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The Red Pill Masterpiece That Predates Them All

Like me, you now sigh every time you skim-read the synopsis of the new LGBT agenda-approved blockbuster that the septic tank of Hollywood releases which usually stars: An anorexic AIDS ridden cowboy teams up with a love-starved transexual on a fabulous journey to the Open Borders Districts of America. Carpet muncher falls in love with female tortured artist or heroin addict next door A female remake of Ghostbusters sponsored by Cheetos and Whiskas, a Clinton-approved work of art and recipient of the IngSoc Academy award. Should have put the muzzle on his balls for more self-inflicted humiliation Where are the mythical heroes, triumphing against all odds? Now Mad Max waits patiently in the car while a bonehead empowered you go grrrrl takes the decisions. It seems that we have to turn towards Russia once more for our recommended daily dose of normal masculinity. As red pill and cold-blooded as it gets “Brother” (“Brat” in Russian) is a 1997 movie directed by Alexey Balabanov. It is seen by many as the one of the greatest gangster movie of all time and changed forever the image of the traditional justice-seeking hero. It has been a few years at least that I want to share my discovery of this film with our readers. It had a tremendous impact on the way I see the world and the attitude I have towards life. I was convinced of its quality, of the impact it could have on the disciples of the red pill and that a few lines cannot do justice to this giant of Russian cinema culture. It entirely deserves an article of its own. My brother, the criminal Enter Danila Bagrov, played by the stellar Sergey Bodrov, who died at 28, at the peak of his meteor-like career. Many called him the Russian James Dean. After serving in the bloody war theatre of Chechnya, young veteran Danila returns home, in the sleepy provincial town of Tula. Needing money and without any solid prospects, he joins his brother Vytia who works as a hitman for the local “well-dressed businessman” in Saint Petersburg. Being an expert in making rudimentary weapons and with his quick capacity of reaction and frugality, Danila adapts marvelously to his new occupation. After seeing the risk of a gifted concurrent stealing their livelihood, the city’s gangsters soon put a price on his head and send a few professionals to tie up this loose end. But even after being betrayed by a mix of greed and cowardice, young Danila Bagrov decides to take on the mob single handedly. An epitome of the Russian alpha. Hard and unforgiving, sober in words and in behaviour, for whom nothing counts more than the bonds of blood and brotherhood. To err is human His one soft spot is the faith he has in human nature, convinced that if he does good, his fellow man will be virtuous in return. He could not be more wrong, especially with women. He discovers very fast that beta moves like buying them gifts and helping them only brings him trouble or ungratefulness. What is rare and makes Danila stand out is his loyalty, a cornerstone of the definition of masculinity and a value that progressively vanishes nowadays. His brother will do the unthinkable. But after the storm clears and Danila emerges victorious, he proves once more his quality as a man by being magnanimous and giving him a second chance. No fancy green screen or politically correct themes Brat is good because it is painfully real and does not embellish the lawless chaos that was early post-Soviet Russia. This is how it felt when the Wall came down. Everyone was trying to survive the best way they could. The odd, low-quality orange filter used in the film reminds us of this period where everything was made from what people could find when the shelves where empty. You cannot go wrong with a good revenge movie and Danila is an example of bravery. Alone and against all odds, he takes on the mafia that wronged him and will make them pay. The man says it like it is His analysis of the city and its perverse influence on men is brutally accurate: Danila: You told me about the city, about its strength. But here, everyone is weak. Hoffman: The city is a great and terrible force. It sucks the life force out of the strong – turns them weak. It takes away your power. And you fell right in the middle of it. His opinion about the abuse of power and the corrupt elites that would kill mother and father for their own profit and the final victory of truth applies especially well to today’s political and social context. American, what’s your power? Is it really money? My brother says it’s money. You’ve got lots of money – so what? Truth is a real power. Whoever is right is strong. You cheated on a man and took away his money. Did it make you stronger? No, it did not, ’cause you are not right, and the person you cheated on is. That means he’s stronger. Right? “Brother” also drops lethal truths about women and their ways. After spending all his roubles buying drinks and dope for a young interchangeable skank, she tells Danila: Kate: Do you have condoms? Danila: Why? Kate: ‘Why? You really think I will give you back your money? Come here… Two brothers for two majestic films The second volume, simply titled “Brother 2”, breaks the stereotype that sequels are always awful and is at least as good, if not better than the original. Same characters are followed but this time, Danila’s brother in arms has been played by a crooked American businessman, in touch with the Muscovite mafia. They attacked his brothers once more and he will have this time to cross the Atlantic to reclaim what is rightfully his. Again, the movie is realistic, gritty but has a lighter outlook on life. Whereas in the first volume, the main character showed a sheer hatred for everything that came from America and corrupted his country, the sequel that involves Danila’s adventures and clueless discovery of American culture often results in hilarious encounters. Un film qui prend aux tripes If the red pill was a religion, Danila Bagrov could be its patron saint. You can watch it legally following this link which includes English subtitles. The firm KinoKompania STV that produced the film decided to release it online, the film being such a household name in Russia and worldwide. Needless to say that you have watch it in the original Russian. The second opus can also be found online with English subtitles and Russian audio. Don’t miss out on these monuments of Russian cinema. Read More: You’ve Already Seen One Of The Greatest Red Pill Movies Ever Made

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NFL’S PHONY PATRIOTISM: US Defense Department Paid NFL DISGUSTING $4.5 Million For On-Field Flag Appearances…Welcome Home Tributes

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

1real

Highlights From the Clinton Campaign Emails: How to Deal With Sanders and Biden - The New York Times

The latest trove of documents released by WikiLeaks includes thousands of pages of emails between John D. Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and aides, Clinton family members and outside donors all angling for position and power within Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Last week, a set of Mr. Podesta’s emails were disclosed that included potentially damaging excerpts from private paid speeches Mrs. Clinton delivered to Wall Street executives in which she praised “open trade and open borders” and lamented that her personal wealth made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class. The latest leaked emails show Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides trying to grapple with that reality, and establish a campaign message that could position her, a career politician and Washington insider, as an appealing agent of change. The authenticity of the emails, which were from Mr. Podesta’s account, was not challenged by Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. Here are the highlights: Despite statements by Mrs. Clinton and her allies insisting she had not made up her mind about seeking the presidency in 2016, the emails reveal that her advisers had begun to test messages and contemplate a campaign strategy at least two years before she officially declared her candidacy in April 2015. Mr. Podesta, who would become campaign chairman, and Robby Mook, the eventual campaign manager, grappled with how to best position Mrs. Clinton, a career politician, as a change agent, how much to play up the potential of her candidacy and how to address anger over income inequality. “Gender will be a big field and volunteer motivator, but it won’t close the deal,” Mr. Mook wrote to Mr. Podesta and Cheryl D. Mills, another Clinton adviser, in March 2014. “The real challenge,” Ms. Mills wrote, “is that this likely will be when people want experience and we got so burned by that narrative” in the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama that “we won’t go back to it, even though it might be right for now. ” The emails reveal the excruciating behind every step related to how Mrs. Clinton handled everything from her splashy campaign rollout speech on Roosevelt Island in June 2015 to a single Twitter post. In one email chain from March 2015, four aides debated a Twitter post in which Mrs. Clinton would address for the first time revelations that she had used a private email server during her tenure at the State Department. “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible,” the post eventually read. “She smacked down POTUS on trade and kept kicking for a little bit,” Huma Abedin, a close aide, wrote on June 14, 2015, using an acronym for the president. “Worth looking at the transcript but this seemed to really work for this crowd. ” At the time, Mrs. Clinton was trying to craft herself as more of a populist, pointing to differences between her and Mr. Obama. The aides also liked the personal details she shared. “She inserted some new applause lines and talked about Dorothy,” her mother, “in a more personal way that I’ve only heard talk about privately,” Ms. Abedin wrote. Aides discussed leaking it after a meeting with labor leaders — so as not to undermine her “principled stand about not the president in public. ” Mr. Mook suggested that Mrs. Clinton time her announcement to “help distract” from the barrage of criticism surrounding her use of a private email server. The emails show heightened awareness of her vulnerability to charges of and political maneuvering. “She risks looking very political, especially on this,” wrote Joel Benenson, the chief strategist on the campaign. Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, felt that leaking her new position on Keystone “might achieve the same effect of getting her on the record on this issue, but with less perception that she is putting a finger to the wind. ” We take a closer look at how the debate over the unveiling evolved. In 2015, the Clinton campaign had to deal with escalating chatter about a potential run by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Donors phoned in reports on Mr. Biden’s maneuvers to advisers like Neera Tanden, who relayed them back to Mr. Podesta. Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Clinton supporter, emailed her campaign manager to grouse about one supporter in particular: Linda Lipsen, head of the trial lawyers association. “I get multiple calls every morning and I try to talk everyone off the ledge and not bug u all,” Mr. Elmendorf wrote. “But Linda is in a different category. ” Ms. Lipsen had complained about not getting enough care from the campaign at a time when she was working members of her trade association and trying to keep them from considering Mr. Biden. For all the planning, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides appeared blindsided by the popularity of Senator Bernie Sanders’s populist message in the Democratic primary. Concern over Mrs. Clinton’s economic message seemed to reach a breaking point after Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Sanders by 22 percentage points in the New Hampshire primary. “Message needs to be more positive, upbeat, hopeful,” an adviser wrote to Mr. Podesta. “Bernie is saying we can change the world. Her msg is ‘No, we can’t’ because … ” The adviser expressed particular concern about young voters gravitating to Mr. Sanders’s promise for revolution. “Bernie’s ads feature young ppl saying why they are voting supporting him,” she wrote. “Hillary’s ads need to be young people — all under 45 and a smattering of older ones — validating her. ” In January, Donna Brazile, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, passed on an email from Mr. Sanders’s outreach team about how it was planning to host a event. “Thank you for the heads up on this, Donna,” responded Adrienne Elrod, one of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides. Ms. Brazile, a longtime party operative, later replaced Debbie Wasserman Schultz on an interim basis as D. N. C. chairwoman on the eve of the party’s national convention, a change that came after leaked emails revealed that Democratic officials had conspired to harm Mr. Sanders’s bid for the party’s nomination. Her aides decided in January that she should avoid talking about Wall Street at an event in Nevada during her primary fight with Mr. Sanders. “Don’t know that it is most effective contrast for her,” wrote Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director. “Seems like we are picking the fight he wants to have. ” In the fall and winter of 2011, an increasingly bitter dispute was breaking out between a top Clinton aide, Douglas J. Band, and Chelsea Clinton, over the blurred lines between the Clinton Foundation and Mr. Band’s consulting company, Teneo. Ms. Clinton had sought to reorganize and professionalize the foundation, angering Mr. Band and a fellow longtime Clinton aide, Justin Cooper, who resisted. “Doug apparently kept telling my dad I was trying to push him out, take over,” Ms. Clinton told Mr. Podesta in a November 2011 email. But the next month, Ms. Clinton was less understanding. In December, she emailed Mr. Podesta and several aides to Mrs. Clinton regarding a Clinton Foundation aide who worked for former President Bill Clinton. The aide, Ilya Aspis, had been calling members of Parliament in Britain “on behalf of President Clinton” for Teneo clients, including the chief executive of Dow Chemical. She also mentions that another former White House aide, Sara Latham, had begun working for Teneo but then quit “because she was so upset, partly because of what Doug and Declan asked her to was happening for their clients at Davos. ” The reference appears to be to Declan Kelly, a of Teneo, though what Ms. Latham was asked to do remains unclear.

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BALTIMORE BURNS: MARYLAND GOVERNOR BRINGS IN NATIONAL GUARD AND DECLARES A STATE OF EMERGENCY

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Lady Gaga Delivers Her Most Subversive Performance at Super Bowl

Every entertainer likes to be subversive — to push the envelope and surprise their audience. At a time when Hollywood has made itself insufferable with its increasingly hysterical political commentary, Lady Gaga shocked the world simply by entertaining it. [Expectations were before the Super Bowl LI halftime show what would Gaga — one of Hillary Clinton’s top celebrity supporters — say or do in this, the first halftime show of Donald Trump’s presidency? How could she possibly top Beyoncé’s tribute to the Black Panthers from last year’s game? “This performance is for everyone,” Gaga coyly told reporters in Houston on Saturday, refusing to divulge her plans. “I want to, more than anything, create a moment that everyone that’s watching will never forget. ” Tantalizing stuff. And yet there was barely a whiff of partisan politics at all during the pop star’s entire set, not even a requisite “Resist,” or “Love trumps hate. ” Opening with a of “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land” from the roof of NRG Stadium under a cloud of pulsating red, white and drones, Gaga literally dove into the building and straight into a collection of her greatest hits: “Poker Face,” “Just Dance,” “Born This Way,” “Telephone” and the grand finale of “Bad Romance,” all delivered (a rare feat given the amount of dancing she was doing) and reasonably well. It was a mesmerizing performance, filled with the kind of expert showmanship that only very confident artists can pull off. It reminded me, if only slightly, of Prince’s pageantry and 2007 halftime show in Miami, in which the late artist, ever the consummate entertainer, ran through a collection of Bob Dylan and Tina Turner covers before hoisting his guitar high for a rousing rendition of “Purple Rain,” in the middle of an actual downpour. Gaga did her set, and then it was over. No raised fists, no inappropriate language, no threats, no protests. No hysteria. She walked off the field after an epic exit in which she dropped the mic, caught a football and dove offstage, and then that stage was reset for what was to become one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the NFL. It is not unlikely — given the current political and cultural climate in America — that Gaga considered going the protest statement route, and then decided against it. After all, it is now firmly established that the endless political grandstanding has gotten celebrities absolutely nowhere. It rarely ever feels authentic, especially coming from people who earn more money in an hour for flashing their ass on TV than most Americans will earn in a lifetime. And even when it does feel authentic, millions across the country are bound to disagree. Conservative media, including yours truly, have made a cottage industry of pointing out exactly how clueless and out of touch celebrities are when compared with ordinary people. Just ask Hillary Clinton and her celebrity army how the last election worked out for them. And consider Beyoncé’s halftime show. For months afterward, the conversation was focused almost entirely on the blatant enforcement message she preached from America’s biggest stage, and now, a year after the show and despite liberals’ claim that everybody loves Beyoncé! half the country now hates Beyoncé. Her show led police groups to boycott her concerts, even as she audaciously used a police escort to get to the game (and later cashed in on the sentiment by offering her very own line of “Boycott Beyoncé” merchandise at her tour stops). More division. More disconnection between law enforcement and the people they serve and protect. All in the name of “love” and “tolerance. ” Or consider Madonna at last month’s Women’s March on Washington, where she casually suggested to the tens of thousands of activists in attendance that she had often thought of blowing up the White House. What did that do for us? Or Meryl Streep’s speech about morality at the Oscars, as if Hollywood is somehow the great arbiter of moral behavior. The only thing Streep’s speech accomplished is that conservatives can no longer enjoy Kramer vs. Kramer in the same way again. The bottom line is this: the best way to unite more than 100 million Americans with wildly disparate political views is to refrain from making any political statements at all. That Lady Gaga was the one to buck the trend freaked out plenty of entertainment journalists and commentators. Could this be the same Gaga that hopped on a sanitation truck outside Trump Tower in the hours of November 9, defiantly holding up a “Love Trumps Hate” sign in a show of silent protest? After the show, Los Angeles Times writer Mikael Wood wrote that the collection of hits Gaga played Sunday night “sounded like objects of distraction, catchy baubles meant to entertain us in the absence of a broader message. ” That sentiment was widely shared among Hollywood journalists, as a cursory look around the Internet revealed on Monday morning. Gaga missed her chance to say something useful, something revolutionary. This would have been The Moment, the chance to break through and show America just how stupid and wrong it was for electing Donald Trump president. Gaga would have found the key. To which I say: good grief. Pop songs are by definition catchy baubles meant to entertain us, and if Lady Gaga wanted to show off her maturity as an artist by performing a collection of her greatest hits (and converting some of the skeptics) then so be it. In the meantime, go masturbate to Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech and dream of better days. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum

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Kremlin: we hope new U.S. envoy can help repair U.S.-Russia ties

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday it hoped that President Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, could help breathe new life into battered U.S.-Russia relations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments to reporters in a conference call ahead of Huntsman presenting his diplomatic credentials to President Vladimir Putin later on Tuesday. “We hope that, headed by the new ambassador, the U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia will be able to significantly contribute to repairing the damage done by Washington’s actions to our relations,” said Peskov. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, an experienced diplomat, was confirmed as ambassador by the U.S. Senate at the end of last month. Huntsman takes on the post in Moscow as congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller investigate allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf, as well as potential collusion with Moscow by Trump associates. Moscow denies such activity and Trump dismisses any talk of collusion. Huntsman said at his confirmation hearing that there was no question Russia interfered during the 2016 campaign.

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Fmr. DNI James Clapper: Trump’s Russia Scandal Is Worse Than Watergate (VIDEO)

James Clapper was the Director of National Intelligence during the Obama Administration. He has been interviewed many times over the Trump Administration s troubles with Russia and his latest statement is sure to make the Trump White House furious that s to say nothing of how Donald Trump himself will react when he gets wind of these comments.During remarks he was making at Australia s National Press Club, Clapper said of Trump s scandal-ridden White House: I lived through Watergate. It was a scary time, I have to say though that I think, you know, compare the two, that Watergate pales in my view compared to what we re confronting now. Apparently, Clapper continued to go all in on Trump, as Australian reporter Paul Karp tweeted out the contents of what Clapper was saying:Clapper is absolutely shirtfronting Trump at #NPC #auspol pic.twitter.com/avN2VxKlOR Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 7, 2017This is not the first time Clapper has openly spoken of Trump with contempt; in fact, he recently suggested to Jake Tapper, host of the CNN news shows The Lead and State of the Union, that Trump is a threat to the very fabric of the republic, saying: I think in many ways our institutions are under assault both externally and that s the big news here is the Russian interference in our election system and I think as well our institutions are under assault internally. When Tapper pressed Clapper about what he meant about the institutional danger from the inside, Clapper said he meant Trump.Of course, Clapper is correct. Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout. There has never been such an assault on our Republic from within the very top levels of government, and certainly we ve never had a president who was in the pocket of the Russians the way Trump is. No, this is far, far worse than Watergate, and that is why we must find a way to remove the entire Trump Administration from office as soon as possible.Watch Clapper s remarks below:Featured image via Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

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BREAKING: DETROIT NEWS REPORTS Potential New Evidence Of Massive Vote Tampering

Detroit elections officials waited several days to deliver nearly 100 poll books to Wayne County officials charged with certifying the presidential election, newly released documents show.County clerk officials on Thursday released a memo to State Elections Director Chris Thomas that said 95 poll books from the 662 precincts weren t available at the start of the canvass, which began the day after the Nov. 8 election. Five of those poll books, which contain the names of voters and ensure the integrity of elections, were never delivered to county canvassers and presumably remain missing.The revelation comes atop other irregularities that have prompted a state audit. Among other issues, The Detroit News reported this week that voting machines registered more votes than they should have in one-third of all city precincts. I m not happy with how Detroit handled this election at all, said Krista Hartounian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which certified the election. We had been seeing improvement, but this one was different. This one was off. Canvassers compare poll books with printouts from voting machines to ensure the number of people who signed in to vote match the number of ballots cast.In heavily Democratic Detroit, the numbers didn t match in 392 of 662 precincts or 59 percent. The discrepancies emerged during a statewide presidential recount that began last week and ended Friday following a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court.It s unclear how many extra votes were counted in Detroit. That s because tallies were off by five or more votes in 52 Detroit precincts, but county officials will not release the exact number of discrepancies in each precinct.Read more: Detroit News

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Morocco's 'mule' women scratch a living on Spanish enclave border

MELILLA, Spain (Reuters) - In a winding early-morning queue, Jemaa Laalaoua hunches over with 50 kg (110 lb) of kitchenware on her back, waiting to cross back into Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. The 41-year-old mother of eight is one of thousands of Moroccans who eke out a living by walking loads of merchandise from Melilla into the northern Moroccan province of Nador. Goods including metal kettles that Laalaoua was carrying are counted as personal luggage and are not taxed, allowing for a small mark-up when they are shipped on and sold on across Morocco. On average, I earn about 70 dirhams ($7.40) per trip, carrying anywhere between 40 to 70 kg, says Laalaoua. But most days, we never know how much we will make. The work is backbreaking and fraught with risk. Some traders have died in stampedes through the tight border crossing. We say our prayers in the morning and brace for the day, not knowing if we will come out dead or alive, Laalaoua says. She lifts undergarments to display bruises on her leg from a Spanish Civil Guard s truncheon. She says she was beaten for attempting to advance towards the front of the queue. No one from the Civil Guard in Melilla was available to comment. When Laalaoua finally gets through the narrowly caged border crossing, she weaves through the crowd to drop off her cargo inside the bustling Beni Ansar market, before rushing back to a Melilla warehouse where she will load up for her last trip of the day. Locals with an address in the Nador province are allowed to cross through into Melilla without a visa, but cannot spend more than a day in the Spanish enclave. They can cross for five hours a day, four days a week. In total, there are between 30,000-40,000 crossings daily, according to the Spanish border police. The practice has been going on for decades. Before, it was dominated by single mothers known locally as mule women , who struggled to make a living elsewhere. But as unemployment has climbed, the women have increasingly found themselves in competition with young men. Each morning the women report to a boss who tasks them with transporting an assigned quantity of goods, coordinating with warehouse owners and shippers. By 5 a.m. crowds of hundreds swell to thousands, as people wait for Spanish guards to open the border gates. Male traders fight and women shout and scream as the jostle for a place in the crush. Most manage to make two or three crossings before the border shuts again. The merchandise spans everything from simple household goods such as towels, toilet paper, and soap, to illicit wares including alcohol and plastic bags, which have been banned in Morocco since last year. Laalaoua lives nearly 27 km (17 miles) from the border, waking up at 2 a.m. to prepare for her commute, by foot then taxi or bus. Her husband Mohammed Zoubah, 57, fell ill six years ago, forcing Laalaoua to become the primary breadwinner. She s strong, she s protecting this household, he says. May God bless her with patience.

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Trump says hopes for Cuban 'freedom' after Castro death

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that his administration would “do all it can” once he takes office on Jan. 20 to help increase freedom and prosperity for Cuban people after the death of Fidel Castro. But his initial reaction to Castro’s death sidestepped whether the incoming president would make good on a threat made late in his White House campaign to reverse President Barack Obama’s moves to open relations with the Cold War adversary. Obama used his executive powers on a series of steps to ease trade, travel and financial restrictions against Cuba, arguing it was time to try diplomacy after the half-century-long economic embargo against Cuba had failed to shake the regime. Trump’s first statement on Cuba policy since the Nov. 8 election, issued from his Palm Beach, Florida, resort where he and his family were spending the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday, did not address whether he would roll back Obama’s measures because of concerns about religious and political freedom in Cuba. “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” Trump said in the statement. “While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” he said. Trump has just begun to fill out the top ranks of his national security team, and has not yet named his top diplomat - the secretary of state - who will play a major role in formulating policy on Cuba. He last week named Mauricio Claver-Carone, a political lobbyist who has strongly criticized Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba and supports maintaining the U.S. embargo against the island, to his transition team at the U.S. Treasury Department. The agency is responsible for enforcing U.S. trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. Claver-Carone is director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee. Claver-Carone was not immediately available for comment on Saturday. Trump’s initial statement was viewed by some to mark a softening from his rhetoric on Cuba policy late in the campaign, one U.S. intelligence official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This may be one place where his business interests prod him to take a more pragmatic course, even if that angers the hard-core, anti-Castro elements of both parties,” the official told Reuters. A second U.S. official noted the foreign policy advisers Trump has named thus far are not known to have any particular interest in Cuba. That may mean Trump’s economic team will have more sway over Cuba policy, which could lead to a more pragmatic approach, the second official said. An aggressive policy by Trump would close off lucrative opportunities to U.S. businesses and hand them to European or Asian firms, and would hurt companies like American Airlines (AAL.O), due to start commercial flights to Havana on Monday for the first time in half a century. Trump - a New York businessman and former reality TV star with an unconventional approach to politics - started his campaign saying he was open to lifting the long-standing embargo on trade with Cuba. In January, he said on Fox News that he was in favor of “opening it up” with Cuba, but wanted a better “deal” than Obama had made, comments he repeated in a debate with Republican rivals in March. “I would want to make a strong, solid, good deal because right now, everything is in Cuba’s favor,” Trump said in March, saying he would “probably have the embassy closed” in Havana until a new deal was made. When Obama visited Cuba later that month, Trump said in an interview with CNN that he “probably” would continue to normalize economic and diplomatic relations with Cuba, and would even open a Trump hotel in Cuba if the conditions were right. “I think Cuba has certain potential, and I think it’s OK to bring Cuba into the fold, but you have to make a much better deal,” he said, noting he was worried Cuba would sue the United States for reparations for damage caused by its decades-long embargo on Cuba. Cuba policy was not part of a major foreign policy address Trump delivered in April. After he secured his party’s nomination, his position shifted to a more traditional Republican position. At a Miami rally in September, Trump said he would roll back Obama’s Cuban policy reforms unless Cuban leaders allowed religious freedom and freed political prisoners. “The next president can reverse them, and that I will do unless the Castro regime meets our demands,” Trump told supporters. His vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, also took a hard line. “Let me make you a promise,” Pence said in Miami just days before the election. “When Donald Trump is president of the United States, we will repeal Obama’s executive orders on Cuba.” On Saturday, Pence tweeted: “The tyrant Castro is dead. New hope dawns. We will stand with the oppressed Cuban people for a free and democratic Cuba. Viva Cuba Libre!” Trump will face pressure to reverse Obama’s orders on Cuba from a bloc of mostly Republican Cuban-American lawmakers that has worked to keep tight restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba for years. They believe Cuba’s government is still too repressive to ease economic and travel restrictions. “The dictator has died, but the dictatorship has not,” said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Cuban-American who ran against Trump to be the Republican presidential candidate. “The future of Cuba ultimately remains in the hands of the Cuban people, and now more than ever Congress and the new administration must stand with them against their brutal rulers and support their struggle for freedom and basic human rights.” But some Republicans want to continue with Obama’s opening. U.S. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a leading Republican anti-embargo voice, said on Saturday that “more frequent and consequential ties between Cubans and Americans” would more likely boost income and sap the strength of the Castro government. Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor, who represents a Tampa, Florida, district with a significant Cuban population, said she thinks Castro’s death could make it easier for the Trump administration to change its Cuba stance. “While Fidel Castro was alive, there was an emotional impediment for greater engagement” from the Cuban exile community in Miami, Castor told Reuters. “That emotional impediment now is gone,” she said.

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Cyprus says it plans to help defuse Lebanese crisis

ATHENS (Reuters) - Cyprus on Wednesday said it would try to help defuse a crisis in neighboring Lebanon after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri made an unexpected stopover on the island on Tuesday night. Cyprus announced the move shortly after Hariri shelved a decision to resign at the request of Lebanon s President Michel Aoun, easing an impasse that had stirred tensions around the Middle East. Hariri met Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades at Larnaca airport for about 45 minutes late on Tuesday on his way back to Lebanon, his first visit home since he unexpectedly announced on Nov. 4 he would resign in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. Our common objective is stability in Lebanon, stability in our area. Within this context... the President of the Republic will undertake some initiatives precisely to promote this objective; stability in Lebanon, Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said. Christodoulides said Anastasiades s initiatives would be directed toward European Union and neighboring states, but was not more specific. Cyprus is uniquely placed, as a member state of the European Union which also maintains excellent relations with all its neighbors. That (position) is broadly recognized and would allow us to work to achieve stability in Lebanon, he said. The island, perched on the edge of the Middle East, is broadly considered a neutral safe haven in an otherwise volatile region. It took in thousands of Lebanese fleeing civil war in the 1970s and successfully mediated an end to a 39-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem between Israeli forces and suspected Palestinian militants. On Tuesday Anastasiades received an invitation to visit Saudi Arabia, Christodoulides said. It was not immediately clear if it was connected to the crisis, though Cypriot government officials told Reuters the visit had been planned for some time.

