Datasets:

k3w15hu8h

/

MissBert-Data

like 0

Quite a bit about the Trump presidency has been unprecedented the amount of hate crimes in the country, the number of white supremacists in the White House, the level of corruption Speaking of corruption, reports are now surfacing that indicate Trump is extremely worried about the numerous investigations into The Donald and his team s connections to Russia.A White House official revealed Thursday that chief of staff Reince Priebus contacted a top FBI official to dispute reports that members of the administration and Trump s campaign staff were in frequent contact with Russian operatives during the election. WDSU reports:The official said Priebus request came after the FBI told the White House it believed a New York Times report last week describing those contacts was not accurate. As of Thursday, the FBI had not stated that position publicly and there was no indication it planned to.The New York Times reported that U.S. agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and members of Trump s 2016 campaign team.Priebus discussion with FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe sparked outrage among some Democrats, who said he was violating policies intended to limit communications between the law enforcement agency and the White House on pending investigations. The White House is simply not permitted to pressure the FBI to make public statements about a pending investigation of the president and his advisers, Michigan Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said of the news.A 2009 memo from then-AG Eric Holder makes it very clear that the Justice Department is only to advise the White House on ongoing investigations when it is important for the performance of the president s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective. The FBI has not made a public statement regarding Trump and his team s Russia connections, but Priebus says that the top levels of the intelligence community have informed him that the allegations are not only grossly overstated, but also wrong. We didn t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to reports an admission that the Trump administration had violated the decade-old rule against such contacts.It is clear at this point that Trump and his friends are scared. Good.Featured image via Getty Images (Pool)

The Times of Israel reports: The Tel Aviv municipality building was lit in the colors of the Egyptian flag Saturday night, in a gesture of solidarity with Israel’s neighbor a day after a deadly shooting attack near Cairo. [Tonight we light up the @TelAviv Municipality with the flag of #Egypt. Those seeking peace will not rest until such horrific acts will end. pic. twitter. — Mayor of Tel Aviv (@MayorOfTelAviv) May 27, 2017, The building had been illuminated in various flags following other international terror attacks — on Tuesday it was lit in the colors of the Union Jack after a deadly suicide bombing in Manchester — but the latest tribute is the first time the gesture has been made toward an Arab country. people were killed Friday morning when a bus carrying Christian Copts pilgrims was shot at by masked gunmen in the Egyptian Minya province, south of Cairo. According to the Egyptian cabinet, 13 of the victims remained hospitalized in Cairo on Saturday evening. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which came on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Read more here.

21st Century Wire says Is Donald Trump the answer? Is anyone the answer?Here s an interesting conversation in New York City, with author David Icke and Luke Rudkowski from We Are Change, talking about the adoption of Donald Trump and Islamophobia by popular, well-financed alternative media outlets, and the challenges of remaining truly independent. Watch:

@MJibranNasir the statement says they attacked because cartoons of bagdadi were published not our holy prophet

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 23:00 UTC Authorities in North Dakota may be feeling the heat from the international attention the Dakota Access Pipeline is getting. They're now saying they lack the manpower to remove the encampment of protesters located on federal land near the controversial pipeline. The announcement may signal a softening of the treatment the protesters, up until now, have been receiving. For months now, The Free Thought Project 's spotlight has been shining on the, some might say, dark and dirty deeds of law enforcement and their treatment of largely Native American peaceful protesters. Attack dogs were unleashed on the protesters in September, injuring six, and an additional 30 protesters, including children, were sprayed with pepper spray. In all, more than 260 people have reportedly been arrested since the protests began in Morton County — over 100 this weekend alone. The sheriff's office's announcement comes just two days after The Free Thought Project encouraged readers to contact Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier's office demanding him to allow for peaceful protest, even providing a link to a petition for his removal. Spokeswoman Donnell Preskey told The Associated Press the department doesn't "have the manpower" to remove the more than 100 protesters from the property. "We can't right now," she said. Preskey said the land belongs to a Texas-based firm, Energy Transfer Partners, and was purchased from a local rancher for an undisclosed price. According to the AP , the Native Americans claim the land is theirs by way of an, "1851 treaty and they won't leave until the pipeline is stopped." "We never ceded this land," said protester Joye Braun. "The $3.8 billion pipeline, most of which has been completed, crosses through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Opponents worry about potential effects on drinking water on the Standing Rock Sioux's reservation and farther downstream on the Missouri River, as well as destruction of cultural artifacts," writes the AP. The disputed ranch is more than 100 years old and was the first one to be inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. According to the AP: "It is within a half-mile of a larger encampment on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' land where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and hundreds of others have gathered in protest. Protesters do not have a federal permit to be on the corps' land, but the agency said it wouldn't evict them due to free speech reasons . Authorities have criticized that decision, saying the site has been a launching point for protests at construction sites in the area." While the announcement by the Morton County Sheriff's office may signal a change in tone and the potential for more relaxed police tactics, it remains to be seen. Late Monday, Standing Rock Sioux chairman Dave Archambault II issued the following statement, calling on the Obama Administration's U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the militant treatment of its peaceful protesters, and asked for an injunction to the pipeline's construction. Archambault wrote; The militarization of local law enforcement and enlistment of multiple law enforcements agencies from neighboring states is needlessly escalating violence and unlawful arrests against peaceful protestors at Standing Rock. We do not condone reports of illegal actions, but believe the majority of peaceful protestors are reacting to strong-arm tactics and abuses by law enforcement. Thousands of water protectors have joined the Tribe in solidarity against DAPL, without incident or serious injury. Yet, North Dakota law enforcement have proceeded with a disproportionate response to their nonviolent exercise of their First Amendment rights, even going as far as labeling them rioters and calling their every action illegal. We are disappointed to see that our state and congressional delegations and Gov. Jack Dalrymple have failed to ensure the safety and rights of the citizens engaged in peaceful protests who were arrested on Saturday. Their lack of leadership and commitment to creating a dialogue towards a peaceful solution reflects not only the unjust historical narrative against Native Americans, but a dangerous trend in law enforcement tactics across America. For these reasons, we believe the situation at Standing Rock deserves the immediate and full attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. Furthermore, the DOJ should impose an injunction to all developments at the pipeline site to keep ALL citizens - law enforcement and protestors - safe. The DOJ should be enlisted and expected to investigate the overwhelming reports and videos demonstrating clear strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement. The chairman's request seems to validate many of the reports coming from the field, that peaceful protesters are being labeled as rioters and are not being treated with the dignity they feel they deserve. As The Free Thought Project reported two days ago, many of the protesters are being thrown to the ground, squashed underfoot, strip-searched, and forced to remove sacred hair braids — all considered "strong-arm tactics, abuses, and unlawful," by Archambault.

If there s one thing that has been made one-hundred percent certain throught the course of this presidential election, it s that Donald Trump is a liar. A huge liar.Recently, he may have likely told his biggest whopper yet, and no one, and I mean no one, besides maybe some of his most devout followers, is falling for it.During one of his latest rallies, Trump went on and on about how President Obama handled a protester at one of Hillary Clinton s campaign rallies. Trump said that Obama was shouting and unhinged, but in reality, the president was calm, cool and collected and treated the protester with the utmost respect.Pointing out this utter fallacy were the ladies on ABC s The View. Not one of the women could defend Trump s lies. Not even the most conservative in the bunch.It was also pointed out that Trump has gotten as far as he has by lying and bullying his way to the top and that never should have been allowed to happen.And that s exactly what Trump is a liar and a bully.Trump cannot be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.Watch all the women tear Trump apart here: That s not just a little misleading that s false, @SaraHaines says of how Trump criticized Pres. Obama s treatment of a protester. pic.twitter.com/EmxpwK0X8t The View (@TheView) November 7, 2016Featured image via video screen capture

After the horrific murder of three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, President Obama gave a heartfelt speech one that could have been given by any politician condemning the cowardly and reprehensible attack against those who put their lives on the line for ours every day. Obama declared that justice will be done. That, though, wasn t convincing enough for Trump, who stated in a Fox News interview that somehow, Obama must be in collusion with the murderers because of his body language. After Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy read Donald Trump a statement from a Cleveland police union president which accused Obama of having blood on his hands Trump replied, Well, it s true. I watch the president and sometimes the words are okay, but you just look at the body language and there s something going on. Source: NY MagazineHere s the video:When the hell did Donald Trump become a body language expert? Oh, he isn t. Body language is nothing but code. President Obama is black. To racists, and Trump, that means that he s anti-cop and he must be a member of the Black Panthers, just as all Muslims are terrorists and all Mexicans are rapists.For decades, and probably centuries, part of the country s narrative was that cops and black people don t mix. Who can blame the African-American community, really? The justice system has been rigged against them from the start.Of course, white people turn that around to prop up the image of black people as criminals; they only have problems with the justice system because they are lawbreakers. Of course, that s not true (more on that in a minute), but that doesn t stop those on the right, including their leader, Donald Trump, from playing that particular race card with the highly educated African-American President of the United States, who must hate cops, simply because he has black skin.Here are the ugly facts, and they don t bode well for the justice system:If I were African-American, I d be pissed, but Obama is the President of the entire United States, a fact that has made some civil rights leaders, like Dr. Cornel West, turn on him. Sure, Obama doesn t deny his race, but he knows injustice wherever he sees it, and the shootings of cops was unjust. There was nothing in his body language but weariness from our seemingly increasing rash of violence.See for yourself:As for Trump, his rhetoric is only ginning up the violence, all while the President tries his hardest to soothe a nation being driven to crisis level, partly because of Trump.Featured image via Drew Angerer at Getty Images.

Boston-based entrepreneur and inventor of Email V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai announced his candidacy for the US Senate seat currently occupied by Elizabeth Warren.Today, ShivaRatri, when Light overcame Darkness, we launched my campaign for US SENATE against @SenWarren. Defend the American Dream! Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (@va_shiva) February 25, 2017Ayyadurai is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is best known for his claim to have invented email.V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, an Indian-American, will take on the only fake Indian in the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren.Shiva announced his candidacy last night at a private event hosted by Mike Cernovich and Jeff Giesea in suburban Maryland.Folks, THIS is the guy who is going to beat @SenWarren. He is the REAL Indian. @va_shiva. @Cernovich #BullMoose pic.twitter.com/6z5BdWpkPY Lynni Megginson (@LynniMegginson) February 25, 2017Elizabeth Warren lied to jump over other candidates and land a position at Harvard. Elizabeth Warren was listed as the Harvard Law s first woman of color in 1997 law review piece on diversity and affirmative action!Elizabeth Warren pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School s first woman of color, based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996). Warren was listed as a woman of color in the 1993 Harvard student journal. GPTime to take fight right into the belly of the beast in MA, the epi-center of Fake News, Fake History & Fake Science! @nntaleb @Cernovich Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (@va_shiva) February 25, 2017Honored to be with REAL patriots #BullMoose who are uniting as one force to bring Truth and Freedom, exposing the Fake News! @Cernovich Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai (@va_shiva) February 25, 2017He s the inventor of email and polymath, holds four degrees from MIT, is a world-renowned systems scientist, inventor and entrepreneur.His love of medicine and complex systems began in India when he became intrigued with medicine at the age of five as he observed his grandmother, a farmer and healer in the small village of Muhavur in South India, apply Siddha, India s oldest system of traditional medicine, to heal and support local villagers. These early experiences inspired him to pursue the study of modern systems science, information technology and eastern and traditional systems of medicine to develop an integrative framework linking eastern and western systems of medicine.In 1978, as a precocious 14-year-old, after completing a special program in computer science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at NYU, Ayyadurai was recruited by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) as a Research Fellow, where he developed the first electronic emulation of the entire interoffice mail system (Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Address Book, Memo, etc.), which he named EMAIL, to invent the world s first email system, resulting in him being awarded the first United States Copyright for Email, Computer Program for Electronic Mail System, at a time when Copyright was the only protection for software inventions.Ayyadurai went on to receive four degrees from MIT, including a bachelors in electrical engineering and computer science, and a dual master s degree in mechanical engineering and visual studies from the MIT Media Laboratory.

Desperate Showmance! David Foster & Katharine McPhee ‘Staging’ Romance, Source Claims

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is long overdue. I think it s long overdue. Many presidents have said they want to do something and they didn t do it, he said in a Cabinet meeting ahead of his midday speech on Israel.

@skerzaholic By the way Chase, you had to go back a year to find any examples, even those who were not kids.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal followed an internal debate that pitted anti-globalist advisers like Steve Bannon against more moderate voices such as Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and top economic adviser, Gary Cohn. In the end, Trump stuck to a promise that he had made on the campaign trail last year aimed at helping blue-collar workers who he feels are under siege in a changing U.S. economy. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Pars,” he said on Thursday in making his announcement. But Trump’s intentions concerning the Paris accord were unclear even to some of his aides until the last day or so, since he has shown flexibility on some campaign promises and had gotten an earful about the need to stay in the agreement from key allies at a Group of Seven summit last week in Sicily. At the White House, the behind-the-scenes debate about whether to stay in Paris or bolt was an intense one that dragged on for weeks. Ivanka Trump, whose husband, Jared Kushner, is a senior White House adviser, had been quietly urging her father to keep the United States in the Paris agreement, and had sought to ensure her father heard all sides in the debate, an official said. Cohn last week suggested Trump might be softening on his outright hostility toward the accord, telling reporters the president’s position was “evolving” based on input from world leaders who wanted the United States to remain in the agreement. Kushner, on the other hand, came around to the view that the standards set out in the agreement did not work for the U.S. economy, a senior administration official said. The official said the question for Kushner was whether to try to change those standards within the agreement or pull out. Consistently in favor of pulling out were Bannon and Trump speechwriter Stephen Miller, who was involved in writing Trump’s Paris remarks, and Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Both Bannon and Miller are seen as key architects of Trump’s “America First” agenda, which is aimed at ensuring U.S. interests are taken into account over a globalist view. Although there had been some discussion of keeping the United States in the Paris accord, while changing its carbon emissions commitments, as a way of maintaining global unity, in the end, Trump decided to cut the cord entirely. “I think the president’s legal team felt very strongly that it was best, that the cleanest way to address it was to just get out,” a senior administration official told reporters.

Gov. Romney's own health care plan in Massachusetts ... requires by law that a representative from Planned Parenthood sit on the MassHealth advisory board.

Photo of Copacabana beach on 3/22/20 full of sunbathers, even though Rio is in quarantine due to COVID-19.

Donald Trump is perhaps the most predictable person who s ever run for president. If someone disses him, they are enemies for life, and if someone says something positive about the self-proclaimed (we won t believe it unless he releases his tax returns) billionaire, brutal dictator or not, they will have Trump s loyalty and respect.Now, things get a little weird when people are sarcastic, as is the case with a Washington Post article that, if you didn t read it, might be something somewhat positive about the GOP nominee. Trump obviously didn t read the article. He would have hated it, but he did retweet the article entitled Donald Trump s birther event is the greatest trick he s ever pulled : Donald Trump s birther event is the greatest trick he s ever pulled https://t.co/zvVQnxeiQ9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016Most of us, at least those of us who are capable of critical thought, would probably not assume that the article was a positive portrayal of Trump s birther farce, but, well, we re talking about Trump. As for the article, no, it was pretty brutal toward Trump. Here are a few snippets:Donald Trump is, at heart, a showman. He rose to national fame thanks to star turns on reality TV in which he played the tough-talking boss to a group of aspirants hoping to become as successful as he has been in business. His great gift is the ability to draw attention and then use that attention for his own, usually commercial, purposes.Trump might have read that far. He s proud of being a showman and he s pretty damned good at it, in much the same way that snake oil salesmen were good at their jobs.Trump may have outdone himself on Friday morning. He and his campaign touted a major announcement at his newly opened hotel in Washington, D.C., at 10 a.m. The word was that Trump would walk away from his past skepticism about President Obama s citizenship while also laying the blame for the birther movement at the feet of Hillary Clinton. (That, of course, isn t true according to numerous fact-checkers but no matter: Trump planned to say it anyway.)The article goes on to fact check some of Trump s many lies, especially in regard to the birther controversy. No, Hillary Clinton didn t start it and yes, Donald Trump has long been a birther.The Washington Post then went on to describe the event, and it wasn t flattering. This is how they described Trump s announcement:Three sentences from Trump himself one that is totally false and two others that represent a total reversal from a position he held as recently as, well, Thursday night.Clearly, Trump didn t read the article, which is a little frightening. Presidents are given several pages, if not hundreds, of important documents ever single day. It s critical that our President read and not just assume and retweet.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images

David Swanson

Email “The Arizona market is the poster child for the problems the [ObamaCare] exchanges are experiencing nationally,” Milliman Inc. actuary Tom Snook told the Wall Street Journal . It would be difficult to argue with Snook’s contention. While individual-insurance premiums are rising by an average of 25 percent across the country next year, Arizona’s premiums are set to grow by double or triple that, with some locales experiencing rate hikes topping 100 percent. Meanwhile, for all intents and purposes, Arizonans have but one insurance carrier from whom to purchase coverage, and one county nearly ended up with no carriers at all. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Arizona was originally the poster child for the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) success. The first year the ACA exchanges opened for business, the state had eight insurers offering a wide variety of plans at low prices, in part because of an expectation that the federal government would bail them out if they suffered losses. “A 2013 Society of Actuaries report suggested that the Arizona individual-insurance market could more than double, growing to 570,681 consumers, with more than 80% of them buying through the exchange,” wrote the Journal . “The health-care costs of the newer customer base would be around 22% higher than the old one, it suggested.” Instead, as has been the case throughout the nation, Americans made health-insurance decisions based on their own needs rather than following the best-laid plans of politicians and bureaucrats. Those with pre-existing conditions took advantage of the ACA’s mandates that insurers cover them at rates comparable to those of their healthy neighbors, while those neighbors balked at buying coverage that was more expensive and less generous than they desired. The result: Enrollment fell well below expectations, with only 203,000 people buying exchange plans this year, while the cost of covering those enrollees was vastly greater than expected — “around 250% higher on average than individual members before the health law,” Jeff Stelnik, senior vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, told the Journal . To make matters worse, the bailouts never came through. The federal risk-corridor program was supposed to transfer profits from successful insurers to unsuccessful ones, but so few insurers made money on the exchanges that the program could only cover 12.6 percent of losses. Congress refused to make up the difference from general revenues. In Arizona, as elsewhere, this could only have one outcome: fewer insurers and higher premiums. Although the number of insurers increased to 11 in 2015, it returned to eight last year. Insurers were forced to raise rates each year — Blue Cross Blue Shield hiked premiums by 35 percent in 2014 — but it still wasn’t enough to break even, let alone turn a profit. The state’s ObamaCare co-op went under in 2015, and major insurers began pulling out of the state en masse this year. UnitedHealth Group and Aetna left entirely. Blue Cross Blue Shield and Health Net both announced they would exit the exchanges in Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, and Pinal County. That, in turn, would have left Pinal County without a single exchange insurer; but “after state and federal regulators ‘expressed their concern for Pinal residents,’” Blue Cross decided to remain in Pinal County after all, Stelnik told the Journal . For 2017, every Arizona county will have only one insurer on its exchange, save for Pima County, home to Tucson, which will have two. However, according to the New York Times , only Health Net is offering a full range of plans in Pima County, while Blue Cross is solely selling catastrophic plans for people under 30. Considering that the ACA also allows people to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26, it seems likely that few will take advantage of Blue Cross’s offer. “There are no choices, really, for anybody in Maricopa County,” Phoenix resident Ken Hoag told the Arizona Republic . “The lack of choice is like having empty shelves (and) no food in a third-world country. Do I live in Cuba?” Of course, with mounting losses and no competition, it’s hardly surprising that premiums for individual plans are skyrocketing. Blue Cross Blue Shield is raising its rates by an average of 51 percent, Health Net an average of 75 percent. In Phoenix, premiums are going up a whopping 145 percent. Republic columnist Laurie Roberts notes that a typical 27-year-old Arizonan “buying the second lowest ‘silver plan’ will see premiums soar by 116 percent. If that 27 year old makes $35,000 a year, he’ll pay nearly 10 percent of his gross income for insurance even with an Obamacare subsidy. If he makes over $47,000, he’ll pay a jaw dropping $422 a month for insurance, up from $196 this year.” That subsidy, as usual, is the ace ObamaCare supporters always have up their sleeve. The rate hikes, while huge, aren’t so bad because the subsidies will cover most of the extra cost, they argue. “That may be so,” Roberts observed, “but how sustainable is a system in which insurance premiums rise by 116 percent in a year? Or even 25 percent a year?” Besides, subsidies don’t cover all the added expense. Hoag’s wife had to buy a new plan for 2017 because her old one is being discontinued. While her new plan’s benefits are comparable to those of her old plan, she is going to be stuck for an extra $50 a month in premiums despite her subsidy. And what of Arizonans who earn too much money to qualify for subsidies? For them, the Times admits, “the price increases will be excruciating.” The paper cites one example: Leslie Rycroft of Scottsdale, who works in human resources, is paying $1,100 a month this year for a United Healthcare plan that has a $13,000 deductible for her family of four. Their income was a little too high to qualify for a subsidy, she said. When she looked at her options on HealthCare.gov last week, she said she was “absolutely horrified” to see only one insurer, Health Net, offering plans that started at $2,200 a month. “It’s beyond ridiculous,” she said. “All of a sudden you are paying $26,000 a year,” Ms. Rycroft said, “just for catastrophic health insurance.” Thus, the Grand Canyon State has the unfortunate distinction of serving as the latest example of the great chasm between progressives’ pipe dreams and reality. As always, though, ordinary Americans, not the politicians who created this monster, are the ones suffering as a result. Is it any wonder that over half of Americans tell pollsters they disapprove of ObamaCare, and the number who say it has hurt them continues to rise? The only wonder is that politicians, who normally live and die by opinion polls, haven’t done anything to address their concerns. Perhaps the upcoming elections will change that, but don’t hold your breath. Should you pass out and injure yourself, you might not be able to afford the medical bills with your ObamaCare-approved insurance — if you can even pay the premium. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment Thank you for joining the discussion at The New American. We value our readers and encourage their participation, but in order to ensure a positive experience for our readership, we have a few guidelines for commenting on articles. If your post does not follow our policy, it will be deleted. No profanity, racial slurs, direct threats, or threatening language. No product advertisements. Please post comments in English. Please keep your comments on topic with the article. If you wish to comment on another subject, you may search for a relevant article and join or start a discussion there.

