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Reflections From Rio - The New York Times

Two weeks ago, Pita Taufatofua gained a sudden, if fleeting, international fame. At the opening ceremony of the Rio Games, Taufatofua carried the flag of the tiny South Pacific nation Tonga while shirtless and covered in coconut oil, his sculptured torso gleaming. Besides lighting up the internet, his appearance earned him a segment on the “Today” show, in which the hosts enthusiastically, and to some controversy, oiled him up. But Taufatofua is fundamentally an athlete. And with the Olympics almost over, he finally got his chance to be an athlete on Saturday morning, in the heavyweight taekwondo competition. Taufatofua was up against it. At 32, he was fighting in his first Olympics after three failed attempts to qualify. His opponent, Sajjad Mardani of Iran, had won a silver medal at the 2013 world championships. Taufatofua saluted the fans when he arrived at the mat. They quickly adopted him, chanting, “Tonga, Tonga. ” Mardani struck quickly. The score was and then . Taufatofua gamely attacked, trying punches and spinning kicks. When he scored his one and only point, the crowd exploded, and he raised a fist in triumph. Final score: . “I lost, and I’m smiling,” Taufatofua said afterward. “I got a point, and it was the happiest point I ever got in my life. ” It is easy to be cynical about the pieties of the Olympics, and some in the skeptical press corps may have found Taufatofua, who works as a counselor for homeless children, too good to be true. But why not end the Games with a dose of Tongan idealism? Taufatofua says his goal is to “bring the world closer together. ” A sincere good luck to him. VICTOR MATHER I was moving around the Maracanã stadium during the opening ceremony when I bumped into performers dressed in critter costumes in a hall leading to the stands. They had left the field a few minutes before, and with a sign warning cast members not to go into the stands, they were essentially forbidden to watch the opening ceremony that they had helped to make. Still, they seemed enchanted and proud of the ceremony some had teary eyes. I was happy that they broke the rule and got to see a bit of the beautiful show they had helped put on. As it turned out, it was common to see the work force trying to sneak a peek at the Olympics. Ticket prices kept the Games out of reach for Brazilians, and workers at the Games, well, had to work. But I saw cleaning people off to the side, trying to watch the judoka Rafaela Silva win Brazil’s first gold medal of the Games. SERGIO PEÇANHA I arrived late to a men’s basketball game between Argentina and the United States, and the press section was filled to overflowing. So much the better. I wandered out into the stands and found a seat among the Argentines, who had descended on Rio de Janeiro by the many thousands for this game. I am a lifetime Mets fan, which describes its own sort of insanity, and I found gloriously lunatic and recognizable companions. For two hours, they jumped up and down in unison and sang. They screamed they whistled they cried. And I can say with clinical accuracy that for the first time in my life, as the far bigger American squad asserted its writ and the game slipped away from Argentina, I saw men trying to pull their hair out. Sitting among fans is one of the great joys of the Olympics. In Manaus, in heat so radiant you could all but touch it, I sat among Colombian soccer fans who rained wonderfully creative chants on Hope Solo, the American goalkeeper. The Brazilians joined in — Solo had earlier implied that Brazil could be enjoyed only with a mosquito net and a scarf over the face — with chants of “Zika! Zika!” (My interpreter told me of many other wondrously creative insults, almost all of which, unfortunately, cannot be published here.) MICHAEL POWELL News conferences are always overstuffed with reporters and prone to zaniness when Usain Bolt is involved. Just before the Games began, Bolt held a media event in Rio de Janeiro featuring dancers and a journalist who rapped a question. Late Thursday, after he had won the gold medal in the dash, Bolt arrived at a news conference room and plopped into a chair between Andre De Grasse of Canada and Christophe Lemaitre of France, who had won silver and bronze. Before the athletes had stepped onto the stage, a press officer for the Olympics had suggested to the dozens of reporters that they play a prank on Bolt by directing questions only to the other runners. The lark lasted for about three questions before a local journalist, who had apparently missed the directive, started to ask Bolt something. The room filled with boos, and then laughter, leaving Bolt with a confused smile. Moments later, another reporter took the microphone. “Usain, let’s imagine Bob Marley is alive,” he began. The reporter wanted to know what Marley, a Jamaica native like Bolt, would have named a song had he written one about Bolt. The crowd broke up again with laughter, but Bolt grinned and took the question in stride. “‘Greatest of All Time,’” he said. ANDREW KEH The Olympics are a realm where displays of grace and boorish behavior occur one after another, and sometimes simultaneously. To wit, the men’s badminton match between Scott Evans of Ireland and Ygor Coelho de Oliveira of Brazil. Even before a point was scored, history was made: De Oliveira was the first Brazilian man to compete at the Olympics in the sport. He had learned at an academy, by his father, in a favela not far from where the competition unfolded. Naturally, the stands were chockablock with de Oliveira’s fans. Chants of “Ygor, Ygor” might have been among the most joyful noises made in the last three weeks. But much of the glee was drained from the arena in the first game, which de Oliveira lost, . Evans’s overhead smash seemed unreturnable. De Oliveira made a few unforced errors. It looked hopeless. But in the second game, de Oliveira elevated his game. He stopped making mistakes and started putting away the shuttlecock with dink shots that barely cleared the net. When he took a commanding lead and then eked out a win in the second game, his fans were in a state of near hysteria. That proved to be the peak of de Oliveira mania. He lost the third and final game, and it was not close. When the match ended, Evans acted as if he had won the gold and the lottery. He ran in circles. He took off his shirt. He left de Oliveira at the net, waiting for a handshake. It was the kind of obnoxiousness usually seen only in professional wrestling, where performers want to be booed. The Brazilian crowd obliged, of course. But de Oliveira kept his poise, a mature beyond his years — and perhaps already plotting his path to the next Olympics. DAVID SEGAL Soldiers and police officers provided a constant backdrop at the Rio Olympics, and after a while you didn’t pay much attention to their presence. Still, an armed escort for a news media bus was out of the ordinary. When one did appear late on a Saturday night while I was riding back to the press center from an outlying venue, I took notice. What was striking, though, at least to me, was that none of the other two dozen journalists aboard seemed to notice. And what were my fellow members of the news media doing while we traveled along a highway with a soldier or a police officer (hard to say which) on a motorcycle in front of us and a truck filled with soldiers bringing up the rear? Well, some were dozing. (Covering the Olympics is a grind, and it was late.) All the others were looking at their phones. This was the bus line that had gained attention when a window was shattered by something — perhaps a bullet, more likely a rock. That may have explained why, days later, we were suddenly getting an escort. It doesn’t explain, of course, why no one else noticed. But did I mention it was late? JAY SCHREIBER Badminton players take their shuttlecocks seriously. The little feathery birds, after all, are critical to the game. I got a sense of this when I wrote about how they are made. Olympic referees and representatives of Yonex, which made the shuttles used in Rio, talked lovingly about them. So I asked where they were kept, assuming they would be in a special secret vault. I was led behind a giant black curtain that separated the three main courts and the fans from the event organizers and the athletes. Within 50 feet, I came upon a door to a temporary office. I could have scaled the flimsy walls, and there was no roof. Inside was a storage space with a bunch of cardboard boxes holding the shuttlecocks. How dull is that? Still, the sneak peek made me realize how finicky athletes are about their pursuits and their equipment, and how the rest of the world will never fully understand. KEN BELSON Crowds of ticket buyers swelled in one area Wednesday night, but no sporting events were taking place there. Far from the Olympic Park, in the Botafogo neighborhood, a neoclassical mansion sparkled. Security personnel, some wearing thobes, traditional Qatari men’s tops, directed gawkers to the ticket window. For 20 reais — a little more than $6 — they could find out why so many people had flocked there during the past two weeks. This was part of an entirely separate competition, carried out by large multinational companies and foreign governments looking to promote their causes with hospitality suites. In scale, the Qatari government left all others in the dust, renting a site that the Daros Latinamerica Collection, an art exhibitor, owned until last year. The collection sold what is still called Casa Daros to a Brazilian school backed by the billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, a friend of Warren Buffett’s. Inside, Brazilians donned abayas, a type of traditional Qatari women’s garb. A museum feel still prevailed, as several rooms displayed Qatar’s plans for, and the work it has done on, the 2022 World Cup, which it will host. Given the struggles of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, Qatar is under pressure to defend itself. It was making a hard sale. guides walked multiple groups of more than a dozen Brazilians through the exhibits. One room even showcased Qatar’s antidoping lab. In the main hall, hundreds of Brazilians sampled Qatari clothes and calligraphy. One area, though, was : the two fancy restaurants. They were reserved for International Olympic Committee and Qatar Olympic Committee officials and their families. Some things never change. VINOD SREEHARSHA Every morning in the Olympic Park, dozens of reporters gathered in a large meeting room, named Samba, for the daily news conference of the International Olympic Committee. It happened in English, and sometimes partly in Portuguese, with live translation into eight other languages. We collected a lot of facts that never made it into stories: the count of urine samples taken from Olympians (3, 491 as of Friday) the average number of daily visitors to the Olympic Park megastore (85, 000) and the items there (a plush toy mascot, and caipirinha shot glasses). Over the weeks, there were questions about the color of the diving pool water (why did it turn green?) the Ryan Lochte incident (why did official stories change?) transportation troubles at the Games (why the shortage of cars and buses?) and the splashy arrest of a top Olympic official who was accused of scalping tickets. Officials answered some of those questions directly. They skillfully deflected others, or declined to respond, they said, for legal reasons. Halfway through the Games, as we settled in for the morning ritual, a reporter turned to me and proclaimed the dodge ball event to be his favorite one of the Olympics. “Which venue is that in?” I asked. “It’s here,” he replied, “in Samba. ” REBECCA R. RUIZ Athletes’ comments are often scripted and anodyne, full of tedious platitudes. As with actors, sometimes you just don’t want to hear their earnest recitations about how they prepared for their roles. So how great it was to see (on TV, not in person) the O’Donovan brothers, Gary and Paul, of Ireland, with excitement after winning their silver medal in the lightweight double sculls? It was their country’s first rowing medal, and its first medal in Rio. Interviewed by Irish television, the two mused on the novelty of the medal process — they got to wear “podium pants,” whatever those are, for the ceremony — and the strange exigencies of the postrace doping test. “I was trying to take a pee in a cup for them, and I drank about 10 liters of water,” Paul O’Donovan said. “I’m quite full, to be honest. ” They talked about how hungry they were. “We haven’t had anything to eat since two hours ago, when we had bread rolls and some Nutella,” Gary O’Donovan said. They said they were sorry not to be back home at the pub in Lisheen, in a rural part of County Cork, where their friends were celebrating their victory. Paul, who had caused earlier delight by describing his rowing technique as “close the eyes and pull like a dog,” added that the two actually enjoyed giving interviews. In a competition too full of preening egotists, this was the best comment of all. “We are just excited that we have other people to talk to apart from ourselves,” he said. SARAH LYALL On my way to interview an International Olympic Committee official in the organization’s luxury hotel on the beach, I hopped into an Uber. The car was nice. Leather seats. Little candies in the cup holder. The driver, who was wearing a suit, offered me water or juice from a cooler on the front seat. “Do you need anything to make the drive more comfortable?” he asked in nearly perfect English. I complimented him on his professionalism and service. Many Uber drivers in Rio, he explained, are businessmen who lost their jobs in the recession. Just before the Olympics, he said, he was laid off from his position at a global technology company. He had worked in the United States for several years. Now he was driving to make ends meet. His Uber car was actually his wife’s car because he considered his own vehicle too expensive to use. The windows on that car were bulletproof because his drive to work had been so dangerous. He would not be attending any Olympic events, he said. Not enough cash for that. He dropped me off at the hotel, where I had to go through tight security to enter the building. I. O. C. members are receiving $900 per diem payments, according to news reports. The dichotomy between life at the I. O. C. and life here was glaring. JULIET MACUR Olympic pin trading might someday become a medal sport at the Games, but for now it’s a great way to meet people from different countries and take on the adventure of haggling in different languages. And really, for me, the Olympics are all about meeting people. So when a young Brazilian was determined to give me an Estonia pin for my beautiful Canada pin (in the shape of a maple leaf) I had to say no. You see, there was a story behind the Canada pin, which I relayed to my potential new trading partner. The woman who had given me the pin had said she would do so if I did a handstand. I explained that my handstand days were long past (actually, they never existed). We had a good laugh, and we worked out a deal for a New York Times pin. That little interlude made the pin more valuable to me because I had that story to tell. I could see that the young man was disappointed, so I offered him a more bland Canada pin I had obtained earlier. He wasn’t interested, and off we went in opposite directions. A few minutes later, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Let’s make a story. ” JIM LUTTRELL Katie Ledecky was talking about Bruce Gemmell, her swimming coach since the fall of 2012, when her voice cracked and tears welled in her eyes. It was after her last race, the freestyle, in which she had shattered her world record for her fifth medal, and her fourth gold. With her Summer Games finally done, Ledecky seemed to realize that the childhood chapter of her life was also coming to a close. In a few weeks, she would be leaving home in Bethesda, Md. for her freshman year at Stanford. The magnitude of the week that was behind her and the year that stretched in front of her — new coast, new coach, new school, new team, new friends — appeared to overwhelm Ledecky, who began to cry as she sat on the interview dais, flanked by the silver medalist Jazmin Carlin and the bronze medalist Boglarka Kapas. As Ledecky struggled to regain her composure, Carlin reached over and petted her arm, as if to console her. Never mind that Ledecky had beaten Carlin by 11 seconds at that moment, Ledecky had never looked less like a swimming machine. KAREN CROUSE

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YES! TRUMP’S UTAH AUDIENCE Chants ‘Four More Years!’ [Video]

President Trump was in Utah today for the signing of a rollback on federal land overreach. He s basically giving land back to the states that Clinton and Obama took for the federal government.The local leaders have applauded this move by Trump but the environmentalists are freaking out:President Trump signed two proclamations Monday shrinking federally protected lands in Utah in the largest rollback of national monument designations in history.The Bears Ears National Monument will shrink to 220,000 acres from its current 1.5 million-acre size, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be cut in half to about 1 million acres, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said.Trump s decision to roll back federal protections marks an unprecedented use of presidential power to shrink the national monument designations made by two of his predecessors.Trump said previous administrations overstepped their authority in declaring vast tracts of western lands off limits to use and development, abusing the purpose, spirit and intent of a century-old law known as the Antiquities Act. That law requires presidents to limit the monument designation to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected. These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of people who work here, live here, and make this place their home, Trump said at the Utah State Capital in Salt Lake City. Because we know that people who are free to use their land and enjoy their land are the people who are most determined to preserve their land. Read more: USA Today

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WOW! ANOTHER YOUNG MAN Found DEAD After Serving DNC With Papers In Fraud Suit On Behalf Of Bernie Sanders [VIDEO]

That s the third suspicious death of a man tied in some way to Hillary. Does anyone in law enforcement have an accurate body count of suspicious deaths tied to Hillary? We recently questioned the suspicious murder of 27 year old Democrat Data Director Seth Rich, as he was walking home through his affluent Washington DC neighborhood. He was beaten and shot in the back, but apparently nothing of any value was taken from his body, which would likely mean robbery was not a motive. If robbery wasn t a motive and the police still have no clues what exactly was the motive for his brutal murder? In our previous article, we explored the possibility that he may have been about to blow the whistle on voter fraud. Does anyone have an actual tally of the number of people who had ties to the Clintons that ended up dead? Now Bernie Sanders supporter and activist Shawn Lucas is found dead.On July 3, 2016, Shawn Lucas and filmmaker Ricardo Villaba served the DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action suit against the Democrat Party on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters.Shawn Lucas was thrilled about serving the papers to the DNC before Independence Day.According to Snopes Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor.We contacted Lucas employer on 4 August 2016 to ask whether there was any truth to the rumor. According to an individual with whom we spoke at that company, Shawn Lucas died on 2 August 2016. The audibly and understandably shaken employee stated that interest in the circumstances of Lucas death had prompted a number of phone calls and other queries, but the company had not yet ascertained any details about Lucas cause of death and were unable to confirm anything more than the fact he had passed away.An unconfirmed report holds that Lucas was found lying on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend when she returned home on the evening of 2 August 2016. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life.** This was before Wikileaks released documents proving the DNC was working against the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary.Shawn Lucas was found dead this week.This follows the death of 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich who was murdered in Washington DC on July 8. The killer or killers appear to have taken nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone. Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a lead saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an ongoing court case possibly involving the Clinton family.Watch here:And on June 22, 2016, former UN official John Ashe accidentally crushed his own throat and died a week before he was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and Democrat Party.Via: Gateway Pundit

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Hillary Clinton: ‘Israel First’ (and no peace for Middle East)

Robert Fantina CounterpunchAlthough the United States is still ten months from its next exercise in electoral futility, most polls do not indicate what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is most anxious to see: a runaway victory for her candidacy. It is a good sign that, despite the fact that she has no real contrasting opponent on the Democratic side, the coronation she expected isn t going to happen.One might say that this writer focuses too much on Mrs. Clinton s adoration of Israel. But by looking at her comments about that apartheid nation, one gets a clear view of some broader, very troubling perspectives that Mrs. Clinton seems to hold.On January 6, an opinion piece appeared in The Jewish Journal, written by Mrs. Clinton. It is a fawning, maudlin essay, typical of the writing of anyone seeking national political office in the U.S. who knows they must pay homage to their Israeli lord and master. A few points from this essay tell much about Mrs. Clinton. I m especially concerned about the new wave of violence inside Israel itself brutal stabbings, shootings, and vehicle attacks that seek to sow fear among the innocent. The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank alone by settler and IOF (Israel Occupation Force) terrorists is at a ten-year high. Why is Mrs. Clinton not especially concerned about the continuing wave of violence against Palestinians, in an area that even the U.S. says Israel occupies illegally? Do not these vicious attacks seek to sow fear among the innocent ? Only a two-state solution negotiated between the parties can provide Palestinians independence, sovereignty, and dignity, and provide Israelis the secure and recognized borders of a democratic Jewish state. Why, oh why, does Mrs. Clinton continue to make this ridiculous statement? The borders of the Jewish state are recognized by most of the world, including the United Nations, and consist of those determined prior to 1967. There is nothing to negotiate. Does Mrs. Clinton disdain international law? It appears that she feels Israel, like the U.S. in its international dealings, is, indeed, above the law. BIBI FIRST: Hillary Clinton will never tell Israel no .And this writer must point out, once again, that negotiations, which have proceeded on and off for twenty years or so, can only be effective when each side wants something the other has, that it can only obtain by surrendering something it has. Israel wants all of Palestine, and takes it, piece by piece, with complete impunity. Why should Palestine agree to pointless negotiations?Mrs. Clinton refers to the secure and recognized borders of a Jewish state, but does not seem to consider the secure and recognized borders of a Palestinian state. We must continue to fight against global efforts to delegitimize Israel. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, known as BDS, is the latest front in this battle. BDS demonizes Israeli scientists and intellectuals even young students and compares Israel to South African apartheid. That s wrong and this campaign should end. The most significant efforts to delegitimize Israel are made by Israel itself. Its racist society, wherein Israeli Jews have more rights than anyone else in Israel; its apartheid system of segregation; its complete disdain for the human rights of the Palestinians; the racist, murderous statements made by government officials all further delegitimize the country, and demonize it, and rightly so. Israel is often compared to South African apartheid, and the comparison is valid.And it is not just in the context of Palestine and Israel that Mrs. Clinton demonstrates either gross ignorance, or gross dishonesty. Her essay also contained these pearls of wisdom: We must work with our friends and partners to deny ISIS territory in the Middle East, dismantle the global infrastructure of terror, and toughen our defenses at home. We can t just contain ISIS we must defeat ISIS. Is that really the U.S. s goal? Garikai Chengu, a researcher at Harvard University, suggested in September of 2014 that ISIS is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran s growing influence in the region. In a June, 2015 column in The Guardian, Associate Editor Seumas Milne said this: [T]he U.S. and its allies weren t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of Islamic state despite the grave danger to Iraq s unity as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. Continue this article at Counterpunch READ MORE 2016 ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files

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Paul Ryan: He's the Fiscal Policy Illiterate in the Conggress

License DMCA Ryan, Obama, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, MSM, and most of Americans need to grasp and act on the irrefutable fact that America can never, involuntarily, go broke. We can afford anything we need which serves a public purpose. All of our needs are paid for from the Treasury's General Fund Account, not from tax dollars or revenue from bond sales. Because Speaker Ryan and his allies, wrongly, couch discussions of spending in the context of scarce resources, the public is always led to believe that Congress must rob Peter to pay Paul, raise taxes, or sell Treasury bonds to fund federal government expenditures. They insist there is only and always the harbinger of debt being the singularly most constraining factor preventing our government from funding public purpose. Nothing is further from reality and the irrefutable truth than this cynical presentation of America's capacity to fund itself. There needs to be an open discussion concerning fiscal policy constraints on Congress allegedly preventing it from appropriating funds to resolve health care provision not only in South Carolina but the provision of funding health care nationally. Clearly, one constraint is ideology (politics.) It would seem that a reasonable political solution would begin with the acknowledgment that doing nothing exacerbates human suffering. No one should support that alternative. A second alternative is to agree to do something that optimizes available resources to resolve the problem of poverty. That solution begins with the acknowledgment of the indisputable power of the Congress to make laws that create the currency with which all Federal Programs are funded. - Advertisement - Because our Federal Government is monetarily sovereign, it can never, involuntarily, "become bankrupt." We can never be Greece, or any of the EC member nations because they do not have monetary sovereignty, cannot issue currency. Our Federal Government (Congress, Treasury, and Federal Reserve) issues a sovereign currency, the dollar, as a non-convertible, fiat currency, in a flexible exchange rate regime, and it has no debt in a foreign currency. Under these, irrefutable, monetary characteristics Congressional appropriations are constrained only by the actuality of inflation and Congress' refusal to pay our bills (appropriate funding.) Moreover, Congress never needs revenue per se to fund its appropriations. The notion that our government needs income to spend is, categorically, false in our post gold standard Modern Money Era which began in 1971-'73. Speaker Ryan and company would have us believe that tax revenue is needed to accomplish spending. That contention is illogical. Tax policy in America manages inflation by taking dollars out of the economy to prevent over spending. While there has been no serious threat of inflation since the 1970's, we are over-taxed. Tax policy is also supposed to be designed to manage income distribution. It has failed this task over the past 45 years as marginal tax rates have become more regressive favoring the rich over the rest. Simply put, tax revenue does not fund the Federal Government. That revenue is never recycled. The government simply issues more electronic dollars. It's illogical and inefficient to recycle government liabilities. - Advertisement - The dollars with which we pay the tax liability must first come from government spending. Speaker Ryan knows this and that Government spending is the first source of dollars entering the economy. Fiat creates dollars. In the instance of the Federal Government, when it spends more than it receives in revenue (which it never needs and this construction is purely accounting not a financial requirement.) Ryan and too many others, consider this an economic Armageddon. None of them admit to the existence of the surplus. That surplus, from government "deficit spending dollars" is now held by those of us in the private sector. We now possess the dollars; it's our surplus or technically our net financial savings after taxes are paid. It's essentially interest-free money for us to spend as we choose. That's why the financial sector/commercial bankers hate deficit spending. Americans benefit from deficit spending and therefore, don't need to go into debt to maintain living standards. Our surplus from deficit spending is what keeps the economy growing. Federal (public) deficit spending is equal, to the penny, to net financial assets in the private sector. When Ryan and company tell us they're going to cut the deficit, it automatically means they are going to reduce the amount of interest-free money available to us. That eventually will, in short order, force us to use our savings, retained earnings or borrow from banks at interest just to maintain current spending. The last six times our economy went into recession were each preceded by either a government surplus or a balanced budget. In all cases too much was cut or taxed away from us by austerity policies and conversely, not enough government spending was authorized by Congress to support interest-free stimulus. Moreover, since this economy has high levels of regional and sub-regional unemployment (ranging from 12% to 35%), the Federal Government should deficit spend until we have a full employment economy.

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WATCH: Joy Reid HAMMERS Republicans For Wasting Taxpayer Money To Pay For Trump’s Wall

Republicans are lying when they claim to be fiscally conservative, and Donald Trump s wall proves it.Throughout the campaign, the central promise Trump made to his supporters was that he would build a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it.And then one day during the home-stretch of the 2016 Election, Trump slipped up by admitting that American taxpayers would be paying the price tag and immediately followed up by claiming that Mexico will reimburse us for the cost.Well, that cost is estimated to be $25 million or more and Donald Trump is now asking Republicans in Congress to pass funding for the wall, all while continuing to insist that Mexico will pay the United States back.Apparently, Trump and Republicans want to start with $10 billion. Keep in mind that these are the same Republicans who claimed to be worried about the national debt and frequently obstructed every piece of legislation they could over the last six years because they complained it cost too much or was a waste of taxpayer dollars.Clearly, Republicans only think it s waste of taxpayer dollars when Democrats try to pass something and are only concerned about the deficit and debt when Democrats are in charge. But they have absolutely no problem blowing up the debt and spending like drunken sailors when they are in power.And Joy Reid along with fiscal conservative political journalist Josh Barro, nailed Republicans for being complete hypocrites. Today, the president-elect got slightly more detailed about who will actually pay for the wall and, surprise, it s you! Reid began.Reid pointed out that Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they are now faced with angering Trump s racist supporters if they don t fund the wall, or angering the American people by wasting taxpayer dollars and revealing themselves to be fiscally conservative hypocrites.Josh Barro agreed. It starts adding up to real money, a billion here, a billion there, he said. It s something that ends up being a non-trivial item in the federal budget if we foot the bill for it. I think they have to be worried in both directions! If they try to not appropriate the money to build the wall they could be attacked in the primary but if they do go along with spending what ends up being $20 billion or whatever on this wall, that s something they can be attacked for in the general election. Here s the video via VidMe.And it would, indeed, be American taxpayers who get stuck with the bill. Because Mexico has repeatedly declared that they are not going to pay one dime for Trump s wall. And such a wall would STILL not stop immigrants from crossing the border. Even the Berlin wall built by the Russians to keep East Germans from crossing over to West Berlin did not stop people from getting across, and that barrier was 12 to 15 feet in height made of concrete and boasted border guards and tanks prepared to kill anyone who dared try to escape. It even included subsidiary walls, trenches, electric fences and an open death strip overseen by armed guards in 302 watchtowers. Plus, the Berlin Wall was only 97 miles long. The southern border between Mexico and the United States, however, is nearly 2,000 miles long and Trump claims his wall will only need to cover 1,000 miles of it. And that means it will be far more expensive than the Berlin Wall and would be far less effective unless Trump and the Republicans are proposing to militarize the wall like the Soviets did to the Berlin Wall. Of course, that would only make the cost skyrocket even higher and hurt America s image as a beacon of freedom.The bottom line is that Trump s wall is a money pit that will drain our resources and do nothing to curtail immigration. It will be useless and give America a black eye because we would be compared to the Soviet Union. And while that might be fine with Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin, it won t be fine with a majority of the American people who still believe in our constitutional values.Featured image via screenshot

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Russian Economy Minister Arrested For $2 Million Bribe Over Rosneft Deal - Russia News Now

This post was originally published on this site Update: RUSSIAN PM APPOINTS DEPUTY MINISTER YELIN AS ACTING RUSSIAN ECONOMY MINISTER – IFAX * * * In an unexpected move, Russian Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev was detained Monday on suspicion of taking a $2 million bribe in return for his ministry’s support for a major oil company deal, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. The minister is in custody and awaiting charges. Alexey Ulyukaev “The circumstances of the crime are connected with Alexey Ulyukayev, who occupies a public post in the Russian Federation, receiving $2 million on November 14 for the positive assessment provided by the Economic Development Ministry that allowed Rosneft to complete the deal on purchasing the government’s 50 percent stake in Bashneft,” Svetlana Petrenko, deputy head of the Investigative Committee, said in an official statement. President Vladimir Putin named Ulyukayev, at the time a first deputy governor of Bank of Russia, economy minister in June 2013; it is unclear what prompted his fall from grace. The case comes as Rosneft is preparing a mandatory offer to buy out minorities in Bashneft , where it purchased a 50.08 percent stake for 329.69 billion rubles ($5 billion). Rosneft’s Oct. 12 purchase from the government was made at a premium to the market, or 3,706.4 rubles for each common share it bought. Bashneft shares closed at 3,480 rubles in Moscow on Nov. 14, or 6.1 percent below the purchase price The Bashneft deal, around which the charges against Ulyukayev revolve, is not going to be revised during the probe, Petrenko told RIA Novosti. “The necessary investigative actions concerning Ulyukayev are under way,” the Investigative Committee’s spokesperson said quoted by RT . Ulyukayev was detained in the act of taking a bribe amid an investigative experiment, Petrenko revealed, as cited by RIA Novosti. “Ulyukayev was caught red-handed when receiving a bribe,” she said. According to Petrenko, the minister resorted to threats, attempting to extort the money from Rosneft officials. The experiment was prompted by evidence law enforcement obtained by wiretapping Ulyukayev’s cell phone and those of his entourage, a source told RIA Novosti. Petrenko said that a criminal case has been opened under part 6 of Article 290 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers “large-scale bribery.” Ulyukayev has been under investigation by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for over a year, a source told RIA Novosti. “The minister has been monitored by FSB agents for more than a year. It is unclear if he was suspected from the beginning of what he is accused now, but he has definitely been observed for more than a year,” he said. Petrenko told RIA Novosti that the Bashneft deal, around which the charges against Ulyukayev revolve, is not going to be revised during the probe. “The acquisition of Bashneft stock was made in accordance with the law and is not the subject of a criminal investigation,” she said. More details on the arrest from RT: Pursuant to Russian law, Ulyukayev faces a maximum penalty of a fine ranging from 80 to 100 times the sum of the bribe. In addition to this, if found guilty, he would be stripped of the right to serve in certain state positions or engage in certain activities for eight to 15 years. Alternatively, the law says the suspect may face from eight to 15 years behind bars and a fine of 70 times the sum of the bribe, or would have to serve the prison term without paying monetary compensation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the accusations brought against Ulyukayev were “very serious” and required “very serious proof.” “In any case, only a court can decide,” Peskov said, adding that he did not know if President Vladimir Putin was aware of the minister’s arrest. In October, Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, purchased the state-owned stake in a major regional oil company, Bashneft, for about $5.3 billion. The deal was approved by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, although back in September, President Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns over the potential takeover of one state-controlled company by another. “Probably it’s not the best option when one company under state control acquires another purely state company,” Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg. He added however, that the biggest bid would win as Russia “cannot discriminate against market participants, not a single one of them.” As the deal was finalized, Ulyukayev said there was another competitor to acquire the stake, but Rosneft had outbid that offer. It is unclear who Ulyukayev’s replacement will be during the criminal proceeding. Related

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WATCH: Video Shows Baton Rouge Cops Repeatedly Shooting A Black Man Point Blank In The Chest

Shortly after midnight Tuesday morning, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was standing outside a Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge selling music CDs when the police responded to a call that he had threatened someone with a gun. The police have yet to say if a gun was found at the scene (although a witness claims the police removed one from his pocket) but we do have a video showing the police throwing Sterling to the ground, pinning him and then shooting him several times while yelling about a gun that is never seen in the video. The entire scene was caught on camera by some bystanders and the community is furious at what appears to be yet another black man unnecessarily killed by white cops.Warning. This video contains graphic violence:While the police were forced to tackle Sterling, once they wrestled him to the ground, he puts up little struggle. Considering how big he is (he appears to be about at least 6 feet tall and well over 200 pounds), if he was resisting, one would expect a lot more movement. And when the cops pull their guns on him, it s not all clear that Sterling was in any position to shoot them.Amazingly, the officers involved were given time to get their stories straight:In a statement, Baton Rouge Police Cpl. L Jean McKneely Jr. said two officers have been placed on administrative leave per standard procedure, though it is believed that only one officer fired shots.The officers have not been named. Our guys will most likely review the video tomorrow, McKneely told The Washington Post in an email Tuesday night. We give officers normally a day or so to go home and think about it before being interviewed, McKneely told the Advocate.It s good to be a cop in America.The police are almost certain to claim that Sterling was reaching for a gun but an eyewitness is already disputing this. Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the Triple S, said the police clearly had a chip on their shoulder when they confronted Sterling and there was no reason to pull their guns and shoot him:Muflahi told the Advocate, His hand was nowhere [near] his pocket, and that Sterling was not holding a weapon.Then, Muflahi said that the officer who fired the shots began cursing and that both seemed to be freaking out. Finally, the store owner said he heard one of the officers say, Just leave him. Muflahi said he saw police retrieve a gun from Sterling s pocket after the shooting. Just leave him. There s that compassion and humanity for minorities that American law enforcement is known for.Unfortunately, Sterling had a criminal record that included aggravated battery, domestic abuse, possessing marijuana with the intent to distribute and illegally carrying a weapon with a controlled dangerous substance so there is literally no chance the cops involved will face any kind of justice even if the security tape from the store shows Sterling s hand nowhere near his pocket at any time.Featured image via twitter

