Oh, What a Lovely War! Delusional foreign policy could bring disaster Email This Page to Someone Your Name Here's  The American people don't know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon's invention of embedded journalists, which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young girls screaming while racing down the street in flames.  Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable level of detachment. Hillary is notorious for her assessment of the brutal killing of Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, saying "We came, we saw, he died." They both share to an extent the dominant New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody, but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary's top advisers, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. led sanctions were "worth it."  In the election campaign there has, in fact, been little discussion of the issue of war and peace or even of America's place in the world, though Trump did at one point note correctly that implementation of Hillary's suggested foreign policy could escalate into World War III. It has been my contention that the issue of war should be more front and center in the minds of Americans when they cast their ballots as the prospect of an armed conflict in which little is actually at stake escalating and going nuclear could conceivably end life on this planet as we know it.  With that in mind, it is useful to consider what the two candidates have been promising. First, Hillary, who might reasonably be designated the Establishment's war candidate though she carefully wraps it in humanitarian "liberal interventionism." As Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has always viewed a foreign crisis as an opportunity to use aggressive measures to seek a resolution. She can always be relied upon to "do something," a reflection of the neocon driven Washington foreign policy consensus.  Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington's leadership role globally and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what they would do to employ our military power. She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus directed against Russia. And, unfortunately, there would be little or no pushback against the exercise of her admittedly poor instincts regarding what to do, as was demonstrated regarding Libya and also with Benghazi. She would find little opposition in Congress and the media for an extremely risky foreign policy, and would benefit from the Washington groupthink that prevails over the alleged threats emanating from Russia, Iran, and China.  Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president, recently warned of "the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. I think it's coming. It's going to be maritime confrontation and if it doesn't happen immediately, I'll bet you a dollar it's going to be happening after the presidential election, whoever is elected."  Hillary believes that Syria's president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in that country and must be removed as the first priority. . It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power vacuum that will benefit the latter. She has also called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the local population as well as the insurgent groups that the U.S. supports, some of which had been labeled as terrorists before they were renamed by current Secretary of State John Kerry. Such a zone would dramatically raise the prospect of armed conflict with Russia and it puts Washington in an odd position vis-à-vis what is occurring in Syria. The U.S. is not at war with the Syrian government, which, like it or not, is under international law sovereign within its own recognized borders. Damascus has invited the Russians in to help against the rebels and objects to any other foreign presence on Syrian territory. In spite of all that, Washington is asserting some kind of authority to intervene and to confront the Russians as both a humanitarian mission and as an "inherent right of self-defense."  Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran, which has been fighting ISIS. As a Senator, she threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran but she has more recently reluctantly supported the recent nuclear agreement with that country negotiated by President Barack Obama. But she has nevertheless warned that she will monitor the situation closely for possible violations and will otherwise pushback against activity by the Islamic Republic. As one of her key financial supporters is Israeli Haim Saban, who has said he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel, she is likely to pursue aggressive policies in the Persian Gulf. She has also promised to move America's relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a "new level" and has repeatedly declared that her support for Israel is unconditional.  One of Hillary's advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the U.S. begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is not at war with either Iran or Yemen and the Houthis are not on the State Department terrorist list but our good friends the Saudis have been assiduously bombing them for reasons that seem obscure. Stopping ships in international waters without any legal pretext would be considered by many an act of piracy. Morell has also called for covertly assassinating Iranians and Russians to express our displeasure with the foreign policies of their respective governments.  Hillary's dislike for Russia's Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed that received curiously little additional coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington's foreign-policy establishment. NED has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do.  After making a number of bumper-sticker claims about Russia and Putin that are either partially true, unproven or even ridiculous, Gershman concluded that "the United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so." It is basically a call for the next administration to remove Putin from power—as foolish a suggestion as has ever been seen in a leading newspaper, as it implies that the risk of nuclear war is completely acceptable to bring about regime change in a country whose very popular, democratically elected leadership we disapprove of. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the kind of thinking that goes on inside the beltway and is quite possibly a position that Hillary Clinton will embrace. She also benefits from having the perfect implementer of such a policy in Robert Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland, her extremely dangerous protégé who is currently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and who might wind up as Secretary of State in a Clinton Administration.  Shifting to East Asia, Hillary sees the admittedly genuine threat from North Korea but her response is focused more on China. She would increase U.S. military presence in the South China Sea to deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also "ring China with defensive missiles," ostensibly as "protection" against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles.  Trump's foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy and he has not always been consistent. He has been appropriately enough slammed for being simple minded in saying that he would "bomb the crap out of ISIS," but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically condemning the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq and has more than once indicated that he is not interested in either being the world's policeman or in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly stated that he supports NATO but it should not be construed as hostile to Russia. He would work with Putin to address concerns over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries spend more for their own defense and also help pay for the maintenance of U.S. bases.  Trump's controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned but it contains a kernel of truth in that the current process for vetting new arrivals in this country is far from transparent and apparently not very effective. The Obama Administration has not been very forthcoming on what might be done to fix the entire immigration process but Trump is promising to shake things up, which is overdue, though what exactly a Trump Administration would try to accomplish is far from clear.  Continuing on the negative side, Trump, who is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders, has relied on a mixed bag of advisors. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael Flynn appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch neocon Michael Ledeen and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran's door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. The advice of Ledeen and Flynn may have been instrumental in Trump's vehement denunciation of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he has called a "disgrace," which he has said he would "tear up." It is vintage dumb-think. The agreement cannot be canceled because there are five other signatories to it and the denial of a nuclear weapons program to Tehran benefits everyone in the region, including Israel. It is far better to have the agreement than to scrap it, if that were even possible.  Trump has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which is a bad idea, not in America's interest, even if Netanyahu would like it. It would produce serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave of terrorism directed against the U.S.  Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Trump would prefer strong leaders, i.e. autocrats, who are friendly rather than chaotic reformers. He rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know little about whom we are dealing with and find that we cannot control what develops. He is against foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the U.S. is strongly disliked.  In East Asia, Trump would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals to deter North Korea. It is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare. Like Hillary, he would prefer that China intervene in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un "step down." He would put pressure on China to devalue its currency because it is "bilking us of billions of dollars" and would also increase U.S. military presence in the region to limit Beijing's expansion in the South China Sea.  So there you have it as you enter the voting booth. President Obama is going around warning that "the fate of the world is teetering" over the electoral verdict, which he intends to be a ringing endorsement of Hillary even though the choice is not nearly that clear cut. Part of the problem with Trump is that he has some very bad ideas mixed in with a few good ones and no one knows what he would actually do if he were president. Unfortunately, it is all too clear what Hillary would do.


The timing of Emperor Akihito s abdication, Japan s first in nearly two centuries, is to be discussed by a special panel that will meet from Dec. 1, the top government spokesman said on Wednesday. Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23 and has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, said in rare remarks last year that he feared age might make it hard to fulfill his duties. A law adopted in June that allows him to step down and be succeeded by Crown Prince Naruhito, 57, left details, such as timing, to be worked out. News the Imperial Household Council - whose 10 members include Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the chief justice of the Supreme Court along with two royals - would convene grabbed domestic headlines after Abe called on Akihito on Tuesday, apparently to inform the emperor of the meeting. Once considered divine, Japan s emperor is defined in the post-war constitution as a symbol of the state and of the unity of the people , and he has no political power. But Akihito, who has spent much of his time on the throne seeking to soothe the wounds of a war fought in his father Hirohito s name, and consoling people suffering from disasters or other woes, is widely respected by many average Japanese. At a special news conference to announce the meeting, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga did not comment on media reports that two options were being considered - March 31, 2019, or April 30 that year. After hearing (the panel s) opinion, based on that, we would like to decide the date promptly, he said. The government had proposed the emperor retire at the end of 2018 but Imperial Household Agency officials demurred, media have said, citing a cluster of rituals and other events around that time. Some in government, however, now worry an alternate proposal of March 31, 2019, would be complicated by nationwide local elections set for that spring, media said. Once Akihito steps down, a new imperial era will begin, replacing the current Heisei , or achieving peace period, which began on Jan. 8, 1989, the day he took the throne. Japan uses the Western-style Gregorian calendar but has also preserved the ancient custom in which the reign of a new emperor ushers in a new era.