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Racist NYPD Cops Threaten To Tase Black Children For Walking Down The Street (VIDEO)

Now that Donald Trump is president and Jeff Sessions is Attorney General, racist cops everywhere have free reign to abuse vulnerable groups of people at every turn. The latest incidence of said abuse was caught on tape by Brooklyn College Associate Professor of Sociology Alex S. Vitale, in which New York City police officers were seen telling a group of black students that they would use a taser on them if they didn t move away from the sidewalk. This is a definite abuse of authority, as the NYPD s official rules state that tasers are not to be used on minors.When the children were slow to move away from the sidewalk at the intersection of Bedford and Campus Avenue, one of the officers said, What are you going to do about it? This apparently implies that the cops don t care about the children s rights, and would do as they please. A short time later, one cop asks the kids, do you want to ride the lightning? This appears to be slang for the use of a taser.Professor Vitale acknowledges that the actions of the officers on the video seem [s] like an abuse of authority. Well, it certainly was abusive. Those children were not doing anything wrong. These cops are just looking to hurt black children because they can. They should be fired and charged with criminal offenses. Luckily, the kids involved in this incident weren t harmed, but, so many times, kids have wound up hurt or dead because racist, power-abusing cops decided to hurt them.The NYPD says that the actions of the officers on the tape are going to be investigated internally. Of course, that means nothing, because they are investigating themselves. They ll surely find that they have done nothing wrong, even though there is every indication, when one views that tape, that they ve done EVERYTHING wrong.Welcome to community policing in the age of Trump.Watch the disturbing video below:

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BREAKING: SECRET SERVICE Takes Action After White House Intruder Got too Close For Comfort [Video]

The Secret Service fired two uniformed division officers who were involved in the March 10th intrusion when Jonathan Tran jumped the White House fence and wandered the grounds for 16 minutes, even getting close to the White House s windows and doors:ALARM TURNED OFF: Shocking Details on WHITE HOUSE Fence Jumper: It was even worse than I thought Secret Service personnel removed the alarm sensors along an area of fence line when the agency raised its height in response to previous fence-jumping incidents as a way to make it harder to scale. Ironically, the very effort to prevent fence jumping appears to have permitted a particularly egregious intrusion.One source said superiors in the Uniformed Division told Secret Service personnel to remove the sensors and piece them together for use elsewhere. They were never replaced.There are at least 10 to 12 officers and agents, including supervisors from the Presidential Protective Division, monitoring these sensors at any given time. They do so from the Joint Operations Command Center or JOCC, which is located outside of the White House complex.Some agents and officers also are questioning why Secret Service never released the K-9 unit to try to find an intruder after the alarms on the first fence the intruder scaled went off.Rep. Jason Chaffetz weighs in below on details of what the intruder did in those 17 minutes: The White House fence jumper who lingered on the ground unnoticed for 17 minutes was literally just hanging out in plain view with alarms blaring, and the Secret Service had no clue.Congressman Jason Chaffetz tells TMZ he met with the Director of Homeland Security and the Acting Director of the Secret Service for an hour and a half Tuesday, and his conclusion It was even worse than I thought. Chaffetz says the surveillance video is shocking the intruder was not darting around. Rather, he was lingering, hanging out on the grounds. At one point he took the time to bend down and tie his shoes.The intruder at times peered through windows of the building, where Trump was inside. As we previously reported, he also jiggled a doorknob.Chaffetz says some of the alarms failed but some went off, yet the intruder was not detected.Secret Service agents did check the grounds, but not with any urgency. Alarms frequently go off for various reasons, and this time it was met with an inadequate response.And Chaffetz says the video shows agents were simply lackadaisical. As he put it, Everything went wrong. The congressman says he was promised there would be big changes, adding, There better be. Via: tmz

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The Smothers Brothers and the Birth of TV Buzz - The New York Times

Fifty years ago right about now, two unassuming young brothers were standing in front of a CBS studio audience taping the first episode of their new variety show. They were also about to unleash the modern concept of television buzz, in a storm the likes of which the medium had not seen. They were the Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, and the story of their show, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” is worth recalling 50 years on as a case study that may prove newly relevant as a president with a habit of attacking TV shows via Twitter settles into office. That first episode, taped in late January and broadcast Feb. 5, 1967, wasn’t incendiary, but some that came later were spectacularly so. The brothers inflamed CBS censors and segments of their audience by injecting sexual innuendo, drug references, religion and especially politics into the typically bland format, drawing, in Season 3, a firing. The story of the show can seem . The brothers were delivering two things that every network today covets: a lot of attention and a young audience. Why kill that goose? The answer lies in the newness of it all. In 1967, no one knew quite how to exploit controversy and conversation the way publicists do. The series was CBS’s latest effort to compete against “Bonanza,” the NBC staple that had owned Sunday nights for years. The brothers had a stage act in which Tom, on guitar, played a dimwit, and Dick, on bass, was the straight man. The dynamic translated exceedingly well to TV. Dick Smothers, now 77, who lives in Florida and advocates fitness and balance programs for older people, was a bit surprised by the show’s popularity at first. “I didn’t think we sang that well,” he said. “Now I can see the genuineness, the whimsy that we had. ” The series was remarkable for its approach, mixing established guest stars with newcomers and rock acts. A September 1967 installment had Bette Davis, Mickey Rooney and the Who, whose finale that night is said to have damaged Pete Townshend’s hearing. The multigenerational lineups led to ratings success some weeks, the show even outdrew “Bonanza. ” But the humor content increasingly reflected contentious times, and by Season 2, clashes with CBS’s censors were frequent. “They had something to offend everybody,” William H. Tankersley, then the executive in charge of programming standards and practices at CBS, said in a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television, still sounding peeved. (Mr. Tankersley died last year at 98.) “They brought more complaints than any show in history on CBS. They injected politics up to the sky. They refused to do anything that we asked. ” The CBS response, though, was oddly inconsistent, evidence of how uncharted this territory was. Pete Seeger’s performance of the antiwar “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” was cut out of his performance in an early Season 2 episode, but five months later he was allowed to sing the song. What today seems barely saucy would be cut. One early battle involved efforts to say “frigget” instead of “ribbet” in a frog sketch, David Bianculli recounts in “Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. ” A sort of guerrilla war broke out in which banned material would turn up in newspapers, including this one as early as April 1967, The New York Times reprinted a sketch by Elaine May that the network had killed. Yet some of the material that made it onto the air was pointed enough to raise eyebrows even today. A series of sketches in a December 1967 episode, for instance, mocked the American obsession with guns mercilessly. In one bit, a contestant was to take shots at three hidden figures in hopes of killing either a stranger, a celebrity or his own wife. If the network was surprised by the show’s success and all the controversy, people on the creative side of things were, too. “I was naïve enough to think that nobody was watching except my friends,” said David Steinberg, who was then a comedian who had made a few “Tonight Show” appearances. “We didn’t know that we were bothering the government. ” In Season 3, Mr. Steinberg did one of his satirical “sermonettes,” in which he tweaked religion, a subject that television of the day didn’t like to touch. Some time after that appearance, he said, he dropped by the show’s headquarters and Tom Smothers dragged him to a room that contained a bunch of bulging duffel bags. “I said, ‘What is this? ’” Mr. Steinberg recalled. “And he said, ‘It’s your hate mail. ’” In March 1969, Tom Smothers asked Mr. Steinberg to do another sermonette, although the network had banned the bit. That move is often credited with being the last straw, though it was just one of many, many straws. In any case, the network fired the Smotherses and canceled the show, though it was still pulling in decent ratings. Since those times, networks have learned that a certain amount of boundary pushing is healthy politicians have become more adept at manipulating TV and the people on the creative side have begun to understand that being on TV, especially in network prime time, requires compromises. That learning process continues today just ask Keith Olbermann or Bill Maher, hosts whose mouths have landed them in hot water. Yet content, the thing that got the Smothers Brothers in trouble, is all over prime time, even on comedies like “ . ” And now comes Donald J. Trump, who seems to have thin skin. The Smotherses incurred the wrath of two presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Tom Smothers, who turns 80 in February, said in an interview in 2000 that he had always believed Nixon was directly responsible for his show’s demise. “There was a bigger game going on that was beyond our scope of understanding,” he said. Who knows what games lie ahead as a Twitter president takes office?

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‘Responsible Gun Owner’ Blows Off His Own Leg After Turning His Lawnmower Into Exploding Target

Successfully proving that we will kill ourselves before ISIS ever gets the chance, a patriotic gun owner decided that the only way to make shooting his lawn mower better was to also rig the lawn mower to explode. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? The short answer is a lot.David Presley loaded up an old lawn mower with three pounds of Tannerite, which is a compound used to create exploding targets for use on shooting ranges. There s no legitimate need for a target to explode, but hey Murica! Right?Presley clearly didn t read the instruction manual. Sheriff Joe Chapman told local news that you are supposed to use less than a pound of the explosive compound if you want to make an exploding target and you need to stand at least 100 yards away from it when you shoot.Presley opted to use the 3 pounds and stand 25 yards away. The ensuing blast of liberty deprived Captain Dumbass of his left leg below the knee.Lydiah Mays, Presley s neighbor really said it best: You would ve had to be on drugs or something to think it was a good idea to play with that and try to blow up a lawnmower. Source: ajc.comWalton County Fire Rescue Chief, Craig League, also gave his opinion: If you hear a loud boom and it shakes your home, your windows, and the china in your cabinets rattle around, then there is a good chance one of your neighbors is shooting Tannerite. Source: ajc.comLet s think about what he just said. This must happen so frequently in the county, that he actually said in a non-joking manner if your house literally is shaking from explosions, someone is shooting large concentrations of explosives for fun. Wow!How soon can I move there to experience this as well?So many parts of this story, despite the obvious tragedy, are absurd to the point of being hilarious. Possibly the best one of all is the fact there is NOT a law against doing this. You can t smoke a teeny little joint in this area legally, but you can willy-nilly shoot large quantities of explosives. America F*ck Yeah.Featured image via YouTube screen capture

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LOUDMOUTH CELEBRITIES Forced To EAT CROW After Hurling Vile Insults At Ben Carson Over “Immigrant” Remarks…WFB Releases VIDEO Of Obama Saying Same Thing In 2015

On March 6, newly-minted Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Dr. Ben Carson, gave a speech before employees of the organization. During the speech, he made a controversial remark, referring to African slaves as immigrants. Here are a few of the vile tweets celebrities posted for everyone to seen Twitter:Actor, radical leftist and Obama cheerleader Samuel L. Jackson apparently had not yet gotten the memo that Obama said almost the exact same thing only one year ago. There s always the very real possibility that Jackson was just too ignorant to understand what Dr. Carson was saying Here s Jackson s vile tweet:OK!! Ben Carson .I can't! Immigrants ? In the bottom of SLAVE SHIPS??!! MUTHAFUKKA PLEASE!!!#dickheadedtom Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) March 6, 2017There s nothing like a has been rapper calling the most brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon in America a DumbF*ck LOL! Christopher Jackson played George Washington in Hamilton. Being an actor in Hamilton apparently makes him the authority on all things black, including the meaning behind the comments made by Dr. Ben Carson. Our Ancestors didn't have a "CHOICE" you IDIOT!!!! Ben Carson, you are Hopelessly Ignorant. Again, Kids look the other way Please. Christopher Jackson (@ChrisisSingin) March 7, 2017Jackson has this tweet pinned to the top of his Twitter account. Apparently telling other people to love your neighbor makes you somehow a better person. And it also apparently gives you immunity when you act like a bully when you tell others to, Stand up to the bully. Love your Neighbor. Make your cause known to them. Stand up to the bully. Speak for those with no voice. This work is JUST Beginning. Christopher Jackson (@ChrisisSingin) November 9, 2016These people are such utter phonies and have no idea what it means to be tolerant of anyone who hold a view that is in opposition to theirs.On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon published a side-by-side video featuring Ben Carson s remarks alongside those made during a 2015 speech by then-President Barack Obama and they were eerily similar:Watch: Daily WireInstead of apologizing for his ignorant remarks, ICE T makes lame attempt at blaming Trump for his hateful and racist remarks:In the past Year or so of Politics.. Twitter and all of Social Media has shown the true Divide of the people.. It s sad But its REAL. ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) March 8, 2017

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Fiji spending soars to battle climate risks

(Reuters) - Fiji warned on Friday it faces soaring costs to protect itself from climate change and called on the world to do more to curb carbon emissions to protect poor island nations from the increasing threat of floods and cyclones. In a report done with the World Bank, the South Pacific nation said it is spending almost 10 percent of its gross domestic product to guard against natural disasters, more than quadruple the level of five years ago. The report assessing the country s vulnerability to climate risks was released to coincide with Fiji chairing the COP23 global climate summit taking place in Bonn. As the President of the COP23 and on behalf of the small island nations ... Fiji is asking the world for drastic action ... so that climate change does not impose a limit to our development, Fijian Prime minister Voreque Bainimarama said in the report. Fiji is set to spend more than 350 million Fiji dollars ($168 million) this year on relocating villages, building improved bridges and roads and on responding to natural disasters, expected to become more frequent and severe due to climate change. This is up from just over 50 million Fiji dollars, just over 2 percent of GDP, in 2013, the report said. With increasing risks to the people and economy of Fiji due to climate change, finding the capacity to respond will only become more challenging, it said. The risks include rising sea-levels, more floods and landslides, destruction of crops and farm equipment and increases in diseases such as Dengue fever, leptospirosis, and typhoid. The effects of climate change already cost the nation around 5 percent of its GDP every year, with the heaviest impact on the farm sector. Fiji is still reeling from Tropical Cyclone Winston in March 2016, the most powerful storm to make landfall in the southern hemisphere. The storm killed more than 40 people and caused 2 billion Fiji dollars in damage. ($1 = 2.0794 Fiji dollars)

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40 Years Ago Ronald Reagan Warned Us About Obama In This Speech [Video]

I d like to suggest that there is no such thing as the left or right. There s only an up or down.

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WATCH: Kellyanne Conway’s Latest Gushing About Trump Will Make America Vomit

The wicked witch of the White House makes America sick again.As we all know, Donald Trump botched his first visit to Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey by basically holding a rally and bragging about himself without once talking to a victim of the storm or surveying the devastation first-hand.And Trump s do-over trip was just as embarrassing and divisive as he praised the Coast Guard before attacking the media and bragging about his hand size.But Kellyanne Conway thinks all of that adds up to Trump uniting the country.During an appearance on Fox & Friends on Sunday, Conway gushed about Trump s visit to Texas and bragged about his pledge of $1 million to Harvey victims after Abby Huntsman incorrectly claimed that Trump s recent most recent trip has not been criticized by the media. That s what s so significant here, that the president and first lady felt compelled to donate $1 million of their own money, felt compelled to visit twice, to really spend the time yesterday, engage people, look them in the eye, Conway said.The only reason why Trump visited a second time is because he f*cked up his first visit so badly. This is the Donald Trump that so many of us know and are privileged to work with and to know very close and personal, Conway continued.And we all that s complete bullshit because Trump is a vindictive narcissist who only cares about himself. He has proved that time and time again.Furthermore, that $1 million pledge is merely a pledge. He actually hasn t donated a penny yet. And he probably won t since the foundation he uses to donate other people s money to charities is under investigation. Trump won t spend his own money to help those in need.But Conway wasn t done making America puke. She claimed that Trump is uniting the country by helping people who didn t vote for him as if to suggest that he doesn t have to help people who didn t support him in 2016. We look at them as our brothers and sisters in need who are suffering, Conway said. But this man is somebody who has always expressed the capacity and compassion for people in need. Is everyone done laughing yet? Because we all know Trump has zero compassion for anyone. He lacks the capacity to care about others. He only cares about himself and his image. Again, the only reason he went back to Texas a second time is because he refused to take the time to visit victims the first time around. Now he is busy using the victims as props so he can claim to give a damn.Conway then attacked the media for criticizing Trump, despite Huntsman claiming that there was no criticism of this second trip. They look so peevish and so small, Conway said. People are saying he missed an opportunity to unify the country. They are doing exactly that here. And also getting people meeting their needs of food, water, and shelter at the same time. Let s unify as a country beginning with the president. Here s the video via YouTube. The relevant remarks begin at the 5:30 mark.Donald Trump did not unify the country by going to Texas. If anything, he divided it even further by botching his first visit and then attacking the media during his second visit. He couldn t even control himself at a time when petty grievances should be put aside. Kellyanne Conway should be ashamed of herself. And so should Abby Huntsman.Featured Image: Screenshot

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The Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy

Leave a reply “Reform always provokes rage on the part of those who profit by the old order.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order Paul Craig Roberts – Who are the anti-Trump protesters besmirching the name of progressives by pretending to be progresives and by refusing to accept the outcome of the presidential election? They look like, and are acting worse than, the “white trash” that they are denouncing. I think I know who they are. They are thugs for hire and are paid by the Oligarchy to delegitimize Trump’s presidency in the way that Washington and the German Marshall Fund paid students in Kiev to protest the democratically elected Ukrainian government in order to prepare the way for a coup. The organization, change.org, which claims to be a progressive group, but might be a front, along with other progressive groups, for the Oligarchy, is destroying the reputation of all progressives by circulating a petition that directs the electors of the Electoral Collage to annul the election by casting their votes for Hillary. Remember how upset progressives were when Trump said he might not accept the election result if there was evidence that the vote was rigged? Now progressives are doing what they damned Trump for saying he might do under certain conditions. The Western presstitutes used the protests in Kiev to delegitimize a democratically elected government and to set it up for a coup. The protest pay was good enough that non-Ukrainians came from nearby countries to participate in the protest in order to collect the money. At the time I posted the amounts paid daily to protesters. Reports came in to me from Eastern and Western Europe from people who were not Ukrainian but were paid to protest as if they were Ukrainians. The same thing is going on with the Trump protests. CNN reports that “for many Americans across the country, Donald Trump’s victory is an outcome they simply refuse to accept. Tens of thousands filled the streets in at least 25 US cities overnight.” This is the exact reporting that the Oligarchy desired from its presstitutes and got. I hope no one thinks that simultaneous protests in 25 cities were a spontaneous event. How did 25 independent protests manage to come up with the same slogans and the same signs on the same night following the election? What is the point of the protests, and what interest is served by them? As the Romans always asked, “who benefits?” There is only one answer: The Oligarchy and only the Oligarchy benefits. Trump is a threat to the Oligarchy, because he intends to stop the giveaway of American jobs to foreigners. The jobs giveaway, sanctified by the neoliberal junk economists as “free trade,” is one of the main reasons for the 21st century worsening of the US income distribution. Money that was formerly paid in middle class wages and salaries to American manufacturing employees and college graduates has been re-routed to the pockets of the One Percent. When US corporations move their production of goods and services sold to Americans offshore to Asian countries, such as China and India, their wage bill falls. The money formerly paid in middle class incomes goes instead into executive bonuses and dividends and capital gains to shareholders. The ladders of upward mobility that had made America the land of opportunity were dismantled for the sole purpose of making a handful of people multi-billionaires. Trump is a threat to the Oligarchy, because he intends peaceful relations with Russia. In order to replace the profitable Soviet Threat, the Oligarchy and their neoconservative agents worked overtime to recreate the “Russian Threat” by demonizing Russia. Accustomed to many decades of excess profits from the profitable Cold War, the military/security complex was angry when President Reagan brought the Cold War to an end. Before these leaches on American taxpayers could get the Cold War going again, the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of a right-wing coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The military/security complex and their zionist neoconservative agents cooked up “the war on terror” to keep the money flowing to the One Percent. But as hard as the presstitute media worked to create fear of “the Muslim threat,” even insouciant Americans knew that the Muslims did not have thousands of ICBMs carrying powerful thermo-nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entirety of the United States in a few minutes. Neither did the Muslims have the Red Army capable of overrunning all of Europe in a couple of days. Indeed, the Muslims haven’t needed an army. Refugees from Washington’s wars enabled by Europeans are overrunning Europe. The excuse for the annual trillion dollar ($1,000 billion ) military/security budget was missing. So the Oligarchy created “the New Hitler” in Russia. Hillary was the Oligarchy’s principle agent for heating up the new Coldl War. Hillary is the tool, enriched by the Oligarchy, whose job as President was to protect and to increase the trillion dollar budget of the military/security complex. With Hillary in the White House, the looting of the American taxpayers in behalf of the wealth of the One Percent could go forward unimpeaded. But if Trump resolves “the Russian threat,” the Oligarchy takes an income hit. Hillary’s job as President was also to privatize Social Security in order that her Wall Street benefactors can rip off Americans the way that Americans have been ripped off by the insurance companies under Obamacare. Those Americans who do not pay attention think, mistakenly, that the FBI cleared Hillary of violating National Security protocals with her email practices. The FBI said that Hillary did violate National Security, but that it was a result of carelessness or ignorance. She got off from indictment, because the FBI concluded that she did not intentionally violate National Security protocals. The investigation of the Clinton Foundation continues. In other words, in order to protect Hillary the FBI fell back on the ancient common law rule that “there can be no crime without intent.” (See PCR and Lawrence Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions .) One would think that protesters, if they were legitimate, would be celebrating Trump’s victory. He, unlike Hillary, promises to reduce tensions with powerful Russia, and we hope also with China. Unlike Hillary, Trump says he is concerned with the absence of careers for those very people protesting in the streets of 25 cities against him. In other words, the protests against the American people for electing Trump as their president are pointless. The protests are happening for one reason only. The Oligarchy intends to delegitimize the Trump Presidency. Once President Trump is delegitimized, it will be easier for the Oligarchy to assassinate him. Unless the Oligarchy can appoint and control Trump’s government, Trump is a prime candidate for assassination. The protests against Trump are suspicious for another reason. Unlike Hillary, Obama, and George W. Bush, Donald Trump has not slaughtered and dislocated millions of peoples in seven countries, sending millions of refugees from the Oligarchy’s wars to overrun Europe. Trump earned his fortune, and if by hook or crook, not by selling US government influence to foreign agents as Bill and Hillary did. So what are the protesters protesting? There is no answer except that they are hired to protest. Just as the Maidan protesters in Kiev were hired to protest by US and German financed NGOs. The protests in Kiev were equally pointless, because presidential elections were only months away. If Ukranians really believed that their president was conspiring with Russia to keep Ukraine from becomming a Western puppet state and wished to become a puppet state regardless of the costs, the opportunity to vote the government out was at hand. The only reason for the protests was to orchestrate a coup. The US did succeed in putting their agent in control of the new Ukrainian government as Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev confirmed in their telephone conversation that is available on the Inernet. The Maidan protests were pointless except for making a coup possible. The protests were without any doubt arranged by Washington through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a neoconservative brought into the State Department by Hillary Clinton for the purpose of creating conflict with Russia. Trump is being protested in order to make him vulnerable in the event he proves to be the threat to the Oligarchy that he is thought to be. Trump won the presidency, but the Oligarchy is still in power, which makes any real reforms difficult to achieve. Symbolic reforms can be the product of the contest between President Trump and the oligarchs. Karl Marx learned from historical experience, and Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pott learned from Karl Marx, that change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this thoughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenious people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington. Washington has conspired with traditional elites to remove the elected presidents of Honduras on a number of occasions. Recently, Washington helped elites evict the female presidents of Argentina and Brazil. The presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia are in the crosshairs and are unlikely to survive. Washington is determined to get its hands on Julian Assange. To achieve this Washington intends to overthrow the Ecuadoran governmenrt that, in defiance of Washington, gave Julian Assange political asylum. Hugo Chavez had the power to exile or to exterminate the Spanish ruling class in Venezuela when the ruling class participated in a CIA coup against Chavez. But before the CIA could kill Chavez, the people and the military forced his release. Instead of punishing the criminals who would have murdered him, Chavez let them go. According to Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, this is the classic mistake of the revolutionary. To rely on good will from the overthrown ruling class is the certain road to the defeat of the revolution. Latin American has proved itself unable to learn this lesson: Revolutions cannot be concillatory. Trump is a dealmaker. The Oligarchy can permit him the sheen of success in exchange for no real change. Trump is not perfect. He might fail on his own. But we should back him on the two most important elements in his program: to reduce tensions between the major nuclear powers, and to halt Washington’s policy of permitting globalism to destroy Americans’ economic prospects. If tensions between nuclear powers worsen, we won’t be here to worry about other problems. The combination of the economy hollowed out by globalism and immigration is an economic nightmare. That Trump understands this is reason to support him. Note: Some believe that Trump is a ruse conducted by the Oligarchy. However, as Hillary is the bought-and-paid-for representative of the Oligarchy, such an elaborate ruse is unnecessary. It is preferable for the Oligarchy to win on its own platform than to install a president on the opposite platform and then change him around. Another sellout increases the anger of the people. If Hillary had won, the Oligarchy would have had the voters’ mandate for their platform. SF Source Paul Craig Roberts Nov. 2016 Share this:

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DEVASTATING 30 SECOND Commercial Shows Scary Truth About TARGET’S Dangerous Open Door Bathroom Policy [VIDEO]

First it was the FLUSH TARGET campaign, where a truck will travel to every store in MN delivering a serious message to Target management: I don t feel safe at Target Click HERE for [VIDEO]Now a new campaign has been launched with an ad targeted at Target shoppers. The ad was produced by Minnesota-based activist group Flush Target . It s a simple ad with a powerful message.WATCH:

1real

Lasers, they are truly upon US.

link So we have laser defense systems being used by the US Navy... Ponce became the testbed platform for the Laser Weapon System (LaWS), with installation of a prototype weapon system for field testing in August 2014.[29][30][31] In December 2014 the United States Navy reported the LaWS system works perfectly, and that the commander of Ponce is authorized to use the system as a defensive weapon.[32] On 9 December 2014, the U.S. Navy released video footage of the LaWS in operation.[33] The exact level of power the LaWS will use is unknown but estimated between 15–50 kW for engaging drones, small aircraft and high-speed boats.[34] Ponce was deployed to the Persian Gulf in late August 2014.[35][36] The LaWS will remain in use on Ponce as long as it is at sea, potentially into 2017.[37] USS Ponce (LPD-15) The US Army has them and they will be fielded... The Army and General Dynamics Land Systems are developing a Stryker-mounted laser weapon aimed at better arming the vehicle to incinerate enemy drones or threatening ground targets. Concept vehicles are now being engineered and tested at the Army’s Ft. Sill artillery headquarters as a way to quickly develop the weapon for operational service. During a test this past April, the laser weapons successful shot down 21 out of 23 enemy drone targets. The effort marks the first-ever integration of an Army laser weapon onto a combat vehicle. Stryker mounted laser Boeing’s High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) team has used a solid state laser to destroy mortars and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A laser destroys targets with pinpoint precision within seconds of acquisition, then acquires the next target and keeps firing. In recent demonstrations, HEL MD used a 10-kilowatt, high energy laser installed on an Oshkosh tactical military vehicle. The demonstrator is the first mobile, high-energy laser, counter rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) platform to be built and demonstrated by the U.S. Army. Source w/video And now after the Air Force originally called lasers off, they've gone and called the game back on. After the success of the Navy and the Army. The contract, which was awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on 23 August, is for the Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) Turret Research in Aero-Effects (STRAFE) programme. It is intended that the SHiELD pod would better enable the USAF's fourth-generation fighter fleet, such as the Boeing F-15 Eagle and Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, to survive in contested airspace. The fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II would probably not carry the pod, as it would negate their stealth characteristics. Lasers are upon on the USA. They have permeated every aspect of our military. Can anyone else say that?

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NATO chief says Europe has interest in helping Afghanistan

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO countries have strong reasons to maintain support for Afghanistan and will respond to U.S. President Trump s call for more troops and funding, the alliance s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. It is in the interest of Europe, of NATO allies to help stabilize Afghanistan, Stoltenberg said during a visit to Kabul with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, which was overshadowed by a militant attack on Kabul airport. Trump made clear last month that he expected NATO to step up its contribution in Afghanistan when he announced a tougher new strategy against the Taliban and other militant forces. However the political reaction in Europe has been mixed with little public appetite for more involvement. In Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is working to form a government after last weekend s election, her conservative party backs the mission. But senior figures from her two likely coalition partners, the liberal Free Democrats and environmental Greens, have expressed scepticism. In Italy, the anti-establishment 5-Star party, riding high in opinion polls ahead of elections early next year, has said it would pull Italy s force of more than 1,000 troops out. Germany has been a strong supporter of the NATO mission in Afghanistan for many many years, Stoltenberg said. Germany is the lead nation in the north (of Afghanistan) and I m absolutely certain that Germany will continue to provide support. Stoltenberg said NATO assistance was aimed at ensuring Afghanistan did not become a safe haven for international terrorism. But he reiterated that NATO troops would not be returning to the combat role they ended in 2014 and would continue training and advising Afghan forces as well as providing equipment and funding. We are not going back to the big combat operations we had before. It will still be a non-combat operation. Stoltenberg said Afghan forces, which have suffered thousands of casualties fighting the insurgency, had been managing a very difficult situation . But they had prevented the Taliban from gaining control of any major provincial centers and would be boosted by plans to strengthen the Afghan Air Force and Special Forces units. There will be setbacks but if we look at what we have achieved so far, we have been able to build a strong Afghan national security force and we ll build it even stronger.

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POST-OBAMA AMERICA: Liberal Thug Gets Physical With N. Dakota GOP Rep At Town Hall [VIDEO]

It s becoming fairly commonplace for public acts of violence to occur when liberals don t get exactly what they want. We used to rely on free speech at town halls to debate our differences, but we re living in a post-Obama era now, where Soros paid thugs have been committing so many acts of violence occur that we almost expect it. Sadly, wherever there is a gathering of people with opposing political views, most Americans now expect to see violence take place A man got physical with Republican North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer at a town hall meeting Thursday before being escorted out by police.The man was yelling at Rep. Cramer, Will the rich benefit from, if the health care is destroyed, do the rich get a tax break? Yes or no? He then shoved cash into the congressman s collar, saying, There you go, take it. Cramer responded, That s too far, and police escorted the man from the meeting. Another man was escorted out after he stepped in and blocked the man yelling as he was angrily approaching the congressman.CNN anchor Poppy Harlow described the scene as, This man showing his disgust with the Congressman s support of tax cuts for the wealthy, one part of the GOP plan right now. Earlier today we reported on a Tennessee woman has obviously bought into the left s playbook to act as crazy as possible when at a town hall.WEAKELY COUNTY, Tenn. A Weakely County woman was arrested after reportedly following Congressman David Kustoff and then threatening him.Police say Wendi Wright followed a car down Highway 45 Monday afternoon. Inside the car were Congressman Kustoff and aide Marianne Dunavant. Wright reportedly followed the car after it left a town hall on the UT Martin campus.THIS WOMAN LEFT THE TOWN HALL AND ENDANGERED THE LIVES OF THE CONGRESSMAN AND HIS PASSENGER! WHO DOES THAT?A police report states Kustoff and Dunavant felt they were in danger of being forced off the road.

1real

Trump to Keep Obama Executive Order Protecting LGBTQ Federal Workers - Breitbart

An executive order signed by former President Barack Obama in 2014 protecting federal employees from discrimination will continue to be enforced under the Trump administration, the White House announced Tuesday. [“President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community,” the White House said in a statement. “The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump. ” The executive order signed by Obama in July 2014 prevents federal contractors from discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “Donald Trump campaigned promising to be a ‘real friend’ to the LGBT community, and now President Trump is delivering on that commitment,” Log Cabin Republicans president Gregory Angelo told CNN. “Log Cabin Republicans is proud to have directly lobbied for this important preservation of LGBT equality in the federal workforce. ” Bloomberg News reported that President Trump might include an exemption for those affiliated with religious groups, but the White House has not made an official statement about exemptions to the executive order.

