, then the head of the department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management and chief adviser to the secretary on the department’s information technology systems, and her deputy, Charlie Wisecarver. “How did the conversation go and have you reached an arrangement?” he asked them, referring to Pagliano, in another email, according to the letter the committee shared with Reuters. Wisecarver and Swart, who had worked in the department for decades, were soon swapping emails expressing confusion and surprise that a political appointee, a so-called Schedule C employee who is more commonly hired to work in the secretary of state’s offices, should be joining the IT department’s ranks. Schedule C employees, who help presidential appointees and agency heads make policy, can only report to people appointed by the U.S. president or other senior executive officials. But no one like that worked in the IT office, so Kennedy ended up being Pagliano’s designated supervisor. The department told Reuters that Pagliano and Kennedy had little contact, and that Kennedy was unaware of the server or his subordinate’s role in running it. Nor did Wisecarver, Pagliano’s day-to-day boss, or Swart know, according to the former colleague, who said the IT office should have been informed. People who worked with Pagliano did not respond to messages. Pagliano’s lawyer declined to comment. Grassley’s letter also indicates that at least some department officials had learned of the server’s existence by the end of the second year of Clinton’s tenure. Pagliano received an IT security briefing in late 2010 or early 2011 “in connection with his work on the Secretary’s non-government server,” according to Grassley’s letter. Grassley’s staff, who have been interviewing officials as part of their inquiry, declined to provide more details. The State Department declined to confirm whether the meeting happened.

UK police release new image of jogger in London bus mysteryLONDON (Reuters) - British police released a new image on Wednesday in a fresh bid to trace a male jogger who appeared to push a woman into the path of an oncoming bus on a busy London street four months ago. Video footage of the apparently callous incident on Putney Bridge, southwest London, has been repeatedly screened on British television but the runner has yet to be found. Footage shows him jog past one man on the bridge on May 5 before knocking into the 33-year-old victim. She tumbled head-first into the path of an oncoming bus, which managed to swerve out of her way, missing her by inches. The new CCTV still was taken from the bus, and shows a white man in a gray top and dark shorts. Police said he came back the other way across the bridge 15 minutes later but did not acknowledge the victim when she tried to speak to him. Images of this alarming incident have been circulated widely and we continue to work through the information received to identify the man responsible, said Detective Sergeant Chris Griffith. Two men arrested last month in connection with the incident have both been released without charge.

Catalan government says voters may use any polling station in referendumBARCELONA (Reuters) - Catalonia s regional government said it would allow voters in Sunday s banned independence referendum to vote at any polling station they found open in the region, if their designated voting booth was closed. In a further step to make it easier to vote, voting slips printed at home will be accepted as valid, Jordi Turull, the regional government s spokesman told a news conference. After a court banned the vote, Spanish police arrested Catalan officials, seized campaign leaflets and sealed off many of the 2,300 schools designated as polling stations.

Mattis says U.S. effort on North Korea aims for diplomatic solutionWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States hopes to find a diplomatic solution to the situation in North Korea and is addressing it through an international process, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump, in a U.N. address, escalated his standoff with Pyongyang. We are dealing with the North Korea situation through the international process and we will continue to do so. Secretary Tillerson is leading the effort and we will hopefully get this resolved through diplomatic means, Mattis said before the start of a meeting with Romania s defense minister.

Obama says U.S. cannot wall itself off from economic globalizationWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that globalization is a fact that “we’re not going to be able to build a wall around” but that it was important to work to shape the process so that it benefits not just big companies but small firms as well. The U.S. leader, speaking at a news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, said the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being worked on has taken into account some of the weaknesses and criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement and sought to address those.

LOL! FAKE INDIAN Elizabeth Warren Returns DNA Kit REAL INDIAN GOP Senate Challenger Sent As Birthday GiftIn February, Boston-based entrepreneur and inventor of Email V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai announced his candidacy for the US Senate seat currently occupied by radical leftist Elizabeth Warren.Today, ShivaRatri, when Light overcame Darkness, we launched my campaign for US SENATE against @SenWarren. Defend the American Dream! Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (@va_shiva) February 25, 2017Ayyadurai is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is best known for his claim to have invented email.Ayyadurai is not afraid to take the fight to the very dishonest Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren. Yesterday, he tweeted evidence of a DNA kit he sent to Senator Warren for her birthday that was promptly returned. The DNA kit was a clear jab at Warren after she lied about her Indian heritage as a way to jump ahead of other applicants for a teaching position at the prestigious Harvard University.I'm deeply saddened @SenWarren refused my thoughtful (gift-wrapped) Birthday Gift: the 23&me DNA Test Kit. Most unfortunate! #FakeIndian pic.twitter.com/BI7F20wDW8 Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (@va_shiva) July 2, 2017Elizabeth Warren was listed as the Harvard Law s first woman of color in 1997 law review piece on diversity and affirmative action!Elizabeth Warren pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School s first woman of color, based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996). GPDr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai has a pretty impressive resume:He s the inventor of email and polymath, holds four degrees from MIT, is a world-renowned systems scientist, inventor and entrepreneur.His love of medicine and complex systems began in India when he became intrigued with medicine at the age of five as he observed his grandmother, a farmer and healer in the small village of Muhavur in South India, apply Siddha, India s oldest system of traditional medicine, to heal and support local villagers. These early experiences inspired him to pursue the study of modern systems science, information technology and eastern and traditional systems of medicine to develop an integrative framework linking eastern and western systems of medicine.

The Ridiculous Reasons Obama’s Half-Brother Is Voting For Trump (VIDEO)The right is giddy over the fact that President Obama s Kenyan half-brother Malik says he plans to vote for Donald Trump. They shouldn t be. His reasons for voting for the braggadocios billionaire are even worse than the reasons for most Americans.Malik Obama lives in Kenya, but he is eligible to vote in the United States because he sometimes lives in Maryland and he worked there. Rupert Murdoch s New York Post claims that Malik is registered to vote in the United States.Malik is the oldest of the Obama brothers; he s related through their father, but the two men have different mothers. The older Obama, 58, has spent most of his life as a Democrat, but likes Trump s slogan of Mak(ing) America Great Again. He doesn t like Hillary Clinton s email scandal, and he has more than one personal bone to pick with his younger brother.About Trump: I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart, Malik Obama told The Post from his home in the rural village of Kogelo. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him. About Hillary Clinton and the email situation: She should have known better as the custodian of classified information, said Obama.The third reason makes one question whether Malik had been a Democrat at all. The man who reportedly has as many as 12 wives hates the idea of marriage equality. I feel like a Republican now because they don t stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me, he said.Then, it gets a bit more personal. The elder Obama says that he was close, personal friends with ousted and assassinated dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. I still feel that getting rid of Khadafy didn t make things any better in Libya, he said. My brother and the secretary of state disappointed me in that regard. Malik has an even more personal beef with his brother. It s about money. Malik is in charge of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which named after the Obamas father. The foundation was set up to help people in their native village in Kenya, but it hadn t registered with the state of Virginia, from which it was run. Shortly after the story became public, the IRS approved the foundation s tax exempt status. Fingers pointed at President Obama, but Malik insists his brother didn t help at all, and for that, he seems to resent him. My brother didn t help me at all, said Obama. He wanted me to shut it down when I set it up. He hasn t supported me at all. Oh, and the President also refused to intervene in his older brother s foray into politics, when he ran for governor of his Kenyan county. Malik partly blames his brother for his loss.Here s the video:Trump, in the meantime, is loving it. Wow, President Obama s brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2016None of this should be terribly surprising. Despite the fact that the two men were best men at each others weddings, Malik got on the birther train. He even questioned whether the President actually shared a father with him. Of course, we can also go birther, asking if Malik is actually registered to vote.Featured image via New York Post screenshot.

UNBELIEVABLE: OBAMA Stands Firm On Taking Random Refugees…Leaves Targeted Iraq And Afghan Interpreters Who Helped U.S. Troops BehindThis isn t the first time Obama left an important figure behind in our war on terror. Remember Pakistani, Dr. Shakil Afridi who helped us to locate Osama Bin Laden, and was left behind to fend for himself? Today, Afridi is in solitary confinement at Peshawar Central Prison, a fortified red-brick remnant of Britain s colonial rule that is crammed with more than 2,000 inmates, ranging from petty thieves to Taliban assassins.Sami Kazikhani once risked his life serving alongside U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, but now he, his wife and their young daughter find themselves sleeping in refugee camps and the unfamiliar streets of Europe as they desperately seek a new life in America.Marked for death in his homeland after being outed as a collaborator in a dramatic incident at a family wedding, Kazikhani, who was lauded by Marines he once served, was forced to flee last year even while he was applying for safe passage to the U.S. with his wife Yasmiin and infant daughter Roxanna under a special visa program designed for those who served our troops. With tribal elders ordering his death, Kazikhani fled first to Turkey, then made the dangerous trip across the Aegean Sea just weeks ago after being ordered out of Turkey. The trip was horrible, Kazikhani, 30, told FoxNews.com from Germany, where he and his family are living with thousands of refugees. We nearly drowned. We saw others who drowned. We were saved three times. Every time we had to jump into the boat with my daughter, I was sad. It made me cry. The only thing I ask is that they don t let me down, he added. That they give me the chance to do more for my new home. Sami KazikhaniOnce in Greece, the family wandered north, sleeping on streets, along railroad tracks and in squalid refugee camps, he said. Everywhere we went, it was no good for us, Kazikhani said. Greece, Macedonia, Serbia. They all began to deport Afghans. Sami Kazikani once risked his life serving alongside U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, but now he, his wife and their young daughter find themselves homeless in Europe.Now in Germany, Kazikhani awaits an asylum hearing on Dec. 4 that would allow him to live there, but fears the worst. I feared for my life in Afghanistan, but now I m more afraid of being deported without even knowing what is what, he said.His supporters say he has more than earned a place in America for himself and his family. All coalition allies offer special visas for interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan who served their troops, but the U.S. process is fraught with paperwork that can turn bureaucratic snarls into life and death for Afghans accused of being traitors and now actively hunted down by the Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaeda. Everywhere we went; it was no good for us. Greece. Macedonia. Serbia. They all began to deport Afghans, Kazikani recently said to FoxNews.com. (Aaron and Marion Fleming) I became a translator because I wanted to serve my country and because I was able to speak English, Kazikhani told FoxNews.com in an interview conducted via Facebook Messenger. I thought I could also be helpful to the coalition forces as well. But there were many who absolutely did not like the people who worked with NATO, he said. Especially interpreters. One former Marine who served shoulder-to-shoulder with Kazikhani is trying to make sure the U.S. pays its debt to Kazikhani. All we are trying to get for him is a verification of employment so we can finish the visa process, but the [U.S.] government is not doing anything, said former Marine counter-intelligence officer Aaron Fleming, who worked with Kazikhani in Afghanistan and praised his commitment to American troops.Fleming is working with No One Left Behind,, a nonprofit founded by Matt Zeller, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer who fought to bring to the U.S. a translator who saved his life in Afghanistan. He worries that Kazikhani may not even be safe in refugee camps.Via: FOX News

Trump Asks Advice From The Swamp He Promised To Drain – Americans Are OUTRAGED At What They SaidNot too long after taking office, Trump decided to start asking around about how the government could roll back regulations and make it easier for companies to get their projects approved. But he didn t ask ordinary Americans, or small business owners. He didn t ask people in small towns and big cities. He asked big corporations what their opinions were. He sought advice from the same people he blasted as The Swamp during his campaign, and promised repeatedly to drain it.Now, given who he s appointed to his cabinet, it was pretty clear that he had zero intention of draining the swamp. Trump specifically targeted manufacturers and fossil fuel producers for this, probably because he thinks allowing them to run roughshod will at least help him pretend he s truly bringing manufacturing jobs back. But this is even more egregious because major industry insiders don t care about people. They don t care who they hurt in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Of course they want industry regulations cut these are the industries people fought (and died) against to stop things like child labor and worker exploitation.The White House got 168 comments total. Manufacturers went after the EPA the hardest, with 79 of those comments targeting that agency. The EPA received 79 comments total, because of course it did. And companies targeted the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts with 48 and 29 comments respectively, because having to clean up after yourself so everyone around you can breathe clean air and drink clean water is just too difficult.Trump s decision to halt key provisions of the Clean Water Act has already angered people, particularly those living in communities that are especially vulnerable to poisoned water. The director of the Sierra Club s Beyond Coal campaign has said: Trump s attempt to halt these clean water protections for mercury, lead, and arsenic from coal power plants is dangerous and irresponsible. After years of peer-reviewed studies, extensive input from medical experts and scientists, and thorough review of public comments, the EPA made the right call in finalizing strong clean water protections against coal plants dumping toxic heavy metals into our waterways As a mother, I m frankly horrified that the EPA would put the safety of drinking water at risk for millions of Americans, but that s exactly what they ve done. Coming from West Virginia, where we ve had enormous challenges with maintaining clean water supplies due to the coal industry s political influence, I m outraged that these common sense protections are under attack from the EPA itself. But, well, profit is king here, even though the coal industry is never going to recover no matter what Trump tries to do. A full breakdown of the agencies and regulations that these companies would like to see rolled back, if not outright eliminated, is below:BP says it wants to make it easier to drill for gas and oil in the very same Gulf that was devastated in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, because why force them be careful when they can lie about being able to self-regulate? (Big corporations can t self-regulate.) And The Associated General Contractors of America wants to roll back regulations for paid sick leave for government contractors. They probably want to get rid of overtime rules, too.Of course, business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are applauding Trump for this. They see this administration as one that is finally interested in relieving businesses from a regulatory onslaught that occurred, principally, during the prior administration. Others are not so sure this is the best way to do things, though, because companies will always, always, always act in their own best interests, and damn the rest of the world. Jeffrey Zients, who worked on regulatory issues under Obama, said: At a time when many CEOS are focused on the short term and looking to maximize their profitability each quarter, I believe that a lot of their aversion to these regulations reflects a short-term mind-set that values reducing costs over anything else.That s unfortunate, because well-crafted regulations are an important part of creating sustainable and fair economic prosperity in the long run. A detail. These companies don t want sustainable and fair economic prosperity in the long run. They want unfair and profitable in the short run. It s the nature of the beast. And it s why the business world needs strong regulation. Instead, Trump is trying to give them back the ability to do what they want, when they want, how they want, without regard to the harm they cause.Featured image by Ron Sachs Pool via Getty Images

Exclusive: EU parliament details UK concessions on rightsBRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will guarantee rights for as yet unborn children who join EU parents after Brexit and accept EU judges rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution seen by Reuters on Thursday. The document, drafted on Monday for a vote next week before an EU summit that may launch talks on a future EU-UK free trade pact, also supports British Prime Minister Theresa May s call for an agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit though an EU official said that would only be negotiated later. The resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement May was about to sign on Monday before objections from her allies in Northern Ireland forced a postponement due to concerns on a plan to keep regulatory alignment between the province and the EU to ensure no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland . It also lays out demands from the legislature, which must approve any treaty. These include limiting British benefits from any future agreement and an insistence London continue to abide by the European human rights convention. It also insists that Britain automatically adopt any new EU legislation passed after it loses its vote during a transition period after March 2019. The draft makes no mention of a point under discussion on Monday when talks were interrupted that would end supervision of EU citizens rights by the European Court of Justice after a certain number of years. Two EU sources said that a compromise of 10 years - midway between a British offer of five and an EU demand of 15 years - appears the most likely solution. One EU source said the compromise may be presented as two years during the transition period plus eight years after that. May has insisted that the ECJ hold no more sway in Britain but the European Parliament has made the court s involvement one of its priorities in safeguarding the position of some 3 million citizens of other EU states now living in Britain. The parliamentary resolution, drafted by five parties which hold the vast majority in the chamber, notes British agreement in detail to honour financial commitments to the bloc and to avoid a hard Irish border, two of three conditions on which the EU wants sufficient progress toward a divorce deal before it will launch the negotiations May wants on a free trade pact. It goes into more detail on citizens rights, notably on issues where London had been resisting lawmakers demands. These included that core family members and persons in a durable relationship currently residing outside (Britain) shall be protected by the Withdrawal Agreement and that this is also the case for children born in the future and outside (Britain) . London, which does not grant its own citizens automatic rights to bring in foreign spouses, had sought to apply that to EU citizens after Brexit and also wanted to deny rights to British residence to any children born abroad after Brexit. Britain has also, according to the draft, accepted that EU citizens can export all exportable benefits as defined by EU legislation after the country leaves the European Union. And it has accepted the competence of the (ECJ) in relation to the interpretation of the Withdrawal Treaty . Citizens rights will be guaranteed through a declaratory, light touch, proportionate procedure, consisting of a single form per family, the resolution stated going some way to addressing lawmakers complaints that costs of hundreds of euros could be incurred by families making several declarations. Lawmakers are still pressing for the procedure to be free. In five months of negotiation, May has largely given way on EU demands. In one sign of a potential concession, the parliamentary resolution states that British citizens living in an EU state on Brexit Day, March 29, 2019, should retain their right ... to reside and move freely in the whole EU . However, an EU official familiar with the negotiations said Brussels had not yet confirmed this point and that it should be negotiated with the 27 member states in the next phase of talks. For now, Britons would only be guaranteed EU rights they already have if they remain living in the same EU state after Brexit. Setting out demands for the new phase of negotiations to be launched at the Dec. 15 summit if May confirms her offers, the parliament stressed that any transition period of not more than three years to avoid a cliff edge scenario depends on a deal on the whole divorce package and would mean Britain being bound by all EU structures while no longer having a say on them. It ruled out any trade off in negotiations between British contributions to EU security and economic benefits for Britain and said the latter could not be as good as membership of the EU or of the EEA, whose members include Norway and Iceland. In any free trade agreement, market access to services a big part of British exports, notably in finance will always be subject to exclusions, reservations and exceptions . Any security and defence cooperation would be subject to EU rules on data protection, the resolution added, reflecting concern among lawmakers that Britain will seek an exception in return for sharing its recognised prowess in intelligence. Seeking to meet a end-of-the-week EU deadline for a deal on divorce terms in order to give EU states time before the summit to agree their offer on opening trade talks, May plans to present tweaked proposals on the Irish border in the coming day, the Irish prime minister said. Should she miss it, senior EU officials say, it could be February before they return to the issue raising concern that businesses will start switching more investment out of Britain. That delay, EU officials believe, could put May s own weak position in jeopardy, and throw new doubt on the process. A senior official closely involved in the talks said however that member states, including power couple Germany and France, seem in no mood to ease demands on Britain to ensure a quick accord.

