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8,476 | You Can Smell Hillary’s Fear | Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
In the final stretch of the election, Hillary Rodham Clinton has gone to war with the FBI.
The word “unprecedented” has been thrown around so often this election that it ought to be retired. But it’s still unprecedented for the nominee of a major political party to go war with the FBI.
But that’s exactly what Hillary and her people have done. Coma patients just waking up now and watching an hour of CNN from their hospital beds would assume that FBI Director James Comey is Hillary’s opponent in this election.
The FBI is under attack by everyone from Obama to CNN. Hillary’s people have circulated a letter attacking Comey. There are currently more media hit pieces lambasting him than targeting Trump. It wouldn’t be too surprising if the Clintons or their allies were to start running attack ads against the FBI.
The FBI’s leadership is being warned that the entire left-wing establishment will form a lynch mob if they continue going after Hillary. And the FBI’s credibility is being attacked by the media and the Democrats to preemptively head off the results of the investigation of the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton.
The covert struggle between FBI agents and Obama’s DOJ people has gone explosively public.
The New York Times has compared Comey to J. Edgar Hoover. Its bizarre headline, “James Comey Role Recalls Hoover’s FBI, Fairly or Not” practically admits up front that it’s spouting nonsense. The Boston Globe has published a column calling for Comey’s resignation. Not to be outdone, Time has an editorial claiming that the scandal is really an attack on all women.
James Carville appeared on MSNBC to remind everyone that he was still alive and insane. He accused Comey of coordinating with House Republicans and the KGB. And you thought the “vast right wing conspiracy” was a stretch.
Countless media stories charge Comey with violating procedure. Do you know what’s a procedural violation? Emailing classified information stored on your bathroom server.
Senator Harry Reid has sent Comey a letter accusing him of violating the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act is a nice idea that has as much relevance in the age of Obama as the Tenth Amendment. But the cable news spectrum quickly filled with media hacks glancing at the Wikipedia article on the Hatch Act under the table while accusing the FBI director of one of the most awkward conspiracies against Hillary ever.
If James Comey is really out to hurt Hillary, he picked one hell of a strange way to do it.
Not too long ago Democrats were breathing a sigh of relief when he gave Hillary Clinton a pass in a prominent public statement. If he really were out to elect Trump by keeping the email scandal going, why did he trash the investigation? Was he on the payroll of House Republicans and the KGB back then and playing it coy or was it a sudden development where Vladimir Putin and Paul Ryan talked him into taking a look at Anthony Weiner’s computer?
Either Comey is the most cunning FBI director that ever lived or he’s just awkwardly trying to navigate a political mess that has trapped him between a DOJ leadership whose political futures are tied to Hillary’s victory and his own bureau whose apolitical agents just want to be allowed to do their jobs.
The only truly mysterious thing is why Hillary and her associates decided to go to war with a respected Federal agency. Most Americans like the FBI while Hillary Clinton enjoys a 60% unfavorable rating.
And it’s an interesting question.
Hillary’s old strategy was to lie and deny that the FBI even had a criminal investigation underway. Instead her associates insisted that it was a security review. The FBI corrected her and she shrugged it off. But the old breezy denial approach has given way to a savage assault on the FBI.
Pretending that nothing was wrong was a bad strategy, but it was a better one that picking a fight with the FBI while lunatic Clinton associates try to claim that the FBI is really the KGB.
There are two possible explanations.
Hillary Clinton might be arrogant enough to lash out at the FBI now that she believes that victory is near. The same kind of hubris that led her to plan her victory fireworks display could lead her to declare a war on the FBI for irritating her during the final miles of her campaign.
But the other explanation is that her people panicked.
Going to war with the FBI is not the behavior of a smart and focused presidential campaign. It’s an act of desperation. When a presidential candidate decides that her only option is to try and destroy the credibility of the FBI, that’s not hubris, it’s fear of what the FBI might be about to reveal about her.
During the original FBI investigation, Hillary Clinton was confident that she could ride it out. And she had good reason for believing that. But that Hillary Clinton is gone. In her place is a paranoid wreck. Within a short space of time the “positive” Clinton campaign promising to unite the country has been replaced by a desperate and flailing operation that has focused all its energy on fighting the FBI.
There’s only one reason for such bizarre behavior.
The Clinton campaign has decided that an FBI investigation of the latest batch of emails poses a threat to its survival. And so it’s gone all in on fighting the FBI. It’s an unprecedented step born of fear. It’s hard to know whether that fear is justified. But the existence of that fear already tells us a whole lot.
Clinton loyalists rigged the old investigation. They knew the outcome ahead of time as well as they knew the debate questions. Now suddenly they are no longer in control. And they are afraid.
You can smell the fear.
The FBI has wiretaps from the investigation of the Clinton Foundation. It’s finding new emails all the time. And Clintonworld panicked. The spinmeisters of Clintonworld have claimed that the email scandal is just so much smoke without fire. All that’s here is the appearance of impropriety without any of the substance. But this isn’t how you react to smoke. It’s how you respond to a fire.
The misguided assault on the FBI tells us that Hillary Clinton and her allies are afraid of a revelation bigger than the fundamental illegality of her email setup. The email setup was a preemptive cover up. The Clinton campaign has panicked badly out of the belief, right or wrong, that whatever crime the illegal setup was meant to cover up is at risk of being exposed.
The Clintons have weathered countless scandals over the years. Whatever they are protecting this time around is bigger than the usual corruption, bribery, sexual assaults and abuses of power that have followed them around throughout the years. This is bigger and more damaging than any of the allegations that have already come out. And they don’t want FBI investigators anywhere near it.
The campaign against Comey is pure intimidation. It’s also a warning. Any senior FBI people who value their careers are being warned to stay away. The Democrats are closing ranks around their nominee against the FBI. It’s an ugly and unprecedented scene. It may also be their last stand.
Hillary Clinton has awkwardly wound her way through numerous scandals in just this election cycle. But she’s never shown fear or desperation before. Now that has changed. Whatever she is afraid of, it lies buried in her emails with Huma Abedin. And it can bring her down like nothing else has. | FAKE |
10,294 | Watch The Exact Moment Paul Ryan Committed Political Suicide At A Trump Rally (VIDEO) | Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr
There are two fundamental truths in this world: Paul Ryan desperately wants to be president. And Paul Ryan will never be president. Today proved it.
In a particularly staggering example of political cowardice, Paul Ryan re-re-re-reversed course and announced that he was back on the Trump Train after all. This was an aboutface from where he was a few weeks ago. He had previously declared he would not be supporting or defending Trump after a tape was made public in which Trump bragged about assaulting women. Suddenly, Ryan was appearing at a pro-Trump rally and boldly declaring that he already sent in his vote to make him President of the United States. It was a surreal moment. The figurehead of the Republican Party dosed himself in gasoline, got up on a stage on a chilly afternoon in Wisconsin, and lit a match. . @SpeakerRyan says he voted for @realDonaldTrump : “Republicans, it is time to come home” https://t.co/VyTT49YvoE pic.twitter.com/wCvSCg4a5I
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 5, 2016
The Democratic Party couldn’t have asked for a better moment of film. Ryan’s chances of ever becoming president went down to zero in an instant. In the wreckage Trump is to leave behind in his wake, those who cravenly backed his campaign will not recover. If Ryan’s career manages to limp all the way to 2020, then the DNC will have this tape locked and loaded to be used in every ad until Election Day.
The ringing endorsement of the man he clearly hates on a personal level speaks volumes about his own spinelessness. Ryan has postured himself as a “principled” conservative, and one uncomfortable with Trump’s unapologetic bigotry and sexism. However, when push came to shove, Paul Ryan – like many of his colleagues – turned into a sniveling appeaser. After all his lofty tak about conviction, his principles were a house of cards and collapsed with the slightest breeze.
What’s especially bizarre is how close Ryan came to making it through unscathed. For months the Speaker of the House refused to comment on Trump at all. His strategy seemed to be to keep his head down, pretend Trump didn’t exist, and hope that nobody remembered what happened in 2016. Now, just days away from the election, he screwed it all up.
If 2016’s very ugly election has done any good it’s by exposing the utter cowardice of the Republicans who once feigned moral courage. A reality television star spit on them, hijacked their party, insulted their wives, and got every last one of them to kneel before him. What a turn of events.
Featured image via Twitter | FAKE |
3,608 | Kerry to go to Paris in gesture of sympathy | U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that he will stop in Paris later this week, amid criticism that no top American officials attended Sunday’s unity march against terrorism.
Kerry said he expects to arrive in Paris Thursday evening, as he heads home after a week abroad. He said he will fly to France at the conclusion of a series of meetings scheduled for Thursday in Sofia, Bulgaria. He plans to meet the next day with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and President Francois Hollande, then return to Washington.
The visit by Kerry, who has family and childhood ties to the country and speaks fluent French, could address some of the criticism that the United States snubbed France in its darkest hour in many years.
The French press on Monday was filled with questions about why neither President Obama nor Kerry attended Sunday’s march, as about 40 leaders of other nations did. Obama was said to have stayed away because his own security needs can be taxing on a country, and Kerry had prior commitments.
Among roughly 40 leaders who did attend was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no stranger to intense security, who marched beside Hollande through the city streets. The highest ranking U.S. officials attending the march were Jane Hartley, the ambassador to France, and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was in Paris for meetings with law enforcement officials but did not participate in the march.
Kerry spent Sunday at a business summit hosted by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. The United States is eager for India to relax stringent laws that function as barriers to foreign investment and hopes Modi’s government will act to open the huge Indian market for more American businesses.
In a news conference, Kerry brushed aside criticism that the United States had not sent a more senior official to Paris as “quibbling a little bit.” He noted that many staffers of the American Embassy in Paris attended the march, including the ambassador. He said he had wanted to be present at the march himself but could not because of his prior commitments in India.
“But that is why I am going there on the way home, to make it crystal clear how passionately we feel about the events that have taken place there,” he said.
“And I don’t think the people of France have any doubts about America’s understanding of what happened, of our personal sense of loss and our deep commitment to the people of France in this moment of trauma.” | REAL |
10,142 | Bernie supporters on Twitter erupt in anger against the DNC: 'We tried to warn you!' | — Kaydee King (@KaydeeKing) November 9, 2016 The lesson from tonight's Dem losses: Time for Democrats to start listening to the voters. Stop running the same establishment candidates.
— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) November 9, 2016 If Dems didn't want a tight race they shouldn't have worked against Bernie.
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) November 9, 2016
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who was one of Hillary Clinton’s most outspoken surrogates during the contentious Democratic primary, blamed Clinton’s poor performance on Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who has so far received a negligible number of votes nationally, saying Stein was the Ralph Nader of 2016 in preventing a Clinton victory. The account @BerniesTeachers threw Krugman’s analysis back in his face. Your candidate was the issue. Take responsibility. https://t.co/KHyOuUSrFS
— Teachers for Bernie (@BerniesTeachers) November 9, 2016
Ana Navarro, a Republican who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, summed up the preposterous nature of the 2016 presidential election in this tweet: GOP nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Hillary Clinton. Democrats nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Trump
— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) November 9, 2016
Popular left-wing Facebook page The Other 98%, which was pro-Sanders during the primary, responded to Trump’s surge by simply posting a meme of Sanders’ face with the text “All this could’ve been avoided. Thanks for nothing, DNC!” The meme has been shared almost 15,000 times in less than an hour:
Posted by The Other 98% on Tuesday, November 8, 2016
While Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton just before the Democratic National Convention in July, many of his supporters remained adamant in their refusal to support the DNC-anointed candidate, pointing to WikiLeaks’ revelations that top officials at the DNC had been working behind the scenes to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor by coordinating with media figures to circulate anti-Sanders narratives.
Rather than attribute a potential Trump presidency to the GOP nominee’s perceived popularity among voters, the closeness of this election could be credited to Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings. According to RealClearPolitics, anywhere between 51 and 57 percent of voters had a negative opinion of the Democratic nominee.
As of 11 PM Eastern, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remain too close to call. Clinton has 197 electoral votes to Trump’s 187.
Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at [email protected] | FAKE |
875 | The Battle of New York: Why This Primary Matters | It's primary day in New York and front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are leading in the polls.
Trump is now vowing to win enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination and prevent a contested convention. But Sens.Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and Ohio Gov. John Kasich and aren't giving up just yet.
A big win in New York could tip the scales for both the Republican and Democratic front-runners in this year's race for the White House. Clinton and Trump have each suffered losses in recent contests, shifting the momentum to their rivals.
"We have won eight out of the last nine caucuses and primaries! Cheer!" Sanders recently told supporters.
While wins in New York for Trump and Clinton are expected, the margins of those victories are also important.
Trump needs to capture more than 50 percent of the vote statewide if he wants to be positioned to win all of the state's 95 GOP delegates. That would put him one step closer to avoiding a contested convention.
"We've got to vote and you know Cruz is way, way down in the polls," Trump urged supporters.
Meanwhile, Sanders is hoping for a close race in the Empire State. A loss by 10 points means he'll need to win 80 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination.
Despite a predicted loss in New York, Cruz hasn't lost momentum. He's hoping to sweep up more delegates this weekend while he's talking about how he can win in November.
"Because if I'm the nominee, we win the General Election," Cruz promised his supporters. "We're beating Hillary in the key swing states, we're beating Hillary with Independents, we're beating Hillary with young people."
For now, Cruz, Kasich, and Sanders have all moved on from New York to other states. Trump and Clinton are the only two staying in their home state to watch the results come in. | REAL |
6,903 | Tehran, USA |
I’m not an immigrant, but my grandparents are. More than 50 years ago, they arrived in New York City from Iran. I grew up mainly in central New Jersey, an American kid playing little league for the Raritan Red Sox and soccer for the Raritan Rovers. In 1985, I travelled with my family to our ancestral land. I was only eight, but old enough to understand that the Iranians had lost their liberty and freedom. I saw the abject despair of a people who, in a desperate attempt to bring about change, had ushered in nationalist tyrants led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
What I witnessed during that year in Iran changed the course of my life. In 1996, at age 19, wanting to help preserve the blessings of liberty and freedom we enjoy in America, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Now, with the rise of Donald Trump and his nationalist alt-right movement, I’ve come to feel that the values I sought to protect are in jeopardy.
In Iran, theocratic fundmentalists sowed division and hatred of outsiders — of Westerners, Christians, and other religious minorities. Here in America, the right wing seems to have stolen passages directly from their playbook as it spreads hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslim ones. This form of nationalistic bigotry — Islamophobia — threatens the heart of our nation. When I chose to serve in the military, I did so to protect what I viewed as our sacred foundational values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Now, 20 years later, I’ve joined forces with fellow veterans to again fight for those sacred values, this time right here at home.
“Death to America!”
As a child, I sat in my class at the international school one sunny morning and heard in the distance the faint sounds of gunfire and rising chants of “Death to America!” That day would define the rest of my life.
It was Tehran, the capital of Iran, in 1985. I was attending a unique school for bilingual students who had been born in Western nations. It had become the last refuge in that city with any tolerance for Western teaching, but that also made it a target for military fundamentalists. As the gunfire drew closer, I heard boots pounding the marble tiles outside, marching into our building, and thundering down the corridor toward my classroom. As I heard voices chanting “Death to America!” I remember wondering if I would survive to see my parents again.
In a flash of green and black uniforms, those soldiers rushed into our classroom, grabbed us by our shirt collars, and yelled at us to get outside. We were then packed into the school’s courtyard where a soldier pointed his rifle at our group and commanded us to look up. Almost in unison, my classmates and I raised our eyes and saw the flags of our many nations being torn down and dangled from the balcony, then set ablaze and tossed, still burning, into the courtyard. As those flags floated to the ground in flames, the soldiers fired their guns in the air. Shouting, they ordered us — if we ever wanted to see our families again — to swear allegiance to the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and trample on the remains of the burning symbols of our home countries. I scanned the smoke that was filling the courtyard for my friends and classmates and, horrified, watched them capitulate and begin to chant, “Death to America!” as they stomped on our sacred symbols.
I was so angry that, young as I was, I began to plead with them to come to their senses. No one paid the slightest attention to an eight year old and yet, for the first time in my life, I felt something like righteous indignation. I suspect that, born and raised in America, I was already imbued with such a sense of privilege that I just couldn’t fathom the immense danger I was in. Certainly, I was acting in ways no native Iranian would have found reasonable.
Across the smoke-filled courtyard, I saw a soldier coming at me and knew he meant to force me to submit. I spotted an American flag still burning, dropped to my knees, and grabbed the charred pieces from underneath a classmate’s feet. As the soldier closed in on me, I ducked and ran, still clutching my charred pieces of flag into a crowd of civilians who had gathered to witness the commotion. The events of that day would come to define all that I have ever stood for — or against.
“Camel Jockey,” “Ayatollah,” and “Gandhi”
My parents and I soon returned to the United States and I entered third grade. More than anything, I just wanted to be normal, to fit in and be accepted by my peers. Unfortunately, my first name, Nader (which I changed to Nate upon joining the Navy), and my swarthy Middle Eastern appearance, were little help on that score, eliciting regular jibes from my classmates. Even at that young age, they had already mastered a veritable thesaurus of ethnic defamation, including “camel jockey,” “sand-nigger,” “raghead,” “ayatollah,” and ironically, “Gandhi” (which I now take as a compliment). My classmates regularly sought to “other-ize” me in those years, as if I were a lesser American because of my faith and ethnicity.
Yet I remember that tingling in my chest when I first donned my Cub Scout uniform — all because of the American flag patch on its shoulder. Something felt so good about wearing it, a feeling I still had when I joined the military. It seems that the flag I tried to rescue in Tehran was stapled to my heart, or that’s how I felt anyway as I wore my country’s uniform.
When I took my oath of enlistment in the U.S. Navy, I gave my mom a camera and asked her to take some photos, but she was so overwhelmed with pride and joy that she cried throughout the ceremony and managed to snap only a few images of the carpet. She cried even harder when I was selected to serve as the first Muslim-American member of the U.S. Navy Presidential Ceremonial Honor Guard . On that day, I was proud, too, and all the taunts of those bullies of my childhood seemed finally silenced.
Being tormented because of my ethnicity and religion in those early years had another effect on me. It caused me to become unusually sensitive to the nature of other people. Somehow, I grasped that, if it weren’t for a fear of the unknown, there was an inherent goodness and frail humanity lurking in many of the kids who bullied and harassed me. Often, I discovered, those same bullies could be tremendously kind to their families, friends, or even strangers. I realized, then, that if, despite everything, I could lay myself bare and trust them enough to reach out in kindness, I might in turn gain their trust and they might then see me, too, and stop operating from such a place of fear and hate.
Through patience, humor, and understanding, I was able to offer myself as the embodiment of my people and somehow defang the “otherness” of so much that Americans found scary. To this day, I have friends from elementary school, middle school, high school, and the military who tell me that I am the only Muslim they have ever known and that, had they not met me, their perspective on Islam would have been wholly subject to the prevailing fear-based narrative that has poisoned this country since September 11, 2001.
In 1998, I became special assistant to the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy and then, in 1999, I was recruited to serve at the Defense Intelligence Agency. In August 2000, I transferred to the Naval Reserve.
In the wake of 9/11, I began to observe how so many of my fellow Americans were adopting a fundamentalist “us vs. them” attitude towards Muslims and Islam. I suddenly found myself in an America where the scattered insults I had endured as a child took on an overarching and sinister meaning and form, where they became something like an ideology and way of life.
By the time I completed my military service in 2006, I had begun to understand that our policies in the Middle East,similarly disturbed, seemed in pursuit of little more than perpetual warfare. That, in turn, was made possible by the creation of a new enemy: Islam — or rather of a portrait, painted by the powers-that-be, of Islam as a terror religion, as a hooded villain lurking out there somewhere in the desert, waiting to destroy us. I knew that attempting to dispel, through the patient approach of my childhood, the kind of Islamophobia that now had the country by the throat was not going to be enough. Post-9/11 attacks on Muslims in the U.S. and elsewhere were not merely childish taunts.
For the first time in my life, in a country gripped by fear, I believed I was witnessing a shift, en masse, toward an American fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism that reflected a wanton lack of reason, not to mention fact. As a boy in Iran, I had witnessed the dark destination down which such a path could take a country. Now, it seemed to me, in America’s quest to escape the very demons we had sown by our own misadventures in the Middle East, and forsaking the hallmarks of our founding, we risked becoming everything we sought to defeat.
The Boy in the Schoolyard Grown Up
On February 10, 2015, three young American students, Yusor Abu-Salha, Razan Abu-Salha, and Deah Shaddy Barakat, were executed at an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The killer was a gun-crazy white man filled with hate and described by his own daughter as “a monster.” Those assassinations struck a special chord of sorrow and loss in me. My mom and I cried and prayed together for those students and their families.
The incident in Chapel Hill also awoke in me some version of the righteous indignation I had felt so many years earlier in that smoke-filled courtyard in Iran. I would be damned if I stood by while kids in my country were murdered simply because of their faith. It violated every word of the oath I had taken when I joined the military and desecrated every value I held in my heart as a sacred tenet of our nation. White nationalists and bigots had, by then, thrown down the gauntlet for so much of this, using Islamophobia to trigger targeted assassinations in the United States. This was terrorism, pure and simple, inspired by hate-speakers here at home.
At that moment, I reached out to fellow veterans who, I thought, might be willing to help — and it’s true what they say about soul mates being irrevocably drawn to each other. When I contacted Veterans For Peace , an organization dedicated to exposing the costs of war and militarism, I found the leadership well aware of the inherent dangers of Islamophobia and of the need to confront this new enemy. So Executive Director Michael McPhearson formed a committee of vets from around the country to decide how those of us who had donned uniforms to defend this land could best battle the phenomenon — and I, of course, joined it.
From that committee emerged Veterans Challenge Islamophobia (VCI). It now has organizers in Arizona, Georgia, New Jersey, and Texas, and that’s just a beginning. Totally nonpartisan, VCI focuses on politicians of any party who engage in hate speech. We’ve met with leaders of American Muslim communities, sat with them through Ramadan, and attended their Iftar dinners to break our fasts together. In the wake of the Orlando shooting , we at VCI also mobilized to fight back against attempts to pit the Muslim community against the LGBTQ+ community.
Our group was born of the belief that, as American military veterans, we had a responsibility to call out bigotry, hatred, and the perpetuation of endless warfare. We want the American Muslim community to know that they have allies, and that those allies are indeed veterans as well. We stand with them and for them and, for those of us who are Muslim, among them.
Nationalism and xenophobia have no place in American life, and I, for my part, don’t think Donald Trump or anyone like him should be able to peddle Islamophobia in an attempt to undermine our national unity. Without Islamophobia, there no longer exists a “clash of civilizations.” Without Islamophobia, whatever the problems in the world may be, there is no longer an “us vs. them” and it’s possible to begin reimagining a world of something other than perpetual war.
As of now, this remains the struggle of my life, for despite my intense love for America, some of my countrymen increasingly see American Muslims as the “other,” the enemy.
My Mom taught me as a boy that the only thing that mattered was what was in my heart. Now, with her in mind and as a representative of VCI, when I meet fellow Americans I always remember my childhood experiences with my bullying peers. And I still lay myself bare, as I did then. I give trust to gain trust, but always knowing that these days this isn’t just a matter of niceties. It’s a question of life or death. It’s part of a battle for the soul of our nation.
In many ways, I still consider myself that boy in the school courtyard in Tehran trying to rescue charred pieces of that flag from those trampling feet. It’s just that now I’m doing it in my own country.
Nate Terani is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and served in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is currently a member of the leadership team at Common Defense PAC and regional campaign organizer with Veterans Challenge Islamophobia . He is a featured columnist with the Arizona Muslim Voice newspaper. (Reprinted from TomDispatch by permission of author or representative) | FAKE |
7,341 | Girl Horrified At What She Watches Boyfriend Do After He Left FaceTime On | Share This Baylee Luciani (left), Screenshot of what Baylee caught on FaceTime (right)
The closest Baylee Luciani could get to her boyfriend, who’s attending college in Austin, was through video online chat. The couple had regular “dates” this way to bridge the 200-mile distance between them. However, the endearing arrangement quickly came to an end after his FaceTime was left on and caught something that left his girlfriend horrified.
Baylee had been discussing regular things with her boyfriend, Yale Gerstein, who was on the other side of the screen on an otherwise average evening. This video chat was not unlike all the others she had with Yale from his apartment near Austin Community College until the 19-year-old girlfriend heard some scratching sounds after FaceTime had been left on.
According to KRON , Baylee was mid-conversation with Yale when scratches at the door caught both of their attention and he got up from his bed, where the computer was, to see who was at his door. He barely turned the handle to open in when masked men entered the room and beat Yale’s face in and slammed him down on his bed while shoving a pistol in his cheek. The intruders didn’t seem to know or care that FaceTime was still on and Baylee’s face, seen in the corner, was watching everything, terrified that she was about to see her boyfriend murdered in front of her, as she watched him fight for his life.
Admitting that she first thought it was a joke, seconds later, she came to the horrid realization that he was being robbed and called her dad, who was at home with her in Dallas, into the room. “I was scared, because they were saying I’m going to blow your head off, I’m going to kill you,” Baylee explained along with the chilling feeling she got when the intruder finally realized the video chat was running and looked right at her in the camera. “I’m like wow… seriously watching an armed robbery happen to somebody that I care about,” she added. Screengrabs of intruder forcing Yale down on his bed while Baylee and her father watch on FaceTime in horror
With a clear view of at least one intruder’s face, Baylee began taking screenshots of the suspect in the act as she and her dad called the police to report what was going on. She got the pictures right in time since, seconds later, the intruder decided to disconnect the computer as he and the suspects took off with thousands of dollars worth of Yale’s music equipment. Although the boyfriend’s life was spared in the traumatizing ordeal for the two of them, he said that the thieves took something from him that can’t be replaced.
“I had just finished my first album as a solo artist,” Yale said. “That’s all lost,” since they took the recordings on the equipment, which means nothing to the thieves and everything to the victim. It’s not often that you hear of FaceTime solving crimes or potentially saving lives, which is what happened in this case. Although it was difficult to watch, Baylee, being there through technology, was an instrumental part in protecting Yale, who hopefully learned that he better take advantage of Texas’ great gun laws and arm himself with more than just a computer. | FAKE |
95 | ‘Britain’s Schindler’ Dies at 106 | A Czech stockbroker who saved more than 650 Jewish children from Nazi Germany has died at the age of 106. Dubbed “Britain’s Schindler,” Nicholas Winton arranged to transport Jewish youngsters from Prague after Germany annexed Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Though the children were originally set to arrive in Britain by plane, the German invasion forced Winton to transport them by train through Germany before they eventually reached England by boat. Winton arranged eight trains, known as the Kindertransports (children’s transports), to evacuate the children, and died on the anniversary of the 1939 departure of the one carrying the largest number of children: 241. Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his efforts, despite keeping it secret for nearly 50 years. | REAL |
4,869 | Fact check: Trump and Clinton at the 'commander-in-chief' forum | Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made some inaccurate claims during an NBC “commander-in-chief” forum on military and veterans issues:
• Clinton wrongly claimed Trump supported the war in Iraq after it started, while Trump was wrong, once again, in saying he was against the war before it started.
• Trump said that President Obama set a “certain date” for withdrawing troops from Iraq, when that date was set before Obama was sworn in.
• Trump said that Obama’s visits to China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba were “the first time in the history, the storied history of Air Force One” when “high officials” of a host country did not appear to greet the president. Not true.
• Clinton said that Trump supports privatizing the Veterans Health Administration. That’s false. Trump said he supports allowing veterans to seek care at either public or private hospitals.
• Trump said Clinton made “a terrible mistake on Libya” when she was secretary of State. But, at the time, Trump also supported U.S. action that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi from power.
• Trump cherry-picked Clinton’s words when he claimed Clinton said “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” Clinton had said the problems in the Department of Veterans Affairs were not as “widespread” as some Republicans claimed, but she went on to acknowledge problems, including the issue of wait times for doctors.
The forum, sponsored by NBC News and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, was held Sept. 7 at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. Today show host Matt Lauer, and members of the military and veterans in the audience, questioned the candidates separately.
Trump said he “was totally against the war in Iraq,” while Clinton claimed that he supported the Iraq War before and after it started. The facts don’t support either candidate’s strong assertions.
Our review of Trump’s statements before and after the Iraq War started found no evidence that Trump opposed the war before it started. In fact, he expressed mild support for invading Iraq when asked about it on the Howard Stern radio show on Sept. 11, 2002 — about six months before the war started.
Stern asked Trump if he supported a war with Iraq, and Trump responded, “Yeah, I guess so.”
In the NBC commander in chief forum, Trump cited an Esquire article that appeared in August 2004 to show his opposition to the war. But that article appeared 17 months after the war started.
As for Clinton, who as a senator voted in October 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq, the Democratic nominee claimed that Trump “supported it before it happened, he supported it as it was happening and he is on record as supporting it after it happened.”
But just as there is no evidence that Trump opposed the Iraq War before it started, the Clinton campaign offered no evidence that Trump supported the war “after it happened.”
The Clinton campaign cited Trump’s interview on March 21, 2003, with Neil Cavuto of Fox Business just two days after the war started.
Cavuto asked Trump about the impact of the war on the stock market. Trump said the war “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” and he predicted the market will “go up like a rocket” after the war. But Cavuto does not ask Trump whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq or whether he supports the war, and Trump doesn’t offer an opinion.
As early as July 2003, Trump expressed concern on Hardball with Chris Matthews about money being spent in Iraq rather than in the U.S. Two months later, Trump told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq.”
Clinton invited her audience to read Trump’s comments on the Iraq War. They can read our timeline, “Donald Trump and the Iraq War.”
Trump said President Obama set a “certain date” for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but that date was actually set by President George W. Bush.
NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Trump about his tendency to respond, when pushed for details on his military proposals, that he’s not going to give details because he wants to be “unpredictable.” Trump responded, “Absolutely,” and went on to criticize Obama for revealing the withdrawal date.
As we said then, Republicans and Democrats disagree on whether Obama or Bush is to blame for withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. But that date was set when Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement on Dec. 14, 2008. It said: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
In the NBC forum, Trump also called the withdrawal of troops “a terrible decision.” As we’ve explained before, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of State, later wrote that Bush wanted an agreement for a residual force to remain, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki objected.
Once Obama took office in January 2009, he had three years to renegotiate the deal, which his administration tried to do, to leave a residual American troop force. But Maliki still didn’t agree. Negotiations broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Whether Obama did enough is a matter of opinion: His then defense secretary, Leon Panetta, later wrote that the president didn’t press hard enough for a deal. But some experts say Iraq was more closely aligned at the time with Iran and there wasn’t a deal to be made with Maliki.
So, both presidents had a role in the withdrawal of troops. But Trump wrongly said that Obama was the one who set a “certain date” for withdrawal and let U.S. enemies know about it, when that date was set before Obama was sworn in.
It’s worth noting that Trump said in a March 16, 2007, interview on CNN that the troops should be withdrawn quickly from Iraq.
Trump said that Obama’s visits to China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba were “the first time in the history, the storied history of Air Force One” when “high officials” of a host country did not appear to greet the president.
That’s not true. Other presidents have encountered similar low-key greetings on foreign trips aboard the presidential aircraft.
Trump referred to the fact that Cuba’s president, Raul Castro, did not greet Obama at the airport on his historic visit to Cuba in March, that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman did not meet Air Force One at the start of Obama’s trip to Riyadh in April, and he referred to China’s handling of the president’s arrival in Hangzhou last Saturday for a Group of 20 meeting.
Whether or not those arrivals constituted snubs of a U.S. president as Trump claims is a matter of debate. But Trump is wrong on the facts when he claims it has not happened before. It has.
In 1984, for example, Ronald Reagan landed in Beijing and was received by China’s foreign minister rather than the president, whom he met only later. Similarly, on a 1985 trip to West Germany, Reagan was met by the foreign minister and not Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
These and other examples were dug up by our friend Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker,” who researched a Trump claim in April that Cuba’s and Saudi Arabia’s handling of Obama’s visits were “without precedent.” Kessler said of Trump, “once again he’s wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Kessler also noted that during Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China he was greeted at the airport by the country’s number two man, Premier Zhou Enlai. His boss, Chairman Mao, didn’t even agree to meet with Nixon until after he had arrived at a guest house.
Clinton said that her plan to overhaul the Veterans Health Administration would not include privatization, which she said Trump supports.
But Trump refuted that statement when it was his turn to discuss his plan to help veterans. “I would not do that,” Trump said, referring to Clinton’s claim that he supports privatization.
Trump’s campaign published “The Goals Of Donald J. Trump’s Veterans Plan” on its website last October. It doesn’t call for the VA to be completely privatized.
One of the biggest changes that plan would make to the current VA health care system is allowing veterans to get care at any non-VA medical center that accepts Medicare.
“Under a Trump Administration, all veterans eligible for VA health care can bring their veteran’s ID card to any doctor or care facility that accepts Medicare to get the care they need immediately,” the plan states.
“The power to choose will stop the wait time backlogs and force the VA to improve and compete if the department wants to keep receiving veterans’ healthcare dollars,” the plan says.
Trump’s proposal would seemingly go further than the Non-VA Medical Care Program, which allows eligible veterans to access care outside of the VA under certain circumstances, such as when VA medical centers cannot provide services. The program requires pre-approval for veterans to receive care at a non-VA facility in non-emergency situations.
Trump’s proposal would also go further than the bipartisan Veterans Choice Act of 2014 that President Obama signed into law, creating a temporary program, separate from the Non-VA Medical Care Program, that allows eligible veterans to receive health care at a non-VA facility if they would have to wait more than 30 days for an appointment at a VA medical center, or if they live more than 40 miles from the nearest VA hospital.
Trump stuck to the idea of allowing veterans to choose between public and private hospitals when he released his most recent “Ten Point Plan To Reform The VA” in July.
Point 10 of the plan says: “Mr. Trump will ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice. Under a Trump Administration, no veteran will die waiting for service.”
Trump reinforced that part of his plan during the NBC News forum as well.
To be clear, Trump supports giving veterans a choice between VA hospitals and private ones. That’s not the same thing as supporting the complete privatization of the system that provides care to veterans.
Trump criticized Clinton for making “a terrible mistake on Libya” when she was secretary of State. But, at the time, Trump also supported U.S. action that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi from power.
Trump made his claim in response to a question posed by Lauer on whether Trump will be “prepared on Day One,” if elected president, to tackle “complex national security issues.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has ignored his past support for the U.S. intervention in Libya.
During the 10th GOP debate, Trump said he had “never discussed that subject” when Sen. Ted Cruz called him out on supporting U.S. action in the country. But, as we wrote, Trump said in 2011 that the U.S. should go into Libya “on a humanitarian basis” and “knock [Gadhafi] out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively and save the lives.”
Trump made that comment in a video posted to his YouTube channel in February 2011:
Even though Trump now says Clinton’s support for intervention in Libya was a “terrible mistake,” it doesn’t change the fact that five years ago he supported Gadhafi’s removal.
Trump twisted Clinton’s words when he claimed Clinton said “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” Clinton said the problems in the Department of Veterans Affairs were not as “widespread” as some Republican supporters of privatization of the VA claim, but she went on to acknowledge problems in the VA system — including the issue of wait times for doctors — and what she would do to address them.
Trump highlighted the issue of wait times to see a doctor as “one of the big problems” in the VA, and then suggested Clinton doesn’t think the VA has problems.
Lauer interrupted, noting that Clinton “went on after that and laid out a litany of problems within the VA.”
Trump insisted his version was accurate, adding, “I’m telling you … she said she was satisfied with what was going on in the Veterans Administration.”
That’s not accurate. The comments in question from Clinton came during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Oct. 23, 2015. Maddow asked about talk among some Republicans of abolishing the VA and privatizing it. “The reason they are able to propose something that radical is because the problems at the VA seem so intractable,” Maddow said.
Maddow asked if Clinton had any “new ideas for trying to fix” the VA. Here was Clinton’s response, with the part Trump is referring to in bold.
Clinton accused Republicans of underfunding the VA because they “want it to fail” so they can privatize it.
Clinton added, “But we have to be more creative about trying to fix the problems that are the legitimate concern, so that we can try to stymie the Republican assault.”
Indeed, the Clinton campaign website states that Clinton wants to “fundamentally reform veterans’ health care to ensure access to timely and high quality care.” The campaign says Clinton “was outraged by the recent scandals at the VA, and as president, she will demand accountability and performance from VA leadership.” The site specifically mentions Clinton’s dissatisfaction that “[m]any veterans have to wait an unacceptably long time to see a doctor or to process disability claims and appeals” and promises she will “[b]uild a 21st-century Department of Veterans Affairs to deliver world-class care.”
Trump cherry-picked the part of Clinton’s response that said problems in the VA have “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be,” to make the blanket claim that Clinton is “satisfied with what was going on in the Veterans Administration” and that “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” But Trump is leaving out the parts of Clinton’s answer that acknowledged problems in the VA — including the wait time issue Trump highlighted as one of his biggest concerns. | REAL |
2,909 | Iran reportedly makes new push for uranium concessions in nuclear talks | Iranian negotiators reportedly have made a last-ditch push for more concessions from the U.S. and five other world powers as talks on the fate of Iran's nuclear program come down to the final days before a crucial deadline.
The New York Times reported late Sunday that Tehran had backed away from a tentative promise to ship a large portion of its uranium stockpile to Russia, where it could not be used as part of any future weapons program. Western officials insisted to the paper that the uranium did not have to be sent overseas, but could be disposed of in other ways.
The new twist in the talks comes just two days before the deadline for both sides to agree on a framework for a permanent deal. The final deadline for a permanent deal would not arrive until the end of June.
However, if Iran insists on keeping its uranium in the country, it would undermine a key argument made in favor of the deal by the Obama administration. The Times reports that if the uranium had gone to Russia, it would have been converted into fuel rods, which are difficult to use in nuclear weapons. It is not clear what would happen to the uranium if it remained in Iran.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iran's position had shifted from from demanding that it be allowed to keep nearly 10,000 centrifuges enriching uranium, to agreeing to keep 6,000. Western officials involved in the talks told the Associated Press that Tehran may be ready to accept an even lower number.
The United States and its allies want a deal that extends the time Iran would need to make a nuclear weapon from the present two months to three months to at least a year. However, The Times reported Sunday that a paper published by Olli Heinonen, former head of inspections for the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, estimated that Iran could still develop a nuclear weapon in seven or eight months with around 6,500 centrifuges.
Tehran says it wants to enrich uranium only for energy, science, industry and medicine. But many countries fear Iran could use the technology to make weapons-grade uranium.
Officials told the Associated Press that another main dispute involved the length of an agreement. Iran, they said, wants a total lifting of all caps on its activities after 10 years, while the U.S. and the five other nations at the talks — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — insist on progressive removal after a decade.
A senior U.S. official characterized the issue as lack of agreement on what happens in years 11 to 15. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with State Department rules on briefing about the closed-door talks.
Limits on Iran's research and development of centrifuges also were unresolved, the Western officials said.
Tehran has created a prototype centrifuge that it says enriches uranium 16 times faster than its present mainstay model. The U.S. and its partners want to constrain research that would increase greatly the speed of making enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb, once limits on Iran's programs are lifted.
One official said Russia opposed the U.S. position that any U.N. penalties lifted in the course of a deal should be reimposed quickly if Tehran reneged on any commitments.
Both Western officials said Iran was resisting attempts to make inspections and other ways of verification as intrusive as possible.
There was tentative agreement on turning a nearly-finished reactor into a model that gives off less plutonium waste than originally envisaged. Plutonium, like enriched uranium, is a path to nuclear weapons.
Iran and the U.S. were discussing letting Iran run centrifuges at an underground bunker that has been used to enrich uranium. The machines would produce isotopes for peaceful applications, the officials said.