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WATCH: SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN Tells TMZ Sports Reporter He’s Okay With NFL Players Disrespecting Our Flag

John McCain really doesn t care what topic reporters ask him about, he only cares how President Trump feels about it, so he can take an opposing view. If President Trump agrees with a social or political issue, McCain disagrees with it. If Trump disagrees, McCain thinks it s a great idea.The cantankerous John McCain has become so predictable, it s almost laughable to hear his opinions anymore. He s become an embarrassment to the Republican Party but refuses to give up the R behind his name to save the party of the humiliation of his antics.McCain s latest embarrassing interview happened today when TMZ caught up with him to ask him his thoughts on the NFL players taking a knee in a show of disrespect for our flag, as a way to support the anti-cop Black Lives Matter movement. Instead of standing up our flag, or for his fellow veterans and the country he once fought so valiantly for, McCain took the cowardly way out and made a statement supporting the NFL player s right to disrespect our flag. Not surprisingly, McCain s remarks stood in contrast to strong admonition President Trump had for the disrespectful athletes in the NFL.Watch:

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Boiler Room EP #109 – It’s a Wonderfull Life

Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis, FunkSoul (21WIRE & ACR contributor), Randy J (ACR contributor) and Andy Nowicki, author of Conspiracy, Compliance, Control & Defiance, for the hundred and ninth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club. This week on the show we re talking about what SHOULD be the biggest story on mainstream media but isn t, the latest revalations in the story of the death (murder) of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who many believe to be one of the main leakers to Wikileaks during the 2016 election. Is his death a deep-state assassination? Is there a cover up under way? Is #TrumpRussia one of the convenient smoke screens to obfuscate this enormous story? You decide! The gang also talks about the death of Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and toss around ideas as to the validity of the suicide narrative coming out of the media so quickly and compare his case to a number of other high profile cases that come with some strange anomalies in their media baggage. The Serial Killer phenomena, possible Phoenix program style chaos on the sidewalks of New York and much more on this episode.Direct Download Episode #109Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!Reference Links:

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UNBELIEVABLE! Students Succeed In Removing US Border Patrol Agents From Career Fair: Concerned They Won’t Make Illegal Students Feel Welcome

This is not some small obscure community college. Disallowing our law enforcement to attend a school sponsored event in favor of protecting lawbreakers is a BIG deal! This school with over 30,000 students has managed to marginalize these brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect and defend our borders!U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reversed its decision to participate in a career fair at the University of California-Irvine in response to a petition signed by hundreds of students.According to the New University student newspaper, CBP s withdrawal represents an unexpected victory for student activists, whose claims that the Border Patrol s involvement in the Fall Career Fair this Thursday would be insensitive to undocumented students had previously failed to convince the university to rescind the agency s invitation. Organizations like the US Customs and Border Patrol are the organizations that are tasked with various roles including targeting Undocumented Communities, which is against the nature of our campus s values for welcoming communities regarding their background, Associated Students of UC Irvine (ASUCI) President Parshan Khosravi wrote in an email to the Career Center Sunday night. This message right now is saying that undocumented students are not welcome, he asserted, adding, That s the type of message that I do not want to see as someone who is a student on this campus, as someone who is a student leader on this campus, and [as] someone who believes in [sic] the values of our campus are inclusivity and a safe space. The next day, Monday morning, student Amy Yu and another individual visited the Career Center in person to voice their concerns directly to administrators. Despite their warnings that undocumented students might experience trauma and discomfort from such close proximity to law enforcement, though, the Center refused to disinvite CBP, explaining that the purpose of the fair is to provide job opportunities for all students. We care about and value all students. We have a diverse student body made up of individuals with many wonderful talents and personal values, Career Center Director Suzanne Helbig told New University. To serve all students, we bring employers to campus and let students use their own judgement to decide which ones fit their skills, interests, and values. Undeterred by the Career Center s response, Yu proceeded to create a Change.org petition in the hope of effecting CBP s removal by appealing to a higher authority. We, as students from UC Irvine, are demanding that the CBP be removed as participants [sic] for the upcoming Fall Career Fair, the petition states. The undocumented community is directly affected by deportation and detention policies that are carried out by Border Patrol, and having Border Patrol agents on campus is a blatant disregard to undocumented students safety and well-being. Prior to being closed amidst declarations of victory Wednesday, the petition had garnered 659 signatures in roughly two days, which was apparently enough for CBP to decide that participating in the jobs fair was not worth enduring a potentially hostile reception from UC-Irvine students. As of this morning, U.S. Customs & Border Patrol has decided not to attend the campus Career Fair on Thursday, Oct. 22, UC-Irvine senior director of communications Cathy Lawhon told The College Fix Wednesday. However, the agency will continue to utilize UCI s Career Center on-line job postings system to list available positions for those students interested in working with CBP. While undocumented students may rejoice, though, others are less thrilled about losing the chance to engage with the largest law enforcement agency in the world. I feel that these efforts are an attempt to politicize a jobs fair that is supposed to help college students find much needed work once they graduate, UC Irvine s College Republicans President Rob Petrosyan told The College Fix. If you don t approve of U.S. Customs, don t apply to work for them, it s that simple. Via: Campus Reform

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WHOA! FOX NEWS HOST JUST BLAMED TRUMP For Violence By Domestic Terrorists Against Him And His Supporters [VIDEO]

Domestic terrorists are ramping up the violence against innocent Americans and the Republican Presidential front-runner, and this FOX News host is going to suggest that Trump or his supporters are somehow responsible? Come again?A NEW LOW FOR THE TRUMP HATERS ON FOX NEWS Hundreds of mostly Latino anti-Trump protesters bloodied Donald Trump supporters, threw rocks at cars and smashed windows on vehicles including police cars following a huge campaign rally by the leading Republican presidential candidate in Costa Mesa, California Thursday night.Today on America s Newsroom host Martha MacCallum blamed the Trump supporters for the anti-Trump violence.Seriously?The anti-Trump goons are cracking skulls and Martha is worried about a few Trump supporters screaming something leftists do at EVERY Trump rally?Wow!Martha MacCallum confronted Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson for the rioting Mexicans outside of the Trump Costa Mesa rally on Thursday night. The open border goons beat Trump supporters bloody and flipped cop cars.Unreal.WATCH HERE:https://youtu.be/hzNMMPvdBUAHere are a few of Martha s outrageous accusations: As Trump supporters and Trump protesters clashed out there At one point a fight broke out when a Trump supporter tried to get his hat back There s also a report though where there was one incident where a man who was holding a Mexican flag was surrounded by Trump supporters and they were shouting at this man who was surrounded Is that something that you condone? And what is the campaign doing to try to lower the temperature a little bit? Via: Gateway Pundit

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Scorpio New Moon Meditation

Event Chronicle Scorpio New Moon Meditation — Make This Viral! October 28 – November 1, 2016 It is time for us to come together and tell the universe “We Are Ready!!!” The upcoming period from Friday, October 28 through Tuesday, November 1 offers a wonderful chance for us to assert our free will and hasten the Event! This window begins and ends with what is known as a ‘Void Of Course’ (VOC) moon. This is when the moon is ‘between signs’; these are periods of immense occult importance, as the the anecdotes in the first link below demonstrate: http://www.astrologybyjudithryan.com/void-of-course-calendar-2016 The second link helps to literally ‘fill in the gap’ regarding the second VOC which occurs as the calendar transitions from October to November on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence, this second VOC period crosses months and is not explicitly identified in either link. This period is often described in many cultures as a time when the separation between the physical and non-physical realms is much thinner. Hence, this is also time each year when light & dark forces do battle. This represents a key moment for us to reassert control of the plasma plane within the Solar System via a spoken declaration of our free will. The instructions are quite simple: 1) Face – as closely as possible – toward the general direction of the Sun, Moon, Galactic Central Sun, and the important light stronghold of Antares during all three meditations. A general rule of thumb is to direct your gaze a bit to the left of where the sun is (or would be if you could see it through either clouds or the ground below) at all three key meditation times. Note – if it is not possible to face the direction of the Sun/Moon/GC/Antares, please focus your intention instead on the first image of the woman at the beginning of this article; this picture can inspire each of us to reach toward the goddess energies of the Galactic Central Sun – beckoning them to come quickly into our Solar System. 2) Follow the regular ‘Ascension Meditation’ instructions at three separate times: A. 4 PM GMT Friday, October 28 (during the first VOC period) B. 4 PM GMT Sunday, October 30 (the actual day of the Scorpio New Moon) C. 3 AM GMT Tuesday, November 1 (during the second VOA period) For those seeking a refresher, the instructions can be found at the first link below, and an English-language guided-meditation audio can be found at the second link below (A “P.S.” statement regarding the guided meditation audio can be found at the end of this article): http://recreatingbalance1.blogspot.com/2016/09/weekly-ascension-meditation-guided-audio.html 3) Speak the words below aloud after the end of the guided meditation audio – note that you will be speaking these words with no other sounds – just your true voice expressing your free will: We, the awakened starseeds of Gaia, announce our readiness for the pulse of Goddess energies from the Galactic Central Sun to bring an end to spiritual duality. We declare our desire for a peaceful transition to the Golden Age and a speedy end to this final galactic war in our solar system – for peace, abundance, and happiness to be present throughout our solar system forever more. We demand an end to any further delays to the Event: that all remaining secrets of the dark forces be made known immediately, that all dark rituals from this day forward be rendered ineffective, and that all tactical advantages which are used to maintain Quarantine Earth be nullified so that the Ascension of Gaia and her inhabitants can commence. It is our free will that the effects of biochips, implants, and scalar interference cease completely so that our fellow Lightworker & Lightwarrior Starseeds fully awaken to their respective missions and assist in leading the way into the Golden Age. The time for our freedom is now. We use the energies of this Scorpio New Moon to announce our desire for liberation, abundance and First Contact. Let the Goddess finally bring peace to Earth and the galaxy. So be it, and so it is. We demand peace. We demand the Event. Let us make our free will known throughout the cosmos. Victory of the Light! P.S. The guided audio track at the “Recreating Balance” blog is highly important for many reasons. Foremost, the evolution of modern communications is such that English ends up being the most universally spoken & understood language in the world. Let all of us Lightworkers and Lightwarriors use that to our advantage… there’s a reason Cobra writes his blog posts in English. Additionally, the audio was recorded in 432 HZ and contains healing codes which lend energetic support and focus for the intention of the meditation. For the audio please go to Event Chronicle Share:

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BOOM! CUSTOMS AGENTS IGNORE Obama Appointed Judge’s Court Order…ENFORCE Trump’s Travel Ban

On Friday, a federal judge in New York issued an emergency stay temporarily halting the removal of individuals detained after President Trump issued an order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.The move appears to mark the first successful legal challenge to the Trump administration and affects those who have arrived in the U.S. with previously approved refugee applications or were in transit with valid visas. Similar rulings were later issued in Virginia, Massachusetts and Washington state.U.S. District Court Judge Ann Donnelly ruled in favor of a habeas corpus petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of two Iraqi men who were detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday after Trump signed his order.Donnelly, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama and confirmed to her judgeship in 2015, ruled in the Eastern District of New York that there is imminent danger that, absent the stay of removal, there will be substantial and irreparable injury to refugees, visa-holders, and other individuals from nations subject to Trump s order. The Hill The ACLU is getting multiple reports that federal customs agents are siding with President Trump and willfully ignoring a Brooklyn federal judge s demand that travelers from seven Muslim countries not be deported from the nation s airports. The court s order could not be clearer they need to comply with the order, Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU s Immigrants Rights project, told The Post late Saturday. It s enough to be a serious concern, Jadwat said of the reports.Jadwat and other ACLU lawyers had earlier Saturday night won an emergency stay of Trump s deportation order from Brooklyn Federal Judge Ann Donnelly. -NYPMUSLIMS Chant Allah And Protest With Call To Prayer Inside Dallas Airport [Video]

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BOOM! KELLYANNE CONWAY Shuts Down CNN’s Cuomo: “Why do you care?” [Video]

Kellyanne Conway defends Trump s Hamilton twitter scrap: Why do you care https://t.co/11UIp8cKFi https://t.co/vnk4rOhY4m CNN (@CNN) November 21, 2016

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Trump: New Steps Next Week to ’Keep Country Safe’ - Breitbart

Friday at the White House, during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, when asked about the 9th Circuit Court ruling upholding the blocking of his executive order banning immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States, President Donald Trump said new steps would be forthcoming next week. Trump said, “We are going to keep our country safe. We are going to do whatever is necessary to keep our country safe. We had a decision which we think we will be very successful with. It shouldn’t have taken this much time because safety is a primary reason, one of the reasons I’m standing here today, the security of our country, the voters felt that I would give it the best security. So we’ll be doing something very rapidly, having to do with additional security for our country. You’ll be seeing that sometime next week. In addition, we will continue to go through the court process, and ultimately I have no doubt that we’ll win that particular case. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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Pressure mounts on Merkel over migrant policy in future coalition

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has lost track of 30,000 rejected asylum seekers, Bild daily reported on Thursday, piling pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to agree a migrant policy with potential coalition partners that ensures no repeat of a migration crisis in 2015. The paper said migrants were on a December 2016 list of people due to leave the country and quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying they could not rule out that some had already left or disappeared without the relevant authorities knowing . One commentator at Bild, which has run a campaign to speed up deportations of failed asylum seekers, wrote: No wonder many people are worried and unsettled. They ask: Can the state protect me? Politicians must take this insecurity seriously. The report, coinciding with official data showing the number of people seeking refuge in Germany more than doubled in the two years until the end of 2016 to 1.6 million, comes amid warnings that courts are overburdened by the sheer volume of applications. Voters punished Merkel for her open-door policy in a September election, with her conservatives suffering heavy losses to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and migration policy now tops the agenda in coalition talks. Her conservative bloc has tried to paper over internal divisions on migrant policy but is still at odds with the Free Democrats (FDP) and especially the Greens with whom they want to rule. Plans to discuss the issue on Thursday were delayed. Points of contention include to what extent family members should be allowed to join asylum seekers in Germany and putting limits on the number of people who arrive. The Statistics Office said the 1.6 million people seeking refuge by the end of last year was a 113 percent jump from 2014 and equivalent to 16 percent of Germany s foreign population. Included in the figures are people from abroad staying in Germany for humanitarian reasons, people still going through the asylum process, those granted refugee status or subsidiary protection status and failed asylum seekers who stay. More than half of the 1.6 million people had by the end of 2016 been granted permission to stay in Germany while some 158,000 were rejected asylum seekers, said the Office. Some 455,000 of the total were from Syria. According to data requested by the Linke party and seen by Reuters, refugees made 321,837 aslyum applications in German courts in the year to June 30, five times the volume in the same period last year. The administrative courts are so heavily burdened that the current staff can not deal with the work in a timely manner, Erich Mueller-Fritzsche, a member of the Federation of German Administrative Judges, told Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper. Although the number of new arrivals to Germany has fallen sharply in the last 18 months and the government has stepped up deportations of rejected asylum seekers, many Germans, worried about security, say better controls are needed. We need to know who is in our country and who has left, said conservative Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, known for taking a tough line on migrants. Last year, a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia killed 12 people when he drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas Market. On Tuesday, a 19-year old Syrian man was detained on suspicion of planning a bomb attack in Germany. The AfD, continuing to put pressure on politicians on the migrant issue, criticized the southern state of Baden Wuerttemberg for accepting 34,000 Syrian refugees. Although the war in Syria is as good as over, the regional government does not mind the asylum authorities continuing to let Syrians stay here, said the regional AfD in a statement.

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AUSTRIAN PARENTS AND TEACHERS Sacrifice Young Girls At Liberal Altar: Teen Refugees Sexually Abuse School Girls For Months

Anyone up for a European vacation? How about sending your young daughters to Europe to study for a semester or two? Is this the end of the tourism and study abroad business for America s youth? More reports of European countries sacrificing their young girls on the altar of Islamic supremacism. School girls were sexually assaulted and groped by the boys for months. The girls had suffered for so long without reporting the abuse, as authorities most obviously turned a blind eye.The headmaster said that the male pupils had all come to Austria as unaccompanied minors from Syria and Afghanistan and she believed them to be happy and grateful for being allowed to live in Austria and attend school, adding that they were integrating themselves very well. I am sure that the victims were afraid to come forward. Afraid they d be called racists. Afraid the Muslims would take their revenge on them and their families. Schoolgirls report abuse by young asylum seekers, The Local, January 15, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):Austrian officials are investigating allegations that four under-age asylum seekers sexually harassed and assaulted three schoolgirls for months, without anybody taking action.The four boys attended the Schlossstrasse middle school in Salzburg. It was only in the wake of the widely reported New Year sexual assaults in Cologne that one of the victims, aged 14, made a complaint to police.That resulted in the four youngsters, aged 14, 15 and 16, being suspended. Only one of them had a residence permit.According to a report in the Kronen Zeitung newspaper, three female students say they were assaulted and groped by the boys for months.Last Wednesday an attack on one girl was reportedly so severe that it came to the attention of the school headmistress Eva Szalony, who made a complaint to police.She said the allegations were a complete shock and that the school is now investigating why the girls had suffered for so long without reporting the abuse.She said that the male pupils had all come to Austria as unaccompanied minors from Syria and Afghanistan and she believed them to be happy and grateful for being allowed to live in Austria and attend school, adding that they were integrating themselves very well .Police have now confirmed they are investigating allegations of sexual assault, grievous bodily harm and threats.The allegations go back to last November, and involve verbal abuse and suggestive comments as well as physical violence in which the girls say they were groped and fondled.The attacks got more serious as time went by. The 14-year-old said that she was often hit by a 15-year-old from Afghanistan, including an incident where she was hit so badly from behind that she smashed her head onto the desk.She was attacked again on Wednesday by the same boy, who smashed her against a locker so hard that the police were called. They took the victim and the accused to the station. After hearing of her ordeal, police then expanded the investigation.Local education officials in Salzburg have said the incidents are being dealt with very seriously and that it will appoint a coordinator to oversee all school-age asylum seekers and their teachers. Via: Pamela Gellar

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Seth Meyers Takes ‘A Closer Look’ At The GOP’s Threats Against Hillary And It’s Terrifying! (VIDEO)

By Allison Vincent Election 2016 , News , Politics , Right-Wing Terrorism , Videos November 4, 2016 Seth Meyers Takes ‘A Closer Look’ At The GOP’s Threats Against Hillary And It’s Terrifying! (VIDEO) There are only a few days left in this election and Republicans are growing more and more desperate, using what Seth Meyers called “increasingly unhinged rhetoric” during Thursday’s Late Night segment of A Closer Look. “‘Republicans are using increasingly unhinged rhetoric to warn about the consequences of electing Hillary,’ Meyers said. ‘Many are even threatening to impeach her without any evidence of a crime before she ever takes office and if they can’t do that, they’ll settle for the next best thing – preventing her from filling any vacancy on the Supreme Court for her entire four year term.'” But that’s not all they’ve done — there have also been more death threats and calls to violence. Former Congressman Joe Walsh, who, like Donald Trump, enjoys Twitter WAY more than he should, tweeted this on November 1: Another shocking GOP turn is from Ted Cruz, who just a few short months ago, during his speech at the RNC, refused to endorse Trump, but just today he hopped on Trump’s plane to go campaign for him in Iowa. This, after Trump accused Cruz’s father of killing JFK and also said horrible things about his wife. Remember that “baked bean teeth” comment Trump made? Yeah. Just plain nasty. It’s really unfortunate that Cruz caved, but the GOP is so terrified of losing control, that they are willing to forget their own pride and pull out all the stops to keep Clinton out of office. Watch Seth Meyers break it all down. It’s pretty terrifying. Featured Image via video screenshot Share this Article!

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GOP Implodes As Trump Launches Nasty Public Fight Against Top Republican (TWEETS)

Donald Trump is continuing to dig himself into an even deeper hole in regards to the horrific racist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.After Trump has been blasted for his weak response by pretty much every politician including Republicans he s taking his critics on. At 6:19 this morning, Trump decided to go after one of the only Republicans who had the guts to call him out directly by name on Charlottesville South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.In a pair of tweets, Trump trashed Graham for holding him accountable and asking him to condemn white supremacy and neo-Nazis in a more powerful way. Of course, Trump s attack was nothing but petty, making sure that Graham and America remember that Trump beat him in the 2015-2016 presidential primaries. Trump wrote: Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can t forget his election trouncing. The people of South Carolina will remember! Graham has been more critical than most Republicans when it comes to Trump s defense of racists and his neo-Nazi fan base. On Sunday, Graham trashed Trump on Fox News when he said: These groups seem to believe they have a friend in Donald Trump in the White House. I don t know why they believe that, but they don t see me as a friend in the Senate, and I would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he s their friend. Graham had also released a statement on Twitter in which he correctly accused Trump of dividing America, and his response to Trump s tweets this morning was just as good. Here s what Graham had to say to Trump s immature attack:Lindsey Graham, one of the Senators Trump ripped on Twitter this AM, responds to Trump pic.twitter.com/BbdlxS4LNR Maggie Jordan: (@MaggieJordanACN) August 17, 2017Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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Karma Comes For Trump, Congressional Committees Want To See Comey ‘Tapes’ (TWEETS)

Donald Trump s lies and empty threats are finally catching up to him. Just a day after the hearing of former FBI Director James Comey, Committees in Congress are announcing that they not only want to see Comey s memos of his conversations with Trump, but they also want to see the supposed White House tapes that Trump says exist.The Senate Judiciary Committee released a letter to Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey who had leaked Comey s memo to the press after receiving instruction from the former FBI Director to do so. This letter requests that Richman provide copies of every memo Comey gave him:The Senate Judiciary Committee has asked Comey s good friend at @ColumbiaLaw for copies of the memos Comey provided him. pic.twitter.com/kgOip24e7m Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) June 9, 2017Trump is currently freaking out over this, and his own personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz will be filing a complaint about the leak in response.In another move that will leave Trump tweeting in anger, the House Intelligence Committee put out a separate statement requesting the memo and tapes , which Trump had threatened to release to get back at Comey:The letter demands that the tapes, to the extent they exist now, must be given to the committee by June 23rd.Already, Trump is sh*tting his pants. Earlier today, Trump accused Comey of perjury, and also wouldn t directly back up his previous statements about the tapes, which allegedly contain his conversations with Comey.Trump may be having a meltdown over this, but Comey is likely tickled pink that the committees want to see the tapes. When Trump threatened to release the likely nonexistent tapes, Comey said: Lordy, I hope there are tapes. It s almost certain that Trump has been lying all along, and he s about to be exposed in a truly humiliating way.Featured image via Pool / Getty Images

1real

THIS Is Trump’s Definition Of ‘Fair’ Media Coverage (VIDEO)

Trump hates the media with a passion. He often rails on Twitter, and at his rallies, about the dishonest media, and the dishonest coverage they give him. He complains that he s been treated very unfairly by any media outlet that doesn t immediately shove its head up his ass, and he bans outlets he deems to be too dishonest and unfair to have the privilege of covering him.Not once has he ever actually laid out what is fair. But, thanks to his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, we now have a definition for fair reporting. But watch out, it s pretty ridiculous: What fairly means is you don t editorialize, you report what he says, that s fair. If you look at the story that he did in The New York Times on foreign policy, it was literally the transcript of what he said it wasn t editorialized at all. That s fair reporting. That was in response to Don Lemon saying that Trump is bashing CNN for repeating what he says and fact-checking it. So, basically, fair is no fact-checking, no discussion, just his words. Nothing else.All that does is give Trump a license to say what he wants, because then he knows the media won t call him on it. Of course, that s exactly what he wants to have happen. He wants everyone to believe him, to trust him implicitly, even though he s lying through his teeth. A huge part of his hatred toward the media is their penchant for fact-checking him, and proving him false.This is the most laughable definition of fair reporting imaginable.Watch a video of this below, beginning at about the 3:20 mark:Just now on @CNNTonight: some frank talk about Trump & the media with @CLewandowski_ & @DonLemonhttps://t.co/OJk77DpOvl Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 17, 2016Featured image by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

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Etihad flight from Abu Dhabi makes emergency landing in Australia

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Etihad Airways flight traveling from Abu Dhabi to Sydney made an emergency landing at Australia s Adelaide Airport early on Saturday after a warning indicator activated in the cockpit. Crew on board Etihad flight EY450 landed the plane at 5 a.m. (1830 GMT) at Adelaide Airport, in the state of South Australia. The Boeing 777 passenger jet had 349 passengers on board who disembarked via emergency exits, according to online news service Adelaide Advertiser. A technical fault with a cargo hold air recirculation fan had been found, Etihad Airways told Reuters in an email. Etihad Airways apologizes for the inconvenience. The safety of our guests and crew is of paramount importance, it said. Australia s ABC News had reported that a smoke alarm had activated. Passengers would make their onward journeys via other airlines due to crew rest requirements, the airline said. Saturday s Etihad flight EY451, from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, had been canceled and passengers would be rescheduled on later Etihad services out of Sydney, the airline said. It was the second incident this year for the Etihad flight that connects Australia s biggest city with the hub of Abu Dhabi, where passengers transit for worldwide destinations. In July, four men were arrested in Sydney over an Islamist plot to attack the flight. One of the men sent his unsuspecting brother to catch the July 15 Sydney to Abu Dhabi flight carrying a bomb hidden in a meat-mincer.

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White House chiefs of staff welcome new member to ranks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eleven men who have held what is considered to be the toughest job in Washington - White House chief of staff - were to gather for lunch on Friday to welcome Reince Preibus, chief of staff to President-elect Donald Trump, to their ranks. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, was hosting his successor at the gathering, along with former chiefs of staff from administrations dating back to the Jimmy Carter White House of 1977-1980. The White House lunch is similar to one hosted in 2008 by Josh Bolten, then chief of staff to outgoing President George W. Bush, for Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a White House official said. Both Bolten and Emanuel will be at the lunch, joined by Obama’s three other former chiefs of staff - Jack Lew, Bill Daley and Pete Rouse - as well as Andrew Card, George W. Bush’s first chief of staff. Jack Watson, who was chief of staff to Jimmy Carter, was invited, along with Kenneth Duberstein from the Ronald Reagan White House and Samuel Skinner from the George H.W. Bush administration. Also invited: John Podesta, a chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House who helped run Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency.

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Lula and Simba, Last Surviving Animals at Mosul Zoo, Have Been Rescued - The New York Times

AMMAN, Jordan — The last surviving animals in the Montazah Zoo in the Iraqi city of Mosul — Lula, a bear, and Simba, a lion — reached safety at a wildlife shelter in Amman, the Jordanian capital, on Monday night. Their home at the zoo was severely damaged as battles for control of the city, Iraq’s second largest, have raged for months between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants. A people are thought to be unable to escape the city. The Islamic State has used civilians as human shields, and American airstrikes, supporting Iraqi counterterrorism forces, have leveled parts of Mosul. A strike in one neighborhood last month was thought to have killed as many as 200 civilians. About 40 animals had died at the zoo in recent months. Some starved and some were killed by bombs, according to Four Paws International, an animal welfare organization based in Vienna that carried out the rescue. Workers said that the animals’ cages were filthy and that Simba and Lula urgently needed veterinary care. Amir Khalil, a veterinarian with Four Paws who led the rescue mission, called it an “authentic odyssey. ” The animals, he said, will now have proper food and medical care, “without living in constant danger of a nearby war zone and noise of bomb blasts in the background. ” Mr. Khalil visited the Mosul zoo in February to check on the animals and organize regular feedings for them. His group’s previous attempt to rescue the two animals failed when workers carrying them were stopped at a checkpoint. The aid workers were asked to leave Mosul. Lula and Simba were sent back to the zoo. “We never got to know the exact details why we were not allowed to pass, but, of course, transporting large wild animals in an area with such a complex political situation is not easy,” Mr. Khalil said Wednesday in a telephone interview. Mr. Khalil said Islamic State militants had been at the zoo and had painted over a sign with the animals’ faces. He said he had heard criticism about his attention to the animals at a time when so many people were suffering. “I like this kind of criticism,” he said, “because in my opinion humanity cannot be divided. ” He said Simba and Lula were a symbol of that humanity. “War rages on but all those fighting cannot ignore animals, put them in a cage, starve them to death, deprive them of water,” he said. Simba and Lula’s new home will be the New Hope Center, the biggest wildlife shelter in the Middle East.

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FLASHBACK! BILL CLINTON: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” [VIDEO]

1real

You’re Fired! Trump Wins Big, Clinton Is Going To Jail

Via Yournewswire Let the swamp draining begin. And when the murky stench begins to clear we all know what we will see – a bloated, slimy creature called Hillary Clinton shivering in the shallows. SPONSORED LINKS Removed from the corridors of power, she won’t be able to say “I don’t recall” 357 times to FBI investigators and get away with it. Her people won’t be able to plead the fifth every time they are asked an incriminating question. Hillary is going down, and a lot of her cronies are going with her. The arrogance of the Democratic establishment in thinking the country would endorse these people is staggering. Podesta, essentially a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia – with a brother, Tony, a Spirit Cooker who is actually on Saudi books as an agent. You can’t make this stuff up. And don’t forget Huma Abedin, thrown off the the campaign in a disastrous, scandal-riddled final week, exposed as being lax with national security – and having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Her only experience prior to employment as a Hillary State Dept aide? 10 years working at a radical Islamic journal with links to jihad. The Democrat campaign was a dumpster fire. Burn, baby, burn. The Democratic establishment should never have nominated such a liability for president. The people wanted Bernie Sanders. The DNC should have let the primary election play out democratically, as their name suggests they would. But no, they interfered, suppressed the voice of their people, and forced a flawed, roundly disliked and distrusted candidate into the full glare of a brutal election season. On election night the Democratic establishment got the pounding they deserve. Never let the mainstream media’s disgraceful collusion with the Clinton campaign be forgotten. May the ignominy live forever. Funneling questions to Clinton so she could defeat her primary rival in debates, colluding with Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta – at his house – to “frame the message” and “frame the race,” lying to the American people about their first amendment rights, attempting to scare the population away from being informed. CNN is a PR firm, the propaganda arm of the establishment, not a member of the fourth estate. They have been thoroughly exposed by WikiLeaks in 2016. RIP Clinton News Network. Go to hell. Don’t forget about the ongoing FBI investigation into the corrupt Clinton Foundation. When Comey cleared her of wrongdoing this week, he was referring to her email scandal. The less publicized Clinton Foundation investigation is still ongoing. The probe was going to hound her into the White House, but now it’s going to throw her in the jailhouse.