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Immigrants Head to Washington to Rally While Obama Is Still There - The New York Times

Nine busloads of immigrant activists from Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island will depart before dawn for the trip to Washington, intent on making their voices heard. They will be blasting protest playlists while carrying posters and flags, from the familiar rainbow to the worn colors of Haiti. But they are not going to the better known Women’s March on Washington, planned for Jan. 21, the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. Instead, they are headed to the nation’s capital on Saturday for a more modest rally focused on the rights of immigrants, called We Are Here to Stay and scheduled to start at 11 a. m. at the Metropolitan A. M. E. Church. For these groups, there was a practical, if not urgent, reason to hold the rally on Jan. 14: Barack Obama will still be president. “As an organizer, the 14th is a date that I feel safe mobilizing people to Washington,” said Natalia Aristizabal, of Make the Road New York, one of the rally’s sponsors. “We don’t know what’s going to happen after the inauguration. ” National and local organizers said they were concerned about the possibility of undocumented protesters being arrested during the new administration, especially since Mr. Trump said he planned to deport the two million to three million undocumented immigrants that he said had criminal convictions. Cristina Jiménez, the executive director of United We Dream, the national organization promoting the interests of undocumented youth known as dreamers, called the threat to immigrant communities “imminent” and added: “To be quite frank, we fear the worst. ” That is not to say that immigrants will be avoiding the women’s march. Some organizations, like United We Dream and the New York Immigration Coalition, are partners in both, and there is other overlap. New York’s Association, which is led by Linda Sarsour, is also a sponsor of the Women’s March, of which Ms. Sarsour is one of the main organizers. Part of the mission statement of the Women’s March calls on “immigrants of all statuses” to attend, but that event has a broader platform that includes issues of pay equity, reproductive rights and safety from domestic violence. Organizers of the immigrant rally said that their protest aims to highlight the disparate groups who make up their movement, and who represent the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. “It’s of the immigrant community, of people of color, it’s broader than people who are first generation,” said Muzna Ansari, 28, the immigrant policy manager for the New York Immigration Coalition. A child of Indian immigrants, she is Muslim. “It’s a moment of connection, too. There are black immigrants who we don’t talk about. ” Ninaj Raoul, a founder and executive director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, said she had seen the immigration rights movement focus on the Latino community since the 2012 election. But black immigrants, who are far less likely to be undocumented, have pressing issues of their own, she said. “Now more than ever it’s important for the Haitian voice to be heard in this movement,” Ms. Raoul said. “Not just for the incoming government, where we have so many reasons to be worried, but for the current government because of the actions they’ve taken on Haitian immigrants. ” Over the last several months more than 80 Haitian immigrants have walked into her Brooklyn office seeking help, she said, anguished by the shifting American policy that has left them separated from family members. And those living in the city because of temporary protection granted after their country’s 2010 earthquake do not know how long that will last. Migrants from Haiti have flooded the southern border of Mexico since last spring, many making dangerous journeys through nine countries after fleeing South America. In September, the Obama administration detained Haitians at the U. S. border arriving without visas and ordered deportations. Some pregnant women and mothers with children were given a temporary humanitarian reprieve to stay, but their husbands were deported. After Hurricane Matthew struck in early October, the administration delayed deporting Haitians, but then resumed deportations in November. For Haitians who have been living in the United States with temporary protection granted after the earthquake, that status that is set to expire in July. Ms. Raoul said that because Hurricane Matthew damaged food supplies, those Haitians did not know if they could return. So Haitian immigrants are going to Washington to appeal to Mr. Obama while they still can. They want him to take executive action to grant Haitian migrants at the southern border permission to temporarily enter the United States on humanitarian grounds, and to extend the temporary protections for another 18 months. Ms. Raoul plans to bring 10 Haitian immigrants, and their country’s flag, to Washington. They will take the bus from Sunset Park with 55 young people representing Atlas: D. I. Y. which serves undocumented immigrant youth in the neighborhood. Michelina Ferrara, the deputy director of Atlas, plans to blast her “revolutionary playlist,” with RB and artists, both on the bus speakers and from her fanny pack. For those not traveling to Washington on Jan. 14, immigrant actions are also planned in 50 other cities. The New York Immigrant Coalition will be kicking off a statewide campaign called This is Our New York with events in Union Square Hempstead, on Long Island and the Hudson Valley. By then, Kathia Gutierrez, 48, will be in Washington with her daughter, Kathya, 29. They arrived 16 years ago from Bolivia. Kathya works as a nanny, saving money for college she can work legally because of President Obama’s program giving certain rights to undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children by their parents. Kathia, her mother, is an activist for Make the Road New York and is going to Washington to deliver a message for Trump: “Look out for the youth. ” They will be joined by others fighting for their own subset of immigrant rights, including Alexis Pampillón, 44, an Argentine immigrant who identifies as gender nonconforming he and 20 others members of Make the Road’s L. G. B. T. Q. rights group will be leaving from Queens. Make the Road’s members, drawn from places including Bridgeport, Conn. Elizabeth, N. J. and Pennsylvania, will fill eight buses. Not all will fit into the church in Washington, which has a capacity of about 2, 500. More than 3, 000 protesters are expected, organizers said. Some, said Ms. Aristizabal of Make the Road, will stand outside with signs in Spanish and English: “Aquí Estamos y no Nos Vamos,” and “We are Here to Stay. ” That slogan is familiar, she said, adding, “But it has never been so much of a declaration of defiance. ”

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Factbox - German coalition watch: We want experiment to succeed - CDU

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office in the German national election on Sept. 24, but a fractured vote that brings the far-right into parliament means she must try to work out a three-way coalition untested at federal level. The new alliance would comprise Merkel s conservative bloc - her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) - along with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens. Such a tie-up is called a Jamaica coalition, because the three parties colors of black, yellow and green match those of the Jamaican flag. To secure a coalition deal, the unlikely bedfellows must overcome differences on issues from immigration to Europe, tax and the environment. Exploratory talks between the conservative bloc and FDP and separately the conservatives and the Greens took place on Wednesday. On Thursday the FDP and Greens meet before all four parties get together for the first time on Friday. Following are remarks on the possible coalition from senior officials: We will not manage without compromises. My impression is that all the participants want the experiment to succeed but also know how difficult it is to come together. It is our job to make something constructive out of our differences. No formulaic compromises but solutions. The road to Jamaica is long. After CDU/CSU, FDP exploratory talks: It was a good exchange, at times nice and above all mutually respectful and joyful. It is totally conceivable that before Christmas or in January we say that the whole thing is pointless and we ll talk to the Social Democrats (SPD). We are open, we are constructive and creative - but also resolute in areas that are important to us. Put the chances of a Jamaica coalition succeeding at 50/50. It can succeed. The most important thing is that trust needs to be built between participants, and that takes time. That s why it would be illusory to believe we could conclude negotiations by Christmas. No one would understand it if the new government does not pass an immigration law. We need a mix of humanity and order. We Greens also want to secure the EU s external borders and build a sensible database of fingerprints. This (the CDU/CSU immigration pact) is an agreement between the CDU and CSU, and far from the result of exploratory talks for a coalition with the FDP and Greens. No party can expect the others to accept its original wording without changes ... But I believe that a signal about limiting immigration on humanitarian grounds will ultimately make its way into the coalition agreement. Europe s fiscal policy needs a shift away from austerity toward a common pact for tax collection and investments, which would trigger social and ecological innovations. A red line for us in coalition talks is the mutualisation of debt in Europe, the creation of new pots of money. In a monetary union where the deficit rules of Maastricht are respected, there is no need for permanent rescue funds. What we Christian Democrats call preservation of Creation overlaps a lot with what the Greens call a sustainable approach to nature. There can only be a Jamaica tax concept if it includes the end of the solidarity surcharge without taking that money out of people s pockets somewhere else. The chancellery and the finance ministry should be politically separate. A Greens, a CSU or an FDP finance minister - anything would be better than leaving the finance ministry in CDU hands.

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Elizabeth Warren Has Found BREATHTAKING Hypocrisy In FBI’s Treatment Of Hillary’s Emails

Buckle up. Elizabeth Warren, continuing her crusade for the little guy, wrote a letter to FBI director James Comey over their transparency with Hillary s emails, because they didn t have that same transparency when investigating the big banks. In fact, they usually don t release anything when there s no indictment. They changed their standards for releasing information with Hillary, and Warren wants to know why that same standard can t be used on Wall Street executives. Your recent actions with regard to the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provide a clear precedent for releasing additional information about the investigation of the parties responsible for the financial crisis These new standards present a compelling case for public transparency around the fate of the FCIC referrals. If Secretary Clinton s email server was of sufficient interest to establish a new FBI standard of transparency, then surely the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis should be subject to the same level of transparency. She s more than right; if Hillary s emails are of sufficient interest to release as much information as possible, then why isn t the information on those who have been proven to cause harm to millions of Americans by crashing the economy of the same interest? It should actually be of bigger interest than the witch hunt against Hillary.The FBI initially released information in response to several FOIA requests from the press, and sent more material to Congress. However, they didn t send over every last, little, tiny bit. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), incensed that they d spurn him like that, subpoenaed the full file earlier this week.Republicans all over Congress are pitching a hell of a tantrum over the FBI not releasing every last scrap of paper, but they really couldn t care less that the FBI didn t release anything after the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute eleven bankers that had a hand in destroying the economy. Why?Simple. When it s Hillary Clinton, everything has to be changed. She must be guilty of something; Republicans and Hillary-haters know things. When it s people who actually harmed America, though? Meh. Not that important why nobody was prosecuted. Here s hoping that Warren s letter has an impact on Comey, because we deserve to know exactly why bankers weren t prosecuted.Featured image by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images

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Why the Italy Quake Was So Severe - The New York Times

The combination of a shallow fault and old, unreinforced masonry buildings led to widespread devastation in the earthquake that struck central Italy early Wednesday. The .2 quake killed at least 241 people and left hundreds more injured. Many people were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. Like other villages and towns in the mountainous area, Amatrice, where the mayor lamented that “half the town no longer exists,” has stone churches and other buildings that were constructed centuries ago, when little if anything was known about earthquakes. Unless they have been reinforced in recent years, such structures are easily damaged or destroyed by shaking. “Even 100 years ago, they didn’t know how to build structures to withstand earthquakes,” said David A. Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. The earthquake was less powerful than many recent deadly quakes. The .8 earthquake that struck Nepal in April 2015, for instance, killing 8, 000 people, released roughly 250 times more energy. But the Italian quake was very shallow: According to the United States Geological Survey, it occurred about six miles below the surface. “Shallow earthquakes cause more destruction than deep earthquakes because the shallowness of the source makes the at the surface worse,” Professor Rothery said. Video from Amatrice and other towns near the quake center showed heaps of masonry rubble from buildings that had been shaken apart. Earthquakes are set off by the movement of the earth’s crust, which is divided into large sections called tectonic plates. The Apennine Mountains, where the quake occurred on Wednesday, are in an area where one plate, the African, is moving under another, the Eurasian. Because of the complex interaction between the plates, the basin of the Tyrrhenian Sea, off Italy’s west coast, is spreading. It is this spreading, and the tension it creates in the Apennines, that led to the quake. The area of Wednesday’s temblor experienced significant earthquakes in the past, including one with a magnitude of 6. 3 near the town of L’Aquila in 2009 that killed at least 295 people, injured more than 1, 000 and left 55, 000 homeless. The two quakes had much in common in terms of genesis and depth,” said Massimo Cocco, a geologist with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome. After the 2009 quake, seven members of a national commission on risk prevention were arrested on charges of failing to adequately warn L’Aquila about the earthquake risk. They were found guilty of manslaughter in 2012 and sentenced to six years in prison, but they were cleared in 2014 by an appeals court. Mr. Cocco said that Italy had construction laws for new buildings, but that little has been done to reinforce existing buildings. “Resilience is just too low compared to the frequency and the high impact of natural phenomena,” he said.

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Treasury's Mnuchin: China may face new sanctions on North Korea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday that if China doesn t follow the United Nations sanctions approved on North Korea, he will seek new financial sanctions on Beijing to cut off access to the U.S. financial system. Mnuchin told a conference broadcast on CNBC that China agreed to historic sanctions on North Korea on Monday in a UN Security Council vote. If China doesn t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system, and that s quite meaningful, Mnuchin said.

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Michael Moore Visits WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange [Video]

Leave a reply Bill Still – Michael Moore went to London to visit with Julian Assange. After he came out, he turned a camera on himself and gave us a little first-person report on his visit. Although the lack of detail makes you want to scream for more, what we do get is a lot more than we knew before we saw this. SF Source Bill Still Oct. 2016 Share this:

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The nonsense she says

Re: the nonsense she says : it’s best not to take ideological disagreements too personally imo 11:17 PM; I don’t. I don’t give a shit. Dao 11:19 PM: you seem a bit off to me is all. just looking out for you. I do care. 11:20 PM; as opposed to what? you only know me starting from a period where I experienced many of the worst things in my life, to be honest you don’t have a strong baseline in knowing me yet, and it takes years for most 11:22 PM: just an intuition 11:22 PM; there’s a difference between life is hard now and life is hard 11:23 PM; if you want to know what I meant, not expecting that she did. I see the same potential and value in all forms of life. I don’t see humanity as any better or worse than any other species and if I were to attribute "genius" to anything it would be to the spirit that binds with the human body. I don’t think she took it that way but her response was emotive as it was, no point in adding to it. She feels how she feels, I do how I do. An argument changes neither of our views and how we act in real life. Hence adding about practicality and empirical occurrence. If things don’t change in real life, I don’t see the point in arguing. 11:32 PM; out and about 11:34 PM: there is a value in exchanging ideas even if you don’t mutually change your original opinion, it offers perspective 11:34 PM; I’ve been over that same notion with others before, I lean away from that 12:16 AM: why? 12:16 AM; start with why not? 12:17 AM: didn’t I just say my opinion though? that would be my reason 12:17 AM; for me, cost benefit analysis is usually such that discussions carry more risk than potential benefit 12:18 AM: see, I don’t feel that way at all. I feel exactly the opposite. I always feel that if you are open to learning about others, there’s never a wasted discussion 12:19 AM; one can’t give equal weight to all relationships, one can’t be open to everyone yet give whole focus on who counts most in their life 12:21 AM: well, yeah you prioritize the people who count the most to you, but that doesn’t have to exclude others you talk to either 12:21 AM; I mean things quite more broadly, taken in principle and in turn down to the minute. If I spent so much time engaging in random discussions with random people I’d hardly have the time and energy for discussions and people that are not so random to my life, let alone those not random at all. 12:23 AM: I disagree. I think there is plenty of time for discussions with random strangers and important people. We spend a lot of time online anyway, we might as well make the time we do spend meaningful. Plenty just browse social media or don’t interact at all. We may be strangers but we are a real social circle. It may be far less important then the face to face interactions for you, but is there no time for it and is it meaningless? IMO no. 12:28 AM; You misunderstand. Before I speak for myself more, take a look at the fueds of the people you know. You can’t choose equanimity for all of them even if you wanted to. 12:31 AM: sure, but that doesn’t mean those people don’t mean anything to me, or that I’d write them off 12:32 AM; It’s not about that, especially if you’re focusing on discussion/interaction in this case. If anything to opt out represents greater sense of caring for others. 12:33 AM: how? 12:33 AM; by sparing people hardship through disagreement for one 12:34 AM: disagreement is enlightening. as sun tzu says, those we disagree with often teach as the most. I think it’s important to understand the perspective of others. it’s not a hardship, discussion and disagreement is how the truth is found. if you avoid those who disagree with you you easily fall prey to a cognitive fallacy known as confirmation bias 12:35 AM; note I said cost benefit analysis before. the risks comes too great and people get heated and even friendships break. I say that from observation including of your own friends, and I say that from experience regarding mine. I spared ___ an argument just now that wouldn’t have changed her view on anything if it happened, nor would it have changed mine. It’s the same now, I won’t change your view and you won’t change mine. 12:37 AM: well that’s silly imo ___. I think intellectual peers need to learn how to dissociate their ideas from their feelings and friendships and the people in this room are more then capable of that. are you? 12:38 AM Page 1

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This University Will Punish You For Being Raped, Effectively Silencing Victims

Imagine being a woman going to a university where instead of only investigating the person who sexually assaulted you, they also choose to discipline you as well. That s exactly what s happening to young women who attend Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.BYU prides itself on Mormon values, yet apparently standing up for women who have been sexually assaulted is not one of those values. Instead, with their actions, they are in turn giving permission to rape, because it s likely not going to get reported, because the women being assaulted are also being punished.One woman named Brooke told CNN after she brought her story to BYU s Title IX office, an office that is supposed to handle sexual violence: I thought there would be some mercy, you know. I told them everything, and because of the fact that I was on drugs, they used that reason to kick me out of school after reporting it. You see, BYU has an Honor Code, and within that code one must not commit sexual misconduct or participate in illegal substances. When Brooke came forward she explained that the sexual assault came after she had taken LSD, the school decided to send her a letter that read: You are being suspended from Brigham Young University because of your violation of the Honor Code including continued illegal drug used and consensual sex, effective immediately. And as it turns out, Brooke is not alone. Several women have come forward with similar stories of being shamed by BYU s archaic Honor Code. So many, in fact, that there is now a petition asking the school to stop punishing victims of sexual assault. The woman who put together the petition shares her story, and says: I don t deserve punishment for choosing to report my rape to the police. But now I have to deal with a criminal trial and an honor code investigation. I don t want anyone to have to go through what I m experiencing now. That s why I m insisting BYU creates a way for victims to come forward without being reported to the Honor Code Office. Also stating: I spoke up at a sexual assault awareness event at BYU last week. In response, Title IX official Sarah Westerberg defended her choice to deny me services and to initiate an Honor Code investigation against me. She recognized that the honor code has a chilling effect on reporting of rape and that Title IX does not apologize for that. I felt like I was being treated not as the victim, but as a perpetrator. BYU has made it clear that victims will be punished if they report sexual violence. That s a huge reason why so many survivors are afraid to come forward and contributes to why BYU s rape and sexual assault numbers are inaccurately low. Without an immunity clause, BYU will continue to be a hostile environment for rape victims, and that emboldens offenders and shames victims.I can only imagine how many rape survivors have not gotten justice or help to heal because it might hurt their academic standing. It s just absolutely outrageous that women have to fear being suspended or expelled because they were victimized by a sexual perpetrator. They did not ask for what happened to them. They are NOT the guilty party. BYU better take a good long look at their practices and how they handle reports of sexual assault, because this is utterly unacceptable. Women should feel safe in their learning environment, and know that their school will be there for them if anything were to ever happen. Instead, they are victim-shamed and robbed of their education. Appalling.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons

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U.S. sees increased activity by Chinese bomber aircraft: officials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is aware of a higher-than-usual level of activity by Chinese bomber planes, signaling a possible heightened state of readiness, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday, but downplayed concerns and left open a range of possible reasons. None of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested alarm or signaled that they knew the precise reason for such Chinese activity. Those possibilities include defensive exercises or Chinese concerns over North Korea. U.S. officials have long speculated that North Korea could soon stage another nuclear test or carry on with missile tests. The comments to Reuters came before U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday cited, without explanation, “some very unusual moves” that he said had been taken over the last two or three hours. It was not immediately clear what he was referring to. Trump was speaking about Chinese activities to put pressure on Pyongyang when he said: “Some very unusual moves have been made over the last two or three hours and I really have confidence that the (Chinese) president will try very hard. We don’t know whether or not they’re able to do that but I have absolute confidence that he will be trying very very hard,” Trump said. Trump has taken a hard line with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has rebuffed admonitions from sole major ally China and proceeded with nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions.

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Can’t Afford Clean Water For Flint, But Israel Demands $50 Billion From U.S. Taxpayers (VIDEO)

In a showdown with the U.S. government, Israel is demanding that its current aid package be drastically increased by an enormous margin. With the current aid agreement of $30 billion over ten years set to expire in 2017, Israel now wants that increased to $50 billion over the next ten years.Where is all this money going to come from? The U.S. taxpayer of course. Instead of using this money to support the poisonous water afflicting Flint, Michigan, we give billions away to a state that perpetuates the most protracted military occupation in modern history, committing countless of human rights violations against the Palestinians.What s insane is that American politicians haven t even paid attention to Flint s water crisis, even though the lead poison in the water may have caused brain damage to thousands of American children who drank it. In a startling display of both disdain and stupidity, Republican senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio didn t even know what was happening in Flint days after the crisis broke. He said: I d love to give you a better answer on it. It s just not an issue we ve been quite frankly fully briefed or apprised of in terms of the role the governor has played and the state has played in Michigan on these sorts of issues. Rubio continued, saying that he s unable to give: A deeply detailed answer on what the right approach should be, other than to tell you that in general I believe the federal government s role in some of these things [is] largely limited unless it involves a federal jurisdictional issue. The comical yet sad aspect of all this is when the Republican presidential candidates ignore Flint, an American city filled with American poisoned children yet grovel to prove their loyalty to Israel, a foreign country and (I must point out again) a terrible violator of Palestinian human rights. The question is why would they grovel on a level that makes it embarrassing to watch as an American? The answer lies in what pro-Israel billionaires can do for you as a politician.For example, Sheldon Edelson, the militantly pro-Israel billionaire, spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Mitt Romney against President Obama in the previous presidential elections because he thought Obama was soft when it came to Israel. Now, Republican candidates are groveling for his support and money. Marco Rubio already has a supporter in billionaire Norman Braman. He is Rubio s largest campaign donor with an estimated $10-25 million. Braman is staunchly pro-Israel, funding an Israeli settlement in Occupied Palestine. Settlements are illegal under international law and are in contradiction to U.S. foreign policy in the region. If you listen to Rubio s rhetoric on Israel, he s religiously on board with Israel s insanity.So, when all is said and done, these signed, sealed, and delivered politicians who grovel to a foreign government must pay back the support they received during an election year. This comes in the form of robbing tax payers of billions of dollars and ignoring an urgent issue like the Flint water crisis. In all likelihood, Israel will get its billions and our cities and people will continue to be ignored.Watch Video Here:Featured image from Wikimedia Commons.

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Samantha Bee Rips Tennessee Republican A New One For Calling All Rape Victims Liars (VIDEO)

A racist, anti-gay Tennessee Republican who thinks rape victims are liars was hilariously taken to the woodshed by Samantha Bee on Monday.GOP state Rep. Sheila Butt has made an ass of herself ever since taking office. She has openly called for the creation of a National Association for the Advancement of White People and is staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage and homosexuality. She has also viciously targeted rape victims, whom she thinks are lying about being raped just so they can get an abortion.In response to all of these hateful and bigoted stances held by this conservative Christian lawmaker, Bee hilariously skewered her. Right, those crimes are totally unverifiable, Bee said of Butt s remarks about rape. So we should go with the likeliest assumption that girls are lying whores that just like the prestige of claiming to be raped by their fathers? It s called Occam s Razor, libtards! And then she moved on to Butt s racism, suggesting that NAAWP could also stand for National Association for the Advancement of Walrus Penises and that we should all spread the word that Sheila Butt loves walrus penises. I mean, she does seem to think about sex a lot, Bee noted before masterfully seguing to Butt s views on homosexuality. In her Christian dating guide Everyday Princess, Daughter of The King, Butt comes down on a 3-year-old who married her two female Barbies, telling her, Girls don t marry girls. God made girls to marry boys! Look, Sheila, if you don t believe in homosexuality, you should never have supported a toy line that includes Ken. That guy is young, dumb and hungry for c*m. And then Bee finished the Tennessee Republican off by literally making her the butt of a seriously funny piece of advice for women. So, girls, next time you re tempted to have dirty sinful sex, resist the urge. Instead, do all the stuff Sheila Butt suggests, or as she may call it, Butt Stuff. This Tennessee state representative wants you to do lots and lots of Butt stuff. Do Butt stuff until it hurts! Here s the video via YouTube.Simply put, Sheila Butt is going to be the butt of many more jokes from now on thanks to Samantha Bee. Featured image via screenshot

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Samantha Bee Mocks Trump, Roasts Media at ’Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner’ - Breitbart

(Adult Language Warning) Liberal comedian Samantha Bee roasted the news media, past presidents, and President Donald Trump during a taped mock White House Correspondent’s Dinner Saturday afternoon in Washington, D. C. From the Hollywood Reporter: “As much as I might love poking fun at the media and as much as you kind of deserve it sometimes, your job has never been harder,” she said. “You’re basically get paid to stand in a cage while a geriatric orangutan screams at you. … You expose injustice against the weak and you continue to the president as if he might someday get embarrassed! Tonight is for you. ” … The special’s commercial breaks were led with taped sketches of Bee roasting a handful of previous presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton, complete with garb. “This story has more wrinkles than the president’s nutsack,” she said of Ronald Reagan and the affair, while Richard Nixon “achieved John F. Kennedy’s two goals: landing a man on the moon and getting f — ed by a deep throat. ” The final sketch of this series had Bee roasting Mike Pence, who became president after Trump died after “getting his head stuck in a jar of honey. ” She was shown wearing a chastity belt and a turtleneck: “I attempted to cover my pillows but the slut shines through. ” … One segment skewered Jeff Zucker and CNN. “Zucker’s greatest success besides The Apprentice — which, by the way, thanks for that — is filling airtime between car crashes with a reality show loosely based on the news where hacks make us measurably dumber by spewing mendacious nonsense while a hologram of Anderson Cooper stand by,” said Bee, pleading for the network to “free” its journalists. “Anderson is a smart reporter! Give him his black back and put him in front of a natural disaster!” She added, “CNN gives you news like your shitty boyfriend gives you orgasms: in the end, you wind up lying in the wet spot and he’s snoring. ” For the rest of the article, click here. The TBS program Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’s Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is set to air Saturday at 10 p. m. eastern.

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Case Regarding Cruz’s Birthright Citizenship Reaches Supreme Court

One of the biggest mysteries in Constitutional Law is what the Framers meant when they said natural born citizen. Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution states the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States, and under clause 5 one would find the natural born requirement:No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.The Supreme Court will have the option to take up the case, if it so chooses, now that the lawsuit challenging Ted Cruz s eligibility to be President has been filed.Retired Utah lawyer Walter Wagner has led the birther movement against Ted Cruz, filing multiple lawsuits in federal court to block the Texas Republican from seeking the nomination. Wagner lost his case in Utah District Court, with Judge Jill Parrish writing:Nowhere does Mr. Wagner allege how he will be injured in a personal and individual way.All cases must show that the individual bringing the lawsuit has suffered, is suffering, or will suffer an injury personal to them, and that their rights have been violated. Wagner contends that he does have a vested interest, saying it s his job at insuring that all candidates for the position of president are legally qualified. Basically, he s a taxpayer and an American citizen, so he has a particular interest in who the president is.After being smacked down in Utah, Wagner appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court.Hopefully the Justices see fit to end this ridiculous talking point, seeing as though Trump will most likely emerge as the nominee. Also, establishing sound Constitutional decision to this long mysterious issue. Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty

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Hillary Clinton agrees to provide private e-mail server to FBI

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attorney has agreed to provide the FBI with the private server that housed her e-mail during her four years as secretary of state, Clinton’s presidential campaign said Tuesday. Her attorney also has agreed to give agents a thumb drive containing copies of thousands of e-mails that Clinton had previously turned over to the State Department. The FBI has been looking into the security of Clinton’s unusual private system, which has emerged as an issue in her campaign amid growing questions from Republicans and some U.S. intelligence officials about whether government secrets might have been put at risk. The development in the FBI inquiry came the same day that a top intelligence official whose office has been reviewing some of Clinton’s e-mails informed congressional leaders that top-secret information had been contained in two e-mails that traveled across the server. The finding, contained in a letter sent to leaders of key oversight committees, marked the first indication from government officials that information regarded as top secret — the government’s highest category of security designation — may have passed across Clinton’s server while she led the State Department. A State Department spokesman late Tuesday described the top-secret designation as a recommendation and said they had not been marked classified at the time, but said staffers “circulated these e-mails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011 and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton.” Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, said Tuesday night that Clinton is cooperating with the FBI probe. He declined to say whether the FBI ordered that she turn over the devices and when her attorney, David Kendall, had done so. “She directed her team to give her e-mail server that was used during her tenure as secretary to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her e-mails already provided to the State Department,” Merrill said. “She pledged to cooperate with the government’s security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them.” The inquiry by the FBI is considered preliminary and appears to be focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material. Officials have said that Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, is not a target. The FBI’s efforts have included contacting the Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the Clintons’ unusual private ­e-mail system. Clinton has resisted relinquishing control of the server. In March, she said the server contained “personal communications from my husband and me.” “I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private,” she said then, in response to a question from a reporter about whether she would allow an independent party to examine the device Clinton turned over more than 30,000 e-mails from the account to the State Department in December, and the agency is vetting those messages for release to the public. She has said that she deemed an additional 32,000 ­e-mails to be personal and chose not to keep them. Kendall told a congressional oversight committee in a letter that there was “no basis” to support a third-party examination of the server. He indicated that he had confirmed with IT staffers that no e-mail sent or received by Clinton’s account while she was secretary of state remained on the server or backup systems associated with the system. “Thus, there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary of State Clinton’s tenure on the server for any review, even if such a review were appropriate or legally authorized,” he wrote. Meanwhile Tuesday, 17 House and Senate members from both parties were informed about the presence of “top secret” information on the Clinton e-mail system in a letter from the inspector general for the intelligence community, I. Charles McCullough III. The letter was first reported Tuesday by the McClatchy news service. Much of the classified information in the e-mail conversations originated with the CIA, according to two government officials familiar with the records. Some of the information was deemed to be classified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s classification guidelines. The information included references to information related to satellite images and electronic communications, according to the officials. The findings by McCullough stemmed from his office’s review of a sample of 40 of Clinton’s ­e-mails. Previously, he had said that the sample included four classified e-mails, but on Tuesday he adjusted his assessment — saying that intelligence agencies deemed two of those e-mails to have contained top-secret information. McCullough has asked for access to all of the e-mails to conduct a more thorough review but was denied by State Department officials in July. Last week, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that while the agency was working to “resolve whether, in fact, this material is actually classified, we are taking steps to ensure the information is protected and stored appropriately.” McCullough also located two e-mails that included classified material from among a separate batch of 296 related to the 2012 attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi. One of those e-mails had been publicly released by the State Department, causing consternation within the intelligence community. He has also located one additional e-mail in the sample of 40 that was classified at the time it was sent but has since been declassified, suggesting that there is no longer a reason to protect the information or that it has since become public, two people familiar with the finding said. McCullough also told lawmakers that his reviewers found two e-mails they believe contain information that the State Department considers classified, and they have alerted the agency so it can conduct its own review. All told, McCullough has pointed to seven e-mails that he said contained classified information, including two with top-secret material. His findings appear to contradict Clinton’s earlier comments. “I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received,” she told reporters last month in Iowa. Clinton said she had “no idea” which e-mails have caught McCullough’s attention.

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Powerful Mexico former union boss granted house arrest

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The powerful former leader of Mexico s largest teacher s union, Elba Esther Gordillo, will be let out of jail under house arrest more than four years after her detention on embezzlement charges, government and judicial sources said on Friday. Gordillo, 72, was unexpectedly arrested in 2013 in the first year of President Enrique Pena Nieto s government, in what appeared to show the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) taking a stand against corruption. But the attorney general (PGR) this week stopped fighting Gordillo s lawyer s attempts to get her out of prison, and a tribunal approved, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The judicial source said that in a matter of hours or days she would be allowed to go home. The decision to let Gordillo see out her trial under house arrest came as the political party she founded, the New Political Alliance Party (Panal), said it would back the PRI in the 2018 election.

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BBC: Nato sends a message to Russia

link The simple fact is that this is not a Cold War Mark II - far from it. Russia with its declining economy is nothing like the Soviet Union, which aspired to establish a different world order to that pursued by the capitalist West. Russia is in many ways a weak country. Its leadership has a strong sense of encirclement - a view that the West is only eager to do it down - and, rightly or wrongly, this is driving Mr Putin's more assertive approach. SOURCE The article linked above is the most chilling piece I've read yet concerning the current tensions with Russia. The fact it was published by the BBC doesn't help. The article should put to rest a lot of the counter-arguments in recent WW3 threads. That is not good news. The situation is clearly worse than we're being told. edit on 27-10-2016 by Profusion because: (no reason given)

1real

Comment on Links 11/4/16 by OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

May’s Brexit plans thrown into turmoil after court defeat Financial Times. Ahem, what they had cooked up so far did not rise to the level of being a plan. Prime Minister’s Questions: 2 November 2016 YouTube. You gotta love Question Time. If we had anything like this, we’d have better informed voters. Wonderfully rowdy. Richard Smith: “Pretty obvious from the response that the PM doesn’t really know what an SLP is yet, but I expect she is brushing up on that now. Arrest Warrants Issued for Arrest of All 59 HDP MPs Kurdish Question (Phil U) Ukraine/Russia

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LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD IMPLODES! Ratings Are In For The Trump-Bashing Emmys…Insignificant Celebrities Are Dealt MAJOR BLOW!

