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U.S. President Donald Trump said he will meet on Tuesday with the Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, to discuss keeping the government open but cited differences with them. "Meeting with "Chuck and Nancy" today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don't see a deal!" Trump said in a Twitter post.

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21st Century Wire says The business of defense.In order to sustain mammoth defense sector based in North America, the U.S. relies on international procurement and sales of both new and close-out military industrial goods.Although a relatively small country in size, Lebanon is a key position on the Middle East chessboard, and could one day become an emerging military market for US defense corporations. In Washington DC, however, the topic of US military aid the Lebanon is a relatively hushed affair because of the Israeli Lobby's influence over US lawmakers. Technically, Israel and its neighbor Lebanon aew still at war, so any US funds allocated to the Lebanese Armed Forces is seen as an affront to Tel Aviv.In _NUMBER_, the US awarded _CUR_156 million in aid to Lebanon which is money that Lebanon would be required to spend exclusively with US corportions, as per the usual arrange with all tied US aid .Here are the'specs of Lebanon's defense orders from US firms Boiling Frogs Post Researcher Christian Sorensen analyzes weapon sales from the U.S. war industry to the Lebanese armed forces. U.S. Foreign Military Sales to Lebanon are publicly available on the U.S. Department of Defense website. FMS to Lebanon involve: aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, communications, small arms & light weapons, ground vehicles, water craft, and foreign liaison administration. Orbital ATK: _NUMBER_ May _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ Jan _NUMBER_ ATSC: _NUMBER_ Dec _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ July _NUMBER_ Textron: _NUMBER_ March _NUMBER_ Northrop Grumman : _NUMBER_ July _NUMBER_ Sierra Nevada: _NUMBER_ October _NUMBER_ Boeing : _NUMBER_ Sept _NUMBER_ Harris Corporation: _NUMBER_ Sept _NUMBER_ Colt: _NUMBER_ May _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ Aug _NUMBER_ Hellfire Systems : _NUMBER_ Dec _NUMBER_ Raytheon: _NUMBER_ Sept _NUMBER_ Corporations providing crew served weapon gear: _NUMBER_ May _NUMBER_ Medico Industries: _NUMBER_ March _NUMBER_ AM General: _NUMBER_ July _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ Sept _NUMBER_ Maritime Security Strategies: _NUMBER_ Jan _NUMBER_ Corporations providing liaison tech/admin support: _NUMBER_ July _NUMBER_ READ MORE LEBANON NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Lebanon Files

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There has been a national uproar over HB2 ever since North Carolina Republicans passed it into law last month. The law allows business owners to discriminate against LGBT customers and employees under the guise of religious freedom, including transgender people, whom Republicans claim are a threat to women and children in bathrooms despite the fact that there have been no instances of a transgender person using protections to defend sexually assaulting a woman or child in a bathroom.What HB2 has done is cause an all-out revolt against the'state by lawmakers, corporations, small businesses, activists, and entertainers. Business projects are being halted and concerts are being cancelled, causing a loss of potential jobs and needed boosts to local economies.And it is about to get even worse as North Carolina now faces the loss of millions of federal dollars because the Department of Justice has sent a letter to Governor Pat McCrory informing him that HB2 violates the Civil Rights Act.According to the Charlotte Observer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta found that the bigoted law violated Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Title VII says employers may not discriminate against people. And Title IX says schools cannot discriminate against people based on sex.Gupta and the DOJ then gave Governor McCrory until May 9th to respond to the letter by confriming that the'state will comply with federal law and dump HB2.Here's the letter via the Charlotte Observer: The Department of Justice has determined that, as a result of compliance with and implementation of NC House Bill2, both you and the'state of NC are in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 0f _NUMBER_ Title VII prohibits an employer from discriminating against an individual on the basis of sex and from otherwise resisting the full enjoyment of Title VII rights .Federal courts and administrative agencies have applied Title VII to discrimination against transgender individuals based on sex, including gender identity .Access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment. Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII HB _NUMBER_ is facially discriminatory against transgender employees on the basis of sex because it treats transgender employees, whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, as defined by HB2, differently from similarly situated non transgender employees Based upon the above, we have concluded that in violation of Title VII, the'state is engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of Title VII rights by employees of public agencies Please advise the department, therefore, no later than the close of business on May _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, whether you will remedy these violations of Title VII including by confirming that the'state will not comply with or implement HB2 .We further inform you that that today the department sent letters addressed to the NC Department of Public Safety and the University of NC similarly notifying them of our conclusion that they have engaged in violations of Title VII as well as violations of Title IX. If Republicans refuse to back down, they risk costing their state nearly _CUR_1 billion in federal education funding alone, which would be a devastating blow to North Carolina.Here's a helpful video about HB2 via the Charlotte Observer as well:Clearly, Governor McCrory and his Republican colleagues seriously need to repeal this discriminatory law or facs serious backlash on a level that will likely spur voters to throw them out of office during the next statewide election, and that's assuming voters haven't already decided to do so.Featured image via Wikimedia

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Slovenian President Borut Pahor will face a second-round election on Nov. _NUMBER_ after he fell short of a majority in Sunday's first round, as he tries to win a second five-year mandate. With _NUMBER_ percent of the vote counted, according to the State Election Commission, Pahor had _NUMBER_ percent of the vote. In next month's runoff, he will face Marjan Sarec, the mayor of the city of Kamnik, who took _NUMBER_ percent. Turnout reached _NUMBER_ percent. The result contradicted exit polls by TV Slovenia that showed Pahor winning in the first round. In the second round anything is possible, although Pahor is a big favorite, Peter Jancic, the editor of political website Spletni Casopis told Reuters. Although the office is mostly ceremonial, the president leads the army and also nominates several top officials, including the central bank governor. Most of his nominations have to be confirmed by parliament. The vote amounted to a warning for Prime Minister Miro Cerar and his Party of Modern Centre before the general election due next June or July. Its candidate, Education Minister Maja Makovec Brencic, took only _NUMBER_ percent of the vote and came seventh out of nine candidates. SMC will surely have a lot to show at parliamentary election, Cerar told TV Slovenia. We have a lot of ideas for the future. Pahor, _NUMBER_, who ran as an independent candidate, is a former long-time leader of the center-left Social Democrats. He told reporters he will focus on connecting people, cooperation, political stability and security if he wins in the second round. He was Slovenia's prime minister from _NUMBER_ to _NUMBER_, the years that led to the worst financial crisis in Slovenia's history. In _NUMBER_, the country only narrowly avoided an international bailout for its banks. A former fashion model, he is also known as the king of the Instagram , for posting photos on Instagram showing him in his official duties but also in various sports activities. Sarec, _NUMBER_, is not affiliated with parliamentary parties but is running as a candidate of his own non-parliamentary, center-left party, Lista Marjana Sarca. He is a former actor. I am happy about this result, which shows that us mayors do a lot for people at the local level and are working hard, he said.

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A _NUMBER_-year-old former paramedic at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp is no longer fit to stand trial due to his dementia, a spokesman for the court said on Tuesday, bringing to an end one of Germany's last prosecutions linked to the Holocaust. Hubert Zafke worked as a paramedic in Auschwitz for one month starting on Aug. _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_. He stood accused of being an accessory to the murder of at least _NUMBER_ people at the concentration and extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. During his time at Auschwitz, at least _NUMBER_ deportation trains arrived there from places as far away as Lyon, Vienna and Westerbork in the Netherlands. Although Zafke was not accused of having been directly involved in any killings, the prosecution's office said he was aware of the camp's function as a facility for mass murder. The trial against Zafke began in the northeastern town of Neubrandenburg in _NUMBER_ but was repeatedly delayed due to his ill health. Germany had faced criticism for not prosecuting those who were small cogs in the Nazi machine and did not actively take part in the killing of _NUMBER_ million Jews during the Holocaust. That criticism has abated thanks to many recent trials and convictions, such as the _NUMBER_ conviction of Sobibor extermination camp guard John Demjanjuk, which gave prosecutors new legal means to investigate suspects under accessory to murder charges. Former Auschwitz guard Reinhold Hanning and Oskar Groening, known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz , have also been convicted of complicity in mass murder in recent years. Another case against a woman who worked as a radio operator at Auschwitz was dropped last year after a court in Kiel ruled she was unfit to stand trial.

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About five million people in Kurdish-held areas of northern Iraq will be summoned to take part in a non-binding referendum on independence from Iraq on Monday. They will be asked to tick a yes/no box next to this question: Do you want the Kurdistan region and the Kurdish areas outside the region's administration to become an independent state? The Kurds are the largest ethnic group left stateless when Britain and France, the colonial powers which won World War One, carved up the Ottoman empire. The region's roughly _NUMBER_ million ethnic Kurds were left scattered, mainly over four countries: Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. All of them suffered persecution and were often denied the right to speak their language. Those in Iraq were uprooted under Saddam Hussein's regime and suffered an attack using chemical weapons. The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq says the Shi ite ruled central government in Baghdad has failed to respect autonomy established after the _NUMBER_ overthrow of Saddam Hussein in a U.S.-led invasion. The KRG says the vote acknowledges the Kurds crucial contribution confronting Islamic State after it overwhelmed the the Iraqi army in _NUMBER_ and seized control of a third of Iraq. WHAT S THE LIKELY OUTCOME AND WHAT S THE NEXT MOVE: The outcome is likely to be a comfortable yes . The KRG, led by Massoud Barzani, plans to use the vote as a legitimate mandate to press for negotiations with Baghdad and neighboring countries to achieve independence. Baghdad thinks the vote could lead to a messy breakup of Iraq at a time when it is struggling with reconstruction and the return of refugees. It offers talks to resolve disputes over land, energy and power sharing, including the status of the multi-ethnic oil region of Kirkuk. Iraq's powerful neighbors fear separatist contagion for their own Kurdish populations. Turkey is home to the largest Kurdish minority. It has been fighting Kurdish insurrection in its south-east since _NUMBER_. Iran's Kurds are close culturally to Iraq's Kurds and they speak the same Kurdish language. Tehran is also close to the Shi ite political parties who have been ruling Iraq or holding key security or government positions since _NUMBER_. Syria is embroiled in a civil war in which its own Kurds are pressing for self-administration. About everyone, including the United States and United Nations who fear a destabilization of Iraq while the war with Islamic State is not yet over. WHY OIL-RICH KIRKUK IS EMERGING AS A FLASHPOINT: Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city. It lies outside the recognized Kurdish region and is home to Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs and Assyrian Christians. It sits on susbtantial oil reserves and its crude is exported through a pipeline to the Mediterranean that crosses KRG territory and Turkey. If Turkey decides to close the pipeline, it would deprive the KRG government in Erbil of most its hard currency income. Iraqi Kurdistan produces around _NUMBER_ bpd of crude from its fields, including around _NUMBER_ bpd from the disputed areas of Kirkuk. The region's production volumes represent _NUMBER_ percent of total Iraqi output and around _NUMBER_ percent of global oil production. The KRG aspires to raise production to over _NUMBER_ million bpd by the end of this decade. Kurdish oil production has been dominated by mid-sized oil firms such as Genel, DNO, Gulf Keystone and Dana Gas. Major oil firms such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Rosneft also have projects in Kurdistan but they are mostly at an exploration stage. Russia's state oil major Rosneft, however, has lent over _CUR_1 billion to the KRG guaranteed by oil sales and committed a total of _CUR_4 billion to various projects in Kurdistan. Trading houses Vitol, Glencore, Trafigura and Petraco have lent a total of _CUR_2 billion to Kurdistan guaranteed by oil sales while Turkey has also provided a total of _CUR_1.5 billion to support Erbil in the past two years. All registered residents of the Kurdish-held region in northern Iraq, Kurds and non-Kurds, are eligible to vote. The Kurdish-held regions include those inside the official boundaries of the KRG and surrounding areas that Peshmerga fighters seized in the course of the war on Islamic State. Kirkuk lies outside the KRG and is also claimed by Baghdad. Internally displaced people from the disputed territories will be allowed to vote. Iraq's Kurdish diaspora will also be allowed to submit electronic ballots on Sept. _NUMBER_ and _NUMBER_. The United Nations opposes the referendum and says it will not participate in the process.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's watchdog is expanding a review of administrator Scott Pruitt's frequent travels to his home state Oklahoma to include more recent trips taken on military and charter flights, according to a memo seen on Friday. The Office of Inspector General had been investigating the "frequency, cost and extent" of Pruitt's travels to Oklahoma through July _NUMBER_, and will now expand the "active audit" to include all travel, including the use of private and military flights he has taken up to Sept. _NUMBER_. The expanded review coincides with heightened scrutiny surrounding the travels of President Donald Trump's cabinet officials with reports that some have spent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for non-commercial flights. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned last week over his use of costly private charter planes for government business. The Interior Department's own inspector general last week confirmed it also opened an investigation into travels by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke after receiving numerous complaints about his use of three chartered flights, including one on an aircraft owned by an oil and gas executive. Energy Secretary Rick Perry also used a private charter flight last week, Reuters reported. The flight cost _CUR_11,000, according to travel records provided to Reuters by the Department of Energy. The records show that Perry took four non-commercial flights between May and last week totaling nearly _CUR_56,000 of taxpayer money. Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hayes said in a statement on Friday that in the "rare instances where government-owned or chartered aircraft have been used, trips were pre-approved by an Ethics officer within the Office of General Counsel." Separately, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department's inspector general office could not confirm nor deny whether it is investigating his travels. In addition to investigating the frequency of Pruitt's travels, the watchdog is also evaluating whether Pruitt followed EPA travel protocols and whether "EPA's policies and procedures are sufficiently designed to prevent fraud, waste and abuse with the Administrator's travel." Pruitt has taken at least four flights that were either not commercial or military-chartered since mid-February, according to government records. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said the four non-commercial flights had been cleared by EPA lawyers. Pruitt had also traveled to Oklahoma on at least _NUMBER_ of the _NUMBER_ days of March, April and May, according to copies of his travel records obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project watchdog and reviewed by Reuters last month, which prompted the initial investigation.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated businessman Donald Trump on his victory in the U.S. presidential election in a telegram on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. "Putin expressed hope for joint work to restore Russian-American relations from their state of crisis, and also to address pressing international issues and search for effective responses to challenges concerning global security," the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin also said he was sure a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington would serve the interests of both countries, the Kremlin said.

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21st Century Wire says With the ongoing hysteria constantly spouting from the American mainstream media about alleged Russian meddling in the _NUMBER_ election which saw Donald Trump elected as president of the United States, the world is still awaiting a single shred of real evidence to support the establishment's conspiracy theory. To date, none has surfaced. The intelligence community has said that this election was meddled with by the Russians in a way that frankly is not particularly original. They ve been doing this for an awfully long time, and we are decades into the Russians trying to undermine American democracy, CIA chief Mike Pompeo told MSNBC's Hugh Hewitt in an exclusive interview that aired Saturday, June _NUMBER_.Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has made a noteworthy response to Pompeo's comments.via Russia InsiderTranslation: We could not but take note of and comment on the June _NUMBER_ statement by CIA Director Mike Pompeo during his NBC interview. The'statement dealt with Russia's alleged long time attempts to undermine the American democracy and meddling in the US elections. It appears that in his opinion Russia's longtime attempts to undermine the US democracy have culminated in the interference in US elections. As we know the issue of Russia's meddling in the election process has become a favorite media story and an obsession in the United States. This story has been adopted by anti-Russia propagandists. This issue continues to pick up momentum and is mentioned in statements by officials who are trying to accuse Russia of engaging in unlawful actions but who have failed to produce any evidence to date.We would like to remind them about some outstanding pages of US history. Unlike the Americans, we have real facts at our disposal, and we know what we should focus on. It is common knowledge that since the early 1990s the United States had voiced its intentions to establish a Jeffersonian democracy in Russia. But the very fact of setting such a task completely runs counter to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the American nation and democracy. All of us know he called for respecting various forms of government, chosen by other nations and said the United States would not impose its will anywhere. He was mistaken. Thomas Jefferson referred to the idea of dictating the form of government to an independent country as arrogant, brutal and outrageous.It appears that the ideologists of the present-day America have very poor knowledge of their own history and the foundations of their statehood, if the concepts of exporting democracy and humanitarian intervention have become their favorite method for conducting an aggressive foreign policy as part of their national concept. For decades, dozens of countries all over the world have been suffering from US-imposed sate system formulas they are trying to equate all countries under one and the'same pattern, without any consideration for what makes each of them unique. This policy and experiments cannot be called harmless. In the past few years Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine have fallen prey to this concept. Needless to say, al-Qaeda in all its manifestations, ISIS and other radical terrorist groups of all religious denominations evolved on the fertile soil created by the Americans and in fact often were the brainchildren of these forces.Generous financial injections in the form of projects and grants through numerous foundations and NGOs is another grey zone through which the United States has been trying to influence political processes all over the world for many years. Russia virtually tops the list of these allocations. Various government and non-government organizations, including the Peace Corps, the United States Agency for International Development , the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and many other similar agencies, have been planting their agents for decades in order to penetrate the Russian political establishment and media community and to influence public opinion. According to some sources, the US has spent _NUMBER_ Billion dollars for these purposes in the 1990s alone. It is very strange that, while making such statements, Mr. Pompeo forgets that many decisions stipulating the allocation of funding were approved by his own agency. It is strange that Washington forgets the fact that in the run-up to the _NUMBER_ Russian presidential election, the Federal Reserve bank delivered _CUR_500 million in cash to the US Embassy in Moscow under a far-fetched pretext of avoiding frenzied demand during the exchange of old _CUR_100 notes. Operatives from the CIA's Moscow Embassy station, headed by Michael Sulick, virtually slept on the money bags, while guarding them. Foreign-made cars delivered small batches of money from the Embassy to certain individuals.Who did the US sponsor using this money? I believe we will also learn this someday. I do not mean our assumptions, everything is clear here Well will know the'specific names, dates and so on. Here are only a few examples of diverse US activities aiming to undermine stability in various regions worldwide and in those areas that are not ready to follow American instructions. We are in no way demanding that Mr. Pompeo should stop his rhetoric because this is in the realm of fiction. One should simply understand that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We are ready. READ MORE RUSSIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russia FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER _USER_.TV

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Protesters who take to the'streets in North Dakota might want to look both ways for changes in the rules of the road.A bill sponsored by state Rep. Keith Kempenich, R-Bowman, would protect drivers from legal consequences if they inadvertently hit, injure or kill pedestrians who are obstructing traffic.The legislation is a direct response to the massive protests around the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, Kempenich said. The ongoing protests have shut down a nearby highway for months and stalled construction of a pipeline that would carry crude from the North Dakota oil patch. If you stay off the roadway, this would never be an issue, Kempenich said. Those motorists are going about the lawful, legal exercise of their right to drive down the road. Those people didn't ask to be in this. The legislation has drawn withering criticism from Standing Rock supporters, who worry that it could be open season for protesters on North Dakota roads.Kempenich said he wants to shift the blame for a crash from drivers to the people who choose to protest in traffic. The legislation, he'said, would not protect someone who deliberately tries to run down a protester, and it would not let drivers off the hook if they hit a jaywalker or a child chasing a ball into the'street. This bill puts the onus on somebody who's made a conscious decision to put themselves in harm's way, he'said. You can protest all you want, but you can't protest up on a roadway. It's dangerous for everybody. Star TribuneHighways shouldn't be used as staging areas for protests, Kempenich said. They re intentionally putting themselves in danger, he'said, adding that accidents could result.Blocking roads or highways has also been a tactic adopted on occasion by protesters in other movements, such as Black Lives Matter.A spokeswoman for the pipeline protests said she is concerned the bill, if passed, would give careless drivers a free pass to kill or maim people who are exercising their free speech rights. It is basically giving permission for vehicular homicide, and that is wrong, said Joye Braun, an organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Nobody has the right to take the life of another person. The network is an activist group that opposes the pipeline, which would carry Bakken crude oil across the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Protesters say the pipeline's path crosses sacred land and could endanger the tribe's source of drinking water.Braun said she once was struck by a woman who objected to her video-recording a protest outside a fast-food restaurant in Mandan, and she worries the bill would embolden people to harm pipeline protesters. I believe there is a small element who may use this as an excuse to attack people, Braun said.The proposal has attracted some national attention. Robert Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary and liberal commentator, has criticized the bill.-Inforum

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France's foreign minister said on Wednesday that Donald Trump's verbal jousting with North Korea was perhaps not the best method to handle the nuclear crisis and urged the U.S. president to focus his attention on raising diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang. Bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent weeks have created fears that a miscalculation could lead to action with untold ramifications, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. _NUMBER_. Trump's method is perhaps not the best, but at the same time we shouldn t mix up the responsibilities, Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM TV. The country that is breaking with nuclear international agreements is North Korea. President Trump is reacting forcefully to this, but without a doubt there is a way to act in a different way by putting pressure and sanctions. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Monday accused Trump of declaring war on North Korea and threatened that Pyongyang would shoot down U.S. warplanes flying near the Korean Peninsula after American bombers flew close to it last Saturday. The North Korean minister was reacting to Trump's Twitter comments that Kim and Ri won t be around much longer if they acted on their threats toward the United States. Le Drian repeated that a maximum amount of pressure needed to be placed on Pyongyang to get it back to the negotiating table, but warned there was a risk of an accidental military escalation. The world is living in a dangerous period, he said. At the moment we re at a verbal clash, but there could be an incident. We need to avoid incidents.