Trevor Noah And The Daily Show Correspondents Collapse With The Giggles Over This GOP Nightmare (VIDEO)The Republican Party is busy with a pitted civil war between those who are willing to jump on Trump s crazy train, and those who realize the party has to be saved from the ultra-conservative extremism which handed a trust fund tycoon the party leadership. But as the Daily Show attempted to report events this week, things were so crazy, the team couldn t keep a straight face.Noah begins by outlining the GOP dilemma. Now the voting is over, and Republicans have chosen a mutant from a carrot juicing accident. As the party wakes up to that devastating reality, the GOP is splitting along the Trump fault line. Noah describes their plight with typical relish: You ve got the people who support Trump. You ve got the people who aren t ready to support Trump. And the most interesting people are a group who spent the whole race throwing sh*t at Trump. And now, they re picking it back up, spreading it on a sandwich, and taking a big bite. The host then shows clips of come-lately Trump supporters railing against the candidate in the most personal and vivid terms earlier in the race. Bobby Jindal calls Trump weak and a narcissist, and claims he would not back him in the event of his becoming nominee. But the real gold comes from Rick Perry, who refers to Trump as a cancer on the party and America, then chooses to back him. But even more insane, is that Perry now even wishes to become Trump s running mate! This left Noah almost tearful with laughter: So wait he says. You want to be running mates with cancer? That s what you re saying? I mean, I guess it has a pretty sturgeon history of winning .but still! Noah goes on to compare the GOP split like that of commuters waiting for a subway train. The doors open, and there s some crazy guy screaming. For some they think, well, it s my train, I m just going to have to get on board the crazy train. While others simply refuse, and to hell with the consequences.But when Noah reaches out to his correspondents for their take on the situation, no one can keep a straight face. Jordan Klepper collapses laughing, saying: They were all such assholes for so long and they completely did this to themselves! Noah turns to Hasan Minhaj in hopes of getting more sensible commentary, but he also falls apart when comparing the GOP to a dog that chewed its own balls off. You can enjoy the full section below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKrwupFg5WM Featured Image via Screengrab

Fake News: The Collapse of the MSM’s ‘Facebook Russian Bot’ StoryAs 21WIRE said last year, the Russian hacking, or Russiagate story was a political hoax from the start. What this story can now demonstrate, is that for the last 18 months, the entire mainstream media has been promulgating a highly politicised, and relentless campaign of fake news designed to implicate Russia in an imaginary scandal. Leading the pack are former papers of record The New York Times and The Washington Post, flanked by America s premier broadcast TV propaganda outlet CNN.Last week, we revealed how powerful politicians in Washington had pressured Facebook executives to come up with any evidence to support the Democratic Party s theory of Russian meddling, demonstrating clear collusion between the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley corporation Facebook, with the goal of fabricating a scandal in order to scapegoat Vladimir Putin and the Russians for the electoral collapse of Hillary Clinton last November.As a result, US-Russian relations have been sacrificed at the altar of petty partisan politics and a failing deep state agenda.It certainly begs the question: with so much at stake, why would Washington and MSM lie and risk pushing global tensions closer to a world war level confrontation? If they are prepared to lie about this, what else are they prepared to lie about?Consortium News Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media is determined to prove Russia-gate despite the scandal s cracking foundation and its inexplicable anomalies, such as why Russia would set up a Facebook puppies page.By Robert ParryWhat is perhaps most unprofessional, unethical and even immoral about the U.S. mainstream media s coverage of Russia-gate is how all the stories start with the conclusion Russia bad and then make whatever shards of information exist fit the preordained narrative.For instance, we re told that Facebook executives, who were sent back three times by Democratic lawmakers to find something to pin on Russia, finally detected $100,000 worth of ads spread out over three years from accounts suspected of links to Russia or similar hazy wording.These Facebook ads and 201 related Twitter accounts, we re told, represent the long-missing proof about Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election after earlier claims faltered or fell apart under even minimal scrutiny.In the old days, journalists might have expressed some concern that Facebook found the ads only under extraordinary pressure from powerful politicians, such as Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on the tech industry. But today s mainstream reporters took Warner s side and made it look like Facebook had been dragging its heels and that there must be much more out there.However, it doesn t really seem to matter how little evidence there is. Anything will do.Even the paltry $100,000 is not put in any perspective (Facebook has annual revenue of $27 billion), nor the 201 Twitter accounts (compared to Twitter s 328 million monthly users). Nor are the hazy allegations of suspected links to Russia subjected to serious inspection. Although Russia is a nation of 144 million people and many divergent interests, it s assumed that everything must be personally ordered by President Vladimir Putin.Yet, if you look at some of the details about these $100,000 in ads, you learn the case is even flimsier than you might have thought. The sum was spread out over 2015, 2016 and 2017 and thus represented a very tiny pebble in a very large lake of Facebook activity.But more recently we learned that only 44 percent of the ads appeared before Americans went to the polls last November, according to Facebook; that would mean that 56 percent appeared afterwards.Facebook added that roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent. So, as miniscule as the $100,000 in ad buys over three years may have seemed, the tiny pebble turns out really to be only a fraction of a tiny pebble if the Russians indeed did toss it into the 2016 campaign.What About the Puppies?We further have learned that most ads weren t for or against a specific candidate, but rather addressed supposedly controversial issues that the mainstream media insists were meant to divide the United States and thus somehow undermine American democracy.Except, it turns out that one of the issues was puppies.As Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in Tuesday s editions, The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads. Now, there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don t think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although precisely how these divergent groups were linked to Russia or the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer details.)At this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy land.Yet, instead of starting to question the overall premise of this scandal, journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to propaganda. The goal of the dog lovers page was more obscure, Isaac and Shane acknowledged. But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to build a large following before gradually introducing political content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried such tactics. [Seriously, this is what the New York Times is passing off as journalism now]The Joe McCarthy of Russia-gateThe Times then turned to Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and a top promoter of the New McCarthyism that has swept Official Washington. Watts has testified before Congress that almost anything that appears on social media these days criticizing a politician may well be traceable to the Russians Continue this story at Consortium NewsREAD MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

Paul Craig Roberts: ‘By Cooperating with Washington on Syria & Russia Walked Into a Trap’ By Paul Crag RobertsA month ago I wrote a column , He Who Hesitates Is Lost And Russia Hesitated. The consequences of this hesitation are now apparent:1. A UN report orchestrated by Washington has accused Syria and Russia of war crimes in Aleppo. According to the report, indiscriminate airstrikes across the eastern part of the city by Government forces and their allies [Russia] are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties. These violations constitute war crimes. And if knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against civilians, they constitute crimes against humanity. The UN Human Rights Council has now voted to start an independent investigation. The purpose of the investigation is to indict Russia and Putin as war criminals and to bring to justice those responsible for the alleged abuses. Moreover, the situation should be urgently referred to the International Criminal Court. Every party to this conflict must know that they will be held accountable for the international crimes they commit all, without selective protection or discrimination. Keep in mind that Washington provides the largest share of the UN s budget, and the UN will overlook that it was Washington that sent ISIS to Aleppo.Obviously, neither Washington nor the UN will be able to drag Putin into the International Criminal Court, but a war criminal charge can serve Washington s purpose by stopping Putin from traveling abroad and curtailing his diplomatic efforts. The purpose of this orchestrated exercise is its propaganda value. Among Washington s many concerns is that some Eastern European countries, alarmed by the conflict that Washington is leading them into with Russia, will threaten NATO with a non-participation statement. If Russia is branded a war criminal, it becomes even more difficult for countries that foolishly and thoughtlessly joined NATO to extricate themselves from the consequences.2. Washington has succeeded in bringing to power in Poland the far right-wing Law and Justice Party. These agents of Washington have re-opened the matter of the death of Poland s President Kaczynski in a plane crash, making wild claims that the crash was a terror attack by Russia aimed at depriving Poland of its political leadership. Despite massive and convincing evidence to the contrary, the Law and Justice Party s claims will find traction thanks to the scary portrait of Russia painted by Washington s demonization campaign. The intended result is to further blacken and isolate Russia and its government.3. As the anointed spokesperson for the neoconservative warmongers, Hillary wants Washington to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria. A no-fly zone would require Washington to attempt to prevent Syrian and Russian air strikes against ISIS positions. It seems clear enough that Syria and Russia would not accept any attempt to deny Syria the use of the country s own airspace in the conflict against forces sent by Washington to overthrow the Syrian government, as happened to Gaddafi in Libya. Unless Russia and Syria surrender, Hillary s no-fly zone would result in military conflict between Russia and the US.To advance the no-fly zone proposal, the use of chemical weapons ruse has been resurrected. Fabricated reports are appearing that the Syrian air force is guilty of dropping chemical weapons on the Syrian population. On October 22, the Indian Express reported that on October 21 the UN-Led Joint Investigative Mechanism informed the UN Security Council that the chemical attack on Qmenas was caused by a Syrian Arab Armed Forces helicopter dropping a device from a high altitude which hit the ground and released the toxic substance that affected the population. The report concluded that three of the chemical attacks investigated were made by Syria and one by the Islamic State.The fact that the Russians resolved the chemical weapons issue in 2014, a year before the alleged attack on Qmenas, by taking possession of the weapons and removing them from Syria means that the report has little credibility. However, at no time during Washington s 15-year-old attack on Muslim countries have facts played any role, and certainly facts have played no role in Washington s demonization of Russia.4. Diana Johnstone has concluded that Hillary intends regime change for Russia and will use the presidency for that purpose.It is impossible to imagine a purpose more reckless and irresponsible. Many members of the Russian government have stated that Washington s provocation and demonization of Russia have brought trust between the nuclear powers close to zero and that Russia will never again fight a war on her own territory Continue this article at The Institute for Political EconomyREAD MORE RUSSIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russia Files

Trump Tells ‘Morning Joe’ He ACTUALLY Plans To Start A Nuclear Arms Race (VIDEO)On Thursday, Donald Trump did a huge favor for defense contractors when he tweeted that The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. While this is obviously good news for companies involved in making a nuclear cold war (or a nuclear apocalypse) happen, it s bad news for everyone else.While some assumed that The Donald wasn t serious when he said that we need to build more nukes, he clarified to MSNBC s Morning Joe on Friday that he was very, very serious about his decision to provoke other nuclear-capable nations into building up a world-ending arsenal. Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski spoke to the President-elect, and he informed them:Asked to respond to Trump s terrifying statement, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius explained that a nuclear arms race might be too much for even Trump s supporters: You can create space, but the space is then there to be able to negotiate, not to throw more wood on the fire. If you say, What I really do want is an arms race, you re going to lose the country. The country doesn t want another arms race. The country definitely doesn t want a nuclear arms race, but if Trump has his way our children will be learning to duck underneath their desks to shield themselves from a nuclear blast, or whatever ridiculous drill we will be forced to come up with thanks to our President s decision to enter us unto a new cold war.If you didn t consider Trump a serious threat to our nation before, you really should consider reassessing your views since on January 20 he will be the guy who can kick off exactly the scenario he tells us he wants.Watch the Morning Joe segment below:BREAKING: Trump to #morningjoe on the nukes tweet: 'Let it be an arms race' https://t.co/X9FMNtgKPK Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 23, 2016

Sarah Palin Gets Her A** Handed To Her For Calling On Trump To Pull America Out Of The United NationsSarah Palin opened her mouth again and people quickly corrected her stupidity.Ever since the United Nations passed a resolution rightfully condemning Israel s continued refusal to stop building new settlements on Palestinian land, conservatives have been fuming about it.Donald Trump even threatened the United Nations and has been trashing the international organization.But now Sarah Palin is also telling Trump to ditch the U.N. in a move that would be similar to Brexit, in which the United States would pull out of the organization just as the United Kingdom pulled out of the European Union, a move that millions of UK voters now regret. I think many of us have called for America to really step up and consider what it is that we are funding and supporting via the U.N., and how it works so hard really against U.S. interests, and just saying look what the U.K. just did, Palin told Breitbart. This is such an encouraging time, where it s not just us, but those across the pond, too, are understanding that their nation s sovereignty and security are on the line here, with the ties that bind us to interests that really don t further our agendas. Yes, God forbid that other nations have opinions, too. When the U.K. made its move, it was just another reason to call yet again for the U.S. to get the heck out of the U.N. and get the U.N. out of the U.S., Palin continued. Let s get going on putting America first so that we can sweep our own porch before telling other nations how to sweep theirs. But the United Nations does not tell America what to do. U.N. resolutions must be approved by the Senate to apply to the United States and we have the power to veto resolutions.Palin then pleaded with Trump to pull America out of the United Nations. I called for our next president, Donald Trump, to call for the unshackling of the political bands tying us to the U.N.. By exiting the U.N., where injustice is actually rewarded, we then will be able to uphold America s reputation as the leader, and as the kind and compassionate and generous nation that we are as the nation sharing values that, when emulated by any other nation, can bring justice and equal rights to any other nation. She then claimed that a revolution put Trump in office and that the same revolution will end the peacekeeping organization that has been around since after World War II. It s our money funding the lion s share of the globalist circus. It s we the people needing to rise up and make this a part of the revolution that we have just so benefited from. Last time I checked, it s not a revolution when a presidential candidate loses the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and has one of the smallest margins of victory in the electoral vote in history.But Palin crowed about her interview on Twitter and was soon put in her place by people with functioning brains.@SarahPalinUSA @BreitbartNews yeah! I ve been tired of the lack of large scale violent conflict between states. #NewYearsResolution #WW3 PussyGrabber45 (@PussyGrabber45) December 29, 2016@eric42025 @SarahPalinUSA @BreitbartNews since the UN s creation there hasn t been a global war. how am I wrong? #factslivesmatter PussyGrabber45 (@PussyGrabber45) December 29, 2016@eric42025 @molliesdadtaken @BreitbartNews US paid $654 million to the UN in 15. For 1/4 the price of an aircraft carrier, we have #peace PussyGrabber45 (@PussyGrabber45) December 29, 2016@SarahPalinUSA @BreitbartNews Palin should call for herself to go back to her ice cave!???? Kathy Palko (@chattykay) December 29, 2016@SarahPalinUSA If you only knew what that meant. Deez Nuts (@KDogPeele) December 29, 2016@SarahPalinUSA You are one SCARY person. Jack BluePNW (@BluePNW) December 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA @BreitbartNews and you should be shackled to the titanic. Ratigan512 (@ratigan512) December 29, 2016@SarahPalinUSA UN includes World Health Organisation. Saves us from ebola and other horrors. We ALL need the UN Lev Szeps (@LevSzeps) December 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA @BreitbartNews really? Become isolationists? How stupid is that? Maryann Horsley (@thebooklady01) December 30, 2016Indeed, not only would America become isolationist, it would be giving up international power and prestige and the power vacuum in the United Nations would be filled by Russia and China, both of which certainly do not have our best interests at heart.There is a reason why we helped found the United Nations and getting rid of it now when we need it more than ever before would be a grave error that would put the world on the path to selfishness and the brink of war unlike anything we have ever witnessed.Featured image via Huffington Post

Australia turns down NZ offer to take asylum seekers barricaded inside campSYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia turned down on Sunday an offer to take 150 asylum seekers being held in an Australian-run detention center in Papua New Guinea, where U.N. officials have warned a humanitarian emergency is unfolding. About 600 men have barricaded themselves inside the camp on remote Manus island in Papua New Guinea, defying efforts by Australia and PNG to shut it. Food, running water and medical services were cut off by Australia five days ago. Australian authorities want the men moved to a transit center elsewhere on the island at the start of a process the asylum seekers fear will result in them being resettled in PNG or another developing nation. The men also fear violent reprisals from the local community. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Friday her country was willing to take 150 asylum seekers from among those held on Manus island and another camp on the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru. Her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, however said Canberra preferred to work through an existing refugee swap deal he negotiated with former U.S. President Barack Obama last year. Under that deal, up to 1,250 asylum seekers could be sent to the United States and Australia will in turn accept refugees from Central America. We want to pursue those, conclude those arrangements, and then in the wake of that obviously we can consider other ones, Turnbull told Ardern during a media conference in Sydney. Relocating the men on Manus island is designed as a temporary measure, allowing the United States time to complete vetting of asylum seekers. Ardern acknowledged the two Tasman neighbors faced different immigration problems but said the offer remained open. The camps on Manus island and Nauru have been key parts of Australia s disputed Sovereign Borders immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. Australia s offshore detention policies have been heavily criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups but are backed the center-right government and the Labor opposition. U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news conference in Geneva on Friday about the unfolding humanitarian emergency in the Manus island center, where asylum seekers have been reported digging wells to try to find water.

MEET LEFTIST ANALYSTS At Research Firm Who Created ABC/Washington Post Poll Showing Hillary With 12 Point Lead [VIDEO]Many Americans were shocked by the latest ABC/Washington Post goal seeking report (aka poll ) that shows Hillary opening up a 12-point lead with likely voters after the latest debate last Wednesday. Ironically, this latest polling farce was embargoed for release after 9 a.m. EST which certainly made it a dominant topic of conversation on all the morning talk shows.Of course, like many of the recent polls from the likes of Reuters, ABC and The Washington Post, something curious emerges when you look just beneath the surface of the headline 12-point lead.As Zero Hedge pointed out numerous times in the past, in response to Reuters efforts to tweak their polls, per the The Pew Research Center, at least since 1992, democrats have never enjoyed a 9-point registration gap despite the folks at ABC and The Washington Post somehow convincing themselves it was a reasonable margin. METHODOLOGY This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats Republicans Independents. Meanwhile, with huge variances in preference across demographics one can easily see how simple it is to rig a poll by over indexing to one group vs. another. While the pollsters release the the split of the sample pool by political affiliation, they do not share the split by any of the following demographics which are just as important to determining the outcome of the poll.Julie E. Phelan, Lead Analyst. The Langer Research website mentions several awards Phelan has won for articles she wrote or co-authored. The article listed appear to all be related to women s rights, more specifically about women in leadership roles. Hmmm seems Julie has a passion for wanting to see more women in leadership roles in politics.In Dec. 2015, Phelan was cited for her contribution to a paper that was an initiative for NDI, whose Chairman happens to be one of Hillary s biggest cheerleaders, Madeline Albright. In that paper, titled Tackling Violence Against Women Phelan and co-author Rudman wrote:Phelan also co-authored Prejudice Toward Female Leaders with Rudman.As a reminder, Madeline Albright told women at a Hillary rally in February, 2016, There s a special place in hell for women who don t vote for Hillary Chad P. Kiewiet de Jonge is a Senior Research Analyst for Langer Research. He graduated from Notre Dame with a PHD in 2013. His dissertation was on Political Learning and Democratic Commitment in New Democracies. Donald Trump s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border marks the extent to which negative views on immigration fuel his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and the limits they may impose.About half of potential GOP voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll oppose a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, and Trump wins support from 34 percent in this group, a remarkable tally in a 16-candidate race. Among those who favor providing legal status for undocumented immigrants, by contrast, Trump s support drops sharply, to 13 percent.Geoff Feinberg is a Senior Research Analyst for Langer Research Assoc. From 2012-2016, Feinberg was the research director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University, where he oversaw numerous public opinion polls and experiments and lectured on survey methods.Clinton and Sanders supporters are more likely to understand the scientific consensus on global warming.A recent review study by Cook and colleagues found that all peer-reviewed studies about the extent of the scientific consensus about global warming have reached similar conclusions: between 90% and 100% of climate experts are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening. The most rigorous of these studies have found that 97% of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening.Fewer than half of any candidate s supporters are aware that such a consensus exists. However, supporters of the Democratic candidates are the most likely to think at least 90% of climate scientists are convinced:

Fox News’ Latest Eye-Rolling Tweet Might Be The Funniest Thing On The Internet (TWEET)There s nothing quite like hypocrisy on the grandest scale imaginable. So large, in fact, that all you can do is sit there and laugh at how absolutely ridiculous something is. This is what just happened on Twitter when they decided to call out media bias.Yes, you read that correctly, Fox News whined about media bias allegedly coming from other news organizations.Not only that, they hashtagged it with #BiasAlert to really add an extra layer of nauseating frosting on to the hypocrisy cake.They tweeted out:#BiasAlert: Candidates refer to NYC blast as bomb but #Trump takes brunt of media criticism https://t.co/KEYMx7ddRk pic.twitter.com/u2MkvGVoOp Fox News (@FoxNews) September 18, 2016Let s just talk about this for a moment. In a tweet that blames other media outlets for correctly going after Trump s irresponsible reaction to a blast in New York City, they are saying that there s media bias.This tweet is the EPITOME of media bias. It is so ridiculous, in fact, that all other tweets with media bias can now be measured against this one in the future to see how biased something actually is. Not only do they display their own bias towards Trump, but they have the audacity to say Bias Alert. That right there is hilarious and kinda sad.Fox News can, without a doubt, be called the media outlet for the Republican party. They so unapologetically swing to defend all things Republican and conservative that they are blind to their own reality.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons

NBC Chairman SHREDS ‘Demented’ Trump, Rips Ratings For The ApprenticeNBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt took to his Facebook account to rip demented Donald Trump, calling him pompous and toxic, then took a shot at the ratings of Celebrity Apprentice. That post has since been deleted but Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast took a screen shot. The sad state of affairs thanks to a pompous businessman turned reality-TV star (whose show consistently ran LAST in its time period, by the way) who thinks speaking his mind is refreshing, Greenblatt wrote. It s actually corrosive and toxic because his mind is so demented; and his effect will unfortunately linger long after he s been told to get off the stage. The Donald often brags about the ratings for The Apprentice, just like he bragged about polls until recently when all national polls showed his campaign spiraling downward. Apparently, his ratings were nothing to brag about either.The Daily Beast reports:Greenblatt s Facebook post was a personal response to a recent New York Times op-ed penned by Nicholas Kristof that shows how all across America Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. The column touches on bullying in schools, and recounts a moment during a high-school physics class in Forest Grove, Oregon, in which a group of white students suddenly began jeering at their Latino classmates and chanting: Build a wall! Build a wall!' (Greenblatt, who is the first openly gay broadcast TV chairman, has long been active in pro-LGBT advocacy, as well as in anti-bullying efforts.)In 2015, Donald tweeted, People don t understand that I left The Apprentice to run for Pres the Apprentice DID NOT leave me. Bob Greenblatt & folks @NBC were GREAT! Donald has claimed many times that The Apprentice was the number one show on television. As television critic Tim Goodman put it at the time, Nobody spins like Trump. Nobody. It s just bloviation. Bloviation is a good word for Donald s presidential run, too. Bloviate is to talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way. That s him alright.The GOP presidential candidate is going to be a sad panda today after reading Greenblatt s opinion of him.Featured image via screen capture.