With the Tuesday deadline approaching and problems remaining, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry canceled plans Sunday to return to the United States for an event honoring the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart, scratched planned trips to Kazakhstan.
Kerry has been in discussions with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif since Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The New York Times. | REAL |
1,357 | With all three Clintons in Iowa, a glimpse at the fire that has eluded Hillary Clinton’s campaign | CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — “I had one of the most wonderful rallies of my entire career right here in 1992,” Bill Clinton said by way of opening to the crowd of more than 1,100 on Saturday night.
Two days before the Iowa caucuses, Cedar Rapids tried to deliver that same old feeling to his wife, Hillary Clinton.
In the crowd, one woman held a sign that said “227 years of men. It’s HER turn!" Some carried signs and books. Others had traveled from as far as Missouri. They had waited hours, even after the fire marshal told them there was no more room inside the high school gymnasium.
The restive crowd chanted slogans and buzzed with anticipation until finally Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton all appeared on stage hand-in-hand, an hour behind schedule. As they roared, Hillary Clinton beamed.
It has been a long slog in Iowa for the Clinton campaign, which has struggled mightily to shake the label that its supporters can’t muster the enthusiasm of its rival’s backers. As the caucuses near, and with the help of a former president, the energy level at her events are notably dialing up.
"He's a charismatic speaker," said Cigi Ross, 31. "In general, I'd say he's a bigger draw for people."
Monday night will put the campaign's months of their work to the test. Can the campaign’s organization bring out their supporters? Can the candidate energize voters?
Clinton, who seemed to draw on the higher-than-usual energy, stood at the center of it all and delivered a confident closing statement.
“What we need is a plan, and a commitment,” Clinton said at the top of her voice.
“And me, yes, thank you,” Clinton finished.
Eight years later, Clinton is in Iowa once again facing what could be a nail-biting conclusion of a hard-fought campaign. Clinton acknowledges that it isn’t just her campaign that has changed since her devastating loss here in her last run, she too has changed — and improved, she told CNN on Saturday.
"I think I am a different, and perhaps a better, candidate, so I hope that also shows," Clinton said in an interview with the network that morning.
Days ago, Iowa seemed to be slipping from her grasp, but campaign aides are feeling more confident now. A slew of positive news, endorsements, and the latest poll from the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg News indicate the bleeding has at least slowed. That poll -- considered the gold standard in Iowa -- gave Clinton a slim lead over her rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
If Democrats are wary of political dynasties, they didn’t show it. Spotting someone in the audience carrying Chelsea Clinton's book, her father remarked: "Thank you, young woman, for holding up her book."
Bill Clinton, who has spent days crisscrossing the state on his wife's behalf, has settled easily into this role as booster-in-chief. He lays off the policy, leaving that to his wife. He focuses instead on what he knows "about the job."
“There are certain, almost intangible qualities that determine whether a president succeeds or not,” Clinton said, his voice raspy, even and low. "You need a sticker. A sticker: someone who won’t quit on you.”
"She’s the best at that I’ve ever known,” he added. | REAL |
988 | Donald Trump’s Shockingly Weak Delegate Game Somehow Got Even Worse | Donald Trump’s organizational problems have gone from bad to worse to flat-out embarrassing. Here’s Politico with the play-by-play from this weekend’s Colorado GOP convention, the latest scene of Trump’s delegate-securing failure:
Unlike in most other states, Republicans in Colorado scrapped plans for a more traditional primary or caucus to award its delegates to this summer’s national convention in Cleveland. Instead, the state GOP selected three delegates from each of the state’s seven congressional districts at individual contests in the days leading up to the state convention, and then the remaining 13 delegates at the statewide event this past weekend. It was a rather convoluted process that favored campaigns that understood the rules and that had the ground game necessary to take advantage of them—or, put another way, not the Trump campaign.
At the first two district-level contests, the billionaire’s team showed up without an approved list of delegates to pass out to attendees, leaving supporters unsure of whom to back. And then at last Thursday’s contest, two of the three delegates on the Trump campaign’s list weren’t actually on the official ballot since they failed to pay the necessary registration fees.
This past weekend’s mix-up, though, was an even bigger embarrassment since at least one of the seven misnumbered names on the Trump-sanctioned list lined up with a Cruz-supporting delegate, according to NBC News. (Even without that mix-up, though, Cruz would have likely swept the contest anyway given his well-oiled delegate-selecting machine.) The Trump camp, though, appeared to blame the state GOP for the mistake, pointing to discrepancies between the delegate guides posted on the party's website and the printed materials distributed at the event. “We'll do whatever it takes to protect the legitimacy of our support in Colorado,” Trump aide Alan Cobb told NBC, suggesting the campaign may challenge the results. “Clearly there are some serious issues with the ballot and balloting.”
Trump remains the favorite to arrive at the convention with the most delegates to his name, but he’s far from assured of the majority of delegates he’d need to win the nomination on the first ballot. Given that reality, the GOP front-runner recently retooled his campaign to address his clear weaknesses in the under-the-radar battle to send loyal delegates to the convention. If those efforts don't start paying dividends soon, though, Trump very well may arrive in Cleveland with the most delegates—and leave without the nomination. | REAL |
7,041 | Strong Solar Storm, Tech Risks Today | S0 News Oct.26.2016 [VIDEO] | Click Here To Learn More About Alexandra's Personalized Essences Psychic Protection Click Here for More Information on Psychic Protection! Implant Removal Series Click here to listen to the IRP and SA/DNA Process Read The Testimonials Click Here To Read What Others Are Experiencing! Copyright © 2012 by Galactic Connection. All Rights Reserved.
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7,623 | 10 Ways America Is Preparing for World War 3 | October 31, 2016 at 4:52 am
Pretty factual except for women in the selective service. American military is still voluntary only and hasn't been a draft since Vietnam war. The comment was made by a 4 star general of the army about drafting women and he said it to shut up liberal yahoos. | FAKE |
1,571 | Trump takes on Cruz, but lightly | Killing Obama administration rules, dismantling Obamacare and pushing through tax reform are on the early to-do list. | REAL |
4,739 | How women lead differently | As more women move into high offices, they often bring a style and approach that is distinct from men. But do they make better leaders?
Democratic women of the US Senate stand on stage during the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (top). There are 20 women in the Senate – 14 Democrats and six Republicans.
Kelly Ayotte and Joni Ernst take the floor, two dynamic young US senators before a town hall of older military veterans. Between them, they represent a raft of firsts: Senator Ayotte is New Hampshire’s first female attorney general and first female Republican senator. Senator Ernst is Iowa’s first woman ever elected to either house of Congress and the first female military veteran to serve in the Senate.
The gender dimension does not go unnoticed. Please welcome “our beautiful senators,” says the veteran who introduces them. Ayotte mentions Ernst’s military service – she’s also a war veteran. But in most ways, the woman thing doesn’t matter. This is just like any other political town hall in campaign season – one senator trying to help another who’s locked in a tight reelection race.
Yet the stakes are high. Republican control of the US Senate could hinge on Ayotte’s ability to fend off her Democratic challenger, Gov. Maggie Hassan. And across the country, women figure prominently in the Democrats’ strategy to retake the Senate, nominating women in six of the 11 competitive races.
Then there’s Hillary Clinton, the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination in the United States.
It’s enough to call 2016 Year of the Woman 2.0, following the original, 1992, when female representation in the Senate jumped from two to six. Today, female senators number 20 out of 100, with potential to reach 24, depending on how the political winds are blowing by Election Day.
Gender diversity among major world powers is also rising, with the ascension of Theresa May to the British prime ministership. If Mrs. Clinton wins in November, three of the world’s top five economies will be headed by women. (German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the other.)
But the numbers and the “firsts” invite a deeper question: Do women really lead differently? From the halls of government to corporate boardrooms, it’s a burning question.
“I think we’re good listeners, and I think that helps,” says Ayotte in an interview. “I don’t want to say my male colleagues aren’t, because plenty of them are. But I think that we listen, and so we’re picking up on where we see the common ground with other people.”
On that point, there is bipartisan agreement.
“There is good research that shows women tend to have different leadership styles,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire’s other senator, says in an interview. “We tend to be more inclusive, we’re less autocratic in our decisionmaking. We like consensus, we like to get people around the table, and so I think that has made a difference.”
Of course, there’s also the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D) of California, the first woman speaker of the House (2007-11). During her tenure, she was known for her ability to wield power – and in a highly partisan way. More than with previous speakers, major legislation came out of her office, not the committees. She was (and is) a master fundraiser for Democrats writ large, a skill she has used to great effect in keeping her members in line.
And as a Roman Catholic woman, Congresswoman Pelosi demonstrated at a crucial moment the power of networking. In 2010, when House passage of the Affordable Care Act appeared in doubt over the abortion issue, she tapped connections her male colleagues had never heard of – two associations of nuns, whose support for the bill proved pivotal.
The research on women’s leadership style has been extensive – and mixed. One academic study, released in 2013, found that women are more attracted to cooperation than men. The reason is that men tend to have greater confidence in their abilities, while women tend to be more optimistic about their prospective teammates’ abilities, according to the study by Peter Kuhn and Marie-Claire Villeval.
New research, released in August, looked specifically at gender differences in the US House of Representatives and found “little evidence to suggest women are inherently more cooperative or bipartisan.” The only difference came with Republican women, who tend to recruit more cosponsors on legislation, including more from the opposite party. That tendency was most pronounced on so-called women’s issues, such as education and social welfare.
“We interpret these results as evidence that cooperation is mostly driven by a commonality of interest, rather than gender per se,” write the authors, Stefano Gagliarducci and M. Daniele Paserman.
The study examined 20 years of data ending in 2008. Since then, female representation in Congress has ticked up a notch, reaching 20 percent in the Senate and nearly that in the House – the rough threshold for a perceived “critical mass” of representation in which women can show perceptible influence.
Indeed, since 2013, female legislators point to multiple examples of how the women of the Senate, in particular, have been instrumental in breaking through congressional gridlock. The best-known example is the end of the 2013 government shutdown, when women senators from both parties met privately over dinner and fashioned a compromise that would form the nucleus of the final deal.
More recently, the women of the Senate – all 20 of them, dubbed “the sisterhood” – backed landmark legislation aimed at combating sex trafficking, which President Obama signed into law in May 2015.
When asked for other examples, Senator Shaheen cites the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. “It was considered dead,” she says, “and because all the women [senators] got on board and pushed it, we were able to get it through.”
Shaheen also notes the growing number of women who serve in top spots on committees, such as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska as chair and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington as the ranking member. “It looks like we may get an energy bill done this year, and I think that speaks to their ability to work together, and to be flexible, and move our colleagues in the House,” Shaheen says.
Behind all this female power are the women senators’ regular dinners, a chance to kick back and talk about whatever – their lives, their work, their male colleagues.
“We go by Mikulski’s rules – that what happens in those dinners stays in those dinners,” says Shaheen, referring to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) of Maryland, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, who is about to retire. “But yeah, they’ve proved to be a great opportunity to build relationships.”
As it happens, Shaheen had hosted 12 of her female colleagues the night before at her office. On the menu: lobsters and clam chowder. That much she will reveal. Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine was there, Shaheen says, “and we had a back and forth about whether the lobsters came from Maine or New Hampshire.”
In 2013, after the Senate’s 20 women helped end the government shutdown, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona wondered out loud: “Imagine what they could do if there were 50 of them.”
That may sound logical, but the reality isn’t so simple. While women do bring a distinctive perspective to policy, based on their life experiences, that doesn’t necessarily make them less partisan, experts say. Some of the most polarizing issues are so-called women’s issues, including health care, abortion, and equal pay.
“As long as women’s issues constitute a prominent division between the parties, there will be little bipartisan collaboration among women on these policies,” Michele Swers, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote in The Washington Post in 2014.
Ms. Swers also notes that partisan sorting has made the South – a region less hospitable to women candidates – the stronghold of the Republican Party, while the more moderate brand of Republicanism that predominates in parts of the country more willing to elect women has declined.
And because women tend to occupy the “leftward wing” of their respective parties, Democratic women in particular are less inclined to compromise, the Gagliarducci-Paserman study found.
Still, none of this means women shouldn’t be more rigorously recruited for public office, say leaders of both parties.
“What you need is more good people, and the process of excluding women has excluded good people from service,” says former Gov. John Sununu (R) of New Hampshire. “So what you need to do is level the playing field.”
In the business world, boosting female representation on corporate boards – now near 20 percent – has been a long-held goal. Advocates cite benefits to the bottom line. In a famous study, Catalyst Inc., a nonprofit that promotes women leaders in the workplace, found that corporate boards with the highest female representation attained “significantly higher financial performance” than those with the lowest representation.
But whether in the private sector or in government, women as top executives are even rarer than women legislators. Only six of the nation’s 50 governors are women, three Republicans and three Democrats. Among world leaders, fewer than two dozen are female. Among Fortune 500 companies, only 21 chief executive officers – or 4.2 percent – are women.
While legislating is an inherently collaborative process, and therefore seems to play to women’s strength, executive roles hew more toward public expectations of how men should behave, i.e., authoritatively.
“I think the more people see women in executive positions, the more they will see that as a normal course of business, and it’s taken longer for that not just in politics but in the boardroom,” says Shaheen.
But that becomes a Catch-22: Women don’t step up because they don’t see other women in those positions. “Some would call it a confidence gap,” says Liz Shuler, the No. 2 leader at the AFL-CIO. “We need to do more to increase the leadership skills-building opportunities, so that it becomes second nature for women to step up.” (See interview with Ms. Shuler here.)
But do women executives really lead differently from men? Clinton echoes other women leaders on this point: “I just think women in general are better listeners, are more collegial, more open to new ideas and how to make things work in a way that looks for a win-win outcome,” she told Time magazine in January.
Meta-analyses have found that women leaders, on average, are “more likely to be democratic, collaborative, and participative” than their male counterparts, who are more likely to be “autocratic and directive” in their approach, writes Alice H. Eagly at TheConversation.com.
Of course, there are exceptions. Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Golda Meir of Israel were both known for being tough and assertive. Today, Apple CEO Tim Cook is known for his team-oriented style. But for women aspiring to leadership posts, the challenge is to overcome societal expectations for how women are “supposed to” act – i.e., nice and nonconfrontational – while still projecting authority. Clinton has faced this “double bind” in both of her presidential campaigns.
New Hampshire has a strong record of female leadership. The governor, both US senators, and one of the state’s two House members are women. The chief justice of the state Supreme Court is a woman. The chair of the state GOP is a woman.
In 2008, Granite Staters made history by electing the nation’s first majority-female state legislative body, in the state Senate. In 2013, the state made history again by sending an all-female congressional delegation to Washington. That could happen again in January.
What is it about New Hampshire that breeds women leaders? Start with a culture of independent-mindedness, and an enormous “citizens legislature” – 400 in the House, 24 in the Senate – in a state with only 1.3 million people. Members are paid just $100 a year, plus mileage. Sooner or later, the joke goes, everybody ends up serving.
“We have so much local self-governance, women have the opportunity to try things out, to see how they like public service, and then they discover that they like it and that they’re good at it, and one thing leads to the next,” says Governor Hassan in an interview in the State House.
Hassan got her start advocating for her disabled son, which caught the notice of then-Governor Shaheen, who appointed her to a state educational funding commission. That led to regular interactions with state legislators – and an introduction to her next mentor, state Sen. Sylvia Larsen, who encouraged Hassan to run for state Senate. She spent six years there, eventually rising to majority leader, losing reelection, then staging a comeback by winning the governorship.
The common denominator for most women in politics, it seems, is mentors. Ask Ayotte, New Hampshire’s junior senator, about Ruth Griffin, and her eyes light up. “I love Ruth Griffin. She’s my mentor!” Ayotte gushes, referring to the nonagenarian grand dame of the New Hampshire Republican Party. (See interview with Mrs. Griffin here.)
When Griffin served on the state Executive Council – an elected board that serves as a check on the governor – she advocated strongly for Ayotte, insisting the Democratic governor reappoint the Republican Ayotte as attorney general.
Shaheen, now a mentor to others, cites as her inspiration Marilla Ricker, the first woman to run for governor of New Hampshire – before women even had the right to vote. Shaheen also speaks fondly of the late Susan McLane, a Republican state senator “who was always very good to me.” (Ms. McLane’s daughter is Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D) of New Hampshire.) Shaheen broke two gender barriers in N.H., first with her election as governor (1996), then as a US senator (2008).
Men, too, have championed women politicians here. At a recent Republican women’s chili fest in Stratham, N.H., Mr. Sununu recalls fighting to make Vesta Roy the first woman state Senate president, in 1983. “There’s that classic picture of me standing at the state Senate door, cracked open, peeking in to make sure the 13 votes I had lined up for her stayed with her,” Sununu says.
Whether New Hampshire’s success at electing women to higher office can be duplicated elsewhere remains an open question. Only two other states have two female US senators, and five others have female governors. New Hampshire is no longer the champ at electing women state legislators; that crown belongs to Colorado, with 42 percent. The top 10 states for female representation in state legislatures are mostly Northern, and the bottom 10 mostly Southern, suggesting cultural factors.
Overall, women hold a higher percentage of state legislative seats (24.6 percent) than seats in Congress (19.4 percent, House and Senate combined). At least the female “farm team” has more players than the “major league,” though those numbers still fall far short of matching the overall female population of the country, 50.8 percent.
For many women, reaching parity with men in government – and in business, the judiciary, the labor movement, and other spheres of life – is a deeply held goal. But a quick glance at the graphs charting female representation in state and national legislatures reveals a stark truth: Growth has nearly hit a plateau.
If progress continues at the current rate of change since 1960, women will not achieve equal representation in Congress until 2117, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Women’s representation in state legislatures, which more than quintupled between 1971 and 2015, has also essentially plateaued. What’s going on?
“It’s not that women are running in droves and losing,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “We know that when women run, they win at about the same rate as men do.”
Women also do just as well in fundraising as men, even if they have to work harder to raise the same amount. Part of the problem, Ms. Walsh says, comes in the recruitment process. Much of the recruiting is done by white men, and they recruit who they know – other white men.
That is particularly so among Republicans: Only 17 percent of Republican state lawmakers are women, a rate that hasn’t changed since the early 1990s. In contrast, Democrats doubled their rate of female state representation during the same period from 15 percent to 30 percent.
In Congress (both houses), the disparity is even more stark: Only 9 percent of Republicans are female, versus 33 percent of Democrats. In the Senate alone, only six of the 20 women members are Republican.
Walsh cites several factors behind this gap: Republican women are perceived to be more moderate than their male counterparts, and can have a harder time making it out of the primaries, where turnout is low and skews conservative. The GOP also has no counterpart to Emily’s List – a well-funded political action committee that helps pro-abortion-rights Democratic women get elected. And then there’s the simple fact that more women identify as Democrats, so their recruitment pool is bigger.
In New Hampshire, where both legislative chambers are controlled by the Republicans, Democratic women legislators still outnumber Republican women legislators, 73 to 49. State GOP chair Jennifer Horn says the party – nationally, not just in New Hampshire – needs a message that’s more inclusive.
“I’m being diplomatic – I think there are times when some of the folks in our party are not as sensitive to the fact that men and women see the world differently,” says Ms. Horn. “When we’re talking about jobs and the economy, for example, we need to be cognizant of the fact that women are an economic engine in and of themselves.”
And then there’s the fact that, in both parties, women are less likely than men to run for office without being recruited.
In the Monitor’s conversations with Ernst and Ayotte, both mentioned how they were asked several times to run for the Senate before saying yes – and both brought up family issues. Without using the word “multitasking,” they both show that they have mastered that classic skill of the working mom.
“It’s about getting the message out about empowering women and saying, you can do this,” says Ernst. “It is important that you have a supportive family, even more so for women. I have a teenage daughter right now – we’re looking at colleges – and sometimes it’s hard for a woman to be away. But there are ways of making it work.”
Before running for Senate, Ayotte had been asked a couple of times to run for Congress, but declined – in part, she says, because she was pregnant, but also because she had plans in her work as a prosecutor.
Ayotte then excuses herself. “I’ve got to pick up my daughter before 5:30 or I’m in trouble!” | REAL |
7,737 | Shocking! Michele Obama & Hillary Caught Glamorizing Date Rape Promoters | Shocking! Michele Obama & Hillary Caught Glamorizing Date Rape Promoters First lady claims moral high ground while befriending rape-glorifying rappers Infowars.com - October 27, 2016 Comments
Alex Jones breaks down the complete hypocrisy of Michele Obama and Hillary Clinton attacking Trump for comments he made over a decade ago while The White House is hosting and promoting rappers who boast about date raping women and selling drugs in their music.
Rappers who have been welcomed to the White House by the Obama’s include “Rick Ross,” who promotes drugging and raping woman in his song “U.O.N.E.O.”
While attacking Trump as a sexual predator, Michelle and Hillary have further mainstreamed the degradation of women through their support of so-called musicians who attempt to normalize rape. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | FAKE |
8,716 | Hillary Clinton in HUGE Trouble After America Noticed SICK Thing Hidden in this Picture... * LIBERTY WRITERS NEWS | 0
Hillary Clinton has barely just lost the presidential election and here she is already getting herself caught in another one of her tangled web of lies.
The day after losing, a picture was posted of her taking her dog out for a walk. The picture was reportedly from a random hiker she ran into and showed that she was getting back to public life, or that’s what she wants you to believe.
Now, I want you to do me a favor and take a very close look at this picture, specifically the “hiker” she met. Memorize her face…
Got it? Okay, good.
Now what I am about to show you is something Hillary Clinton was hoping nobody else would notice. Tell me if the girl in the 2nd picture, taken in the 2000’s, reminds you of anyone:
Yeah, it is the EXACT SAME GIRL!
Her name is Margot Gerster and her mother just happens to be one of the big fundraisers for Hillary. That’s actually where the older picture was taken.
Wow! That doesn’t seem random at all, does it?
It looks like this is yet another example of Hillary Clinton trying to mislead the public using her inner circle and pretending like she doesn’t know them.
All I gotta say is, give it the Hell up, Hillary! You lost, nobody needs to see your “chance encounters” or other promotional propaganda anymore. This is exactly why Americans ended up hating you!
Oh well, I guess you really cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Well, in that case all that’s left to do is share this all across Facebook and the internet and expose yet another one of her Serial Lies! | FAKE |
3,304 | What's in that Iran bill that Obama doesn't like? | Washington (CNN) For months, the White House and Congress have wrangled over a bill that would give lawmakers a greater say in the Iran nuclear deal the administration is hammering out along with other world powers.
And now, less than two weeks after a framework agreement with Tehran was reached, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning to take up the measure.
On Tuesday, the committee will consider amendments to Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker's Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act before deciding whether to have the full Senate vote on it.
For many in Congress, it's a very simple premise: Congress should weigh in on the terms of a final nuclear deal with Iran.
But for the White House, and some Democrats in Congress, that's an explosive idea that could derail the talks — and therefore must be stopped.
So what's in the bill?
Supporters of the legislation have emphasized that it would allow Congress to give a thumbs up or down on the deal President Barack Obama is aiming to finalize with Iran by the negotiations' June 30 deadline. Backers think that's only fair since the United States is contemplating a major nuclear pact with a decadeslong enemy.
The bill would give Congress a chance to hold hearings, host briefings and pave the way to a vote on a joint resolution that could express approval or disapproval of the deal. It also requires the Obama administration to quickly report to Congress on details of the deal and regularly assess whether Iran is keeping its commitments. And it spells out what the President needs to do vis-a-vis Congress if Iran is found violating the terms.
But most important, it would keep Obama from waiving any congressional sanctions on Iran during Congress' 60-day review period. And if Congress passes a joint resolution of disapproval, then sanctions could not be lifted even after that time.
Does this hurt the diplomatic effort to reach a final deal?
Iran's primary reason for agreeing to the deal's limits on its nuclear program is to get sanctions relief.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have insisted sanctions must be lifted on Day One of the deal. While the Obama administration has said it would wait several months before lifting sanctions -- to verify that Iran has taken major steps to roll back its program — the President is counting on having some latitude to waive sanctions in order to give Iran an incentive to sign the deal and then keep its commitments.
The Corker bill makes it less likely sanctions would be lifted, and lifted in a timely way, which gives less encouragement to Iran.
Without the bill, could Obama lift all sanctions on Iran?
Not all, but most — at least for a limited time.
Without the Corker-Menendez bill (named after Corker and lead Democratic co-sponsor Sen. Bob Menendez), Iran could see nearly all nuclear-related sanctions at least temporarily lifted. Those enacted through the United Nations and by presidential executive order could be fully removed, and most of those passed by Congress could be waived by Obama until he leaves office, when they would go back into effect unless the next president continues to waive them.
If the Corker-Menendez bill becomes law and a deal is finalized, Obama wouldn't be able to lift the congressional sanctions for at least 60 days.
During that 60-day review phase, the bill says Obama can't "waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of statutory sanctions."
How can Obama waive sanctions passed by Congress anyway?
The biggest sanctions package approved by Congress, widely credited with crippling Iran's economy and bringing the country to the negotiating table, was the 2010 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act.
It included a provision that gives the President leverage to waive sanctions for a limited time if he determines it's in the U.S. national security interest.
He wouldn't be able to permanently sunset the sanctions, though, unless Iran cuts its ties with and stops funding terror organizations around the world, an aspect not being addressed in the current negotiations with Iran and not predicted to happen any time soon.
The administration says sanctions are where Congress could eventually weigh in on the Iran deal -- by repealing them -- but that would only happen if lawmakers deem the deal a good one.
How would Congress weigh in during the 60-day review period?
Congress could pass a joint resolution approving of the deal or disapproving of the deal and forbidding any sanctions relief. Or it could do nothing, allowing Obama to implement the sanctions, and by implication the deal, after the 60 days are up.
A joint resolution disapproving of the deal would need to muster a two-thirds majority, though, to override the veto Obama has promised -- an unlikely, but not entirely unthinkable, scenario.
Are there other reasons that Obama opposes this bill?
First, he's facing a combative, Republican majority in both houses of Congress. Those Republicans have sought to undermine his negotiations with Iran at every turn. Giving those lawmakers a legislative avenue to slam the terms of an eventual deal would, at best, be a political blow to Obama and his administration's efforts to broker an agreement.
There's also the White House's argument that the executive branch has the power to broker international agreements without Congress meddling, while congressional oversight of the Iran deal would set a dangerous precedent. Most international agreements aren't treaties ratified by Congress, and Obama has argued that U.S. allies need to know they can count on those agreements holding up.
Virtually every Senate Republican supports the bill and nine Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors, including independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats. Several more on the left are leaning toward supporting the bill.
That means backers will likely pass the bill with a filibuster-proof majority. It's unclear, though, if they can muster enough Democrats willing to vote to override Obama's veto.
It's not just the numbers, though. Some powerful Democrats are supporting the legislation. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, who will become the chamber's Democratic leader when Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada retires at the end of his term, is a big proponent of the legislation.
Menendez, of New Jersey, who has been working to rally Democrats around legislation on Iran throughout the negotiations, remains the most vocal Democrat on the issue. He was the top-ranked Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until stepping aside to face corruption charges handed down earlier in the month.
Also, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of the earliest Obama backers during the 2008 campaign, has been insistent on the need for Congress to weigh in and has worked behind the scenes to make Corker's bill more palatable to Democrats -- and the White House. But so far that effort hasn't succeeded, as the White House remains opposed. | REAL |
3,078 | The 1 chart that explains everything you need to know about partisanship in America | While paging through Pew's best data visualizations of 2014 (it's awesome), I came across what I believe to be one of the best and most revealing charts about the state of American politics. Here it is:
The chart, which comes from Pew's amazing political polarization project, shows how partisans of both parties have grown both increasingly unified amongst themselves and increasingly far apart from their partisan others over just the last 20 years. As recently as 1994, seven in 10 Democrats were more consistently liberal than the median Republican. As of 2014, it's a whopping 94 percent. Same goes for Republicans; 64 percent of GOPers were more consistently conservative than the median Democrat in 1994 while 92 percent are today. In addition, "the overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10 percent to 21 percent," according to Pew.
To me, this chart is so important -- particularly in a week where a new Congress arrives in Washington -- because it reveals that the polarization of our elected officials isn't some sort of "only in Washington" thing. The increasing partisanship of Congress is a direct reflection of the increasing partisanship of the country. After all, that's who elects these people to Congress, right?
So, when you hear people decry the partisanship of their elected officials in Washington, don't believe it. We have the Congress we want -- even if we aren't totally honest with ourselves all the time about what that is. And, we get the results -- not many -- from our elected officials that you have to expect when you have a country as polarized as ours. | REAL |
2,517 | The slippery slope to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims | With little fanfare this fall, the New York developer who had planned to build an Islamic community center north of the World Trade Center announced that he would instead use the site for a 70-story tower of luxury condos.
Those who had rallied in opposition to the building because of its religious affiliation back in 2010 were exultant. “The importance of the defeat of the Ground Zero Mosque cannot be overstated,” Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, wrote on the website Breitbart in September. “The Ground Zero Mosque became a watershed issue in our effort to raise awareness of and ultimately halt and roll back the advance of Islamic law and Islamic supremacism in America.”
It’s all well and good that so many Republicans have condemned Donald Trump’s reprehensible call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) was particularly forceful, calling proper attention to the “many Muslims serving in our armed forces, dying for this country.”
When he was president, George W. Bush honorably put a lid on right-wing Islamophobia. He regularly praised American Muslims and stressed that the United States needed Muslim allies to fight violent extremism. Once Bush was gone, restraint on his side of politics fell away.
Thus, Trump’s embrace of a religious test for entry to our country did not come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it simply brought us to the bottom of a slippery slope created by the ongoing exploitation of anti-Muslim feeling for political purposes.
You don’t have to reach far back in time to see why Trump figured he had the ideological space for his Muslim ban. Last month, it was Jeb Bush who introduced the idea of linking the rights of Syrian refugees to their religion. He said he was comfortable granting admission to “people like orphans and people who are clearly not going to be terrorists. Or Christians.” Asked how he’d determine who was Christian, he explained that “you can prove you’re a Christian.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) took a similar view, saying , “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.”
Trump took limits on Muslim access to our country to their logical — if un-American and odious — conclusion. Vice President Biden said that Trump was serving up “a very, very dangerous brew,” but the brew has been steeping for a long time. This is why the “Ground Zero Mosque” episode is so instructive.
The demagoguery began with the labeling of the controversy itself. As PolitiFact pointed out, “the proposed mosque is not at or on Ground Zero. It does not directly abut it or overlook it.” It was “two long blocks” away. And while a mosque was part of the proposed cultural center, the plans also included “a swimming pool, gym and basketball court, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant and culinary school, a library and art studios.”
This didn’t stop opponents from going over the top, and Newt Gingrich deserved some kind of award for the most incendiary comment of all. “Nazis,” he said, “don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.”
When President Obama defended the right of developers to build the project, he was — surprise, surprise — accused of being out of touch, and Republicans were happy to make the Muslim center and Obama’s defense of religious rights an issue in the 2010 campaign.
“I think it does speak to the lack of connection between the administration and Washington and folks inside the Beltway and mainstream America,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who was then chairman of the committee in charge of electing Republicans to the Senate. Voters, he said, felt they were “being lectured to, not listened to.” Sound familiar?
At the time, John Feehery, the veteran Republican strategist, put his finger on why Republicans were so eager to lambaste Obama’s response to the Ground Zero issue. “This will help drive turnout for the GOP base,” he said.
The Republican establishment is now all upset with Trump, but he is simply the revenge of a Republican base that took its leaders’ pandering — on Islam and a host of other issues — seriously.
You can’t be “just a little” intolerant of Muslims, any more than you can be “just a little” prejudiced against Catholics or Jews. Once the door to bigotry is opened, it is very hard to shut.
Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. | REAL |
10,348 | Episode #160 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Hail to the Deplorables’ with special guest Randy J | November 13, 2016 By 21wire Leave a Comment
Episode #160 of SUNDAY WIRE SHOW resumes this November 13, 2016 as host Patrick Henningsen brings a 3 HOURS special broadcast of LIVE power-packed talk radio on ACR…
LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE AT THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULED SHOW TIMES:
SUNDAYS – 5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm ET (US) | 9am-12pm PT (US)
This week’s edition of THE SUNDAY WIRE is on the road broadcasting LIVE from the Valley of the Sun. This week host Patrick Henningsen covers this week’s top stories in the US and internationally. In the first hour we’ll conduct a post-mortem on the incredible US Election which has produced President Elect Donald J Trump , and the aftermath – a nation divided punctuated by numerous street protests in part fuelled by Soros and the Democratic Party Machine . Later, we’re joined by our roving everyman , ACR Boiler Room contributor, Randy J , for an on the ground take on Election events from the West Coast, and beyond…
SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
Strap yourselves in and lower the blast shield – this is your brave new world…
*NOTE: THIS EPISODE MAY CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE AND MATURE THEMES* | FAKE |
778 | Hillary Clinton Makes A Bipartisan Appeal on Staten Island | Hillary Clinton told a Staten Island crowd today that she was the candidate who could reach across party lines to get things done as president—pointing to her experience representing the borough in the Senate and even giving public thanks to Republican President George W. Bush.
“I have no time for people who are partisan for the sake of being partisan,” Ms. Clinton, a Democrat and former secretary of state, told a crowd that welcomed her enthusiastically in a historic building at Snug Harbor Cultural Center.
Ms. Clinton was the second leading presidential candidate to speak on Staten Island today, after Republican Donald Trump delivered a typical stump speech at a Republican brunch. But Ms. Clinton, perhaps sensing or recalling Staten Island’s ever-present desire for politicians to pay attention to the forgotten borough, delivered a speech that seemed to be especially tailored for the borough, which is more conservative than the rest of New York City. The majority of its voters are registered Democrats, but the borough routinely swings Republican.
“When I ran in 2000, I didn’t carry Staten Island. When I ran in 2006, I did,” Ms. Clinton said today. “I’ve got no problem with people having political disagreements. That’s in America’s DNA, isn’t it?”
Instead, Ms. Clinton decried “deliberate efforts to set Americans against each other.” She harkened back to representing the borough of cops and firefighters on September 11, 20001, when nearly 300 Staten Islanders were killed in the terror attacks. She noted the city’s mayor, the state’s governor, and the president were all Republicans.
“I did not for one minute stop and say to myself: ‘Well, I don’t know, can we work together?'” Ms. Clinton said. “How absurd is that?”
Ms. Clinton said with 3,000 people murdered, people “pulled together” and “politics was totally left behind.” She had criticized President Bush for his handling of a strong economy he “inherited” from her husband, President Bill Clinton, and for other reasons. But she praised him for approving billions of dollars to rebuild lower Manhattan after the terror attacks, even as others in Washington didn’t want to spend it.
“I publicly say, ‘Thank you President George W. Bush,’ for making sure that we got the money that we needed to rebuild our city,” Ms. Clinton said.
She also touted her record working for the borough after the attacks, including sounding the alarm on air quality and pushing for the passage of the Zadroga Act. Ms. Clinton went on to discuss her foreign policy experience, saying anyone who wants to president has to be able to offer specifics on what they would do—an allusion to her Democratic rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—but also has to be able to keep people safe.
“Maybe we take that more seriously here in New York, but we should,” she said. “And we are going to do everything we can to keep America safe.”
She cited her work building a coalition that “brought Iran to the negotiating table,” without mentioning how controversial that final Iran deal was for President Barack Obama.
Ms. Clinton’s rally had little in common with Mr. Trump’s Staten Island event, except one thing: the crowd at both seemed to hate Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Ms. Clinton mentioned his plan to spy on Muslim neighborhoods, which has also been dismissed by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.
At the mention of Mr. Cruz’s name, the crowd offered a chorus of boos.
The crowd had been hyped up for Ms. Clinton before she even arrived, and gave a nice response to several local pols as they urged people to get out the vote on Tuesday.
“Hillary is the only one with the experience,” said Councilwoman Debi Rose, a Democrat who represents the borough’s North Shore. “She knows what it’s like to be in the White House. She knows the realities. She knows that living and running the White House in this country is not a reality show.”
Ms. Clinton, at the end of her speech, offered the kind of promise Staten Island always loves—and the kind it holds politicians to, if the way the Staten Island Advance repeatedly agitated and inquired about a town hall Mayor Bill de Blasio will finally hold here on Wednesday night is any indication.
“I want you to hold me accountable,” Ms. Clinton said. “I will be coming back to Staten Island when I am your president.” | REAL |
3,300 | New Senate majority leader’s main goal for GOP: Don’t be scary | Mitch McConnell has an unusual admonition for the new Republican majority as it takes over the Senate this week: Don’t be “scary.”
The incoming Senate majority leader has set a political goal for the next two years of overseeing a functioning, reasonable majority on Capitol Hill that scores some measured conservative wins, particularly against environmental regulations, but probably not big victories such as a full repeal of the health-care law. McConnell’s priority is to set the stage for a potential GOP presidential victory in 2016.
“I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome. I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority,” the Kentucky Republican said in a broad interview just before Christmas in his Capitol office.
It’s a far cry from his defiant declaration in 2010 that his “single most important” goal was to make President Obama a one-term president, an antagonizing oath that Democrats frequently invoke to embarrass the GOP leader — Obama won reelection comfortably in 2012, and McConnell’s party lost seats.
Now in charge at both ends of the Capitol, Republicans aim to avoid the worst excesses of the past four years and make sure the public isn’t fearful of the GOP’s course.
“There would be nothing frightening about adding a Republican president to that governing majority,” McConnell said, explaining how he wants voters to view the party on the eve of the 2016 election. “I think that’s the single best thing we can do, is to not mess up the playing field, if you will, for whoever the nominee ultimately is.”
But McConnell, who will become majority leader Tuesday, is not planning to avoid conflict altogether. He wants to use the annual spending bills to compel Obama to accept conservative policy riders that will divide Democrats, similar to the December spending bill’s inclusion of a provision benefiting Wall Street firms involved in risky derivative trades. That rider brought a liberal outcry but did not end up torpedoing the bill, which had Obama’s support.
McConnell has been coaching his members to understand that, in the initial rounds, they will have to almost unanimously support the budget outline and the spending bills, because few Democrats will support their policy riders.
With 54 Republicans in his caucus, McConnell knows that he’s a long way from getting 67 votes to override an Obama veto and that it won’t even be easy getting six Democrats to regularly support legislation so that he can overcome likely filibusters led by the incoming minority leader, Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Still, on some issues, such as energy and taxes on the health industry, McConnell thinks there’s enough bipartisan support to get bills onto Obama’s desk.
“They’d like to be relevant. They’d like to be part of the process,” he said of discussions with some rank-and-file Democrats. “Assuming we will have on most issues a largely unified conference — I don’t expect that on everything — it wouldn’t take a whole lot of Democrats to actually pass legislation in the Senate.”
But McConnell said those who are “craving some grand deal as a way to measure the next two years” should lower their expectations. He’s very skeptical of such bargains with Democrats on tough issues such as immigration and entitlement reform. Instead, he believes three issues have potential common ground: international trade deals, an overhaul of the tax code and new revenue streams for infrastructure projects.
“Could the country use a lot more? You bet. But there’s no way you can overcome a reluctant president on something really large,” McConnell said. The best he can do on some of those bigger issues is force Obama to break out his veto pen so there is a clear set of Democratic policy stances Republicans can campaign against in 2016.
Democrats are dubious of McConnell’s pledge to avert edge-of-the-cliff moments. They believe he will run into the same problems that have bedeviled House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) during the past four years — including the inability to corral rabble-rousers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to support an agenda that conservative critics will probably view as not bold enough in challenging Obama. Appeasing those far-right conservatives will lead to an agenda that Democrats hope to exploit in 2016.