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Counterfeiting is illegal by the way and shouldn't be rewarded with American citizenship This could be the'story of an American dream. An immigrant family builds a successful business and buys a four-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood with good schools for their young son. But not all is as it seems on the'steep, curving streets of San Diego's Rancho Penasquitos.A _NUMBER_-year-old Chinese woman, Xu Ting, lives in a brown shingle house with a weedy driveway. She has been sued for counterfeiting by eight luxury brands, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and owes Chanel Inc. _CUR_6.9 million in damages. None of this has stopped her from becoming a legal permanent resident of the United States and achieving a comfortable suburban life.China is not the only country with a counterfeiting problem. Most fakes are made in China, but they are sold in America. Counterfeiting is not a priority on par with drug smuggling or money laundering, and is rarely prosecuted as a crime. The lack of legal cooperation with China makes it easy for counterfeiters to move their money beyond the reach of Western law enforcement and hard to root out counterfeiting kingpins. As long as counterfeiters can stay out of jail and hold on to their profits and consumers continue to buy the trade in fakes will likely thrive.Despite spending millions on brand protection, companies often end up playing whack-a-mole, shutting down producers and distributors of fakes, only to see them pop up again. Xu Ting simply refused to show up in court over the years. Instead, doing graduate studies in statistics at San Diego State University, helped her family amass at least _CUR_890,000 in bank accounts back in China, and bought the _CUR_585,000 Rancho Penasquitos house with her husband, who has also been involved in selling counterfeit luxury goods, public records and court cases in China and the U.S. show. There's a million ways to game the'system, said Dan Plane, an intellectual property lawyer at Simone IP Services in Hong Kong, who is not involved in litigation against Xu Ting. Probably the only thing that's going to stop her is when she passes away probably on an island resort somewhere or if she gets arrested. FINDING XU TINGIn the web of lies that counterfeiters weave fake names, fake addresses, fake Internet domain registrations one thing is always true: their bank account information.The need to get paid is the counterfeiter's fatal flaw, and Xu Ting's bank accounts were the first crack in her armor of misdirection.Her legal troubles began in _NUMBER_, when a federal judge in California ordered Xu Ting who declined multiple requests for comment for this story to pay Chanel Inc. _CUR_6.9 million in damages for selling counterfeits online. She'still hasn't paid the damages, according to Chanel spokeswoman Kathrin Schurrer. The essential point for Chanel is really shutting down the counterfeiting operations, which we did successfully, Schurrer wrote in an email.But after the lawsuit, Xu Ting's business continued to grow.In _NUMBER_, a Florida judge ruled against Xu Ting and shut down seven websites she was accused of helping run that sold fake Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Celine. She did not show up in court.That case didn't stop her either.The next year, Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Yves Saint Laurent all brands belonging to France's Kering group filed a lawsuit in New York federal court against Xu Ting, her future husband, her younger brother, her mother and six others who the companies said sold more than _CUR_2 million worth of fake handbags and wallets online to U.S. customers. Gucci alleges that the group shipped merchandise from China to a house in San Diego, where it was repackaged and passed off as genuine.Four days after the'suit was filed, Xu Ting married a Chinese man, Xu Lijun, a civil engineer licensed in California who is six years her junior, according to her marriage license issued in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.Gucci subpoenaed banking records. JP Morgan Chase handed over account records with a wealth of information about the couple: addresses, dates of birth, driver's license, Social Security and passport numbers and a student identification card.In November _NUMBER_, Xu Lijun reached a settlement with Gucci the only defendant to do so. He denied wrongdoing but agreed to let Gucci keep _CUR_400,000 in counterfeiting proceeds seized from accounts outside China. He also agreed to pay a _CUR_7,500 fine, according to a copy of the judge's order.Eric Siegle, a New York City lawyer who represented Xu Lijun, said he was a small-time nobody, and that Gucci's lawsuit, like many others, failed to tackle the real powers behind the operation. The people they are arresting or suing here in the United States are low-level people, Siegle said. If you can find where the money is going, you can get to the heart of the problem. It's like the drug wars. Why are we arresting all these kids on street corners? But Gucci, which is seeking _CUR_12 million in damages, couldn't find where the money was going because Chinese banks, including the'state-run Bank of China, refused to disclose transaction details about the counterfeiters accounts in China. BOC cannot comply with such orders without violating Chinese law, the Bank of China said in an email. GREEN CARD? NO PROBLEMXu Ting's legal troubles did not prevent her from getting a green card. In February _NUMBER_, she became a legal permanent resident by virtue of being married to someone with an advanced degree or extraordinary ability, according to the person familiar with the matter.U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Christopher Bentley declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.Dan Kowalski, an immigration attorney and editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin, said immigration officials may not have known about Xu Ting's legal problems but, more likely, didn't consider them disqualifying. Grounds for denying a green card range from committing a serious crime to having communicable disease but there's nothing about civil liabilities. A vaguer requirement for good moral character is more commonly applied for citizenship, not legal residence.In the U.S., most counterfeiting prosecutions are civil cases brought by companies seeking to shut down websites selling fakes and get financial compensation. Criminal cases, which lawyers say are a far more effective deterrent, are rare. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than imprisoned for counterfeiting, said Geoffrey Potter, an intellectual property lawyer at New York's Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.In an email, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said, Large-scale commercial counterfeiting is one of the top enforcement priorities of the department's Intellectual Property Task Force, which continues to have a number of significant prosecutions. The Department of Homeland Security seized _CUR_1.2 billion worth of fakes at U.S. borders last year, but the Justice Department filed just _NUMBER_ criminal cases for selling counterfeit goods and services in fiscal year _NUMBER_. By comparison, the Justice Department filed _NUMBER_ cases for immigration violations, _NUMBER_ cases for drug-related offenses and _NUMBER_ violent crime cases during the'same period.The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, a multiagency group led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reports slightly more counterfeit-related crime _NUMBER_ arrests, _NUMBER_ indictments, _NUMBER_ convictions in the _NUMBER_ fiscal year because its tally includes local prosecutions and counterfeit-related activity, like wire fraud.Decisions about whether to prosecute criminally typically start with a U.S. attorney's office, whose priorities vary by district, said Bruce Foucart, director of the multiagency group. Some may give weight to the volume of faked goods, others to the'suspect's history. If the U.S. attorney's office declines a case, investigators try to persuade local prosecutors.China is the largest source country for seized counterfeit goods, and apparel and accessories are the largest category of merchandise. Foucart, who didn't know about Xu Ting, said luxury goods are typically made in Guangzhou and sent by container or courier like FedEx to the U.S. They may be sold in stores or flea markets but are usually hawked online. Unfortunately, once you shut one down, they have _NUMBER_ more ready to open up in a different name, said Foucart.Brand owners also bear responsibility. Government agencies often rely on them for tips and investigative legwork.U.S. law gives companies broad powers to enforce court judgments. Unpaid judgments accrue interest and last for _NUMBER_ years, said Potter, the intellectual property lawyer. Even a bankruptcy won't erase the debt. The counterfeiter can't own a business, buy a house, have a bank account or borrow money from a bank, Potter said. If the counterfeiter takes a regular job, the judgment holder can garnish her wages. But doing the kind of work required to root out debtors like Xu Ting public records searches to see whether they own real estate, subpoenaing credit card bills to track spending habits, hiring investigators to determine whether they have jobs takes relentless commitment, and money.Via: AP

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President Barack Obama will deliver a statement to the press on Tuesday morning following a meeting of his National Security Council on the attack in Orlando, Florida, and efforts to defeat the Islamic State militant group, the White House said on Monday.

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According to a new report, health insurance premiums will shoot up _NUMBER_% for the Average American under the health care bill being served up by the Republican Senate. Older customers will be hit even harder with some paying twice as much for plans comparable to what they currently have.The nonpartisan group Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed the costs for individual market plans that cover _NUMBER_% of medical costs what most Obamacare plans cover and factored in insurance prices and subsidies under the Republican bill.Mitch McConnel's health bill encourages customers to purchase plans with high deductibles, reduces subsidies for lower-income Americas, and allows insurers to charge older people more.These changes would result in plans varying dramatically due to age and income, with low-income and older persons suffering the most.People between _NUMBER_ and _NUMBER_ would see an increase of 115_CUR_ on average, which is more than double the Obama care prices. Low-income Americans who make less than _CUR_24,000 a year would receive an increase of 177_CUR_, versus only _NUMBER_% for people that bring in more money.Younger and higher income Americans will see less sweeping changes in their insurance premiums.Customers who have the disadvantage of being bother older and low-income will see premiums go up _NUMBER_%, an increase of almost fourfold.The Senior Vice President for Special Initiatives at Kaiser Family Foundation, Larry Levitt, weighed in on the drastic situation. Faced with premiums almost quadrupling, many of these low-income adults would tend to either go without coverage entirely because it's unaffordable or gravitate towards a plan with lower premiums and higher deductibles. The Congressional Budget Office even admits this bill is going to be disastrous for Americans. Their own analysis concluded that premiums will most likely be too high for low-income Americans to purchase coverage, causing millions more to be stranded without insurance than under the current health care law.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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Jalal Talabani, whose presidency of post-Saddam Iraq symbolized the resurgence of the country's long-oppressed Kurdish people, was brought home on Friday and borne to his burial through streets crowded with tens of thousands of mourners. Iraqi and Kurdish TV showed the Iraqi Airways plane which carried Talabani's coffin from Germany, where he died on Tuesday at the age of _NUMBER_, landing in Sulaimaniya, his home city in northern Iraq. A _NUMBER_-gunshot salute was given for the coffin, draped in the red, white and green Kurdish flag stamped with a golden sun. A military band played the Iraqi national anthem, Mawtini , and Chopin's funeral march. The Kurdish flag on the coffin triggered a wave of protests on media close to Shi ite political groups which support the Iraqi government. Al-Etejah TV interrupted its broadcast because the coffin was not draped by the Iraqi flag . The plane that brought the body home was given special exemption from a ban on international flights to the Kurdish region imposed a week ago by the Iraqi government, in retaliation for a Kurdish referendum on independence. Talabani, a veteran leader of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination, became Iraq's president in _NUMBER_, the first person to hold the job after the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein in a U.S.-led invasion. Although the presidency has few real powers, the decision to give it to a member of the Kurdish minority symbolized unity for Iraq under a constitution intended to share power among ethnic and religious groups. Executive authority lies in the hands of a prime minister from the Shi ite Arab majority. Talabani stepped down as president in _NUMBER_ after a long period of treatment following a stroke in _NUMBER_. His successor, Fuad Musam, also a Kurd, presided over the ceremony at the airport on Friday. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is demanding that the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government cancels the outcome of last week's independence vote, did not come to the funeral. Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji represented the central government. The government delegation protested strongly because the Iraqi flag wasn t put on Mam Jalal's coffin, even though the national anthem was played, said a government spokesman in a statement. Talabani is affectionately known as Mam, the Kurdish for uncle . Holding pictures of Talabani and waving the green flags of his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, tens of thousands gathered along the airport road and around Sulaimaniya Grand Mosque, where the prayer for the dead was held. The funeral procession of a dozen SUVs struggled to make its way through the dense crowd from the mosque to his grave on a hill overlooking Sulaimaniya, near the Talabani family home. The Dabashan hill was covered with people as he was laid to rest in early evening. At the airport ceremony, Kurdish regional government leader Masoud Barzani, Talabani's rival for decades in the movement for self-rule, sat between President Masum and Talabani's widow Hero. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the highest-ranking foreign official in attendance, repeated Tehran's assertion that the independence vote was a strategic mistake , Iranian media said. Talabani had been too ill to express his views about the independence referendum. His PUK party gave it only lukewarm support. Unlike Barzani, Talabani had good ties with Iran and the Iranian-backed Shi ite groups that effectively rule in Baghdad. The Baghdad government, Iran and Turkey all strongly opposed the referendum. Washington, an ally of the Kurds for decades, had also urged them not to hold it. Kurdish media and social media were rife with complaints about the flight ban imposed by Baghdad, which, they said, had prevented larger international participation at the funeral. Born in _NUMBER_ in what was then a monarchy ruled under the British mandate, Talabani studied law at Baghdad University, joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party in _NUMBER_ and by his mid-twenties was a lieutenant to the independence movement's patriarch, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, Masoud Barzani's father. He split from the KDP and formed the PUK in _NUMBER_, drawing support from the urban elite and from the small Kurdish Shi ite community. He regarded himself as a modern, socialist, urban alternative to the tribal authority wielded by the elder Barzani. Talabani's harshest lesson came in _NUMBER_ when Iraq gassed Kurdish towns near the Iranian border during an Iranian-PUK offensive in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war. In a brutal campaign, Iraqi forces killed tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians and uprooted many more from their homes. Talabani's PUK has remained the most powerful political force in his home city of Sulaimaniya, while Barzani's KDP dominates the regional capital Erbil. One of Talabani's sons, Qubad, is deputy prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government.

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A little over a month ago, Linda Sorenson, the Republican Chair for Delta County, Colorado, posted the following Facebook meme:Oh those wacky Republicans and their unbelievable racism!At first, Sorenson was defiant in the face of public condemnation, stating, I really don't care if people are offended by it, she told me of the post, which was sent to me by a source. Un-friend me. Stop looking at me on Facebook. After all, this is a new day in America. This is Donald Trump's America and gosh darn it! White people won't stand for being oppressed by the PC Police any longer! Let freedumb ring!But a funny thing about Trump's America it doesn't actually exist. At least not yet. And certainly not in the very purple state of Colorado. Clearly, Sorenson thought the people would rally to her bigoted side. Instead, according to the The Daily Sentinel:That posting not only prompted calls of her resignation from fellow Delta County Republicans, but also from several outside groups, including the Colorado branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance.Whoops.In the face of all of this pressure, Sorenson changed her story from, I m racist and I m proud! to the perennial favorite of politicians who make a social media blunder: Someone hacked my account! I m the victim here! After four accountability meetings though, including an investigation into Sorenson violating party rules by endorsing a local Republican primary candidate, Sorenson saw the writing on the Facebook wall and resigned. The Republicans Central Committee was quick to distance themselves:Suppes, who is not a member of the central committee, said it was an appropriate move. There's no room for racism, intended or unintended, in society, he'said. It's best for the party, best for the county, that she'step down. On the one hand, bravo to the Colorado GOP for dealing with this appropriately. On the other, Sorenson is hardly an outlier. Republicans have spent decades turning their party into a haven for racism and bigotry in all its many forms. Sorenson was simply stupid enough to say it out loud; a trend that has been exacerbated, but certainly not started, by Donald Trump.I wonder who she ll blame for her downfall? I m going to guess Obama. What do you think?Featured image via screencap

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Why couldn't the parents be notified of his death? What possible reason could the Obama regime have for keeping his death a secret from his parents?An American and an Italian being held hostage by al Qaeda in a remote region of Pakistan near the Afghan border were killed in a CIA drone strike in January an accident President Obama on Thursday blamed on the fog of war. Obama grimly admitted the botched operation at the White House and apologized to the families of the two aid workers Warren Weinstein, _NUMBER_, of Rockville, Md., and Palermo native Giovanni Lo Porto, _NUMBER_. I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government, I offer our deepest apologies, Obama said.MEANWHILE, the family of hostage Warren Weinstein , were still negotiating to pay more money for his release months after his death.Here is a heartbreaking video of slain hostage, Warren Weinstein asking for help from a country he came to Pakistan to defend:The Weinstein family shed little light on the'secret ransom plot when it was revealed Friday, saying only that they'd sought out efforts to rescue him. His wife had spoken by phone with her husband in a proof of life telephone call prior to the money being handed over, a family spokesman said. Over the _NUMBER_ / -year period of Warren's captivity the family made every effort to engage with those holding him or those with the power to find and rescue him, the'spokesman said. Weinstein got along well with his captors, the intermediary said. He spoke Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, and learned to speak with his kidnappers in another local language, Pashto. They kept him well and sent a lot of money to keep him alive on medicine for the heart, said the intermediary. Otherwise, he would have been dead long ago. Also Friday, White House officials said they were considering setting up a fusion cell, or task force, to better communicate with hostage families and integrate the multiple agencies responsible for the rescue of captives.Via: NY Post

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Indonesian anti-terrorism police have detained _NUMBER_ people with links to militant groups in a bid to cut the risk of attacks during Christmas and the New Year in the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, police said on Monday. Near-simultaneous attacks on churches in the capital, Jakarta, and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in _NUMBER_, killed nearly _NUMBER_ people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday. Police Chief Tito Karnavian said while there was no evidence of a specific plot, the detentions were made in a bid to head off trouble. We re doing a pre-emptive strike, Karnavian told reporters. The majority of them have links to previous incidents who we had arrested earlier, he said. Police said that _NUMBER_ people had been detained in South Sumatra, four in West Kalimantan, one in Malang in East Java and one in Surabaya in the same province. Under Indonesia's anti-terrorism laws, investigators can hold people for seven days before determining whether they will be designated suspects or released, said police spokesman Setyo Wasisto. Indonesia has seen its share of militant attacks over the years aimed at foreign, Christian and government targets including blasts on the tourist island of Bali in _NUMBER_ that killed _NUMBER_ people. Since then, police have managed to stamp out or weaken many militant networks although there has been a resurgence in radicalism in recent years, inspired largely by Islamic State. A series of small-scale attacks since early _NUMBER_ has been linked to Islamic State, which is believed to have thousands of sympathizers in Indonesia.

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Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister resisted calls to resign in a crisis that has left the country on the brink of a general election, saying on Monday it is up to an ongoing judge-led tribunal to judge her conduct. The Tribunal will objectively judge the appropriateness of my conduct. I look forward to giving my evidence to the Tribunal early in January, Fitzgerald wrote in a statement on Twitter following further calls for her to step down on Monday over her handling of a case involving a police whistleblower.

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday spurned the Taiwanese president's suggestion that the two leaders hold another phone call, saying he did not want to create problems for Chinese President Xi Jinping when Beijing appears to be helping efforts to rein in North Korea. In a White House interview, Trump brushed aside the idea after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen told Reuters on Thursday she would not rule out talking directly again to the U.S. president, an act certain to incense China. The status of self-ruled Taiwan is possibly the most sensitive issue between Washington and Beijing. "Look, my problem is I have established a very good personal relationship with President Xi. I really feel that he is doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation," Trump told Reuters, referring to signs that China may be working to head off any new missile or nuclear test by Pyongyang, Beijing's neighbor and ally. "So I wouldn't want to be causing difficulty right now for him," Trump added. "I think he's doing an amazing job as a leader and I wouldn't want to do anything that comes in the way of that. So I would certainly want to speak to him first." REUTERS RECOMMENDS Racism on the rise: Reuters poll How North Korea gets its oil from China As president-elect in early December, Trump took a congratulatory phone call from Tsai. It was the first contact between a leader of Taiwan and an incumbent or incoming U.S. president in nearly four decades, and Trump cast doubt on Washington's longstanding policy of acknowledging Beijing's "one China" policy, which asserts that Taiwan is a part of China. The call angered Beijing because it fears contacts between Taiwan and leaders of other countries would confer sovereignty on the island. Democratic Taiwan, self-ruled since _NUMBER_, has no interest in being ruled by autocratic China. Trump agreed to honor the "one China" policy in February and then hosted Xi at his Florida resort earlier this month. Trump's dismissal of Tsai's suggestion underscored the importance he is placing on enlisting China's help in defusing tension with North Korea, which has become his biggest national security challenge since taking office in January, _NUMBER_ days ago come Saturday. On Friday, in response to Trump's remarks, Taiwan's presidential office said it had no plans "at this stage" to hold a call, and that it understood the United States had priorities in handling regional affairs. In a statement, Tsai's spokesman, Alex Huang, said the government would not "overly limit" itself, but would pursue the island's best interest. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged Taiwan to pay attention to the United States' reaction. "We consistently oppose countries which have diplomatic relations with China having any form of official exchanges with Taiwan," Geng told a daily news briefing on Friday. "This position is very clear and very firm." F-_NUMBER_ REQUEST Tsai told Reuters on Thursday Taiwan's ties with the United States have been improving. She said Taiwan may need to buy from its sole arms supplier the F-_NUMBER_ fighter jet, the most advanced stealth warplane in the U.S. arsenal. "We have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the U.S. government," Tsai said. "We don't exclude the opportunity to call President Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the U.S. government's consideration of regional affairs." Tsai said, "We don't rule out any items that would be meaningful to our defense and our defense strategy and the F-_NUMBER_ is one such item." But when told Taiwan's president had said the island might want to buy F-_NUMBER_ aircraft, Trump said: "Oh, I haven't been informed. I'd have to think about that. I'd have to speak to my people about that. They do buy a lot of equipment from us." China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it was resolutely opposed to any country selling arms to Taiwan. U.S. officials told Reuters last month that the Trump administration was crafting a big arms package for Taiwan that could include advanced rocket systems and anti-ship missiles to defend against China, a deal sure to anger Beijing. But one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at the time the administration was not considering selling the F-_NUMBER_ to Taiwan. The package is expected to be significantly larger than one that was shelved at the end of the Obama administration – valued at around _CUR_1 billion – but completion of a new deal could take months and possibly into next year, the official said. The Global Times, an influential Chinese Communist Party-backed tabloid, called Tsai's government "a naughty child" in an editorial on Friday and said it would "strongly counter" any move to sell Taiwan advanced fighter jets. "Each time the Tsai Ing-wen authorities step out of line they will pay the price, like a naughty child in class getting a stern reprimand for shouting out or smashing the glass at school," it said.

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Famous singer John Legend posted a very offensive casting call for actors who look like Trump'supporters. He's showing how clueless he is about Trump'supporters They come in all shapes, colors and sizes. He's also just offended millions of Americans by being a big racist. Boycott this jerk!According to a listing on Casting Networks in LA, the musician's newest video requires eight white men and women, _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ years old, who are preferably out of shape. The actors will be playing protesters on a set of a political rally with a Black Lives Matter group playing the opposition.Legend, _NUMBER_, is not afraid to speak his mind when it comes to politics, so it is no surprise he is incorporating his opinions into his music videos.A BITTER HOLLYWOOD ELITIST: In an interview with Guardian on Sunday, the Beauty And The Beast singer said: I think Trump is an embarrassment to the country. The'singer is married to supermodel Chrissy Teigen. She's battling alcoholism in a very public way. You d think he d circle the wagons and take care of his wife and one-year old daughter. It's a shame that the bitterness and hate for Trump and his supporters is living rent-free in John Legend's head.He gets really nasty in the Guardian interview: When he is criticising something, he is usually projecting. So, he calls people liars because he is a liar. He talks about people being violent because he encourages violence, he continued. One word for Legend ANTIFARead more: Daily Mail

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Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, briefly joined her father's telephone call with Argentine President Mauricio Macri earlier this month, Macri's spokesman said on Tuesday. The two men spoke on Nov. _NUMBER_, making Macri one of few Latin American leaders who had spoken with Trump in the days following his surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election. The call was aimed at rekindling a relationship formed when they worked as businessmen before entering politics. "At the end of the president's call with Trump, the phone was passed to Ivanka so he could say hello. They have known each other since she was quite young," the spokesman said in an emailed response to a question about the call from Reuters. The congratulatory call was aimed at re-establishing the "personal bond" that the two men formed while doing business together, Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra said, although Macri had publicly expressed his preference for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. _NUMBER_ election. The Macri spokesman denied reports in the Argentine press on Monday that during the call Trump mentioned a pending office tower project that the real estate mogul has been trying to get approved by city regulators in Buenos Aires. Photographs taken inside a meeting room at Trump Tower last week showed Trump was also accompanied by Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner when he met with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The son of one of the richest men in Argentina, Macri ended _NUMBER_ years of leftist rule in Latin America's third-largest economy when he took office last December. He was one of the regional presidents who have worked hardest to improve relations with the United States under President Barack Obama. Macri met Trump decades ago while working for his father, Francisco Macri. According to a book by the elder Macri, his son beat Trump in a golf game during a complicated real estate deal in New York in the 1980s, and Trump broke his clubs after the game in frustration.