This summer s box office numbers were the worst they ve been in over 25 years, and now this KNOCK, KNOCK! Who s there? Karma Adjustments might take a little of the sting out of the news that Sunday night s Emmy telecast was a ratings catastrophe, but any adjustment will only make the nightmare a little less nightmarish. Instead of being the lowest-watched Emmys in its 69-year history, Sunday night s telecast might be able to squeak into the second-lowest.As of now, though, it looks as though all that promised Trump-hating resulted in a record low, which is especially shocking (at least to bubbled Hollywood) because last year everyone was certain the bottom had been hit.Regardless, the die is cast. Last night was yet-another ratings flop for Hollywood s Beautiful People. As of now, it looks as though fewer than 11.3 million viewers tuned in to watch host Stephen Colbert s hate-fest. That would mean the 69th Emmy telecast had fewer viewers than last year s 68th, which currently holds the all-time low ratings record.What we do know for sure is that the 8.2 overnight rating is lower than 2016 s 8.4. Even in the coveted 18-49 age group, TVs Greatest Night flopped with a pathetic 2.8, which proves that even young people are tired of watching rich elites publicly work through their inability to come to terms with losing the 2016 presidential election.This news, of course, comes just days after the ratings for the MTV Awards hit their own record low.What has to be especially galling to Colbert and his fellow social justice glitter-warriors, is that in a country of 330 million, fewer than five percent tuned in, cared to watch even a minute of the show, was not in the least interested in their Big Thinks on issues n stuff, including President Trump who, despite the unrelenting hate campaigns from the media and Hollywood, still holds (if you believe the polls) a 40% approval rating. We all know it is higher, especially in the only states that matter.As Hollywood has gotten more political, more divisive, more bigoted towards Normal People, and more hateful, take a look at the nuclear fallout. America is more red, more Republican-led than at any time since Reconstruction. On every level, Democrats have been wiped out of electoral office. Breitbart NewsAnd the best part is President Donald J. Trump continues to live rent-free in these small-minded celebrities heads.

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Hillary BLASTS Anti-Woman, Anti-Immigrant Republicans In Glorious #GOPDebate Live Tweets

Thursday night marked the seventh GOP debate of this presidential election season. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton decided to take the opportunity to remind us all just what a GOP win in 2016 would mean for the country. She took to her twitter account to make sure everyone knew not to be fooled by any seemingly rational statements made by the clowns on stage.First the former Secretary of State blasted the misogynist men and their equally misogynist policies:Here you go, @JebBush: https://t.co/CNTHWnBzMs #GOPDebate Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016With every Republican attacking safe and legal abortion, women need more than an ally in the White House: We need a fighter. #ImWithHer Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016Reproductive rights are human rights. Women not any of the politicians on stage should make decisions about their own health. #GOPdebate Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016Then, she tackled their immigration positions:Trump isn t the only candidate missing from the #GOPdebate stage tonight. So is anyone who would protect DACA and DAPA. Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016Mientras los Republicanos no ofrecen ninguna soluci n, Hillary apoya una reforma migratoria con un camino hacia la ciudadan a. #GOPdebate Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016And of course, she rightfully condemned the Islamophobia that GOPers are so well-known for:Muslim Americans: This is your country, too. Islamophobic rhetoric isn't a tool against terrorism and it has no place in America. #GOPdebate Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016And of course, she attacked their anti-science stances on climate change:Want to hear presidential candidates discuss how they'd combat the global threat of climate change? You re out of luck at the #GOPdebate. Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016Then there was, of course, their ridiculous approach to fighting ISIS and other forms of terrorism:Said it before, will say it again: Bluster and chest-beating aren't a strategy to defeat terrorism. #GOPdebate Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016Of course, she had to mention Trump s absence, but reminded us all that his horrible ideas were still there, with the other equally regressive candidates:Donald Trump isn't on stage at the #GOPdebate but you can bet the same backwards ideas and out-of-touch rhetoric will be out in force. Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016In the end, this fabulous woman just straight out insulted them.#GOPdebate: Lots of bickering, no real plans to strengthen families or keep us safe. pic.twitter.com/HsojcMQUMq Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2016And she s still tweeting. All in all, this is a very important message. We need to remember what is at stake if we do not vote blue in 2016. Any Democrat is better than these dangerous fools in the GOP Clown Car.Featured image via Hillary Clinton Twitter

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Comment on ‘I won’t stop until I’m too fat to move’: Morbidly obese model who dreams of weighing 1000lbs by welcometoskaamoog

Posted on September 7, 2016 by DCG | 53 Comments Liberals would probably tell you to not “body shame” her. I say this woman needs serious medical and mental treatment. From Daily Mail : An obese model who is paid by men to eat wants to pile on a further 300lbs to become the world’s fattest woman and be completely immobile. Monica Riley, 27, from Fort Worth, Texas, already tips the scales at 700lb but dreams of being too fat to move and is working towards hitting 1,000lb so that she feels like a ‘queen’. Her feeder boyfriend Sid Riley, 25, whose surname she has taken despite not being married, spends his days cooking Monica meals and even feeding her 3,500 calorie shakes lavished with double cream through a funnel . He then rolls her over when her 91-inch stomach is full. Among the things Monica – a model on Super Sized Big Beautiful Woman websites – is looking forward to being immobile and getting a bed with a built-in toilet which Sid will need to empty. Monica said: ‘The plan is to reach 1000 lbs and become immobile. I would feel like a queen because Sid would be waiting on me hand and foot and he’s excited about it too. ‘ It’s a sexual fantasy for us and we talk about it a lot. He already has to help me get off the sofa and get me out of bed. If I lay down after a big dinner he has to help me roll over because my belly is too full for me to roll – it’s a big turn-on for both of us .’ Despite their controversial plans, the Monica and Sid are trying for a baby and have endured two miscarriages so far. She said: ‘We do plan to have children – there’s nothing to stop me raising a child from my bedroom . We would get a nanny in to help around the house and take the baby out and about. There’s nothing to stop us raising a child. Some people might think it’s selfish but I’m confident we would be good parents.’ Monica had been overweight all of her life and just two years ago she was preparing for bariatric surgery after an ex-boyfriend urged her to shed the pounds. But at the last minute she pulled out of the operation and decided to embrace her figure instead. And since meeting average-built Sid online four months ago, Monica has gained almost 55 lbs by gorging on 8,000 calories every day. Monica said: ‘ The bigger I get the sexier I feel. I love my big soft belly and stuffing myself with food really turns me on . Sid loves to cook for me and hand-feed me and I’ve achieved so much since we got together . He feeds me around the clock and I never have to get up to do anything.’ On an average day, Monica will eat six biscuits, six sausages in a bread roll, a big bowl of sugary cereal, two weight gain shakes, four McChicken sandwiches, four double cheeseburgers, a large portion of French fries, 30 chicken nuggets, macaroni cheese, Taco Bell treats and a gallon of ice cream. Monica hopes to get to a size where she will be unable to do anything for herself – requiring Sid to clean her, feed her and change her – by the time she is 32. The couple have run into criticism for their intentions, especially from Monica’s mother Terri, but they won’t be deterred in their efforts. Monica said: ‘My mom doesn’t understand it at all and she says I’m killing myself. ‘I understand her concerns but it’s my life and gaining weight makes me happy. I do worry a little bit about losing my independence but I know Sid loves taking care of me and would never let me suffer. ‘ Sid, who is 6ft 2in and 220 lbs, is also defensive against any criticism and insists he is simply helping Monica achieve her dreams . Sid said: ‘There is a misconception that feederism and immobility is about control but that’s not the case. If Monica wanted to stop I would accept her decision without question. I wouldn’t see caring for Monica as a chore at all. I love her and I love doing things for her – caring for her would be a dream come true.’ To assist Monica with her weight-gain, Sid prepares a special shake for her to drink through a funnel. The shake consists of ten Pop Tarts, heavy-duty cream, ice cream, milk and weight-gain power, totalling 3,500 calories. Monica said: ‘The funnel feeding is what I really look forward to. I find it to be a very sexual experience and I know Sid likes it too. I have 20,000 online fans and they love to watch the funnel feeding – it’s a big hit.’ And regardless of the health risks of being morbidly obese, Monica and Sid are charging full steam ahead with their mammoth quest. Monica said: ‘I could get hit by a car tomorrow and my life would be over. At least if I die this way I will have lived out the life I wanted and fulfilled all of my dreams.’ DCG

1real

U.S. Democratic Party says more documents leaked, blames Russians

(This 13th September story was refiled to correct the headline and first paragraph to make clear more documents released from earlier breach, not a new hack) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the Democratic National Committee said on Tuesday the organization had been hacked by Russian state-sponsored agents who were trying to influence the U.S. presidential election and they may have released more documents after a similar leak in July roiled the party. A link to the documents was posted on WikiLeaks’ Twitter account and attributed to alleged hacker Guccifer 2.0. The release came during a presentation on Tuesday from a person speaking on behalf of Guccifer 2.0 at a London cyber security conference, Politico reported. Reuters could not immediately access the documents. “There’s one person who stands to benefit from these criminal acts, and that’s (Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump,” DNC interim Chair Donna Brazile said in a statement. “Not only has Trump embraced (Russian President Vladimir)Putin, he publicly encouraged further Russian espionage to help his campaign,” she said. Trump in July invited Russia to dig up emails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state, prompting Democrats to accuse him of urging foreigners to spy on Americans. He later said he was speaking sarcastically. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chair on the eve of July’s Democratic National Convention after WikiLeaks published an earlier trove of hacked DNC emails that showed party officials favoring eventual nominee Hillary Clinton over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s nominating contests. Three other senior officials also stepped down from the DNC after the leak. “We have been anticipating that an additional batch of documents stolen by Russian agents would be released,” said Brazile, who took over from Wasserman Schultz on an interim basis. Democratic Party sources said the party and Clinton’s presidential campaign were deeply concerned about possible publication by WikiLeaks or other hackers of a new torrent of potentially embarrassing party information ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

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POWERFUL! FORMERLY OPPRESSED EX- MUSLIM WARNS Ignorant Americans About Danger Of “Welcoming The People I Fled From” [VIDEO]

A former Muslim and Donald Trump supporter who fled Islam-controlled Kuwait years ago has a warning for Americans this election cycle.Sarah, an ex-Muslim who bravely denounced Islam at a Milo Yiannopoulos speech, said she would absolutely hate it if America started to embrace Islamic culture, the exact culture which led her to flee her native country.She suggested that if American women want to support this oppressive lifestyle, they should go there to experience it. In a nutshell, she s saying, don t bring it here she came here to escape the intolerance and submissive lifestyle. They [western feminists]show me they really don t care about me by welcoming my attackers into the place that I now call home.' ***Language warning*** I found home in America and I would really hate it if the values that made me find America as my home would be destroyed, so I m with the Trump campaign, I m with the Republican campaign. Keep people out of America that would change America for what we love it for and Milo is just another part of that which is why I support him, Sarah said.Sarah said she fled Kuwait after her very Muslim husband told her that getting a college degree would do nothing for her because she is a woman. If you want to learn about something, go and learn about it, Sarah said of Americans who are embracing Islam. You re more than welcome. Become a hostage in Saudi Arabia. Maybe that ll teach you something. Via: American Lookout

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WATCH: Hell Freezes As Fox News Host Calls Republican Party A ‘Disgrace’ For Being Incapable Of Governing

Things just went from bad to worse for the Republican Party.Being in charge just isn t what Republicans imagined it would be like.After all, they have majority control of the House and Senate and have the perfect puppet in the White House to rubber stamp their destructive agenda.But millions of angry Americans across the country, including Democrats, Republicans, and independents, have made Republicans in Congress incredibly nervous about the GOP healthcare bill. Nervous enough to actually oppose it.The Trumpcare bill would strip healthcare away from 20 million Americans and cause premiums to skyrocket, both of which Donald Trump promised would not happen. In short, he lied, and many Republicans don t want to commit political suicide with him.The Republican failure to pass their terrible bill is good for the American people, but it s politically harmful to the GOP because their failure to pass their own bill despite having majority control makes them look incompetent of governing.Keep in mind that Republicans have insisted for years that they are more capable of governing the United States than Democrats. But when Americans actually put them in charge of the entire government it turns out Republicans were all talk and no walk.Rather than govern, Republicans have let Trump systematically destroy this country and now they have failed miserably in their first effort to pass a major policy on their agenda.And even Fox News is disgusted by how Republicans have performed.During his show on Fox Business on Friday, stalwart Republican cheerleader Stuart Varney literally called the entire Republican Party a disgrace and conceded that they can t govern, much to the surprise of Juan Williams. I personally believe at this moment in time, the Republican Party is a disgrace, Varney declared. I m serious. I am serious. We elected the Republicans to run the House, the Senate and the White House and the very, very first thing that comes up on the legislative agenda they vote no, they re split. They can t do it. They can t govern. I am really fit to be tied. Varney invited Williams to take shots at him and the GOP but he declined to do so, opting instead to point out that the Republicans who oppose this bill are doing so because it s a bad bill.Here s the video via YouTube:Indeed, the bill is not better than the Affordable Care Act. In fact, it kills all of the good things the Affordable Care Act provides and takes America back to a time when the uninsured rate was shockingly high and people had to choose between paying for healthcare or paying their bills to avoid homelessness and starvation.But Republicans only have themselves to blame what the position they are in right now. Rather than supporting a law that includes many Republican ideas such as an individual mandate, they chose to viciously oppose the law instead and demonize it for political gain. Furthermore, they had seven years to come up with a better healthcare plan and couldn t even do that. More Americans now understand that the Affordable Care Act was not the evil Republicans portrayed it to be and they now want to save it. Americans are learning about all the good things Republicans would be destroying by repealing it.And now even Fox News is having a hard time defending Republicans on this issue. And losing the support of their propaganda machine should signal to Republicans that they have royally f*cked up.Featured image via screenshot

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Factbox: Republicans' Obamacare plan would dump Medicaid expansion, taxes

(Reuters) - After months of internal discord, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday were still trying to craft a bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, a law they have been attacking since it was enacted in 2010. Two attempts in recent weeks to pass an overhaul bill have collapsed in confusion, with conservatives pushing for a more complete repeal and moderates keen to avoid going too far for fear of angering their constituents. Obamacare brought health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. The first version of the Republican bill, known as the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, would have left 24 million more Americans without coverage, according to an estimate by nonpartisan congressional researchers. The House has recently added two amendments to the AHCA to try to appease both conservatives and moderates. Here are the latest versions of the bill’s main provisions: The Republican plan would maintain some of Obamacare’s most popular provisions. It would allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health plan until age 26 and it would ban insurers from setting a lifetime dollar limit on coverage. An amendment introduced by moderate Republican Representative Tom MacArthur would let states opt out of Obamacare’s mandate that insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. It would also allow states to opt out of Obamacare’s requirement that insurers cover 10 essential health benefits, such as maternity care and mental health treatment. The measure would provide states with $100 billion, largely to fund high-risk pools to provide insurance to the sickest patients. An amendment added Wednesday would provide another $8 billion over five years to help those with pre-existing conditions pay for health insurance. The bill would let insurers mark up premiums by 30 percent for those who have a lapse in insurance coverage of about two months or more. Insurers won another provision they had long sought: The ability to charge older Americans up to five times more than young people. Under Obamacare, they could only charge up to three times more. The Republicans want to end in 2018 Obamacare’s income-based tax credits that help low-income people buy insurance. These would be replaced with age-based tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 per year that would be capped at upper-income levels. While Obamacare’s credits gave more help to those with lower incomes, the Republican plan would be largely age-based. The Republican bill would abolish most Obamacare taxes, including on medical devices, health insurance premiums, indoor tanning salons, prescription medications and high-cost employer-provided insurance known as “Cadillac” plans. Those taxes paid for Obamacare. Republicans have not said how they would pay for the parts of the law they want to keep. The bill would also repeal the Obamacare financial penalty for the 2016 tax year for not purchasing insurance, as well as a surtax on investment income earned by upper-income Americans. It would repeal the mandate that larger employers must offer insurance to their employees. Under Obamacare, more than 30 states, including about a dozen Republican states, expanded the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor. About half of Obamacare enrollees obtained insurance through the expansion. The bill would allow the Medicaid expansion to continue until January 1, 2020, providing states chose not to expand. After that date, expansion would end and Medicaid funding would be capped on a per-person basis. State Medicaid plans would no longer have to cover some Obamacare-mandated essential health benefits, fulfilling a Republican promise to return more control to the states.

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How Fox News Is Trying To Cover Up Its Harassment Lawsuit

Lawyers working on behalf of Roger Ailes, the chairman of the right-wing Fox News Channel, filed a legal motion on Friday that would hide the details of former anchor Gretchen Carlson s sexual harassment allegations from the public.Ailes lawyers have asked that the lawsuit be moved from federal courts in New Jersey and into arbitration. They claim that Carlson is orchestrating a tar-and-feather campaign and that constitutes a breach of her contract with Fox News. They claim that the document she signed with the network mandates that disputes go into arbitration, and that a legal case with a jury can t go forward.Carlson s lawyers say the gambit is just an attempt to stop Fox s dirty laundry from being aired in public.Ms. Carlson s lawyers said Mr. Ailes was trying to force the case into a secret proceeding, and away from the public spotlight of a trial. Gretchen never agreed to arbitrate anything with Mr. Ailes, and the contract on which he relies does not mention him and is not signed by him, her lawyers, Nancy Erika Smith and Martin Hyman, said in a statement. Gretchen intends to fight for her right to a public jury trial, a right protected by the discrimination laws and our Constitution. Ms. Carlson did not name Fox News in the lawsuit. Mr. Ailes is the only defendant.Carlson alleges in her lawsuit that she was demoted to a daytime timeslot on the network after she rebuffed sexual advances from Ailes and complained about sexism from her co-hosts on Fox & Friends, particularly conservative host Steve Doocy.Ailes alleges that she was demoted and let go because of poor ratings. Since the allegations were first publicized, Carlson s lawyers say they have been deluged by complaints from women about Ailes, including one allegation about a 16-year-old female.Ailes is a long-time conservative who worked as part of Richard Nixon s operation, was associated with the infamous Willie Horton ad, and has a history of racially charged and sexist comments. He denies Carlson s claims.Featured image via YouTube

1real

Minority Youths Mistrust Police. A Brooklyn High School Has a Plan. - The New York Times

On a chilly morning in November, Lt. Donzel Cleare of the New York Police Department stood in front of a classroom at Liberation Diploma Plus High School in Coney Island and asked a simple question: “How many of you guys feel that I work for you?” Before him, in desks arranged around three sides of the room, sat roughly 15 students, mostly male, with a group of girls gathered together on one side. Most of them were black or Hispanic, and because Liberation is a transfer school, virtually all of them had dropped out or fallen behind at other schools. Not a single student raised a hand. A few actually laughed. They were there at the beginning of a monthslong course, conceived by Liberation’s founding principal, April Leong, as an experiment in bridging the gap between New York City’s police and young people from a poor, minority community in Brooklyn. An elective class called the Junior Citizens Police Academy, it met weekly and was made up of students selected by Ms. Leong, in some cases because they had expressed negative feelings about the police. It is a common sentiment in the neighborhood around Liberation. The 60th Precinct, which includes Coney Island, has nine public housing projects, some with feuds between their residents. Last year there were 23 shootings in the precinct. This year, as of Aug. 28, there were nine — half as many as there were by this time last year, though it is unclear why the total is down. A number of Liberation’s students have had friends or family members killed. Some have watched fathers, brothers or friends go to prison. Others have themselves been incarcerated. Two years ago, Manuel Ocampo, an student, was shot in the head and killed by a retired police officer. The police said that Mr. Ocampo had a gun and was trying to rob the former officer and steal his car. The shooting was determined to be and the former officer was not charged. The week before he died, Mr. Ocampo had given a short speech at school, thanking his mother and Ms. Leong for helping him to turn his life around. Ms. Leong keeps a photograph of him on the wall next to her desk. It is no surprise that many of Ms. Leong’s students are suspicious of and hostile to the police. They are mostly resigned to the idea that officers will never be held accountable for what the students see as mistreatment of black people. Lieutenant Cleare, the commanding officer of the housing bureau’s community affairs unit, said later that he knew what the students’ response would be before he even asked the question, but he saw it as a way to get them talking. “It was very important when I came in there to let them voice their true feelings and opinions and concerns,” he said. “I didn’t want them to feel that this was going to be a brainwashing session. ” But the skepticism he faced from the students was especially about the idea that community residents should help the police stop crime. “That’s not going to happen,” a young man named Jahkhil said at the end of the first class. (He, like most of the other students, is being identified by only his given name at the school’s request, so that the details of their lives don’t affect their future opportunities.) “It’s just a rule — you just don’t snitch,” he said. “You can’t snitch. ” The consequences for those who do are clear. “You going to be looked at a certain type of way,” he added, “and certain people are going to want to kill you. ” As politicians, police officials, civil rights activists and others talk about how to change relationships between the police and poor minority communities, there has been little discussion of what role schools might play. The city’s Education Department has made some modest efforts. In May, more than 300 elementary schools received visits from officers from their local precincts, who read to students or led physical education classes or other activities. But there was little preparation, and the program was not aimed at neighborhoods where mistrust of the police is most pervasive. On July 14, after the shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, and then of five police officers in Dallas, New York City’s schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, sent a letter to principals, teachers and other department staff members asking for lesson plans to address topics of civil rights, guns and violence. She also asked for suggestions about how schools could develop relationships with local police precincts. But few if any schools have attempted a program as intense as the one at Liberation. Ms. Leong and Lieutenant Cleare plan to repeat the class this year, with more field trips and activities. Over the course, they intend to have the students tour the 60th Precinct’s station house and the new headquarters of the local housing police unit, Police Service Area 1. Liberation occupies a former Catholic school building on the corner of West 19th Street and Mermaid Avenue. Its enrollment varies throughout the year but hovers around 200 students. More than half of the students are black, and close to a third are Hispanic. Eighty percent qualify for free lunch. At their former schools, these students slipped through the cracks. Ms. Leong’s goal is to not let that happen again. For her students, not graduating from high school means facing grim life prospects. According to the Brookings Institution, a research organization based in Washington, black men born in the late 1970s who did not graduate from high school had a nearly 70 percent chance of being imprisoned by their . That was higher than their chances of being employed. For both male and female students, not completing high school means a high likelihood of a lifetime of poverty. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, black high school dropouts age 25 and older had a median weekly income of $440. Female high school dropouts of all races fared even worse, with a median weekly income of $409. Some observers have identified what they call a “ pipeline,” in which young black and Hispanic men are funneled into the criminal justice system by punitive school disciplinary standards. When Ms. Leong heard last year that a drug addict had fatally shot a police officer in East Harlem, her first thought was about school. She wondered what New York City schools the man, Tyrone Howard, had attended and what chances were missed to put him on a better path in life. Her approach is shaped by her own background. She was born in Brooklyn to a mother and a father. She did well academically but was pregnant by the time she graduated from high school. She often tells students about how she took her infant son to her orientation at Baruch College because she didn’t have a babysitter. When she saw other students staring at her and whispering, she wanted to leave and never come back — just as they might feel out of place when they get to college, she tells them. But her adviser in a program for students encouraged her, and she stayed, graduating and ultimately becoming a teacher and then an administrator. She started Liberation in 2007. The son she had at 18 went to Yale, and her younger son is now a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Lieutenant Cleare, 47, who is black, grew up in Rosedale, a suburban section of southeast Queens. Like the students at Liberation, he said, he and his friends didn’t like the police officers in their neighborhood, most of whom were white. “They would be using the they would be slamming you up against walls,” he said. He went to York College in Queens, where he was the captain of the basketball team. After York, even though friends and cousins who had become police officers tried to persuade him to join the force, he took a job as a high school drug counselor. He finally became an officer when he was 29. He has spent 14 of his 18 years on the force doing youth development and community outreach. At Liberation, he approached the students as something of a father figure. But if the divide between black communities and the police is often characterized as a confrontation between black and blue, Lieutenant Cleare was clearly speaking from the blue side. “When there’s shooting around your way — ’cause there’s shootings all the time — when people are running away from the gunfire, who’s running toward the gunfire?” he asked. “Cops,” the students said. “Does it happen in a white neighborhood?” No, the students conceded. He acknowledged that not all officers were model public servants. “I’m going to say that to you right now: There’s a bunch of idiots out there,” Lieutenant Cleare said the first day. But over the months he did not engage in deep discussions about misconduct or police brutality, and as the students sometimes pointed out, he tended to put the onus for improving the relationship on them. He compared getting stopped by the police to being robbed at gunpoint and asked why people did not respond to commands from an officer as they would to orders coming from any other person with a gun. “Your most important priority when you get into an interaction with the Police Department is to leave the same way you came,” he said. “Just like the robber comes to you and says, ‘Yo, run that,’” — he demonstrated demanding someone’s money — “your whole goal is to walk away safe and sound. ” But instead, he said, people often talked back to the police. Lieutenant Cleare explained: “You think — and this is what’s crazy — on one hand, you think, Oh, it’s just a cop. There’s a certain level of trust. That’s why you can disrespect that officer, because you feel, at the end of the day, ‘You just a cop — you got that badge and gun, but you’re really not going to use it. ’” The students were not buying it. “Talking is different than touching somebody,” Bobby, 19, objected. “I can say whatever I want, ’cause it’s only my mouth — freedom of speech — but you can’t touch me. ” Another student, Shanell, said, “You’re saying because they have guns, because they have badges, we can just be disrespected!” “No!” Lieutenant Cleare said, throwing up his hands in frustration. At times, their views of the world seemed unbridgeable. Lieutenant Cleare said residents of Coney Island did not do enough to stop crime, because they refused to talk to the police. “You basically want people to start snitching,” Bobby said. “Define what a snitch is, Bobby,” Lieutenant Cleare responded. “Someone not intimidated to communicate — that’s what Ms. Leong told us,” Shanell said, sounding dubious. “Once we snitch, who come in guns blazing for us?” Lieutenant Cleare encouraged them to take the first step and be friendly to the scared rookie officer on the street. In a class in January, he said most officers would be dumbfounded if the students said a simple “Good morning” or “Be safe, officer. ” He went on, “How am I supposed to know that you’re a good guy unless you show me?” Bobby wondered why things couldn’t run the other way. “How about if you show me something, I show you something?” he asked. “How we always got to show you something and you can’t show us anything?” Bobby was a star of Liberation’s basketball team and the unofficial ringleader of the policing class. The other students listened closely to him, and he delighted in making them erupt in laughter. He lived in a nearby housing project and was the youngest of 10 children, one of eight brothers. He transferred to the school from Abraham Lincoln High School in fall 2014, when he should have been a senior. He broke his ankle in the winter of his sophomore year and skipped most of the rest of the year, he said. Bobby said he was uneasy around the police in part because he had seen one of his older brothers arrested inside their apartment when he was around 8. “I see one cop with a gun to his head, and one cop having him lay down with his knee in his back,” he recalled. “I thought I was about to see him die right in front of me or something — it was crazy. ” His brother went to prison for five years, though Bobby wasn’t sure what the charges were. “I think for robbery and assault,” he said. That experience, he said, was one reason he would never inform on someone to the police. “If you tell on somebody,” he said in January, “they got a whole family that they probably had to provide for in a situation where, in the streets, it’s hard. ” And yet his own family had been victimized by violent crime. His eldest brother, then 29, was shot and killed the previous school year. Bobby had been willing to give Lieutenant Cleare a chance partly because he trusted Ms. Leong so much. She had supported him after the killing. According to the police, his brother was visiting a female friend on Staten Island when her former boyfriend showed up they argued and the man shot him. Ms. Leong and two other staff members went to the funeral. Bobby said he had gone a little crazy for a while, thinking about tracking the man down and shooting him with his brother’s gun, but his surviving brothers talked him out of it. The man was arrested and indicted on a count of murder, among other charges. He is currently on Rikers Island and awaiting trial. But Bobby said he would have preferred that the man hadn’t been arrested. He would have preferred that he be dead. At Liberation, violence never seemed to be far away. In the cousin of one student was murdered in East New York, Brooklyn. The next day, another man was found dead behind one of the Coney Island projects, in what some suspected was retaliation. The week after the killings, Lieutenant Cleare talked in class about his own youth and how close he came to getting into serious trouble. At one point when he was a teenager, he said, he bought a gun to try to settle a dispute and hid it in the back seat of his aunt’s car, which sat in the driveway but was never used. Then his stepfather found it. Jahkhil, 19, who is slight, with tendrils of hair framing his face, laughed. “You got snitched,” he said. “I came home,” Lieutenant Cleare said, “and I heard my mother on the phone: ‘All I know is that the bullets are the size of C batteries! ’” “If I had ended up using that,” he added, “I wouldn’t be here today. ” One day in February, another young man, skinny and tattooed, said that the class was helping him understand why the police did certain things, but that he didn’t think his views would ever fundamentally change. He said he resented the police because his father had gone to prison for eight years, starting when he was 10. “My birthday was like the day before he got locked up,” he said. “Imagine, 10 years old, birthday — you think you’re about to get presents, everything. ” He said he had been close to his father when he was younger, but now they did not understand each other, and he had seen him only once since he was released from prison last year. Before coming to Liberation he attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, from which he should have graduated in 2015. (Asked why he fell behind, he smiled and said, “They had too many girls over there. ”) Still, he said he was confident he would graduate in June, as long as he could pass the algebra Regents exam that month. But just four days later, he was arrested along with a younger boy and charged with robbery. According to a criminal complaint, he pointed a BB gun at several young people and took two cellphones. The police arrested them on a bus, nine blocks west of the school. His first day back at Liberation, a little over two weeks later, the policing class met but Lieutenant Cleare couldn’t make it, so Ms. Leong talked to the students about a coming field trip to Baruch College. After class, she approached the young man, who hung his head and looked embarrassed. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said that he hadn’t wanted to come to school that day, but he had pushed himself. “I’m just trying to stay focused,” he said. Ms. Leong asked gently, “You want to speak to Cleare?” The young man nodded. She dialed her phone and handed it to him. He spoke quietly for several minutes, explaining his version of the story, and listened to Lieutenant Cleare, who told him it was important that he find a good lawyer and take responsibility for his actions. Ms. Leong said later that she worried the student would become discouraged and drop out. He was already 20, so he had little time left to graduate before he aged out of the public school system at 21. In March, Detective Joseph Agosto, a firearms instructor at the Police Academy, came to the class with the department’s firearms simulator. The law enforcement equivalent of a video game, it lets participants act out various policing scenarios. The instructor gives the details of a 911 call to which the police are responding. Then the scene is projected on a screen. The participants — usually police recruits — can talk to the characters and give commands. They can use pepper spray or a baton. Or they can shoot a gun or a Taser. If they hit a character in the right spot, the character will fall. Detective Agosto told the class that his responsibility was to train police officers to avoid getting shot. He said the Supreme Court had set a standard known as objective reasonableness for deciding whether an officer was justified in using force. He said it meant that an officer did not have to be right to shoot, but only to respond reasonably. Vinnette Carrasquillo, 20, was about to graduate that month, six and a half years after starting high school she had missed a year and a half while she was pregnant and after her daughter was born. She said she had heard that police officers were trained to shoot to kill and asked if that was true. “That’s a complete fallacy,” Detective Agosto said, “but that’s what people want you to hear. ” As it turned out, when the students took their turns at the simulator, they were more than ready to use lethal force. In one scenario, two students shot a mentally disturbed woman in an alley who was brandishing a pair of scissors. In another, Jahkhil and Jonathan, a classmate, responded to a call about a burglar alarm going off at a warehouse and found a man inside standing behind a table, with one of his hands hidden. Jonathan pointed his gun. They ordered the man to put his hands up. He argued with them instead. When he lifted one of his hands holding a metal object, Jahkhil and Jonathan opened fire, and the man fell. Only afterward did they see that the object was a staple gun. The class hooted, and Jahkhil burst into tense laughter. “You’re laughing, right, because what did you just do?” Detective Agosto said. “Killed him,” Jahkhil said. “You shot a guy with a staple gun,” Detective Agosto said. Why would someone do that, the students asked. “There’s a phenomenon called suicide by cop — it happens all the time,” Detective Agosto said. One scenario involved a shooting at a minimart, which led to a firefight with the perpetrator. In another situation, two students were told they were responding to a call about a domestic dispute. “Is there kids in the house?” asked Alisha, one of the students. She had transferred to Liberation from Lincoln in the fall, not because she was behind, she said, but because she wanted to be in a smaller school. Like Vinnette, she was about to graduate. Looking in the window of the house, Alisha, 18, and her partner, Malik, 19, saw a man with his back turned leaning over a couch, and a woman screaming in terror. When they called out, the man turned around. In his hands was a shotgun, which was pointed right at them. Malik froze, but Alisha sprang into action. She fired 10 rounds, missing once or twice, then hitting him in the elbow and the torso. She fired a couple of rounds after he fell. When she went back to her seat, her hands were shaking, and after a minute tears started streaming down her face. Ms. Leong rubbed her shoulder, and Detective Agosto asked why she was emotional. “Because that’s a common situation, personally,” she said. “You have to think of it this way,” Detective Agosto said. “You may have shot this guy. But what did I do? I also saved his wife. ” After the students ran through five scenarios, Detective Agosto’s partner, Officer Steven Malone, made an observation. Of the five scenarios, he said, only the conflict at the minimart had to end with the police firing their guns. “You shot everybody,” he said. Vinnette nodded. “Then we sit here: ‘Cops are killing everybody,’” she said. Lieutenant Cleare asked how the students who had fired their weapons felt. Alisha said she felt sympathy with officers. Bobby, who sat in the back and was unusually quiet, said, “I understood, like, why they do what they do. ” “You all human,” said Jahkhil, “just like us. ” A young woman in the policing class, who asked to be identified by only her middle name, Marie, began missing class in February. Marie, 20, was in her third year at Liberation and close to graduating, but she had recently been kicked out of her mother’s apartment and had lost custody of her son to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. At one point, she sent Ms. Leong a text message saying she had to leave school because she’d had little to eat in the past two days and didn’t feel well. Pointing to her own background, Ms. Leong urges students to recognize the disadvantages they face at home but not to use them as an excuse. Instead of offering Marie sympathy, Ms. Leong noted that she could have asked for food from the school’s pantry, which is stocked with pasta and other staples for students who do not have enough to eat at home. “She said, ‘I don’t want to keep asking,’” Ms. Leong said later. “I said, ‘That’s your choice. ’” Although Ms. Leong is tough on students, she is not punitive, even when they curse at her or other staff members. She said that some teachers wanted her to be more harsh. But when students are accustomed to being hurt by the people closest to them, she said, a suspension often has little impact. “They say it out loud — ‘So what? ’” Ms. Leong said. “‘My mother just kicked me out. Kick me out, too? Go right ahead. ’” Ms. Leong said it was usually more effective to talk with students than to suspend them. “Taking ownership and apologizing and ‘what am I going to do different’ is different for them, and I think they learn to respect that,” she said. As the year went on, Lieutenant Cleare continued to emphasize that students could change their relationship with the police by extending some basic courtesy. And he offered his own friendship. He cheered on the basketball team at its championship game in February, and in May he challenged the players to a game at the Coney Island Y. M. C. A. against him and a group of fellow officers. The students won both games. He attended graduation in June, and in August he helped Ms. Leong organize what she called a unity barbecue at the school for current students and recent graduates, their families and officers from the 60th Precinct and PSA 1. If the goal of the Junior Citizens Police Academy was to change the dynamic between the students and the police, it did not work miracles or magically erase a legacy of distrust. Many of the students remained wary of the police and still believed that many officers were racist. But they had developed, in many cases for the first time, a close relationship with a police officer, as well as some respect for the challenges of policing and the risks officers take to protect the public. Bobby and Jahkhil both became interested in law enforcement as a career, which in turn sharpened their interest in college as a necessary step on that path. Often, what Lieutenant Cleare said in class discussions mattered less than that he was there at all. Jonathan, 19, who grew up in Coney Island with Bobby and, like him, transferred to Liberation from Lincoln, said the basketball game against the officers had affected his feelings about the police more than anything in the class had. “I could tell they had love for the game, like I do,” he said. He added that even though he never confided in Lieutenant Cleare about something deeply personal, he now felt that he could. Lieutenant Cleare said the class had affected him, too. “It actually just gave me more insight to the struggle that our kids face — the real struggle that they have being in an urban community,” he said. Even though he works with students often, he explained, he rarely has the chance to build close relationships with them. “This class enabled me to develop those bonds, where they were comfortable enough to talk to me about issues and be real,” he said. Lieutenant Cleare said he was considering going back to work in schools as a counselor when he is eligible to retire from the department in two years. The school year ended in June. Alisha, Bobby, Marie and Vinnette graduated. Jonathan, who had finished all his credits but had not passed the global history Regents test, failed the exam in June and then again in August and is now back at Liberation, studying to retake it in January. The student who was arrested in February did not drop out, and he attended every meeting of the policing class. Ms. Leong made him one of her interns, which meant that he worked for her after school and helped host community events, and he went to summer school. She expects him to graduate in December. His court case is in preliminary and evidentiary hearings. By the time of the shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, the students had scattered. Ms. Leong said she had spoken with some of them, and they wondered whether the officers in those encounters had received sufficient training. She said of the students’ reaction: “Their thing was, This is why more of us should think about going into law enforcement, because we need to change who is in law enforcement, so that they wouldn’t be racist or have stereotypes in their heads or be so afraid to deal with us that you’re ready to shoot us. ” She hopes that offering the class again this year will keep alive the conversations about policing and racial justice that were stirred up by recent events. Too often, she said, her students become angry but don’t think they can change anything, so they move on. “That level of empowerment or voice just seems out of their reach,” she said. Ms. Leong wants to convince her students that they have a voice. She plans to ask some of the students from the previous class to speak to a group of high school principals to encourage them to consider organizing similar programs. And in the future, she hopes to raise money to take the students to other cities to talk to young people there about what they learned. Bobby, who started taking classes last month at Borough of Manhattan Community College, said the shootings of Mr. Sterling and Mr. Castile made him angry. He said he still believed that the majority of police officers, at least outside New York City, were racist. But before the class, he said, he would have condemned all police officers as a group. “There just would have been no respect,” he said. Now his perspective had shifted somewhat. “I got respect for those who have respect for me,” he said. “That’s how I feel now. ”