“What Senator McConnell wants people to think and what they will think when they see the results for themselves are two very different things,” said Reid’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson. “Senator McConnell heads a caucus that is obsessed with rigging the game against working people in favor of wealthy special interests. That’s a scary fact indeed, and he won’t be able to hide it.”
While McConnell’s office is adorned with a portrait of Kentucky’s only other Senate majority leader — Alben W. Barkley, whose tenure was often marked by clashes with his own party’s president, Franklin D. Roosevelt — his model more resembles that of George Mitchell, the Democratic majority leader from 1989 through 1994.
Without ever shutting down the government, Mitchell stared down a president of the opposite party, George H.W. Bush, and won several liberal victories in a 1990 budget showdown. Mitchell also delivered a slew of legislation to Bush’s desk that drew a veto, helping frame the debate for the 1992 election on domestic policy.
McConnell has recently studied other two-term presidents on how often they vetoed legislation in their last two years in office. Obama has issued only two minor vetoes over technical matters, largely because the previously Democratic-run Senate prevented anything from reaching his desk that he opposed.
McConnell suggested that a veto strategy would help clarify issues for voters. “I think his bureaucracy across the board has done a lot of damage to the country. . . . I’d at least like for him to have to personally take responsibility for it, even if he in the end decides to veto the bill over some restriction on EPA regulations.”
McConnell is keenly aware of the challenges of reining in some of the impulses that his fellow Republican lawmakers have developed over eight straight years in the minority.
The first test will come on an energy debate, which could begin by the end of this week. McConnell is trying to keep his side from offering amendments not related to energy issues. In recent years, when some rank-and-file Republicans wanted to stop the Senate in its tracks, they would threaten amendments related to how Congress gets its health care.
“I’ve asked my members to restrain themselves,” he said.
Restraint has been hard to come by in this political era, particularly because a small army of conservative groups has made it a mission to push Republicans to the most strident stands, even if it means shutting down the government or risking default on the national debt.
McConnell faced some of those groups firsthand when they supported his 2014 primary challenger, and he faced a grinding general election against a Democrat who was well financed.
It cost nearly $30 million from his campaign war chest and tens of millions of dollars more from outside groups. Winning both races handily, McConnell is delivering a message to Republicans on how to behave heading into 2016.
“Don’t try to reinvent yourself. Be yourself, number one. And don’t be afraid of a primary. We will win all the primaries. We did it in ’14. We will do it in ’16,” McConnell said.
Shortly after Election Day this fall, McConnell sat down with Obama for a rare one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office, a huddle that both sides kept largely secret. In the pre-Christmas interview, McConnell acknowledged that the meeting’s purpose was only to discuss areas where the president and Republicans might find bipartisan agreement — because their disagreements on other issues were too intractable.
That meeting, he said, focused on trade deals, a tax code overhaul and infrastructure funding. “Can we get there on tax reform, trade, infrastructure?” he said.
He eschewed the idea of holding the debt ceiling hostage to gain spending-cut concessions from Obama, a tool Republicans had to use before because they were in the minority.
“We are in the majority. We can pass a budget. We can determine how much we’re going to spend,” he said.
Avoiding those moments could make for a less “scary” Congress, giving the Republicans a better chance in 2016 to hit the trifecta and gain the White House. His own horse is already chosen, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), but don’t expect McConnell to be out on the campaign trail or doing any other favors for his home-state colleague.
“I’m going to be supporting Rand Paul. But he knows that beyond that, I won’t be involved in presidential politics. I’ve got a big job here,” he said. | REAL |
6,155 | ‘Inferno’ and the Overpopulation Myth | Mises.org November 1, 2016 Inferno is a great thriller, featuring Tom Hanks reprising his role as Professor Robert Langdon. The previous movie adaptations of Dan Brown’s books ( Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code ) were a success, and I expect Inferno will do well in theaters, too. Langdon is a professor of symbology whose puzzle solving skills and knowledge of history come in high demand when a billionaire leaves a trail of clues based on Dante’s Inferno to a biological weapon that would halve the world’s population. The villain, however, has good motives. As a radical Malthusian, he believes that the human race needs halving if it is to survive at all, even if through a plague. Malthus’s name is not mentioned in the movie, but his ideas are certainly there. Inferno provides us an opportunity to unpack this overpopulation fear, and see where it stands today. Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) thought that the potential exponential growth of population was a problem. If the population increases faster than the means of subsistence, then, “The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.” Is overpopulation a problem? The economics of population size tell a different, less scary, story. While it is certainly possible that some areas can become too crowded for some people’s preferences, as long as people are free to buy and sell land for a mutually agreeable price, overcrowding will fix itself. As an introvert who enjoys nature and peace and quiet, I am certainly less willing to rent an apartment in the middle of a busy, crowded city. The prices I’m willing to pay for country living versus city living reflect my preferences. And, to the extent that others share my preferences or even have the opposite preferences, the use and construction of homes and apartments will economize in both locations. Our demands and the profitability of the varied real estate offerings keep local populations in check. But what about on a global scale? The Inferno villain was concerned with world population. He stressed the urgency of the situation, but I don’t see any reason to worry. Google tells me that we could fit the entire world population in Texas and everybody would have a small, 100 square meter plot to themselves. Indeed, there are vast stretches of land across the globe with little to no human inhabitants. Malthus and his ideological followers must have a biased perspective, only looking at the crowded streets of a big city. If it’s not land that’s a problem, what about the “means of subsistence”? Are we at risk of running out of food, medicine, or other resources because of our growing population? No. A larger population not only means more mouths to feed, but also more heads, hands, and feet to do the producing. Also, as populations increase, so does the variety of skills available to make production even more efficient. More people means everybody can specialize in a more specific and more productive comparative advantage and participate in a division of labor. Perhaps this question will drive the point home: Would you rather be stranded on an island with two other people or 20 other people? Malthus wouldn’t be a Malthusian if he could see this data The empirical evidence is compelling, too. In the graph below, we can see the sort of world Malthus saw: one in which most people were barely surviving, especially compared to our current situation. Our 21st-century world tells a different story. Extreme poverty is on the decline even while world population is increasing. Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor and “celebrity statistician,” is famous for his “Don’t Panic” message about population growth. He sees that as populations and economies grow, more have access to birth control and limit the size of their families. In this video , he shows that all countries are heading toward longer lifespans and greater standards of living. Finally, there’s the hockey stick of human prosperity. Estimates of GDP per capita on a global, millennial scale reveal a recent dramatic turn. The inflection point coincides with the industrial revolution. Embracing the productivity of steam-powered capital goods and other technologies sparked a revolution in human well-being across the globe. Since then, new sources of energy have been harnessed and computers entered the scene. Now, computers across the world are connected through the internet and have been made small enough to fit in our pockets. Goods, services, and ideas zip across the globe, while human productivity increases beyond what anybody could have imagined just 50 years ago.
I don’t think Malthus himself would be a Malthusian if he could see the world today.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute. The Best of Jonathan Newman Tags: Jonathan Newman was a 2013 and 2014 Summer Fellow at the Mises Institute and teaches economics at Auburn University. | FAKE |
636 | Anti-Trump forces seek last-ditch delegate revolt | Washington (CNN) The faction of the GOP that is unhappy with Donald Trump as the party's presumptive nominee has one last plan to stop the mogul: staging an all-out delegate revolt at the Republican National Convention.
The far-fetched idea is the latest reflection of a campaign cycle that has been anything but ordinary, and stems from a continuing dissatisfaction among some conservative stalwarts with how Trump is behaving and running his campaign. But two longtime GOP veterans says they wouldn't bet on the effort working.
The effort comes at a rough time for the GOP. As the Democratic Party's heaviest hitters, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, line up behind Hillary Clinton and against Trump, Republicans have been forced to criticize their own nominee. Recent comments from Trump about a federal judge's Mexican heritage have drawn widespread rebuke and put GOP leaders in a corner as they defend their endorsement of Trump while disavowing his comments.
One of the vocal advocates for a delegate revolt is conservative commentator and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who has also been actively seeking a candidate to mount an independent bid against Trump, thus far to no avail.
Kristol tweeted late Thursday that the idea of a "conscience convention," where delegates are free to vote for whomever they want to, is also appealing.
"I've been focused on independent candidacy, & still am. But struck by sudden level of interest in possible delegate revolt at convention," Kristol tweeted. He added: "A Convention of Conscience in Cleveland would be quite something. Made easier by fact Trump only won minority of total primary votes anyway."
Bob Vander Plaats, the head of The Family Leader, an influential social conservative group in Iowa, told CNN's Kate Bolduan Friday morning that "everything does need to be on the table" at the convention, though he stopped short of calling for a revolt on the convention floor.
"We want a principled conservative and disciplined candidate who is the standard-bearer of this party," said Vander Plaats, who backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during the primaries. He said Trump has time before the convention to "have the concerns laid to rest."
"All I'm doing is adapting to the circumstances," Kendal Unruh told ABC. "I certainly believe Trump's demagogic racist comments are hurting him."
The rules enacted by the previous convention, which govern in 2016 until delegates pass a new set of rules, state that even if a delegate casts a ballot for a candidate other than one they are bound to, the convention secretary will record their bound vote.
In order to change that rule, the 112 delegates (two from each state and territory) on the Rules Committee would have to pass different rules and bring those to the floor of the convention, where a majority of delegates present would have to approve them.
Rules expert and RNC veteran Jim Bopp, an Indiana delegate who serves as special counsel to the RNC Rules Committee, said he has spoken with people who want to "keep the option open to manipulate the rules in some way to deny Trump the nomination," but he said he wouldn't bet on any changes.
"I would put money on no rules changes that would affect the outcome of the nominating process," Bopp told CNN. "I think it's highly likely that no rules changes would be adopted that would affect the nomination."
Bopp said there's also a counter movement within Rules insiders to pass a rule that would prevent any other rules changes from going into effect until the close of the convention.
Rules Committee and Oregon RNC member Solomon Yue is behind that effort, and has been pushing the RNC this year to adopt rules that give less power to the party and more to the delegates. He tried but failed to get the party to adopt rules that would require bigger majorities to pass business at the convention.
Yue says with roughly 80% of the convention delegates being either Trump or Cruz backers, the anti-Trump forces don't have much strength.
"The common denominator of the delegates is anti-establishment, anti-Washington," Yue said. "And if you think about 'Never Trump' people, they are representing Washington and the establishment."
Part of the philosophy for a delegate revolt comes from longtime RNC veteran Curly Haugland, from North Dakota, and a book he co-wrote with public policy consultant Sean Parnell. "Unbound" uses the history of the RNC to make the case that RNC rules dictate that delegates be allowed to vote their conscience.
"What Curly and I are contending is that because of RNC rules, there is no such thing as binding," Parnell told CNN, saying the binding rules that currently are in place are in a part of the rules package that govern pre-convention during the delegate selection process.
But Parnell also acknowledged that any effort to make the interpretation stick would require at the very least a handful of state delegations if not a majority of delegates on the floor.
"It would be messy. Good television though," Parnell said. "I would not call it likely. My hope is that delegates are free to vote however they want to vote, and it's going to be up to the chair whether or not to allow that. But I think unless Donald Trump actually does go shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, I don't think this is going to cost him the nomination."
Neither the Trump campaign nor Republican National Committee immediately responded to a request for comment on the chatter about a delegate revolt.
There has been intense focus on the Rules Committee for months, going back to when there was a possibility of no Republican candidate getting enough delegates to clinch the nomination outright. With the prospect of a contested convention, the Cruz campaign made a concerted effort to stock the Rules Committee and state delegations with loyalists who would support Rules that would benefit Cruz in a bid to win the nomination on multiple ballots.
But after Cruz lost Indiana soundly and suspended his campaign, the prospect of a contested convention vanished and Trump rolled to the magic number to clinch the nomination.
Meanwhile, the Cruz campaign urged supporters to continue to become delegates and earn leadership spots to influence the platform at the convention.
Though some in the party have never warmed to Trump, the intensity of finding a way to prevent his formal nomination has grown in recent days after Trump's comments about a federal judge inflamed even the leaders of his own party.
Trump questioned the impartiality of the district court judge overseeing a lawsuit related to his venture Trump University, saying the Indiana-born judge's Mexican ancestry could bias him against Trump. The mogul cited his campaign promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico in making the comments.
Though the presumptive nominee has repeatedly stood behind and doubled down on the comments, his stance has drawn outrage from the likes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who called the remarks "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
Still, only a small handful of Republicans have withdrawn or withheld their endorsements of Trump. Vulnerable Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk disavowed Trump this week and said he could not endorse the party's nominee after all, but Ryan, McConnell and others have stood by their endorsements, saying Clinton would be a worse choice. | REAL |
755 | Sanders Trounces Clinton in W. Va. -- But Will It Make a Difference? | Meanwhile, Democrat Bernie Sanders picked up more delegates in the two states than Hillary Clinton.
The Vermont senator's still way behind, but says he's not giving up, calling his win in West Virginia "tremendous."
Clinton still holds a commanding delegate lead, but Sanders still has the fight in him.
"We are in this campaign to win the Democratic nomination!" he declared.
But Sanders' quest appears to be almost impossible, with Clinton 94 percent of the way to winning the nomination.
"I am, if I am so fortunate enough as to be the nominee - I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump come the fall," she said.
Still, Clinton faces the FBI investigation of her email scandal.
In addition, her loss in West Virginia, a state she took in 2008, was payback for her statements in March that a lot of coal miners and coal companies would be out of business.
She's also polling badly among whites, men, and young people, with many loyal Sanders supporters vowing to never vote for her.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Trump kept rolling, winning West Virginia and Nebraska.
The billionaire told the Associated Press he's looking at five or six people as his running mate, all with deep political experience.
One person that Trump will likely not be considering is Sen. Marco Rubio, who told CNN he disagrees with Trump's "America first" foreign policy.
"I have well defined differences with the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party," Rubio said. "And like millions of Republicans, you try to reconcile those two things."
Trump will be meeting on Capitol Hill Thursday with Republican leaders, a group he has railed against, to try to patch up the public differences they've had.
Unifying the Democrats is going to be an issue for Clinton too, as many Sanders voters have said they wouldn't vote for her.
So, after tough primary battles, both parties are facing the question of how to work together against each in the general election this fall. | REAL |
626 | Donald Trump Is Changing His Campaign Slogan to Prove He’s Not Racist | After a week of nonstop criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike for comments many condemned as racially charged, Donald Trump claims to be altering his campaign to be a little more inclusive. While the presumptive G.O.P. has long promised to “make America great again,” Trump now says he’s adding two words to slogan to illustrate just how non-racist he really is.
“You know, I have the theme ‘make America great again,’ and I've added a couple of things,” Trump announced to supporters at a campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia, on Friday night. “Right now I’m adding make America great again—I’m adding ‘for everyone,’ because it’s really going to be for everyone. It’s not going to be for a group of people, it’s going to be for everyone. It’s true.”
The allegedly amended slogan, which has yet to appear on any official signage or Trump merchandise, comes after the presidential candidate spent the first half of June repeatedly denouncing Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge of Mexican heritage presiding over the Trump University class action lawsuit, as inherently biased against him. (Curiel was born in Indiana.) His comments were widely condemned by the Washington political establishment, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who suggested he may be an idiot, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who called Trump’s statement the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”
Trump, who hasn’t apologized or taken back any of his comments, indicated on Friday that he realized his words have had a negative effect on his campaign and declared he is not a racist.
“I am the least racist person. The least racist person that you’ve ever seen. I mean give me a break,” he said at the rally. “I am the least racist person that you’ve ever looked at, believe me.” | REAL |
691 | Pure chaos: Donald Trump’s campaign management offers a glimpse into his governing style (spoiler alert: it’s terrible) | If you want a glimpse into a presidential candidate’s governing style, take a look at his campaign. How does he build an organization? How does he manage personnel? How does he delegate responsibility? Does he value loyalty or honesty in advisers? It’s hardly conclusive, but how a candidate deals with these challenges says a lot about what they’d prioritize as president.
The presumptive Republican nominee has managed his campaign the way he manages his casinos or his realty TV program: haphazardly and with an unearned arrogance. Everything’s about the brand and non-sycophants are cast aside. Getting it right is far less important than being right. Thus, when prompted by advisers to dial down the rhetoric and think more about his long-term viability, Trump has resisted. He’s yet to understand how different a primary and a general election are, and he’s too cocksure to listen to anyone who tries to explain it.
Trump isn’t as stupid as he pretends to be, but his confidence seems to scale with his ignorance, and that’s a dangerous trait in a president, given how consequential each decision can be. As a candidate, a confident idiot can make a lot of noise and fool a lot of voters. But you can’t lead that way. As president, Trump would need the sober advice of serious professionals. Considering how little he understands about the job and the world, this is especially true in his case.
Based on the latest behind-the-scenes reports on Trump’s campaign (as well as his entire history in real estate and television), it’s unlikely he would govern with the humility and self-awareness required. The campaign has undergone several shake-ups in recent months, with key staffers like Corey Lewandowski being demoted to make way for veteran operatives like Paul Manafort. Trump’s approach has remained very much the same, however. Everyone he brings in bends to his will or is replaced by someone who does.
Things have gotten more chaotic in the last week or so, as Rick Wiley was fired as the campaign’s national political director. Wiley was known to assert himself in ways that alienated Trump and his loyalists. The Washington Post’s Sean Sullivan and Robert Costa summarized the broader situation over the weekend: “For the last two months, Donald Trump has presided over a political team riddled with turf wars, staff reshuffling and dueling power centers. But tensions are more than typical campaign chaos: They illustrate how Trump likes to run an organization, whether it’s a real estate venture or his presidential bid. Interviews with current and former Trump associates reveal an executive who is fond of promoting rivalries among subordinates, wary of delegating major decisions, scornful of convention and fiercely insistent on a culture of loyalty around him.” These are the management techniques of a brand-hustling magnate, not a president of the United States. Trump’s dictatorial approach works well on the campaign trail, but it’d be a disaster in office. A president has to persuade and compromise. The capacity to admit ignorance is equally important. Trump, by all accounts, has no interest in any of these things. Trump doesn’t know what he needs to know in order to be president, nor does he care that he doesn’t know. If his campaign is any indication, he’ll hire people to ensure his veil of ignorance is never cracked. That kind of megalomania is why Trump is who he is – it’s part of his outsized persona. It’s also the clearest indicator we have of the kind of president he’d be. | REAL |
5,743 | Syrian War Report – November 1, 2016: Syrian Military Deploys Advanced T-90 Battle Tanks to Aleppo | Syrian War Report – October 31, 2016: Al-Nusra-led Forces Failed to Break Aleppo Siege ‹ › South Front Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises. They focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world: Ukraine, the war in Middle East, Central Asia issues, protest movements in the Balkans, migration crises, and others. In addition, they provide military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by governments and mainstream media. Syrian War Report – November 1, 2016: Syrian Military Deploys Advanced T-90 Battle Tanks to Aleppo By South Front on November 1, 2016 …from SouthFront
The Syrian military has deployed advanced Russian-made T-90 main battle tanks to western Aleppo, according to the video released on October 31. T-90 MBTs were observed in the Minyan area where they were participating in operations against Jaish al-Fatah, a Jabhat al-Nusra-led coalition of militant groups. Last weekend, elite units of the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces and the Desert Hawks Brigade were deployed in Aleppo to counter the militants’ offensive operation to capture the al-Assad Military Academy and the nearby areas. Both formations operate T-90 MBTs supplied by Moscow over the last year. The government forces massively use tanks, artillery, warplanes and helicopters to attrit Jaish al-Fatah’s manpower in non-populated urban areas.
Experts note that the jihadists have also concentrated a high number of experienced troops, artillery, rocket launchers and military equipment at a restricted front in western Aleppo. To do this, they had been pushed to use almost all their resources from the rear bases in Idlib province. If Jabhat al-Nusra is not able to achieve a decided success in clashes with the government forces soon, this will lead to its total collapse as a powerbroker in the war. The group’s material and technical base will be destroyed and experienced troops and field commanders killed in the clashes. We’ve been already able to observe signs of this tendency since the failed al-Nusra attempt to dig in the Ramouseh Artillery Acandemy in southern Aleppo.
The Kurdish YPG and the Ankara-led forces (Turkish-backed militant groups and the Turkish Armed Forces) have been competing in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo city. Both forces recently captured a bunch of villages from ISIS in the direction of Al-Bab. In this case, the ongoing coordination between the Syrian army and the YPG has once again become reality on the ground. The recent Kurdish operations were coordinated and supported by the Russian and Syrian military and military sources say that Moscow increased military supplies to the YPG in the area. Moscow and Domascus believe that the Kurdish buffer zone plays an important role, preventing Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki and other pro-Turkish groups from attacking the Syrian army and its allies in Aleppo city. In mid-October Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki officially announced that the next stage of Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield will include an advance on the ‘regime forces’ in Aleppo.
Dozens of al-Nusra Front and linked-groups members were killed during their failed attempt to break the Syrian army’s defenses at the abandoned al-Mahjoorah Battalion military camp near the militant-controlled town of Ibtaa in the province of Daraa on October 31. According to pro-government forces over 40 militants were killed. Pro-militant media outlets confirm 26 killed in action terrorists. Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians, or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. LEGAL NOTICE - COMMENT POLICY Posted by South Front on November 1, 2016, With 727 Reads Filed under World . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. FaceBook Comments
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1,787 | GOP insiders: Carly crushed it | On this day in 1973, J. Fred Buzhardt, a lawyer defending President Richard Nixon in the Watergate case, revealed that a key White House tape had an 18... | REAL |
7,808 | Jeffrey Sewell et al. : Metabiology face to face with Artificial Intelligence [VIDEO] | Randy Maugans & Jeffrey Sewell | Metabiology face to face with Artificial Intelligence Published on Sep 20, 2016 We are speaking on a subject that is vital for humanity to comprehend, AI or artificial intelligence, our objective is to further disclose how this is influencing humanity in subtle and not so subtle ways, for without knowledge of its existence or comprehension of its prevalence humanity is easily being led into more sophisticated technological control mechanisms.
Jeffrey Sewell has spent many years in deep study of biology, in the process he introduces us to Metabiology, the tenants are simple, ‘As above, so below’ holds true from the nucleus of a cell to the furthest reaches of distant galaxies, life begets life. And it does so in a miraculous pattern that is reflected from the cosmos to the super organism, our Earth and to each of us in our divine vessel, the human body. From his website: http://cytocosmos.com
“Metabiology is a study of the invisible systems of life spanning from the subatomic to the celestial. […] By using cell biology as a template, we are able to map elements within the cell to elements of unseen systems. The latter elements are obtained by cross referencing multiple sources of material from the OBE/LBL/NDE experiencer community. These so-called astral systems map quite nicely to systems in the cell, and they tell the same narrative, albeit the complexity and sophistication of cellular earth is many times that of the cell.
Much of the understandings derived from such mappings are echoed in the deeper cosmologies and teachings of the ancient world religions. Examples include; Sumerian, Egyptian, Kabbalah, Gnostic, Kashmir Shivaism, and Vedanta. Jungian Psychology has also proven to be useful in mapping out the cellular psyche.
This is the science of “as above, so below” in a very literal sense. The invisible is inner visible within the generalized cell itself. We can therefore grasp and ground the unseen systems of life by mapping them to the empirical biology of the cell. The implications of what this science has to offer reach all the way from psychology to cosmology and particle physics.
The primary tenet of Metabiology is that we have inherited biology from systems of life that exist both above and before us. Should it be surprising? After all, we are children of the living universe. The Cytocosmos is a multidimensional living fractal, a cellular holarchy that has hitherto been called the universe.”
Randy Maugans is the beloved radio show host of ‘Offplanet Radio’ http://radio.offplanetmedia.net/ Who doesn’t pull his punches speaking his truth. His many years in the medium of the the alternative media and on the internet has given him an ample arena to study the affects of the infiltration of AI and its interface with human consciousness.
claudia and christine co-founded “Earth Empaths” and this YouTube channel “Not In Our Name.”… The truth no matter where it leads us.
http://earthempaths.net
“Listen to your inner voice. Don’t listen to the superficial voice that makes you angry. Listen to that deeper voice that is going to guide you from now on, the voice that is laughing. Listen to it! And laugh with it. Laugh! Laugh!”– Don Juan Matus Share: | FAKE |
6,484 | Why It’s Necessary To Relax Into A Stretch | In a previous article , I discussed stretching—namely, why stretching is important for the masculine man, and several stretches that you should use in your training to maximize your physical fitness. And while that advice is still valid, I neglected a very important concept in that first article: the techniques that detail how to stretch.
I am not referring to a specific stretch or some sort of hypothetical “stretching mindset,” but rather a set of techniques that can be utilized for any stretch to increase ones flexibility immediately. But before I can discuss those, I have to discuss the incorrect way of stretching that many people still use.
How Not To Stretch Many people believe that stretching is a literal act of forcing the muscles and connective tissue to stretch— avoid this at all costs ! First and foremost, as I have discussed previously in these pages, you should never apply any stretching pressure to the connective tissue. They evolved solely to “hold fast” and keep things in one piece, they should never be stretched at all!
The muscles are the anatomical feature that stretches, as they evolved to do. When stretching, your body should always be positioned in a way where the connective tissues are stable and the muscles are moving.
Even when you are positioned properly, no part of stretching should involve the athlete forcing his muscles to stretch, as that risks muscular tearing which is a nagging injury that never truly goes away. This is because the human body has naturally evolved what is referred to as the “ anti-stretch reflex ” to prevent muscular tearing-stretching the muscles increases in difficulty the farther and deeper the stretch is, and your body responds to this stress with pain. This is a biological sign telling you that if you go further you’ll be risking muscle tears, and should normally be a heeded warning.
However, if you want to do advanced stretching (such as that nigh-impossible benchmark of fitness the splits), you will have to find a way to overcome this reflex without hurting yourself. And as luck would have it, there is!
Relax Into Stretching Reflexes can be overcome with gradual and repeated practice—just ask your friendly neighborhood hooker about how she overcame her gag reflex! Similarly, your anti-stretch reflex that keeps your “joints” (actually your muscles) stiff and immobile can be overcome with a few techniques.
The most basic of these techniques is the one that I have had the best results with (as usual, the simple but difficult answer is usually the correct one), and that is the titular concept of “relaxing into a stretch”—with thanks to Pavel Tsatsouline for naming the concept.
To use this technique, take an easy form of the stretch you want to do: using the splits as an example, you would do a seated groin stretch. Engage the stretch just to the point where you feel tension in the target muscle, and then…sit and wait.
Yes, paradoxically, relaxation is the key to increasing your physical fitness in this context. You are literally going to sit there and wait for your muscles to stop fighting the stretch—in other words, you’re going to exhaust your reflex until it stops being reflexive.
This is not something that happens quickly—from my experience, it will take 5-10 minutes per stretch, so it is perfectly acceptable for you to get a book or watch TV while doing this. As a side note, this is literally the only time where it’s acceptable to have a visual distraction during exercise, in my opinion.
As you might expect, once your muscles have relaxed and the pain has melted away, you can increase the stretch a little bit more, and hold it for another 10 minutes. Repeat this process until your muscles are in pain and you judge that you can’t go any further—this is a personal call that you will have to decide for yourself, as I can’t judge when your muscles are demanding you to stop.
This technique can be utilized for any stretch, and in many cases will give you the progress that you so desire. However, there are other methods in the “Relax Into Stretch” family of exercises that can be utilized as well, such as meditation—mentally relaxing will lead to muscular relaxation.
Or you can try “forced relaxation”, where you flex the muscle simultaneously while stretching, forcing the muscle to relax.
Either way you slice it, don’t just brute force your stretching, utilize these techniques for better results.
Read More: Why Stretching Is Essential For The Body (With 6 Beginner Stretches To Get You Started)
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7,385 | Brexit Encourages UK to Trade With Non-EU States, Including Russia | Britain and EU After Brexit ( 31 ) 0 13 0 0 Brexit prompts the Unietd Kingdom to facilitate trade relations with non-EU states including Russia, the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) chairman told Sputnik.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Leaving the European Union and losing access to the single market encourages Britain to develop trade with Russia and other non-EU states, Roger Munnings, the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) chairman, told Sputnik on Wednesday. "There are at least two years to go before we leave the European Union, but I think the way Britain is looking at it is that it gives us a chance to be completely open to all countries in the world, including Russia. We’ll need to look for other trading partners rather than being confined to the European Union by virtue of the free trade arrangement, so we will be very keen to do trade with Russia," Munnings said on the sidelines of the RBCC RussiaTALK Investment Forum in Moscow.
He added that although there was sanctions regime in place against Moscow, at the same time the British government encourages trade with Russia. © Photo: PIxabay UK FinMin Upholds Economic Stimuli to Quell Concerns Over ‘Hard Brexit’ On June 23, the United Kingdom voted on referendum to leave the European Union . On October 2, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that the country would trigger Article 50 of the EU Lisbon Treaty by the end of March 2017 to start the official procedures to cease its EU membership.
A number of EU leaders have already stated that the United Kingdom will lose its access to the single market unless it keeps freedom of movement rules. May, meanwhile, suggested at the Conservative party conference in early October that the country’s exit from the European Union would be a "hard" rather than "soft" Brexit, meaning that control over immigration would be prioritized over the access to the European single market. ... | FAKE |
9,016 | 2016 interview with Socrates: Another day of Life in the Empire! Are we near an endgame, or fools to ever ‘hope for change’? (6 of ?) | Posted on October 27, 2016 by Carl Herman
“It is no use trying to escape their (Empire’s) arrogance by submission or good behavior. Robbers of the world, having by universal plunder exhausted the land, their drive is greed. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if poor, they lust for domination. Neither rule of the East nor West can satisfy them. Alone among men, they crave with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To plunder, slaughter, seize with false pretenses, they give the lying name ‘empire.’ And where nothing remains but a desert, they call that ‘peace.’ ” – Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania (analyses here , here ). Tacitus wrote ~ 100 AD, a century into empire. Emperors proclaimed to the public that their government still upheld the highest ideals of their Republic, claiming expanding empire was only and always in “self-defense.”
“One Love! Let’s get together and feel all right. Hear the children cryin’ Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart! )” ~ Bob Marley, One Love
language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”
Socrates: Carl!
Carl: Soc! (bro hug)
S: How may I be of service? (genuine smile)
C: I just want to talk with an honest person, bro. We last talked 6 months ago . I don’t know if I have anything new to say, but I want to talk with someone who can hear.
S: I’ll try. What about?
C: We’re finishing a so-called “election” season that’s “jumped the shark” (and here ) with the Left-wing candidate a proven criminal, and Right-wing candidate a depraved Roman Emperor wanna-be . These are Left and Right arms of one illegal rogue state US empire , of course.
S: Of course.
C: So I keep feeling that we have to be near an endgame, Soc. We have to be, given the open floodgates of evidence about s much criminal activity by the .01% centered in war , looting , and lying .
I mean, really, how much longer can this go on?!
S: (smiling) Are you asking me, or just pausing for dramatic effect?
C: I’m asking if you have any answers.
S: (shrugs) I went through a 27-year civil war after almost 50 years of Athenian “leaders” concentrating an empire under their dominion. As we discussed in some detail , Athen’s “love of freedom” and spin that foreign barbarians “hate us for our freedoms” was total inversion of the facts because “freedom” was only meant for us, and not anyone else. Everyone else had to pay tribute or face military invasion.
This hypocrisy in my time produced civil war. Those of us voicing the facts were insufficient to prevent it, or stop it once started. (Pauses to look intensely into my eyes)
So you tell me: how much longer could your struggle go on?
C: Fuck.
I really don’t want a civil war.
S: Fuck, indeed. If it comes, maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe it won’t last 27 years.
C: Fuck.
S: But I do have a brighter perspective. I mean, how many of the non-sheeple would care to talk with me if all I ever did is leave them discouraged? (chuckles) Who would converse with Socrates if those who did were asked, ‘Hey, how did your conversation with Socrates go?’ and the responses were all disheartened, ‘Fuck!’ (laughs)
C: Alright, go. What’s the higher light?
S: You already know it. You tell me.
C: Ok, you’re right. Maybe my being on Earth is all about growth, truth, and service, and I have to exercise real-world Faith to the One Life. It’s my job as a guest on this planet to harmonize in service to the Goddess ’ plan for Earth. Those of us who are relative beacons of light are isolated by design, obviously, by the facts of our relative leadership and lack of response from the public.
(smile) At least I haven’t been voted by my peers for execution, as you were, Soc, for standing for truth.
S: Not yet, anyway. If you had taken other pathways, you would have been assassinated by your oligarchs, such as Martin King , President Kennedy , and others .
C: (sigh) I guess I don’t really have anything new to discuss. I just want to win this game. End the empire. Have truth and love.
It’s been a long war, bro.
S: Indeed it has. Longer than you know.
C: So much bullshit .
S: Only bullshit. Any truth has been co-opted, controlled, and used to mask the empire. The only reason I’m allowed onto your history pages is pretense that humanity lives on a planet operated from ideals of virtue.
It’s the same with religious ideals of love.
C: I’m ready to win.
S: So was I.
C: (sigh) Alright. So another day in the empire. Ok. Fine. Real-world exercise of Faith. The Goddess has more evolution to oversee with love and wisdom before we see a breakthrough. I can embrace that.
It’s really stupid to argue with reality.
Really stupid.
S: (smiling) Apparently, yes.
We have to work with what we have, assuredly. There is no other option.
C: We discussed in our previous conversations linked for readers below that the US today compares to your empire in Athens, and the case that perhaps, just maybe, the US is on the verge of breakthrough for Truth and Love.
S: Perhaps my history can allow perspective on your world of the present, and encourage Americans today to best use their voice and virtue for a brighter path than the civil war we endured.
Certainly for all interested, this consideration is worthy of investing time and attention. History is literally all we know, and what drives our understanding of the present. History is what informs our direction for building the future.
America’s history is at war between an awakening We the People and a deeply evil .01% committed to undisclosed vicious empire.
Your history could devolve into civil war. (chuckles) As would-be Emperor Trump might say: “Sad.”
C: (shaking my head, slight smile). Ok, I gotta’ go to work. Another day in the empire. My vote still stands to planetary management for full fucking truth in a breakthrough. I like a potential trend with revealing e-mails, but want a breakthrough that causes arrests of our .01% leaders in elegant endgame.
S: Yes, and I’d like to fly, breath underwater swimming like a dolphin, and have daily dinner parties with wine, music and women!
C: (mock agreement) Me, too!
Ok, our wants aren’t our best guides, necessarily.
I do have to go to work. Back to “earning a living.”
S: Make the most of it. It’s your given area of self-expression.
C: I promise. I’ll lead by example of my best good-faith expression and experience of virtue.
Another day.
S: Perhaps just another day. Perhaps you can’t imagine what’s coming.
C: Human limitations. I’ll work with what I see.
S: That’s all I concluded was possible. That’s all I got for wisdom. I didn’t teach anything other than look for yourself what’s right there in front of you to see. Listen to your small voice within for your best call of virtue.
Step-by-step, my brother. In all empathy, live your Faith that you’re loved and guided more than you’re able to imagine.
(bro hug)
We’ll do our best.
“Interview” series: | FAKE |
9,324 | Mike Pence Drapes Shawl Over Immodest Lady Justice Statue - The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Trump Raises Concern Over Members Of Urban Communities Voting More Than Zero Times ATKINSON, NH—Warning supporters that the troubling practice could affect the outcome of the election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed strong concern Friday that members of urban communities were voting more than zero times, sources reported. Nation Puts 2016 Election Into Perspective By Reminding Itself Some Species Of Sea Turtles Get Eaten By Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch WASHINGTON—Saying they felt anxious and overwhelmed just days before heading to the polls to decide a historically fraught presidential race, Americans throughout the country reportedly took a moment Thursday to put the 2016 election into perspective by reminding themselves that some species of sea turtles are eaten by birds just seconds after they hatch. Report: Election Day Most Americans’ Only Time In 2016 Being In Same Room With Person Supporting Other Candidate WASHINGTON—According to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, Election Day 2016 will, for the majority of Americans, mark the only time this year they will occupy the same room as a person who supports a different presidential candidate. Most Hotly Contested Down-Ballot Measures Of 2016 As Americans head to the polls, they will be presented with a number of issues to vote on besides choosing their representatives. The Onion gives voters an advance look at which measures will be included on the ballots in which states. New Heavy-Duty Voting Machine Allows Americans To Take Out Frustration On It Before Casting Ballot WASHINGTON—Saying the circumstances of this year’s presidential race made the upgrade necessary, election commissions throughout the country were reportedly working to install new heavy-duty voting machines this week that will allow Americans to physically take out their frustrations on the devices before casting their votes. Clinton Staff Readies EMP Launch To Disable All Nation’s Electronic Devices NEW YORK—In an effort to prepare for any new revelations that might emerge about her emails during her tenure as secretary of state, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly told her staff Tuesday to ready the launch of several electromagnetic pulses to disable all of the nation’s electronic devices. End Of Section | FAKE |
8,983 | First Ever Hindu Woman Elected into Congress | First ever Hindu was elected to the US House of Representatives. She will take the oath of office over the Bhagavad Gita.
During election, Hawaii elected Japan-born Mazie Hirono to be the first ever Asian-American woman elected to the Senate. Hawaii also elected Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as the first ever practicing Hindu to the US House of Representatives. Because of this, Fox News have declare Hawaii a “disaster zone”.
Gabbard is the daughter of two conservative Hawaii politicians. She first ran, and was elected into office at the age of 21. After her first term, she served on a 12 month tour of duty with Hawaii’s National Guard, and then became the first woman in history of the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy to be designated a “distinguished honor graduate”.
She was then deployed to Baghdad as a medical operations specialist in 2004, and she was deployed to Kuwait in 2008.
History has proven that not everyone is comfortable with a Hindu elect. When Hindu statesman Rajan Zed was asked by the Senate to open with a prayer in 2007, the American Family Association called the prayer “gross idolatry” and urged people to protest. Three protesters interrupted the prayer with shouts from the gallery.
When she is sworn this January, Gabbard will take her oath of office over the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text for Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma.
Gabbard hopes to assist the US in fostering a better relationship with India, the world’s largest democracy with a growing economic and nuclear power. She also hopes to work on veteran’s affairs, and environmental issues.
Other non-Christian people in Congress include Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who took his oath of office over the Qu-ran.
Ariana Marisol is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She graduated The Evergreen State College with an undergraduate degree focusing on Sustainable Design and Environmental Science. Follow her adventures on Instagram. | FAKE |
8,965 | Donald Groped Hillary in 2005! Trump and Weiner Sext Each Other! | Topics: anthony weiner , presidential politics , American Politics , Donald J. Trump , Groping , Clinton's emails Friday, 4 November 2016
[ Associated Press, Washington, D.C. ] FBI Director James Comey informed members of Congress this morning that he was expanding his investigation into e-mails, based on materials found on the laptop of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The materials include an e-mail from Trump to "Carlos Danger," the on-line pseudonym which Weiner used, in which Trump bragged about groping then-Senator Clinton when she and former President Bill Clinton attended Trump's third wedding, to Melania Trump, at the billionaire's Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
"There she was, her and Bill, smiling for the cameras, and all the time I had my hand on her ass," boasted Trump, according to Comey.
Comey went on to state that Weiner's laptop contained "sext" messages from Weiner to Trump, containing photos of a bulge in the former Congressman's tidy whiteys, and messages back from Trump to Weiner, containing photos showing Trump's tiny hands gripping a large zucchini.
Comey added that he, also, would be a subject of the ever-expanding investigation, because there were several selfies of himself on the laptop, including one in which he is posed sitting naked on a white horse with a garland of laurel on his brow, one of him dressed up to look like J. Edgar Hoover, in a dress, with the caption, "Infallible ME!" and a third one of him engaged in self-flagellation with a Cat'o Nine Tails.