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Japan will delay a decision to develop a new advanced fighter jet, four sources said, as military planners struggle to settle on a design and officials splash out on new U.S. equipment such as ballistic missile interceptors and F-_NUMBER_ stealth planes. Faced with a growing military threat from North Korea and increased activity by Chinese air force jets over the East China Sea, Japan is under pressure to improve its defenses on two fronts. Any delay to the new fighter, known as the F-_NUMBER_, will raise a question mark over the future of what could be one of the world's most lucrative upcoming military contracts, estimated at more than _CUR_40 billion to develop and deploy. A decision after the first half of _NUMBER_ would be too late for it to be included as a core program in a new five-year defense equipment plan beginning April _NUMBER_ that Japan will reveal at the end of next year. The direction is for the F-_NUMBER_ decision to be put back, said one the sources who have knowledge of the discussion. The people who spoke to Reuters asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media. They said the decision, on whether to forge ahead as a domestic program or seek international collaboration, would now likely come after _NUMBER_. Regarding the F-_NUMBER_ decision, including whether we will delay a choice, we have haven t come to any conclusion, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence Acquisition Technology & Logistics Agency said. Analysts estimate developing the F-_NUMBER_ could cost _CUR_40 billion, a figure described another source as an initial cost. With a defense budget of around _CUR_50 billion that has increased in the past few years at just under an annual _NUMBER_ percent, that outlay, even spread out over years of development, represents a major undertaking. It would come at a time when Japan is spending a record amounts on U.S. equipment, including Lockheed Martin Corp's F-_NUMBER_ jet, Raytheon defense missiles and Boeing Co and Textron Inc's tilt-rotor Osprey troop aircraft. In _NUMBER_, Japan procured _NUMBER_ billion yen of equipment through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales system. By last year, that outlay had quadrupled to _NUMBER_ billion yen. President Donald Trump in Tokyo last week called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to purchase additional U.S.-made weapons as his administration pushes Washington's allies to contribute more to their joint defense. For now, that defense is focused on countering the threat posed by North Korean ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Japan's defense forces, however, want the F-_NUMBER_ to counter growing Chinese air power in the skies over the western Pacific and East China Sea where Tokyo and Beijing are locked in a territorial dispute. Japanese fighters scrambled a record _NUMBER_ times to intercept Chinese planes in the year that ended March _NUMBER_. A second role for the yet-to-be-built fighter is to reinforce Japan's defense industry by giving Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and its suppliers their first fighter jet program since Japan built its F-_NUMBER_ fighter two decades ago. Mitsubishi Heavy, the maker of the World War Two-era Zero fighter, in January _NUMBER_ tested a prototype jet, the ATD-X. Developed for around _CUR_350 million, it was seen as the first step toward a new homegrown frontline stealth fighter. While support for a domestic-only program is strong among some government officials, other bureaucrats are worried about the potentially enormous expense of developing components from scratch. They support international collaboration to share costs with overseas partners and tap their technology. What we have now is a flying box without all the systems that constitute a fighter such as weapons and sensors, said another of the sources. Possible overseas partners include BAE Systems, a leading designer of the high-altitude Eurofighter interceptor backed by the British government, F-_NUMBER_ builder Lockheed Martin and Boeing, maker of the F-_NUMBER_ strike fighter. All have responded to initial requests for information from Ministry of Defence overseeing F-_NUMBER_ plans.

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President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey may shut its border with northern Iraq at any moment after closing its air space to the region, Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday, reviving a threat first made after Kurds there voted for independence. We have completely closed our air space to the regional government in northern Iraq, the paper cited Erdogan as telling reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Poland. Talks are continuing on what will be done regarding the land ... We have not shut the border gates yet but this could happen too at any moment, he added. Turkey announced on Monday it was closing its air space to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and said it would work to hand control of the main border crossing into the region to the central Iraqi government. The Habur gate is the main transit point between Turkey and Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. A Sept. _NUMBER_ referendum, in which Kurds in northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, alarmed Baghdad, Iraq's neighbors and Western powers, all of whom feared further regional conflict could arise from the vote. Subsequently Kurdish Peshmerga forces retreated to positions they held in northern Iraq in June _NUMBER_ in response to an Iraqi army advance into the region after the referendum, a senior Iraqi commander said on Wednesday. Ankara, which has been battling a three-decade insurgency in its own mainly Kurdish southeast, fears an independent Kurdish state on its borders would heighten separatist tension at home.

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Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before! - The Obstructionist Democrats make Security for our country very difficult. They use the courts and associated delay at all times. Must stop! - Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough! - Heading to Camp David for major meeting on National Security, the Border and the Military . - I have directed that U.S. Cyber Command be elevated to the status of a Unified Combatant Command focused on....cont: -- Source link:

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It turns out that William F. Buckley's own son wasn't thrilled about Sean Hannity receiving an award named after his dad.And that may be the exact reason why the conservative group known as the Media Research Center rescinded the Media Excellence award he was set to receive, despite the fact that Hannity has done nothing but push conspiracies and kiss Donald Trump's ass.According to CNN, the naming of Hannity as the award's recipient caused distress among Buckley's family in particular his only child, best-selling author Christopher Buckley. A source familiar with the'situation tells CNN that Christopher Buckley expressed great dismay at the announcement that the award would go to Hannity, who has spent a great deal of time insulting conservative intellectuals on Twitter, particularly since he became a strong supporter of Donald Trump.Indeed, Hannity is not an intellectual at all. He's a college dropout who peddles bullshit that should have gotten him kicked off the airwaves years ago. Meanwhile, William F. Buckley was a true conservative intellectual who loathed Trump.Buckley's son informed the Media Research Center of his disapproval and the group quietly removed Hannity's name from the gala on their website and decided not to give Hannity the award.They made the right decision. The only thing Hannity deserves for the crap he'spews on television and radio is a pink slip.Of course, the news upset Hannity and he took to Twitter to throw a temper tantrum, attacking CNN and Christopher Buckley.Hey Fake News Jake, I was offered an award, I was unable to attend, and I respectfully turned it down. _URL_ Sean Hannity July _NUMBER_, 2017If _USER_ Never Trumpers or WFB's son were upset about me receiving the award, they never told me. Now I m really glad I said No thanks _URL_ Sean Hannity July _NUMBER_, 2017Fact; Awards are BS ways to raise _CUR_. The only Award I care about is serving my audience, the'support of my audience, and saving the USA _URL_ Sean Hannity July _NUMBER_, 2017Chris Buckley needs to speak out about how _USER_ has readers pay for free cruise vacations . Thank God for Conservative Review. Sean Hannity July _NUMBER_, 2017No idea, I never spoke to Chris a single time. I was going to humbly accept it, but I ran into a conflict and declined. _USER_ is NEVER TRUMP! _URL_ Sean Hannity July _NUMBER_, 2017Hannity just demonstrated precisely why he'should never have been picked to receive a media award. Attacking the'son of the man it is named after isn't exactly an example of media professionalism.Hannity is just desperately trying to save face after being rejected. He knows it. The Media Research Council knows it. CNN knows it. We all know it.Featured image via Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images

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The leftist teachers and the press are part of the HUGE problem of misinformation about Donald Trump. They are partly to blame for the violence and hate out there. Here's a perfect example: A self-described mentor for the girl who attacked Jade urged compassion for the'suspended student. We don't want a mistake during a highly emotional and intense time to affect her long-term future, said Khabral Muhammad, a life coach at Live in Peace, a nonprofit group supporting East Palo Alto youth. WOODSIDE, Calif. One Peninsula high school student's support of Donald Trump may have made her a target.The Woodside High School student and her family are shocked something like this could happen. The girl said all of her friends were posting about the election last night, but her post got her beat up.Cellphone video captured the moment a female student attacked sophomore Jade Armenio. This girl comes up to me and she'said, Do you hate Mexicans? and I was like, no, and she'said, You support Trump. You hate Mexicans.' Armenio says the girl hit her, threw her to the ground, pulled out her earrings and hair. She was left with a bloody nose and scratches and bruises. Before the results came in on election night, Armenio had posted on Instagram that she hoped Trump would win. I don't think I could name one person on any of my accounts who didn't say their opinion last night, Armenio said.Armenio's parents say they're mortified about what happened. My husband and I don't put our political views on social media. Kids still do it. That's their life. We tell them don't do it, but even if she does she'should never be hit like that, said Gina Armenio.The principle of Woodside High School issued a statement that reads in part the recorded incident was investigated in conjunction with law enforcement and appropriate disciplinary action has been taken.Armenio says she's also now the target of social media hate mail but she's taking it in stride. In high school if you'really care about what every person thinks you're going to get torn apart, Armenio said.Armenio parents say they are keeping her out of school until they know she ll be safe.If only this poor pro-Trump child had just worn _TAG_ perhaps this wouldn't have happened _URL_ ia?GiveMeTears? November _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_

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Perhaps Celebrity Cruises didn't get the memo Donald J. Trump won'the election. Trump won'the election in large part because people are sick and tired of the unchecked invasion of illegal aliens and refugees from countries who hate us into our country. Here is the transcript from this insane anti-Trump ad. Far from the talk of building walls, far from the threats of keeping people out, far from the rhetoric of fear is a world of differences. Differences that expand and enrich us. Because after all, our lives aren't made better when we close ourselves off to the world, they're made better when we open ourselves up to it Celebrity Cruises. If that language sounds targeted to one specific candidate, that's no mistake but it's also not the whole point. It's in response to the rhetoric around the world, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, president and CEO of Celebrity Cruises, told Skift. She named the Brexit vote, the rise of hate crimes in the UK, and the plight of refugees in France as examples.Closest to home for the Miami-based cruise line which gets the majority of its passengers from the United States are the positions that Trump has taken, such as calling for the building of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and for ideological tests to be given to visitors. If people want to choose this statement as a political statement, I can't control that, Lutoff-Perlo said. She'said she has thought about whether some potential passengers might be turned off by the'spot, but she hasn't worried about the possibility. I believe anybody that truly looks at this and says, We re not going to sail on Celebrity again, they're probably not sailing on Celebrity, she'said. I hope I get more people than I lose. Lutoff-Perlo continued: Is there a risk? Sure. At some point in time you have to take a stand. SkiftConservative Twitter user _USER_ created this video to expose the real message behind Celebrity Cruise Lines anti-Trump ad:_URL_

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An Australian conservative politician on Monday proposed to his long-term partner on the floor of parliament, ahead of the expected passage of a measure for same sex couples to marry. Australians overwhelmingly voted for same-sex marriage in a postal vote in September and a marriage equality bill that passed the senate last week is being debated in the lower house, where it is expected to pass this week. Liberal member of parliament Tim Wilson proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger in the capital of Canberra, the two having already exchanged rings but having pledged to wait for the country to pass the legislation before they wed. This debate has been the soundtrack to our relationship, an emotional Wilson said to his partner, seated in parliament's public viewing area above. In our first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands, that they are the answer to the question we cannot ask. So there's only one thing left to do - Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me? asked Wilson, who was formerly Australia's human rights commissioner. Bolger nodded yes, to applause. Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal-National coalition government and the main opposition Labor Party have said they aim to pass the law by Dec. _NUMBER_, but any proposed amendments could stretch out that timeline. Passage of the bill will make Australia the 26th nation to legalize same-sex marriage, a watershed for a country in which some states considered homosexual activity illegal until _NUMBER_. This is an issue of fundamental fairness, Turnbull said to parliament later on Monday. A society that promotes freedom and equality under the law should accord gay men and women the right to marriage. About _NUMBER_ percent of eligible voters participated in the voluntary survey, a turnout larger than for Britain's Brexit vote and Ireland's same-sex marriage referendum. The message today, to every gay person in this nation, is clear, Turnbull added. We love you, we respect you, your relationship is recognized by the Commonwealth as legitimate and honorable as anybody else s.

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The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has received assurances that the Syrian government delegation will attend peace talks in Geneva this week, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Earlier the pro-Damascus Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that the Syrian government delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva this week has not yet left Damascus and may announce on Tuesday whether it will participate. The Government delegation has not yet arrived, the Special Envoy received a message that they are planning to arrive tomorrow, which is the 29th of November, U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told a news briefing in Geneva, declining to give details. At least we know that they are coming.

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Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireHere we go again. There seems to be no end to the escalation of tensions between North Korea and the United States and its allies.Yesterday, Pyongyang's state broadcaster came out declaring what it claims is another successful test , this time with a hydrogen bomb, which they say could be mounted on to their still as yet nonexistent intercontinental ballistic missile .Seizing the moment, state news anchor Ri Chun Hee proudly announced that the test was a perfect success, and symbolises the country's final step on the long road to attaining a state nuclear force. All very exciting.Still, there has been no independent verification of the claim, but why let that get in the way of a promising international security crisis? Kim Jung Un: Looking at shiny objects, pointing, generally looking busy. North Korea's alleged test is said to have happened just hours after Pyongyang state-run media released images of leader Kim Jong Un inspecting something which looks like it could be a hydrogen bomb, but no one is really sure.We re also told that this was ready to be placed on top of an ICBM, however no one has actually seen a real operational ICBM yet. That's kind of an important detail in this grand plot, but one which is routinely overlooked by legions of western mainstream experts on CNN and NBC. So far, the DPRK only has a series of botched tests of their short-range Hwasong-_NUMBER_ rockets to show the world. Still, the western media insist that this constitutes a potential threat to the US.So confident was this mainstream media outlet, that they've seemed to have hedged their bets on the authenticity of the DPRK state claims, leaving the offending H Bomb in quotes SEE ALSO: North Korea and The Unintended Consequences of TrumpThis wouldn't be the first time North Korea exaggerated its WMD credentials. Last January they exaggerated claims of a successful H-bomb test. Despite their dodgy record, the western media, and politicians who are fed by defense contracts are lapping up Pyongyang's latest pig's breakfast.Whatever this latest test was, it's hardly an act of war. Meanwhile, South Korea wasted no time retaliating by showing off its new toys purchased out of its US dollar reserve account, launching multiple missiles for the cameras. Seoul insists that it's ready to activate four Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries. It also carried out a major joint drill with F-15K fighter jets and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. This posturing by South Korea has excited the western media to no end. Everyone is loving it, because nothing brings eye balls and ratings like a good crisis.Guardian reporter Justin McCurry confirms: South Korea has carried out a simulated attack on North Korea's nuclear test site in a huge show of force in response to Pyongyang's detonation of what it claims is a hydrogen bomb.Seoul has also approved the complete deployment of a US anti-missile system in another sign that it intends to address North Korean provocations with reminders of its own military firepower, while keeping the door open to dialogue. You can be certain'that CNN absolutely loves this latest crisis too, wailing this morning: South Korea strengthened the deployment of a controversial US-made missile defense system and launched a huge show of military might on Monday in response to North Korea's hydrogen bomb test. Naturally, not a word of condemnation from the western media about South Korea's real provocations broadcast in colour around the world.How Serious is the Threat?At the time of publishing this piece, members of the UN Security Council are already convening emergency sessions about what to do next. In the final analysis, there will have to be some clear and present threat in order to justify some harsh response from the UNSC.Can such a rational evaluation be made with so much theatre on both sides?Washington's UN Ambassador Nikki Haley gave a predictable hawkish speech claiming that, He is begging for war. Of course Haley is all too eager to oblige.Once again, western media outlets are treating claims by North Korea's state-run KCNA media agency as good as gold .For the US, this latest move by North Korea has been PR gold. It's helped to revive and reenergize the dying conversation of a nuclear standoff between The Good Guys and The Bad Guys. And to deal with those bad guys, you need tough guys.Enter US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who swiftly moved in with tough new sanctions against the DPRK, warning that this isn't the time for just talk. A novel approach.Eager to win back some approval points and stop the political hemorrhaging that seems to be draining all of the mojo Trump had when he whipped-up the campaign trail crowds promising to drain'the'swamp, the President took to Twitter, to do what he thinks his base wants, which is to be Kim's bad cop .Kim and The Donald, two iconic frontmen, both being played like a marionette by the generals off camera.Cue Trump North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States, wrote Trump.Tough. North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! Tougher.Trump also tries to slam the door shut on any chance of bilateral negotiations:South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! Donald J. Trump September _NUMBER_, 2017Toughest.Of course, Trump's comments appear to be winding up Pyongyang. A vicious circle of fighting talk. Are there any adults left in the room?Not to be outdone, here comes a good cop. Enter US Defense Secretary James Mad Dog Mattis, who is still earning his nickname meant to resemble an unstable, rabid house pet. After his meeting with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday, the Mad Dog, wearing a purple tie , read his military decree on the White House lawn: We have many military options, and the president wanted to be briefed on each one of them. We made clear that we have the ability to defend ourselves and our allies, South Korea and Japan, from any attack, and our commitments among the allies are ironclad, said Mattis.What a relief, he'sounds moderate compared to Trump. But wait Before exiting the podium, he'said: We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so. This is a unique breed of lunatic.Talking tough, and talking of options for annihilating a country. Normal people would say this is an idiotic proposition because the fall-out would be much worse than any of Kim apocalyptic sabre rattling. All this looks very familiar. Quite simply, what we are seeing here in Washington is Neoconservativism reasserting itself through one of its flagship planks the preemptive strike. Above all other military strategies, this is always the most favorable for the Pentagon because it doesn't require any real justification or accountability for a preemptive action. All that's required is a sufficient amount of media fear-mongering and political hype about the threat we all face and how we must act and then simply fire away and sift through the rubble, reforming the narrative afterwards. In the meantime, the ruling parties can call it a success, and claim that many lives were saved by this valiant action etc. It's clean and straightforward, albeit in the'short term, but extremely messy in the long term.As much as hawks in Washington would love to test out their new toys right now, a conflagration is not likely to happen by the hand of the US in the Pacific Rim. There are too many powerful players in the immediate vicinity and the fall-out from any rash US-led geopolitical pissing contest, surgical or kinetic action could be detrimental to all parties. Better to get someone else to start it for them, but that's not easy either.There was a time when people had high hopes for Mattis. He was affectionately referred to as the warrior monk, with many FOX News pundits drooling over his apparent Sun Tzu prowess, as was rumoured that he has actually read some historical books and was really smart and really wise apparently a rarity in Washington military circles these days. But no matter how many books people think he's read about the Peloponnesian Wars, it's should be pretty clear by now that Mattis, like his predecessor Ash Carter, is acting as kind of an executive sales rep for the military industrial complex. That's essentially what the position of Defense Secretary has become in America. It's a straightforward deal: you ll keep your job, as long as you'do and say what's required to keep international tensions high at all times. This translates into profits, and shareholder dividends for industry stakeholders. If you're not with the program, then you ll have to tender your resignation. Just ask Chuck Hagel.What Americans should really understand is that the generals with whom Trump is so enamored, and who he trusts with all our bombs and silos have left nothing but a string of military failures in their wake. Between Generals James Mattis and Major General H.R. McMaster, you have a collective _NUMBER_ plus years and two of the worst military and foreign policy boondoggles in US history, Afghanistan and Iraq, underscored by successive failed surges. Add to these, a total defeat in Syria, blowing billions of US taxpayer dollars on a proxy war that's arguably created a new generation of Islamist extremists . Impressive, isn't it? So why do the media continue to elevate the military brass? Not every General is a good general. As with any other position or profession, some are good, and some are corrupt, and many are incompetent, or promoted for playing ball. General David Petraeus is a good example of this. The media can't get enough of him. He was the architect of the'surge we're told, which means he was around when Obama-Bush ordered up another _NUMBER_ troops for Iraq in a futile effort to fix what they broke. Still, the media will bend over backwards in an almost worshipful mode whenever his name is mentioned, forgetting that Petraeus was found guilty of the'same crime for which half of America wanted Hillary Clinton locked-up. Despite bringing his name and his office into disrepute, Petraeus was rewarded board positions with mega Wall Street firms like KKR, and a perennial seat at Bilderberg.Men like Mattis, McMaster and Petraeus can, and will run rings around this President who has already signaled his weakness for those chevrons on the'shoulder. And,this President will happily defer everything to these men. Should we be surprised if they keep getting it wrong?Let's just pray that they'don't get it wrong with North Korea, too.*** Patrick Henningsen is an American-born writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire and host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network .READ MORE NORTH KOREA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire North Korea FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER _USER_.TV

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Turkey's foreign minister said on Wednesday Ankara would not submit to impositions from the United States to resolve a feud which has seen the two NATO allies stop issuing visas to each other's citizens. However, President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman struck a more positive tone, saying he expected the crisis to be resolved soon following the arrival in Turkey of a U.S. delegation for talks on repairing bilateral ties. Earlier this month Washington suspended visa services after Turkey detained two Turkish nationals employed as U.S. consular staff. They are being held on suspicion of links to last year's failed coup in Turkey, allegations rejected by Washington. Ankara swiftly retaliated by suspending its own visa services in the United States. The dispute hit the Turkish lira and stocks and unnerved investors. The United States has said it wants details of the charges against its staff, and Turkish broadcaster Haberturk said the U.S. delegation had set four conditions to solve the crisis, including Ankara providing evidence related to the detentions. We will cooperate if their demands meet the rules of our constitution but we will not succumb to impositions and we will reject any conditions that we cannot meet, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference on Wednesday. The two people arrested by Turkey are a translator at the consulate in the southern province of Adana and a Drug Enforcement Administration worker in Istanbul. Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the talks with the United States were now moving in a good direction . I believe this crisis will be resolved soon, he told state-owned TRT Haber. The U.S. delegation does not have the authority to lift the visa suspension but they will communicate our views to Washington and, hopefully, the White House will take positive steps soon . Foreign Ministry sources described Wednesday's talks as positive and said the two sides agreed to continue the discussions to resolve the dispute as soon as possible. Relations between Turkey and its Western allies have soured significantly since the July _NUMBER_ coup and the large-scale purges of the Turkish armed forces, state institutions, media and academia that followed. Ankara blames the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen for the coup and has repeatedly asked Washington to extradite him. Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since _NUMBER_, has denied the charges and condemned the coup. Turkey has sacked or suspended more than _NUMBER_ people from their jobs on suspicion of links to the Gulen network, prompting criticism from rights groups, the United States and the European Union that Ankara is undermining free speech and democracy.

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Brazil's Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles has hired social media experts to boost his image ahead of the _NUMBER_ election, three sources told Reuters on Wednesday, the strongest sign yet that the former banker is seriously eyeing a run for president. Meirelles hired analysts linked to the Get lio Vargas Foundation think tank to study his social media presence on a daily basis and build a communication plan, said one of the sources. The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. They have been working for Meirelles for more than three months, two of the sources said. The Finance Ministry's press office declined comment on Meirelles behalf. The finance minister's potential candidacy adds to political uncertainty ahead of a presidential election marked by a strong anti-establishment climate and a lack of clear favorites. Meirelles, praised by investors for leading a market-friendly agenda of economic reforms, would have to leave his post by April, six months before the election, and could face a wide field of competitive candidates in a first-round vote. One of the analysts hired by Meirelles works alongside the ministry's official communication team in Brasilia, although the FGV team has not received any public funds for supporting his potential candidacy, two of the sources said. The team includes Thomas Traumann, a former spokesman for impeached President Dilma Rousseff, according one of the sources and another person familiar with the matter. Traumann confirmed to Reuters that he had consulted for Meirelles under private contract since _NUMBER_, but he did not work for the Finance Ministry. He declined to comment on potential preparations for next year's presidential race. The Finance Ministry said FGV has offered consultancy on social media to the ministry as part of a _NUMBER_-year-long initiative of institutional support, without any connection to the _NUMBER_ campaign. A ministry spokeswoman, who asked not to be named in accordance with ministry policy, said it had no relationship with Traumann. FGV said it had not signed a contract with the Finance Ministry or Meirelles. Reuters reported late in August, citing a source close to Meirelles, that Meirelles wanted to run for president but knew he would have a strong chance only if the economy improved substantially after two years of recession. Congressmen from his Social Democratic Party last month heard from Meirelles that he felt honored to have his name floated as a potential candidate. Other potential candidates from within President Michel Temer's fragmented coalition include the governor of Sao Paulo state, Geraldo Alckmin, and Sao Paulo Mayor Joao Doria. Meirelles opened a Twitter account in June to publicize his actions as minister and has recently left the door open for a potential candidacy, saying he would take a decision on the race by April. About _NUMBER_ percent of voters have declared their intention to vote for him, according to a recent Datafolha poll. A civil engineer by training, Meirelles is the former president of BankBoston, which was eventually acquired by Bank of America Corp, and a former president of Brazil's central bank.