Another successful cleansing of our history like it or not what s next?Just a reminder of something Michelle Obama said in 2008 on the campaign trail in Puerto Rico: MICHELLE OBAMA: Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we re going to have to move into a different place as a nation. Change our traditions and change our history. What did she mean by that?Changing history means not just telling the same old tall tales of the free market system and the Founders. No, it s the history according to progressives. And it s not merely spinning the old facts; it s taking current events and molding them to fit the progressive agenda and, in this case, completely ignoring history. HERE S A BACKWARDS TIMELINE OF WHAT HAPPENED TODAY VIA THE POST AND COURIER:Members of the South Carolina Senate have voted 37-3 to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds.Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, objected to giving the bill automatic third reading, which is usually a procedural vote, on Tuesday. For the bill to be sent to the House, it will need a two-thirds vote.Monday s three nay votes were from Bright, and Sens. Harvey Peeler and Danny Verdin. Plus, for the bill to be amended on third reading, it would need a three-fifths vote.Senate is scheduled to return Tuesday at 10 a.m.3:20 p.m. update: The senate has voted to table amendments that would have pushed the vote on the Confederate flag issue to a statewide referendum (36-3), allow the flag to flown on Statehouse grounds on Confederate Memorial Day (22-17) or replace the current flag with the First National Flag of the Confederate States of America (34-6). Now, various senators are taking turns speaking about the issue. No one has yet made a motion to vote on the bill that would remove the Confederate battle from the Statehouse grounds.1:50 p.m. update: After a short break, the Senate returned to debate the fate of the Statehouse s Confederate battle flag just after 1:15 p.m.Roebuck Republican Sen. Lee Bright s amendment has already died on a 36-3 vote. It would have placed the fate of the flag in the hands of voters.The Senate has now moved to discuss an amendment by Sen. Danny Verdin, R-Laurens. It would allow for the flag to be flown at the Confederate Soldier Monument on Confederate Memorial Day, which is May 10. Verdin has the floor.COLUMBIA It s been a morning of impassioned speeches in the South Carolina Senate, as lawmakers brace for discussion on a bill that will determine the fate of the Confederate battle flag on the Statehouse s grounds.The Senate is on recess until 1 p.m. Senate President Pro Tempore Hugh Leatherman said the heads of both the GOP and Democratic Caucus asked for body to break for a recess so that the caucuses could meet. But lawmakers are still planning on discussing the bill today. My intent is to give it second reading today and my intent would be to give it third reading tomorrow, Leatherman said. Will the Senate do that? Don t know. But we ll try to head in that direction. If the bill follows Leatherman s planned track, it ll be before the House for a vote on Wednesday. Only one amendment has been proposed in the Senate so far.Roebuck Republican Sen. Lee Bright s amendment would place the fate of the banner in the hands of voters. When the bill crosses the hall, it ll likely be met with an amendment by Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, who said he d like to see the battle flag replaced with Bonnie Blue.Meanwhile, members from both sides of the aisle have made speeches calling for the flag s removal this morning, including Pickens Republican Sen. Larry Martin, who said his view on the flag changed after the shooting that took the lives of nine churchgoers in Charleston on June 17.Martin said he looked at the flag as if it was given some sort of official status, because it flies on the capitol s grounds. That doesn t represent all of the people of South Carolina, Martin said. It isn t part of our future. It s part of our past. A two-thirds vote in each chamber is needed to do anything with any monument on the capitol s grounds, including the battle flag which is part of the Confederate Soldier Monument. That vote threshold has been met, according to a survey by The Post and Courier.Outside the Statehouse, dozens of protesters began to arrive Monday morning. Some called for the flag to come down. Others, such as Nelson Waller in his rebel flag tie, said the state was giving in to Northern liberals and civil rights activists. Waller carried a sign that read Keep the flag. Dump Nikki! Two decades ago, he carried a Dump Beasley sign after then-Gov. David Beasley made an unsuccessful attempt to get the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome.

Congressman Ted Lieu: US troops could be prosecuted for Yemen war crimes: Lawmaker By Press TV on November 4, 2016 An American soldier talks with Saudi troops. (File photo by the US Army) A US congressman has warned that American troops could be prosecuted for providing military support to the Saudi war on Yemen. Ted Lieu made the warning in a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, saying the US government’s denial of target selection for Saudi airstrikes in Yemen does not excuse Washington from legal responsibilities. “I find it deeply troubling that the US apparently has no advanced knowledge of what targets will be struck by jets that are refueled by US personnel with US tankers,” Lieu said in his letter. “The US would appear to be violating LOAC [laws of armed conflict] and international standards by engaging in such direct military operations if US personnel are not aware if targets are civilian or military, if the loss of life and property are disproportional, or if the operation is even militarily necessary,” he noted. A Yemeni boy walks past a mural depicting a US drone and reading: “Why did you kill my family.” (Photo by AFP) Pointing to the 18-month involvement of US in Saudi war on the Yemeni people, the Democratic congressman stressed that Washington had knowledge of a bombardment campaign hitting civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, multiple times. “US personnel are now at legal risk of being investigated and potentially prosecuted for committing war crimes. Under international law, a person can be found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes. Under US law, a person can be found guilty for conspiring to commit war crimes,” Lieu wrote. The Pentagon has been providing logistic and surveillance support to Saudi Arabia in its military aggression against Yemen, the kingdom’s impoverished southern neighbor, which has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis since its onset in March 2015. The unprovoked war started by a coalition of Saudi-allies in an attempt to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime. Washington has on several occasions criticized the Saudi regime for its crimes against humanity in Yemen, but has shown no sign of ending its support for Riyadh. US Representative Ted Lieu of California addresses delegates on the fourth and final day of the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center on July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by AFP) In August, the US State Department approved the sale of more than 130 Abrams tanks, 20 armored recovery vehicles and other equipment worth about $1.15 billion to Saudi Arabia. Saudi-led bombardments have struck hospitals, markets and other places where civilians gather. In September, Amnesty International reported that a US manufactured bomb had been used in a Saudi strike against a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen’s northwestern province of Hajjah which claimed the lives of 19 people. In October, more than 140 people lost their lives and over 525 others sustained injuries after Saudi military aircraft struck a hall in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, where rows of people were attending a funeral. Yemeni rescue workers pull out a victim from amid the rubble following a Saudi airstrike against a packed funeral site in the capital, Sana’a, on October 8, 2016. (Photo by AFP) UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said last month that the death toll from the Saudi military aggression could rise even further as some areas had no medical facilities, and that people were often buried without any official record being made. Related Posts: No Related Posts The Press TV 13 Reads Filed under Politics

A provision in the health care reform bill for end-of-life counseling for seniors is not entirely voluntary.

@Applemask @billybragg see, liblabcon voters are horrible stupid people,who can't destroy Western Europe quick enough #guilty

21st Century Wire says After 12 months of perpetrating one of the greatest political hoaxes in history blaming Russia for the Presidential victory of Donald Trump the Washington establishment is now wanting to take the lie to the next level by sanctioning not only Russian international media outlets, but any media outlet (see one of their guide lists here) who dare to violate the mainstream party line on the US war agenda by broadcasting to an America audience forcing them the register as foreign agents under the FARA Act of 1934. CrossTalk says: The television station you are watching now and the Russian news agency Sputnik may find themselves in legal jeopardy in the United States. The drive to designate both as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act is disturbing and dangerous. It would seem those in power decide who can freely speak. Host Peter Lavelle is CrossTalking with guests Scott Rickard, Neil Clark, and Alexander Nekrassov.Watch this incredible discussion on how Washington is degenerating into a paranoid NeoMcCarthyist den of political scape-goatists whose chief aim is to shut down any dissenting voices against America s policy of endless war around the globe:. READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

Now that FBI’s reopened Hillary investigation, can THIS be far behind? (Hint: Bill, fire up the jet!) Posted at 2:15 pm on October 28, 2016 by Doug P. As we’ve reported, FBI Director James Comey said he would be reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and private server in light of new information: WHOA! FBI director tells Congress Hillary investigation reopening ‘due to recent developments’ (here’s the letter) https://t.co/SfcQhxBWzI — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 28, 2016 Can “total coincidence” number two be far behind? I think it's time for another Lynch/Clinton tarmac meeting https://t.co/IzD7715mA7 — Kelly Riddell (@KellyRiddell) October 28, 2016 We wouldn’t put it past them … again . Trending

John Podesta is the guardian of the Clintons just like Valerie Jarrett was for the Obamas. He was instrumental during the 2016 election as the Clinton campaign chair and was exposed when the Wikileaks hack happened. He was just interviewed by the House Intel Committee regarding the Russia scam and was asked about it in the heated debate below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9U5zxVyTqAJohn Podesta is not just the former chairman of the Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign, but also a central figure in the ongoing narrative of Russian meddling in the US election of 2016. His hacked emails were at the heart of what some have called a coordinated news campaign led by Wikileaks, and so he met with the House Intelligence panel yesterday behind closed doors.This morning he appeared on Fox Business to discuss the Russian interference, allegations of collusion with Trump campaign and more with host Maria Bartiromo in what became a testy debate that perfectly exemplifies the divided positions that so many Americans hold right now.Bartiromo showed skepticism over the Russia claims rightfully so!. And there may be no other individual that best embodies the Clinton s web of influence for good and bad than Mr. Podesta. He s the definition of a weasel.Bartiromo aggressively attacked Podesta and Democrats for what she said were deeper ties with Russia, specifically asking about Podesta s investment portfolio:THIS IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE OF A DEEP TIE TO RUSSIA:Russia gave John Podesta 35 millions dollars (1 billion rubles) while he advised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Russia gave John Podesta 35 millions dollars (1 billion rubles) while he advised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. pic.twitter.com/cf042XZLeU Based Vet (@BasedVet) March 28, 2017 Get your facts straight, the former Clinton campaign chair shot back, before dismissing the FBN hosts claims as coming from a dubious source like InfoWars. It went downhill from there.

Videos Protesters Disrupt “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” At UT-Austin The bake sale hosted by the Young Conservatives of Texas — in which prices varied depending on the buyer's race and gender — was meant to protest the consideration of race in admissions. | October 27, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! The Young Conservatives of Texas at UT Austin held a bake sale at the West Mall to discuss affirmative action policies on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016. The Young Conservatives were met with criticism, which resulted in a protest and several intense conversations among students. (Photo: Shelby Knowles/Texas Tribune/cc) A controversial bake sale meant to protest race-based admissions at the University of Texas at Austin drew its own opponents on Wednesday. The campus branch of the Young Conservatives of Texas hosted the bake sale — in which prices varied depending on the buyer’s race and gender — to draw attention to affirmative action, which the event’s organizers said “demeans minorities on our campus by placing labels of race and gender on their accomplishments.” A cookie cost $1.50 for Asian males, 75 cents for white females and 25 cents for Hispanic females. More than 100 of their classmates showed up to host a counter-protest, calling the bake sale an offensive and inappropriate stunt. “The labeling of races and the different prices of each is unacceptable…” said Jarvis Dillard, a UT freshman and one of the students protesting the bake sale. “White males have privilege above all the other races.” In a statement Wednesday, Greg Vincent, the university’s vice president for diversity and community engagement, called the event “inflammatory and demeaning.” “Focusing our attention on the provocative nature of the YCT’s actions ignores a much more important issue: They create an environment of exclusion and disrespect among our students, faculty and staff,” the statement says. The young conservatives group held a similar bake sale in 2013 and was similarly chastised by Vincent, who called that event “deplorable.” UT-Austin’s affirmative action policies have put the university in the spotlight over the past few years. In June 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the university’s affirmative action system in a 4-3 vote after it was challenged by a white woman, Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission. Fisher argued she was passed over by UT while less qualified minority students were not. The university considered the Supreme Court decision — which gives a small boost in admission to black and Hispanic students — a win. As of 2015, however, black students only made up 3.9 percent of the student population. During the protest, UT student body president Kevin Helgren said the campus has a long way to go in terms of inclusivity and diversity. “Institutionalized racism exists and affirmative action helps to combat that,” Helgren said during the protest. “The act of putting financial values on groups of people based on their gender or on their race, in my opinion, is a really prominent way to engage in racism in 2016.” On the young conservatives’ Facebook event page, the group wrote: “YCT is a truly colorblind organization and believes that all government institutions are constitutionally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race in all circumstances, including affirmative action.” Christopher Shafik, a 19-year-old member of the young conservatives group, said “people assume that because we are in a position against affirmative action that we’re racist.” He said the opposite is true, and that the organization must work to change its image on campus. This work by T he Texas Tribune is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

US charges 61 with India-based scam involving 15,000 victims US charges 61 with India-based scam involving 15,000 victims By 0 166 The US Justice Department has charged 61 people and entities with involvement in a major India-based scam that targeted thousands of Americans. The scheme involved Indian call centers, where some workers called American citizens and convinced them to pay their non-existent debts by impersonating Internal Revenue Service (IRS), immigration and other federal officials, the Justice Department said in a statement on Thursday. Some victims were even offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee. The scammers had stolen more than $300 million from at least 15,000 unsuspecting citizens, the department noted. The victims’ money was laundered by an American network of criminals who used debit cards or wire transfers under fake identities, the indictment said. Federal officials arrested 20 people across America on Thursday. Additionally, 32 individuals and five call centers in India were charged…

@Zilla_Mon @wessmith123 @seanhannity and a racist.

People queue in Singapore for Halal food.

Democrats, however, should be concerned for a different reason. The last consecutive two-term presidents from the same party were James Madison and James Monroe, who were both Democratic-Republicans. That transition occurred before the formation of our modern two-party system. The 2020 election is one Democrats cannot afford to lose. It is a census year, which means the future of the House will be determined for the next decade. It is also highly possible that at least two (or three) seats will open on the Supreme Court, given the ages of the justices—more than are likely to open between 2016 and 2020. If the Democrats do not win, the GOP will have a solid hold on government for at least another 10 years. And that raises one very important question: Do Democratic voters really want to hitch their wagon to four years of a center-right candidate like Hillary Clinton? The Democratic Party as a whole is moving to the left—albeit slowly. Elizabeth Warren would never have gotten elected in the ’90s, let alone become as influential as she has. It can easily be said that the Democrats are no longer the party of the Clintons (the New Democrats), and are instead, the party of Elizabeth Warren. If Hillary Clinton wins the nod in 2016, and manages to win the general, it is unlikely she will be able to excite the base of her own party in four years—as the DNC may slowly be realizing. She’s a hard enough sell now in spite of every effort chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has expended on her behalf. Many on the left will not turn out to vote for Clinton—in fact, a new poll showed that 20 percent of Democrats would defect and vote Trump over Hillary in a general election. Clinton’s problems start with image. More Americans mistrust her than trust her. This may be due to her various “scandals,” especially her private email server. But it probably also has something to do with the fact that she is politically expedient. A look at her campaign strategy throughout her career is telling. In this regard, she is nearly indistinguishable from the GOP. In 2008, her campaign reportedly circulated a picture of Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder without providing context for the image, in a seeming effort to stir fears that the now-president was a Muslim. In this current election cycle, Clinton has relied on Republican talking points to attack Bernie Sanders. Specifically, she cited Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal’s faulty analysis of the cost of his domestic plan. Clinton has gone as far as attacking him for proposing universal health care—a move 2008 Hillary called out as a Republican tactic. Clinton has also resorted to Republican talking points to justify opposing a $15 minimum wage. Though she calls them her greatest enemies, her argument relies on the same false premise as the GOP’s: it will cost jobs. First, Clinton purposefully ignores that a raise to $15 per hour would be gradual. Additionally, she pays no heed to the fact that evidence indicating such increases will cost jobs is thin. In fact, studies overwhelmingly suggest that minimum wage hikes have no impact on employment. Additionally, many on the left worry that there is no way for Democrats to know what Hillary Clinton will morph into, given her numerous flip-flops. And for all of her talk about fighting for the middle class, she has an uncomfortably cozy relationship with Wall Street and powerful private industries (oil, private prisons, big banks, cable companies, etc.). But Clinton’s problems run much deeper than impressions of her character. As a candidate, Hillary is closer to George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan than to the heart of the Democratic Party, FDR. Progressives know this about her. She exists out-of-time—propped up by a Democratic establishment similarly stuck on Third Way politics. Hillary is a New Democrat in 2016; she’s caught between two narratives: the GOP/Reagan narrative that government is too big, and inherently inefficient, and the Democratic narrative, that government can and should work for all to solve the problems we face as a country. Clinton’s background creates a disconnect between her policies and those of her party. Hillary’s “strongest issue” is foreign policy, given her years of experience at the State Department. Unfortunately, her foreign policy ideas don’t fit with many on the left. Put simply, she is an interventionist hawk. In 2008 Barack Obama compared her to George W. Bush, and that comparison still seems appropriate. She did, after all, vote for the Iraq War and support the use of torture on detainees. Although she has called her war vote “a mistake,” we must look at it in its proper context. When we consider the initiatives she pushed at the State Department (the bombing of Libya, arming the Syrian rebels, and selling arms to Clinton Foundation donors), as well as her current plans, like the no-fly-zone in Syria, it seems less of a one-off, and more like part of a pattern. Clinton’s strategy is to deal with ISIS is nearly indistinguishable from Marco Rubio’s: defeat ISIS rather than contain them by forming a coalition with our allies to take back territory, sending in ground troops, disrupting their recruitment, and ramping up airstrikes. Hillary’s plan, like those of the Republicans, is predicated on the idea that by taking out ISIS, U.S. involvement in the region can end. What Clinton’s and the Republican plans fail to take into account is political culture. Changing political culture within a generation is impossible, let alone changing it in a part of the world Westerners, as a rule, barely understand; where people mistrust and resent us, and where democratic tradition is a novel concept. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is not the only part of the globe where intervention is Hillary’s modus operandi. Her involvement in legitimizing the violent coup regime in Honduras indicates that as president, interference would also define her Latin America policy. Besides intervention, Clinton’s foreign policy prioritizes “free markets.” She appears to view the world through the lens of how much multinational business, rather than domestic companies or workers, benefits. Though she has now flip-flopped on both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), her years of support for each suggest her shift is politically motivated. All things considered, it is safe to call Clinton a neoconservative. Economically speaking, in spite of touting herself as a “progressive who likes to get things done,” Clinton is essentially a moderate Republican—which makes economic progressives angry. Her capital gains tax proposal does not increase long-term capital gains taxes, and instead targets short-term investments. This might sound solid on paper, but, as I’ve said before, it will impact new investors and the middle class, while preserving the status quo where billionaires, who keep the majority of their assets wrapped up in long term investments, pay lower rates than their secretaries. She is also against reinstating Glass-Steagall, and breaking up the banks—instead opting for a game of regulatory catch-up to monitor “shadow banking.” Her plan barely tackles symptoms while leaving the underlying illness untouched. To make matters worse, this issue is time-sensitive as there may be another financial crisis brewing with subprime auto loans. A collapse would spell disaster for the Democratic Party should it hit after eight years of President Obama with another Democrat in the Oval Office. However, Hillary seems unconcerned. She’s even attacked proponents of a new Glass-Steagall, on the premise that her policy is stronger—the only plan that tackles shadow banking. As Zach Carter of the Huffington Post explains in his recent article titled “Hillary Clinton Is Not Telling the Truth About Wall Street,” her claims are dishonest. Shadow banking is a direct consequence of the too-big-to-fail model. The concentration of financial power in just six institutions is the fundamental problem we face. The size of the banks allowed them to exert unprecedented influence over rating agencies like S&P or Moody’s, due to the pay-per-rating model. This undermined the integrity of our entire rating system. At the same time, lenders were taking insurance policies out on their loans and products. The size of the banks and by extension, the sheer volume of the insured debt is why, when borrowers began defaulting, insurers like AIG went under. All of this could have been avoided with a decentralized banking system like the one Bernie Sanders is proposing. Clinton’s stance on social programs and spending is equally disappointing to many liberals and progressives. Though she used to, she no longer supports universal healthcare. She explained her flip-flop during one of the few sanctioned DNC presidential debates by saying, “[t]he revolution never came.” Hillary is also against expanding Social Security. She does not support free college tuition for all. Instead she feels it should essentially be a means-tested welfare program. And speaking of welfare, Hillary has stood by her husband’s signing of the disastrous Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (aka welfare reform), deeming it “necessary” in spite of evidence that it caused a spike in extreme poverty particularly in minority communities. This bill was a Republican initiative—part of the “Contract With America.” Clinton isn’t exactly Nancy Reagan on drugs, but her “evolution” on marijuana/cannabis has not come very far since the ’90s—and that’s difficult for many young Democrats to accept. Clinton also scares many environmentalists. She used to be in favor of the Keystone Pipeline until it became a political liability for her, and her State Department helped spread fracking to the rest of the world. She also has trouble convincing some people of her support for LGBTQ equality. It wasn’t until 2013 that she fully embraced same-sex marriage. Prior to that she believed that marriage was a “sacred bond between a man and a woman.” She also supported the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). She hasn’t even been consistent on gun control. Sure, Clinton talks a big game now about background checks and modest reforms, supporting President Obama in his executive actions. But in 2008, she was “Annie Oakley,” accusing Obama of being hostile to hunters’ rights. Everything about Hillary Clinton’s record suggests that she will negotiate from the center/right—leaving only one direction to go in compromising with Republicans: further right. Like her husband before her, she’ll likely use social programs and financial reform as bargaining chips. After all, she’s already given up on universal health care. Her commitment to campaign finance reform is also doubtful considering how much she is raising for this campaign from big donors (Time Warner and Morgan Stanley are both in her top 10). Clinton is not the candidate Democrats should back. This leaves the Democratic Party with two options: 1) Nominate Bernie Sanders. He’s the candidate drawing the largest crowds; the candidate beating the GOP field by the widest margins in a majority of polls; the candidate Americans feel is honest. If anyone has a shot at breaking the trend of back-and-forth in presidential elections, it is Sanders for the simple reason that he has been an independent for the majority of his political career. His outsider image gives him the greatest chance at beating the odds against consecutive two-term presidents from the same party. 2) Let a Republican have four years. With a Hillary ticket, this scenario isn’t out of the question—especially if the candidate is Donald Trump, who can run on the fact that he donated to Clinton. There’s a cold logic in this move. In 2020, Democrats can run someone like Elizabeth Warren who excites the base. Coming off of four years with the GOP, a two-term presidency would be easily attainable with the added benefit that any economic downturns that happen between now and then would be blamed on Republicans. Even if one hit during the first term of the newly elected Democrat, the GOP would still take the fall. Also worth mentioning, people typically vote down the party line—which is good for Democrats, considering it is a census year. 2020 could see the Democrats take the presidency, the House and the Senate—and with the likelihood that two or three seats will open on the court, they’d control all three branches of government. The downside to this option is that Senate Democrats would have to obstruct for four years. Such a move will exact a political cost, but as the Republicans have shown, obstruction isn’t a death knell in elections. Of course, the main drawback is the fact that people will suffer as budgets are slashed. There’s also the high probability that liberals will lose one seat on the Supreme Court, as well as federal judge appointments—all of which be damaging. The only mitigating factor is that, as previously mentioned, there’s strong possibility that more seats will open up on the SCOTUS between 2020 and 2024 than between 2016 to 2020. “Bernie or Bust” is undoubtedly a controversial position, as many Democrats insist that if Hillary Clinton gets the nod, she should be elected president. This argument relies on the-lesser-of-two-evils mind-set; vote Hillary because she’s better than the GOP. However, with all things weighed and considered, it is clear that Clinton should neither be the Democratic nominee nor the president, and that her differences with her opponents are not so stark. The 2020 election cycle is far too important to risk it on a candidate who can barely relate to her own party now—especially taking into account historical trends. Democrats must ask themselves where a Hillary presidency leaves the country in four years. Would her half-measures be enough that they would feel comfortable handing the keys over to the GOP in 2020? That is why “Bernie or Bust” is the real “lesser-of-two-evils” option.