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SHOCKING REPORT: 50% of Babies in 24 States Born via Medicaid…Is Your State on the List?

New Mexico led all states with 72 percent of the babies born there in 2015 having their births covered by Medicaid.Arkansas ranked second with 67 percent; Louisiana ranked third with 65 percent; and three states Mississippi, Nevada and Wisconsin tied for fourth place with 64 percent of babies born there covered by Medicaid.New Hampshire earned the distinction of having the smallest percentage of babies born on Medicaid. In that state, Medicaid paid for the births of only 27 percent of the babies born in 2015.Virginia and Utah tied for the next to last position, with 31 percent of the babies born on Medicaid.However, according to KFF, some of the nation s most populous states shared the distinction of having 50 percent or more of the babies born there born on Medicaid.

1real

Britain's new 3 billion pound warship has a leak

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s biggest ever warship, the new 3.1 billion pound ($4.2 billion) aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, has a leak and needs repairs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Tuesday. The 65,000-tonne ship is hailed as Britain s most advanced military vessel and was only commissioned by the queen two weeks ago but it has a problem with a shaft seal that was identified during sea trials, the MoD said. Sea trials are precisely for finding manageable teething problems like this and rectifying them, a Royal Navy spokesman said. Repairs under contract are already underway alongside in Portsmouth and the sea trials will take place as planned in the New Year, when we will continue to rigorously test the ship before she enters service. The Sun newspaper reported that the 280-metre (920-foot) warship, the nation s future flagship vessel, was letting in 200 liters of water every hour and the fix would cost millions of pounds. A defense source said the navy was aware that the ship, which took eight years to build, had an issue when it was handed over by manufacturers and the Sun said the builders would have to foot the repair bill. The Aircraft Carrier Alliance - a consortium including British engineering companies BAE Systems (BAES.L) and Babcock (BAB.L), and the UK division of France s Thales (TCFP.PA) - built the Queen Elizabeth and its sister aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, as apart of a 6.2 billion pound project. It s normal practice for a volume of work and defect resolution to continue following vessel acceptance, BAE Systems said in a statement. This will be completed prior to the nation s flagship re-commencing her program at sea in 2018. BAE said the issue would take just a couple of days to fix with no need for the ship to be taken into a dry dock. Chris Parry, a former senior Royal Navy officer, said all ships took on water. That s why you have pumps, he told Sky News. When you get a brand new car not everything s perfect, you have to send it back to the garage to get a few things tweaked. This is exactly in that bracket. Also on Tuesday, parliament s defense committee raised questions about the procurement of the F-35 fighter jets from a consortium led by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) which will eventually operate from the Queen Elizabeth. The committee said there had been an unacceptable lack of transparency about the program and the MoD had failed to provide details of the full cost of each aircraft which one newspaper had estimated could be as much as 155 million pounds. We strongly refute any suggestion of a lack of transparency in the F-35 program, an MOD spokesman said. The program remains on track, on time, within costs and not only offers our military the world s most advanced fighter jet but will support over 24,000 British jobs and is very much clear for take-off. When the aircraft carrier was commissioned, British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said: Our new aircraft carrier is the epitome of British design and dexterity, at the core of our efforts to build an Armed Forces fit for the future.

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Special counsel to meet Senate committee leaders

(This June 19 story has been refiled to correct Mueller title to special counsel.) By Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special counsel Robert Mueller will hold talks this week with senior Senate Judiciary Committee members to ensure that there is no conflict between his investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and the panel’s probe, two congressional aides said on Monday. Mueller, a former FBI director, will meet on Wednesday with the committee’s Republican chairman, Charles Grassley, and its top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They will be joined by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, they added. The subcommittee is examining what U.S. intelligence agencies say was a Russian campaign of influence was intended to boost Donald Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 presidential election. The discussions will focus on ensuring that the subcommittee’s investigation is not interfering with Mueller’s probe, one source said. Spokesmen for the committee and for Mueller declined to comment. Mueller also was expected to meet sometime during the week with top members of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee for a similar discussion. A spokesman and a spokeswoman for the panel also declined to discuss the matter. The special counsel met last week with the Republican chairman and the top Democrat overseeing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of what U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia denies that it conducted such a campaign, and Trump denies there was any collusion between his campaign and Moscow.

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Nominee for U.S. EPA chemical safety withdraws: Bloomberg

(In this Dec. 13 story, corrects third paragraph to say Dourson is a former professor at the University of Cincinnati) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former chemical industry consultant nominated by the Trump administration to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety and pollution prevention office has withdrawn his nomination, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Michael Dourson notified the administration of his decision on Wednesday after Republican senators raised concerns about his past work and possible conflicts of interest, said Bloomberg, which cited an unnamed official for the report. Dourson, a former professor at the University of Cincinnati who has worked as a consultant for chemical companies, was one of several people whose nominations for top EPA positions were approved by the Senate environment panel in October in a 11-10 vote along party lines. Bloomberg said several Republican senators refused to support Dourson, including Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both of North Carolina, who raised concerns about contaminated water at the Camp Lejeune military base in their state. The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. A spokeswoman for Burr said she could not confirm that Dourson had withdrawn. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate environment panel, said in a statement, “Dourson, an individual who has spent most of his career promoting less protective chemical safety standards, had no business overseeing our nation’s chemical safety laws.” Environmental group Earthjustice hailed the news as a “victory for all children, workers and communities who deserve the strongest protections from exposure to toxic chemicals and pesticides.” Dourson, while a consultant, had assessed some chemicals, including PFOA, used to make Teflon non-stick surfaces, to be safe at levels far higher than considered acceptable by the EPA.

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Obama Says He Will Keep More Troops in Afghanistan Than Planned - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Wednesday that he planned to leave 8, 400 American troops in Afghanistan until the end of his term, further slowing the drawdown in a war that Mr. Obama pledged to end on his watch but now seems likely to grind on indefinitely. Acknowledging that the Taliban had retaken territory and were terrorizing the population, Mr. Obama said he was again adjusting his plan to withdraw American forces. The announcement will leave his successor with a substantial military commitment in the country, though far less than the nearly 40, 000 troops deployed there when he took office. “The security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious,” Mr. Obama said from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “Even as they improve, Afghan security forces are still not as strong as they need to be. ” Those troops, he said, had not been able to quell a string of attacks and suicide bombings, including in the capital, Kabul. The United States has close to 10, 000 soldiers in Afghanistan, where they train and equip Afghan forces, and carry out counterterrorism operations. When he last tinkered with the drawdown schedule, Mr. Obama said he hoped to reduce that number to 5, 500 by early 2017. Now, more than 8, 000 troops will remain, and it will be up to Mr. Obama’s successor to order any further reductions. The president recently loosened the rules of engagement for American troops to give them the ability to fight the Taliban directly, and more flexibility to carry out airstrikes or wage ground combat. Mr. Obama cast his decision as a vote of confidence in Afghanistan’s government, led by President Ashraf Ghani, as well as in the support of NATO members and other partners, who have contributed 6, 000 troops. But it also underscores the fact that American hopes of building an Afghan force capable of securing the entire country had fallen short. “We have to deal with the realities of the world as it is,” said Mr. Obama, who was flanked by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. “It is going to continue to take time to build up military capacity that we sometimes take for granted. Given the enormous challenges they face, the Afghan people will need the partnership of the world, led by the United States, for many years to come. ” Mr. Obama announced the decision a day before leaving for a NATO summit meeting in Warsaw. Administration officials said the timing was intended to clarify American intentions and demonstrate that the United States was committed to Afghanistan. The president made the decision, which was very closely held, after a lengthy internal debate, and based on a recommendation from the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. Keeping 8, 400 troops in the field, a senior administration official said, would allow American forces there to advise Afghan commanders “at the and level out in the field” over a sustained period, something that would not have been possible at lower troop levels. The number represents a slight decline from the 9, 800 troops currently deployed. “It’s an important and timely shift,” said Daniel F. Feldman, who was Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “I welcome it as a demonstration, not only of the administration’s flexibility in best advancing our national security interests in Afghanistan, but of the commitment we’ve said we’ve had to Afghanistan, but which was being questioned there. ” Mr. Feldman was among more than a dozen former military commanders and diplomats who had urged Mr. Obama last month in a letter not to cut troop levels. Two prominent Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, added their voices to that call. “If we go to 5, 500, this place will fall apart quickly, quicker than Iraq,” said Mr. Graham, who joined Mr. McCain on a July 4 visit to Afghanistan. “If we keep 9, 800, there is a decent chance we can succeed. ” But Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and a critic of the war, said, “We are engaged in what appears to be an endless war, with no strategy about how to end the conflict and disengage our troops. ” Besides fragile security, the decision reflected American worries that Al Qaeda was regrouping in Afghanistan, and that the Islamic State had established a foothold there. Mr. Obama repeated his vow that he would not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists. There have been other signs that the United States is preparing for a counterterrorism campaign. In May, a missile fired from an American drone killed Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the head of the Taliban, as he was traveling in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province. The decision to strike him on Pakistani soil, and then to announce it publicly, suggested a new, more aggressive approach by the United States. “We can’t forget what’s at stake in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said. “This is where Al Qaeda is trying to regroup. This is where ISIL continues to try to expand is presence,” he said, using the administration’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State. The Afghan government had lobbied privately to keep the troops, American officials said. “We were expecting a decision based on the ground realities, and we welcome President Obama’s decision,” said Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman for Mr. Ghani. The government has struggled with security as American soldiers have left, steadily losing territory to Taliban insurgents. They briefly captured Kunduz last year, the first time they had seized a major urban center since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Insurgents claiming affiliation with the Islamic State have also contested districts in eastern Afghanistan, and have remained a persistent threat despite major military operations against them. Despite the assassination of Mullah Mansour, the Taliban have retained their ability to carry out attacks in cities, most recently killing at least 33 people, almost all of them police cadets, in a bombing in Kabul. The deployment, Mr. Obama noted, was a far cry from the 100, 000 combat troops once there. But he acknowledged the frustration people might feel at the inability of the United States to draw this war to a close. “When we first sent our forces into Afghanistan 14 years ago,” he said, “few Americans imagined we’d be there — in any capacity — this long. ”

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Southeast Congo faces 'deadly disaster', half a million people displaced: NGO

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - More than half a million people have fled ethnic violence in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo since last year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Wednesday, warning that the area is on the brink of a deadly disaster . Four years of clashes between militias representing the Luba, a Bantu ethnic group, and Twa pygmies in Tanganyika province have killed hundreds of people and forced thousands to flee into neighboring Zambia. The conflict, which appears to have intensified in recent months, is part of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Congo. Militia violence has spiked this year, fueled in part by President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down when his constitutional mandate expired last December. Tanganyika is on the brink of a deadly disaster, said Ulrika Blom, NRC s Congo country director, in a statement. It s a catastrophic cocktail about to blow up. The United Nations declared Congo a level three humanitarian emergency last month - the highest possible classification and on par with Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Nearly 4 million Congolese are internally displaced. NRC, an independent aid agency, said that over 80 percent of the people sheltering in displacement sites it visited over the last two weeks in Tanganyika do not have access to clean drinking water. The conflict in Tanganyika is driven by inequalities between Bantu villagers and the Twa, a hunting and gathering people historically excluded from access to land and basic services. Some 600,000 children are also on the brink of starvation in central Congo s Kasai region, where a local insurrection has killed up to 5,000 people since August of last year, the World Food Programme s executive director said on Monday. Millions died during regional conflicts in eastern Congo between 1996-2003, most from hunger and disease.

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Despite EU caution, France pursues tough line on Iran missile program

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Wednesday it wanted an uncompromising dialogue with Iran about its ballistic missile program and a possible negotiation over the issue separate from Tehran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Paris has already suggested that new European sanctions against Iran could be discussed over its missile tests, something EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini seemed to dismiss on Tuesday, keen not to raise risks to the hard-won deal that curbed Iran s disputed nuclear activity. On Sunday, Iran rejected a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on its missiles, saying they were defensive in nature and had nothing to do with its nuclear energy work. France is concerned about the continued pace of the Iranian missile program, which does not conform with (U.N.) Security Council Resolution 2231 and which is a source of destabilization and insecurity for the region, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily briefing. Resolution 2231, which enshrined the nuclear deal, calls on Iran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear bombs, including launches using such technology. It stops short of explicitly barring such activity. France wishes to examine all the diplomatic options: a frank and uncompromising political dialogue with Iran; investigations by the U.N. General Secretariat; if necessary, new European sanctions against Iranian entities or individuals involved in the ballistic program; and finally opening a negotiation on the subject, she said. President Donald Trump, who has resumed a confrontational U.S. approach to Iran in contrast with predecessor Barack Obama s policy of detente, has said Iranian missile activity should be curbed and wants to punish Tehran over its role in Yemen and Syria. Trump has also dealt a blow to Iran s nuclear deal - agreed with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States under Obama - by decertifying Iranian compliance with its terms, contradicting the findings of U.N. nuclear inspectors. The U.S. Congress now has until mid-December to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran that had been lifted in exchange for limiting its nuclear program in ways meant to prevent it developing an atomic bomb. But the EU, which normally coordinates closely with Washington on international sanctions, has been lobbying hard to keep the nuclear pact alive, saying it should be kept separate from missile and regional security matters. France s tougher line on the missile issue appears to reflect a concern that Iran might eventually try to arm a missile cone with a nuclear bomb, should it ever build one. Tehran has repeatedly denied any intent to do so. Romatet-Espagne reiterated the view that the nuclear deal should be kept separate, but said the ballistic missile issue was being discussed with fellow EU governments and Mogherini s foreign service. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian had been due to visit Tehran before the end of the month, although that has now been pushed back to later in the year due to a busy schedule, a diplomatic source said. Any EU-wide sanctions action requires the unanimity of all 28 member states but there is no consensus on new punitive steps against Iran, a fact made clear by Mogherini on Monday. We didn t discuss, not today, not last week (and) I don t foresee any discussion also in the future, further sanctions from the EU side on Iran, she said, alluding to Macron s remarks, after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

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Rockettes Not Required to Dance at Trump Inauguration, Company Says - The New York Times

Within hours of confirming plans to appear at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the Radio City Rockettes were plunged into a maelstrom of social media outrage on Friday amid reports that the performers were contractually obligated to dance at the ceremony or lose their jobs. But as the day wore on, both the Madison Square Garden Company, which manages the Rockettes, and the dancers’ union, the American Guild of Variety Artists, said that any of the dancers could opt out of the Jan. 20 performance in Washington. The day of statements followed reports that a Rockette was “embarrassed and disappointed” that the decision to perform had been made for her. The dancer’s private Instagram post was published by the gossip website Perez Hilton and quoted widely by news outlets. That dancer, Phoebe Pearl, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday, nor did several of her fellow performers. Not long after those reports, a statement relayed through Mikyl Cordova, a spokeswoman for the Madison Square Garden Company, said that dancers’ appearances are voluntary. “For a Rockette to be considered for an event, they must voluntarily sign up and are never told they have to perform at a particular event, including the inaugural,” the statement read. “It is always their choice. ” The statement also said that, among the dancers, Mr. Trump’s inauguration has been a popular opportunity: “In fact, for the coming inauguration, we had more Rockettes request to participate than we have slots available. We eagerly await the inaugural celebrations. ” Nonetheless, the company did not respond to further inquiries or make any dancers available for interviews. Despite these assurances, many of the women may feel under pressure to perform. Much of the fear and confusion could be traced to an email sent on Thursday night by the union to some of the dancers. “If you are full time, you are obligated,” said that message, which was forwarded to The New York Times. “Doing the best performance to reflect an American institution which has been here for over 90 years is your job. I hope this pulls into focus the bottom line on this work. ” Union officials did not return any calls, but on Friday evening, the guild said on Facebook that it had reached an agreement with the company that would allow all employees, even dancers, to opt out of the inauguration. It said the earlier email to its members had simply been an explanation of the existing contract. The pressure to perform at the inauguration ceremony will probably vary based on the circumstances of each Rockette, according to a performer who spent five years with the company. Heather Lang, a contemporary dancer who left the Rockettes in 2009, said in a phone interview that there are about 12 dancers who perform in both winter and spring shows. They are a minority of the company, which has about 80 Rockettes. All of the dancers were seasonal until about a year ago. Ms. Lang, 35, said that for and seasonal dancers, there is a fear of jeopardizing their future employment and of compromising their standing in the eyes of James L. Dolan, the executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company, and his executives, if they complain or try to bow out. “One of the most annoying situations about that job is it’s corporate,” Ms. Lang said. “It’s not like a Broadway show where you feel like you have an artistic voice. You’re sort of owned by this corporation. ” So even if an appearance is considered voluntary, individual Rockettes may feel forced to perform if they are told that executives want them onstage in Washington. Ms. Lang said that performers are drawn to the company for the honor of dancing at Radio City Music Hall — as well as for the health benefits. Many of the women have feared standing up for themselves in the current controversy, she said. “Everybody’s in fear of losing their job. ” The idea that Rockettes could be forced to perform prompted anger on Twitter among actors, performers and other celebrities, who began widely circulating contact information for the company, the Rockettes’s producers and their union. Chris Pappas, a tour guide with Radio City Music Hall, said employees there were angry. “I can say that as a member of the tour guide staff, we have discussed it, and it has upset us,” Mr. Pappas said in a telephone interview. “It’s not saying the Rockettes are invited to perform. It’s saying that the Rockettes will perform. ” In announcing the appearance, Mr. Dolan said in a statement on Thursday that the Rockettes were “treasured American icons,” and noted that they had performed at the inaugurations of George W. Bush in 2001 and 2005. The dance company, known for pearly smiles and high kicks, is one of the most recognizable holiday institutions of the ’s hometown, and one of the few performers to confirm an appearance so far. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which has performed at previous presidential inaugurations, confirmed its appearance on Thursday. On Friday, a petition was circulating among people who were urging the group to reconsider. Last week, Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, confirmed in an email that the opera singer Jackie Evancho would be performing the national anthem at the event, calling her a “true role model and inspiration for people young and old in our country and around the globe. ” Other performers, including the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and the singer Elton John, have both said in recent days that, contrary to rumors, they would not be performing. In between commenting on Twitter about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and addressing business conflicts of interest within his family, the took time on Thursday evening to assure the nation that he did not want celebrities attending his inauguration. “I want the PEOPLE!” Mr. Trump tweeted.

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Loretta Lynch becomes first African-American woman AG.

Washington (CNN) Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the new U.S. attorney general on Monday, replacing Eric Holder. Lynch, the country's first African-American woman to serve in the role, had her nomination held up more than five months over politicking in the Senate. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's about time," said Vice President Joe Biden at the swearing in ceremony. The highly politicized five-month battle to choose Obama's next attorney general came to a close Thursday when the Senate finally voted 56-43 to confirm Lynch But the delay of her nomination neared record-breaking proportions. Republicans leading the Senate refused to bring her nomination up for a vote until Democrats cut a deal on abortion language in an unrelated bill. That legislation passed Wednesday, setting up Thursday's vote and ending the latest partisan Washington standoff. Ten Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was the only senator not to vote. Obama tapped Lynch to replace Attorney General Eric Holder in November and her nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in February. Still, she waited longer than the seven most recent U.S. attorneys general combined for a vote on the Senate floor, after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted on first finishing work on an unrelated bill. Loretta Lynch's father, Lorenzo A. Lynch, was in the Senate gallery watching when the historic vote took place confirming her daughter as the first African American female attorney general. "The good guys won. That's what has happened in this country all along," Lorenzo Lynch told reporters. "Even during slavery. Levi Coffin was a founder of the Underground Railroad. Even during slavery. A white man fought against slavery. So all over this land good folks have stood in the right lane, in the right path." A two-time U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Lynch takes on the high-profile job at time when America faces a series of challenges, from dealing with strained relations and deep distrust in some cities between the police and the communities they serve, to criminal justice reform, to confronting the ongoing threat of terrorism. Lynch, 55, has earned a reputation as a highly qualified, but low-profile prosecutor who has a good relationship with law enforcement and a history of handling tough cases well. She is a good listener and a skilled consensus builder, qualities that will help her succeed at Justice, said Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia who served under Lynch on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, a group that meets regularly to advise the Justice department on policy matters. "In that [attorney general] job you are at the center of so many of the emerging, significant, pressing issues not only in this country but around the world. There's probably no job in government as diverse and challenging as being attorney general of the United States," Heaphy said. He added that building support for initiatives both within and outside the department is an important part of the job. "She will be good at getting people to work well together. I think that's a strength of hers. I saw that on the committee," Heaphy said. Lynch's portfolio will include addressing voting rights, white-collar crime and policy reviews, as well as public corruption, an area in which she has vast experience. In a statement, Obama said America will be better off with Lynch leading the Department of Jusice. "Loretta's confirmation ensures that we are better positioned to keep our communities safe, keep our nation secure, and ensure that every American experiences justice under the law," Obama said in a statement shortly after the vote. Lynch's experience on civil rights case, like helping win the convictions of New York City police officers who sexually assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, will be important as her office tackles closely watched investigations in recent police conduct cases, including the still unexplained death of a 25-year-old Baltimore man while in police custody. "She's seen and understands the injustices that have taken place in the past and so therefore she's uniquely also equipped to deal with what's going on and do the kinds of investigations that will restore faith to Americans in their justice system," said Rep. Greg Meeks, D-New York. Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lynch grew up 60 miles to the east in Durham, North Carolina. Her father was a fourth-generation Baptist minister; her mother, an English teacher and school librarian. As a child, Lynch rode on her father's shoulders to his church, which served a meeting place for students organizing anti-segregation boycotts in the early 1960s, she told the Judiciary panel at her January confirmation hearing. Lynch eventually graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Speaking at her nomination announcement in November, Lynch highlighted the fact that the Justice Department is named for an ideal. "This is actually appropriate, because our work is both aspirational, and grounded in gritty reality," she said. "Today, I stand before you so thrilled, and, frankly, so humbled to have the opportunity to lead this group of wonderful people who work all day and well into the night to make that ideal a manifest reality." At a conference meeting with all the nation's U.S. attorneys a few years ago, Heaphy was put in charge of organizing a presentation showing the attorneys as they were 20 years before. Lynch shared a picture of herself with her college cheerleading squad. "Loretta sent me a picture of her as a Harvard cheerleader in a pyramid," he said. "She was comfortable sharing this with Eric Holder and other department leaders. She laughed at herself." "I don't think she's just tough, there's a humanity, there's a human touch that she has that will also serve her well," he said. "Nobody is going to mistake that she's in charge, but her humility and sense of humor will come through."

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University of California IT Workers Sue After Losing Jobs To Outsourcing - Breitbart

IT workers at the University of California intend to file a lawsuit challenging their dismissal after they were replaced by offshore workers, arguing that those sacked from the UC San Francisco campus were discriminated against based on age and national origin. [Around 80 people lost their positions in the department, including 50 workers and 30 contractors, in a move that is unheard of in the public sector, where offsourcing is much less common than in the private sector. UCSF hired the firm HCL to handle its services instead of the American workers. Randall Strauss from Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli Brewer, the attorney representing the argued that “to take a workforce that is overwhelmingly over the age of 40 and replace them with folks who are mainly in their 20s — early 20s, in fact — we think is age discrimination. ” The group also represents and “reflects the diversity of California” — to allow them to be “replaced with people who come from one particular part of the world” is discrimination based on their national origin, continued Strauss. The lawsuit will be filed in Alameda County Superior Court. On Wednesday, details about UCSF’s financial situation emerged that may help the IT workers in their case. A report by a California state auditor found an undisclosed $175 million in funds in the university’s budget the outsourcing would be estimated to save $10 million a year for the next 5 years. The lead counsel on the case, J. Gary Gwilliam, released a statement on the subject of the university funding: It is unbelievable to me that a public university would ship good American jobs overseas by telling the fired workers, the Regents, the Legislature and public of a crying need to save money, while at the same time maintaining a secret slush fund of $175 million dollars which would more than cover the cost of keeping all these jobs in California, leaving more than enough money leftover to cover the needs of the University and its students. Similar lawsuits have been popping up around the country recently. In December, former IT workers at Disney filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that American workers were being discriminated against in favor of hiring visa workers from overseas. Some staff members even alleged that they were forced to train their foreign replacements before being allowed to take their redundancy check. Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can like his page on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_ or on Gab @JH.

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TRUMP BLASTS MEDIA For LYING About Bust Of MLK JR Being Removed From Oval Office…Brings One Very Important Bust BACK Into The Oval Office

President Donald Trump didn t take long to put his stamp on the Oval Office, reinstalling a bust of Winston Churchill that had gotten the boot under President Obama.The Churchill bust was on view as Trump took some of his first actions as president, signing executive orders and a waiver to let generals serve in his cabinet despite prohibitions on ex-military tenure.There was a transatlantic flap when Obama removed the Churchill bust in 2009. The White House at first denied it had been removed, but it was later confirmed that it had been returned to the British Embassy.Reporters allowed into the Oval Office for the document signings observed the change.Obama defended the removal on a trip to the United Kingdom. I love Winston Churchill, I love the guy, Obama said at a press conference in London with then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Then-London mayor Boris Johnson, now foreign secretary, attributed the removal to Obama s ancestral dislike of the British Empire owing to his father s Kenyan heritage.During the initial flap, then-White House press secretary Dan Pfeiffer defiantly denied the charge, saying The bust is still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room. In fact, that was another bust that had been a gift to President Lyndon Johnson.The new Trump press shop didn t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.The Sun reported that when Johnson visited Trump tower and met with Trump advisors Steven Bannon and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, they asked for the bust to be returned. The Prime Minister is happy to loan the Churchill bust to the White House and will be delighted to view it on display when she visits this Spring, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Theresa May told the paper. Daily MailYesterday, TIME reporter Zeke Miller erroneously reported that Trump removed the MLK Jr bust from the Oval Office. He was called out for lying by President Trump s Press Secretary Sean Spicer and was forced to apologize:Here s the tweet from Trump s outspoken Press Secretary Sean Spice:Thanks to White House Chief of Staff for this wonderful picture of the MLK bust in the oval pic.twitter.com/Lzgj6RljvI Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) January 21, 2017

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Senator Warren endorses Clinton for president

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday. “I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House,” the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

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U.S. Gives The United Nations BILLIONS Of Your Tax Dollars For What?