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White House Economic Adviser Gary Cohn is remaining in his post, a White House official said on Thursday, after speculation earlier in the day of Cohn's possible departure rattled the U.S. stock market and the dollar. "Gary intends to remain in his position as NEC director at the White House. Nothing's changed," a White House official said. Wall Street investors were also concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump's refusal to back down from his initial reaction to the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, would damage the prospects for his economic agenda, including tax reform. Key U.S. equity indexes were down between _NUMBER_ percent and _NUMBER_ percent, while the dollar was a touch higher but well off the day's peaks before the Cohn speculation. "Gary is focused on his responsibilities," the White House official said, declining to comment on whether the president and Cohn had spoken about Cohn's reaction to what happened this week. Cohn's decision to remain comes amid mounting speculation that some top officials may be looking for an exit strategy in the wake of growing backlash to Trump's response to Saturday's violence in Charlottesville. Trump said on Tuesday the anti-racist demonstrators were as responsible for the violence as the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who instigated the protests. Those remarks sparked rebukes from fellow Republicans, top corporate executives and some close allies even as some supporters, including the vice president, stood by the president. The fallout also led to the disbanding of two CEO advisory panels as a growing number of chief executives from some of the nation's largest companies resigned this week in protest of the president's response. Other corporate executives not on the presidential councils also issued strong statements denouncing racism and bigotry. Cohn, who left his top job at Goldman Sachs Group Inc to take on the White House position, has served as the administration's point man on tax reform, infrastructure and other priorities. His departure would be seen as a setback to those plans. Trump's increasingly combative relationship with Congress, exacerbated by his latest tweets targeting senators in his own party, could further restrain any progress on those reforms even as Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. One Wall Street executive, who asked not to be named, noted that Cohn serves as "a moderating influence," in a White House often seen as divided among various camps. Steve Bannon, a White House senior adviser with close ties to far-right groups, said in an interview published Wednesday that he constantly butts heads with Cohn over issues such as trade with China. "That's a fight I fight every day here," Bannon told the American Prospect, a liberal-leaning political magazine.

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San Fransisco 49er's quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand during the national anthem during a recent NFL football game. He claimed he would no longer stand for a flag that represents a country who oppresses blacks. Does he even know what oppression is?_NUMBER_). Kaepernick coincidentally converted to Islam only two months ago.2). He is engaged to Nessa Diab, a Black Lives Matter activist who promotes what she calls authentic Islam. The Kaepernick's will also have a traditional Muslim wedding.3). Kaepernick was abandoned by his black family as a child and was adopted by a white family. Did he'suffer like he claims or was he taken care of when no one else wanted him? You only hear him talking tough now because something else is driving his anti-American anger.4).To date, Kaepernick has donated _CUR_0 to Black Lives Matter or any other group affiliated with helping minorities. His net worth is estimated to be over _CUR_100 million, yet he has donated zero dollars to the issues he claims to be so passionate about. When the National Anthem is played, I salute because I am a black man born and raised in the inner city afforded the opportunity for greatness in my own right. May you seek God's forgiveness and find humility, because we, the people are not going to forget what you'did and said. Conservative Daily PostFormer US Rep., Allen West had these tough words for anti-American pro-BLM Colin Kaepernick: BLM activists are thugs that vandalize cities and collect welfare checks while our veterans are sleeping under a bridge overpass because they fought for Kaepernick to have the freedom to utter ignorant remarks like he did.

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There aren't too many stories that are more shameful or disturbing than this one. What has been done to fix the horrible quality of care our veterans have been receiving during Obama's eight years in office? What would the VA look like today if Obama spent as much time trying to fix this broken health care system for our veterans as he'spent trying to improve his golf swing or organizing with Black Lives Matter terrorists? If anyone thinks Hillary would do a better job with our vets and their health care, they only need to do is look at Benghazi to see how much she cares about members of our US Military. Hillary continues to brag about her failed efforts to inflict a similar government run health care system on every American A veteran took his own life in the parking lot of a VA hospital in Long Island, New York, over the weekend after he was allegedly denied an appointment with an ER doctor for his mental problems.Peter Kaisen, _NUMBER_, of Islip, was pronounced dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound outside Building _NUMBER_ at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Sunday.According to a note posted on a funeral home's website, Kaisen was married, had children and grandchildren.The Suffolk County Police Department has confirmed that Kaisen had been a patient at the VA hospital but said nothing about a possible motive behind the'suicide.However, two hospital employees talking anonymously to the New York Times, which broke the'story, revealed that Kaisen had been frustrated that he could not see a doctor in the emergency room, where he went to seek help related to his mental health.One of the'sources told the paper that the _NUMBER_-year-old veteran shot himself inside his car after being denied service in the ER. The'source wondered why Kaisen had not been sent to the hospital's mental health center, or put in contact with a psychologist by phone. Someone dropped the ball, the unnamed hospital staffer told The Times. They should not have turned him away. The VA medical system, which serves nine million servicemen, has been under scrutiny since _NUMBER_, when it was revealed in a scathing report from the inspector general's office that about _NUMBER_ veterans at a Phoenix hospital faced chronic wait times and were at risk of being lost or forgotten .The VA later confirmed that at least _NUMBER_ veterans died while awaiting treatment in Phoenix.VA officials in Phoenix were also accused of falsifying records to cover up the long wait times for medical appointments.Entire story: Daily Mail

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The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to serve as his administration's top advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court, overcoming united Democratic opposition. Noel Francisco, a Washington lawyer with strong conservative credentials who previously worked in Republican former President George W. Bush's administration, was confirmed by the Senate as U.S. solicitor general on a vote of _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_. All the Senate's Democrats voted against him except for New Jersey's Robert Menendez, who is currently on trial facing corruption charges in Newark. Francisco takes up his new position as the Supreme Court prepares to begin its new term on Oct. _NUMBER_. The court has several potential blockbuster cases on its docket, including the challenge to Trump's travel ban on people from six predominantly Muslim countries entering the United States. That case will be argued before the justices on Oct. _NUMBER_. Francisco, who previously worked at the Jones Day law firm, will now be overseeing the Justice Department's defense of the ban and other major policy initiatives that are challenged in court. He has argued three cases at the Supreme Court. Most recently, he represented Republican former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell in a successful attempt to throw out corruption convictions. The justices ruled in favor of McDonnell last year in an _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ ruling that could make it tougher to prosecute politicians for corruption. Francisco served as a White House lawyer from _NUMBER_ to _NUMBER_ and spent another two years in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from _NUMBER_ to _NUMBER_. He previously worked as a clerk for the late Supreme Court conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

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A struggling mom sent an email to all _NUMBER_ of Mississippi's lawmakers asking for help getting insulin and an insulin pump for her diabetic daughter. This was after she called _NUMBER_ suppliers, trying to find one that would take Medicaid following her former supplier's move out of Medicaid's network. Her daughter has Type _NUMBER_ diabetes, and needs six to ten insulin injections per day just to live.Nicole Nichols was flabbergasted when she received this response from State Representative Jeffrey Guice: I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought about buying the'supplies with money that you earn? Wow. A struggling mom gets desperate and emails her lawmakers for help, and she gets slapped down with a horrifically insensitive reply from someone who doesn't know squat about her or her family. Guice is the perfect example of what's wrong with the GOP. The bootstraps crowd over there has a very limited understanding of these things.Guice issued an apology for his terrible response, which actually just reinforces the fact that he doesn't care about anyone outside his little bubble: I realize my remarks to Mrs. Nichols were completely insensitive and out of line I am sorry and deeply regret my reply. I know nothing about her and her family and replied in knee-jerk fashion. I d like to think the people of Mississippi and my constituents know that I m willing to help where I am able. I replied in knee-jerk fashion. That's basically an admission that he thinks anyone receiving government aid is a lazy good-for-nothing living high on the hog off of the backs of hardworking taxpayers. That's what the entire GOP thinks about people on aid. What an obtuse piece of flotsam.Nichols told her story to the Clarion-Ledger, going into more detail in a video about her situation and why she needs these supplies:Nichols is a stay-at-home mom, but her husband works two jobs to provide for their family of four. The insulin pump, which her daughter needs to avoid having to go through six to ten injections every day, is _CUR_2,000. The insulin itself can run as much as _CUR_400 per month. Struggling families can't afford that, and no amount of get a job is going to change that.Nichols actually did receive two other replies, both of which were sympathetic to her situation. Thankfully, people like Guice aren't calling the'shots here. Nichols posted about this on her Facebook page, prompting a barrage of outraged comments from people who read it. Mississippi Medicaid saw her post, actually had some compassion, and reached out to Nichols about this very situation.Guice, and the rest of the GOP, are heartless brutes. He might regret his comments, but the fact that he even made them shows that he's just another one of those who thinks everyone should just magically grow bootstraps with which to pull themselves up.Featured image via screen capture from embedded video

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The Oscars have been experiencing some well-deserved backlash since January _NUMBER_, when the'show announced an all-white group of nominees for the _NUMBER_ Academy Awards. Chris Rock, who is hosting the'show this year, called the'show the white BET Awards while other celebrities like Jada Pinkett Smith and director Spike Lee said they would not be attending the'show. Since the uproar, many other celebrities have spoken out against racism in Hollywood and have supported the call to boycott the Oscars.But someone else has given their unwanted opinion Republican presidential front runner and infamous racist Donald Trump. Never one to disappoint when it comes to being offensive, the business mogul went on Fox & Friends to share what he thought about the Academy Awards lack of minority nominees. Actress and Fox contributor Stacey Dash set the'stage when she criticized Black Entertainment Television for not giving out awards to white people. She'said: I think it's ludicrous, because we have to make up our minds. Either we want to have segregation or integration. If we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms. It's a double standard. Trump followed Dash with his own awful take on BET and the Oscars controversy: I saw somebody on your show today say, Well, what do we do with BET? The whites don't get any nominations, and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I ve never even thought of it from that standpoint. Later in his rant, Trump added: I mean, I ve watched over the years where African Americans have in fact received Academy Awards and have in fact been represented. And this is not one of those years, but over the years I ve seen numerous black actors and African American actors receive awards and I think that's great. This doesn't happen to be one of those years. It's a difficult situation. Trump also slammed Al Sharpton's push to tune out the A-list event, saying Give me a break. You can watch the interview below:Featured image via Gage Skidmore

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A coalition of U.S. states has mounted a broad legal challenge against what it called the Trump administration's illegal suspension of rules to improve the energy efficiency of ceiling fans, portable air conditioners and other products. The challenge, also joined by environmental groups, came after the U.S. Department of Energy last month delayed standards proposed under the Obama administration to reduce air pollution and operating costs associated with the products. Ten Democratic attorneys general, plus New York City and a Pennsylvania regulator, on Monday notified Energy Secretary Rick Perry of their plan to sue in _NUMBER_ days for stalling proposed standards for air compressors, commercial boilers, portable air conditioners, power supplies, and walk-in coolers and freezers. The same group, excluding Maryland, on Friday petitioned the federal appeals court in New York to force the administration to implement ceiling fan efficiency standards that were to have taken effect two weeks ago, but have been delayed to Sept. _NUMBER_. Implementation was delayed after White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Jan. _NUMBER_ directed federal agencies to put new regulations on hold until their new leaders could review them. The Obama administration issued a similar directive in _NUMBER_. The Energy Department said it does not comment on pending litigation. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said adopting the "common-sense" efficiency standards would dramatically reduce air pollution, including from carbon dioxide, mercury and methane. He said enough electricity would be saved to serve _NUMBER_ million households annually, and save consumers and businesses close to _CUR_24 billion. "Leaving the final rules in regulatory 'limbo' has very real, negative economic and environmental consequences, essentially frustrating Congress' energy conservation goals," the states said in their letter to Perry. The letter was signed by officials of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, New York City and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The Consumer Federation of America, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club on Monday sent Perry a similar letter threatening litigation. Both letters accused the Energy Department of ignoring its obligation under federal law to publish final efficiency rules in the Federal Register. In notices published last month, the Energy Department said Perry had only begun his job on March _NUMBER_ and needed more time to conduct "further review and consideration of new regulations." The petition is New York et al v U.S. Department of Energy et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_.

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The man who served as White House Counsel to former President Richard Nixon during Watergate is weighing in on Donald Trump's ongoing scandal with Russia. His opinion? Trump's administration is in cover-up mode. John Dean sat down for an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Monday night and his summation of Trump's current situation was clear when Hayes asked about Trump's shady ties to Russia and his bogus wiretapping claims. In fact is in cover-up mode, Dean replied.On Monday, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee and he confirmed that the bureau is indeed investigating Russia's interference in the _NUMBER_ election. He also said that the FBI is investigating the possibility that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia.In addition, Comey said during the hearing that the Justice Department has absolutely no evidence to support Trump's claim that former President Obama had the phones at Trump Tower tapped.According to Dean, Trump's desperate attempts to distance himself from Comey's testimony is highly suggestive of a coverup. There's just never been any question in my mind about that. I ve been inside a cover-up. I know how they look and feel. And every signal they're sending is: We re covering this thing up,' Dean said. Experienced investigators know this. They know how people react when they're being pursued, and this White House is not showing their innocence, they're showing how damn guilty they are, is what we're seeing. During the Watergate scandal, Dean ended up charged with obstruction of justice. Trump, he'said, is well on his way to committing the'same crime. There's also the question of whether this White House will obstruct, essentially, an investigation. You now have the head of the FBI with a target painted on its back, the front-line investigators with targets painted on their backs; you have a U.S. attorney the president said he was going to retain who has been summarily fired in Preet Bharara, and it strikes me that there is in some ways a kind of obstruction land mine that the entirety of the White House now has to tip-toe through, Dean said.Trump had personally promised Bharara that he would be keeping his job, then last week he changed his mind and fired him without warning. Bharara just happened to be investigating Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price , but of course, this had absolutely nothing to do with Trump'suddenly deciding to give him the boot. Trump's Russia problem isn't going away anytime soon. Like with Watergate, it is just a matter of time until the truth comes out and Trump's dirty deeds blow up in his face.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images

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Turkey did not violate U.S. sanctions against Iran and did the right thing regardless of the outcome of the ongoing case in the United States, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by private broadcaster CNN Turk as saying on Thursday. On Wednesday, Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab described in a U.S. court how he ran a sprawling international money laundering scheme aimed at helping Iran get around U.S. sanctions and spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, in a case that has further strained ties between Ankara and Washington.

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Nancy Pelosi had a strange reaction to a reporter's question about North Korean aggression She giggled!Nancy Pelosi holds a weekly press conference that has become a joke. Every week she does something strange that hits the news. Whether it's giggling or saying Bush is President, you can be sure Pelosi will do something gaffe worthy.Pelosi was fielding questions from reporters during her weekly press conference, and as she finished an answer about arts funding she giggled.A reporter then said, Kim Jung In has been celebrating their ICBM launch with some cultural events Pelosi laughed strangely.Pelosi stopped giggling and gathered her composure as the reporter continued she then sighed loudly into the microphone.As the reporter finished asking his question about whether Pelosi thinks the administration will be able to protect the West Coast from an attack, she bizarrely said she's one of the few members of Congress to have visited Pyongyang. What is wrong with this woman? Term limits please!

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Mubashra Uddin, a _NUMBER_-year-old Muslim college student and daughter of Pakistani immigrants dropped her newborn infant out of an eight-story apartment window in Chicago on November _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, and was just sentenced to only four years of probation.In the'strict Muslim home where Uddin was raised, even speaking to boys particularly African-American ones was forbidden, relatives said.When her Pakistan-born parents found out about her boyfriend, they pulled her out of the high school and home-schooled her for her last two years, according to her family and friends.Uddin found out she was pregnant when she was _NUMBER_ and only told her boyfriend and her closest friend. But in the'strict Muslim home where Uddin was raised, even speaking to boys particularly African-American ones was forbidden, relatives said. When her Pakistan-born parents found out about her boyfriend, they pulled her out of the high school and home-schooled her for her last two years, according to her family and friends.She gave birth in her room in a three-bedroom apartment shared with her family in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.Shortly after giving birth, she heard her mother coming down the hall and dropped her newborn out of her eight-story window.The newborn suffered broken ribs, a fractured skull, and spine, and a lacerated aorta and liver. A neighbor found the infant, still alive, on the ground, wrapped her up, and brought her to the hospital where she later died. The act of dropping a newborn out of an eighth-story window to its eventual death is exceedingly evil, exceedingly cruel, Judge James Brown said Thursday as he ordered Uddin held without bail. With all her family has put her through, I m surprised she didn't jump out of the window herself, said the mother of Uddin's former boyfriend, who asked not to be identified in order to keep her son's identity secret. Sometimes she felt under pressure to be this perfect daughter even pressure to be this perfect Muslim woman that prayed, fasted, was humble and also didn't make mistakes, a longtime friend, identified only as Nina O., wrote to the judge.Uddin loved babies, according to family and friends.Prosecutors said that after she admitted guilt, police searched her home and found bloody sheets, bloody scissors and blood on the floor next to her bed, as well as near and on the window. Chicago TribuneIn contrast: Earlier this year a Connecticut Dad was sentenced to _NUMBER_ years in prison without parole for dropping his infant son off of a bridge. See story here.

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The remains of Victor Emmanuel III, who reigned as Italy's king through two world wars and died in exile in _NUMBER_, were flown back from Egypt on Sunday for reburial at a family mausoleum near Turin. The remains of his wife, Queen Elena, also returned to Italy on Friday for reburial with those of the king at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, near the Piedmont town of Cuneo, a spokesman for the sanctuary said. Elena died in _NUMBER_ and her remains had lain in Montpelier in France. Victor Emmanuel III's _NUMBER_-year reign, which started in _NUMBER_ after the assassination of his father Umberto I, encompassed the period of fascist rule in Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini. He drew criticism for failing to prevent Mussolini's seizure of power in _NUMBER_ and for fleeing Rome in _NUMBER_ to avoid an invading German army. The monarch - known as sciaboletta , or small sabre, due to his stature - abdicated the throne in _NUMBER_ in favor of his son Umberto II in a vain effort to avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic. After Italians voted for a republic, Victor Emmanuel went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died the following year. Italy's post-war constitution barred male descendants of the royal House of Savoy from setting foot in Italy because of the family's support for Mussolini. The ban was lifted in _NUMBER_. The grandson of Umberto II, Emanuele Filiberto, told the Italian press recently that he believed the right place for the remains of former Italian kings was the Pantheon in Rome.