Tickets to the fundraiser for Hillary hosted by a law firm who was banned from GITMO after being caught giving Muslim terror suspects anti-American propaganda are a mere $2,700 per person You can t make this stuff up!In 2007 Hillary Clinton voted YES on preserving habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees.Sen. Specter s amendment would have stricken the provision regarding habeas review. The underlying bill would have authorized a trial by military commission for violations of the law of war. Here is what Senator Lindsey Graham had to say about the bill from the Senate floor:Senator Graham asked, Do we really want enemy prisoners to bring every lawsuit known to man against the people fighting the war and protecting us? No enemy prisoner should have access to Federal courts a noncitizen, enemy combatant terrorist to bring a lawsuit against those fighting on our behalf. No judge should have the ability to make a decision that has been historically reserved to the military. That does not make us safer. Senator Arlon Spector on the vote: The US Constitution states that Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. We do not have either rebellion or invasion, so it is a little hard for me to see, as a basic principle of constitutional law, how the Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Even with all the evidence that pointed to the danger this bill would our nation, Hillary voted Yes while the majority of the Sentate voted against her.Today, the attorney s who defended GITMO prisoners are rewarding Hillary for her vote with a major fundraiser.Watch:

No one has passed for more yardage or more touchdowns in a Dallas Cowboys uniform than Tony Romo. Not Troy Aikman, Roger Staubach, Danny White or Don Meredith. But Romo has apparently completed his last pass for the team. After losing his starting job last season, he is retiring as a player to become the lead football analyst for CBS Sports, replacing Phil Simms. CBS announced the hiring on Tuesday and said that Romo would join the man Jim Nantz and the sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson on the lead announcing team. “We know Tony will quickly develop into a terrific analyst,” the news release said. On Tuesday afternoon, Romo posted on Twitter a photograph of himself in a CBS blazer with the message, “I guess it’s time to start dressing up. ” CBS’s announcement acknowledged Simms, who has been its lead N. F. L. analyst for 20 years. “We are discussing with Phil his future role with CBS Sports,” it said. Romo played for the Cowboys for 13 seasons and compiled a record as a starter, but, unlike Aikman and Staubach, he never won a Super Bowl. In fact, he was never on a team that produced a decent playoff run, going in his career. As a result, he will probably always sit just below the top quarterbacks in the Cowboys pantheon. But playoff failures are not the reason the Cowboys cut him. They had plenty of other reasons. Chief among them was the emergence of Dak Prescott, the rookie who stepped in last season when Romo was injured and put up huge numbers for the Cowboys. Romo will be 37 at the start of next season, and he has struggled to stay on the field of late, managing only four games in 2015 and only four passes in 2016. After missing the first 10 weeks of last season with a back injury, he returned, but Prescott had been so impressive that Romo did not get his job back. Nonetheless, there were some suitors who had hoped to get something out of Romo’s twilight years. Romo was a Pro Bowl selection and could have provided veteran leadership to a young team or been the final piece of the puzzle for a team close to the top prize. Most of the speculation recently centered on the Broncos and the Texans. Denver, which struggled with Trevor Siemian last season, and Houston, whose signing of Brock Osweiler was a bust, will now have to look elsewhere. Still, Romo has been good enough recently enough that some wondered if he would return, if the offer was right. Starting quarterbacks get injured, and teams have been known to have midseason quarterback crises. Veteran players are also known to have second thoughts about retirement — ask Brett Favre. Romo has certainly been the most player in this linked with a dozen or more teams at one time or another. The Browns, the Redskins, the Chiefs, the Jets and the 49ers were all linked with him. It seemed likely that there would be a job for him somewhere. Instead, he retires ranked 21st in career passing touchdowns, with 248, sandwiched between the standouts Drew Bledsoe and Boomer Esiason. But like them, he will be remembered for never winning a Super Bowl as a starter. Romo played college football at Eastern Illinois. In a year in which quarterbacks Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller and Rex Grossman were all taken in the first round of the draft, Romo was bypassed by every team through all seven rounds in 2003. The Cowboys signed him to a contract, and he sat on the bench for three years behind Quincy Carter, Vinny Testaverde and Drew Bledsoe before finally taking over as starter in 2006. His elevation led to a reversal of fortune for the Cowboys. They had made the playoffs just once in the previous six seasons. Under Romo, they made it in three of four years, including in and seasons. But they won just one playoff game. After a fallow period, Romo had a last hurrah in 2014, making the Pro Bowl and leading the Cowboys to a record. But the team tripped up in the playoffs again, losing to the Packers in the divisional round.

@khamenei_ir God illuminating follow our steps, glorious SUPREME LEADER OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN!

The Book of Leviticus is often cited by conservative Christians as examples of biblical law the nation must obey. Ted Cruz, however, doesn t practice what he preaches.According to Leviticus 19:11: Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. But that is exactly what the Texas Tea Party Senator did during a face to face interview with David Brody on the Christian Broadcasting Network.The interview addressed Cruz s past failure to tithe, an obligation important to the evangelical community in which Christians are required to give at least ten percent of their income to the church as set by the Bible. It s especially important to the pastors in the movement who need those hard-earned dollars to enrich themselves.And if Cruz wants the support of evangelical voters, you would think he would be honest and explain himself satisfactorily, or at the very least, beg for forgiveness. But not only did Cruz tell a fabricated story to cover his ass, he did so right in the face of a Christian journalist and all the Christians watching. Listen on the question of tithing, all of us are on a faith journey, and I will readily admit that I have not been as faithful in this aspect of my walk as I should have been, Cruz said. That article focuses on ten years ago. We don t have the ability to go back and change what occurred ten years ago when Heidi and I were newly married and we d just started a family. But at the end of the day, being a Christian is not about holding yourself out as righteous. It s about beginning with the understanding that we are flawed sinners and we are saved not by deeds but by Christ s redemption. I am grateful that God is a patient and forgiving God and this area, as in many areas of my life I am working to do a better job walking in my faith. Here s the video via CBN.Mediaite s Tommy Christopher, who grew up in a fundamentalist household, fact-checked Cruz s story and discovered that it is nothing more than a tall tale.The story he references, first of all, doesn t focus on ten years ago, it covers Ted s tax returns for a five-year period that ended five years ago. From 2006 to 2010, Ted Cruz made $5,064,248.00 and gave $44,000.00 to charity. That s 0.86% of his income, or about 8.6% of a tithe. In 2006, when Cruz made only $350 grand, he and Heidi weren t newly married, they d been married for five years, and they weren t starting a family, they didn t have kids until 2008.In other words, the story Ted Cruz gave about he and his wife being something of a struggling couple with mouths to feed is bullshit. He made more money in five years than most Americans do in a lifetime, yet he couldn t be bothered to share his wealth with the church community he has been aggressively pandering to over the years. If Cruz had followed the general rule, his tithing would have totaled $500,000 over those five years.Once again, Ted Cruz gets caught being a liar and a total hypocrite.Featured Image: Nation of Change

9/11 was orchestrated by the US deep state.

Islamic State will be completely defeated in Iraq this year, Iraqi state television quoted Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as saying on Tuesday. Islamic State s cross-border caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, after a nine-month battle. The group s last territory in Iraq is now a stretch skirting the western border with Syria following the fall of the town of Hawija and surrounding areas on Oct. 5 in an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces.

Email One year ago, I was arrested for both statutory rape and possessing child pornography, and I deeply regret my disgusting crimes. Since that fateful day, I’ve been serving a 16-year jail sentence, using every second of that time to reflect on, and repent for, what I have done. I’ve truly learned a lot about myself as a person, and if our president-elect, Donald Trump, were to recognize my transformation and to pardon me, I would be honored to serve as his Secretary of Agriculture. In the event Donald J. Trump pardons and then appoints me to his future Cabinet, I, Jared Fogle, current federal inmate and former Subway spokesperson, could think of no greater privilege than to serve our commander in chief, and our country, as the head of our Department of Agriculture. It is the Secretary of Agriculture’s sworn duty to provide assistance to our nation’s farmers, as well as to protect farmland and enforce food safety, and if I am let out of jail, I believe I am ready for the task. To have Donald Trump both forgive my child-sex crimes and recognize how useful my deep knowledge of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers, hot Italian peppers, olives, and other sub toppings could be to his administration would make my heart swell with pride. To serve our farmers at the federal level would be greater than any Subway sandwich I ever ate, greater than any Subway commercial I ever made, and greater than any large pair of pants I ever wore. As someone who has sold hundreds of millions of Subway sandwiches to the American people since the year 2000, I know the burden of working for the public, and I would not let our new president, nor the American people, down. It would be an immense privilege to serve for a full four years, and pending Donald Trump negating my seven federal counts of production of child pornography, I would start that process immediately. I lost over 245 pounds and ate thousands of Subway sandwiches before I was arrested for paying for sex with a minor, and I do hope that President-elect Trump considers that fact when making his decision whether or not to pardon and appoint me secretary of agriculture. To serve our farmers at the federal level would be greater than any Subway sandwich I ever ate, greater than any Subway commercial I ever made, and greater than any large pair of pants I ever wore. So, hopefully, the next time I address you, it will be not from my prison cell in Englewood Federal Correctional Institution but from the National Mall, in Washington, D.C. Believe me, the next four years would be incredible not just for me, but for you, should our president-elect look deep into his heart and give the department the spokesperson it deserves!

Washington (CNN) A House panel approved a measure Wednesday that cuts funding for Amtrak, less than a day after a train derailment left at least seven people dead and many more injured. The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 to reduce grants to Amtrak by $252 million -- a drop of about 15% from last year's level. The cut would apply only to Amtrak's capital spending and wouldn't touch funding levels for safety and operations. The measure still needs to clear the full House and Senate before it would go into effect in October. Democrats on the panel fought unsuccessfully to boost Amtrak funding by $1 billion, to $2.4 billion. But Republicans argued that such a spending increase would need to be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, and they admonished Democrats for pointing to the derailment in an effort to increase funding for the passenger rail service. "Don't use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you," Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said to Democrats. The derailment late Tuesday in Philadelphia is renewing focus on how the U.S. funds and maintains infrastructure. Amtrak has become a political hot button in recent years as Republicans have sought to reduce the rail service's funding and focus it more on the popular Boston to Washington Northeast Corridor. In March, the House approved legislation that would authorize Amtrak to pump more money into the Northeast Corridor route but that measure has yet to muscle its way through the Senate. In a separate House transportation committee hearing on Wednesday, Democrats like Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon complained about sspending cuts, saying Republicans should be "cognizant of the real world out there, of what happened last night, of what the capital needs of Amtrak are, and will not engage in short-sighted budget cutting." Republicans also brought up the derailment, but in more general terms, saying it needs to be studied. "It's critical we find out exactly what happened out there and make sure we take the appropriate response to make sure it doesn't happen again," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Florida. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday on CNN's "New Day" that investing more in transportation infrastructure "is a common sense" decision and said investing in Amtrak should not be a partisan issue. "There is clearly more that can be done when we're talking about a railway infrastructure that is decades-old," Earnest said. "If there's an opportunity for us to make further investments in our infrastructure that would better safeguard the traveling public, then those are investments that we should make." Vice President Joe Biden, perhaps the most famous Amtrak fan in the country, issued a statement saying that "the victims could have been any one of our parents, children, or someone from one of our communities. Amtrak is like a second family to me as it is for so many other passengers." Opposition to funding cuts isn't just coming from Democrats. Some Republicans representing districts in the Northeast Corridor are pushing back against conservatives who want to cut funding to Amtrak and privatize the rail service. Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pennsylvania, said Congress should boost funding for Amtrak, rather than cutting into its budget. "If we're not investing in our safety for the Northeast Corridor, we're not doing what we should be doing down here," he said Wednesday morning on CNN. "We need to continue to invest in our passenger rail system...a critical piece of the economy in the Northeast part of the country." It is still unclear what caused the crash, though the derailment happened as the train rolled through a curve, which investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were inspecting Wednesday morning. The FBI is also at the scene assisting investigators, though there is nothing to suggest a terrorism connection at this point, a law enforcement official told CNN. The state's two senators, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey, toured the crash site Wednesday. Some of the most gruesome images from inside the train came from a former Democratic congressman, Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, who was onboard one of the seven cars that derailed. Murphy quickly tweeted images of injured passengers and first responders inside his overturned café car. He was not seriously injured, but his seatmate was knocked unconscious and was bleeding. Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, was also on the train but got off at a stop in his state before the train derailed in Philadelphia. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pennsylvania, chair of the House transportation committee, and his Republican colleague, Jeff Denham, who chairs the railroads subcommittee, released a statement Wednesday saying they were "saddened by the tragic accident. U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster R-Pennsylvania, Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Denham (R-California). "Both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration are on the scene, and while we don't yet know many details, we need to know how this happened and ensure the safety of the system and the millions of Americans who rely on the Northeast Corridor," they said in the statement.

Fact-Checking Feud: How Bette Davis Got Revenge on Joan Crawford for That Stolen Oscar

A carjacker became enraged and shot a motorist in front of his wife and child because the thief was unable to drive a stick shift transmission, police say. [The murder occurred in Houston, Texas, on March 11 when Pedro Aguilar, 47, was standing near his car with his wife and daughter. They family was then approached by two men reportedly in the 20s. The men pulled a gun on Aguilar and demanded his car keys. But neither of the assailants could get the car in gear using its manual transmission. According to ABC 13, the pair became enraged and one shot Aguilar in anger. Both men then fled. Mr. Aguilar died at the scene. The victim’s son, Kevin Aguilar, said his father was his “inspiration. ” “He always was happy. He say, ‘I want the best for you.’ ‘It’s difficult,” son Kevin Aguilar said. The suspects are still unidentified. Police are asking anyone with information to contact the Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit at or call Crime Stoppers at (8477). Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.

LOL! This group gets raided for suspicion of massive voter fraud, and their defense is that the Republican Secretary of State and (of course) the police, are responsible for preventing 45,000 African Americans from voting? And you know what s even scarier? Indiana s not even a state that should be in play for the Democrats. Just imagine how they ve been organizing in the swing states where the vote is expected to be close. Pretty scary stuff Indiana police raided the offices of the Indiana Voter Registration Project in north Indianapolis on Tuesday in a growing voter fraud case.It is not clear who established or funded the Indiana Voter Registration Project. However, the group released a statement through spokeswoman Christy Setzer, whose PR firm s website says she has worked as a Democratic strategist for the presidential campaigns of Al Gore, Howard Dean and Chris Dodd. Indiana State Police investigators on Tuesday searched a voter registration agency on Indianapolis north side as they look into a voter fraud case that spans nine counties.The investigation began in late August when police learned of the filing of fraudulent voter registration forms in Marion and Hendricks counties.The investigation has expanded from Marion and Hendricks counties to include Allen, Delaware, Hamilton, Hancock, Johnson, Lake and Madison counties, according to a statement from State Police.Police said the growing number of involved counties leads investigators to believe that the number of fraudulent records might be in the hundreds. An investigation of this nature is complex, time consuming and is expected to continue for several more weeks or months, said a State Police statement. Victims of the activities by some agents of the Indiana Voter Registration Project may not discover they have been disenfranchised from voting until they go to vote and realize their voting information has been altered. Such action may result in the citizen having to cast a provisional ballot. Officials said a representative sample of voter registration applications received by county voter registration offices and suspected of being fraudulent have been copied and provided to investigators. The original applications are maintained by the appropriate voter registration office.The possible fraudulent information is a combination of fake names, addresses and dates of birth with real information. USA Today Via: Gateway Pundit

(Reuters) - Former Vice President Joe Biden described attacks on the press and the judicial branch as corrosive and dangerous, without mentioning President Donald Trump who has made incendiary comments about both institutions, ABC News reported. “What worries me the most,” Biden said late on Wednesday, is the “almost drumbeat of denigration of the institutional structures that govern us.” “When you delegitimize the courts, you delegitimize the legislative body. It’s corrosive. and it makes it impossible to reach compromise,” he said in Washington, where he was receiving the Patriot Award for political courage and leadership from the Bipartistan Policy Center, ABC reported. Biden did not mention Trump, who has called U.S. Judge James Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” opinion “takes law enforcement away from our country.” Trump’s remarks came after the judge ordered a temporary lifting of the president’s travel and immigration ban in February. Biden, who served two terms as vice president under Democratic President Barack Obama, received the award at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism and First Amendment freedoms. Trump has called the media an “enemy of the American people” and often refers to negative coverage of his administration as “fake news.” “To question the actual legitimacy of a free press is one of the most dangerous things out there. The degree that we depart and denigrate our institutions and the fourth estate, I think we really, honest to God, honest to God, weaken our ability for self-government,” Biden said. “We undermine it and become weaker and not stronger.”

And the winner is the Anti-Billionaire or the guy who detests rich people or how about the guy who made a LOT of people rich during his campaign, but did absolutely nothing for the less fortunate with his windfall. In fact, we reported about hundreds of homeless people who were kicked out of a venue they used as a warming hut on the coldest night of the year because socialist Bernie Sanders (who cares so much for the poor and underprivileged) was about to host a rally in that venue. Oh well the show must go on who has time for homeless people who likely won t vote .right hypocrite Bernie?The small-dollar fundraising juggernaut that has kept Bernie Sanders s insurgent White House bid afloat far longer than anticipated has generated another unexpected impact: a financial windfall for his team of Washington consultants.As donations surged this year, the Sanders campaign ratcheted up its spending each month, racing through an astounding $45 million in March alone.By the end of March, the self-described democratic socialist senator from Vermont had spent nearly $166 million on his campaign more than any other 2016 presidential contender, including rival Hillary Clinton. More than $91 million went to a small group of admakers and media buyers who produced a swarm of commercials and placed them on television, radio and online, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission reports.While the vast majority of that money was passed along to television stations and websites to pay for the advertising, millions in fees were kept by the companies, The Post calculated. While it is impossible to determine precisely how much the top consultants have earned, FEC filings indicate the top three media firms have reaped payments of seven figures.Sanders s money blitz, fueled by a $27 average donation that he repeatedly touts, has improbably made the anti-billionaire populist the biggest spender so far in the election cycle. The campaign s wealth has been a surprising boon for vendors across the county who signed on to his long-shot bid.The large profits stem in part from the fact that no one in Sanders s campaign imagined he would generate such enormous financial support. So unlike Clinton, he did not cap how much his consultants could earn in commissions from what was expected to be a bare-bones operation, according to campaign officials.A campaign spokesman declined to comment on whether Sanders feels the high fees earned by his media consultants are appropriate. Via: Washington Post

President Donald Trump hosted a listening session at the White House to highlight the problems with Obamacare, as Americans continue to suffer from higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles and less coverage. [The president met nine American citizens Monday who were suffering the financial effects of what he described as the “very, very, failed and failing Obamacare law. ” Trump told the group that he would put into place a better plan that “lowers cost, expands choice, and ensures access for everyone” and promised “more competition and less regulation” in the market place. “You’ll see rates go down, down, down, and you’ll see plans go up, up, up, you’ll have a lot of choices,” he said. Trump admitted that it would take a few years to fully fix the insurance marketplace, but promised that it would be “a thing of beauty” when completed. He was critical of the media for reporting that Obamacare was doing well. “It’s a little bit like President Obama, when he left people like him, when he was here, people didn’t like him so much. That’s the way life goes, that’s human nature. ” Trump said that Republicans were in bad position politically by trying to repeal Obamacare, when it would be easier to let it collapse entirely. “The press is making Obamacare look so good all of a sudden,” he said, predicting disastrous results for the law in 2017. Carrie Couey, a cattle rancher from Colorado explained that her rates under Obamacare were three times the rates and that multiple insurers had dropped their coverage. “Millions of people had great health care that they loved,” Trump said. Brittany Ivey of George said her private insurance rates went up 110 percent, and that even though she was paying $1300 a month for a plan, her doctors wouldn’t take the insurance. “We’re so happy to be seeing it going,” she said. “It’s almost put our family in financial ruin. ” Elias Seife, Florida, an attorney from Florida, said that their insurance had changed every year since Obamacare was put into place, noting that they had a daughter with a disability. “I think the real scenario was that this law was supposed to implode … my parents came from communist Cuba, they know what socialism is all about, so I know what socialism is and that’s pretty much what this whole system was meant to have one single provider,” Seife said. Kim Sertich from Arizona told the president that the 116 percent increases reported in her state were very real, explaining that she lost her plan three times before opting out of getting health care all together. A nurse from Wisconsin, Gina Sell, said that she was forced to take a full time job and more time away from her family after, One man, Greg Knox of Ohio, gave the president a cutout card of his face with a note that was created by his son. Greg Knox of Ohio brings @realDonaldTrump a card that his son made for him pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) March 13, 2017, “I wish I looked that good,” Trump said, showing the card to the rest of the group.

@MarcsWords @Independent well yes but freedom of speech is more important is it not? Are the 2 things mutually exclusive?

@EmilyZDavis it's a sad day for the world when people die for their opinion.

The Trump administration is pushing security ties between the United States, India, Japan and Australia, but the revival of the Asian Quad must overcome lingering mistrust in New Delhi towards its allies that hampers genuine military cooperation. Joint naval drills have been at the heart of a relationship that analysts widely see as a move to counterbalance China s rising power by binding the region s leading democracies more closely together. But while the navies of the United States, Japan and Australia can easily operate together

Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are prohibited from recommending medical marijuana.

us admits afghan strike likely caused civilian deaths sat nov pm military in this photograph taken on september an afghan pilot stands next to a line of usmade md helicopters in kabul photo by afp the commander of us forces in afghanistan has promised an investigation into the recent death of more than afghan civilians including women and children in an airstrike general john nicholson said saturday that the airstrike on the village of buz kandahari just outside the northern city of kunduz on thursday would be probed three taliban leaders were supposed to be targeted in the raid but the forces met significant enemy fire from multiple locations and called for help from a us aircraft which left civilians including children dead an initial investigation has determined that efforts near kunduz on november to defend afghan national defense and security forces likely resulted in civilian casualties nicholson said in a statement we will work with our afghan partners to investigate and determine the facts and we will work with the government of afghanistan to provide assistance the targets were highranking elements of the takfiri group that were supposed to be hit in their houses according to afghan defense ministry spokesman dawlat waziri they werent ordinary people who had gathered they were leading fighting in kunduz they were the commanders of their military commission waziri said taliban militants were removed from power following the usled invasion of afghanistan but they have stepped up their activities in recent months attempting to overrun several provinces afghan forces have been engaged in fierce clashes with taliban to contain the ongoing insurgency across various parts of the violencewrecked country the rising violence in afghanistan comes despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in the country loading