"I deserved it," Comey explained. Make Philip J. Moss's | FAKE |
5,580 | Ex-Assistant FBI Director: Clintons Are a Crime Family | Ex-Assistant FBI Director: Clintons Are a Crime Family October
That's quite an endorsement . And if there's anything top FBI officials now, it's crime families. Certainly this is probably the first serious level of experience that Hillary can claim in any field.
“The Clintons, that’s a crime family, basically,” former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom said. “It’s like organized crime. I mean the Clinton Foundation is a cesspool.”
“Kallstrom, best known for leading the investigation into the explosion of TWA flight 800 in the late '90s, said that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was a “pathological liar.”
He also blasted Attorney General Loretta Lynch, claiming that she impeded the investigation into Clinton’s private server.
“The problem here is this investigation was never a real investigation,” he said. “That’s the problem. They never had a grand jury empanelled, and the reason they never had a grand jury empanelled, I’m sure, is Loretta Lynch would not go along with that.”
Kallstrom also said that FBI Director James Comey and the rest of the FBI’s leadership were responsible for holding back the investigation, not the rest of the bureau.
“The agents are furious with what’s going on, I know that for a fact,” he said.
But according to the media, the FBI investigating Hillary is the real crime. | FAKE |
9,757 | Hillary Wants Aggressively Interventionist Foreign Policy | 10-27-1 6 The first Bill and Hillary Clinton co-presidency included eight years of Balkan and other wars of aggression. Bush/Cheney exceeded their lawlessness. Obama outdid the worst of both previous administrations - attacking seven countries, destabilizing others, orchestrating coups in Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil, threatening Venezuelan democracy, enforcing puppet rule in Haiti, continuing Plan Colombia aid, responsible for massacres, disappearances and torture of regime opponents, along with instituting increasingly anti-Sino/Russia policies, risking confrontation with both countries. On October 27, the Wall Street Journal said 2016 electoral politics scrambled traditional positions on foreign policy and international intervention, obliterating many of the usual partisan distinctions and presenting political challenges for whoever wins in November. Hillary will likely exceed the worst of Obamas aggressiveness on the international stage, according to her public statements and (what) top aides say. Shell be more hardline on Russia, China and Iran, risking direct confrontation. Earlier she said I think Ive been very clear that my position is in favor of what I called smart power that uses all the tools at our disposal, and military power always should be a last resort. Her views as first lady, US senator and secretary of state show how often she favors it aggressively, her rage for wars insatiable. As president and commander-in-chief, shell likely circumvent international and constitutional law like her predecessors, waging war on any nation she chooses. Former acting CIA director Michael Morell, a likely Hillary administration appointee, urges a more muscular US geopolitical role, including new sanctions on Russia and Iran, earlier saying: Ships leave Iran on a regular basis carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. I would have no problem from a policy perspective of having the US Navy boarding their ships and if there are weapons on them to turn those ships around. This type aggressiveness would risk greater Middle East war than already, maybe involving Russia and China, challenging US interventionism - knowing their nations are next if its not stopped. Earlier, Hillarys top national security advisor Jake Sullivan said (w)e need to be raising the costs to Iran for its destabilizing behavior, and we need to be raising the confidence of our Sunni partners. Last years nuclear deal failed to change overall US policy toward Iran - wanting pro-Western puppet governance replacing its sovereign independence. Instead of cooperating with Iran in furthering regional peace and stability, a Hillary administration appears planning to challenge it confrontationally - perhaps with another war in mind, a far greater challenge than against other Middle East states, especially with Russia likely to intervene if asked. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. Donate to Rense.com Support Free & Honest Journalism At Rense.com Subscribe To RenseRadio! Enormous Online Archives, MP3s, Streaming Audio Files, Highest Quality Live Programs | FAKE |
1,967 | Both parties want to craft populist messages for 2016 | Presidential hopefuls in both parties agree on at least one thing: Economic mobility, and the feeling of many Americans that they are being shut out from the nation’s prosperity, will be a defining theme of the 2016 campaign.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush last week became the latest Republican to signal a readiness to engage Democrats on what historically has been their turf, putting issues of middle-class wage stagnation, poverty and shared prosperity at the forefront of their political messages.
Bush’s framing of the economic and social challenges facing the country nearly mirrors that of likely Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as other possible contenders on the left. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has written a book on the subject, “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone,” to be published this week, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has proposed policies for distressed communities that he sees as “the ticket to the middle class.”
And Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee who was portrayed by Democrats as insensitive to and out of touch with the lives of middle- and working-class Americans, has told friends he considers poverty a topic du jour as he weighs another run in 2016.
“You talk to any pollster, on the Democratic side or the Republican side, they’re in complete agreement on the idea that there has to be an economic populist message,” said Matthew Dowd, a top strategist for former president George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. “Then it comes down to ‘Are there credible solutions and is there a credible candidate?’ ”
About 45 million Americans live at or below the poverty line, according to last fall’s census estimates, while the median household income in the United States in 2013 was just under $52,000. Adjusted for inflation, the median is 8 percent lower than it was in 2007, the last full year before the recession, and 11 percent below what it was in 2000.
Wage stagnation has been a persistent problem for low- and middle-income workers. “Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution,” Lawrence Mishel of the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote in a paper published this month.
Launching his new political action committee, Right to Rise, Jeb Bush asserted last week in the PAC’s mission statement that President Obama’s tenure has been “pretty good” for those at the top of the income scale but a “lost decade” for everyone else.
“Millions of our fellow citizens across the broad middle class feel as if the American Dream is now out of their reach; that our politics are petty and broken; that opportunities are elusive; and that the playing field is no longer fair or level,” Bush wrote. “Too many of the poor have lost hope that a path to a better life is within their grasp.”
Bush’s focus adds an unexpected element to the coming debate and puts pressure on the entire field, himself included, to come forward with fresh policies that address the nation’s core economic problems.
The shift also highlights a potential vulnerability for Democrats. In his campaigns, Obama twice promised to focus on wealth inequality and middle-class stagnation, but those problems persist even as the economy revs up and unemployment falls.
Clinton could be challenged now from both the right and the left to lay out solutions that go beyond Obama’s — and also to develop a political voice of her own to articulate them. Democrats conceded after last fall’s midterm elections that they had not found a compelling economic message.
Democrats will look to Clinton, should she run, to take the lead in doing that — although they also are looking to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her harder-edged populist rhetoric.
Clinton tested such a message last year. In a major speech at the New America Foundation in May, she said that Americans are “finding it harder than ever to get their footing in our changing economy. The dream of upward mobility that made this country a model for the world feels further and further out of reach.”
The language of Bush, Rubio and other Republicans appears aimed at avoiding the problem that bedeviled Romney throughout his 2012 campaign. The former Massachusetts governor’s memorable comment about the “47 percent” of the population who he said depend on government and feel like victims haunted him during the final months before the election.
Yuval Levin, editor of the conservative journal National Affairs, said the overall shift in emphasis by Republicans is an effort to move away from Romney’s more abstract message of job growth and to focus more specifically on social mobility and solutions for those at or near the bottom.
“It’s a process of letting the light out from under the bushel,” Levin said. Citing past conservative leadership in reforming welfare, he added: “I think Republican ideas have always held this promise, but conservatives have not always emphasized these elements. . . . A difference in emphasis is not insignificant.”
Democrats, however, argue that revising their rhetoric will not be enough for Republicans — especially if Jeb Bush becomes the GOP nominee — to gloss over former president George W. Bush’s legacy, which Democrats say tightened the middle-class squeeze.
“It’s not like the Republican Party has clean hands on the issue of rising inequality,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and an adviser to Clinton on economic policy. “It’s a weird thing to say, ‘I care about how the rest of the country is doing, not just the top earners,’ when your brother cut taxes for the wealthy and your party’s economic position starts with undoing Dodd-Frank,” the 2010 law that tightened regulation of Wall Street.
Obama hit the road last week to highlight economic successes of his presidency, from the auto industry bailout to more robust overall growth in the last half of 2014. Still, many Democrats acknowledge that there is a large gap between promise and results on issues of middle-class insecurities.
That is where Bush and some other Republicans are taking aim. Two factors have contributed to the opening they see.
One is the continued problem of stagnating wages for the broad middle class and the income gap between rich and non-rich. The other is new evidence that it has become harder for those at the bottom to rise into the middle class, and that the risk of some born into the middle class — particularly minorities — falling out of it is growing.
Democrats long have been seen as the party more trusted to deal with middle-class economic issues. Republicans long have resisted policies that smack of economic redistribution. Could that be changing?
“How do you tell the middle class, ‘We’re your guy?’ ” said Grover Norquist, a conservative anti-tax advocate. “Republicans feel comfortable saying that now because they feel the guys they’re running against are sufficiently discredited.”
William Galston of the Brookings Institution said that the issue of blocked social mobility is one Republicans will feel more comfortable engaging — and on their own terms. “That’s what Jeb Bush is saying: ‘We can accept a definition of a problem . . . but give unabashedly conservative responses to those challenges,’ ” he said.
But Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, said Bush’s framing of the issue this way means he has put down a marker that he will be expected to meet.
“I would expect to hear from him over the coming months some of the best and most innovative conservative thinking on opportunity and upward mobility,” he said. “That will be a fair test on how much gas there is in the conservative ideas tank.”
Other Republicans have been working to reorient their party toward blue-collar economics and to put forward fresh economic ideas. Former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, two former presidential candidates who are looking at running in 2016, long have talked about the GOP’s need to recognize the problems of working families.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has focused on policies designed to lift people out of poverty. In 2012, as Romney’s running mate, Ryan wanted to campaign in inner cities and give speeches promoting individual empowerment. He was frustrated that Romney’s campaign team directed him to talk about other topics.
Rubio has proposed a fundamental shift in anti-poverty programs. He has suggested devolving power and responsibility from Washington to the states by consolidating federal monies into a “flex fund.” The senator from Florida has called for significant reductions in federal regulations that he says will spur creation of better jobs. On education, he has offered a series of reforms designed to lessen the burden of student loan debt and expand access to apprenticeship programs. Rubio and others also have proposed changes in the earned-income tax credit to extend its reach to more people.
Democrats are skeptical that Republicans can meet the challenge with policy proposals that are much beyond calls for tax cuts to spur economic growth and further efforts to scale back the size of government.
“It sounds to me like a traditional Romney Republican trickle-down agenda but with a willingness to engage on inequality and mobility,” said Jared Bernstein, a former adviser to Vice President Biden who works at the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities.
Democrats say it’s too early to draw conclusions, but they note that if Bush and other Republicans find new ways to engage middle-class voters with populist themes, the pressures on Clinton will mount significantly.
“Voters are going to [say], ‘Okay, thank you for acknowledging this problem, but what are you going to do about it?’ ” Bernstein said. “I would argue that Democrats are going to have to have more in their toolbox than [raising the] minimum wage and universal pre-K.” | REAL |
431 | First Take: Wall Street bids goodbye to June hike | NEW YORK -- Bye bye June rate hike. That was the billboard-size headline from Wall Street trading desks after the U.S. job-creation machine hit the wall in May. The government said 38,000 jobs were created in May, way, way, way below the roughly 160,000 new positions Wall Street economists had been expecting.
It was the worst month for job creation since September 2010.
The Janet Yellen-led Federal Reserve had been driving home the message that it was "appropriate" to hike interest rates in coming months – and perhaps as early as June – IF the job market and economy continued to perform well and meet their more upbeat forecast.
But the May jobs report was bad. Really bad.
"Horrible," is the word used by Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at MSUSA. "Very weak," chimed in Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at EverBank. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, tweeted out that the lousy jobs number amounted to a "bombshell."
A bombshell, indeed. So weak was the 38,000 May job count, that Wall Street now sees virtually a zero chance of the Fed moving at its June meeting, which breaks up on June 15.
"This is the weakest number of workers added in almost six years," Gaffney told USA TODAY via e-mail.
After the dreadful jobs report was released, the odds of a June hike plunged to about 4%, down sharply from 19% before the data were released, according to futures markets tracked by the CME Group.
"Just when they thought it was safe to go back into the water," the Fed gets hit with this less-than-stellar data point on jobs, Ricchiuto told clients in a report. "This now assures that June is off the table, but may not rule out July."
But professional investors are still not willing to rule out a hike in July – at least not yet as there is a lot of economic data to come between now and July. The chances of a July hike plunged to 34% from close to 60%.
The market reaction was swift. Stocks dipped as investors now have to worry about a possible slowdown in job creation, which is a negative for the economy. "Risks about the strength of the U.S. economy outweigh the positive impacts of lower interest rates," Gaffney said.
Bond yields fell, as investors piled back into U.S. government bonds as the threat of an imminent Fed rate hike fade. The U.S. dollar weakened as the Fed's rate-hike timetable gets pushed back.
Sure the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.7%. But while that number sounds good it is mainly due to "another big drop in the labor force," says Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.
Yellen is scheduled to speak on Monday, Ashworth adds. Wall Street will be listening – closely.
"Yellen should provide more insight on the Fed's thinking Monday," he said via e-mail. | REAL |
5,955 | Real Disclosure! Secret Alien Base Found In Moon's Tycho Crater | Real Disclosure! Secret Alien Base Found In Moon's Tycho Crater # Grey 52
Real Disclosure is where you find something on the lunar surface that cannot possibly exist unless someone built it. NO WAY it's a natural formation --- SOMETHING constructed that ---- 90° angles are just not possible without alien/man-made interaction. More 'smoking gun' irrefutable proof of intelligence from abroad. Tags | FAKE |
7,455 | Homeless Woman Protects Trump’s Walk of Fame Star From Violent Leftists | Homeless Woman Protects Trump’s Walk of Fame Star From Violent Leftists "I'm gonna stay here and watch this, and make sure nobody touches it." Chris Menahan | Information Liberation - October 28, 2016 Comments
Powerful video shows a homeless woman protecting Donald Trump’s Walk of Fame Star after it was smashed by a criminal leftist.
As The Gateway Pundit reports , the woman was seen holding up a sign reading: “20 Million Illegals and Americans Sleep on the Streets in Tents. Vote Trump.”
It was repaired on the same day.
The day after, this homeless Trump supporter went to protect it.
“I’m gonna stay here and watch this, and make sure nobody touches it,” she was heard saying. Homeless Trump supporter guards @realDonaldTrump 's star on Hollywood Blvd. against all SJWs #BasedSentinel #MAGA3X https://t.co/BjGcFO0du5 ? pic.twitter.com/nrMqnbW5UK
— PeterDuke MAGA3X🇺🇸 (@peterdukephoto) October 27, 2016
Video shared on Periscope shows hordes of disgusting leftists insult and attack the woman for supporting Trump.
In this short video posted to YouTube, one angry black man is seen screaming in her face and asking her: “Do you know your federal government is not even party of the f***ing government?”
“Do you know that?” he asks. “No, I didn’t think so,” he says.
“Hello,” another woman in the crowd shouts in agreement. “Open your eyes,” she says.
In case anyone is not aware, the federal government is part of the government.
While Hillary Clinton wants to bring in millions of foreigners to take jobs and welfare from the poorest of Americans, Donald Trump wants to help our own and put the needs of Americans first. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | FAKE |
5,224 | With 3:20 a.m. tweet storm Saturday, Clinton continues to mock Trump’s Friday ‘meltdown’ | WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Not to be outdone by her Republican rival, Hillary Clinton fired off a series of early-morning messages Saturday on Twitter.
Only the tweets sent over the Democratic presidential nominee’s account dealt with a very different subject matter than those blasted about a former beauty-pageant winner by Donald Trump 24 hours before.
[Trump under fire after sending nasty tweets about ‘disgusting’ ex-Miss Universe]
Clinton instead focused on national service, a subject to which she had devoted a speech in Florida on Friday.
“It's 3:20am. As good a time as any to tweet about national service,” said the first one, coming at the same time that Trump started his storm of disparaging tweets about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
The next Clinton tweet borrowed a favorite word of Trump.
“There are hundreds of thousands more @AmeriCorps applications than spots. Horrible!” it read. “Let's expand it from 75,000 annual members to 250,000.”
The tweets — several more followed — were the latest bid by Clinton to keep a spotlight on what she described Friday as Trump coming “unhinged.”
In his tweets, the Republican presidential nominee called Machado “disgusting” and a “con” and raised questions about her past, alleging she had been in a sex tape.
[Clinton calls for new National Service Reserve during Florida swing]
The former Miss Universe’s story has dominated media coverage of the election since Clinton brought her up at Monday’s debate, when she criticized Trump for denigrating comments he made in 1996 about Machado’s weight.
Unlike Trump, who often tweets himself, many of those sent out over Clinton’s official campaign account are composed by aides.
On Friday, there were a series mocking Trump’s behavior, and at a rally in Coral Springs, Fla., she accused her rival of having a “meltdown.”
Trump’s twitter account appeared to have been silent in the early-morning hours on Saturday. | REAL |
7,793 | 220 ‘Significant’ Pipeline Spills Already This Year Exposes Troubling Safety Record | By Dan Zukowski
Three major U.S. pipeline spills within the last month are just a small part of the 220 significant incidents reported so far this year—and 3,032 since 2006—that provide a stark reminder of the environmental hazards of an aging pipeline infrastructure carrying fossil fuels. The costs of these leaks since 2006 has amounted to $4.7 billion.
1. Oklahoma: On Oct. 24, the 30-inch S-1 pipeline carrying crude oil from the critical Cushing, Oklahoma hub to refineries and chemical plants on the Gulf Coast began to leak and was shut down overnight. It was the second release connected with the Cushing storage facility in less than a month.
2. Pennsylvania: On Oct. 21, 55,000 gallons of gasoline gushed from a ruptured Sunoco Logistics pipeline in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, just upstream from the Susquehanna River. Carol Parenzan, Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper , said that witnesses who contacted her office reported that the “smell of petroleum is so thick you can taste it.” The 80-year old pipeline was damaged by a heavy storm that dumped seven inches of rain on the area.
3. Alabama: Last month, the Colonial Pipeline in Alabama leaked an estimated 336,000 gallons of gasoline and triggered concerns about gas shortages for drivers in the East. That spill was Colonial’s fifth in the state this year and occurred on a 43-year old section of the pipeline.
Based on data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the number of significant pipeline incidents grew 26.8 percent from 2006 to 2015. A significant incident is defined as one that results in serious injury or fatality, costs more than $50,000, releases more than five barrels of volatile fluids such as gasoline or 50 barrels of other liquids, or results in a fire or explosion. In 2015, there were 326 such incidents—almost one per day.
Some 55 percent of the U.S. network of 135,000 miles of pipeline is more than 45 years old. Technology designed to detect pipeline leaks is highly unreliable, even though companies like Colonial Pipeline tout their use as a way “to insure safe operations.” But a recent Reuters report found that these technologies are “about as successful as a random member of the public” finding a leak. Of 466 incidents studied by Reuters, only 22 percent, or 105, were detected by advanced detection systems. The others were found in different ways, with the public finding 99 of the leaks.
In testimony before a House subcommittee earlier this year, Carl Weimer, executive director of the watchdog group Pipeline Safety Trust , said, “Under the current statutes there is no requirement that a pipeline company obtain any permit or permission to operate a pipeline in this country.” Weimer called on Congress to require PHMSA to issue permits for interstate transmission pipelines and ensure that the company follow all rules and regulations.
“It is important that we not only maintain our aging energy infrastructure, but that we also remain vigilant about new pipelines and energy interests that threaten water quality,” said Parenzan.
Dan Zukowski — Environmental journalist and nature photographer. Member, Society of Environmental Journalists. Follow me on Twitter @DanZukowski and visit DBZ Photo
Source: EcoWatch
| FAKE |
2,777 | Obama makes the right call to tough it out in Afghanistan | The president now plans to continue a U.S. ground force presence in Afghanistan to help hold off the Taliban until he leaves office. This is an uncommon turnaround for a president who hasn’t changed his mind on foreign policy since drawing his (much-ballyhooed and promptly ignored) “red line” in Syria.
So what does this rare shift have to say about Obama’s foreign policy and America’s future role in Afghanistan? Not much.
Mr. Obama started his presidency hoping to use Afghanistan to demonstrate his willingness to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty in the national security business. He asserted that, unlike “Bush’s War” in Iraq, fighting in the place where the 9/11 attacks were concocted was worth it.
In approving a surge in Afghanistan, the president made much of his role as decider-in-chief. Yet, even as he sent in more troops, he tipped his hand that Afghanistan was not as much an exception to the talk-don’t-fight Obama Doctrine as the tough-guy image he sought to cultivate.
The president gave commanders only half the force and half the time they requested to do the job right. It turned out, the commanders were right. Mr. Obama, however, had his eye on the next election and wanted to go into the race showing he had put the war on a glide-path to wind down and pull out.
Signaling a limited-time interest in fighting an enemy rarely ends well. The Taliban adopted the logical and predictable strategy of simply waiting out Mr. Obama. Also predictably, the half-measure surge and overly ambitious transfer of responsibility to the Afghan military resulted in unnecessarily heavy casualties for Afghan security forces, a persistent Taliban, and a shaky security situation.
Nevertheless, Afghanistan is far from a total failure. Indeed, compared to the president’s other foreign policy dalliances—from the Russian “reset” to Libya to Syria to Iraq to Ukraine— it ranks as his best achievement yet.
Which is why Mr. Obama is reportedly backing away from his plan to yank virtually all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of next year. Instead, he has agreed to leave the current force of 9,800 troops in place throughout “most” of next year, and keep 5,500 in theater thereafter.
It’s a good call. With the Taliban flexing its muscles anew and the Islamic State making inroads there, completely pulling out makes little sense. Mr. Obama can ill afford another complete foreign policy disaster on his watch. Further, virtually everyone –the U.S. military, the Afghans, Pakistan, India, our NATO allies— wants the U.S. to stay and see the job through.
In addition, there is zero domestic pressure for the president to make good on his campaign promise. An appearance of Code Pink is about as common as a Yeti sighting. And in the debates thus far, presidential candidates have devoted about as much time to Afghanistan as they have to defunding Public Television.
It makes complete sense for Mr. Obama to tough it out in Afghanistan, but don’t expect the change in plans to make things better for the Afghans or the larger security picture. The U.S. presence is the bare minimum to hold on. More forces with loser rules of engagement would make the country much safer, much faster.
But holding on is probably the best we can hope for with this president. Here’s hoping the next Commander in Chief’s attitude toward Afghanistan will focus more on solving problems than just wishing they would go away.
James Jay Carafano is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @JJCarafano. | REAL |
587 | Senate race rankings: Dems attack as GOP lays swing-state groundwork | The move would make it easier for the Trump administration to demolish the exchanges. | REAL |
9,403 | ‘He didn’t know the boy didn’t want to be raped’ – court throws out Muslim migrant child sex charge and Germans are in shock | By INDRA WARNES
In a truly shocking twist the Suptreme Court decided the grown Iraqi man may not have realised the 10-year-old did not want to be sexually abused by him.
Amir A, 20, was visiting the Theresienbad pool in the Austrian capital of Vienna last December as part of a trip to encourage integration.
When the youngster went to the showers, Amir A. allegedly followed him, pushed him into a toilet cubicle, and violently sexually assaulted him.
Following the attack, the accused rapist returned to the pool and was practising on the diving board when police arrived, after the 10-year-old raised the alarm with the lifeguard.
The child suffered severe anal injuries which had to be treated at a local children’s hospital, and is still plagued by serious post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a police interview, Amir A. confessed to the crime; telling officers the incident had been “a sexual emergency”, as his wife had remained in Iraq and he “had not had sex in four months”.
A court found Amir guilty of serious sexual assault and rape of a minor, and sentenced him to six years in jail.
However, in | FAKE |
5,931 | Pieczenik “Rogue FBI Agents and Wikileaks are Spearheading a Movement to Stop the Clintons from Stealing the White House” – TruthFeed | Breaking News Pieczenik “Rogue FBI Agents and Wikileaks are Spearheading a Movement to Stop the Clintons from Stealing the White House” Pieczenik “Rogue FBI Agents and Wikileaks are Spearheading a Movement to Stop the Clintons from Stealing the White House” Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 2, 2016
The world is teaming up to stop crooked Hillary from taking the White House.
From Wikileaks to rogue FBI agents, everyone is doing their part to stop the sinister Clinton Machine.
It’s a joint effort from patriots hailing from every corner of the world.
Watch the video: Breaking:Twitter Friendly Version A soft coup has been launched by FBI to overthrow the Clinton’s hostile takeover of the White House. pic.twitter.com/MrPUlSO1OE
— OakTown ☢MAGA O.G☢ (@hrtablaze) November 2, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | FAKE |
3,027 | American politics has reached peak polarization | For a long time in American politics, we've been trapped in a cycle of ever-escalating political polarization. As measured by voting patterns in the US Congress, the two parties have pulled apart to distances we've never seen before. As measured by consistent partisan positioning among voters, the split in the electorate has reached a historic level of divisiveness.
But this is about to end. We've now hit peak polarization. The forces that have fueled the widening gap between the two political parties are now fueling fights within the two political parties, fights that will lead to new coalitions in American politics, eventually realigning the two parties. A new era of American politics is about to emerge.
The tautological reason polarization has increased in American politics is that over the past four decades, conflict in American politics has increasingly operated along a single dimension: Republican versus Democrat. A large number of issues that were once nonpartisan or non-ideological have become partisan issues. Almost every policy has now been swept into the maw of partisan jockeying, leaving almost no space for the cross-partisan cooperation our political system relies on to function.
In order for congressional polarization to persist, both parties have to maintain tight enough discipline over their members and the political agenda to ensure consistent party voting. And in order for public polarization to persist, parties have to maintain tight enough message discipline among their elites to ensure that their voters only hear one main message.
This is breaking down. Republicans are now in open warfare between Trump supporters and #NeverTrumpers. Democrats are far less divided, but internal rifts between their "establishment" (Hillary Clinton) and "insurgent" (Bernie Sanders) wings are also real and likely lasting.
This conflict is emerging on issues of international trade, on questions of corporate (especially Wall Street) power, and in growing anger over money in politics and corruption generally. In short, parties are increasingly divided on a growing range of issues that pit their less-educated, lower-income voters who feel left behind by the current political-economic system against their better-educated, higher-income voter who don't want to mess too much with the status quo. These conflicts are not going away anytime soon.
This moment is the culmination of four interconnected but ultimately unsustainable trends that have turbocharged polarization over the last two decades:
Close competition fueled partisan nastiness and increased the demand for campaign money. The demand for campaign money made the parties more dependent on wealthy donors, which made them less responsive to their voters. This lack of responsiveness provided plenty of evidence for corruption and the felt sense that politics was broken, which fueled anger. Both parties attempted to channel this anger against the other party to distract from their own failures and contradictions and win elections by rendering the other party toxic. This exacerbated the sense that politics was broken and corrupt.
These trends created contradictions, and now these contradictions have created openings. Ambitious candidates who could get past their parties' campaign finance gatekeepers had a lot of angry and left-behind voters eager for their message. And this is precisely what Sanders and especially Donald Trump have accomplished. Now there is no going back.
These are big claims. So let's flesh this story out a little more, this time with expanded detail.
The story could go all the way back to the decisive election of 1932, when Democrats became the dominant party in American politics for a generation, holding together a big-tent New Deal coalition that included Southern pro-segregationists with Northern urban progressives. But it was an uneasy alliance that could only last as long as civil rights legislation was bottled up. Then in 1964, the Democrats decidedly became the party of civil rights. And as Lyndon Johnson allegedly acknowledged upon signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Democrats "have lost the South for a generation."
Democrats had controlled the South ever since Republican-led Reconstruction (since Republicans were the party of Lincoln and of Reconstruction). But as Republicans came to be the party better aligned with the South on issues of race, conservative Republicans replaced conservative Democrats in Southern House and Senate seats, starting in the 1980s. By 1995, when Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years, this transition was mostly complete. By 2011, it was absolute and total.
As this all happened, the ideological center of the Republican Party moved to the South, fusing social and economic conservatism. Northern liberal Republicans were marginalized and soon endangered. Democrats, meanwhile, lost their Southern, conservative wing, and the ideological center of the Democratic Party moved to the coasts and big cities, fusing social and economic liberalism.
As the parties became less internally diverse, individual members of Congress delegated more power to their party leaders. After all, they all now basically agreed on the issues. And they wanted leaders who could punish disloyal dissenters and control the agenda. So when Newt Gingrich took over the speakership in 1995, he centralized power in the position in a way it had not been centralized since 1910.
In the 1990s, American politics entered a somewhat unusual period of remarkably close two-party competition for control of the House and the Senate.
This, as political scientist Frances Lee explains, has been the catalyst for a very nasty brand of partisan fighting.
This seems exactly right to me, and there's lots of evidence to prove it.
But not only has this close competition fueled partisanship by turning legislating into zero-sum trench warfare, it has also turbocharged the fundraising dimension of political campaigning.
Parties are campaigning harder than ever to win over those swing seats, and this has meant raising ever-expanding sums of money. And in order to raise this money, both parties have had to lean more and more on their wealthiest donors.
But relying on these wealthy donors created a problem for both parties. On many issues, particularly economic issues, wealthy elites hold separate opinions from most voters.
Major Republican donors generally want fiscal austerity, and particularly a rolled-back welfare state. They also tend to be much more pro-immigration and pro–free trade than Republican voters, and not particularly worried about social issues. But schemes like privatizing Social Security and voucherizing Medicare have never been all that popular with actual Republican voters. And as the middle classes' wages have stagnated, especially for those without college degrees, and the share of foreign-born residents in the US has reached levels not seen since the 1920s (it hit 13.9 percent in 2015), the voting constituency for anti-immigration populism has grown considerably.
Democratic donors are somewhat more economically liberal. But they are not about to support Sanders-style socialism. They prefer Clinton's generally pro-market views. They will tolerate some regulation of business, but not that much, particularly when it's the tech and new economy businesses that they run and invest in.
Whereas Democrats once relied on labor unions to get out the vote, by the 1990s unions could no longer provide the support Democrats needed. Democrats instead moved to depend on the "professional class," deprioritizing workers' concerns to focus instead on the social and environmental concerns that went over much better in Hollywood and San Francisco and Manhattan fundraisers.
For a while, both parties could manage these contradictions, being responsive to their donors while pooh-poohing the economic concerns of their less affluent voters on the bland promise that a thriving economy was good for everyone. And for much of the 1990s and 2000s, the economy was doing okay, which generally kept voters from feeling too angry. And to the extent that individual voters weren't benefiting, it was, of course, the other party's fault.
As long as both sides were focused on the evils of the other side, and the economy was not in a major recession, party leaders could get away with ignoring many of their voters, and using the campaign contribution proceeds to make their case through more and more negative political advertising and aggressive media messaging.
This negativity translated into what political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster call "negative partisanship." As they explain:
All these interrelated trends have turbocharged polarization over the last two decades. But they relied on both sides being able to control the anger that they were stoking, and on both sides being able to convince their voters that all of the corruption and fecklessness in Washington was because of the other party. This could not go on indefinitely.
In fall 2008 the financial crisis hit, and the government bailed out the big Wall Street banks in a very public way. For many, this served as the decisive proof that things really were rigged: Washington and Wall Street were in a corrupt alliance, a conspiracy of career politicians and crony capitalists and lobbyists who were rolling in the money and laughing about it while everyone else was living paycheck to paycheck. As the economy stumbled through recession and then a jobless recovery, economic insecurity and political resentment increased.
Obama and the Democrats swept the 2008 election on the strength of anti-Bush feeling and the timeless energy of hope and change. For the first time since 1992, Democrats had unified control in Washington; Republicans were now out in the cold.
With their backs against the wall and Democrats as the new Washington establishment, Republicans now turned their anti-government rhetoric up to 11. Obama was Stalin. Obama was Hitler. Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim bent on destroying America. Democrats responded to the charges with signature big-government legislation that taxed the middle class so that poor people could have government-subsidized health care. The Republican base went crazy. All their worst fears were confirmed.
In 2009, the Tea Party emerged, representing what felt like new anti-establishment radicalism but was really just the culmination of decades of Republican anti-government rhetoric now freed from any institutional responsibility for actually governing. In 2010, on the strength of Tea Party anti-Obama energy (and the fact that Democrats had won a bunch of majority Republican House districts in 2006 and 2008), Republicans swept back into control of the House. In the 2014 election, they finally won back the Senate.
But then nothing happened. Obamacare, the devil piñata of every Republican attack, was neither repealed nor replaced. Worse, Republican leaders were negotiating with Obama, Satan himself. They were letting Obama get away with an executive order on immigration. Here was the most corrupt, most crony capitalist administration in history, and what were Republicans in Congress doing? They were rolling over and being just as corrupt!
In June 2015, Donald Trump announced he was running for president and became the immediate frontrunner on the strength of his aggressive anti-immigration stance. Because he had his own money and his own media celebrity, Trump did not need to do the pro-austerity, pro-immigration, pro-free trade dance that other potential frontrunners had done to shake the big donor GOP money tree. He could just run for president, declaring everything was corrupt and he was the only one you could trust because he was the only one who didn't have a super PAC. And he could speak to the working-class Republican voters who had been left behind in this economy, by saying he'd go after China and give them Social Security and Medicare and go after the corrupt hedge fund rip-off artists.
And they loved it. For decades, they had been told, for partisan reasons, to be angry; they had been told, for partisan reasons, that Washington was corrupt, and that all Washington politicians were evil. Now they finally had somebody who could say those things while actually not embodying any telltale signs of the sins. They also had somebody who could finally and authentically call out all the "corrupt" things Republican establishment types themselves were doing.
A few months later, in September, Republican Speaker John Boehner announced he would resign from Congress, responding to efforts by the House Freedom Caucus to force him out. This was the first time since 1910 that an insurgent faction in the House had successfully challenged a sitting speaker. The anti-establishment anger that Republicans had courted had now finally turned on its leaders.
On the Democratic side, anti-Clinton progressives were hoping to draft Elizabeth Warren, who had demonstrated her anti-establishment bona fides in December 2014, sinking Obama's appointment of Wall Street banker Antonio Weiss for a top Treasury position (Weiss withdrew his nomination, instead accepting a counselor position to Secretary Jack Lew). Warren had also been a prominent opponent of Obama's major Asian free trade agreement.
But Warren didn't run. Instead, it was self-identified socialist Bernie Sanders who found the opening. Democratic donor gatekeepers had cleared the field for Hillary. This meant Sanders could get attention just for being the only real alternative, attention that he was able to snowball into a following. Sanders won't win the nomination. But he has done far, far better than anybody ever expected, because a sizable number of Democrat voters share his view that politics is a rigged game where the billionaires and the crony capitalists always win. And like Sanders, they are sick and tired of it.
If you briefly scroll back to the top of this article and look at the graph of polarization over time, you'll see a previous peak around 1910 or so. While historical analogies are never perfect, there are some notable similarities between now and around 1910.
For one, 1910 was the last time a sitting speaker of the US House had been effectively challenged from within the party. Second, in 1912 the Republican Party was so divided over its presidential nomination that the party splintered, with about half of Republicans supporting Howard Taft (the incumbent) and about half supporting Teddy Roosevelt (the previous incumbent). Democrat Woodrow Wilson won in a landslide.
Around 1910 was also when the last great anti-establishment movement in America, the progressive movement, emerged in response to growing concentrations of wealth and political power, concentrations that many Americans felt had left them behind. As political scientist Grant McConnell once wrote of "the progressive legacy," it consisted of a "charges made against virtually all the institutions of American society" with "one common theme — corruption. ... Corruption of such prevalence, disorder of such magnitude could only be explained by something more than the assumption of a slow-spreading decay. The theory of conspiracy was ready at hand and in one way or another it was invoked as an explanation." This resonates with today's anti-establishment mood.
Political scientist Hans Noel has argued that the emergence of the progressive movement "crosscut the parties and eventually reshaped them." Noel notes that progressives opposed existing authority structures, both economically (e.g., the "trusts") and politically (they disliked political parties and other authority structures).
In 1910, it was progressive Republican George Norris who led the internal House revolt against Speaker Joe Cannon, stripping Cannon of most of his authority and devolving considerable powers back to individual members, who had increasingly chafed under their marginalization. Like John Boehner in 2015, Cannon in 1910 represented the culmination of exactly 20 years of increasingly centralized leadership control in the House speakership. Just as Gingrich had radically centralized control in 1995, Speaker Thomas Reed had radically centralized control in 1890.
Parties depolarized in the 1910s and 1920s because, freed of centralized leadership structures, more legislating happened in committees, where a cross-cutting progressive coalition could more freely operate independently of the two parties. Interestingly, trade policy also became much less polarized in the 1920s, with cross-party coalitions on tariff issues.
Most likely, Trump will be the Republican nominee. Even if the #NeverTrump forces somehow wrest the nomination from him (unlikely, but possible), the anti-establishment forces in the Republican Party are not going away. If not Trump (though my guess is he will stick around for a while longer), somebody in the Tea Party, or possibly even Ted Cruz, will find a way to harness the Trump voters by following the Trump issues playbook. Where there are voters to be had, there are politicians to have them.
Meanwhile, in Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is already having difficulty building consensus around a budget process. No matter how many speeches he gives about the importance of decorum in politics, it seems increasingly unlikely that he can reconcile the conflicts that Boehner failed to resolve, which means he will have to eventually lean on Democrats to pass a budget and, like Boehner before him, alienate some of his party. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, much less beloved even within his party, will face similar problems.
Most likely, Hillary Clinton will become the 45th US president (she has led in every single head-to-head poll against Trump). And most likely she will use her agenda-setting powers to try to force the Republicans into open civil war by pushing many of the issues that already divide them, especially immigration and trade. Clinton's natural home is in the pro-business center, a position that will be advantageous to her and Democrats in the short term at least. But she has to be cautious. Emboldened by Sanders and by Elizabeth Warren, the progressive wing of the Democrats is growing, and will be unhappy with Clinton's pro-business instincts.
The internal fights will continue in both parties. The competing wings of both parties will feel that they are the true Republicans/Democrats. The growing importance of outside, non-party groups in elections will also force ideological diversity onto the parties. Party leaders might instinctually want to wrest power back from these outside groups, but they'd be wiser to open up their tent to allow for different ideas. After all, the party that does best in American politics is always the one that can build the broadest coalition, which means accepting ideological diversity.
Eventually, congressional leaders will realize (or be forced to realize) that the only leadership style that works is a less centralized, more committee-driven approach. This is the only way ideologically heterogeneous parties can effectively govern. A more decentralized Congress, with more fluid coalitions, will function better, assuming that a more committee-driven process is also accompanied by increases in congressional staffing capacity. Partisan control of Congress will mean less, since there will be more cross-party coalitions.
Many issues, like gun rights or affirmative action, will remain very partisan. But other issues, especially those of corporate/Wall Street power, antitrust, interventionist foreign policy, will likely split the parties. Trump Republicans and Sanders Democrats will find common cause against establishment centrists. Big organized interests, like the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate groups, will align less closely with Republicans, realizing that their future success will require the right mix of Republicans and Democrats to advance their agendas.
And as the parties become more ideological diverse, voters, who are generally more ideologically all over the place than the current party alignment would suggest, will identify less reliably with one or the other, since there will be more for them in both parties. They will again sometimes split their tickets, depending on who is running. Many will feel more passionate about individual issues and will align themselves with supporters of those issues in both parties, especially as individual interest groups become cross-partisan in order to achieve policy outcomes. In that respect, politics will come to look more like it did in the 1950s and 1970s, when liberal Republicans existed alongside conservative Democrats.
This is an optimistic scenario.
But it only works if party leaders tolerate diversity within their party and allow disagreements.
Another scenario is that establishment Republicans banish the Trump faction and Democrats banish the Sanders faction after the 2016 elections, and both parties go back to the predictable and intractable trench warfare battle lines that have become increasingly dug in over the past two decades, using nastier and nastier tactics to subvert internal divisions in service of the larger fight against a common enemy. This may be possible for a little while longer (especially if the economy improves significantly), but it is still probably long-term unsustainable for reasons I've described above. It also may mean that 2020 becomes an even more violent and nasty election.