OBAMA’S BACKDOOR GUN CONFISCATION: 260,000 VETERANS STRIPPED Of Second Amendment RightsObama s cowardly backdoor gun confiscation starts with those who ve risked their lives defending our rights.In what amounts to a backdoor gun grab, two Senate Republicans are demanding to know why the VA stripped 260,000 veterans of their Second Amendment rights.As of December, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI as mentally defective and therefore not permitted to purchase a gun, Guns.com is reporting.U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa lawmaker who is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, finds this unacceptable. Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights, said Grassley in a statement. Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA s careless approach to our veterans constitutional rights is disgraceful. In an effort to fix the issue, Grassley, along with Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., penned a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald last week and another to the subcommittee over the agency s funding, questioning the practice.Making a due process argument, the lawmakers argue the VA uses the fiduciary trustee status of a veteran to regulate firearms possession without ever seeking to find out if the service member is a danger to themselves or others. The use of the VA regulation, adopted for a totally unrelated purpose, is suspect, especially in light of the Supreme Court holding that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right, reads the letter to McDonald. That holding changed the legal calculus by which a regulatory scheme can survive constitutional scrutiny and it is not clear how these regulations would fare under that increased scrutiny. Via: DownTrend

Trump’s Wealthcare Plan Set To FAIL As Yet Another Republican Breaks RanksOne after another, Republicans are breaking ranks with their party and saying they just can t throw their support behind the GOP s appalling excuse for a healthcare plan. With so many conservatives jumping ship, it is starting to look more and more likely that the American Health Care Act is set to fail.Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis reported on Friday that Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) issued a statement saying he cannot support the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in its current form. It is estimated that the AHCA would result in 24 million people losing their insurance coverage by 2026, with 14 million of these people finding themselves without health care by the end of the year.Heller said he agrees with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who recently joined with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to argue that the GOP plan would be disastrous in states that had expanded Medicaid. Heller said that he just can t support the AHCA in its current form. ! HELLER does not support the American Health Care Act in its current from, agrees with Gov. SANDOVAL. Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 17, 2017It is looking like the AHCA, even if it manages to pass the House, will crash and burn in the Senate. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said on Thursday that she will not support the bill as it is written. Several other Republican senators have criticized the bill, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). As much as the GOP would like to believe otherwise, Republicans aren t necessarily just going to fall in line and vote in favor of the bill.Senate NO votes on AHCA as written: COLLINS PAUL HELLER Major critics include: CASSIDY COTTON LEE CRUZ + MURKOWSKI says won t defund PP Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 17, 2017Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images

Trump says he's likely to sign healthcare order this weekWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he likely will sign an order this week that is expected to allow Americans to buy stripped-down health insurance policies, a step some experts say would further undermine the Obamacare law that Trump opposes. Unable to win passage of legislation to dismantle the 2010 law in a Congress led by his own party, Trump indicated he would take unilateral action. He offered few specifics beyond saying his action would let people cross state lines to obtain “great, competitive healthcare” costing the United States “nothing.” The expected order would allow small businesses and individuals to band together as associations to buy health insurance plans that would be exempt from some Obamacare requirements. These include mandatory coverage for 10 essential health benefits such as maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs and mental health treatment. It would also expand the amount of time people can use short-term medical insurance plans, which are cheaper than traditional plans but cover a limited set of benefits. People could use those plans for up to a year, compared to three months under current law. “I’ll also be signing something, probably this week, which is going to go a long way to take care of many of the people that have been so badly hurt on healthcare,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “With Congress the way it is, I decided to take it upon myself,” Trump added, saying the plan is “largely worked out.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump will make his announcement “by the end of Friday.” Trump said his action would let insurers sell across state lines. The association health plans, for instance, could be sold from a state with fewer benefit requirements. Such insurance policies could be cheaper than those that provide the full range of medical coverage required under Obamacare, potentially making them attractive to people in other states. It is unclear when these plans would become available. It is unlikely consumers could sign up for these plans during the 2018 open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1. Experts questioned Trump’s authority to issue such an order that would exempt some plans but not others from Obamacare rules rather than pursuing the changes through legislation. The action could open Trump to legal challenges from Democratic state attorneys general, who have said they will sue Trump if he tries to destroy Obamacare. The plans allowed under the order could lure young and healthy people away from the individual insurance markets created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare. That could further destabilize those markets, where insurers have already exited the markets altogether, pared back offerings or hiked premiums because of uncertainty caused by the Trump administration. Experts said Trump’s plan could leave behind only the sickest people in the Obamacare markets, raising premiums and effectively eroding the law’s protection that people with pre-existing medical conditions cannot be charged more. “There’s a general belief that at every turn the federal government is going to create regulations to hurt rather than help the markets,” said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, referring to the Trump administration. “It unwinds the ability of people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance under the ACA,” Garthwaite said. Republicans have failed to make good on their seven-year promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, the signature domestic policy achievement of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. Gutting Obamacare was a top Trump campaign promise. Trump, who has called the law a failure and vowed to let it “implode,” has undermined Obamacare through regulatory and administrative actions. Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule that will let businesses and non-profit organizations lodge religious or moral objections to obtain an exemption from the law’s mandate that employers provide birth control for women in health insurance with no co-payment. Trump has declined to commit to making payments guaranteed to insurers under Obamacare. The payments are estimated to be about $7 billion this year and help lower out-of-pocket medical costs for low-income consumers. Insurers have cited that uncertainty in exiting insurance markets or hiking premiums. His administration has slashed the Obamacare advertising budget, halved the open enrollment period and cut funding to groups that help sign people up for insurance under the law.

WATCH AND LAUGH: Sebastian Gorka Tells CNN’s Camerota That More People Watch Cartoons Than Them [Video]Sebastian Gorka does a mic drop on CNN anchor Alison Camerota when he tells her more people watch Nick at Nite and cartoons than they watch CNN:WATCH AND LAUGH: Sebastian Gorka tells CNN that more people watch Nick-at-Nite and cartoons then them. #Trump #CNNBlackmail pic.twitter.com/uwEKMoCqrR Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) July 12, 2017Sebastian Gorka, President Trump s deputy assistant, mocked CNN s ratings on its morning program New Day on Tuesday, stating in a contentious interview with co-anchor Alisyn Camerota that more people watch Nick at Nite cartoons than CNN today. This interview between Gorka and Camerota went from cordial to personal really quickly! Alison Camerota asked about Iraqi forces defeating ISIS to win back the city of Mosul. But Camerota couldn t help herself so she pivoted to the Trump-Russia fake news topic:Camerota goes partisan: Is it possible that your team is obsessed with the Clintons? Gorka starts to get into with Camerota: No. We d like you to actually do your job. You aren t in the news business anymore. You used to be. You are in the attacking President Trump business. And it s sad. It s really sad. Camerota: It s interesting. Look, I know you have to go, and I didn t even want to go down this rabbit hole with you. When you take shots at us and at journalism, at CNN, Gorka interrupted with this zinger: Not journalism. CNN. Camerota said Gorka was the one who asked to appear on the network.Camerota responded: OK. When you take shots at CNN, I do feel that I must respond and just point out that you called us yesterday to come on here. Gorka shot back: That s what we do. The amount of time you spend in desperation on a topic that has plummeted you to 13th place in viewership ranking across America, more people watch Nick at Nite cartoons than CNN today. Camerota shot back: Our ratings are doing just fine. If you want to go there, our ratings are doing just fine. Gorka s mic drop moment came here: Nick at Nite is in 11th place. More people are interested in cartoons!

Morning Joe HAMMERS Republicans For Sucking Up To Putin (VIDEO)To be a Republican these days, one apparently needs to kiss Russian President Vladimir Putin s ass as well as Donald Trump s.On Wednesday, GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher defended Putin s human rights record by pretending that Russia has not committed any human rights violations under Putin s reign, which is total bullshit.Russia s treatment of the LGBT community alone is enough to make the world cringe in horror, but for some reason Republicans are big fans of what Russia is doing.Russia even committed espionage against our country by hacking into our election system and the DNC, but again, Republicans seem to think this is just fine and not a big deal at all.Russia has also made aggressive military moves toward Europe and seized the Crimea from Ukraine.Clearly, Russia is no friend of ours not is Russia a friend to our allies, but Republicans are apparently enamored with Putin. And that very much concerns Joe Scarborough, who hilariously took Republicans to task on Thursday morning for being infatuated with him. Putin s a guy that assassinates journalists, Scarborough pointed out on Morning Joe. He s the guy that shoots down in front of the Kremlin! political opponents. He s the guy that locks political opponents into jail for years. And then he ripped Rohrabacher and the other Republicans who love Putin. I don t understand, he was always a conservative s conservative. Are you a RINO if you don t have pictures of Putin on the wall shirtless, and go up and pray to him every night? Rohrabacher s defense of Putin is even scarier because Donald Trump is seriously considering him for Secretary of State, which would likely make Russia very happy because it means their hope for a puppet in the White House is becoming reality.Here s the video via Twitter.Rep. Rohrabacher asks @biannagolodryga: Where do you come from? #morningjoe panel flabbergasted by his remarks https://t.co/kTzTatVBvk Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 8, 2016By aligning themselves with Russia, Republicans are selling out the United States and abandoning American values. They should be ashamed of themselves for defending a man who is basically a dictator and they should be worried that Donald Trump admires Putin. Trump is already threatening journalists and satirical shows that criticize or make fun of him. He is already stacking his cabinet with generals, which sends the message that Trump intends to rely on military power instead of diplomacy. And he has made it clear that he doesn t care about the rights of minorities. So Trump is a Putin in the making and Republicans are lining up to kiss his ass by kissing Putin s.Featured Image: Photo of Donald Trump by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. Photo of Vladimir Putin by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images

Disgusting Trump Is Using Hurricane As An Opportunity To Deport PeopleA Category Four hurricane has hit Texas. It s set to be the most disastrous hurricane since Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005, yet Donald Trump is using it as an opportunity to deport people.Thousands of people are evacuating the affected areas, trying to beat the storm. Instead of helping ensure that evacuations go smoothly, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite. They are creating checkpoints and forcing people to show their papers proving they are documented residents of the United States.The federal government is closing border patrol checkpoints in the path of the hurricane, but they re leaving checkpoints open outside the path. The Texas Tribune reports: Border Patrol checkpoints will not be closed unless there is a danger to the safety of the traveling public and our agents. Border Patrol resources, including personnel and transportation, will be deployed on an as needed basis to augment the efforts and capabilities of local-response authorities, the agency said in a statement.The Border Patrol is a law enforcement agency and we will not abandon our law enforcement duties. I m sure you can imagine the consequences. Sure, checkpoints will only be open outside the path of the hurricane, but they can still cause traffic to back up for miles. It will also all but ensure that undocumented immigrants and their families will stay behind, only to be potentially killed by the hurricane or the resulting floods.Civil rights agencies like the ACLU are furious. This is a disgusting move from the Border Patrol that breaks with past practices, American Civil Liberties Union director of immigration policy and campaigns Lorella Praeli said. The Border Patrol should never keep checkpoints open during any natural disasters in the United States. Everyone, no matter the color of their skin or background, is worth saving. Everyone, no matter the color of their skin or background, is worth saving. Except to Donald Trump, they really aren t. Trump doesn t care about anyone, but he does care about appeasing his racist, xenophobic base. John Edwards used to talk about two Americas. Today, we have the America that Donald Trump cares about (about 1/3 of the country) and we have the rest of us who could all die in the path of a hurricane for all he cares.Featured image via Pool/Getty Images.

JUDGE HANDS ILLEGAL ALIEN Who Tried To Kill Trump A Shocking Plea Deal19 year old native British man, Michael Sanford, pled guilty on Sept 14th to one count of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and one count of disrupting an official function, both of which are felonies.When Sandford was first arrested he was initially charged with an act of violence on restricted grounds after he attempted to grab a police officers gun with the intent to kill Trump at a Las Vegas rally, but he was later indicted on the firearm and disruption charges.Sandford s father, Paul Davey, said that his son had met a woman and moved to the United States to be with her. Court papers show his tourist visa expired in August 2015, making him an illegal alien.Sandford could have faced 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each offense, according to the plea agreement. He acknowledged in the document that it is almost certain that he will be deported from the United States with no possibility of returning. The plea agreement in Nevada federal court recounts the bizarre details leading up to Sanford s crimes, but differs from the initial criminal complaint in that it stops short of stating that Sandford wanted to shoot Trump. Instead, Sanford, who had overstayed a tourist visa by nearly a year, confessed to seizing the officer s gun and interfering with Trump s speech. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 18 months to two years. Although court papers do show he confesses to special agents that he wanted to kill Trump, his plea leaves out talk of a plot to assassinate him.Court Documents: CBS video of the arrest Check out Trumps response to the attempted assassination at minute mark 3:23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QgGWdtcNEUIt is amazing what you can get away with in this country lately. A slap on the wrist basically is what Michael Sandford with be getting for the attempted murder of a Presidential Candidate. It s sickening.H/T [ Breaking 911 ]

Cuba calls Trump speech on island 'grotesque spectacle'VIENNA (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech on Cuba was a “grotesque spectacle,” but the island’s government will continue working towards better relations with the majority of Americans who back detente, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Monday. Trump announced a partial rollback of the normalization of relations with Cuba on Friday in Miami, the heartland of Cuban exiles, in a theater named after the leader of the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of the island in 1961. “It was a grotesque spectacle straight from the Cold War,” Rodriguez said in Vienna, during a tour of European countries, in a news conference broadcast live in Cuba. Trump’s speech before an audience that included people Cuba considers terrorists, included dramatic flourishes like a Cuban- American exile playing the U.S. national anthem on his violin. The U.S. president stopped short of breaking diplomatic relations with Cuba, restored in 2015 after more than five decades of hostility and leaves many recent agreements between the two countries intact. However, it will tighten restrictions on Americans traveling to the Caribbean island, hurting the booming Cuban tourism industry and clamp down on U.S. business dealings with Cuba’s military. “It is necessary to wait for the U.S. government to announce regulations that implement these measures before opining on their reach and depth,” Rodriguez said. He added, however, that they would inevitably hit U.S. companies and citizens by restricting their ability to invest in or travel to Cuba, while also hurting the Cuban people. “It will wreak economic damage not just on Cuba’s state companies but also on the cooperatives and private sector workers,” he said. Moody’s Investor Service released a report on Monday saying the U.S. revision of its Cuban policy was “credit negative” for the island, coming at a time when the country was already suffering liquidity problems due to weakening economic support from its crisis-wracked ally Venezuela. The Cuban foreign minister said Trump’s hope of separating the people from the military, who were simply “the people in uniform,” was “infantile.” ‘On the contrary, these measures reinforce our patriotism, our dignity and our decision to defend national independence by all means,” he said. Meanwhile, the partial rollback of the detente would fall flat with the majority of Americans, who supported the normalization of relations with Cuba, and with whom the country would continue working, Rodriguez added. In response to Trump’s demand to return fugitives sought by the United States, Rodriguez said Cuba considered them fighters for civil liberties. “These persons will not be returned to the United States,” he said.

PAUL RYAN: American Companies Will Close Without Foreign LaborPaul Ryan is just like all the other establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle who have sold the American worker down the river for cheap labor. Foreign workers have been coming in to America by the droves to take over jobs that Americans had. In some cases, the American worker is required to train the foreign worker who s taking their job. Disney has been called out on doing this to its workers who fought back against it. The Chamber of Commerce is in the pocket of the establishment and they are all for more and more immigration that will ultimately hurt the American worker. In a Tuesday morning interview with radio host Bill Bennett,Paul Ryan defended his omnibus bill s controversial expansion in the H-2B visa program, which would allow foreign workers to fill blue-collar American jobs, by arguing that if the provision were not included, American companies would be forced to shut their doors.Bennett pressed Ryan on the details of the H-2B visa expansion, slipped 700-pages into Ryan s 2,009-page omnibus spending bill asking Ryan directly, Do you believe there are not enough Americans to fill these jobs? In response, Ryan described the H-2B visa expansion as a very small, discrete provision. Despite the nation s high levels of unemployment and stagnating wages, Ryan continued on to assert, without offering evidence in support of his claim, that corporations are facing a shortage of labor, which rendered the provision necessary. Ryan said:The reason that this was passed is because there was some seasonal surge jobs that they can t find local workers to fill, like the seafood packaging industry in Chesapeake Bay. You have seafood season, you need people to package those things, to can them. In the North, we have the summer tourism industry. What it is is there s seasonal industries where they can t find local people to do the jobs: kids are already in college or things like that where you have a surge in workers.Ryan explained that the provision was passed specifically to help small business who cannot find labor when there s a surge in demand for their labor like seafood processing, or tourism. Ryan warned, The point is these businesses would have shut down without this and that s what we didn t want to see happen. We didn t want to see businesses, who are seasonal, shut down because they couldn t get the labor. That s why this provision was passed in July. The data, however, demonstrates Ryan s claim to be unsubstantiated. As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80% has highlighted, the Economic Policy Institute has documented how, wages were stagnant or declining for workers in all of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014. Unemployment rates increased in all but one of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014, and all 15 occupations averaged very high unemployment rates Flat and declining wages coupled with such high unemployment rates over such a long period of time suggest a loose labor market an over-supply of workers rather than an under-supply.Cries of so-called labor shortages are frequently invoked by corporations and immigration expansionist who want to see large increases in low-wage labor. As immigration attorney Ian Smith has explained, Ryan s resurrection and expansion of the controversial provision in Sen. Marco Rubio s Gang of Eight bill to increase guest-worker programs will disproportionately hurt America s most vulnerable workers such as black workers, single women, the elderly, and first-generation immigrants.While Ryan argues that more low-wage immigrant labor is needed to fill labor shortages, National Review s Rich Lowry has previously declared, The next time I hear a Republican strategist or a Republican politician say that there are jobs that Americans won t do, that person should be shot, he should be hanged, he should be wrapped in a carpet and thrown in the Potomac River. Ryan s push to expand immigration comes on top of the nation s existing federal policy of autopilot visa dispensations. Under current policy, every day the U.S. brings in enough new immigrants to fill an overcrowded, metropolitan high school. Every week, the United States brings in enough new immigrants to fill the Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers play. Every year, we add an immigrant population the size of Dallas. And every three years, the U.S. adds another entire city of Los Angeles, made up of foreign-born immigrants.Ryan, however, seems to believe these numbers should be even bigger, even as the U.S. foreign-born population is already at an all-time high of 42.4 million.Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Ryan s using conservative talk radio platforms to make arguments for expanded immigration is that the Republican Party is now in the position of having an electorate that is almost universally opposed (92 percent according to Pew) to immigration increases, but it is led by a House Speaker who has a two-decade long history of pushing for higher rates of immigration. This means that one segment of the electorate, perhaps most in favor of immigration reductions, now has as its leader one of the politicians most associated with pushing for expanded immigration.Read more: Breitbart

Trump nominates Columbia professor Jackson for seat on SECWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday nominated Columbia University law professor Robert Jackson, an advocate for public disclosure of political spending by companies, for a vacant seat on the five-member U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the nomination is approved by the U.S. Congress, Jackson would fill a spot reserved for a Democrat. His nomination, announced in a White House statement, follows a July decision by Trump to tap Hester Peirce, a former congressional aide, for a Republican seat on the commission. Approval of the nominees would bring the agency tasked with policing and writing rules for Wall Street to full strength and clear the way for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to push ahead on an agenda of reducing the regulatory burden on public companies. Jackson is known for his advocacy work in trying to advance new rules at the SEC that would force public companies to disclose their political spending to investors.