Republicans and Democrats in Congress sparred on Tuesday over U.S. states setting rules for testing and deployment of self-driving cars and a proposal to allow automakers and technology companies to bypass existing regulations in introducing autonomous cars. Democrats on a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee said that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) must play a more aggressive role in mandating self-driving car safety. A Republican draft package of 14 bills would allow NHTSA to exempt up to 100,000 vehicles per year from federal motor vehicle safety rules, which currently prevent the sale of self-driving vehicles without human controls. It would also bar states from setting self-driving rules and prevent NHTSA from preapproving self-driving car technologies. "We simply cannot have cars that stop at state lines," Representative Robert Latta said at a hearing of the subcommittee. "This isn't the government saying you have to get in a self-driving car. This is government make sure that industry can innovate." Latta said he hoped to win committee approval of a bipartisan legislative package by the end of July. General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Tesla Inc and others have been lobbying Congress to pre-empt rules under consideration in California and other states that could limit self-driving vehicle deployment. Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat, said that under the Republican proposal, states would be barred from regulating self-driving car safety "without a guarantee that NHTSA will step in" to set binding rules. "We need to be sure that we get this right and that safety is the first priority," Pallone said. Democrats noted that the administration of President Donald Trump, a Republican, has not nominated a candidate to head NHTSA, which has a number of vacant senior positions. NHTSA did not sent an official to testify. Two automaker trade associations said in testimony it is essential they do not face a "patchwork" of self-driving state rules. They said NHTSA will have to approve exemptions. Republicans, citing competition from other countries and the rising number of traffic deaths, say it is urgent Congress approve sweeping legislation to ensure automakers and technology companies test the vehicles inside the United States. The administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama last year unveiled voluntary guidelines on self-driving cars. Trump's Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has vowed to quickly update those.


The United States will provide Ukraine with enhanced defensive capabilities, the State Department said on Friday, as Kiev battles Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. U.S. assistance is entirely defensive in nature, and as we have always said, Ukraine is a sovereign country and has a right to defend itself, the department said in a statement. It said the decision was part of the U.S. effort to help Ukraine defend its territorial integrity and deter further aggression, but did not specify the capabilities being considered. Earlier on Friday, ABC News reported that President Donald Trump was expected to approve the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, citing State Department sources. Any sale would need congressional approval. Ukraine and Russia are at loggerheads over a war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 10,000 people in three years. Kiev accuses Moscow of sending troops and heavy weapons to the region, which Russia denies. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September that any decision by the United States to supply defensive weapons to Ukraine would fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine and possibly prompt the separatists to expand their campaign there. On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this week the State Department said it had approved an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers. Senator John McCain on Wednesday welcomed the small arms sale. McCain, a Republican, urged Trump to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions, and to fully utilize security assistance funds provided by the Congress to enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.


Americans in liberal enclaves from New York to San Francisco reacted with shock and despair on Wednesday to Republican businessman Donald Trump's defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton, with many struggling to explain the result to their children. Trump, who had never before run for public office, won on a broad wave of support both from the Republican U.S. heartland and by flipping previously Democratic states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, helping his party protect majorities in both chambers of Congress. The victory stunned residents of major cities up and down the East and West coasts, many of whom had trusted opinion polls that had long predicted a Clinton victory but were proven profoundly wrong by Tuesday's results. "I'm feeling physical pain. I'm shocked. I'm sad," said Sofia Huizar, 30, as she waited outside the Manhattan hotel where Clinton conceded her loss on Wednesday morning, some eight hours after Trump declared victory. Huizar, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, said she spent much of Tuesday night commiserating with family across the border. "It's a way to help process the fear," Huizar said. Trump's campaign promises have included building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal crossings and to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Others, like Kim Priban, a 38-year-old nurse who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Boston Heights, Ohio, said they had a difficult time breaking the news to their children. Priban said she had proudly taken her 5-year-old daughter along to vote for Clinton, who would have been the first woman U.S. president, and on Wednesday morning had to discuss the result with her. "I still haven't quite figured out what to tell my daughter. I've been crying all day," Priban said. "I feel like I have to go out and make my voice heard for women and children." Priban and Huizar are likely far from alone in the depth of their pain over Clinton's loss, academic research suggests. A 2015 paper by researchers at Harvard University found that voters who supported Republican Mitt Romney's unsuccessful White House bid reported sharper spikes in their unhappiness than parents following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre of Connecticut schoolchildren or Boston residents after the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. While many Democrats along the coasts mourned Clinton's defeat, Trump supporters celebrated the outcome, saying they hoped he would shake up a dysfunctional political system. "The overwhelming majority of Americans want change, and this is a direct result. ... Trump is the disrupter, for better or for worse," said Kelley Smith, 33, who lives in Chicago and works in software sales. "He's a little bombastic. I don't think he's polished. But I don't think he's going to purposefully take our country down." The divide between the coasts and the heartland, evident not only in the results but also in the social media battles ahead of the election, made the Trump victory more shocking for liberals. Deena Pioli, an attorney from San Francisco, said she had rarely run into people who were not supporting Clinton, and that she now regrets that. "Those of us here in San Francisco and California should not be so safe in our bubble," she said. Trump dropped his angry speaking style to take a conciliatory tone when he declared victory early Wednesday morning, saying, "I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans." Clinton and Democratic President Barack Obama sounded similarly restrained. But the breadth of Trump's win left his opponents urging self-examination. "Folks should have deep humility in this moment," said civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson on Twitter. "We all have things to learn from how Trump happened." Karen Parnett, a 48-year-old mother of three in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said she had been heartbroken to tell her children about Trump's win, and said the result illustrated the growing anger of lower-income voters who believe their concerns are being ignored by Washington. "I have too much at stake with three kids to just throw up my hands and weep and say that all is lost," Parnett said. "There are new realities and we need as a country to reckon with what in the world we are going to do about the disenfranchisement of the white working poor." (This story has been refiled to fix typo in ninth paragraph)


Chart Of The Day: The Giant Bubble In Janet's Hometown Is Now Fixing To Crack By David Stockman. Posted On Saturday, November 19th, 2016


We didn t mean to send a negative message. We wanted to be positive. Yeah because telling Asians, Whites and Hispanics to stay back and do school work while their black friends go on a field trip is a pretty positive experience for everyone Administrators at a Florida middle school faced a severe backlash from parents and students after they organized a field trip only for black students.Heron Creek Middle School scheduled a trip to Black Violin, a performance by black musicians, WSTP reports. I think it should be the whole school not just blacks, says black seventh-grader Richard Service.Instead, administrators were caught segregating students based on race.The school received 50 tickets and decided to give them only to black students. They said it was for blacks to be motivated to improve their grades, according to Service. I did think it was kind of racist that Latinos, Chinese couldn t go, says Jennifer Bender, another student at the school. No matter what race it s wrong all the way around, according to parent Steve Moreno.Other parents were harshly critical of the move on a community Facebook page. Linda Prince wrote:Just wanted to let the community be aware of what is happening at Heron Creek Middle School. Yesterday they called an assemble for ONLY African American students. The assembly was to tell them that they could earn a field trip for good behavior. After writing a email to the school board last night letting them know I was upset, I received a call from the vice principle this afternoon. He told me it was because there was an upcoming performance from a group called Two Black Musicians and they thought it would be a good motivational tool for their African American students. I thought segregation ended a long time ago. I completely do not agree with this. Basically I was told we just have to agree to disagree.After the backlash, administrators decided to allow all students to attend. We care about every child on this campus. We celebrate diversity all the time, Principal Matthew Gruhl says. We didn t mean to send a negative message. We wanted to be positive, according to Gruhl. We learned from this, he says, adding a bit sarcastically, We are sorry if we hurt people s feelings. Gruhl had told students they were changing the rules not because they were caught segregating students based on race, but because, We learned there s a demand for all our students to have an opportunity to see this great performance. They re now trying to raise $3,500 to purchase 500 tickets so more students can go, based on grades and behavior and not race. There s no word on who will go if they don t raise that amount of money. They had some parents upset this opportunity was not extended to more students, Sarasota County schools spokesman Scott Ferguson tells the Herald-Tribune. They decided today to open it up to all students who met the same criteria. That involves grades and behavior and other criteria. That s how should have been in the beginning, parent Steve Moreno tells the news station.