Another possibility is that the parties realign quickly, with the Trump/Tea Party faction effecting a rapid transformation of the Republican Party into a downscale nationalist populist party, pushing the remaining upper-class moderate Republicans into a more pro-business Democratic Party, which in turn pushes some disaffected Sanders voters into the Republican Party. If this realignment happens too quickly, there is no period of depolarization. But this seems unlikely, given the stickiness of partisan identity and the strong disagreements between the two parties on a whole range of other issues.
Other scenarios are possible as well, especially if there are significant global crises.
But here's the bottom line: Something is different this year in American politics. The logic that has operated for the past two decades or so is breaking down, largely because the factors and trends that propelled it produced unsustainable contradictions. American politics is now entering a new logic, with new trends and forces that will push the lines of political conflict in directions we are only beginning to understand.
This feels like chaos, and it is. But it is also good news, because chaos scrambles the rules. We've hit peak polarization. Politics is slowly coming unstuck. A period of new possibilities awaits.
This post is part of Polyarchy, an independent blog produced by the political reform program at New America, a Washington think tank devoted to developing new ideas and new voices. See more Polyarchy posts here. | REAL |
4,377 | Anti-Muhammad cartoon contest: Free speech or deliberately provocative? (+video) | Sponsors say that the shootings in Garland, Texas, confirm their view of Islam as violence-prone. But critics say the event was designed to be incendiary and to poison relations at a volatile time.
When Pamela Geller and her controversial organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, announced it would hold a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, their plan to satirize and lampoon the founder of Islam was intended to have both a defiant and provocative free-speech edge.
Sunday’s contest and its $10,000 prize were prompted in part by the Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, Ms. Geller said in March, as well as the riots in Muslim countries sparked by the publication of satirical anti-Muhammad cartoons by a Danish newspaper in 2005. And indeed, as if on cue, two gunmen with apparent ties to Islamic militants overseas tried to storm the heavily secured event in a similar fashion, before being shot dead by a local police officer Sunday night.
The incident comes at a time when tensions between some segments of American society and Muslims appear to be becoming more fraught – with protests against Muslims in Texas and anti-Muslim social-media attacks after the release of the film "American Sniper." In that context, Geller's actions raise questions about speech seen by many as motivated to incite anger and hatred.
It is an issue Geller has faced before. Two weeks ago, she won a federal free-speech case against New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had refused to put up one of her ads: “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah” – a quote the ad attributes to “Hamas MTV.”
Geller’s organization has often clashed with officials in other cities, including Philadelphia and Washington, over their incendiary ads, some of which compare Islam to Nazism. In 2012, another federal judge ruled that cities could not refuse to post her subway poster that read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
Many supporters of Geller and her organization view the violence on Sunday as a vindication of their views of Islam as an inherently violence-prone religion. But for others, her relentless campaign to push the boundaries of free speech with intentionally incendiary messages is only poisoning public discourse at a particularly volatile time.
“And coming as it did right when we, the United States of America, are really facing a time when we have to question what it is that holds us together, I can see this potentially aggravating the already-challenging times for dealing with some of these questions about cultural difference, diversity, and what kind of society we want to be,” says Gordon Coonfield, director of graduate studies in communication at Villanova University near Philadelphia.
After analyzing some of the submissions to the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest,” Professor Coonfield pointed out the similarities of some of the depictions of the prophet Muhammad to posters for “Der Ewige Jude,” or “The Eternal Jew,” a notorious Nazi propaganda “documentary.”
In one of the cartoons, the prophet is depicted as contorted and snarling and as a hook-nosed man in a turban holding a bloody knife. The caption reads, “When it comes to religion ... I’ve got the edge.” The face, Coonfield notes, is nearly identical to the contorted face of “The Eternal Jew” poster.
“That strategy for creating a sense of ‘unity’ by lifting up this internal enemy is as old as human civilization and culture,” he says. “It’s ironic that the kind of thinking that Hitler used, and the Nazis have become famous for using – propaganda to try to create this sense of a collective by creating a strong unquestionably evil Other who is right here in our midst ... so it’s kind of ironic that she’s trying to link some of these things together, when that is in fact her message.”
Despite the fact that images depicting the prophet Muhammad cut deeply to the heart of Muslim identity, Muslim leaders in Texas told their followers not to picket or protest the event on Sunday.
“Her words are not just free speech,” says Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. “They are inciteful; they incite hate against our whole community. I was very dismayed by the shooting in Garland, Texas, but at the same time, Pamela Geller is not the victim in this situation that we’re in right now.”
“She intentionally put that event together in hopes that she’d get the response that she received,” Ms. Sarsour says.
“We prayed, but not one Muslim from the state of Texas went out to protest her,” she added. “Muslim leaders specifically told people, do not go anywhere near her. Let her do whatever she does. We don’t care. And there was no protesting outside – unfortunately, except for these two guys from Arizona, who were already on the radar of the FBI anyway.”
Advocates have tried to counter Geller’s free political expressions with ad campaigns of a different tone. In 2012, a coalition called Rabbis for Human Rights responded to her “support the civilized man” poster with an opposing message that read, “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.”
And last week, the makers of the satirical film “The Muslims Are Coming!” launched a humorous series of subway and bus ads to counter Geller's. “The Muslims are coming, and they shall strike with hugs so fierce, you’ll end up calling your grandmother and telling her that you love her.”
But in an era in which the Islamic State, the Tsarnaev trial, and the lingering aftermath of 9/11 still inflame fears about Islam, many worry that Sunday’s violence will exacerbate the current tensions.
“Free speech is about being open to listening to the ideas you hate the most, that you disagree with the most, and I feel this group in particular is hiding behind this free speech rhetoric,” Coonfield says. “This can’t become the poster child for Christianity versus Islam or the West versus the Middle East. We have to maintain a space where groups that have very different ways of thinking and viewing the world can still come together to talk about it, without resorting to this kind of craziness.” | REAL |
5,937 | 3 Effects of Substance Abuse on Individual, Family and Community | Drug and substance abuse has ruined and taken the lives of many. Substance addiction or abuse happens to be a complicated and complex disease which gradually gnaws the addict of their physical,... | FAKE |
7,277 | Tree Shaped Vertical Farms That Grow 24 Acres Of Urban Crops | By Amanda Froelich This tree-like skyscraper is capable of growing 24 acres-worth of crops and will be powered entirely by renewable resources. By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to reach... | FAKE |
5,521 | New Comment Features have been Added | Be the First to Comment! Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Search articles | FAKE |
3,627 | World's newspapers react to 'Hebdo' attack | The world watched in shock on Wednesday as French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo became the site of a grisly terror attack. Gunmen opened fire on a second-floor editorial meeting, killing 12 people in total. Among them were eight journalists and two police officers.
Journalists felt their profession under fire, and several newspapers are taking to their front pages to react. Editorial cartoons, somber black covers and powerful photos from the attack are seen on pages around the world.
The Independent covers their paper with a fictional cover of Charlie Hebdo.
Libération in Paris said "We are all Charlie."
The Times of London's calls it "attack on freedom." | REAL |
9,360 | Ying and Yang (the Gold and Silver Set-Up) | Ying and Yang (the Gold and Silver Set-Up) Posted on Home » Silver » Silver News » Ying and Yang (the Gold and Silver Set-Up) No, this is not a post about some new Chinese law firm. Instead, it’s just an update on the gold and silver markets which, while refusing to go further down, aren’t making much progress to the upside, either. From Craig Hemke, TFMetalsReport : Today’s message: A few more slightly positive US economic datapoints and these are likely enough to make a December FF rate hike a fait accompli. Again, though…and I can’t stress this enough… we have traced out a pattern that is remarkably similar to last October and November in the run up to the most recent FF rate hike. And what happened beginning the very next day? Well, by now you know the story. The week of the October 2o15 FOMC produced a high trade in the Dec15 contract of $1183. As the Fedlines were digested later that week, it became clear that the Fed was going to raise the FF rate at the December 2015 meeting come hell or high water. And they did. However, take a close look at how gold traded in the days and weeks between the Oct15 FOMC and the December rate hike. Price fell from $1180 to $1050 in about five weeks but note that it bottomed well in advance of the actual “news” of the FF rate hike. This 10+% drop was fueled by a near panic level liquidation of the Specs at the Comex. How bad was it? From the CoT survey of 10/27/15, just one day before that fateful FOMC and Fedlines, the Large Specs in gold were NET long more than 157,000 contracts while the Commercials were NET short nearly 166,000. Just five weeks later, the NET position of the Large Specs was down to only 10,000 contracts with the Commercial position reaching an alltime low of just 2,911 contracts NET short. We even speculated at the time that there were some days, intraweek, where the Gold Commercials were actually and historically NET LONG. Well now compare last autumn to our current situation. Just as back then, a FF rate hike is a near certainty at the FOMC in December. However, as you know, the anticipatory move in gold began a few weeks ago with the beatdown and purposeful break of both the 50-day and 100-day moving averages in late September. Take a look at the current chart and compare it to the one posted above: In 2015, we had the October FOMC and then two stout down weeks. Before price turned, we slogged through 5-6 weeks of consolidation and CoT improvement before the blast higher began. In 2016, we had the September FOMC and then two stout down weeks. Price is attempting to bottom and turn while the CoT improves, but it doesn’t seem ready just yet to begin moving consistently higher. In 2015, the turn in gold began once the actual rate hike took place. The rate hike and forecast for 3 or 4 more in 2016 led to dollar strength, which led to Chinese devaluations, which led to emerging market crises, which led to equity selloffs and the gold price was already 5-10% off its lows by late January before the real fun began with the USDJPY falling 10% in early February. Are we headed down that same path again? It certainly appears so as the first major salvos of Chinese yuan devaluation were fired last week: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-20/dear-janet-china-devalues-most-august-yuan-tumbles-lowest-sept-2010 And, just as in 2015, the CoT is certainly undergoing a makeover, too. From the survey of 9/27/16, the Large Specs in gold were NET long 292,000 contracts while the Commercials were NET short 325,000. As of last Tuesday and just three weeks later, the Large Specs were down to 180,000 NET long for a reduction of 38% and the Commercials were NET short 203,000. To be sure, these are still hefty positions but much more “bullish” than the levels seen through the past summer. And now check the full long-term chart. You can see again the similarities between now and last fall. Also be sure to note, however, that the trend has clearly changed and that price is pointed higher. So while we must still deal with the consolidation for a while longer…the Ying and Yang mentioned in the title of this post…it is clear to me that the trend remains higher and that the now-expected FOMC FF rate hike will be simply another “sell-the-rumor, buy-the-news” type of event for gold and silver. This current period of relative quiet should be used to prepare for the next leg UP, not some sort of new bear market where paper prices are sharply falling. Use your time wisely and continue to prepare/stack accordingly. TF On Sale At SD Bullion… This Week Only… This entry was posted in Gold News , Silver News and tagged Craig Hemke , December Rate Hike , gold update , silver update , TFMetals Report . Bookmark the permalink . Post navigation | FAKE |
909 | Closed primaries, 'warped' democracy? | Political parties choose their presidential nominees. But with more Americans opting out of parties, is the process representative of what America wants? The New York primary – and others ahead – offer insights.
How SNL's 'the bubble' sketch about polarization is all too true
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to supporter Michael Cantalupo while taking a walk in New York's Times Square Tuesday. Mr. Cantalupo said he is unable to vote in the New York primaries
Denise Guardascione, a waitress for nearly three decades at the Shalimar Diner in Queens, thinks the New York primary process was rigged.
She’s a vocal supporter of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, but as a registered Democrat, Ms. Guardascione missed the deadline to switch her registration to become a Republican – which, shocking to her, was more than six months ago.
And now, the independent-minded waitress has become bewildered by what seems to be the complicated, back-room system of electing party delegates both in her own state and across the country.
“It’s antiquated, it belongs in the Smithsonian, next to Archie Bunker’s chair!” says Ms. Guardascione, a Queens native who works six days a week slinging eggs and coffee for this well-known political haunt. “It’s just for the [expletive] bigwigs and muckety mucks, not us, not the people who just want to vote.”
In truth, presidential primaries have never been more open. Since 1972, primaries have gone from being the province of party bosses to vibrant voter-driven contests. But in this year of populist revolt in both parties, “more open” looks to many voters like “still pretty antiquated.”
That is by design. Parties, after all, are not democratic. They can choose their nominees in whichever way they think is best. But at a time when Democrats and Republicans are a shrinking share of the population, closed primaries are shutting more and more of America out.
The irony is that America is no less partisan. Research suggests the growing ranks of independents are just as partisan as the parties. These voters have just abandoned parties because they are ashamed by how the parties act.
The anger over closed primaries, superdelegates, and convention arcana isn’t likely to help. (Nor are allegations of irregularities in the New York primary. On Thursday, the state's Elections Board suspended the top official in charge of Brooklyn after numerous allegations, the most serious of which is that 125,000 Democratic voters were incorrectly purged from the rolls before polls opened.)
The question is, whether the spotlight of this election could force further change ahead, both in states and in the nation.
“New York and other states have long given power to the parties and to the establishment,” says Jeanne Zaino, a political scientist at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. “But who has higher voting turnout? States that have early voting, states that have mail in ballots and same day registration. We in New York allow none of that. This was not just a closed primary, this was an ultra-closed primary. Whether you’re running for office or voting, you had to be on top of your game to be a part of it.”
The knock against closed primaries in this election season has been that they hurt insurgent candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders. But the picture isn’t so simple.
Yes, Senator Sanders of Vermont has done much better among independents. But his biggest wins – in Hawaii, Alaska, and Washington state – all came in closed primaries or caucuses.
Trump, meanwhile, has in many cases actually done better among Republicans than independents.
What is clear is that the primary rules disenfranchise those who most dislike the parties. “So why is Sanders doing so well among independents?” asks Dan Hopkins of the FiveThirtyEight data journalism website. “It appears to be driven not by their ideology so much as their dislike of partisan politics.”
In one respect, that makes sense. Why would parties give vote to someone who doesn’t like them?
Yet those people are a growing share of the American electorate. Some 39 percent Americans now identify as independents; 32 percent say they’re Democrats, and 23 percent say they’re Republicans, according to a Pew Research Center survey last year.
In 2000, 29 percent were independents, 33 percent were Democrats, and 28 percent were Republicans, Pew found
In Tuesday’s closed primary, “three million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary,” Sanders said. “That’s wrong.”
It almost certainly hurt Sanders. In Michigan, for example, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic vote by 58 to 40 percent – similar to the 58 to 42 percent margin in New York. But since Michigan was an open primary where independents could vote, Sanders won the state by taking 71 percent of independent voters.
Eight of the 16 remaining primary contests – including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland – are closed contests.
Sanders and his supporters have also complained about the fact that 15 percent of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention – 712 out of 4,763 – are party leaders known as “superdelegates,” who overwhelmingly support Mrs. Clinton.
In short, the deck is stacked against Sanders. And intentionally so.
Sanders isn’t a Democrat; he’s an independent who describes himself as a democratic socialist. It is not illogical that Democratic primaries should favor an actual Democrat.
The same is true, in different ways, for Trump. The GOP front-runner won a solid victory in New York. But he's getting little help from the establishment in navigating the complex delegate rules – rules that he says are rigged. Meanwhile, the well-organized campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz outmaneuvered him in Louisiana and swept Colorado’s state convention contest.
Presidents have always gone through a complex, multilayered processes in which voters, local officials, and party leaders each have their role, scholars say. Party leaders should have no small say in choosing their party’s presidential nominee, the thinking goes.
But even within the parties, there is some restlessness for change. “Closed primaries poison the health of that system and warp its natural balance,” said Charles Schumer (D) of New York, now the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, to The New York Times in 2014.
As America’s political balance increasingly settles outside either of the two parties, 2016 is showing how even a more open system can be warped.
“And if part of that story is about disenfranchisement, it is about these younger voters, people who are new to the process, or who disengaged from it and didn’t register, or registered as independent and couldn’t vote,” says Professor Zaino.
“You’re talking about Sanders supporters who are going to be on the losing end of that.” | REAL |
6,646 | Police Turn In Badges Rather Than Incite Violence Against Standing Rock Protestors | It should be evident if you’re following news concerning the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota that tension continues to escalate between protestors supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and... | FAKE |
1,522 | Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton has 'caused tremendous death' | Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has a new attack line against Hillary Clinton: "She has caused death."
Trump raised the stakes against Clinton on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, insisting that as secretary of State in President Obama's first term, Clinton's decisions led to unnecessary deaths on both sides in the Middle East.
"She has caused tremendous death with incompetent decisions," Trump said. "She caused a lot of the problems that we have right now. You could say she caused the migration.
"The entire world has been upset. The entire world, it's a different place. During Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's term, she's done a horrible job."
As he has said before, Trump argued that getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- a policy of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush -- has led to the rise of the Islamic State. "All of this has led to tremendous death and destruction," he said. "And she, for the most part, was in charge of it, along with Obama."
Trump acknowledged that by calling for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, he was giving radical Islam a rallying cry. The terrorist group al-Shabaab is now using a clip of Trump in calling for Muslims to join jihad or leave the U.S.
"What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say," Trump said. "And you know what I have to say? There's a problem. We have to find out what is the problem. And we have to solve that problem."
During the interview, Trump also disagreed with Obama on the need for more gun control -- particularly if the president tries to move the issue by executive action rather than working with a recalcitrant Congress. "All they want to do is blame the guns. And it's not the gun that pulls the trigger," he said. "So I don't like it. I don't like what he's doing."
Rather than fiddle with the Second Amendment, Trump said mental health is the problem. "We should build, like, institutions for people that are sickos," he said. "We have sickos all over the place. And that's the problem."
Despite his lead in national polls, Trump said he will spend about $2 million per week on advertising in the coming weeks leading to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. "I think I'm probably wasting the money," he said. "But I'm $35 million under budget.... I almost feel guilty." | REAL |
7,540 | Detroit women’s Halloween decorations depict ‘real-life horrors’ … such as shootings police by police | Print
[Ed. – How to take the fun out of Halloween.]
As Halloween approaches, hair-raising yard displays can often cause people to stop, gawk and whip out their cellphones.
Larethia Haddon is well aware of that, and is using it to shine some light on real-life horrors, rather than typical Halloween themes.
In her yard at the corner of Mendota and Santa Maria avenues in Detroit, there are six dummies portraying police shootings, slain children, the Flint water crisis, and other horrors.
Last year, a single dummy placed face-down in the grass, realistically depicting a dead body in her yard, shocked passersby and caused fearful calls to the police.
This time around, Haddon wants to inspire a broader range of thought, rather than just shock.
“We’re trying to do something positive instead of just having a dead body laying in the yard,” she said. “Want to get people to be a little more focused on the issues, what’s going on in the world. We need to stick together more. We need to come together. And if we don’t, this scene in my yard is going to be reality every single day.” | FAKE |
1,834 | Biden makes another surprise political stop | On this day in 1973, J. Fred Buzhardt, a lawyer defending President Richard Nixon in the Watergate case, revealed that a key White House tape had an 18... | REAL |
1,775 | Hillary Clinton's declining favorability numbers, in context | Buried beneath Wednesday's eye-popping headlines about Hillary Clinton's sinking favorability ratings, you'll find the reason that she's still on course to win the Democratic primary.
First, the headline number: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 53 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Clinton, an 8 percentage point increase since July. Her favorable rating has declined by 7 percentage points to 45 percent over the same period of time, and the split among registered voters is even worse for her, at 56 percent unfavorable to 43 percent favorable. A majority of women (51 percent) now view her unfavorably. None of that is good news for Clinton.
She's been on a pretty steady drop from the moment she left the State Department in early 2013. That was a foreseeable outcome of Clinton moving back into domestic partisan politics after four years of representing America's interests abroad. Ellen Tauscher, a former member of Congress and undersecretary of state, warned Clinton that would happen in a private conversation about Clinton's political future in September 2011, when about two-thirds of Americans rated her favorably.
But what's apparent — and of more immediate interest to Clinton — is that she's still better regarded among Democrats than Vice President Joe Biden, who is still weighing whether to run against her. Biden's dead-even 46 percent to 46 percent favorable/unfavorable rating is better than Clinton's, but the edge is based on him having higher numbers with Republicans and independents, the vast majority of whom won't vote in the Democratic primaries.
A full 80 percent of Democrats view Clinton favorably, compared with 70 percent who feel that way about Biden. Her number among African Americans is 79 percent, and it's 68 percent among Hispanics. By comparison, Biden is viewed favorably by just 67 percent of African Americans and 49 percent of Hispanics.
That helps explain why Clinton is blowing her Democratic competition out of the water in national horse-race polls. She was up 35 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a PPP poll conducted August 28 to 30 and held a 45-22-18 lead over Sanders and Biden in a Quinnipiac survey conducted from August 20 to 25.
She's also doing much better on the favorability scale than either Republican frontrunner Donald Trump or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Trump checked in with a favorable number that has risen to 37 percent, about the same as Bush's 38 percent. Trump had an unfavorable score of 59 percent, while Bush was at 55 percent.
The Clinton ship has taken on water. But, along with other recent surveys, this poll tell us that Clinton is still running away with her party's nomination and remains in better position than any of her Republican or Democratic rivals to advance to the all-important second round of the presidential race. For someone who lost the 2008 primary in part because she looked ahead to the general election, it makes sense to focus on winning the primary first in 2016. On that score, she's still in great shape. | REAL |
8,212 | Comment on Quid Pro Quo? Wikileaks Email Reveals Clinton Campaign Eyeing Paul Ryan’s Relative for Supreme Court by lenore.lee | New Wikileaks email dumps have revealed massive corruption surrounding Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta . In one email dated February 29, 2016, an article sent by Hillary advisor Sara Solow to Podesta and Hillary’s foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan indicates that the Clinton campaign is considering House Speaker Paul Ryan’s relative for the Supreme Court .
Ketanji Brown is the subject of the article. She is related to Paul Ryan by marriage and is a judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The email reads, “She was confirmed by without any Republican opposition in the Senate not once, but *twice*. She was confirmed to her current position in 2013 by unanimous consent – that is, without any stated opposition. She was also previously confirmed unanimously to a seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission (where she became vice chair).”
“Her family is impressive. She is married to a surgeon and has two young daughters. Her father is a retired lawyer and her mother a retired school principal. Her brother was a police officer (in the unit that was the basis for the television show * The Wire *) and is now a law student, and she is related by marriage to Congressman (and Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan.”
Earlier this month, he even said he would not campaign for nor support his party’s nominee, Donald Trump . In fact, some supporters of Trump have theorized that Ryan was somehow behind or involved in the leak of the tape in which Trump made sexually crude comments about women.
If you claim this is merely circumstantial, then I think there is no hope for you understanding just how corrupt DC has gotten, and this is the very Paul Ryan I warned you about in 2012, which everyone said was “so conservative.” Sadly, many didn’t listen and voted for liberal Mitt Romney and him. Perhaps Paul Ryan’s records and emails should be leaked and maybe we just might see that he’s willing to engage Hillary in a pay-to-play scheme .
Courtesy of Freedom Outpost
Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com , SonsOfLibertyMedia.com , GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com . He is husband to his “more precious than rubies” wife, father of 10 “mighty arrows”, jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. Tim is also an affiliate for the Joshua Mark 5 AR/AK hybrid semi-automatic rifle . Follow Tim on Twitter . Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | FAKE |
3,363 | Hillary Clinton: The criminal investigation keeps moving forward | While the country has been fixated on Donald Trump's tormenting his Republican primary opponents and deeply concerned about the government’s efforts to identify any confederates in the San Bernardino, California, killings, a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents continues to examine Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state in order to determine whether she committed any crimes and, if so, whether there is sufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
What began as an innocent Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a D.C.-based public advocacy group promoting transparency in the executive branch, has now become a full criminal investigation, with Clinton as the likely target.
The basic facts are well-known, but the revealed nuances are important, as well. When the State Department responded to the Judicial Watch FOIA request by telling Judicial Watch that it had no emails from Clinton, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit. When the State Department made the same representation to the court -- as incredible as it seemed at the time -- the judge accepted that representation, and the case was dismissed.
Then The New York Times revealed that Clinton used a private email server instead of the government’s server for all of her work-related and personal emails during her four years as secretary of state. After that, the Judicial Watch FOIA case was reinstated, and then the judge in the case demanded of State that it produce Clinton’s emails.
When Judicial Watch expressed frustration to the judge about the pace at which it was getting emails, the judge ordered Clinton, “under penalty of perjury,” to certify that she had surrendered all her governmental emails to the State Department.
Eventually, Clinton did certify to the court that she did surrender all of her governmental emails to the State Department. She did so by sending paper copies of selected emails, because she had wiped clean her server. She acknowledged that she decided which emails were personal and which were selected as governmental and returned the governmental ones to the State Department. She has denied steadfastly and consistently that she ever sent or received any materials marked "classified” while secretary of state using her private server.
All of her behavior has triggered the FBI investigation because she may have committed serious federal crimes. For example, it is a crime to steal federal property. What did she steal? By diverting to her own venue the digital metadata that accompany all emails -- metadata that, when attached to the work-related emails of a government employee, belong to the government -- she stole that data. The metadata do not appear on her paper copies -- hence the argument that she stole and destroyed the government-owned metadata.
This is particularly troublesome for her present political ambitions because of a federal statute that disqualifies from public office all who have stolen federal property. (She is probably already barred from public office -- though this was not prominently raised when she entered the U.S. Senate or the Department of State -- because of the china, silverware and furniture that she and her husband took from the White House in January 2001.)
Clinton may also have committed espionage by failing to secure the government secrets entrusted to her. She did that by diverting those secrets to an unprotected, nongovernmental venue -- her own server -- and again by emailing those secrets to other unprotected and nongovernmental venues. The reason she can deny sending or receiving anything marked "classified” is that protected government secrets are not marked “classified.”
So her statement, though technically true, is highly misleading. The governmental designations of protected secrets are “confidential,” “secret” and “top secret” -- not “classified.” State Department investigators have found 999 emails sent or received by Clinton in at least one of those three categories of protected secrets.
Back when Clinton became secretary of state, on her first day in office, she had an hourlong FBI briefing on the proper and lawfully required care of government secrets. She signed a statement, under penalty of perjury, acknowledging that she knew the law and that it is the content of emails, not any stamped markings, that makes them secret.
Earlier this week, my Fox News colleagues confirmed the certain presence of top-secret materials among the 999 emails. Intelligence from foreign sources or about foreign governments is always top-secret, whether designated as such or not. And she knows that.
As well, she may have committed perjury in the FOIA case. When the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in its investigation of her role in the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, gathered emails, it found emails she did not surrender to the State Department.
Last week, the State Department released emails that give the FBI more areas to investigate. These emails may show a pattern of official behavior by Clinton designed to benefit the financial interests of her family's foundation, her husband and her son-in-law. Moreover, the FBI knows of a treasure-trove of documents that may demonstrate that the Clinton Foundation skirted the law and illegally raised and spent contributions.
Two months ago, a group of FBI agents sat around a conference table and reviewed the evidence gathered thus far. Each agent was given the opportunity to make or detract from the case for moving forward. At the end of the meeting, it was the consensus of the group to pursue a criminal investigation.
And Clinton is the likely target.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. | REAL |
1,084 | Rubio’s parting shot at Trump | It was not supposed to end like this for Marco Rubio.
Eleven months ago, he launched his presidential campaign in front of Miami’s Freedom Tower, the Ellis Island for his and other Cuban families. In his rapid rise, young Rubio had been a darling of both the tea party movement and the conservative intelligentsia — the Republicans’ best hope of attracting nonwhite voters.
But then came vulgar Donald Trump. Rubio was savaged on everything from immigration to his height. On Tuesday night, Rubio, his campaign fading, lost his home state of Florida to the bigoted demagogue who makes scapegoats of foreigners and minorities. Bowing to the inevitable, Rubio ended his candidacy.
By the time Rubio’s campaign bus rolled to its final pre-primary stop — an outdoor basketball court here where he played as a boy — only a couple-hundred supporters were on hand, nearly equaled by the number of journalists on death watch.
Before Rubio arrived, a prankster hijacked the microphone and was chased off by campaign aides. When Rubio himself spoke, the sound system failed, so he delivered his valedictory with a bullhorn.
[The GOP establishment has failed. It’s up to voters to deny Trump.]
Rubio’s voice sounded tinny, but his words were rich with nostalgia as he recalled knocking on doors when he ran for city commissioner here. “In between sips of sweet Cuban coffee, I heard the stories of their youth, of the dreams they lost,” he said. “That has carried me every single day throughout this campaign, knowing that my worst days are better than some of the best days that many people in this community have had.”
These are not the best days for Rubio, or for anybody who cares about American democracy. The 44-year-old made mistakes during his campaign: freezing in the New Hampshire debate, failing to take on Trump earlier, then finally attacking Trump by joking about genitalia.
Yet he finished honorably. He spoke reflectively Monday about Trump’s brutal transformation of politics. This message should have been delivered much earlier, but it deserves to be heard even now.
“Leadership is not about going to an angry and frustrated people and saying you should be even angrier and more frustrated, and you should be angry and frustrated at each other,” Rubio told a gym full of Christian college students in West Palm Beach. “That’s called demagoguery. And it’s dangerous.” It leads, he said, to “where we are today, a nation where people literally hate each other because they’re voting for different candidates. . . . And it leaves us incapable of solving problems.”
Trump tore up the norms of decency that remained in American politics, and Rubio expressed puzzlement that it worked. “My whole life I’ve been told being humble is a virtue, and now being humble is a weakness and being vain and self-absorbed is somehow a virtue,” he said. “My whole life I’ve been told no matter how you feel about someone, you respect everyone because we are all children of the same God — and now being respectful to one another is considered political correctness.”
Rubio voiced regret for his own role in the vulgarity, saying he “felt terrible” for joking about Trump’s penis size. Such remorse separates Rubio from Trump, who seems to have no shame as he blurts obscenities, delivers insults and winks at violence. “There are people, I know, who like this stuff because he says what they want to be able to say, [but] presidents can’t say whatever they want to say,” Rubio told the students, mentioning the harm to America’s reputation that Trump has already done. “We’re not a Third World country. We’re the United States of America.”
[Donald Trump just threatened more violence. Only this time, it’s directed at the GOP.]
That’s the welcoming country to which Rubio’s parents immigrated, settling among the shoe-box homes here in Cuban West Miami. “Everywhere I go I tell the story of this community of people, many of whom lost their country in their youth,” Rubio said Monday night in his boyhood park, his kids beside him in the bed of his Dodge pickup.
He spoke, in English, then in Spanish, with the requisite optimism, telling supporters he looked forward to moving his “caja china” — Cuban barbecue — to the White House.
“If there’s no car, we’ll go in a raft!” a supporter said in Spanish.
Another said in English: “Don’t give up, man!”
But Rubio’s speech to his modest band had the ring of a farewell. “I will always be a son of this community. I will always carry with me the hopes and dreams of generations that made possible the dreams of mine,” he said. His candidacy, he said, “was possible because you and I happen to live in the one place on Earth where even the son of a bartender and a maid from West Miami can be president.”
Or at least he can lose to a trash-talking rich guy from Queens.
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. | REAL |
4,410 | Loretta Lynch becomes first African-American woman AG. | Washington (CNN) Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the new U.S. attorney general on Monday, replacing Eric Holder. Lynch, the country's first African-American woman to serve in the role, had her nomination held up more than five months over politicking in the Senate.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it's about time," said Vice President Joe Biden at the swearing in ceremony.
The highly politicized five-month battle to choose Obama's next attorney general came to a close Thursday when the Senate finally voted 56-43 to confirm Lynch
But the delay of her nomination neared record-breaking proportions. Republicans leading the Senate refused to bring her nomination up for a vote until Democrats cut a deal on abortion language in an unrelated bill. That legislation passed Wednesday, setting up Thursday's vote and ending the latest partisan Washington standoff.
Ten Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was the only senator not to vote.
Obama tapped Lynch to replace Attorney General Eric Holder in November and her nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in February. Still, she waited longer than the seven most recent U.S. attorneys general combined for a vote on the Senate floor, after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted on first finishing work on an unrelated bill.
Loretta Lynch's father, Lorenzo A. Lynch, was in the Senate gallery watching when the historic vote took place confirming her daughter as the first African American female attorney general.
"The good guys won. That's what has happened in this country all along," Lorenzo Lynch told reporters. "Even during slavery. Levi Coffin was a founder of the Underground Railroad. Even during slavery. A white man fought against slavery. So all over this land good folks have stood in the right lane, in the right path."
A two-time U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Lynch takes on the high-profile job at time when America faces a series of challenges, from dealing with strained relations and deep distrust in some cities between the police and the communities they serve, to criminal justice reform, to confronting the ongoing threat of terrorism.
Lynch, 55, has earned a reputation as a highly qualified, but low-profile prosecutor who has a good relationship with law enforcement and a history of handling tough cases well.
She is a good listener and a skilled consensus builder, qualities that will help her succeed at Justice, said Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia who served under Lynch on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, a group that meets regularly to advise the Justice department on policy matters.
"In that [attorney general] job you are at the center of so many of the emerging, significant, pressing issues not only in this country but around the world. There's probably no job in government as diverse and challenging as being attorney general of the United States," Heaphy said. He added that building support for initiatives both within and outside the department is an important part of the job.
"She will be good at getting people to work well together. I think that's a strength of hers. I saw that on the committee," Heaphy said.
Lynch's portfolio will include addressing voting rights, white-collar crime and policy reviews, as well as public corruption, an area in which she has vast experience.
In a statement, Obama said America will be better off with Lynch leading the Department of Jusice.
"Loretta's confirmation ensures that we are better positioned to keep our communities safe, keep our nation secure, and ensure that every American experiences justice under the law," Obama said in a statement shortly after the vote.
Lynch's experience on civil rights case, like helping win the convictions of New York City police officers who sexually assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, will be important as her office tackles closely watched investigations in recent police conduct cases, including the still unexplained death of a 25-year-old Baltimore man while in police custody.
"She's seen and understands the injustices that have taken place in the past and so therefore she's uniquely also equipped to deal with what's going on and do the kinds of investigations that will restore faith to Americans in their justice system," said Rep. Greg Meeks, D-New York.
Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lynch grew up 60 miles to the east in Durham, North Carolina. Her father was a fourth-generation Baptist minister; her mother, an English teacher and school librarian. As a child, Lynch rode on her father's shoulders to his church, which served a meeting place for students organizing anti-segregation boycotts in the early 1960s, she told the Judiciary panel at her January confirmation hearing. Lynch eventually graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Speaking at her nomination announcement in November, Lynch highlighted the fact that the Justice Department is named for an ideal.
"This is actually appropriate, because our work is both aspirational, and grounded in gritty reality," she said. "Today, I stand before you so thrilled, and, frankly, so humbled to have the opportunity to lead this group of wonderful people who work all day and well into the night to make that ideal a manifest reality."
At a conference meeting with all the nation's U.S. attorneys a few years ago, Heaphy was put in charge of organizing a presentation showing the attorneys as they were 20 years before. Lynch shared a picture of herself with her college cheerleading squad.
"Loretta sent me a picture of her as a Harvard cheerleader in a pyramid," he said. "She was comfortable sharing this with Eric Holder and other department leaders. She laughed at herself."
"I don't think she's just tough, there's a humanity, there's a human touch that she has that will also serve her well," he said. "Nobody is going to mistake that she's in charge, but her humility and sense of humor will come through." | REAL |
2,669 | Why it's funny Republicans are upset with Facebook: Column | GOP opposes the kind of antitrust regulation that would preserve freedom of expression online.
America’s right wing is in a froth about allegations that Facebook has tweaked its “trending news” feed to reduce the visibility of conservative news sites.
It’s not clear if the allegations, from a Gizmodo report based on anonymous sources, are true and Facebook denies them. But the deeper problem is undeniably real: Facebook is the dominant member of a small number of giant entities — corporate and governmental — that are gaining control over news, freedom of expression and much of our digital lives. The irony is that the conservatives and business-backed Republicans in Congress who howl about Facebook are the same people who have thwarted policies that would encourage the competition we need to challenge that increasingly centralized control.
Almost no one wants to address the fact that Facebook is becoming a monopoly in the antitrust sense of the word. Along with Google, it dominates online advertising; Facebook especially does so on mobile devices, which are the way many people connect to the Internet. If you offer news and information online, you have almost no choice but to play on Facebook’s field because so much of your audience is there. (In some parts of the world, Facebook essentially is the Internet, because mobile devices are pretty much the sole means of online access and in some cases the company has made deals with local telecommunications companies and, or governments.)
Facebook has been buying everything that presents even a whiff of competition: Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. This is smart — no one can dispute that Mark Zuckerberg and the others on his team are brilliant technologists and strategists — but it’s also a red flag. As Zuckerberg famously said several years ago, he wants Facebook to be “like electricity.” Well, electricity is a utility. And we regulate utilities.
Monopolies and cozy oligopolies never turn out well in the long run for anyone but the monopolists or cartel members. They end up controlling markets and do their best to thwart genuine competition. It’s their nature. Which is why capitalism, plainly the best system when it’s working right, needs rules to promote competition.
Yet Republicans, in general, think the government should play little to no role in promoting competition. They consider antitrust inquiry and enforcement to be counterproductive, at best — except, of course, when a powerful constituent (a corporation, usually) is in danger from predatory behavior.
That attitude accounts for the GOP’s cheerleading for corporate dominance of Internet access. Republicans, in general, are fine with the idea that one or two companies (say the leading cable provider and another telecom) should control access in most communities, and utterly opposed to a remedy — what we call network neutrality — to ensure that people at the edges of networks, not dominant Internet service providers, should decide what information they want and at what priority.
I don’t want the government to tell Facebook what it can publish and don’t look forward to much more than posturing from Congress. But I do want the government to start paying extremely close attention to the way the company is becoming a monopoly and to what it means for freedom of expression when a single company has so much power over what people say online. I want government to use antitrust and other pro-competition laws to ensure that Facebook doesn’t abuse its dominance in a business sense. I want government(s) to promote open technology and communications, and fierce competition at every level. Kudos to Zuckerberg for making Facebook so appealing to millions of users; that’s an amazing achievement. But we can’t allow Facebook to leverage that success to block the emergence of alternatives to its service, or use its market power to influence or alter the content of publications and others trying to communicate with Facebook users.
We all need to wake up to the potential threat Facebook poses to freedom of expression. Once you are in its enclosed online space, it is the corporation’s terms of service, not the First Amendment, that determines what you can say. If it decides to downplay speech it doesn’t like, Facebook has the right to do so.
So I’m glad that conservatives are concerned, even if the allegations prove overblown. (Facebook has modified its outright denial to a “we’re looking into it” stance; stay tuned.) I’d be even happier if conservatives realized that government does have a role in promoting genuine competition — and that we’re in uncharted information-freedom territory under the new control freaks of Silicon Valley.
Dan Gillmor teaches digital media literacy at Arizona State University. He is the author of Mediactive. He wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns, go to the Opinion front page and follow us on Twitter @USATOpinion. | REAL |
3,648 | FBI checking if Orlando shooter's wife knew attack plan but didn't warn police | The wife of the gunman who carried out the deadliest mass shooting on American soil could face criminal charges if investigators conclude that she knew of the attack in advance but failed to warn police.
Noor Zahi Salman told that FBI that her husband, Omar Mateen, had said he was going out to see friends, but she feared he was going to attack a gay nightclub, NBC News reported on Wednesday. She tried to talk him out of it but did not contact law enforcement agencies.
Wielding an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen opened fire at the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida, early on Sunday in a three-hour shooting rampage and hostage siege that ended when a Swat team smashed its way in and killed him. There were 49 people killed and 53 were injured.