Everyone getting hammered tonight for bad reasons 11-11-16 BRITAIN is to get hammered as usual tonight but for bad reasons, not celebratory, end-of-the-week ones. Alcohol is selling briskly across the UK as adults prepare to get blackout drunk not because the weekend is here but because the weekend is here and Donald Trump is president and Leonard Cohen is dead. Nikki Hollis, from Peterborough, said: “Normally I’m skipping merrily into the land of drunkenness, a carefree sense that none of it matters, but tonight I’ll be lurching there. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I haven’t killed two bottles of wine by 10pm in my despair, as opposed to last week when I polished off two bottles before News at Ten out of sheer joie de vivre. ” She added: “And tomorrow’s hangover will be a black cloud of gloom clearly revealing that everything in the world is shit. While last week it just seemed like that.” Pub landlord Bill McKay said: “We’re expecting a fairly dark atmosphere in here tonight. We probably won’t do the quiz.” Share:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) came to a convention of libertarian-leaning Republicans and talked about shrinking government, slashing regulations, fighting against the bulk collection of phone data and his great affinity for a rival in the presidential race. Paul, Kentucky’s junior U.S. senator and scion of one of the country’s most famous libertarian families, was expected to lock down the support of libertarian voters in the presidential campaign. But as Paul’s poll numbers have sagged nationally — and in such libertarian-minded places as New Hampshire — Cruz is trying to pick off what is sometimes called the liberty vote. Cruz essentially crashed what was supposed to be Paul’s big libertarian party here, the biennial meeting of the Republican Liberty Caucus. Cruz stood in a hotel here on a dreary Friday morning, surrounded by supporters and curious attendees who held signs and jostled for photos. “I was elected with tremendous support from the liberty movement,” Cruz said of his 2012 Senate campaign, noting that Rand Paul and his father, former representative Ron Paul (R-Tex.), both endorsed him in that race. The Texas Republican’s presidential campaign has been making the case that as Paul’s campaign has floundered, Cruz is viable — flush with cash and able to go the distance. On the trail, Cruz has invoked the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections and railed against the Federal Reserve. Last month, the campaign rolled out a video showing eight supporters of Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign who are backing Cruz for 2016. “The liberty movement has been integral to our campaign since Day One,” Cruz said. Cruz breaks down the Republican electorate into four brackets of support: tea party conservatives; evangelical Christians; establishment Republicans; and libertarians. He sees his base in the tea party and evangelical wings, but he also is trying to siphon off libertarian voters with a message of limited government. Cruz tailored his speech here in New Hampshire to those voters. He took a less hawkish tone when discussing foreign policy, saying that the United States “shouldn’t engage in nation-building” and calling for armed Kurdish ground troops to fight the Islamic State. “There’s no reason for us to get in the middle of the Syrian civil war,” he said. Cruz praised the liberty movement as an “amazing thing” and vowed that the size of government will be “materially smaller” if he is elected president. He promoted a bill he co-sponsored to end the bulk collection of phone metadata — an issue that Rand Paul championed this year with a nearly 11-hour Senate floor speech. “This is the battleground between Cruz and Paul,” said Dave Nalle, a former chairman of the Liberty Caucus. He said Paul appeals to privacy-minded libertarians while Cruz appeals to those who want a strict adherence to the Constitution. “I was impressed” with Cruz, said Louis Colavecchio Sr. of Wakefield, R.I., who also said he has not decided whom he will support in the primary. The scramble for supporters seems to have somewhat strained the cordial relationship between the onetime Senate allies. Last month, Paul said Cruz was “pretty much done for” in the Senate after Cruz tried to disrupt the passage of a government funding bill because it would give money to Planned Parenthood. “Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership . . . which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the Senate, and as a consequence he can’t get anything done legislatively,” Paul said on Fox News Radio. On Friday, Cruz called Paul “a friend” and “good man.” Paul gave an animated speech here and appeared to be in his comfort zone, saying he wants a government that leaves him alone. He reminded his audience of his marathon Senate speech to defend that principle. He called for reform of the criminal-justice system, and he knocked other candidates for saying they would not hold talks with rival nations. Paul also rapped Congress, labeling a just-passed bill that temporarily funds the government “a bunch of crap” and the body itself “impotent and inconsequential.” “I’m embarrassed that I’m even a part of it,” said Paul, sporting a bright-blue belt with the University of Kentucky’s logo on it. Paul played down the threat from Cruz. “Both here and Iowa, we know where our support is and where my dad’s support was, and we feel comfortable that the overwhelming majority of it is with us,” Paul said. Some libertarians here were uncomfortable with Cruz making religion such a large part of his campaign. “I don’t think he’s going to have as much sway on Rand Paul’s electability as people think he will, because he’s a religious zealot. It’s too much,” said Austin Sekel, 22, who is supporting Paul. Cruz “needs to stop grandstanding on the Senate floor,” he said. Sekel and others said they do not think Paul’s sagging poll numbers will change anything. Sekel thinks Paul has a base of support that has not yet become engaged in the campaign. Bob Pyle, a pastor from Harrisburg, Pa., said Paul has a “solid, loyal following that is not given to the sounds of throwing red meat.” Between those people and Ron Paul supporters, Pyle said the Kentucky Republican’s fortunes will only increase. Other people here are not completely enamored of either candidate. Some libertarians have said that Paul has run his race too far from his father’s pure libertarian principles. They include John Cisar, 36, of Burlington, Vt. “I think there’s a big schism among libertarians that he’s fallen short of expectations,” Cisar said of Paul. Cisar said that he is not a Cruz fan and that he thinks Paul is the more acceptable of the two in the 2016 race. “He’s the lesser of the evils,” Cisar said of Paul. “And that doesn’t make me feel really good inside to vote for him.”

Charlie Crist "worked with Acorn" to give felons voting rights.

Trump Adviser Says Israeli Settlements ‘Not Illegal’ Contrary to Trump camp's statements, Israeli settlements are a violation of international law, | October 27, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel speaks as the Republican Party launches its first ever election campaign in Israel in Modiin, Monday, Aug. 15, 2016. Donald Trump’s adviser on Israel said on Wednesday that Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are not illegal, adding that he believes the candidate agrees with him, putting the pair at odds with much of the world. Speaking to AFP at a rooftop restaurant on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion after a pro-Trump rally, David Friedman also said the US presidential candidate was “tremendously sceptical” about the prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. About 150 people, including right-wing Israelis and evangelical Christians, attended Wednesday’s Trump rally outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, near the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound. The compound is holy to both Muslims and Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount. Located in East Jerusalem, it was occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community. Asked whether Trump viewed the West Bank as part of Israel, as many far-right Israelis do, Friedman did not answer directly. “I don’t think he believes that the settlements are illegal,” Friedman said. Myself and . @realDonaldTrump senior #Israel advisor David Friedman at the #JerusalemForever event that was held tonight at the old city. pic.twitter.com/2JxEWRrk8o — Israeli for Trump (@davidweissman3) October 26, 2016 Israeli religious nationalists see the Palestinian territory as part of the country, citing Jews’ connection to the land from biblical times. The US has intensified criticism of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank in recent months, warning that it is eating away at hopes for a two-state solution. Settlements in the West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law and are major stumbling blocks to peace efforts because they are built on land seized in the 1967 war which Palestinians see as part of their future state. At an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in March, Trump described an “unbreakable bond” between the US and Israel. “When I become president, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one,” Trump told delegates, in a speech that heaped praise on Israel and derided Palestinians as perpetrators of violence. Recalling rounds of failed peace talks between the two parties, Trump blamed Palestinian leaders. “To make a great deal, you need two willing participants,” Trump said. “We know Israel is willing to deal. Israel has been trying to sit down at the negotiating table without preconditions for years.” Friedman reiterated that Trump would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there – which would break with decades of precedent and put Washington at odds with most UN member states. There were chants of “lock her up” when Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton’s name was mentioned at the rally ahead of the 8 November vote – a common refrain among Trump supporters who want to see her jailed over an emails scandal. “I hate Hillary. She’s the same like (Barack) Obama,” said Ran Hofman, 54, who waved an Israeli flag. “They screw up the whole world.” A brief video message from Trump of about one minute was played at the event. “Together we will stand up to the enemies like Iran, bent on destroying Israel and her people,” Trump said. “Together we will make America and Israel safe again.”

By Fred Reed October 28, 2016 Oh good. The world reaches a crossroads, or probably a road off a cliff, just when I want to relax and watch gratuitous violence on the tube. To judge by the rapid drift of events aboard our planetary asylum, the talons of Washington and New York on the world’s throat are fast being pried a-loose. The Global American Imperium is dying. Or so it sure looks anyway. I say talons of “New York and Washington” because America’s foreign policy, forged in those two cities, belongs entirely to them. Americans have no influence on it. Further, none of what the Empire does abroad is of any benefit to Americans. Do you care at all what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, or the South China Sea? Do you want to pay for it? America has been hijacked. And the Empire prospereth not. It prospereth very not. Consider the recent record of the world’s hyperpower: Washington does not have control of Afghanistan, and obviously is not going to. Washington does not have control of Iraq, and appears unlikely to. Washington did not back Iran down, and isn’t going to. Washington did not back Russia down in Ukraine and Crimea, and isn’t going to. Washington did not back China down in the South China Sea and, while this is perhaps not over, the Empire seems to be losing. Washington has not backed North Korea down and is not going to. In the Philippines, President Duterte has told Obama to “go to hell” as being “the son of a whore,” which may be taken to indicate latent hostility. He is vigorously seeking rapprochement with China. While Washington may have him murdered, it seems to be losing control of the Little Vassals of ASEAN. Turkey seems to be cuddling up to Russia–that is, looking East like Duterte. Maybe Washington can turn this around temporarily, but there-s a whole lot of wavering going on. Meanwhile Washington thrashes around impotently as per usual in Syria, and, though the jury remains out on this one, looks to have poor prospects. If Washington–AKA New York–loses here, after doing so in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the Empire will beyond redemption be on the downward slope. The United States is not in danger. The Empire is. This is not good. Empires, the Soviet Union notwithstanding, seldom go quietly. Either Washington gambles on war of some sort against Russia, or Russia and China, in the desperate hope of reversing things, or the Empire gets slowly eaten. Or not so slowly. Once one country pries itself loose, many may rush for the door. New York may go for calculated war against Russia–say, cyberwar expected not to turn into shooting war, shooting war in Syria not expected to turn into global shooting war, global shooting war not expected to turn into nuclear war. This will be a crapshoot. Note that America has badly misguessed the outcomes of every war since Korea. This is why the American election actually matters, unusual in Presidential contests. It is Blowhard against Corruption, a swell choice, but Trump is firmly against war with Russia, and Hillary for. Her military understanding is that of a fried egg. The woman is both a fool and a knave but, it seems, Trump has talked trash, and therefore she will likely be President. Weirdly, the future of the world depends on how an excited electorate of political middle-schoolers responds to one candidate’s dirty talk. From a curmudgeon’s point of view, it is pretty funny. It is funnier if one lives outside of the radiation footprint. But back to business. The seaboard Axis of Evil needs a war because almost every tide runs against it. Proximately, the Axis has pushed China, Russia, and Iran together against the Empire. (First rule of empire: Do not let the dissidents unite.) Many signs suggest that the world, or much of it, is beginning to see China as its future. The BRICS, the SCO, the NDB, the AAIB–all exclude the US. China becomes the major trading partner of country after country. The twilight deepens. Not all goes wrong for the Empire–not yet, but things are getting spooky. On the European Peninsula of Asia, countries remain docile, especially England and, much more importantly, Germany. Yet even among Washington’s European harem, there seem to be faint stirrings of a forgotten independence. As I understand it, Germany’s businessmen would very much like to end Washington’s sanctions on Russia and improve trade with China, which would be greatly to the benefit of the Peninsula. Washington won’t let them. It can’t. If the Europeans did what would be good for themselves, and looked to Eurasia, then the fat lady, already warming up, would burst into full bellow. Which, methinks, raises the likelihood that Washington will in desperation do something phenomenally stupid. At this writing Hillary’s camp seems to be prepping the public for war with Russia. The telescreen tells us day after day that Putin is Hitler, that Russia is expanding, that the Russkies are hacking the election, that they cause indigestion and falling hair. Is this just Hillary waggling her codpiece in the expectation that Moscow will demurely back down, as God intended? Or will she again send other people’s children to fight for her in somebody else’s country? The larger picture, assuredly obvious to New York, is truly grim–for New York, not for Americans. China has a huge population of a billion Han Chinese, versus two hundred million Caucasian Americans–these being the scientific, technological and entrepreneurial brains of the Empire. One must not notice this, but you can bet that New York and Beijing do. Economically China is growing hugely, advancing technologically at a high rate, building rail lines that now extend from the Chinese Pacific coast to Madrid. It will increasingly dwarf the Empire no matter what happens–short of a world war. The curtain falls in ways unnoticed. China recently launched a communications satellite, the world’s first employing quantum cryptographic links, which cannot be intercepted. The intention of this, as well of the QC link from Beijing to Shanghai, is to keep the NSA off China’s back. A small thing, perhaps. Yet if successful and adopted en masse by other countries weary of Washington’s meddling, the result will be a loosening of the Empire’s grip on everybody’s communications. For the Empire it is, as Elvis sang, “now or never.” Lenin spoke of “useful idiots.” Ours aren’t even useful, but they call the shots. The Best of Fred Reed Tags:

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - Detonating a nuclear-tipped missile over the Pacific Ocean would be a logical final step by North Korea to prove the success of its weapons program but would be extremely provocative and carry huge risks, arms control experts said on Friday. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering testing “an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb” over the Pacific in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat at the United Nations to “totally destroy” the country. “It may mean North Korea will fire a warhead-tipped (intermediate range) Hwasong-12 or Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile and blow it up a few hundred kilometers above the Pacific Ocean,” said Yang Uk, a senior researcher at the Korea Defence and Security Forum in Seoul. “They may be bluffing, but there is a need for them to test their combined missile-bomb capability. They could have already prepared the plan and are now trying to use Trump’s remarks as an excuse to make it happen,” said Yang. Such an atmospheric test would be the first globally since China detonated a device in 1980, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tests of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles are rarer still. The United States’ only test of an operational ballistic missile with a live warhead was fired from submarine far out in the Pacific Ocean in 1962. China was widely condemned for a similar test with a missile that exploded over its Lop Nur test site in the country’s west in 1966. North Korea’s six nuclear tests to date have all been underground, the most recent earlier this month by far its largest. “We have to assume they *could* do it, but it is exceedingly provocative,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at  Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “To put a live nuclear warhead on a missile that’s only been tested a handful of times, overflying potentially populated centers. If it...doesn’t go exactly as planned....it could be a world changing event.” North Korea has fired two ballistic missiles over Japan’s north Hokkaido region in the past month as part of a series of tests that experts say have illustrated unexpectedly rapid advances. “They said Pacific Ocean, which pretty much means firing a missile over Japan,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. “They want to shut us all up for doubting they could build it.” While a missile would be the most ideal means of delivery, it is also possible to put a bomb on a ship and detonate on the surface of the ocean or in the sea, the experts said. Either way, the radioactive fallout could be significant, as well as the diplomatic backlash from around the world. North Korea’s recent missile launches over Japan especially drew stern rebukes from Tokyo and the international community. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called Pyongyang’s remarks and behavior “completely unacceptable”. Narang said a test high enough over the ocean would limit the radioactive fallout but risks included damage from an electro-magnetic pulse, something Pyongyang has hinted it might employ on an attack on the United States or its allies. “If it doesn’t go exactly as planned and the detonation occurs at a lower altitude we could see some EMP-like effects for anything in the area. A lot of dead fish too.” Pyongyang has launched dozens of missiles this year as it spurs a program aimed at mastering a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the United States, in addition to its Sept 3 nuclear test. If Kim’s threat materializes, it will be a “tipping point” for China, and may prompt many other countries to demand an “end to the regime,” said David Albright, founder of the non-profit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. “No one has tested above ground for decades and the radioactive fallout could be terrifying to many,” Albright said. Other experts said such an atmospheric nuclear test is unlikely for now due to its substantial technical and diplomatic risks. Joshua Pollack, editor of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Review, said it would be an “end-to-end demo of everything.” “But I would be surprised if this were their very next move. They have yet to test an ICBM at full range into the Pacific,” said Pollack. “That will probably come first.”

uk royals in bahrain amid crackdown wed nov am persian gulf britains prince charles speaks to bahrains crown prince salman bin hamad bin isa al khalifa upon arriving in the bahraini capital manama on november photo by ap britains prince charles and his wife camilla have arrived in bahrain on a threenation tour of the persian gulf states amid strong criticism of londons continued arms sales to the repressive regime in manama the plane carrying the british royals touched down at sakhir air base in central bahrain on tuesday on the last leg of the tour which had already taken them to oman and the united arab emirates they were received by bahrains crown prince salman bin hamad bin isa al khalifah and then taken to a nearby palace to meet with the countrys king hamad bin isa al khalifah since the united kingdom has sold million dollars worth of arms to bahrain the year saw the eruption of peaceful antiregime protests on the island london has been under fire by international rights organizations for selling military equipment to manama which is involved in a harsh and deadly crackdown on opposition activists it was reported late last month that the uk will open a massive permanent military base in bahrain and deploy warships to the persian gulf a bahraini protester shouts slogans during clashes with regime forces in the village of sitra south of manama on february photo by afp the military base which is the first such facility being opened by britain in years in the persian gulf region will be launched next month britains express newspaper reported britain will station around military forces at the royal navy facility and will deploy its warships to patrol the surrounding waters and guard oil and gas shipments in the waters when britain kicked off the project in defense secretary michael fallon described it as a permanent expansion of the royal navys footprint in the persian gulf the project has bypassed the parliament according to data released by the uk trade and investment in september the uk government has become the worlds second biggest arms dealer with bulk of its weapons fueling deadly conflicts in the middle east loading

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday said he had better things to do than comment on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s announcement about the so-called birther question over Obama’s citizenship. “I’m shocked that a question like that would come up at a time when we’ve got so many other things to do

Before departing for Puerto Rico, Donald Trump hurled an insult at the island, then after landing in the U.S. territory, he continued to embarrass the rest of us. After telling Puerto Ricans whose lives have been devasted by two hurricanes that they are throwing the budget out of whack, Trump praised officials on the island with the exception of the Mayor of San Juan, in order to continue his war on Carmen Yul n Cruz.As Trump entered Calvary Chapel, cheers rang out from the crowd, according to The Hill. There were signs in the room which read Let s Make Puerto Rico Great Again and God bless You, Mr. President, according to a pool report. There are no signs like that visible from the video which captured the former reality show star throwing rolls of paper towels out to the desperate hurricane victims. It s possible, but I just haven t run across any yet online.It s as if Trump thought he was in a Mardi Gras parade, tossing out beads and doubloons to the crowd.While standing behind a table of supplies, Trump said, There s a lot of love in this room, a lot of love. At that point, Trump handed out a few packages of rice to the crowd, then picked up packaged rolls of paper towels and threw them into the crowd as if he was practicing shooting basketball hoops.A few of the rolls were caught by people in the crowd while another fell to the ground.Watch:.@realDonaldTrump entrega suministros durante su visita a la isla. #TrumpPuertoRico #hurac nMar a pic.twitter.com/aAsND3HRd6 El Nuevo D a (@ElNuevoDia) October 3, 2017It s as if Trump thought he was starring in a game show.Yes, he really did throw paper towels at the church crowd in PR. (Photos: AP & Reuters) pic.twitter.com/mr9dF5eVBk David Martosko (@dmartosko) October 3, 2017I suppose we should be thankful that Trump didn t hand out bags of rice to the victims, then jerked one back if the person didn t quickly grab it. Too slow! You can t have it now! But we don t want to give him any ideas. He would probably consider it to be a challenge.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

@thomassfl @AmyMek only a stupid white racist would ask such a ignorant question. hell yeah they are in hell with the white slave founders

Carmela Tyrell November 1, 2016 Moving Your Computer Off Grid More than a few preppers feel that as long as they can provide food, shelter, water, and basic medical needs for themselves and their families, nothing more is required. Other preppers may feel that self defense, power generation, education, and machine repair are skills that will be required in the post crisis world. Sadly, many preppers and also off-gridders tend to ignore or underestimate the need to have a computer that can be used to help make it easier to survive. In all likelihood, these are also the people most likely to have serious problems in the post crisis world because they do not have a computer available to help meet a range of goals. Computers and Prepping Can Get Along A computer cannot hunt a deer for you, boil water, or make a pair of shoes, obviously. On the other hand, any computer with a connection to the internet can help you find out how to do these things and much more. When you find good information, it is also very easy to store those files on your computer so that you can read them and work with them whenever you want. And if you are in a situation where internet access is still available, you can use your computer to contact friends and loved ones as well as people that might be able to help you get through a crisis. Then you can certainly relate to the quandary of many preppers that are finding out it is becoming impossible to make or obtain raw materials that would be needed in a major crisis scenario. On the other side of the equation, many of the items you need for basic prepping can still be purchased online. All you really need is a prepaid debit card and an internet connection so that you can find websites where you can place your orders. Not only will you be able to get the supplies you need, you will also have a much wider selection of other goods to choose from. Regardless of whether you are interested in the best quality gun cleaning kits, need a certain type of fishing reel, or need good quality vintage hand tools, you can find them all online. In fact, even if you are disabled, you may be able to find customized materials and tools that have been modified to meet your needs. Most people don’t realize just how important it is to network with preppers from diverse geographic regions and make plans for bugging out that include those friends and connections. Consider what would happen if an earthquake or hurricane strikes your area. If you only have friends and family in a local, or small area, chances are everyone will be affected. If you have friends in other states that might be able to offer temporary shelter or help you make a new start, then you will be well ahead of the game. In these times and beyond, both money and barter systems are vital for exchanging needed goods and services. A computer is very important for expanding your trade and marketing options. It is also very important for securing alternative currencies that may play a vital role in remaining solvent in the face of currency collapse. Most people would be truly amazed at how easy it is for the average consumer to secure foreign currencies, keep a good supply of them, and even use them as down and dirty form of currency trading or flipping. The Tough Choice on the Best Device(s) Obsolete devices may still be very useful because certain older technologies are easier to work with and may be safer than newer devices that are routinely overclocked or are based on unstable hardware platforms. If you are interested in newer devices, here are some categories, brands, and models that you can start off with for each category of device: Desktops If you are primarily interested in a conventional desktop computer, my own experience leads me to believe the best option is to build the computer yourself so that you know exactly what parts are being used and how best to optimize the BIOS (this is where you can determine how fast the computer will run, whether or not the system can boot from a USB drive, and other aspects of basic operation) settings. Since modern computer chips tend to run hot, it is very important to provide plenty of ventilation and cooling options inside the case. If your CPU and motherboard kit come with sub-par heat conducting gel, do not hesitate to find the best on the market. It is also very useful to add extra fans and other cooling devices right inside the case. Always remember, the cooler you can keep the chips during operation, the lower your chances of erratic freeze-ups or even ruining the chips. Insofar as other vital parts such as hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and video cards, it truly depends on your personal tastes. You will need a dedicated video card to gain access to these specialized chips that will reduce wear on the CPU and enhance computer performance at the same time. Be sure to study gamer forums and video editing forums to find out which video cards work best with specific CPU and motherboard combinations. A bad fit between these parts can truly be a disaster. Memory cards (RAM) are yet another tricky, yet vital area of the computer that you will need to think about. This is also one area where only the best will do. It is better to go with the fastest cards that the motherboard will take, and also from the best rated vendor. Laptops Unlike desktop computers, you will have far less control over what parts are found inside the case. Before purchasing a laptop, be sure to find out the model number of the CPU and motherboard. From there, you will need to look up the chipsets to find out what the optimal clock speeds are. I have seen more than one laptop burn up at around the 1 year mark because a sub-part mother board with a slower timing chip was paired with a faster CPU. Since most buyers do not ask about the motherboard model, there was no way for them to find out that they basically had an overclocked system that was going to fail very quickly. Overall, I can safely say that I don’t recommend spending 3 – 4 times as much money on a laptop when I can choose a much cheaper tablet and optimize it with less intensive apps. The only advantage a laptop might have over an off grid tablet is that it is easier to customize the programs. Tablets An unlocked tablet will give you just about everything you need for basic document access and communicating with others. You can also choose apps that will enable you to create your own apps and carry out other more complex tasks. Tablets also have the advantage of taking far less power than a desktop or laptop computer. They can easily be recharged on a portable solar pack, and it is also fairly easy to bypass the battery. Insofar as brand names, I tend to favor Lenovo, but have also found Alldaymall tablets to work well. The Alldaymall tablets are also a good bit cheaper, so you can purchase more of them and put them in your bug out bag as well as other locations. Smart Phones When it comes to a comfortable viewing experience combined with relatively low power usage, larger tablets will work much better than smart phones. That being said, in a “something is better than nothing” or a vital tool for your EDC, few things can rival a good quality unlocked smart phone. While I recommend a 10” tablet for bug out gear, a 5” smart phone is truly more than enough for EDC. Not only a phone this size fit easily into a purse or backpack, it is even easier to power than a larger tablet. They also work well for reading a range of documents and will give you a good sized window for viewing videos. You can also hook up a folding keyboard and be able to carry out a number of tasks that would be difficult using the screen keyboard. The Challenge on Providing a Steady Source of Power Today, the vast majority of computers have sub par power supplies that make them more susceptible than ever to fluctuations in power coming into the system. As our electric grid continues to crumble, rolling blackouts, brownouts, and line voltage fluctuations caused by excess usage during peak hours will shorten the life cycle of many computers. If you are generating your own power, it is just as important to make sure you know how to keep the current going into your computer as steady as possible. There are some things you can do now, as well as consider when building a power system that will help you get the most out of every computer that you own. CLICK HERE to subscribe to Survivopedia’s newsletter and get the free report on how to take your computer off grid. Understanding the Impact of Utilization No discussion about preparing your computer hardware for off gridding would be complete without at least touching on the resource cost involved in each program that you run on the system. For example, if you have a simple word processor program with no fancy graphics, it will take up far less processor and memory resources than one that has funny critters dancing around all over the place. Apps that automatically play videos or programs that automatically play music also shorten the hardware life of your computer. Therefore, when it comes to choosing the best computer for your off grid or prepping needs, it is always important to study benchmark tests and hardware longevity tests under certain loads. Once again, you will find some of the best and most accurate information in the gaming forums. Important Parts to Keep On hand For each device in your EDC, bug out bag, or other location, there are some important parts that can help double or even triple the useful lifespan of your computer. Even if you lose some functionality, the main parts should still work for 2 – 3 decades on desktop units, and up to 10 years on laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Start off by buying all of your devices brand new and with the maximum warranty available. If something breaks down during the warranty period, let the manufacturer or repair center take care of the problem. Buy at least 3 to 5 non-functioning devices that are compatible with the make and model of each device. Usually, you can pick these units up for around 10 to 20% of the cost of a brand new device. You can choose different manufacturers as long as the parts are fully interchangeable with your device. You will use these devices to learn how to make repairs, and also for spare parts if something breaks down on your main device. Since RAM chips take the most abuse on any computer system, keep a few spare ones on hand. Have at least one extra power supply for desktop units. Unlike other parts of the system, you should never open up the case on the power supply unless you have a good bit of experience working with electronic devices. Never forget that the capacitors inside these power supplies may not be fully discharged, and that touching them or a live circuit can cause death or severe injury. Keep at least 2 USB hubs handy that also have the capacity to power any device you hook up to them. When connecting devices to the USB ports on your computer, try to never at least one pair of ports. What Happens When the Battery Dies? If you have been thinking about using a smart phone or tablet as a place to store important survival information, you may hesitate because you know that the battery can easily be ruined by over charging , or that it will wear out sooner rather than later. While some devices will continue to work while the battery is “charging”, others will not. If you have a device that will not work while charging, you will need to remove the battery and apply current directly to the device. In this scenario, you must know how to keep the voltage and amperage as stable as possible before they reach the device. You can make your own controllers for this purpose then hook them up to solar panels or anything else that you will be using as a power source. Just remember that you power controller may also need to go safely from AC to DC current as well as match the voltage and amperage needs of the device. If you aren’t sure how much power to provide for laptops, tablets, or smart phones, just go by what the battery is rated for. Video first seen on PrepareForTheUnexpected . Basic Toolkit It will not be of much use to have plenty of parts on hand, and then no way to install them or make good use of them. Here are the most essential tools you will need for building computers or making repairs: chip extractors for chips that are installed in sockets high heat conducting gel precision and larger size screwdriver kit magnifying glass low wattage solder iron, solder, and flux suitable for computer parts desoldering bulb