Russia has left troops behind after staging war games in Belarus despite promising not to, Ukraine s Commander in Chief Viktor Muzhenko told Reuters. In an interview on a military plane on Thursday evening, Muzhenko said Russia has withdrawn only a few units from Belarus and had lied about how many of its soldiers were there in the first place. His comments could increase tension between the two neighbors and contradict the Belarussian defense ministry spokesman, who said the last train of Russian troops and equipment had left Belarus on Thursday. Russia s defense ministry did not respond to an immediate request for comment. Relations between Kiev and Moscow nosedived after Russia s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people. Ukraine sees itself as being at war with Russia and has accused Moscow of sending troops and hardware to fight in the Donbass region, which Moscow denies. There are frequent casualties despite a notional ceasefire agreed in 2015. The Zapad wargames, held by Russian and Belarussian troops on territory in both countries in September, are a new source of concern for neighboring Ukraine and NATO member states on Europe s eastern flank. Russia has said the exercise was to rehearse a purely defensive scenario, that the scale of the wargames was in line with international rules, and that allegations it was a springboard to invade Poland, Lithuania or Ukraine were false. But Muzhenko said the wargames were of an offensive nature. Ukraine staged its own drills in northern Ukraine in response to Zapad and built up troops there. I wouldn t say that the tension has lessened. We can say tension is building up or rising, he said. We had information that they had withdrawn only a few units of the declared 12,500 troops, of which 3,000 were Russians, but there were significantly more of them there. Muzhenko said the Russians had withdrawn air units from Belarus to make a show of leaving. Russia demonstrated, and it was primarily a demonstration, the return of aviation units they took off from the airfields and flew to airfields in Russia. But we understand that 300-400 km for aviation is a distance that can be overcome in a very short time, he said. The 55-year-old, who became Chief of the General Staff in 2014, said Ukraine was still outgunned in terms of its air defense capabilities in the Donbass war and needed air reconnaissance and anti-missile systems. Kiev is hoping to receive lethal defensive weapons from U.S. President Donald Trump. Muzhenko said talks had been concluded. We expect the corresponding decision because all negotiations are over and the relevant issues have been agreed on the list and types of weapons and we expect only the political decisions of our partner countries, he said.


Nothing betrays your official narrative that your administration is functionally well and you are not a crook like tweeting assurances from Fox News that your chances of being impeached are only slim. One might argue that frantically insisting that you are probably not going to get impeached only makes the notion that you probably are all the more reasonable. No sane president would get caught doing something so desperate.But Trump woke up and did just that.In another humdinger to add to a series of self-owns, Trump retweeted a video of Fox News host Geraldo Rivera insisting that Trump s chances of being impeached went from 3 percent (a number he pulled out of thin air) to 0 percent (another number he pulled out of thin air). In doing so, Trump inadvertently acknowledged that his chances of being impeached weren t zero before and are only zero now if you listen to the network that operates as state media for his administration.Trump s self-incrimination is a nice reminder of how troubled his administration is. In an effort to spin the testimony of the former FBI director he recently inappropriately fired, he is reduced to leaning on Fox News to make the case that the hearing didn t prove he was trying to obstruct justice (as most neutral observers noted) but actually it vindicates him somehow. It s a line of spin so patently absurd that even conservative pundits are having a hard time trumpeting it with a straight face.Enter Rivera. The longtime shockjock is, of course, among the least reputable men in journalism. His legendary fails include botching the opening of Al Capone s vault on live television, getting kicked out of Iraq after revealing U.S. troop positions to the enemy on live television, and saying Travyon Martin brought his murder on himself for wearing a hoodie on live television. Put Rivera in front of a camera, broadcast it live, and chances are he will do something to humiliate himself. He has become one of Trump s biggest defenders.It says something about Trump s chances of making it through his first term without being thrown out of office that he s just a few months in and already he s been reduced to using disreputable Fox hosts like Rivera to defend him. The fact that nobody else will risk destroying their reputation to stand up for him speaks volumes. Luckily, Trump is just dimwitted enough to keep reminding us of his precarious situation because he is fundamentally incapable of not tweeting incredibly stupid things each day.


This is sad and infuriating.In February, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich suffered the loss of his father.Despite his dad s death, an insurance agent called to inform Reich that his dad is behind on his car insurance payments.Now, one would think that being informed of the death would not only draw condolences, but also an end to the business at hand considering deceased people can t drive, nor can they pay insurance from the grave.But this auto insurance agent couldn t get the reality of the situation through his thick skull. He proceeded to try and bully Reich into paying hundreds of dollars and even informed Reich that not paying would affect his father s credit rating.Reich described the phone call on Facebook. I just got a call from my father s auto insurer, telling me he s behind on his payment. I explained he died in February. He still needs to pay for the last two months, said the man from the insurance company. But he can t pay. He s deceased, I said. He owes $348.62, for the period April 24 to June 24, he said. But he didn t drive then. He died in February. No one has driven his car since he died. Well, someone has to pay or his insurance will be cancelled, and it will hurt his credit rating. I m sure he d be okay if it s cancelled, I said. And I don t think he cares about his credit rating. Are you infuriated yet?Clearly, this insurance agent must be a truly heartless person. He even became snippy with Reich upon hearing that Reich s father won t care about his credit rating and the conversation continued to go in circles as the insurance agent tried another intimidation tactic and didn t seem to get that his client was dead and no longer needed car insurance. Are you trying to be smart with me? asked the man from the insurance company. No, I m just trying to tell you that my father is deceased and he doesn t need car insurance. Have you cancelled his car registration? No, I haven t got around to that. Well, you should. If he s deceased, he shouldn t have a registration. I understand. Nobody s supposed to have a registration if they re not paying their auto insurance. Right. So, are you going to pay the insurance that s due? I wasn t planning to. Then it s an illegal car. But it won t be on the road. Still illegal. Sorry. That could be a problem for him. He s no longer with us. I know. You made that clear. I m referring to his estate. I don t see how. Well, let s say the state of Florida imposes a penalty for having a car registered in his name but no insurance. And let s say that penalty holds up any legal proceedings in resolving The insurance agent STILL tried to get Reich to pay the insurance, even going so far as to talk about a hypothetical situation in order to force Reich to reach into his pocket and pay for something that was no longer necessary.Frustrated and growing tired of the phone call, Reich asked the insurance vampire who he is supporting for president. And the answer explains everything. May I ask you a personal question? Personal? Who do you support for President? For President? I don t mean to pry. [chuckling] Oh, no problem, he said. You have a favorite candidate? I asked. As a matter of fact, I do, he said. And who is it? That Trump fella. Really? Yeah, Trump. Good man. No bullshit. Here s the post via Facebook.Personally, I would have hung up the phone rather than keep repeating myself to the same asshole, but there you have it, folks. An ignorant insurance agent who tries to bully money out of people even if they are dead. That sounds exactly like the kind of person who would support Donald Trump.


A bishop of the Protestant Church of Norway has launched a proposal urging Christians to hire illegal migrants, a move that the minister of immigration called "irresponsible. "[Tor Berger Jørgensen, formerly the bishop of in northern Norway, sent out a series of letters last week to various Christian organizations requesting that they provide employment for those unable to work legally in Norway. Although employing illegal immigrants is against the law, the bishop said that his campaign was about giving people "in a hopeless situation" the chance at a livelihood. Jørgensen, who is also a agitator for gay rights, said he has already received "several positive responses" from people who would like to help. "I am quite optimistic that we can achieve something among church organizations and with church connections," he said. Jørgensen was inspired by learning that an evangelical church in Stavanger, Norway, had employed an Eritrean woman named Tita who had been living in the country illegally for 8 years, a move he called "brave" and "important. " The bishop has reportedly requested a meeting with Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug (FRP) who has called the bishop's proposal "irresponsible. " "What he is in fact doing is creating false hopes for people who have to return to their homeland," she said. "Individuals who have received a final rejection of their asylum application are obliged to return home. " For his part, Jørgensen posted on Facebook that what the Minister calls illegal is really just " . " "Sylvi Listhaug calls us irresponsible," the bishop responded in a recent "because we encourage people to do something illegal. But Listhaug doesn't know what degrading and dehumanizing experiences many 'undocumented' have had over the years. " According to current legislation, employers who hire illegal foreign workers are subject to fines or imprisonment. Christian Wedler, a local leader for the Progress Party (FRP) in Stavanger, said that he understands the desire to help people who find themselves in a difficult situation, yet people must also consider "what is right for the country and the big picture. " "If an asylum application has no consequences, then the system will collapse altogether and we are going to experience arrangements that ensure that the whole asylum system is in jeopardy," he said. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter


A man who refused to provide passwords to his electronic devices when stopped by British police was found guilty under terrorism laws at a court in London on Monday, in a case that campaigners say threatens personal privacy. Muhammad Rabbani, 36, the international director of campaign group CAGE was found guilty of wilfully obstructing or seeking to frustrate an examination or search, and given a conditional 12-month discharge, and was ordered to pay a 620 pound ($830) fine. CAGE is an advocacy group which campaigns against the impact of counter-terrorism policies, and came to international attention over its links to Jihadi John, a British Islamic militant, before he went to Syria. Rabbani said he was returning from a wedding in Qatar when he was stopped at Heathrow last November. Police seized his phone and computer, and demanded the passwords for the devices. Rabbani said that he had not provided the passwords as he wanted to protect the privacy of a client who he was working with on an anti-torture case. However, judge Emma Arbuthnot found that Rabbani was lawfully required to provide the passwords. Rabbani said he would appeal the decision. He was held under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which was used to detain David Miranda, the partner of the journalist who brought leaks from former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to world attention in 2013. Rabbani said that the law poses a threat to personal privacy, and told reporters and supporters outside the court that the decision highlights the absurdity of the Schedule 7 law. They accept that at no point was I under suspicion, and that ultimately this was a matter of having been profiled, he said, referring to the judge and prosecution. There are important implications for our collective privacy, as Schedule 7 acts as a digital strip-search. But the police welcomed the verdict. Today s verdict is an important one. It s crucial that police are able to use the legislation that exists to help keep the public safe, said Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, in a statement, adding that Schedule 7 was a vital tool in the fight against terrorism. The Met has retained Rabbani s phone and laptop and is continuing its efforts to examine the contents. ($1 = 0.7437 pounds)


Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Sign up.) The election of Donald J. Trump has left many California Latinos feeling on edge. But one Election Day outcome has given Latino groups that opposed Mr. Trump a measure of encouragement — the largest ever Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "It's historic what actually happened," said Chuck Rocha, a political consultant. Latinos now make up nearly 40 percent of California's population. Election analysts said strong Latino turnout played a crucial part in contests throughout the West, including the election of Catherine Cortez Masto, of Nevada, who will become the first Latina senator. As a result, the Hispanic caucus will grow from 26 to 31 members, with more than a third from California. Representative Linda Sánchez, the caucus chairwoman, said members had already asked for a meeting with Mr. Trump. "Obviously, we are going to be pushing back on some of the really divisive and flawed policies that Donald Trump has discussed with respect to the Latino community," said Ms. Sánchez, whose district includes southeastern Los Angeles. How much clout the lawmakers can wield on issues like immigration policy, a major concern, is uncertain given the Republican control of the White House and chambers of Congress. Nanette D. Barragán, a Democrat who won an open seat representing a heavily Latino part of Los Angeles, said many of her constituents were fearful about Mr. Trump's plans. "I just think having us at the table being a part of the conversation is so very important with a president like this," she said. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said he has nothing against immigrants but vowed to deport all of those who are in the country illegally, an estimated 11 million people. Speaking in an interview on "60 Minutes" that was broadcast on Sunday, the appeared to soften that stance, saying he would seek to deport just those undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, and only up to three million of them. Salud Carbajal, who was elected to Congress from the Central Coast, said immigrant leaders have always supported efforts to deport people who have committed serious crimes. The question is how broadly a Trump administration would define the group. "Am I glad that he has lowered the number? Yes," Mr. Carbajal said. But, he added, "The devil's in the details. " • "That is not our job": The Los Angeles police chief said he would not help deport immigrants under a Trump administration. [Los Angeles Times] • Climate change, immigration and education: How a President Trump could change California, profoundly. [Opinion | San Diego ] • Loretta Sanchez went on a failed bid for California's United States Senate seat. Now, her next move is unclear. [Los Angeles Times] • Google and Facebook are taking aim at purveyors of fake news after criticism that misinformation may have influenced the 2016 election. [The New York Times] • In a surprising reversal, Airbnb said it is ready to police its San Francisco hosts. [Mercury News] • Review: Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops are thin and powerful, but the jury is out on the usefulness of the Touch Bar. [The New York Times] • NASA and FEMA rehearsed for the unthinkable: an asteroid strike on Los Angeles. [The New York Times] • The University of California and California State University are considering raising tuition for the first time in six years. [Los Angeles Times] • A photographer hung out in corners of Alice Waters's celebrated restaurant Chez Panisse to create an intimate portrait of life there. [The New York Times] • Over the past year, the National Geographic Channel has turned itself inside out. "Mars" is the latest example. [The New York Times] • Corey Seager, a shortstop for the Dodgers, was a unanimous choice for the National League Rookie of the Year. [The New York Times] People once thought Yosemite's El Capitan was unclimbable. It was this month in 1958 that Warren Harding, a Californian, proved them wrong, ascending the granite monolith for the first time. Mr. Harding, along with a series of partners, climbed the Nose route in stages over the course of 18 months. They fixed ropes to the wall that hung to the ground and allowed the climbers to quickly return to where they had left off. Altogether, it took about 45 days of climbing to reach the top in freezing weather on Nov. 12. The feat redefined what was thought possible in the infant sport, and ushered in an era of big wall climbing. Mr. Harding continued rock climbing through the 1970s, making about 30 first ascents in Yosemite and becoming a legend of the sport's golden age. He died in 2002 at his home near Anderson in Shasta County at age 77. Today, the latest generation of elite climbers is taking the sport to new levels. Last year, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson scaled one of El Capitan's most difficult routes, the Dawn Wall — without the benefit of ropes, other than to catch their falls. Some considered it the hardest climb in the world. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley.


Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here's the .) Let's turn it over to Jonah Engel Bromwich for today's introduction. A California law that went into effect on Sunday barring drivers from holding phones while operating vehicles is among the most stringent in the nation. But experts say that it most likely won't be enough to prevent accidents caused by distracted driving. Jennifer Ryan, AAA's director of state relations, cautioned in a phone interview on Thursday that, "hands free is not risk free. " Ms. Ryan said the California measure matched a larger trend of states bringing legislation with contemporary phones. But while the state's provisions were particularly broad, she said, it was important for motorists to take responsibility for themselves and pay attention. The law goes beyond what federal authorities recommend to prevent distracted driving, which remains a significant cause of traffic fatalities. The latest statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that more than 3, 400 people died in 2015 in crashes that involved a distracted driver. Of those, 272 were teenagers. And while the use of smartphones is certainly part of the problem, many are unconvinced that keeping them out of drivers' hands will be a panacea. Some have speculated that the California law may encourage enthusiasm for cars. When Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure into law in September, he approved of another bill that allowed for the first tests of autonomous driving vehicles on public roads. Steve Finnegan, the government affairs manager of the Automobile Club of Southern California, said that while the new legislation "is a step in the right direction," it does not address "the complete issue of distracted driving. " "One of the bigger issues is cognitive distraction," Mr. Finnegan said. "It's not what your hands are doing it's what your brain is doing. " (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have metered paywalls.) • Senator Dianne Feinstein will be at the center of the debate over Donald J. Trump's nominees. [McClatchy] • San Diego's mayor has quietly started mulling a run for governor. [Politico] • A lawmaker's claim that California legalized child prostitution was rated "Pants on Fire" by a group. [PolitiFact] • California is bracing for the type of punishing rains that happen about once every . [San Francisco Chronicle] • Grapes ripen earlier. Nights warm up. Aquifers run dry. Climate change is hitting wine country. [The New York Times] • Why more California families are falling into homelessness. [KPCC] • After overhauling its football stadium, U. C. Berkeley owes more money than any other college sports program. [Bloomberg News] • It was one of the most productive, disjointed and confusing years in the life of Kanye West. [The New York Times] • How the Hollywood artist Tyrus Wong fused traditional influences with his own style to create the look of "Bambi. " [The New York Times] • The category at the Oscars is a race, with "La La Land" in the lead. [The New York Times] • Pete Wells's harsh review of an Oakland fast food restaurant faced some backlash. [Los Angeles Magazine] Boats bobbing in the marina, a shimmering blue bay, the echoing calls of seabirds. Sausalito, a tiny waterfront community just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, is an inspiring place. So it was, many summers ago, that Otis Redding stayed on a houseboat there and came up with the first idea for an American classic. It was this weekend in 1968 that Mr. Redding's "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" was released. In August 1967, the soul singer had come to San Francisco to do a series of gigs at Basin Street West, a storied club at the time. According to Jonathan Gould, the author of a forthcoming biography of Mr. Redding, the rock promoter Bill Graham offered Mr. Redding the use of his houseboat up in Sausalito. While relaxing there with his guitar, he is thought to have sketched the lines: Later, the guitarist Steve Cropper helped to fill out the rest of the song and it was recorded in November. But Mr. Redding never heard the single. Just 18 days after the studio session, he died in a plane crash in Madison, Wis. on Dec. 10, 1967. He was 26. On Jan. 8, 1968, the "Dock of the Bay" album was released. The single rose to No. 1 on Billboard's pop chart and stayed there for four weeks. It was the biggest hit of Mr. Redding's career. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley.