Angus King, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, which received a briefing on the attack, told CNN: “It appears she [Salman] had some knowledge of what was going on. She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information.”
Peter King, chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee on counterintelligence and terrorism, told MSNBC: “If it’s true that she did know that it was going to happen and she tried to talk him out of it, then it’s possible criminal action (could be taken) against her, and again there might be more involvement by her, so all that has to be investigated.”
The possibility that Mateen, 29, did not act alone but received support from other individuals or groups is now central to the FBI’s inquiry, King added. “If there’s anybody else that he was dealing with, anyone else he was talking with, anyone else who may have known about this, this is all where the investigation is going now.”
Media reports also suggested that Salman was with her husband when he bought ammunition and a holster. She allegedly told the FBI that she once drove him to Pulse, nearly a two-hour drive from their home in Fort Pierce, Florida, because he wanted to scope it out. Mateen is said to have browsed militant Islamist material on the internet for at least two years before the mass shooting.
As detectives tried to piece together Mateen’s last movements on Saturday night, Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer, who opened a family assistance centre in a stadium on Wednesday, said: “What I know concretely is that he was driving around that evening and visited several locations.”
The FBI director, James Comey, has said the agency is trying to determine whether Mateen had recently visited Disney World, one of the Orlando’s celebrated theme parks, to consider it as a potential target.
Disney, which is donating $1m to an official fund for victims of the shooting, installed metal detectors last December but declined to comment on the Mateen case. A spokesperson said: “Unfortunately we’ve all been living in a world of uncertainty, and we have been increasing our security measures across our properties for some time, adding such visible safeguards as magnetometers, additional canine units, and law enforcement officers on site, as well as less visible systems that employ state-of-the-art security technologies.”
Salman will be key to the ongoing investigation as conflicting narratives emerge, including evidence he had been influenced by militant Islamist ideas and reports he might have struggled with his own sexual identity.
A survivor of the massacre, Patience Carter, suggested on Tuesday that Mateen had an overt political motive. Cowering in a bathroom, she heard him demand that Americans “stop bombing his country” and pledge allegiance to Islamic State, she said.
Carter, 20, who is African American, told reporters at Florida Hospital: “He even spoke to us directly in the bathroom. He said, ‘Are there any black people in here?’ I was too afraid to answer but there was an African American male in the stall, where the majority of my body was, who had answered and he said, ‘Yes, there are about six or seven of us,’ and the gunman responded back to him and said: ‘You know, I don’t have a problem with black people. This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.’”
The account chimed with previous FBI statements that Mateen had called the 911 emergency service and made reference to both Isis and the Tsarnaev brothers, who were responsible for the Boston bombings. Investigators have said Mateen was probably self-radicalised and there is no evidence that he received any instruction or aid from outside groups such as Isis.
Mateen also called a local 24-hour cable news channel, News 13, the station revealed on its website on Wednesday. Matthew Gentili, who was the producer on duty at the time, recalled that Mateen said: “I’m the shooter. It’s me. I am the shooter ... I did it for Isis. I did it for the Islamic State.”
Soon after the attack, Mateen’s father indicated that his son had strong anti-gay feelings. He recounted an incident when his son became angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami while out with his wife and young son.
Several media reports quoted men as saying they had seen Mateen at Pulse many times or that he had contacted them via gay dating apps, such as Grindr and Jack’d. But Pulse denied that he had ever been a patron. “Untrue and totally ridiculous,” spokeswoman Sara Brady said in an email to Reuters.
Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, told CNN she did not know if he was gay but added: “Well, when we had gotten married, he confessed to me about his past that was recent at that time and that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife and there was a lot of pictures of him.”
“I feel like it’s a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn’t want everybody to know about.”
Asked by the Guardian about rumours his son was gay, Mateen’s father Seddique Mateen said: “It’s not true. Why, if he was gay, would he do this?”
Seddique Mateen declined to comment specifically on the investigation on Wednesday, saying: “The FBI, they always do a professional job and to the maximum extent of my ability I will support them.”
Mateen, investigated twice by the FBI, was on the government’s terrorist watchlist for 10 months before being taken off. G4S, the security company that employed Mateen, only psychologically evaluated him once, at the start of his nine-year employment with the company and not again after the company was made aware he had been interviewed by the FBI.
Thirty-three people remain in hospital, including six in critical condition. On Tuesday, the first of the seriously injured to speak of their trauma was Angel Colon at the Orlando Regional Medical Center. “He’s shooting everyone that’s already dead on the floor, making sure they’re dead,” he said, speaking from a wheelchair. “I look over, and he shoots the girl next to me. And I’m just there laying down and I’m thinking: ‘I’m next, I’m dead.’
“So I don’t know how, but by the glory of God, he shoots toward my head but it hits my hand, and then he shoots me again and it hits the side of my hip. I had no reaction. I was just prepared to just stay there laying down so he won’t know that I’m alive.”
The attending trauma surgeon on call that night, Dr Chadwick Smith, said: “It was singularly the worst day of my career and the best day of my career. And I think you can say that of pretty much every person standing up here.”
The atrocity continued to reverberate in Washington DC, where Senate Democrats demanded tighter gun controls. Donald Trump, the Republican presumptive nominee, broke ranks with the party by saying he would meet the influential National Rifle Association lobbying group, which has endorsed him, to discuss an idea for restricting gun purchases by people on terrorism watchlists.
Barack Obama, who will visit Orlando on Thursday, launched a blistering assault against Trump over the candidate’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, which the president described as dangerous and contrary to American values.
“Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer, [they] were all US citizens. Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently? ... Putting them under surveillance?” | REAL |
6,197 | Is google and YouTube in the Hillary's purse? | Is google and YouTube in the Hillary’s purse? page: 1 link After I posted my opening post (OP) on “Hillary Clinton Wants a Strong Russia. Wait, what did she say?” , mysteriously, my YouTube account gets wiped out. The next thing I notice, is that the youtube video that I used in my OP, www.abovetopsecret.com... suddenly won’t work. Has anyone else experienced this bizarre behavior before? Is this what we are to expect if Hillary becomes POTUS? I went to the Youtube site and the video is available. www.youtube.com... I frankly, don't know what to think about this. link a reply to: Violater1 yes, so is almost all the major media, magazines (that are left), most of hollywood, GOP kinda, most of the bush's. Who else? Google is pro clinton like drudge is pro trump without a doubt Just about every news story under google news is pro hillary and negative towards trump. If I recall correctly they even advice her campaign edit on 511031America/ChicagoThu, 27 Oct 2016 21:51:09 -05 p3142 by interupt42 because: (no reason given) Is the dead link the same as the good one in the following reply? Same vid#? No errors? link I'm getting the feeling that the gun control,Hillary as dictator,is not unlike Obamacare,forced on us,this is socialism and being the Corporations own the candidates,they want this we have no choice,they have the UN,plus a bunch of immigrants to join the UN forces to attack the american freedom fighters,you may think I'm crazy but they said I was crazy when I said 9/11 was a controlled demolition,look at the past,put common sense to it,the big ball is rolling,too much money at stake here thats the goal rich get richer,no more middle class,upper middle class,those making like 1 or 2 million a year,will be joining the crowd,unless your a member of the party,Known many an immigrant who lived under communist rule,all storys kind of same,all bad,no sense of identity | FAKE |
596 | Handicapping the Hispanic vote for 2016 GOPers | The last Texas Republican to occupy the Oval Office, George W. Bush, took 49 percent of the state’s Hispanic vote in his 2004 presidential re-election, setting a relatively high bar for the handful of Texas-born or -raised Republicans who might be hoping to follow in his footsteps in 2016.
Republican presidential aspirants with ties to the Lone Star State must figure out how to hold the GOP base and attract conservative Hispanics if they want to be successful in Texas, political observers say.
So how do the party's four most prominent Texas affiliated might-be candidates — former Gov. Rick Perry; Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two former presidents from the state; Texas’ junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz; and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — stack up in the early going?
For Republicans to avoid a repeat of 2012, when presidential nominee Mitt Romney took only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, they need to nominate a conservative candidate who can go into Hispanic communities and truly connect with voters, said Hector De Leon, co-chairman of the Associated Republicans of Texas, which reaches out to Hispanic voters.
“It’s all about paying attention,” De Leon said.
Hispanics made up 10 percent of the national electorate in the 2012 presidential election. But in Texas, they make up almost one-third of eligible voters. And there’s plenty room for improvement when it comes to voter turnout. Only 39 percent of Texas Hispanics eligible to vote cast ballots in 2012.
Political observers say candidates would be right to take a page out of George W. Bush’s playbook on Hispanic outreach. He solidified his winning record with Hispanics with help from Latino-media guru Lionel Sosa, who told The Texas Tribune he has been in talks with Jeb Bush about his possible presidential bid.
Sosa helped George W. Bush’s campaign craft several television ads that painted him as the candidate who understood Hispanic culture. The candidate who can mobilize on-the-fence Hispanic voters who usually do not turn out to vote could win the state.
“I do think the primaries will include a concerted effort by some candidates to speak to that constituency,” said Sylvia Manzano, a senior analyst for the nonpartisan political polling organization Latino Decisions. “In Texas, that’s 10 million people. That’s a number that cannot be ignored.”
Though it's still early in the game, many political observers say Jeb Bush is best positioned at the moment. He grew up in Midland, spent much of his childhood in Houston and is considered friendly to the Hispanic community, both personally and politically.
“Jeb Bush is not going to come in and play mariachi politics,” Manzano said. “He knows better than that.”
But this far out, all is speculation. As the candidates tiptoe toward the starting gate, here's how several political experts handicap the field.
Already holding a political advantage because he is fluent in Spanish, the former Florida governor has experience winning over Hispanics in a state where they make up a large part of the population. During his 1998 re-election campaign, Bush won an impressive 61 percent of Florida's Hispanic electorate. It's worth noting, though, that Florida’s mostly Cuban Hispanic population differs from Texas, where a majority of Hispanics have roots in Mexico.
What the experts say:
For Bush, reaching out to Texas Hispanics would be an extended family affair. Aside from benefiting from the groundwork his family has done in the state, expect to see Bush campaigning with his Mexican-born wife, Columba, and his son, Texas Land CommissionerGeorge P. Bush, at his side. George P. is also fluent in Spanish and helped found Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a political group that recruits and supports Hispanic Republicans running for public office.
Bush’s record on issues that resonate with Texas Hispanics, particularly immigration reform, could prove attractive to this voting group. He has urged Congress to pass immigration reform and has highlighted it as a key issue in helping Republicans win Hispanics. He also gained national attention last year when he said many of those entering the country illegally do so out of an “act of love” for their families.
As the state’s longest-serving governor, Perry has long courted Texas Hispanics. He has steadily improved his standing since winning only 13 percent of the Hispanic vote when he defeated Hispanic businessman Tony Sanchez of Laredo in 2002. By the time he was re-elected in 2010, Perry pulled in 38 percent of Hispanic voters.
What the experts say:
Perry’s efforts to broaden his appeal were buoyed by the passage of the Texas Dream Act during his 14-year tenure. Though the future of the law granting in-state tuition to some undocumented immigrants is unclear, Perry has stood by it both on the national stage and at home. During a 2011 presidential debate, Perry famously told opponents who challenged his support of the law that they had no heart. More recently, as the state’s new GOP leadership works to overturn the law, Perry has been vocal about his continued support for it.
Because he presided over the state’s economic boom in the last decade, Perry has a unique opportunity to appeal to Hispanics on economic issues. If Perry can convince Hispanic voters that they benefited from the so-called Texas Miracle, he may be able to sway some on-the-fence voters his way.
Though he is the only Hispanic in the group — and the first Hispanic senator from Texas — Cruz has largely avoided making heritage part of his political persona beyond recounting his father’s journey to the United States from Cuban as an exile in 1957. Still, he has done well with Texas Hispanics. In 2012, he outperformed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, taking 35 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to a Latino Decisions poll.
What the experts say:
Cruz arguably faces the toughest challenge courting Texas Hispanics given his divisive tone on immigration and health care. He has been vocal in his opposition to President Obama’s executive order on immigration, which will grant millions of undocumented immigrants work permits and reprieve from deportation proceedings. The order is widely popular among Hispanics. On health care, Cruz has been one of the biggest foes of the federal Affordable Care Act. Texas Hispanics — who make up a large portion of the state’s uninsured population —overwhelmingly support the health law.
Though Paul was elected to the Senate from Kentucky, where Hispanics make up only 3 percent of the population, he grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas, where Hispanics are one-fifth of the population. Paul has spent the last few months preaching a message of Hispanic inclusion within the Republican ranks.
What the experts say:
Paul is someone to watch in the upcoming election when it comes to appealing to Texas Hispanics because of his views on growing the GOP’s number of Hispanic supporters. Because he is largely unknown among Texas Hispanics, Paul also has some room to improve his standing. A November 2014 poll by Latino Decisions found that almost a third of Texas Latino voters have no opinion of Paul. | REAL |
6,061 | Truth Will Out Radio: The Laconia Incident | Radio Aryan October 28, 2016
Sven Longshanks , Dennis Wise and Messerschmitt bring us another episode of Truth Will Out Radio, this week looking at the Laconia incident and the British Freikorps.
Messerschmitt deviates somewhat with his Axis War Heroes series in that the main subject is not a person but the so-called “Laconia Incident”. In September 1942 a German U-boat under the Command of Werner Hartenstein torpedoed the British troopship Laconia. As Hartenstein realized that a lot of Italian prisoners of war and even civilians including women and children were among the survivors struggling for their lives he ordered that as many as possible were to be taken on board the U-boat. Even though he radioed his intentions to all surrounding vessels in plain English and had a Red Cross flag draped across the U-boat he and the survivors they were carrying were attacked by an American B-24. What happened to the survivors and what the response of the German Navy was when it learned of this atrocity is elaborated on by Schmitt and the presentation ends with a letter from a relative of one of the casualties, thanking the U-boat commanders for their courageous and honourable behaviour.
This presentation shows how the Allies were breaking the rules of war while the Germans were keeping to their treaties. During the Nuremberg trials this incident was brought up in the hopes of convicting Admiral Doenitz for advising the U-boats not to pick up survivors, but it had the inadvertent effect of exposing the British and Americans of waging unrestricted submarine warfare, in itself a possible war crime as it breaks the law of the sea that any shipwrecked mariners must be rescued, no matter who they are. Dennis points out the hypocrisy of the British and Americans in this before reminding us that not all the British behaved like this during the war. Some became members of the Freikorps and fought to defend Europe from the Bolshevik menace alongside the other SS Volunteer Legions. These heroes were called traitors by the British establishment, yet their oath was to protect Europe from Communism, not to fight against Britain. It is a testament to the truthful ideology of National Socialism that prisoners of war could be set free to fight against Communism once they had heard the truth about it from their kinsmen in the League of St George.
After giving us a brief history of these brave young British men, Dennis and Sven conclude the podcast by talking about the importance of race and how the Freikorps highlighted this in their propaganda.
Presented by Sven Longshanks, Dennis Wise and Messerschmitt
Truth Will Out Radio: The Laconia Incident â TWOR 102816 | FAKE |
1,569 | GOP establishment nightmare? Ted Cruz vs. Donald Trump | Watch the CNN Republican debate Tuesday, December 15 at 6:00 p.m. ET and 8:30 p.m. ET.
The GOP establishment, confronted by a recalcitrant electorate that refuses to leave Donald Trump, is being forced to take a fresh look at Ted Cruz , a man with grassroots strength in key early primary states and few friends in Washington.
Suddenly, the Republican Party's best hope could be a man hell-bent on transforming it: a senator who openly spars with fellow GOP colleagues, and has campaigned by painting its leaders as spineless and feeble.
Headed into Tuesday's CNN Republican presidential debate, Cruz and Trump have turned Iowa into a two-man race, with the Texan leading in two new polls. Cruz is up 31% to Trump's 21% among likely GOP caucus-goers, according to the Bloomberg Politics-Des Moines Register poll released Saturday. A Fox News poll Sunday has Cruz leading Trump 28% to 26%.
A small and growing number of Republicans allied with the establishment -- the force long thought to quickly consolidate against a surging Cruz bid -- are coming to terms with the idea that he may be palatable in an election cycle where Trump has pushed the envelope well beyond what they considered acceptable.
"Oh God, yes," said Ed Rogers, a top Republican lobbyist, when asked if he'd prefer Cruz. "Compared to Trump, he's OK."
Establishment Republicans had enough of a problem when Trump began his populist-fueled move to the top of national polls, where he has stubbornly remained for five months. But Cruz's steady rise means that even if Trump were taken out by a well-financed negative campaign, they might have to deal with a stronger Cruz, who has more political polish than the more improvisational Trump.
"If you talk to my peers around town, collectively it's an appreciation the guy is smart as hell," explained a senior Washington Republican who is backing another candidate. "He can be a more acceptable alternative to Trump, if it comes to that."
The irony hasn't escaped them. Said the Republican: "It's an interesting life -- and everything's relative."
"The second he starts to look like a winner in Washington," Rogers said, "he's going to have a bunch of new friends."
It's a dilemma swatted away on Capitol Hill -- perhaps optimistically.
Asked about choosing Trump or Cruz, 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain would only allow that they are "smart people." Bush backer Sen. Susan Collins would just offer that they are "obviously not my choice."
And there's no guarantee either one can beat Hillary Clinton.
"He's not as outrageous as Trump, but I don't know that he's any more electable than Trump," said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Republican presidential campaigns for over two decades.
Brian Walsh, a longtime Senate campaign aide, said it's an out-of-control Trump -- not an in-control Cruz -- that explains the Texan's growing appeal.
"Trump has gone so far that it has in some ways masked how problematic Cruz would be as the nominee as well," he said.
Despite his background as an Ivy League-educated attorney and his time in the Bush administration, Cruz rose to prominence as a tea party darling who became the national face of the 2013 government shutdown. Cruz has spent the two years since working to salvage his relationship with some potential investors in his campaign, but he has reveled in his image as a Washington bad boy, the only senator willing to do on Capitol Hill what he campaigned on back at home.
It's something that has made him enemies in Washington, where he has not convinced a single Senate colleague to back his campaign. Cruz helped push Republicans to shut down the government in a high-stakes fight over Obamacare, a strategy that failed to get results but didn't cause a predicted electoral meltdown.
On the trail, he has shown no willingness to moderate his positions, bragging about his conservative purity and his rabble-rousing reputation in the Capitol.
But even compared to Cruz's burn-it-down rhetoric, Trump's campaign has been more incendiary and worrisome for party elders determined to beat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The mogul had harsh things to say about Hispanics, prisoners of war, women in the media, the disabled, and most recently, Muslims, who he thinks temporarily should not be allowed to enter the United States.
And most concerning for GOP leaders, Trump has frequently floated leaving the Republican Party altogether to mount an independent bid, which would significantly increase Clinton's chances of winning the White House.
The pair appears to be heading toward a clash that Cruz, at least, long sought to delay. On Friday evening, about 24 hours after audio leaked of Cruz questioning Trump's judgment at a private fundraiser, the real estate mogul launched his first attacks on Cruz.
Cruz had attempted to head that off by alleging that mainstream Republicans were trying to sow discord.
"The Establishment's only hope: Trump & me in a cage match," he tweeted Friday morning. "Sorry to disappoint — @realdonaldtrump is terrific. #DealWithIt"
Cruz has done little to woo the Republicans he used as his bogeyman: He has raised the lion's share of his money far from the New York-to-Washington corridor, raced to the party's right flank on every issue of the day, and campaigned loudly on the polarizing social issues that one well-placed Republican said puts some contributors permanently out of reach.
Cruz, on paper, should not be as repellent to the GOP political class as he is. Nurtured by the George W. Bush network in Texas, he served as solicitor general before winning an upset bid in the 2012 Republican U.S. Senate primary.
To Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, that resume should theoretically make him attractive to the party's elite.
"At a core of Cruz's candidacy is a great phonyism," Stevens said of the self-stylized insurgent. "You can wear all the plaid shirts and shoot off all the automatic weapons you want, but you're an insider."
And some of his positions, such as on national security, do hew closely to the party's center. As Cruz held court on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last week, "you could've sworn he was working for George Herbert Walker Bush on his foreign policy," a senior Republican said.
But a leading Republican in frequent touch with high-level donors, said even though those contributors may despise Cruz, they are learning to live with him. "If that's what we need to do to beat Trump," the Republican said, "then that's what you get." | REAL |
1,178 | Bernie Sanders lost poor voters in South Carolina by a big margin — a problem for his political revolution | Hillary Clinton didn't just take the vast majority of the available delegates in South Carolina on Saturday night. She also took away one of Bernie Sanders's strongest arguments — that he's the candidate who has the most working-class support.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders had done better than Clinton among voters in the lowest income brackets. That seemed to bolster his claim that his "political revolution" could energize millions of new low-income voters who typically don't turn out to vote.
This argument, however, is much less tenable after tonight. Clinton did best among poor voters in South Carolina, taking 82 percent of those who earn under $30,000 on her way to a 37-point victory, according to exit polling by the New York Times.
Here are the results by income, according to the Times:
Of course, this discrepancy is largely driven by Clinton's huge 87-13 margin of victory over black voters. But that's the point — outside of states like Iowa and New Hampshire, many low-income and working-class voters aren't white. Unless Sanders is able to win working-class voters beyond the whitest electorates in the country, his revolution may be over almost as soon as it started. | REAL |
9,545 | Should I Get Botox? | Support Us Should I Get Botox?
source Add To The Conversation Using Facebook Comments November 1, 2016 at 6:25 am
I think that maybe she can use a very natural makeup as an enhancement for her features to make her skin look softer and fresher. More than those lines her skin looks tired. Exfoliation, hydration, and a natural makeup will do a great difference in her. November 1, 2016 at 6:25 am
Botox is a toxin, it's not for "taking care of your skin". If you want to actually take care of your skin and reduce the appearance of your wrinkles, you should do a deep chemical peel once a year, derma roll every month, and use prescription Retin-A in between those things. Keeping the skin hydrated and nourished with consistent exfoliation is the key to young skin. So vitamin e oil, steam facials and natural moisturizers on the regular. As far as feminism and skincare/plastic surgery, I think it's less a gender issue than a reach to maintain biological attraction. Youth equals fertility, and – because we're animals – to attract a mate, generally it's about how "fertile" you appear. Call it peacocking or whatever you will, it's not anti-feminist to care about how you look. | FAKE |
1,506 | Jeb Bush Picks Up Endorsement From Lindsey Graham | Former GOP presidential hopeful Linsdey Graham has announced his endorsement of Jeb Bush for president.
Graham's presidential campaign went nowhere, but as a senator from the early voting state of South Carolina he hopes to still have some clout.
Graham praised Bush's temperament Friday morning, following Thursday night's GOP debate. "He hasn't tried to get ahead in a contested primary by embracing demagoguery ... he's not running to be commander-in-chief by running people down," he said.
That was clearly a reference to Donald Trump. Bush returned the admiration, calling Graham a "patriot."
"He loves this country. You just hear it how he spoke from his heart about what's at stake here. What's at stake is our way of life," Bush said.
Jeb Bush — still slumping in polls — has been looking for a way to jump-start his campaign, but an endorsement from a former candidate who couldn't break through either probably won't give Bush the upswing he needs.
With the Iowa caucuses fewer than three weeks away, he's polling behind Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson both nationally and in Iowa. Bush was unable to stand out from the field once again at Thursday's Republican presidential debate. And Bush's donors are reportedly getting skittish, saying it's only a matter of time before he drops out. Politico reported that several donors said they are now waiting for what one former George W. Bush administration appointee described as a "family hall pass" to switch to another campaign after the New Hampshire primary. | REAL |
1,641 | 2016 Republican race enters a new, volatile phase | The fight for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination appears to be moving into a new, more fluid phase.
No longer is the question merely whether or how Donald Trump can be stopped.
The recent rise in the polls of retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — Trump’s low-key stylistic opposite — has shown that the celebrity billionaire may not be the only one who can tap the appetite of many in the party’s angry base for an outsider.
And after Wednesday’s chaotic and freewheeling debate, there also is a new dynamic on the establishment side of the race.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s once-formidable campaign appears to be nearing a state of collapse, made worse by his flailing on the stage in Colorado.
That has provided an opening to his onetime ally, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is getting a new look from the party establishment — an ironic situation, given Rubio’s roots as an insurgent tea party favorite in 2010.
“Marco Rubio now has probably the best shot to emerge as the mainstream alternative to Trump and Carson,” said Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary for President George W. Bush.
More broadly, Fleischer, who is not committed to any of the 2016 candidates, predicted that the GOP is about to enter “a condensed version of where it was four years ago, where the party is volatile and shopping around.”
That could help Ted Cruz, who also made a strong showing in the debate. The firebrand senator from Texas, widely despised by the Washington Republican hierarchy, is looking to nudge out Trump and Carson among voters who are looking for a candidate to supplant the old order.
“I don’t think the party is going to nominate anybody who has not been elected before,” said Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Also likely to force some clarity in the coming weeks is the calendar. The first contest, in Iowa, is barely more than three months away.
So the focus for all the leading contenders will have to shift, from raising their profiles nationally to refining the strategies and organization it will take to put specific states in their column.
“The campaign is really in a nuts-and-bolts stage,” said Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. “It’s about getting on the ballot, organizing, and making sure people understand what caucuses are in Iowa and other states and teach them how to participate. It’s about getting people committed and ready.”
Lewandowski said Trump’s campaign is already hiring staff for states that do not hold their primaries until March.
“Our approach is to execute and meet the criteria to get on the ballot in all 50 states, in five territories and in the District of Columbia. That’s a full-time job,” he added. “This campaign is doing all of the things necessary for long-term success.”
At the same time, Trump seemed to be moderating and refining his message as he campaigned outside Reno, Nev., Thursday afternoon.
Where he previously has devoted his rallies to slinging insults at his opponents and boasting about his poll numbers, Trump focused instead on describing the professional and life experience he would bring to the White House.
He also cited issues where he claimed to have led before it was a popular thing to do — including opposing the Iraq war and aggressively combating illegal immigration.
“That’s the kind of thinking we need in the country,” Trump said. “A lot of the people in the audience, maybe in your small way you have that same thinking.”
Bush, campaigning in New Hampshire, insisted that his struggling candidacy should not be counted out. The former Florida governor, who is polling in the single digits almost everywhere, insisted, “We’re doing fine.”
But he appeared to acknowledge that he had not helped his prospects with his showing in the debate.
“Look, there are two types of politicians. There are the talkers and there are the doers,” Bush told the crowd. “I wish I could talk as well as some of the people on the stage, the big personalities on the stage, but I’m a doer.”
Rubio, meanwhile, must capitalize — quickly — on whatever interest and momentum may be generated by his debate performance. He spent the morning making the rounds of six network and cable television shows and the remainder of the day fundraising in Denver and Chicago. He will be in Iowa on Friday.
On “CBS This Morning,” Rubio declined to criticize Bush personally and said the differences between the two will be fleshed out in terms of policy.
“I’m going to continue to tell people who I am, what I’m for. There are policy differences between us — we’ll discuss those. Americans deserve to hear those. But I’m not going to change my campaign,” he said.
“Jeb is my friend, I have admiration for him. I’m not running against him. I’m running for president.”
Cruz, meanwhile, is building what GOP insiders say is a strong organization. The campaign says that it has 77,000 volunteers on the ground, with 6,000 in the first four voting states.
Fundraising has also been robust — and was reignited by the debate, during which the senator trained his fire on the CNBC moderators and the media. A Cruz aide said more than $1 million had poured in since Wednesday night’s debate.
There will be growing pressure on candidates who are getting no traction to get out of the race. On Thursday, for instance, the New York Times editorial board called upon New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to abandon his bid.
“New Jersey is in trouble, and the governor is off pursuing a presidential run that’s turned out to be nothing more than a vanity project,” the paper wrote. “Mr. Christie’s numbers are in the basement, and he’s nearly out of campaign cash. This is his moment, all right: to go home and use the rest of his term to clean out the barn, as Speaker John Boehner would say.”
Christie, for his part, tweeted, “Can’t read the article because I don’t have a subscription, but I can tell you this — I am not going anywhere.”
Robert Costa in Colorado and Jenna Johnson in Nevada contributed to this report. | REAL |
139 | ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie | The late evening of Aug. 9, 2014, I couldn’t sleep. I was due to substitute-anchor MSNBC’s “UP with Steve Kornacki” and should have been asleep. But after looking at my Twitter feed and reading the rage under #Ferguson, I felt compelled to type a reaction to the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. Tying the shooting to the inane whine of certain politicians about a “war on whites,” I decried the next morning the death of yet another unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer.
In those early hours and early days, there was more unknown than known. But this month, the Justice Department released two must-read investigations connected to the killing of Brown that filled in blanks, corrected the record and brought sunlight to dark places by revealing ugly practices that institutionalized racism and hardship. They have also forced me to deal with two uncomfortable truths: Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown.
The report on the Ferguson police department detailed abuse and blatant trampling of the constitutional rights of people, mostly African Americans, in Ferguson. Years of mistreatment by the police, the courts and the municipal government, including evidence that all three balanced their books on the backs of the people of Ferguson, were laid bare in 102 damning pages. The overwhelming data from DOJ provided background and much-needed context for why a small St. Louis suburb most had never heard of exploded the moment Brown was killed. His death gave voice to many who suffered in silence.
The unarmed 18-year-old also became a potent symbol of the lack of trust between African Americans and law enforcement. Not just in Ferguson, but in the rest of the country. Lord knows there have been plenty of recent examples. And the militarized response to protesters by local police put an exclamation point on demonstrators’ concerns. But the other DOJ report, the one on the actual shooting of Michael Brown, shows him to be an inappropriate symbol.
Through exhaustive interviews with witnesses, cross-checking their statements with previous statements to authorities and the media, ballistics, DNA evidence and results from three autopsies, the Justice Department was able to present a credible and troubling picture of what happened on Canfield Drive. More credible than the grand jury decision to not indict Wilson. The transcript of his grand jury testimony read like so much hand-holding by the prosecution.
What DOJ found made me ill. Wilson knew about the theft of the cigarillos from the convenience store and had a description of the suspects. Brown fought with the officer and tried to take his gun. And the popular hands-up storyline, which isn’t corroborated by ballistic and DNA evidence and multiple witness statements, was perpetuated by Witness 101. In fact, just about everything said to the media by Witness 101, whom we all know as Dorian Johnson, the friend with Brown that day, was not supported by the evidence and other witness statements.
Page 6: Brown then grabbed the weapon and struggled with Wilson to gain control of it. Wilson fired, striking Brown in the hand. Autopsy results and bullet trajectory, skin from Brown’s palm on the outside of the SUV door as well as Brown’s DNA on the inside of the driver’s door corroborate Wilson’s account that during the struggle, Brown used his right hand to grab and attempt to control Wilson’s gun. According to three autopsies, Brown sustained a close range gunshot wound to the fleshy portion of his right hand at the base of his right thumb. Soot from the muzzle of the gun found embedded in the tissue of this wound coupled with indicia of thermal change from the heat of the muzzle indicate that Brown’s hand was within inches of the muzzle of Wilson’s gun when it was fired. The location of the recovered bullet in the side panel of the driver’s door, just above Wilson’s lap, also corroborates Wilson’s account of the struggle over the gun and when the gun was fired, as do witness accounts that Wilson fired at least one shot from inside the SUV.
Page 8: Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson. As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible [or] otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time. Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media. Prosecutors did not rely on those accounts when making a prosecutive decision. While credible witnesses gave varying accounts of exactly what Brown was doing with his hands as he moved toward Wilson – i.e., balling them, holding them out, or pulling up his pants up – and varying accounts of how he was moving – i.e., “charging,” moving in “slow motion,” or “running” – they all establish that Brown was moving toward Wilson when Wilson shot him. Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and “charging” at Wilson.
The DOJ report notes on page 44 that Johnson “made multiple statements to the media immediately following the incident that spawned the popular narrative that Wilson shot Brown execution-style as he held up his hands in surrender.” In one of those interviews, Johnson told MSNBC that Brown was shot in the back by Wilson. It was then that Johnson said Brown stopped, turned around with his hands up and said, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” And, like that, “hands up, don’t shoot” became the mantra of a movement. But it was wrong, built on a lie.
Yet this does not diminish the importance of the real issues unearthed in Ferguson by Brown’s death. Nor does it discredit what has become the larger “Black Lives Matter.” In fact, the false Ferguson narrative stuck because of concern over a distressing pattern of other police killings of unarmed African American men and boys around the time of Brown’s death. Eric Garner was killed on a Staten Island street on July 17. John Crawford III was killed in a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, on Aug. 5, four days before Brown. Levar Jones survived being shot by a South Carolina state trooper on Sept. 4. Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was killed in a Cleveland park on Nov. 23, the day before the Ferguson grand jury opted not to indict Wilson. Sadly, the list has grown longer.
Now that black lives matter to everyone, it is imperative that we continue marching for and giving voice to those killed in racially charged incidents at the hands of police and others. But we must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative on behalf of someone who would otherwise offend our sense of right and wrong. And when we discover that we have, we must acknowledge it, admit our error and keep on marching. That’s what I’ve done here. | REAL |
7,744 | Lavrov and Kerry discuss Syrian settlement | Lavrov and Kerry discuss Syrian settlement October 28, 2016 TASS
Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the Syrian settlement as well as the situation in Yemen and Libya by telephone on Oct. 28.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the conversation had taken place at the U.S. side’s request.
"The foreign policy chiefs continued discussing ways of settling the Syrian conflict, including the normalization of the situation around Aleppo, with account taken of fundamental approaches contained in the previously reached Russian-U.S. agreements. For that, the United States should ultimately separate moderate opposition (in Syria) from terror groups," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"Lavrov and Kerry also discussed assistance to the solution of crises in Yemen and Libya as well as separate issues of bilateral agenda," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed. | FAKE |
8,177 | BREAKING : DOJ Says They Will “HELP” Review the 650K Emails – TruthFeed | BREAKING : DOJ Says They Will “HELP” Review the 650K Emails BREAKING : DOJ Says They Will “HELP” Review the 650K Emails Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 31, 2016
Oh great, now the biased DOJ is going to “help” the FBI go through the 650K emails because they want to “HURRY THROUGH” it?
That’s unsettling and smells of more “rigged favors” from Loretta Lynch.
On Friday the FBI announced they were reopening the email investigation into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information.
In a statement, the FBI said that they discovered “new emails” pertinent to the earlier investigation on “several devices.”
We now know there were 650K emails found on Huma and Anthony’s private computer.
How do you feel about the DOJ “helping” sift through the emails?
I say, HELL NO! BREAKING: Justice Dept. says it’ll dedicate all needed resources to quickly review emails in Clinton case – AP This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | FAKE |
4,134 | Bernie Sanders' call for ouster of two convention co-chairs rejected | Democratic National Committee officials on Saturday turned down Bernie Sanders' formal request for the ouster of “aggressive attack surrogates” for Hillary Clinton from key national convention committees.
The campaign announced earlier that it wanted to remove Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy as a co-chairman of the Platform Committee and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank as head of the Rules Committee. Frank has sharply criticized Sanders’ positions on breaking up big banks and Malloy has criticized Sanders on guns.
“Governor Malloy and Mr. Frank have both been aggressive attack surrogates for the Clinton campaign,” Sanders campaign counsel Brad Deutsch wrote in a letter to the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. “Their criticisms of Sen. Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the senator and his campaign."
But committee co-chairs Jim Roosevelt and Lorraine Miller responded that his challenge "fails to meet the criteria" for their dismissal. It did not allege any violations in the conduct of their elections to their posts by the DNC executive committee in January, they wrote.
The Sanders campaign’s Friday letter to Democratic National Committee rules officials marks the latest turn in Sanders’ feud with party officials. It comes a week after Sanders said he would make sure Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida isn’t reappointed to her role as head of the DNC if he becomes president and he began fundraising for her primary opponent, Tim Canova.
Most members of the convention standing committees — rules, platform and credentials — are awarded to candidates based on the results of those primaries and caucuses. But under party rules, Wasserman Schultz recommended co-chairs and a slate of 25 at-large appointments per committee for approval by the party’s executive committee.
In a May 6 letter to Wasserman Schultz, Sanders complained she selected only three of his more than 40 recommendations for committee appointments, and he expressed no confidence in Malloy or Frank, writing their appointments suggest the committees are being established “in an overtly partisan way.”
Deutsch argued Friday that Frank and Malloy can’t be relied upon to perform convention duties fairly “while laboring under such deeply held bias.”
“The appointment of two individuals so outspokenly critical of Sen. Sanders, and so closely affiliated with Secretary Clinton's campaign, raises concerns that two of the three Convention Standing Committees are being constituted in an overtly partisan way designed to exclude meaningful input from supporters of Sen. Sanders' candidacy,” Deutsch wrote.
In April, Tad Devine, Sanders’ senior adviser, said Frank is among surrogates for Hillary Clinton who used Sanders’ remarks to a New York Daily News editorial board on April 1 to promote a story line that questions Sanders’ capacity to be president. Devine pointed to Frank’s April 6 statements on MSNBC that Sanders “confused several things” in his responses to questions about his core issue of breaking up big banks. Frank also said Sanders’ responses to the editorial board were not “coherent.”
Frank said in an April interview with USA TODAY that he would step aside from his co-chairmanship if the Democratic nomination is still uncertain in June and if a Rules Committee decision could be the deciding factor. With Clinton's decisive lead in delegates, that appears unlikely.
A Connecticut Democratic Party spokesman told USA TODAY earlier this month that Malloy agrees with Sanders on many issues. On Saturday, Leigh Appleby said Malloy is committed to a platform and process reflective of the party's diverse viewpoints.
"This year's Democratic platform process is making an unprecedented effort to ensure the process is reflective of the entire party and that every Democrat has an opportunity to have their voice heard in a meaningful way," Appleby said in a statement. "And at the end of the day, Democats will put forward a platform that stands in stark contrast to the hateful, divisive, and dangerous policies of Donald Trump." | REAL |
917 | Five Reasons the New York Democratic Primary Felt Competitive | NEW YORK, N.Y. — If Hillary Clinton is winning the Democratic presidential race, why has it felt like she’s losing? Yes, Mrs. Clinton scored an important victory in New York Tuesday, winning her adopted home state in the primary. But should the outcome ever have been in doubt?As a former senator from New York she […] | REAL |
3,854 | To get around Congress, Obama turns to city halls | WASHINGTON — President Obama has quietly racked up a series of legislative victories during the past few months as lawmakers have enthusiastically embraced his calls for a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave and universal pre-kindergarten.
Instead of Capitol Hill, those victories happened in city halls, state houses and county buildings far from Washington.
At least six major cities — Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Washington, D.C. — have passed paid sick leave laws in the four months since Obama called for state and local action in this year's State of the Union Address. Since the 2013 address when Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, 17 states and six major cities have taken action, including Los Angeles last week.
Obama's state-and-local strategy may be unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Though previous administrations have appointed top advisers to listen to concerns of state and local officials, the Obama White House appears to be the first to aggressively use those same channels to encourage them to adopt Obama's policies.
"It is a change in the paradigm, where we used to sit passively by waiting for elected officials to come to us. We think we can have a more substantial impact if we collaborate," said Valerie Jarrett, the assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs.
"I think the president has always had the perspective that change always happens from the ground up, and our state and local officials are oftentimes more influenced by the will of the American people than the politics in Washington would seem to indicate," Jarrett said in an interview.
Obama has no formal authority over state and local lawmakers, so his persuasion is a form of soft power — the "phone" part of what Obama has described as a "pen-and-phone" strategy to take action in the absence of congressional cooperation.
He's found fertile ground in Democratic-run cities such as Seattle, where Mayor Ed Murray helped push for a minimum wage and paid leave laws that have gone into effect since April.