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One of the ancillary benefits of Donald Trump's insurgence into the US political scene has been a forceful injection of realism into the national political discourse. One of those points of discussion is centered around the concept of a state within a state, commonly referred to as the Deep State. It's suddenly become an acceptable mainstream idea, but prior to the _NUMBER_ election cycle, that conversation was strictly a fringe affair, mostly relegated to the realms of conspiracy forums and alternative media. but now it's written and spoken about as a mainstream talking point. One of the most coherent articulations of this idea originated from a former US Congressional staffer turned best-selling author, Mike Lofgren. In his book, The Deep State, he outlines the'shape and structure of this seemingly invisible state within a state, but unlike the establishment media's innocuous commentary, Lofgren also delivers a incisive moral verdict on this power transition and explains how it's not only eviscerating the fabric of democracy and the foundations of the Constitutional Republic, but more importantly how it's destroying society.More than ever, it's important to understand just how we arrived at this crucial point in history and more importantly what can be done to derail this silent coup in the United States, and internationally too.The following essay was written by Lofgren in _NUMBER_, and still stands firm as a critical deconstruction of the current shadow state set-up in America . Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the'silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade . By Mike LofgrenThere is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics _NUMBER_ or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The'subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. During the last five years, the news media have been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain'that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected . President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress. Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented at least since the McCarthy era witch hunts against federal employees . Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the'subject of illegal surveillance.These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in _NUMBER_ when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi's regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit _CUR_115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least 100m to the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country's intelligence. Since _NUMBER_, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing _NUMBER_ people. During that same period of time, the government spent _CUR_1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the'size of _NUMBER_ football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to _NUMBER_ quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an expos of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the'state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can'this other government be accurately termed an establishment. All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for _NUMBER_ years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, the deciders. Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called groupthink, the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the'sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the _NUMBER_,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it's _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the'state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified? No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State's emissaries.I saw this submissiveness on many occasions. One memorable incident was passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of _NUMBER_. This legislation retroactively legalized the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance first revealed by The New York Times in _NUMBER_ and indemnified the telecommunications companies for their cooperation in these acts. The bill passed easily: All that was required was the invocation of the word terrorism and most members of Congress responded like iron filings obeying a magnet. One who responded in that fashion was Senator Barack Obama, soon to be coronated as the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He had already won'the most delegates by campaigning to the left of his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the excesses of the global war on terror and the erosion of constitutional liberties.As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called private enterprise is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called Top Secret America, Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the'scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September _NUMBER_ attacks. There are now _NUMBER_ contract personnel with top-secret clearances a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since _NUMBER_/_NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons about _NUMBER_ million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community's budget goes to paying contracts. And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government's largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the'same company; Booz Allen is _NUMBER_ percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the'status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: I am concerned that the'size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you'do prosecute, if you'do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. This, from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee. The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In _NUMBER_, General David Petraeus joined KKR of _NUMBER_ West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with _CUR_62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the'sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy. Petraeus and most of the avatars of the Deep State the White House advisers who urged Obama not to impose compensation limits on Wall Street CEOs, the contractor-connected think tank experts who besought us to stay the course in Iraq, the economic gurus who perpetually demonstrate that globalization and deregulation are a blessing that makes us all better off in the long run are careful to pretend that they have no ideology. Their preferred pose is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well considered advice based on profound expertise. That is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the Washington Consensus : financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century American Exceptionalism : the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground and to ignore painfully won international norms of civilized behavior. To paraphrase what Sir John Harrington said more than _NUMBER_ years ago about treason, now that the ideology of the Deep State has prospered, none dare call it ideology. That is why describing torture with the word torture on broadcast television is treated less as political heresy than as an inexcusable lapse of Washington etiquette: Like smoking a cigarette on camera, these days it is simply not done. After Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. While the government could simply dragoon the high technology companies to do the NSA's bidding, it would prefer cooperation with so important an engine of the nation's economy, perhaps with an implied quid pro quo. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary indulgence the government shows the Valley in intellectual property matters. If an American jailbreaks his smartphone , he could receive a fine of up to _CUR_500,000 and several years in prison; so much for a citizen's vaunted property rights to what he purchases. The libertarian pose of the Silicon Valley moguls, so carefully cultivated in their public relations, has always been a sham. Silicon Valley has long been tracking for commercial purposes the activities of every person who uses an electronic device, so it is hardly surprising that the Deep State should emulate the Valley and do the'same for its own purposes. Nor is it surprising that it should conscript the Valley's assistance.Still, despite the essential roles of lower Manhattan and Silicon Valley, the center of gravity of the Deep State is firmly situated in and around the Beltway. The Deep State's physical expansion and consolidation around the Beltway would seem to make a mockery of the frequent pronouncement that governance in Washington is dysfunctional and broken. That the'secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-like control on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the'status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.The results of this contradiction are not abstract, as a tour of the rotting, decaying, bankrupt cities of the American Midwest will attest. It is not even confined to those parts of the country left behind by a Washington Consensus that decreed the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy in the interests of efficiency and shareholder value. This paradox is evident even within the Beltway itself, the richest metropolitan area in the nation. Although demographers and urban researchers invariably count Washington as a world city, that is not always evident to those who live there. Virtually every time there is a severe summer thunderstorm, tens or even hundreds of thousands of residents lose power, often for many days. There are occasional water restrictions over wide areas because water mains, poorly constructed and inadequately maintained, have burst. The Washington metropolitan area considers it a Herculean task just to build a rail link to its international airport with luck it may be completed by _NUMBER_.It is as if Hadrian's Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrates from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills begin to crumble. The governing classes of the Deep State may continue to deceive themselves with their dreams of Zeus-like omnipotence, but others do not. A _NUMBER_ Pew Poll that interviewed _NUMBER_ people around the world found that in _NUMBER_ of _NUMBER_ countries surveyed, a plurality of respondents said they believed China already had or would in the future replace the United States as the world's top economic power.The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the'sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Living upon its principal, in this case, means that the Deep State has been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the'so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the'surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the'smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. Will the Deep State ride on the back of the American people from failure to failure until the country itself, despite its huge reserves of human and material capital, is slowly exhausted? The dusty road of empire is strewn with the bones of former great powers that exhausted themselves in like manner.But, there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the House narrowly failed to pass an amendment that would have defunded the NSA's warrantless collection of data from US persons. Shortly thereafter, the president, advocating yet another military intervention in the Middle East, this time in Syria, met with such overwhelming congressional skepticism that he changed the'subject by grasping at a diplomatic lifeline thrown to him by Vladimir Putin. Has the visible, constitutional state, the one envisaged by Madison and the other Founders, finally begun to reassert itself against the claims and usurpations of the Deep State? To some extent, perhaps. The unfolding revelations of the'scope of the NSA's warrantless surveillance have become so egregious that even institutional apologists such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have begun to backpedal if only rhetorically from their knee-jerk defense of the agency. As more people begin to waken from the fearful and suggestible state that _NUMBER_/_NUMBER_ created in their minds, it is possible that the Deep State's decade-old tactic of crying terrorism! every time it faces resistance is no longer eliciting the'same Pavlovian response of meek obedience. And the American people, possibly even their legislators, are growing tired of endless quagmires in the Middle East.But there is another more structural reason the Deep State may have peaked in the extent of its dominance. While it seems to float above the constitutional state, its essentially parasitic, extractive nature means that it is still tethered to the formal proceedings of governance. The Deep State thrives when there is tolerable functionality in the day-to-day operations of the federal government. As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black budgets get rubber-stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly. But when one house of Congress is taken over by tea party Wahhabites, life for the ruling class becomes more trying.If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda. But recent congressional antics involving sequestration, the government shutdown and the threat of default over the debt ceiling extension have been disrupting that equilibrium. And an extreme gridlock dynamic has developed between the two parties such that continuing some level of sequestration is politically the least bad option for both parties, albeit for different reasons. As much as many Republicans might want to give budget relief to the organs of national security, they cannot fully reverse sequestration without the Democrats demanding revenue increases. And Democrats wanting to spend more on domestic discretionary programs cannot void sequestration on either domestic or defense programs without Republicans insisting on entitlement cuts.So, for the foreseeable future, the Deep State must restrain its appetite for taxpayer dollars. Limited deals may soften sequestration, but agency requests will not likely be fully funded anytime soon. Even Wall Street's rentier operations have been affected: After helping finance the tea party to advance its own plutocratic ambitions, America's Big Money is now regretting the Frankenstein's monster it has created. Like children playing with dynamite, the tea party and its compulsion to drive the nation into credit default has alarmed the grown-ups commanding the heights of capital; the latter are now telling the politicians they thought they had hired to knock it off.The House vote to defund the NSA's illegal surveillance programs was equally illustrative of the disruptive nature of the tea party insurgency. Civil liberties Democrats alone would never have come so close to victory; tea party stalwart Justin Amash , who has also upset the business community for his debt-limit fundamentalism, was the lead Republican sponsor of the NSA amendment, and most of the Republicans who voted with him were aligned with the tea party.The final factor is Silicon Valley. Owing to secrecy and obfuscation, it is hard to know how much of the NSA's relationship with the Valley is based on voluntary cooperation, how much is legal compulsion through FISA warrants and how much is a matter of the NSA surreptitiously breaking into technology companies systems. Given the Valley's public relations requirement to mollify its customers who have privacy concerns, it is difficult to take the tech firms libertarian protestations about government compromise of their systems at face value, especially since they engage in similar activity against their own customers for commercial purposes. That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State's demand for patriotic cooperation. Even legal compulsion can be combatted: Unlike the individual citizen, tech firms have deep pockets and batteries of lawyers with which to fight government diktat.This pushback has gone so far that on January _NUMBER_, President Obama announced revisions to the NSA's data collection programs, including withdrawing the agency's custody of a domestic telephone record database, expanding requirements for judicial warrants and ceasing to spy on friendly foreign leaders. Critics have denounced the changes as a cosmetic public relations move, but they are still significant in that the clamor has gotten so loud that the president feels the political need to address it.When the contradictions within a ruling ideology are pushed too far, factionalism appears and that ideology begins slowly to crumble. Corporate oligarchs such as the Koch brothers are no longer entirely happy with the faux-populist political front group they helped fund and groom. Silicon Valley, for all the Ayn Rand-like tendencies of its major players, its offshoring strategies and its further exacerbation of income inequality, is now lobbying Congress to restrain'the NSA, a core component of the Deep State. Some tech firms are moving to encrypt their data. High tech corporations and governments alike seek dominance over people though collection of personal data, but the corporations are jumping ship now that adverse public reaction to the NSA scandals threatens their profits.The outcome of all these developments is uncertain. The Deep State, based on the twin pillars of national security imperative and corporate hegemony, has until recently seemed unshakable and the latest events may only be a temporary perturbation in its trajectory. But history has a way of toppling the altars of the mighty. While the two great materialist and determinist ideologies of the twentieth century, Marxism and the Washington Consensus, successively decreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the market were inevitable, the future is actually indeterminate. It may be that deep economic and social currents create the framework of history, but those currents can be channeled, eddied, or even reversed by circumstance, chance and human agency. We have only to reflect upon defunct glacial despotisms such as the USSR or East Germany to realize that nothing is forever.Throughout history, state systems with outsized pretensions to power have reacted to their environments in two ways. The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the'status quo reflects the nation's unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers. As the French ancien r gime, the Romanov dynasty and the Habsburg emperors discovered, the'strategy works splendidly for a while, particularly if one has a talent for dismissing unpleasant facts. The final results, however, are likely to be thoroughly disappointing.The'second strategy is one embraced to varying degrees and with differing goals, by figures of such contrasting personalities as Mustafa Kemal Atat rk, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle and Deng Xiaoping. They were certainly not revolutionaries by temperament; if anything, their natures were conservative. But they understood that the political cultures in which they lived were fossilized and incapable of adapting to the times. In their drive to reform and modernize the political systems they inherited, their first obstacles to overcome were the outworn myths that encrusted the thinking of the elites of their time.As the United States confronts its future after experiencing two failed wars, a precarious economy and _CUR_17 trillion in accumulated debt, the national punditry has split into two camps. The first, the declinists, sees a broken, dysfunctional political system incapable of reform and an economy soon to be overtaken by China. The'second, the reformers, offers a profusion of nostrums to turn the nation around: public financing of elections to sever the artery of money between the corporate components of the Deep State and financially dependent elected officials, government insourcing to reverse the tide of outsourcing of government functions and the conflicts of interest that it creates, a tax policy that values human labor over financial manipulation and a trade policy that favors exporting manufactured goods over exporting investment capital.All of that is necessary, but not sufficient. The Snowden revelations , the derailed drive for military intervention in Syria and a fractious Congress, whose dysfunction has begun to be a serious inconvenience to the Deep State, show that there is now a deep but as yet inchoate hunger for change. What America lacks is a figure with the'serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed. The term Deep State was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime. In British author John le Carr's latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster. I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process. Twenty-five years ago, the'sociologist Robert Nisbet described this phenomenon as the attribute of No Fault . Presidents, secretaries and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon and now the Persian Gulf. To his list we might add _NUMBER_/_NUMBER_, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The attitude of many members of Congress towards Wall Street was memorably expressed by Rep. Spencer Bachus , the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in _NUMBER_: In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks. Beginning in _NUMBER_, every US president has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. Beginning in _NUMBER_, every losing presidential candidate has been a Harvard or Yale graduate, with the exception of John McCain in _NUMBER_. In recent months, the American public has seen a vivid example of a Deep State operative marketing his ideology under the banner of pragmatism. Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates a one-time career CIA officer and deeply political Bush family retainer has camouflaged his retrospective defense of military escalations that have brought us nothing but casualties and fiscal grief as the'straight-from-the-shoulder memoir from a plain-spoken son of Kansas who disdains Washington and its politicians. Meanwhile, the US government took the lead in restoring Baghdad's sewer system at a cost of _CUR_7 billion. Obama's abrupt about-face suggests he may have been skeptical of military intervention in Syria all along, but only dropped that policy once Congress and Putin gave him the running room to do so. In _NUMBER_, he went ahead with the Afghanistan surge partly because General Petraeus public relations campaign and back-channel lobbying on the Hill for implementation of his pet military strategy pre-empted other options. These incidents raise the disturbing question of how much the democratically elected president or any president sets the policy of the national security state and how much the policy is set for him by the professional operatives of that state who engineer faits accomplis that force his hand.*** Author Mike Lofgren is a former career congressional staff member who served on the House and Senate budget committees. His latest book is The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. He appeared several times as a guest on Moyers & Company. Learn more on his website: mikelofgren.net.This essay was originally published on Feb. _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, written by best selling author Mike Lofgren and published at BillMoyers.comREAD MORE DEEP STATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Deep State FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

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British pop singer Rebecca Ferguson, daughter of a white British woman and Jamaican father, says she has been invited to perform at Donald Trump's inauguration, but her response may not be the RSVP the President-elect's team were expecting.The former UK X-Factor runner-up said she would only accept the invitation on the condition that she could perform Strange Fruit a song protesting racism in 1930s America, made famous by Billie Holiday.The lyrics, written in the 1930s by Jewish communist Abel Meeropol, were composed as a protest poem to highlight endemic racism in America's southern states.The'song's opening lyrics deal with lynching, which was still happening in parts of the country at the time: Southern trees bear strange fruit // Blood on the leaves and blood at the root // Black bodies swinging in the'southern breeze // Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.According to Billie Holiday's Estate, Holiday regularly performed the'song at live performances in _NUMBER_. Her record label, Columbia, refused to let her record the'song under their name, so they granted her a one-session contractual release that gave Holiday clearance to independently record the track.Later that year, the album featuring Strange Fruit sold a million copies, becoming Holiday's biggest-selling record at the time. In _NUMBER_, the'single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Last month, The Beach Boys told CNN that the group has been contacted about performing, but that no decision has been made at this point as to how or whether they will participate. The'so-called "A" list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they'did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE! Donald J. Trump December _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_-CNN

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Donald Trump has had what is arguably the most bizarre week in the history of the American presidency. He has careened from outrage to outrage, lie to lie, and lawless action to lawless action all in the'span of five days, starting with his firing of FBI Director James Comey because he threw a massive tantrum over the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. Well, there is one respected American who has had about enough of Trump's acting as if he is above the law: journalist Dan Rather.Rather took to his Facebook page to rip Trump to shreds as only he can. He begins by talking about how long he's lived and how many presidencies he's lived through including Richard Nixon's and then moves on to the extraordinary disgrace that is the Donald Trump presidency. Rather says, in part:But I have never seen a week where a president of our nation has behaved with such a cavalier disregard for the norms and institutions of our democracy. And it now seems like the investigation is expanding into Trump's business dealings. The comparisons with Richard Nixon are plentiful these days, but even he did not seem so untethered from our basic governance. And I have never seen so many members of a political party rally around incompetence, intemperance, and inanity.Dan Rather is correct. Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout. Trump is downright dangerous, and he must be restrained. If only the Congress would do their jobs and speak out, and act as the check on this president that they are supposed to be. Hell, they were more than happy to be a check on President Obama and he didn't even do anything that was lawless.This is the Republican Party putting partisan politics and their own political futures above the good of the republic. It is shameful, and that is why we must vote them out of Congress in _NUMBER_.Mr. Rather, thank you for speaking truth to power. We need voices like yours in these dark and dire times.Read the entire brilliant post below:Featured image via Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for SiriusXM

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Earlier today, it was revealed that the US Secret Service is investigating a Facebook post from Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, in which she'stated: I hope Trump is assassinated! She deleted her comments after she realized the'sh*t-storm she had started by openly calling for the assassination of our president.Shortly after the news broke about the vile comments the Democrat MO state senator made, I Hope Trump Is Assassinated began to trend on Twitter, a social-media platform that has been criticized for shutting down conservative and libertarian voices, while allowing leftist hate speech to flourish.Conservative comedian Mark Dice tweeted to Twitter CEO _USER_ to ask why he's allowing I Hope Trump Is Assassinated to trend on the'social media platform.Way to go _USER_. "I Hope Trump Is Assassinated" is trending on your company's platform. Do you'disavow or endorse? Silence speaks Mark Dice August _NUMBER_, 2017This Twitter user wants to know how conservative Twitter accounts get banned left and right but I Hope Trump Is Assassinated is allowed to trend on Twitter:"I Hope Trump Is Assassinated" Conservative twitter accounts get banned left and right, but this trends. Disgusting liberal animals _URL_ Mike August _NUMBER_, 2017As usual, Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars had the best response to the'sickening trend:"I hope Trump is assassinated" is trending on Twitter. But it's the right that has a problem with violence. CNN told me. Paul Joseph Watson August _NUMBER_, 2017Here are just a few examples of tweets from the left wishing our current president would be assassinated:I've never wished misfortune on anyone but with all my fuckin heart I hope trump is assassinated before he runs us into the ground Fuck him AnalogGirl January _NUMBER_, 2017i hope trump is assassinated by a disabled latino muslim lesbian Mars November _NUMBER_, 2016I would never wish death upon anybody, but I hope Trump is assassinated. November _NUMBER_, 2016Gay, Jewish conservative and former Breitbart writer, Milo Yiannopoulis woke up to find his Twitter account shut down for what Twitter considered to be hate speech for holding liberals accountable for their actions.For anyone who would like to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt, and may believe the people who monitor hate speech at Twitter haven't noticed the horrific trend by the left quite yet, check out this tweet by _USER_ , that's still up on Twitter from December _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_:It's _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ AM and I want to kill Donald Trump. DOOMBLADE December _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_

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Rohingya insurgents declared a month-long unilateral ceasefire, starting on Sunday, to enable aid groups to help ease a humanitarian crisis in northwest Myanmar. Nearly _NUMBER_ Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and _NUMBER_ non-Muslim civilians have been displaced inside Myanmar after the military launched a counter-offensive following attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army insurgents on _NUMBER_ police posts and an army base on Aug. _NUMBER_. ARSA strongly encourages all concerned humanitarian actors resume their humanitarian assistance to all victims of the humanitarian crisis, irrespective of ethnic or religious background during the ceasefire period, ARSA said in a statement. The impact of the move is unclear. The group does not appear to have been able to put up significant resistance against the military force unleashed in Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state. In the last two weeks, thousands of homes have been burned down, dozens of villages uprooted and thousands of people are still on the move toward the border with Bangladesh. The wave of hungry and traumatized refugees pouring into Bangladesh has strained aid agencies and local communities already helping hundreds of thousands displaced by previous waves of violence in Myanmar. In its statement, ARSA called on the military to also lay down arms and allow humanitarian aid to all affected people. Myanmar says its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against ARSA, which the government has declared a terrorist organization. Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes have mounted a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population. On Friday, the United Nations in Bangladesh found tens of thousands of refugees who had not been counted before, raising the count to _NUMBER_ from some _NUMBER_ the day before. On Saturday, that jumped by another _NUMBER_ to _NUMBER_. On Saturday, thousands of Rohingya were milling on the road near the camp of Kutapalong, carrying bamboo and tarpaulin to build shacks. Children and women flocked to every stopping vehicle, begging. Aid workers say a serious humanitarian crisis is also unfolding on the Myanmar side of the border. Red Cross organizations are scaling up their operations in Rakhine after the United Nations had to suspend activities there following government suggestions that its agency had supported the insurgents. The United Nations evacuated non-critical staff from the area. Thousands of displaced people in Rakhine have been stranded or left without food for weeks. Many are still trying to cross mountains, dense bush and rice fields to reach Bangladesh. The U.N. and INGOs have not been very welcome in Rakhine and...they are not able to operate and ensure the safety and security of their staff and volunteers, said Joy Singhal of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies . The government had invited the Red Cross to assist them, he said. Aid workers worry many Rohingya had been left without food since mid-July, when the World Food Programme , which had been providing food and cash assistance, was unable to operate. The government said it would set up camps for internally displaced people in Rakhine but the move could draw opposition from U.N. humanitarian experts.

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A new poll by Austria's Social Democrats suggests they may be poised for a boost at parliamentary elections on Sunday after having been relegated to third place behind the conservatives and the far right in opinion polls for months. An SPO source and a report by newspaper Kurier said on Friday the Social Democrats have come within less than a handful of percentage points of the conservatives, who have been leading polls for months at around a third of the vote. The SPO and the far-right Freedom Party have both attracted approval ratings of around a quarter, with the FPO taking second place more often than not. We will win this, you will see, an ebullient Christian Kern, Social Democrat Chancellor and party leader, told supporters. Whichever party wins the most votes on Sunday is likely to miss the _NUMBER_-percent mark, meaning it will have to enter coalition talks.

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Democratic Party activists in some U.S. states are using Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who has stirred controversy with his comments about illegal immigrants and women, as the centerpiece of their "get out the vote" campaign for the November elections. In California, canvassers from the Orange County Democrats carry pictures of Trump when they knock on doors ahead of the June _NUMBER_ California primary. They ask if people will vote in the primary, and warn that if they don't help pick the strongest possible Democrat, "this guy will win," said Henry Vandermeir, the local party chairman in Orange County, a traditionally Republican island in the state. Democrats in New Hampshire have unveiled Trump/Sununu lawn signs, looking to tie Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on issues such as climate change and healthcare. One sign reads: "Trump/Sununu. Because Health Care Is For Losers," a swipe at Trump's vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. "Every state party is trying to maximize what they can get out of this difference and to tie Trump to the Republicans in the state," said Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. To be sure, Republicans appear likely to use Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination who is also a polarizing figure, in a similar fashion. "There is no better volunteer recruitment tool, fundraising pitch, or unifier for the Republican Party than the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency that will surely take us further backwards," the Republican National Committee said in a statement. Democrats are also looking to tie Trump to Republican Senate candidates on the Nov. _NUMBER_ ballot as they seek to regain control of the chamber they lost in the _NUMBER_ congressional elections. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last week released so-called "Trump cards" online, equating several Republican senators' policy positions with those of the New York developer. For Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, for example, the DSCC highlighted how they and Trump oppose a federal minimum wage hike. The DSCC also launched a website in March, partyoftrump.com, which labeled some senators "Retrumplicans" and asked for donations to help fight senators who support Trump. Recent polls suggest that a Trump/Clinton matchup could be a tight race. The two candidates were in a dead heat in the three key swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania in a Quinnipiac University poll earlier in May. And a Reuters poll this month showed that much of the backing for Clinton and Trump comes from people whose primary motivation is to stop the other side from winning, rather than any love for either of the two candidates or their policies. The strategy of highlighting opposing candidates is not without risks, according to Bruce Newman, the author of "The Marketing Revolution in Politics: What Recent U.S. Presidential Campaigns Can Teach Us About Effective Marketing." If Trump - who shocked pundits by beating _NUMBER_ other Republican hopefuls for the nomination - proves more attractive to the general electorate than Hillary Clinton, then tying him to other Republicans could hurt Democrats "We don't know how popular this guy is going to get," Newman said. "This is just the beginning."

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Republicans may act like they have faith in Donald Trump when the cameras are rolling, but if you ask them in private, they have some serious issues with his trainwreck of a presidency.On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the ladies of The View that Republicans have real problems with Trump when you speak to them behind closed doors. When you talk to Republicans quietly you know, in the cloak room and the gym they are having real problems with him, Schumer replied. Now, very few John McCain, to his credit but very few have had the courage to oppose hime even though they know he's doing a lot of things that are against what America is all about My prediction is that if he keeps up on this path which is likely, I don't think he ll change within three or four months you're going to see a whole lot of Republicans breaking with him. And that's the'salvage of America. That is the hope of America. Schumer continued, noting that Trump has assembled the worst cabinet I ve ever seen in the history of America. He then predicted that in a matter of months Trump will push Republicans to a point where they have no choice but to turn on him.Schumer explained that Trump had campaigned as a populist against both the Democratic and Republican establishments. If he continued on that path, he might have some successes, Schumer said. But what Trump has done is move to the hard, hard right, way beyond what most Republicans are for, and because of this, he will be a failure. Schumer doesn't think Trump is going to change anytime soon, but he does think that there will come a time when Republicans will step up and put a stop to this madness. Or at least he hopes so. I do think, and hope and pray, that a lot of the Republicans they're mainstream people, I don't agree with them on the issues but they're good people that they will feel they have no choice but to break with him. The minority leader also added that Trump's attacks on the press, in particular, are trouble for the democracy. Watch the'segment here:Featured image via video screen capture

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Hillary Clinton breaks the law, gets people who work for her killed, lies to the American people and she's still a media darling? How is that possible???

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The thin-skinned president-elect took his angry little fingers to his Twitter account to moan about Saturday Night Live's skit this weekend. Alec Baldwin knows how to get under Donald Trump's skin and it's glorious to watch.Incoming press secretary Sean Spicer was upset as he'spoke with Tamron Hall and Willie Geist of the NBC TODAY Show Monday about the comedy skit.Alec Baldwin returned to play the part of Donald Trump this weekend to hit on the _NUMBER_-page dossier alleging that Trump paid prostitutes to take part in Golden Showers at a hotel in Moscow. I d like to ask you about your big Russian pee-pee party, the reporter said. No, no, Baldwin's Trump told the reporters. I m not talking about the pee-pee. It didn't happen. It wasn't as cool as it sounds. Next question. But that was too much for Spicer to handle. He called the comedy show disappointing and not funny. It was not funny; it was mean-spirited, Spicer said. And it's gone from being a show you could sit back and get a good laugh out of to being something that's frankly mean and bad television, he continued.It was funny, though.Watch:The Twitter-addicted president-elect took to Twitter to cry about the'show. _USER_ is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!, he tweeted.It's a comedy skit and the more Team Trump rants against it, the more the'show's ratings will peak. Somewhere, Alec Baldwin is smiling because again, he got under Donald J. Trump's skin simply by impersonating him on a late night comedy show.In Barack Obama's final interview with _NUMBER_ Minutes as president, he'said thick skin is an important quality to have when serving as the commander-in-chief. Thick skin helps in getting the job done, the president said.Grow up, Donald. Life is hard. We can't wait to see the SNL skit after Trump's impeachment hearings.Featured image via screen capture.