Donald Trump s rollout of TrumpCare is already crashing and burning (just like everything he tries to do) and his White House Press Secretary certainly isn t helping him. Earlier today, Sean Spicer tried to address the questions surrounding the much-hated TrumpCare plan, and accidentally admitted that tons of people are going to lose their health care coverage because of it.Spicer basically said that it didn t matter how many people would be covered under the new horrible Obamacare replacement:You can watch Spicer f**k up in the video below:Spicer went off on Obamacare, incorrectly stating that people had cards under the Affordable Care Act, yet they were not receiving care. This is absolutely false, as Obamacare had measures put in place to guarantee that people would be covered by insurance companies unlike TrumpCare, which doesn t have any of those regulations.So far, the GOP has fallen silent over how many people would be covered under their Obamacare replacement measure. They purposely avoided running TrumpCare past the Congressional Budget Office a move that is being highly criticized for its lack of transparency. Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested that this secrecy was to prevent word getting out that millions of Americans will lose their coverage under the new plan. This looks like yet another thing that Trump won t be able to deliver. Let s not forget that Trump promised again and again that his new health care plan would cover everyone. He once said: I am going to take care of everybody everybody s going to be taken care of, much better than they re taken care of now. Trump also promised America that he was so good at making deals that the government would basically pay for everyone s coverage:How do we go from everyone being covered to not being able to even say how many people were going to be covered and trying to spin the issue to be about people not getting care? What Spicer is doing is trying to reframe Trump s campaign promises, because the White House knows they can t be delivered. TrumpCare is an abomination compared to Obamacare, and millions of Americans are going to suffer because of the GOP s incompetence.Featured image is a screenshot


(Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the .) Good evening. Here's the latest. 1. It's official. Simone Biles, the gymnast some call the best in history, was crowned the gymnastics champion at the Rio Olympics. Her teammate Aly Raisman came in second. Here's a of two of Biles's signature moves. With a win in the individual medley, Michael Phelps earned his thirteenth individual gold medal, surpassing Leonidas of Rhodes, who won 12 gold medals in the ancient Olympics. Another achievement for the books: Simone Manuel became the first woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming. Our full coverage of the Games is here — including the odd version of the U. S. national anthem being played at medal ceremonies. _____ 2. Hillary Clinton rejected the economic agenda Donald Trump laid out this week, calling him an enemy of "the little guy. " He wants to "give trillions in tax cuts to people like himself," she said, while deepening the financial pain of the middle and working classes. Neither candidate, however, has said much about helping people who are not working — many of them living in abject poverty. _____ 3. Mr. Trump faced down critics of his unorthodox campaign style, telling an interviewer, "It's either going to work or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have a very, very nice long vacation. " After weeks of hearing detractors saying a Trump presidency would be a grave threat to national security, Mr. Trump has begun portraying Mrs. Clinton and President Obama as of the Islamic State. He held a rally in Kissimmee, Fla. in the evening. _____ 4. The F. B. I. has widened its investigation into what officials believe was a Russian cyberattack directed against the Democratic Party. The attack appears to have been far larger than first thought, raising the possibility of more damaging disclosures like the emails published recently by WikiLeaks. After a impasse that has kept the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Sweden has agreed to question him there over rape accusations. _____ 5. Almost 55 miles a gallon — that's what U. S. regulators say automakers' fleets must average by 2025. Engineers, racing to meet the mark, are working with new batteries for hybrids. Some cars are going on a superglue diet: adhesives, like the one being used on the GMC Acadia above, can stiffen seams and allow components to be made of thinner steel. _____ 6. The animated "Sausage Party," opening nationwide this weekend, sends foodstuffs ranging through the supermarket for 89 minutes of bawdy, silly humor — and a deeper layer. Characters voiced by Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton, Michael Cera, Bill Hader and others end up in a classic confrontation between comforting religious beliefs (weekend shoppers are gods who will liberate them) and scientific thought (their actual fate). Our reviewer saluted "the intellectual rigor of a project that probably didn't require it" and called the movie "fun pretty much all the way through. " _____ 7. Fox News has not managed to put a scandal behind it, despite rapidly forcing out its chairman, Roger Ailes. More women have come forward to describe a culture of intimidation and misogyny, including a former Fox host, Andrea Tantaros, above. Top Ailes deputies who remain are being accused of abetting Mr. Ailes's behavior. _____ 8. "I found the numbers heartbreaking. " That was a senior U. S. health official, commenting on a new study that found high rates of rape, bullying, depression and other harms suffered by gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers. The survey found that they make up about 8 percent of the high school population, or 1. 3 million students. Future studies are likely to include an option for students to identify as transgender. Above, a youth contingent at Miami's gay pride march in April. _____ 9. U. S. forces seized most of the coastal Libyan city of Surt, a stronghold of the Islamic State. But in Syria, the battle between government forces and rebels has left two million people in the city of Aleppo with critical shortages of food and water. If the turmoil in the Mideast seems too overwhelming to grasp, this could help. A team spent more than a year charting the catastrophe that has befallen the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At words, it's not a quick read, but it is a remarkably clear account that connects the region's history and the Arab Spring uprisings to the creation of the Islamic State and the global refugee crisis. _____ 10. One of our articles today focuses on the pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories and its operations in India's highly competitive drug market. A Times investigation found that managers pushed workers to pursue sales in violation of Indian law, medical standards and the company's own ethics guidelines. One of the country's top salesmen jumped in front of a train last month, leaving a note that said he was committing suicide because of the pressure. Above, his daughter. _____ 11. Finally, Mongolia, a sparsely populated country with nomadic traditions, will be pioneering a novel system next month. The country is adopting an app created by a British What3Words, that looks up a unique code (dissident. sloth. ploy, for instance) for every patch of the earth's surface — all 57 trillion. Users enter an address or position a pointer on a map to retrieve the code, which the postal service can then use for deliveries. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don't miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here's last night's briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com.


Two non-politicians, businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, dominate the contest for the Republican nomination, together accounting for more than half of the potential vote as support for traditional politicians continues to decline, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. In the contest for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost significant ground over the past two months, as she has struggled to manage the controversy over her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. She still leads the field of Democrats, but for the first time her support has dropped below 50 percent in Post-ABC surveys, with the biggest decline coming among white women. Overall, the survey underscored the degree of dissatisfaction toward government and politics that is shaping the campaign. More than 7 in 10 Americans say people in politics cannot be trusted. More than 6 in 10 say the political system is dysfunctional. Sizable majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents agree with those assessments. But Democrats and Republicans part ways over the kind of experience they are looking for in the next president. Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they prefer the next president to have experience that comes from outside the political establishment. Only about a quarter of Democrats say the same. Two-thirds of the Republicans who say they are looking for non-political experience currently support either Trump or Carson — the foundation of the wide division between the two outsiders and the rest of a field made up almost exclusively of traditional politicians. Several of these current or former elected officials registered new lows in the survey. Their next big chance to reverse their fortunes comes at a debate Wednesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., that will feature the top 11 candidates. The debate, hosted by CNN, will begin at 8 p.m. Eastern time. There will be an earlier forum, beginning at 6 p.m., for the candidates who did not qualify for the main debate. The new poll found Trump to be the favorite of 33 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. That is a jump of nine percentage points since mid-July and a 29-point increase since late May, just before Trump announced his candidacy. He does well with most groups of GOP voters, but his strongest support comes from those who do not have a college degree and those with incomes below $50,000. Carson runs second at 20 percent, 14 points higher than in July. His surge is consistent with several other national polls that show him moving up the ranks since the first Republican debate in Cleveland last month. Carson's base is more strongly rooted in the conservative wing of the party. After Trump and Carson, there is a significant falloff in support for the other candidates. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who began the year as the nominal GOP front-runner, stands at 8 percent, his lowest ever in Post-ABC surveys of the 2016 field. Next, at 7 percent each, are Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. No one else registered above 5 percent. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie either tied or registered their lowest levels of support in Post-ABC polls of the 2016 race dating to the beginning of 2014. Walker suffered the steepest decline since the July survey, falling from 13 percent to 2 percent. Recent polls in Iowa, where Walker had been leading, also have shown a loss of support. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Clinton is the choice of 42 percent of registered voters. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is second with 24 percent and Vice President Biden, who is deciding whether to run, is third with 21 percent. Sanders's support has risen by 10 points since July, while Biden has gained nine points. Biden advisers have said he is likely to make a decision this month. The vice president has said recently that he is still dealing with the death of his son Beau a few months ago and cannot yet say he has the emotional commitment needed to seek the presidency. But his advisers are preparing for a possible campaign as Biden and his family weigh the personal costs of running. The survey indicates that if Biden decides not to run, Clinton would benefit far more than Sanders, at least initially. Without Biden on the list, Clinton jumps 14 points, to 56 percent, among Democratic-leaning voters, while Sanders rises four points, to 28 percent. While Clinton maintains the lead, her support has dropped 21 points among Democrats since July. She has lost ground with most demographic groups, but the sharpest drop has come among women and particularly white women. In July, 64 percent of white women said they supported Clinton; today, it is 31 percent, the same level of backing as Sanders, whose support has doubled among this group. A majority of Americans (55 percent) say they disapprove of the way Clinton has handled questions about her use of a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state. An almost identical percentage (54 percent) say that she has tried to cover up facts. Asked whether Clinton stayed within government guidelines or broke the rules by using a private server, 51 percent say she broke the rules, while 32 percent say she did not, with the remainder offering no opinion. The public is divided on the question of whether the e-mail issue is a legitimate one in the coming election, although today, unlike four months ago, slightly more say it is not legitimate. On all those questions, there is a big difference in the responses of Democrats vs. Republicans and independents. A majority of Democrats (55 percent) approve of how she has handled the controversy, while a third do not. More than 7 in 10 say the e-mails are not a legitimate issue in the coming campaign. In a hypothetical general election, Clinton runs about evenly with Trump, leading 46 percent to 43 percent among registered voters. Clinton holds a much bigger lead, 51 percent to 39 percent, among all adults. Clinton and Trump share one vulnerability: Almost 6 in 10 Americans say Trump is not honest and trustworthy, while 56 percent say that about Clinton. But in other measures, Clinton is seen as far readier to be president than the GOP front-runner. At this point, 6 in 10 say Trump is not qualified to be president, though more than 6 in 10 Republicans say he is. Two-thirds say he does not understand the problems of "people like you." More than 6 in 10 say he does not have the kind of personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively as president. Just over half of all Americans say Clinton does not understand their problems, but 56 percent say she has the personality and temperament to serve as president. Among all Americans, 57 percent oppose Trump's tough positions on immigration. Among Republicans, 56 percent support them — with 39 percent saying they strongly support them. The Post-ABC News poll was conducted Sept. 7-10 among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, including landline and cellphone respondents. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Full results of the poll and detailed methodology are available at wapo.st/pollarchive.