"President Obama recognizes that good ideas are being incubated at the local level, and those are ideas that are going to go to scale nationally," Murray said. That recognition can go a long way in a city such as Seattle, which often doesn't get the national attention East Coast cities do. "The president of the United States recognizing us only helps us. We do other things beside e-commerce and coffee," Murray said.
There's also resistance. Jon Russell is a councilman in Culpeper, Va., and the director of the American City County Exchange, a year-old initiative of the small-government American Legislative Exchange Council.
Russell said states — not cities, not Congress and not the president — should be the primary regulator of labor conditions. Obama, he said, is "hop-skipping over the states."
"With the number of states that have now turned to the opposite political party, he doesn't have the allies there that he used to," Russell said. "To work with the urban areas to push his agenda is not surprising. It's the only allies he really has."
The strategy has been more effective on some policies than others. Since last September, more than 200 mayors have signed on to the My Brother's Keeper initiative, a commitment to help boys and young men of color. But since Obama called for states to offer free community college in January, only a handful have moved in that direction.
The state-and-local strategy effort has been particularly effective on paid leave policies, which Obama championed in his State of the Union Address this year. "Forty-three million workers have no paid sick leave — 43 million. Think about that," Obama said. "So I'll be taking new action to help states adopt paid leave laws of their own."
That pledge came with a $1 million budget from the Department of Labor to help fund feasibility studies for state and local governments, which will begin to be awarded this summer.
Obama dispatched Jarrett and Labor Secretary Tom Perez on a "Lead on Leave" tour of cities that have adopted paid leave policies. Jarrett went to Philadelphia and Chicago; Perez has been to Portland, Ore., Pawtucket, R.I., St. Petersburg, Fla., and Seattle.
Tuesday, Perez will be in Minneapolis, which just adopted a paid leave policy for city employees this month.
Perez said it's a mistake to view the state-and-local strategy as separate from a larger effort. "Our strategy is an all-of-the-above-and-then-some strategy," he said.
He said Obama will continue to use executive orders, as he did when he increased the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour.
"We want Congress to act, and I'm confident that it's a when question, not an if question. But we're also not going to wait around for Congress to act," Perez said.
Although focusing on city councils may seem small compared with the sweeping congressional legislation early in Obama's presidency, state minimum wage laws will raise the pay of more than 7 million people by 2017. (That number, which comes from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, includes people making just above minimum wage who were helped indirectly because their wages are increased accordingly.)
"That's nothing to sneeze at. That's progress," Jarrett said.
San Francisco passed the first paid sick time law in the nation in 2006, requiring all employers to grant one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. Three states and 18 cities now have paid sick leave laws on the books, according to A Better Balance, a New York-based legal advocacy group that tracks such laws.
A year ago, advocates had a hard time breaking through the public consciousness on the issue, said the group's co-president, Sherry Leiwant. After a White House Working Families Summit last year, and again after January's State of the Union Address, there's been an "explosion" of interest by state and local lawmakers, she said.
"The White House leadership on this issue has been huge. It's had a real impact," Leiwant said. "That influence on mayors or governors, who are Democrats but haven't paid a lot of attention to this issue, or they want to be pro-business Democrats, this gives them a lot of cover."
A Better Balance still favors a national law that would cover everyone, but while the government is divided at the national level, "the best strategy is to go to localities and states."
A city-by-city strategy can be painstaking and legally complicated. Every state grants different home rule powers to cities — and even different powers to different-sized cities in the same state.
Philadelphia was able to pass a paid leave bill applying to private-sector workers, but Pittsburgh's law applies only to some non-union city workers. Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak credits Obama for giving her city's effort "a lot of momentum," but she said more cities need to put pressure on the state Legislature to adopt statewide law.
There's also pushback from the opposite direction. Last month, the Pennsylvania Senate voted 37-12 to preempt the Philadelphia law, taking the power to regulate sick leave out of the hands of local governments.
That bill's sponsor, state Sen. John Eichelberger Jr., said it's untenable to have 2,562 municipalities with different labor standards, forcing businesses to comply with a patchwork of rules.
"Philosophically, I have a real problem with President Obama going to a municipality and trying to accomplish an agenda, whether it's liberal or conservative or otherwise," he said. "It's just not the place to adopt these policies."
Obama has opened an entirely new frontier of presidential power by turning to state and local governments, said Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, who studies the effect of presidential persuasion at the University of North Texas.
"I'm really struck by, one, why hasn't anybody thought of this before? And two, this could be a very effective strategy," Eshbaugh-Soha said. "At a time when executive orders are becoming particularly controversial and you're not able to break through the gridlock of Congress, I think it's ingenious."
He's skeptical that the effort will put much pressure on members of Congress who don't support Obama's policies.
Jarrett said the effort is starting to snowball. She said some city leaders agreed with paid leave on principle but were reluctant to pass what could be seen as burdensome regulations in a difficult economy. As more cities and states have passed those policies, it's emboldened others.
"Success begets success," she said. "What the evidence has begun to show is it's not a burden but an investment that is starting to pay off."
Indeed, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter vetoed two paid leave bills in 2011 and 2013. But three weeks after Obama's State of the Union Address this year, Nutter reversed course.
What changed? Nutter said the economy was better, and the bill contained key compromises to accommodate small businesses. Nutter spokesman Mark McDonald said he was unaware of any role Obama had in getting the bill passed.
Bill Greenlee, the councilman who sponsored the measure, said Nutter "completely turned a corner" on paid leave when the president put it on his agenda. "I gotta think that when the president mentions sick leave in his State of the Union, and if you're a Democrat and a supporter of the president's agenda in general, that's gotta have an effect," Greenlee said.
Nutter did make a symbolic nod to Obama's influence in signing the paid leave bill: He signed it with a pen Obama gave him — after the president used it to sign an unemployment compensation bill. The only other time Nutter used that pen was on an executive order raising the minimum wage for city contractors to $12 an hour. | REAL |
7,049 | Celebrity Deathmatch: Darkmoon Sages Make Their Final Predictions on US Election | Is Trump the lesser of two evils or are both candidates equally unelectable?
THE GREAT DEBATE BEGINS: We’ll know who is right tomorrow!
SARDONICUS (to Flopot) : I know it makes your blood boil to consider the “lesser of two evils” scenario. But LD has always been a conscientious non-voter and is therefore unlikely to be voting for either Trump or Hillary. Nor am I for that matter, since I am a UK resident and do not get to vote in the American elections.
You really must reconcile yourself, Flopot, to the fact that Hillary is held in such visceral loathing that her millions of haters feel they have no option but to vote for her opponent, Donald Trump, even though they are aware of the Donald’s many faults and his Zionist connections.
It’s either not voting at all or voting for the lesser of two evils.
FLOPOT : You don’t understand the meaning of “lesser of two evils”. It is a con trick; it doesn’t exist. Donald will pursue the same globalist wars and cultural revolutions as any other Zionist puppet. It is a meme that exists to get your consent to continue the same evil.
HARBINGER: Hear hear. Exactly Flopot. As I’ve stated umpteen times, Trump is good cop, Hillary is bad. But sadly, Sardonicus does not see the ‘grand plan’ even though the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Carroll Quigley do, both very much part of that process.
There is not one politician in the west who becomes what they are, without a careful vetting procedure. Classic example is Jeremy Corbin , whom many thought was going to be the saviour of Labour and take it to the Zionists, when he has proven without any shadow of a doubt that he’s a rampant Zionist, even though who goes on pro Palestine marches.
Trump is a puppet. Clinton is a puppet. May is a puppet. Merkel is a puppet….. There is not ONE politician in the west who isn’t part of the ‘grand plan’ and it’s why everything works according to plan.
SARDONICUS (to Flopot and Harbinger) : Yes, I understand exactly what both you and Harbinger are saying and I can sympathize with your viewpoint. You are saying there is NO LESSER OF TWO EVILS here since both candidates are EQUALLY EVIL. Because both are Zionists and will deliver a program to further Jewish interests. That’s what you’re saying, right?
The only difference, as Harbie indicates, is that one of these two candidates is playing the “bad cop” (Hillary) and the other is playing the “good cop” (Trump). So it’s nonsense to vote for the “good cop” as the “lesser of two evils” when both cops are equally evil when the chips are down.
This is your argument and I can sympathize with it only if you are correct in your initial assumption that Trump has no redeeming features whatever and is a total charlatan and liar who will break every single promise of his if he gets into the White House.
You are entitled to that assumption, but you are NOT entitled to believe that your assumption is universally shared. Kevin MacDonald certainly doesn’t believe that Trump is a thorough scoundrel who will sell all White America down the river as soon as he is elected. Nor do the thousands of White Nationalists and other White Americans who share MacDonald’s perfectly acceptable and intellectually defensible views.
These millions of Trump supporters do NOT believe that Trump is an unmitigated scoundrel who will break his promise to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out. Trump has said he has no intention of starting a war with Russia. Hillary has made no such promise. Trump has said he will crack down on illegal immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants from hostile Muslim states. Well, MacDonald and his White Nationalists are giving Trump the benefit of the doubt.
I for one refuse to think that Kevin MacDonald and the millions who are hoping for a resurgence of White ethnic interests are deluded and mistaken in their advocacy of Donald Trump. They could be right. Trump could be their man and actually deliver the goods, i.e., improve the lives of millions of White Americans who are now suffering under Jewish hegemony and a multiculturalism that has gone mad.
The pessimism both of you share in regard to the irredeemable character of Donald Trump is simply a subjective state of mind. It’s an opinion, not a fact.
I may choose to say, “I can’t stand garlic and onions.” This makes me a garlic-and-onion pessimist. My subjective viewpoint that garlic and onions are horrible vegetables does not make it a scientific fact that garlic and onions are horrible vegetables. The garlic and onion eaters of the world are entitled to tell me to get lost if I told everyone to give up eating garlic and onions.
So it is with Flopot and Harbinger with their Trump pessimism. They are making a logical mistake in confusing impressions with facts. It is not a FACT that Trump is a scoundrel; at the most it is a subjective opinion.
HP : Trump is not a politician who has been a politician who grew up a politician and lived and breathed politics all his adult life. Apart from business/social, of course.
He’s an Alpha businessman who just happens to be waaay more intelligent and personally powerful than 99% of the political mediocres who envy and hate him.
He came from out of nowhere and like a freight train rolled right over them before they could even cry foul or man an offense against him based on their default slime factor M.O.
Hell, he vetted them ! Even as the entire weight of the political, M$M, Hollywood, Academia, foreigners, etc., etc., set upon him like no other in memory near or far. But they couldn’t even put a dent in him, or scare him off, and you know the vile demons tried very hard.
He didn’t scare. But he did and does scare them. A lot.
Being a uber-quick study, he easily overtook and surpassed the half-bright bureaucrat politicians and within one solitary year he IS The Alpha Politician.
Putin (and his 12 time zones full of natural resources) will no doubt enjoy Trump. Putin will respect his intelligence, embrace his personality, utilize his uber-business talents and skills, and very very importantly, hugely importantly.. share their big big patriotism for their nations, their citizens..
In other words: The world gets an early Christmas present this year!
UNGENIUS: Well said, HP! I would add only one statement: Trump is not a murderer, but Killery is a murderer of long standing which should make a choice simple between the two.
GILBERT HUNTLY: Sardonicus, thanks for your healthy and sane perspective! Well said! 🙂
LOBRO: Seconding that. And add HP’s perceptive comment [ above ] to the score for level headed reason.
ARIADNATHEO: Sardonicus, Harbinger and Flopot: You are all wrong, as I used to be, I admit.
“Jewish hegemony,” “zionism” …. are nothing but red herrings that distract our attention from the real enemy. It’s not “Jews, Jews, Jews,” it’s Goyim, goyim, goyim. I owe it to Amy Martin to have finally understood who are, to cite her “the two more powerful lobbyists in the US” — the Podesta brothers!
Also who are the real rulers whose vast web of corruption brought them virtually absolute power: the Clintons! No Jews are involved anywhere.
Amy is really good (AND good looking). Why did RT get rid of her?
KAREN: Ariadnatheo, great satire!
FLOPOT: Satire reveals truth, though. We’re our own worst enemy — gullible goy; the malleable toy.
ARIADNATHEO: This is a prediction I trust [ short amusing video ].
If you watch, make sure it is BEFORE lunch.
JOHN KIRBY: Sounds like the usual shakedown.
THE DOT (having the last word, unedited) :
@ darkmooners charlatans
you have been supporting the cretin clown d j dumpy from day one just because that you are sick and mentaly diseased racist pigs just like him your lunatic drivel is just like his . guess what Adriana you sick horny hog ,your Donny will not win ,loser I seen a gifted seer and some mysterious unseen someone ,she can look at the future do some kind of time travel ,I was told that ,but my mind couldn’t accept it ,so i asked for a proof ,the future winning lottery numbers.she asked for my soul then i ran away . before that she said that she visited tomorrow and Donny lost the election . now Adriana and the rest of you dark spirited hyenas ,who is crazier you or me or that witch We’ll know tomorrow (Ed) Like this? Share it now. 7 thoughts on “ Celebrity Deathmatch: Darkmoon Sages Make Their Final Predictions on US Election ” Flopot says: | FAKE |
3,343 | John Kerry: ISIS responsible for genocide | (CNN) Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the United States has determined that ISIS' action against the Yazidis and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria constitutes genocide .
Children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants in Mosul on Tuesday, June 10.
Children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants in Mosul on Tuesday, June 10.
A Syrian rebel fighter lies on a stretcher at a makeshift hospital in Douma, Syria, on Wednesday, July 9. He was reportedly injured while fighting ISIS militants.
A Syrian rebel fighter lies on a stretcher at a makeshift hospital in Douma, Syria, on Wednesday, July 9. He was reportedly injured while fighting ISIS militants.
Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee Mosul on Wednesday, August 6, after the latest wave of ISIS advances.
Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee Mosul on Wednesday, August 6, after the latest wave of ISIS advances.
Thousands of Yazidis are escorted to safety by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and a People's Protection Unit in Mosul on Saturday, August 9.
Thousands of Yazidis are escorted to safety by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and a People's Protection Unit in Mosul on Saturday, August 9.
Aziza Hamid, a 15-year-old Iraqi girl, cries for her father while she and some other Yazidi people are flown to safety Monday, August 11, after a dramatic rescue operation at Iraq's Mount Sinjar. A CNN crew was on the flight, which took diapers, milk, water and food to the site where as many as 70,000 people were trapped by ISIS. But only a few of them were able to fly back on the helicopter with the Iraqi Air Force and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
Aziza Hamid, a 15-year-old Iraqi girl, cries for her father while she and some other Yazidi people are flown to safety Monday, August 11, after a dramatic rescue operation at Iraq's Mount Sinjar. A CNN crew was on the flight, which took diapers, milk, water and food to the site where as many as 70,000 people were trapped by ISIS. But only a few of them were able to fly back on the helicopter with the Iraqi Air Force and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters fire at ISIS militant positions from their position on the top of Mount Zardak, east of Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 9.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters fire at ISIS militant positions from their position on the top of Mount Zardak, east of Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 9.
A elderly man is carried after crossing the Syria-Turkey border near Suruc on Saturday, September 20.
A elderly man is carried after crossing the Syria-Turkey border near Suruc on Saturday, September 20.
Syrian Kurds wait near a border crossing in Suruc as they wait to return to their homes in Kobani on Sunday, September 28.
Syrian Kurds wait near a border crossing in Suruc as they wait to return to their homes in Kobani on Sunday, September 28.
A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier who was wounded in a battle with ISIS is wheeled to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Duhuk, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 30.
A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier who was wounded in a battle with ISIS is wheeled to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Duhuk, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 30.
Alleged ISIS militants stand next to an ISIS flag atop a hill in Kobani on Monday, October 6.
Alleged ISIS militants stand next to an ISIS flag atop a hill in Kobani on Monday, October 6.
Kiymet Ergun, a Syrian Kurd, celebrates in Mursitpinar, Turkey, after an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Kobani on Monday, October 13.
Kiymet Ergun, a Syrian Kurd, celebrates in Mursitpinar, Turkey, after an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Kobani on Monday, October 13.
Cundi Minaz, a female Kurdish fighter, is buried in a cemetery in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc on Tuesday, October 14. Minaz was reportedly killed during clashes with ISIS militants in nearby Kobani.
Cundi Minaz, a female Kurdish fighter, is buried in a cemetery in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc on Tuesday, October 14. Minaz was reportedly killed during clashes with ISIS militants in nearby Kobani.
Heavy smoke rises in Kobani following an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition on October 18.
Heavy smoke rises in Kobani following an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition on October 18.
Kurdish fighters walk to positions as they combat ISIS forces in Kobani on Sunday, October 19.
Kurdish fighters walk to positions as they combat ISIS forces in Kobani on Sunday, October 19.
ISIS militants stand near the site of an airstrike near the Turkey-Syria border on Thursday, October 23. The United States and several Arab nations have been bombing ISIS targets in Syria to take out the militant group's ability to command, train and resupply its fighters.
ISIS militants stand near the site of an airstrike near the Turkey-Syria border on Thursday, October 23. The United States and several Arab nations have been bombing ISIS targets in Syria to take out the militant group's ability to command, train and resupply its fighters.
Iraqi special forces search a house in Jurf al-Sakhar, Iraq, on Thursday, October 30, after retaking the area from ISIS.
Iraqi special forces search a house in Jurf al-Sakhar, Iraq, on Thursday, October 30, after retaking the area from ISIS.
A picture taken from Turkey shows smoke rising after ISIS militants fired mortar shells toward an area controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters near Kobani on Monday, November 3.
A picture taken from Turkey shows smoke rising after ISIS militants fired mortar shells toward an area controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters near Kobani on Monday, November 3.
Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish People's Protection Units join forces to fight ISIS in Kobani on Wednesday, November 19.
Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish People's Protection Units join forces to fight ISIS in Kobani on Wednesday, November 19.
Smoke billows behind an ISIS sign during an Iraqi military operation to regain control of the town of Sadiyah, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on Tuesday, November 25.
Smoke billows behind an ISIS sign during an Iraqi military operation to regain control of the town of Sadiyah, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on Tuesday, November 25.
An elderly Yazidi man arrives in Kirkuk after being released by ISIS on Saturday, January 17. The militant group released about 200 Yazidis who were held captive for five months in Iraq. Almost all of the freed prisoners were in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect, Kurdish officials said.
An elderly Yazidi man arrives in Kirkuk after being released by ISIS on Saturday, January 17. The militant group released about 200 Yazidis who were held captive for five months in Iraq. Almost all of the freed prisoners were in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect, Kurdish officials said.
ISIS militants are seen through a rifle's scope during clashes with Peshmerga fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday, January 21.
ISIS militants are seen through a rifle's scope during clashes with Peshmerga fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday, January 21.
Junko Ishido, mother of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, reacts during a news conference in Tokyo on Friday, January 23. ISIS would later kill Goto and another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
Junko Ishido, mother of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, reacts during a news conference in Tokyo on Friday, January 23. ISIS would later kill Goto and another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
Collapsed buildings are seen in Kobani on January 27 after Kurdish forces took control of the town from ISIS.
Collapsed buildings are seen in Kobani on January 27 after Kurdish forces took control of the town from ISIS.
Kurdish people celebrate in Suruc, Turkey, near the Turkish-Syrian border, after ISIS militants were expelled from Kobani on Tuesday, January 27.
Kurdish people celebrate in Suruc, Turkey, near the Turkish-Syrian border, after ISIS militants were expelled from Kobani on Tuesday, January 27.
A Kurdish marksman looks over a destroyed area of Kobani on Friday, January 30, after the city had been liberated from the ISIS militant group. The Syrian city, also known as Ayn al-Arab, had been under assault by ISIS since mid-September.
A Kurdish marksman looks over a destroyed area of Kobani on Friday, January 30, after the city had been liberated from the ISIS militant group. The Syrian city, also known as Ayn al-Arab, had been under assault by ISIS since mid-September.
Safi al-Kasasbeh, right, receives condolences from tribal leaders at his home village near Karak, Jordan, on Wednesday, February 4. Al-Kasasbeh's son, Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh, was burned alive in a video that was recently released by ISIS militants. Jordan is one of a handful of Middle Eastern nations taking part in the U.S.-led military coalition against ISIS.
Displaced Assyrian women who fled their homes due to ISIS attacks pray at a church on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Sunday, March 1. ISIS militants abducted at least 220 Assyrians in Syria.
Displaced Assyrian women who fled their homes due to ISIS attacks pray at a church on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Sunday, March 1. ISIS militants abducted at least 220 Assyrians in Syria.
Iraqi Shiite fighters cover their ears as a rocket is launched during a clash with ISIS militants in the town of Al-Alam, Iraq, on Monday, March 9.
Iraqi Shiite fighters cover their ears as a rocket is launched during a clash with ISIS militants in the town of Al-Alam, Iraq, on Monday, March 9.
The parents of 19-year-old Mohammed Musallam react at the family's home in the East Jerusalem Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov on Tuesday, March 10. ISIS released a video purportedly showing a young boy executing Musallam, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent who ISIS claimed infiltrated the group in Syria to spy for the Jewish state. Musallam's family told CNN that he had no ties with the Mossad, Israel's spy agency, and had, in fact, been recruited by ISIS.
On April 1, Shiite militiamen celebrate the retaking of Tikrit, which had been under ISIS control since June. The push into Tikrit came days after U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS bases around the city.
On April 1, Shiite militiamen celebrate the retaking of Tikrit, which had been under ISIS control since June. The push into Tikrit came days after U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS bases around the city.
People in Tikrit inspect what used to be a palace of former President Saddam Hussein on April 3.
People in Tikrit inspect what used to be a palace of former President Saddam Hussein on April 3.
A Yazidi woman mourns for the death of her husband and children by ISIS after being released south of Kirkuk on April 8. ISIS is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions, crucifixions and other acts.
A Yazidi woman mourns for the death of her husband and children by ISIS after being released south of Kirkuk on April 8. ISIS is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions, crucifixions and other acts.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces help Yazidis as they arrive at a medical center in Altun Kupri, Iraq, on April 8.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces help Yazidis as they arrive at a medical center in Altun Kupri, Iraq, on April 8.
Yazidis embrace after being released by ISIS south of Kirkuk, Iraq, on Wednesday, April 8. ISIS released more than 200 Yazidis , a minority group whose members were killed, captured and displaced when the Islamist terror organization overtook their towns in northern Iraq last summer, officials said.
Thousands of Iraqis cross a bridge over the Euphrates River to Baghdad as they flee Ramadi on Friday, April 17.
Thousands of Iraqis cross a bridge over the Euphrates River to Baghdad as they flee Ramadi on Friday, April 17.
A member of Afghanistan's security forces stands at the site where a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up in front of the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Saturday, April 18. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The explosion killed at least 33 people and injured more than 100 others, a public health spokesman said.
A member of Afghanistan's security forces stands at the site where a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up in front of the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Saturday, April 18. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The explosion killed at least 33 people and injured more than 100 others, a public health spokesman said.
Iraqi soldiers fire their weapons toward ISIS group positions in the Garma district, west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, on Sunday, April 26. Pro-government forces said they had recently made advances on areas held by Islamist jihadists.
Iraqi soldiers fire their weapons toward ISIS group positions in the Garma district, west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, on Sunday, April 26. Pro-government forces said they had recently made advances on areas held by Islamist jihadists.
People search through debris after an explosion at a Shiite mosque in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, on Friday, May 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, according to tweets from ISIS supporters, which included a formal statement from ISIS detailing the operation.
Residents examine a damaged mosque after an Iraqi Air Force bombing in the ISIS-seized city of Falluja, Iraq, on Sunday, May 31. At least six were killed and nine others wounded during the bombing.
Residents examine a damaged mosque after an Iraqi Air Force bombing in the ISIS-seized city of Falluja, Iraq, on Sunday, May 31. At least six were killed and nine others wounded during the bombing.
Syrians wait near the Turkish border during clashes between ISIS and Kurdish armed groups in Kobani, Syria, on Thursday, June 25. The photo was taken in Sanliurfa, Turkey. ISIS militants disguised as Kurdish security forces infiltrated Kobani on Thursday and killed "many civilians," said a spokesman for the Kurds in Kobani.
Syrians wait near the Turkish border during clashes between ISIS and Kurdish armed groups in Kobani, Syria, on Thursday, June 25. The photo was taken in Sanliurfa, Turkey. ISIS militants disguised as Kurdish security forces infiltrated Kobani on Thursday and killed "many civilians," said a spokesman for the Kurds in Kobani.
People in Ashmoun, Egypt, carry the coffin for 1st Lt. Mohammed Ashraf, who was killed when the ISIS militant group attacked Egyptian military checkpoints on Wednesday, July 1. At least 17 soldiers were reportedly killed, and 30 were injured.
Protesters in Istanbul carry anti-ISIS banners and flags to show support for victims of the Suruc suicide blast during a demonstration on Monday, July 20.
Protesters in Istanbul carry anti-ISIS banners and flags to show support for victims of the Suruc suicide blast during a demonstration on Monday, July 20.
Mourners in Gaziantep, Turkey, grieve over a coffin Tuesday, July 21, during a funeral ceremony for the victims of a suspected ISIS suicide bomb attack. That bombing killed at least 31 people in Suruc, a Turkish town that borders Syria. Turkish authorities blamed ISIS for the attack.
Saudi officials and investigators check the inside of the mosque on August 6.
Saudi officials and investigators check the inside of the mosque on August 6.
The governor of the Asir region in Saudi Arabia, Prince Faisal bin Khaled bin Abdulaziz, left, visits a man who was wounded in a suicide bombing attack on a mosque in Abha, Saudi Arabia, on August 6. ISIS claimed responsibility for the explosion, which killed at least 13 people and injured nine others.
Buildings reduced to piles of debris can be seen in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi on August 6.
Buildings reduced to piles of debris can be seen in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi on August 6.
Smoke rises as Iraqi security forces bomb ISIS positions in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi, Iraq, on August 6.
Smoke rises as Iraqi security forces bomb ISIS positions in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi, Iraq, on August 6.
An ISIS fighter poses with spoils purportedly taken after capturing the Syrian town of al-Qaryatayn.
An ISIS fighter poses with spoils purportedly taken after capturing the Syrian town of al-Qaryatayn.
In this image taken from social media, an ISIS fighter holds the group's flag after the militant group overran the Syrian town of al-Qaryatayn on Thursday, August 6, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. ISIS uses modern tools such as social media to promote reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism. Fighters are destroying holy sites and valuable antiquities even as their leaders propagate a return to the early days of Islam.
Iraqi men look at damage following a bomb explosion that targeted a vegetable market in Baghdad on Thursday, August 13. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
Iraqi men look at damage following a bomb explosion that targeted a vegetable market in Baghdad on Thursday, August 13. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
Smoke rises above a damaged building in Ramadi, Iraq, following a coalition airstrike against ISIS positions on Saturday, August 15.
Smoke rises above a damaged building in Ramadi, Iraq, following a coalition airstrike against ISIS positions on Saturday, August 15.
Shiite fighters, fighting alongside Iraqi government forces, fire a rocket at ISIS militants as they advance toward the center of Baiji, Iraq, on Monday, October 19.
Shiite fighters, fighting alongside Iraqi government forces, fire a rocket at ISIS militants as they advance toward the center of Baiji, Iraq, on Monday, October 19.
Members of the Egyptian military approach the wreckage of a Russian passenger plane Sunday, November 1, in Hassana, Egypt. The plane crashed the day before, killing all 224 people on board. ISIS claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but the group's claim wasn't immediately verified.
Syrian government troops walk inside the Kweiras air base on Wednesday, November 11, after they broke a siege imposed by ISIS militants.
Syrian government troops walk inside the Kweiras air base on Wednesday, November 11, after they broke a siege imposed by ISIS militants.
Smoke rises over the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on November 12. Kurdish Iraqi fighters, backed by a U.S.-led air campaign, retook the strategic town, which ISIS militants overran last year. ISIS wants to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria.
Emergency personnel and civilians gather at the site of a twin suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, November 12. The bombings killed at least 43 people and wounded more than 200 more. ISIS appeared to claim responsibility in a statement posted on social media.
Wounded people are helped outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris following a series of coordinated attacks in the city on Friday, November 13. The militant group ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed at least 130 people and wounded hundreds more.
Investigators check the scene of a mosque attack Friday, November 27, in northern Bangladesh's Bogra district. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack that left at least one person dead and three more wounded.
Yemenis check the scene of a car bomb attack Sunday, December 6, in Aden, Yemen. Aden Gov. Jaafar Saad and six bodyguards died in the attack , for which the terror group ISIS claimed responsibility.
Syrian pro-government forces gather at the site of a deadly triple bombing Sunday, January 31, in the Damascus suburb of Sayeda Zeynab . ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement circulating online from supporters of the terrorist group.
Syrians gather at the site of a double car bomb attack in the Al-Zahraa neighborhood of the Homs, Syria, on February 21, 2016. Multiple attacks in Homs and southern Damascus kill at least 122 and injure scores, according to the state-run SANA news agency. ISIS claimed responsibility.
Wounded passengers are treated following a suicide bombing at the Brussels Airport on March 22, 2016. The attacks on the airport and a subway killed 32 people and wounded more than 300. ISIS claims its "fighters" launched the attacks in the Belgian capital.
"My purpose here today is to assert in my judgment, (ISIS) is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims," he said, during a news conference at the State Department.
Kerry said that in 2014, ISIS trapped Yazidis, killed them, enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls, " selling them at auction, raping them at will and destroying the communities in which they had lived for countless generations," executed Christians "solely for their faith" and also "forced Christian women and girls into slavery."
"Without our intervention, it is clear that those people would have been slaughtered," he said.
This is the first time that the United States has declared a genocide since Darfur in 2004.
The House of Representatives on Monday unanimously passed a resolution labeling the ISIS atrocities against Christian groups in Syria and Iraq "genocide," a term the State Department had been reluctant to use about the attacks and mass murders by the terror group.
The move, aimed at ramping up pressure on the Obama administration, appears to have worked.
The measure was non-binding, but both Republicans and Democrats in the House joined together 393-0 to back a "sense of Congress" saying the crimes committed against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in the region amount to war crimes and, in some cases, genocide.
Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, whose Nebraska district is home to the largest group of resettled Yazidis in the U.S., authored the resolution with California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo.
During debate on Monday, Fortenberry noted it was a rare instance of an issue that has "risen above the petty and difficult differences we often work out on the floor of the House of Representatives."
Under a deadline set by Congress, the State Department had until Thursday to formally to decide whether it would issue a comprehensive genocide designation.
Kerry, though, had previously alluded to the possibility that the actions of ISIS, also know as ISIL, were genocide.
"ISIL's campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yazidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque targeted acts of violence, show all the warning signs of genocide," Kerry said in August 2014. "For anyone who needed a wakeup call, this is it."
Fortenberry praised the State Department for its decision Thursday.
"I commend Secretary Kerry and the State Department for making this important designation. The genocide against Christians, Yazidis and others is not only a grave injustice to theses ancient faith communities -- it is an assault on human dignity and an attack on civilization itself," he said. "The United States has now spoken with clarity and moral authority."
"That it took so long for the administration to arrive at this conclusion, in the face of unspeakable human suffering, defies explanation," Rubio, who until Tuesday was a GOP presidential candidate, said in a statement. "At long last the United States is no longer silent in the face of this evil, but it would be travesty if we were to mistakenly take solace in this designation, if the designation did not then yield some sort of action."
"I am very happy to hear that (the U.S.) will recognize the genocide of Yezidi and Christian minorities," he told CNN in an email. "This is an important step to stop the suffering of the persecuted people under the control of the extremist islamic groups, specially ISIS. And this is also important for my community to trust the international community again, because we were left in the hands of Islamic State."
He called on the State Department to push the U.N. to establish an international criminal court case on genocide against the Yazidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria.
"Furthermore," he said, "it is necessary to give the minorities more support to be sure that (these) crimes will not happen again."
An international center advocating against hate, terrorism and anti-Semitism was one to join the chorus.
"The Simon Wiesenthal Center applauds Secretary Kerry's acknowledgement that Christians and Yazidis are targets of Genocide," the organization said in a statement. "We reiterate our call that the U.S put these two groups at the front of the line for consideration for immigration to our country and to redouble our efforts to destroy ISIS."
In Defense of Christians, a group that has heavily lobbied for recognizing what is happening as genocide, put out a statement from its president Toufic Baaklini.
"IDC extends our deepest gratitude to Secretary Kerry and to the Obama administration for carefully reviewing the overwhelming evidence of the genocide against Christians, Yazidis, Shia Muslims and other religious minorities and for proclaiming the irrefutable truth that the crimes they have suffered constitute genocide," Baaklini said.
And the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, put out a statement of "appreciation."
"For some time, the world has witnessed the deliberate and organized effort by ISIS to eliminate Christians from the Middle East. For the U.S. government to call this savagery by its proper name -- genocide -- is a welcome step in what must now be a more committed effort at bringing peace and security to that beleaguered land," Wuerl said. "These words must now be translated into action." | REAL |
4,348 | Mitt Romney's Re-Invention As Anti-Poverty Warrior | With the shake of an Etch-A-Sketch, Mitt Romney reintroduced himself to the Republican Party on Friday as a man interested in running for president because of his desire to address poverty and income inequality. One only wonders why the former governor of Massachusetts neglected to focus on the growing problems the last time he held the title of GOP standard bearer.
Addressing a gathering of Republican National Committee officials below deck of the decommissioned U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier in San Diego, California, Romney ticked off three priorities crucial to what he called the "post-Obama era": making the world safer with a more muscular foreign policy, providing opportunity to all Americans, and lifting people out of poverty.
"It's a tragedy, a human tragedy, that the middle class in this country by and large doesn't believe that the future will be better than the past," he said. "We haven't seen rising incomes over decades."
"The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before under this president," he added.
Romney stressed his years as an LDS pastor, a topic he and his campaign rarely broached in 2012, and described working "with people who are very poor to help them get help."
The governor isn't the only potential Republican presidential candidate to embrace a more populist tone as wage growth continues to lag in an accelerating economic recovery. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently lamented that "while the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top-earners, they've been a lost decade for the rest of America." Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has emphasized reconnecting with blue collar Americans. Even die-hard conservatives like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) paid lip service to the matter at the Heritage Foundation policy summit, an annual gathering of conservatives in Washington.
While he may be sincere in his pursuit to eliminate poverty, the notion that Romney would be the best candidate to lead his party in doing so is puzzling at best. The former Massachusetts governor didn't have just one misstep that allowed Democrats and Republican primary opponents to paint him as an obscenely wealthy, out-of-touch plutocrat in the 2012 election -- he had a dozen. Here's just a brief sampling:
"I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it," he said inelegantly following his victory in the Florida primary. "I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."
"Corporations are people, my friend ... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people," he said before the Iowa Ames straw poll.
And his infamous remarks about "47 percent" of Americans: "My job is not to worry about those people -- I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
But it's not just the gaffes. Romney embraced the Paul Ryan budget in 2012 -- a sweeping plan that, if enacted, would have instituted draconian cuts to programs affecting the poor. Millions of low-income Americans benefiting from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as well as other retirement funding, would have been affected under a Romney presidency. Added to his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its subsidies for the poor, it's not hard to see how Romney wouldn't be vexed by some of the same problems should he ultimately decide to run for president. | REAL |
3,424 | King: Fill the Supreme Court vacancy | "We've got an opening on the court. I think Sandra Day O'Connor made a very practical point. Let's fill the vacancy so the court can fully function and get on with it," he told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."
"I don't agree (with Republicans)," said O'Connor. "We need somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it."
King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he is surprised that some Republicans have decided to reject a nominee before even having a candidate to evaluate.
"I'm surprised people can make that judgment before they even know who the nominee is," he said. "It may be that he picks a nominee that's so eminently qualified that it would be very hard to explain a vote against him, other than politics." King acknowledged that the Senate doesn't have to support the nominee, but thinks there should be a vote. "Of course, we have these debates. And of course, politics are involved," King said. "The politics are important. And I'm not saying a Republican senator has to vote for whoever Obama nominates. I would never say that." But a refusal to hold a process could leave the vacancy for more than a year and that would be "pretty troublesome," King said. The senator, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also expressed concern about a judge's order that Apple help the FBI break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters. "They're asking Apple to create a key that does not currently exist. And I've got a problem with that. This is a very complicated issue," he said. Forcing Apple to do this could set "a serious precedent" that could lead to other citizens having their privacy invaded, he said. "Once that key is made, it can end up in the hands of hackers," King said. "There's no end to complications of this." "I think we need to slow down and really consider the policy," he added. | REAL |
1,718 | Ted Cruz is toast: It’s not just that he won’t be president — his days in the Senate are numbered, too | I’m not sure when it started, but at some point the Republican Party ceded the business of governance to the Democrats. Maybe it began with the Tea Party movement or Fox News or the larger conservative media-industrial complex – I honestly don’t know. But it’s clear now that the GOP is no longer a legitimate governing party. A party that allows rank neophytes like Herman Cain and Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina to run for the highest office in the country has lost its way.
If you look at how the Republican Party operates today, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that governing just isn’t a priority – or internal pressures within the party make it impossible. Instead, the GOP has become what I previously called a self-perpetuating hype machine for conservative political entrepreneurs. Particularly at the national level, Republican candidates and legislators (many of them, at least) show no interest in compromise or serious policymaking, which is what you’d expect from a party of and for purists.
While the new GOP has been bad for the country, it’s been great for political celebrities, people looking to promote their personal brands. Ted Cruz is the most recent and obvious example of this approach to politics. Cruz has been a remarkably ineffective Senator. He has done nothing but bloviate and showboat on the Senate floor. He’s accomplished zero legislatively. His only practical contribution has been to obstruct and draw attention to his martyrdom (read: presidential) campaign.
Ted Cruz will never be elected president. If he manages to win the Republican nomination, he’ll lose in a landslide to a Democrat, whoever that happens to be. And because he’s so eagerly made a spectacle of himself in the Senate, he’s alienated all but the tiniest segment of his own party. Which means he has no political capital in Congress – hardly a concern for someone uninterested in legislating, however.
Cruz’s latest squabble with Rand Paul helps to illustrate Cruz’s intentions. In an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Paul basically wrote Cruz’s political obituary:
Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the senate, and as a consequence he can’t get anything done legislatively. He is pretty much done for and stifled and it’s really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem. I approach things a little different, I am still just as hardcore in saying what we are doing , I just chose not to call people liars on the Senate floor and it’s just a matter of different perspectives on how best to get to the end result.
Paul is right, of course, but he omits an essential point: Cruz has been ineffective by design. Managing relationships and respecting decorum only matter to people trying to accomplish things in the Senate – that’s not what Cruz is up to. Like the fanatical Tea Party wing of the House, Cruz is there to obstruct and self-promote. In all likelihood, Cruz will retire after a single term in the Senate. Now that he’s boosted his national profile and endeared himself to the insurgent elements of the base, he can pivot to the private sector and make more money as a professional conservative activist – as, for example, Jim DeMint did in 2012. Cruz ought to be seen as the grifter that he is. It was never about policy for him. When he leaves the Senate, he’ll be a hero to the fringe right. He’ll make a fortune on the conservative lecture circuit, telling rapturous audiences about his willingness to challenge the “Washington cartel.” It won’t matter that he accomplished nothing, changed nothing – it’ll be enough that he pretended to while he was there. The same is true of Carson and Trump and Fiorina and even politicians like Huckabee and Jindal: None of them will be president, but their over-the-top activism will ensure them a profitable career after politics. And that, I assume, is the whole point. The Democrats have their share of bad politicians, but you don’t see this kind of faux activism and exploitation in their party. | REAL |
143 | Obama’s speech in Selma was an answer to those who question his love for America | President Obama's supporters sometimes wonder where the inspirational candidate of 2008 has gone. The answer is to the White House. Obama's presidency is about smaller, less inspiring questions than his 2008 campaign.