Some of the biggest corporations in the United States have come together to beg Donald Trump not to abandon the Paris Climate Agreement and they did it on the front page of the New York Times. Dear President Trump, they began. As some of the largest companies based or operating in the United States, we strongly urge you to keep the United States in the Paris Agreement on climate change. Climate change presents both business risks and business opportunities, the open letter to Trump explained. Continued U.S. participation in the agreement benefits U.S. businesses and the U.S. economy in many ways. These include strengthening competitiveness, creating jobs, markets, and growth, and reducing business risks, the letter added, going into each point in detail.The letter was signed by several of the biggest companies in America, including Adobe, Apple, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Danfoss, Facebook, Gap, Inc., Google, The Hartford, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Ingersoll Rand, Intel Corporation, Johnson Controls, Levi Strauss & Co., Mars Incorporated, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, National Grid, PG&E Corporation, Royal DSM, Salesforce, Schneider Electric, Tiffany & Co., Unilever, and VF Corporation all signed on to the open plea.The letter was also published in several other major newspapers throughout the country. As businesses concerned with the well-being of our customers, our investors, our communities, and our suppliers, we are strengthening our climate resilience, and we are investing in innovative technologies that can help achieve a clean energy transition. For this transition to succeed, however, governments must lead as well, the coporations said to Trump. U.S. business is best served by a stable and practical framework facilitating an effective and balanced global response. The Paris Agreement provides such a framework. As other countries invest in advanced technologies and move forward with the Paris Agreement, we believe the United States can best exercise global leadership and advance U.S. interests by remaining a full partner in this vital global effort, the letter concluded.Trump has gone back and forth on whether or not to pull the United States out of the climate deal. Axios announced that it was a done deal and Trump would be withdrawing from the agreement. But the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump is once again on the fence about the matter and has been influenced by the negative response from big businesses urging him not to abandon the deal.Featured image via Olivier Douliery Pool/Getty Images

With eucalyptus sprays you can “destroy the virus (SARS-COV-2)”

WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner will become a senior White House adviser to his Donald J. Trump, cementing the New York real estate executive’s role as a powerful and at times decisive influence on the . Mr. Kushner, 35, who married Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009, is closer to Mr. Trump than any other adviser, a steady and stabilizing presence inside an often chaotic transition team who has provided input on most of his ’s most consequential hiring and firing decisions. Mr. Trump described Mr. Kushner as “a tremendous asset and trusted adviser throughout the campaign and transition” in a statement issued early Monday evening announcing an appointment that perhaps more than any other defines the way the incoming president will govern. Mr. Kushner plans to sell some of his real estate holdings and other assets, his lawyer said. Some ethics experts have questioned whether the appointment will be legal under federal laws designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the United States government. Other presidents configured their White House hierarchies to mirror experiences in statehouses, on campaigns or at the heads of armies. Mr. Trump intends to adopt the management style of a New York real estate empire, with family at the pinnacle and staff members, however trusted or talented, somewhere below. Ms. Trump, who also participated in her father’s campaign decisions, has no immediate plans to enter the administration and will restructure her portfolio of holdings. But she plans to step down from the management of the Trump Organization and the Ivanka Trump fashion brand, said Jamie S. Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer. Mr. Kushner’s plan is to sell assets to his brother and to a trust overseen by his mother, said Ms. Gorelick, who added that she had been consulting with federal ethics officials in an attempt to minimize opposition to Mr. Kushner’s appointment. Under the arrangement, Mr. Kushner will divest his holdings in his family real estate firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue sell his stake in the New York Observer newspaper divest his interest in his brother’s firm, Thrive Capital and restructure other investments. He will also divest of all foreign investments, said Ms. Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. He will have to recuse himself on matters that could relate to his wife’s businesses and his remaining holdings, she added. Mr. Kushner has been described by numerous transition staff members as the first among equals in Mr. Trump’s high command. His new title belies the sweeping influence he will have behind the scenes. The Mr. Kushner has often been described as having a calming effect on Mr. Trump, who is notorious for yelling at staff members during moments of tension. Mr. Kushner became the de facto campaign manager in the spring, and his influence with Mr. Trump has expanded rapidly. He is expected to play the same role in the White House, while the chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, provides the with strategic, messaging and communications advice, and Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and the incoming chief of staff, runs operations in the West Wing. Mr. Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, will have a direct line to the president on a range of issues. Despite his lack of political experience before the 2016 campaign, Mr. Kushner earned the trust of his mercurial during the campaign’s most turbulent moments, joining his wife and Mr. Trump’s adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr. in ousting Corey Lewandowski, then the campaign manager, in the heat of the primary season. Mr. Kushner was among those who pushed, campaign officials said, for the removal of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey as the head of Mr. Trump’s transition team, and pressed for his to appoint David M. Friedman, a Long Island lawyer, as ambassador to Israel. Mr. Kushner, an orthodox Jew, has also made an unlikely ally of Mr. Bannon, an icon of the nationalist movement. When Mr. Bannon, a former Breitbart executive, came under attack from Democrats after he was appointed to a White House role, Mr. Kushner assured allies that he had complete faith in Mr. Bannon and described him as a man of character. Mr. Kushner will not take a salary and plans to work on issues involving the Middle East and Israel try to forge government partnerships with the private sector and collaborate with Mr. Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. on matters involving free trade, Ms. Gorelick said. The scion of a prominent Democratic family active in New Jersey politics, Mr. Kushner showed few early signs that he would become a national political power player. A Harvard graduate, he is a lifelong Democrat, liberal on social issues. Like his ideologically limber he has donated to Democratic candidates. Mr. Kushner’s appointment was greeted with relief by some liberals, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who views him as moderating influence in a Trump West Wing dominated by conservatives. “I respect him a lot,” Mr. de Blasio said when asked about Mr. Kushner on Monday. “I’ve known him for years and find him to be a very reasonable person. ” Still, it remains unclear if Mr. Kushner is inclined to prod the to the left. By his own account, he underwent something of a personal political transformation during the campaign, embracing Mr. Trump’s fiery and conservative economic message after spending months crisscrossing red and America. Mr. Kushner’s new role became public a day after the disclosure that he would resign as chief executive of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate firm, and divest himself of “substantial assets,” including 666 Fifth Avenue. Mr. Kushner will divest of his holdings in The Observer and has stepped down as its publisher his the newspaper’s chairman, will assume that role. Mr. Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference on Wednesday to discuss his plans for dealing with myriad conflicts of interest raised by his sprawling international development, hotel, branding and entertainment empire. Ms. Gorelick said she was confident Mr. Kushner’s appointment would survive any legal challenge, and said Mr. Trump would seek an advisory opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. “I am not saying there’s no legal argument on the other side,” she added. “I’m just saying we have the better argument and will prevail. ” Mr. Trump made it clear since he was elected that he wanted Mr. Kushner in his White House. Since December, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Gorelick’s team have consulted with the Office of Government Ethics to create a plan that would satisfy the legal requirements needed for him to serve. Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, a real estate developer who was once imprisoned for tax evasion, will take an increased role in the family company. Norman L. Eisen, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President Obama, said he thought Mr. Kushner’s decision to divest holdings raised pressure on Mr. Trump to follow suit. “What we are seeing now is, after the initial chaos of the Trump transition, that his nominees are now complying with the requirements of the law,” he said. “Rex Tillerson has retired from Exxon, and now Kushner is doing the same,” he added, referring to Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state. “So it’s going to be hard for Trump to ignore 40 years of precedent and not do the same. ”

"keep the faith" Cpt. Johnson #Ferguson http://t.co/QqgBvfcYWO

Some 2,500 Americans Have Died in Afghanistan and Iraq Under Obama. Under Obama, America has been at war for longer than under any other U.S. president. When is the last time you heard those statistics mentioned by our Leftist media?Somewhere along the way, Obama decided that winning (or ending) the wars in the middle east was less important than starting a full-blown race war in America. Does anyone care that Hillary is openly advocating to carry on his legacy of hate and division over concern for our military or our national security?This is Obama s legacy A California high school football team staged a bizarre die-in to protest the singing of the national anthem.Kaepernick came to Oakland, CA. He kneeled on one knee, players laid on their back with hands up during the Anthem. pic.twitter.com/Cae4sTopac Kirk Morrison (@kirkmorrison) September 24, 2016The Castlemont High School Knights, based in Oakland, engaged in shameful display of anti-American behavior. It happened during a Friday night football game.Disgraced NFL Colin Kaepernick was on hand to encourage the children to disrespect America and the U.S. Armed Forces. I had to come out here and stand with y all, he said in remarks covered by the Mercury News. So I appreciate what y all did. I love y all. Y all my brothers I m here with you. But instead of collapsing on the ground with the children, Kaepernick simply took a knee. I guess he didn t want to get grass stains on his hoodie. Todd StarnesOh and by the way these punks lost their game. They also lost the respect of anyone who watched their disgusting anti-American behavior.High-school players take anthem demonstration to another level, with @Kaepernick7 present, via @kirkmorrison https://t.co/BGD8q2wJ75 ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) September 24, 2016

"This decision is an unfortunate example of why those of us in Montpelier need to work together to make Vermont a more affordable place to do business and make sure our policies help businesses thrive rather than creating unique burdens and barriers to growth that make us less competitive with other states."

Women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.

(CNN) Egypt's military carried out a series of airstrikes against ISIS militants in Libya on Monday in retaliation for the slaughter of 21 Egyptian Christians by the jihadist group. The bombing raids pulled Egypt deeper into the widening international fight against ISIS and highlighted the extremists' growing presence in North Africa The warplanes hit 10 targets used for training and storage in ISIS' Libyan stronghold of Derna, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN. "Avenging Egyptian blood and punishing criminals and murderers is our right and duty," the Egyptian military said in a statement that was broadcast on state television. There were conflicting claims about what the bombs had struck. "These were surgical strikes based on very accurate intelligence and related to degrading the capabilities of ISIS within the city of Derna," Shoukry told CNN's Erin Burnett. But an umbrella group of Islamist militias in Derna issued a statement saying that the city "woke up to a disaster today as Egyptian military jets targeted civilians in residential areas in the city." The statement reported that the bombings had killed women and children, and it warned the Egyptian government of a "harsh and painful" response to come. CNN couldn't independently verify what damage and casualties the airstrikes had caused. The footage, bearing many of the hallmarks of previous ISIS videos of the killing of hostages, has intensified international concerns about ISIS' deepening reach into countries far beyond its strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The slickly produced video shows the apparent mass killing, with jihadists in black standing behind each of the victims, who are all dressed in orange jumpsuits with their hands cuffed behind them. Twenty-one Egyptian Christians were kidnapped in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte in two separate incidents in December and January. They were reportedly from impoverished villages and went to Libya looking for work. Although the ISIS video showed around a dozen men being beheaded, Egyptian officials said that all 21 Christians were believed to have been killed. Some of the hostages cry out "Oh God" and "Oh Jesus" as they are pushed to their knees. The five-minute video, released by ISIS' propaganda wing al-Hayat Media, includes a masked English-speaking jihadi who says, "The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah, we will mix it with your blood." The video threatens Egypt, which shares a long border with Libya, and also Europe, whose shores lie across the Mediterranean Sea. 'The right of retaliation' Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had warned Sunday that his country "reserves the right of retaliation and with the methods and timing it sees fit for retribution for those murderers and criminals who are without the slightest humanity." He also declared a week of mourning in the Muslim majority nation for the slain Christians. In a statement, Egypt's Foreign Ministry called for other nations battling ISIS to support Egypt's efforts and to target terrorists in Libya, as well. The U.S. government condemned the killings, saying ISIS' "barbarity knows no bounds." U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Sunday to offer condolences, the State Department said. Concern has increased over ISIS' rising influence in Libya amid the power and security vacuum prevalent in the country since the 2011 uprising that overthrew former dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Jihadists with allegiance to ISIS had also expanded their presence westward along the Libyan coast, forming chapters in cities including Benghazi, Sirte and even Tripoli, the capital, according to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadist now involved in counterterrorism for the Quilliam Foundation. "There's been a real radical Islamist presence in Libya for some time," said Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. "What's worrying is now they are self-identifying with ISIS." Questions remain over how much direct command and control the ISIS leadership in Syria and Iraq has over its North African affiliates. The killings of the Egyptian Christians has filled in some of the detail. Before the grisly video was released, ISIS had released photos in its English-language magazine Dabiq, claiming they had been killed. "There's certainly communication between the Libyan affiliate and the affiliate in Syria about matters of importance to both of them," said CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen. He said the ties between Libyan jihadists and ISIS' precursor, al Qaeda in Iraq, "go back a very long time." "While we can come up with a military solution or a military operation in a restricted area like Syria and Iraq, what do we do when it expands to North Africa?" Francona asked.

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian driver plowed a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers as they were getting off a bus in Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon, killing four and injuring 17 others, according to the police and witnesses. The police called the episode an act of terrorism. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the attacker had been shot, and the police released images showing the truck’s windshield riddled with bullet holes. The dead included three female soldiers and one male soldier, the Israeli military confirmed. Several people were hospitalized, some with critical injuries. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack and said the perpetrator was “by all indications a supporter of the Islamic State. ” “This is part of the same pattern inspired by Islamic State, by ISIS, that we saw first in France, then in Germany and now in Jerusalem. This is part of the same ongoing battle against this global scourge of the new terrorism,” he added. Mr. Netanyahu has often made the comparison between local attacks against Israelis and those in the rest of the world, though the attacks in Israel are more broadly viewed as being more connected to the conflict. While the Israeli security services have described a few Palestinian attackers as having been inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State, no direct links have been established between them and the organization. The attack on Sunday occurred on the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, a popular tourist spot between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem that offers sweeping views of the Old City. The four soldiers killed were Erez Orbach, 20, from Alon Shvut, in the West Bank Yael Yekutiel, 20, from Givatayim, near Tel Aviv Shir Hajaja, 22, from Maale Adumim in the West Bank and Shira Tzur, 20, from Haifa. The violence ended several months of relative calm in the contested city, after a period of frequent stabbings, shootings and car attacks. It also underlined the volatility of the situation at a time when Donald J. Trump has promised to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a potentially explosive step that American administrations have avoided for decades. Palestinian officials say it would destroy the chances of any peace process by prejudging the outcome, and some have said it would constitute a declaration of war against Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said on Friday that the Palestinians would view any such change in the status quo in Jerusalem as the crossing of a red line. Mosque preachers addressed the proposed embassy move in their sermons during Friday prayers, apparently on the instruction of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel captured the area from Jordan in the 1967 war and claims sovereignty there. Hamas, the Islamic militant group that holds sway in Gaza, praised Sunday’s attack, without taking responsibility for it. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas official, described it as a “courageous and heroic operation. ” In Gaza City, people were handing out sweets to in celebration. Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, condemned the attack in a statement. “It is reprehensible that some choose to glorify such acts, which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “There is nothing heroic in such actions. ” The Palestinian official news agency, WAFA, identified the driver of the truck as Fadi Ahmad 28, a resident of the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber in East Jerusalem. Ribhi Ewiysat, a resident of the neighborhood, said that a large number of Israeli security forces had entered the area and were at the attacker’s house. Chaim Newman, a tour guide who was accompanying the group of soldiers at the scene, told Israel Radio, “The soldiers got off the bus, and we were getting organized when suddenly the truck came with great speed and rammed into the group. ” “Civilians and soldiers began shooting, and this prevented a worse tragedy,” he added. “He rammed them a number of times, going into reverse and forward in order to hurt more people. ” Chen Lendi Sharon, a paramedic from the Magen David Adom ambulance service, said there was “chaos on the scene” when she arrived. “I saw a truck that rammed youngsters getting off the bus next to the Armon Hanatziv observation point. ” Ms. Lendi Sharon said that at least 10 people were trapped under the bus or were lying on the grass by the road. The attack occurred around 1:30 p. m. Dozens of soldiers were getting off buses at the site as part of a routine educational tour of Jerusalem. Aged 18 to 21, they were cadets from an officers’ course, Israel Radio reported. About two hours after the attack, the truck, a white flatbed with a crane on the back, remained at the scene and an ambulance was still removing bodies. Dovy Meyer, a spokesman for the United Hatzalah ambulance service who was at the scene, said that around 100 soldiers had been milling about when the attack occurred. A spate of deadly stabbings, shootings and car attacks began in October 2015 and quickly spread from Jerusalem and the West Bank to cities around Israel. More than 30 Israelis and two American visitors were among those killed in the attacks. More than 240 Palestinians have been killed during that period, many of them while carrying out or intending to carry out attacks, according to Israeli officials. Several attackers have come from the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood. Mr. Netanyahu said the neighborhood had been “encircled” by security forces on Sunday.

Comments A new federal government document has surfaced which details the housing discrimination practices of Donald Trump and his family’s vast Trump Organization’s realty holdings in New York City’s outer boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. It’s the first time that tangible proof of Donald Trump’s history of racial discrimination practices has been confirmed in an official record. found this key document from the archives of University of Michigan’s Law School, markgin the very first time that the complete list of Trump’s covered properties has been discovered. The Republican nominee spent most of the 1970s battling federal housing discrimination charges alongside his father, a fact Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton highlighted in an attack ad this week . However, Trump has always publicly denied culpability and hid behind the confidentiality of settlement discussions to avoid full disclosure like this new public record document exposes. In fact, he has always never admitted guilt, according to Politifact : The case was settled and Trump never admitted guilt, though his company had to agree to stipulations meant to prevent future discrimination at his rental properties. Donald Trump’s Properties Had 75% Fewer Minorities Than Lived Nearby In Other Buildings The Trump Organization had 9,050 apartment units covered under the settlement agreement with the federal government, which housed only 399 minority residents across 35 covered properties, or only 4.4% of Fred and Donald Trump’s New York City rental real estate empire. The public record document proves the Trump Organization and principals Fred and Donald Trump’s buildings schemed to ignore the Fair Housing Act of 1968 but failed miserably and ultimately landed in court for two years starting in 1973. The Trumps eventually capitulated to the government in 1975. Keep in mind, the federal government named Donald Trump personally in their Fair Housing complaint, so he wasn’t just a bit player in the dark history of his family business’ illegal management practices — but a named defendant. The Justice Department named 39 buildings in their original complaint, which leading to a story entitled, “ Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias ,” on the front page of the New York Times. Out of the total of 14,000 units that The Times says the Trump family owned in 1973, 68% of their holdings fell under the settlement. The Trumps segregated a small group of non-white tenants into a few of their properties, maintained a single building with just over half minority residents, and virtually excluded minorities from 24 New York City buildings of the 36 total project covered in their 1975 settlement with the federal government which covered a mind-boggling 9,500 apartments. Five of the Trump buildings affected had no minority residents whatsoever, and more than half of the buildings had less than ten minority residents. There’s also spreadsheet below with easier to read copy of the key public record document proving Trump’s discriminatory housing practices, but you can see the original here: Who Wrote This Letter At The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division And Why Did They Write It? Drew S. Days, III transmitted the Trump Leak (below) to the Open Housing Center of New York shortly after his appointment by President Carter. It was prepared by career Civil Rights division lawyer Harvey L. Hanley in the summer of 1977, Days , was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights division then, where he personally oversaw the Trump family’s desegregation efforts. He went on to become a Yale Law Professor, and eventually the US Solicitor General under President Clinton in 1993. Days’ memo reveals that the portfolio of Trump Organization realty which was covered in the 1975 settlement, and their slow progress of racial integration as of July 11th, 1977. By then, the Trump Organization had designated two additional buildings to accommodate significant blocks minority renters compared to other buildings. But across the board, non-white occupancy rates only went from 4.4% to 7.2% with 663 residents of color housed. When you factor out those two buildings – named Argyle Hall and Westminster Hall who accepted 48 of only 264 new minority tenants – the Trump Organization’s overall minority occupancy rate stood at only 6.45%. Trump Organization Management Actively Discriminated Against African-Americans The New York Times reported in August that Trump’s property managers – both New York and Cincinnati, Ohio – marked minority housing applications for denial whether they were segregationists or more likely following their orders strictly. One manager spilled the beans on Trump’s discriminatory practices: A former Trump superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter “C” on it — for “colored” — to any application filed by a black apartment-seeker. That wasn’t only reason to date why the federal Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division monitored fully 2/3rds of the Trump family’s realty empire for racial discrimination in the 70s. Case records like the one provided by DCAT below show that Trump’s manager would tell prospective tenants that their neighborhoods were safe, “because there were no blacks around.” Furthermore, as in many housing discrimination cases, the below court document also documents testers visiting the Trump Organization’s buildings and coming out with different results based on the skin color of the prospective tenant. Federal Court Document from US vs. Trump. Click to Open in New Tab New York’s Minority Population Doubled In the 1970s It’s important to note that demographic data from the US Census illuminates this report to show that most of Trump’s buildings had far fewer minorities than the communities in which they sat. US Census data indicates that Kings and Queens Counties were the two most populous counties in New York back then, with 4.6 million people in 1970. (doc 2, page 11 in link) US Census Data. Click to Open in New Tab Roughly 20% of that 1970 population was listed as African-American. By the 1980 US Census , the population of the two New York City boroughs dipped slightly, however the percentage of African-American and hispanic residents in the two boroughs was 40% of the population. (pages 29-30 in link) This data demonstrates that the Trump Organization’s covered apartments only had one fourth of the proportion of minority residents compared their surrounding neighborhoods in the mid-1970s, while 15% percent of their properties had zero African-Americans residing inside them. For the purposes of this story, we used the blended average of minority population in both districts, since there’s a large portfolio of buildings. Conclusion Donald Trump settled a federal Fair Housing Act lawsuit because most of his buildings often had few, or even no minority residents. A careful examination of his record shows that his family’s real estate empire systematically excluded African-Americans from its housing, and even after settling with the US Department of Justice, the Trump Organization continued to use the same tactics of loading just a few properties with most of the minority tenants.