U.S. judge to review FBI's Clinton emails search warrantNEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday directed federal prosecutors to show him the search warrant application used to enable the FBI to access emails related to Hillary Clinton’s private server that were discovered shortly before the Nov. 8 presidential election. U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan ordered prosecutors by Thursday to turn over the application, which investigators obtained shortly after FBI Director James Comey informed Congress of newly discovered emails on Oct. 28, 11 days before the election won by her Republican opponent Donald Trump. Castel made the order as he considered whether any portion of the search warrant materials could be made public in response to a lawsuit filed by Randol Schoenberg, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who specializes in cases to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis, seeking to force the release of the documents. In court papers, Schoenberg said the public had a “strong interest” in the disclosure of the search warrant materials, saying transparency was “crucial” given the potential influence the probe had on the election’s outcome. The search warrant was obtained after Comey issued a letter to top U.S. lawmakers disclosing that emails potentially related to the Clinton server probe had been discovered in an “unrelated case.” Comey’s Oct. 28 announcement roiled the campaign and drew new attention to a damaging issue for Clinton. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, used the server while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Comey in July had recommended to the Justice Department that no criminal charges be brought against Clinton over her handing of classified information in the emails. Only two days before the election, Comey disclosed that the newly reviewed emails did nothing to change his earlier recommendation after all. Clinton days after her loss blamed Comey’s letter, so close to the election, as a reason she lost to Trump. Sources close to the investigation have said the emails were discovered during an unrelated probe into former Democratic U.S. congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. In court, Castel said he would not be surprised if prosecutors, in submitting the materials to him, cited the presence of an ongoing probe in a case unrelated to Clinton as a reason to keep the search warrant application confidential. “It could be potentially terribly unfair to a person who ultimately winds up not being charged,” Castel said, apparently referring to Weiner. Castel said it was possible information unrelated to the Clinton email probe could be redacted, and noted that in Clinton’s case, Comey later indicated in a subsequent letter that the server probe was closed. Castel invited prosecutors to propose redactions in case he decides to release the search warrant application.

DONALD TRUMP JR Slams Kathy Griffin for Playing the Victim [Video]Donald Trump Jr slammed Kathy Griffin for playing the victim after the huge backlash to her beheading Trump photo. saying she deserves whatever she gets. To run and claim victimhood, she deserves everything that s coming to her, Donald Trump, Jr., said Tuesday on ABC s Good Morning America. Griffin initially apologized for posing with the disturbing image, and CNN dropped her from her annual New Year s Eve special alongside Anderson Cooper.However, she reversed course with a Friday press conference alongside civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom, where she tearfully said the Trump family was bullying her and broke her. Griffin s erratic demeanor was widely panned; USA Today said it was a D-list showing, and Salon called it mad and looping.

Not Paying Taxes Doesn’t Make Trump ‘Smart,’ It Makes Him A Shamelessly Un-American FreeloaderTrump, not surprisingly, took the bait during the first showdown between him and Hillary Clinton at the first presidential debate. He admitted to not paying income taxes (because it makes him smart ), and a recent bombshell report from the New York Times may confirm what we already know: he doesn t pay a time in federal income taxes because he, as a brilliant business man, lost almost $1 billion, allowing him to forgo paying federal income taxes for almost 20 years. However, because he refuses to release the rest of his tax returns, no one can confirm nor deny this.When you allegedly skip out on paying your federal income taxes (especially for 20 years), that doesn t make you a smart businessman, that makes you a shameless freeloader. When you skip out on paying your income taxes, you don t pay for:The list goes on and on. It doesn t matter what party one is from (that includes you, Al Sharpton), or how you feel about taxes, we all owe them and we all contribute to this great country called the United States. And to have a presidential candidate be smug enough to say that not contributing to these programs make him smart is an insult to the millions of business owners who play by the rules and pay their fair share. While even illegal immigrants pay $1.1 billion a year in personal income taxes (out of $12 billion overall), the Trump campaign and its merry band of deplorables still think he s done nothing wrong. Maybe he didn t do anything illegal, but just because something is legal doesn t make it right or ethical (we ve heard that for years from Republicans).And the last 18 years aren t the only times Trump has skipped out on paying his fair share. According to the Clinton campaign website, Trump payed zero, or nearly zero, in federal income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991, and 1993. So these 5 years, plus alleged 18 years from 1995 to 2013, means there have been at least 23 years Trump paid virtually nothing. Ask the middle class and lower class how much they paid in 23 years.So don t ever tell me Trump cares about our troops, vets or military ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about tackling the national debt ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about Social Security or our retirees. Because if he really, truly did, he wouldn t take his irresponsible budgeting and turn it into a personal gain for himself at the expense of the American taxpayers. If he truly cared, he would have stepped up and fulfilled his obligation to the country that has given him so much. People who have less than him (and who aren t even citizens) are giving more than he is.People from both sides do this. But the man is running as President of the United States. The other person? She pays her taxes. Go on her website, there s over 15 years of full tax returns on there.I might be able to look past Trump s skipping on taxes for over 20 years if he wasn t such a sleazy businessman. If Trump was actually charitable (when there isn t legal contingencies attached to it), I might be forgiving. If he actually paid his independent contractors (which he doesn t), I might look the other way. If he didn t decimate local economies with his mishandling of money (he s done that several times), this wouldn t be as big an issue.For decades, local communities and economies have been cleaning up the messes he s made with his destructive, greedy behavior. For decades, small businesses have closed up shop, resulting in thousands of job losses, because he refused to pay them what they earned. And all the while this has been going on, we the taxpayers have been subsidizing his tax free lifestyle while he makes billions more. That right there is what s at the heart of this it s not the fact that he used an unfair tax system to his advantage, it s that it s unethical, and it s un-American, and he puts on a facade of caring when everyone knows he d do it again in a heartbeat.There is no difference between Donald Trump and the common small town snake oil salesman, and his supporters are the townspeople being manipulated into believing what he did (and will continue to do) is actually good for them. It s amazing that the same people who complain about lazy minorities and working poor not paying their taxes are all of a sudden A-OK with this guy skipping out on paying billions in taxes for 23 years.Some people can t afford to pay their taxes. Some people misfile their taxes and owe back-pay. But you want to know the difference between these people and Donald Trump? In Trump s own words, these people don t have seven billion fucking dollars in the bank! That little zinger was said in 2011 at his Comedy Central Roast 2011, one of the years Trump wasn t paying federal income taxes, yet he had seven billion f-ing dollars in the bank. Good to know.The 2016 Republican Presidential candidate is officially the Freeloader candidate, and we re all paying for his smart business savvy. I hope it was worth it. And if you think Trump is going to eliminate this little loophole, knowing who his friends in business are, you ve got another thing coming to you.Featured image via Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images

Gunmen assassinate mayor of Libya's biggest port cityTRIPOLI (Reuters) - Gunmen fatally shot the mayor of Libya s third-largest city, Misrata, late on Sunday, ambushing his car inside the city, security officials said. The North African oil producer has been in chaos since the 2011 uprising that unseated Muammar Gaddafi, but Misrata, Libya s biggest port, had been relative peaceful until now. Gunmen chased the car of Mayor Mohamed Eshtewi after he left Misrata airport following his arrival on a plane from Turkey, a security official said, adding it was unclear who was behind it. In October, a bomb exploded at the city s court, killing about four people and wounding 40 others in an attack claimed by Islamic state. Misrata, almost 200 km (125 miles) east of Tripoli, is the gateway for food and other imports into Libya and the country s only tax-free zone. It is one of the few places still frequented by foreign business people fearing poor security elsewhere.

Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber rams police truck, kills sevenQUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber rammed a car into a police truck in the southwestern city of Quetta on Wednesday, killing at least seven people, police said. The attack killed five police officials and two passers-by on the outskirts of the city of Quetta, police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema said. He said 22 people were wounded, eight of them critically. Sarfraz Bugti, the home minister of Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is capital, told Reuters: It was a suicide blast. Quetta is about 100 km (60 miles) east of the border with Afghanistan. Bugti said the truck carrying the police officials was on its way to the city to drop them at their posts when the suicide bomber rammed into the vehicle. Television pictures showed the burnt wreckage of the vehicles. The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of various militant groups within Pakistan, and loosely allied to the Afghan Taliban, issued a statement claiming responsibility. Baluchistan province has long been the scene of an insurgency by separatists fighting against the state to demand more of a share of the gas- and mineral-rich region s resources. They also accuse the central government of discrimination. The Taliban, Sunni Islam militants and sectarian groups linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group also operate in the strategically important region, which borders Iran as well as Afghanistan. The violence has fuelled concern about security for projects in the $57 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan s southern deep-water port of Gwadar. A suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State at a Sufi Muslim shrine this month killed 22 people and wounded more than 30. Ayub Qureshi, the provincial police chief, said a counter-terrorism police officer was shot and killed in another part of Quetta as authorities were dealing with the suicide bombing. A militant sectarian faction, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi, claimed responsibility for killing the counter-terrorism official, and for planting a roadside bomb in a northwestern region, that killed two soldiers. Security officials said a remote-controlled bomb was set off as an army vehicle passed by.

AWESOME! HISPANIC TRUMP SUPPORTER Rips Into Pro-Sanctuary City Officials: “I’m a hard core TRUMP supporter” [Video]

JUST IN: TRUMP ENDS FREE MONEY TRAIN After Pakistan Refuses To Stop Housing Terrorists…Cuts STUNNING About Of Military Aid The Trump administration on Friday announced the United States will deny Pakistan military aid amounting to $255 million as it expects Islamabad to take decisive action against terrorists and militants on its soil . The United States does not plan to spend the $255 million in FY 2016 in Foreign Military Financing for Pakistan at this time, said a spokesperson of the President s National Security Council in a statement to Hindustan Times. The President has made clear that the United States expects Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorists and militants on its soil, and that Pakistan s actions in support of the South Asia Strategy will ultimately determine the trajectory of our relationship, including future security assistance. The Administration continues to review Pakistan s level of cooperation. The statement reflected and sealed the administration s complete disillusionment with Pakistan, which had sought to brazenly disregard the explicit warnings issued by President Donald Trump personally and leading members of his cabinet, such as secretaries James Mattis and Rex Tillerson.Financial Times reported last week that the Trump administration is considering dropping Pakistan as an ally as it examines tough measures to quell more than 20 terrorist groups it says are based in the country. Here again, the President who is daily derided and ridiculed by foreign policy experts is right, and they are wrong: Pakistan is no ally, and has not been for years. This is a rupture that is much needed and long overdue.President Trump has accused the Pakistani government of housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. And it s true, with the most notorious of these being Osama bin Laden himself. Journalist Carlotta Gall, who reported from Afghanistan for the New York Times for twelve years, reported in March 2014 that:Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden s presence in Abbottabad. The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha s or one about him in the days after the raid. He knew of Osama s whereabouts, yes, the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so.He shouldn t have been. It had been obvious for years at that point, and remains obvious, that the Pakistanis had been aiding the same jihadists that the U.S. government has been giving them billions of dollars to fight. This could be the severest blow dealt to Islamabad by this administration if it indeed decided to withhold it, said a leading US expert on Pakistan, who did not want to be identified. There is more coming, the expert added. IOTWReportThe amount, $255 million, is left over from $1.1 billion aid earmarked for Pakistan in 2016, and which included non-military aid as well. It was cleared for handing over in August, just days before it would lapse as unspent money.First reported by The New York Times, the move to withhold the money, which may not be large but would have signaled US backing, is reported to have come shortly after Pakistan refused to hand over to the Americans an operative of the Haqqani Network apprehended during the rescue of an American-Canadian family in October.The Haqqani Network is an affiliate of Afghan Taliban and works out of Pakistan, inflicting massive casualties on the US-led international coalition in Afghanistan. Frustrated by Islamabad s reluctance to give them, the United States has tied large portions of military aid payments to Pakistan for its actions aimed at debilitating the network.Pakistan, however, has chosen to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in such payments over 2015 and 2016, instead of kicking out the terrorists. And it has lost equity.The Trump administration was clear from the start it wouldn t countenance continuity in ties and aid without real changes. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting, President Donald Trump had said unveiling his new South Asia strategy in August. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately. Hindustan Times

Trump stands by Obama wiretap charge, shrugs off row with BritainWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump stood by unproven claims on Friday that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race and shrugged off a dispute with Britain over the notion their spy agency had a hand in it. British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman earlier in the day dismissed the charge against Britain’s GCHQ spy agency as “ridiculous” and said the White House had promised not to repeat it. But at a news conference Trump brushed aside a question about whether it was a mistake to accuse British intelligence of eavesdropping. “We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it,” Trump said. He was referring to Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano who on Tuesday accused Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intelligence agency of having helped Obama, a Democrat, wiretap Trump, a Republican. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday quoted Napolitano’s comments about GCHQ during a testy briefing with reporters. But speaking at the White House news conference, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at his side, Trump distanced himself. “That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, and so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox. OK?” Trump said while standing by his initial charge that the previous U.S. administration eavesdropped on him. “As far as wiretapping, I guess by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps,” he said to Merkel. U.S. ties with Germany were frayed by news reports in 2013 citing leaked intelligence documents that Washington had bugged Merkel’s mobile phone. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said British officials had voiced concern to senior Trump aides but the official declined to explicitly apologize for Spicer’s citation of the Fox News allegations. The Republican Trump, president since Jan. 20, tweeted this month that his Democratic predecessor had wiretapped him during the late stages of the 2016 campaign. Trump offered no evidence, and an Obama spokesman has said the claim is “simply false”. Leaders of both major parties in Congress have joined a growing chorus disputing it. On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said it had responded to a request by committees in Congress for documents that could shed light on Trump’s claim. A government source, who requested anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said an initial examination indicated it contained no evidence to support Trump’s charge. On the “Fox & Friends” program, Napolitano, a political commentator and former New Jersey judge, said that rather than ordering U.S. agencies to spy on Trump, Obama had obtained transcripts of Trump’s conversations from GCHQ so there were “no American fingerprints” on it. Late on Friday, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said: “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop.” Dominic Grieve, chairman of the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, said a U.S. president cannot task the GCHQ to intercept an individual’s communications. In a rare public statement, the GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency which monitors overseas electronic communications, said the claims should be ignored. Reuters reported earlier this week that an unidentified British security official had denied the allegations about Trump. GCHQ, based in western England, is one of three main British spy agencies alongside the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service and the MI5 Security Service.

Trump meets Russia foreign minister amid Comey controversyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia’s top diplomat met President Donald Trump on Wednesday and praised the U.S. administration as problem solvers, just as the White House drew criticism over the firing of the FBI director who was leading a probe into Moscow’s alleged interference in U.S. politics. The talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were the highest-level public contact between Trump and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin since the Republican took office on Jan. 20. While not unprecedented, it is a rare privilege for a foreign minister to be received by a U.S. president for a bilateral meeting in the White House. In a stunning development, Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey, whose agency is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the possibility Trump associates may have colluded with Moscow. Democrats accused Trump of trying to slow down the investigation by firing the FBI chief. Trump described his talks with Lavrov as “very, very good.” When asked whether the Comey dismissal had affected his meeting, Trump said, “not at all.” He and Lavrov said they discussed the civil war in Syria, where Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad. “We want to see the killing, the horrible killing, stopped in Syria as soon as possible and everyone is working toward that end,” Trump told reporters. Lavrov, who earlier met with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said his discussions with members of the Trump administration had convinced him they were people who wanted to cut deals and solve problems. “The Trump administration, and the president himself, and the secretary of state, I was persuaded of this once again today, are people of action,” Lavrov said. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a January report that Putin had ordered an effort to disrupt the 2016 election that included hacking into Democratic Party emails and leaking them, with the aim of helping Trump. Russia denies the allegations. Blaming “fake information,” Lavrov said: “I believe that politicians are damaging the political system of the U.S., trying to pretend that someone is controlling America from the outside.” The Trump administration denies claims of collusion with Russia. Earlier, as Tillerson and Lavrov posed for photographs, the Russian sarcastically deflected a reporter’s question about Comey’s dismissal. Asked if the firing would cast a shadow over his talks, Lavrov replied: “Was he fired? You’re kidding. You’re kidding.” The Russian embassy in Washington tweeted a picture from the Lavrov meeting of Trump shaking hands with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, a man at the center of the controversy on Russian contacts with associates of Trump. Former U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. Senior Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said the Oval Office encounter was a photo opportunity for Russia. “President Trump in these pictures, is shaking hands with Russians, and the Kremlin is gleefully tweeting these pictures around the world,” Durbin said on the Senate floor. Wednesday’s meetings followed talks Tillerson held with Putin last month in Moscow. Tensions in the relationship grew following U.S. air strikes against a Syrian airfield in April in response to a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on Assad. Both Trump and Lavrov appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone after both capitals had presented souring views of the relationship recently. The White House said Trump “raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere” and still sought to build a better relationship between the two countries. Lavrov said that despite difficulties “our countries can and should contribute jointly to the settlement of the most urgent issues in international affairs”. Trump underscored “the need for Russia to rein in the Assad regime, Iran and Iranian proxies,” the White House said. Lavrov said the meeting mainly focused on ideas of de-escalation zones in Syria. Russia brokered a deal for de-escalation zones with backing from Iran and Syrian opposition supporter Turkey during ceasefire talks in the Kazakh capital Astana last week.