Sounding like a frustrated Cassandra, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. lamented last week that Hillary Clinton had not done enough to reach white voters in the presidential campaign. Even more egregious to Mr. Biden, some fellow Democrats had concluded that whites were not even worth pursuing. "I mean these are good people, man!" Mr. Biden exclaimed in an interview on CNN. "These aren't racists. These aren't sexists. " With his typically unambiguous assessment, the vice president thrust himself into a heated debate that has shaped the Democrats' since Donald J. Trump won the presidency: Should the party continue tailoring its message to the young and nonwhite constituencies that propelled President Obama, or make a more concerted effort to win over the white voters who have drifted away? For Democrats, the election last month has become a Rorschach test. Some see Mrs. Clinton's loss as a result of an unfortunate series of flukes — Russian tampering, a late intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and a poor allocation of resources — but little more than a speed bump on the road to a demographic majority. Others believe the results reflect a more worrisome trend that could doom the party. It is a sensitive topic, touching on race and class, but the choices that Democrats make in the coming months will shape their identity and carry major implications in both the 2018 midterm elections and the next presidential race. Few leading Democrats are arguing for a reconsideration of the party's core liberal agenda. After all, history is a game of inches, and Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2. 8 million votes, but lost the presidency by 77, 000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — less than the capacity crowd at Lambeau Field on any given Sunday. "Demographically, the Electoral College is heading in the right direction" for Democrats, Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Mr. Obama, said. What Mr. Trump pulled off, he added, "would be hard to replicate. " Even those who believe the party has become too fixated on identity politics do not think it should reverse course on such issues as immigration, criminal justice and legal protections for gay and transgender Americans. Yet as a matter of politics, those in Mr. Biden's camp believe the party's ethos of inclusion may add up to less than the sum of its parts. In the minds of those Democrats, they will not be a majority party again in Washington or across much of the country without winning back white voters of modest means. "You don't need those people?" Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, asked. "You're going to wait how many decades before this other strategy works?" Mr. Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, had tried to push Mrs. Clinton, a longtime ally, toward focusing more on rural America, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He was just as exasperated over what he described as his party's pattern of neglect of many of the voters he spent eight years working with in his cabinet post. "Rural America is 15 percent of America's population," Mr. Vilsack said. "It's the same percentage as it's the same percentage as Hispanics. We spend a lot of time thinking about that 15 percent — and we should, God bless them, we should. But not to the exclusion of the other 15 percent. " In their zeal for pursuing clearly defined constituencies, some Democrats now worry they missed the bigger picture: failing to deliver a message that would cut across all constituencies, and ceding too much territory to Republicans in whiter, more conservative areas that Mr. Trump won by wider margins than other recent Republican nominees. Entering the race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Thursday, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez summed up this view in blunt terms. "We got our ass kicked in a lot of these rural pockets because we weren't there in sufficient force," Mr. Perez said. Representative Gwen Graham, Democrat of Florida and a likely candidate for governor in 2018, called her party's message "too funneled. " It needed to be more open to pursuing moderate and conservative voters, she said. Ms. Graham, who was elected in a district in the Florida Panhandle, said she would campaign across every part of the state if she ran for governor. Though she declined to criticize her party's presidential nominee directly, such campaigning would be starkly different from the approach Mrs. Clinton took in 2016, when she focused overwhelmingly on the state's biggest metropolitan areas. "I would run a strategy," Ms. Graham said. "And I would reach out to all different kinds of Democrats and Republicans, along the ideological spectrum. " But while this may make for a good message at the outset of a campaign, it is, to a vocal contingent of Democratic strategists, a dated approach that ignores inexorable political and demographic trendlines. To win in a changing country, these Democrats said, the party must tailor a platform and strategy that explicitly appealed to younger and nonwhite voters on issues like policing, climate change and immigration. Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, said it was folly to continue developing a message for and devoting considerable resources to "a shrinking, increasingly resistant market. " Mr. Belcher recalled focus groups in North Carolina this year in which nonwhite voters who had come out for Mr. Obama's two elections could not name the party's Senate candidate in the state. (It was Deborah Ross she lost.) "We're spending all of our resources on broadcast television chasing this mythical unicorn white swing voter," he said. Mr. Belcher, who has published a new book about race and the Obama presidency, "A Black Man in the White House," said the party should not ignore white voters. But he said Democrats also should not react to this election by refashioning their appeal as if the country were just as white as it was when Bill Clinton and other centrists began the Democratic Leadership Council 30 years ago. "Why would we go back to running campaigns as though it's the 1980s?" Mr. Belcher asked. "Because it's not the 1980s. " Mr. Pfeiffer, the former Obama adviser, noted that red states like Arizona and Georgia were closer to turning blue this year even as Mrs. Clinton lost, and argued that new arrivals in Florida and North Carolina would make those states tilt Democratic. Yet even Democrats in solidly blue states, who can in theory win elections without a single conservative vote, said the party's message was lacking. Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles said Democrats had not explained to many voters how tolerant social values translated into government action. "Of course we are for a tolerant, diverse, inclusive, cooperative future," he said. "It isn't enough. " Mr. Garcetti likened the party's message to the gestures of conciliation proposed by civic leaders in Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots in the 1990s — well intentioned but insufficient. "If the starting point is: 'Hey, we are a party and we are a country that stands for blacks and Koreans and people of all stripes liking each other,' that's not an agenda," Mr. Garcetti said. "These values aren't just about social inclusion. They're about getting things done. "


Washington was rocked by yet another staff shakeup in the White House on Monday when Trump s newly hired communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, was fired after only ten days on the job. But who they are thinking about replacing him with is astounding.Apparently, the Trump administration is somehow considering the possibility of naming Kellyanne Conway, the queen of alternative facts, as the new White House communications director.The Daily Caller reports:There is chatter within the White House that Kellyanne Conway is being looked at as the next communications director, a White House insider told The Daily Caller.Scaramucci was ousted after an embarrassingly profane rant in which he called Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who has since been fired, a f*cking paranoid schizophrenic. During his temper tantrum, he also made some very unfortunate comments about Steve Bannon s c*ck. And as the White House explained, President P*ssy Grabber just can t have someone in his administration using that type of language. (Insert eye roll here.)Now Trump thinks that maybe the person he needs as his communications director is his good old adviser and former campaign manager, Conway. She has proven time and time again that she is loyal to Trump and that she has no problem lying to the press about anything and everything. This also happens to be the reason that she has absolutely no credibility.Way back in February, Morning Joe s Mika Brzenski said that she refused to have Conway appear on the show because she is the epitome of fake news. So, Joe was just saying that she books herself on these shows. We know for a fact she tries to book herself on this show. I won t do it because I don t believe in fake news or information that is not true. Everytime I ve ever seen her on television something s askew, off, or incorrect, Brzenski said on-air.And this is who the White House thinks should be their number one spokesperson? Seriously? The fact that she is even being considered is enough to let you know that these people are a few flakes short of a full bowl of cornflakes. But with Trump in the Oval Office one thing is for sure, just when you think things can t get any more absurd, they do.