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Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ PM PST | _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ PM CST | _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire, Andy Nowicki of Alt Right Blogspot, Stewart Howe, Randy J , Daniel Spaulding of Soul of the East and other Boiler regulars if we can drag them out of their deep state research for the 86th episode of BOILER ROOM. Water the plants, put the kids to bed and get your favorite snuggy out so you can drop deep into the Boiler Room with the ACR brain-trust.Caller line is open tonight: _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_-_NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ passcode: _NUMBER_#Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY!Listen to Boiler Room #_NUMBER_ on Spreaker.Reference Links:

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Ratings agency Moody's downgraded Britain's credit rating on Friday, saying the government's plans to bring down its heavy debt load had been knocked off course and Brexit would weigh on the economy. A few hours after Prime Minister Theresa May set out plans for new ties with the European Union, Moody's cut the rating by a further notch to Aa2, underscoring the economic risks that leaving the bloc poses for the world's fifth-biggest economy. Britain has worked down its budget deficit from about _NUMBER_ percent of economic output in _NUMBER_, shortly after the global financial crisis hammered the country, to _NUMBER_ percent. But Moody's - which stripped Britain of its top-notch AAA rating in _NUMBER_ - said the outlook for public finances had weakened significantly as May's government softened the austerity drive of former prime minister David Cameron and his finance minister George Osborne. The government hit back, saying Moody's assessment of the Brexit hit to the economy was outdated and that May had set out an ambitious vision for the UK's future relationship with the EU in her speech on Friday. But a Moody's official said the speech made no difference to the agency's gloomy long-term view for Britain's economy. Having looked at Theresa May's speech, I don t think there is anything in there which would in any way make us change our assessment, Alastair Wilson, managing director of global sovereign risk at Moody s, told BBC radio on Saturday. Over the next few years, we have a lot less confidence that the UK's government is going to be able to fulfil its plans to bring the debt load back down, and this is an extremely high debt load that the UK has, or to be able to achieve some form of agreement with the EU which retains a substantial share of the rights that membership of the EU grants, he said. Moody's verdict will be grim reading for May and her finance minister Philip Hammond, who is under pressure to spend more in his budget plan, due in November. After seven years of austerity, a recent relaxation of a tight public sector pay cap for police and prison workers was likely to be broadened, Moody's said. Furthermore, a deal struck by May with a small political party in Northern Ireland after she lost her parliamentary majority in June's election and the dropping of plans to review costly pension increases would also weigh on the public purse. Overall, Moody's expects spending to be significantly higher than under the government's current budgetary plans, Moody's said. On the tax side, it noted how the government abandoned a controversial plan to raise national insurance contributions for self-employed workers and was reliant on highly uncertain revenue gains from tackling tax avoidance to fund tax cuts . As a result, the budget deficit was likely to remain at around _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ percent of GDP in the coming years, higher than the government's plans to cut it below _NUMBER_ percent of GDP by _NUMBER_/_NUMBER_. That meant Britain was one of the few big European economies where the public debt ratio was likely to rise, probably peaking at about _NUMBER_ percent of GDP in _NUMBER_, two years later than under the latest government plans. At the same time, budget pressures would rise as Britain's economy slowed due to Brexit, with growth of just _NUMBER_ percent likely next year, down from _NUMBER_ percent in _NUMBER_ and not recovering to its historic trend rate over the coming years. Moody's said it was no longer confident that Britain would secure a replacement free trade agreement with the EU which substantially mitigated the Brexit hit. The sheer workload of Brexit in the coming years meant the government would struggle to fix Britain's weak productivity growth, the Achilles heel of the economy, it said. Britain's government said Moody's move brought it into line with the other major credit ratings agencies, Fitch and Standard & Poor s. Moody's revised up its outlook on the country to stable from negative, meaning a further downgrade is not imminent.

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Real estate billionaire Donald Trump's coarse rhetoric has won him some fans, but there's at least one large group in America that is increasingly unimpressed: women. Half of U.S. women say they have a "very unfavorable" view of the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, up from the _NUMBER_ percent who felt that way in October. The survey was taken from March _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_, and included _NUMBER_ respondents. The rise in anti-Trump sentiment among women could pose a problem for the New York billionaire in his quest for the White House. Women form just over half of the U.S. population, and they have turned out at higher rates than men in every election since _NUMBER_, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. "If the presidential election were tomorrow, women would be a big problem for Trump," Republican strategist David Carney said. "But he has time to fix it." A Trump campaign official did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Trump has said that he has had good relationships with women in his business career and is well-liked by women voters. Several women who oppose Trump, interviewed by Reuters this week, said their disapproval was based on a range of factors from his disparaging comments about women he dislikes - such as Fox News host Megyn Kelly - to his hard-line views on immigration and his ribald exchanges with rivals. "I think Trump is very scary," said Mariah Dobias, a _NUMBER_-year-old cook who was voting in Ohio's primary on Tuesday. "He says he is going to make America great, but he doesn't say how he is going to do it besides alienating whole groups of people." Carolyn Hostetler, a conservative from Tennessee, told Reuters she disliked "the way he has belittled women." Some of Trump's female supporters, meanwhile, said they liked his straight talk, and believe he could strengthen America's position on the world stage. "He's a little unpredictable, as we've seen," said Kathleen Douglas, a _NUMBER_-year-old college professor from Winter Park, Florida who supports Trump. "He's going to put other world leaders on edge." Trump does not have a similar image problem with men. The Reuters/Ipsos polling results showed that just _NUMBER_ percent of men said they have a "very unfavorable" opinion of Trump, a level that has held steady in recent months. Republican women are also much more likely to approve of Trump, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Among women who identify as Republican, he has been holding around _NUMBER_ percent favorability since the start of the year. Trump's relative appeal among men versus women was evident in the most recent round of nominating contests on Tuesday, when Trump extended a broad lead over rivals. In Florida, exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed that Trump's support among Republican women voters was _NUMBER_ percent, versus _NUMBER_ percent among males. In Ohio, where Trump came in second to the state's governor, John Kasich, _NUMBER_ percent of women voters backed Trump, compared with _NUMBER_ percent of men. If the GOP frontrunner were to run against Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton in the general election, likely women voters would support Clinton over Trump by nearly _NUMBER_ percentage points, according to the March polling data. Among men, Clinton would win by about _NUMBER_ percentage points. At a precinct in Florida's Winter Park, Darlene Monzadeh, a _NUMBER_-year-old stay-at-home mom who had been a supporter of Jeb Bush, said Trump lost her vote during a debate when he exchanged potshots with his rivals. "It changed my opinion. When they catfight all the time and act like little boys, pointing fingers, raising voices," she said, adding she now supports Kasich. Trump has been accused by critics of misogyny since he launched his campaign. He complained last year that Fox News host Megyn Kelly had asked him tough questions in a debate and referred to "blood coming out of her wherever." He more recently sent a Twitter post suggesting she was a "bimbo." He has called television personality Rosie O'Donnell a "fat pig" and made fun of former presidential rival and ex-HP chief executive Carly Fiorina's face, saying, "Would anyone vote for that?" An anti-Trump attack ad launched by the Our Principles Super PAC this week featured women repeating words that Trump has used to describe women, including "fat pig" and "dog." Several of his female supporters defended Trump against the ad on social media.

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Massive changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - or the financial reform law that established it - could hurt U.S. mortgage borrowers who use the agency to fight erroneous charges and foreclosures, according to Trulia, an online real estate marketplace. President Donald Trump recently ordered a review of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that created the CFPB after the _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ financial crisis to protect individuals from fraud and bad lending, with an eye to cutting it down. Meanwhile, Congress is considering legislation to radically reorganize the CFPB in a way that many bureau supporters say would defang it. "That could be a blow for thousands of mortgage borrowers who have used the CFPB's dispute resolution to act as an intermediary in their cases," the managing editor of Trulia's economics research team, David Weidner, wrote in an analysis released on Wednesday. Using complaint data from the CFPB spanning Dec. _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_ through April _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, Trulia found that borrowers in housing markets hardest hit by the mortgage crisis and those in expensive areas rely heavily on the CFPB for help in dealing with their loans. The complaint rate was highest in Miami, Florida - with _NUMBER_ percent of mortgage holders turning to the bureau compared to _NUMBER_ percent nationally. Even though members of the armed services only represent _NUMBER_ percent of the working age population, they made up _NUMBER_ percent of all mortgage complaints. In the same vein, people _NUMBER_ or older represented _NUMBER_ percent of complaints. That was a high proportion given that roughly _NUMBER_ percent of Americans own their own homes by the time they turn _NUMBER_, Trulia said. The researchers also found that since _NUMBER_ complaints for Veterans Affairs, Federal Housing Administration and reverse mortgages have spiked. The first two are part of federal programs intended to make housing more affordable for veterans and low-income workers. Reverse mortgages are payments financial services firms make to people who own their homes, with the principal, interest and fees deducted from the future sale of the house. They are increasingly popular among retirees who may own real estate but are short on cash. For all three types of loans, complaints more than doubled in just four years, according to Trulia, which said the high rate was caused by the lack of expertise lenders and servicers may have in the specialized products.

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a review of the U.S. visa program for bringing high-skilled foreign workers into the country, putting technology firms and the outsourcing companies that serve them on notice that possible changes may be ahead. Seeking to carry out a campaign pledge to put "America First," Trump signed an executive order on the H-1B visa program. It was vague on many fronts, and did not change existing rules, but one objective, said Trump aides, is to modify or replace the current lottery for H-1B visas with a merit-based system that would restrict the visas to highly skilled workers. Indian nationals are the largest group of H-1B recipients annually. Such a change could affect companies, such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Tech Solutions Corp and Infosys Ltd, that connect U.S. technology companies with thousands of foreign engineers and programmers. None responded to requests for comment. Trump announced the order and made remarks at a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc, a tool maker in Wisconsin. In addition to addressing the visas issue, he also ordered a review of government procurement rules favoring American companies to see if they are actually benefiting, especially the U.S. steel industry. "With this action, we are sending a powerful signal to the world: We're going to defend our workers, protect our jobs and finally put America first," Trump said. Trump was a businessman before he was elected president last year, and his companies have been criticized for using visa programs to fill positions at Trump properties with foreign workers. Trump-branded products are also made overseas. _NUMBER_-DAY BENCHMARK As he nears the _NUMBER_-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law stalled in Congress, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to change policy. It was unclear whether the latest such order would yield immediate results. The H-1B visas section included no definite timeline. The government procurement section did. "We hope the goal of President Trump's executive order on the H-1B program is 'mend it, don't end it,'" said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a technology industry group. Going to a more merit-based H-1B system could attract more people with advanced science and technology skills, Atkinson said in a statement. But he said some ideas could make the system ineffective, such as requiring advertisement of job openings for long periods to prove the unavailability of U.S. workers. Democrats said Trump's order was not strong enough, and too late, after thousands of visas were awarded this month in this year's lottery. "For a president who has prided himself on his swift action when it comes to immigration, an interagency review of the program is a guarded and timid approach. It's too little, too late," said U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the No.2 Democrat in the Senate. Critics of the program say most H-1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India. That takes work away from Americans, lowers wages and keeps Americans from being trained in tech-related fields, they say. "Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries," Trump said. Tech companies have been bracing for Trump to make changes to the H-1B program. The visas are intended to go to foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialized knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award _NUMBER_ visas yearly and randomly distributes another _NUMBER_ to graduate student workers. Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. "Right now H-1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that's wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans," Trump said. More than _NUMBER_ percent of Facebook Inc's U.S. employees in _NUMBER_ used a temporary work visa, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. Labor Department filings. Facebook did not respond to requests for comment. Infosys, India's No. _NUMBER_ IT services firm, has said previously that it is ramping up work on on-site development centers in the United States to train local talent in an effort to address the visa regulation changes under consideration. It warned last week that onerous changes to U.S. visa rules could affect its earnings. NASSCOM, the Indian IT service industry's main lobbying group, said it backs efforts to root out H-1B abuses, but said the idea that H-1B visa holders are cheap labor is inaccurate. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Washington in February to be open minded on admitting skilled Indian workers.

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This guy is awesome! He is so right and so on point about his assessment of Trump.

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Do you'remember Trump's first meltdown week? It was late July, after the Democratic National Convention, and as the election drew closer it seemed to many people as if Donald Trump might be approaching a mental breakdown. It wasn't the final meltdown of the campaign, and doubtless the next four years will prove a harsher test of the Donald's sanity. Yet it did result in some startling moments of honesty as Trump, in the grip of strong emotion, let'some things slip that perhaps he'shouldn't have.Take July _NUMBER_, for example. He was speaking in Denver, Colorado when he'said the following:We have stupid people representing us. Stupid, stupid people. So, here's what's going to happen. We are going to build, and bring, our best. Look we have the greatest business people in the world. Better than anyplace else. We don't use them. We use political hacks. Some of these business people are not nice people. Who cares? Do you care? I don't think so. Some of these people are vicious, horrible, miserable human beings. Who cares? Who cares? Some of these people they'don't sleep at night! They twist, and turn, and sweat! And their mattress is soaking wet! Because they're thinking all night about victory the next day against some poor person that doesn't have a chance! And these people unfortunately, I know them all these people would love to represent us against China, against Japan. Against all of these countries Mexico, where they're killing us at the border, and they're killing us in trade!For the record, I am not making the case he is projecting or speaking indirectly. Despite his attempted qualifier, unfortunately, I know them all, it seems pretty clear that he is directly referring to himself.Think about it. He is clearly stating that we should pick this class of best business people in the world to run things, instead of politicians and public servants. Furthermore, he has selected himself as the epitome of what American leadership should be.So he's talking about himself. Drain'the'swamp? He's the fucking swamp monster.He describes himself as not nice and a vicious, horrible, miserable human being who twist, turns, and sweats rather than sleeping. That explains the _NUMBER_ a.m. Twitter temper tantrums, I suppose.He describes himself as staying up all night to figure out how to screw over poor people. I will grant it's not clear whether he means this in a pitiful sense or economically.If you'doubt the words as I have recorded them, think that I am taking him out of context in an unfair way, or really want to punish yourself, you can watch him speak below. The reported remarks start around _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_:_NUMBER_:h/t _USER_ for pointing this out on Twitter.Featured image via screencapture from embedded video

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Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Friday he had removed his name from consideration for a position in Donald Trump's new administration as the president-elect narrows the field of people he is considering for secretary of state. Giuliani's withdrawal from consideration came after Trump made clear that he was broadening his search for a secretary of state beyond the four finalists transition aides had identified: Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former CIA head David Petraeus and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. In recent days, Trump has expanded his search for a secretary of state to include additional lawmakers and corporate executives, such as Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil Corp and Alan Mulally, a former executive at Ford Motor Co and Boeing Co . The Wall Street Journal, citing two transition team officials, said Tillerson had emerged on Friday as the leading candidate for the State Department job. It said some Trump advisers saw Tillerson as a mold-breaking pick who would bring an executive's experience to the post of top U.S. diplomat. Giuliani, speaking to Fox News, said he had actually sent a letter withdrawing himself from consideration back on Nov. _NUMBER_ but that the transition team had rejected it, saying they wanted to continue to keep him in the running for the State Department. "I decided ... that the whole thing was becoming ... very difficult for the president-elect, and my desire to be in the Cabinet was great, but it wasn't that great and he had a lot of terrific candidates," Giuliani said in a phone call with Fox. He said he had met Trump on Friday and they agreed it was worth going ahead and releasing the letter as the president-elect narrows his choice for secretary of state. Trump indicated to supporters in Louisiana on Friday that he would have another Cabinet announcement next week "you're really going to like." "They're down to the last two, three, four , so it made sense to ... get out of the way," Giuliani said in the Fox interview. He said he had been considered for other positions in the Cabinet but was not keen on a role other than State Department. "That was the only one I had any real interest in. But it wasn't so overwhelming that I'm terribly disappointed," Giuliani added, noting that he would continue to act as a friend and informal adviser to Trump. Asked his view on Romney as a possible secretary of state, Giuliani said he agreed with other "very loyal supporters of President-elect Trump" that "Mitt went over the line" in his criticism of the candidate during the campaign. "You can make friends and make up, but I wouldn't see him as a candidate for the Cabinet," Giuliani said, though he added he would accept whatever decision Trump ultimately made. Giuliani's withdrawal was likely to disappoint some of Trump's most loyal aides, who appreciated how he had supported the president-elect all along and had been resistant to Romney. Earlier on Friday, CNN, citing an unnamed source, reported that Giuliani was told he was no longer in contention for secretary of state. Trump, who takes office on Jan. _NUMBER_, praised the former New York mayor in a statement. "Rudy Giuliani is an extraordinarily talented and patriotic American," the New York businessman said. "He is and continues to be a close personal friend, and as appropriate, I will call upon him for advice and can see an important place for him in the administration at a later date." Reince Priebus, Trump's incoming White House chief of staff, said in the statement that Giuliani "was vetted by our team for any possible conflicts and passed with flying colors." Giuliani also told Fox the vetting process had turned up no conflicts.

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WHO KNEW HE HAD IT IN HIM? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back against a reporter who asked a question critical of the Republican'tax reform bill early Wednesday morning by pointing out it was the reporter's job to use Democratic talking points. McConnell held a press conference shortly after the Senate passed the _CUR_1.5 trillion package of tax cuts and tax code revisions in the chamber's _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ vote. The vote was at about _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ a.m. after much debate on the floor of the Senate. The Democrats are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the Republicans. They are putting politics before what's best for America. Pro-growth is the way to go! MAGA!A MONTAGE OF HYSTERIA FROM THE LEFT OVER THE TAX BILL AFTER THE HOUSE VOTE BUT BEFORE THE SENATE VOTED ON IT: Check out the woman who breaks into the live feed to call the bill a scam Wow! What do you say to Sen. Schumer when he'says that you guys are going to rue the day that you pass this bill that the politics of passing long-term corporate tax cuts with short-term individual cuts is going to catch up to you guys? a reporter asked.McConnell cleared his throat and told the reporter he understood his job to use the Democratic talking points before explaining why he believes the tax reform bill is good for Americans.

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Undercutting President Trump's agenda is what McConnell and ryan do best. It was most obvious during the Obamacare effort to repeal and replace. It's maddening to us but can you imagine how President Trump feels?He tweeted out his frustration last week and we can't blame him:The latest effort to block the MAGA agenda is happening because of Ryan and Mcconnell AGAIN!The Daily Caller reports below:President Donald Trump is angry with Republican leaders because of a proposal floating around Capitol Hill that undercuts his legislative agenda and provides major concessions to Democrats, two conservative strategists with more than _NUMBER_ years of Hill experience told The Daily Caller News Foundation.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are planning to pass legislation that would raise the debt ceiling and fully fund Obamacare subsidies through the _NUMBER_ election cycle, a source within the administration told TheDCNF. Leadership is also preparing to pass a short-term spending bill a continuing resolution that would fund the government through mid-December, include no appropriations for Trump's border wall, and continue funding to Planned Parenthood, the conservative strategists told TheDCNF.Trump called both Republican leaders out on Twitter Thursday, claiming he asked the pair to attach a measure to raise the debt ceiling to the recently-passed Veterans Affairs bill. He then went on to blame McConnell and Ryan for failing to follow through with his request, and said raising the debt ceiling could have been easy. Now the'situation is a mess, he'said.Read more: DC

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Iraqi forces seized the district of al-Qaim on Friday, one of the last remaining territories in the country held by Islamic State militants, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said. In a congratulatory statement, Abadi praised the Iraqi security forces for liberating the district in record time . Units from the Iraqi army, Counter-Terrorism Services, Sunni tribal and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation forces entered the area on Friday morning.

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China's foreign minister on Thursday said that ties with Japan should not take two steps back for every step forward, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a rare appearance at an anniversary event for the normalization of diplomatic relations. Speaking on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the resumption of ties between Beijing and Tokyo, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Japan's ambassador to China, Yutaka Yokoi, that he hoped for greater improvement in relations. We hope that the Japanese government can pursue a more positive policy towards China... and not take one step back for each step forward, even two steps back for each step forward, Wang said, according to a statement released on the ministry website on Friday. Relations have been complicated for decades by the legacy of Japan's wartime aggression, as well as by a festering territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Abe on Thursday evening made an appearance at a Chinese embassy event in Tokyo that jointly celebrated the anniversary as well as China's Oct _NUMBER_ National Day. Wang called the appearance good news and added: We hope for more good news in China-Japan relations and not for bad news to follow shortly after good news. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Abe also exchanged congratulatory messages on Friday, in which Li said that the two countries should properly manage and control their contradictions and differences , China's official Xinhua news agency reported. Japan's cabinet on Thursday announced Oct. _NUMBER_ as the date of a snap election where Abe, a conservative who returned to power in _NUMBER_, hopes a recent boost in voter support will help his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition maintain a simple majority. It now holds a two-thirds super majority.

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The timing couldn't possibly be any worse ***WARNING*** GRAPHIC VideoTarget is smack dab in the middle of a PR nightmare. The news of Target suing this good samaritan couldn't have come at a worse time In _NUMBER_, everyone agreed that Michael Turner saved the life of a teenaged girl who was attacked in a Pennsylvania Target store. Now, Target is suing him.When she was sixteen, Allison Meadows was shopping in an East Liberty, Pennsylvania, Target store when Leon Walls rushed into the outlet and stabbed her.With the assistance of surveillance video, Walls was convicted of attempted homicide for his attack on the girl.Here is the horrific video of the'stabbing and more importantly, of the heroic act by Michael Turner that saved her life:The only reason the girl did not suffer more injuries is because Michael Turner interceded and, along with several other men, confronted Walls. Turner himself chased Walls out the'store with a baseball bat.Unsurprisingly, Meadows was extremely thankful for Turner's efforts. I thank him, Meadows has said. I thank him every time I see him. But Meadows launched a lawsuit against Target, saying the'store's lack of security put all shoppers, not just her, in danger.Target, however, is less grateful for Mr. Turner's heroics. And now the retailer is suing him for endangering the'store's customers.According to the company's filing, Target says Turner and several others chased the'suspect toward the'store's entrance after the attack on the girl. The'store insists Turner put other shoppers at risk with his actions.The victim of the'stabbing and her family are furious with the retail chain and say Target is just trying to shift the blame away from its own security failures. Suing Michael Turner is just Target's way of trying to blame someone else for what happened under their own roof, the Meadows family attorney said. The family certainly doesn't blame Mr. Turner and they are thankful he was there that day. Target is already getting negative publicity; the chain is the'subject of a major boycott effort due to its announcement that it is allowing men to use women's bathrooms and changing rooms.Despite the uproar over its decision not to mention the loss of up to _CUR_6 billion in stock values Target doubled down on its policy.Via: Breitbart

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U.S. President Donald Trump should under no circumstances take military action against North Korea without the consent of the government in Seoul, the chairwoman of South Korea's ruling party, Choo Mi-ae, said on Wednesday. President Trump often emphasizes that he put all options on the table, Choo told a Washington think-tank. We want to make sure that this option of another war is not placed on the table. Under no circumstances should the U.S. go ahead and use a military option without the consent of South Korea. We must seek a peaceful resolution of the matter in any manner that is available to us. The remarks by Choo, who is expected to meet Trump administration officials in Washington, underscored South Korean concerns that any U.S. strikes against North Korea's nuclear and missile programs could provoke devastating North Korean retaliation against South Korea. Visiting Seoul last week, Trump warned North Korea he was prepared to use the full range of U.S. military power to stop any attack, but also urged Pyongyang to make a deal. Trump, who had previously called negotiations with North Korea a waste of time, has offered no clear path to talks and has sent mixed signals about his interest in negotiations. Speaking on his return from Asia, Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had rejected a freeze for freeze agreement. China and Russia have previously advocated such a plan, where the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs. It was not clear if this was what Trump meant. We agreed that we would not accept a so-called freeze for freeze agreement like those that have consistently failed in the past, Trump said. There was no immediate comment from China's embassy in Washington. Pyongyang has shown little interest in negotiations, at least until it has developed a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Choo, whose president and fellow Democratic Party leader Moon Jae-in has advocated dialogue with North Korea, said Seoul backed Trump's policy of maximum pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions and there should be no talks for the sake of talks. However, she said blocking opportunities for dialogue could prompt North Korean miscalculation. She declined to say whether she was satisfied with the Trump administration's limited efforts to talk to Pyongyang to resolve the crisis stemming from North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States.