Islamic State cleared from Syria's Raqqa: monitorBEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-backed militias have completely taken Syria s Raqqa from Islamic State, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by a U.S.-led international alliance, has been fighting Islamic State inside Raqqa since June.

MORE TRANSPARENCY: CLINTON’S REFUSE TO RELEASE HILLARY’S HEALTH RECORDSKarl Rove is suggesting Hillary suffered brain damage following her blood clot.On Sunday, Hillary Clinton s campaign manager would not commit to releasing her health records during the 2016 campaign.Face the Nation host John Dickerson pointed out that Hillary Clinton had a big health scare when she was secretary of state and asked campaign manager Robby Mook, will she release her medial records as part of this campaign? I will let Hillary decide that, Mook answered. But I can tell you she has been hitting the campaign trail hard. In 2012, Clinton had to delay her Benghazi testimony to Congress after she fell and suffered a concussion. She later was treated for a blood clot in her brain, which experts said could have been life threatening. Though Clinton joked about her cracked head in emails that the State Department recently released, Bill Clinton revealed last year that Hillary s injuries required six months of very serious work to get over. On the stump this weekend, Clinton tried to deflect concerns about her age by saying that she would be the youngest woman president if elected to the White House.Via:Breitbart News

OPEN-BORDER LIBERALS Put Entire Nation On High Alert: German Spy Chief Warns 1,000+ Radical Islamists Ready To Attack…Over 100 ISIS Members Among RefugeesThank you Angela Merkel German security service BfV reportedly received more than 100 tip-offs that ISIS militants had infiltrated the country among refugees, according to a recent report. The news comes as massive nationwide anti-terror raids took place this week.The head of the German domestic intelligence service (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen, told a gathering of politicians that the agency had received more than 100 warnings indicating there were Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants staying in Germany as refugees, newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported Friday, without citing its sources.However , some cases of baseless defamation were among those tip-offs, Maassen added, according to the newspaper.German security services have remained on high alert since the November terror attacks in Paris which claimed the lives of more than 130 people.Earlier this week, police and security agents all across Germany were scrambled to search for suspects allegedly planning a terror attack in the country, with Berlin seen as the most likely target. Well-known tourist attractions including Alexanderplatz train station and the Cold War-era Checkpoint Charlie could be among the targets of a possible attack, according to preliminary media reports.On Thursday, a police special force unit raided four flats and two businesses in Berlin, detaining four men accused of allegedly having ties to Islamic State. They were suspected of being involved in planning an attack, police spokesman Martin Redlich told RT.German spy chief warns of 1,000+ radical Islamists ready to attack https://t.co/VZn1xRA2oA pic.twitter.com/BlxXGGXHkK RT (@RT_com) December 13, 2015One of the suspects, a 49-year-old Algerian, was arrested in a three-bedroom flat in Berlin s predominantly immigrant district of Kreuzberg. He was living there on a fake French passport, local media reported, and owned two shops nearby Alexanderplatz and Checkpoint Charlie. Redlich could not confirm the landmarks were the targets, however.The spokesman said police had acted on a tip-off, but he provided no further details.Similar raids also took place in the German regions of North Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony. In Berlin alone, 450 police officers were engaged in the operation, German media reported.The main suspect was a 35-year-old Algerian man detained during Thursday s raid in the town of Attendorn. Said to be a possible leader of an IS terrorist cell, he was also being sought by Algerian authorities over allegations he is a member of the terrorist group.He entered Germany in autumn 2015, having traveled the so-called Balkan route. At that time, the 35-year-old was registered in Bavaria as a refugee.Both men had been monitored since the end of 2015, after security services had received a tip-off they might be IS infiltrators.Another unnamed 26-year-old Algerian, who also registered as a refugee and lived in a shelter in central Hannover, is suspected by the police to be the cell s communication agent. He is also thought to have possible ties to Belgian Islamists. He has traveled to the Molenbeek district of Brussels, known for harboring jihadists, at least once in recent weeks. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the November s Paris attacks, was a Molenbeek resident.Germany took in over 1.1 million refugees in 2015, and fifty-four percent of Germans believe the terror threat in the country is on the rise because of the high number of incoming migrants, according to the latest Spiegel poll. Via: RT

NFL protests are protected speech but 'misguided': U.S. House speakerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said National Football League players’ protests were constitutionally protected free speech, but their decision to kneel while the national anthem played at games was “misguided.” “Clearly people have a right to express themselves,” Ryan told reporters at a news conference. But doing so in front of the U.S. flag, “it looks like you’re protesting against the ideals of America... I think it’s misguided,” he added.

Russia says 'will consider' U.S. resolution on North Korea but with caveatsMOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to consider a new U.S. resolution on North Korea provided it does not escalate military tensions and focuses on finding a diplomatic solution, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. Russia s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Lavrov had conveyed that stance to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call initiated by the U.S. side. The ministry said Lavrov had also spoken of the merit of involving U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in helping find a diplomatic solution to the North Korea crisis.

Anti-Abortion Republican Cheated And Tried To Get His Mistress To Have An AbortionA text message which was sent in January to U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, a staunch pro-life Republican representing Pennsylvania s 18th District, is now being revealed. In the text, a woman with whom Murphy was in a relationship outside of his marriage, took him to task for an anti-abortion statement posted on Facebook from his office s public account, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports. And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options, wrote Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted just last month to having an extramarital relationship. Mrs. Edwards is now going through a divorce following the affair.Murphy publicly admitted to the affair last month. Last year I became involved in an affair with a personal friend. This is nobody s fault but my own, and I offer no excuses. To the extent that there should be any blame in this matter, it falls solely upon me, he said in a statement at the time.The Gazette notes that a text, which the paper obtained, from Murphy s cell phone number that same day responded to say, I get what you say about my March for life messages. I ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced, he continued. I told staff don t write any more. I will. So, he never believed the anti-choice messages he touted.The Gazette reports:The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.In addition to Murphy s other problems, a six-page memo to the Pennsylvania Republican, presumably written by his chief of staff, Susan Mosychuk, described a hostile workplace in which Murphy repeatedly denigrated employees, threatened them and created a state of terror. Apparently, being a pro-life Republican means not respecting life while secretly opting to be pro-choice for them. Murphy has voted against funding for Planned Parenthood and voted against federal funding for research that utilizes human embryonic stem cells. He has consistently voted against pro-choice proposals.Image via screen capture.

FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE GATES RIPS INTO OBAMA For Putting Politics Over Our Troops [Video]Former CIA Director Robert Gates rips into Obama for his refusal to say the troops are in a combat role in the Middle East. Obama s doing a great disservice to our troops! Ever since American forces have been deployed to fight ISIS, the White House has said that they are not there in a combat capacity, even though three Americans have been killed fighting the terror group.

CITY TO DECIDE: Should They Allow Illegals to Vote in Local Elections?The slippery slope continues College Park is just the latest city in Maryland to propose that illegals be given the right to vote in local elections. If you re NOT outraged by this, we d love to know why not. Once you start allowing non-citizens to decide on anything within your city, doesn t this preclude the legal citizens from receiving their lawful voting rights?This is not unconstitutional but it is unAmerican!College Park, Md. is weighing whether or not to allow illegals to vote in local elections.Officials in College Park, which is home to the University of Maryland s main campus, have yet to make their final decision, the Baltimore Sun reports.Opponents say immigrants even those in the country legally, such as green-card holders should not be able to have a say in the direction of the community until they complete the process of becoming a citizen.The measure s sponsor, City Councilwoman Christine Nagle, said it would be good for noncitizens living in the city to make decisions regarding local services. These are folks who have a significant stake in our community, and who rely on the facilities in our city, Nagle said. To me, it just made sense. College Park would not be the only city in the state to allow noncitizens to vote: Takoma Park, Md. has allowed noncitizens to vote since 1991, and two towns in Montgomery County have done the same. Other Maryland towns are considering and adopting the same measure.Via: Baltimore Sun

Obama lauds Denver Broncos, Peyton Manning for Super Bowl winWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama welcomed the Denver Broncos to the White House on Monday to congratulate the Super Bowl champions for their victory over the Carolina Panthers and send off retiring quarterback Peyton Manning with words of praise. “I have to say I’m so pleased to be able to host Peyton here at the White House before I left. Anybody who has been a football fan has watched what is one of the greatest Hall of Fame careers ever,” Obama said, with the team standing behind him in the White House Rose Garden. “We were all obviously a little disappointed to see him hang it up this spring. But as somebody who is just a little bit older than he is, I was sympathetic to the idea that running around with these guys, it takes its toll,” Obama, 54, said of Manning, 40. Obama leaves office in January. As he often does, Obama noted he remained a fan of his hometown team, the Chicago Bears, but he conceded that the Broncos had a good year. “I will continue to root for the Bears,” he said to laughter. “But I’ve got to give this organization credit for having done an extraordinary job. And this is a well-deserved celebration of an extraordinary season.” The Broncos won their third National Football League championship with a 24-10 win over Carolina in the Super Bowl in February. The following month, Manning retired after an 18-year career with the Indianapolis Colts and Denver that established him as one of the game’s greatest quarterbacks.

Russian bank VEB says executives had talks with Trump son-in-lawMOSCOW (Reuters) - Executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) held talks with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, during a bank roadshow in 2016 when it was preparing a new strategy, the bank said on Monday. The news came as the White House announced that Kushner, a top adviser in the Trump administration, had volunteered to testify to a Senate committee probing whether Russia tried to interfere in last year’s presidential election. “As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America multiple times during 2016,” VEB said in an emailed statement. “During the talks, the existing practices of foreign development banks and promising trends were discussed,” the bank said. It said roadshow meetings took place “with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies”.

Canadian Company Offers Asylum To Americans Looking To Escape Donald Trump (IMAGES)A Canadian tech company is capitalizing on Donald Trump s scary rise to the top by offering refuge to American workers in the field of technology.Sortable, based out of Kitchener, Ontario, has started as a brand new automated ad company that aims to make ads suck less. I first ran across Sortable while scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed. The business is paying for advertising on the social media network and their ad made me laugh out loud:Sortable says they want to offer people in the tech industry a safe place to live and work if Donald Trump is elected president. Now, while we don t think Americans will actually move en masse to Canada if the election doesn t go their way, we do want to extend an offer. Because it s the polite, Canadian thing to do Over the last year, Sortable s popularity has followed a similar trajectory to Trump s. We have been growing 40% month over month, and our ad engine is handling 3 billion ad impressions each month. While Donald Trump has been really bad for America, he is actually proving to be quite profitable for our Northern neighbor. Sortable isn t the first Canadian entity to offer their country up as an alternative option if Trump is elected. Recently an island in the country also announced they would welcome us with arms wide open if the billionaire somehow manages to bamboozle his way into the White House. Further, the anti-Trump sentiment across America has given the country a noticable bump in tourism.Sortable s founder Christopher Reid said he began the ad campaign after watching the progression of the United States presidential election: It s bizarre and it s funny and we thought, why not use that as an opportunity to sort of promote the fact that we re hiring aggressively and we re looking globally. We re doing it because we need to find people and it s fun. What s perhaps even funnier than the campaign to lure American workers to the company, is their attempt to bring Canadians, who are working in Silicon Valley, back home:While it is funny to watch Canadian businesses and towns use Donald Trump s rise to power to advertise, it s also really embarrassing for America. We are quickly becoming a laughingstock around the world. It was bad enough when our allies were scratching their heads and wondering why we have so many mass shootings while they have virtually none, but now we have Bozo the Clown running for president. Trump s steady flow of hate, bigotry and bullshit is damaging our already bruised reputation further.These kinds of ad campaigns further highlight how important it is that Democrats get off of their sofas and vote in November. We have way too much at stake.Featured image via Facebook

Chicago finance committee approves payouts for police custody deathsCHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday approved payments totaling $6.45 million to settle cases involving two black men who died while in police custody. The settlements come as the third-biggest U.S. city’s police department faces a federal investigation and racism accusations over the death of black teenager Laquan McDonald. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired his police commissioner in 2015 after protests following the release of a video showing a Chicago police officer shooting 17-year-old McDonald 16 times. Under the settlements, the family of Philip Coleman, who was tasered by police officers while handcuffed in a jail cell in 2012 and later died after being taken to a hospital, will receive $4.95 million. Coleman was dragged motionless out of his cell by the handcuffs. The tasering and dragging were caught on video cameras. The committee also approved $1.5 million for the family of Justin Cook, who died of an asthma attack after being arrested in 2014. The suit claimed that police did not provide appropriate medical attention. The full city council will vote on the settlements on Wednesday. High-profile killings of black men by mainly white police officers in U.S. cities have prompted a national debate and protests about the use of excessive force by police.

Hillary Clinton to attend Nancy Reagan funeral servicesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will depart from the campaign trail on Friday to attend the funeral services of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. The campaign on Tuesday reported that Clinton, former first lady under President Bill Clinton and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, would attend the planned services in California for Reagan, who died on Sunday of congestive heart failure. (This version of the story corrects the day of Reagan’s death from Monday to Sunday in the paragraph two.)

HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS BRAGS About Her “Best Abortion”…”If I Could Yelp Review it, I Totally Would!”Plimpton, 46, who starred in The Goonies when she was 15, was speaking at a #ShoutYourAbortion event in June in Seattle, but the recent release of online footage of her remarks in which she boasted about her abortion are causing a firestorm on Twitter.Plimpton told the cheering crowd:Seattle has some particular significance for me for lots of reasons. I ve got a lot of family here, some of whom are here in the audience tonight. I also had my first abortion here at the Seattle Planned Parenthood! Yay!Notice I said first and I don t want Seattle I don t want you guys to feel insecure, it was my best one. Heads and tails above the rest. If I could Yelp review it, I totally would. And if that doctor s here tonight, I don t remember you at all, I was 19, she continued as the crowd applauded. I was 19, but I thank you nonetheless. You probably won t remember because I wasn t that famous then. Breitbart NewsWATCH this sub-human brag about killing her children:

Canada's Trudeau defends finance minister amid ethics questionsOTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his finance minister on Wednesday amid criticism that Bill Morneau did not place his assets in a blind trust, moving to dampen a growing controversy that threatens to overshadow the government s agenda. Questions about Morneau s potential conflict of interest follow weeks of backlash over the finance minister s attempt to reform small business taxes and have become a major stumbling block for Trudeau s two-year-old Liberal government. Morneau, the multimillionaire former chief executive officer of human resources management firm Morneau Shepell Inc, asked on Tuesday to meet with the federal ethics watchdog to discuss his decision not to put his assets into a blind trust, as Trudeau himself has done. The conflict of interest and ethics commissioner gave clear advice to the minister of finance, which he followed, and which he will continue to follow, Trudeau said in parliament, declining to answer questions about when he knew Morneau had not used a blind trust. Morneau has said he sought the advice of Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson to avoid conflicts of interest. The troubled tax reform and focus on Morneau s personal wealth risk derailing the Liberal agenda just as the government heads into the second half of its four-year mandate facing newly elected opposition leaders. While Morneau has been a relatively low-profile finance minister, he has been the face of the government s plan to boost infrastructure spending, a project expected to boost economic growth and widely supported by financial market players. Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, said financial markets would be largely unaffected if Morneau leaves his job, as long as he is replaced by somebody with the same views and fiscal plans. If you were to tell me that the criticism of him is really partly a veiled criticism of fiscal expansion strategy and that his demise could trigger a change in fiscal policy, it would be somewhat more important, Chandler said, adding markets are more worried about the possible demise of NAFTA and future rate hikes by the Bank of Canada than the tempest over Morneau. Morneau is expected to provide a fall fiscal update soon, possibly as early as next week, forecasting a gradual reduction in the budget deficit from an estimated C$28.5 billion this year. He denied rumors in September that he was unhappy in his post, saying he has enjoyed this job from day one, but his rise from obscurity to the most scrutinized cabinet ministers has happened fast. The problem is that to the extent people don t know much about Bill Morneau, they are learning about him now, and it s kind of all the wrong things, said Ipsos Public Affairs pollster Darrell Bricker. Bricker said the Liberal lead over the Conservatives has been trimmed to just 3 or 4 percentage points in recent weeks, a surprising tightening given Trudeau s personal popularity at home and abroad. The next federal election is in 2019. A Morneau spokesman declined on Tuesday to say whether the minister holds any Morneau Shepell shares or what he did with his assets and holdings to guard against conflict of interest. According to public disclosure documents available through the office of the Ethics Commissioner, Morneau is full or part owner of two holding companies as well as several real estate holding companies, and is party to a conflict of interest screen to ensure he abstains from decisions related to his company.

U.S. appeals court questions scope of Trump travel banSEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday sharply questioned a lawyer defending President Donald Trump’s effort to broadly enforce a temporary refugee ban that the Republican president said was necessary for national security. At a hearing in Seattle, a three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also disputed attempts by Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan to argue that grandparents and other relatives of Americans from six Muslim-majority countries should be temporarily barred from travel to the United States. The latest round in the fight over Trump’s travel ban began after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in June to partially revive it. The high court said the ban could take effect but that people with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred. The Trump administration interpreted that language to mean the 90-day travel ban would apply to grandparents and some other family members. It also sought to block entry of up to 24,000 refugees who have a connection to a U.S. resettlement agency, for 120 days, arguing that such a relationship is not close enough to warrant protection from Trump’s order. The state of Hawaii challenged that interpretation, and a judge in Honolulu ruled against the Trump administration. The Justice Department appealed to the 9th Circuit. While that appeal goes forward, the Supreme Court said grandparents and others could be allowed to enter the United States, but that the refugee limits would remain in effect. About two dozen observers filed into a Seattle courtroom for Monday’s hearing, where 9th Circuit Judge Ronald Gould asked how the government could take the position that a grandmother of a child in the United States does not count as a close relationship. “What universe does that come from?” Gould asked Mooppan. Another 9th Circuit judge, Richard Paez, questioned why a relationship between a refugee and a resettlement agency is not legitimate. The agency has to develop a specific exchange with the person seeking to move to the country, he noted. “They’re not just some random person out there,” Paez said. Mooppan, a deputy assistant attorney general, said the resettlement agency has a relationship with the U.S. government, not the refugee directly. The court did not issue a ruling during the hearing. The rollout of Trump’s current executive order has been more subdued than in January, when Trump first signed a more expansive version. That order sparked protests and chaos at airports around the country and the world.

Trump and Putin shake hands at APEC summit dinnerDANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia s Vladimir Putin shook hands at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit dinner in Vietnam on Friday, even though the White House said there would be no formal meeting. Trump and Putin smiled and stood next to each other for the traditional group photograph. Then they parted to sit at different parts of the table. The White House said earlier that no formal meeting was planned because of scheduling conflicts on both sides, though it was possible they would bump into each other. In terms of a scheduled, formal meeting, there s not one on the calendar and we don t anticipate that there will be one, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters minutes before landing in Danang. The main meeting of leaders from APEC countries is on Saturday in the Vietnamese resort city of Danang. Trump is on the fourth leg of a 12-day tour of Asia.

BRITAIN’S THERESA MAY Refuses To Wear Headscarf On Saudi Arabia Visit…Media Compares Her Bravery To Hillary, Michelle Obama…But We Have Pictures That Tell A Different StoryHow long before the media will stop using two of the most irrelevant women in America to compare to women who actually will be remembered in history for making a positive difference in this world? British Prime Minister Theresa May, turned heads on Tuesday when she arrived in Saudi Arabia without wearing a headscarf reportedly bucking the advice of her own government.The photos showed May s ankles and wrists were covered. However, The Telegraph noted her outfit did not completely comply with Foreign Office guidelines: Women should wear conservative, loose-fitting clothes as well as a full length cloak (abaya) and a headscarf. There is no law in Saudi Arabia forcing foreign visitors to wear a headscarf, the newspaper reported. FOX NewsMSN News and other publications attempted to paint Hillary and Michelle Obama as two other prominent women who refused to don the headscarf in Saudi Arabia. They probably just forgot that First Ladies going back for several decades refused wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia.She follows in the footsteps of other political figures including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, in refusing to adhere to the dress code for women.Ms May has said she hopes to be an inspiration to oppressed women in Saudi Arabia by showing people there what women can achieve .Wow here s Hillary in Muslim majority Pakistan. It sure looks like her head is covered in this picture: While the media is busy giving Hillary kudos for being so brave as to reject wearing a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, perhaps they can explain why she and her adult daughter were wearing headscarfs with the person many call the Father of terrorism Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. How is it considered brave to wear a headscarf in deference to a terrorist?Oops! It looks like Michelle was caught wearing a headscarf while visiting Muslim majority Jakarta, Indonesia. It doesn t look like she s refusing to follow the Islamic dress code in this picture. While it s true that Michelle did not wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia, she was only following a long tradition of other First Ladies who also refused to wear a headscarf. She was not expected to, nor did she shake hands with the Saudi dignitaries.Rosalyn Carter can be seen without a headscarf as she walked behind the Saudi dignitaries.

SOUR GRAPES? Whatever happened to the ‘smooth transition of power’ that Obama vowed? Andrew Malcolm McClatchy News You better stop stealing money from your mother s purse, young man, or I will punish you late this year or perhaps sometime in 2018, said no parent who was serious about punishment.Yet that s pretty much what President Obama did with his old-fashioned expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over alleged political hacking by Moscow interests going back 18 months.A very strange retro-response from a president who mocked Mitt Romney for suggesting in 2012 that Russia was America s worst strategic threat. Obama said: The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War s been over for 20 years. As has often happened when Obama shoots from the lip sans teleprompter (think his red line in Syria, ISIS is a JV squad), the aloof one is wrong.Obama s been golfing and snorkeling in Hawaii since mid-December. But he left orders for a number of last-minute steps, including more ineffective sanctions against Russia and a stunning historic break with Israel. Indeed, these measures smell more of vengeance than practical policy.Petty political ploys are standard operating procedure back in the Chicago wards that spawned Obama s career. They re less expected at the presidential level. In fact, Russia s president declined to retaliate Continue this story at McClatchy Newspapers READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21WIRE 2016 Files

Five militants, two soldiers, killed in Egypt's SinaiCAIRO (Reuters) - Five militants and two soldiers were killed on Wednesday in clashes that followed a failed attack on a security checkpoint in Egypt s strife-torn North Sinai province, a military spokesman said. Troops were seeking some of the militants who fled the scene during the clashes, the spokesman said in a statement. One of the militants, wearing an explosive vest, attempted to raid one of the security checkpoints and due to the vigilance of the security forces the terrorist was killed while the rest of the militants were dealt with, he said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, with its news agency Amaq saying one of its militants had set off a suicide vest at a security checkpoint. An Islamist insurgency in North Sinai has gathered pace since mid-2013 when the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi after mass protests against his rule and the group leading it pledged allegiance to Islamic State a year later. Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed since and in recent months the attacks extended to Coptic Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt s 90 million population.

Sessions slams Chicago sanctuary policies(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday strongly criticized the city of Chicago’s political leadership, citing its so-called sanctuary policies as an example of the breakdown of law and order in the country. Sessions has begun imposing new restrictions on some law enforcement grants to cities that decline to use municipal resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Chicago, along with the state of California and city of San Francisco, sued this month over those conditions. President Donald Trump frequently criticizes Chicago and its high murder rate, and cracking down on illegal immigration was a theme of his 2016 presidential campaign. Democratic city and state leaders argue that sanctuary policies build trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, which helps deter crime. In a speech in Miami, Sessions praised leaders of Miami-Dade County for complying with requirements that allow federal immigration authorities access to detainees in local jails. Chicago’s refusal to do the same has made it a haven for predators and drug dealers, Sessions said. “Respect for the rule of law has broken down,” Sessions said. “In Chicago, I suggest, the so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies are just one sad example.” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement the city “will not cave” to federal officials. “In a week in which the Trump administration is being forced to answer questions about neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the KKK,” Emanuel said, “they could not have picked a worse time to resume their attack on the immigrants who see America as a beacon of hope.” Sessions said Miami-Dade County’s homicide count is barely a third of what it was in the 1980s, and this year Chicago has more than three times as many as Miami-Dade does. The county includes the city of Miami and surrounding areas, and is similar in population size to Chicago. Immigration advocates say there is no correlation between immigration and violent crime. Los Angeles, which also has embraced sanctuary city policies, has seen a sharp drop in homicides since they reached a high in the early 1990s. In 1992, 1,094 people were killed in the city, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics. In 2016, the Los Angeles Police Department reported 294 homicides. Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a statement that shootings are down 16 percent this year, and that undocumented immigrants are not driving violence in the city.

Despite by-election loss, Pakistan opposition claims momentum for 2018LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan s party said on Monday it had built momentum in a by-election for ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif s parliamentary seat, despite finishing second, but the biggest inroads were made by two new Islamist groupings. Sharif s wife Kulsoom won the by-election with 49.3 percent of the vote in the eastern city of Lahore - a handsome margin of victory but down from the 61 percent garnered by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party in the constituency in an election in 2013. The vote was seen as a barometer of support for Nawaz in the wake of his disqualification by the Supreme Court in July, and an indication of whether the corruption allegations leveled at the Sharif family have had an impact in their power base in the vast Punjab province. A general election is due next year. The election commission s preliminary results released on Monday showed that the candidate of Khan s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party took 37.6 percent of the vote, up from 35 percent in the last poll. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the PTI deputy chairman, said the shrinking of the PML-N s winning margin from 26 percentage points to about 12 in a constituency where it has been so dominant showed its vulnerability in closer-run races in Punjab in 2018. If this happens in one of the strongest constituencies of PML-N, the prime minister s constituency which they ve had since 1985 That means there is a surge for PTI, there is a tilt for PTI, said Qureshi. PTI candidate Yasmin Rashid, a gynaecologist from the area, on Monday disputed the count and filed a petition with the electoral commission to suspend the results. We will continue our struggle for verification of the controversial votes which played an important role in the PML-N victory, Rashid said. It was two candidates backed by religious parties that appeared to most chip away at PML-N s vote share, however, together winning about 11 percent. Neither party - one of which is linked to U.S.-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed - existed in 2013. Analysts say the by-election result will certainly concern Sharif s party. The committed and hardline vote did not shift from PML-N, but others who are not hard core or are somewhat independent, they seem to have shifted, said Hasan Askari, a political analyst. PTI officials are betting that corruption trials against Nawaz and his family due to start before the next poll, likely in mid-2018, will further erode support for the veteran leader who has served three stints as prime minister. Nawaz denies any wrongdoing and his family have alleged a conspiracy led to the Supreme Court disqualifying him for not declaring a small source of income, which he denies receiving. Nawaz s daughter Maryam, who spearheaded the campaign as her mother is receiving cancer treatment in London, had framed the by-election as a chance for voters to reject the Supreme Court s verdict against her father, and late on Sunday suggested some PML-N workers had been threatened and abducted. Maryam did not name anyone, but PML-N sources said she was accusing elements of the military establishment. The military has not commented on Maryam s remarks. PML-N officials tout Kulsoom s victory as proof that Nawaz remains popular with voters and say the closer margin is largely due to the strong showing by the two candidates backed by religious parties. One of the surprises of Monday s official results was the third-place finish of Shaikh Azhar Hussain Rizvi, an independent candidate backed by Tehreek-i-Labaik, a coalition of Islamist groups. The Labaik-backed candidate won 6 percent of the vote campaigning on a platform of support for Pakistan s strict blasphemy laws. His campaign posters praised executed killer Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard who assassinated Punjab s governor for suggesting the laws might be reviewed. After his execution, Qadri was hailed by some religious sects as a martyr for Islam. Yaqoob Sheikh, who was himself designated a terrorist by the United States in 2012, captured nearly 5 percent of the vote. Sheikh is backed by the new Milli Muslim League (MML) party that is loyal to Hafiz Saeed, who Washington accuses of being the mastermind behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people. A retired general and analysts have said that the MML - which has yet to be legally recognized, forcing Sheikh to appear on the ballot as an independent - was likely part of a mainstreaming project envisioned by the military to draw some militant groups into politics. The MML on Monday said it planned to contest another by-election in the northwestern city of Peshawar next month. Despite their relatively strong gains, neither the MML nor the Tehreek-i-Labaik is seen as having much chance of winning many seats in 2018. (Ths story has been refiled to add dropped word in paragraph 5)

U.S. cyber bill would shift power away from spy agencyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would require the U.S. National Security Agency to inform representatives of other government agencies about security holes it finds in software like the one that allowed last week’s “ransomware” attacks. Under former President Barack Obama, the government created a similar inter-agency review, but it was not required by law and was administered by the NSA itself. The new bill would mandate a review when a government agency discovers a security hole in a computer product and does not want to alert the manufacturer because it hopes to use the flaw to spy on rivals. It also calls for the review process to be chaired by the defense-oriented Department of Homeland Security rather than the NSA, which spends 90 percent of its budget on offensive capabilities and spying. Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced the legislation in the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Striking the balance between U.S. national security and general cyber security is critical, but it’s not easy,” said Senator Schatz in a statement. “This bill strikes that balance.” Tech companies have long criticized the practice of withholding information about software flaws so they can be used by government intelligence agencies for attacks. Hackers attacked 200,000 in more than 150 countries last week using a Microsoft Windows software vulnerability that had been developed by the NSA and later leaked online. Microsoft President Brad Smith harshly criticized government practices on security flaws in the wake of the ransomware attacks. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage,” Smith wrote in a blog post. Agencies like the NSA often have greater incentives to exploit any security holes they find for spying, instead of helping companies protect customers, cyber security experts say. “Do you get to listen to the Chinese politburo chatting and get credit from the president?” said Richard Clayton a cyber-security researcher at the University of Cambridge. “Or do you notify the public to help defend everyone else and get less kudos?” Susan Landau, a cyber security policy expert at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that in putting DHS in charge of the process, the new bill was an effort to put the process “into civilian control.” The new committee’s meetings would still be secret. But once a year it would issue a public version of a secret annual report. The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. says 'one China' policy should not be used as bargaining chipWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday insisted that Washington’s “one China” policy should not be used as a “bargaining chip” with Beijing after President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to be bound by its long-standing position that Taiwan is part of China. Signaling further resistance Trump will face in Washington if he tries to overturn a principle that has underpinned more than four decades of U.S.-China relations, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said he personally backed the “China policy” and no one should “leap to conclusions” that the president-elect would abandon it. “I do not respond to every comment by the president-elect because it may be reversed the next day,” McCain told Reuters when asked about Trump’s statement in an interview broadcast over the weekend. Trump set off a diplomatic firestorm when he told Fox News: “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.” This followed an earlier protest from China over the Republican president-elect’s decision to accept a telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Dec. 2. The issue is highly sensitive for China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, and Beijing expressed “serious concern” about Trump’s latest remarks.  It called the “one China” policy the basis for relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned against moves to damage China’s “core interests,” saying that “in the end, they are lifting a rock only to drop it on their feet.” Some U.S. analysts warn that Trump could provoke a military confrontation if he presses the Taiwan issue too far. Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business & Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington called Taiwan “the third rail of U.S.-China relations.” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States is committed to the “one China” principle and will not use the Taiwan issue to gain leverage in any dealings with Beijing. “The United States does not view Taiwan and our relationship with Taiwan as a bargaining chip,” he told a daily briefing, calling Taiwan a “close partner.” “And bargaining that away is not something that this administration believes is our best interest. “Disrupting this policy,” he said, “could have a disruptive effect on our ability to work with China in those areas where our interests do align. That reflects the high priority that China puts on the policy and on Taiwan.” While saying the “one China” policy should remain intact, McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an outspoken critic of Democratic President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, said that “somebody should hold China responsible” for its behavior with regard to Taiwan, Hong Kong, island building in the South China Sea and “propping up” North Korea. After Trump’s phone conversation with Taiwan’s president, the Obama administration said senior White House aides had spoken with Chinese officials to insist that Washington’s “one China” policy remained unchanged. China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary on Tuesday it was clear Trump did not understand the policy. “The one-China policy is the cornerstone for any country, including the United States, to engage with China diplomatically, and is simply non-negotiable: no exceptions,” Xinhua said. The State Department’s senior diplomat for Asia, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel, was due to speak to China’s ambassador to Washington on Monday, the State Department said. Trump has tempered his strong criticisms of China and call to Taiwan’s president by announcing plans last week to nominate a long-standing friend of Beijing, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, as the next U.S. ambassador to China. However, he is also considering John Bolton, a former Bush administration official who has urged a tougher line on Beijing, for the No. 2 job at the U.S. State Department, according to a source familiar with the matter. Bolton has said the next U.S. president should take bolder steps to halt China’ military aggressiveness in the South and East China seas and consider  a “diplomatic ladder of escalation” that could lead to restoring full diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.

Funding bill clears hurdle in HouseWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to extend funding for the U.S. government through Dec. 22 and avert agency shutdowns on Saturday cleared a procedural hurdle in the House of Representatives on Thursday, paving the way for a vote on passage later in the day. By a vote of 238-188, the House approved the rules for debating the stop-gap funding bill.

Spanish PM Rajoy to ask court to revoke Catalan referendum lawMADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Thursday he would ask Spain s constitutional court to revoke a referendum law passed on Wednesday by the Catalan parliament that sets the stage for a Oct. 1 vote on splitting from Spain. The law, passed by a majority of Catalan lawmakers, was unconstitutional, Rajoy told a news conference. Spain s state prosecutors office said on Thursday it would present criminal charges against leading members of the Catalan parliament for allowing Wednesday s parliamentary vote to go ahead.

SHIFTING PARADIGM: You’ll Only Understand Trump and Brexit If You Understand the Failure of Globalization21st Century Wire says It s hard to not to draw a comparison between the Brexit referendum and the stunning surprise victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election in America. Many now argue that both were a repudiation on globalization.Indeed, anxiety over the global economy as a whole contributed to 2016 s historic rejection of the status quo: big trade, big banks and Wall Street.Yesterday in his overseas speech, even President Obama acknowleged that the globalized policies of the world have absolutely contributed to a political upheaval that has given rise to Brexit vote and a Trump presidency: The current path of globalization demands a course correction, adding Any legislation that is proven flawed can be corrected through the process of democracy. Earlier this year, conservative leaning Washington Times discusssed the nature of falied policy that has led to such sluggish growth in the US over the past 7-8 years: The previously bullish Fed finally and openly acknowledged that sluggish growth is the long term new normal for America. Secular stagnation is here to stay. The growth rate has limped out of the 2008-09 recession at a 2 percent pace now for seven years. The Joint Economic Committee of Congress tells us a normal recovery gives us about 3.5 percent growth and the Reagan and JFK booms were closer to 4 percent. So the GDP today thanks to President Obama is about $2 to $3 trillion smaller than it should be. This is roughly the equivalent of losing the entire annual output of every business and worker in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana combined.Instead of speeding up to recover all this lost ground, we re decelerating. Growth was 1.4 percent in the 4th quarter of 2015. It was 0.8 percent in the first quarter of this year. The Fed now has downgraded growth now to less than 2 percent for the rest of 2016 down from an original forecast of 2.4 percent. One day after the US election, The Intercept s Glenn Greenwald (of Snowden fame) captured the frustartion that led to the Brexit vote and Trump s win. Here s a short passage from his piece: The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Only time will tell what the future holds for Brexit or Trump but for the moment, the voice of the everyday man has been heard loud and clear.More from Washington s Blog below (Image Source: Onmanorama). Washington s BlogTrumpTrump made rejection of globalization a centerpiece of his campaign. In his July 21st acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, he said:Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.The Boston Globe bannered this headline on Thursday: Trump won. Globalization lost. Now what? On election night, CNN s Jake Tapper explained that many Americans voted for Trump because they are sick of the income inequality, globalization, and politics-as-usual that the status quo have given us. He pointed out that only a handful of people have gotten rich off of globalization, and a lot of people have been left behind.Counterpunch wrote Friday:The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland.***Trump voters had several reasons to vote for Trump other than racism . Most of all, they want their jobs back, jobs that have vanished thanks to the neoliberal policy of transferring manufacturing jobs to places with low wages.BrexitSimilarly, Brexit was largely a vote against globalization.For example, the Guardian ran an article in June explaining, Brexit is a rejection of globalisation :Britain s rejection of the EU. This was more than a protest against the career opportunities that never knock and the affordable homes that never get built. It was a protest against the economic model that has been in place for the past three decades.***Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare states were all better protected in the heyday of nation states in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation. Unemployment across the eurozone is more than 10%. Italy s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the euro was created. Greece s economy has shrunk by almost a third.***Inevitably, there has been a backlash, manifested in the rise of populist parties on the left and right. An increasing number of voters believe there is not much on offer from the current system. They think globalisation has benefited a small privileged elite, but not them. They think it is unfair that they should pay the price for bankers failings. They hanker after a return to the security that the nation state provided, even if that means curbs on the core freedoms that underpin globalisation, including the free movement of people.***Torsten Bell, the director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, analysed the voting patterns in the referendum and found that those parts of Britain with the strongest support for Brexit were those that had been poor for a long time. The result was affected by deeply entrenched national geographical inequality , he said.There has been much lazy thinking in the past quarter of a century about globalisation. As Bell notes, it is time to rethink the assumption that a flexible globalised economy can generate prosperity that is widely shared. But What Do the Experts Say?Mainstream economists, organizations and politicians including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (and see this), McKinsey & Company and Obama now admit that globalization creates inequality. People worldwide are furious at runaway inequality and it s affecting elections globally.The Bank of International Settlements the Central Banks Central Bank says that financial globalization itself makes booms and busts far more frequent and destabilizing than they otherwise would be.The Economist pointed out in July:Most economists have been blindsided by the backlash [against globalization]. A few saw it coming. It is worth studying their reasoning .David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have documented how the costs of America s growing trade with China has fallen disproportionately on certain cities. And so on.Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York believes such costs perpetuate a cycle of globalisation. He argues that periods of global integration and technological progress generate rising inequality .Supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks both that big slices of society would feel left behind .The New York Times reported in March:Were the experts wrong about the benefits of trade for the American economy?***Voters anger and frustration, driven in part by relentless globalization and technological change [has made Trump and Sanders popular, and] is already having a big impact on America s future, shaking a once-solid consensus that freer trade is, necessarily, a good thing. The economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded trade is a double-edged sword, wrote Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.What seems most striking is that the angry working class dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.In a recent study, three economists David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn at the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson at the University of California, San Diego raised a profound challenge to all of us brought up to believe that economies quickly recover from trade shocks. In theory, a developed industrial country like the United States adjusts to import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that can successfully compete in global markets.They examined the experience of American workers after China erupted onto world markets some two decades ago. The presumed adjustment, they concluded, never happened. Or at least hasn t happened yet. Wages remain low and unemployment high in the most affected local job markets. Nationally, there is no sign of offsetting job gains elsewhere in the economy. What s more, they found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.In another study they wrote with Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from M.I.T., they estimated that rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs. These results should cause us to rethink the short- and medium-run gains from trade, they argued. Having failed to anticipate how significant the dislocations from trade might be, it is incumbent on the literature to more convincingly estimate the gains from trade, such that the case for free trade is not based on the sway of theory alone, but on a foundation of evidence that illuminates who gains, who loses, by how much, and under what conditions. Continue reading Washington s Blog here READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

Iran non-interference in Lebanon is key for regional stability: FrancePARIS (Reuters) - France s foreign ministry said on Monday it was an important condition for the stability of the region that Iran not interfere in Lebanon s domestic affairs. We wish that all those who exert an influence in Lebanon allow all the political actors in this country to exercise fully their responsibilities, foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily briefing. Mr Saad al-Hariri called on Iran yesterday to not interfere in the affairs of Lebanon and its neighbors. We believe that this is an important condition for the stability of the region.