1real

BREAKING: Federal Judge STOPS Obamacare Transgender, Abortion Related Protections

O Connor found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule. WASHINGTON A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect. The lawsuit brought by Texas, a handful of other states, and some religiously affiliated nonprofit medical groups challenges a regulation implementing the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation forbids discriminating on the basis of gender identity and termination of pregnancy under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.Specifically, the ACA provision Section 1557 prohibits discrimination in federally-funded health benefits, including based on sex. Over the course of 2015 and this year, HHS proposed and finalized a regulation interpreting the definition of sex in that provisions to include gender identity defined as internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female as well as sex stereotyping and termination of pregnancy. Explaining the lawsuit, O Connor wrote, Plaintiffs claim the Rule s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017. The states and nonprofits in the healthcare lawsuit allege that the regulation violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) which sets the rules for federal government rule-making and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). O Connor found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule. The White House defended the administration s policies on Saturday night.Read more: Buzzfeed

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Woman Stabs Black Man In The Face On Christmas For Offering Her His Train Seat

Apparently, in Donald Trump s America, you can t even be nice to someone if your skin is darker than a piece of chalk. After he was elected, we saw a spike in hate crimes that would make anyone especially people who already faced discrimination beforehand, nervous.On Sunday that s the Christmas that Donald Trump says he saved if you re keeping score Ijan DaVonte, a black transgender man, decided to show some holiday spirit by offering his seat to a woman who was entering his train car. While most would view this as an act of generosity especially at almost midnight on Christmas Stephanie Pazmino decided that she was offended by someone being nice to her. I don t want to sit next to a black person, were the words that came out of her mouth, according to police. I got up anyway and said to her that she didn t have to sit next to me, said Jarrett, who had just gotten done working his shift as a hair stylist. I took a seat across from her and just forgot all about it. When Pazmino got up to leave the train, a simple insult became much, much worse when she began punching Jarrett. It was not until later when another man rushed to his aid that he realized that Pazmino had slashed his face and stabbed him in the arm with a 2-inch knife. She stabbed me right under my left eye, on the back of my hand and on my left arm. She was screaming and hollering the whole time, he recalled. I ran to the ticket booth to ask the attendant to call the police, she stated that she did and that I should sit down. And I passed out after that, Jarrett said. He was transported to Harlem Hospital where he was treated and is in stable condition, according to PIX11. Pazmino was arrested and charged with a hate crime.Jarrett says he doesn t know if he was targeted because he is transgender, as well, though the racial component is bad enough. I don t know why she did it because I didn t do anything to provoke her, Jarrett says.Unfortunately, we re going to be seeing more of this with Donald Trump as president. At this point, it s safe to assume that if you are a group that regularly faces discrimination, you are in danger always.Featured image via screengrab

1real

Sexism or compliment? German politician stokes debate

BERLIN (Reuters) - A female German politician has triggered a fierce debate by accusing a former ambassador of sexism after he failed to recognize her at a conference and then said he was not expecting such a young and beautiful woman as a speaker. Sawsan Chebli, a 39-year-old state secretary in the Berlin city government, said she was sitting in the front row waiting to speak at a meeting of the Indo-German Society but was not recognized by the head of the group, Hans-Joachim Kiderlen. When he realized his mistake, the retired former German ambassador to India reportedly said: I wasn t expecting such a young woman. And you are also so beautiful. Chebli, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, went ahead with her speech but posted on her Facebook page afterwards that she was in shock. Of course, I m always experiencing sexism, but I have never experienced anything like what happened today, she said. Her comments prompted an outpouring in German newspapers and social media, already abuzz as million of women across the world have been sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse in an online campaign using the hashtag #MeToo. Chebli, a former spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry born to Palestinian refugee parents, was swamped with insults on her Facebook page, including suggestions that she wear a Muslim headscarf if she does not want to receive compliments. She also received messages of support, including from women who had similar experiences, including Teresa Buecker, editor-in-chief of the feminist magazine Edition F. I have also been called up to the stage as the beautiful speaker - it is degrading and disrespectful, Buecker wrote on Twitter. Kiderlen wrote to Chebli to apologize for his inappropriate address and greeting , the Tagesspiegel daily reported on Thursday.

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National Biotechnology Panel Faces New Conflict of Interest Questions - The New York Times

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are assigned by Congress to provide policy guidance to the government. The group describes itself as “advisers to the nation. ” The advice often comes through written reports from scientific committees organized by the group. One of those committees, though, is facing questions about how its members were selected. The concerns focus on a panel studying biotechnology, a booming area of business, including in the food industry, and one of the most contentious scientific issues in Washington. Critics say that several committee members have financial ties to biotech businesses that could color the panel’s report, expected to be published soon, potentially giving short shrift to health and environmental worries. By the academies’ own account, two of the scientists already violate the group’s extensive policy. In addition, an employee at the academies who helped pick the scientists to serve on the panel was pursuing a different job while he put together his recommendations for the group. Three of the 13 people he recommended — all of whom were eventually selected for the panel — were board members at his new employer, a new biotechnology nonprofit. The criticism adds to the heated debate about how federal regulators are handling the fast development of biotechnology. The National Academies play an outsize role in the debate because of their stature in the academic community and connections to the federal government. A separate study the organization did on genetic engineering in agriculture, published in May, also came under intense criticism from environmentalists. The National Academies have defended the panel that produced the May report, as well as the current panel on biotechnology, saying that the type of expertise needed to staff them is limited and thus some conflict must be tolerated. But people with ties to the academies say any perceived conflicts of interest may undermine some of the group’s authority. “There’s often a lot riding on what the academies say, and so their ability to act with objectivity and independence defines any value they have,” said Dr. Harvey Fineberg, a former leader of what is now the medical division of the National Academies. The most recent committee convened to study biotechnology was formed this year at the behest of the White House. The group was asked to predict what new technologies might arise over the next 15 years and advise the government on how to oversee them. The regulation for the industry was last updated in 1992, years before the first approval of genetically engineered seeds, which are now widely used by farmers. Like the 200 or so other reports published by the National Academies each year, the biotechnology report is undergoing peer review, the process regularly used by academic journals. The report could have broad implications for the industry. Big food companies like and Archer Daniels Midland, for instance, have invested in synthetic biology, a term used for the more sophisticated genetic engineering now coming into use that was the panel’s area of study. Food companies are exploring its use in creating flavorings and sweeteners. When the National Academies announced the committee this year, they disclosed that two of the group’s 13 scientists had ties to the biotech industry that violated the organization’s policy. Such disclosures are rare for the academies, said William Kearney, a spokesman for the organization, but scientists with conflicts are sometimes allowed to work on a committee when the academies think the scientist has a specialty or knowledge that cannot be found elsewhere. Mr. Kearney would not, however, provide data on how frequently the academies have to disclose such conflicts, saying only that they are “rare. ” The two scientists with conflicts are Dr. Steven Evans, a scientist at Dow AgroSciences, a major biotechnology company, and Jeffrey Wolt, a professor at Iowa State University, who the academies said has investments in a company that could benefit from the study’s results. The academies noted their conflicts when the panel members were announced. Dr. Evans and Professor Wolt referred questions about their role to Mr. Kearney. Mr. Kearney said the disclosed conflicts of interest were discovered during the usual vetting of panel members by the academies. The academies kept the scientists on the panel, he said, because they could not find anyone with the same expertise. But more than three dozen environmental and health advocates argue that the National Academies also allowed several other scientists with potential financial conflicts onto the panel without any disclosures. “Several members of this committee stand to benefit directly or indirectly from the rules and regulations their recommendations will help shape,” said Tim Schwab, a food researcher at Food Water Watch, an advocacy group leading the group of critics. “Nor does the committee include anyone who might advocate a more judicious approach to regulating the industry. ” The group made note of Farren Isaacs, an assistant professor at Yale. Professor Isaacs is a founder of enEvolv, a that engineers tiny organisms “to produce chemicals. ” DuPont, which has major investments in biotech, has funded Dr. Isaacs’s research, and he holds two patents that could be used in synthetic biology. Professor Isaacs referred questions to Mr. Kearney. Mr. Kearney said all conflicts that violate the academies’ policy had been disclosed when the panel was announced. Professor Isaacs, he said, did not have a conflict that required disclosure because his company’s technologies are not now being used in biotech. “The term ‘conflict of interest’ applies only to current interests, not prospective ones,” Mr. Kearney said. He said the same about similar questions raised about other members of the committee by the group of critics. (One panel member resigned: Richard Johnson, a former partner at Arnold Porter, a law firm that counts many biotech companies as clients. Mr. Kearney attributed the decision to scheduling conflicts.) The job of finding the scientists to fill the 13 open spots on the biotech committee largely fell to Douglas Friedman, the “responsible staff officer,” or study director. Such employees help the academies identify scientists to serve on a study’s panel, set the agenda for their meetings and oversee the production of the final report, among other tasks. But while Mr. Friedman, who has degrees in chemistry and chemical biology, was putting together his recommendations, he was also applying for a leadership job in the biotech world. In January, Mr. Friedman widely distributed an email seeking nominations for the panel. The email was one of many digital records about Mr. Friedman and the panel that were discovered by Food Water Watch. The group found the records, including the emails and spreadsheets, through Google searches of the panel’s members and shared them with The New York Times, which repeated the search and also found the documents. The records have since been removed from the websites where they had been cached. One recipient of the email was the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering and advancing synthetic biology research. According to the digital records discovered online, Mr. Friedman was firmly on the nonprofit’s radar as a possible leader by the time he began his search for members for the National Academies panel. Ginni Ursin, a Monsanto executive on the nonprofit’s board, commented on a spreadsheet dated December 2015 that Mr. Friedman was the “top candidate by a decent margin. ” The 13 scientists Mr. Friedman recommended to his superiors at the National Academies — including three members of the nonprofit’s board — were all ultimately approved, he said. The panel was appointed in April, and in July, Mr. Friedman started as the new executive director of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium. In a phone interview, he said that he pursued the new job while helping to put the panel together but did not see any reason to tell the academies about the job search. He said he was only one of many layers in the process of appointing members to the biotech panel. And he said it was a coincidence that so many committee members also have roles at the nonprofit. “It’s a relatively small community of people involved in the biotech space,” he said. But Mr. Kearney of the National Academies said Mr. Friedman should not have played the role he did in the selection of the committee in the midst of a job search he did not disclose. The National Academies, he said, are reviewing the selection process, including the oversight of the staff members who oversee it. “No staff member,” he said, “should be participating in the appointment of a committee with members who are also on the board of an organization with which he or she is negotiating employment. ”

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Watch Live: #BenShapiro Speaks As #Berkeley Antifa Protests [Video]

What happened to free speech? The left is trying to crush it with the violent Antifa movement. Ben Shapiro is a 33-year old conservative who has every right to speak. Watch live-the speech was scheduled to happen at 7:00 PST California time (running a little late):S.E. Cupp interviewed Shapiro about the upcoming speech and how some students need counseling honestly!Here s what was going on up to the time of the speech: Conservative Jew Ben Shapiro is making an appearance on the UC Berkeley campus to discuss free speech and how to help reduce the violence and open dialogue between Americans with opposing views. Meanwhile, the left has been busy preparing to show how they re not interested in any views but their own.We ll be keeping you updated throughout the night on the activities at UC Berkeley tonight. Stay tuned VIDEO: lot of anger & tension on the @UCBerkeley campus today, ahead of tonight's speech by @benshapiro. Chalk graffiti will "welcome" him pic.twitter.com/rG4wnuuyjw Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) September 14, 2017In the video below, Ben implores activists, most especially Antifa, to stop using violence as a way to shut down free speech and to possibly open up their minds to other people s points of view:"I know I've been working out, but I don't really think I'm that threatening." #BenAtBerkeley pic.twitter.com/cEAOBevDPO Devin Sena (@DevinSenaUI) September 14, 2017Ben Shapiro has quite a few supporters on social media, who, although they may not agree with everything he says, (present company included) still believe he has the right to express his opinions in a public forum without having to fear for his life. Hurricane shapiro has made landfall and prepares to melt the glacier of snowflakes at Berkeley. #BenAtBerkeley (@JustinShadel) September 14, 2017Young Americans for Freedom on Campus or YAF, posted signs around the campus imploring intolerant liberals to not use hate and violence as a way to take away Ben Shapiro s right to free speech. Some helpful @yaf advice for liberals attending tonight's @benshapiro lecture #BenAtBerkeley #YAFonCampus pic.twitter.com/gNCRAUX2Np Patrick X Coyle (@PatrickXCoyle) September 14, 2017Businesses aren t taking any chances this time around, after witnessing riots and the violence perpetrated by Antifa and Democrat students at Berkeley last year, when gay conservative Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to deliver a speech on the campus of UC Berkeley. Signs have been posted explaining that they have closed early for the safety of their staff and customers.A lot of stores around @UCBerkeley are closing early today, and boarding up, as a precaution during #BenAtBerkeley @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/7ukSbhp7xQ Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) September 14, 2017ATM s owned by Bank of America are being boarded up, so they ll be protected in the case of a riot on campus.VIDEO: B of A boarding up its ATMs on Telegraph Avenue next to @UCBerkeley, fearing violence during #BenAtBerkeley @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/Pn1PRg7Rh5 Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) September 14, 2017Here are some of the classy signs posted around campus by YAF on Campus defending our First Amendment Right: Leftists call @benshapiro a white supremacist. @yaf has a response. #benatberkeley #yafoncampus pic.twitter.com/I2HkFqkBFR Amy Lutz (@amylutz4) September 14, 2017

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EU gives itself June deadline for deal on refugees

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders appealed for unity in a last-ditch effort to break their deadlock on sharing out refugees by June, telling reluctant eastern states they could otherwise be outvoted on a dispute that has shaken the bloc s foundations. Coming out from a fraught discussion among 28 EU leaders that went into the small hours on Friday morning in Brussels, rivals in the two-year-old dispute all stuck to their guns, hemmed in by expectations they have raised with their own voters. The Mediterranean frontline states Italy and Greece, and the rich destination countries including Germany, Sweden, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are demanding that all countries host some refugees as a way to demonstrate solidarity. Their four ex-communist peers Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic refuse to accept people from the mostly-Muslim Middle East and North Africa, saying that would threaten their security after a raft of Islamic attacks in Europe. There are areas where there is no solidarity and this is something I find unacceptable, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters. At one point during the two days of talks in Brussels, cameras caught Merkel, the bloc s paramount national leader, as she appeared to become agitated when talking with the leaders chairman, Donald Tusk, making her displeasure with him clear. That came after Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, came out strongly against ineffective and highly divisive obligatory refugee quotas, ruffling the feathers of those states that back them as well as the executive European Commission. The manner in which the principle of solidarity was being questioned does not only undermine the discussion on the refugee issue, but the future of Europe, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told reporters after what he called intense talks. Tusk said the ineffectiveness of relocation schemes was demonstrated by the fact that only 35,000 asylum seekers had been transferred from Greece and Italy under a 2015 plan meant to move 160,000 people. Mandatory quotas remain a contentious issue, Tusk told a joint news conference with the Commission s head Jean-Claude Juncker, the disagreement between the two playing out visibly despite their usually friendly rapport. Relocation is not a solution to the issue of illegal migration. Will a compromise be possible? It appears very hard. But we have to try our very best, he said, stressing the bloc was in full agreement about making further efforts to tighten its borders and chip in for development and migration-related projects in the Middle East and Africa. After sealing a deal with Ankara in 2016 that cut off arrivals from Turkey to EU state Greece, the bloc is now pushing to stem African immigration to Italy through Libya. Tusk, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other leaders said they wanted to make permanent financing available for such activities in the bloc s next long-term budget from 2021. But it is the feud over how to share the burden of caring for those refugees who still make it to Europe that has weakened the bloc s cohesion and undermined member states trust in each other at a time they need unity to face Brexit. After many months of letting the open wound fester, the backers of quotas made clear they want to move on and would vote on the broader reform of the bloc s asylum system by majority if no compromise acceptable for all is found by June on relocation. I am not a fan of qualified majority decision-taking but... it can be used, Juncker said. Some of our colleagues were openly saying yesterday night that if there is no progress, they will propose qualified majority decision-making procedure. That would inevitably deepen divisions in the EU and the four eastern states warned that the bloc would shoot itself in the foot should it go down this track. The only proposal the EU has on the table on asylum reform has most recently been updated by Estonia and attempts to bridge the divide by proposing that any relocation of asylum-seekers from one EU state to another, while obligatory at times of extremely high arrivals, would in fact only take place if both involved agreed voluntarily to the terms. Diplomats in Brussels hoped Italy would be more willing to compromise after it holds elections, most likely in March, and said Germany could reassume the lead on the file after it forms a ruling coalition following an election last September. A senior EU diplomat from one of the pro-quota countries said they would seek to break the united front of the four eastern states to bring down the number of countries that would eventually be defeated in a vote if everything else fails.

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PAMELA GELLAR GROUP PLANS TO RUN MUHAMMED CARTOON ADS ON DC BUSES [Video]

Drawing Muhammad is not illegal under American law, but only under Islamic law. Violence that arises over the cartoons is solely the responsibility of the Islamic jihadists who perpetrate it. Because freedom of speech is under violent assault, the human rights advocacy group the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) has announced a new ad campaign to defend freedom of speech and stand up to violent intimidation kicking off in the nation s capital.I said in a statement: Because the media and the cultural and political elites continue to self-enforce the Sharia without the consent of the American people by refusing to show any depictions of Muhammad or showing what it was in Texas that had jihadists opening fire, we are running an ad featuring the winning cartoon by former Muslim Bosch Fawstin from our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas. Let the American people see what the cowardly press is censoring in accordance with the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law).The ad campaign has been submitted to the Washington, D.C. MTA to run on buses and train dioramas in the Foggy Bottom, Capitol South, Bethesda, L Enfant Plaza, and Shady Grove stations. Drawing Muhammad is not illegal under American law, but only under Islamic law. Violence that arises over the cartoons is solely the responsibility of the Islamic jihadists who perpetrate it. Either America will stand now against attempts to suppress the freedom of speech by violence, or will submit and give the violent the signal that we can be silenced by threats and murder. We cannot submit to the assassin s veto. It was the jihadis, not I, who made the cartoons a flash point. If we surrender on that point and stop drawing Muhammad, we ve established a precedent of surrendering to violent Sharia enforcement, and once established, we will be made to reinforce it again and again. Islamist government is a unique threat to free speech and libertyFreedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced.Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not bear being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed while everyone else lives in fear, while other groups curtail their activities to appease the violent group. This results in the violent group being able to tyrannize the others.I added: There is nothing about this cartoon that incites violence. It is within the established American tradition of satire. If America surrenders on this point, the freedom of speech is a relic of history. AFDI Vice President Robert Spencer stated: Many people on both the Left and the Right are saying that we should do nothing to provoke Islamic fundamentalism. The immediate answer would seem to be that we should do nothing to provoke violent jihadis, that the prudent thing to do would be to avoid doing things that anger them. But if we did that, they would not they stop coming at us. Last September, an Islamic State spokesman boasted: We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us; He is glorified and He does not fail in His promise. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market. In light of that, what is the point of asking whether or not we should provoke them? They re already provoked, he continued. A more useful question now is whether it is really productive and helpful to signal to them that we will acquiesce to their threats of violence and change our behavior accordingly, or whether we will instead signal to them that their violent threats are not going to frighten us into submission. The ads have been submitted to run on buses in Washington, D.C.AFDI stands for:The freedom of speech as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of blasphemy and slander, which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism; The freedom of conscience as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy; The equality of rights of all people before the law as opposed to Sharia s institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims. Via: Breitbart News

1real

Turkey suspends all non-immigrant visa services at all diplomatic facilities in U.S.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish embassy in Washington said on Sunday it suspended all non-immigrant visa services at all Turkish diplomatic facilities in the United States, after U.S. missions reduced visa services in Turkey. “Recent events have forced the Turkish government to reassess the commitment of government of the United States to the security of Turkish mission facilities and personnel,” the statement by the embassy in Washington said. The decision came hours after the U.S. mission to Turkey reduced visa services after one of its employees was detained last week, saying it needed to “reassess” Turkey’s commitment to the security of its personnel.

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Trump lawyers aim to delay fraud trial at hearing

(Reuters) - Attorneys for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will try at a court hearing on Friday to delay a civil trial involving allegations from students that they were defrauded by the now-defunct Trump University. The former students say they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn the New York businessman’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors. Trump owned 92 percent of Trump University and had control over all major decisions, the students’ court papers said. Trump denies the allegations and has argued he relied on others to manage the business. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego has urged both sides to settle in advance of a trial scheduled to begin on Nov. 28. Trump’s lawyers filed a motion last week asking to delay the case until after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, saying the presidential transition was “all-consuming.” They also proposed that Trump’s trial testimony be recorded before trial. The students opposed the request, saying Trump had already provided several hours of deposition testimony that could be presented to a jury. “Any delay would be a slippery slope because President-Elect Trump’s life is only going to get more complicated and unpredictable as time goes by,” they wrote. Curiel is presiding over two cases against Trump and the university. A separate lawsuit is pending, filed by New York’s attorney general who has said over 5,000 students across the country were defrauded out of about $40 million. Trump aroused controversy earlier this year when he said during his campaign that Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, could not be impartial because of Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Elon Musk’s Boring Machine Brings Excitement to Los Angeles - Breitbart

Inventor Elon Musk is into driverless cars and space missions to Mars, but now he’s excited about his boring machine. [Make that the Boring Machine, monikered Godot, a reference to a mysterious character that never appears in a Samuel Beckett play called “Waiting for Godot. ” Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, announced last week that his new venture is ready for its first project. The Boring Company will be creating a network of underground tunnels connecting Los Angeles International Airport and L. A.’s westside neighborhoods: First tunnel for The Boring Company begins … Full length of first tunnel will run from LAX to … https: . — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2017, “First tunnel for The Boring Company begins … Full length of first tunnel will run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks. Future tunnels will cover all of greater LA,” Musk wrote in his Instagram account. After completion, cars may be loaded onto a “electric sled,” which would allow a vehicle to be transported from “Westwood to LAX in 5 minutes,” according to Musk. To those unfamiliar with Los Angeles, the most congested city in the U. S. (according to Forbes) a typical drive between LAX and Westwood takes about 30 minutes. It’s not unusual to take an hour or more to traverse those 10 miles on the 405 Freeway during heavy traffic hours. Musk posted a video of a test run on the sled inside the nearly experimental Hyperloop tunnel he had built outside SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, just south of LAX: [Warning, this may cause motion sickness or seizures]This is a test run of our electric sled … https: . — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2017, There is no word yet on when the project will officially start or be completed. But for Angelenos perpetually stuck in traffic, this could be the best news until flying cars come along. (Then again, if you have to wait a long time in line to get on the sled … but we’re way ahead of ourselves now.) Follow Samuel Chi on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru.

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KELLOGG’S PULLS ADVERTISING From Breitbart News As Punishment For Conservative News Slant…#BoycottKelloggs

Kellogg Co. is pulling its ads from the website Breitbart News, the right-wing news organization whose former chairman Steve Bannon was tapped as a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump.Brands that advertise on Breitbart have drawn flak in recent weeks, with activists saying the website espouses racist and anti-Semitic views. A screen shot showing an advertisement for Kellogg s Frosted Mini Wheats was part of an online campaign to get marketers to abandon the site. We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren t aligned with our values as a company, said Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg, which also makes Frosted Flakes and Special K cereal. We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site. AppNexus Inc., one of the biggest digital advertising services, barred Breitbart from using its ad-serving tools earlier this month because it felt the publisher violated its hate-speech rules.AppNexus scrutinized Breitbart s website after Bannon was given the White House post. The digital ad firm decided the publication had breached a policy against content that incites violence, according to a spokesman for the company. Kellogg declined to name the third-party company that places its digital ads.Kellogg is the latest major brand to pull its online advertising from the news site. Other companies including Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker and SoFi have also blacklisted Breitbart from showing their ads, according to Digiday.The site had 19.2 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in October, up from 12.9 million a year ago, according to ComScore Inc. Breitbart doesn t rely on subscriptions, suggesting that advertising is a major source of revenue.Many marketers buy online advertising through third-party tech companies that distribute them widely across the internet, so they may not be aware of all the websites where they appear. But they also have the ability to control which websites display their ads. The creator of the Twitter account Sleeping Giants has been taking screen shots of ads appearing on Breitbart in an attempt to pressure those brands to take their ads down.Not all brands are shying away from advertising on Breitbart, though. After a screenshot showed a Nissan ad on the website, the automaker said in a statement that it places ads in a variety of sites in order to reach as many consumers as possible. The placement of Nissan advertising is not intended to be a political commentary and there are no plans to change the advertising mix at this time, the company said. Bloomberg

1real

COMMANDER IN CHIEF APPROVED RACISM? U.S. Military Makes SHOCKING Disciplinary Decision For 16 Black West Point Cadets

Do we even need to ask how 16 white West Point cadets posing in uniform, with a white power fist before graduation would have been resolved? Never mind the media circus it would have created Sixteen black West Point cadets who posed with raised fists for a pre-graduation picture that sparked debates on race and proper behavior in uniform won t be punished for the gesture, the U.S. Military Academy said Tuesday.The decision, less than two weeks before the 16 female seniors are poised to graduate, found they didn t violate any U.S. Department of Defense rules limiting political activity.An internal inquiry found that the cadets did not pre-plan or set out to make a political statement, West Point s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., said in a letter to the student body.But, he said, they showed a lapse of awareness in how symbols and gestures can be misinterpreted and cause division and they will get some instruction on that.The fists-up image, which circulated online, led some observers to question whether the women were expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests over police killings of unarmed black men.But the inquiry found the picture, one of multiple photos the women made in keeping with an informal campus tradition, captured a spur-of-the-moment gesture intended to demonstrate unity and pride in graduating, Caslen wrote. Groups of cadets often take Old Corps pictures in traditional dress uniforms to echo historical portraits.A raised fist has symbolized political resistance for generations, from Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison in 1990 to Democratic Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on the presidential campaign trail this year. It was used by black power advocates in the 1960s, including by two American sprinters during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, and more recently by activists for the Black Lives Matter movement.Some observers suggested the women were improperly identifying with the movement while in uniform.Defenders said the women were simply celebrating their forthcoming graduation, something closer in spirit to a team lifting helmets to celebrate a win or Beyonce raising her fist at this year s Super Bowl halftime show. Via: Yahoo h/t WZ

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Florida man admits helping funnel 2012 foreign political contribution

(Reuters) - A Florida man pleaded guilty on Monday to working with another man to illegally funnel $80,000 in foreign contributions to U.S. President Barack Obama’s joint fundraising committee in 2012 so that a foreign national could attend a campaign event. William Argeros, 57, pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, to charges that he knowingly and willfully made foreign contributions and donations and made a false declaration to a federal grand jury, prosecutors said. U.S. law prohibits contributions from foreign nationals to candidates or fundraising committees in federal elections. A lawyer for Argeros did not respond to a request for comment. The Tampa, Florida, resident is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 9. The proceedings came a month after an earlier guilty plea in the case by Bilal Shehu, a New Jersey limousine driver to whom prosecutors said Argeros facilitated the transferring of $80,000 from a foreign source. Prosecutors said Shehu, a Paramus, New Jersey resident, then provided the money to Obama’s joint fundraising committee so that a foreign national could attend a campaign event on Oct. 8, 2012, in San Francisco. In announcing both guilty pleas, prosecutors have not specifically identified the foreign source of the money or the foreign national. But the cases came after a Republican congressman in 2013 called for investigations into the purchases by Shehu’s family of two $40,000 tickets for a San Francisco fundraiser, one of which was used by now-Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. At the October 2012 event, Rama, the Albanian Socialist Party leader, was photographed with Obama. U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California at the time contended the photo was then used for “deceitful” purposes by Rama to imply a relationship with Obama during Albania’s own election, which brought him into leadership. Prosecutors have said that the foreign national in the case was denied entry to the campaign event but was allowed to be photographed with Obama. Prosecutors said no one on the joint election committee has been accused of any wrongdoing and that it had cooperated fully in the investigation.

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FEMALE REPORTER Assures Viewers Germany’s Carnival Is Free Of “Rapefugees,” As Men Sexually Assault Her On Live TV [VIDEO]

It s hard to tell if the men assaulting this female reporter are refugees or Germans. One thing is clear however, there is now an attitude permeating Germany that it s okay to openly commit sexual assault on women. Hmmm .isn t there a culture in the Middle East that has the same mindset? This is a perfect example of the Left putting an ideology before the most vulnerable in their society. To hell with protecting their women and children, welcoming Muslim males, who have no intention of assimilating with Europeans, appears to be the primary concern of progressives in the failed EU expiriment. The sex attack on the Belgian TV journalist Esmeralda Labye (42): she was attacked by two men while the camera was running on a live broadcast for the channel RTBF. The incident occurred around 1.30 am in the Old Market. The perpetrators are still at large.On the evening Labye spoke in a television broadcast about the events in Cologne: At first it was only fooling around behind me. Then a hand landed on my breast. I was shocked. https://youtu.be/DYQB81Bpd9MLive from the carnival in Cologne, the presenter on the national broadcaster, Esmeralda Labye, was explaining that things are going relatively well , while passers-by were making obscene gestures and whispering in her ear.Reminder: The final carnival festivities in Cologne, one of the most popular events in Germany, began last Thursday, surrounded by a heavy security after violence that took place at New Year . A total of 2,500 police officers were deployed, three times more than last year .The New Year s night was marred by violence , including sexual abuse , attributed to North African asylum seekers or immigrants.Via: DH.be

1real

Coke Zero: What Went Wrong With The Marco Rubio Brand?

Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireAny business expert will tell you that marketing is not an exact science. The same is true in politics, and even more so in this historic election season. As the polls closed yesterday, Republican candidate and US Senator Marco Rubio took to the podium to announce he was finally bowing out the GOP presidential primary race. Front runner Donald Trump nearly swept the board starting with Rubio s home state of Florida, followed by Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri and in US territory Mariana Islands, while Ohio governor John Kasich took the remaining contest winning his first primary race ,in his home state.With 99 delegates at stake in a winner take all contest, Florida was meant to be Rubio s gallant last stand. Even though the polls showed Rubio trailing in double digits before Tuesday, Rubio still insisted he was going to win, and even go on to win the nomination.Marco: A smile you can trust.. Quite frankly, I think a lot of people are going to be embarrassed tonight and are going to want refunds from the money they spent on those polls because we re going to win Florida, said Rubio. We feel very optimistic about that. When it was all said and done, Trump beat Rubio 46% to 27% in Florida. A blow out.By the end of his long drive, Rubio had only managed to win one state caucus in Minnesota, leaving him with no real primary victory. To his investors, the truth of the matter might be almost too painful to comprehend that beyond all the hype, their man was really a bottom tier candidate.Super Tuesday s humiliating loss was indicative of a Rubio rise that never rose. Before Tuesday s defeat, no matter how poorly Florida Senator Marco Rubio showed in previous primary elections, and no matter how badly he was polling in his home state of Florida the media, led by CNN and FOX News, still covered his campaign like he was winning the election. Clearly, there was a concerted and well-coordinated effort by the Republican establishment and major broadcast media outlets to promote Rubio s candidacy well above the actual candidate s weight division.Three weeks ago, in a last-ditch effort to elevate his poll numbers, Rubio tried to out-Trump Trump, by unleashing his own round of back-ally personal verbal insults at the front runner in the hope of pulling The Donald back down to earth. Rubio began publicly calling Trump a con man and asserted that Trump had not achieved anything in his business career and along with fellow competitor Ted Cruz, inferred that the billionaire property and entertainment mogul Trump had inherited $200 million dollars from his late father and therefore was not deserving of any accolades. When Trump would joke about Rubio s lack of height (Rubio is 5 8 and Trump is 6 2 ), Rubio hit back joking, look how small Donald s hands are, and you what they say about men with small hands.. to his crowds roaring with laughter before the Texas primary three weeks earlier.Trump finally hit back with a moniker that Rubio could never shake, renaming him Little Marco. LITTLE MARCO: Trump s crude deconstruction of Rubio delivered the final blow.Although their cage match pulled more TV airtime and attention away from a Trump-obsessed media, in the end it backfired horribly for Marco, as America got an uncomfortable snapshot of a nasty and desperate Rubio hardly the look of stability, moderation and unity that Rubio marketeers were trying to project, and hardly presidential either.What was most telling about Rubio s response to a situation, partly of his own making, was that Rubio shirked any responsibility for ratcheting-up the rhetoric, and instead tried to blame Trump for the degrading tone of the election: This is a frightening, grotesque and disturbing development in American politics, Rubio said of the violence. We are being ripped apart at the seams now, he continued. I m sad for this country. This is supposed to be the example to the world of how a republic functions and instead people are watching third-world images last night coming out of Chicago. It was too late. The damage was already done. Some pundits were calling it political suicide by Rubio a gross error of political miscalculation on his part. But this would be missing the point because in reality, beyond all the incredible marketing hype, Rubio s campaign never achieved any serious market penetration to begin with.It s important to remember that the establishment firmly believed, and still to this day, that Marco Rubio could be the Republican Party s answer to the marketing sensation that was Barack Obama in 2008. By capitalizing on his youth and his Latino profile, the GOP elite saw this as a turn-key marketing solution. Just like a soda pop brand, party and media operatives believed that by positioning Rubio s brand in a highbrow market tier, voters would make the necessary connections and move to act by casting their vote for him. DETATCHED: Darryl Issa throws himself under the bus,, desperate to inflate Rubio before Super Tuesday.On Super Tuesday, the transmission truly fell out of the Rubio marketing machine. After months of boasting about how he would win his home state, Rubio plugger and California Congressman Darryl Issa (R), insisted that, Marco is leading in early (voting) returns in Florida. Seriously, Congressman Issa?Issa appeared to be carrying water for the GOP establishment by doing the last minute media rounds for kingmaker Mitt Romney, who weeks earlier dropped the gauntlet down on the Trump train during a speech at the University of Utah. Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor implored his GOP herd to join forces and stop Trump by splitting the votes by voting for Kasich in Ohio, and for Rubio in Florida. Romney hoped that his divide and conquer strategy would rob Trump of the delegate majority needed to secure the GOP nomination before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio this July. JET-SET: Rubio taking instructions from elite off-shoring corporate raider Mitt Romney.Clearly, Romney had staked his claim behind Marco Rubio then, which means that Rubio s collapse in Florida has half deflated Romney s Revolt.Romney continued to dig a hole for himself in Florida before Super Tuesday by recording an automated Robo-call used to phone prospective Marco Rubio voters in Florida, nearly begging voters to cast ballots for, a candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton and who can make us proud. The recorded message went on: If we Republicans were to choose Donald Trump as our nominee, I believe that the prospects for a safe and prosperous future would be greatly diminished and I m convinced Donald Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton. Making Robo-calls for a candidate who people were already calling a Robot , wasn t exactly a smart move by Romney.Far from swinging the election towards Rubio, what Mitt Romney really proved was that money and power can t buy common sense.Ghost RunFor anyone who actually bothered to look close enough, hints of Rubio s collapse were everywhere, but you wouldn t know if from media coverage over the last two months. If not for favorable network face-time on the GOP TV debates, along with Rubio s elite financier backers like billionaire Paul Singer and Cayman hedge fund raider Romney, it s safe to say that Rubio s numbers might had been well below those of his fellow non-starter, Ohio Governor John Kasich.Rubio-linked multi-million dollar Super PAC funds pulled out all the stops against Trump too, launching a social media tidal wave of anti-Trump messages before the Florida primary:If every Rubio supporter makes 1 phone call #MarcoRubio will win! Convince 1 voter to vote for Marco! #CallForMarco pic.twitter.com/d8wOKZWFA4 Stop Trump PAC (@StopTrumpPAC) March 15, 2016Last Wednesday, Rubio hired out a football stadium to stage a homecoming rally in his own state. Unfortunately, no one showed up. TV cameras had to be moved forward into a tiny area around the field s goal posts in order to make the rally look as if more than a few hundred people bothered to show up. Far from jovial and inspirational, the atmosphere was that of deflation and despondency. It was tragic.Rubio stadium event in Hialeah. Stands empty; crowd in one end zone. pic.twitter.com/9zj0xslwSA Byron York (@ByronYork) March 9, 2016 And when the cameras zoomed-in, it looked like this:The crowd in Hialeah is fired up for @marcorubio tonight! #FLforMarco #FLPrimary pic.twitter.com/e34GsoWWwH Team Marco (@TeamMarco) March 9, 2016CNN had dispatched one of its intrepid city-dwelling reporters, Jason Carroll, out to Hialeah, Florida to cover the event. Carrol tried be nice about it, describing the event as much, much smaller than a normal Rubio event. So much for Marco s homecoming, and so much for Mitt Romney s plan to have Marco win his home state to force a brokered convention in July.If Romney s revolt was ever going to happen, it wasn t going to be in Florida. You d think Mitt s people would ve figured that one out, but there you go (millions are beginning to understand now why Romney performed so poorly in the 2012 election).Jason Carol s cameraman delivered a dim shot of the rally. If there was a church BBQ down the road, it would have drawn a bigger crowd than this.After this debacle last week, Rubio still found the gumption to go on national TV and more or less instruct his supporters to cast their vote for John Kasich in the Ohio primary. Never before in modern American history have we seen presidential candidates instructing their supporters to vote against them in order to derail the party frontrunner in the hopes of triggering a brokered Republican National Convention in July.In reality, a brokered convention means that even if Donald Trump wins the popular votes and the collects the most delegates in the GOP primaries the Republican Party will call for a vote on the convention floor asking for all delegates to vote again, which in this case would mean that if the combined delegates of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich exceeds that held by Donald Trump, then Trump would be dumped by his own party s establishment insiders at the convention in favor of another yet to be determined party elite selection. Most likely this would be Mitt Romney s former running mate, House Speaker Paul Ryan, or one of the other three aforementioned candidates.Great on PaperBefore he was cast-off by the Tea Party purists in favor of Cruz, Rubio had positioned his brand as one of insurgency, but the crowd didn t buy it. So the brand was repositioned as a safe choice for voters.When the Rubio vs Trump m l e first started, I had said that this was the inevitable result of the Republican establishment who were, going for the mathematical and demographically pragmatic option which would be Marco Rubio, with Wisconsin s Scott Walker throwing early innings in the bull pen. Orthodox RNC thinking last spring believed that Rubio, with less than one term in Senate and no leadership experience, would somehow repeat the Obama effect of 2008, and finally usher their party into the 21st century. Things looked very different for Hillary last spring too, where she seemed invincible on the Democrat side as well as in national polling. On paper at least, it seems that Rubio would tick all the right boxes for the GOP elite presiding over a party in decline and disarray young (44 years old, although you d put him at a decade his junior), and even more importantly, Latino, giving the GOP a shot at pulling in a crucial trilateral voter compliment: Hispanic-American, independents and moderate Democrats. On paper this all makes perfect sense, but running for President in the United States of America isn t simply a case of what looks logical on paper. Case and point: Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson and, of course, Donald Trump. It was a truly devastating moment for the Rubio campaign who had raised no less than $70 million so far as part of a desperate establishment bid to market the Rubio brand . According to a chief strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Rubio has been more hyped than Crystal Pepsi, in reference to Pepsi s 1992 marketing flop. Sen. Rubio has been more hyped than Crystal Pepsi, but he has flopped even worse, said Weaver last week. Even a well-conceived, high-financed marketing campaign won t work if people don t want to buy the product. That s the Rubio campaign s problem . Behind the nice packaging, voters are discovering there is little substance. Not surprisingly, I don t really like Crystal Pepsi. No one does. But everyone remembers when Coca Cola tried to inflate New Coke, Cherry Coke, and finally Coke Zero, before it completely flopped. Millions were wasted in vain, and it seems that the only people who really benefited from this exercise in hype were the advertising agencies and the production companies who produced them and also the media networks who sold the ad space to Coca Cola.The same could be said with Rubio, and of course with Jeb Bush and a few others, although Rubio may still live to run another day. Coke didn t give up on Zero. Zero eventually became a Hero (well, according to Coca Cola, anyway) after years and years of marketing capital was invested into that product which no one was really interested in to begin with.Billionaire Boys ClubBillionaires love to gamble, especially in politics and they gambled heavily and lost, on Marco Rubio. One might question the establishment s efficacy in leaving an invisible Rubio in a primary race where he s taking votes away from a more promising challenger in Texas Senator Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz. Ditto with Kasich.Maybe it s the egos, or maybe Trump is actually pulling the master strings. Either way, the establishment s anti-Trump obsession is tearing the Republican Party apart.Just when you thought it couldn t get any more like a true life black comedy, all three desperate GOP challengers found themselves courting the endorsement of election dropout and former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, on the Thursday before the CNN debate began.As sexy goes, this endorsement hardly registers outside of a few select country clubs. If it were an endorsement from 90 year old Barbara Bush then it might mean something.So poor was Jeb s showing in the primary contest even after burning through over $100 million in campaign donations (he raised over $150 million) and received around 7% of the vote it s difficult to see why anyone among Rubio, Cruz and Kasich would be offering a stump for Mr. Excitement, a low energy dynastic nonstarter.On balance, this endorsement would probably garner less votes than an endorsement from David Duke. Such is the bizarre and sideshow-like nature of this 2016 presidential election. A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: Rubio uses Neocon s PNAC and Israel-first old marketing slogan.Why the Elite Loved RubioLike his globalist colleague Kasich, and despite his evasive comments on the campaign trail, Rubio seems very committed to Wall Street and Bilderberg principles regarding corporate-brokered trade pacts like TPP, TTIP, GAT, and the WTO.On foreign policy, Rubio is a pro-war Republican, calling for regime change in Syria, and even made the incredible comment during one of the GOP s February debates that, We didn t overthrow Gaddafi, the Libyan people did , having not realized that months of US air bombardment, as well as arming and working with Islamist militants on the ground is what toppled the Libyan state in 2011. Many of these same militants packed up and moved the roadshow to Syria in late 2011 and early 2012. The CIA were active and involved in the repatriation of fighters to Syria and the trafficking of weapons into Syria after the fall of Gaddafi. It would be shocking if Rubio wasn t aware of any of this, especially if he wants to be president of the United States.The other obvious, if not bizarre indicator that the globalists billionaire, military industrial class were firmly backing Rubio was hidden in plain sight. His campaign slogan was A New American Century , and of course, the significance of this was completely lost on the mainstream media. It seemed that Rubio had stolen his campaign slogan from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton (and Jeb Bush, who also signed the PNAC pledge in 1998) whose neoconservative pro-war think tank, Project for A New American Century (PNAC) was arguably the architect of America s post-9/11 foreign policy. PNAC was also an extension of Israel s foreign policy too, which makes sense considering how aggressively Rubio advocates for Israeli interests.When you actually look at Rubio s record during his time in the Florida legislature, it does not paint a pretty picture at all.Without too much effort, any member of the media, including CNN s Don Lemon, Jake Tapper or Anderson Cooper, could find a substantial trail of dirt behind the young Senator if only for the fact that Rubio s record seems to be off limits by the media and newspapers like the New York Times all of whom are devoted to only running critical exposes on Donald Trump. Rubio s dubious track record of scandals and other pieces of corruption are well-known in his home state, but almost invisible nationally. Top of that list might be one David Rivera, a long-time political ally and close friend of Marco Rubio who also happens to be under investigation by the FBI.That s only the beginning. One of the most telling scandals involved Rubio selling his home to a lobbyist, and getting way over the asking price. On The Issues reports: Rubio s personal finances were questioned because he made a $200,000 profit selling a house he owned to the mother of a chiropractor who was lobbying for a change in state insurance rules. Rubio had been a holdout, but removed a block on the measure shortly after the home sale and voted for it. Rubio was criticized for failing to disclose a home equity loan he received from US Century Bank, whose chairman, Sergio Pino, was a political supporter. The house had been appraised for $185,000, more than the purchase price just 37 days after he bought it. Rubio s staff said the value jumped because he d locked in a lower preconstruction price and made improvements. US Century Bank a large recipient of federal bank bailout money denied making a sweetheart deal. There are a number of other sketchy scandals linking Rubio to Florida s organized crime syndicates, ponzi schemes, including shady deals involving cash payouts and dodgy lobbyists, some of which can be read here. The mainstream media never challenged Rubio on any of these reports, so Rubio never had to defend against them.Then there s the business of Rubio s sugar daddy , Jewish billionaire and Israeli luminary Norman Braman. Not only is Braman bank-rolling the Rubio political machine (in return for ?), but Brahman s charity foundation also employs Marco s wife Jeanette Rubio too. ON BOARD: Rubio with Israeli luminary Shimon Peres. Brahman is also Rubio s entr e into the Israeli Lobby. It was Brahman who flew Marco and his family to Israel in 2010 to be inducted into the Israeli mind-set. This is also evident through Rubio s pro-Israeli rhetoric, where during one debate he proudly announced, There can be NO negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians right now In another recent speech, Rubio took things a step further by insinuating that anyone who criticizes Israel is racist, insisting that, All of this anti-Israel action going on globally, it s anti-Semitism. He could easily be speaking as an Israeli envoy, speaking straight off of the lobby s talking script.That s just a snapshot of what sort of political animal Marco Rubio is not unlike the rest of the pack, and perhaps a lot more shrewd, pushy and cunning than many others. You wouldn t expect anything less by anyone who believes that they deserve to be elected President of the United States having served less than one term in the US Senate at the age of 44.It s not certain yet whether or not Rubio will be able to retain his Florida US Senate seat after announcing he would be campaigning for president last year. Maybe a run for governor in Florida is in the cards.One thing is certain though, at his young age and with powerful backers like the Israeli Lobby we have not seen the last of Marco Rubio. His talent and ability as a speaker and his potential for a broad-based appeal is undeniable and you can be certain he will remain a key tool for the establishment for many years to come.Just like Coke Zero, with enough marketing muscle and money injected into it, every brand can have a second life.Rubio will return.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files

1real

Clinton's pledge to curtail fracking falls on unconvinced ears

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s vow to regulate oil and gas fracking almost out of existence was met with skepticism Monday, failing to convince either industry or environment groups that she would - or could - end the controversial drilling practice if she becomes president. The front-runner for the Democratic party nomination used a debate in Flint, Michigan on Sunday night to oppose fracking anywhere local communities were against it, wherever it polluted air or water, and whenever companies refused to disclose what chemicals they use in the process. “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she said. But supporters and opponents of fracking dismissed her position as campaign rhetoric that would collide with the limited powers of a president to control an activity largely regulated at the state level. Defenders of fracking said no president would try to put the brakes on a drilling technique that has flooded the U.S. with cheap oil and gas. “Secretary Clinton’s answer is essentially campaign hyperbole, and meant to appease her environmental constituency,” said Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Texas’ Southern Methodist University, in a blog post in the Dallas Morning News. “In reality, it has little substance to it.” Green groups welcomed Clinton’s shift from her past support for fracking. But they also urged her to stop laying down conditions and caveats. “Clinton will continue to struggle to convince climate advocates that she is serious about addressing the crisis until she comes out for a full ban on fracking,” said Yong Jung Cho, campaign coordinator of grassroots groups 350 Action. As secretary of state, Clinton supported fracking as a way to reduce U.S. dependence on imported energy, and even led a push to spread shale extraction to allies in Europe to wean them off Russian gas.[L1N0VX2JT] Her pledge in Flint to curtail the practice followed the blunt declaration against fracking by Senator Bernard Sanders, her sole rival for the nomination. Sanders’ challenge has shifted some of Clinton’s positions in the campaign, and her statement on fracking now comes closer to wider Democratic party sentiment. “Secretary Clinton has been pushed to the left by Senator Sanders,” said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government affairs at the Western Energy Alliance. Sgamma said Democrats from President Barack Obama to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper support fracking and the economic benefits its brings to many states. “Sometimes things said in the heat of a debate are later wisely set aside when faced with the economic and national security consequences of shutting down the technique that unlocks huge domestic sources of energy that would otherwise have to come from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran,” she said. The Clinton campaign said the candidate has previously criticized fracking when it clashed with local opposition. “If a local government says no (to fracking), not here, they should be able to do that,” Clinton said during a campaign stop in Keene, New Hampshire last October. But fracking for natural gas has also drastically reduced the amount of coal being burned to produce electricity, and has been mostly supported by the Obama administration. David Koranyi, director of the Eurasian Energy Future Initiative at the Atlantic Council said Clinton’s “very circumspect” answer to the question in Flint actually reflected the Obama administration’s current approach to fracking, which seeks to continue expanding shale production with more environmental oversight. “I believe wrapped in her strong statement is a pragmatic approach that recognizes the merits of natural gas as a bridge fuel in the process of decarbonization,” he said. Clinton’s harder line did, however, delineate the clear differences between Democrats and Republicans on the issue. All Republican contenders have strongly defended fracking, leading Louis Finkel of the American Petroleum Institute to attack Clinton’s position as “a political stunt by those who are spouting populist rhetoric for political points.” The importance of fracking to the American economy, he said, means the Democrats “are not being honest with American voters.” (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bernard Orr) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

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Senators seek to block $1.15 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four U.S. senators introduced a joint resolution on Thursday seeking to block the U.S. sale of $1.15 billion of Abrams tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, citing issues including the conflict in Yemen. The measure was introduced by Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Democrats Chris Murphy and Al Franken, the latest indication of strong disapproval of the deal among some U.S. lawmakers. “Selling $1.15 billion in tanks, guns, ammunition, and more to a country with a poor human rights record embroiled in a bitter war is a recipe for disaster and an escalation of an ongoing arms race in the region,” Paul said in a statement. In August, 64 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter urging President Barack Obama to delay the sale. The Pentagon announced on Aug. 9 that the State Department has approved the potential sale of more than 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored recovery vehicles and other equipment to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements foreign arms sales, said that General Dynamics would be the principal contractor for the sale. Introducing the resolution, the senators cited the conflict in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition in support of forces loyal to the exiled government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who are trying to oust Iran-allied Houthi forces from the capital, Sanaa. Human rights groups have criticized the coalition’s air strikes because of the deaths of civilians. “Thousands of civilians are being killed, and terrorist groups inside the country, like al Qaeda and ISIS, are getting stronger. Until the Saudis’ conduct changes, the U.S. should put a pause on further arms sales,” Murphy said in a statement. Some congressional aides questioned whether Congress had the right to try to block the sale, since it has been more than 30 days since Congress was notified about it. But the four senators said the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 allows senators to force a vote on an arms sale by a president. Human rights activists applauded the resolution. “Congress’ silence would signal to the Yemeni people that U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is unconditional – no matter how cruel the parties’ methods of warfare or how unwilling they are to make peace,” Scott Paul, senior humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam America, said in a statement.

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EXCLUSIVE - Islamic State Supporters Vow Terror Group Will Retake Mosul as ‘Liberators’

Writing in an encrypted chat room, Islamic State sympathizers and militants celebrated the anniversary of the terrorist organization’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s city. [Despite losing most of Mosul to the U. S. international coalition, the IS supporters vowed that they would return and take control over the entire city once more. IS completed its takeover of Mosul from Iraqi forces on June 10, 2014. Over the last eight months, the group has been fighting a difficult battle against Iraqi forces supported by an international coalition led by the United States and has lost control of most of the city except for a few pockets of resistance. Nonetheless, the IS members in the chat room marked the anniversary, with Abi Aisha Almosulawi writing, “Thank Allah who blessed us with the blessing of Islam. Thank Allah who granted us the Islamic State that rules through Allah’s sharia. The campaign of conquests began here in Mosul and now we’re dealing with a brutal crusader Shi’ite war, but we have not surrendered and will not surrender. We will continue to harm the infidels and continue to disturb their peace even if we lose Mosul three years after liberating it. This isn’t over. We will continue to trust in Allah and the victory he is expected to grant us one day. ” Abi Huzaifa Almosolawi wrote, “Today marks three years since the capture of Mosul and its liberation from the hands of the blasphemous Shi’ites. This glorious conquest that Allah gave his warriors and gave them the opportunity to implement sharia was the beginning of the fulfillment of Allah’s promise to the loyal mujahedeen. “We may lose the land but we will never lose the desire to enforce holy sharia on every meter in our control. We will return to Mosul again as liberators and we will liberate Baghdad, Syria, Egypt, Palestine and all the land to impose holy sharia. Even Rome will be liberated and when we enter it we will yell Allah is great, with the help of Allah. ” Abi Talha Almagrebi (the Moroccan) wrote, “From the pulpit of the mosque in Mosul, the Caliph Abu Bakr (Al Baghdadi) came out and declared the Caliphate. From here, the land of Mosul. From Mosul, we went forth to liberate Fallujah, Al Anbar and other places. Today we come back to the desert but we do so while clinging to the divine promise. We cling to holy sharia and we won’t compromise with the infidels. The right and justice lies with us. We will come back here as liberators. When we return as liberators, with the help of Allah, we will remember our mujahedeen brothers Abi Ali Alanbari (a senior military commander in IS who was killed) and the Sheikh Abo Mohamad Aladnani (an IS spokesperson who was killed). ” The U. offensive in Mosul began about eight months ago, with the terrorist group losing most of the city to Iraqi forces except for an area at the western section of the Tigris river. On Saturday, U. S. Iraqi forces repelled an IS offensive in the Sunni town of Shirqat, just south of Mosul.

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Oklahoma lawmaker, found with boy in motel, charged with prostitution

(Reuters) - An Oklahoma Republican state senator who campaigned as a champion of family values was booked on felony prostitution charges on Thursday after police found him in a motel room with a teenage boy and drugs, court documents showed. Ralph Shortey, 35, was charged with three felony counts, including engaging in child prostitution, court documents filed in Cleveland County showed. Shortey, who has served since 2010, has not spoken to media about the incident. According to an arrest affidavit, police found Shortey and a 17-year-old male, who was not named, in a motel room in Moore, south of Oklahoma City, on March 9. “Officers present observed a strong odor of marijuana coming from the room and inside the room at the time of their contact with the defendant,” the affidavit said, adding the officers also “found an opened box of condoms in the defendant’s backpack.” According to court records, Shortey was booked at a local jail on Thursday afternoon. His bond has been set at $100,000 and local media said he was released about two after he surrendered. Oklahoma politicians from both major parties called on Shortey to resign, including Republican Governor Mary Fallin. “The charges against him do not reflect the character and decorum that we expect of an elected official,” Fallin said in a statement. A guns rights advocate who has taken a hard-line stance against abortion, Shortey was sanctioned by the Republican-dominated state Senate on Wednesday on a 43-0 vote for “disorderly behavior.” The sanctions imposed penalties such as stripping him of his office space, removing him from committee positions and canceling his reserved parking space.

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Chuck Plays Chicken: Would Block New FBI Director Until Special Prosecutor Named - Breitbart

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer ( ) told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that he supports a proposal by Sen. Mark Warner ( ) to block the confirmation of the next FBI director until a special prosecutor is named to investigate allegations of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. [“We’ll have to discuss it as a caucus, but I would support that move,” Schumer told host Jake Tapper. However, under the filibuster rule changes initiated by former Majority Leader Harry Reid ( ) in 2013, the Senate minority cannot actually block the confirmation of any executive branch appointees. Schumer himself seemed to acknowledge the point implicitly: “The key here, of course, is getting some of our Republican colleagues to join us,” he told Tapper. There is almost no Republican support for a special prosecutor — largely because there are no crimes yet to prosecute. President Donald Trump is not even under investigation. The FBI’s inquiry has reportedly centered around three Trump campaign aides who played minor roles, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Even perennial gadfly Sen. John McCain has only called for a select committee, not a special prosecutor. Also, as Breitbart News’ Ken Klukowski has pointed out, Trump was within his legal authority to fire former FBI Director James Comey — something Democrats had demanded for months. Moreover, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was confirmed last month by the Senate in a vote, is overseeing the Russia investigation, with which Trump has not interfered — even if he has objected to the way it is being used by Democrats to justify their 2016 losses and rally political enthusiasm among their frustrated base. The Trump administration reportedly interviewed eight possible candidates to replace Comey this weekend, and more continue to be proposed. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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Experts Recommend Breaking Down Crushing Defeats Into Smaller, More Manageable Failures - The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Experts Recommend Breaking Down Crushing Defeats Into Smaller, More Manageable Failures Close Vol 50 Issue 20 · Lifestyle SANTA BARBARA, CA—Offering advice to those who feel overwhelmed at the thought of becoming massive failures, a group of experts reported this week that the best way to approach a crippling defeat is to break it down into a set of smaller and more manageable setbacks. “The key to failing on a monumental scale is to take life one small misstep at a time,” life coach Jack V. Royce told reporters, emphasizing that people who hit absolute rock bottom seldom get there overnight. “Just start with a couple of minor fuckups and then build off that. It’s all about working through your long, humiliating downward spiral in workable increments: botch this, flub that, make a wreck of something else—and then, before you know it, you’re well on your way to being totally screwed.” Royce added that it’s also helpful every now and then to stop, take stock of your situation, and really beat yourself up about it. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines

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RINO MITCH McCONNELL Praises Hillary Day After Benghazi Hearing…Says He Could Work With Her As President

Is there a law against waterboarding Republican Senators who continue to be re-elected even though it s pretty clear they should be running on the Democrat ticket Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) praised former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday the day after the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report. She s an intelligent and capable person, no question about it, McConnell told Time Warner Cable News, adding that he had worked well with her in the Senate and would be able to work with her as president.The Benghazi report details a pattern of incompetence, negligence, and dishonesty by Clinton and her associates. She failed to provide adequate security for U.S. diplomats in Benghazi; failed to take action to save U.S. personnel under attack on Sep. 11, 2012; and then falsely blamed an anti-Islamic YouTube video for inciting a protest that supposedly led to the attack.In addition, the Benghazi investigation uncovered the existence of Clinton s private email server, which violated State Department policies and may also have broken laws regarding the handling of classified information. Clinton seems to have used the server to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, possibly in connection with fundraising for her family s private foundation while in office, including solicitations from foreign donors and governments. She has misled the public repeatedly about the email server, claiming falsely that she did not share classified information and that she had turned over all work-related emails to the government.Yet McConnell did not rule Clinton out. Instead, he said her presumptive Republican opponent, Donald Trump, had not yet proven himself qualified:Sen. Mitch McConnell: Trump clearly needs to change, in my opinion, to win the general election. What I ve said to him both publicly and privately: You re a great entertainer. You turn on audiences. You re good before a crowd. You have a lot of Twitter followers. That worked fine for you in the primaries. But now that you are in the general, people are looking for a level of seriousness that is typically conveyed by having a prepared text and Teleprompter and staying on message. So my hope is that he is beginning to pivot and become what I would call a more serious and credible candidate for the highest office in the land. Geoff Bennett: At the moment, though, I hear you saying he does not meet that threshold of credibility? McConnell: He s getting closer. Getting closer. Via: Breitbart

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Syrian Refugee Receives RIDICULOUS Sentence For Trafficking 13 and 14-Yr Old Girls While On Bail For Raping 17-Yr Old

Political correctness and open-borders are a dangerous combination. This story is proof that Europe has officially ceded their nations to mostly Muslim refugees who have no intention of assimilating with their citizens. Progressivism is actually killing Europe.The percentage of Muslims in Europe has been rapidly increasing over the past few years, by about one percentage point every 10 years. Muslims are expected to make up 8% of Europe s population in 2030. I wonder how long it will take them to start decided to protect their own citizens, especially young girls, from the violent crimes being committed by Muslim refugees. Europeans seem to fear being called racist more than they fear their women and children being raped and violently assaulted.A sex offender abducted and sexually abused two 13 and 14-year-old girls while on bail for raping another teen.Zohair Tomari, 20, who is believed to be from Syria, invited his 17-year-old victim and her 15-year-old friend to his flat in August 2014 after befriending them.Once there, the twisted attacker plied the older girl with alcohol before slapping and punching both and pulling out a knife. Tomari, who claimed to be from Morocco in his pre-sentence report but now claims to be from Syria, told the terrified teenager that the more she cried the more he would hit her, before proceeding to rape her.Police arrived at the scene after the youngest girl was reported missing at which point the other informed them of the incident. But the rapist was granted bail and went on to traffic two younger girls, aged 13 and 14, as they walked to a friend s home in the early hours of the morning in August last year.The pair were enticed into a car in which Tomari was a passenger and given drink and cigarettes before being led to a flat in Foleshill, Coventry, where he sexually assaulted them. At Warwick Crown Court, Tomari, of Longford in Coventry, was found guilty of rape in relation to the incident involving the 17-year-old girl and jailed for a total of 12 years and nine months for both incidents on Thursday.The court heard how Tomari had been jailed at Coventry Crown Court in January this year after being convicted of trafficking for child sexual exploitation and sexual assaults in relation to the other incident.He will also have to serve an additional seven years on licence, and has been ordered to register as a sex offender for life. In relation to the first attack, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC, sentencing, told Tomari: Behaviour of this nature is abhorred in virtually every civilised country on this earth. Sadly, then you were granted bail, and you committed other offences for which you are now in prison. I am driven to conclude you are dangerous. I can see no end to the danger you pose. Daily MailWhen nations welcome millions of unvetted citizens across their borders with no real understanding of whom they ve invited into their neighborhoods, schools, or community centers they are basically saying that their unique cultures and the rule of law is not worth protecting or defending. By allowing refugees to commit crimes against their citizens with little or no repercussions, European nations are in essence agreeing to become part of the Middle East, where in many nations, male dominance, rape, sexual assault and marriage between older men and young girls is simply a way of life.

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Donald Trump Begs Hillary Clinton Early Voters to Change Their Votes

As a new poll shows 28% of early Republican Florida voters casting their vote for Clinton, Donald Trump is getting desperate. The Republican nominee begged Clinton voters to change their vote in 6 states where it’s not too late to do so. Trump wrote Wednesday morning, “So now that you can see Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN!” You can change your vote in six states. So, now that you see that Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2016 Tuesday evening Trump made the case that due to the FBI’s announcement about Clinton’s emails voters might have buyers’ remorse , “A lot of things have happened over the last few days. This is a message for any Democratic voters who have already cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton and are having a bad case of buyers’ remorse — in other words you want to change your vote — Wisconsin is one of several states where you can change your early ballot if you think you’ve made a mistake.” While it’s true that people in some states can change their votes, it’s not true that this rule was changed because of Hillary Clinton’s “emails” and yes, that’s a new Right wing “thing” apparently. Trump doesn’t suggest the law was changed because of Clinton, but he seems to think people will be rushing to change their mind about Clinton because of the non-surprise October “surprise!” the Republican FBI Director delivered , which was perceived to have benefited the Trump ticket. Days ago, Snopes debunked the notion that changing early votes is being allowed because of the FBI’s bizarre announcement that they may or may not have more emails pertaining to Clinton. Claim: After FBI Director Jim Comey announced that he was reviewing e-mails potentially linked to Hillary Clinton, several states announced that they were allowing people to change their early votes. mixture WHAT’S TRUE: Some states allow early voters to change their votes before election day. WHAT’S FALSE: No states changed their election laws in order to allow people who voted early for Hillary Clinton to change their votes. And to make this even better, that false information was based on a Fox News report that wasn’t selling the false story about Clinton, but still got some of the information wrong. This is why the Right can’t have nice things. The Left should be vigilant against allowing itself to become too insular, because epistemic closure leads to losing. Trump conveniently ignores his own history of email dumping, exhaustive list of lawsuits, bragging about sexual assault, dissing minorities and a Gold Star family, and national security experts investigating his ties and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Only a desperate candidate runs on trying to get people to change their votes to him because someone found a Clinton aide’s emails when they don’t even know what they say or if they are duplicates yet. While this race is far from over, if all Americans get off their butts and go vote, Donald Trump faces an uphill battle to the White House.

1real

Lawyers Mobilize at Nation’s Airports After Trump’s Order - The New York Times

Even before President Trump issued an order on Friday banning immediate entry into the United States by people from several predominantly Muslim countries, immigration lawyers, having heard rumors of coming action from the White House, were on alert. On Wednesday, lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center who were concerned that the action would affect the project’s clients sent out an email calling for lawyers who could volunteer immediately to go to airports where refugees were scheduled to enter the United States. “It occurred to us that there were going to be people who were traveling who would land and have their status affected while in midair,” said Betsy Fisher, the group’s policy director. And that is exactly what happened. Across the country, people were detained on Sunday after being caught up in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s order, even though a petition filed on Saturday in federal court in Brooklyn led a judge to block part of the order. Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, the plaintiffs named in the petition, were originally clients of Ms. Fisher’s organization. The email received a tremendous response, Ms. Fisher said, with “well over a thousand people” expressing interest and availability. By Saturday morning, the lawyers who heeded the call were at about a dozen airports around the country. Others who heard about the effort through colleagues or the news media went to airports on their own to pitch in. By early Sunday morning, Ms. Fisher said, lawyers offering services and advice were at “most international airports in the United States. ” Andre Segura, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York at 1:30 p. m. on Saturday. He said that the outside section of Central Diner, a restaurant in Terminal 4, was “entirely taken over by attorneys,” all working to file petitions for individual clients with the help of the clients’ families. “There were attorneys from numerous major law firms, nonprofits, all working together,” Mr. Segura said. “I’ve never seen that immediate coming together of teams to start filing actions to try to protect people. ” He added, “The dynamic between what was happening inside the terminal with all the attorneys, and outside with massive protests and people holding signs — I’ve never experienced anything like that. ” Mr. Segura said he arrived home around 2 a. m. on Sunday. He woke up at 5:30 and began answering emails from lawyers who had stayed overnight at the airport. While lawyers gathered at airports on Saturday, others were working furiously on litigation. Cecillia Wang, the A. C. L. U.’s deputy legal director, described the scene at her office as “complete chaos. ” “I was sitting at my desk working on a template habeas petition that could be used by lawyers at airports all around the country,” she said. Omar Jadwat, the director of the A. C. L. U.’s Immigrant Rights Project, which worked on the petition that led to the judge’s stay, said the litigation had not been prepared ahead of time. “That was not something we had on the shelf ready to go, waiting for the right plaintiffs to come along,” he said. “It was a case of: There’s this emergency, and people have to work together to figure out a response as quickly as we can so that these people and other people around the country didn’t get deported. ” Even after word of the federal court’s order reached the airport in New York, confusion reigned. Alina Das, a professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law, said she had arrived at the airport at 7 p. m. on Saturday and stayed overnight, working to get a client released. Ms. Das, who said she could not comment on her client’s situation, described the scene on Sunday morning, saying that it was “incredibly difficult to get an answer on whether our clients were going to be sent back or whether they were being processed for release” and that people remained detained even after the court order blocked part of the president’s actions. Avi Gesser, a partner at the law firm Davis Polk Wardwell, described the process in Terminal 4 on Saturday, saying that a group of people had been deployed to search for those whose family members were detained. “If they found people, they referred them over to us and we onboarded people as clients if we could, and then filed habeas petitions,” he said. Mr. Gesser, who is originally from Canada, did not leave the airport until 4:30 a. m. on Sunday, he said. “Our firm has a lot of people who were not born in the United States,” he said. “We felt that people who were being detained needed legal representation. And that’s something that we do very well. ” Rebecca Heller, who was coordinating lawyers’ efforts on the ground for the International Refugee Assistance Project on Saturday, said that by Sunday afternoon, her services were far less in demand. “They’re now!” she said excitedly in a brief phone call. “That’s how a movement starts. ”

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Manuela Carmena pide a los madrileños que guarden las latas de los refrescos y las bolsas de la basura para hacer los vestidos de los Reyes Magos

Manuela Carmena pide a los madrileños que guarden las latas y las bolsas de la basura para hacer los vestidos de los Reyes Magos EL MUNDO TODAY RADIO El Mundo Today en tu buzón Tu Email PRISA contrata pitonisas para que hagan el escrutinio electoral de las próximas elecciones EL MUNDO TODAY: PROGRAMA 12 (19/11/2011) Este sitio web utiliza cookies para analizar cómo es utilizado el sitio. Las cookies no te pueden identificar. Si continuas navegando supone la aceptación de la Política de Cookies. Estoy de acuerdo. Más info.

1real

HOW PEOPLE MAGAZINE COVER Proves Hillary Has ALWAYS Been Wildly Unpopular With Women

Does anyone else get the sense Hillary is not quite as popular with Americans as the media would like us to believe? She can barely fill a phone booth with supporters at her rallies and the activity with her social media accounts pale in comparison to Donald Trump s. Will the media be able to convince enough Americans that voters actually like or trust Hillary by November? Flashback to 2014, before the full-force of Hillary s reckless handling of highly classified emails put our national security at risk: People magazine has been a propaganda arm of the Left for decades. The June 16, 2014 cover promoting Hillary as our next President is no exception. Unfortunately, the propagandists at People Magazine underestimated the disinterest and dislike Americans had for Hillary Clinton when they made the decision to place her on their cover.According to AdWeek s report on the best and worst covers of 2014, the Clinton cover was People s most unpopular cover of the year, selling only 503,890 copies.Considering that 70% of People magazine s readers are women, this embarrassing cover flop should be of great concern to the campaign of the first female candidate for President Watch:The most successful cover? Unsurprisingly, Robin Williams memorial issue from August sold a total of 1,169,800 copies.- Huffington PostThis is just more proof of how UNpopular Hillary Clinton truly is with American voters and most especially with a demographic she can t afford to lose women voters.

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Hillary’s Latest Challenge To Progressives Is One That Needs To Be Taken Very Seriously (VIDEO)

Appearing on Face the Nation this past Sunday, Hillary Clinton was posed a question by host John Dickerson surrounding voters and how many want what they want, even when it comes to their candidate of choice. Dickerson insinuated that Hillary may be trying to get Bernie Sanders out of the race. However, when it comes down to who is going to win the nomination, many voters are undoubtedly going to be disappointed, because their candidate was not the one chosen. Yet, those voters will still have a voice, a voice that needs to be heard, and a message that needs to be spread far and wide.Hillary s response was honest, clear, to the point, and one that needs to be heard by every progressive everywhere who doesn t want to see the nation fall into the hands of Donald Trump. She said: I m three million votes ahead of Senator Sanders, nearly 300 pledged delegates ahead of him. He has to make his own mind up.But I was very heartened to hear him say last week that he is going to work seven days a week to make sure Donald Trump doesn t become president. And I want to unify the party. I see a great role and opportunity for him and his supporters to be part of that unified party, to move into not just November to win the election against Donald Trump, but to then govern based on the progressive goals that he and I share.We both want to raise the minimum wage. We both understand you have got to rein in bad actors on Wall Street and in corporate America to make sure they don t wreck Main Street. We have a lot of the same goals. And I hope we can unify around them. And she s absolutely correct. While the means to achieve some of the goals are different, the goals, nonetheless, are pretty much the same. While Bernie wants to overhaul health care and education in one fell swoop, Hillary wants the same things, but done over time. It s all about unifying behind the message and making sure we get there somehow, because if Donald Trump is to become president, or we can t manage to turn Congress blue again, honestly, it won t really matter who is president. Everything that needs to get done would be virtually impossible (see also: President Barack Obama with Republican Congress).No matter who the Democratic candidate for president is, it s time to unite behind them with the common goal of progress for the greater good, not just the few on top. Let s do this, progressives.Watch the whole segment from Face the Nation here:Featured Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

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WHEN A GOVERNMENT PUTS IMMIGRANTS BEFORE CITIZENS: Swedish Citizens Have No Place To Live, No Jobs, Need To Carry Guns Everywhere They Go

Barack Obama and the Democrat party would like us to go the way of the Swedes. Do Americans have the fortitude to fight back against a government hell-bent on putting political correctness before national security?The Swedes see the welfare systems failing them. Swedes have had to get used to the government prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. There are no apartments, no jobs, we don t dare go shopping anymore [without a gun], but we re supposed to think everything s great. Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men. You Cabinet Ministers live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants [and] have to use public transport. Laila, to the Prime Minister. Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence Unite everyone. Do not make it a racism thing. Anders, to the Prime Minister. In all honesty, I don t even feel they [government ministers] see the problems There is no one in those meetings who can tell them what real life looks like. Laila, on the response she received from the government.The recent double murder at IKEA in V ster s, where a man from Eritrea who had been denied asylum grabbed some knives and stabbed Carola and Emil Herlin to death, letters and emails poured into the offices of Swedish Prime Minister (PM) Stefan L fven. Angry, despondent and desperate Swedes have pled with the Social Democratic PM to stop filling the country with criminal migrants from the Third World or, they write, there is a serious risk of hatred running rampant in Sweden. One woman suggested that because the Swedish media will not address these issues, L fven should start reading foreign newspapers, and wake up to the fact that Sweden is sinking fast.During the last few decades, Swedes have had to get used to the government (left and right wing parties alike) prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. The high tax level (the average worker pays 42% income tax) was been accepted in the past, because people knew that if they got sick, or when they retired or otherwise needed government aid, they would get it.Now, Swedes see the welfare system failing them. More and more senior citizens fall into the indigent category; close to 800,000 of Sweden s 2.1 million retirees, despite having worked their whole lives, are forced to live on between 4,500 and 5,500 kronor ($545 $665) a month. Meanwhile, seniors who immigrate to Sweden receive the so-called elderly support subsidy usually a higher amount even though they have never paid any taxes in Sweden.Worse, in 2013 the government decided that people staying in the country illegally have a right to virtually free health and dental care. So while the destitute Swedish senior citizen must choose between paying 100,000 kronor ($12,000) to get new teeth or living toothless, a person who does not even have the right to stay in Sweden can get his teeth fixed for 50 kronor ($6).The injustice, the housing shortage, the chaos surrounding refugee housing units and the sharp slide of Swedish students in PISA tests all these changes have caused the Swedes to become disillusioned. The last straw was that Prime Minister L fven had nothing to say about the murders at IKEA.Gatestone Institute contacted to the Swedish government, to obtain emails sent to the Prime Minister concerning the IKEA murders. According to the principle of public access to official documents, all Swedes have the right to study public documents kept by authorities with no questions asked about one s identity or purpose. The government, however, was clearly less than enthusiastic about sharing the emails: It took a full month of reminders and phone calls before they complied with the request.What follows are excerpts from emails sent from private citizens to Prime Minister Stefan L fven:From Mattias, a social worker and father of four, a dad who wants my kids to grow up in Sweden the way I had the good fortune of doing, without explosions, hand grenades, car fires, violence, rape and murder at IKEA : Hi Stefan. I am a 43-year-old father of four, who is trying to explain to my children, ages 6-16, what is going on in Sweden. I am sad to say that you and your party close your eyes to what is happening in Sweden. All the things that are happening [are] due to the unchecked influx from abroad. You are creating a hidden hatred in Sweden. We are dissatisfied with the way immigration is handled in Sweden, from asylum housing to school issues. And it takes so long to get a job, many people give up before they even get close. Mattias Marcus, 21, wrote: Hi Stefan, I am one of the people who voted for you. I live in Helsingborg, still with my parents because there are no apartments available. I can see where I live that as soon as an old person moves out, eight foreigners immediately move in: they just bypass us young, Swedish people in line. With all that is going on in Sweden rapes, robberies, the IKEA murders and so on why aren t non-Swedes sent back to their countries when they commit crimes? Of course we should help refugees, but they should be the right kind of refugees. I m sorry to say this, Stefan, but the Sweden Democrats should be allowed to rule for four years and remove the people who do not abide by the laws, and who murder or destroy young women s lives. It is horrible, I have a job that pays poorly because there are no jobs. Sweden has more people than jobs. Peter wrote: Esteemed Prime Minister. I am writing to you because I am very worried about the development in Swedish society. I am met daily by news of shootings, exploding hand grenades/bombs, beatings, rapes and murders. This is our Sweden, the country that, when you and I grew up, was considered one of the safest in the world. You, in your role as Prime Minister, have a responsibility to protect everyone in the land, regardless of whether they were born here or not. Unfortunately, I can see that you are not taking your responsibility seriously. I follow the news daily, and despite our now having suffered another act of madness, this time against a mother and son at IKEA, I do not see any commitment from you? You should emphatically condemn the violent developments we see in this country, allocate resources to the police, customs and district attorneys to slow and fight back (not just build levees and overlook) criminal activity. Sebastian wrote: Hi Stefan! After reading about the horrible deed at IKEA in V ster s, I am now wondering what you are going to do to make me feel safe going to stores and on the streets of Sweden. What changes will there be to make sure this never happens again? Will immigration really continue the same way? Benny wrote: Hi, I m wondering, why is the government quiet about such an awful incident? The whole summer has been characterized by extreme violence, shootings, knifings and explosions. The government needs to take vigorous action so we can feel safe. Laila s subject line reads: Is it supposed to be like this? Are we supposed to go outside without arming ourselves? Rape after rape occurs and no one is doing anything about it. I was born and raised in V rby G rd, but seven years ago, we had to move because we couldn t take the dogs out in the evenings due to the non-Europeans driving on the sidewalks. If you didn t move out of the way, they would jump out of the car and hit you. If you called the police, they do nothing in a suburb of Stockholm. When my brother told some of these men off, a rocket (the kind you use at New Year s) appeared in his mailbox. You can imagine how loud the blast was. Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men . It is easy to get weapons today, I wonder if that is what we Swedes need to do, arm ourselves to dare to go shopping. Well, now I am getting to what happened at a major department store: Two people were killed and not just killed, there is talk online of beheading. The Prime Minister will not say a word, but resources are allocated to asylum housings, a slap in the face for the relatives who just had two of their kin slain. Swedish newspapers will not say a word, but fortunately, there are foreign newspapers that tell the truth. We Swedes can t change apartments, we live five people in three bedrooms. Two of us are unemployed, looking, looking and looking for work. The only option is employment agencies. I m 50 years old, on part-time sick leave because of two chronic illnesses, I cannot run around from one place to another. But more and more asylum seekers keep coming in. There are no apartments, no jobs, we don t dare go shopping anymore, but we re supposed to think everything s great. Unfortunately, I believe the Prime Minister needs to start reading foreign newspaper to find out that Sweden is going under. I found out that the mass immigration costs billions every year, and the only thing the immigrants do is smoke waterpipes in places like V rby G rd. This is happening in other places too, of course. Now it s starting to spread; you will see that in the opinion polls, next time they are published. Soon, all Swedes will vote for the Sweden Democrats. They are getting more and more supporters every day. You Cabinet Ministers do not live in the exposed areas, you live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants, the car should be taken from you so you d have to use public transport. After three months, you would see my point. I am scared stiff of what is happening in this country. What will the government do about this? Anders wrote: Hi Stefan, why don t you, as our Prime Minister, react more against all the violence that is escalating in our country? [Such as] the double murder at IKEA in V ster s. Add to that the bombings and other things happening in Malm . Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence, who says that it s wrong no matter which ethnic group is behind it or at the receiving end of it. Because all the people living in Sweden are Swedish, right? A torchlight procession against racism only highlights the fact that it s immigrants committing these crimes. What we need now is a clear signal from our popularly elected [officials] that violence needs to stop now. Sweden is supposed to be a haven away from violence. I m asking you as our Prime Minister, take a stand against the violence. Unite everyone in Sweden into one group and do not make it a racism thing. Some of the people received a reply from Carl-Johan Friman, of the Government Offices Communications Unit; others have not received any reply at all. A typical response goes: Thank you for your email to Prime Minister Stefan L fven. I ve been asked to reply and confirm that your email has reached the Prime Minister s Office and is now available for the Prime Minister and his staff. It is of course not acceptable that people should be exposed to violence and criminal activities in their everyday life. Many efforts are made to counteract violence, and quite correctly, this needs to be done without pitting groups against each other. Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views, they are important in shaping government policies. Via: Zero Hedge

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WATCH: MUSLIM MAYOR Of Rotterdam, Holland To Muslim Immigrants, “If you can’t accept freedom, f*ck off”

Freedom is under attack across the globe. Radical Muslims are committing horrendous acts of violence against innocent people around the world. Meanwhile, the Left demands we don t identify the faith of the terrorists, for fear of offending them. It s time to fight back America. The Netherlands, France, and the Uk are our future.Moroccan born Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb grew up in a very poor family. His family came to Holland at the age of 15. He has no tolerance for liberals who try to justify the violent actions of poor Muslims. He has taken a hard line in the city of Rotterdam, which has been overrun with Muslim migrants who have no intention of assimilating. Here is his open, honest and some would say stunning response to the Muslims who attacked the Charlie Hebdoe publication in Paris:https://youtu.be/Jped8eVIZoEMayor Aboutaleb is not the only one speaking out against the Muslim invasion of the Netherlands.Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom leader in the Netherlands appears on trial against free speech for speaking the truth about the invasion of Muslim migrants in the Netherlands who refuse to assimilate. He has been chased down and has had his life threatened by radical Muslims for the past 11 years. His story should send shockwaves through America, but alas, our media does everything they can to ignore his message. Those in the media who highlight him, do it in such a way as to make him out to be a villain and hater, much like they have tried to do to Donald Trump for saying we need to stop the flow of Muslim migrants into America until we can properly vet them.Watch Geert Wilders chilling Orwellian testimony here:Here is an example of the hate and vitriol Geert Wilders, the brave leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands is facing on a regular basis:

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Sessions: The Border Is Not Open - Breitbart

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told anybody thinking about crossing the United States border illegally to expect to be deported. “[T]his border is not open. If you come to America, come lawfully. Don’t come unlawfully. That’s a huge factor in the decline in the attempts to enter America,” Sessions said Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “Justice. ” He later said, “No person can come into the country illegally and not expect to be deported. I mean, where did this come from?” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

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Congo Republic signs peace accord with 'Ninja' rebels

BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - The government of Congo Republic on Saturday agreed a ceasefire with rebels in the southeast region of Pool, halting a 15-year conflict that rights groups say has cost dozens of lives and forced tens of thousands to flee. Political violence spiked in the Central African oil producer after a contested presidential election in April 2016 was won by President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has ruled for 33 of the last 38 years. A militia led by Frederic Bintsamou, better known as Pastor Ntumi, which fought Sassou Nguesso during and after a 1997 civil war, has been blamed by the government for deadly raids on police, military and government bases, and has also halted trade through the Pool region with blockades. In return, the government has bombed the Pool region, including one helicopter raid last year on a residential area that Amnesty International said killed at least 30 people. The unrest has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and sparked allegations from human rights groups of abuse by government troops. Ntumi s so-called Ninja rebels have clashed with the Congo government since 2002 and have long sought an end to government military intervention in the Pool region. The peace agreement between the two sides was signed by Interior Ministry security advisor Fran ois Nd and Pastor Ntumi s representative, Jean Gustave Ntondo. Today is a great day for the Congolese. This is the day we have just signed the cessation of hostilities agreement, said Ntondo. Under the deal, the militias have agreed to hand over arms and allow the free movement of trade between the capital Brazzaville and the commercial hub of Pointe Noire. During hostilities, trains and cars were often halted by militias. The government will oversee a commission that will monitor the peace, and loosen security in the region to allow people to travel to and from their family homes.

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Hawaii Attorney General HUMILIATES Jeff Sessions For Whining About Judge On ‘Island In The Pacific’

Donald Trump s Attorney General just got schooled on the Constitution.Earlier this week, Jeff Sessions bitched about a judge on an island in the Pacific having the power to block an executive order. I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power, Sessions said.Of course, Sessions is a hypocrite because he cheered on judges who blocked executive orders issued by President Obama.But because the order was issued by his rich white boss, Sessions is all of a sudden complaining.Judge Derrick Watson stood up to Trump and his racist administration a couple months ago by blocking parts of the immigration ban that barred Muslims from certain nations from entering the country. Trump s ban caused international chaos and violated the civil rights of thousands.Hawaii is not merely an island in the Pacific, however. It s also an official state under the same Constitution that Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump violate on a daily basis.In the Constitution, the founding fathers created the Judicial Branch of our government to serve as a check on executive and legislative power. The judiciary has the power to review executive orders and laws and can block and strike them down if they are found to be unconstitutional.Judge Watson exercised his judicial power.Sessions statement is a disgraceful attempt to undermine the judicial branch.Hawaii Attorney General Dougal Chin fired back at Sessions on Thursday by explaining how the Constitution works. President Trump previously called a federal judge in California a so-called judge. Now U.S. Attorney General Sessions appears to dismiss a federal judge in Hawaii as just a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific. Our Constitution created a separation of powers in the United States for a reason. Our federal courts, established under Article III of the Constitution, are co-equal partners with Congress and the President. It is disappointing Sessions does not acknowledge that. Indeed, America needs an Attorney General who actually understands the Constitution, and Sessions clearly does not.One of Sessions Justice Department lackeys even tried to pathetically clarify the offensive remarks. Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific a beautiful one where the Attorney General s granddaughter was born. The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the President s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe. Wrong. If Trump and his administration think the ruling is flawed then they should seek opinions from higher courts. That s how the system works. The White House and Justice Department can t just ignore a court ruling because they disagree with it. Also, national security should not be used as an excuse to ignore the Constitution. That s a slippery slope to tyranny. If that excuse were acceptable Trump and Sessions would use it all the time to justify anything and everything they do.Jeff Sessions should be embarrassed for attacking the judicial branch the way he did and he definitely deserved the humiliation he has been receiving. Frankly, he should resign in disgrace.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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REPUBLICAN PROPOSES HOUSE BILL TO FORCE Supreme Court Justices And Employees To Join Obamacare

Of course, we d be okay with excluding three of the Justices who didn t go along with the rubber stamping of Obama s reckless socialized medicine plan. While we re at it, it s only fair for Barry and his family to be forced to use his signature Obamacare insurance plan as well A House Republican on Thursday proposed forcing the Supreme Court justices and their staff to enroll in ObamaCare.Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said that his SCOTUScare Act would make all nine justices and their employees join the national healthcare law s exchanges. As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it s important that these six individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people, he said. That s why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for ObamaCare, Babin said.Babin s potential legislation would only let the federal government provide healthcare to the Supreme Court and its staff via ObamaCare exchanges. By eliminating their exemption from ObamaCare, they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with, he added.His move follows the Supreme Court s ruling Thursday morning that upheld the subsidies under ObamaCare that are provided by the government to offset the cost of buying insurance.The 6-3 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, said consumers purchasing health insurance from the federal exchange in roughly 34 states could continue to do so.The ruling in King v. Burwell has spurred anger on the right, with conservatives questioning the logic of the decision. They deserve an Olympic medal for the legal gymnastics, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, told The Hill.Roberts argued in his decision that eliminating subsidies would have pulled state healthcare markets into a death spiral. That chain of effects, he added, was not consistent with ObamaCare s intent. The argument that the phrase established by the State would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal Exchanges is unpersuasive, he wrote.Justice Antonin Scalia strongly criticized that interpretation in his dissent. We should start by calling this law SCOTUScare, he wrote, lambasting Roberts for the ObamaCare decision in 2012 declaring the law s mandate that people buy insurance constitutional.Via: The Hill

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Food and drug chief Gottlieb skirts health secretary talk, says most effective at FDA

(Reuters) - U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, considered a potential successor to recently departed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, said on Tuesday he believed he could best serve the Trump administration in his current role. “I feel like I want to continue to follow through on the policies we’ve put out and it’s where I think I can be most effective,” Gottlieb told Reuters in an interview in New York. He declined to say whether he had been approached about the job by the White House. “I’m not going to get into private discussions I might have had around that,” he said. Gottlieb is one of several potential candidates for the top job at HHS, a post vacated by Price last month following an uproar over his use of private jets for government business. Other names mentioned by health policy experts include Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Gottlieb has won mostly positive reviews since taking over as FDA commissioner in May. He has introduced policies tackling some of the country’s biggest health challenges, including opioid and tobacco addiction and rising prescription drug prices. The top post at the FDA has always been difficult to fill, Gottlieb noted, and there have been long stretches where the agency has operated under an acting commissioner. Gottlieb once served as senior adviser to FDA commissioner Mark McClellan, who left the agency in 2004 after just two years to run CMS, a move that Gottlieb said was detrimental to the agency. “It’s always challenging to move an FDA commissioner,” he said. “Continuity of leadership there is important.” In a wide-ranging interview, Gottlieb said the situation on the ground in Puerto Rico, where 10 percent of drugs prescribed in the United States are made, was “very bad” and that shortages of some drugs could emerge within as little as two to three weeks. He also said the agency is going to more clearly define regulations around cell therapies. The law currently states that if a cell is extracted from a patient’s body and more than minimally manipulated it is a drug subject to FDA regulation. “Historically the FDA hasn’t vigorously enforced around that line because it didn’t have the implementing guidelines to do that,” he said. At the same time, the agency plans novel measures to make it easier for small academic centers to apply for FDA product approval by pooling data generated from similar work. “If academicians working at different academic sites are doing a similar procedure with stem cells, if they are all following the same protocol, then they’re going to be able to pool their data to submit it for regulatory approval,” he said.

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Britain says minister's remarks offer no basis for action against jailed aid worker in Iran

LONDON (Reuters) - Comments by British foreign minister Boris Johnson about the case of Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe can form no justifiable basis for further action against her, a spokesman said on Tuesday. He reiterated his anxiety about the continued suffering of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family and hoped a solution would be reached soon, the spokesman said about a phone call between Johnson and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier on Tuesday. The foreign secretary concluded by emphasizing that his remarks could form no justifiable basis for further action in this case and urged the Iranian authorities to release Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe on humanitarian grounds.

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Robert Redford for WaPo: ’45 Years After Watergate, The Truth is Again in Danger’ - Breitbart

In a guest column for the Washington Post, actor Robert Redford describes the difficulty he had in getting Hollywood producers interested in his 1976 film All the President’s Men, which revolves around the investigation into former President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and warns that 45 years after that politically momentous event, “the truth is again in danger. ”[Redford writes at the Washington Post: … This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Watergate scandal. Because of my role in the film, some have asked me about the similarities between our situations in 1972 and 2017. There are many. The biggest one is the importance of a free and independent media in defending our democracy. When President Trump speaks of being in a “running war” with the media, calls them “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” and tweets that they’re the “enemy of the American people,” his language takes the Nixon administration’s false accusations of “shoddy” and “shabby” journalism to new and dangerous heights. Sound and accurate journalism defends our democracy. It’s one of the most effective weapons we have to restrain the . I always said that “All the President’s Men” was a violent movie. No shots were fired, but words were used as weapons. … Read Redford’s full column at the Washington Post.

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WNBA Players in Turkey Worry About Rise in Terror - The New York Times

Kiah Stokes celebrated New Year’s Eve at a nightclub in Istanbul, where she plays basketball for Besiktas of the Turkish league. But a night of revelry turned alarming when club employees told patrons they had to shut down early for security reasons. As Stokes and her friends left the building, they saw roads. They cautiously walked for about 10 minutes before finding a taxi to take them home, not knowing that a gunman had killed 39 people at another club down the street and was still at large. “You don’t think something can happen,” said Stokes, who, in September, finished her second season with the Liberty of the W. N. B. A. “Now I’m like, ‘Wow, this is just scary. ’” Players like Stokes have long packed up after the W. N. B. A. season and spent their winters abroad, competing with teams that offer larger paychecks than the women can earn in the American league. This more W. N. B. A. players ended up in Turkey than in any other country. There are now 26, according to the league’s players’ association. The unrest there — an attempted coup last summer and multiple terrorist attacks — has led some players to question the costs of taking a second job overseas. It has also added urgency to efforts to keep W. N. B. A. players in the United States in the . “It’s kind of sad we can’t stay home,” said Liberty guard Sugar Rodgers, who played for the Turkish club Osmaniye but returned to Virginia in November because she did not feel safe. About two weeks after the Liberty were eliminated from the playoffs, Rodgers joined Osmaniye, which is based about two hours from the Syrian border. Shortly after her arrival, a car bombing killed at least 17 people at a checkpoint in Syria’s Aleppo Province. “That right there shook me,” said Rodgers, who has also played in France, Israel and Slovakia. She acknowledged that the United States was not immune to such violence, but in Turkey, the threat of danger felt almost constant. “Getting emails saying families from embassies are leaving — the consulate or embassy were leaving — that rings a bell,” Rodgers said. She soon got out of her contract. “My team was understanding,” Rodgers said, adding, “I’m not going to play to my full potential always watching over my back. ” As Turkey became increasingly unstable last year, the W. N. B. A. and the players’ association arranged new security measures for the women who would go overseas in the . In late December, the league provided an app that would allow players to communicate easily with the W. N. B. A. office from anywhere in the world. In an emergency, the office can give information about safe areas and contacts. Jayne — the union’s associate director of player relations, who competed in China and Turkey as well as in the W. N. B. A. — set up and maintained a group chat for the league’s players in Turkey. When Terri Carmichael Jackson, a former N. C. A. A. executive, became the director of operations for the players’ association last May, she focused on improving security for players overseas. The union met with the league’s director of security, Eric Rhodes, who suggested more collaboration with the State Department and some relatively simple measures, like pointing players to the department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. The program, a State Department spokesman said, allows travelers to “receive messages from the nearest U. S. Embassy or Consulate, which stand at the ready to assist U. S. citizens abroad. ” “We get news of an incident,” Jackson said, “and we kind of have a plan in place, informally, here in the office. ” She added, “There’s always a concern there might be a blackout with media and news services. ” Lisa M. Borders, the W. N. B. A.’s president, was attending church services when she heard about the Istanbul attack. Last season, her first as president, Borders gave her personal cellphone number to every player in the league. Until New Year’s Eve, it was seen primarily as a gesture of good will. Borders said that after contacting the league’s security officials that night for instructions, she reached out to players individually. She declined to name which players had communicated with her. “I feel compelled to be deeply engaged with my players overseas, as well as domestically,” she said. “Speaking to players immediately in harm’s way is very relieving to me — that I can reach them with a phone call, that they will answer me or FaceTime me and let me know what’s happening. ” Players have noticed the league’s increased efforts to ensure their safety abroad. But many pointed out that they would not feel the need to leave the United States if their W. N. B. A. salaries were higher. According to the most recent agreement, players in the W. N. B. A. received a base salary of $39, 676 to $50, 617 in 2016, not including performance bonuses, housing stipends and other benefits. A player in her third year made as much as $54, 609. The most recent agreement also included a $50, 000 bonus for each team to distribute among players who limit their overseas competition to three months or less. Aside from relieving security fears, an athlete who stays in the United States avoids the physical stress of an extra basketball season. The league also offers professional internships and programs for the and it is considering other ways to keep players home in the winter. “I get it,” Borders said. “You want to make sure you are having one job making enough money to pay bills, sustain family and do things we all want to do. That day will come. ” The league needs more revenue for that to happen, she said, adding that her chief operating officer, Jay Parry, met early this month with executives from each team to explore ways to increase attendance. Stokes, who did not disclose her Besiktas salary, said she would probably forgo her second job if the W. N. B. A. could replace most of her overseas income. An ESPN article in 2012 quoted an agent’s estimate that the average overseas salary for a female basketball player was $72, 000. For now, Stokes plans to remain in Turkey until the season ends in early May, despite the hazards. A few weeks before the New Year’s Eve attack, dozens of people were killed in a double bombing outside Besiktas’s soccer stadium, about a mile from where Stokes lives. “It freaked me out,” she said. She had read about the country’s turmoil during the summer, but she took comfort in knowing that a Liberty teammate who had played in Turkey before, Shavonte Zellous, would also be on the Besiktas team. But Zellous said her past experience in the country did not match what she was seeing this season. “The cities they’re bombing, I never imagined terror groups doing something in these cities,” Zellous said. “I think stuff is really getting real now. ” Stokes said that security measures had become noticeably stronger at games and that the team had more frequent police escorts on the road. She also said that she had become attached to her Turkish team and felt a certain level of commitment to it, even if friends and family yearn for her to return. “My mom wants me to come home right now,” Stokes said. “She said it’s too dangerous, it’s scary. She knows the money is good, but it’s not worth it. It definitely crossed my mind. ”

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Trump Just Tried To ‘Compliment’ Democrat Keith Ellison. Ellison’s Response Is ALL Of Us (TWEETS)

Donald Trump just got absolutely humiliated on Twitter after he made a pathetic attempt to cozy up to Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison with a compliment.Trump kicked off Wednesday morning with a tweet about Ellison, complimenting the Democrat in his effort to head up the Democratic National Committee. Of course, no Trump compliment is complete without the undeserving president bragging about himself, so Trump congratulated Ellison for predicting that he would win the election:Trump is referring to the time Ellison spoke with ABC s This Week in 2015, in which Ellison weighed in on the 2016 election. In the segment, Ellison spoke up and warned Americans that even though no one was taking Trump very seriously, he might have a real chance of becoming the Republican nominee, and might even win the presidency. Ellison had said: Anybody from the Democratic side of the fence who s terrified of the possibility of President Trump better vote, better get active, better get involved because this man has got some momentum. We better be ready for the fact that he may be leading the Republican ticket. Any idiot could see that Ellison is actually against Trump in that statement, and was trying to mobilize people to get out and vote against the former reality television star. But of course, Trump is a moron and still decided to compliment Ellison for saying he had a chance at winning the election.It seriously backfired on him less than two hours later. Ellison, who has been criticizing Trump ever since the beginning of his disastrous, shameful presidency, saw Trump s tweet and practically destroyed him:Brutal and so perfect all at once! Guess Trump is going to be spending the rest of his day attacking Ellison just hours after complimenting him now Featured image via Drew Angerer and Alex Wong via Getty Images

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South Sudan army, rebels clash hours after ceasefire

NAIROBI (Reuters) - South Sudan s army clashed with rebels in an oil-producing region early on Sunday, both sides said, shattering a ceasefire hours after it came into effect. Both sides accused the other of starting the fighting around the town of Koch in Unity state. Seventeen aid workers fled the violence, according to a humanitarian source. There were no immediate details of casualties. The government and rebel groups signed a ceasefire on Thursday in the latest attempt to end a four-year civil war and let humanitarian groups reach civilians. The ceasefire formally came into force on Sunday morning, but fighting broke out soon afterwards, according to a humanitarian security report seen by Reuters. Our forces came under heavy fire this morning in Koch county, Dickson Gatluak, a spokesman for the government side, said. Our forces acted in self defense and repulsed the attacking forces and defeated them, he added in a statement. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said the army attacked first and rebel forces were now pursuing government soldiers towards the town. The world s youngest country plunged into war in late 2013 after President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy, Riek Machar. The dispute erupted into fighting that spread across the country, largely along ethnic lines between forces loyal to Kiir, who is Dinka, and Machar, who is Nuer. The violence, which the United Nations says has amounted to ethnic cleansing, has forced a third of the population to flee. Earlier this year, pockets of the country plunged briefly into famine.

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The U.S. government’s predatory-lending program

Most parents will do just about anything for their children, especially when it comes to education. Predictably, at a time when college costs are exploding and students are staggering under more than $1 trillion in debt, one opportunistic lender is making huge profits on loans to their doting moms and dads. Less predictably, that lender is the United States government. The fast-growing federal program known as Parent PLUS now serves 3.2 million borrowers, who have racked up $65 billion in debt helping their kids go to school. The loans have much in common with the regular student loans that have created a national debt crisis and a 2016 campaign issue, but PLUS has much higher interest rates and fees, and far fewer opportunities for loan forgiveness or reductions. In fact, the PLUS program, which includes similar loans to graduate students, is the most profitable of the 120 or so federal lending programs. That sounds like a good thing, until you remember the government’s profit comes from its own citizens, often citizens of modest means. Parent PLUS was created in 1980 to provide small loans to help reasonably well-off families finance the American Dream of an undergraduate education. But in an era of skyrocketing education costs, it has grown to look a lot like publicly funded predatory lending, providing almost any borrowers with almost unlimited cash to attend any school with almost no regard to their ability to repay. Thirteen percent of undergraduates now rely on Parent PLUS, and many of their parents are falling into debt traps. “You feel so guilty that you haven’t done enough for your kid, and they make it so easy to get the loans,” said Elizabeth Hill, a 57-year-old property appraiser from the Boston suburbs with more than $30,000 in PLUS debt. “Then they’ve got you by the cojones. It’s like ‘The Sopranos,’ except it’s the government.” For all the controversy swirling around student loans, lending money directly to students at least has a “human capital” rationale, since recipients pursue degrees that can boost their earning power and help them fulfill their obligations. But when parents borrow, they’re often taking on new debts just as their earning power is starting to dwindle. They’re not building human capital. They’re just getting closer to retirement, mortgaging their futures on behalf of their children. And if they default, the government can garnish their wages and even their Social Security checks — less brutal than “The Sopranos,” but just as effective. According to the White House budget office, the expected recovery rate for defaulted Parent PLUS loans is a remarkable 106 percent, a testament to Uncle Sam’s unique power as a collection agency. Overall, the program is expected to return $1.23 on every dollar it lends this year, thanks to its relatively high interest rates and minimal opportunities for debt relief, as well as the government’s relentlessness in tracking down overdue education loans. The only federal loans that generate slightly better returns are the similar PLUS loans to graduate students, which have much lower default rates. POLITICO has been investigating the government’s bizarre $3.3 trillion loan portfolio, which is riddled with tensions between the interests of borrowers and taxpayers. Some credit programs are almost comically risky for the government, most memorably a rural broadband effort with an official default rate of a seemingly impossible 116 percent. Parent PLUS loans are the flip side of the coin, generating reliable profits for taxpayers but serious risks for moderate-income borrowers. Just about everyone I interviewed thought Congress should consider major reforms to Parent PLUS when it takes up a higher education bill this fall, but no one was too optimistic that reforms would pass, largely because of those profits. “Parent PLUS is classic predatory lending. It’s not a safe product for many of these families, and the debts will hound them forever,” said Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst at the nonpartisan New America think tank. “But it’s a cash cow for the government, so it’s going to be extremely difficult to reform.” Parent PLUS is not a trap for everyone. The latest data suggest that only 5 percent of borrowers are defaulting within their first three years of repayment, although that figure is rising rapidly. The White House budget tables suggest the expected default rate over the course of the loans is well above 10 percent, which is still well below the rate for regular student loans. There’s a wealth of evidence that college degrees boost lifetime earnings, and defenders of Parent PLUS say it’s an important tool for increasing college graduation rates. PLUS loans have also become a key revenue source for many schools, particularly historically black colleges and for-profits that tend to serve lower-income families. But that just illustrates the increasingly tortured economic paradoxes at the heart of modern higher education, where schools have no incentive to provide affordable prices as long as they can count on federal dollars for making education affordable. Ultimately, Parent PLUS sluices more cash into the college-industrial complex, helping educators jack up their tuitions while pressuring parents to make up the difference with debt, while doing nothing to ensure they’re getting a real return on their investment. It enhances accessibility, but not really affordability, simply giving parents a way to punt the skyrocketing costs into the future. Even some advocates who fiercely defended Parent PLUS during a high-profile controversy in 2011, when the Obama administration briefly reined in loans to parents with sketchy credit histories, told me the program is deeply troubled and inherently flawed. When I spoke to White House education adviser Roberto Rodriguez about this conundrum, he emphasized that President Barack Obama has crusaded to make America the world’s leader in access to higher education, expanding Pell grants to low-income students and “income-based repayment” for burdensome student loans, while proposing to make community college free. Parent PLUS, he said, is another important tool to help young people pursue a better life. But he also said he's concerned that too many struggling parents are getting in too deep. When I asked him if the Education Department was running a predatory lending program, he didn’t say no. “That’s the heart of the matter,” Rodriguez said. “You want to expand access and choice, but you also want to make sure families can afford these loans.” HILL AND HER husband are solidly middle class and proudly thrifty; she drives a 15-year-old minivan and shops at TJ Maxx. She and her husband put away money for their son Aaron’s education, and though they burned through some savings when Hill lost her job early in the Great Recession, they figured they’d be fine when Aaron chose the University of Massachusetts at Amherst over several private colleges. He also won some academic grants and maxed out on federal student loans. But even a public school like UMass cost $25,000 a year. Hill just couldn’t make the numbers work. Until, suddenly, she could. Hill discovered she was eligible for Parent PLUS, which would cover whatever Aaron’s grants and loans didn’t. At the time, Hill felt like she had won something, even though the loans are entitlements for anyone without a recent history of “adverse credit.” She feels differently now that Aaron has moved back home with his degree and taken a job at a local liquor store — and her husband may have to postpone his plans for retirement to make ends meet. “You’re at your wits’ end, you want to help your kid, and this fairy princess appears on your computer and says: ‘Want some money?’” Hill recalled. “You’re like: Bingo! It’s more than you can afford, but dammit, education is important, right? Then four years later, you can’t believe how much you owe.” When Congress created Parent PLUS 35 years ago, the loans were capped at $3,000 per year, until that was lifted in 1992 so families could borrow as much as they wanted toward the cost of attendance at any public or private school. But the rules do not allow colleges to ask about their income or their ability to pay. And the borrowers don’t have to start making payments until the student leaves school, although the interest accumulates the whole time. Congress set the maximum interest rate at 9 percent in 1980, which seemed generous at a time when mortgage rates were skyrocketing toward 18 percent, but Parent PLUS is no longer a particularly attractive deal for families with other options. The current rates are about 7 percent plus a 4 percent origination fee, a lot lower than credit card debt or payday loans, but a lot higher than subsidized student loans. “I figured the rate wasn’t terrible, and the money was so easy to get,” said Debbie Hounanian, a 56-year-old office manager in the Los Angeles suburbs who racked up $54,000 in Parent PLUS debt. “I had no idea what I was getting into.” Today, the average Parent PLUS loan is about $13,000, and many parents pile up much larger debts now that some schools cost more than $50,000 a year. The loans are almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, just like student loans, but they’re ineligible for most of the income-based payment relief available for student loans. Consumer advocates compare them to subprime mortgages before the bust, encouraging families to bite off more debt than they can chew — except that Parent PLUS also has a government imprimatur. Toby Merrill, who runs a Harvard-affiliated legal services clinic that focuses on predatory lending, recalls one ready-to-retire borrower who contacted her after running up $150,000 in PLUS debt on three children. “The question was: What are my options?” Merrill said. “It was sad, because the answer was: You don’t really have options.” AS STATE AID for higher education has plunged while the cost of college has escalated, PLUS loans have become an increasingly routine method of filling the gap, with about 700,000 new loans every year. Some schools actually include PLUS in their financial aid offers, telling parents they’ve qualified to take out, say, $20,000 in PLUS loans, a rather disingenuous way of saying the actual offer will leave them $20,000 short of the school's official cost of attendance. Colleges with tight budgets have little incentive to tell students they can’t afford to enroll, and strong incentives to encourage students to load up on PLUS loans that pass directly into their coffers. The president of Albany State University in Georgia even admitted at a public hearing that cash-strapped colleges have been steering students from student loans into more onerous and expensive Parent PLUS loans, because they’re required to report default rates for student loans but not for Parent PLUS. The 2011 controversy over Parent PLUS, when the Obama administration temporarily tightened the program’s lax vetting process, illuminated the extent to which colleges and families have become dependent on the cash. It erupted after the Education Department’s financial aid office finally recognized a longstanding absurdity: the “adverse credit” reviews for PLUS applicants were flagging some delinquent debts, but not debts that were so delinquent they had been sent to collection agencies or written off. As a result, many applicants were getting loans with worse credit than rejected applicants. “It made no sense,” said Ben Miller, who was a senior policy adviser at the department during the PLUS flap and is now director of post-secondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “But fixing the problem had a much bigger impact than anyone realized it would.” Quietly, the department started counting more bad debts in its credit reviews — and PLUS rejection rates soared. Students who couldn’t renew their loans began dropping out of school. And schools that relied heavily on PLUS revenue began hemorrhaging cash. At historically black colleges and universities, which had been particularly hard-hit by the recession, the number of PLUS recipients dropped 45 percent over the next two years, depriving them of an estimated $150 million. Three struggling black colleges—in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina — ended up shutting their doors, and larger schools like Morehouse endured mass layoffs. “Our schools were screaming bloody murder,” said Thurgood Marshall College Fund President Johnny C. Taylor Jr., a leading advocate for historically black colleges and universities. “Forget salt — this was pouring acid in our wounds.” For-profit schools absorbed an even bigger hit, a 54 percent decline in PLUS enrollment. But for obvious political reasons, the black schools (with fierce support from the Congressional Black Caucus) led the fight to get the first African-American president to reverse or at least delay the changes. Taylor and other advocates had several tense meetings with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, repeatedly asking why a two-decade-old snafu had to be corrected immediately, why the tougher reviews couldn’t be limited to new PLUS applicants, why a secretary who had said expanding access to college would be his “North Star” was restricting access to college. Duncan emphasized that the changes weren’t directed at black schools, but Taylor shot back that they were having a disproportionate effect on black schools. “The secretary kept saying: My lawyers are telling us to do this; we’re doing our best to work it out,” Taylor said. “Give me a break! We were trying to revive a community with double the unemployment rate of the majority community.” Eventually, Duncan publicly apologized to black college leaders for the abruptness of the changes, acknowledging that “communication internally and externally was poor.” He promised to consider appeals from all rejected PLUS applicants, and launched a process to write new PLUS credit rules. “It was an operational screw-up of epic proportions,” said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “But it was a pretty good reminder that Parent PLUS helps a lot of people pay for college.” In 2014, the department announced the new PLUS rules, essentially reversing its efforts to tighten credit checks. Bad debts are no longer grounds for rejection if they’re less than $2,085 (versus $500 in the old rule) or less than two years old (versus five years). The department didn’t even require loan counseling for all PLUS borrowers, just those who managed to get loans despite adverse credit. “It’s a shame. Most parents would be better off taking a second mortgage,” said Natalia Abrams, director of the advocacy group Student Debt Crisis. “Instead, they’re getting trapped. They assume that if the government is offering these loans, they must be safe.” To my surprise, Taylor told me he agrees. Taylor was probably the most outspoken critic of the administration’s short-lived efforts to rein in Parent PLUS, and he still believes it was unfair to change the rules so suddenly after a brutal downturn. But he asked me not to describe him as a Parent PLUS defender. He said the program is so exploitative that he once investigated a class-action lawsuit, but found that debt-ravaged parents were too ashamed to go public. “It’s a horrible program, totally out of control,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to make college affordable, but Parent PLUS is definitely not the answer.” OBAMA'S NEW CONSUMER Financial Protection Bureau has raised alarms about predatory lending by bankers and mortgage brokers. At a recent event, Richard Hunt, the president of the Consumer Bankers Association, posed a question to CFPB Director Richard Cordray: “Why aren’t you doing anything about Parent PLUS?” Cordray replied that he didn’t have jurisdiction over the federal government, but Hunt believes that if one of his members offered a similar loan product with similarly negligible underwriting standards, the bureau would be all over it. “The silence has been deafening,” Hunt said. “It’s sinister to see the government throw money at people with no clue if they can pay it back.” Hunt would like to see the private sector — that is, his members — take over the business. And some private lenders are starting to compete with Parent PLUS — one Rhode Island bank is offering a similar product with a much lower interest rate of 3 percent and no origination fees for the most creditworthy borrowers. But while PLUS loans don’t have the same protections as federal student loans, they do include some options most private banks won’t match, like the ability to defer payments for years. What PLUS lacks is flexibility. Parents who qualify can borrow whatever they need for their kids to attend whatever school they want, while parents who get rejected can’t borrow a dime. In another hearing, an administrator of a North Carolina college shared a sad vignette about a homeless woman who was denied a PLUS loan, implicitly suggesting the government should have extended her virtually unlimited credit. In fact, that’s exactly what would have happened if her credit had been clean. Nobody would have been allowed to try to gauge whether her income or assets gave her any hope of repayment. Parent PLUS suffers from a paradox that also afflicts government loans for agriculture, shipbuilding and just about everything else: It’s highly risky for borrowers who need it most desperately, while the borrowers who could most easily handle the debt could probably get by without it. Many critics argue that Parent PLUS should be abolished, and that the government should expand Pell grants and raise caps on student loans instead. But even those who want to continue the program — including Rodriguez in the White House and Republican staffers on Capitol Hill — seem to agree there are relatively obvious ways to strengthen it. The most evident would be real underwriting standards to evaluate the ability to pay of potential borrowers. Another would be strict loan caps. Or a combination of those reforms could link the creditworthiness of borrowers to the size of the loans they’re eligible to receive, the kind of calculation real banks make. Even Draeger, who represents aid administrators at 3,000 colleges and universities, said the system needs structural changes to protect vulnerable families. “We definitely support new underwriting standards. Parents are getting in too deep, and it’s affecting their ability to retire and enjoy life,” he said. “Right now, schools just have to follow the rules, and from a consumer protection standpoint, the rules are dangerous.” The major obstacle to reform, beyond Washington’s general dysfunction and polarization, is the immense profitability of Parent PLUS. These days, the government borrows money at almost no cost, so lending at 7 percent plus fees can add up: Parent PLUS could reduce the deficit by $3 billion this year. That means any effort to scale it back and restrict it to creditworthy borrowers would cost the government a lot of money. Politicians generally don’t like paying more money to provide fewer benefits, especially when a well-organized political coalition has defended those benefits in the past. “That’s the perversity of a loan program like this,” one senior GOP aide said. “It makes it that much harder to fix.” In other words, Washington has become as dependent on Parent PLUS loans as the schools that flack them and the parents who receive them. The status quo has tremendous power, because Congress likes profitable programs, schools like reliable revenue, and parents like to help their kids. Hill and her husband have another son getting ready to start Ithaca College, just as they’re starting to pay back Aaron’s loan, but they're determined to help out again. They haven't figured out how they're going to do that yet, because there's no way they're going back to the Parent PLUS well again. “Fool me once, right?” Hill said. “I don’t want to put my kid in a bind, but these loans are ridiculous. The guilt system only goes so far.”

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Trump says 'revved up economy' will pay for budget proposals: Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said he believes the extra $54 billion dollars he has proposed spending on the U.S. military will be offset by a stronger economy as well as cuts in other areas. “I think the money is going to come from a revved up economy,” Trump said in a Fox News interview broadcast on Tuesday, hours before he was to address a joint session of Congress. “I mean you look at the kind of numbers we’re doing, we were probably GDP of a little more than 1 percent and if I can get that up to 3 or maybe more, we have a whole different ball game.  It’s a whole different ball game.”

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A view of the Syrian war from the Golan Heights

By Robert Fisk on November 6, 2016 Robert Fisk — The Independent Nov 4, 2016 Syrian soldiers stand before their tanks at Quneitra, a few hundred metres from the front line with Nusrah Islamists and only five miles from Israeli troops on the Golan Heights. Click to enlarge From Colonel Saleh’s forward position on his front line north of Quneitra, he has a unique and exclusive view of the Syrian war. To his west and south is a vast area of his country which is occupied by Jabhat al-Nusra Islamist fighters – their earthen ramparts and supply roads are scarcely half a mile away. Then, another couple of miles away, Israeli soldiers are inside their concrete positions on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, above the old and Nusra-held Syrian city of Quneitra. “You see that mosque over there, just to the right of the water tower?” the colonel asks. “Well, Nusra is there. And you see the triangular hill beyond? The Israelis are there.” It’s what you call a politically intriguing battlefield – yes, shells do come whizzing in towards the Syrians from Nusra and also from the Israelis. The Syrians concentrate their fire on Nusra but Nusra’s casualties are often taken through the Israeli lines for hospital treatment in Haifa. So whose side is Israel on? Baath City is a concrete conurbation created back in pre-civil war days to defy the vandalisation of the old Quenitra. It was occupied by the Israeli army during the 1973 Middle East war and then – before they abandoned it under the Kissinger agreement – totally destroyed with explosives by Israeli troops. Nusra now occupy these 43-year old ruins. As for Baath City, its university, banks, fire station, schools, police force and hospitals are defiantly maintained by the Syrians under the eyes of their two enemies: the Nusra Islamists and the Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits a military field hospital in the Golan Heights medical facility where wounded “Syrian rebels” are being treated. Click to enlarge According to the Syrian army in Baath City – their forward lines and tanks are positioned in unfinished apartment blocks on the edge of the town – their intelligence department’s Hebrew speakers constantly monitor conversations between the Israelis and between Israeli and Nusra fighters. They know – and the Israelis have made no secret of the fact – that wounded Nusrah fighters are taken to Haifa for hospital treatment. On one occasion, a Nusrah man travelling in an Israeli ambulance on the Golan was dragged from the vehicle and lynched by a crowd of enraged Druze men who are largely loyal to the Syrian government and regard Nusrah as their mortal enemies. Reports of the man’s murder highlighted the highly ambiguous relationship between Israel and the Islamists, whose name-changing cannot conceal their al-Qaeda roots. Druze towns inside Syria and close to Baath City have taken the side of the regime – this does not apply to other Druze areas – but it makes the geography of the front line here all the more surreal. One Syrian lieutenant described to me how he directed his artillery fire onto an Israeli jeep in the Nusra-occupied town of Al-Hamidiya inside Syria and destroyed it. The jeep might have been a gift or borrowed from Israel – whether there were any Israeli personnel inside it if it was hit is another matter. The Syrians, however, also say that Israeli bulldozers were used to build a new supply route for Nusrah between Quneitra and Golan – again, inside Syria’s frontiers. All of which raises a compelling question. The Nusra-controlled territory between the Syrians and the Israeli lines on Golan – and other Islamist groups and a few remnants of the old “Free Syrian Army” allied to them in this location – stretches all the way south to the edge of the Syrian city of Deraa and right down to the Jordanian frontier. And beyond that frontier is the so-called “Military Operations Centre” – the “MOC” of which both the Islamists and the Syrian army refer – where Western intelligence officers maintain a liaison and weapons supply depot for the anti-government Syrian forces. So what is the relationship between the MOC and its Western backers – who maintain contact with Nusra – and the Israelis who treat Nusra’s wounded in their hospitals? The Jordanian border and the Israeli lines on Golan are at their most only about 70 miles apart and opposition fighters hold all the land in between. Littered around the front lines outside Baath City are the wreckage of past battles and the abandoned UN posts from which Filipino UN soldiers were kidnapped en masse more than a year ago; the Syrian army now occupies several of these positions, the UN logo still painted on the walls although several of the “igloo”-type UN accommodation huts have migrated to Syrian compounds in the rear lines. The UN force on Golan now operates only inside Israeli-occupied territory. Only a few hundred yards away from Nusra-held territory, we found Abu Hashem, a farmer who fled from his village, now held by the Islamists, living today in family property close to one of the old UN posts. He fed us tea and coffee and walnuts from his orchard. His wife and six children now exist in this unfinished, cold house along with a small library of books – the speeches of Imam Ali (the “Najul Blagha”) and a collection of medical books of Aleppo herbal cures for headaches and kidney infection, published in Beirut. He says the people in his Nusra-occupied village are divided. Some are sympathetic towards the Islamists – they are not fighters – while others are sometimes permitted by Nusrah to cross the front lines for treatment in Syrian government hospitals. They are Bedouins and farmers, the unsettled and the landowners, always prey to the wolves of civil war insurgents. Colonel Saleh, who is 50 years old, has been guarding his echoing and weed-strewn apartment blocks on the edge of Baath City for three years, noting wearily that the Israelis attack his army but never attack Nusra who – being al-Qaeda – might logically have earned Israel’s enmity. But no. “I know every stone here,” the colonel says. “I can see if a rock or a vehicle has moved across the fields in front of us – and I can immediately see if one vehicle has become two vehicles. We know when they are going to attack – they always precede their offensives with a big artillery and mortar barrage.” Sometimes the voices of Nusra men shout insults at the Syrians on their own radio sets, calling them “kafirs” – ‘“infidels” or “unbelievers”. “If I am in a good mood, I invite them for coffee,” Colonel Saleh says. “If I’m in a bad mood, I am silent. Their accents are very similar to the Jordanians. They come from the south of Deraa, along the Jordanian border.” As we spoke, further down the line, the Syrians and Nusra were fighting with tanks, artillery and mortars. The Syrians claimed that their enemies arrived in several directions in a convoy of at least 13 vehicles. They spoke, too, of a Nusra female officer called Souad al-Qatahani (nicknamed “Al-Nood”), the 30-year-old sister of a Nusrah general called Qais al-Omani who commanded 1,200 fighters. She was, they pointed out rather remarkably, a former first lieutenant in their own Syrian government army. And one further feature that the Syrians have noted about their enemies outside Baath City. Whenever Nusra fire a missile, they have to take a photograph of the rocket leaving its launcher – presumably to prove to their suppliers that they have not sold the weapon to someone else. Trust, as usual in the Syrian war, is in short supply.

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Trump Took Federal Money Meant For Small Businesses Affected By 9/11 Attacks

Trump is a millionaire who clearly doesn t need federal money for his businesses, but he took it anyway, even though it was supposed to go to small businesses that were devastated by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.When the twin towers fell that day, it did significant damage to many area businesses. Many businesses were wiped out entirely because they were based within the World Trade Center. In the aftermath, people avoided the area and area businesses struggled to survive the economic hit.That why Congress tried to come to their rescue by passing a recovery program earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars meant to help small businesses that were affected by the attacks.However, small businesses that could have been helped were actually shortchanged because wealthy corporations ended up getting awarded millions of dollars despite not being near Ground Zero.Donald Trump s building at 40 Wall Street is one mile away from the World Trade Center, yet Trump was able to claim that the building only had $26 in the bank and that it was a small business in order to receive $150,000 that should have gone to revitalize the real small businesses around the World Trade Center.But 40 Wall Street brings in $8 million in revenues every year, which goes beyond the federal definition of a small business.Even if there had been any damage to 40 Wall Street because of 9/11, Trump could have definitely paid to fix it himself. But he didn t. Instead, he swindled the Empire State Development Corporation out of $150,000 of taxpayer money so that he wouldn t have to reach into his own deep pockets.It makes one wonder just how many times he has taken federal tax dollars throughout his career as a businessman, which makes the fact that he continues to refuse to release his tax returns all the more infuriating.Not only would those documents show us exactly how much money Trump makes every year, it would show us how much he has suckled off the government teat. But he has excused not releasing his taxes because he claims he is being audited, which the IRS says wouldn t prevent anyone from releasing copies of their tax returns. Clearly, Donald Trump has something, or many somethings, to hide that could make Americans hate him even more than they already do.Taking 9/11 funds from small businesses is just the tip of the scummy iceberg.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons

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Against the clock, German parties haggle over immigration, euro budget

BERLIN (Reuters) - With just one day left to conclude exploratory talks on forming a new coalition government, German parties were still far apart on Wednesday on the hot issue of immigration and the future governance of the euro zone. Merkel, 63, wants the exploratory talks to end on Thursday, when German media expect her to press all sides to strike a compromise before moving to formal negotiations that could lead to her securing a fourth term as Chancellor. Merkel is hoping to put together an unlikely alliance of her conservatives, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecologist Greens - a combination untested at national level but a deal which could head off fresh elections. The parties are struggling to reach agreement on the touchy issue of immigration, with the Greens firmly opposed to a conservative plan to cap at 200,000 per year the number of migrants Germany will accept for humanitarian reasons. The parties are also at odds over the number of foreigners who qualify to join relatives granted asylum in Germany. Differences over whether Germany should back a French proposal to create a joint euro zone budget also highlight the difficulties Merkel faces in trying to forge the awkward alliance. A document seen by Reuters, describing a possible government s stance on European issues, contains bracketed sentences reflecting areas of disagreement that must be settled by party leaders on Wednesday. [The following compromise proposal could not be reached: There is a need for a capacity to buffer extraordinary, unpredictable economic emergency situations which are beyond the control of individual member states...], one passage reads. Another sentence, described as the FDP position read: We do not support a fiscal capacity in order to buffer the effects of economic shocks. The paper contains two alternate phrasings on the banking union, one supported by Merkel s conservatives and the left-leaning Greens, and another with more hardline language backed by the pro-business FDP. THWARTING THE FAR-RIGHT Merkel needs a deal to head off fresh elections that mainstream politicians fear could see the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) make further gains after it surged into parliament for the first time after a September election. Businesses are eager for the parties to reach a deal. We believe that all parties involved have understood the urgency to reach an agreement by Christmas, said Dieter Kempf, chief of Germany s largest industry association, the BDI, warning that prolonged uncertainty could hit investment. The mood music coming out of the talks has been mixed. Late on Tuesday, Merkel and other senior conservatives drank wine with Greens co-leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt, conservative party sources said. But the coalition negotiations are complicated by the dynamics within the conservative bloc, which comprises Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The CSU, worried about losing support in a state election next year, is uncompromising on immigration - a risk for the three-way Jamaica coalition, so-called because the parties colours match those of the Caribbean country s flag. CSU Secretary General Andreas Scheuer said his party was ready to compromise, but added: It is becoming ever more clear that Jamaica is not a pleasure trip.

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Who Tossed On the First Tinsel? Two Baltic Capitals Disagree - The New York Times

RIGA, Latvia — In the Baltics, there may be no war on Christmas but there’s a pretty prickly one over the tree. For six successive seasons, Riga and Tallinn — the capitals of Latvia and Estonia — have waged a feud over which was the site of the world’s first decorated Christmas tree. Riga says it was first, in 1510. Tallinn claims a much earlier event, in 1441. More than civic pride is at stake. travel has become extremely lucrative, especially in the north, where there are no swaying palms to lure the . And this year, the rivalry has taken on both an added urgency and a darker tinge. Simmering tensions between Russia and NATO and the faltering Russian economy have squeezed tourist traffic from what had been a prime source of vacationers. And the deadly attack on Berlin’s Christmas market this week has raised fears that holiday markets, in general, may see fewer customers for their hot spiced wine and sugary treats. The Christmas tree spat began in 2010, when Latvians started an advertising campaign that claimed that Riga was the first, citing 1510 as the year when a mysterious and rambunctious medieval brotherhood known as the House of the Black Heads paraded through Riga carrying a constructed replica of a tree. They decorated it with fruits and candles, danced around it and then, a few days later, burned it to the ground. Hold on a second, responded the Estonians. They produced evidence that they claim showed that a similar festival had taken place at yet another lodge of the Black Heads, this one in Tallinn in 1441. And their festival, Estonians claim, involved a real tree. In fact, said the historian Juri Kuuskemaa, “we can be sure it was a spruce. ” Riga’s mayor, Nils Usakovs, countered that claim by saying that the Estonians employ tactics when it comes to the invention of the Christmas tree. It’s an unusual war, fought with ornaments and historians. “Cities like Berlin had to wait until the 18th century before the first recorded public use of a Christmas tree,” sniffed Mr. Kuuskemaa, 74, who is also the official Herald of Tallinn, a ceremonial position for which he often dons period garb. “And for Paris and London, it didn’t happen until the 19th century. Tallinn and Riga did it centuries before all the great metropolises of Europe. ” Whizzing round the capital the week before Christmas, Mayor Usakovs has taken on the work ethic of an elf. At the foot of a former landfill site that is being converted into a miniature ski resort, Mr. Usakovs lit his 48th Christmas tree of the season. He said the Christmas tree conflict, in reality, had reached a bit of a historical stalemate, as there was not enough contextual evidence to say for certain which city came first. But he doesn’t care. “Any time they say they were first, they have to mention also our city,” he said. “Tourists from Germany or Belgium or Russia don’t care for historical truth they care about cities with fancy Christmas trees, fancy Christmas markets. And when they read that there is also this battle between Tallinn and Riga — it’s fun!” Nearly 200 miles north, in Tallinn, the chairman of the Estonian Parliament’s defense committee, Hannes Hanso, stood beside the official parliamentary tree and declared that he took a policy of total nonrecognition when it came to Riga’s claims. “I didn’t know Latvia had any claim to the first Christmas tree,” he said with mock incredulity. Mr. Hanso also reminded Latvians not to get any ideas about who has the highest mountain either, as Estonia’s Big Egg Mountain, at 1, 043 feet, was clearly higher than Latvia’s Gaizinkalns, which reaches to a mere 1, 024 feet. Deployments of elves and reindeer have become the important weapons for Baltic nations to keep tourism levels steady over an otherwise dead season. It is especially important for Latvia and Estonia where, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism’s direct contribution to gross domestic product is twice as big as it is in Lithuania, the southernmost Baltic state. In 2015, in Lithuania it amounted to 1. 7 percent, whereas in Latvia and Estonia it was 4. 1 percent and 3. 9 percent. With the weak ruble keeping many Russian tourists at home, Christmas profits are even more under threat. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the birth of Jesus in early January, so the holiday markets could stay open for weeks longer and still find eager crowds. Mariann Lugus, secretary general of the Estonian Travel and Tourism Association, said that Estonia had detected a dip in the number of Russian tourists in January 2014. A year later, though, after the Russian seizure of Crimea and the imposition of international sanctions, Russian tourism plummeted. Only about half as many Russians visited that January. Latvia, for some reason, has not experienced similar drops. “We don’t know why that is,” said Irena Riekstina, secretary general of the Association of Latvian Travel Agents and Tour Operators. “This is probably going to happen at some point and we need to prepare for this. ” Maximilien Lejeune, executive director at European Best Destinations, a travel website, said that the Christmas tree war could end up attracting even more visitors to both cities as they compete for other popular Christmas season destinations like Lapland and Norway — especially if tourists become nervous about attending holiday markets in cities that have experienced terrorist attacks. Keen to compete is Remigijus Simasius, the mayor of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Though his city has no claim to the first Christmas tree, he hopes to compete with even larger and more elaborate presentations. He threw down the gauntlet this year with a towering tree adorned with 50, 000 bulbs, which drew wide acclaim. His tree provoked rebukes from Russia, though, where several articles accused the Lithuanians of copying the tree’s design from a smaller one in Moscow’s Red Square. Lithuania may have no claim to the first Christmas tree, Mr. Simasius said in his annual Christmas speech, but it was important to think in broader terms. “We are part of the Baltic Sea region, and we are happy that this tradition is born in our region,” he said. Mr. Lejeune said that “in troubled times, people like to have landmarks,” and that’s what European holiday markets have become. “People also like to escape when the news makes them afraid,” he said. “That’s why magic movies have such success in cinemas. The Christmas markets also allow people to escape a bit from reality. ” But not everyone is in the Christmas spirit. Gustavs Strenga, an archivist and historian at the National Library of Latvia, said that both Riga and Tallinn were guilty of making creative leaps with their historical interpretations. Actually, he said, those celebrations by the Black Heads had nothing to do with Christmas and were connected to other festivities the brotherhood celebrated. Looking down at his coffee cup, Mr. Strenga admitted that his skeptical position had not gone down well in Latvia. “I’ve been called the Grinch,” he said.

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THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT WHY OBAMA Is Planting Muslim Refugees In Small Towns Across America

This is the best explanation of why Obama and the Democrat party are fighting so hard to keep the US State Department s Refugee Resettlement program going strong. Please share this with everyone who s been wondering why the Democrats are so eager to bring Muslim immigrants from countries who hate us, to America, while leaving Christian refugees from the same countries behind. To hell with terrorism, the Democrats want to win even if it s at the expense of our national security Looks like my old stomping grounds in Montana are heating up. People there are not taking Obama s plan to force refugees on them lying down. There was a protest in Missoula, Montana recently over that very issue. It is just one of many battles brewing out there in small town America.Small towns in the sparsely populated parts of America are the perfect place to relocate these refugees. Especially, if your agenda includes politically terraforming the country. The West is historically conservative in their politics. Many are Republicans and Libertarians. Even the Democrats hearken back to an earlier time when they were more conservative in nature. Obama and the Democrats can t have that. They need to have an entire country willing to submit to Marxist diktats. They need areas seeded with those who will vote Democrat and ensure that they stay in power no matter what.And it s not just voting demographics that are pushing this move either. I personally believe that there is a warped logic to all of this. That if Islam can be made the predominant religion in America, people will be more easily controlled. That s insane of course and won t work, but there you have it. Instead, Shariah law will be implemented and you will see the same atrocities occurring in Europe happen here. The big difference being, that at least for now, Americans are armed and will use those weapons to protect their neighbors, loved ones and country.Of the 237 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. since the attacks in Paris just one has been a Christian. The rest have been Muslims.CNS News reports that according to data from the State Department Refugee Processing Center, since the November 13 attacks the U.S. has admitted 236 Sunni Muslim refugees from Syria and a single Christian a Greek Orthodox refugee.Bringing in the refugees also moves forward the Cloward and Piven strategy to overwhelm the system so it will collapse and cause chaos in the streets. These people want to tear the system apart, so they can replace it with something truly heinous. The Obama administration will never admit that this is the plan, but can you honestly look at what is going on today and tell me it isn t? Our borders are wide open. We are not vetting anyone to speak of and security here in the US is worse than before 9/11.Communities in states such as Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and Kansas are being infused with Muslim refugees even though they are not wanted by the residents or the local law enforcement. The feds and their leaders are not giving them a choice. Wyoming is the only state currently not participating in the program, but even the governor there wants to jump in it. Living in large cities would be too costly for the refugees and more can be accomplished with seeding them across the plains. In a small town, they can turn everything to their advantage in short order. Since many of our larger cities are already flooded with immigrants from south of the border and from Muslim nations, in many respects they have at least partially fallen to the ploy already. This is the fundamental transformation of America in play. South Carolina, Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota and Michigan are vigorously fighting against this program and Obama s change .The same entitlements, jobs, lodging and freebies will be given to these refugees in small town America. But that will mean taking more and more away from locals in these same communities. These immigrants bring crime and disease with them. As crime rises, people will leave which will hasten the take over of these towns. At least that is what Obama and his friends hope for. I pray that people dig in and decide to stay and fight if they can.We haven t learned a damned thing from watching what is going on over in Europe. How do you justify the rapefugees in Germany and Sweden, who treat rape as game for a large number of players at a given event? How can you ignore the violence, the murders, the depravity that is the Ummah? What s wrong with these people? Do money and power mean so much to them that they don t care that they are selling America out to a hellish nightmare movement? Imagine your wives, daughters, mothers, neighbors little children subjected to these beasts. What would you do?For entire story: Trevor Loudon

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Social media firms summoned to U.S. Congressional hearings on Russia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google have been asked to appear on Nov. 1 at hearings on alleged Russian interference in U.S. politics called by the U.S. Senate and House Intelligence Committees, officials said. Facebook and Twitter have already agreed to send representatives to the Senate committee hearing, a Congressional official said. An official knowledgeable about House committee plans declined to disclosed whether the companies have agreed to send representatives to its hearing. Sources said that Google had not yet notified the committees that it would send representatives to the hearings, though ultimately the company was likely to do so.

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Top tech executives to attend Trump summit on Wednesday: Recode

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top executives from Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc and Facebook Inc are among a small group of tech leaders invited to a summit to be held on Wednesday by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Recode reported, citing sources. Executives from Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and Oracle Corp will also be among “a very heady group of less than a dozen, comprising most of the key players in the sector” to attend the summit, Recode said. Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk will also be in attendance, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. “I plan to tell the president-elect that we are with him and are here to help in any way we can,” Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz told Reuters in an emailed statement. “If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation, and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology community will be stronger and more competitive than ever.” Amazon.com Inc CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was also invited and is likely to attend, Recode said citing sources with knowledge of the situation. Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An Intel spokeswoman and a Microsoft spokesman declined to comment. The gathering will take place on Wednesday at Trump Tower in New York City, Recode said.

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SHARPTON SHAKES DOWN PASTORS FOR DONATIONS AT MEMORIAL FOR BLACK YOUTHS: Black Pastor Calls Sharpton A “Pimp”

Hey Al Why don t you try going into the neighborhoods of Chicago and ask the residents to contribute to your worthless charity? Everyone knows Shakedown Al does nothing to help the hundreds of young black men who are killed by other black youths every year. It s all about the contributions to Al and his worthless charity At a Hartford, Connecticut rally supposedly called to protest five homicides of young people in the city over the past two weeks four of them shootings Rev. Al Sharpton was challenged Saturday by a black pastor for asking every preacher present to donate $100 to Sharpton s civil rights organization, National Action Network (NAN). I want to be here to see a memorial for the young people that have died, said Sharpton at Shiloh Baptist Church, according to CT News Junkie. I want the names and their stories up so children can see they don t want to be on that wall. Pastor Marcus Mosiah Jarvis of Christ the Cornerstone Praise and Western Tabernacle, however, shouted at Sharpton as he strode down the center aisle of the crowded church, How dare you ask the people of Hartford to give you their money! You re nothing but a pimp! Jarvis slammed Sharpton for using the supposed anti-violence rally as a cover for coming into a community where people are struggling for jobs, struggling for money, and demanding money to speak. Don t you come up in here asking us for money, Jarvis yelled, according to Fox CT.Jarvis was about to be escorted out of the church, but he instead remained in the rear. Sharpton responded to his challenge by removing $1,000 in cash from his suit pocket. Everything that you all raise will go to a memorial, he said. [F]or the lives that could have gone on to cure cancer. Lives that could have been the next President of the United States. Sharpton founded NAN in 1991. As Breitbart News reported in April of last year, the IRS fined the nonprofit for not properly reporting its taxes, and it was charged with $1.9 million in back taxes and penalties. Additionally, the New York Times reported last November that Sharpton owes more than $4.5 million in state and federal taxes. Mr. Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts of obligations most people see as inevitable, like taxes, rent and other bills, reported the Times.The rally was the culmination of a march through Hartford in which Sharpton and about 150 mostly black individuals participated. Rev. Dr. Boise Kimber invited Sharpton to speak.According to the Hartford Police Department, the city saw 49 shooting victims between January and May 16.Jarvis later said local efforts are essential to initiate change in a community, reports CT News Junkie. We re setting in place classes where people can come for credit repair, establishing credit, home ownership, creating a resume, how to look for a job, mock interviews that s how you empower people, not creating memorials, he said.Via: Breitbart News

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WW3 Nuclear War Drills World War 3 To Start In Ukraine

November 1, 2016 at 10:33 pm You never see these debates in Parliament on the BBC news not one bit. Just shows you all the bullshit that doesn't really have anything to do with the people of this country. They have no good intentions for our people and are only concerned about the 1%

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North Korea missile crisis seen pushing South Korea to gun up

SEOUL (Reuters) - The escalating threat arising from nuclear-armed North Korea’s recent series of missile tests is prompting South Korea to beef up its military muscle and experts warn it could spur an arms buildup elsewhere in Northeast Asia. South Korea and Japan are accustomed to the North’s frequent threats to attack. But the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang has raised fears of a sudden clash along the world’s most militarised border dividing the two Koreas, which might quickly escalate to all-out war. After North Korea’s second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on July 28, South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered a speedy deployment of the controversial U.S. THAAD anti-missile defense system, reversing his earlier decision to postpone it pending an environmental review. This week, the U.S. Defence Department said it was “actively” considering revising bilateral ballistic missile guidelines with South Korea to allow Seoul to build more powerful missiles — at the South’s request. Moon told U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone conversation on Monday South Korea also wants to build a nuclear-powered submarine, presidential officials said. “All of this could lead to further militarization of South Korea,” said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum. South Korea, which spends around a tenth of its annual budget on defense, is already home to some 625,000 local soldiers and more than 28,000 U.S. troops. The country, still technically at war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce and not a peace treaty, has deployed the U.S.-built Patriot missile defense system, as well as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system. Trump warned the North and its leader Kim Jong Un against attacking Guam or U.S. allies on Friday, a day after the isolated country said it was finalizing by mid-August a plan to launch four intermediate range missiles toward waters off the U.S. Pacific territory. “If North Korea actually launches Hwasong-12 missiles towards Guam, they’re going to do it with all their other missiles, artillery and tanks ready for action,” said Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul. “And we should be prepared too.” Even before the latest spike in tensions, South Korea was seeking to enhance its missile-defense capabilities in the face of the unprecedented pace of North Korean missile tests. Japan, worried its ballistic missile defenses could be overwhelmed by swarm attacks or circumvented by warheads launched on lofted trajectories, is likely to acquire a ground-based version of the Aegis missile defense system. It is also mulling the acquisition of munitions that would allow it to strike North Korea missile sites. “The greatest threat to both states remains shorter range artillery, artillery rockets and stockpiles of short-to-medium range missiles. The focus will primarily remain upon bolstering defensive rather than offensive capabilities,” said Reed Foster, a defense analyst for IHS Jane’s. “I don’t believe that there will be any significant altering of East Asian procurement strategies, despite the rhetoric emanating from North Korea, principally because for them the threat hasn’t altered drastically,” Reed added. Conservative lawmakers in Seoul in recent days have even called for a “nuclear balance” on the peninsula, saying Seoul should ask Washington to redeploy U.S. nuclear weapons if South Korea is unable to develop its own. The United States withdrew nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1992, when the two Koreas agreed to make the peninsula nuclear free. In violation of that agreement as well as U.N. Security Council resolutions, North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests. “Now is the right time to actively look at bringing back tactical nuclear weapons,” Chung Woo-taik, floor leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, told Reuters. “North Korea broke the denuclearisation agreement a long time ago.” Reintroducing nuclear weapons remains an unlikely scenario, as that would undermine demands from Seoul and Washington for North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs. For now, officials are instead focused on changing the missile guidelines, which allow Seoul to have ballistic missiles with a flight range capped at 800 km (497 miles), topped with a maximum 500 kg (1,102 pounds) warhead. South Korea is less focused on increasing the flight range, as that could face opposition from neighbors including China, Russia and Japan, and the 800-km range limit covers all of North Korea in any case, senior government officials said. Rather, Seoul wants to double the maximum payload to 1,000 kg or greater, powerful enough to target underground bunkers or nuclear sites within the North, the officials said. That’s still a fraction of the size of “the mother of all bombs”, which the United States dropped on a suspected Islamic State target in Afghanistan in April. The 21,600-pound GBU-43 bomb is one of the largest non-nuclear devices used in combat.

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Och-Ziff to Pay Over $400 Million in Bribery Settlement - The New York Times

Africa once represented a lucrative new market for a giant New York hedge fund. More than a decade later, the hedge fund, Capital Management, and its founder, Daniel Och, are paying the price for what the United States government has charged were more than $100 million in bribes paid to government officials in Libya, Chad, Niger, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to secure natural resources deals and other investments. OZ Africa Management, a unit of pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday to one count of conspiracy — an unusual violation for a hedge fund of a federal law aimed at preventing bribery of foreign officials. Mr. Och, who is also chief executive of agreed to pay $2. 2 million to settle a violation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joel M. Frank, ’s chief financial officer, also agreed to settle charges that executives ignored red flags. And itself will pay a $413 million fine as part of a agreement to settle both the criminal and civil charges. The settlement is one of the biggest criminal penalties levied on a United States hedge fund firm, dealing a blow to as it works to stem withdrawals from its investors, which include state pension funds, endowments and foundations. The court filings by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and securities regulators lay out a complex and elaborate tale of clandestine meetings and dealings with officials in the regimes of Muammar in Libya and President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. In one instance, knowingly invested in a Libyan development project in which some members of the Qaddafi family had a financial interest. “Senior executives cannot turn a blind eye to the acts of their employees or agents when they became aware of suspicious transactions with partners in foreign countries,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the S. E. C. ’s division of enforcement. The settlement caps a nearly investigation by the Justice Department, the S. E. C. and overseas financial regulators that last month ensnared the son of a former prime minister of Gabon. But it still leaves the door open for action against others who once worked for prosecutors said. Michael L. Cohen, who led ’s investments in Africa, is referred to in court filings without his name being used. Mr. Cohen left the firm in 2013. He was also an officer in Africa Management Ltd. a joint venture set up by to secure African resource contracts. Mr. Cohen worked closely at with a former associate, Vanja Baros, who is also referred to in court filings from prosecutors but is not named. A representative for Mr. Baros declined to comment on Thursday. Ronald G. White, Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, said his client had “an unblemished reputation built over the course of a career spent creating value for ’s investors,” adding that he had “done nothing wrong. ” Mr. Frank also declined to comment. The settlement focuses attention on one of the biggest and hedge funds and one of the few publicly traded firms in the opaque $3 trillion hedge fund universe. “This has been a deeply disappointing episode,” Mr. Och said in an emailed statement, adding: “This conduct is inconsistent with our core values and not representative of our hundreds of employees worldwide, who are dedicated to serving our clients with the utmost integrity. We have learned from this experience and taken significant steps to strengthen . ” Between 2007 and 2011, pushed ahead with deals even though some within the firm raised questions about whom it was dealing with in Africa, according to the government. The S. E. C. for instance, said in its administrative order that Mr. Och and Mr. Frank “were aware of corruption accusations” against one partner it was working with in Congo. But the S. E. C. added that neither Mr. Och nor Mr. Frank knew that bribes would be paid. In another instance, an unidentified employee at emailed Mr. Och to describe an important meeting with Libyan officials, including one of Qaddafi’s sons, in Vienna in 2007. “Meetings are amazing,” the employee wrote. “They have 77 billion, half in cash and no idea who to give it to,” referring to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. When Mr. Och later inquired about progress, the employee replied: “I thought you were against it so I haven’t pursued it,” adding that ’s Libyan fixer wanted to follow up. “You O. K. with that?” the employee asked. Mr. Och replied, “I will be O. K. Will call you. ” first disclosed the Justice Department’s investigation in 2014. Earlier this year, the firm said it was nearing a settlement with the government, setting aside $200 million for a penalty. In August, federal investigators arrested Samuel Mebiame, a Gabonese consultant and son of a former prime minister, on charges that he routinely paid bribes to officials to secure mineral concessions in Niger, Guinea and Chad on behalf of and its partners in a joint venture called Africa Management Ltd. The joint venture was seen as a new source of returns for . A global commodities boom was just starting to fade when the venture was created in 2008, but Africa Management Ltd. had big ambitions to acquire assets like exploratory mining and energy concessions. In a statement at the time, Mr. Och said, “We look forward to working together to grow our combined venture and create the leading investment management business in the region. ” One week before Mr. Mebiame’s arrest, said it was setting aside another $200 million as a provision for a penalty. On Thursday, executives — including Mr. Och — committed to put $400 million toward the penalty. The firm faces more challenges ahead. Investors have pulled more than $5. 5 billion out of the hedge fund this year. “It hurts ’s reputation,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “The legal separation of a parent and its subsidiaries might be important in court, but for reputation it is the brand name that counts, and the brand name is in the headlines. ” As part of the settlement, will hire an independent monitor. The criminal charges will be dismissed if the firm complies with the terms of the agreement and does not violate any other laws over the next three years. For the Mr. Och, the deal with the S. E. C. is an admission of a lack of control and oversight at his firm. Like many titans in the hedge fund industry, Mr. Och began his career at Goldman Sachs before going on to found his own firm in 1994 with a $100 million investment from the Ziff brothers, heirs to a magazine empire. For years a top earner in the hedge fund industry, his net worth is estimated to be $2. 7 billion, according to Forbes. He is part of a small group of financial elite who mingle at Manhattan society events, contribute to the same charities and gather at the exclusive World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. And once loomed large in the industry. Just over a decade after Mr. Och founded the firm, it became one of the first hedge fund firms to go public, in 2007. With more than $26 billion in assets under management at the time of its public listing, quickly grew to manage as much as $48 billion last year. According to the firm’s revolving credit facility — terms under which the firm can draw from loans — if its assets under management drop below $22 billion for more than two consecutive quarters, could be declared in default. was charged with four counts of bribery, but the charges will ultimately be dismissed if the firm complies with the terms of the agreement. The penalty that faces is not the biggest faced by a hedge for breaking the law. Other hedge funds that have faced criminal charges, like Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital, have been forced to wind down their hedge funds. Mr. Cohen’s SAC paid $1. 2 billion to federal prosecutors as part of an insider trading guilty plea. Prosecutors and the S. E. C. filed hundreds of pages of documents. At a hearing Thursday afternoon, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, noted the extensive nature of the investigation, saying: “I would have you read the charges, but I have dinner plans at 8 p. m. ”

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COPYCAT MUSLIM TERRORIST ARRESTED With Assault Weapons, Knives Drives Into Busy Shopping Area At High Speed [VIDEO]

Assimilation fail A French Muslim has been arrested after trying to drive a car loaded with liquid gas, assault rifles and knives into a crowd at high speed on a busy shopping street in Antwerp. Belgian police, who confirmed more security personnel had been sent to the area, said the car was being driven at high speed and that pedestrians had to jump out of the way to avoid being injured.In the car, authorities said they found knives, a shotgun and a gas can with an unknown liquid and the case has now been taken over by officers who usually deal with extremist attacks. It comes just hours after three people were killed in London by a terrorist who mowed down pedestrians and cyclists outside the House of Commons before stabbing a policeman to death.Belgian police arrested a man named as Mohamed R, 39, on Thursday after he tried to drive into a crowd at high-speed in a shopping area in the port city of Antwerp at around 11am. The suspect, who has not been confirmed as a Muslim but is named after the religion s prophet and is said to be of North African descent, was wearing camouflage when he was arrested. Belgian security forces found a rifle as well as bladed weapons in a car driven by a Frenchman who tried to ram a crowd on Thursday in the port city of Antwerp. Different arms were found in the boot bladed weapons, a riot gun (rifle) and a container of liquid that is still unidentified, the federal prosecutor s office said in a statement.For entire story- Daily Mail

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Factbox: Trump on Twitter (July 26) - U.S. Military, Transgender individuals

The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - It was my great honor to join our wonderful Veterans at AMVETS Post 44 in Youngstown, Ohio this evening. A grateful nation salutes you! [0005 EDT] - People of Ohio are fantastic. Thank you so much. What an evening! [0040 EDT] - The crowd in Ohio was amazing last night - broke all records. We all had a great time in a great State. Will be back soon! [0649 EDT] - Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad! [0713 EDT] - After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow...... [0855 EDT] - ....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming..... [0904 EDT] - ....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you [0908 EDT] - President Trump Proclaims July 26, 2017, as a Day in Celebration of the 27th Anniversary of the ADA: bit.ly/2eN938t [0630 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR)

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