Early on Oct. 6, Erin was awakened by the sound of her baby crying. She later told the authorities in Florida that she had picked him up from a bassinet, prepared some formula in a bottle and settled back into bed with him, propping him up with a pillow and nestling his head in the crook of her arm. Then she dozed off. Two and a half hours later, according to a Polk County sheriff’s affidavit, Ms. 25, woke up “in a panic. ” Blood was on her baby boy, Javier, who was less than a month old, and vomit was coming out of his mouth, she told officials. Ms. of Winter Haven in Central Florida, said she tried to revive the boy, and called 911. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. When investigators interviewed Ms. about the baby’s death, according to the document, she said, “It happened again. ” Prosectors say it was the second time an infant died under Ms. ’s care: Her daughter, Angelina, died of suffocation in 2009. That was ruled an accident. A spokeswoman for the coroner’s office said Javier also died of accidental suffocation. In November, Ms. was charged with felony aggravated manslaughter of a child. But the police did not arrest her until Tuesday, after prosecutors reviewed the affidavit and reports. She was scheduled to appear on Wednesday before a judge, according to Polk County’s chief assistant state attorney, Brian Haas. It was not immediately clear whether she had a lawyer. The case touches on a pillar of parenting: how to get infants to sleep, especially for newborns who may require feedings. It also shines a light on in which parents share a room or a bed with their infants. The practice is considered controversial for medical and cultural reasons. Family is common in many parts of the world, but it is generally discouraged in Western cultures, where children traditionally sleep in cribs in separate rooms. Some parents say that helps to make babies more manageable at night, while others find the constant caregiving and interrupted sleep to be exhausting, a recent study found. Approximately 3, 500 infants die annually in the United States from deaths, including sudden infant death syndrome, accidental suffocation and accidental strangulation in bed, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. To reduce the risk of those deaths, the academy recommends positioning of babies supine in bed, using a firm sleep surface, sharing a room without sharing a bed, and avoiding soft bedding and overheating. The case presents prosecutors with the challenge of showing that was a form of neglect because the mother had been informed of the risks during both of her pregnancies. “These are very, very difficult cases,” Mr. Haas said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “We are not charging parents with crimes because accidents happen. There has got to be something more to it. ” Mr. Haas said that the case was still in the discovery phase, and officials were gathering more information about what happened in October. The affidavit charging Ms. said she had undergone counseling during both pregnancies. It said she had received information while she was pregnant with her first child about the “dangers” of with babies, and of the importance of placing infants on their backs to sleep. But on Dec. 4, 2009, about two weeks after she had given birth to her baby girl, Ms. fell asleep while in bed, only to wake up and find the baby “cold and stiff to the touch” next to her, the sheriff’s affidavit said. The baby died of asphyxia from “probable overlay” and “” according to the medical examiner. When Ms. learned she was pregnant in 2016, she received training through the Healthy Start program about and putting an infant to sleep safely, documents show. Her mother and doctor also advised her, the affidavit said. In July, while pregnant, Ms. was arrested on a charge of possessing methamphetamine, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. The felony charge in Javier’s death was based on his being “killed in the same manner as her first child, Angelina, due to her own culpable negligence and without lawful justification,” according to the affidavit. A spokeswoman for the coroner’s office, Sheli Wilson, said the death certificate called it an accidental suffocation, but she added that an autopsy had not been finalized. Relatives of Ms. could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

INDIANAPOLIS — Less than a month ago, Senator Ted Cruz seemed to have done it. He had won Wisconsin. Former rivals were holding their noses to support him. He was dominating delegate elections, positioning himself for what seemed increasingly likely to be a floor fight at the Republican convention in July, as the campaign of Donald J. Trump fell into internal disarray. “Tonight is a turning point,” Mr. Cruz said on primary night in Milwaukee. “It is a rallying cry. ” It was neither. On Tuesday, Mr. Cruz ended his campaign, his loss in Indiana extinguishing any chance of denying Mr. Trump the nomination. “Together we left it all on the field in Indiana,” Mr. Cruz told supporters here as cries of “Nooo!” rained from the crowd. “We gave it everything we’ve got. But the voters chose another path. ” Yet to dismiss Mr. Cruz as an would diminish his unlikely feat in outlasting nearly every rival: His calls for conservative purity were, for better or worse, the most consistent message in the field, his rage against the “Washington cartel” a signal of the nation’s view of its leaders. In a year when many voters flocked to the candidate they hoped could startle Washington into submission, Mr. Cruz galvanized millions of supporters drawn to his more ideological conservatism, quoting founding documents and texts. He was the most candidate to even sniff the nomination in at least a . Long before Mr. Trump careered into the race, Mr. Cruz staked perhaps the loudest claim to the boiling national anger among conservatives in the age of President Obama. He was . “Ted Cruz’s theory of the race was that conservatives were angry,” said Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist, a conservative online journal. “It turns out that everyone was angry. ” For a candidate who appeared, just a few weeks ago, to have a plausible path to the nomination, the descent came quickly. The calendar did not help. Hours after his Wisconsin victory, he charged headlong into New York City, earning Bronx jeers that foretold a hostile reception across a Eastern states that were never a natural fit for him. “Manhattan has spoken!” Mr. Cruz joked bitterly in Indiana. “Everyone give up and go home. ” But the problems ran deeper. Given an opening to unite the party in opposition to a man many see as an existential threat to it, Mr. Cruz was unable to consolidate support, leaving Republican leaders lurching toward a fateful bet: Live with the risk of a Trump nomination rather than elevate a figure they loathe. His advisers insisted that he was a more versatile candidate than past Iowa caucus winners like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, but he failed to sufficiently expand his appeal much beyond the party’s most religious and ideological voters. His surrogates in Indiana looked much the same as in Iowa, with testimonials from the radio host Glenn Beck and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas. “Conservatives are uniting,” Mr. Cruz said often on the campaign trail, long after it felt true. But his efforts were undercut, in large measure, by his toxic relationships with Senate colleagues and a manifest indifference to repairing them. Soon, the indignities mounted. He named Carly Fiorina his prospective running mate, despite trailing by several hundred delegates, briefly rousing a partly full Indianapolis pavilion. He earned scorn in Indiana for referring to a basketball rim as a “ring. ” He was heckled by a young boy in La Porte and several men in Marion. “Sir, with all respect,” Mr. Cruz pleaded, after approaching one of them for a chat on Monday, “Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump. ” On Tuesday morning, he at last unburdened himself in full, promising to tell reporters “what I really think of Donald Trump” for the first time. “This man is a pathological liar,” Mr. Cruz said, ticking off Mr. Trump’s distortions, his infidelities, his penchant for conspiracy theories. “The man is utterly amoral. ” It is possible there is nothing more Mr. Cruz could have done. Mr. Trump has proved immune to political gravity. He has been largely impervious to attacks, once Mr. Cruz backed away from his monthslong embrace and began hammering him. Most critically, Mr. Trump’s success in early states across the South, thought to be Mr. Cruz’s firewall, forced a rewrite of the Cruz campaign playbook on the fly. But while few politicians have better absorbed the lessons of the party’s rightward tilt in recent years, Mr. Cruz found himself outmaneuvered on issues like trade and national defense by an outsider whose political antenna had a crisper signal. Even on immigration — where Mr. Cruz’s grasp of the party’s id helped vanquish a foe, Marco Rubio, who came to regret embracing a pathway to citizenship — Mr. Trump managed to go bigger and louder. That Mr. Cruz lasted this long anyway was a triumph of management guile and considerable hustle: No Republican campaign more effectively marshaled its finances, holding the most cash on hand for much of the race, and no candidate worked harder than he did, frequently dashing through six events a day in Iowa. With a showman’s itch and a singular manner of speaking — the long pauses, the controlled twang, the easy deployment of words like “élan” and “hosannas” on the stump — Mr. Cruz registered at times like an actor playing the role of presidential candidate. He often resorted to gimmickry, from movie scenes to lawyerly theatrics to his grandest stunt of all: adding Mrs. Fiorina to an imagined ticket. But these last few, flailing weeks belied a campaign that for months had followed its initial strategy to the letter. Mr. Cruz and his advisers often likened the election to a college basketball tournament bracket, where opponents like Scott Walker and Mr. Rubio were to be muscled out one by one. (They also griped that Gov. John Kasich of Ohio failed to leave the court, despite the score.) When Mr. Cruz entered the race, his team openly cheered its meager position, roughly 5 percent in the polls, reasoning that he could energize his core supporters first. “You have to own a base in the Republican primary,” his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said the day Mr. Cruz announced his run at an evangelical university last year. “If you own the base, then you can grow it. ” Mr. Cruz’s most consequential choice might have come last year when he defended Mr. Trump as a credible outsider and a force for good in the race as rivals began taking swings. As late as December, he celebrated Mr. Trump as “terrific,” rising quietly in the polls as Mr. Trump absorbed the slings and arrows directed to a . Even after Mr. Trump began disparaging Mr. Cruz’s Canadian birth, the senator initially resisted a barrage. Eventually, his broadsides were frequent and scattershot: Mr. Trump was too unsteady, too shifty, too consumed by social media, too much like Hillary Clinton. Recently, as Mr. Cruz’s growth seemed to reach its outer bounds, he leaned increasingly on this sort of messaging potpourri. He tried positioning himself as the party’s champion of women. He cast himself as the heir to President Obama’s generational promise, debuting a new slogan — “Yes, we will!” — that was quickly abandoned. Then there was his habit of declaring as fact things he wished to be true. Mr. Cruz often described the “hard ceiling” of support that Mr. Trump would surely brush up against, estimating it to be 35 to 40 percent. “Donald has been a minority candidate, a fringe candidate,” Mr. Cruz told reporters last week. The next day, Mr. Trump received at least 54 percent of the vote in all five primaries. And if Mr. Trump’s chosen moniker for Mr. Cruz (“Lyin’ Ted”) was not quite as instantly devastating as some of his others (“ ” Jeb Bush, “Little Marco” Rubio) the Cruz campaign contributed to lending it a ring of truth — not least because of his abrupt antagonism toward Mr. Trump after reams of praise. While Mr. Cruz steadied himself, rebounding in his home state of Texas and winning several smaller contests and delegate conventions, his successes were too few. Even in victory, Mr. Cruz spoke often in apocalyptic terms. Facing defeat, his pleas grew pained. “If Indiana does not act,” he said hours before Tuesday’s vote, “this country could well plunge into the abyss. ”

Trigger warning If liberal schools and badass campus cops offend you, this video may cause a spike in your blood pressure Two University of South Alabama students were confronted by campus police Wednesday, and one student was cited for causing alarm by wearing an empty holster. This week is the empty holster protest for Students for Concealed Carry in Alabama to demonstrate that students are defenseless on campus, D.J. Parten, president of Students for Concealed Carry, told Campus Reform. Along with fellow club member Kenneth Tews, Parten was also promoting an upcoming screening of the movie Can We Take a Joke? when three campus police officers approached their table demanding identification.Video footage, obtained by Campus Reform, shows one of the police officers asking to search the students, and when they exercise their right to refuse, another officer becoming aggravated and warning that he will find something to charge them with if they remain uncooperative a threat that is eventually carried out against Parten.The school s website states that all weapons are prohibited in University housing buildings, parking lots, and on University property adding that this includes, but is not limited to, bullets, ball bearing bullets, bullet balls, pellets, firearms, guns, knives, paintball guns, air guns, hunting bows, archery bows, swords, martial arts weapons, and replicas of such weapons. Toy and water guns are prohibited. Parton protested that nothing in the policy even implies that he is not allowed to wear the empty holster, particularly since he was doing it as a way of drawing attention to the school s no-gun policy, but made no headway with the intractable officer, who insisted that the empty holster represented a potential safety hazard because it implied the existence of a firearm whose whereabouts he could not ascertain. Is this just because I have a holster on me? Parten asks the officer after turning over his identification. Yeah, it is, because somebody called it in, the officer replies matter-of-factly. You know there s a no-weapons policy out here, but still you want to push it. Uh this is a protest, Parten submits after a short pause, evidently caught off-guard by the notion that an empty holster might violate the policy. Did you get permission to wear it? the officer queries him. I don t need permission to wear it, Parten replies confidently. You need permission from the university. To wear a holster? he asks with undisguised incredulity.Standing his rhetorical ground, the officer simply shrugs off the challenge and says, There s a no-weapons policy here. It s not a weapon. I understand that, the officer concedes. Take it up with Dean of Students, then, because y all are gonna be written up for disciplinary [sic], and I will put in there your attitude, you understand? Assuming a more confrontational demeanor, the officer then turns to Parten and states, So I m gonna ask you one more time: where s the weapon? I don t have it, Parten tells him. It s at home. Later in the video, though, the first officer calls Parten over after the others have stepped away and acknowledges that neither of the students had technically done anything wrong, then requests for your safety as well as mine that they be more compliant in the future when officers respond to reports of a possible weapon. What you re doing is not against the rules or the law, he explains, but when we get a call thinking somebody might have a gun, you have to be polite and cooperative, because if you start being difficult, [it looks like] you re carrying something. Your friend here had his hands in pockets, and he kind of laughed when I asked him to take them out, but he forgot that he put this little folding knife that has a clip on the outside in his pocket. Parton and Tews counter that, at least with respect to the holsters (which were the reason the officers were called, in the first place), they were engaged in a public display that was explicitly billed as an empty holster protest. Via: Campus Reform

Now here s a Hollywood actor who lives in reality While the left is still delusional about the Trump win last November, Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad just ranted about those who want Trump to fail It s Great! Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston, notably outspoken against then-candidate Donald Trump, recently changed his tone, calling out those who don t support the current president. President Trump is not the person who I wanted to be in that office, and I ve been very open about that, Cranston said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. That being said, he is the president. If he fails, the country is in jeopardy. It would be egotistical for anyone to say, I hope he fails, Cranston said. To that person I would say, f k you. Why would you want that? So you can be right? The actor, currently promoting Vietnam War-era movie Last Flag Flying, said he doesn t want Trump to fail. I don t want him to fail, Cranston argued. I want him to succeed. I do. I honestly do.If Trump fails, then America fails too! Tax reform and pro-growth should be what all Americans want Right?The actor s comments mark an abrupt change from previous remarks he made about the president before he was elected. In October 2016, Cranston said he would move to Canada if Trump were elected to office:Fox News reported: Bryan Cranston says he ll leave the United States and move to Canada if Donald Trump is elected president.During an interview Sunday with The Bestseller Experiment podcast, Cranston was asked if he would leave the country and take and extended vacation to Vancouver if Trump defeats Hillary Clinton. Absolutely. I would definitely move. It s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won t, Cranston said. It wouldn t be a vacation. I d be an expatriate. However, in the interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cranston said regardless of political affiliations, he ll support anyone with a good idea. If you ve got a good idea that helps the country, oh man, I m gonna support you, Cranston said. I don t care if you re a Republican and I m a Democrat or whatever, I don t care. He added: We ve got to get away from this idea that our country is a political football, and someone with a different opinion is the enemy. Assume they love this country as much as you do, and there s always room for improvement. How can we make it better? WE SAY AMEN TO THAT!Read more: NYP Page Six

Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign policy roles for presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, is President Donald Trump’s leading candidate to be deputy secretary of state, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. Abrams is to meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Abrams, 69, last served in government in the Bush White House, first as a Middle East expert on the National Security Council and later as a global democracy strategy adviser. Another candidate for the position was former diplomat Paula Dobriansky, the source said, while adding that it appeared Abrams had the inside track.

Buzzfeed reports, that, from the start, Megyn Kelly Today s Nielsen ratings have been down compared to the third hour of Today, which was cohosted by Al Roker and Tamron Hall last fall. The ultimate aim of Megyn Kelly Today was to challenge Live With Kelly and Ryan, which is syndicated by ABC, but the contest is not even close. In Megyn Kelly Today s first week, Live beat it by 14% among viewers and 17% in the 25-to-54 demographic. In the second week, the gap widened, with Live besting Megyn Kelly Today by 34% among viewers and 60% in the demo.We re not sure what they were thinking when they sent the wine-soaked Hoda from the Kathie Lee and Hoda show over to help make Megyn look more normal and approachable to her audience, but by bringing a likeable and relatable host from another (formerly) popular show on NBC, they only managed to shine a huge spotlight on Megyn Kelly s inability to connect with anyone who isn t holding a camera. By bringing Hoda Kotb over for a very awkward segment on Kelly s show, NBC managed to reinforce why nobody wants to watch the cringe-inducing host of Megyn Kelly Today.Watch:Hoda was on #MegynKellyToday this morning for no reason other than to fill time and I've never been so embarrassed. pic.twitter.com/wXUatEcPhY Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) October 19, 2017

LONDON — In one of the most consequential diplomatic events in Britain since World War II, Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday sent formal notice of the country’s intention to withdraw from the European Union, starting a tortuous divorce littered with pitfalls for both sides. Mrs. May said in Parliament that she was invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, putting Britain on track to leave the European Union in 2019 and raising a host of thorny issues involved in untangling a relationship. In addition to a welter of trade and customs matters, the Conservative government faces the prospect of a new independence referendum in Scotland, where a majority voted to remain in the European Union, and deep worries about the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland. Just before 12:30 p. m. Britain’s top envoy to the European Union, Tim Barrow, walked to the office of Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, and handed him a letter with the official notification. Mr. Tusk then posted on Twitter acknowledging receipt of the letter. Mrs. May told Parliament, “Today, the government acted on the democratic will of the British people, and it acts too on the clear and convincing position of this house. ” “The Article 50 process is now underway,” she added, “and, in accordance with the wishes of the British people, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. ” She added: “This is an historic moment from which there can be no turning back. ” She cited the “enduring power of the British spirit. ” And she painted a vision of a “truly global Britain, the best friend and neighbor to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe, too. ” With this step, Mrs. May enters what William Hague, a former foreign secretary, called “the most complex divorce ever in history. ” She begins the process with limited leverage, having made clear that establishing control of immigration takes priority over membership in the European Union’s single market or customs union. As a result, analysts say, she has frequently stressed her willingness to walk away from the table if a good deal proves elusive, leaving European Union negotiators wondering whether she is serious or trying to bluff her way into a stronger negotiating position. “I think they would prefer a deal,” Anand Menon, a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, said of the British government, noting the high economic stakes. Nevertheless, he said, “I still think they are readier to walk out than most people accept. ” Given her negotiating “red lines,” the difference between whatever deal Mrs. May can secure and no deal at all may turn out to be relatively small. Blaming the Europeans for a collapse of the talks might be easier, politically, than bringing a weak agreement to Parliament. The politics are so toxic, Professor Menon added, that they make a disorderly departure from the bloc — often likened to walking off a cliff edge — plausible. “It’s ugly and so frighteningly horrible, that I can’t quite believe it’s happening,” he said. European leaders have emphasized that Britain cannot “cherry pick” the rules and regulations it likes, and certainly cannot expect to have a better deal than countries that remain in the bloc. The last thing they want to do is lend greater momentum to the centrifugal forces already threatening to tear apart the European Union. Mr. Tusk said at a news conference in Brussels that there was “no reason to pretend this is a happy day,” and that Britain’s plans to depart the bloc would only leave the 27 remaining members “more determined and more united. ” He added, “We already miss you. ” Manfred Weber, a German lawmaker and a powerful conservative in the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter that “from now on, only the interests of the remaining 440 million Europeans count for us. ” He later added, “If you leave the EU, you lose the associated benefits. ” What makes the looming confrontation so dangerous is that both sides stand to lose economically in the event of a breakdown. From agriculture to aviation, from fisheries to pharmaceuticals, Britain’s economy has been shaped by membership in the European Union, its main trading partner. With its single market — the world’s largest — and its customs union, the European Union ensures trade across frontiers in goods and some services. Without a deal, Britain faces customs checks at its borders and tariffs on imports and exports, not to mention the relocation of at least part of its lucrative financial services sector. But Britain is a big market for Continental Europe, too: Germany alone exports 800, 000 vehicles there every year. Though London’s dominant financial services sector is hardly popular, many businesses on the Continent rely on its deep capital markets. Britain is one of only two significant military powers in the bloc — the other is France — and has valuable security and intelligence capabilities that elevate Europe on the global stage. In her letter to Mr. Tusk, Mrs. May argued that without an overall agreement, “our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. ” Her officials later denied that this was a threat by Britain, arguing that it reflected the fact that some cooperation on policing issues was conducted through European Union channels. But Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s negotiator for Britain’s exit, said there could be no “ ” in talks between such issues and trade. “I think that the security of our citizens is far too important,” Mr. Verhofstadt said. To make matters more difficult, the final deal will require votes in perhaps 38 legislatures across Europe, as well as in the British Parliament. It is even possible that the negotiations could founder over the issue of money before they really get underway. Michel Barnier, the negotiator appointed by the European Commission, wants to resolve the terms of the departure before moving on to future trade ties. The commission estimates that Britain owes as much as $64 billion in future spending commitments and pension entitlements for European Union officials. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has rejected that idea, invoking the memory of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who in 1984 demanded — and received — her “money back” from European partners in another acrimonious negotiation. Diplomats say a collapse over money matters can be avoided if specifics are left until the end of the talks, when the parameters of a trade deal are known. European officials seem open to that idea of reaching agreement on the principles and methodology of calculating what Britain owes, based on commitments undertaken while it was a member. That would allow Mrs. May to justify payments as part of a deal allowing continued access to European markets. Joachim director of the Europe program at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research institute based in Germany, said the best prospect of achieving agreement was a broad discussion, including defense and security cooperation, an area where London has something to offer at a time when NATO’s role is being questioned. “If you go narrow, it is tremendously difficult,” Mr. added. “It will not bring the problem to a conclusion in two years. ” He said he believed one danger was the “illusion” among some in Brussels that the European Union was “strong enough to live without the Brits,” who still have significant economic and military power. Another is the illusion among some Britons that they can dictate the terms of a deal. Professor Menon, too, said he thought the messages from some British politicians, reinforced by tabloid newspapers aggressively for the exit, were destructive. “The British people now think that Europeans will be stupid if they don’t give us a good deal, because it’s in their own interest,” he said. Time will be a problem, too. British businesses want a transition period to adapt to the circumstances after withdrawal, but this requires an agreement on what Britain would transition to after 2019. And unless all this is decided quickly, it will be of little use companies will not be able to wait long into 2018 before assuming the worst outcome and acting accordingly, even if that means a sharp economic adjustment. “Whatever happens, she is not going to have a great deal,” Professor Menon said, referring to Mrs. May. “It is still going to involve a lot of pain, given that we are outside the customs union and the single market. ”

Total Divas S7 E3 Recap: Naomi Gets In Trouble For A Championship Leak, Carmella & Big Cass

Keystone XL allows "Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else."