Gym Employees Accuse Black Seahawks Star Of Trying To Rob Them (TWEETS)When 2014 Super Bowl champion Kam Chancellor isn t kicking butt for the Seattle Seahawks he is running fitness boot camps for women. So, when the star came across a recently closed gym in Redmond, Washington he decided that he wanted to buy it for his classes. Unfortunately, this curiosity resulted in the police being called and him being accused of trying to rob the place.Two female employees of the Redmond Athletic Club called the police when Chancellor looked through the window of the gym and tried to get some information about how to buy it. Seriously. Apparently nobody told Kam that he can t buy a business while black.The football player explained what happened on Twitter, Wednesday:The funniest thing just happened too me in Redmond. I went to go get info on a gym that was closed and 2 ladies called the cops on me Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016 They told the cops I was trying to rob the place because I was looking into the glass asking for help. I took a picture of the two employees Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016Good thing the cops know I m a good guy and stealing isn t in my blood. I work for everything I get Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016 No I was mad because all I wanted was a number to call and they waved me off like a fly without answering me https://t.co/eAJnjw3vJv Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016Yes two younger ladies. I took a picture of them calling the cops on me https://t.co/5qzWUpwirB Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016 I guess I won t put a gym in Redmond then. I m not qualified. I want to post her face so bad on the phone looking disgusted. Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016Although he doesn t tell us the race of the women who called the cops on him, another one of his tweets makes alludes them possibly being white. @djparker25: @Kam_Chancellor that s crazy bruh smh not all people are like that so I don t blame the world. I blame their parents Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016@Wizdom80@djparker25 true Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 3, 2016I only know of one race that is privileged and that is mine: Caucasians.There is no doubt in my mind that the women who called the police did so because they were scared of the big, scary black guy. If a white man of a smaller stature had looked in that window and motioned them for help there is little chance the cops would have been called.Thankfully, the police immediately recognized the Chancellor and he wasn t arrested or shot. We all know that in 2016 it isn t an uncommon thing to see African-Americans gunned down for absolutely no reason, so he s one lucky guy. Featured image via Instagram

Rights groups condemn Saudi arrests as crackdown on dissent(Reuters) - The campaign group Human Rights Watch on Friday condemned the arrest by Saudi authorities of some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists this week as a coordinated crackdown on dissent , and Amnesty International echoed the sentiment. The arrests were made after exiled opposition figures called for demonstrations following Friday s afternoon prayers, which did not appear to attract much support amid a heavy security deployment. Activists this week circulated on social media lists of people detained. They included prominent Islamist preacher Salman al-Awdah, as well as some people with no clear links to Islamist activity or obvious history of opposition. The detentions come amid widespread speculation, denied by officials, that King Salman, 81, intends to abdicate in favor of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed, who dominates economic, foreign and domestic policy. There are also growing tensions with Qatar over its alleged support of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which is listed by Riyadh as a terrorist organization. These apparently politically motivated arrests are another sign that Mohammed bin Salman has no real interest in improving his country s record on free speech and the rule of law, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. The New York-based group said the arrests fitted a pattern of human rights violations against peaceful activists and dissidents, including harassment, intimidation, smear campaigns, travel bans, detention and prosecution. Crown Prince Mohammed has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms. Critics say he is not doing enough to liberalize politics in a country where the king enjoys absolute authority. Amnesty International also denounced the crackdown, urging the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the detainees and give them access to families and lawyers. In recent years we cannot recall a week in which so many prominent Saudi Arabian figures have been targeted in such a short space of time, said Samah Hadid, the group s director of campaigns in the Middle East. It is clear that the new leadership under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is sending a chilling message: freedom of expression will not be tolerated, we are coming after you. A government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All public protests are banned in Saudi Arabia, as are political parties. Labor unions are illegal, the media are controlled and criticism of the royal family can lead to prison. Riyadh says it does not have political prisoners, but senior officials have said monitoring of activists is needed to maintain social stability. The al-Saud family has always regarded Islamist groups as the biggest internal threat to its rule over a country in which appeals to religious sentiment cannot be lightly dismissed and an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago killed hundreds. Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt and briefly held power there after the 2011 Arab Spring, represent an ideological threat to Saudi Arabia s dynastic system of rule. The Brotherhood-inspired Sahwa movement agitated in the 1990s to bring democracy to Saudi Arabia and criticized the ruling family for corruption, social liberalization and working with the West, including allowing U.S. troops into the kingdom during the 1991 Iraq war. The Sahwa were weakened by a mixture of repression and co-optation, but remain active. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport links with Qatar in June over its alleged support for Islamists including the Brotherhood a charge Doha denies. At a mosque in central Riyadh that protest organizers had identified as one of several potential gathering spots, the imam warned worshippers against demonstrating. All the groups that exist today and call for political action or aspire to rule they are all misguided, deviant groups headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, he said. Most people seemed to heed that message, with no demonstrations reported across the kingdom.

Senate Republican leader says still aiming for long-term government funding billWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday he hoped to reach agreement “in the next few days” on a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, saying it was too soon to talk about a short-term fix to avert a government shutdown at midnight on Friday. “We’re hoping to reach an agreement in the next few days on how to process the entire bill through September 30th,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. “I don’t want to speculate about whether that can actually clear this week.”

'I am sorry,' British PM May says of botched electionMANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said she was sorry her Conservative Party lost seats in June s snap election and pledged 10 billion pounds ($13.4 billion) of extra funding to help people buy new homes. May said she had listened to the message given by the election in which she lost her party s majority in parliament. Announcing changes that would make university graduates 30 pounds a week better off, May said the university fee repayment threshold would rise. ($1 = 0.7465 pounds)

Seth Meyers Just Banned Donald Trump From Appearing On His Show – It’s Absolutely Amazing (VIDEO)More and more people have had just about enough of Donald Trump s ridiculous shenanigans. Trump has been racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and has catered to groups that hate LGBT equality. He s a person who has no right running for President of the United States, not only because of his bigoted views, but because he has absolutely no experience whatsoever.With Donald Trump being so scrutinized by so many, including the press that has the freedom to ask him questions and report what he says, Trump has taken action against the press. He s been prohibiting news organizations from attending his events. An action that goes directly against the freedom of press listed in the United States Constitution. The latest publication Trump has gone after is the Washington Post.Now, taking action against Trump in the same regard, is Late Night host Seth Meyers. On his latest show, Meyers brilliantly went after Trump for his reaction to the Orlando shooting, but also stated: As for the Washington Post, we here at Late Night believe in freedom of the press and therefore have decided to stand in solidarity with them. So as long as the Washington Post is banned from Donald Trump s campaign, Donald Trump will be banned from ever coming on this show. Good on you, Seth. Hopefully that becomes a trend.Featured image via video screen capture

Indonesia to reopen Bali airport after closure due to volcanoDENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Bali airport will reopen on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, two days after a volcanic eruption spread ash across the island and forced the airport to close. The airport will reopen at 3 p.m. (0700 GMT)

Sanders disappointed after Trump pulls out of debateWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders expressed disappointment on Friday after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would not debate Sanders ahead of California’s June 7 primary. “I heard that he was going to debate me, then I heard that he was not going to debate me, then I heard that he was going to debate me. Now you’re telling me that he is not going to debate me. Well, you know, I hope that he changes his mind again,” Sanders said in a video clip posted on an ABC News Twitter account.

SUNDAY SCREENING: The Deep State: Hiding in Plain Sight (2014)Our weekly documentary screening curated by the editorial team at 21WIRE.Editor s Note: Although this is not an actual documentary film, this powerful interview segment is a must-see in order to grasp the concept of the Deep State in America, and further into the international arena. In this seminal interview segment, author Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member for 28 years, talks to veteran broadcaster Bill Moyers about Washington s shadow government now commonly referred to as the Deep State, where elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war, says Lofgren. Watch:Run time: 26 min Host: Bill Moyers Program: Moyers & Company Production: Public Affairs Television (2014)Also read Mike Lofgren s powerful essay, The Anatomy of the Deep State SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERESUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

WOW! HUNGARY and ISRAEL Just Labeled Hungarian Born-Jew George Soros An ENEMY OF THE STATE…Will The U.S. Follow?Hillary would never have labeled one of her largest donors, longtime friend, and the financier of violent anti-American protesters around the world an enemy of the state. But fortunately for America, Hillary s not our president. Fortunately for America, both the Senate and the House are controlled by Republicans who understand we have a lot to lose if they continue to sit back and let this radical billionaire throw hundreds of millions of dollars at these violent, anti-American groups. Soros goals are not consistent with those of our Founding Fathers. His agenda is counter to protecting our freedoms and defending our national security. It s time our legislators consider taking the same steps as Israel and Hungary to send George Soros a message that we consider him an enemy of the state, and that we re not going to just sit by and watch him force his radical agenda on America. Israel s foreign ministry has issued a statement denouncing U.S. billionaire George Soros, a move that appeared designed to align Israel more closely with Hungary ahead of a visit to Budapest next week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew who has spent a large part of his fortune funding pro-democracy and human rights groups, has repeatedly been targeted by Hungary s right-wing government, in particular over his support for more open immigration.In the latest case, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has backed a campaign in which Soros is singled out as an enemy of the state. Let s not allow Soros to have the last laugh say billboards next to a picture of the 86-year-old investor, a campaign that Jewish groups and others say foments anti-Semitism.Soros, who rarely addresses personal attacks against him, has not commented on the billboards. But Hungarian Jewish groups and Human Rights Watch, an organization partly funded by Soros, have condemned the campaign, saying it evokes memories of the Nazi posters during the Second World War . ReutersThere s one big problem with the statement by Soros Human Rights Watch group, Soros admitted he was no friend to the Jews during the Holocaust in a 1990 interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes . The interview was suspiciously scrubbed from the internet for some time, but has just recently resurfaced. Knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, Soros father, who was a successful lawyer, bribed a government official to take 14 year old George Soros in and say he was his Christian godson. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his appointed godfather around confiscating property from Jews. George admitted it wasn t difficult at all to take part in taking property from the Jews. Kroft asked Soros if it bothered him?Soros: It created no problem at all.Kroft: No feeling of guilt?Soros: No.Why should Israel tread lightly when it comes to this monster who had no feelings of guilt about taking property from fellow Jews during the Holocaust?Watch:Soros was born in Hungary, they are interestingly, the second nation to consider George Soros to be an enemy of the state. Fox News When Soros talks of chaos, it s a subject he knows well. The only question is his involvement.Most everywhere Soros, his foundations or his investment money has gone, trouble has followed.He s helped start revolutions, undermined national currencies and funded radicals around the world.Soros has been convicted of insider dealing in France and fined $3 million, fined another $2 million in his native Hungary.His foundations have been accused of shielding spies and breaking currency laws and his investing strategy has been targeted for harming several national currencies.That s not the story the broadcast networks have been telling about Soros for the past five years.There were 29 mentions of Soros during that time but only one gave any hint at trouble, and that was merely to mention he was still known as the man who broke the Bank of England. But ABC followed that description up with: That was all legal. Only a sex scandal with a 28-year-old Brazilian actress gave Soros any negative publicity at all.But there have been lots of negatives in Soros s past as he s spread his influence around the world. Soros wears criticism like a badge of honor. I have now come under attack in several countries: in Hungary from Hungarian nationalists; in Romania from the Vatra Romanesca; in Slovakia from the communist party newspaper Pravda; in the Soviet Union by the organ of the hard-liners Sovietskaia Russiya, he claims in Underwriting Democracy. Soros s Open Society Fund was created in 1979 as a charitable lead trust. Even its creator admitted his motives were basically selfish and he wanted a tax gimmick. He did it as a trust for his children While Soros has been known worldwide for his investment skills, he hasn t always managed to stay clear of the authorities.He was found guilty in France of an insider trading case about 20 years ago and has repeatedly failed at having that news pulled from his record.According to The New York Times, in September 2011, a French panel upheld his conviction because he had bought and sold shares of Soci t G n rale in 1988 with the knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. He was fined $3 million.His fund ran into problems in Hungary, where Soros was born and lived till his late teen years. At issue was how he handled an investment into the the country s largest bank : OTP. His fund was fined $2 million by Hungarian regulators last week for having manipulated OTP s stock price, wrote The New York Times in 2009.

NFL’S PHONY PATRIOTISM: US Defense Department Paid NFL DISGUSTING $4.5 Million For On-Field Flag Appearances…Welcome Home TributesEvery day, the NFL gives fans another reason to stop supporting them. Although the NFL agreed to refund a small portion of the money our Defense Department (US taxpayers) have paid them to show support for our military, it s the idea that Americans have been duped into believing it was something they did out of honor or reverence for our military. The NFL has reached a new low with their acceptance of players who are disrespecting our flag to promote Obama s race war while disallowing the Dallas Cowboys to honor the 5 police officers slain in their hometown by a Black Lives Matter terrorist. Don t forget, they also looked away when Cleveland Brown s player, Isaiah Crowell posted an Instagram picture of a cop with his neck being slit open. The NFL never said a word. They never even acknowledged what some considered to be a terrorist type threat to our law enforcement.In May 2016, the NFL announced that they would return more than $700,000 of taxpayers money that was paid to teams for sponsored military tributes.After being criticized for paid patriotism, in which money came out of the armed forces budget for various measures of public recognition during games, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league would pay that money back.In a letter written to Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain on Wednesday, and disclosed on Thursday, Goodell said that following an audited review of 100 marketing agreements from 2012 to 2015 by accounting firm Deloitte & Touche teams were deemed to have received $723,734 for acts of sponsored patriotism. Given the immense sacrifices made by our service members, it seems more appropriate that any organization with a genuine interest in honoring them, and deriving public credit as a result, should do so at its own expense and not at that of the American taxpayer, the report said. Americans deserve the ability to assume that tributes for our men and women in military uniform are genuine displays of national pride, which many are, rather than taxpayer-funded DOD marketing gimmicks. PGLast year, Flake and McCain disclosed that the U.S. Department of Defense had spent $5.4 million in contracts with 14 NFL teams from 2011 to 2014. Some of those contracts disclosed that payment was for on-field flag ceremonies and tributes to welcome home veterans. One team, the Atlanta Falcons, had made more than $1 million from the department over those four seasons.The National Guard spent $6.7 million on contracts with NFL teams from 2013 to 2015. Via: ESPNThere has never been a better time to boycott the NFL, their merchandise and any of their sponsors.

Factbox: Proposals of main parties in Honduras presidential electionTEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Hondurans vote on Sunday in a presidential election that many expect to result in a second term for the current U.S.-friendly leader, eight years after he supported a coup against a former president who also floated the idea of re-election. Polls suggest Juan Orlando Hernandez, of the center-right National Party, will clinch a divisive second term and see off television host Salvador Nasralla, who helms a broad left-right coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Below are the candidates main proposals: Juan Orlando Hernandez - A former head of Congress who studied at the State University of New York and Honduras military academy, the 49-year-old Hernandez enjoys good rapport with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and is seen as a reliable U.S. ally in Central America. - Hernandez has managed to lower the murder rate and raise growth, while expanding his influence into the furthest reaches of the Honduran government. - Critics say that Hernandez, who was born in a humble, rural family of 17 siblings, has stifled dissent and is seeking to consolidate power. U.S. government officials say they want him to quickly revitalize stalled legislation to place a cap on presidential limits and assuage fears he will not cede power. - With his slogan that Change has begun, and should continue, Hernandez says he will keep up his militarized fight against the gangs that have turned the Central American nation into one of the world s most violent. - Hernandez says a so-called Honduras 20/20 plan will help lure investment in textiles, call centers and car manufacturing and lift growth. Hernandez wants to push ahead with special economic zones, a project that has so far yielded few concrete results. He says his policies will create 600,000 new jobs in the next four years. Salvador Nasralla - A colorful 64-year-old sports and talent TV show host descended from Lebanese immigrants, Nasralla promises to put an end to years of violence, poverty and graft. - Nasralla s Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition includes the Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), which is controlled by ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, who many believe is the true force behind the coalition. - A non-traditional political figure who has benefited from his entertainment background to build support among those disenchanted by business-as-usual Honduran politics, Nasralla trailed Hernandez by 15 points in the last permitted poll before the election, which took place in September. - Nasralla says he will ask the United Nations to install an anti-graft body, similar to one operating in Guatemala, to probe and bring charges in corruption cases. Nasralla would maintain the Military Police, created by Hernandez, but wants to found a community police force to work in violent slums. He would also continue the purge of the national police, while hiring up to 25,000 new officers. - Plans for the economy are vague, but the coalition has proposed lowering sales tax and slashing a Hernandez-imposed corporate levy that has enraged the private sector. The Alliance has proposed a referendum on how the current Constitution should be rewritten, either by Congress or by a new national assembly. It also wants a referendum on stripping the powers of the Supreme Court, which it accuses of being pliant to Hernandez.