The answer is anyone but YOU. Did you know that American taxpayers gave the U.N. general fund $654,778,938 in 2015? Did you also know that Obama committed an astounding $3 billion to a new U.N. Climate fund run by communist and terrorist nations. It gets better, we just gave Africa $36.5 million to train African doctors because the World Health Organization deemed it necessary. The NIH then gives the $36.5 million in American money to whomever the WHO wants it given to. Do you see how this works? The National Institutes of Health is a virtual slush fund for anyone and everyone in the world with a massive budget of $30 BILLION. The system of giving is a perfect setup for the REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH from the West. I ve heard different pundits call for the defunding of the National Institutes of Health and it s evident they re not being monitored. How do I know this? All you need to do is go to their website or read the news and you ll be shocked at the ridiculous studies they fund with YOUR MONEY! Like the one where they got monkeys drunk:GOLDEN HAMMER: FEDS SPEND MILLIONS TO STUDY DRUNKEN MONEYS, PILOTS AND STUDENTSIt ll make your head explode! Like a good lap dog, the U.S. is dedicating $36.5 million to help Africa train doctors because the famously corrupt United Nations determined that the continent has a terrible shortage of medical personnel and faculty.That means Uncle Sam must come to the rescue. The latest Africa allocation is in addition to the eye-popping $654,778,938 that American taxpayers gave the U.N. general fund in 2015 and billions more to the peacekeeping budget and other U.N. organizations. The U.S. has always been the single largest contributor to the world body, which is well known as a pillar of fraud and mismanagement. Even the U.N. s Human Rights Council, also funded primarily by American taxpayers, is a huge joke. A few years ago Judicial Watch reported that the U.N. awarded a genocidal warlord indicted by an international court for crimes against humanity a seat on its laughable human rights council. Last year President Obama committed an astounding $3 billion to a new U.N. Climate fund run by communist and terrorist nations.Now the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. s public health arm, has determined that sub-Saharan Africa is in desperate need of medical personnel. The region bears almost a quarter of the global disease burden yet has only 3% of the world s health workforce, according to WHO. So this week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation s medical research agency, kicked in the $36.5 million to train Africans. The NIH doles out north of $31 billion annually to hundreds of thousands of researchers at thousands of universities and institutions around the globe. A few years ago President Obama launched an NIH program to boost the number of minorities in biomedical research and he appointed the nation s first ever Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity to mastermind a multi-million-dollar effort.The new Africa allocation will help the region strengthen medical school curricula, upgrade community-based training sites and expand communications technology, according to an NIH announcement. Research must play an integral part in generating sustainable, quality health care in sub-Saharan Africa, which is the ultimate goal, NIH Director Francis Collins said. It is critical that we increase research capacity so Africans can carry out locally relevant investigations themselves, and develop the necessary expertise in areas such as bioethics, informatics, environmental science, and genomics. That will empower their participation in international collaborations. Read more: JW

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Republicans Vote To DEFUND The U.N. In Retaliation For One Single Issue

House Republicans have long since made clear their dislike and disdain of the United Nations. Some of them seem to buy into conspiracy theories that the U.N. is trying to take our sovereignty away from us. Others are just idiots, and the House GOP proved that when they passed a resolution that would allow Congress to yank our funding from the U.N. over just one issue.That issue is the apartheid state of Israel, which is also home to an awful lot of human rights violations. The U.N. recently approved a resolution declaring Israel s settlements in Palestine illegal, and the U.S. abstained from that vote, so it passed 14-0. In retaliation, the GOP wants the option of yanking our financial contributions unless the U.N. does what they want.The Zionists we ve got in Congress called this resolution anti-Israel. Sen. Ted Cruz said: I believe Congress should end U.S. taxpayer funding for the United Nations unless and until the U.N. reverses this anti-Israel resolution, and I believe there will be considerable support in Congress, I hope in both parties, to do exactly that. The House Freedom Caucus, made up of Tea Partiers who are uber-religious, will meet next week to discuss two options: Decreasing/ending funding entirely, or making our funding voluntary something Congress has to decide on every two years.And Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) put in his two cents with: The United Nations will regret this vote and I hope the Obama Administration will realize the massive mistake they made on their way out of the door. Seriously? Yes, seriously. Worse, though, Sen. Tom Tehran Cotton, the architect of that ridiculous letter threatening Iran, said: Any American with any common sense knows that Senegal and Malaysia don t set the agenda for the Security Council, the United States does. And this resolution would not have gone forward if the United States did not want it to go forward. So the whole world should bow to us, including the peacekeeping United Nations. We are completely and utterly beyond reproach, at all times, in all situations. Yeah, we re that awesome. Nobody should condemn Israel for anything, ever, period, end, because they are, apparently, God.Oh, please.Never mind all the good the U.N. has done. Protecting Israel, and sending taxpayer dollars there, is so important that it s worth killing 22 percent of their budget to make a point. Israel called the vote a betrayal, and since we apparently dance to their tune (despite all conservative cries that we re a sovereign nation), we ve decided the U.N. betrayed Israel, too.Israel s settlements in Palestine are illegal, make no mistake. Republicans like to paint the U.S. as this bastion of freedom and democracy, but they like to practice that selectively. Otherwise they d condemn Israel, as the rest of the U.N. did, and that would be that.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

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Convoy rolls into Damascus suburbs with aid for 40,000: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A convoy from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered towns in the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta on Monday, bringing aid to 40,000 people for the first time since June 2016, the United Nations said. A tightening siege by government forces has pushed people to the verge of famine in the eastern suburbs, residents and aid workers said last week, bringing desperation to the only major rebel enclave near the Syrian capital. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Twitter they had entered the towns of Kafra Batna and Saqba. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said in a separate tweet that the inter-agency convoy had 49 trucks. They carried food, nutrition and health items for 40,000 people in need, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. The last time we reached these two locations were in June 2016, he said. A health worker in Saqba who was present when the convoy started to offload said that nine trucks of foodstuffs, including milk and peanut butter, and four trucks of medicines had arrived so far. Technical specialists were on board to assess needs in the towns in order to plan a further humanitarian response, he said. More aid to complement today s delivery is planned in the coming days, Laerke added. At least 1,200 children in eastern Ghouta suffer from malnutrition, with 1,500 others at risk, a spokeswoman for the U.N. children s agency UNICEF said last week. Bettina Luescher, spokeswoman of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), said the convoy carried nutrition supplies for 16,000 children. Food, fuel and medicine once travelled across frontlines into the suburbs through a network of underground tunnels. But early this year, an army offensive nearby cut smuggling routes that provided a lifeline for around 300,000 people in the enclave east of the capital.

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LIBERAL RAGS LIKE USA TODAY Working Overtime To Destroy Trump…Here’s Proof Americans Aren’t Listening

IF YOU HAVEN T FIGURED IT OUT YET THE LIBERAL MAIN STREAM MEDIA IS WORKING OVERTIME TO LITERALLY DESTROY TRUMP The American people are rebelling against the lies and distortions from liberal rags like USA Today and other local news organizations. In this day of social media pushing the news, it s great that people can get the truth from other sources like Twitter or Facebook.Trump now leads in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina all states Barack Obama won his first term according to Real Clear Politics averages. THEY TRY TO DESCRIBE TRUMP BUT END UP DESCRIBING HILLARY CLINTON TO A TEE! IT S HYSTERICAL!WHO MAKES UP THESE EDITORIAL BOARDS ANYWAY?It didn t go so far as to endorse Hillary Clinton or, for that matter, libertarian Gary Johnson but what USA Today wrote Thursday night about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made it clear who the publication s editorial board does not, under any circumstance, want in the White House next year.In its 34 years of existence, USA Today has had a no-endorsement policy. In a historic first that breaks 34 years of tradition, the board decided this election season to revisit its no-endorsement policy then threw it out and penned a scathing critique of the GOP nominee that read more like an anti-endorsement.Trump, they wrote, is unfit for the presidency. From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents, the board wrote. Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. THIS DESCRIBES HILLARY TO A TEE:The editorial calls him her erratic, ill-equipped to be commander in chief and a serial liar. Via: WaPo

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BOOM! BRONCOS PLAYER Has Message For Fellow NFL Players Disrespecting Our Flag: “We Live In The Greatest Country On Earth”…If You Don’t Like It Here…”Why Do You Stay?”

He clarified that protesting in the United States is a right, but he also challenged the players taking a knee: If there s somewhere better, why don t you leave?Broncos defensive end Derek Wolfe explained Sunday why he stands for the national anthem, referencing the troops and the ideal vision of America. Wolfe, who is white, did not reference whether he agrees with the basis of the protest that gained steam Sunday following President Trump s condemnation: to object to the treatment of minorities in the United States.Entering Sunday, only one white player, Seth DeValve of Cleveland, had joined the movement. I stand because I respect the men who died in real battles so I have the freedom to battle on the field, Wolfe, 27, told ESPN in a statement. Paying tribute to the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom is why I stand. But everyone these days likes to find a reason to protest and that s their right. It s America and you are free to speak your mind. I just feel it s disrespectful to the ones who sacrificed their lives and it s the wrong platform. But like I said to each their own it s AMERICA! The greatest country in the world and if you don t think we are the greatest country in the world and you reside here, then why do you stay? A lot worse places in the world to call home. Proud to be an American. Several of his Broncos teammates took a kneel Sunday, days after Trump urged owners to kick the son of a bitch who protests off the team. Wolfe s teammate Brandon Marshall knelt throughout last season.Wolfe, in his sixth NFL season, grew up in Ohio and played at the University of Cincinnati. He skipped visiting the Obama White House following the Broncos Super Bowl win in 2016, saying, I just had a lot of stuff going on, things to do. NYP

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Ukraine says hopes for continued support against Russia from U.S. under Trump

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he hoped the United States would continue to support Ukraine in its stand-off with Russia following the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. “The President looks forward to a continuation of U.S support in two important areas: Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression ... and also assistance in the realization of major reforms,” Poroshenko was quoted as saying in a statement on Wednesday.

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DONALD RUMSELD HUMILIATES “The View” Dingbat Joy Behar…Calls Her Out For Not Understanding How Presidents Are Elected [VIDEO]

There is no question that Whoopi Goldberg is a talented actress and has the ability to make people laugh, but the gift of comedy that Whoopi used to make herself so popular with her fans has mostly disappeared, and has been replaced with a hostility that is anything but funny. The most painfully ignorant co-host on the show however, is comedian Joy Behar. It s been hilarious watching her now admit that she actually misses George W. Bush. Behar has made some embarrassing attempts lately to bond with guests from former members of George W. Bush s cabinet who ve appeared as guests on The View . Bear is so completely enveloped with hate for President Trump, that she s actually convinced herself that the whole world hates Trump as much as she does. She s gone so far off the deep end, that she truly believes she can convince conservatives like Bush s former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who appeared on The View last month [Watch HERE] to join her in her never-ending obsession to bash and discredit President Trump. Things didn t work out how Behar planned however, when Condoleezza Rice who gave Behar and her co-hosts an education on how things actually work in government and not how they wished they worked.This time around, it was George. W. Bush s former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld who appeared on The View and gave dingbat Joy Behar an education on how presidents are elected in the United States.WatchWhoopi Goldberg asked Rumsfeld if Trump s presidency was unique to which he replied that, It s different. Rumsfeld went on to explain how President Trump won in the primaries against some very qualified candidates, and went on to win against a seasoned, well-known Democrat Hillary Clinton. Behar pressed on, suggesting that Trump really is not a legitimate president because he lost by 3 million votes. Rumsfeld then proceeded to educate the loudmouth, emotional Joy Behar about how presidents are elected. Rumsfeld continued to educate the rest of the dingbats on The View who insisted on engaging in hypotheticals when it comes to the leftist tin-foil hat theory, that Trump worked with the Russians to affect the outcome of our elections.

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TICKING TIME BOMB: Why More Young Muslims In The West Are Sympathizing With Terrorists

These are statistics are shocking and very telling. Please be sure to share this piece with Hillary voters who support a candidate that welcomes un-vetted refugees to America with open arms in the name of diversity. Obama and his regime have been shaming Americans into believing that there is something wrong with us for being suspicious of radicalized Muslims in America. Barack Hussein Obama has gone out of his way to criticize Christianity, going as far back as the Crusades to make a point about Christians committing acts of violence against Muslims. He has also gone out of his way to embrace Islam. Is it any small wonder he is endorsed and adored by one of the most radical Muslims in America, leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan? On the back of the Brussels terror attack it is worthwhile remembering that while a majority of Muslims in the West appear to have no truck with terrorism or extremism, there are a significant number who sympathise with terrorism and repeatedly attempt to justify attacks on the West.TERRORISMAn ICM poll from 2006 revealed that 20 per cent of British Muslims sympathised with the 7/7 bombers who brought terror to the streets of the British capital, killing 52 and injuring hundreds. This number rose to one in four British Muslims, according to NOP Research for Channel 4. With a British Muslim population of over 3 million today, that translates to roughly three quarters of a million terror-sympathising people in the UK.The number rises for younger British Muslims a sure sign that radicalisation through schools, mosques, and prisons (often via Saudi-funded groups) is creating a long-term problem in Europe. Thirty-one per cent of younger British Muslims endorsed or excused the 7/7 bombings of 2005, with just 14 per cent of those over 45 doing so.Here are a few examples of tweets we found last night on Twitter following the Brussels terror attack:A 2013 study found that 16 per cent of young Muslims in Belgium believed that state terrorism is acceptable, while 12 per cent of young Muslims in Britain said that suicide attacks against civilians in Britain can be justified.Pew Research from 2007 found that 26 per cent of young Muslims in America believed suicide bombings are justified, with 35 per cent in Britain, 42 per cent in France, 22 per cent in Germany, and 29 per cent in Spain feeling the same way.And Muslims who are more devout or dedicated to Islam are three times more likely to believe that suicide bombings are justified a harrowing statistic when you consider that 86 per cent of Muslims in Britain feel that religion is the most important thing in their life. While just 5 per cent of UK Muslims said they would not report a terror attack being planned, the number leaps to 18 per cent amongst young, British Muslims.The anti-police narrative fueled by groups like Black Lives Matter are no doubt contributing to this idea that people should not work with the police, with the British Muslim Youth group recently urging a boycott of police.More recently, in 2015, it was revealed that 45 per cent of British Muslims think that hate preachers that advocate violence against the West represent mainstream Islam. Forty per cent of British Muslims say they want Sharia law in the West, while 41 per cent oppose it.Despite the fact that Islamophobia did not rise after the Paris Attacks, there remains a grievance industry across the Western world which targets young Muslims especially, urging them to feel victimised by Western governments for taking a stance against Islamism and scarcely a tough stance at that.CRIMINALITYDo these stats explain Obama s rush for a mass release of prisoners before he leaves office?Earlier this year it was reported that one in five prisoners in the United Kingdom s top security jails is now Muslim, a rise of 23 per cent from just five years ago. In total, a 20 per cent increase in the jail population in Britain has been outstripped by the rise in Muslim inmates up 122 per cent over 13 years.The same disproportionate figures are borne out across the United States, where Pew data from 2011 revealed that Muslims made up 9 per cent of state and federal prisoners though at the time Muslims made up just 0.8 per cent of the U.S. population.In 2008, the Washington Post reported About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in [France s] prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country s population. INTEGRATION Despite hundreds of millions of pounds, dollars, and euros spent on integration projects, it appears to be a Sisyphean task calling into question the rate at which immigration is occurring throughout the Western world and the tolerance with which our societies have operate thus far.The BBC found that 36 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death. Thirty five per cent of Muslims say they would prefer to send their children to an Islamic school, and 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds say they want government-funded Islamic schools to send their kids to.The report again highlights the radicalization of the Muslim youth in the West, with 74 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds preferring Muslim women to wear the veil, compared with only 28 per cent for those over the age of 55. Via: Breitbart News

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Uber Hires NASA Engineer for VTOL ’Flying Car’ Project - Breitbart

Uber has hired NASA engineer Mark Moore as Director of Engineering for their flying car project “Uber Elevate,” which seeks to expand the cab service into airborne travel. [Moore worked at NASA “as an advanced aircraft engineer and basically kickstarted the current interest in vertical and landing craft for urban flight with a 2010 paper on the feasibility of the vehicles. ” “The engineer was impressed by Uber’s work on the subject, and saw a chance to make the vision he’d originally articulated years ago into something real, in a reasonable time scale,” according to TechCrunch. “Moore said that key to his decision to join Uber was that the company seemed to have a practical business case for making a flying commuter transit service real — and nothing would ever get done without market motivation behind the vision. ” Uber’s plans for a flying service were first hinted at in September 2016 by Uber’s Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden. In an interview, Holden shared his interest in “vertical takeoff and landing” vehicles (VTOL) claiming, “It could change cities and how we work and live. ” Holden added that he wanted to offer his customers “as many options as possible to move around,” and that passenger drone technology could be a fully functioning norm within a decade. “VTOL is another way to do that,” said Holden, after talking about ways to decrease city traffic. Uber’s Head of Product for Advanced Programs, Nikhil Goel, confirmed in a statement that Moore would be working on VTOL vehicles. “Uber continues to see its role as an catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem,” said Goel in the statement. “We’re excited to have Mark join us to work with companies and stakeholders as we continue to explore the use case described in our white paper. ” In 2015, rapper and other individuals, including members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, invested $20 million in JetSmarter, which has been billed as “the Uber for flying,” while an Israeli tech firm is also prepared to launch their drone service in 2020, following 15 years of development. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

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Venezuela making interest payments on foreign debt: minister

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has started making interest payments on its foreign debt, Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Tuesday, amid delays in transfers of funds for sovereign and state oil company PDVSA bonds. Ratings agency S&P has put Venezuela in selective default for failing to pay $200 million in overdue coupon payments on its 2019 and 2024 bonds, and investors are seeking a default declaration on PDVSA for late debt payments. Rodriguez did not specify which payments he was referring to.

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Michael Moore Wants A Spot in Hillary’s Cabinet

Given the shameless, over-the-top, almost breathtakingly cloying pro-Hillary promotional hype that Michael Moore has been spouting recently (roughly, since mid-July), the only explanation is that this man—this pride of Flint, Michigan, this modest film documentarian who grew up middle-class but is now worth upwards of $50 million—secretly harbors a desire to play a role in a Hillary Clinton administration. If not a Cabinet post, then something else. It’s more likely he has his eye on an ambassadorship. Maybe he covets being posted in a fun country, preferably a “resort country,” a country with a temperate climate and friendly people, a country where they speak English and don’t get all carried with civil unrest. The Honorable Michael Francis Moore, U.S. Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. You have to admit, it has a nice ring to it. Don’t laugh. How do you think people get these ambassadorships? It’s never been about anything having to do with “qualifications.” Ambassadorships are handed out in return for loyal service, in return for an important political favor, in return for keeping a potential troublemaker quiet, and in return for helping to raise a shit-pot of campaign donations. It’s “quid pro quo” writ large. Of course, when it comes to countries that might actually require a modicum of diplomatic ability, the administration has to be careful. You can’t just take someone off the street and make them ambassador to a place like Russia or China or Brazil, not if the U.S. wishes to maintain its credibility. But still, there are plenty of places in the world where you can pretty much dump anybody. Take President Clinton’s administration, for example. In 1994, Bill Clinton rewarded congresswoman Maxine Waters for her long-time support, along with her role in securing African-American votes, by appointing her husband, Sidney Williams, to the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas. Prior to becoming an ambassador, Williams played football in the NFL, and ran a Cadillac dealership in Los Angeles. Life in Nassau was good. Again: “Michael Francis Moore: U.S. Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas” has a nice ring to it. If not the Bahamas, then how about Barbados? There’s whole array of places to pick from. Granted, picturing Moore in a silk top hat and coattails instead of his usual baseball cap and sweatshirt is a bit of a stretch, but with a little coaching, there’s no doubt he can pull it off. After all, isn’t that why people in these positions have “personal assistants”? So best of luck to you, Michael. Let’s hope that when you or your “people” casually mention to Hillary that being an ambassador would be a cool job, she gets the hint. On the other hand, don’t count your chickens before they hatch (to coin a phrase). Because this is big-time politics, there will be a long list of people seeking the same job. Debbie Wasserman and Donna Brazile immediately come to mind. David Macaray is a playwright and author. His newest book is “ Nightshift: 270 Factory Stories .” He can be reached at dmacaray@gmail.com

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#BringBackObama Hashtag Blows Up On Twitter As Americans Share Memories (TWEETS)

The six months since President Donald Trump was inaugurated have been somewhat of an adventure, albeit not a particularly enjoyable one for most of us, so in the wake of Trump s latest turmoils involving himself, his son, and Russia, many took to Twitter on Wednesday while feeling more than just a little nostalgic, as the hashtag #BringBackObama started trending.Barack Obama supporters flocked to Twitter yesterday to share memories of a relatively more stable time in American history, posting photos and generally just yearning for a time now past, when the 44th President of the United States of America was still in power. Forget 44.5, I ll keep 44 until we get a real 45, wrote @BerryMistyckle. My children came of age with a brilliant, courageous, soulful, decent president, was contributed by @RavMABAY among many other tweets fondly reminiscing the days of the former leader of the free world.Once upon a time we had a president that was willing to deliver a speech under the rain. #LEGENDARY #bringbackobama #BringObamaBack https://t.co/PM6M7Ii3fL Edgar Romero (@ed_romero93) July 12, 2017However, it wasn t all just praise and positive memories that were being shared, as there were plenty of Obama critics that wanted their voices heard, or at least their tweets read, too, slyly slipping the #BringBackObama hashtag into their tweets to attack the former President.Faux Progressive make excuses for Obama's Neoliberalism. Why? Obama punched down at black folks his entire Presidency. #BringObamaBack Nah. Tim Black (@RealTimBlack) July 12, 2017Sycophantic support of Obama despite his numerous failures caused you to be routed, democrats. #BringObamaBack pic.twitter.com/BOr0z7J6PS AmishDriveBy ?? (@Amish_Drive_By) July 12, 2017#BringObamaBack so he can be prosecuted for his crimes. Spying on the American people, Logan act, sedition. Nicole Andrews (@babycatcher16) July 12, 2017The Twitter debate erupted and raged on in the aftermath of Donald Trump Jr. releasing emails in which he accepted an offer to meet with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damning information on Hillary Clinton, his father s opponent in the presidential race, as well as being told the Russian government backed Trump Sr s presidential candidacy.It is still unknown whether the President s son released all of the email contact he had with Russia, later published in the New York Times, but it definitely contradicts the months of denial of any dealings with the Russian government that has been coming out of the Trump camp a story they ve described as a witch hunt. Barack Obama recently criticized the absence of American leadership shown under the Trump administration in a speech he delivered in Berlin in June. While current Gallup polls show that the majority of Americans agree with him, there are still many that are critical of Obama s eight years in office.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Trump Got An Eight-Year-Old American Girl Killed, Along With Other Children And Women

Donald Trump is an incompetent commander-in-chief and he just proved it with the first military raid he ordered.Since December 2014, the United States had refrained from putting boots on the ground in Yemen to fight terrorists because the region has become so dangerous and unstable.President Obama effectively used drone strikes to take down terrorist leaders instead.But in an apparent move to somehow prove that he s a tough guy, Trump ordered a military raid in Yemen that should get him arrested for murder.That s because an eight-year-old American girl was killed after being shot through the neck by American troops during the raid, which Trump and his team bragged about because 14 Al Qaeda militants were also killed.Nawar al-Awlaki surely was not expecting to die at the age of eight. But after two hours of suffering on Sunday, she passed away, thus being denied the chance to grow up by a tyrant thousands of miles away in the White House.Nawar was the daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen who joined the terrorist organization and was subsequently killed by a drone strike in 2011. Her 16-year-old brother was killed by a drone strike two weeks later.But we re talking about an eight-year-old girl here. Not a terrorist. And she was an American citizen. She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours, Nawar s grandfather Nasser al-Awlaki told the press. Why kill children? This is the new (U.S.) administration it s very sad, a big crime. Indeed, it is a crime and one that Trump and his entire administration should have to answer for.Nawar wasn t the only child to be murdered, however. Other children were killed in the raid and so were women. Medics on the scene said there were at least nine dead women and children because American military forces obeyed an order from a madman.And what s truly scary is that Trump is so willing to kill American citizens and call it collateral damage. No one can say that this girl was a terrorist, yet she was killed anyway as if she were.One wonders whether Trump will start targeting Americans he considers his enemies now that white supremacist Steve Bannon sits on the National Security Council, the same council that makes the decisions about whether an American should be targeted for assassination. After all, Trump has no qualms about killing innocent children so clearly Trump would do anything and say it s all in the name of national security.White House mouthpiece Sean Spicer made that clear on Monday when he said that it would be misguided and wrong to NOT handcuff a five-year-old child who was being detained and separated from his mother by airport security because he was traveling from Iran, on of the seven nations including in Trump s Muslim ban.So not only is Trump killing children, he s having them arrested, too, just because they happen to have brown skin and have connections to nations in the Middle East. Seriously.This is the kind of bullshit that terrorists will use to recruit more people to their cause, which will make our country less safe down the road as terrorists make plans to get revenge.By killing this little girl along with other children and women, Trump is no better than the terrorists who indiscriminately kill Americans on our own soil. And he s going to continue displaying his incompetence when it comes to military matters for the next four years if nothing is done to remove him from power to show the world that we do not in any way condone what he is doing. That being said, it s time for the military to stand up to Trump and be as brave as acting Attorney General Sally Yates was before Trump fired her.The United States military should not be ordered to conduct a raid if it means innocent women and children will be killed. The price is just way too high.Featured image via Twitter

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Republicans Are Now Threatening To KILL Transgender Students At This University

Republicans at the University of North Carolina have gone completely off the rails and are now literally threatening transgender women who use the women s restrooms on campus with the penalty of death.Sadly, there is no amount of exaggeration in that statement. College Republicans have already made direct threats to the life of one transgender female on campus and are asserting that they will defend their daughters and sisters, with equal force against anyone else they declare a threat.The student who received the threats posted the exchange to Reddit while redacting her name. College Republicans have completely denied that the exchange occurred, which is not surprising.Portions of the attack, taken from the thread, are listed below: First of (sic), you are a mentally-ill man, no amount of surgery or hormones will change that. Second, if a tranny like you goes into the women s restroom, then what about the rights of them? If you value your life, you shouldn t have made this sick choice and settled with the gender God gave you. Playing into your delusions would make us no better than someone who tolerates pedophiles. You will never be a woman, and so you should stick with the man s room, as that is what you are, a mentally-ill man. you are sick and disgusting for mutilating your own God-given body, so a tranny like you find no pity with us. If you ever dare to set foot into the women s room I will make sure to give you a lesson not to harass our women, you freak of nature. We will make sure that you trannies do not molest our daughters and sisters. This comes on the heels of North Carolina passing a license-to-bigot law, otherwise known as a religious freedom law. Among the usual mundane items of people being protected from the sin of baking gay wedding cakes, it also places restrictions on transgender individuals forcing them to use the bathroom that is associated with their physical genitalia.The UNC College Republicans released a statement denying everything about the incident, claiming that it s a fake story and they never threatened her. Yeah, I m sure that it s far more likely a transgender student decided to make death threats against herself, rather than just simply pee and go on with her business.The law, despite its utter failures on so many levels, seems to have had its desired effect. It has now legitimized every phobia and bit of hate that the good moral Christian right-wingers had inside themselves. They now think that they are within their rights to use deadly force to defend their women. Thanks, Republicans. We couldn t have gone full-Christian Sharia in America without you.Featured image via wikicommons

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High School Forced to Change Mascot over Accusation ’Stallions’ Is ’Sexist’ - Breitbart

A school district in Kentucky has canceled the school’s “Stallions” mascot after a petition from the community argued that the mascot was “inappropriate and sexist. ”[The petition, which garnered just over 200 signatures, was successful in its efforts to have the Fayette County school district changed the new Frederick Douglass High School’s mascot from the “Stallions” to something more appropriate for female sports teams. This is inappropriate and sexist when you consider the definition from “YourDictionary” … ”The definition of a stallion is a male horse that has not been castrated, used for breeding or is slang for a powerful and virile man who has a lot of lovers” and from Wikipedia … ”because of their instincts as herd animals, they may be prone to aggressive behavior, particularly toward other stallions, and thus require careful management by knowledgeable handlers. However, with proper training and management, stallions are effective equine athletes at the highest levels of many disciplines. ” Superintendent Manny Caulk announced on Tuesday that the high school would get rid of the stallion mascot in favor of a more horse mascot, which he believes will be more appropriate as a symbol for the several female sports teams that Frederick Douglass High School will field. Despite the seemingly harmless nature of the mascot, Caulk felt it necessary to claim that the never intended to offend any members of their community with the choice: “Since the public announcement of the mascot Monday, we have received feedback from some community members who have concerns about the mascot and we want assure our constituents that there was absolutely no intent to offend or upset anyone. We also recognize that there is support from others in our community to honor the former stallions of Hamburg Place farm,” Caulk said. Caulk declared that the students of Frederick Douglass High School will have the opportunity to choose their mascot from a slate of options: “Moving forward, we will keep the Keeneland green and orange colors and horse image in the school logo to pay homage to Lexington’s rich history in the horse industry, but we will allow the incoming students of Frederick Douglass High School to choose their mascot,” Superintendent Caulk said in a statement late Tuesday. “We’ve already received suggestions of Thoroughbreds or Racers as possible alternatives to Stallions and we will solicit additional ideas from our students before they choose a mascot grounded in the land’s equestrian heritage. ” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about social justice and libertarian issues for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com

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U.S. citizen on the run after busting out of Bali prison

DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian police are hunting for a U.S. citizen who escaped on Monday from an overcrowded prison on the holiday island of Bali by cutting through steel bars in a ceiling, the jail s second breakout of foreign inmates this year. The Kerobokan prison, about 10 km (six miles) from the main tourist beaches in the Kuta area, often holds foreigners facing drug-related charges. Cristian Beasley, who was a suspect in crimes related to narcotics but had not been sentenced, escaped at 4.10 a.m. (2010 GMT Sunday), said Badung Police chief Yudith Satria Hananta. It is thought that the prisoner escaped ... by cutting through the steel bars above the ceiling, he said in a statement, without giving details of how Beasley escaped without being detected. Beasley, 32, from California, is believed to have then used a rope to climb down a wall before getting over a perimeter wall in an area being refurbished. Police had questioned witnesses and guards and were hunting for Beasley, Hananta said. Another American, Paul Anthony Hoffman, 57, was captured while also trying to escape, Hananta said. Representatives of Beasley and Hoffman could not immediately be reached for comment. In June, an Australian, a Bulgarian, an Indian and a Malaysian tunneled to freedom about 12 meters (13 yards) under the prison s walls. The Indian and the Bulgarian were caught soon after in neighboring East Timor, but Australian Shaun Edward Davidson and Malaysian Tee Kok King remain at large. Davidson has taunted authorities by saying he was enjoying life in various parts of the world, in purported posts on Facebook. Kerobokan has housed a number of well-known foreign drug convicts, including Australian Schappelle Corby, whose 12-1/2-year sentence for marijuana smuggling got huge media attention. Indonesia has executed several foreign drug convicts in recent years. Indonesian prisons are often overcrowded, partly because a war on drugs led by the government of President Joko Widodo has led to a surge in the number of people locked up. As of June, Kerobokan housed 1,378 inmates, more than four times its planned capacity of 323, government data show. Prison escapes are fairly common in Indonesia, which launched an investigation this year after about 350 inmates broke out of a prison on the island of Sumatra.