Men in plain clothes fired shots in the air as hundreds of opposition supporters marched through the Kenya s capital to its election board headquarters on Monday, a Reuters witness said. The demonstrators were demanding reforms ahead of a presidential election scheduled for Oct. 26. Senator James Orengo from the opposition alliance said they also wanted to warn ruling party lawmakers not to pass a proposed amendment to the election laws that would limit circumstances in which the Supreme Court could nullify an election.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to enact judicial changes that critics say will undermine graft investigations by weakening the president s oversight. The move brings the country, ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, in line with eastern European Union peers Hungary and Poland in defying EU concerns over the independence of judiciaries and the rule of law. Ruling Social Democrat senators approved the bill by 80-0 with all opposition groupings boycotting the vote. It now goes to the president, who has expresses scepticism about it. He can sign it or send it back for more discussion. The opposition, however, has already said it plans to contest the bill at the constitutional court, which could prolong its adoption by early 2018. Contested elements of the bill include weakening the president s right to vet prosecutor candidates, as well as amending the definition of prosecutors activity to exclude the word independent. The president can refuse to appoint (prosecutors) only once..., reads the bill. Prosecutors carry out their work according to the principles of legality, impartiality, hierarchical control, under the authority of justice minister. Prosecutors are independent in proposing solutions, the bill stipulates. Critics say this amounts to political control. The bill also refers to the finance ministry s obligation to recoup losses triggered by a judicial error from the judge who issued the sentence, instead of from state funds. Experts have said this would could distort court judgments. The bill is are part of a wider judiciary overhaul that has triggered street protests across the country in recent weeks. Romanian prosecutors have investigated thousands of public officials in an unprecedented crackdown on graft in recent years. The lower house and senate speakers, both leaders of the ruling coalition, are on trial in separate cases.

@jashsf @piersmorgan I hadn't considered classifying it as a mental health issue. I'll have to chew on that. Thanks for the perspective.

The Greatest Name shall do its things, O heart, be of good cheer For by wile and guile the demon shall never become Solomon. ~ Hafiz In 2014, a former, estranged disciple of Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s — an ex-Maryamiyyah member — told me that Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Russian fascist Alexander Dugin and his organization are on quite intimate terms, apparently sharing similar long-term political aspirations, and not just where their purported Traditionalism is concerned. At the time this revelation struck me as a bit odd since Nasr (and specifically his son Vali-Reza) are staunch Atlanticists –- Vali-Reza Nasr being the veritable prized subaltern ornament of Neoconservatism in America — whereas Dugin and his Eurasianism ostensibly (at least where the rhetoric is concerned) stand at the very opposite pole. The complex details of this Nasr-Dugin nexus is a discussion better left for another day, only to say that –- and as recently outlined in one academic monograph [1] — this unlikely fellowship may actually have something to do with Frithjof Schuon’s (d. 1998) underlying ideological “Aryanism” with its “de-semitization” of the theosophical Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi: an ‘Aryanism’ and ‘de-semitization’ that Dugin’s brand of occult fascism would very much be in agreement with. But let us turn here to the checkered history of the Maryamiyyah Sufi Order itself, which Seyyed Hossein Nasr currently heads [2]. The Maryamiyyah Sufi Order The Maryamiyyah is the Sufi order created by the Swiss writer and esotericist Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998) which stems from an Algerian sub-branch of the Shadhiliyah Sufi Order [3]. After briefly visiting North Africa in the early 1930s to meet the charismatic Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi (d. 1934) [4], from the mid 1930s onward Schuon attracted disciples of his own in his native Switzerland while as of 1936 he also began claiming to be the successor to this same Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi. The actual successors of Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi, however, have adamantly denied Schuon’s claims and instead maintain that Schuon only spent a sum total of a few days with their master in the early 1930s; that he was barely even initiated into their order, only authorized to transmit the Muslim confession of belief (i.e. the shahada ); let alone being the Shaykh Ahmad al-Alawi’s actual successor. This, and other related controversies, soon led to a bitter schism within the ranks of the Traditionalist school and specifically a personal falling out between Frithjof Schuon and the leading intellectual light of the movement, the Frenchman Rene Guénon (d. 1951). One recent study published in Iran suggests that Guénon’s premature death in Cairo in 1951 may have even been somehow orchestrated by the Maryamiyyah itself, thus making of Guénon’s demise possibly a murder at their hands since, had he lived longer, Guénon’s rivalry with Schuon would have certainly proven deleterious to Schuon and the Maryamiyyah’s long-term political interests [5]. Particularly after Rene Guénon’s death, Frithjof Schuon’s Maryamiyyah Sufi Order (based at the time in Basle, Switzerland and now operating almost like a quasi-Masonic order) began spreading among some elite Western intellectual circles, claiming in its ranks some notable figures among the academic Islamic Studies as well as the Comparative Religious Studies establishments of the time (eg. Huston Smith, Victor Danner, Cyril Glasse, to name few). During the 1960s Schuon now claimed mystical visions of the “Divine Feminine” in the naked form of the Virgin Mary who anointed him the Avatar of the Age, the Imam Mahdi, the Return of Christ, the Fifth Buddha, the incarnations of Kalki and Vishnu, etc. Within its specific Islamicate context, Schuon’s claims, his ‘universalist’ teachings, and some of the details of his visions of the divine feminine are eerily similar to those claimed by the Baha’i founder Mirza Husayn ‘Ali Nuri Baha’u’llah (d. 1892), with other striking similarities existing between Bahaism and the Maryamiyyah that deserves a detailed comparative analysis in its own right. Today both also enjoy a very cozy relationship with the state of Israel — with the former also sharing a cozy relationship with the Gulf potentates as well as the Moroccan elite. One feature of the Maryamiyyah practice which they are noted for is that they pray to Schuon as well as the Virgin Mary; and, along with offering blessings ( salawat ) to the Prophet Muhammad and the Madonna, the order also offers daily blessings ( salawat ) to Frithjof Schuon –- a feature of their practice which would certainly scandalize any orthodox Muslim, Sunni or Shi’i. Much of the Maryamiyyah’s teachings and practices also seem to share common elements with the Indian Tantric Left-Hand Path tradition. Schuon’s ‘sacred nudity’ and his spin on the nature of the ‘divine feminine’ would be easily recognizable to any genuine Tantric initiate. Be that as it may, and even under the mountains of obfuscatory terminological mumbo-jumbo that the Maryamiyyah regularly use to conceal the fact, the Left-Hand Path is never mentioned nor is it remotely the ‘orthodoxy’ that Schuon insists upon in his books; but rather it is the very same ‘heterodoxy’ he incessantly decries. To date, the Maryamiyyah have never forthrightly acknowledged this fact or dealt with it in any honest manner. That said, in 1980 Schuon, his family, entourage and disciples moved from Switzerland to Bloomington, Indiana, and henceforth made it the Maryamiyyah’s headquarters. A series of scandals and public defections rocked the cult throughout the 1980s, and in the early 1990s Schuon was even briefly indicted by an Indiana Grand Jury. These scandals stemmed from Schuon’s “Primordial Gatherings” in Bloomington were scantily clad members of the Maryamiyyah –- with Schuon sometimes appearing completely naked donning only a Native American Lakota head-dress — would publicly engage in activities resembling something between a Native American pow-wow, a Sufi majlis and a Tantric maithuna ceremony. However, the scandals were very swiftly covered up and the public prosecutors and attorneys involved against the Maryamiyyah were eventually intimidated and browbeaten by unknown, behind the scenes actors to drop the case against Schuon: a case, I might add, involving allegations by ex-members of criminal sexual impropriety in the presence of minors (including paedophilia and related felonies). Schuon was also accused of forcing some of his leading disciples to divorce their wives, which he would then promptly re-marry as his “vertical” or ‘spiritual’ wives [6]. Schuon died in 1998 and left a splintered, scandal-ridden organization in his wake with one group gravitating towards the figure of Martin Lings (d. 2005) in the UK — who had served as Guénon’s secretary in Cairo while also being among Schuon’s earliest disciples — with another group congregating around the figure of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in the Beltway area of the United States. More diehard Schuonites stayed in Bloomington, Indiana, and refused to recognize either Lings or Nasr as Schuon’s putative successors and continued with their syncretistic, nudist “Primordial Gatherings” as before. The Maryamiyyah After Schuon and Its Marriage to Empire Both Nasr and Lings brought the Maryamiyyah closer to the circles of Western elites. To some degree this was already a process in full swing during Schuon’s own lifetime. But Nasr and Lings each in turn made closer alliances with the British establishment and the American deep state, going so far on occasion to operate in the capacity of covert and clandestine fronts for Anglo-American ‘soft power’ in numerous locales throughout the Muslim world [7]. Seyyed Hossein Nasr himself was already a royalist insider in Pahlavi Iran, especially during the last two decades and a half of the Pahlavi regime, earning his post at Aryamehr (now Shahid Beheshti) University due to his intimate connections with the Shah’s royal court and Farah Pahlavi specifically. It was as a consequence of this royalist connection that he was forced to flee Iran in 1979 following the Islamic Revolution. That said, while not formally accounting himself among the ranks of the Maryamiyyah, Prince Charles, for example, considers himself to be some kind of (soft) Traditionalist as well as an avid fan of the writings of Guénon, A.K. Coomaraswamy, Schuon, Nasr and other Traditionalists. It should also be pointed out that the presence of Schuonian Traditionalists among assorted reactionary monarchist groups and organizations is a regular feature of their activities virtually everywhere around the world. This would also explain their proximity to the Moroccan royalty and elite. What is not widely appreciated is their alleged closeness to the various potentates and elites in the Gulf kingdoms (who are not usually known for their love of Sufism), and particularly those in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Due to his skills and vast connections, some ex-Maryamiyyah members even contend that Martin Lings himself may have been a life-long operative of the British SIS/MI6 [8]. Then there is Seyyed Hossein Nar’s long-time association and friendship with Henry Kissinger; the fact that prominent Turkish Maryamiyyah member Ibrahim Kalin has served as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s official spokesman in Turkey for some years now; not to mention the proximity of the Maryamiyyah to the Jordanian royal family and Prince Ghazi specifically who publishes “The Muslim 500” which regularly lauds the policies of the corrupt Gulf kingdoms and celebrates Anglo-American and Israeli policy against Iran and Syria [9]. Certainly the Russian occult fascist Alexander Dugin knows all about these linkages yet continues in his association with Nasr and the Maryamiyyah, which defies conventional explanation when he, his organization and the Russian state that Dugin advises pretend to stand as geopolitical adversaries to everything Nasr, his Maryamiyyah Sufi Order and these Atlanticist connections represent. On the ground in North America, the Maryamiyyah’s rank-and-file is predominantly composed of upper middle-class professionals (monied and college educated) with white upper middle-class converts being the most preferred among recruits. Liberal, left-leaning and anti-establishment members entering the order are often required to become apolitical and focus instead on the “inner life” and forgo all politics, but over time they are turned conservative (or, rather, reactionary) and instead made to support the establishment conservatism of the Republican Party. One former member has alleged that Seyyed Hossein Nasr was actively canvassing for George W. Bush among his acolytes during both the elections of 2000 and 2004 and for John McCain in 2008, proving that father and son share identical political views and that the proverbial apple does not fall far from the tree. Be that as it may, so much for the ‘Traditionalism’ that ostensibly seeks to shun the convoluted and corrupt materialist politics of the ‘Reign of Quantity’, especially the politics of the West which Traditionalists are supposed to believe represents the epitome of this ‘Reign of Quantity’ – or, as they elsewhere like calling it, “the system of the Antichrist.” The same contact also reported rampant classism, racism and similar discriminatory, elitist attitudes prevalent throughout the Maryamiyyah Sufi Order together with an almost “congenital hatred” for all forms of liberal/leftwing and social justice causes, issues and charities [10]. To deflect and smokescreen from his own role in the Pahlavi regime, Seyyed Hossein Nasr has even gone on public record recently besmirching the memory of Ali Shariati (d. 1977) and accusing him of having been a SAVAK mole [11]; this, while some former members have alleged that the FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA and other agencies of American law enforcement and the US deep state are crawling all over the Maryamiyyah Sufi Order as either full-fledged members, affiliates or sympathizers [12]. As a process that began under Schuon, the Maryamiyyah has also firmly entrenched itself within important segments of the Islamic/Mid East Studies establishment of the Western Ivory Tower as well as in parts of the Muslim world, strategically placing proverbial ‘gatekeepers’ in key places. Besides Seyyed Hossein Nasr himself, William Chittick, Terry Moore, Hasan Awan, Reza-Shah Kazemi and Alan Godlas are presently just a few of those names associated with the Maryamiyyah at its highest level [13]. The Iranian scholar Gholamreza Avani, who was also at one time a student of Henry Corbin’s — who, for his part, was either generally aloof, if not hostile, to the views of Guénon, Schuon and the Traditionalists — is the most eminent figure of the Maryamiyyah Sufi Order in Iran today. In recent times, allegations of abuse and cult-like behaviour continue to bedevil the Maryamiyyah’s reputation. A noteworthy incident is the one cited by Koslow (and reiterated by Shahbazi in his book) regarding the initial publication schedule for Mark Sedgwick’s ‘ Against the Modern World ’ [14]. Apparently the book was supposed to have been published by Oxford University Press earlier than 2004. Koslow claims that Sedgwick wrote to him in 2004 to say that Oxford University Press had been “…threatened by the Schuon cult with legal harassment [regarding its initial publication draft]. Rather than face the mafioso tactics thrown at him by the Schuon cult, Sedgwick…backed down and published a rather weak assessment of Schuon’s polygamous activities, criminal actions, visions of nude Virgins and delusions of grandeur…” [15] Withal, it should be underscored that Sufism has not always been (nor is it in all present circumstances) in the service of First World imperial, neo-colonial agendas. Historically many individual Sufis and Sufi orders have actually stood against Western imperialism, colonialism and their lackeys. Amir Abd al-Qadir Jaza’iri (d. 1883) in Algeria, Shamil Daghestani (d. 1859) in the Caucuses, Umar Mukhtar (d. 1931) in Libya and those Iranian Sufi masters with their disciples who stood on the side of the people during the period of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-09) and later with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 are just some prominent examples of Sufis who have stood against both authoritarianism as well as the colonial powers of their day. Unfortunately Western (and specifically Anglo-American) Sufism has increasingly gone in another direction, allying itself more and more with the agendas of Western establishments and the core interests of Empire in the Muslim world (the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order is another notable example here). This turn to the darkside by organized Sufism in the West may also explain one of the heretofore unnoted factors in the growth of Islamist ideologies and organizations among countless disaffected, marginalized (immigrant) Sunni Muslim communities, since such a blatant infiltration of Sufism by the Western establishment, with the inevitable corruption it brings with it, is unquestionably as big a betrayal of the ‘Tradition’ as Islamism itself is. It certainly also explains why a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran is generally weary of the influence and activities of such organizations as the Maryamiyyah Sufi Order and similar. Notes [1] See Gregory A. Lipton, “ De-Semitizing Ibn ‘Arabi: Aryanism and the Schuonian Discourse ,” Journal NUMEN, forthcoming. [2] Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s specific circle in Maryland is sometimes also hyphenated as the Maryamiyyah-Nasriyyah (private correspondence, 2014). [3] Note that the order’s name ‘Maryamiyyah’ is a bow to the Virgin Mary since in Arabic Mary is Maryam . [4] See Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-‘Alawi , Cambridge, 1993. [5] Abdollah Shahbazi, maryamiya: az frithjof schuon ta seyyed hossein-i-nasr , Tehran, 1393 solar/2014: 101-2 and passim ; an article on the site regnabit.com vaguely suggests the same thing regarding the underlying reasons for Guénon’s demise. [6] See Mark Koslow, Frithjof Schuon: Child Molestation and Obstruction of Justice , http://www.naturesrights.com/knowledge%20power%20book/frithjof_schuon.asp (retrieved 28 October 2016). [7] Private correspondence, 2014. [8] Private correspondence, 2014. [9] Private, correspondence, 2016; see The Muslim 500 site online at, http://themuslim500.com/ (retrieved 30 October 2016). [10] Private correspondence, 2014. [11] See (in Persian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCf3ErXFjog (retrieved 30 October 2016). [12] Private correspondence, 2014. [13] Private correspondence, 2016. [14] Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century , Oxford University Press, 2004 [15] Koslow, ibid.

NTEB Ads Privacy Policy Investors Flock To West Texas As $900 BILLION Oil Field Discovered In Permian Basin Wolfcamp Oil explorers have been flocking to the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico to tap deposits so rich that they can generate profits even at lower oil prices. by Geoffrey Grider November 16, 2016 In a troubled oil world, the Permian Basin is the gift that keeps on giving. One portion of the giant field , known as the Wolfcamp formation, was found to hold 20 billion barrels of oil trapped in four layers of shale beneath West Texas. That’s almost three times larger than North Dakota’s Bakken Play and the single largest U.S. unconventional crude accumulation ever assessed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey . At current prices, that oil is worth almost $900 billion. The estimate lends credence to the assertion from Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield that the Permian’s shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. Irving-based Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the company’s engineers and geologists forecast. “The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” Walter Guidroz, coordinator for the geological survey’s energy resources program, said in the statement. Oil explorers have been flocking to the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico to tap deposits so rich that they can generate profits even at lower oil prices. A race to grab land in the Permian has been the main driver of a surge of deals in the energy patch and the industry’s main source of good news. Although the Permian has been gushing crude since the 1920s, its multiple layers of oil-soaked shale remained largely untapped until the last several years, when intensive drilling and fracturing techniques perfected in other U.S. regions were adopted. The Wolfcamp, which is as much as a mile thick in some places, has been one of the primary targets. ConocoPhillips , the world’s largest independent oil producer by market value, increased its estimate for the size of its Wolfcamp holdings on Nov. 10 to 1.8 billion barrels from 1 billion last year. A day earlier, Concho Resources CEO Timothy Leach told investors and analysts that two recent wells it drilled in the Wolfcamp were pumping an average of 2,000 barrels a day each. Diamondback Energy Inc. disclosed last week that it has been drilling 10,000-foot sideways wells in the Wolfcamp. Production from the wells has been as high as 85 percent crude, according to the Midland, Texas-based explorer. For Apache Corp., a slice of the Wolfcamp and another Permian layer known as the Bone Spring are major components of the 3 billion-barrel Alpine High discovery that the company announced in September. CEO John Christmann called Alpine High “a world class resource” during a Sept. 7 presentation at a Barclays Plc conference in New York. The Wolfcamp shale also holds 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of gas liquids, the geological survey said in a statement on Tuesday. source SHARE THIS ARTICLE Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING

Email Donald Trump has stated that, on advice of his lawyer, he will not release his tax returns until his audit is concluded.1 By contrast, Hillary Clinton has released her federal 1040 returns, (but not her state or possible other returns). Language on her campaign website asserts that she and her running mate “continue to set the standard for financial transparency.” The Clinton returns reveal much information, but they reflect a standard short of full financial transparency. More significantly, the tax reductions the Clintons receive when donating to their foundation and the lower rate of self-employment taxes they paid compared to those who make much less reflect some of what is wrong with the U.S. tax system. Gross income is the gross receipts minus their business expenses and $3,000 of a carried forward capital loss that started in 2008.2 Total federal taxes is their income taxes minus foreign tax credits (for them, only years 2011-13)* plus self-employment taxes and additional taxes due to the Affordable Care Act (higher medicare taxes and taxes on investment income starting in 2013) * For the Clintons, the foreign tax credit came to $160,000 or less each year from 2011-13 and arose from work done abroad. For years 2010-2015, the table below shows the Clintons’ reported gross income, total federal taxes paid, charitable contributions, and the amount of the latter going to the Clinton Foundation. What follows mainly focuses on the Clintons’ 2014 tax return. Self-employment Income Almost all of the Clintons’ gross income after deducting expenses ($28,020,811) was derived from self-employment: with the biggest amounts for making speeches (slightly more than $8.7 million made by Hillary and $8.4 million by Bill), consulting ($6.1 million made by Bill,) and writing ($4.6 million made by Hillary.) All of their speaking income is paid by The Harry Walker Agency. However, under IRS rules, who paid the agency or to whom they spoke is not disclosed. The tax return indicates that $2.125 million of Bill’s consulting income, before deducting expenses, was paid by Gems Education. A Wikipedia article describes Gems Education as “the largest operator of private kindergarten-to-grade-12 schools in the world, [that] as of 2015 has over 70 schools in over a dozen countries…” In 2010, Bill Clinton “named GEMS Education a strategic partner of the Clinton Global Initiative .” According to the tax returns, in 2011, for the first time, GEMS Education paid Bill– $500,000 raising its payment each year thereafter. Laureate Education paid Bill $4,292,475. It is described in the New York Times as “a network of for-profit schools .” In 2010, Laureate hired Bill as its new honorary chancellor. As disclosed on the tax returns, it paid him over $17.5 million from 2010-2015. Bill’s visits to Laureate’s campuses were described to have “inspired” students.3 The nature of the advice Clinton provided is not part of the tax return. Business Deductions Both Clintons took deductions against their self-employment income. These deductions are supposed to be ordinary and necessary meaning they are common and appropriate. Their expenses deducted for airfare, transportation, and hotels came to several times what most people earn at their jobs. In 2014, Bill claimed travel expenses of $375,793 for his speaking business, an amount considerably less than the $2,018,050 spent on travel for that business in 2013. By contrast, his total travel expenses for his consulting business for 2013 and 2014 together came to less than $600. Hillary’s travel expenses for making speeches in 2014 came to $813,842. Another $288,504 was spent on travel for her writing business in 2014. Under IRS rules, specific details such as where they went and stayed, and for how long, are not provided. Self-employment tax Self-employment income is subject to self-employment taxes: social security and medicare taxes paid by the self-employed. In 2014, social security taxes were paid on only the first $117,000 of net income at a rate of 12.4% resulting in a maximum tax of $14,508. The medicare portion which is 2.9% of all net income had no income limits. If one adds the Clintons’ 2014 self-employment tax to their additional medicare tax under the Affordable Care Act, the total comes to $1,010,090 or 3.6% of their total net self-employment income. The Clinton returns show the gross unfairness of the self-employment tax that leaves those with high incomes paying a rate that is much lower than those with significantly less income. For example, a person making $30,000 of self-employment income after deducting expenses would pay a self-employment tax of $4,239 which is over 14% of their self-employment income, or more than 3 times the rate paid by the Clintons. Clintons’ Unearned Income From 2011-2014, the Clintons reported no dividend income from stock holdings, only interest income. In 2014, it came to only $25,171. All but $464 was paid by JP Morgan Chase Bank. How their money is invested with the bank is, as allowed by the IRS, not made clear– probably in the form of CDs or bonds. By contrast, in 2007, the Clintons made over $1 million in interest income and over $90,000 in dividends. All of the latter is reported as coming from trusts. In 2007, they also reported over $15 million on the sale of stock held by their trusts. Most sales were for less than $100,000 with only one for slightly more the $250,000. Most sales occurred on or before May 11 reflecting very good timing since this was shortly before the financial meltdown. Their stock holdings were diverse. They consisted of holdings in major corporations including Bank of America, Wal-mart, Chevron, Exxon, General Electric, Honeywell, and Lehman Brothers prior to its bankruptcy. At first glance, one might see the Clintons as acting upon information that the economy would soon crash, but they may have decided to rid themselves of holdings that might be used against Hillary in her run for the presidency in 2008. Reporting no dividends from 2011-2014 probably indicates no re-entry into the stock market after the meltdown, or that they only purchased stocks that paid no dividends. There is a huge difference between their total interest and dividend income in 2007 of $1,159,836 with their 2014 interest income of $25,171 and no dividend income. Despite the low interest rates, how could their dividend and interest income have plummeted so much? Given the size of their total income all these years, one has to wonder if they have been spending it all or investing it in ways that do not show up on their tax returns.4 This raises other questions. Have they been making large gifts/political donations or paying large personal legal bills? Have they set up an entity that handles investments and pays taxes on the income generated instead of passing it through to them individually to report on their tax return? Charitable Contributions Those who usually receive the biggest reduction in their taxes per dollar donated are those with the highest income because they are in a higher tax bracket. Many charitable donors receive no tax reduction because they do not itemize their deductions. In 2014, the Clinton donation to their foundation of $3 million reduced their taxes $1,188,000 –39.6% of the money donated, not including a probable savings of state taxes. This level of savings can be viewed as a government subsidy/giveaway to the rich since it reduces the government’s revenue and allows the money donated to be used to support and finance the policies of their own foundation. In 2014, all but $200 of their remaining charitable contributions, $22,500, went to two churches. From 2010-2015, 2014 was the only year specified contributions went to religious organizations. Comparison to Romney 2010 Return In 2010, the Romneys reported on their tax return gross income of $21,661,344. Despite a gross income that was $8 million more than the Clintons that year, their total federal tax came to less than 14% of their gross income, $3,009,766– over $1,000,000 less than the amount of federal taxes paid by the Clintons. The main reason for the Romneys’ lower taxes was because most of their income came from investments which were taxed at a lower rate (a policy that began when Bill Clinton was president) while the bulk of the Clinton income was “earned” income which is taxed at a higher rate. Like the Clintons, the Romneys saved on their taxes by making donations. $1.525 million went to their church and over $1.45 million of stock was donated to their own foundation. It in turn made donations to entities including Brigham Young University, The George W. Bush Library, and the Harvard Business School. 4 Why All of the Above Smells Foul The rich are said to be different than most people. One difference is that three of the last four major party candidates for the presidency had their own foundation. This suggests that having a foundation could be a future requirement for being taken seriously as a candidate. By releasing their returns, the Clintons have acted with more transparency than Trump. Trump may be hiding something, but the Clinton returns raise many questions whose answers should be of concern to voters. The Clinton’s gross income declined sharply in 2015 from over $28 million in 2014 to $10,745,378. Nevertheless, this “lower” income could arouse disgust given the levels of poverty in the world and unmet basic needs of millions. The low level of taxes the rich pay under the IRS rules allow for the massing of fortunes which normally go untaxed during their lifetimes, except for whatever property taxes they pay on the real estate they own. Footnotes 1.By signing his Form 1040 return, Trump indicated, as stated above one’s signature that “Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete .” If what he submitted is “true, correct and complete,” shouldn’t he be willing to share his returns with the public even if many lawyers think otherwise. See various views held by some lawyers on this issue at: http://lawnewz.com/politics/legal-experts-side-with-trump-it-would-be-totally-stupid-to-release-his-taxes-during-audit/ 2. The capital loss started in 2008 when the Clintons disposed of a holding they acquired in 2003 of Yucaipa Partnerships showing a loss of $726,761. For some details about it and their relationship to it, see this Wall Street Journal article at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123716092427335513 The Clinton ties to Yucaipa weren’t all costly. According to the 2007 tax return, Yucaipa Global Holdings paid the Clintons over $2.75 million. (The relationship between Yucaipa Global Holdings and the disposed Yucaipa Parnerships is not clear to me.) There was no income from Yucaipa during subsequent years reported on a Schedule E where one reports partnership income as had been reported in 2007. A Wikipedia article indicates that: “Former U.S. President Bill Clinton , a close friend of founder Ron Burkle, was an advisor to Yucaipa. From 2003 to 2006, Bill and Hillary Clintons’ tax returns show total Yucaipa partnership income of $12.5 million.” 3. http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/23/news/clinton-laureate-university/ 4. There are no indications on the tax returns that the Clintons invested in real estate. From 2007 through 2015, their property taxes remained around $100,000. The only exception is 2013 when it jumped to $128,098, but then went back down to $104,303 the following year.

@HisEmineminence @NiallODowd what?

Durham, New Hampshire (CNN) No more fake niceties. No more patience. No more Martin O'Malley to get in the way. Hillary Clinton re-launched her campaign Thursday night, going directly after Bernie Sanders regarding his attacks on her record, stressing her foreign policy experience, and making the case to Democrats that it's time to stop dreaming and get real. Sanders didn't hold back either, continuing to rail against the political establishment and campaign finance system. And he hit Clinton again on her Wall Street connections and vote for the war in Iraq. Here are the takeaways from the intense MSNBC Democratic debate: Clinton goes after Sanders for his 'artful smear' campaign In her second presidential campaign, Clinton clearly doesn't want to win through a war of attrition. She's sick of Sanders casting himself as the protector of the progressive realm against the corrupting influence of the Clintons, and she is ready to extinguish the Bern now. After yet another Sanders swipe at Clinton as part of a political establishment bankrolled by Wall Street and drug companies, she unloaded. "Time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack that he is putting forth which really comes down to, you know, anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought. And I just absolutely reject that, senator, and I really don't think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough," Clinton said. Then she challenged him: "If you've got something to say, say it directly, but you will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation I ever received." And finally, Clinton made it just a little bit more personal, saying: "I think it's time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks." And she follows with the definition of 'progressive' It's been a struggle for months for Clinton to find a way to tell Sanders' supporters that she's on the same page with them policy-wise -- it's just that their big ideas could never, ever make it through Congress. She tried a new way of explaining their differences on Thursday night, and it was her best yet. "A progressive is someone who makes progress," Clinton said. It was easy to see Clinton's exasperation with Sanders. The pattern repeated itself: He'd propose a liberal policy and be cheered. She'd say she agrees, and then add that she has a specific plan to make it happen. "I'm fighting for people that cannot make those changes and I'm not making promises that I cannot keep," Clinton said. But Sanders' response is potent, too In going right at Sanders, Clinton took a big risk. She is hoping to pick up a few points in New Hampshire, and slow Sanders' momentum nationally. But in doing so, she could infuriate the young voters who Sanders has drawn into the political process. At first those young voters were fine with Clinton -- liked her, even. They just saw Sanders as more genuine. Now, the tone at Sanders' rallies makes clear, she will have significant work to do to win them over should she win the nomination. Sanders didn't hit Clinton directly when he responded, but he didn't shrink, either. He lambasted 1990s-era Wall Street deregulation (under Bill Clinton, of course), the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil. "That is what goes on in America," Sanders said. "There is a reason, you know, there is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system," he said, "and in my view it is undermining American democracy and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families." Wall Street continues to be full of potholes for the former secretary of state. Her pragmatism and her accusations of an "artful smear" on Sanders' part don't erase the political problem caused by her paid speeches at Goldman Sachs -- which she had joked about in a CNN town hall the night before, saying with a laugh that the $675,000 in speaking fees she received was what they'd offered. "I may not have done the job I should in explaining my record," she said, arguing that she was tough on bankers behind closed doors and has been in the 2016 campaign, as well. Thirteen years and two presidential campaigns later, Clinton's vote to go to war in Iraq still haunts her. Her experience on foreign policy -- as Sanders himself admits -- is much deeper. But just like then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, Sanders keeps using that Iraq vote as Kryptonite on the subject. She finally found an answer to Sanders' criticism: "A vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS." It allowed Clinton to finally capitalize on a significant weakness of Sanders. There's a reason Clinton's campaign decided to embrace four more Democratic debates: She's a bare-knuckle brawler, and she's not going to lose the nomination because she wasn't willing to hit Sanders hard enough. Sanders, meanwhile, will pull his punches -- especially on subjects where he's tepid. The big one is foreign policy. It never comes up at his town hall meetings, and it's not at the top of his supporters' priorities. On the debate stage, it shows. The email issue continues to hang over the Clinton campaign -- and the question of whether there's some ticking timebomb there that could decimate her campaign in a general election after she wins the nomination. Asked directly whether she could "reassure" Democrats on this, Clinton said: "Absolutely I can." MSNBC's Chuck Todd pressed further regarding an FBI investigation into the matter. "I am 100 percent confident. This is a security review that was requested. It is being carried out. It will be resolved." Sanders -- as he has before -- declined the opportunity to take a direct shot at Clinton on the emails. But he did remind viewers that he could attack her if he wanted to. "The secretary probably doesn't know that there's not a day that goes by when I am not asked to attack her on that issue," he said, "and I have refrained from doing that and I will continue to refrain from doing that."

“Fish tank additive may treat coronavirus.”

21st Century Wire says Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard continues to face down the mainstream propaganda machine with her based and skeptical opinion surrounding the war on Syria, including the recent attacks on Shayrat air base by the United States as a reprisal for the alleged chemical attack on Idlib by Damascus.It s not surprising within the American political party system that if you don t agree with the gang , they come for your blood, and this is exactly what s happening to Gabbard. Her previous fact finding visit to Syria in 2016 had already began to turn heads, but now after the CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, who happens to all of a sudden like Donald Trump, the Democrats are circling Tulsi Gabbard in increasing droves.More on this report from The Duran Alex Christoforou The DuranNo room for free speech. No dissent. No skepticism. Neocons, Democrats, liberal leftists all united to remove Assad, prop up ISIS and begin WW3.The warmonger knives are coming out for Gabbard in what is looking like Iraq WMDs all over again.Gabbard spoke with CNN s Wolf Blitzer who all of a sudden finds Trump very presidential and capable.Rep. Gabbard: Yes, I m skeptical of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack https://t.co/fETssThsLF https://t.co/fpYdUNR2t4 CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017Rep. Gabbard: Yes, I m skeptical of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack https://t.co/fETssThsLF https://t.co/fpYdUNR2t4 CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017Zerohedge reports Gabbard, who sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, drew criticism earlier this year when she took a somewhat mysterious trip alone to meet with Assad in Syria without alerting House Speaker Paul Ryan. The liberal Democrat subsequently explained she simply wanted to engage in dialogue with Assad though it clearly burned some bridges within her own party. Per CNN:Gabbard told CNN on Friday that she wants to achieve peace in Syria, Why should we just blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war? There s responsibility that goes around, Gabbard said. Standing here pointing fingers does not accomplish peace for the Syrian people. It will not bring about an end to this war. People of Hawaii's 2nd district was it not enough for you that your rep met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?1 https://t.co/jbwGuZIJ6R Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) April 7, 2017Zerohedge further adds that former DNC chair Howard Dean also decided to join in on ganging up on Gabbard, but he immediately got shut down by a follower who asked the obvious question of why engaging in dialogue was disqualifying for Gabbard but violating federal record retention laws and a Congressional subpoena was perfectly fine for Hillary.It s becoming increasingly clear that Gabbard is just another Putin puppet who likely assisted Russian hackers in their efforts to take down Hillary we sincerely hope the Congress launches an immediate investigation Continue this report at The DuranREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

The heads of the Turkish and Iraqi armed forces discussed the illegitimate Iraqi Kurdish referendum on Saturday and stressed the importance of maintaining Iraq s territorial integrity, the Turkish military said. It issued a written statement after the Iraqi army s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, met his Turkish counterpart, General Hulusi Akar, in Turkey on Saturday, two days ahead of the planned referendum.

Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 Make News Honest Again! Der Postillon launches The Postillon (the-postillon.com) Fürth, London, New York (dpo) - Der 9. November 2016 ist ein Tag, der in die Geschichte eingehen wird. Nein! Nicht weil der olle Trump die Präsidentschaftswahl gewonnen hat, sondern weil heute offiziell die internationale Ausgabe des Postillon , Deutschlands größter Tages- und Nachtzeitung, startet: The Postillon Auf The Postillon werden ab sofort regelmäßig die besten Artikel, Reportagen und Enthüllungsstorys der Postillon -Redaktion auf Englisch erscheinen. Make News Honest Again! Fan auf Facebook werden: The Postillon The Postillon auf Twitter folgen: The Postillon Artikel teilen:

October 28, 2016 @ 3:07 pm Reports are coming in now of absentee ballots being stolen from mailboxes in Billings, Montana. Bigger issue: FBI has now reopened their investigation into Hilloween’s emails! Have found new ones. My concern is, how is someone under federal investigation going to fulfill the duties of the office of the presidency? That person would be focusing on their defense, not the well being of the American People! How is someone barred from access to Highly Classified Information going to be able to act in the interest of our country? A successful impeachment would see Kaine elevated to the presidency! He must be sitting behind the scenes, rubbing his hands in eager anticipation!”My precious! My precious!” All those mindless bots who are voting for this ho, only doing so because they desire to see a woman president will be sorely disappointed to see that office ceded to Tim Kaine! Whatta joke! TRUMP/PENCE!! marlene October 28, 2016 @ 2:50 pm I will consider the Constitution Party AFTER Donald Trump has served 8 years as President. When it comes to Congress, unfortunately my state does not allow 3rd parties to vote in the primary. If they did, I’d vote for the Constitution Party to give Trump a Congress he can work with. This also means that if I change to democrat, how can I vote out the democrats in Congress? And if I stay republican, it would be useless to vote them out as it would result in more democrats! My state SUCKS and has the worst rigged voting machines, soros-paid Election Commission criminals, and is a “swing” state. A ‘swing’ state is one where they swing your votes to the other candidate of THEIR choice.

According to WHO, no vegetarian has been affected by coronavirus because it needs animal fat in the body to survive.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - A leftist alliance between Nepal s former Maoist rebels and moderate communists appeared to be heading for a victory in elections aimed at completing a transition to democracy after the abolition of the monarchy and end to civil war. Early tallies from Thursday s vote show the leftists lead in 63 out of 80 constituencies where counting has begun. Nepal has seen 10 government changes in as many years. Instability has given rise to corruption, retarded growth and slowed recovery from a 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 people. The election pits the centrist Nepali Congress party of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who heads a loose alliance that includes the Madhesi parties from Nepal s southern plains and former royalists, against the tight-knit alliance of former Maoists and the moderate Communist UML party. The Nepali Congress party is considered a pro-India group, while the opposition alliance is seen as closer to China. Nepal is a natural buffer between the two and the outcome could indicate whether China or India gets the upper hand in the battle for influence in a nation rich in hydropower and home to Mount Everest. Nepal emerged from a civil war in 2006 and abolished its 239-year-old Hindu monarchy two years later. Guna Raj Luintel, editor of the daily Nagarik, said it was almost certain the leftist alliance would win. Trends so far suggest they could win a two-thirds majority. If that happened, that will be a landslide win, Luintel said. There are 165 seats to be decided on a first-past-the-post basis for which voting was held on Thursday with another 110 seats decided by proportional representation. Few results are in from the southern plains, home to nearly half of the population, and communists are thought to have weaker support there. Final results of the election, Nepal s first under its republican constitution approved by a special Constituent Assembly in 2015, could take around 10 days due to cumbersome counting procedures.

Sunday at a press conference, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) fought back tears as he vowed to do everything he can to “overturn” President Donald Trump’s executive order that halted immigration from seven countries into the United States. Schumer said, “This executive order was mean spirited and . ” He added, “It must be reversed immediately. Senate Democrats are going to introduce legislation to overturn this and move it as quickly as we can. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Hackers believed to be working for the Russian government broke into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, spied on internal communications and accessed research on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the committee and security experts said on Tuesday. Two separate groups entered the DNC’s system, and one read email and chat communications for nearly a year before being detected, according to the committee and CrowdStrike, the cyber firm that helped clean up the breach. Russian spies also targeted the networks of Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as the computers of some Republican political action committees, the Washington Post quoted U.S. officials as saying, although details were not available. A Clinton campaign official said there was no evidence the campaign’s information systems had been hacked. A Russian government spokesman denied involvement in the breach. “I completely rule out a possibility that the (Russian) government or the government bodies have been involved in this,” Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told Reuters in Moscow. The intrusion is emblematic of the sophistication of Russian hackers, who intelligence officials have long viewed as the most talented of U.S. adversaries in cyberspace. The Democratic Party had been aware of efforts to hack Trump material for two months, and U.S. intelligence agencies were involved in efforts to find out who was behind the hacking, a source familiar with Trump opposition research said. The source said Democratic Party operatives believed the hacking was conducted by the Russian government. The research includes material on Trump’s business efforts in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia and Russia, according to information made available to Reuters. Cyber attacks against political candidates and organizations are common worldwide. U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said last month he was aware of attempted hacks on campaigns and related groups and he expected to see more as the Nov. 8 presidential election nears. U.S. Representative Jim Langevin, a Democrat and co-founder of the congressional cybersecurity caucus, said it was “disconcerting” that independent groups penetrated the DNC and that one was able “to stay embedded for nearly a year.” But the groups are extremely sophisticated, Langevin said, and have previously been implicated on attacks at the White House, the State Department and the German Bundestag, as well as a number of private companies. The DNC contacted CrowdStrike in May and within 24 hours it began investigating unusual activity on the group’s network, said Dmitri Alperovitch, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer. It identified two hacking groups and both were kicked out this weekend, he said. The first, which CrowdStrike named Cozy Bear, entered the DNC’s systems last summer, according to the firm. It primarily monitored email and chat conversations and may be working for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, Alperovitch said. Russian President Vladimir Putin once ran the FSB. The second group, nicknamed Fancy Bear, is probably working on behalf of Russia’s military, Alperovitch said. It gained entry in late April and “went straight to the oppo research ... on Donald Trump and exfiltrated some of it,” he said. Alperovitch said both groups were among “the best threat actors that we’ve ever encountered” but they did not appear to be working together. He was not sure how the intrusions occurred but suspected the hackers may have leveraged “spearphishing” emails to trick DNC employees into downloading malicious code onto their network. “When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the DNC, said in a statement. “Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network.” Trump’s interest in Russia goes back to the 1980s, with a 1990 Vanity Fair article citing news program appearances in which Trump offered his own services as a negotiator with Russia. Information made available to Reuters indicates Trump tried on at least three occasions

@pmocek @KidNate seriously, cant the press find out who the cop is? its 2014.

Says Andrew Gillum has a "far left socialist platform."

Donald Trump threw another Twitter tantrum, so Keith Olbermann gave him something to really cry about.Clearly, Donald Trump is scared that recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan will overturn the initial results of the 2016 Election and make him a loser.That s why he threw another one of his infamous hissy fits on his favorite social media platform in opposition of the recount effort.Trump attacked Hillary Clinton, calling her a hypocrite for supporting the recount because he was asked repeatedly whether or not he would accept the results of the election. However, Trump only said he would support the results if he wins.It was a nine-tweet rant that once again proved how unfit Trump is to be president. And Olbermann absolutely smacked Trump down for it.What, @realDonaldTrump, was that bullshit from you this week about everybody uniting? #MinorityVotePresident #GoEffYourself #Resist pic.twitter.com/Jh0QemlKIJ Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 27, 2016Honest to God, @realDonaldTrump shut the fuck up. #Resign pic.twitter.com/mkQMPDIZTz Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 27, 2016One of your high level advisors, @realDonaldTrump like Fabio needs to remind you that you were never asked to abstain from a recount pic.twitter.com/0c3bgprzi4 Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 27, 2016And look in a mirror, @realDonaldTrump, and let your eight chins break it to you: you re blowing this. You ve erased your dignity #GetOutNow pic.twitter.com/drKUYxDtRE Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 27, 2016Olbermann even advised Trump to dump Kellyanne Conway, who whines and commits hypocrisy every time she appears on the air.Also, @realDonaldTrump, get rid of this Dolores Umbridge of DC, Conway. She s doing nearly as much damage to you as your own tweets are https://t.co/oIWZFr8OkD Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 27, 2016Hillary Clinton and the American people deserve a recount. And if that recount shows that Trump actually lost, he and his team should immediately step aside. And if it is discovered along the way that Trump s team was aided by hacks into our voting system, every last one of them should be prosecuted for election fraud and put behind bars where they belong.Clinton currently leads in the popular vote by over 2 million votes and her losses in the three states mentioned above were by narrow margins. Asking for recounts is perfectly legal, and in this case, very reasonable considering the fate of the free world and our democracy hang in the balance.Featured Image: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

If anyone knows what it s like to be attacked by the likes of Donald Trump, it s Rosie O Donnell. The bitter feud between the two goes back years, and it should have been made clear then how much of a cruel and creepy misogynist he truly is. What we ve been seeing from Trump on this most current campaign trail shouldn t really surprise us. Yet, here we are, every day, getting shocked and appalled by everything he says. However, it s really no different than he s always been if we looked past his celebrity to actually watch and listen.In a poem she posted to her website, Rosie O Donnell wrote about Donald Trump. The piece really encapsulates everything that is the real estate mogul and failed businessman. It highlights his failures and his outright creepiness, and really goes to show that he s always been this way.The poem reads: trump was once perceived to be powerful in wealthy NY circles to Long Island Kids like ME he was always a joke failed everything his tacky large lame gold letters TRUMP like a commandhe went after me with a vengeance that only now comes to tipify himdangerous evil richie rich this charlatan this compassion free creephe is all smoke and mirrors THIS truth I told back then seemed revolutionarySIMPLE TRUTHS PEOPLE last night ASK RO https://t.co/q8Vgw5xdDd pic.twitter.com/oda1TvCRH6 Rosie (@Rosie) April 3, 2016The fact that people are still drawn to Trump says more about those people than it does about the Republican frontrunner for president. If that s the type of person they want leading the nation a hateful, vindictive, bigoted, misogynistic narcissist his supporters have to look deep within themselves to discover why those qualities are so desirable. Either they are that way themselves, or they re too dumb to know the difference and easily respond to applause lines that can fit on a bumper sticker.Kudos to Rosie for always standing up to him and for still telling it like it is. Never stop being you, Rosie. Never stop.Featured Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images

Harvard Law School emeritus professor, liberal Democrat, and noted defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz has penned an in the Hill opposing the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the investigation into possible ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. [Dershowitz makes a case against the special counsel. First, he says, the Trump campaign is not facing criminal accusations. Second, he says, even if collusion were to be found between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, or if Trump were found to have divulged secrets to the Russian foreign minister, none of that would be illegal, and ought to be punished by voters, not prosecutors. Third, he argues, Trump’s decision to fire James Comey does not constitute obstruction of justice, and a special counsel could not impeach him anyway. The only legitimate targets of a special counsel, Dershowitz says, would be “those current and former intelligence officials who willfully leaked classified and highly secret information to the media” over the past several months. He concludes: So what will the special prosecutor be doing? The short answer is that we don’t know and may never know, because he will be operating in secret. His most powerful weapon will be the grand jury, which has the power to subpoena witnesses to be questioned without their lawyers behind closed doors. It is a crime to disclose or leak grand jury testimony (except in special situations). At the end of his super secret investigations, the special counsel has essentially three options: he can issue indictments and prosecute the defendants, he can issue a statement that no indictments are warranted and close down his investigation, or he can issue a report. If he were to issue a report, it would be and based on an investigation not geared towards knowing the whole truth, but rather to develop and present to the grand jury sufficient evidence to show probable cause that a crime may have been committed. The grand jury hears only one side — the prosecutor’s. A report, based on no criminal investigation, is likely to be and incomplete. Dershowitz writes that he would have preferred to see “a investigatory commission to uncover the whole truth” about Russia’s role in the election. Read Dershowitz’s entire here. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.