Dispatch from inside the conventions(Reuters) - Delegates at both the Republican and the Democratic conventions sported outrageous outfits - but the views from their respective gatherings were a study in contrast. Republican National Convention delegates in Cleveland last week embraced a freewheeling, policy-light lineup, reveling in messages of salvation from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s inner circle, while expressing their fears that America has become less safe. A man wearing an orange jumpsuit and Hillary Clinton mask told Reuters he had been asked to take pictures standing next to “hundreds” of convention-goers, while “lock her up” - a cry to imprison Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - became the crowd’s go-to chant. A woman wearing a red cape with “TRUMP” spelled out in twinkle lights happily posed for the dozens of passersby requesting photos. The few remaining, weary Ted Cruz supporters found a rallying cry in the former Republican presidential candidate’s refusal to endorse Trump, a moment of party discord that prompted security to escort Heidi Cruz out of the convention hall and away from irate, yelling Trump supporters. At this week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, erstwhile candidate Bernie Sanders worked to build a bridge over troubled waters (yes, Paul Simon performed the song of that name). At the end of a roll call of state delegations, he called for Clinton to be nominated by voice vote - a show of support and a bid for unity after a bitter primary campaign. The move prompted deafening cheers on the convention floor - as well as a boos from Sanders supporters, who, on occasion, could be seen angrily arguing with Clinton backers. And there were celebrities - actresses Eva Longoria, Lena Dunham, America Ferrera, Sigourney Weaver and Elizabeth Banks drew shrieks and cheers from the crowd. But Clinton’s convention was heavy on policy and calls to public service. Former President Bill Clinton received a rock star’s welcome before ticking off a list of his wife’s civic accomplishments. First lady Michelle Obama drove some members of a rapt audience to tears when she declared, “I wake up in a house built by slaves.” Reuters photographers caught up with several convention-goers, both Republican and Democrat, and asked “If you could speak to your nominee, What would you like them to know about your hopes for the future of America?” Here are some of their responses: “Thank you for having my back,” Sharon Jackson, a delegate from Alaska at the Republican convention, said, referring to Trump. Barbara Finger, a delegate from Wisconsin at the Republican conclave, also expressed gratitude to the New York businessman. “Keep going the way you are,” she said. “Make America great again.” Lavon Bracy, a Democratic delegate from Florida, expressed her support for Clinton at her party’s convention, emphasizing the importance of unity. She said she hopes, “We can all live together in harmony and understand that we have differences and appreciate those who are different.” Democratic delegate Alvin Peters of Panama City, Florida, said he, too, hoped for brighter days. “Spread the joy,” said Peters. “Dispel the doom and gloom.”  Reuters photo slideshow: reut.rs/2aAmRRd

White House seeks $44 billion hurricane aid, far short of requestsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday said it had asked Congress for $44 billion in supplemental disaster assistance to help those hurt by recent hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands, far short of the aid some officials have called for. The White House said it expected to seek additional funds after a fuller analysis. U.S. Representative Frank Pallone and Senator Ron Wyden, both Democrats, called the request “a dereliction of duty by the Trump administration to American citizens in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that need our help. “This woefully inadequate funding request does not provide the necessary resources required to properly respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” they added. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello asked for $94.4 billion to rebuild the U.S. territory’s infrastructure. Texas was seeking $61 billion and Florida had asked for $27 billion. The $44 billion would be in addition to about $50 billion Congress previously approved for hurricane and disaster relief. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan that the $44 billion “does not represent the final request” for assistance for the victims, especially in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where needs were still being assessed. “At this time, the administration is requesting an additional fiscal year 2018 funding in the amount of $44 billion and the necessary authorities to address ongoing recovery efforts,” Mulvaney said in the letter. The administration also wants Congress to approve new tax relief for victims of recent California wildfires, which mirror what Congress awarded recently to hurricane victims. The White House also wants to make houses of worship eligible for disaster relief funding. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, on Thursday dismissed the latest request as “wholly inadequate” for his state. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders defended the request. “Up until this point Texas has not put any state dollars into this process. We feel strongly that they should step up and play a role and work with the federal government in this process. We did a thorough assessment and that was completed and this was the number that we put forward to Congress today,” she said. She said the new request “primarily addresses Texas and Florida Those storms took place ahead of Puerto Rico. The assessment for Puerto Rico hasn’t been completed yet. Once that’s done, we fully anticipate that there will be additional requests at that time.”

France, Germany want Iran to reverse ballistic missile programPARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany agree that Iran must reverse its ballistic missile program and end its hegemonic temptations across the Middle east, the French foreign minister said on Monday. We also have the same view on the necessity for Iran to go back on its ballistic missile program and its hegemonic temptations, Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a news conference alongside his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel.

Democrats pick Perez to lead party against TrumpATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. Democrats elected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez as chairman on Saturday, choosing a veteran of the Obama administration to lead the daunting task of rebuilding the party and heading the opposition to Republican President Donald Trump. Members of the Democratic National Committee, the administrative and fundraising arm of the party, picked Perez on the second round of voting over U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, a liberal from Minnesota. Following one of the most crowded and competitive party leadership elections in decades, Perez faces a challenge in unifying and rejuvenating a party still reeling from the Nov. 8 loss of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He immediately made Ellison his deputy. After losing the presidency and failing to recapture majorities in Congress, party leaders are anxious to channel the growing grassroots resistance to Trump into political support for Democrats at all levels of government across the country. “We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance,” Perez, a favorite of former Obama administration officials, told DNC members. He promised to lead the fight against Trump and change the DNC’s culture to make it a more grassroots operation. Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants who was considered a potential running mate for Clinton, overcame a strong challenge from Ellison and prevailed on a 235-200 second-round vote. Ellison, who is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, was backed by liberal leader U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The showdown between candidates backed by the establishment and progressive wings of the party echoed the bitter 2016 primary between Clinton and Sanders, a rift Democrats will try to put behind them as they turn their focus to fighting Trump. Those divisions persisted through the months-long race for chair, as many in the party’s liberal wing were suspicious of Perez’s ties to the establishment and some Democrats raised questions about possible anti-Semitism in Ellison’s past. Some Ellison supporters chanted “Not big money, party for the people” after the result was announced. But both Perez and Ellison moved quickly to bring the rival factions together. At Perez’s urging, the DNC suspended the rules after the vote and appointed Ellison the deputy chairman of the party. “I am asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez,” Ellison told DNC members after the vote. “We don’t have the luxury, folks, to walk out of this room divided.” Perez said the party would come together. “We are one family, and I know we will leave here united today,” Perez said. “A united Democratic Party is not only our best hope, it is Donald Trump’s nightmare.” Trump took a dig at Perez and Democrats in a tweet offering his congratulations on the election. “I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!” Trump said. Perez and Ellison wore each other’s campaign buttons and stood shoulder-to-shoulder at a news conference after the vote. Perez said the two had talked “for some time” about teaming up, and Ellison said they had “good synergy.” “We need to do more to collaborate with our partners in the progressive movement,” Perez said, adding he and Ellison would look for ways to “channel this incredible momentum” in the protests against Trump and against Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan. Sanders issued a statement congratulating Perez and urging changes at the DNC. “It is imperative that Tom understands that the same-old, same-old is not working,” Sanders said. “We must open the doors of the party to working people and young people in a way that has never been done before.” The election offered the DNC a fresh start after last year’s forced resignation of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who stepped aside when the release of hacked emails appeared to show DNC officials trying to help Clinton defeat Sanders in the primaries. Both Perez and Ellison have pledged to focus on a bottom-up reconstruction of the party, which has lost hundreds of statehouse seats under Obama and faces an uphill task in trying to reclaim majorities in Congress in next year’s midterm elections. Perez said he would redefine the role of the DNC to make it work not just to elect Democrats to the White House but in races ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Senate, pledging to “organize, organize, organize.” “I recognize I have a lot of work to do,” he said. “I will be out there listening and learning in the weeks ahead.” Perez fell one vote short of the simple majority of 214.5 votes needed for election in the first round of voting, getting 213.5 votes to Ellison’s 200. Also on the first ballot were four other candidates — Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown, election lawyer Peter Peckarsky, and activists Jehmu Greene and Sam Ronan. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, withdrew just before the voting, while Brown, Greene and Ronan dropped out after the first round.

Justice Department, FBI resist lawmaker demands for 'Trump dossier' files: officialsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI are resisting demands from a Republican lawmaker to hand over documents about a former British spy’s dossier on purported Russian support for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, because the FBI has its own open criminal investigation, officials said. The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas in August seeking “any and all documents” about both agencies’ dealings with former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, according to a letter seen by Reuters from committee chairman Devin Nunes, a Trump supporter. Steele compiled the so-called Trump dossier, which Trump was told by FBI director James Comey contained salacious material about the businessman-turned president. Trump and his associates have said the dossier’s contents were false. Law enforcement and congressional officials said that the Justice Department and the FBI were reluctant to comply with the demand for documents as the FBI had its own probe, under the supervision of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, into U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign to tilt the November election in Trump’s favor. Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling and Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials. Two officials said Nunes met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein behind closed doors on Thursday to discuss the subpoenas. “The Deputy Attorney General is meeting with Nunes as part of an ongoing negotiation over what information DOJ will provide or how it will be provided,” a Justice Department official said. The FBI declined to comment on anything to do with Nunes’ request. A spokesman for Nunes declined to comment. According to a Sept. 1 letter Nunes sent to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the subpoenas demand that the department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation produce all documents related to their “relationship” with Steele and the “so-called ‘Trump Dossier”. Such documents, the letter said, would include any payments the FBI made to Steele, and any efforts the government made to corroborate the contents of Steele’s reports. Sessions recused himself earlier this year from the Russia investigation. Nunes publicly recused himself from leading the Russia probe in April following a secret visit he paid to White House officials. Democrats on the committee said Republicans issued the subpoenas in an attempt to discredit Steele. Republicans say it is important to understand the genesis of the dossier and whether it was created to sabotage Trump during his successful campaign for president. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee has also been battling with the Justice Department for months over its request to interview two FBI officials about Trump’s dismissal in May of Comey as FBI chief, according to letters from the committee and the department. The department twice refused to allow them to testify, according to the letters. On Sept. 22, it agreed that it would be “appropriate” for the officials to testify provided that it would be in a classified setting and did not interfere with Mueller’s inquiry. The Senate panel’s chairman, Charles Grassley, had told reporters on Sept. 20 that the committee had begun drafting subpoenas to compel the testimony. In another letter dated Sept. 27, the conditions of the testimony still appeared to be in dispute.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS Ends #PieGate…Makes April Ryan Eat “Humble” Pie [Video]When CNN White House correspondent April Ryan challenged Sarah Sanders pie making skills during the Thanksgiving holiday (see below), Sarah was determined to prove she actually makes pecan pies that look that good.Fast forward: Sarah trolled April with a tweet showing the pie-making ingredients:Ingredients all mixed up and pies in the oven! @AprilDRyan let me know if you need further documentation #piegate pic.twitter.com/OVYLg1gBgO Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sarah has handled this with great humor and grace: @PressSec is a TRUE role model Beautiful, Intelligent, witty & talented! Just like dad, @GovMikeHuckabee you bring us class, love & hope. This looks amazing Sarah! #SarahHuckabeeSanders#IAlwaysStandWithSarah#WHPressCorpsPotluck#PieGate NO @AprilDRyan#MAGA pic.twitter.com/pT0SmXKqBy FeistyChristine (@FeistyCovfefe) December 14, 2017So today, Sarah brought the cooked pies to give to April We call that Humble Pie While all indications point to extensive @FBI and DOJ POLITICAL CORRUPTION, the Media and @AprilDRyan are focused on #piegate, and questioning whether @PressSec Sarah Sanders can make homemade Chocolate pecan pie pic.twitter.com/hFiF83jEuP Boston Bobblehead (@DBloom451) December 14, 2017Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shares home made pecan pies with April and the press. #piegate pic.twitter.com/Fn7xQRp8pB TrumpSoldier (@DaveNYviii) December 14, 2017HOW PIEGATE STARTED:CNN political analyst just spent her Thanksgiving Day so consumed with hate for President Trump s White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that she removed any doubt her Twitter followers may have had about the possibility of having an objective bone in her body.CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan suggested, without any evidence, Friday that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders actually didn t actually cook the pecan pie Sanders said she did.Here is Sanders tweet that got under April Ryan s skin:I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan is frequently praised by liberals for being a nuisance in the White House press briefing room, but she failed to present any evidence Friday, except for the claims of random Twitter users, that Sanders faked the pie. Ryan did not respond to this reporter when asked for proof.A reverse image search did not find any other pictures of the pecan pie that Sanders posted.The White House press secretary responded to Ryan s criticism and said that she will make the journalist a pie of her own.-Daily CallerDon t worry @AprilDRyan because I m nice I ll bake one for you next week #RealPie #FakeNews https://t.co/5W3mGbKs4J Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 24, 2017While hundreds of liberal Twitter users jumped on Ryan s thread, as a way to drum up hate for the brilliant and witty conservative Press Secretary, Sanders definitely got her fair share of support. Conservative actor James Woods didn t make any secret about how he is thankful on Thanksgiving Day for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. One final reason to be thankful today: @SarahHuckabee She is the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. The #CNN and other liberal minions melt before her intelligence, her wit, and her sheer fortitude like snowflakes in the desert. James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 24, 2017Twitter user, Vanessa Vega nailed it with her tweet in response to Sanders reply to Ryan s ridiculous claim:It burns them up. That a graceful intelligent woman like you holds the WH positions, rocks at it, is an amazing mother and baked a pie during a traditional American Holiday. keep doing you @PressSec !! We are grateful for you & the haters are entertaining to watch Vanessa Vega (@EscbrRoX2017) November 25, 2017

Five migrants die when boat sinks, Libyan coast guard and German NGO blame each otherTRIPOLI (Reuters) - At least five African migrants died and more were missing off western Libya on Monday after a boat carrying about 140 people capsized and then some migrants refused rescue by the Libyan coast guard and tried instead to swim to a German rescue vessel. The migrants rubber boat overturned some 30 miles off the Libyan coast, said Libyan officials and rescue workers in Tripoli to where the coast guard brought some 45 survivors. A video obtained by Reuters showed how, during the rescue operation, some migrants tried jumping off the Libyan patrol boat which had rescued them to reach a ship of Seawatch, a German non-governmental organization, a few meters away. Some screamed to be allowed to leave the Libyan boat as the German vessel came closer. The Libyans tried to discourage the migrants from trying to reach the German boat, Seawatch said. The incident sparked mutual recrimination by Seawatch and the Libyan coast guard. At least five migrants had died, including a toddler, due to the violent and reckless behavior of (the) Libyan coast guards, Seawatch said on its Twitter feed, adding that 58 had been rescued. The so-called Libyan Coastguard forced as many as they could into their vessel to take them back to Tripoli, the German group added. The Libyan coast guard said an unknown number of people had died after their inflatable boat had sunk and Abu Ajala Amer Abdelbari, a coast guard commander, said the German NGO had undermined its rescue operations by approaching its boat. The Seawatch was approaching while we were rescuing migrants, he said. This was encouraging the migrants to swim to the Seawatch and a (nearby) French navy ship. The survivors brought to Tripoli were from West African countries including Nigeria and Senegal. I wanted to reach Italy. I don t know what to do now, said Dora Onoruyi, a 23-year old arts student from the southern Nigerian city of Benin known as hub for human traffickers to smuggle women to Italy where they often end up as prostitutes. I see no future in Nigeria, there are no jobs, she said, standing next to a group of weeping Nigerian survivors. Libya is the main departure point for migrants trying to travel by boat to Europe. But numbers crossing to Italy have fallen sharply since July due to a drop in people smuggling and increased activity by Libya s European-backed coastguard.

Former Trump Staffer Suing After Campaign Director Pulled Gun On Him (IMAGES)A former staffer of Donald Trump s presidential campaign is currently suing the campaign for its disastrous handling (or lack of handling) a deadly situation involving a gun. This comes just two days after Trump called for Second Amendment people to shoot and kill Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.According to the suit filed yesterday by Vincent Bordini in Mecklenburg County Superior Court in North Carolina, Bordini is suing the campaign for its inaction over a situation in which former N.C. campaign director Earl Phillip produced a pistol, put his right index finger on the trigger, and drove the barrel into Vincent s knee cap while the two men were in Phillip s jeep.The incident happened on February 13, and the complaint reads: Phillip pushed the barrel into Vincent s knee. The barrel s pressure crinkled Vincent s blue jeans. Phillip ominously stared sidewise at Vincent while driving the Jeep down the road and the barrel into Vincent. Vincent froze. Phillip s gun was loaded and the safety was off. A bump in the road would likely result in a bullet hole, and worse, in Vincent s knee. After this incident, Bordini had gone straight to Trump s regional director to report the incident, and that s when the director told Bordini that he d also experienced similar threatening behavior from Phillip. Desperate for a solution to this terrifying situation, Bordini went even higher up the chain and tried to report the incident to Stuart Jolly, Trump s national field director. Despite all of the evidence against Phillip, nothing happened. Still determined to be heard, Bordini notified Trump s then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski about this incident. Once again, no action was taken by the Trump campaign and Phillip continued to work on the campaign. Bordini decided to have faith that the matter would be straightened out with time. According to the suit, Bordini was a passionate Donald J. Trump supporter. He decided that putting his head down and soldiering on was the best thing he could do for Mr. Trump. He had faith the Trump campaign would handle the situation internally. But once again nothing came of Bordini s complaints and less than a month later, Bordini resigned on March 12. Bordini is suing for assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress in the suit.You can read the court document below:Featured image via Richard Ellis / Getty Images

McCain calls on Trump to back up wire-tapping claimWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain on Monday called for President Donald Trump to release any evidence supporting his claim the Obama administration wiretapped him while probing Russia’s influence in the 2016 election. “I think the president of the United States, if he has any information that would indicate that his predecessor wiretapped Trump Tower, then he should come forward with that information. The American people deserve it,” McCain, a Republican from Arizona, told Reuters. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican lawmaker who heads the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CBS in an interview on Monday that he had “not seen anything directly that would support what the president has said.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who heads the Senate Judiciary subcommittee looking into allegations Russia meddled in the election, said the panel would be asking both Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and the Justice Department whether he had told the law enforcement agency this weekend to reject Trump’s wire-tapping claim. The White House said on Monday that Trump still has confidence in Comey despite his assertiveness in challenging Trump’s claim that the administration of former President Barack Obama had wiretapped him. Asked whether Trump still had confidence in Comey, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer said, “There’s nothing that I have been told by him that would lead me to believe that anything is different than what it was prior.” He was “almost 100 percent certain” Trump had not spoken to Comey since the Republican president made the allegation on Twitter on Saturday. “I’m not aware that that occurred,” Spicer told reporters. But, when asked during an early-morning interview on Monday with ABC’s “Good Morning America” whether Trump accepted Comey’s assertion, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I don’t think he does.” The FBI declined to comment on Comey’s communications. Trump has given no evidence for his claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped. The allegation is the latest twist in a controversy over ties between Trump associates and Russia that has dogged the early days of his presidency. The wiretapping allegation hit U.S. stocks on Monday. Some investors worried that the affair could distract Trump from his economic agenda of introducing tax cuts and simplifying regulations that has powered a record-setting rally on Wall Street since the election. The lack of detail on Trump’s proposals, his isolationist stance and setbacks in filling his Cabinet have made investors question whether the post-election rally has run its course. Democrats accused Trump of making the wiretapping claim to try to distract from controversy about possible links to Russia. His administration is facing FBI and congressional investigations into contacts between members of his campaign team and Russian officials. The White House has asked the Republican-controlled Congress to examine, as part of an ongoing congressional probe into Russia’s influence on the election, whether the Obama administration abused its investigative authority.

LIBERAL TEACHER’S Social Media Message Goes VIRAL: “Lots of white trump supporters in Las Vegas” Asks Liberals To “Pray Only Trumptards Died”Anyone who is not yet convinced that liberalism is a mental disorder hasn t been on social media since President Trump s inauguration. Every day the hateful rhetoric is ramped up by liberals who are no longer able to function in everyday society since they ve been afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome.Hollywood celebrities are holding up severed heads of our President. Has been pop-stars like Madonna say things like they d like to blow up the White House. Black Lives Matter has inspired an entire league of overpaid professional NFL athletes to turn what was a movement against our brave law enforcement officers into an anti-American, anti-Trump movement. Only two days ago on the SNL Resistance show, Michael Che called President Trump a cheap cracker .This tweet by a woman who claims to be a teacher, mother, sister and woman may not even come as a surprise to anyone who follows the hatred vitriol the left spews every day on social media. Sadly, this woman didn t even have the common courtesy to keep her disgusting hate for anyone who doesn t agree with her politics in her shallow little head.Ann#TheResistance has deleted her Twitter account. If anyone knows this woman, it would be great if you could contact the school where she works, as it appears she is not stable enough to be left alone with children who may hold opposing political views.

Was Gaddafi Right About JFK?The late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi remarked before his death about what he believed was an overriding reason for the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy in 1963. His conclusion as shocking as it was orphic. Watch this video montage which recounts some of the key moments and evidentiary points in what remains one of the biggest unsolved political mysteries in modern history.. READ MORE JFK NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire JFK FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

WOW! HILLARY’S GOT GOVERNOR OF IOWA Shakin’ In His Boots: Here’s Why He’s Afraid Of A Clinton Loss There [Video]Wow!Hillary s got the governor of Iowa shaking in his boots..Asked by Tucker Carlson if he s worried about a Clinton loss: She s vindictive!