Obama's presidency is bounded by the limits of the office and the demands of the moment. It is about what America needs to do right now — the next budget, the next bill, next year's taxes, the last war. Candidates can muse. Presidents must govern.
Obama's 2008 campaign was about what kind of country America is; how to read its past to best guide its future. His speech in Selma — which is really worth reading in its entirety — was among the best of his presidency precisely because it had almost nothing to do with his presidency; it was a return to the central topic of his campaign.
Historians who want to understand Obama will find few better summations than the two paragraphs at the core of this speech:
We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, or that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing's changed in the past fifty years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or L.A. of the Fifties. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing's changed. Ask your gay friend if it's easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress — our progress — would be to rob us of our own agency; our responsibility to do what we can to make America better. Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the "race card" for their own purposes. We don't need the Ferguson report to know that's not true. We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation's racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.
Those 230 words are a precise distillation of Obama's view of America, and the role politics must play in it.
The first paragraph is Obama's case for hope: America is improving; it has always been improving, and to deny that improvement is to steal from Americans a belief in their country that they have more than earned. "To deny this progress — our progress — would be to rob us of our own agency," he said.
The second paragraph is Obama's case for change: America's sins are not vanquished; its hatreds remain real; its racism still breathes. "We know the march is not yet over," Obama said, "the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much."
Hope and change. These are the two ideas that form the steady core of Obama's politics. But, more than that, they are the two ideas that define, for Obama, what kind of country America is — and what it means to serve it.
Obama's critics question his love for the country he governs. "I do not believe — and I know this is a horrible thing to say — but I do not believe that the president loves America," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in February. They look at Obama's steady belief that America is not yet good enough, not yet pure enough, not yet perfect enough, and they see a skeptic, not a patriot.
In this speech, Obama's answer to this criticism was direct:
Fellow marchers, so much has changed in fifty years. We've endured war, and fashioned peace. We've seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives, and take for granted convenience our parents might scarcely imagine. But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship, that willingness of a 26 year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five, to decide they loved this country so much that they'd risk everything to realize its promise. That's what it means to love America. That's what it means to believe in America. That's what it means when we say America is exceptional.
There is an implicit radicalism in what Obama is saying here. To believe America is good enough is to abandon the tradition of criticism and activism that has made America great.
Obama's answer to Giuliani is that Giuliani has mistaken uncritical adoration for the hard work required of true love. Patriotism is active, not passive. Those who love America prove it by working to perfect America. They continue marching. | REAL |
930 | Where Does Bernie Sanders Go From Here? | NEW YORK - Bernie Sanders is at a crossroads.
The Vermont senator took Wednesday off the campaign trail at home alone with his wife, leaving his top aides behind in Washington to cool their heels.
"He wanted an opportunity to think," said Sanders senior strategist Tad Devine. "It's affording him an opportunity to think about where we are in the campaign, what he wants to say in the weeks ahead. He hasn't had a real chance to do that" in weeks.
The Sanders campaign poured itself into New York, throwing a hail mary pass to try to change the delegate math while they could. They spent $5.6 million (twice what Hillary Clinton did), made 3 million phone calls in the final weekend alone, and organized the biggest rallies of a campaign defined by big rallies.
But in the end Sanders came up short - not just of winning, but of the delegate target allies had aimed to hit, which might set them up for a path through California, the campaign's final hope.
Now, with the nomination even further out of reach, Sanders faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to actually win the Democratic nomination? Or does he return to the message campaign his long-shot White House bid was originally seen as?
There's no question that Sanders will stay in the race either way. "Bernie made a decision after Nevada that he was going to go through this process and finish it up by letting everybody who wanted to vote, vote," Devine said.
Democratic primary voters have shown no sign they're in a rush for the race to settle down, and seem hungry for Sanders' message, if not his presidency.
He'll continue to draw massive crowds from zealous fans, who have almost literally given his campaign a blank check to do as they wish. On Wednesday night, the campaign announced raising $15 million more than Clinton in March, though they also spent much more.
But even some Sanders allies cringed at parts of the candidate's message in New York, where his agenda was sometimes obscured by a focus on Clinton and issues with the election process.
"Going forward, what we're encouraging Senator Sanders to do is to continue to keep the campaign focused on the issues," said Neil Sroka, the communications director of Democracy for America, which backs Sanders.
The campaign says they want to return to more substantive issues - but only as long as the Clinton campaign joins them. So far, at least, they believe Clinton forces are keeping up the heat and see it as sign Clinton still views Sanders as a threat.
Privately, some Sanders allies say it's time for the candidate to start to thinking more about how he maximizes his leverage at the Democratic National Convention, and afterwards, and less about beating Clinton at all costs.
One indicator of which kind of campaign Sanders wants to run is how much he and his aides continue to talk about relying on super delegates to hand them the nomination.
The strategy, which calls for wooing the unelected delegates even if Sanders loses more primaries and caucuses, was floated by campaign manager Jeff Weaver with MSNBC's Steve Kornacki late Tuesday night.
MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, both of which have endorsed Sanders, have since 2008 been pressuring super delegates to support whichever candidate gets the most votes.
More than 380,000 people signed petitions from the group agreeing that "the race for the Democratic Party nomination should be decided by who gets the most votes, and not who has the most support from party insiders."
Both groups confirmed to MSNBC Wednesday that they still hold that position.
"MoveOn members overwhelmingly endorsed Sanders for president, and we want him to win the most pledged delegates, become the nominee, and become president. But superdelegates shouldn't overrule the will of the Democratic grassroots," said MoveOn Washington Director Ben Wikler. "If the primary and caucus winner is Hillary Clinton, then Clinton should be the nominee."
Devine said the campaign's main focus is still to win pledged delegates. But if Sanders falls just short of a majority, it's negligible - "de minims," Devine said - and the campaign will pitch super delegates that Sanders is the stronger general election candidate.
Another indication of Sanders' intentions will be where he devotes his precious time in the days leading up to Tuesday's contests.
Five states are voting and Maryland is expected to be Sanders' worst showing.
If he invests heavily there it's a sign his campaign is still focused on winning and scraping together delegates. If he spends time in states like Connecticut and Delaware to try to eek out wins despite limited delegate opportunities, it's a sign he's more focused on moral victories than ones that lead to the nomination.
What Sanders decides to do, and how aggressively he decides to continuing pursuing Clinton, will help determine the shape of the rest of the primary and how quickly Clinton, the odds-on nominee, can unite the party.
Clinton's favorability rating has tumbled during the primary, especially among Sanders voters, presumably at least in part due to his attacks.
But as Democratic leaders worry about the damage, the party seem to be enjoying the contest.
National polling between Clinton and Sanders has tightened to a virtual dead heat, suggesting voters are not ready to settle on Clinton. Exit polls showed two-thirds of New York primary voters found the heated contest in the state to be energizing, not divisive.
"Mr. Sanders's presence has made this an immeasurably more substantive race," The New York Times wrote in an editorial Wednesday calling on Sanders to ignore calls to leave the race, which was shared by the Sanders campaign. The enthusiasm of his supporters "should be a wake-up call to leaders of both parties. They are missing something big about their own members' priorities, and their mood."
Still, Sanders' entire campaign has been about bringing new people into politics and the Democratic party. At some point, he might risk pushing them back out again. | REAL |
1,661 | Exclusive: GOP campaigns plot revolt against RNC | Killing Obama administration rules, dismantling Obamacare and pushing through tax reform are on the early to-do list. | REAL |
7,801 | Revelation Unleashed: Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Bible’s Most Mysterious Book | Revelation Unleashed: Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Bible’s Most Mysterious Book On this episode of Rightly Dividing, join us as we drop some pins and create an easy to understand roadmap to the amazing, awesome, and very much knowable book of Revelation! Join us as we apply Paul’s command found in 2 Timothy 2:15 to ‘rightly divide’ our Bible and put everything in it’s proper perspective and place.
“ And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” Revelation 5:5 (KJV)
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE when the show starts Sunday night at 9:00PM EST!
For centuries, the Catholic Church had locked up the Bible and kept it out of reach of the common man. As a result, when the Protestant Reformation ended the Dark Ages and removed the Bible from its Vatican shackles, it was a book that remained quite a mystery to most people. Out of all of its 66 books, the most misunderstood, most debated over and most feared book is, ironically and undoubtedly, the book of Revelation.
On this episode of Rightly Dividing , we apply Paul’s command to “rightly divide” to the book of Revelation, and in the process of doing so remove much of the mystery in the process. God didn’t write any part of the Bible to be out of reach of anyone who, by faith, wanted to plumb its depths and unlock its mysteries. Join us as we drop some pins and create an easy to understand roadmap to the amazing, awesome, and very much knowable book of Revelation!
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE when the show starts Sunday night at 9:00PM EST! | FAKE |
10,232 | Silent Counter-Coup by 17 Intel Agencies To Stop Crooked Clintons [Video] | Leave a reply
Bill Still – Good evening, I’m still reporting on an ongoing counter-coup being run by patriotic members of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies to stop the Clinton Crime syndicate from proceeding with the rigging of the coming election.
According to a 4 minute video, done by Dr. Steve Pieczenik, a Harvard and MIT-educated psychiatrist who has written 26 New York Times Best Sellers, the Clinton coup has been put down by an intelligence community counter-coup, effective at noon today.
Dr. Pieczenik has great contacts in the American intelligence community. He put the following video up on his YouTube channel at noon today and says that the channel was down twenty minutes later.
Currently, that channel is up, so perhaps our channel will not be harmed.
I believe what you are about to see is true because of the nature of the recent WikiLeaks revelations. To me, hackers could not have done this. To me, white hats at NSA had to have been involved.
Having spent my adult life working around the community, I knew that folks who were at most of these agencies – exempting DHS and CIA – are American patriots who would not allow this nation to be destroyed by the Clinton Crime Syndicate.
[insert]
This may well be the reason President Obama yesterday had his press secretary praise the work of Jim Comey, head of the FBI, at the very moment that Hillary Clinton was speaking in Florida deriding Comey. Let us all pray that Comey has actually turned away from being subservient to Obama and the Clintons and has now joined forces with the vast majority of the American military/intelligence community and Obama has decided – for his own preservation – to not fight them. I’m still reporting from Washington; good evening.
Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and has also produced the syndicated radio program, Health News. He has written 22 books and two documentary videos and is the host of his wildly popular daily YouTube Channel the “Still Report”, the quintessential report on the economy and Washington. Share this: | FAKE |
1,360 | Why Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, 'won' town hall | Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state was the first woman to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.
Clinton waves to the media in January 1996 as she arrives for an appearance before a grand jury in Washington. The first lady was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons' business investment was investigated, but ultimately they were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Clinton looks on as her husband discusses the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 26, 1998. Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." In August of that year, Clinton testified before a grand jury and admitted to having "inappropriate intimate contact" with Lewinsky, but he said it did not constitute sexual relations because they had not had intercourse. He was impeached in December on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Obama and Clinton talk on the plane on their way to a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, in June 2008. She had recently ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Obama.
In this photo provided by the White House, Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
Clinton checks her Blackberry inside a military plane after leaving Malta in October 2011. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state. The account, fed through its own server, raises security and preservation concerns. Clinton later said she used a private domain out of "convenience," but admits in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.
Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attack during a House committee meeting in October 2015. "I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said during the 11-hour hearing. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done." Months earlier, Clinton had acknowledged a "systemic breakdown" as cited by an Accountability Review Board, and she said that her department was taking additional steps to increase security at U.S. diplomatic facilities.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders shares a lighthearted moment with Clinton during a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015. It came after Sanders gave his take on the Clinton email scandal. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails," Sanders said. "Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing the United States of America."
After Clinton became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, this photo was posted to her official Twitter account. "To every little girl who dreams big: Yes, you can be anything you want -- even president," Clinton said. "Tonight is for you."
Obama hugs Clinton after he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The president said Clinton was ready to be commander in chief. "For four years, I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment and her discipline," he said, referring to her stint as his secretary of state. | REAL |
3,635 | French police hunt two brothers accused of Charlie Hebdo terror attack | A third suspect has turned himself in. Prime Minister Valls said several arrests had been made overnight in connection with the deadliest terror attack in France in a generation.
French President Francois Hollande, right, and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, left, listen to the explanations of high ranking police officer Jacques Meric, center, during a visit at Paris Prefecture control room in Paris, Thursday Jan. 8, 2015. French police hunted Thursday for two heavily armed men, one with a terrorism conviction and a history in jihadi networks, in the methodical killing of 12 people at a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad. The prime minister announced several overnight arrests and said the possibility of a new attack “is our main concern.”
French authorities are searching for two chief suspects in Wednesday's deadly attack in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine, which left 12 people dead in France's deadliest terrorist incident in a generation.
Thousands of police and counter-terrorism officers are searching in northern France for the two armed suspects, Said and Chérif Kouachi, who are brothers, remain at large. A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, turned himself in at a police station in a small town about 145 miles northeast of Paris after learning his name was linked to the attack.
Speaking on RTL radio, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said authorities had made several overnight arrests and that the possibility of a new attack by the two suspects “is our main concern,” The New York Times reports. An unnamed security official put the arrest total at seven.
“We are facing an unprecedented terrorist threat, both internally and externally,” Mr. Valls said, adding that, “there was not zero risk.”
In an incident likely to rattle nerves in Paris, a policewoman was killed in a shootout in southern Paris on Thursday morning. The shooting set off searches in the area as the manhunt for the two brothers expanded, but police didn't immediately link it to the Charlie Hebdo attack, Reuters reports. The policewoman wasn't involved in the manhunt for the suspects and had been called to a routine traffic incident.
Valls said the suspects in the attack on Charlie Hebdo were known to French authorities and had been tracked before. Chérif Kouachi was convicted of abetting terrorism in 2008 for recruiting jihadists to fight in Iraq, the Associated Press reports. Both brothers were also named in connection with a plot to help an Islamic extremist, who bombed a Paris metro station in 1995, escape from jail.
The brothers are Algerian-origin French citizens who lived in Paris, the BBC reports.
Given his track record, the fact that Chérif Kouachi allegedly pulled off such a brazen attack may raise concerns in France and across Europe. It's still unclear whether the brothers had any foreign support or trained abroad. European security agencies fear that militants from Europe who fight in Iraq and Syria could in future stage attacks at home.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that France has Europe’s largest Muslim population and the largest number of citizens who have joined groups such as the self-described Islamic State. Some 1,000 French have traveled to fight in Syria, according to authorities.
Charlie Hebdo, which directs its irrelevant satire at almost everyone, has repeatedly offended Muslims for its caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. The magazine’s editor and two police officers were among those killed on Wednesday. | REAL |
8,290 | The Mandela Effect was made by one overlooked 33 year old man, an ascended master (video and proof) | link There is simply no more denying, for millions of people across whatever planet we are actually on now, that the Mandela Effect is the greatest and most important single event in the history of all mankind on every possible level. That's not in question anymore, the only remaining question left is "Who done it?". Will the real one responsible for this, please stand up? Now, because this is the biggest display of sheer Power, there are a lot of government agencies whose only job is to make you think that they have power who are sitting down and yelling "we did it, we are the ones and we did it with our collider!" And there's others sitting down and yelling "we did it, with our d computers!" These collider and d computers are jokes, they can't do anything, you can barely play pacman on them - they are just impressive looking things to you which make you scared of the people who want to control you. That's all they are. You people need to stop being scared of your bullies. Your bully who took you lunch money every day in the 2nd grade - is not the same person who caused a universal-earth-ending-space-time-continuum-Shift. This is real power. Whoever can do this, isn't the same bully who took your lunch money in the 2nd grade. Your government and Nasa and Cern are all a bunch of bullies, who throw water bottles at your head then when you turn around they point to the person next to them and call them a terrorist. That's all they have done throughout the years. But whoever did the Mandela Effect is entirely different from them, whoever did that has True and Real Light. I'll just go ahead and flatly state it for the whole world to hear - I, Pyron, created the Mandela Effect through metaphysical sciences through writing. No computers no colliders, only my mind and heart. It was my true desire to create a new world where those who control you will lose control. I wrote from age 12 to age 32, obsessively for 20 years in a row without break, I've been rejected by everyone the whole time, no one out there has been continuously rejected like I have, so I just kept on continuously going into my own space and writing more and more. Not caring about money or controlling people for selfish gain or any of that, I was just going on a self-journey. And in doing that, I cracked the code for the fabric of the Space Time continuum and opened up the Stargate. And I recorded every last thing that I did, and tell the whole world exactly how I did it and how everything occurred in a 50 page book - that I've put up for free on Youtube. This 50 page book is the liberation and the Revolution for every soul in all of existence, and I offer it for free here www.youtube.com... | FAKE |
6,227 | CNN: One voter can make a difference by voting repeatedly | Channel list
Following hurricane Matthew's failure to devastate Florida, activists flock to the Sunshine State and destroy Trump signs manually
Tim Kaine takes credit for interrupting hurricane Matthew while debating weather in Florida
Study: Many non-voters still undecided on how they're not going to vote
The Evolution of Dissent: on November 8th the nation is to decide whether dissent will stop being racist and become sexist - or it will once again be patriotic as it was for 8 years under George W. Bush
Venezuela solves starvation problem by making it mandatory to buy food
Breaking: the Clinton Foundation set to investigate the FBI
Obama captures rare Pokémon while visiting Hiroshima
Movie news: 'The Big Friendly Giant Government' flops at box office; audiences say "It's creepy"
Barack Obama: "If I had a son, he'd look like Micah Johnson"
White House edits Orlando 911 transcript to say shooter pledged allegiance to NRA and Republican Party
President George Washington: 'Redcoats do not represent British Empire; King George promotes a distorted version of British colonialism'
Following Obama's 'Okie-Doke' speech , stock of Okie-Doke soars; NASDAQ: 'Obama best Okie-Doke salesman'
Weaponized baby formula threatens Planned Parenthood office; ACLU demands federal investigation of Gerber
Experts: melting Antarctic glacier could cause sale levels to rise up to 80% off select items by this weekend
Travel advisory: airlines now offering flights to front of TSA line
As Obama instructs his administration to get ready for presidential transition, Trump preemptively purchases 'T' keys for White House keyboards
John Kasich self-identifies as GOP primary winner, demands access to White House bathroom
Upcoming Trump/Kelly interview on FoxNews sponsored by 'Let's Make a Deal' and 'The Price is Right'
News from 2017: once the evacuation of Lena Dunham and 90% of other Hollywood celebrities to Canada is confirmed, Trump resigns from presidency: "My work here is done"
Non-presidential candidate Paul Ryan pledges not to run for president in new non-presidential non-ad campaign
Trump suggests creating 'Muslim database'; Obama symbolically protests by shredding White House guest logs beginning 2009
National Enquirer: John Kasich's real dad was the milkman, not mailman
National Enquirer: Bound delegates from Colorado, Wyoming found in Ted Cruz’s basement
Iran breaks its pinky-swear promise not to support terrorism; US State Department vows rock-paper-scissors strategic response
Women across the country cheer as racist Democrat president on $20 bill is replaced by black pro-gun Republican
Federal Reserve solves budget crisis by writing itself a 20-trillion-dollar check
Widows, orphans claim responsibility for Brussels airport bombing
Che Guevara's son hopes Cuba's communism will rub off on US, proposes a long list of people the government should execute first
Susan Sarandon: "I don't vote with my vagina." Voters in line behind her still suspicious, use hand sanitizer
Campaign memo typo causes Hillary to court 'New Black Panties' vote
New Hampshire votes for socialist Sanders, changes state motto to "Live FOR Free or Die"
Martin O'Malley drops out of race after Iowa Caucus; nation shocked with revelation he has been running for president
Statisticians: one out of three Bernie Sanders supporters is just as dumb as the other two
Hillary campaign denies accusations of smoking-gun evidence in her emails, claims they contain only smoking-circumstantial-gun evidence
Obama stops short of firing US Congress upon realizing the difficulty of assembling another group of such tractable yes-men
In effort to contol wild passions for violent jihad, White House urges gun owners to keep their firearms covered in gun burkas
TV horror live: A Charlie Brown Christmas gets shot up on air by Mohammed cartoons
Democrats vow to burn the country down over Ted Cruz statement, 'The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats'
Russia's trend to sign bombs dropped on ISIS with "This is for Paris" found response in Obama administration's trend to sign American bombs with "Return to sender"
University researchers of cultural appropriation quit upon discovery that their research is appropriation from a culture that created universities
Archeologists discover remains of what Barack Obama has described as unprecedented, un-American, and not-who-we-are immigration screening process in Ellis Island
Mizzou protests lead to declaring entire state a "safe space," changing Missouri motto to "The don't show me state"
Green energy fact: if we put all green energy subsidies together in one-dollar bills and burn them, we could generate more electricity than has been produced by subsidized green energy
State officials improve chances of healthcare payouts by replacing ObamaCare with state lottery
NASA's new mission to search for racism, sexism, and economic inequality in deep space suffers from race, gender, and class power struggles over multibillion-dollar budget
College progress enforcement squads issue schematic humor charts so students know if a joke may be spontaneously laughed at or if regulations require other action
ISIS opens suicide hotline for US teens depressed by climate change and other progressive doomsday scenarios
Virginia county to close schools after teacher asks students to write 'death to America' in Arabic
'Wear hijab to school day' ends with spontaneous female circumcision and stoning of a classmate during lunch break
ISIS releases new, even more barbaric video in an effort to regain mantle from Planned Parenthood
Impressed by Fox News stellar rating during GOP debates, CNN to use same formula on Democrat candidates asking tough, pointed questions about Republicans
Shocking new book explores pros and cons of socialism, discovers they are same people
Pope outraged by Planned Parenthood's "unfettered capitalism," demands equal redistribution of baby parts to each according to his need
John Kerry accepts Iran's "Golden Taquiyya" award, requests jalapenos on the side
Citizens of Pluto protest US government's surveillance of their planetoid and its moons with New Horizons space drone
John Kerry proposes 3-day waiting period for all terrorist nations trying to acquire nuclear weapons
Chicago Police trying to identify flag that caused nine murders and 53 injuries in the city this past weekend
Cuba opens to affordable medical tourism for Americans who can't afford Obamacare deductibles
State-funded research proves existence of Quantum Aggression Particles (Heterons) in Large Hadron Collider
Student job opportunities: make big bucks this summer as Hillary’s Ordinary-American; all expenses paid, travel, free acting lessons
Experts debate whether Iranian negotiators broke John Kerry's leg or he did it himself to get out of negotiations
Junior Varsity takes Ramadi, advances to quarterfinals
US media to GOP pool of candidates: 'Knowing what we know now, would you have had anything to do with the founding of the United States?'
NY Mayor to hold peace talks with rats, apologize for previous Mayor's cowboy diplomacy
China launches cube-shaped space object with a message to aliens: "The inhabitants of Earth will steal your intellectual property, copy it, manufacture it in sweatshops with slave labor, and sell it back to you at ridiculously low prices"
Progressive scientists: Truth is a variable deduced by subtracting 'what is' from 'what ought to be'
Experts agree: Hillary Clinton best candidate to lessen percentage of Americans in top 1%
America's attempts at peace talks with the White House continue to be met with lies, stalling tactics, and bad faith
Starbucks new policy to talk race with customers prompts new hashtag #DontHoldUpTheLine
Hillary: DELETE is the new RESET
Charlie Hebdo receives Islamophobe 2015 award ; the cartoonists could not be reached for comment due to their inexplicable, illogical deaths
Russia sends 'reset' button back to Hillary: 'You need it now more than we do'
Barack Obama finds out from CNN that Hillary Clinton spent four years being his Secretary of State
President Obama honors Leonard Nimoy by taking selfie in front of Starship Enterprise
Police: If Obama had a convenience store, it would look like Obama Express Food Market
Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males
NASA: We're 80% sure about being 20% sure about being 17% sure about being 38% sure about 2014 being the hottest year on record
People holding '$15 an Hour Now' posters sue Democratic party demanding raise to $15 an hour for rendered professional protesting services
Cuba-US normalization: US tourists flock to see Cuba before it looks like the US and Cubans flock to see the US before it looks like Cuba
White House describes attacks on Sony Pictures as 'spontaneous hacking in response to offensive video mocking Juche and its prophet'
CIA responds to Democrat calls for transparency by releasing the director's cut of The Making Of Obama's Birth Certificate
Obama: 'If I had a city, it would look like Ferguson'
Biden: 'If I had a Ferguson (hic), it would look like a city'
Obama signs executive order renaming 'looters' to 'undocumented shoppers'
Ethicists agree: two wrongs do make a right so long as Bush did it first
The aftermath of the 'War on Women 2014' finds a new 'Lost Generation' of disillusioned Democrat politicians, unable to cope with life out of office
White House: Republican takeover of the Senate is a clear mandate from the American people for President Obama to rule by executive orders
Nurse Kaci Hickox angrily tells reporters that she won't change her clocks for daylight savings time
Democratic Party leaders in panic after recent poll shows most Democratic voters think 'midterm' is when to end pregnancy
Desperate Democratic candidates plead with Obama to stop backing them and instead support their GOP opponents
Ebola Czar issues five-year plan with mandatory quotas of Ebola infections per each state based on voting preferences
Study: crony capitalism is to the free market what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity
Fun facts about world languages: the Left has more words for statism than the Eskimos have for snow
African countries to ban all flights from the United States because "Obama is incompetent, it scares us"
Nobel Peace Prize controversy: Hillary not nominated despite having done even less than Obama to deserve it
Obama: 'Ebola is the JV of viruses'
BREAKING: Secret Service foils Secret Service plot to protect Obama
Revised 1st Amendment: buy one speech, get the second free
Sharpton calls on white NFL players to beat their women in the interests of racial fairness
President Obama appoints his weekly approval poll as new national security adviser
Obama wags pen and phone at Putin; Europe offers support with powerful pens and phones from NATO members
White House pledges to embarrass ISIS back to the Stone Age with a barrage of fearsome Twitter messages and fatally ironic Instagram photos
Obama to fight ISIS with new federal Terrorist Regulatory Agency
Obama vows ISIS will never raise their flag over the eighteenth hole
Harry Reid: "Sometimes I say the wong thing"
Elian Gonzalez wishes he had come to the U.S. on a bus from Central America like all the other kids
Obama visits US-Mexican border, calls for a two-state solution
Obama draws "blue line" in Iraq after Putin took away his red crayon
"Hard Choices," a porno flick loosely based on Hillary Clinton's memoir and starring Hillary Hellfire as a drinking, whoring Secretary of State, wildly outsells the flabby, sagging original
Accusations of siding with the enemy leave Sgt. Bergdahl with only two options: pursue a doctorate at Berkley or become a Senator from Massachusetts
Jay Carney stuck in line behind Eric Shinseki to leave the White House; estimated wait time from 15 min to 6 weeks
100% of scientists agree that if man-made global warming were real, "the last people we'd want to help us is the Obama administration"
Jay Carney says he found out that Obama found out that he found out that Obama found out that he found out about the latest Obama administration scandal on the news
"Anarchy Now!" meeting turns into riot over points of order, bylaws, and whether or not 'kicking the #^@&*! ass' of the person trying to speak is or is not violence
Obama retaliates against Putin by prohibiting unionized federal employees from dating hot Russian girls online during work hours
Russian separatists in Ukraine riot over an offensive YouTube video showing the toppling of Lenin statues
"Free Speech Zones" confuse Obamaphone owners who roam streets in search of additional air minutes
Obamacare bolsters employment for professionals with skills to convert meth back into sudafed
Gloves finally off: Obama uses pen and phone to cancel Putin's Netflix account
Joe Biden to Russia: "We will bury you by turning more of Eastern Europe over to your control!"
In last-ditch effort to help Ukraine, Obama deploys Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to Crimea
Al Sharpton: "Not even Putin can withstand our signature chanting, 'racist, sexist, anti-gay, Russian army go away'!"
Mardi Gras in North Korea: " Throw me some food! "
Obama's foreign policy works: "War, invasion, and conquest are signs of weakness; we've got Putin right where we want him"
US offers military solution to Ukraine crisis: "We will only fight countries that have LGBT military"
Putin annexes Brighton Beach to protect ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, Obama appeals to UN and EU for help
The 1980s: "Mr. Obama, we're just calling to ask if you want our foreign policy back . The 1970s are right here with us, and they're wondering, too."
In a stunning act of defiance, Obama courageously unfriends Putin on Facebook
MSNBC: Obama secures alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
Study: springbreak is to STDs what April 15th is to accountants
Efforts to achieve moisture justice for California thwarted by unfair redistribution of snow in America
North Korean voters unanimous: "We are the 100%"
Leader of authoritarian gulag-site, The People's Cube, unanimously 're-elected' with 100% voter turnout
Super Bowl: Obama blames Fox News for Broncos' loss
Feminist author slams gay marriage: "a man needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"
Beverly Hills campaign heats up between Henry Waxman and Marianne Williamson over the widening income gap between millionaires and billionaires in their district
Biden to lower $10,000-a-plate Dinner For The Homeless to $5,000 so more homeless can attend
Kim becomes world leader, feeds uncle to dogs; Obama eats dogs, becomes world leader, America cries uncle
North Korean leader executes own uncle for talking about Obamacare at family Christmas party
White House hires part-time schizophrenic Mandela sign interpreter to help sell Obamacare
Kim Jong Un executes own " crazy uncle " to keep him from ruining another family Christmas
OFA admits its advice for area activists to give Obamacare Talk at shooting ranges was a bad idea
President resolves Obamacare debacle with executive order declaring all Americans equally healthy
Obama to Iran: "If you like your nuclear program, you can keep your nuclear program"
Bovine community outraged by flatulence coming from Washington DC
Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"
Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week
Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message
NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"
Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough
The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"
Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare
Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation
Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans
Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy
GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords
Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare
Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria
Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"
DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women
Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees
Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left
Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'
FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp
Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies
GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'
Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'
Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism
News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota
Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith
Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page
Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment
White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria
Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'
Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins
Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date
IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history
After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot
Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'
Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program
US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?
Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy
This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'
Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'
White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward
President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama
As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet
Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'
Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Obama attends church service, worships self
Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending
Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'
Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter:"Too few words"
Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space
Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"
Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"
Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'
Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'
Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome
People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"
Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party
Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off
Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"
Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed
White House: "Let them eat statistics"
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama | FAKE |
3,255 | Give Social Security recipients a CEO-style raise | (CNN) On Veterans Day we recognize and honor the sacrifices our service members and their families make for our country. We owe our service members the very best, but unless Congress acts, on January 1 more than 9 million veterans who rely on Social Security benefits or pension and compensation benefits will not get their annual cost of living increase.
This freeze in funds, which has happened only two other times since 1975, will be really tough on veterans among the 71 million Americans who depend on Social Security and other benefits to help make ends meet. Two-thirds of seniors depend on Social Security for the majority of their income, and for 15 million Americans, Social Security is all that stands between them and poverty.
While vets and seniors get no raise, CEOs at the top 350 American companies received, on average, a 3.9% pay increase last year. That's a lot of money. The average CEO at one of the top 350 American companies made $16.3 million and got more than half a million in pay raises. So CEOs get huge raises, while seniors, veterans and others who've worked hard don't get an extra dime. Why? It's not an accident. It's not inevitable. It's the result of deliberate policies set by Congress.
Social Security is supposed to be indexed to inflation so that when prices go up, benefits go up, too. But Congress' formula samples the spending patterns of about a quarter of the country, and the formula isn't geared to what older Americans actually spend.
Projections for the costs of core goods and services show inflation is up about 2%, but seniors won't get a cost of living increase -- mostly because of falling gasoline prices, which don't mean as much to millions of seniors who don't commute to work. So seniors, who are already struggling to scrape by to cover rent and exploding prescription drug prices , will be left scrambling.
Sure, companies should make their own decisions about how much to compensate executives, but because of the laws Congress has passed, American taxpayers are forced to subsidize these multimillion-dollar pay packages.
It's time for Congress to make different choices. That's why last week I introduced the Seniors And Veterans Emergency (SAVE) Benefits Act. The SAVE Benefits Act will give seniors on Social Security, veterans, those with disabilities and others a one-time payment in 2016 equivalent to an average increase of 3.9% -- the same as the taxpayer-subsidized raise that CEOs received last year.
We can afford to give seniors and vets a raise. In fact, we can increase pay for seniors and vets without adding a single penny to the deficit simply by closing the bonus loophole for corporate executives. According to the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, closing this loophole will create enough revenue to help millions of Americans and still have enough left over to help extend the life of the Social Security trust fund.
Seniors and vets would get an increase of about $581 next year — a little less than $50 a month. That $581 increase would cover almost three months of groceries for seniors or a year's worth of out-of-pocket costs on critical prescription drugs for the average Medicare beneficiary. That $50 a month is worth a lot to those 71 million Americans. According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, that little boost could lift more than 1 million Americans out of poverty.
Giving vets and seniors a little help and stitching up these corporate tax write-offs isn't just about economics; it's about our values. For too long, we've listened to a handful of people with money and power who say: Cut taxes for those at the top, cut rules and regulations that keep everyone honest, and let everyone else fight over the scraps. We tried trickle-down economics, and it failed.
But we can make different choices -- choices that reflect our values. We don't have to ignore this problem. We can give a small boost to 71 million Americans who have earned it and who need it.
We can lift over 1 million people out of poverty. We can extend the life of Social Security. And we can do it by shutting down taxpayer giveaways to a handful of wealthy corporations that will do fine without them. For me, this is simple. Our spending should reflect our values, and that means passing the SAVE Benefits Act. | REAL |
3,177 | Fireworks erupt between Trump and Bush, Rubio and Cruz at GOP debate | Sparks flew at the toughest and liveliest GOP primary debate yet Saturday night, as Donald Trump and Jeb Bush clashed over the Middle East and George W. Bush’s legacy, trading insults at a rapid clip – and the two Cuban-American senators in the race accused each other of lying on immigration and even questioned each other’s Spanish-speaking skills.
And just when it seemed Trump and Ted Cruz might steer clear of each other, the two leading Republican candidates entered the ring toward the end of the debate when the Texas senator questioned the billionaire businessman’s pro-life credentials.
“You are the single biggest liar. You’re probably worse than Jeb Bush,” Trump said.
Cruz stood his ground, charging that Trump would “appoint liberals” to the Supreme Court if elected.
The issue of judicial appointments was front and center at the CBS News-hosted debate in Greenville, S.C., in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, with candidates like Cruz saying it underscores the high stakes in this election. Several candidates called for a delay in any high court appointment or confirmation.
But the barbed and often personal exchanges Saturday marked a new phase of the race, as the candidates charge into next week’s critical South Carolina primary. The clashes left Ohio Gov. John Kasich – the affable, second-place finisher in the New Hampshire primary – making an appeal for peace in the GOP field, albeit one unlikely to be heeded.
“I think we’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this,” Kasich said.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, too, warned about the coming general election and said, “We cannot be tearing each other down.”
The appeals came shortly after Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio accused each other of being soft on illegal immigration. It’s an argument they’ve had before – Cruz faults Rubio for backing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a path to legal status, and Rubio says Cruz was on board with that effort – but this time, it became more heated. And after Cruz accused Rubio of saying on Univision he wouldn’t rescind President Obama’s immigration executive orders on day one, Rubio quipped:
“I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish,” Rubio said.
Cruz, then, immediately began debating Rubio in Spanish. Rubio continued, saying Cruz “lies about all sorts of things” and indeed supports legalizing illegal immigrants.
As the Rubio-Cruz battle heated up, so did the long-simmering feud between Trump and Bush.
“This is a man who insults his way to the nomination,” Bush said of Trump.
With Bush attempting a comeback in the race after a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire, Trump faced a feistier debate rival on stage Saturday night than he has before – boosted in part by what seemed to be a sympathetic audience.
The audience often booed Trump when he took on Bush, though Trump once again accused them of representing Bush’s “special interests and lobbyists.”
Their most personal dispute came when Trump accused Bush of promoting a policy that would get the U.S. mired more deeply in the Middle East – and blamed the former Florida governor’s brother for the problems there.
Trump initially took issue with Jeb Bush’s call to confront ISIS while also taking on Syria’s Bashar Assad and sidelining Russia.
“Jeb is so wrong,” Trump said. “You have to knock out ISIS. .... You decide what you have to do after. You can’t fight two wars at one time.”
Bush, though, said Russia is not a U.S. ally, and Assad’s hold on power prevents a resolution in the war. Trump then went on to repeatedly slam the decision under the George W. Bush administration to enter Iraq in the first place, calling it a “big fat mistake” that “destabilized the Middle East.”
“They lied” about WMDs, he said.
“I am sick and tired of him going after my family,” Jeb Bush countered, saying he’s proud of his brother’s efforts to keep the country safe.
Trump then invoked 9/11: “The World Trade Center came down … That’s not keeping us safe.”
Rubio, who has often been at odds with Bush, leapt to his brother’s defense, saying the Bush administration “kept us safe.”
Jeb Bush joked that he was rescinding Trump’s invitation to an upcoming rally with George W. Bush on the campaign trail.
The fireworks flew after the debate started on a somber note, discussing the legacy of Supreme Court Justice Scalia and the impact his death Saturday will have.
Several candidates urged President Obama to refrain from nominating anybody to fill the vacancy, and wait for the next president to make that decision. Trump, though, said he doesn’t expect Obama to wait, and called on Senate Republicans to hold up any nomination.
Kasich urged Obama to put the “country first” and not move forward with a nomination, a plea echoed by Rubio. Obama, though, said minutes before the start of the debate that he indeed plans to nominate a successor.
The GOP candidates, meanwhile, used opening remarks to honor Scalia’s legacy.
Cruz called him a “legal giant” who “changed the arc of American legal history.” He said Scalia’s death also “underscores the stakes of this election.”
“We are one justice away from a Supreme Court that will strike down every restriction on abortion” by states, threaten gun rights and “undermine” religious liberty, Cruz said. He said he would appoint a strict constitutionalist if elected.
Scalia’s death thrusts the issue of judicial appointments into the 2016 race, raising the possibility that the next president immediately will have to fill a high court vacancy. While Obama vowed Saturday to nominate a successor, it’s unclear whether he can get any appointee confirmed in the Republican-led Senate.
While the prospect of a Supreme Court vacancy now looms over the race, the South Carolina primary already was heating up on several fronts in recent days, with the candidates trading accusations on immigration and other issues.
The debate Saturday reflects that tougher tone, in a state notorious for bare-knuckle primary battles. Trump at one point accused Cruz of trying to spread rumors in the state that he’s not running in South Carolina – likening that to his campaign’s actions in Iowa, where representatives spread false rumors that Carson was dropping out.
“Nasty guy, now I know why he doesn’t have one endorsement from any of his colleagues,” Trump said.
Even Kasich struggled to avoid the fray, as Bush criticized him for expanding Medicaid under ObamaCare and said that would create more debt.
“He knows that I’m not for ObamaCare,” Kasich said, before vowing to stay “positive. “
The GOP field is now down to six candidates -- after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Hewlett Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina dropped out following low finishes Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary.
A big question Saturday night, and going forward, was whether Rubio could regain his momentum – following last weekend’s lackluster performance. A withering attack by Christie on Rubio, which had the Florida senator repeating himself, appeared to hurt him in the New Hampshire primary. Rubio himself blamed his debate performance in part for his fifth-place finish in the state. He finished behind Trump, Kasich, Cruz and Bush. Christie, though, is no longer on stage or in the race.
Most polling in South Carolina still shows Rubio third, with Trump and Cruz in the top two positions, respectively. | REAL |
2,832 | Obama, sounding like his critics, admits no 'complete strategy' for Iraq | The online comment fits closely with his campaign platform. | REAL |
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