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Jonah Hill Is No Joke - The New York Times

You can tell a lot about a person by watching him lose. I did not suggest specifically because I thought Jonah Hill would lose at it, but rather because his initial suggestion for an interview activity — tennis — presented logistical complications: specifically, the problem of trying to talk with someone from 70 feet away across a net on a loud city court. So Hill agreed to . “Doesn’t Susan Sarandon have a place in New York?” he mused while forming a plan. “I’ve heard that. I know people who’ve gone there. I don’t really know what Susan Sarandon’s involvement is. I just know for certain that she’s tangentially connected to the industry. ” This turns out to be correct. The Academy actress Susan Sarandon is a founder of a chain of lounges called SPiN. It has locations in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. The New York outlet, where I met Hill on a Wednesday afternoon in June, is an icily subterranean space on 23rd Street with nightmarish wall murals and 18 royal blue tables. Players were scattered about the place, ponging away to a dance remix of “Let’s Talk About Sex. ” Hill arrived punctually with drowsy eyes and an iced coffee from Starbucks. “No sign of Susan Sarandon,” he observed, looking around the room and dragging on his coffee, “which is the biggest sign of Susan Sarandon. ” He did not, he said, get a lot of sleep last night. There was a work call with someone in a different time zone — a “finance person” for a movie he plans to direct — and the conversation left Hill so jazzed that he couldn’t fall asleep, so he took his French bulldog Carmela (named after Tony Soprano’s wife) for a walk around the neighborhood, and when he finally dozed off he left a window open, leaving him speckled with “a thousand” mosquito bites, visible in rosy constellations across his arms. The coffee was helping. Hill, at 32, has appeared in enough movies (currently 29) that he was recognized, in the space of 10 minutes, by a female SPiN employee in her 20s who requested a photo, by a 40ish camp counselor who asked that Hill take a picture with his campers and by the campers themselves, who clustered around the actor and stared stoically into the camera for a photo in which Hill was the only one smiling. These people probably knew Hill from his role as a hilarious sidekick in the “21 Jump Street” remakes, or from his role as a hilarious sidekick in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” or from his role as a hilarious sidekick in “Superbad. ” The roles make up a numer ically small but portion of Hill’s career, and no number of contrasting performances — in indie comedies directed by the Duplass brothers, in dramas like “Moneyball” — can seem to override the public impression of him as a man who might, at any moment, start humping the furniture. This is fair, because Hill is excellent at delivering coitus jokes. It’s also unfair, because his acting career didn’t begin in a place and it doesn’t seem to be heading in that direction, even if his IMDb page is dotted with the presence of Judd Apatow. Hill has received two Oscar nominations and produced six movies and has writing credits on both of the “Jump Street” movies. He is not Seth Rogen, although people sometimes confuse the two men, which feels vaguely given that they look nothing alike. Next year he’ll direct a movie that he wrote (not a comedy). This summer he appears in “War Dogs,” directed by Todd Phillips, of the “Hangover” movies. Though it’s strewn with giggly moments, the movie is ultimately alarming. Hill plays a sociopathic arms dealer. In the basement at SPiN, patrons continued to recognize the actor, who didn’t wear a hat or sunglasses or other protective camouflage, until a manager registered the ogling and transferred Hill to a private room behind a curtain. By now the coffee had kicked in. I asked Hill if he was ready to play . “Yeah!” he said. “I was just thinking that I’d love to. ” Pause. “You didn’t think of that idea — I thought of it. ” This last sentence came across as a joke in real life — he was doing an impression of a surreally bratty person — but it reads horribly on the page, which turns out to be true of many things that Hill says. His humor is . This may be one reason that profiles of the actor have not historically been ultraflattering. Another reason may be Hill’s face. “I have resting bitch face,” he explained to me once. “I really do. It’s heartbreaking. I don’t mean anything by it. ” This is borne out by paparazzi photos of Hill sternly alighting from a vehicle, angrily riding a Citi Bike and resentfully hanging out with Leonardo DiCaprio. “I know I look really pissed off,” he said, “but I’m not. ” If life were a reality TV show, it would be accurate to say that Hill has received a “bad edit,” in part because of the above factors. In 2013 he did an interview with Rolling Stone that resulted in the following words being used by media outlets to describe him: humorless, insufferable, angry, defensive, pompous jerk, and “20 Most Hated Celebrities!” Today’s Jonah Hill, rallying at a table, seems like someone who might do yoga, or drink green tea, or practice Transcendental Meditation. Maybe it is just the residue of his youth in California. Maybe “centeredness” is just Los Angeles leaving the body. Whatever it is, he comes off as mellow and polite, keeping his phone out of sight during interactions and asking if I have any dietary restrictions. He behaves in a way that would assure his mother that she did a good job. He says that the trait he values most in others is being nice. Most famous people have a thin oleaginous layer of social grace that tops a bottomless well of impatience to get their press duties over with, but Hill seemed to be in no particular hurry to do anything, except lose at . While his serve is 90 percent unreturnable and his backhand is evil, Hill’s forehand is unreliable. Midway through Round 1 an employee popped his head in and asked for the score. “Fourteen to 20,” Hill replied. “She’s winning. ” The guy scoffed. “You’re losing to a girl?” “That’s not a very feminist attitude, my friend,” Hill said. “Does that make you mad?” he asked, after the employee left. “It’s not the dumb outlook that bothers me. It’s that he expects me to share that sentiment. He expects me to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m really embarrassed that a girl is beating me. ’’u2009” For Round 2, which he also lost, Hill plugged his iPod into a speaker and selected a playlist of ’90s rap acts like the Coup and Jeru the Damaja. When the game ended, he briefly howled in grief, bounced over to shake hands and then floated the idea of barbecue for lunch. Not a bad loser. A certain comfort with vulnerability might be the most prominent aspect of Hill’s personality. At lunch, he gets the hiccups. He warns me that his face sweats a lot, but that the rest of his body produces a normal amount of sweat, and he occasionally mops his forehead as politely as anyone can mop anything using a napkin that he has folded into a tidy mopping rectangle. If you compliment his acting, he’ll say, “Thank you,” and then “Do you really feel that way?” — and not in a “Do go on” tone, but as if he suspects a polite fabrication and is offering an out. Once he was asked to audition for a part in a filmed musical adaptation, and he declined — because he can’t sing, but also because the possibility of his audition tape’s being leaked was too embarrassing to contemplate. This hypothetical struck him as even more embarrassing than a leaked sex tape, because after all, he said, “most human beings have had more practice at having sex than they have at singing. ” Vulnerability is a counterproductive trait for a famous person to have, but Hill is funniest when he plays characters thumping up against their feeble natures, and he is most affecting in dramatic roles doing the same. It makes you wonder whether the kind of person most suited to being an actor — sensitive, expressive, slightly weird — is the kind of person least suited to being a celebrity. Hill has been sensitive and weird since infancy. He grew up in Los Angeles, the son of an accountant and a costume designer, enjoying a childhood that he characterizes as “fun” yet “super emo. ” He cried frequently. For a year starting at age 4 he pretended to be a dog and padded around the house on all fours, woofing, which may have been his first acting experience. He intended to grow up into a writer until he became obsessed with skateboarding at around 10. His dreams of becoming a professional skater eventually receded because of a lack of skill, and he enrolled in college at The New School with plans to write and direct. “In school I was always a decent athlete, a decent student, but I was never exceptional at any of that stuff,” he says. “When I started taking acting classes, it was the first time teachers were like, ‘You’re good and you should keep doing this. ’’u2009” Another adult who recognized Hill’s potential was Dustin Hoffman, who happened to be the father of Hill’s former schoolmate Jake Hoffman and who suggested that Hill audition for “I Heart Huckabees. ” Hill got the part and appears halfway through the movie as a teenager arguing with his sister and playing video games at a family dinner across from Mark Wahlberg. The role is a blip, but Hill earns his few minutes appearing at ease despite never having been in a movie and having no idea, he told me, when the camera was on him. This confidence apparently stretches back to his youth: A Jewish Journal profile from 2012 — a rare flattering one — includes a quote from Cantor Yonah Kliger of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, where Hill had his bar mitzvah, describing him as “destined for something great” and “electric” even at 13, reciting his Torah portion in a prayer shawl. Three years after “Huckabees,” Hill in “Superbad” as a who cries, dances, lies, has his heart broken, is struck by a number of vehicles and exchanges tender with Michael Cera’s character in a final scene that still makes me weep in a way that no Pixar movie ever will. This was his breakthrough. If “Superbad” cemented Hill’s status as an entertaining accent piece, “Moneyball” (2011) suggested that pegging him as a novelty actor was an error. His character in that movie, an economics geek named Peter Brand, is an introvert who walks the earth as if he’s about to be pantsed. He underplays the part so deftly that Brand’s emotional climax — when he sees that his methods actually work — is conveyed by no more than a few euphoric seconds of rapid blinking and a . The next movie he appeared in was a critical disaster of a comedy called “The Sitter. ” Because of this seesawing, the best way to make sense of Hill’s career is to divide it roughly in half, not chronologically but by the two kinds of movies he makes: on one side, the goofy com edies, and on the other side, movies by respected directors, like “Django Unchained” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Hail, Caesar!” After “Superbad,” it would have been easy for Hill to take the Adam Sandler route and ride the wave of his own typecasting, making bad copies of the same movie over and over again. Instead, he exercised discretion in his roles and did a job to hammer out the kind of career that hilarious sidekicks in teen com edies have not traditionally enjoyed. (Jason Biggs offers a useful point of comparison it took him a decade and a half to recover from the abasement of “American Pie. ”) The parallel movie tracks have one thing in common, which is that Hill tends to play obsessive characters in both. In “War Dogs” he is obsessed with selling weapons to the United States government for piles of money. In “True Story,” he is obsessed with a murderer. In “Moneyball,” he is obsessed with sabermetrics. In “Cyrus,” he’s obsessed with his mom. In “Superbad,” he is obsessed with the probability of losing his best friend. Even in “Hail, Caesar!” though he is onscreen for approximately two seconds, the gag of Hill’s character is that he is too engrossed in processing legal papers to take note of Scarlett Johansson’s predatory innuendoes. Obsessiveness is a good filter for choosing roles, because there is nothing with more comic potential than a character who desperately wants something, and there’s also nothing with more tragic potential the distinction is in how that obsession pans out. It can be a poignant trait, as with Jay Gatsby or an evil one, as with Hannibal Lecter or a creepy one, as with Annie Wilkes or a mesmerizing one, as with Willy Wonka or an epic one, as with Charles Foster Kane or a pa thetic one, as with Norma Desmond. Monomania is infinitely versatile. Ellen Lewis, who cast Hill as Donnie Azoff in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” had been particularly impressed with his performance in “Superbad. ” “Wolf” wasn’t necessarily written to be funny, she said, but Martin Scorsese wanted a Donnie who could improvise. “Obviously it was a different way to go,” she said. “Jonah’s got depth, but at the same time, he’s extremely charismatic. And really funny people can be very dangerous. He showed that edge. ” He reminded her a little, Lewis said, of Robin Williams. One thing I’ve never understood about acting is how famous actors get better at it. Do they all have acting coaches on retainer? And if these acting coaches are so good, why aren’t they famous actors? When someone is freakishly precocious at acting, like Claire Danes, where does that come from? When someone gets appreciably worse at acting, like Al Pacino or Robert De Niro, how does that happen? And when someone gets perceptibly better at acting, like Jonah Hill, how does he make sure that his trajectory continues in a northeastern direction? At lunch he mentioned that every night before filming “Cyrus,” he brushed his lips with a toothbrush because his character seemed like the kind of person who would have permanently chapped lips. How did he learn to think of this stuff, these novelistic details? Hill shrugged at the question. “If it was your job to think of those things, you would. You just would. ” But what’s his secret? “The acting juice I drink every morning. ” But really. “I watch things over and over again,” Hill said. Like, 20 times. Most recently, “Behind the Candelabra. ” Before that, the French film “A Prophet. ” All the great Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola movies, obviously. All the Paul Thomas Anderson movies. He loves Lena Dunham and Spike Jonze. When he finds a movie he likes, he watches it compulsively — and at a loud volume, because he has bad hearing from listening to live music as a youth without taking the proper precautions. He watches movies until he is able to forget that he is watching a movie, which to Hill is the sign of a really great movie. He picks the roles he plays using the same rubric he uses to pick the movies that he watches, which is by director. “If you have a great script, it’s hard to [expletive] it up — but I’ve kind of had that happen,” he said. “And I’ve had scripts that were not even complete, and the director was amazing, and I ended up being proud of the movie. ” Great directors, he maintained, make great movies. It took him a while to figure this out. Even if a role is good, he won’t do a movie now unless he believes in the director, because “You don’t want to be a cool character in a bad movie. ” Nobody has bulletproof judgment, though, and Hill’s character in this summer’s “War Dogs” could be seen as a terrific character in an otherwise O. K. movie. It’s not that “War Dogs” isn’t funny and it’s not as if Todd Phillips has made a comedy about Ferguson, but it is an Iraq War movie made by the director of “The Hangover. ” There are strippers and an underwritten role and Bradley Cooper. Phillips originally approached Hill with the movie a few years ago, offering him either of the two lead roles, but Hill declined, thinking it was somehow too similar to “The Wolf of Wall Street. ” Phillips kept trying. Hill appreciated the persistence and eventually said yes. He was driving out of the “yes” meeting in his car when he spotted Phillips leaving separately on his Vespa. Unaware that Hill was watching, Phillips pulled over to the side of the road and did a victory fist pump, by himself, in a moment of unguarded personal joy. Hill found this immensely endearing. (Philips said he does not recall this event but that he believes it happened: “I’ve been known to tool around on my Vespa and I’ve been known to get excited. ”) “It’s funny,” Phillips said of Hill, “because in actual life he’s — ‘quiet’ is the wrong word, but reserved. If you sit down to lunch with him you’ll laugh, but he’s reserved. When he steps on set, this natural swagger comes out. ” In the movie, Hill plays Efraim Diveroli, an bro from Miami Beach with ambitions and a buttery spray tan. The movie is based on a true story, which originally appeared in Rolling Stone and which Hill himself tried to option before finding out that Phillips had already bought the rights. The real Efraim Diveroli does not approve of the movie, has not spent time with Hill and has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. The buttery spray tan was applied nightly in Hill’s hotel room by a woman named Felicia, who stood aiming a hose while he pulled his boxers into a thong and revolved. Throughout filming he smelled faintly tropical. To prepare for all his movies, Hill compiles playlists and then listens to them until they seep into his consciousness. For “War Dogs,” the playlist involved “a lot of cheesy, Miami booty bass,” which gives you a sense of his character’s personality: loud, libidinous and whatever the opposite of introspective is. “I imagined him listening to music that revved him up to lie to someone,” Hill said. “A lot of the people with confidence that you play, you try to find their deep insecurity. I don’t think Efraim is a deeply, deeply insecure person. ” Instead of making the character a cartoon villain, Hill’s Efraim is gleeful and coercive and menacing, with a helmet of gelled hair and a giggle that sounds like the creepiest ringtone on earth. Miles Teller in the film but disappears in the role next to Hill, he has the charisma of a corn dog. Hill’s appeal, whatever the genre, is in his instinct to punctuate long stretches of smoothness with florid bloopers. He’s either fully in control of himself or totally at the mercy of his emotions. He has the fallibility of an Everyman with the magnetism of someone millions of young men and women would halt a game to take a selfie with. A decade ago we idolized celebrities whom we could never, in a million years, imagine being or dating. Lately we have adjusted our expectations downward to prefer figures, like Hill, who could be described as “reasonably aspirational. ” In person he’s both smooth and not with cinematic extremity but in a way that makes you think his friends definitely have a lot of Jonah Hill anecdotes in their back pockets. He is a generator of incidents. One morning in June we went for a southbound walk on the High Line. Hill ambled along at a pace, pausing to buy a $1 amulet reading WORK SMOOTHLY LIFETIME PEACE from a (possibly phony) monk and lingering to form a audience for a street performer singing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up. ” “I love this song,” Hill said, grooving mildly and retrieving a bill from his pocket. There was no visible donation receptacle, so he put the money on the performer’s side table, where it started blowing away in the wind. To prevent this, Hill slid the man’s nearby iPhone onto the bill to act as a paperweight, but his finger tapped “pause” in the process and the Rick Astley instrumental abruptly ceased. “I’m sorry!” Hill wailed. “I completely [expletive] that up. ” The performer made a “no prob” gesture and resumed singing, then did a back flip, as if to assure Hill that everything was cool between them. As we walked away Hill spoke directly into my tape recorder, as if to guarantee that the corny Rick Astley joke he was about to make would be reflected accurately for future generations: “I want it on the record that he just looked me in the eye and promised me never to hurt me. It’s documented. If that man ever, ever breaks my heart or deserts me, there will be legal repercussions. ”

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In schools and hospitals, Turkey carves north Syria role

AL-BAB, Syria/BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) - Children returning to school in the northern Syrian city of al-Bab were handed a new textbook this term: T rk e reniyorum - I am learning Turkish . Turkish lessons, Turkish signposts, Turkish-trained police and most recently a Turkish post office all point to Turkey s deepening role in an area of northern Syria it captured from Islamic State (IS) with the help of Syrian rebels. Turkish administrators are even helping to run hospitals in the area. Ankara has taken on a widening role in the 100-km (60-mile) stretch of territory seized in its eight-month long Euphrates Shield operation, laying the foundations for long-term ties with an area that is of crucial strategic importance to Turkey. Launched to drive IS away from the border, the operation also aimed to block further expansion by Syrian Kurdish groups that Ankara deems a threat to its national security. With the Euphrates Shield region calm for months, Ankara says it wants to help recovery and to encourage a return of Syrian refugees, millions of whom fled the six-year-long war into Turkey. But Turkish support is also consolidating the region s status as a Syrian opposition-held territory where Turkey-backed Syrian opposition groups are building their own government even as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad win back swathes of the country elsewhere. After Daesh (Islamic State) was expelled ... we returned and the cities were suffering from large-scale destruction and general ruin, said Mohammad Karaz, director of education in al-Bab. Some schools were wiped out entirely, he said. The restoration was done by our Turkish brothers who restored 10 schools, one of which we are sitting in today, he said during an interview at the Major Bulent al-Bayrak elementary school, named after a Turkish officer killed while fighting Islamic State for control of al-Bab. Arabs and Turks are siblings reads a mural in the schoolyard. Turkish aid includes stationery, books and clothes. Karaz said the schools were teaching a Syrian curriculum modified to remove the state s Baathist ideology. The decision to add Turkish was taken unanimously by Syrian education officials in the area, he said. Turkish classes, taught by Syrians trained in Turkey, have started for pupils aged between six and nine. Explaining the decision, Karaz noted that two-thirds of al-Bab citizens had sought refuge in Turkey. Turkish authorities had given assurances that qualifications from schools in the area would be recognized in Turkey and students can apply to Turkish universities , he said. A senior Turkish official said Ankara aimed to recreate the conditions to bring life back to normal in the area which is located northeast of the city of Aleppo and stretches to the western bank of the Euphrates River. Turkish support included health care, security, food and police training. Turkey wants the Syrians living (in Turkey) to return to their country ... However, it will continue to host the Syrians here and provide humane living conditions for the Syrians in the regions under its control for as long as necessary, the official told Reuters. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in a speech last weekend, said: We don t have a wish to occupy these lands but we want the rightful owners to go back there. Damascus has, however, long accused Turkey, a major backer of the Syrian opposition to Assad, of colonial ambitions in northern Syria. The front page of the pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar on Thursday declared that Ankara was undertaking the Turkification of the area. Turkey s intervention was driven chiefly by concern over the growing sway of Syrian Kurdish groups seen by Ankara as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade long insurgency against the Turkish state. The Euphrates Shield operation shattered the Syrian Kurds hopes of joining up two Kurdish-dominated regions of northern Syria, where the war has allowed Kurdish militia to carve out their own autonomous regions. The Syrian opposition s efforts to establish their own interim government in the Euphrates Shield area received a big boost this week when a Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group handed it control of a border crossing to Turkey. The interim government s aims include drawing investment to move the people from a state of war to work and building the region , said Khaled Aaba, a senior official with the Jabha Shamiya FSA group that handed over Bab al-Salama crossing. Crediting Turkey for standing by Syrians in their travails , he said Ankara was actively participating in supporting administrative and service institutions in the area . The existence of (the interim) government better organizes this relationship. Turkey s support to the health sector has included repairing and expanding hospitals previously operated by the Syrian state. Turkish administrators are working alongside Syrians at the Hikmeh Hospital in al-Bab, said Ahmad Aabo, a Syrian medical official in the city. Turkey s main project is a 200-bed hospital that will replace one destroyed during the war with IS. The companies taking control of the construction are Turkish, we don t have companies capable of doing such a project, said Aabo, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from the city. He said work on the hospital, which began a month ago, should be completed by New Year, comparing the rapid pace of the Turkish project with the 25 years it had taken to build its predecessor. Turkish support for Syrian security forces has included training police officers who began deploying in the region in January. Abdel Razzak al-Laz, the head of the National Police and General Security Forces , said 7,000 have now been deployed. Everyone wants the return of security and stability, wants to see a police patrol at night and during the day, said Laz, a police director when he defected to the opposition in 2012. The numbers are increasing, and there are continuous courses.

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Russian hopes of thaw with Trump dented after his top security adviser quits

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s parliament applauded on learning that Donald Trump had won the U.S. election. But prospects for better relations with Washington have suffered setbacks since then and the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser is the biggest blow yet. The Kremlin still believes a rapprochement is feasible, even if it might take longer than initially thought. But the clock is ticking: Vladimir Putin is expected to run for another presidential term next year, and an easing in Western sanctions could speed Russia’s recovery from a recession and safeguard his national popularity. For now, Russia plans to keep working with the Trump administration towards a rapprochement, looking to improve the atmosphere. With relations having sunk to a post-Cold War nadir under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama as a result of Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, they could hardly get worse. A first meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, expected in Germany later this week, will give the Kremlin a chance to grasp what Washington is now thinking and where this may lead. The resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was seen in Moscow as a leading advocate of warmer ties with Russia, has underscored for the Kremlin the difficulties of reaching a settlement with Washington and drove home the urgent need to find new areas of common interest. Flynn, who shared dinner with Putin in 2015 and favoured Washington uniting with Russia against Islamic State militants, quit on Monday after revelations he had improperly discussed the issue of U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to Washington before Trump took office. A U.S. official said Flynn indicated to the envoy that the sanctions “would not necessarily carry over to an administration seeking to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia”. “Flynn, unlike many other high-ranking Americans, was at least open to dialogue,” said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the upper house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “Either Trump has not gained the requisite independence and is being gradually (and not unsuccessfully) backed into a corner, or Russophobia has already infected the new administration.” Other Russian politicians suggested Flynn had been forced to resign to harm relations with Moscow. But the Kremlin, anxious not to feed fears of Russian media manipulation to influence U.S. politics, said only that it was an internal U.S. matter. Trump came to power talking of wanting cooperative U.S.-Russian relations, for example to take joint action against Islamic State militants. So far, there’s been scant improvement. Trump spoke by phone to Putin on Jan. 28, but Reuters learnt that the call had not gone smoothly: Trump used it to denounce a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States. The Kremlin is also struggling to set up a meeting. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said on Tuesday he could not say when or where the Russian leader would meet Trump and that it was “premature” to even talk about what direction U.S.-Russian relations might take. A series of U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s cabinet nominees did not go the Kremlin’s way either, with the incoming defense secretary and secretary of state both raising concerns about the dangers of Russia as an unpredictable military player. Russian officials are frustrated too that Trump has not yet filled key senior staff positions at the State Department, leaving Russian diplomats feeling they have nobody to work with. “To have cooperation, you need someone to promote it from the other end,” Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, testily told a news briefing last week. Moscow seems to have been taken aback by the strength of Congressional opposition to Trump overseeing a rapprochement with Russia, a factor that would make it hard for him to ease sanctions even if he wanted to. In a further reverse for the Kremlin, senior U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would give Congress the right to review any move to relax sanctions on Russia. Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, told state television last week Moscow was aware of how difficult the domestic U.S. scene was becoming for Russia. “Does the lack of political consensus inside the U.S. create problems for our bilateral relations?” Kislyak asked rhetorically. “That is an objective reality.” There were muted expectations in Moscow that Trump might move fast to reverse Obama’s expulsion in December of 35 suspected Russian spies over allegations of Russian-backed cyber attacks on U.S. election campaign groups to help Trump win. Obama shut down two Russian compounds at the same time that he said were used by Russian personnel for “intelligence-related purposes”. Back then, Trump praised Putin for refraining from retaliation, calling him “very smart”. But Trump has given no indication since that he will roll back any of the measures. One of the biggest setbacks for Moscow followed a flare-up in fighting in eastern Ukraine where government forces are facing off against pro-Russian separatist forces. Before the escalation in January, which both sides blame on each other, the Trump administration gave the impression it was open to looking at reviewing sanctions on Russia. Afterwards, Nikki Haley, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, blamed Russia for the fighting and said Ukraine-related sanctions would not be lifted until Moscow returned Crimea to Ukraine, something Russia says it will never do. Flynn’s resignation may hurt more, though. “Flynn was the main lobbyist for the ‘big deal with Putin’ project,” said Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin. “There was nobody in Trump’s entourage who so persistently lobbied to cancel the sanctions as Flynn. Today is a black day for Kremlin diplomacy and for Putin personally.”

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Trump's heartland voters shrug off global uproar over immigration ban

(This version of the Jan 29 story has been corrected to show former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott is from Mississippi not Missouri) By Laila Kearney (Reuters) - Many of President Donald Trump’s core political supporters had a simple message on Sunday for the fiercest opponents of his immigration ban: Calm down. The relaxed reaction among the kind of voters who drove Trump’s historic upset victory - working- and middle-class residents of Midwest and the South - provided a striking contrast to the uproar that has gripped major coastal cities, where thousands of protesters flocked to airports where immigrants had been detained. In the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, Missouri, 72-year-old Jo Ann Tieken characterized the president as bringing reason into an overheated debate. “Somebody has to stand up, be the grown up and see what we can do better to check on people coming in,” she said. “I’m all for everybody to stop and take a breath … Just give it a chance.” By executive order on Friday, Trump banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen – and temporarily halted the entry of refugees. In the electoral strongholds for Trump, residents seemed nonplussed about the uproar flashing across their television screens. They shrugged off concerns about botched execution, damage to foreign relations and legal challenges across the country. In New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, Trump’s action set off an outpouring of anger. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, evoked an image of the Statue of Liberty weeping. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York teared up himself on camera as he seethed over the “mean-spirited and un-American” immigration ban. Veterans in government agencies, including the Homeland Security and State departments, blasted Trump’s team for what they called slipshod planning and scant interagency communication, criticism the White House rejected. At airports, security officials also struggled to consistently enforce vague rules. But allegations of operational or administrative blunders may do little to dampen enthusiasm for a president who rose to power on a populist and protectionist platform, political analysts said. Louise Ingram, a 69-year-old retiree from Troy, Alabama, said she forgave the new administration a few “glitches,” such as widespread confusion over treatment of green card holders, as it moved to protect U.S. citizens from attacks. “I’m not opposed to immigrants,” she said. “I just want to make sure they are safe to come in.” A senior Trump administration official said political considerations had little to do with the executive orders. They rather represent a reaction to the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California; the Boston Marathon bombing; and multiple attacks by radicalized groups in Europe. “The reality is that the situation that exists today in parts of France, Germany and parts of Belgium is not a situation that we want replicated inside the United States,” one official told Reuters. Candace Wheater, a 60-year-old retired school cafeteria worker from Spring Lake, Michigan, also referenced the attacks in Brussels and Paris. “Look at what’s happening in Europe,” she said. “I don’t dare travel there, out of fear.” Steve Hirsch, 63, from Manassas, Virginia, drove to Washington’s Dulles airport on Sunday to pick somebody up, rather than to protest as hundreds of others did. He said he supported Trump’s order. “A country is not a country if it doesn’t have borders,” he added. He lauded Trump’s actions as a calculated step toward the larger goal of tightening border security. “He probably went as far as he thought he could,” Hirsch said. “You can’t ban everybody in the world, but I think it’s prudent considering the conditions in certain places in the world.” Trent Lott, a former Senate Republican leader from Mississippi who is now a lawyer in Washington, D.C., said the orders made sense to “working-class Americans in the real world.” “Out in the rest of the country, people are excited to see the president moving forward with securing the border,” he said. University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato agreed that the weekend protests over the executive orders would not hurt Trump politically. “His base is as firm as ever,” he said. “What he’s lost in the very early polls is the Republicans who were never Trumpers and ended up voting for Trump.” Trump opponents have succeeded in winning some early court decisions that could undermine the practical impact of his executive orders, but Sabato said his base would perceive those as attacks from liberal elites. Trump could eventually lose support if he fails to keep promises important to regions that supported him, such as delivering jobs to the so-called Rust Belt, the Midwestern states dotted by dying factory towns. Whatever Trump ultimately accomplishes, his election has ushered in a new extreme of political polarization to an already deeply divided country. “I just have not found a single person who has any neutrality at all about Donald Trump,” Sabato said. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 40-year-old teacher Trista Carles said she had been ordered to keep her views about Trump out of the classroom. “We were told to be Switzerland,” she said. “We’re not allowed to take any sides or views.” She has her own opinions, of course, and said she appreciated that Trump, in his blunt way, gave voice to them “with no sugar-coating.” “I think it’s just too easy to get into our country and stay illegally,” she said. “I feel like he is going to – to the best of his abilities – make a lot of things he said happen.”

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Republicans strike back at new U.S. ban on forced arbitration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans lawmakers on Tuesday started trying to kill a brand-new U.S. rule prohibiting banks and credit card companies from requiring customers who open new accounts to sign an agreement that they will not join a group lawsuit in the event of a dispute. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday finalized the new rule banning “mandatory arbitration clauses” requiring consumers to forego class-action suits and instead settle disputes in negotiations overseen by arbitrators frequently hired by companies. The rule immediately ran into fierce opposition by Wall Street and Republicans who control both Congress and the White House. They have long criticized the consumer agency, which is run by a Democrat, Richard Cordray. Senator Tom Cotton, a member of the Banking Committee, has already announced he is drafting a resolution to kill the rule. His fellow Republican Senator Pat Toomey, chair of the subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer protection, said he is considering a similar step. Republican lawmakers plan to eliminate the rule, using a law that allows Congress to undo new regulations with simple majority votes in both chambers and a signature from the president. Analysts and consumer advocates have said the agency’s rule may survive the Congressional challenge. Still, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is contemplating a legal challenge and Trump administration officials are also looking at ways to kill the rule. Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst for the investment firm Compass Point Research & Trading, said the rule has a slightly better than 50 percent chance of surviving in Congress. Joe Valenti, who tracks the issue for the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, said the House of Representatives was unified against the rule, which opponents have argued benefits class-action lawyers, not consumers. “It comes down to the Senate,” said Valenti, noting that the rule would survive if only three Republicans in that chamber switched sides. That is possible, said Ed Mierzwinksi, the consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. He noted that Senate Republicans have struggled to gather enough votes for majorities and the calendar is swollen with pressing legislation and confirmation hearings. In addition, Mierzwinksi said, senators may be leery of appearing to side with Wall Street against consumers. He noted that Wells Fargo & Co used clauses in its account-opening agreements to block customers from suing over its phantom account scandal. Supporters of the rule say mandatory arbitration denies citizens their day in court and is rigged in favor of big firms. They say litigants banding together in a class-action lawsuit have a better chance of getting companies to answer publicly for illegal activities and that fears of such a suit can discourage law breaking. The consumer protection agency wrote the rule after conducting a lengthy, multi-year study of the issue. Opponents of the rule say the study is flawed and that arbitration is cheaper and faster than class-action lawsuits and produces better awards for consumers. The Chamber is exploring a prompt legal challenge to the rule, said Matt Webb, senior vice president for its legal reform institute. Another possible challenge could come from the acting comptroller of the currency, Keith Noreika. He is laying groundwork to invoke an untested provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that allows the council of the country’s top financial regulators to nullify a consumer agency rule if they decide it threatens the safety and soundness of the banking system. Rohit Chopra, senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America and former CFPB assistant director, said a lawsuit will probably fail because the law says the agency can restrict arbitration as long as it hews to its study. He said the Dodd-Frank provision that the comptroller’s office is looking at was meant to keep risks to the financial system at bay. “To suggest that this rule would cause a financial crisis is ridiculous on its face,” he said.

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POWERFUL: A RAPE SURVIVOR EXPLAINS Why Men Should Never Be Allowed In Women’s Bathrooms And Locker Rooms

This is a powerful story of a courageous young woman who is fighting for the rights of women and children everywhere in America to feel safe in public bathrooms and locker rooms. It is a MUST read and SHARE story.A few months ago, Kaeley Triller, from the Keep Locker Rooms Safe organization and a victim of rape registered for a workshop called The Story Workshop at the Allende Center in Seattle. It was primarily aimed at helping survivors of sexual abuse find the purpose and weight in their fractured personal narratives, the conference promised to be intense but deeply healing.I don t know exactly what I expected. I was naively hopeful that I would get a few good writing tips that would enable me to beautify my past and approach it like one of Aesop s fables third-person fiction with a perfect little moral at the end of the story.That s not what happened. One of the pre-assignments was to write 700 words about a painful childhood memory. I was surprised at the one I chose. It wasn t a heavy hitter, so to speak. I wrote about a Polaroid picture I kept rediscovering in a shoebox at my parents house, and my inability to figure out why looking at it made me want to rip it to shreds.I m about ten years old in the picture, with scraggly hair, pale skin, and a vacant expression. I m wearing my mom s oversized knit sweater and Oxford shoes my dad had bought me. In my hands is a piece of green felt I d cut into the shape of New York for a school report about a U.S. state. Coincidentally or not, New York is the place my abuser had recently moved. I think I wanted to be closer to him. Don t try to understand it. I still don t.My small group dissected the story with grace and insight that could only be offered by those who spoke the same horrific language of shame and rage and grief. I felt nothing as I spoke about it. It is what it is, I remember saying, committed to my ambivalence. My group leader brushed away a tear and said, Kaeley, this story breaks my heart. Why do you hate the little girl in that picture so much? I couldn t access her understanding or her empathy. I recognized the accuracy of her assessment, but I didn t know how to change it.Later that evening, one of the workshop presenters tasked us with a seemingly benign activity. We were instructed to play with crayons and miniature tubs of play dough on the tables in front of us. I hated these types of exercises. I thought they were such a waste of time. I reached for a purple crayon and reluctantly complied. I drew a picture of a flower and rolled a snake out of my play dough. And I burst into tears.The invitation to engage as a child had revealed my whole dilemma: I didn t hate the little girl in the photo. I hated her need. I hated her anonymity. I hated the visible proof that she loved her abuser. I hated that she didn t know any better, that it took her another ten years to figure out why she still slept with the light on and showered in her underwear and vigilantly lined the crack under the bathroom door with a beach towel and destroyed her teeth with gum she relentlessly chewed as a means of escaping the recollection of his breath on her face. I hated that he fooled her. He fooled everybody. He was really good. Wake up! I wanted to scream at her. Can t you see what s going on? Do something about it! It s the same desperate inclination I m fighting today. Everywhere I read in the news, there s talk of another school or gym or business that is boldly adopting progressive new locker room policies designed to create equal rights for people who identify as transgender. These policies allow transgender individuals to use the locker room consistent with the sex they identify as their own, regardless of anatomy.While some have proposed a third option for transgender people (single-occupancy restrooms and showers), this option has been largely struck down, and employees are prohibited from suggesting it, as it is considered discriminatory and emotionally damaging to a group of people who are working so hard to fit in. The solution? Anyone can use whatever restroom he or she wants without being questioned.I read these reports, and my heart starts to race. They can t be serious. Let me be clear: I am not saying that transgender people are predators. Not by a long shot. What I am saying is that there are countless deviant men in this world who will pretend to be transgender as a means of gaining access to the people they want to exploit, namely women and children. It already happens. Just Google Jason Pomares, Norwood Smith Burnes, or Taylor Buehler, for starters.While I feel a deep sense of empathy for what must be a very difficult situation for transgender people, at the beginning and end of the day, it is nothing short of negligent to instate policies that elevate the emotional comfort of a relative few over the physical safety of a large group of vulnerable people.Don t they know anything about predators? Don t they know the numbers? That out of every 100 rapes, only two rapists will spend so much as single day in jail while the other 98 walk free and hang out in our midst? Don t they know that predators are known to intentionally seek out places where many of their preferred targets gather in groups? That perpetrators are addicts so committed to their fantasies they ll stop at nothing to achieve them?Do they know that more than 99 percent of single-victim incidents are committed by males? That they are experts in rationalization who minimize their number of victims? Don t they know that insurance companies highlight locker rooms as a high-risk area for abuse that should be carefully monitored and protected?Don t they know that one out of every four little girls will be sexually abused during childhood, and that s without giving predators free access to them while they shower? Don t they know that, for women who have experienced sexual trauma, finding the courage to use a locker room at all is a freaking badge of honor? That many of these women view life through a kaleidoscope of shame and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, dissociation, poor body image, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, difficulty with intimacy, and worse?Why would people knowingly invite further exploitation by creating policies with no safeguards in place to protect them from injury? With zero screening options to ensure that biological males who enter locker rooms actually identify as female, how could a woman be sure the person staring at her wasn t exploiting her? Why is it okay to make her wonder? Wake up! I want to scream. Can t you see what s going on? Do something about it! Despite the many reports of sexual abuse and assault that exist in our world, there s an even larger number of victims who never tell about it. The reason? They re afraid no one will believe them. Even worse, they re terrified of a reality they already innately know to be true: even if people did know, they wouldn t do anything to help. They re not worth protecting. Even silence feels better than that.There s no way to make everyone happy in the situation of transgender locker room use. So the priority ought to be finding a way to keep everyone safe. I d much rather risk hurting a smaller number of people s feelings by asking transgender people to use a single-occupancy restroom that still offers safety than risk jeopardizing the safety of thousands of women and kids with a policy that gives would-be predators a free pass.Is it ironic to no one that being progressive actually sets women s lib back about a century? What of my right to do my darndest to insist that the first time my daughter sees the adult male form it will be because she s chosen it, not because it s forced upon her? What of our emotional and physical rights? Unless and until you ve lined a bathroom door with a towel for protection, you can t tell me the risk isn t there.For me, healing looks like staring at the little girl in a Polaroid photo and validating her need to be seen, heard, and protected instead of hating it. It looks like telling my story, even the parts I can never make pretty, in hopes it will help break the anonymity of survivors and create a sense of responsibility in others to act.I still battle my powerlessness to do anything that feels substantial to affect change, but the good Lord didn t bring me out of Egypt and set my feet upon a rock so I could stand idly by in the face of danger. So even if a little article or Facebook post doesn t ultimately change the world, it s better than silent resignation to negligence and harm. I feel a sense of urgency to invite people to consider the not-so-hidden dangers of these policies before more and more of them get cemented into place. Once that happens, the only way they ll change is when innocent people get hurt.Even if there aren t hundreds of abusers rushing into locker rooms by the dozens, the question I keep asking myself is, What if just one little girl gets hurt by this? Would that be enough to make people reconsider it? And what if that little girl was me? It s a question I really don t want to ask. But God s grace has enabled me to value the face in the photo enough to realize that I have to. And even if I don t like the answer, at least I wasn t silent.Author Kaeley Triller Via: The Federalist

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DNC Insiders Vote To Take Bernie’s Win In New Hampshire Away From Him (IMAGES)

You may or may not know this, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a system in place that s capable of overriding the will of the people when the popular vote doesn t quite match up with what the establishment has in mind. Due to DNC rules put into place, party elites have chosen to award Hillary Clinton an equal amount of delegates in New Hampshire even though Bernie Sanders won by an overwhelmingly large margin. Pretty messed up, huh? Yes, it is. But there s more you need to know before panicking entirely (although you should panic a little).New Hampshire has a total of 24 pledged delegates that go to the winner of the primaries. Since Bernie won 60.4% of the vote, he was awarded 15 of those, and Clinton only 9. But, party officials in the state are given 8 superdelegates and are free to choose whichever candidate they like. Six of those insider party officials are throwing their support behind Clinton while two remain undecided. If you do the math, that means that the DNC is technically overriding the will of the voters and making the state an even call between the both of them.Pic via AP.Don t blame Hillary Clinton, though. While there is substantial evidence of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz being personally tied to Clinton (she was the co-chair of Clinton s 2008 campaign after all), these rules were put in place back in 1984. The whole point of the superdelegate system was to make sure unelectable candidates wouldn t get elected. That s a good thing. Remember George McGovern? He was beaten so bad by Nixon, the Democratic Party felt like it needed to do something, and this is what they eventually came up with. Bernie Sanders is electable, though, and you d think the establishment is just now starting to get that. The momentum he s currently receiving (and fundraising) is unbelievable far more than anyone could have ever imagined just six months ago.The truth is (and no fault to Sanders), but Clinton began the race with an enormous amount of support still left intact from her 2008 run against Barack Obama. Due to her expansive campaign reach, she has been able to gain favor early on with most party insiders from the get go. And, yes, they still support her. Bernie s momentum is definitely happening, but so far that hasn t changed how the rules are set up. And right now, because of the rules, Clinton has that advantage.Pic via New York Times.There is good news, though. Even though technically Clinton received the same number of delegates as Sanders, taking away the kind of win needed to secure enough delegates from the state, he still won the popular vote. And that s important no matter what anyone claims to tell you. Here s why: the popular vote will decide the election overall. Clinton started with an overwhelming amount of support, true, but 4,051 of the ordinary, popular vote delegates are allocated based on the voters, not the party. And it only takes 2,282 to secure the nomination. If it ever came down to it, and Bernie somehow received more of the popular vote than Clinton, the superdelegates should, in theory, back Bernie. If they didn t, it would cause chaos. Don t ever plan on that happening, though the DNC isn t that stupid.The DNC establishment, with their early superdelegate total factoring in, might make it seem like Bernie has an uphill battle, but the voters will largely determine the overall outcome. Unfortunately, as of right now, though, Bernie didn t win the overwhelming majority of delegates like the citizens of New Hampshire democratically went to the polls for. But, that s the DNC s rules for you.Featured image from Flickr.

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Orlando Gunman Was Shot at Least 8 Times, Autopsy Finds - The New York Times

The authorities in Florida said Friday that Omar Mateen, whose June 12 rampage at an Orlando nightclub left 49 other people dead, was shot at least eight times by police officers who responded to the deadly mass shooting. The Orange County medical examiner’s office released its report of Mr. Mateen’s autopsy on Friday, the same day local officials began to distribute their findings about the victims of the attack, during which Mr. Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State. The 32 death reports released on Friday were the first time that the authorities so publicly cataloged and detailed the injuries of the dead. The medical examiner’s office said in a statement that it had begun notifying family members on Thursday that the reports would be released under the state’s public records law. The office said it expected to publish all of its assessments by Wednesday night. Officials reported their findings about the deaths of 28 men, including Mr. Mateen, and four women. The youngest victim whose autopsy was published was an woman the oldest was a man. Most of those who were killed died of multiple gunshot wounds, the autopsies showed. The placing of the shots varied some people were wounded in the head, while others were shot in the torso, and still others were struck in their arms, neck or lower extremities. It was not clear on Friday whether anyone besides Mr. Mateen had been killed from police gunfire. Citing the continuing inquiry, a spokeswoman for the Orlando police referred a request for comment to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which did not respond to a message. But Orlando’s police chief, John Mina, left open the possibility in June, when he said, “That’s part of the investigation, but here’s what I will tell you: Those killings are on the suspect. ” The reports had a certain uniformity — each person’s death, for instance, was declared a homicide — but the scores of pages also carried small hints about individual lives. One man had been wearing two beaded bracelets when he was gunned down, while another young woman had worn “an elaborate yellow metal necklace” to Pulse. Another person had carried his photo identification from the Y. M. C. A. Mr. Mateen, his autopsy report noted, had been dressed in tan pants, a holster attached to a black belt. He was struck by gunfire in several places, including the chest, the abdomen and the foot. Mr. Mateen died after a protracted standoff with the police, who feared that he would set off explosives, as he had threatened to do. Once the authorities gained access to the nightclub with the aid of an armored vehicle, officials traded gunfire with Mr. Mateen, who was 29. The medical examiner’s office said Friday that it would not discuss individual cases. But in an interview in June, the county’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Joshua D. Stephany, said it appeared that all of the victims had died quickly. “It doesn’t appear anyone suffered,” he said. “Everyone went down where they were. I don’t think anyone had prolonged suffering. ”

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Hackers Dump More Intel From NSA’s Elite Equation Group

Videos Hackers Dump More Intel From NSA’s Elite Equation Group The new leak purportedly reveals IP addresses of NSA controlled servers in 49 countries that are used to launch offensives against NSA targets. | November 1, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! This June 6, 2013 file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. In August, anonymous hacker(s) dumped a cache of cyberweapons that appeared to originate with The Equation Group , an elite, NSA-affiliated hacking squad. The leakers called themselves The Shadow Brokers, and they sought bTc1,000,000 for access to the remainder of The Equation Group’s files. Earlier this month, arrested NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin was accused of being the source of the leak to The Shadow Brokers, though not necessarily deliberately (he may have been hacked by The Shadow Brokers). The Shadow Brokers have had no takers for their auction, and so they’re now dumping more files, presumably to stir up interest. The new leak purportedly reveals IP addresses of NSA controlled servers in 49 countries that are used to launch offensives against NSA targets. If the leaks are to be believed, they show that the NSA uses hacked servers in China and Russia to attack other countries. The dump contains some 300 folders of files, all corresponding to different domains and IP addresses. Domains from Russia, China, India, Sweden, and many other countries are included. According to an analysis by the security researcher known as Hacker Fantastic, the dump contains 306 domains and 352 IP addresses relating to 49 countries in total. If accurate, victims of the Equation Group may be able to use these files to determine if they were potentially targeted by the NSA-linked unit. The IP addresses may relate to servers the NSA has compromised and then used to deliver exploits, according to security researcher Mustafa Al-Bassam. “So even the NSA hacks machines from compromised servers in China and Russia. This is why attribution is hard,” Al-Bassam tweeted on Monday. This work by Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License.

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Hamas says its security chief wounded in Gaza car bombing

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas security chief in the Gaza Strip was wounded in a car bombing on Friday in what the Islamist group called a failed assassination attempt. The attack came as rival factions are trying to implement a new agreement meant to end a 10-year rift that has effectively split the Palestinian territories between Hamas in Gaza and the more mainstream Fatah in the occupied West Bank. Tawfeeq Abu Naeem, Hamas head of security in Gaza and a strong supporter of the reconciliation deal, was lightly wounded when his car exploded outside a mosque, Hamas said in a statement. Hamas, which has been quick to blame Israel for similar attacks in the past, did not say who it believed was behind the bombing, suggesting it could also be the work of a radical jihadist Salafi group that opposes the Palestinian rapprochement. Asked about the explosion in Gaza, Israel s military said it did not comment on foreign reports. Hamas has stepped up a security campaign against Salafi groups and recently detained a senior operative. Hamas also has improved ties with Egypt, which is battling Islamist groups across the border in the Sinai peninsula. Some disputes arose this week in implementing the reconciliation deal. Senior Fatah officials traveled to Gaza this week from the West Bank to take control of two government offices there, but they turned back, saying Hamas officials refused their authority. A Fatah spokesman later said the issue was being resolved.

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MELANIA TRUMP IN RARE ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW: Watch Her DESTROY Leftist MSNBC Hack On Immigration…”I Followed The Law!”

Melania Trump has been taking a relatively low key position in her husband s bid to become our next President. She s more than just arm candy for Donald Trump. She s a tough business woman who s proud to have come to America as an immigrant and earned her citizenship the LEGAL way. Watch her no-nonsense interview here with leftist MSNBC hack host, Mika Brzezinski, who does everything in her power to provoke her and condemn her husband: I followed the law, Trump said in an interview with Mika Brzezinski aired Wednesday on MSNBC s Morning Joe, in discussing the hoops she had to jump through in order to become a citizen of the United States. I never thought to stay here without papers. I had a visa, I traveled every few months back to the country to Slovenia to stamp the visa. I came back, I applied for the green card, I applied for the citizenship later on after many years of green card. So I went by system, I went by the law. And you should do that, you should not just say let me stay here and whatever happens, happens. Trump, who immigrated to the United States from Slovenia in 1996, said that she and her husband are prepared for people to call him names for expressing his viewpoints. I m a full-time mom, and I love it. So, I decided not to be in the campaign so much, but I support my husband 100 percent, she said of her role in the campaign itself. We have thick skin, and we know that people will judge him and people will call names. They don t give him enough credit. From June that he announced, they don t give him enough credit, she said, leading Brzezinski to ask her what she thought about people who felt he insulted Mexicans with his comments that the country is sending rapists and murderers across the border in his announcement speech. Via: Politico

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Just Weeks After Obama’s Executive Order on Catastrophic Space Weather Events, a Coronal Mass Ejection Is Set to Hit on Election Day?

By Melissa Dykes This has already been the craziest election in the history of the country, with the most overt corruption and fraud the American...

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G7 Fashion: First Lady Melania Trump Outshines Fellow NATO Spouses In Blossoming Ensemble

First Lady Melania Trump upstaged her peers during her final visit abroad this week with President Donald Trump to Sicily, Italy for the G7 Summit. [In a luxurious and Dolce Gabbana floral coat, covered in an array of flowers, along with a matching floral clutch, Melania stole the show from the other spouses of foreign leaders during the NATO event. As the First Lady was photographed in the center for the spouses, her peers opted for more subtle looks. Newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte, dressed down for the occasion, arriving in an orange knit top paired with white skinny jeans and red wedges. The wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Akie, wore a floral look as well, but couldn’t match up to Melania’s vibrant coat and matching clutch purse. Meanwhile, the wife of Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni, Emanuela Mauro, remained casual in a white linen top and black trousers, while the wife of Catania, Italy’s Mayor Enzo Bianco, Amanda Succi, kept it subtle in a pale blue dress. TIZIANA Images, Melania’s arrival at the meeting of international leaders marks her and her husband’s last visit abroad before heading back to the United States from their first global trip as President and First Lady. The First Lady took the fashion world by storm on the trip with her choice of high fashion outfits of mostly coats, dresses and belts, stunning the foreign press in Dolce and Gabbana, Reem Acra, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors. Melania is a friend of Dolce Gabbana designer Stefano Gabbana, who takes to Instagram to celebrate each time she wears one of his creations.

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White House: no change to 'one China' policy after Trump call with Taiwan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday said there was “no change” to the United States’ longstanding “one China” policy after President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. “We remain firmly committed to our ‘one China’ policy,” said Ned Price, a national security spokesman for President Barack Obama. “Our fundamental interest is in peaceful and stable cross-Strait relations.”

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The unexpected and ingenious strategy of Obama's second term

Presidents often turn more moderate to make gains in their final years. Think of Bill Clinton's 1997 budget deal, or George W. Bush's 2007 (failed) immigration reform effort, or Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax reforms. Second terms can feel like new presidencies. President Obama's increasingly successful second term has been the exception to that rule. It's been a concentrated, and arguably jaded, version of his first term. The candidate who was elected to bring the country together has found he can get more done if he acts alone — and if he lets Congress do the same. That has been the big, quiet surprise of Obama's second term. Congress has become, if anything, more productive. And that speaks to a broader lesson Obama has learned about polarization in Congress: Since he's part of the problem, ignoring Congress can be part of the solution. Obama's diplomatic breakthroughs with Cuba and Iran call back to a controversial promise Obama made in the 2008 primary but seemed to abandon once he won the White House: to negotiate with dictators with few or no preconditions. This was among the biggest fights of the Democratic primary and the most radical promises of Obama's campaign — but it seemed almost completely forgotten in the first years of his presidency. Obama's first-term foreign policy was largely defined by George W. Bush's wars. It's only been in Obama's second term that the foreign policy philosophy he previewed in the 2008 campaign has really been visible — and where Obama has shown himself to be to the left of many in the Democratic Party. Even some congressional Democrats have balked at his negotiations with Cuba and Iran. But not only is Congress largely irrelevant to these deals (at least unless the opposition can overturn a presidential veto, which they almost certainly can't) but Obama doesn't have much pressing legislation before Congress, which makes it safer for him to anger them. In that way, Obama's increasing distance from Congress has been a boon to his foreign policy efforts. The results will profoundly shape Obama's foreign policy legacy. As my colleague Dylan Matthews wrote, "Obama has reestablished productive diplomacy as the central task of a progressive foreign policy, and as a viable alternative approach to dealing with countries the GOP foreign policy establishment would rather bomb. He established a viable alternative to the liberal hawks that dominated Democratic thinking during the Bush years, and held positions of influence on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. And he developed a cadre of aides who can carry on that legacy to future Democratic administrations, and keep a tradition of dovishness alive." But it's not just foreign policy where Obama has swung left. When he ran for president in 2008, he opposed same-sex marriage. It wasn't until 2012 that he "evolved" on the issue. But by 2015, he was embracing marriage equality as part of his legacy. He even turned his home into a symbol of celebration: Similarly, Obama has sought to use executive action to achieve in his second term what Congress wouldn't permit in his first: sweeping action on both immigration and climate change. In some ways, the immigration action is the most telling of the two. Prior to his second term, Obama had repeatedly told immigration advocates that he simply didn't have the power to stop deportations on a significant scale. "I am president," he told Univision in 2010, "I am not king." But Obama eventually decided that the president had more power than he initially thought. Similarly, he is pushing strong regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Both efforts show a basic reality of Obama's second term: Rather than working to find more compromise in Congress, which would necessitate choosing different issues and agreeing to much more modest solutions, Obama is sidestepping Congress with more aggressive, more polarizing actions. To put it another way, he's prioritizing the liberal policy outcomes he promised in the 2008 campaign above the compromise-oriented political approach he promised in the 2008 campaign. Given Obama's actions, you might expect Congress to have devolved into yet more partisan rancor and paralysis. But over the past year, the opposite has happened. Democrats and Republicans shocked everyone by coming up with a fix to Medicare's broken payments formula. The Senate agreed on a replacement to No Child Left Behind. There have been no government shutdowns or debt ceiling disasters. And Republicans have even been willing to make some common ground with Obama on trade authority. Evidence of Congress's relative productivity can be found elsewhere, too. The Bipartisan Policy Center keeps up a "Healthy Congress Index" that "tracks key metrics like substantive days in session, amendments offered, and bills reported out of committee." Of late, Congress is looking a whole lot healthier. Which, in a way, makes a twisted kind of sense. Obama is a polarizing figure, and his efforts to pass legislation were part of what was polarizing Congress. Obama eventually realized he couldn't solve a problem that was created by his very presence. And so he's more or less left Congress to do its own thing — particularly since Republicans won the Senate in 2014. Now that they've stopped arguing so much over Obama, both sides in Congress have more time and more inclination to work with each other — and, surprisingly, to work with Obama on the rare occasions when there's an obvious common ground, as proved true on trade authority. The result is that even as Obama's second term has become more liberal, the agenda he's actually pursuing with Congress has become more conservative — and more successful.

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DIVERSITY GONE WILD: US Government Plans To Replace Alexander Hamilton On $10 Bill With A Woman…

We re living in such historic times I can barely take all the diversity and equality Help us to choose the woman the Obama regime will select to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill (below). The Treasury Department is preparing to announce that they are putting a woman on the $10 bill, as a source has confirmed what appears to be a premature tweet.Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will announce Thursday that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will put a woman on the bill as soon as 2020. Via: Weasel ZippersWednesday evening, Nancy Lindborg tweeted:Sec Lew announced 2day historic decision to feature a woman on new 10 dollar bill. About time! Share ideas on who to feature #TheNewTen. Nancy Lindborg (@nancylindborg) June 17, 2015We have a few guesses as to whom the Obama regime will choose as Alexander Hamilton s replacement:The honorable and very alert US Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader GinsburgWhite House puppet master, Valerie JarrettAmerica s first Food Nazi and 5-star vacation MoochAmerica s first transracial, habitual liar and former Spokane, WA NAACP PresidentAnd finally America s most dishonest presidential candidate

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OPINION: Both sides of abortion debate need to talk more honestly

“We should see human life as sacred and recognize its immeasurable worth in every human condition,” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said in his 2015 State of the State address. “Whether at the beginning of life or the end of life, Kansas is the most pro-life state in America. And we are not going back.” On April 7, he kept his word, signing into law the Unborn Child Protection From Dismemberment Abortion Act, which states that, starting July 1, a person who, “with the purpose of causing the death of a living unborn child,” knowingly dismembers and extracts such an unborn “child, one piece at a time from the uterus,” may be charged with a Class A misdemeanor if it is his or her first violation of the law. Subsequent violations render a person liable for a felony conviction and carry a jail sentence of up to nine months. The Kansas act is the first state law since Roe v. Wade to block women’s access to a commonly used method — medically known as dilation and extraction — for second-trimester abortions, which account for just under 10 percent of the approximately 1 million abortions performed in the United States each year. It’s an unsurprising development, given Kansas’ track record on abortion regulation and the pattern of state-level abortion legislation in the last 18 months. The law’s rather striking name garnered national attention for its use of the word “dismemberment.” It gathers its rhetorical power, ironically, from the decision of earlier reproductive-rights advocates to frame the debate not as a morally complex issue but rather as a simple issue of women’s choice. But any argument that focuses just on women’s interests, or alternatively, only on the rights of the fetus, is ultimately misleading. Why didn’t Kansas choose more neutral language that would have been consistent with some of its other statutes, such as the Pharmacy Practice Act and the Uniform Controlled Substance Act? After all, the vote — 98 for the bill and 26 against it — would not have been significantly different had the bill had a more innocuous name. A possible reason is that Kansas lawmakers wanted to be brutally honest. Second-trimester abortions performed using the dilation and extraction method do involve removing a fetus in pieces from a uterus. Perhaps those lawmakers thought learning that fact might change some American’s minds about the moral status of abortion (though it would change them by inducing disgust, not by providing additional reasons for thinking that abortion is a morally complex issue). A less benign but utterly familiar possible reason is to put critics of the bill on their back foot, cast as defenders of the dismemberment of unborn children. Politicians and advocates of all kinds are adept at framing their side of a debate in terms that guarantee the maximum amount of awkwardness for any expression of dissent. The expression “pro-choice” as a label for supporters of the right to abortion was strategically adopted to counter the rhetorically powerful label “pro-life.” While the term “pro-choice” captured the morally central idea that each of us should be free to decide whether we become parents, it also abetted the gradual but substantial intrusion of state restrictions across the country into Americans’ reproductive lives. Abortion cannot be described as a morally neutral act akin, as philosopher Mary Anne Warren once suggested, to “cutting one’s hair.” It’s an act that kills a fetus and ends the development of a very young member of our species. Had reproductive-rights activists told the whole moral story about abortion from the beginning, there would have been less rhetorical wind for the sails of legislation such as Kansas’. In other words, full disclosure about the moral dimensions of abortion would have prevented states like Kansas from even appearing to occupy the moral high ground when they enact regulations allegedly designed only to protect unborn children. This point applies to both sides; opponents of abortion access have also been quite selective in the moral tale they tell. For if the death of a fetus is morally significant simply because it is human, so too is the well-being of the woman carrying it. If having an abortion is far more serious than having a haircut, then giving birth to a child is an even more morally consequential act for the biological mother as well as for the adult who the child will become. Hence arguments that focus exclusively or primarily on the fetus and ignore the interests of women are dishonest in their own ways. Abortion is a horrendously complicated moral issue, so complex that many Americans find it difficult to express a clear view about it. This difficulty is evident in recent polling results that show that while 28 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all circumstances and 50 percent believe that it should be legal in some circumstances, only 47 percent describe themselves as pro-choice. One diagnosis for what’s going on here is that people acknowledge that both abortion itself (the killing of the fetus) and abortion access are morally significant, because each intimately affects how and whether a human life continues.  As I have written before, over the past 40 years the terms of the abortion debate have accreted new and unhelpful connotations. “Pro-choice” now connotes the view that abortion is morally permissible under any circumstances and that all that matters is the pregnant woman’s wishes, while “pro-life” connotes an ugly and pernicious view of women and of feminist commitments more generally. Thus linguistic entities that began as pithy slogans expressing moral views no longer perform that function and are in fact obstacles to any productive conversation about abortion and abortion policy in the U.S. Planned Parenthood belatedly recognized it was time for a linguistic change in 2013 when it produced a YouTube video encouraging people to dispense with the life-versus-choice rhetoric. In its place, the organization recommends returning to the idea that abortion is a “personal decision.” That term, unfortunately, appears to represent an even deeper retreat from moral honesty about abortion. We should agree with Planned Parenthood that elected officials ought not legally prohibit women from acting on their reproductive health care decisions. However, we do not need to deny that abortion kills a biological human being. In suggesting that an individual’s choices fully determine the moral permissibility of her actions, reproductive rights advocates continue to play into the hands of politicians who favor banning abortion. Women will continue to face unwanted, unintended and life-threatening pregnancies, and according to the Guttmacher Institute, 3 in 10 American women will have at least one abortion by age 45. Even so, most reasonable people agree that reducing the incidence of abortion in America would be a good thing. That will not be achieved by legislation such as the Kansas law, which is little more than a cynical use of language designed to shame and horrify. People on all sides of this discussion need to step with both feet onto the moral high ground. It will do no good to limp along with just one foot in the truth — on the one hand, that abortion kills human fetuses or, on the other, that women’s freedom of choice is all that matters. Both matter, and the fact that they do demands of us serious personal reflection about how we act as well as compassionate public policy grounded in the real world.

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’SNL’ Star Michael Che Not Sorry for Calling Boston ’Most Racist City’

Saturday Night Live star Michael Che is not apologizing for calling Boston, Massachusetts the “most racist city” he has ever visited. [Che had originally made the remarks during a “Weekend Update” segment on the NBC show the night before the Super Bowl. “I just want to relax, turn my brain off, and watch the blackest city in America beat the most racist city I’ve ever been to,” Che told SNL viewers. @GerryCallahan @KirkAndCallahan yep figured you appreciate this one from SNL last night. pic. twitter. — Junk_That_Jersey (@junkthatjersey) February 5, 2017, The controversial comment came up again Thursday during an appearance at Boston University. Che explained that he had received a ton of angry feedback over his Boston remarks, the Boston Globe reports. He said he had responded to one woman, who was exceptionally outraged by the line, by insisting that she “talk to your closest black friend and ask them to explain it to you. ” “Touche,” the woman replied, according to Che. The New York native also slammed Trump Thursday, telling the audience that it would be better if Trump was running another country instead of being in “our own little slice of crazy. ” Che reportedly made it a point to tell the audience that he never apologizes for his comedic language or for his controversial statements because he’s “just trying to be more presidential. ” After the presidential election, Che told Esquire magazine that he agreed with President Trump’s criticism that SNL is politically “biased” and — opting to ding Republicans and conservative viewpoints far more than Democratic and liberal dogma. “Oddly, I agree with him,” he said. “We try to write that way. But I do agree with him. I think the show should show all views and we make a conscious effort to do so. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

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Mexico presidential hopeful rejects comparisons to Venezuela

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The current front-runner for Mexico s 2018 presidential election on Sunday rejected comparisons of his leftist party to Venezuela s socialist government, saying his movement was a Mexican-made revolution against rampant corruption. Former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has led early opinion polls for the 2018 election, supported by frustration with rising crime and corruption scandals that have battered the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Just last week, President Enrique Pena Nieto compared the 63-year-old to Venezuela s Nicolas Maduro, suggesting Lopez Obrador could unleash economic chaos if he wins office. (They are) saying that if MORENA wins Mexico, it s going to be like Venezuela. That s a lie! Lopez Obrador told a crowd of thousands of supporters who rallied at a monument in the nation s capital. We re not taking inspiration from any foreign government ... Neither Maduro, nor Donald Trump. Earlier this year, Pena Nieto s PRI sought to brand Lopez Obrador s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) an ally of Venezuela. [nL1N1IX09K] Analysts have compared Lopez Obrador s populist appeal to that of Trump. While Trump blamed immigrants and free trade deals for declining incomes among working-class Americans, Lopez Obrador s message is that corruption is keeping Mexicans poor. People are fed up with corruption, Lopez Obrador said. This is the cancer that we are going to end with our movement. In his annual state of the nation address on Saturday, Pena Nieto did not directly attack Lopez Obrador but he said Mexico faced the choice between backing his reforms, like the opening of the energy sector, that were transforming Mexico or a model from the past that has failed. Lopez Obrador was the runner-up in Mexico s past two presidential contests. A victory by him could mark a leftward shift in Latin America s second-largest economy, where centrist technocrats have held sway for decades, and further complicate relations with top trade partner the United States. Maduro s government has been criticized by Washington, the United Nations and major Latin American nations for cracking down on protests and failing to allow the entry of foreign humanitarian aid to ease a severe economic crisis. Critics of Lopez Obrador have long sought to depict him as an economic liability, likening him to Maduro s fiery, late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in previous runs for the presidency. Pena Nieto told pure lies. He says all these things, but it s all corruption, said 71-year-old Ana Maria Hurtado as she stood among the crowd at the Lopez Obrador rally.

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Trumps history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one

In the heat of a presidential campaign, youd think that a story about one partys nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly shut down an inquiry into that nominees scam university would be enormous news. But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. I raised this issue last week, but its worth an update as well as some contextualization. The story re-emerged last week when The Posts David A. Fahrenthold reported that Trump paid a penalty to the IRS after his foundation made an illegal contribution to Bondis PAC. While the Trump organization characterizes that as a bureaucratic oversight, the basic facts are that Bondis office had received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting the check, Bondis office dropped the inquiry. At this point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps Bondi didnt realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the fact that Trumps foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from his personal account, he didnt realize thats not how the law works (the foundation would have to get its money back from Bondis PAC; he could then make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondis decision not to pursue the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable. But heres the thing: We dont know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them. For instance, there was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on Face the Nation (Christie took great umbrage: I cant believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way). And the comparison with stories about Hillary Clintons emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just raises questions about her integrity. The big difference is that there are an enormous number of reporters who get assigned to write stories about those issues regarding Clinton. The story of something like the Clinton Foundation gets stretched out over months and months with repeated tellings, always with the insistence that questions are being raised and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isnt any evidence at a particular moment to support that idea. When it comes to Trump, on the other hand, weve seen a very different pattern. Heres what happens: A story about some kind of corrupt dealing emerges, usually from the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists; it gets discussed for a couple of days; and then it disappears. Someone might mention it now and again, but the news organizations dont assign a squad of reporters to look into every aspect of it, so no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get written. The end result of this process is that because of all that repeated examination of Clintons affairs, people become convinced that she must be corrupt to the core. Its not that there isnt plenty of negative coverage of Trump, because of course there is, but its focused mostly on the crazy things he says on any given day. But the truth is that youd have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Heres a partial list: Trumps casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money Trumps habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed. The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did Trumps employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he cant find Americans to do the work Trumps use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work Trumps history of being charged with housing discrimination Trumps connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailess behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected. And that last one is happening right now. To repeat, the point is not that these stories have never been covered, because they have. The point is that they get covered briefly, then everyone in the media moves on. If any of these kinds of stories involved Clinton, news organizations would rush to assign multiple reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and wed learn more about all of them. Thats important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to pursue. And it means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the hook.