A draft law allowing Moscow to designate foreign media as foreign agents gives Russia a tool to reciprocate to restrictions Washington has imposed on Russian media operating in the United States, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. He said it was too early to say how tough the law would be as the draft, approved on second reading by the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, did not spell out how it would be applied in practice.


One of the biggest Democratic themes of the 2016 election is building on President Obama s legacy. It has come from many establishment Democrats during the 2016 primary season. Even Debbie Wasserman Schultz has used this theme in a statement released by her office, and she isn t even running in the primaries. This all makes it rather strange that with this in mind, Wasserman-Schultz has decided to help Republicans to destroy a very popular Obama-created governmental office of which he is very proud and voters absolutely love.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up by Elizabeth Warren after President Obama personally appointed her to do so, is coming under heavy attack by the ultra-predatory payday lending industry. The industry is also enjoying the assistance of Republicans and a few Democratic sellouts which now includes Wasserman-Schultz among their number.The CFPB is approaching a point where they are going to be able to adopt better rules to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, which disproportionately harm the poorest among us and can throw an otherwise financially stable family into a long and sometimes inescapable cycle debt. This has caused the industry to rally Republicans to assault the CFPB by attacking its budget, burdening it with impossible amounts of regulation, and creating outright lies about the agency unilaterally shutting down businesses.Wasserman-Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would completely gut the CFPB s approaching payday loan regulations and she is trying to lobby other Democrats in Washington to join her in this unprecedented attack on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.The upcoming Republican sabotage is wrapped in a misleading name, the Consumer Protection and Choice Act. What exactly it has to do with protection and choice is not clear, since it actively blocks protections and poor people who are in desperate need tend to have no choice when it comes to resorting to a payday loan. The legislation would delay the CFPB s new regulations by two years, and would allow for state-level nullification of their federal authority in states that adopted their own laws regarding payday lenders. It s important to note that it doesn t have any classification for a level of protection of consumers only that the state has adopted a law regarding payday lenders. It could be a mostly anti-consumer measure, but if it fulfills the letter of the law it would make it literally impossible for the CFPB to help an entire state.The Consumer Federation of America, the NAACP, The National Consumer Law Center, The National Council of La Raza, The Southern Poverty Law Center, and dozens of others sent letters to every member of Congress urging them to oppose the law. This isn t an online petition by regular people on some website. These are some of the biggest progressive social justice movements in America.A typical Florida payday loan customer takes out 9 loans per year and is stuck in debt for almost half that year. The average interest on Florida payday loans is 304 percent, which is less than the national average but still huge.Wasserman-Schultz is partially reacting to a state-level law she helped create in Florida, that her office claims sharply reduced the need to go after bad actors, curbed predatory practices, and created standards and protections for low-income borrowers. The problem with this is, it simply isn t true. 76 percent of payday loans are turned, which means that they are made to help the borrower pay off a previous payday loan. This is exactly what the CFPB wants to help stop a cycle of debt that the poor can t escape where they need to keep taking out loans to pay off previous ones.Debbie Wasserman Schultz is quickly becoming a pariah among Democrats. Her management of Democratic primary debates has garnered her a fair amount of infamy, and many have been calling for her to resign from her position as DNC chairperson. She will also be facing a primary challenge for her seat in the next election cycle. With this latest assistance to Republicans, will it mean the end of her seat at the DNC as well as in Congress?


Voting rights expert, Ari Berman, sat down with Joy Reid during Saturday s broadcast of The Reid Report where he and Reid discussed a court ruling that found that the GOP worked to prevent black voters from voting in North Carolina.The segment begins with a reading of part of the Fourth Circuit Court s decision, which reads: The only clear factor linking these various reforms is their impact on African American voters. The record thus makes obvious that the problem the majority in the general assembly sought to remedy was emerging support for the minority party. This decision in North Carolina was the biggest victory for voting rights since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act because the fourth circuit court was so clear about what happened. North Carolina, as you mentioned, passed the country s strongest and most sweeping voting restrictions, Berman assesses. They did so just a month after the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, Berman continued. John Roberts said it was a thing of the past. What the Fourth Circuit said all of these things they did were meant to target black voters, with almost surgical precision. The Republican Party have tried to position themselves as the champions of free and fair elections since the Voting Rights Act was struck down. In reality, the reforms that they have put in place have been nothing except an attempt to disenfranchise minority voters.The left has fought against these reforms since they began cropping up. Now, with this landmark decision, the left has much more more legislative muscle to fight back against these racist laws.You can watch the segment below, in full.Featured image from video screenshot


Trending Articles: Trending Articles: Clinton emails: FBI director ignored Attorney General's advice not to 'take action that could influence election' Source: The Independent  FBI director James Comey reportedly ignored the advice of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who urged him not to thrust the controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails back into headlines less than a fortnight from election day.  US Department of Justice officials, Democrats and even some Republicans were said to be aghast at the timing of the FBI's announcement, on Friday, that it was reviewing a fresh cache of emails, which Mr Comey said may be "pertinent" to the investigation into Ms Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.  According to a report from the New Yorker , Ms Lynch "expressed her preference" that Mr Comey uphold the Justice Department's "longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election." The FBI director, however, "said that he felt compelled to do otherwise."  Writing in the Washington Post , former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Mr Comey's decision was a "troubling violation of long-standing Justice Department rules or precedent, conduct that raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to serve as the nation's chief investigative official."  The emails were discovered "in connection with an unrelated case," the FBI director wrote in a letter to Republican congressional committee chairs on Friday. That separate case, it later emerged, concerns disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner , who is under investigation for allegedly sending explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.  Mr Weiner is the estranged husband of Ms Clinton's closest aide, Huma Abedin , and the emails were found on one or more electronic devices belonging to the couple, which had been seized as part of the Weiner probe. The FBI is now investigating whether those emails contained any classified information.


The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee told Breitbart News the new Border Adjustment Tax is the way for Capitol Hill conservatives to support President Donald Trump's efforts to reform the tax code and reverse American trade disadvantages, as well as unleashing trillions of dollars currently sitting on the sidelines. ["We know what our competitors do to beat us," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R. ) who took over one of the House's most powerful committees from Speaker Paul Ryan (R. .) upon Ryan's taking up the gavel. "China, Canada, Germany, Mexico, and these others, they beat us on low rates, but not anymore," Brady said. "They border adjust. " The chairman said virtually every other country in the world has a system in place, where they take major taxes off of a product as it is exported to the United States and they slap a tax on products coming into their country from the United States. Brady said the president is deeply involved with the chairman's tax reform effort, because it lines up with his campaign rhetoric. "President Trump gets it," he said. "He knows it is not a level playing field and American workers and American communities are really getting hurt by this, so we are having very good discussions about how to end the 'Made in America Tax'," he said. "I am very encouraged with our talks with President Trump," Brady added. Helping Brady's cause is the popular support for what he promises the Border Adjustment Tax achieves. According to a confidential poll by Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio and his partner David Lee that is circulating Capitol Hill offices and was made available to Breitbart News, 58 percent of the voters in 14 states key support the BAT, and 29 oppose it. Among Republicans, 80 percent support the BAT with Democrats split: 45 percent oppose and 39 percent support. The poll asked: "( ) people say that they would prefer a tax code that incentivizes goods imported and sold in American stores for lower prices. ( ) People say that they would prefer a tax code that incentivizes American manufacturing of goods to be sold in American stores and exported throughout the world." percent chose to incentivize American goods, and 13 percent chose to incentivize foreign goods. The poll was conducted among 1, 000 registered voters from Feb. 20 to Feb. 22 in 14 states and the District of Columbia. percent of the calls were made over landlines, and 44 percent were made on cell phones. The poll carries a 3. 1 percent margin of error with a 95 percent level of confidence. Brady's BAT is not a small piece of the puzzle it is the puzzle. It is estimated that the tax will reassign a macro tax burden by roughly $1 trillion, or about of federal revenues. The legislative lift alone is massive, given that this is the most significant restructuring of the tax code since President Ronald Reagan's 1986 reform. That reform reduced the individual tax code to three brackets, lowered the rates, and eliminated hundreds if not thousands of tax breaks. The BAT's $1 trillion haul then allows conservatives to achieve long overdue items on their agenda, such as the full repeal of the tax on estates, lowering the tax rates on personal and business taxes, and elimination of the tax code's infestation of tax loopholes written in for special interests. Brady said the estimates vary, but it is safe to say that American businesses are sitting on $6 trillion in cash that they were unwilling to use to hire new workers or invest. "Because of President Obama's constant attack on the free enterprise system, businesses didn't feel comfortable unleashing that investment," he said. "Under the Republican blueprint, we allow businesses to immediately write off from their taxes all their new investment, new buildings, new equipment, new technology, and new software," the Texan said. "We'll bring all that investment off the sidelines and inject it right into the US economy," he said. "That's where you are going to see lots of growth as well. " Under the current system, low American trade barriers and the tax rebate other countries offer on exports means that American companies have a solid incentive to move manufacturing overseas and then send their products into the United States as our competitors do. Brady said the BAT equals out that disadvantage and fosters an environment where businesses are comfortable hiring and investing. During the campaign, Trump promised to lower the business tax to 15 percent from its current 35 percent. This rate is one of the highest in the world and creates the conditions for lawmakers to give their friends tax breaks. Were Congress to lower the business tax from 35 percent, there would be less reason to hire lobbyists to secure a tax loophole. One other advantage of lowering the business tax rate is the estimated $2. 5 trillion parked overseas by companies unwilling to pay 35 percent off the top when they bring those profits home — those funds suddenly become reasonable to repatriate, he said. "Those profits, stranded overseas, we want them reinvested in America in new jobs, new research, and new growth. " The chairman said his goal is to have the bill marked up out of committee by the end of spring and signed into law before the end of 2017. "You want to give the Senate plenty of time to act on their tax reform as well," he said. "After 30 years, the prospects of getting tax reform done this year are the best they have ever looked. "