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Today's act of terror against a GOP Congressional baseball team by a Bernie Sanders supporter was about as ugly and hateful as anyone could imagine. But no one should be surprised by this violent act, given how many leaders in the Democrat Party have been calling for violence against anyone who disagrees with their radical progressive agenda, starting with our former president and community organizer, Barack Obama. Below, is a list of _NUMBER_ prominent Democrats who have called for violence against Americans who disagree with them. Of course, their actions have largely been ignored and deemed acceptable behavior by their allies in the mainstream media #_NUMBER_. President Obama's grassroots Organizing for Action, in a message to supporters, said that voters turned their back on them and it is time respond by fighting harder than we ever have before. That Barack Obama would suggest Democrats fight harder than ever before should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. The former president and community organizer is no stranger to calling for violence against anyone who doesn't agree with him.In _NUMBER_, he made a comment about rubbing out his opponents the Chicago way when he'suggested If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Obama also joked about rubbing out his opponents _TAG_:"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, _TAG_, Philly, _NUMBER_ John Kass August _NUMBER_, 2016Here's a video highlighting some of our former community organizer in chief's violent comments:Scrapping any intention to work with the new administration, the message from OFA's BarackObama.com said, we're not backing down. The email to supporters was a clear rallying cry to fight the incoming Trump administration, despite Obama's pledge to help the new team.OFA's Jeremy Bird said, If you're anything like me, you're still sorting through the events of the past week and a half. It's hard there's no way to sugarcoat that. Vulnerable communities are feeling like this country has turned its back on them. And years of hard work are on the chopping block, seemingly overnight. Maybe you're feeling disillusioned, cynical, or frustrated. But now is not the time to walk away now is the time to get in the ring and fight harder than we ever have before. Washington Examiner#_NUMBER_. Hillary Clinton's former running mate Tim Kaine called for Democrats to fight in the'streets against Trump. Kaine, whose son was recently charged for his involvement in a riot during a pro-Trump event, had appeared on MSNBC in January, calling for members of his party to fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the'streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box. Kaine's _NUMBER_-year-old son Linwood Kaine was charged in May with fleeing police on foot, concealing his identity in a public place, and obstructing legal process, after a masked group he was with threw smoke bombs into a pro-Trump rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota in March.#_NUMBER_. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch posted a video urging people to march, bleed, and die in the'streets.In February, Obama's attorney general posted a video in which she urged people to march and bleed in the'streets to resist the president and his administration. It has been people, individuals who have banded together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came together and supported those ideals who have made the difference. They ve marched, they've bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good thing is. We have done this before. We can do this again, Lynch stated.#_NUMBER_. Hillary Clinton made a video where she told Democrats to RESIST and to stay engaged through activism. She praised the people who were marching and protesting against anyone who doesn't agree with their progressive agenda. Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and for our country. Clinton wrapped up her video by telling Democrats to, Keep fighting! Watch:#_NUMBER_. Madonna tells women's march that she fantasizes about blowing up the White House.During the unhinged aging pop star's vulgar speech at the rally, she demanded that this was the beginning of a revolution, and called Trump's win a horrific moment of darkness. Yes, I m angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, Madonna said. But I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair. -Big League Politics#_NUMBER_. Comedian Kathy Griffin made a career-ending decision to hold an ISIS inspired bloodied, decapitated head of President Trump up for a video, as part of a comedy act . No one but Kathy and some hate-filled Democrats thought it was funny:#_NUMBER_. Three weeks before President Trump's inauguration, another unhinged comedian Rosie O Donnell tweeted: DONALD TRUMP IS MENTALLY UNSTABLE. She added, LESS THAN _NUMBER_ WEEKS TO STOP HIM AMERICA. Stop him? Was Rosie calling for someone to harm or to take out Donald Trump before his inauguration? It sure sounds like it to us!

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Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage on Monday sued the state's Democratic attorney general, contending she had abused her power by joining legal opposition to early moves by President Donald Trump that LePage's office supported. LePage, a fiery conservative now in his second term, challenged Attorney General Janet Mills for joining a legal brief opposing Trump's executive order banning immigration from a half-dozen majority Muslim countries. The governor said he supported Trump's order, which has been blocked by courts and which the White House says is necessary to protect national security. "It is no secret that Attorney General Mills and I have differing political views, but that is not the issue," LePage said in a statement. "The problem is she has publicly denounced court cases which the executive branch has requested to join and subsequently refuses to provide legal representation for the state." He said Mills had refused to represent the state in other cases where she disagreed with LePage's political position and prevented his office from filing its own brief in support of Trump, a charge that Mills denied. "Instead of signing onto another party's brief at no cost to the taxpayers, however, or hiring a lawyer to draft his own brief, the governor has wasted state resources by hiring a lawyer to file a frivolous lawsuit, complaining that he cannot do exactly what we have told him he can do," Mills said in a statement. Maine is the only one of the _NUMBER_ U.S. states where the attorney general is elected by the state legislature, rather than elected by voters or appointed by the governor. The nation's _NUMBER_ Democratic attorneys general emerged in the first months of the Trump administration as a major opposition force to his policies, successfully suing to block his executive orders on travel and also challenging environmental policy moves. Maine is one of eight U.S. states that have a Republican governor and a Democratic attorney general, setting the stage for the conflict that resulted in Monday's lawsuit, filed in Kennebec County Superior Court. LePage was first elected to office in _NUMBER_ on a wave of Tea Party support and was re-elected in _NUMBER_. Both victories came in three-way races. He was an early supporter of Trump and came under intense public pressure last year after calling a Democratic lawmaker a "little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker," in a voicemail message that was widely circulated.

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will vote later on Wednesday on whether to send its tax legislation to a conference to hammer out differences with the U.S. House of Representatives' version of the plan. Speaking on the chamber's floor, McConnell also said Congress later this week would pass a short-term continuing resolution measure to continue funding the federal government while lawmakers work on a longer-term spending bill. He did not give any dates.

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The November U.S. presidential election is being sold by the major parties as a defining moment for the next generation of Americans. But stock and options traders, often moved to action by political headlines, are responding with a big 'meh.' Options bets on volatility around the Nov. _NUMBER_ election are running lower than could be expected given how stocks have performed in past election cycles, BNP Paribas said. Typically, stock market volatility picks up around presidential elections. Traders use options to guard against outsized market reaction to such events. The CBOE Volatility Index, the most widely followed gauge of near-term investor anxiety, had some big spikes this year, hitting a four-month high after the Brexit vote. But there is little to suggest that November is a big worry for stocks. Investors are focused on the quarterly earnings season starting next week. They might also be taking the view that both the Republican and Democratic prospective nominees would be more favorable for business than the current administration, analysts said. "It's like the opposite of 'Alien vs. Predator,'" said Mark Sebastian, chief investment officer at volatility arbitrage hedge fund Karman Line Capital in Chicago, referring to the _NUMBER_ American science fiction film which had the tagline 'whoever wins, we lose.' "Here, no matter who wins, Wall Street does better," he said. Despite being called anti-business by some on Wall Street, the Obama administration has been in power over one of the best presidential cycles for stocks on record. Per BNP Paribas data, S&P _NUMBER_ Index options forward implied volatility, which measures volatility expectations embedded in options, shows no dislocation over the remaining election campaign period. Had there been a big bump-up in this measure for November it would have been a sign that traders were loading up on protective contracts. "The market is not ascribing a large probability to a high volatility scenario over the election period," said Stewart Warther, an equity derivatives strategist at BNP Paribas. Market-makers, or dealers which quote prices for options, are also not expressing a great deal of anxiety over stock gyrations. If stock volatility does not pick up in November, that would be a departure from the norm, according a BNP Paribas analysis of data going back to _NUMBER_. "The shape of the curve definitely is upward sloping but it's not like there is a huge hump out in November," said Steve Sosnick, an equity risk manager at Timber Hill, the market-making unit of Interactive Brokers Group Inc. "We have seen some demand for options but I would say it's hardly a frenzy."

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Of course, putting America first is a totally foreign concept to the man who occupies the highest office in the nation. Obama appears to have even given up the game of golf in order to spend every last second of his final term forming alliances with communist leaders, shutting down American companies and destroying our most basic rights afforded to us by the US Constitution . Why would anyone expect Obama to protect an American business without something being in it for him?The Boston Globe is reporting that U.S.-based shoe manufacturer New Balance has come out hard against the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. The odd thing, though, is that the Boston company had gone quiet last year. Now, apparently, we know why:New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England.Tariffs on shoes are steep, and New Balance is one of a handful of shoe companies that still manufactures shoes in the United States. The company's leaders appear to disagree that the now-broken deal was underhanded. There was no quid pro quo deal, Rob DeMartini, CEO of New Balance told WMTW. We wanted to compete for a big piece of business that we are very confident we can win in. Matt LeBretton, VP of public affairs for the company, tells the Globe that:We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts, We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president. The fight comes as a result of a statutory requirement known as the Berry Amendment, which places restrictions on where the items used by members of the armed forces are manufactured. New Balance had hoped their U.S.-made shoes could put an end to the exemption for imported athletic shoes, which the DoD has allowed in recent years. Via: Weekly Standard

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Since March of _NUMBER_, the American people have had to suffer under the incredible economic burden of the Affordable Care Act Obamacare. This legislation, passed by totally partisan votes in the House and Senate and signed into law by the most divisive and partisan President in American history, has tragically but predictably resulted in runaway costs, websites that don't work, greater rationing of care, higher premiums, less competition and fewer choices. Obamacare has raised the economic uncertainty of every single person residing in this country. As it appears Obamacare is certain'to collapse of its own weight, the damage done by the Democrats and President Obama, and abetted by the Supreme Court, will be difficult to repair unless the next President and a Republican congress lead the effort to bring much-needed free market reforms to the healthcare industry.Congress must act. Our elected representatives in the House and Senate must:_NUMBER_. Completely repeal Obamacare. Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.2. Modify existing law that inhibits the'sale of health insurance across state lines. As long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements, any vendor ought to be able to offer insurance in any state. By allowing full competition in this market, insurance costs will go down and consumer satisfaction will go up.3. Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns under the current tax system. Businesses are allowed to take these deductions so why wouldn't Congress allow individuals the'same exemptions? As we allow the free market to provide insurance coverage opportunities to companies and individuals, we must also make sure that no one slips through the cracks simply because they cannot afford insurance. We must review basic options for Medicaid and work with states to ensure that those who want healthcare coverage can have it.4. Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts . Contributions into HSAs should be tax-free and should be allowed to accumulate. These accounts would become part of the estate of the individual and could be passed on to heirs without fear of any death penalty. These plans should be particularly attractive to young people who are healthy and can afford high-deductible insurance plans. These funds can be used by any member of a family without penalty. The flexibility and security provided by HSAs will be of great benefit to all who participate.5. Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals. Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other medical-related procedure.6. Block-grant Medicaid to the'states. Nearly every state already offers benefits beyond what is required in the current Medicaid structure. The'state governments know their people best and can manage the administration of Medicaid far better without federal overhead. States will have the incentives to seek out and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse to preserve our precious resources.7. Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products. Congress will need the courage to step away from the'special interests and do what is right for America. Though the pharmaceutical industry is in the private sector, drug companies provide a public service. Allowing consumers access to imported, safe and dependable drugs from overseas will bring more options to consumers.

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Regarding the current North Korea missile crisis, President Trump's teleprompter-led address to the United Nations General Assembly was provocative, and perhaps counter-productive in terms of achieving peace and stability in the Far East region. Some will even say that it ranks as one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of American international diplomacy. 21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen speaks to RT International about the danger and the rank hypocrisy of the current hawkish US stance against North Korea, and how the current stand-off is also a kind of stage-managed geopolitical theatre driven by big money vested interests in US military's bloated Pacific operation, and also about how the US presence in the region is hampering any chance of peace between South and North Korea. Far from creating peace, the US rhetoric is actually helping to push Pyongyang to acquire a nuclear deterrent. Watch: READ MORE NORTH KOREA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire North Korea FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

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When Ella Dawson started a blog discussing her trials with genital herpes, along with STI stigma, she expected prudes to come out of the woodwork and snipe at her for putting such a personal topic out for all to see. What she didn't expect was for the dangerous alt-right to find her and make her a target for their sick form of entertainment.When she decided to write about that, she likely also didn't expect to catch the attention of Hillary Clinton, let alone grab it enough to receive a personal letter back.The letter starts with: Thank you for the brave and insightful piece on Medium this week. I am so grateful for you for not only speaking out against the'stigma surrounding sexually transmitted infections, but for also taking a courageous stand against the ridiculous, but very real, barrage of hate you have received online. She reiterated that love and kindness are among the central components of her campaign, and that the decline of civil public discourse is one of the more alarming problems in the digital age. Then she dropped this truth bomb: It's going to take all of us, working together, to restore our discourse and that work starts by calling out the bullies, chief among them Donald Trump and the alt-right. Read the whole letter below:Thank you, _USER_, for reading. I m incredibly moved. To be accurate, I m ugly crying. _TAG_ _URL_ Ella Dawson September _NUMBER_, 2016The blog post that caught Hillary's attention discusses Dawson's very real and terrible problems with the alt-right. Her broader discussion, though, is about how rape threats, death threats, doxxing, shaming, and more, happen to women all over the Internet because we dare to Internet while female. The'sheer gall of us to have an opinion and put it out there we should, in the eyes of the misogynistic alt-right, stay silent. We bring the harassment on ourselves in their view.What's worse is that some of the people harassing Dawson aren't the typical cretins that inhabit the alt-right. Mike Cernovich, who's a lawyer, but more well-known for his sexist Internet presence, tweeted: Ugly and has herpes. Maybe an SJW male might actually be able to get at these table scraps. . Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Alex Jones InfoWars, recorded a five-minute YouTube video talking about how vile were the women who were tweeting under the hashtag _TAG_ for STD Awareness Month. He ended it with the typical sexist attack of: I don't think we should be that surprised that feminists are bragging about their STDs. After all, they're so fat and ugly, the mere fact that they're having any kind of sex at all is a massive achievement. Because the women the alt-right considers to be their eye candy all know their places and would never be so hateful towards men as to become a feminist. Sure.The response to that video caused Dawson to lock her Twitter account, lest Breitbart writers, and other misogynistic writers, embed her tweets in their stories, causing an ever-growing cycle of harassment. A man writing about this stuff would never receive this treatment. Ever.That's what Hillary knows, and has dealt with as a strong woman in a position of power for most of her life. Hillary stood up in Reno and read off Breitbart headlines while many other women are afraid to even mention that cesspool of a news site. Dawson has been a Hillary supporter for years, but her admiration for Hillary went through the roof when she witnessed this speech.Dawson ended her post with a thank-you to Hillary for having the guts to call the alt-right out for what it is. Misogyny, racism, white nationalism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and all-around hate are what the alt-right is about. That's despite the fact that, according to Dawson, they'delusionally bill themselves as: trendy new generation of conservatism, pushing boundaries and buttons in response to political correctness and liberal oversensitivity. Please. That is vile on its face.Bravo to Dawson for continuing to Internet while female, and bravo to Hillary for standing with her. That is what makes a president.Featured image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Rescuers on Monday found the body of a Belgian army helicopter pilot who had disappeared in a mysterious midair incident at a weekend airshow, local media said. Investigators are trying to determine how and why the unnamed pilot left the controls of his Agusta A-_NUMBER_ on Sunday and ended up dead hundreds of meters below. The Belgian Armed Forces said in a statement that the pilot had fallen from the aircraft but that the co-pilot, alone on board, had landed it safely. Public broadcaster RTBF, quoting public prosecutors, said the co-pilot told them he was watching three skydivers who had just jumped from the helicopter. When he turned back round, the pilot's seat was empty and the door of the aircraft was open.

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Why would the Vatican invite an aggressive leftist speaker to the rollout of the Pope's Papal document on phony global climate change? As a Catholic, the news about the Pope's support of these horrible leftists and their radical agenda is heartbreaking. Pray for our nation One of the'speakers slated for the Vatican rollout of the long-awaited Papal document on climate change once said the earth is overpopulated by at least _NUMBER_ billion people.The teaching document, called an encyclical, is scheduled for release on June _NUMBER_ at Vatican City. Perhaps with the exception of the _NUMBER_ encyclical on contraception, no Vatican document has been greeted with such anticipation.The political left is hoping for a document that ties belief in global warming to a religious obligation. Climate skeptics have already started criticizing the document.The choice of Professor John Schnellnhuber, founding director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, as one of three presenters may be giving the left added hope and giving giving skeptics severe heartburn. He has been described as one of the more aggressive scientists on the question of man-made global warming.In a talk given to what's described as the failed _NUMBER_ Copenhagen climate conference, reported in the New York Times, Schnellnhuber, who has advised German President Angela Merkel and is a visiting professor at Oxford, said of global warming: In a very cynical way, it's a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something - namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below _NUMBER_ billion people. Schnellnhuber is also author of what's called the two-degree target that says governments must not allow the temperature to rise more than _NUMBER_ degrees higher than at the'start of the industrial revolution. Any higher, the theory holds, and much life on earth would either perish or be gravely harmed.To deal with climate issues, he has also called for an Earth Constitution that would transcend the UN Charter along with the creation of a Global Council elected by all the people on Earth and a Planetary Court..a transnational legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to violations of the Earth Constitution. Via: Breitbart News

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Spanish stocks were set for their biggest day of gains in more than five months on Thursday as nerves over an imminent declaration of Catalan independence eased. Spain's Constitutional Court suspended a session of the Catalan parliament scheduled for Monday in which local leaders were expected to declare secession. Traders also cited a Bloomberg report of a rift between pro-independence leaders. Spain's _NUMBER_-year bond yield fell to as low as _NUMBER_ percent, and at _NUMBER_ GMT was down _NUMBER_ basis points and set for its biggest daily fall since April. There is the sentiment Catalan separatists are maybe a bit less die-hard than they were previously, said Jerome Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments. Spanish markets were already recovering earlier in the day, but traders said the main share index and banking stocks jumped after the Bloomberg report which, citing sources, said moderate separatists were pushing for further negotiations with the central government. The decision to suspend Monday's parliamentary session, which the court said was because it had agreed to consider a legal challenge filed by the anti-secessionist Catalan Socialist Party, had already thrown the independence bid into doubt. Spain's main share index jumped as much as _NUMBER_ percent, boosted by financial stocks which together added _NUMBER_ points to the index, with Santander the biggest contributor. Catalonia-headquartered Banco Sabadell and Caixabank jumped higher, last up _NUMBER_ percent and _NUMBER_ percent respectively. Caixabank joined Sabadell in saying it was considering moving its base outside Catalonia as a result of the crisis. Trading activity in Spanish government debt has rocketed this week as the crisis deepened. Around _NUMBER_ billion euros of Spanish government debt changed hands on Wednesday, _NUMBER_ percent higher than the daily trading average since January _NUMBER_, according to Trax, a subsidiary of trading platform MarketAxess. On Thursday, Spain's _NUMBER_-year government bond was the most traded euro government security, the data firm said.

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Israel attacked a military site in Syria's Hama province early on Thursday, the Syrian army said, and a war monitoring group said the target could be linked to chemical weapons production. The air strike killed two soldiers and caused damage near the town of Masyaf, an army statement said. It warned of the dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region . The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said the attack was on a facility of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, an agency which the United States describes as Syria's chemical weapons manufacturer. It came the morning after U.N. investigators said the Syrian government was responsible for a sarin poison gas attack in April. Syria's government denies using chemical arms. In _NUMBER_ it promised to surrender its chemical weapons, which it says it has done. The Observatory said strikes also hit a military camp next to the center that was used to store ground-to-ground rockets and where personnel of Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah group, had been seen more than once. An Israeli army spokeswoman declined to discuss reports of a strike in Syria. Syria's foreign ministry has sent letters to the U.N. Security Council protesting against Israel's aggression and saying anyone who attacked Syrian military sites was supporting terrorism, Syrian state TV reported. In an interview in Israel's Haaretz daily last month on his retirement, former Israeli air force chief Amir Eshel said Israel had hit arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Hezbollah allies nearly _NUMBER_ times in the past five years. Israel sees red lines in the shipment to Hezbollah of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons. The reported attack took place on the 10th anniversary of Israel's destruction of a nuclear reactor in Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. _NUMBER_, and is widely expected to voice Israel's concern over what it sees as attempts by Iran to broaden its military foothold in Syria and threats posed by Hezbollah Israeli officials have said that Russia, another ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Israel maintain regular contacts to coordinate military action in Syria. Some Israeli commentators saw the latest strike - a departure from the previous pattern of attacks on weapons convoys - as a show of Israeli dissatisfaction with the United States and Russia. Last month, Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin, but came away without any public statement from Moscow that it would curb Iranian influence. Hezbollah and Israel fought a brief war in _NUMBER_ in which more than _NUMBER_ people died. Both have suggested that any new conflict between them could be on a larger scale than that one. Hezbollah has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most important allies in the war and last month its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said he had recently traveled to Damascus to meet the Syrian president. Israel is conducting military exercises in the north of the country near the border with Lebanon. Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser, told reporters he assumed Thursday's strike was linked to Nasrallah's visit to Damascus. Weapons systems have been transferred from this organization into the hands of Hezbollah during the years, he said. In May, an official in the military alliance backing Assad said that Hezbollah drew a distinction between Israel striking its positions in Syria and at home in Lebanon. If Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, definitely it will respond, the official said. The Syrian army statement said the Israeli strike came at _NUMBER_:_NUMBER_ a.m. from inside Lebanese airspace. It said it had been launched in support of Islamic State. Jets flying over Lebanon overnight broke the sound barrier and Lebanese media reported that Israeli warplanes had breached Lebanese airspace. The Observatory reported that seven people were killed or wounded in the strike. The factory that was targeted in Masyaf produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians, Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, said in a tweet. The strike sent a message that Israel would not let Syria produce strategic weapons, would enforce its own red lines, and would not be hampered by Russian air defense systems in Syria, he added. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Wednesday a government jet dropped sarin on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province in April, killing more than _NUMBER_ civilians, and that government forces were behind at least _NUMBER_ chemical attacks. U.S. President Donald Trump said he had not heard a report that Syria had used chemical weapons again. But nothing would change. We would be extremely upset if he was using chemical weapons, he said in response to a question at a news conference in Washington. As far as Syria is concerned, we have very little to do with Syria other than killing ISIS. What we do is we kill ISIS.

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Meryl Streep and Viola Davis weren't the only ones who blasted Donald Trump at the Golden Globes.Dr. Gregory House, also known as British actor Hugh Laurie, also won an award on Sunday night for his role in The Night Manager and used about one minute of his speech to mock Trump and Republicans.As we all know, Trump and his Republican fans hate the press, foreigners, and Hollywood. So seeing as how the Golden Globes are put on every year by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it's safe to say the Golden Globe Awards is not their favorite at all.And during his acceptance speech, Hugh Laurie absolutely torched Trump and the Republican Party. Thank you first to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for this amazing honor, Lauire began. I suppose it's made more amazing by the fact that I ll be able to say I won'this at the last ever Golden Globes. I don't mean to be gloomy, it's just that it has the words Hollywood, Foreign and Press in the title. To some Republicans, even the word association is slightly sketchy I accept this award on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere. Here's the video via YouTube:As previously mentioned, Meryl Streep and Viola Davis also delivered blistering messages to Trump. But so far, Trump has only thrown a temper tantrum over Streep's speech, calling her overrated and a Hillary flunky on Twitter. Seriously.Many conservatives are whining about the Golden Globes, claiming that it's inappropriate to deliver political speech at an awards show. But the First Amendment says otherwise.The Golden Globes is a platform that reaches millions of Americans so it's the perfect place to make a political stand that will be seen and heard. If Donald Trump and his conservative supporters don't like that, they can go f*ck themselves.Featured image via Wikimedia

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Remember when experts came out after Hillary collapsed following her visit to the _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_ memorial in NYC and revealed that the odd blue-colored sunglasses Hillary was sporting that day are used by epileptic patients to avoid having a seizure.Who could forget Hillary's bizarre collapse that day, when her legs began to buckle and secret service agents grabbed her arms and threw her into the vehicle. It was almost as though the people around Hillary were well practiced in how to toss her into the vehicle before the cameras could catch her having a seizure only months before the election.Watch: Infowars Hillary was seen wearing the blue sunglasses during the _NUMBER_/_NUMBER_ memorial in New York City where she later collapsed from complications stemming from her numerous health issues.Given her lack of fashion concerns she's regularly seen wearing pantsuits everywhere she goes it's unlikely her blue sunglasses were meant as a fashion statement.Epileptic patients often wear Zeiss Z1 blue lenses in particular because they are effective at treating photosensitive epilepsy. The Z1 lens is highly effective in controlling photoparoxysmal response in a very large number of photosensitive epilepsy patients irrespective of their epilepsy or antiepileptic drug treatment, according to a _NUMBER_ studypublished in Epilepsia. The lens might become a valid resource in the daily activity of any clinician who cares for patients with epilepsy. Hillary experiences seizures from flashing lights, such as camera flashes at public events, according to sources inside the Secret Service who spoke to Infowars.Hillary Clinton appeared in Chappaqua, NY in their Memorial Day parade as a float with her husband Bill, the former president and rapist. The former presidential candidate was seen wearing the'same bizarre blue-colored sunglasses that she wore on _NUMBER_-_NUMBER_.Bill & Hillary Clinton & Gov Cuomo at Memorial Day parade _URL_ Michael Grabell May _NUMBER_, 2017Here's Hillary again waving to the crowd as though she's already campaigning for _NUMBER_. Bill's just happy to not have to be cooped up in the'same house with her for a couple of hours. .@HillaryClinton wearing anti-seizure Zeiss Z1 sunglasses at Chappaqua Memorial Day parade. _URL_ Josh Caplan May _NUMBER_, 2017Here's a great shot of the happy couple:They look well. _URL_ Josh Caplan May _NUMBER_, 2017The Daily Mail asked Josh Caplan of Vessel News if they could use his photo of Hillary for a story:Hi _USER_, can'the Daily Mail use this image with a credit to you? Thanks! MailOnline Pictures May _NUMBER_, 2017Here is Caplan's hilarious response: Only if you note her anti-seizure sunglasses. Sick Hillary may run in _NUMBER_, so it's important your readers know extent to how unwell she is. _URL_ Josh Caplan May _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_

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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday defended his country's human rights record at a regional summit in Laos, urging East Asian leaders and the United States to help Manila eradicate the scourge of illicit drugs. Duterte swept to power in May on promises to wipe out crime and corruption within six months, pledging to wage a war on drug dealers and crush widespread addiction in a country of _NUMBER_ million. The toll in his government's two-month war on drugs reached _NUMBER_ last week, with police saying about _NUMBER_ people died in police operations, and the rest were "deaths under investigation", a term human rights activists call a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings. Setting aside a prepared speech, Duterte spoke for more than five minutes about human rights and his campaign against drugs during the East Asian Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, according to one Indonesian diplomat at the meeting. "Let me tell you about human rights," the diplomat quoted Duterte as saying while displaying a picture of Filipinos killed by American soldiers about a century ago. "This is my ancestors being killed, so why now we are talking about human rights? We have to talk of the full spectrum of human rights." Duterte spoke after Obama had delivered a speech that referred to human rights. Duterte's drive has won popular support at home but the killings have drawn expressions of concern from the United States, a close Philippine ally, and the United Nations. In a tirade before the Laos summit, Duterte insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the White House responded by cancelling a two-way meeting. Philippine officials this week handed out a _NUMBER_-page pamphlet at the summit that praised Duterte's drug campaign.

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Wait for the Left to blame micro-aggressions by the insensitive, non-believers on this repulsive video. After all, this poor Muslim man has been forced to live in a country where they have not yet universally accepted Sharia Law. The German women aren't wearing the required Sharia compliant clothing. Why should he have to change his ways, or assimilate with the Germans and their culture? I snipe with the Arabs, the Parisians flee , can be heard, among other things, in this song that mixes the aesthetic standards of rap with the propaganda codes of Islamic State. I burn the pages of Charlie Hebdo, perforate the pigs at the Gate of Paris raps SadiQ in German in this song that multiplies references from jihadists, the Gaza Strip to Sh m , Guantanamo to the love of death.https://youtu.be/RLfBmvpx9vsSadiQ is not unknown across the Rhine. Sadie Zadrande was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in _NUMBER_, and arrived in Germany when he was _NUMBER_ years old. His first album came out in _NUMBER_ on the label Halunkenbande, which has nurtured many other German rappers such as Baba Saad or D Maroc. Via: Le Huffington Post

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A relative of Zimbabwean minister Jonathan Moyo, purged from the ruling ZANU-PF party along with President Robert Mugabe, said on Monday that a tweet on his Twitter handle earlier saying that he was outside of the country was the work of a hacker. While he remains safe, he is not the one who posted that, the family member told Reuters, adding that Moyo remained in Zimbabwe. The tweet was subsequently deleted.

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Trump and his staff are so sure the media lies about everything that they've put together a media accountability survey designed to gauge how people feel about the media, how they're representing Trump and Republicans, and numerous other things. Of course, because true scientific polls don't ever tell them what they want, this survey is anything but scientific. They want to feed their confirmation bias. But what's really happening is hilarious and it's made Trump call his own poll rigged.Seriously.The email that was sent to supporters asking them to take the'survey again reads:The President emailed you to take the urgent Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.Since then, mainstream media outlets have viciously attacked it and thousands of Democrats have taken it to try to sabotage the results.Which is why we need your IMMEDIATE help as one of President Trump's biggest supporters.Please take the Mainstream Media Accountability Survey now.>>Thanks,Team Trump Not only does this email demonstrate that Trump is only interested in answers from people who think the exact same way he does, but it also demonstrates the'sheer desperation on Trump's part to prove that the media is engaging in one giant conspiracy to bring him down. Or something.The questions in the'survey are leading and biased, and were definitely not crafted by an experienced pollster. He wants specific answers and the questions are worded so he's more likely to get those answers: And those are just a sampling of the questions in the'survey.At the end, it asks you for your name, email address and zip code, but there's no verification on it, so you can make up a name and email address, and pick a zip code. Any zip code. And you'don't have to create dummy email accounts for it either so really, what did they expect to happen here?After you fill it out it takes you to a donation page, because of course it does.The bottom line is that, unless he gets the results he's looking for, he's going to keep crying rigged! If you'd like to see what's in it, it can be found here, if you'd like to take it for yourself. Repeatedly.Featured image by Sean Rayford via Getty Images

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British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday she did not set red lines for the behavior of her ministers and said she welcomed different voices in her cabinet over how to secure the best Brexit deal. The annual conference of May's Conservative Party conference has been overshadowed by splits in her cabinet over how Britain will leave the European Union. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has set out his own terms for Brexit. I don t set red lines, May told BBC television. Leadership is about ensuring that you have a team of people who aren t yes men, but a team of people of different voices around the table so that we can discuss matters, come to an agreement and then put that government view forward and that is exactly what we ve done.

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Leaders of Spain's industrialized northeastern region of Catalonia said the regional population had voted for independence in a ballot on Sunday that the central government said was illegal and non-representative. With _NUMBER_ percent of the vote counted, authorities said the Yes vote stood at _NUMBER_ percent, albeit with a turnout of just a little over _NUMBER_ percent - _NUMBER_ million out of _NUMBER_ million registered voters. On Tuesday, Barcelona metro stations were closed, pickets blocked main roads and civil servants walked out in response to a strike called by pro-independence groups. The stand-off could now take three different paths. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont continues with his pledge to declare unilateral independence, likely prompting the central government to trigger Article _NUMBER_ of the Spanish Constitution, which would strip the region of its autonomous status and put it under direct Madrid rule. If Article _NUMBER_ is triggered, the next step would be snap elections in Catalonia. Pro-independence parties only hold the majority in the regional parliament with the help of the far-left group CUP, and polls, before Sunday's ballot, suggest these groups could lose their hold on power if a new election was called. However, after events on Sunday, when police swung truncheons and fired rubber bullets in the direction of mostly peaceful demonstrators to shut down the referendum, pro-independence parties may again win the election. Such a result would raise doubts surrounding Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's ability to govern. Rajoy's immediate opposition in the national parliament lacks the numbers to force him out through a no-confidence vote, but without cross-party support on Catalonia, he may be forced to call a snap national election himself. Rajoy was voted in as a minority leader twice in last year's two elections and a fractious parliament suggests a snap election may prompt a similar result. If the Catalan parliament gives up the push for independence, Rajoy may sit down with Puigdemont to hammer out a new deal for the region including a better tax deal and greater fiscal autonomy. Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro and Economy Minister Luis de Guindos have suggested this may be a possibility if the independence drive is completely abandoned. Puigdemont has yet to make a unilateral declaration of independence, instead calling for a period of reflection, leaving the door open for such a scenario. However, after the violent scenes on Sunday and continued protests on Tuesday via a partial strike across the region, the Catalan leader may be keen to keep face and avoid being seen bowing down to Madrid. If the Catalans do not go ahead with a declaration of independence but also fail to sit down for talks with Rajoy as the two party's positions diverge beyond a possible compromise, Madrid may refer the matter to the constitutional courts. Legal and financial action against Catalan leaders is likely to fuel animosity and could prompt further protests, pushing leaders on both sides into difficult positions.

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Germany's liberal Free Democrats set the stage for tough coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the Greens, saying they would not agree to a deal that did not promise a change in the German government's direction. It is not up to us to form a Jamaica coalition at any price, deputy party leader Wolfgang Kubicki told journalists on Monday, after Sunday's national election pointed to a three-way tie-up as the most straightforward possibility for a coalition. FDP party leader Christian Lindner said that changes were needed in Germany's energy policy and its stance on euro zone fiscal policy.

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On Thursday Republicans in Congress voted to overturn a rule, proposed by the Obama administration, which requires investment advisers to act in the best interest of the person they are advising.The rule was first proposed last year, after a detailed report from Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed that financial advisers are receiving a treasure trove of incentives, kickbacks and non-cash awards for giving out bad financial advice to seniors and people on the brink of retirement.As Addicting Info reported here, Warren's report showed that financial advisers are rewarded with all-expenses-paid, luxury vacations to places like South Africa, the Bahamas and Aruba, as well as golf outings, theater tickets, gift cards and cash prizes, all for steering retirees toward risky, company-owned investment options.While financial advisors personally profit from doling out bad advice, retirees lose more than _CUR_17 billion a year because of a loophole that leaves them unprotected under traditional conflict of interest laws.The Obama administration has been working to fix the loophole by including people who seek advice about pension and retirement accounts as people toward whom advisers have a fiduciary obligation, under the conflict of interest law.In the meantime, the industry has been fighting hard to keep the rule from taking effect.During a hearing on the proposed rule last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren went head-to-head with the President of Primerica, Peter Schneider, who was brought in to testify against the rule.Watch Senator Warren hammer away at Schneider in the video below, courtesy of Sweet Videos on YouTube:While it's clear from Senator Warren's report and the testimony in the video above that the rule is needed to protect consumers, Republicans proved yet again'that they have no desire to serve the interests of the public.Congress introduced and passed H.J.Res.88, which reads as follows:This joint resolution disapproves and nullifies a Department of Labor rule published on April _NUMBER_, _NUMBER_, relating to the definition of the term fiduciary and the conflict of interest rule with respect to retirement investment advice.As much as Republicans would like him to, there's almost no chance that the President Obama would sign any bill which attacks the proposed fiduciary rule.Still, the Republican-sponsored resolution confirms what we already know about their priorities.While Democrats like President Obama and Elizabeth Warren are fighting to protect the public from Wall Street predators, Republicans are working hard to pass legislation that prevents them from doing just that.There's only one solution. Vote them out in _NUMBER_.Photo credit KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

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Every once in a while, it seems like Sen. Lindsey Graham might be growing a spine and standing up to Donald Trump. Before he voted for the skinny repeal of Obamacare, he told the media he would most certainly vote against it. That's guts, right?Maybe not, but when it comes to bad guys across the globe, Graham is no pushover, he is all over that like Donald Trump in front of a bucket of chicken.Great afternoon in Ohio & a great evening in Pennsylvania departing now. See you tomorrow Virginia! _URL_ Donald J. Trump August _NUMBER_, 2016Now that North Korea is being a bit petulant with their nuclear weapons, Graham is suddenly Pavlov's dogging all over our equally petulant Commander-in-Chief. There is a military option: to destroy North Korea's nuclear program and North Korea itself, Graham told the Today show's Matt Lauer. He's not going to allow President Trump the ability of this madman to have a missile that could hit America. If there's going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there, Graham continued. If thousands die, they're going to die over there. They re not going to die over here and he's told me that to my face. Source: VoxOh, Lindsey, don't let yourself get too worked up. You might get the vapors.Graham added that Trump doesn't want a war, unless North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un doesn't stop playing with his war toys, and of course unless Trump can't figure out a way to get the Russian scandal off the front pages. Okay, he didn't say that second part.LAUER: Are you saying it's okay to use a military option that immediately endangers the lives of millions of people in that region?GRAHAM: I m saying it's inevitable unless North Korea changes, because you're making our president pick between regional stability and homeland security. He's having to make a choice that no president has wanted to make. They ve kicked the can down the road for _NUMBER_ years; there's nowhere else to kick it. There will be a war with North Korea over their missile program if they continue trying to hit America with an ICBM. He's told me that, and I believe him.Are you frightened yet?Lindsey, perhaps you should focus on the madman who's currently running our nation as the more immediate danger.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to congratulate her on winning a fourth term in office and said France and Germany would forge ahead with their cooperation. I called Angela Merkel to congratulate her. We continue with determination our vital cooperation for Europe and for our countries, Macron tweeted. Macron ran for the French presidency on a pledge to relaunch Europe, in tandem with Germany, after years of economic and financial crisis and the new shock dealt by Britain's vote last year to leave the bloc. Merkel's conservatives beat their rivals to win her a fourth term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into Germany's parliament for the first time in more than half a century, exit polls showed.

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European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Monday she expected strong backing from EU foreign ministers for the _NUMBER_ nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that the U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized. It's an agreement that is working. It's an agreement that we need for our security, and I would expect from the ministers today a strong signal of European unity and its support and the full commitment to have it implemented by all sides, Mogherini told reporters before a foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg.

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Our Justice Department is beyond out of control to give _NUMBER_ months extra to those who ve let their permission to work in America expire! How in the world is being negligent rewarded? Do these people have a personal responsibility to renew papers themselves?The goal ultimately is to make it harder and harder for companies to fire anyone.Sounds good for workers right? Well, it's a double edged sword. If it's harder to fire it's much harder to hire. Companies fearing being stuck with poor performers will choose to not hire or to automate.And check this video out:This is the'sort of thing employers have to concern themselves with these days. Good luck keeping all the rules straight. But you'd better or you might find yourself subject to a government inquiry.The video is shot in a dimly lit office, where two actors discuss whether their fictional company should let go of some Salvadoran employees who have failed to provide updated paperwork on their immigration status.After a discussion about whether retaining the workers would violate the law, a woman says, I think this is an exception to that rule, and recommends that they contact the the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices before making any decisions. We want to follow the rules but we don't want to lose these workers or discriminate against them, she concludes. They are too valuable.

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If Donald Trump thinks he can use the presidency to make business deals for himself and his family, Senate Democrats are prepared to defend the'sanctity of the office.Over the course of the campaign and after the election, Trump has insisted that his many conflicts of interest surrounding his business empire do not matter. But the Constitution says that officeholders in the United States government may not receive presents, emoluments, or titles from foreign states.Article I, section _NUMBER_ states,No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.And since Trump's business receives money from foreign nations, he would be violating the Constitution on the first day of his administration. And it's even worse when one considers that Trump's businesses have ties to businesses backed by foreign governments such as in the Philippines, and that foreign governments could blackmail Trump by threatening his profits or his foreign business partners. Trump could also use the presidency to extract business deals from nations in exchange for American support or aid, even if helping certain nations goes against the best interests of our country.In short, Trump'should be forced to put his company in a blind trust or sell it altogether to avoid these problems and put these conflicts of interest to rest.That's why Senate Democrats plan to introduce a bill to do just that. Our President-elect has significantly greater risk of business and financial conflicts of interest than any other president, yet has so far refused to follow the precedent set by previous presidents. To this day, President-elect Trump has refused to address his conflicts of interest, Senator Chris Coons said.Coons, along with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ben Cardin, Dick Durbin, and Jeff Merkley have all endorsed the legislation and pointed out that presidents have divested their financial interests to avoid violating the Constitution for decades. If Trump is allowed to be president and keep his business decades of precedent would be wiped out, paving the way for anyone to use the presidency for personal profit. The American people deserve to know that the President of the United States is working to do what's best for the country not using his office to do what's best for himself and his businesses, Elizabeth Warren said. The only way for President-elect Trump to truly eliminate conflicts of interest is to divest his financial interests and place them in a blind trust. This has been the'standard for previous presidents, and our bill makes clear the continuing expectation that President-elect Trump do the'same. Republicans, of course, will probably refuse to bring the bill to a vote on the Senate floor, and if they'do they ll be helping Trump violate the Constitution that they claim to hold so dear.Senate Democrat's are preparing for a war and they should be. After all, Republicans have established precedent for obstructing and attacking a president over the last eight years and turnabout is fair play. Anything less than fighting Trump's agenda every second of every day over the next four years is unacceptable.Featured Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday welcomed the prospect of talks on a grand coalition with her Social Democrat rivals and defended the record of the previous such government, saying it had worked well. Merkel's fourth term was cast into doubt when the pro-business Free Democrats walked out of three-way coalition talks with her conservative bloc and the Greens last Sunday, causing a political impasse in Europe's biggest economy. But on Friday, the SPD reversed a previous decision and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the possibilities of a new grand coalition which has ruled Germany for the last four years, or of a minority government. Addressing party members on Saturday, Merkel argued voters had given her conservatives a mandate to rule in the Sept. _NUMBER_ election which handed her party the most parliamentary seats but limited coalition options. Her conservatives bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany . Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly, Merkel told a regional party meeting in northern Germany, adding, however, that her acting government could carry on day to day business. Asking voters to go to the polls again would, I think be totally wrong, she said. On Monday, Merkel had said she would prefer new elections to a minority government in which her party would be only held in power by others. Without even mentioning the option of a minority government, Merkel said she wanted to look ahead after the setbacks of the last week. Sounding self-assured and drawing applause during her speech, she turned her attention fully to the SPD. Welcoming the prospect of talks with her former partner, she defended the record of the last coalition. We worked well together, she said, adding under the grand coalition, Germany enjoyed the strongest labor market for decades, a balanced budget and pensioners and families had benefited, she argued. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is to host Merkel, SPD leader Martin Schulz and the leader of her conservative CSU sister party for a meeting on Thursday. Steinmeier had exerted considerable pressure on Schulz to change course for the sake of stability in Germany. However, no one is saying things will be easy and the two former partners are already jostling over policy. Merkel said her aims are to maintain Germany's solid finances, cut some taxes and expand the digital infrastructure. In a nod to her CSU conservative allies, she also said she aims to limit the number of migrants entering Germany to _NUMBER_ per year. This, however, may be hard for the SPD to swallow. A cap, which may not be called that, breaches the constitution and the Geneva Convention. With the SPD there will be no limit put on family members who want to join asylum seekers, SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told the Funke media group. Schulz, who had until Friday rejected any deal with Merkel, said there was nothing automatic about the outcome and promised party members a vote on talks. The SPD is split as many members fear that renewing a grand coalition would be political suicide. It scored its worst result since _NUMBER_ in the September election. Several other leading SPD members have called for other commitments, such as investment in education and homes. Some senior SPD members have made clear that they will not let Merkel hold them hostage. Mrs Merkel is not in a position to be setting conditions, Malu Dreyer, premier of the state of Rhineland Palatinate, told the Trierscher Volksfreund.

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Unless the Democrats can figure out a way to effectively steal the vote from millions, we predict Trump will win in a landslide election. Despite what the media would like Americans to believe, Hillary will be lucky to have Chelsea vote for her in November NEW YORK CITY, New York Meet the Trumpocrats, or so the'sizable collection of lifelong Democrats breaking with their party because of their disgust with nominee for president Hillary Rodham Clinton and supporting instead Republican nominee Donald J. Trump call themselves.Christian Rickers, the Virginia-based executive director of the Trumpocrats PAC a Super PAC designed to help his like-minded lifelong Democrats abandon'the'sinking Democratic ship due to Hillary Clinton's nomination and join the Trump movement walked Breitbart News through why he is leading the effort among Democrats who support Trump for president.Rickers argument centers on trade policy, and Trump's ardent opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership that Clinton supported publicly more than _NUMBER_ times but now claims she opposes. He points back to Bill Clinton's backing of the North American Free Trade Agreement from his time as president, and Rickers says Democrats everywhere should be terrified of how much further Hillary Clinton would go if she's elected president.Rickers said in a phone interview:Rickers said in a phone interview:I m a lifelong Democrat, really since I was a little kid, and I still am a Democrat. But the Clintons for instance, where I am from, my hometown, when I was a kid we had _NUMBER_ manufacturing plants and we now have one. Nobody does anything there anymore, and that's the'same thing happening in a lot of small towns across the country really. The Clintons are really the cause of this, the cause of manufacturing going overseas with NAFTA and the trade deals and all of that. Donald Trump, he'says a lot of crazy sh*t, but the one thing that he does say, that he really does want to do something about that and that he wants to protect our people with better trade policies and new trade policies.On the Trumpocrats PAC website is a video of David Muscat Saunders, another lifelong Democrat, talking with Fox News. Breitbart

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James Kallstrom is the former Assistant Director of the FBI who is no fan of former FBI Director James Comey. We ve reported several times on Kallstrom's very blunt take on the politicization of the intelligence community . Check out his awesome take on how Comey folded Wow!Kallstrom tells it like it is in his latest interview: James Comey, the notion that Barack Obama was going to let Hillary Clinton was going to be indicted that was obvious to anybody who knows anything at the very beginning Unfortunately, it turns out he was a political hack I think he maybe started out in an honorable way. His opinion of himself is sky high. Unbelievable guy. Just an arrogance about him I think he thought he was Superman and found out he wasn't. The dogs are always going to bite you on your heels when you're dealing with the Clintons. Look how long the American people have been dealing with the crime syndicate known as the Clinton Foundation We got all these major crime things bubbling All of which are _NUMBER_ times bigger than Watergate! And nothing seems to be happening The Attorney General is in a coma! James Kallstrom, former FBI Assistant Director, said he is glad it happened. Daily CallerKallstrom endorsed Donald Trump for president He said he feels like America is going down the tubes . We should listen to this man! He's been in the belly of the FBI beast and knows the truth.