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‘Classified’ Emails from Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop

Looking back on the 2016 Presidential election, there was a non-stop chorus on denials by Hillary Clinton, her campaign surrogates, and the mainstream media that had not allowed any classified emails to float around her home-brew server, or onto the family of her close aids.As it turns out, Hillary Clinton was lying. A new batch of emails released by the US State Department clearly show that Anthony Weiner, convicted sex criminal and husband of Clinton s chief aid Huma Abedin, had kept classified emails pertaining to official US State Department business during Hillary Clinton s tenure as Secretary of State kept on the same laptop which Weiner used to target an underage girl and where he also kept child pornography.Among the released emails were exchanges which clearly show Hillary Clinton conspiracy with authoritarian Saudi Arabia to stop Wikileaks. The reopening of this old Clinton gaping wound is another devastating blow for the mainstream media and the Democratic Party s resistance movement, whose mission is to remove Donald Trump for office.RT International reports At least five of the 2,800 emails stored on a laptop belonging to former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner were marked confidential and involved delicate talks with Middle Eastern leaders and Hillary Clinton s top aide.On Friday, the State Department released a batch of around 2,800 work-related documents from the email account of Huma Abedin, who served as the deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.At least five of the emails found on Abedin s ex-husband s laptop were heavily redacted and marked classified and at confidential level, the third more sensitive class the US government uses below secret and top secret. The State Department applies the confidential classification level to information that the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security, according to the Government Publishing Office.While the documents were not marked as classified before they were released, some of the information recovered in the emails was considered classified. It is illegal for civilians to posses or read classified documents without a security clearance.The confidential emails, which date from 2010 to 2012, concern discussions with Middle Eastern leaders.Dishonest: despite being caught multiple times, Hillary Clinton is still in denial about mishandling classified material.One of the emails has the subject Egyptian MFA on Hamas-PLO talks, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The email is mostly redacted, only mentioning that it is a further update on Hamas-PA talks, referring to the Palestinian Authority.Another four-page email contains a completely redacted call sheet to prepare Clinton for an upcoming call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.A call sheet in another 2010 email includes notes to guide Clinton through a call she would make to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The purpose of the call was to inform Saud about an impending WikiLeaks disclosure. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the call sheet instructed Clinton to say.Clinton was warning the Saudis the leak could contain information related to private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and asked the Saudi s to help the US prevent WikiLeaks from undermining our mutual interests. During a congressional hearing in 2016, former FBI Director James Comey said Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state. The emails were released in response to a 2015 lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch against the State Department after it failed to respond to a Freedom of Information request (FOIA) seeking: All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non- state.gov email address. In a statement issued Friday, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the release a major victory, adding that it was no surprise there were classified documents on Weiner s computer. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin s emails on Weiner s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials, Fitton said in a statement. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton s and Huma Abedin s obvious violations of law. The emails were discovered on Weiner s laptop during an FBI investigation into allegations that he engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl. In September, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to sending obscene material to a minor.The discovery of the emails led Comey to announce that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton s use of a private email server 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. Clinton said the announcement contributed to her loss to Donald Trump See more at RTLast year, in effort to shore-up Clinton s crumbling reputation for being truthful to the public, her campaign published a bizarre 4,000-word fact sheet on the Clinton campaign website.As it turned out, Clinton s fact sheet was riddled with numerous false statements and other half-truths, including a lie that the FBI was conducting a security review when it was in fact conducting an investigation, and that she never sent or received classified information on her email account.This latest Weiner revelation is just another devastating blow to an already damaged political brand.Could Clinton mount a 2020 run?It s highly unlikely.READ MORE HILLARY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Clinton FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

1real

Trump at Nat’l Prayer Breakfast: Let’s Pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ’Apprentice’ Ratings - Breitbart

President Trump cracks joke at National Prayer Breakfast: Let’s pray for @Schwarzenegger’s ’Apprentice’ ratings https: . pic. twitter. Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Donald Trump opened his remarks with a joke about the ratings of NBC’s “The Apprentice” with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the host. “When I ran for president, I had to leave the show,” Trump said. “That’s when for sure I knew I was doing it. And they hired a big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster. And Mark will never ever bet against Trump again and I just want to pray for Arnold if we can — for those ratings, OK?” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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Combined dipshit, all the women and children in developing world….combined.

1real

Twitter Is Working On The Biggest F*ck You To Trump And You’re Going To Love It (DETAILS)

Many Americans have been begging Donald Trump to delete his Twitter account for the sake of the country s reputation, and Twitter might have actually found a way to make him quit the social media platform for good!In an effort to combat fake news , Twitter is developing a feature that will allow its users to flag tweets that contain false or harmful information which pretty much describes every tweet that Trump posts. Twitter s Vice President of Policy, Colin Crowell, stated that Twitter is working hard to detect spammy behaviors We ve been doubling down on our efforts. This feature is currently in the prototype phase, and is being noted as Twitter s most aggressive attempt yet to maintain the integrity of the content that appears on its platform. According to the Washington Post, this feature would work as a small tab in a drop-down menu next to tweets. According to two anonymous sources, Twitter is still testing and researching this function carefully, as there are concerns that legitimate information could also be censored if this feature could be manipulated.This might not only kill Trump s tweets, but it will also have a major effect on his audience. Trump loves to brag about how big his following is on Twitter, yet third-party service Twitter Audit states that over half (59%) of Trump s audience is comprised of fake accounts or bots.While this feature is very much in the early phases and there is no guarantee that it will definitely be implemented, this is big news for Trump s presidency. And while the company hasn t said anything about targeting Trump with this initiative, one can only wonder as we recall the words of Twitter s co-founder, Evan Williams: It s a very bad thing, Twitter s role in that. If it s true that he wouldn t be president if it weren t for Twitter, then yeah, I m sorry. Featured image via Joe Raedle / Getty Images

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Congress votes to avert shutdown, sends Trump stopgap spending bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday averted a government shutdown just one day before federal funding was due to expire, sending President Donald Trump a bill to provide just enough money to keep agencies operating through Jan. 19. With lawmakers eager to begin a holiday recess until Jan. 3, the House of Representatives and Senate scurried to pass the hastily written bill by votes of 231-188 and 66-32, respectively. When Congress returns, lawmakers will immediately have to get back to work on appropriating more money for a fiscal year that already will be three months old. They will try to pass an “omnibus” spending bill to fund the government from Jan. 19 through Sept. 30. Negotiators have been struggling for months over thorny issues such as the amount of defense-spending increases versus increases for other domestic programs, including medical research, opioid treatment and “anti-terrorism” activities. Fiscal hawks, meanwhile, are angry that Congress is again moving to bust through spending caps that had been designed to tamp down mounting federal debt. But some of those same lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Congress earlier in the week voted for a sweeping tax bill that will add $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years to a national debt that already stands at $20 trillion. With the clock ticking toward a deadline of midnight on Friday when government funding would run out, Democrats in the House and Senate made a strong pitch for including protections for young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children, popularly known as “Dreamers.” In the end, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and immigration advocacy groups failed. But nearly all of the House’s 193 Democrats and 29 of the Senate’s 46 Democrats voted no, in part to protest the lack of action on the immigration measure. Shortly before the House and Senate votes, Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez told reporters, “We’re really tired of tomorrow,” referring to years of failed attempts in Congress to protect Dreamers from deportation, allow them to legally work in the United States and get on a path to citizenship. They will resume their fight in January, aiming to win on the next spending bill or a separate measure. Trump has eliminated Obama-era temporary protections for Dreamers, but has asked Congress to come up with a permanent solution by March. In the meantime, about 122 Dreamers a day are becoming vulnerable to deportation while Congress bickers. Also on Thursday, the Senate put the brakes on another bill that passed the House, which would provide $81 billion in new disaster aid to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several states hit by this year’s hurricanes or wildfires. The temporary spending bill did, however, give Trump a modest increase of $4.7 billion for the Department of Defense to be used for missile defense and ship repair. The bill includes $2.85 billion to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program through March and funding for community health centers and the Indian Health Service. The plan also would extend the National Security Agency’s expiring internet surveillance program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, through Jan. 19. Other provisions address funding for veterans, the Coast Guard and flood insurance. Most government programs would be temporarily extended until Jan. 19 at fiscal 2017 levels.

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SUNDAY SCREENING: Counter Intelligence – ‘The Strategy of Tension’

21st Century Wire says Our weekly documentary film curated by the editorial team at 21WIRE.The following is Part 3 of a 5 part series which deals with the Deep State The Strategy of Tension examines the history of false flag operations used for war, propaganda and psychological operations or psy-ops . Operation Northwoods and Operation Gladio are examples used to illustrate the nature of clandestine operation planning and execution; as well as shedding light on the intent and extent to which the National Security apparatus manipulates events and manufactures outcomes to suit its goals. This programme also looks at the issues that spin off from the history of false flag operations such as how conspiracy theories are used to discredit inquiry and investigative journalism; and also how the cultural preconditions around dismissing false flag operations serve to protect their continuation and plausible deniability Watch:. Run time: 55 min Writer and Director: Scott Noble Production: Metanoia FilmsSEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERESUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV

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Exclusive: Zimbabwe's Grace Mugabe says model attacked her with knife

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s First Lady, Grace Mugabe, has denied assaulting South African model Gabriella Engels with an electric cable in a Johannesburg hotel suite last month, saying an intoxicated and unhinged Engels attacked her with a knife. In a previously unreported Aug. 17 deposition seen exclusively by Reuters, Mugabe countered 20-year-old Engels version, portraying herself as the victim after intervening on behalf of her adult sons Chatunga and Robert Junior who were in trouble with a drunken young woman . The statement said Grace Mugabe, 52 and a contender to replace her 93-year-old husband as Zimbabwe s president, was thinking about filing attempted murder charges. A group representing Engels dismissed the allegations as lies. According to the model, an irate Mugabe burst into the room where she was waiting with two friends to meet Chatunga on Aug. 13 and started laying into her with an electric cable. Photographs taken by Engels mother soon after the incident showed gashes to the model s head. She also had bruising on her thighs. In her deposition, Mugabe dismissed Engels version as malicious allegations and said she had been attacked after going to help her sons. She was worried about them and went to see them at their hotel suite, the statement said. Upon her arrival, Ms Engels, who was intoxicated and unhinged, attacked Dr. Grace Mugabe with a knife after she was asked to leave the hotel. Security was left with no other option but to remove Ms Engels from the hotel suite, it continued. The statement also alleged that Engels had been in a fight with other women at Johannesburg s Taboo nightclub the previous evening and suggested that may have been the cause of her injuries. Afriforum, an Afrikaans civil society group acting on behalf of Engels, denied both accusations. Gabriella never attacked Grace Mugabe in any way and she did not participate in the fight at Taboo, Afriforum said. It is clear that Grace Mugabe is desperately trying to escape responsibility for her own violent behavior by using lies to falsely portray the victim in this case as the perpetrator. South Africa granted Grace Mugabe diplomatic immunity, allowing her to evade immediate prosecution for assault, although Engels and Afriforum have challenged that decision, saying Mugabe was not in South Africa on official business. They also argued that assault was a grave crime that was not covered by diplomatic immunity laws. The decision to let Grace Mugabe return home caused a row in South Africa, with the opposition Democratic Alliance also going to court to overturn the immunity. According to Zimbabwean intelligence files seen by Reuters, Robert Mugabe lobbied his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, to have the issue solved amicably and out of court but was stymied by Engels refusal to accept a settlement. He is trying to avoid the embarrassment of his wife appearing before the court, one file, dated Aug. 30, reads. The problem he is facing is that the woman who was assaulted is refusing to accept any money and she just wants justice to be delivered upon Grace. Afriforum lawyer Gerrie Nel - best known for prosecuting South African track star Oscar Pistorius over the shooting of his girlfriend - said last month Engels had been approached with a cash offer but had turned it down. The intelligence report is a part of a series of hundreds of files dating back to 2009 that have come from within Zimbabwe s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Reuters has not been able to establish their original author or final audience. The Aug. 30 report said Mugabe was changing his attitude to the case and was now backing Grace while accusing Engels of impropriety. Mugabe wants people to stop castigating his wife and calling her all sorts of names, it said. Mugabe is saying that his wife acted in an angry mood like all other women who find their children being involved with sleeping with whores. Afriforum chief executive Kallie Kriel said this allegation was an absolute lie and part of a deliberate attempt by Harare to undermine Engels credibility as a witness. A spokesman for Zimbabwe s presidency, which has direct oversight of the CIO, was not immediately available for comment. Zimbabwe s ambassador to South Africa did not respond to a request for comment. Zuma has denied any hand in the affair, telling parliament on Aug. 31: I am not a lawyer. I don t know the point of law and I was not involved in this process. How it was done, I would be lying if I speculate. His spokesman declined to elaborate.

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OBAMA’S ARROGANCE: WATCH As He Admonishes Reporter For Asking If He Was “Content” With 4 Americans Held In Iran Jail [VIDEO]

Being called out for his utter incompetence as a leader by the press is not something Obama is used to CBS News s Major Garrett asked President Obama at a press conference Wednesday if he was content with four Americans held in Iranian jails while his administration celebrated the nuclear deal. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content with all the fanfare around this deal to leave the conscious of this nation, the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans? Garrett asked. That s nonsense and you should know better, Obama bit back. Nobody s content and our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out. Garrett later brushed off the scolding on CBS s news streaming network, saying, Clearly, it struck a nerve. That was my intention Was it provocative? Yes. Was it intended to be as such? Absolutely. The Daily Beast s Shane Harris reported yesterday that the Americans came up during negotiations over Iran s nuclear program. We believe very strongly that this is an opportunity for Iran to let the Americans come home, an administration official said.Via: The Daily Beast

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#BlackLivesMatter Terrorists Using #BlackRail On Twitter To Organize Shut Down Of Rail Before MN Vikings Game

Sanctioned domestic terrorists taking direction from our Organizer In Chief and funding from his billionaire marxist friend, George Soros. Are there new laws about acts of terrorism and threats against Americans that we re unaware of? Since when did it become okay to threaten innocent people taking their families on a train to a football game with their radical behavior? Are we still in America? #BlackLivesMatter St. Paul is planning to shut down light rail before the Minnesota Vikings game on Sunday. This is a typical act for the group which often tries to disrupt traffic during specific events or rush hour.FOX 9 in Minneapolis reported: Black Lives Matter plans to shut down light rail before Vikings home openerThe group Black Lives Matter Saint Paul announced their plans on Facebook Thursday to shut down the light rail before the Vikings home opener this Sunday. Sunday September 20th is the Minnesota Vikings home opener, big money day, so what better day to shut the light rail down and disrupt business as usual, they said in a press release. Enough is enough of business as usual! We must bring an end to white supremacy and the status quo. Black Lives Matter Saint Paul refers to an incident on Aug. 31 when Marcus Abrams, 17, was beaten into multiple seizures by a group of Metro Transit police officers. On Sunday, the group will be joined by Abrams, his mother, and many others to talk about Autism, police brutality, and bringing an end to white supremacy. The demonstration is set to occur around 9:30 a.m. in St. Paul, starting just south of University Ave. on Lexington across from Dairy Queen. The light rail Green Line runs along University Avenue and includes stops on the University of Minnesota campus, where the Vikings are playing at noon at TCF Bank Stadium.Organizers are using the hashtag #BlackRail for Sunday s protest.Via: Progressives Today

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Dr. Stephen Leeb

111928 Views November 19, 2016 BROADCAST King World News FOR DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY OR DOWNLOAD AUDIOS: CLICK HERE Dr. Stephen Leeb: Chairman & Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital Management – Dr. Leeb is a registered investment adviser and has been managing big cap growth portfolios since 1999. Over the last decade, his independently-verified performance record has been ranked in the top 5 percent among peers according to Informa’s PSN manager database. Dr. Leeb is a New York Time’s Best Selling author, eight books total on investments and financial trends. His latest book, Red Alert: How China’s Growing Prosperity Threatens the American Way of Life (Business Plus, 2011). Biography of Dr. Stephen Leeb Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital Management Dr. Stephen Leeb is a recognized authority on the stock market, macroeconomic trends and commodities, especially oil and precious metals. As Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital Management, a registered investment advisor, Dr. Leeb has been managing big cap growth portfolios since 1999. Over the last decade, his independently-verified performance record has been ranked in the top 5 percent among peers according to Informa’s PSN manager database. Dr. Leeb is also founder of the Leeb Group, which publishes a line of financial newsletters including The Complete Investor, Leeb’s Income Performance Letter, Leeb’s Real World Investing e-letter, and Leeb’s Aggressive Trader, Leeb’s Million Dollar Portfolio and Leeb’s ETF World Alert e-letter. His total readership exceeds 250,000. The Complete Investor newsletter has earned two awards for Editorial Excellence. Dr. Leeb sits on various boards sharing his strategic perspectives on financial markets and natural resources. Since 2008, Dr. Leeb has been a Director of Plain Sight Systems, a technology holding company centered at Yale University. Plain Sight owns a world-class patent portfolio in areas such as information organization/search, computational analytics, electro-optics, and spectroscopy. These technologies are licensed to Fortune 500 companies and used as part of private buyouts and venture spin-offs. As part of Plain Sight, Dr. Leeb also sits on the board of Water Intelligence plc , due to be listed in June 2010 on AIM (London), operating in the water management space and Deep Markets Corporation , a division of Plain Sight developing next generation risk management applications. Dr. Leeb is also Head of the Advisory Board of Leor Exploration & Production LLC (since 2006 – present) and a member of the advisory boards of Electrum USA Ltd. (since 2007) and Los Gatos. Each of these companies explore for natural resources, especially precious metals and energy. Dr. Leeb is the author of seven books on investments and financial trends. His latest book, Game Over: How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy (Business Plus, 2009) predicts a permanent peak in global commodity production. His previous book, The New York Times best selling business book, The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Warner Books, 2006), predicted that tightness in global energy supplies would cause the American economy to oscillate between periods of recession and high inflation this century. Dr. Leeb’s best seller, The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself and Profit from the Coming Energy Crisis (Warner Books, 2004), outlined the relationship between oil prices and stock market performance and accurately predicted the subsequent surge in oil prices. The book was rated among the top investment books of the year by Stock Trader’s Almanac 2005. His earlier best seller, Defying the Market: Profiting in the Turbulent Post-Technology Market Boom (McGraw-Hill; 1999) predicted the collapse of technology stocks and the growing importance of oil, and other hard assets during the 21st century. The book was selected by Library Journal as one of the Best Business Books of 1999. His first book Getting in on the Ground Floor (Putnam, 1986) predicted the secular bull market in financial assets and the fall in inflation. The book was a main selection of the Money Book Club. Dr. Leeb earned his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He then completed both a Master’s degree in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Illinois. About author

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Ivanka Trump’s Dress Was Nice, But There Was One MAJOR Problem With It (VIDEO)

A consistent theme among Donald Trump s rhetoric, and last night s address to Congress was no different, is economic nationalism, which means buy and hire American. As usual, though, the words were contradicted by his own family s actions, and in particular, his favorite child, Ivanka, who wore a lovely dress that was made, of course, in the United Kingdom and designed by a French designer.Getting ready to leave The White House with @realdonaldtrump as he prepares to address Congress #JointSession pic.twitter.com/vlR1wPHGkK Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) March 1, 2017Ivanka Trump, the President s eldest daughter who is said to be his favourite child, wore a fuchsia dress by French designer Roland Mouret which cost $1868 ( 1772) to the prestigious event which saw her father promise a new chapter of American greatness and launch barbed attacks on illegal immigrants.A representative for the acclaimed designer, Roland Mouret, told The Independent the Rawlings Dress which was worn by the first daughter was produced in the UK.Source: IndependentNot everyone thought the dress was appropriate because it was cocktail length rather than formal, and it showed her shoulders after Michelle Obama was so widely criticized on the right for daring to show her arms. Ivanka s bra strap was also showing.@IvankaTrump @brianstelter @realDonaldTrump You re wearing a cocktail dress to the joint session?! Karen Dawn Zachary (@KarenDZachary) March 1, 2017.@IvankaTrump You post a lot of prom-night photos. @brianstelter https://t.co/c13gGIiNGx (@y2k7s) March 1, 2017@IvankaTrump Hate to be the one that points this out, but the right sleeve of your dress is missing & your bra strap is showing. Just saying Marguerite (@margcellent) March 1, 2017@IvankaTrump @realDonaldTrump You re dressed inappropriately as is Melania #oneshoulder #sparkles Al Farr (@pepperdaze) March 1, 2017The real problem with the optics, of course, isn t even about the questionable choice in dress style, it s about the fact that like almost everything that has Trump s brand, it was made outside the United States while Trump is pushing an agenda of nationalism. It s hypocrisy at its worst and rather than apologize for it, the Trumps flaunt it, just like they flaunt the ethics surrounding the presidency.Featured image via Twitter screen capture

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Numbskull Ben Carson Just Managed To P*ss Off Every Decent Parent In America

Ben Carson may be the dumbest person ever to perform brain surgery. He has proven time and time again that he has no clue on matters of simple science issue,s and has demonstrated a lack of critical thinking skills that have landed in the pants on fire category of fact checkers on numerous occasions.His stories about growing up some street-wary tough guy who liked to beat and stab people turned out to be fabrications. His tales of being held at gunpoint couldn t be verified by anyone. The only thing Carson has ever said that seems even remotely true is that he often felt like the dumb kid in class. He likes to follow it up with how he persevered and became a brain surgeon.Whatever it was that pushed Ben Carson through medical school and into a fellowship at one of the world s most prestigious hospitals was definitely not his ability to think on the fly. Left unscripted and with a microphone, Carson is his own worst enemy. That was never more obvious than it was at a recent campaign stop to talk to 5th-graders in Des Moines at the Isaac Newton Christian school.Apparently Carson was again trying to build on that old favorite dumb kid card when he turned into by far the dumbest person in the room. Without considering that he was dealing with 10-year-olds, Carson actually asked the class to point to the worst student among them. A Des Moines Register reporter tweeted that at least half a dozen kids in the class singled out one student:W/ crowd of 500 @RealBenCarson just called out to 5th grade class: who's dumbest kid in class? At least half dozen kids point to 1 student. Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016If you re a parent and that didn t absolutely infuriate you, you should have your idiot filter cleaned. In what universe is it OK to EVER degrade a child to make a political statement? The student said he wasn t upset by being singled out, which may make Carson feel better, but certainly not the kid s parents.Carson s numbers have been dwindling and it appears his campaign is nearing the end. Hopefully he drops his aspirations to de-throne George W Bush as the least qualified buffoon ever to occupy the Oval Office sooner than later before he causes any more damage.Featured image by Gage Skidmore

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Date Rape Comments by Brooklyn Police Captain Are Condemned - The New York Times

The commander of a Brooklyn police precinct has apologized for remarks he made to the media and at a local community meeting last week in which he played down a recent surge in rapes in his neighborhood, saying most were date rapes, not “true stranger rapes. ” In a post on Twitter on Monday afternoon, Capt. Peter R. Rose of the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint said, “I deeply regret the statements I made last week about rape,” adding that his comments “were not meant to minimize the seriousness of sexual assault. ” “Every rape whether it is perpetrated by a stranger or someone known to them is fully investigated,” Captain Rose wrote. “We make no distinction in our response. ” The apology came days after the officer was quoted in an article on the local news website DNAinfo. com about an increase of sexual violence in the neighborhood of Greenpoint, where there were eight reported attacks or attempted attacks in 2015 and 13 last year. Of last year’s cases, three led to arrests, but 10 — including two allegedly by taxi drivers on young female passengers — remain unsolved. In the article, which appeared on Friday, Captain Rose told DNAinfo. com that while every rape should be investigated, the spike in reported assaults was “not a trend that we’re too worried about” because many of them had been committed by acquaintances of the victims. “If there’s a true stranger rape,” Captain Rose went on, “a random guy who picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards. ” Not long after the interview, Captain Rose elaborated on the unsolved sex assault cases at a meeting of the 94th Precinct community council, where he said some of the attacks had involved of the victims and others hookup apps like Tinder and thus were “not rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets. ” He added that the cases remained open because the victims refused to cooperate with investigators and in some cases left New York for their homes in other states. Both of his comments set off a firestorm of criticism from public officials and advocates for victims of sexual assault who condemned Captain Rose for perpetuating the idea that rapes committed by those who know their victims are somehow less troubling than those committed by strangers. “Rape is rape,” Eric Phillips, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in remarks published on Friday in a separate article on DNAinfo. “The crime merits no moral qualification and does not involve shades of criminality or degrees of danger. ” The same day, Stephen Davis, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, issued a statement saying, “Captain Rose’s comments did not properly explain the complexity of issues involved with investigating rape complaints. ” The statement added: “All complaints of rape and other types of sexual crimes are taken seriously whether they are committed by domestic partners, acquaintances or strangers. ” Then on Monday, the city’s new police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, wrote a rare opinion article in The Daily News in which he called Captain Rose’s comment “insensitive” and said that they had “left the misleading and inaccurate impression that the N. Y. P. D. treats these types of cases differently. ” Commissioner O’Neill continued: “We do not, either as a matter of policy or practice. ” In his article, the commissioner also said that only some rape victims report their attacks to the police, and he detailed a number of steps that the department has taken in recent years to change that. Those steps, he said, included collaborating with victims’ advocates, sponsoring poster contests on college campuses to encourage students to report rapes and assaults, and creating a hotline so that victims can directly call the detectives who investigate such crimes. Commissioner O’Neill did not say whether Captain Rose would face any disciplinary action. Reports of sexual assault have greatly decreased in the last 20 years. Quoting federal crime statistics from 2010 to 2014, the Rape Abuse Incest National Network said seven in 10 rapes were committed by someone known to the victim. That was the argument of two dozen demonstrators who gathered in the snow on Tuesday outside the 94th Precinct station house to protest Captain Rose’s statements, with signs reading “Take Rape Seriously” and “Rape Is Always a Crime. ” “It is an outrageous idea that acquaintance rape matters less — it isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad law enforcement,” Jane Manning, the director of advocacy for Women’s Justice NOW. “Most rapists target women they know because they’ll have a better chance to get away with it by claiming consent. “The idea that acquaintance matters less is pervasive in our culture,” Ms. Manning added. “Captain Rose was unfortunately saying something out loud that many, many people already believe. ”

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Iraqi Army Discovers US-Made Missiles in ISIS’s Military Base

We Are Change Iraqi Army Discovers US-Made Missiles in ISIS’s Military Base in Mosul Iraqi army and popular forces have discovered a number of US-made missiles from a military position of the ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh) in the Southern part of Mosul, informed local sources disclosed after the first group of pro-government troops opened their way into Southern Mosul on Monday. “Several US-made missiles were found in al-Shoura region to the South of Mosul,” a local source said on Monday. The Iraqi army and popular forces had found US-made missiles in Anbar province several times before. Provincial officials confirmed that the US-made weapons were sent by the US-led anti-ISIL coalition airplane for the ISIL terrorists in Anbar province. Meantime, Iraqi security officials announced that the ISIL has sent US-made military equipment to Tal Afar region in the last two days to stand strong against Iraqi popular forces’ impending attack to capture the region. “The ISIL terrorists have sent US-made TOW anti-tank missiles to Tal Afar and it is quite evident that they are preparing for a long-term war,” the Arabic-language media quoted an Iraqi security official as saying on Monday. In late August 2015, a senior Iraqi intelligence official revealed that the US helicopters drop weapons and other aids for the ISIL terrorists in the Western province of al-Anbar. “The fighters present at the forefront of fighting against the ISIL always see US helicopters flying over the ISIL-controlled areas and dropping weapons and urgent aids for them,” the official who called for anonymity told FNA. Yet, he said the helicopters could have also been sent from Turkey or Israel. He added that in addition to dropping aids, the helicopters transfer the ISIL ringleaders and wounded members from the battleground to some hospitals in Syria or other countries which support the terrorist group. The official cautioned that such assistance further prolongs the conflicts in Anbar, adding that when the Iraqi army and popular forces purge the terrorists from Anbar province, the US helicopters will transfer the ISIL ringleaders to other regions to prevent the Iraqi forces’ access to ISIL secrets. Also in March 2015, a group of Iraqi popular forces known as Al-Hashad Al-Shabi shot down the US Army helicopter that was carrying weapons for the ISIL in the Western parts of Al-Baghdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Meantime in February 2015, a senior lawmaker disclosed that Iraq’s army had shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province. “The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said. SA – 12 Follow WE ARE CHANGE on SOCIAL MEDIA SnapChat: LukeWeAreChange fbook: https://facebook.com/LukeWeAreChange Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange I nstagram: http://instagram.com/lukewearechange Sign up become a patron and Show your support for alternative news for Just 1$ a month you can help Grow We are change We use Bitcoin Too ! 12HdLgeeuA87t2JU8m4tbRo247Yj5u2TVP Join and Up Vote Our STEEMIT The post Iraqi Army Discovers US-Made Missiles in ISIS’s Military Base appeared first on We Are Change .

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Trump says never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday he never asked former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn is the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence last year’s U.S. presidential election. Trump fired Comey from his post in May. “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump tweeted.

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Former President George H.W. Bush watched inaugural from hospital room

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who has spent nearly a week at a Houston hospital where he is being treated for pneumonia, watched the inauguration of President Donald Trump from the intensive care unit, a family spokesman said. Bush, who at 92 is the nation’s oldest living ex-president, was breathing on his own after a breathing tube was removed on Friday, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. He is in stable condition in the intensive care unit of Houston Methodist Hospital, he added. “He was extubated this morning, and is breathing well on his own with minimal supplemental oxygen,” McGrath said. Former first lady Barbara Bush, 91, was admitted to the same hospital on Wednesday as a precaution after experiencing fatigue and coughing, McGrath has said. She is being treated for bronchitis and is expected to remain in the hospital over the weekend as a precaution, he said. “Mrs. Bush, meanwhile, continues to feel better and is focusing on spending time with her husband,” the spokesman said. The Bushes marked their 72nd wedding anniversary on Jan. 6. Prior to being hospitalized, they had said they would not attend the inauguration of Republican Trump due to health concerns. He was the only living former president who did not attend the inauguration in Washington, DC. In a letter to the then president-elect, Bush said he and his wife would be with Trump in spirit at the inauguration and wished him the best. Bush, a Republican, did not endorse Trump in his race against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

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The Destiny Of The World

39 Views November 05, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News With continued uncertainty in global markets, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, spoke with King World News about the destiny of the world. Egon von Greyerz: “Eric, the destiny of the world economy is not going to be determined by what happens to Brexit or the U.S. election. Of course the election can be a catalyst but it won’t be the reason for what will happen next. What will trigger the next crisis phase in the world economy is the implosion of… KWN has now released this extraordinary audio interview with Egon von Greyerz, where he gives KWN listeners a look what is really happening behind the scenes globally and in the gold market, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW. ***ALSO RELEASED: Forget The Propaganda, Here Is What Is Really Happening In The Gold Market CLICK HERE. © 2015 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the articles is permitted and encouraged. About author

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Minor New Zealand parties in focus as hotly contested election gets tighter

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The rising popularity of New Zealand s Labour Party in hotly contested elections is making it less likely that the nationalist New Zealand First Party will play kingmaker, poll averages released on Friday show. The uncertainty over which combination of parties will decide the next government is worsening an already topsy-turvy election, previously seen as a slam dunk for the center-right National Party, which has ruled for almost a decade. Since taking over as leader last month, charismatic politician Jacinda Ardern has almost single-handedly changed the chances of her Labour Party at the Sept. 23 election. When I go out and knock on doors...there is a feeling for change, there is, Marama Fox, a leader of the M ori Party, said at a televised debate between leaders of smaller parties, referring to Labour s newfound popularity. Fox s party, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous New Zealanders, could play a crucial role in determining the next government. Though it has been in a coalition with National for nine years, Fox said she could work with Labour. Support for newly invigorated Labour rose to 41.8 percent in opinion polls, nudging above the National Party s 41.1 percent, figures released by media showed. That put the center-left opposition party closer to being able to form a government with the Green Party, polling at around 5.4 percent, and the M ori Party, which posted support of about 1.2 percent. Alternatively Labour could join forces with New Zealand First, which slipped to 7.9 percent and had previously been thought likely to determine which major party governed. Green Party leader James Shaw would not rule out a deal with New Zealand First, but expressed reluctance, as the party s outspoken leader would not commit to either National or Labour. He s a bad date, Shaw said of Peters last-minute decision to skip the debate. He s stood us up tonight... he s completely unreliable and you don t know which way he s going to go. But if the Green Party fell further, sinking below the support threshold of 5 percent for seats in parliament, that would put New Zealand First in an even stronger position. It is really unusual... it s all about which pieces land where, said Grant Duncan, political analyst at Auckland University. Minor parties often have an outsize role in New Zealand s proportional representation system, in which a party, or combination of parties, needs 61 of Parliament s 120 members - usually about 48 percent of the vote - to form a government.

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