Print  The number of migrants sleeping rough on the streets of Paris has risen by at least a third since the start of the week when the "Jungle" shanty town in Calais was evacuated, officials said.  Along the bustling boulevards and a canal in a northeastern corner of Paris, hundreds of tents have been pitched by migrants – mostly Africans who say they are from Sudan – with cardboard on the ground to try and insulate them from the cold.  While the presence of migrants there is not new, it has grown substantially this week, Colombe Brossel, Paris deputy mayor in charge of security issues, told Reuters. …  Between the Stalingrad and Jaures Paris metro stations, migrants who spent the night camped out on the median strip of a major road, with traffic passing on either side, had scattered on Friday morning, many carrying their tents while police patrolled the center of the boulevard.  Migrants and officials said police checked ID papers and asylum requests and later let the migrants return to the central reservation of the avenue where they put their tents back up.  "There's a lot of new people here," said Mustafa, 21, from Darfur, as he waited on the side of the road.


Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Myanmar President Htin Kyaw on Sunday that China was willing to keep playing a constructive role over the Rakhine state issue, China s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.


After learning that Bill Nye had been very publicly demolishing her new climate change denial movie, Sarah Palin lashed out at the beloved science communicator with the ultimate insult saying he s as dumb as she is.In what might be the most mismatched battle of intellect in history, Palin and Nye have recently gone toe-to-toe over an upcoming documentary meant to prove climate change is a lie called Climate Hustle. The film is produced by infamous right-wing climate denier Marc Morano and is billed as the long-awaited response to Al Gore s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth. Palin, a woman whose catchphrase is Drill, baby, drill is the film s chief promoter.For a brief moment it appeared that Nye would actually get a chance to debate Palin over climate science face-to-face, however the deal quickly fell through. The two sides have been trading barbs online ever since. Nye seemingly put the matter to rest with a final Facebook post in which he explained: Marc Morano did not invite me to his movie but he said I refused to come after he did invite me he was making that up, Nye said in a video posted on his Facebook page. It s disingenuous, at best. Morano did interview Nye and a clip in which he humiliates himself by refusing to put his money where his mouth is with a simple $20,000 bet quickly went viral.Never one to know when to keep her mouth shut, Palin has now jumped into the fray and hilariously tried to attack Nye s credibility by comparing it to her own.As The Hill caught at an event on Capitol Hill:Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, said the man known for his show Bill Nye the Science Guy, is using his position of authority to harm children by teaching them that climate change is real and man-made.Palin said behind the alarmism that the climate is changing is a predetermined and political agenda of those, I think, who are controlling the narrative right now on changes in the weather. The irony of a half-term governor and now reality television star criticizing Bill Nye for his science credentials is rich. And while Nye doesn t currently work as a research scientist, he received a Bachelors of Science from Cornell in mechanical engineering and spent his early career teaching astronomy and ecology courses at the college level. Furthermore, he s been honored with dozens of prestigious awards for his work at being an effective communicator of science (a job that is sorely needed). He s dedicated his life to passing along oftentimes complex scientific ideas in a way that is digestible and fun.In terms of climate science, Nye isn t a leading authority doing the cutting edge research but he listens to the people who are. Palin, of course, hasn t bothered to listen to a scientist once in her career. Instead, she s latched onto Morano, a man who viciously smeared respected climatologists to push his climate denial agenda. Before being humiliated by Nye during his own interview, Morano s last claim to fame was appearing on Fox News to complain that Google was unfairly discriminating against his articles by fact-checking them.Who would you trust?


Atlantic City's mayor said on Tuesday that bankruptcy was "back on the table" after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation considered essential to the distressed gambling hub's tax base and cash flow. "If the state is not able to come up with the funding we need within the next few weeks, we will have no choice but to declare bankruptcy," Mayor Don Guardian said in a statement. The seaside city's gambling industry, facing increased competition from neighboring U.S. Northeastern states, lost four of its 12 casinos in 2015. The legislation called for casinos to make fixed payments in lieu of taxes and would have added a measure of stability to the city's rapidly shrinking property tax base. Lawmakers first passed it in June. Nearly five months later, Christie vetoed it but said he would consider signing it with certain changes he required. The Democratic-led legislature then amended the measure, which was part of a package of bills, passed it, made yet more changes and passed it again. Christie, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, also declined on Tuesday to sign the other bills in the package. The city's emergency manager, Kevin Lavin, who was appointed by Christie a year ago, said in a report on Friday that without the revenues generated in the package, the city's cash flow would run dry by April. Legislative leaders, who have proposed a takeover of the city, will have to reintroduce the bills if they want to keep pushing for them. Democratic Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, whose district includes Atlantic City, said in a statement that Christie's vetoes showed a "brazen disregard" for Atlantic City's fiscal recovery and added he would move forward on measures to restore the region's economic security. Asked why Christie vetoed the bills, the governor's office referred to comments he made on Saturday when he was campaigning in Iowa. "If I don't think the total package makes sense, I won't (sign it)," he said, according to the remarks. He has been discussing "some accommodation on this" with Senate President Steve Sweeney and other legislative leaders. Sweeney, a Democrat, originally championed the legislation but is now pushing for a takeover of the city's operations. "We cannot afford to let Atlantic City go bankrupt," Sweeney said in a statement. "The best way out is for the State of New Jersey to take control of Atlantic City's finances and the best way to do it is to act quickly."


It s pretty much common knowledge that all Mitt Romney s speech against Donald Trump did was serve to help the Republican frontrunner with his band of merry morons voting for him. They, like Trump, see any and all criticism of The Donald as a means to rise up. If Trump is racist, they love him more. If he s misogynistic, he rises in the polls. If he criticizes disabled people, they d give him a medal.So, when you add up all the mean tweets being written by Trump supporters and Trump himself, you can only imagine how many poured in after Romney made his attempt at tearing Trump down. Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Romney read a few of those tweets, and added a few jabs back that were actually pretty funny.Here are just a couple to give you the general idea of what comes out of the Trump campaign and his minions:Mitt Romney had his chance and blew it. Lindsey Graham ran for president, got ZERO, and quit! Why are they now spokesmen against me? Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2016@MittRomney = loser, who are you any way, and by the way where do u buy the shoe polish u wear in ur hair lol #Trump2016 Annette (@arpace4) March 2, 2016I actually met Mitt Romney in a bank a couple months back. I'm now working on a time machine to go back & punch him in the throat!#TRUMP VOTE4TRUMP_2016 (@VOTE4TRUMP_2016) March 4, 2016And while it s clear Donald Trump s skin and his ego are very fragile, kudos to Romney for proving he knows how to take criticism with a grain of salt. That s what one actually has to do when in the public eye. However, Trump turns in to a whining schoolboy destined for revenge and ends up being the class bully.Watch the hilarious segment here: