Six more U.S. senators signed on to support a sweeping Republican tax bill on Friday, leaving only one known Republican opponent - Bob Corker - and virtually assuring the measure would pass despite Democratic opposition. A vote was expected later Friday. Here are the Republican senators who have been pivotal to the bill's fate. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Friday he could not vote for the Senate legislation because of fiscal concerns. In a statement, he said he believed the tax overhaul "could deepen the debt burden on future generations." Corker had stalled momentum on the tax bill on Thursday by demanding Republicans look for more ways to keep the bill from causing the U.S. deficit to balloon. He said Friday he felt it would have been fairly easy to alter the measure in a way that would have been more fiscally sound, but "unfortunately, it is clear that the (Republican) caucus is in a different place." However, Corker said he had told President Donald Trump in a phone call Friday that he would take a close look at the final version of the bill, expected to be produced by a House-Senate conference, before deciding how to vote on it. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated on Thursday that the Republican bill would expand the national debt by $1 trillion over 10 years, far short of assertions by Republicans that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. The moderate senator from Maine announced Friday she will support the tax bill after securing several improvements in the text and getting assurances that other legislation would be advanced to help lower health insurance premiums. Collins dislikes a clause in the bill repealing a fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare's "individual mandate" to obtain health insurance. She said she worried that repealing this fee would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out gains from tax cuts that many constituents might get from the bill. She said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had pledged to help mitigate the effect of the repeal by supporting passage of two other healthcare bills before the end of the year. One would help insurers cover expensive patients; the other would continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins also got three amendments included in the tax bill, including one to keep the state and local property tax deduction of up to $10,000 from federal income tax. This would mirror legislation already passed by the House of Representatives. The Montana Republican signed on to support the bill Friday after having voiced concerns about its treatment of "Main Street" businesses. He said he had won more tax relief for non-corporate pass-through businesses, which include partnerships, sole proprietorships and other non-corporate enterprises. The senator from Wisconsin endorsed the bill after demanding more for pass-throughs. The bill now features a 23 percent tax deduction for such business owners, up from the original 17.4 percent, said statements from Daines and Johnson. The Arizona conservative announced in a statement on Friday he would vote for the bill. He said he had succeeded in eliminating an $85 billion expensing "budget gimmick" and received a firm commitment from Senate leaders and the Trump administration to work on permanent protections for immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children. Oklahoma's Lankford came aboard on Friday after having questioned whether tax revenues from economic growth would compensate for an expected increase in the national debt. He announced on Friday he was voting for the bill. Moran had earlier been wary of its impact on the debt. The Arizona maverick and former presidential candidate announced on Thursday that he would back the tax bill. The senator from Alaska will vote for the tax bill, she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening.


President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey may shut its border with northern Iraq at any moment after closing its air space to the region, Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday, reviving a threat first made after Kurds there voted for independence. We have completely closed our air space to the regional government in northern Iraq, the paper cited Erdogan as telling reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Poland. Talks are continuing on what will be done regarding the land (border) ... We have not shut the border gates yet but this could happen too at any moment, he added. Turkey announced on Monday it was closing its air space to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and said it would work to hand control of the main border crossing into the region to the central Iraqi government. The Habur gate is the main transit point between Turkey and Iraq s semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. A Sept. 25 referendum, in which Kurds in northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, alarmed Baghdad, Iraq s neighbors and Western powers, all of whom feared further regional conflict could arise from the vote. Subsequently Kurdish Peshmerga forces retreated to positions they held in northern Iraq in June 2014 in response to an Iraqi army advance into the region after the referendum, a senior Iraqi commander said on Wednesday. Ankara, which has been battling a three-decade insurgency in its own mainly Kurdish southeast, fears an independent Kurdish state on its borders would heighten separatist tension at home.


Citizen journalism with a punch Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors   War is first and foremost a profitable racket The Nation  Washington, DC, may be the only place in the world where people openly flaunt their pseudo-intellectuality by banding together, declaring themselves "think tanks," and raising money from external interests, including foreign governments, to compile reports that advance policies inimical to the real-life concerns of the American people.  As a former member of the House of Representatives, I remember 16 years of congressional hearings where pedigreed experts came to advocate wars in testimony based on circular, rococo thinking devoid of depth, reality, and truth. I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket.  How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city's so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora's box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC's think "tanks" should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia.  According to the front page of this past Friday's Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of "liberal" hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO.  The think tankers fell in line with the Iraq invasion. Not being in the tank, I did my own analysis of the call for war in October of 2002, based on readily accessible information, and easily concluded that there was no justification for war. I distributed it widely in Congress and led 125 Democrats in voting against the Iraq war resolution. There was no money to be made from a conclusion that war was uncalled for, so, against millions protesting in the United States and worldwide, our government launched into an abyss, with a lot of armchair generals waving combat pennants. The marching band and chowder society of DC think tanks learned nothing from the Iraq and Libya experience.  The only winners were arms dealers, oil companies, and jihadists. Immediately after the fall of Libya, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over a municipal building in Benghazi, Gadhafi's murder was soon to follow, with Secretary Clinton quipping with a laugh, "We came, we saw, he died." President Obama apparently learned from this misadventure, but not the Washington policy establishment, which is spoiling for more war.  The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America's current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on "mission accomplished." CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria.  The Brookings Institute has taken tens of millions from foreign governments , notably Qatar, a key player in the military campaign to oust Assad. Retired four-star Marine general John Allen is now a Brookings senior fellow . Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute , which has received funding from Saudi Arabia , the major financial force providing billions in arms to upend Assad and install a Sunni caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria. Foreign-government money is driving our foreign policy.  As the drumbeat for an expanded war gets louder, Allen and Lister jointly signed an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post, calling for an attack on Syria. The Brookings Institute, in a report to Congress , admitted it received $250,000 from the US Central Command, Centcom, where General Allen shared leadership duties with General David Petraeus.Pentagon money to think tanks that endorse war? This is academic integrity, DC-style.  And why is Central Command, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of transportation, and the US Department of Health and Human Services giving money to Brookings?   Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously told Colin Powell , "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it," predictably says of this current moment , "We do think there needs to be more American action." A former Bush administration top adviser is also calling for the United States to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria.  The American people are fed up with war, but a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria.  The demonization of Russia is a calculated plan to resurrect a raison d'être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination.  It's infectious. Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a fictional show that contemplated WWIII, beginning with a Russian invasion of Latvia (where 26 percent of the population is ethnic Russian and 34 percent of Latvians speak Russian at home).  The imaginary WWIII scenario conjures Russia's targeting London for a nuclear strike. No wonder that by the summer of 2016 a poll showed two-thirds of UK citizens approved the new British PM's launching a nuclear strike in retaliation. So much for learning the lessons detailed in the Chilcot report.  As this year's presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place.  The DC think tanks provide cover for the political establishment, a political safety net, with a fictive analytical framework providing a moral rationale for intervention, capitol casuistry. I'm fed up with the DC policy elite who cash in on war while presenting themselves as experts, at the cost of other people's lives, our national fortune, and the sacred honor of our country.  Any report advocating war that comes from any alleged think tank ought to be accompanied by a list of the think tank's sponsors and donors and a statement of the lobbying connections of the report's authors.  It is our patriotic duty to expose why the DC foreign-policy establishment and its sponsors have not learned from their failures and instead are repeating them, with the acquiescence of the political class and sleepwalkers with press passes.  It is also time for a new peace movement in America, one that includes progressives and libertarians alike, both in and out of Congress, to organize on campuses, in cities, and towns across America, to serve as an effective counterbalance to the Demuplican war party, its think tanks, and its media cheerleaders. The work begins now, not after the Inauguration. We must not accept war as inevitable, and those leaders who would lead us in that direction, whether in Congress or the White House, must face visible opposition.


In the middle of Marilyn Oshman's otherwise cozy apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, between an antique candelabra, curtains and framed family photos, was a hospital bed. "I was dying," Mrs. Oshman, 85, said. "I felt like I was in a prison in that lousy hospital bed. I couldn't get out. " She was bedridden and unable to walk because of venous stasis and cellulitis, a painful bacterial infection that covered the lower half of her body with large, sores. Ordinary tasks, like getting out of bed every morning, became impossible. It was a drastic setback for someone who loved to move around on her own. As a child born and raised on Monroe Street on the Lower East Side, she loved exploring the city by foot. When she was 20, she had a job at a toy factory on Broadway, and it was there that she met her husband, David Oshman. They divorced in the late 1980s after 35 years of marriage, but Mrs. Oshman recounted fond memories of their active, early years together: Dancing the jitterbug on Fridays and Sundays at a club on the Lower East Side ("And he was some jitterbug dancer!" she said) fishing for pogies off a Coney Island pier and when they had children, a son and a daughter, taking family vacations to the mountains. Most of all, though, she said she loved doing the simpler things around the house: washing the walls, scrubbing the floors and cooking her favorite Jewish delicacies, stuffed cabbage and pot roast. But her health took a bad turn around 50 and deteriorated over the last three decades. For the last two years, Mrs. Oshman has made many trips between Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital at 16th Street and First Avenue, and Gouverneur Health on the Lower East Side, and then back to her apartment. "Two years of hell," she said. "And I mean hell. " The back and forth became so strenuous that her doctor helped Mrs. Oshman get a hospital bed — not the centerpiece she would have preferred — so that she could receive medical care in her apartment. She was home, but she was miserable she could not lie comfortably in the new bed and often resorted to sleeping upright in a wheelchair. The ordeal became a dangerous cycle: She struggled to stand on her own, meaning she spent more time bedridden and immobile, which intensified the swelling, redness and pain. "I don't want money, I don't want jewelry," Mrs. Oshman said, glancing at her still swollen legs, wrapped in compression socks. She added, through tears: "The only thing I want, at this stage in my life, is to be able to walk again. " Over the summer, Mrs. Oshman's doctor recommended a special recliner that could help her stand up, but Mrs. Oshman could not afford it. Every month she receives $1, 251 in Social Security benefits and $180 in food stamps, which is not enough to cover her monthly grocery bills. She pays $406 a month to Medicaid for the home care services, and $350 monthly toward her apartment. She was 62 when she retired from Citibank, where she was a greeter and an assistant to bankers, after she got too sick to continue working. Mrs. Oshman left with no retirement savings and does not receive financial support from her children. She has been getting help from the Educational Alliance, an organization that offers a social service program for people over 60. The Educational Alliance is a beneficiary agency of of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. When the Alliance learned of Mrs. Oshman's need for the recliner, the group used $799 from the Neediest funds to buy it. It arrived in August. "This chair saved my life, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that," Mrs. Oshman said. "I was suffering with the hospital bed, and because of this chair, I'm able to walk again. It's a blessing. I'm doing more for myself than I ever did. I'm changing myself. " She has had to relearn tasks once taken for granted: standing up on her own, dressing herself and getting into the kitchen. "I'm living since I got this chair," she said, tilting it up and down. It even has a massage function and heated seats. "What should we name it?" she asked, referring to the chair draped in a bright purple sheet and blanket. Mrs. Oshman has been able to get out of the apartment more in recent months than she ever did during the last few years. She is again walking the streets of the Lower East Side, where she grew up. "I was a familiar face around the neighborhood then, and until this day, I still am," she said. "I was away from here for two years, and when the aide took me downstairs one day recently, people stopped me in the street saying, 'What happened to you? Where were you?' And all I said was, 'I'm back. '"


Food Stamp use has miraculously gone down in several states! It s a miracle! In 13 Alabama counties, food stamp use went down a whopping 85%!When Obama took out the welfare-to-work requirement, the use of food stamps skyrocketed to nearly 45 million Americans! That s 1 in every 7 US citizens using food stamps! Now that the Trump administration has vowed to reduce the use, it s interesting to see that people jump off of assistance when the work requirement is put back in.Georgia and Alabama have seen a sharp decrease in food stamp use with the work requirement back in:Georgia:More than half of the 11,779 people enrolled for food stamps in 21 counties, an estimated 7,251 people, have dropped out of the food stamp program a drop of 62 percent, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.Georgia first rolled out its work requirements for the food stamp program in three counties in January 2016. Since then, the state has expanded work requirements in an additional 21 counties, giving people in those 21 counties until April 1, 2017 to find a job or lose food stamp benefits. Via: BNALABAMA:Thirteen previously exempted Alabama counties saw an 85 percent drop in food stamp participation after work requirements were put in place on Jan. 1, according to the Alabama Department of Human Resources.The counties Greene, Hale, Perry, Dallas, Lowndes, Wilcox, Monroe, Conecuh, Clarke, Washington, Choctaw, Sumter and Barbour had been exempt from a change that limited able-bodied adults without dependents to three months of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits within a three-year time frame unless they were working or participating in an approved training program.During the economic downturn of 2011-2013, several states including Alabama waived the SNAP work requirements in response to high unemployment. It was reinstituted for 54 counties on Jan. 1, 2016 and for the remaining 13 on Jan. 1, 2017. As of April 2017, the highest jobless rate among the 13 previously excluded counties was in Wilcox County, which reported a state-high unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, down more than 11 percentage points from the county s jobless rate for the same month of 2011.Ending the exemption has dramatically cut the number of SNAP recipients in the counties.As of Jan. 1, 2017, there were 13,663 able-bodied adults without dependents receiving food stamps statewide. That number dropped to 7,483 by May 1, 2017. Among the 13 counties, there were 5,538 adults ages 18-50 without dependents receiving food stamps as of Jan. 1, 2017. That number dropped to 831 a decline of about 85 percent by May 1, 2017. Based on the trend, the number of (able-bodied adults without dependents) recipients for SNAP benefits is expected to continue to decline statewide and in the formerly 13 exempted counties, according to Alabama DHR spokesperson John Hardy.Statewide, the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamps has fallen by almost 35,000 people since Jan. 1, 2016. Each recipient receives about $126 a month in benefits.Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The Trump administration has vowed to cut the food stamp rolls over the next decade, including ensuring that able-bodied adults recipients are working.


A thousand metaphysical miles from the Olympic zone, a couple of activists and I entered the Favela do Mandela, a ramshackle collection of buildings. We walked a narrow road ringed by young men, which led to a narrower one, which led to a alleyway. We found the home of Marie Auxiliadora. With blond hair brushed back, she was a diminutive eruption of joy. She apologized for her modest home, scrubbed and packed with crucifixes and plastic flowers and pastel curtains. She wore a sun dress and pink . Although morning gunfire had earlier forced her to hide in her bedroom, she insisted hers had been a good life. She noted she had four beautiful adult children, thank God. On her television, we watched demonstrators protest the presence of the Olympic torch on the day before the Olympics started. She pursed her lips and put her hands over her chest. "I am so upset," she said. Her eyes turned . "I have not gotten my retirement check for a month. Our hospitals and schools are broken. Shooting every day, and they spend all of our money on this Olympics. "The rich play, and we die. " Seen from the northern and western precincts of Rio de Janeiro, which sprawl inland from the green Tijuca forest and the coastal mountain spine, the Olympics inhabit a foreign and wealthy world. In two days of wandering through favelas and neighborhoods, I found Olympic excitement an often extinguished fire. Graffiti and signs draped across walls by labor activists document the Games' huge cost to a wounded city. Olympic torchbearers jogged into several neighborhoods and left sprinting, chased by angry residents. Outrage is not difficult to understand. Billionaire developers and media magnates have made a fortune off the Olympics bribe and corruption investigations arising from these Games are a growth industry, with construction companies and hundreds of congressional deputies potentially in the dock. An extremely expensive subway was built to run the length of this city's south coast from Copacabana to the Olympic site. A forest of towers to house athletes rose on publicly owned land afterward, the developer will turn these into luxury housing. On the route from the international airport to the south shore, Olympic organizers put up colorful walls so that visitors could not see the favelas. The International Olympic Committee's chieftain, Thomas Bach, proclaimed the Rio Games a grand success last week. I wondered at the quality of his eyes. To write of pain is to take nothing from the Brazilians, who are gracious hosts and exuberant fans, crowding the waterfront of Copacabana for beach volleyball. Grand athletic achievement is inspiring, and these athletes, the world's greatest, deserve applause. But the practiced I. O. C. shakedown of cities, the demands that local officials compete to construct obscenely expensive stadiums and news media centers and to guarantee that tourist zones have been swept of the desperate, has rarely looked more problematic. Rio is all but bankrupt. Teachers have gone months without pay. Retirees are months behind on pension checks. University professors gather to mop floors and empty overflowing garbage cans. I talked to a hospital administrator in a northern neighborhood who asked that I not use his name for fear he might lose his job. Officials had instructed him, he said, to reserve beds in overcrowded wards and to put aside medicines, such as blood pressure pills, for Olympic tourists. His hospital received a new ambulance to serve the Olympics. I traveled this day in the company of Anderson Franca, a sturdy, bearded activist, writer and researcher, and his wife, Suelen Masiero. Anderson sees a bill of lading for decades of neglect come due. "In a way, the Olympics are to be congratulated," he says. "The contradictions of this city are emerging faster and more dramatically. " Later, we will put the question of the Olympics to Geovane Prince, a muscular, tattooed photographer in the Mandela favela. He has created a thriving studio and travels about the city. He shakes his head before I get the question out. "All the corruption, the suffering, there is too much pain," he says. "We protest. To keep building giant arenas in the wealthy zone? We are sick of investing in this. " Violence is a caldron still boiling and cannot be separated from this Olympic antipathy. In advance of the 2014 World Cup and now the Olympics, the police and the military pushed at the point of semiautomatic rifles and armored cars into hundreds of favelas in brutal pacification campaigns. Homicides dropped significantly but spiked again this year. New York City recorded 350 murders in 2015. Rio de Janeiro, a state with roughly double the population of New York City, recorded 461 murders in April 2016 alone. The police were responsible for of all murders in Rio last year, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. At 8:30 a. m. last week, we traveled toward the Complexo do Alemão favela, which sprawls across four hills. We stopped at a traffic light. . I tilted my head it sounded like firecrackers, except not really. The driver in the car next to ours rolled his eyes. The paramilitaries and drug gangs, he said through his open window, shoot early this morning. "You see that hill?" Franca, the activist and my guide this day, said as he pointed toward a green mountain ridge. Tumbledown homes climbed its slopes azure skies rose above. Those were the Mercy Hills. "They found a mass grave with dozens of bodies. No names. " I talked later to a woman who owned a modest grocery store on another hillside in this favela. She cradled her baby granddaughter. "No one can even get together to watch a game," she said. "The occupation is too dangerous. " Hers was an often repeated observation. Residents want peace, but they harbor no particular rooting interest in the army or the drug gangs or the paramilitaries composed of retired cops: All armies are lethal. We scrambled up a hardscrabble path to the new police precinct that commands the hill like a medieval castle keep. Inside, three police officers in body armor nodded warily. They pointed to one, two, three bullet holes in the glass windows of the precinct, each the size of a ball the police attack, and the gangs counterattack. The precinct wall is dominated by a painting of a knight kneeling and holding his sword, accompanied by these words: "You may die, but if you don't fight, you're already dead. " The precinct commander walked in, a semiautomatic rifle strapped to his chest. "You should not stay here — go back to the Olympics," he said. "Shooting is anytime. " Officials cut several bus lines that run north to south during the Olympics, in hope of keeping gangs from invading the tourist zones of Copacabana and Ipanema and the central business district. Many tens of thousands of Cariocas, as natives of Rio are known, spend two and a half to three hours commuting to distant jobs, journeys made far more arduous during the Games. Anderson's mother lives in a favela. She is in her ninth decade and has never visited the white sand beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. The city's public safety director talks about the disaster that could await when the Olympics end and soldiers withdraw from the tourist zones. The next day, I talked with Carla Maria Avesani, a young professor at the Rio de Janeiro state university. She has a Ph. D. and runs a nutrition institute at the University of Rio de Janeiro. She serves on the board of a prestigious journal and writes for an international audience of academics. She studies how changes in diet help poor patients on dialysis and those with heart problems. It was her dream to work at a public university with a mission. Now she and her fellow professors pool their Brazilian reais to buy computers and paper towels, and to fix doors. They try to figure out what to do about the broken elevator. Their university is broke, its pockets turned out. She lives in an neighborhood, with good restaurants and that Mediterranean climate. The evening atmosphere, with young couples hand in hand, calls to mind Rome, except with enormous rock faces nearby and an ocean lapping at your feet. She watched the opening ceremony, all the brilliant choreographies, and read her friends' proud posts on Facebook. She could not join them. "It was a beautiful party we Brazilians do wonderful parties," Avesani said. "But to see the amount of money spent for stupid stadiums, I don't want to celebrate when the state is broke and hospitals are closing and the poor are dying by the thousands. " She paused. "It's nice to see so many foreigners, and I want you to be happy. I want to be happy. " She sighed. "I would be happiest now if the world sees how we are living. I feel absolutely offended by these Olympics. "


Bernie Sanders supporters have been in an uproar about the Democratic National Committee s rules for primaries, specifically the use of superdelegates. A superdelegate is someone chosen by the party to represent their interests in a given state. They are unpledged, meaning they are able to vote for whoever they choose at the convention. Bernie Sanders supporters, especially the Bernie or Bust crowd those who pledge to stay home or vote for Trump if Hillary gets the nomination have decided that the use of superdelegates circumvents the democratic process, making it impossible for anyone but an establishment Democratic candidate to win.Let s put that into perspective real quick: If the RNC had the same rules they wouldn t be forced to nominate Donald Trump.Superdelegates act in the best interest of the party. There was a candidate in 2008 who learned first-hand that superdelegates can make or break a candidacy. Her name was Hillary Clinton. The expected nominee from the start of the primary season, Clinton found herself face-to-face with the up and coming Barack Obama, whose candidacy didn t truly flourish until half of the state primaries were over. As he gained in popularity and it became clear that he was the right choice for America to succeed Dubya, those corrupt superdelegates, tasked with securing the best interest of the party, began switching their support to Obama, who was ultimately nominated by quorum call on the convention floor by none other than Hillary Clinton.That s the way these things work. Bernie or Bust may be upset that all those independent voters didn t get to just walk into a Democratic primary and vote, but it really isn t anyone s fault but their own that they don t know the party rules. Primaries aren t general elections; they re nominating processes controlled by the parties. Make no mistake: If Bernie Sanders were in the lead or it looked like he was going to pull ahead, those superdelegates would shift their support and make sure the nominee was someone the registered voters of the party want to support.When Clinton was faced with the exact same scenario in 2008, she wrote a letter to the superdelegates of the party with one last plea for support. Her arguments include things like who polled better against the GOP, who had spent more years arguing progressive causes and who was ultimately more qualified to execute the office of the president:Dear ___________,The stakes in this election are so high: with two wars abroad, our economy in crisis here at home, and so many families struggling across America, the need for new leadership has never been greater.At this point, we do not yet have a nominee and when the last votes are cast on June 3, neither Senator Obama nor I will have secured the nomination. It will be up to automatic delegates like you to help choose our party s nominee, and I would like to tell you why I believe I am the stronger candidate against Senator McCain and would be the best President and Commander in Chief.Voters in every state have made it clear that they want to be heard and counted as part of this historic race. And as we reach the end of the primary season, more than 17 million people have supported me in my effort to become the Democratic nominee more people than have ever voted for a potential nominee in the history of our party. In the past two weeks alone, record numbers of voters participated in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries. And with 40 and 35 point margins of victory, it is clear that even when voters are repeatedly told this race is over, they re not giving up on me and I am not giving up on them either.After seven years of feeling invisible to the Bush administration, Americans are seeking a President who is strong, experienced, and ready to take on our toughest challenges, from serving as Commander in Chief and ending the war in Iraq to turning our economy around. They want a President who shares their core beliefs about our country and its future and gets what they go through every day to care for their families, pay the bills and try to put something away for the future.We simply cannot afford another four or eight years in the wilderness. That is why, everywhere I go, people come up to me, grip my hand or arm, and urge me to keep on running. That is why I continue in this race: because I believe I am best prepared to lead this country as President and best prepared to put together a broad coalition of voters to break the lock Republicans have had on the electoral map and beat Senator McCain in November.Recent polls and election results show a clear trend: I am ahead in states that have been critical to victory in the past two elections. From Ohio, to Pennsylvania, to West Virginia and beyond, the results of recent primaries in battleground states show that I have strong support from the regions and demographics Democrats need to take back the White House. I am also currently ahead of Senator McCain in Gallup national tracking polls, while Senator Obama is behind him. And nearly all independent analyses show that I am in a stronger position to win the Electoral College, primarily because I lead Senator McCain in Florida and Ohio. I ve enclosed a detailed analysis of recent electoral and polling information, and I hope you will take some time to review it carefully.In addition, when the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee the one who would be the best President and Commander in Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people will have cast their votes for me.I am in this race for them for all the men and women I meet who wake up every day and work hard to make a difference for their families. People who deserve a shot at the American dream the chance to save for college, a home and retirement; to afford quality health care for their families; to fill the gas tank and buy the groceries with a little left over each month.I am in this race for all the women in their nineties who ve told me they were born before women could vote, and they want to live to see a woman in the White House. For all the women who are energized for the first time, and voting for the first time. For the little girls and little boys whose parents lift them onto their shoulders at our rallies, and whisper in their ears, See, you can be anything you want to be. As the first woman ever to be in this position, I believe I have a responsibility to them.Finally, I am in this race because I believe staying in this race will help unite the Democratic Party. I believe that if Senator Obama and I both make our case and all Democrats have the chance to make their voices heard everyone will be more likely to rally around the nominee.In the end, I am committed to unifying this party. What Senator Obama and I share is so much greater than our differences; and no matter who wins this nomination, I will do everything I can to bring us together and move us forward.But at this point, neither of us has crossed the finish line. I hope that in the time remaining, you will think hard about which candidate has the best chance to lead our party to victory in November. I hope you will consider the results of the recent primaries and what they tell us about the mindset of voters in the key battleground states. I hope you will think about the broad and winning coalition of voters I have built. And most important, I hope you will think about who is ready to stand on that stage with Senator McCain, fight for the deepest principles of our party, and lead our country forward into this new century.The letter was followed by 11 pages of statistics showing that even though she was behind, the race wasn t over. In the end it was the support of superdelegates that gave Obama the clear win.As a Bernie Sanders supporter, I would love to see the last melee of primaries go his way. A big win in California and a couple of other states and there s a chance Bernie becomes the best choice for the party, at which time he can realistically try to woo the superdelegates away from Clinton. If Hillary can hang on and secure the nomination, those of us who care about the future of our country will put our full support behind her.Featured image by NBC Newswire/Getty Images


More than 42 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 59 are infected with genital human papillomavirus, according to the first survey to look at the prevalence of the virus in the adult population. The report, published on Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics, also found that certain strains of the virus infected 25. 1 percent of men and 20. 4 percent of women. These strains account for approximately 31, 000 cases of cancer each year, other studies have shown. Two vaccines are effective in preventing sexually transmitted HPV infection, and researchers said the new data lend urgency to the drive to have adolescents vaccinated. "If we can get and to get the vaccine, we'll make some progress," said Geraldine McQuillan, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lead author of the new report. "You need to give it before kids become sexually active, before they get infected," Dr. McQuillan said. "By the time they're in their people are infected and it's too late. This is a vaccine against cancer — that's the message. " (Do you have questions about HPV? Read some answers here.) She and her colleagues also found that 7. 3 percent of Americans ages 18 to 69 were infected orally with HPV, and 4 percent were infected with the strains that can cause cancers of the mouth and pharynx. HPV is a ubiquitous virus, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. About 40 strains of the virus are sexually transmitted, and virtually all sexually active individuals are exposed to it by their early 20s. The virus usually is spread through direct contact with infected genital skin or mucuous membranes during intercourse or oral sex. Over 90 percent of HPV infections are cleared by the body within two years. The figures released today were a snapshot of the prevalence of active oral HPV infection from 2011 through 2014, and active genital infection in 2013 and 2014. Sometimes, the virus persists in the body. Chronic infections with certain strains can lead to genital warts and cancers of the cervix, vagina, penis, anus and throat. Two viral strains, and cause almost all cervical cancers. "One of the most striking things that we really want people to know is that HPV is common — common in the general population," Dr. McQuillan said. While the C. D. C. recommends routine screening for cervical cancer for all women ages 21 to 65, adults are not routinely screened for HPV infection itself. Indeed, there is no HPV test for men. (A test for women is sometimes used in conjunction with a Pap screen for cervical cancer.) There were significant differences in rates of genital HPV infection by race and ethnicity, Dr. McQuillan and her colleagues found. The highest rate, 33. 7 percent, was found among blacks the lowest, 11. 9 percent, among Asians. The prevalence of genital HPV infection was 21. 6 percent among whites and 21. 7 percent among Hispanics. Men generally have somewhat higher rates than women, but among Asian and Hispanic men, the infections are not significantly more common. The reasons for these variations are not known.


During a recent appearance on Good Morning Britain, Donald Trump made several claims about Muslims that are, perhaps unsurprisingly to most people, completely bogus. During the interview, Trump claimed that one of the biggest challenges in the fight against terrorism is that good Muslims are withholding information about terrorist plots. It s like they re protecting each other, Trump said during the interview. They have to report the bad ones. And if you report the bad ones, then all of a sudden you re not going to have the problems. Here s the interview:This statement does not hold up to empirical evidence. Muslims do in fact quit often turn in radical extremists. Vox reports: In 2014, University of North Carolina sociologist Charles Kurzman identified 188 cases since 9/11 where the police had publicly identified a Muslim American as a suspected terrorist and disclosed where the initial tip came from. Of those 188, 54 individuals were brought to the government s attention via tips from members of the Muslim-American community. Muslim Americans were the single largest source of tips identified in Kurzman s study. To further illustrate the stupidity of Trump s claims, let s look at some other facts. Trump is implying that it is the Muslim population s responsibility to report problems to the authorities. By doing so he is placing responsibility for the actions of terrorists on Muslim communities shoulders.There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. That s about 23% of the world s entire population. Only about 3.3 million Muslims lives in the United States. During this interview, and for the entirety of his campaign, Trump has been using nearly a quarter of the world s population as a political scapegoat. The reality is that the Islamic State and other terror groups are followers of Salafi Jihadism. They are a relatively tiny cult of extremists, that mainly live in concentrated geographic regions.The chance that a Muslim person would actually know a Jihadist is pretty slim. The odds that they might stumble upon information about a possible terror plot is even slimmer. When we take that into account, and we look at the number of tips that come from Muslims about possible terror attacks since 9/11 it becomes quite clear that Muslims do almost always turn in information regarding possible terrorist activities when they come across it and they know what they have come across.It s almost as if Muslims almost always do the reasonable thing that anyone would do if they were in that situation.Of course, none of this will probably matter to Trump or his followers. If he says he saw a video of Muslims cheering in New Jersey after 9/11, that s what they saw too. Featured image from video screenshot


Common sense is prevailing in Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union, France s foreign minister said on Friday, as he welcomed signs that talks were moving into a new phase after an initial breakthrough. The European Commission said on Friday enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations with Britain and that a second phase of discussions should begin, ending an impasse over the status of the Irish border. The work that has been done on negotiations ... is gradually leading us to common sense, Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio. We wanted the conditions for (Britain s) withdrawal to be clearly defined to be able to move into another phase. That s what s going to happen now, I hope.


Next Prev Swipe left/right A group of incredibly talented schoolkids play an excellent version of the Luke Cage theme Luke Cage theme co-writer Adrian Younge shared this Instagram video of a group of schoolkids doing an incredible cover of the title music from the Netflix series – the kid in the hoody especially seems to be really into it. A video posted by Adrian Younge (@adrianyounge) on Nov 1, 2016 at 6:06pm PDT


A microphone guy who worked on The Apprentice just came forward to tell the world that Donald Trump often referred to him as a f*cking monkey. According to Buzzfeed News, the sound engineer is white, but he wanted his story to be heard without his name being released, because apparently, Trump was quite a monster to him and to many others, including to women whom he sexually harassed.He told Buzzfeed: Micing him was honestly the most abusive, humiliating, experience of my fifteen years as a sound engineer. He treated me like I wasn t a human being. In fact, there were several times Trump would refer to him as a f*cking monkey. Trump would say: Woah, woah woah, who s this fucking monkey? As well as: I m not gonna let this fucking monkey touch me unless he washes his hands. Then he would be monitored by Trump s assistant to make sure he went and washed his hands.He also told Buzzfeed: Trump just kept calling me a f*cking monkey over and over. I ve mic d everyone from Ben Affleck to Ren e Zellweger, and never, ever in my career have I run into something like that. Apparently, working for him was pretty much one of the worst gigs in town. He was a monster to many, many people, including several women he would sexually harass. And after listening to Trump on the released Access Hollywood tapes, that is very, very easy to believe.Trump is not a person who should be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. He s a racist and misogynistic egomaniac who seems to have a short temper while having none of the required experience to be leader of the free world.Something tells me there will be more and more of these stories coming out as we get closer to election day, and hopefully, it will be the icing on the cake to make sure he s never, ever elected president.Featured Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images


Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis, FunkSoul (21WIRE & ACR contributor), Randy J (ACR contributor) and Andy Nowicki, author of Conspiracy, Compliance, Control & Defiance, for the hundred and seventh episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club. This week on the show we re side stepping politics and talking about movies, Hollywood, Aliens, Elf-men and paradigm shifts brought on be technological innovation!Direct Download Episode #108Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!Reference Links:


Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to renegotiate or scrap longstanding global trade deals are not protectionist and are more focused on winning better terms for American businesses, the top executive of United Parcel Service (UPS.N) said on Thursday. "I have to tell you, we don't consider what we are hearing from the president as protectionist," Chief Executive Officer David Abney told Reuters in a phone interview after the world's largest package delivery company reported a higher-than-expected second-quarter net profit. "Protectionist would be 'we don't want trade agreements' and just try to protect the U.S. in that regard," he added. "It's much more about having more favorable terms than it is about protectionism." Abney's remarks come as the Trump administration nears the August 16 start of talks with Mexico and Canada to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trump has repeatedly called the 1994 trade treaty a "disaster" that has shuttered U.S. factories and sent American jobs to Mexico. UPS has been expanding its services into Mexico. Ahead of NAFTA negotiations, Abney said UPS has told the Trump administration it wants to "take friction" out of border crossings to speed them up and modernize the agreement with language about ecommerce. "I'd be more worried if there were no changes to the deal," he said, adding that NAFTA needs to be modernized. "We believe that we've been listened to." In a conference call with analysts earlier on Thursday, Abney praised a free trade pact Japan and the European Union concluded in early July creating the world's biggest open economic area. The CEO also reiterated UPS' previous strong support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and a desire to see the U.S. enter into trade agreements with its member countries. The Japan-EU trade deal was interpreted as signaling resistance to what many world leaders see protectionism by Trump. On the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump has championed "America First" policy positions on trade, promising new or revised deals to boost American manufacturing. In January, shortly after taking office, Trump formally withdrew America from the TPP. The 12-nation trade deal was negotiated by former Democratic President Barack Obama's administration. UPS on Thursday reported a higher-than-expected quarterly net profit due to rising ecommerce deliveries even as investors worried about the company's performance in the back-half of the year and shares fell 4.6 percent.


A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered that all videotaped depositions in a lawsuit over Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's private email server remain sealed, The Hill newspaper reported. In a brief order on Thursday evening, Judge Emmet Sullivan granted the request of lawyers for Clinton's ex-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, who had worried that video clips of her interview could be used for political purposes, according to The Hill. And Sullivan went further, ordering all videotaped depositions to remain sealed until he ordered otherwise, the newspaper said.


Democratic U.S. congressman John Conyers faced increasing pressure to resign on Wednesday, with the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives saying he should step aside if sexual harassment accusations against him were true. With Congress in session, Conyers returned to his home district in Detroit on Tuesday. He has been accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward women who worked for him. The latest accusation was reported by the Detroit News, which cited a former staffer as saying Conyers sexually harassed her three times between 1997 and 1999. Conyers, 88, has denied the accusations and said he would cooperate with a House Ethics Committee investigation. Asked if Conyers was planning to resign, his attorney Arnold Reed told Reuters, "No." The Detroit News earlier quoted Reed as saying, "He's not going to be forced out of office, and no one has told him he has to leave." "Notwithstanding the credibility of the witnesses, we have a process to determine were these allegations founded? And if they're founded, yes, he should resign," Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said in an interview with MSNBC. Conyers' office did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. The Michigan lawmaker has stepped down as the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee pending the outcome of the ethics investigation. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said it was up to Conyers to decide if he should resign from the chamber. "I know what I would do if this happened to me. I will leave it up to him to decide what he wants to do. I think he made the right decision in stepping down from his leadership position," Ryan said. The House on Wednesday passed a resolution requiring members and their staff to take annual training on sexual harassment. A bipartisan group of House members also introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of public funds to settle sexual harassment claims against members, and require all previously made payments to be made public. Conyers and his wife Monica left their house in Detroit in separate vehicles on Wednesday. He did not talk to reporters who had gathered outside. Some of Conyers' colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus have been privately pressing him to resign, according to Democratic aides. Representative Joe Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, said he believed that in Michigan, Conyers was "taking counsel from his family as well as his constituents." "And I believe at the end of the day the right thing will be done. I think accountability will be had," Crowley told a news briefing. Democratic Representative Linda Sanchez said lawmakers were trying to pursue a fair process for both sides. "It appears that there's more than one complainant, which does heighten my sense of 'there may be something there,'" Sanchez said, adding that she could not call for Conyers' resignation unless she has heard all the evidence. Sexual harassment accusations have been made against a number of public figures in recent weeks, including former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama and Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.


Donald Trump on "The Apprentice": The false values of reality TV have been carried over into the current presidential race. (NBC)  There is no shortage of signs of impending environmental catastrophe, including the melting of the polar ice caps and the rise of atmospheric carbon to above 400 parts per million . The planet's sixth mass extinction is underway. It is not taking place because of planetary forces. Homo sapiens is orchestrating it. We are at the same time bankrupting ourselves by waging endless and unwinnable wars. We have allowed our elites to push more than half the U.S. population into poverty and, often, profound despair through deindustrialization. We do nothing to halt the waves of nihilistic violence by enraged citizens who carry out periodic mass shootings in schools, malls, movie theaters and other public places. The political and financial elites flaunt their greed and corruption. Donald Trump appears to pay no federal income taxes. Bill and Hillary Clinton use their foundation as a tool for legalized bribery. Our largest corporations have orchestrated a legal tax boycott. The judicial system is a subsidiary of the corporate state. Militarized police carry out public executions of unarmed people of color. Our infrastructure, including our schools, roads and bridges, along with our deindustrialized cities, are in ruins. Decay and rot—physical and moral—are pervasive.  We are blinded to our depressing reality by the avalanche of images disseminated by mass media. Political, intellectual and cultural discourse has been replaced with spectacle. Emotionalism and sensationalism are prized over truth. Highly paid pundits who parrot back the official narrative, corporate advertisers, inane talk shows, violent or sexually explicit entertainment and gossip-fueled news have contaminated cultural life. Reality television, as contrived as every other form of mass entertainment, has produced what might be called a reality presidential candidate.  Mass culture, because it speaks to us in easily digestible clichés and stereotypes, reinforces ignorance, bigotry and racism. It promotes our individual and collective self-glorification. It sanctifies nonexistent national virtues. It takes from us the intellectual and linguistic tools to separate illusion from truth. It is all show business all the time.  Advertisement Square, Site wide  There are hundreds of millions of Americans who know that something is terribly wrong. A light has gone out. They see it in their own suffering and hopelessness and the suffering and hopelessness of their neighbors. But they lack, because of the contamination of our political, cultural and intellectual discourse, the words and ideas to make sense of what is happening around them. They are bereft of a vision. Austerity, globalization, unfettered capitalism, an expansion of the extraction of fossil fuels and endless war are not the price to be paid for progress and the advance of civilization. They are part of the savage and deadly exploitation by corporate capitalism and imperialism. They serve a neoliberal ideology . The elites dare not speak this truth. It is toxic. They peddle the seductive illusions that saturate the airwaves. We are left to strike out at shadows. We are enticed to succumb to the racism, allure of white supremacy and bigotry that always accompanies a culture in dissolution.  We cannot, for this reason, discount the possibility that Donald Trump will be elected president. The election outcome will be decided by whatever emotion Americans feel when they cast their ballots.  Celebrity narratives, manufactured pseudo-drama, sex scandals, natural disasters, insults and invective, mass shootings and war flash before us in a constant jumble of images on ubiquitous screens. The assault of images obliterates reality. A former congressman who sends a picture of himself in underwear to a woman is a national news story. Sober examinations of our economic, foreign, judicial and environmental policies are dismissed as too complicated and boring. It does not produce engaging images. The electronic media's sole goal is to attract viewers and advertising dollars. It has conditioned us to demand an endless vaudeville act.  We are infected because of this mass indoctrination by what Daniel Boorstin in " The Image : A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" calls "social narcissism." The bottomless narcissism of Trump and Bill and Hillary Clinton cater to this social narcissism. They reflect back to us our desperate longing for, as well as celebration of, entertainment, celebrity, wealth, power and self-aggrandizement. It is not only advertising and public relations, as Boorstin points out, that carries out the incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed social narcissism. Journalists, book publishers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, positive psychologists, self-help gurus, the Christian Right and talk show hosts all feed the mania for illusion. They all chant the insane mantra that reality is never an impediment to what we desire. We can have anything we want if we work hard, get an education, believe in ourselves, grasp that we are exceptional and believe the impossible is always possible. It is magical thinking. And magical thinking is the only real commodity the elites have left offer to us. Make American Great Again. Or America already is great. Take your pick of idiotic clichés.  "We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world," Boorstin writes. "We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid."  The incessant search for instant gratification and the most appealing image, including the image of ourselves we manufacture for others on social media, has robbed us of the ability to examine ourselves and our society. It has extinguished the truth. The terminal decline of the American empire, the utter incompetence of our elites to manage everything from the ecosystem to the economy and foreign policy, the climate crisis, along with the widespread poverty and despair that defines over half of America, do not fit with the illusion. So these realities are blotted from public consciousness. The poor are rendered invisible. The climate crisis is ignored. The foreign policy debacles will be fixed with more bombs. A culture that can no longer discern or confront reality is unable to reform itself and dies. Only the Soviet and fascist dictatorships, along with the medieval Catholic Church, controlled thought as effectively.


White House officials are now saying Trump won t make a trip to England this summer after a hurried, secret plan to sneak the president into the country was leaked to the English press causing widespread outrage.Trump s unpopularity in the United Kingdom is legendary, and his aversion to protesters has caused him to refuse to visit the nation until they can guarantee there won t be mass protests. But his staff apparently came up with a gamble that would allow him to meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May while avoiding the backlash. Unfortunately for him, it fell through almost immediately.Trump wanted to visit his golf course in Scotland (because, of course) while he was in Europe for the G20 meeting and the plan was to have him quietly pop over to London so he could meet with May. To avoid any chance of protests, Trump s staff is said to have warned British officials that the president would only be giving 24-hour notice before dropping by. This way, they reasoned, protesters wouldn t even know he was in the country before he was leaving again.Whitehall sources confirmed the government had been warned that the president could visit Turnberry, one of his two golf resorts in Scotland, during his trip to Europe, between attending the G20 summit in Hamburg and joining celebrations for Bastille Day in France on 14 July.Trump would be expected to come to Downing Street to meet the prime minister for informal talks as part of any such visit, though final confirmation would be likely to be given with just 24 hours notice to minimise the risk of disruption.But like everything with Trump s flailing administration, the plan leaked to the press and protesters vowed to be ready, even at short notice.So the White House is back to saying he won t be visiting our ally after all. At least not this summer.A spokeswoman for the US president said on Monday that no trip was imminent, amid mounting speculation that Trump was planning to make an unofficial visit to the UK on his way to or from the G20 summit in Hamburg this week. While we look forward to visiting the UK, it will not happen in the next two weeks, the spokeswoman said.It s doubtful that the White House s denials are going to make any would-be protesters put their guard down. The Trump administration has such a deep reputation of lying, that a denial from them means absolutely nothing. It s likely that angry English citizens will gather at Trump s Scottish golf course while Trump is in Europe juussstttt in case. And Trump has a notoriously hard time resisting a game of golf.Meanwhile, Trump is getting ready to meet his on-again, off-again friend Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit. His advisers told CNN that the president is not planning to bring up the fact that Russia hacked the U.S. elections. Nevertheless, it will certainly be the elephant in the room.


"From the start," Hillary Clinton declared today in Reno, "Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He has taken hate groups mainstream, and [is] helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party." The speech that followed those words was an extended argument that her opponent is a racist, a conspiracy theorist, and a man temperamentally unfit to be president. Clinton's campaign had promoted this in advance as an address about "Donald Trump and his advisors' embrace of the disturbing 'alt-right' political philosophy"—the alt-right being an umbrella term for an assortment of racist micro-movements and online subcultures. Yesterday I suggested that making the alt-right the stars of such a speech could only give a signal boost to what is, after all, a rather obscure political faction. But Clinton's comments about that faction took up only about a minute of her remarks. And while that minute was pretty juicy, the alt-right wasn't really the rally's star villain after all. The star villain was Donald Trump. Everyone else that Clinton brought into the address—the alt-right, Breitbart, Alex Jones, David Duke, Nigel Farage, Vladimir Putin—was there in a supporting role. Some of Clinton's arguments didn't make a lot of sense. She led her litany, oddly, by quoting Trump's recent remarks about how bad blacks have it in America. ("Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen.") Most people would call his comments a clumsy attempt to reassure voters that he cares about the black community's problems, but Clinton declared them "a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters." She also wildly overstated the alt-right's influence, declaring that "the de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign" means the alt-rightists have "effectively taken over the Republican Party." She was on sturdier ground at other moments, as when she mentioned Trump's habit of retweeting white nationalists or his false claim that he watched thousands of New Jersey Muslims cheer the 9/11 attacks. Running through all her claims, both the weak ones and the strong ones, was one basic theme: Donald Trump is a bigot and a nut. And while that's an idea you've been hearing ever since the mogul turned reality TV star entered the race, this was as forceful and concentrated an expression of it as I've ever heard emerge from Hillary Clinton's mouth. It's bound to fire up her supporters, and I expect it will help her get out the vote. Whether it also leads a bunch of curious conservatives to Google "alt-right" depends, I suppose, on how much coverage that minute of the speech gets in the next few days. But the guy who must be really delighted right now is Alex Jones. Hillary Clinton just attacked him by name! His listeners will be hearing clips from this speech til Ragnarok.


Donald Trump thinks African-Americans are worse off now than they have ever been, and President Obama just took him to the woodshed for it.During a rally, Trump declared that African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape than they ve ever been in before. The assertion suggests that slavery was a picnic for black people and that Jim Crow was heaven on earth.But President Obama set Trump straight during an interview with Good Morning America at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. You know, I think even most 8-year-olds ll tell you that whole slavery thing wasn t very good for black people, Obama told Robin Roberts. Jim Crow wasn t very good for black people. What we have to do is use our history to propel us to make more progress in the future. Here s the video via ABC.President Obama also slammed those who think racism no longer exists in this country simply because he was elected to the presidency or because some black people make a lot of money. It s unrealistic to think that somehow that all just completely went away, because the Civil Rights Act was passed or because Oprah s making a lot of money or because I was elected president. You know, that s not how society works. And if you have hundreds of years of racial discrimination it s likely that the vestiges of that discrimination linger on. And we should acknowledge that and own that. As President Obama said, Donald Trump could learn a lot from a visit to this museum. To think that black people had it easy as slaves is offensive and it s almost as if Trump thinks they would be better off going back to being slaves. So he s definitely on a slippery slope, and while that may get his white supremacist supporters frothing at the mouth, it does nothing to help him get black people to vote for him.Featured Image: Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images


U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras discussed Greece's economic reforms in a meeting on Wednesday in Davos, the White House said on Wednesday. "The leaders agreed on the importance of moving forward as quickly as possible on Greece's economic reforms, including serious discussions with creditors on debt relief," the White House said in a statement.


Singapore should end harassment of peaceful activists, Human Rights Watch has said, after participants at a candlelight vigil for a man being executed for drug trafficking were stopped from leaving the country. On July 13, around a dozen people, including opponents of the death penalty and relatives Prabagaran Srivijayan, 22, attended the vigil outside Changi Prison in support of the man, who was to be hanged early the next morning. The man, who was executed on July 14, was convicted of trafficking 22.4 grams of heroin into Singapore. During the vigil, participants said they were approached by police and told that a police report had been filed and that they were to remove the candles. The police removed the candles and photographs of Prabagaran but the participants say they were not asked to disperse. A police statement on Saturday said 17 people were under investigation relating to whether they had been involved in an illegal assembly. Assemblies and processions for a cause in public places without a permit is a criminal offense in Singapore. Anyone convicted of organizing such an assembly faces penalties of up to S$10,000 ($7,440) in fines and up to six months in jail. The Singapore government has said that the law is required to provide for the individual s rights for political expression without compromising on order and safety . Among those at the vigil were a journalist, who is an activist against capital punishment, an editor of independent online blog Online Citizen and a filmmaker whose most recent work focused on the detention in 1987 of political activists under Singapore s Internal Security Act. The three said in social media postings that they had been prevented from leaving the country, and had been told that they were required to stay in Singapore to assist police with an investigation. Human Rights Watch said the government should respect the right of free speech and assembly. The government should end its harassment of activists campaigning against capital punishment and respect their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, the group said in a release on Thursday. None of the three had been arrested or charged, Kirsten Han, the activist and journalist, told Reuters.


GREENBELT, Md. — The next great space telescope spread its golden wings this month. Like the petals of a sunflower seeking the light, the 18 hexagonal mirrors that make up the heart of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope were faced toward a balcony overlooking a cavernous clean room at the Goddard Space Flight Center here. Inside the room, reporters and a gaggle of space agency officials, including the ebullient administrator Charles Bolden, were getting their pictures taken in front of the giant mirror. Now, after 20 years with a budget of $8. 7 billion, the Webb telescope is on track and on budget to be launched in October 2018 and sent a million miles from Earth, NASA says. The telescope, named after NASA Administrator James Webb, who led the space agency in the 1960s, is the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. Seven times larger than the Hubble in ability, the Webb was designed to see farther out in space and deeper into the past of the universe. It may solve mysteries about how and when the first stars and galaxies emerged some 13 billion years ago in the smoky aftermath of the Big Bang. Equipped with the sort of infrared goggles that give troops and police officers night vision, the Webb would peer into the dust clouds and gas storms of the Milky Way in which stars and planets are presently being birthed. It would be able to study planets around other stars. That has been NASA's dream since 1996 when the idea for the telescope was conceived with a projected price tag then of $500 million But as recently as six years ago, the James Webb Space Telescope was, in the words of Nature magazine, "the telescope that ate astronomy," mismanaged, over budget and behind schedule so that it had crushed everything else out of NASA's science budget. A House subcommittee once voted to cancel it. Instead, the program was rebooted with a strict spending cap. The scientific capabilities of the telescope emerged unscathed from that period, astronomers on the project say. The major change, said Jonathan P. Gardner, the deputy senior project scientist, was to simplify the testing of the telescope. Most of the pain was dealt to other NASA projects like a proposed space telescope to study dark energy, which the National Academy of Sciences had hoped to put on a fast track to be launched this decade. It's now delayed until 2025 or so. Typically for NASA, the Webb telescope was a technologically ambitious project, requiring 10 new technologies to make it work. Bill Ochs, a veteran Goddard engineer who became project manager in 2010 during what he calls the "replan," said the key to its success so far, was having enough money in the budget to provide a cushion for nasty surprises. The telescope smiling up at us like a giant Tiffany shaving mirror is 6. 5 meters in diameter, or just over 21 feet, compared with 2. 4 meters for the Hubble. The aim is to explore a realm of cosmic history about 150 million to one billion years after time began — known as the reionization epoch, when bright and violent new stars and the searing radiation from quasars were burning away a gloomy fog of hydrogen gas that prevailed at the end of the Big Bang. In fact, astronomers don't know how the spectacle that greets our eyes every night when the sun goes down or the lights go out wrenched itself into luminous existence. They theorize that an initial generation of stars made purely of hydrogen and helium — the elements created during the Big Bang — burned ferociously and exploded apocalyptically, the seeding of the cosmos with progressively more diverse materials. But nobody has ever seen any Population 3 stars, as those first stars are known. They don't exist in the modern universe. Astronomers have to hunt them in the dim past. That ambition requires the Webb to be tuned to a different kind of light than our eyes or the Hubble can see. Because the expansion of the cosmos is rushing those earliest stars and galaxies away from us so fast, their light is " " to longer wavelengths the way the siren from an ambulance shifts to a lower register as it passes by. So blue light from an infant galaxy bursting with bright spanking new stars way back then has been stretched to invisible infrared wavelengths, or heat radiation, by the time it reaches us 13 billion years later. As a result, the Webb telescope will produce cosmic postcards in colors no eye has ever seen. It also turns out that infrared emanations are the best way to study exoplanets, the worlds beyond our own solar system that have been discovered in the thousands since the Webb telescope was first conceived. In order to see those infrared colors, however, the telescope has to be very cold — less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero — so that its own heat does not swamp the heat from outer space. Once in space, the telescope will unfold a giant umbrella the size of a tennis court to keep the sun off it. The telescope, marooned in permanent shade a million miles beyond the moon, will experience an infinite cold soak. The sunshield consists of five thin, layers of a material called Kapton. Way too big to fit into a rocket, the shield, as well as the telescope mirror, will have be launched folded up. It will then be unfolded in space in a series of some 180 maneuvers that look in computer animations like a cross between a parachute opening and a swimming pool cover going into place. Or at least that is the $8 billion plan. Engineers have done it on the ground, and it worked. The same people who refolded the shield after each test will fold it again, in a process Mr. Ochs compares to packing up your parachute before a jump. The test will come in space, where no one will be able to help if things go wrong. That whole process will amount to what Mr. Ochs called "six months of high anxiety. " "For the most part, it all has to work," Mr. Ochs said. The last time NASA did something this big astronomically, in 1990, things didn't quite work. Once in orbit, the Hubble couldn't be focused it had a misshapen mirror that had never been properly tested. Astronauts eventually fitted it with corrective lenses, and it went on to become the crown jewel of astronomy. Making sure that doesn't happen this time is the agenda for the next two years. "Our telescope is finished," John C. Mather, the senior project scientist, said. "Now we are about to prove it works. " In the coming weeks, the mirror and the box of scientific instruments on its back will be put on a rig and shaken to simulate the vibrations of a launch, and then sealed in an acoustic chamber and bombarded with the noise of a launch. If the parts survive unscathed, the telescope assembly will be shipped to a giant vacuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. There it will be chilled to the temperatures at which it will have to work, and engineers will actually focus the telescope, twiddling the controls for seven actuators on each of the 18 mirror segments. No Hubble surprises here. Then the telescope will go to Los Angeles to be mounted on its gigantic sunshield. That whole contraption, now too big for even the giant military transport plane, will travel by ship through the Panama Canal to French Guiana. It will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket supplied by the European Space Agency as part of Europe's contribution to the observatory, and go into orbit around the sun at a point called L2 about a million miles from Earth. Canada, NASA's other partner, supplied some of the instruments. Then come the six months of anxiety. Sometime in the spring of 2019, if all goes well, the telescope will record its first real image — of what, the assembled astronomers were not ready to guess. In a bonus undreamed of when the Webb telescope was first conceived, it looks as if the Hubble will still be going strong when the Webb is launched. They will share the sky and the potential for joint observing projects. A million miles apart, they can view objects in the solar system from different angles, providing a kind of stereoscopic perspective. Besides the expected baby galaxies and the exoplanets, there are, as astronomers like to remind us, always new surprises (like colliding black holes when the LIGO observatory was turned on last year) when humanity devises a new way to look at the sky. Asked what the telescope's greatest discovery would be, Dr. Mather said, "If I knew, I would tell you. " Nor would the project members talk about contingency plans to rescue the telescope if anything goes wrong a million miles from Earth. There are no plans to fix it or bring it back. They know how to attach a probe or robot to the telescope, Dr. Mather said, but "we are planning to not need it, thank you. "


On Tuesday's "Mike and Mike" on ESPN Radio, Mike Golic reacted to a group of Boston Red Sox fans berating Baltimore Orioles center fielder Adam Jones with racial slurs Monday night. Golic said the fans, who were removed from the stadium, should be publicly outed along with their quotes for everybody to see. "What kind of idiot are you to do something like that?" Golic scolded. "The way I look at it, you're yelling that out publicly to somebody, I wish you would be publicly outed. I wish your face would be somewhere and with the quote of what you said right under your face publicly for everybody to see since you feel the need to yell something about someone. " Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent


The judge presiding over the criminal case against President Donald Trump's former campaign manager issued a gag order on Wednesday barring anyone involved in the case from making public statements that might taint it. Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were arraigned in federal court in Washington last week on a 12-count indictment that accused them of conspiring to launder money, failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in her written order she wanted to make sure the trial was fair and that potential jurors were not influenced by pre-trial publicity. She directed the defendants, all lawyers and any potential witnesses to "refrain from making statements to the media or in public settings that pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice" to the case. Jackson had previously warned lawyers about discussing the case publicly after Manafort defense lawyer Kevin Downing made a defiant statement outside the courthouse following his client's arraignment on Monday. "This is a criminal trial and not a public relations campaign," Jackson said in court last week. Downing, appearing before television cameras on Monday, said the charges against Manafort were "ridiculous" and said the president was correct to insist there was "no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government." The charges against Manafort and Gates stem from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Manafort and Gates have both pleaded not guilty. The Kremlin has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied any collusion took place. Downing did not respond to a request for comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment. Jackson had asked the parties last week if they had any objections to a gag order. None responded. Downing's statements outside the courthouse had raised eyebrows among defense lawyers. "Judge Jackson is a no-nonsense judge and he's clearly angered her to no purpose," said Eric Lewis, a longtime Washington trial lawyer. But Los Angeles defense lawyer Mark Geragos said he thought Downing might indeed have had a purpose in mind: currying favor with Trump in the hopes of eventually securing Manafort a presidential pardon. "The cynic in me would say that was exactly what was happening," said Geragos, "that there was an audience of one."


Longer prison sentences for non-violent criminals and crowded prisons are hurting the American economy more than they are helping it, economists in U.S. President Barack Obama's administration said in a report released on Saturday. The prison population in the United States is 4.5 times larger than it was in 1980, primarily driven by longer sentences and higher conviction rates for nearly all offenses, according to the Council's report. Economists are "of one mind" that packed prisons, excessively long sentences, and insufficient reentry programs "are counter-productive to our economy as a whole in addition to hurting the people involved," Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters in a call on Friday. On Monday, administration officials, economists, business leaders, and scholars will discuss the Council's findings at an event hosted by the White House, the American Enterprise Institute think tank, and New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. The United States can reap greater economic benefit through investments in police, prisoner education, and job opportunities for ex-prisoners than it can from putting additional funding toward prisons, the Council's report said. The Council's report was based on a review of existing economics research, and does not estimate the indirect costs borne by the U.S. economy as a result of its current criminal justice policies. Later this year, the Brennan Center will unveil a study quantifying how much the U.S. criminal justice system costs Americans in terms of employment, wages, and gross domestic product, said the center's director of justice programs, Inimai Chettiar. Previous administrations have not brought the same focus to how criminal justice policies affect the U.S. workforce, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who led the Congressional Budget Office from 2003-05 and is now president of the American Action Forum think tank. Since the recession of the late 2000s, "every aspect of the workforce has been scrutinized more closely, and this sort of popped out," he told Reuters.


Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton widened her lead over likely Republican nominee Donald Trump to 13 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday. The July 1-5 poll included responses gathered mostly over the holiday weekend, before the Federal Bureau of Investigation recommended on Tuesday that no criminal charges be filed against Clinton over her use of private email servers and what it called her "extremely careless" handling of classified information while she was U.S. secretary of state. The presumptive Democratic nominee led Trump, a New York businessman, by 9 percentage points in a previous Reuters/Ipsos poll that ran from June 27 to July 1. Tuesday's poll showed that 46 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, while 33 percent backed Trump. Twenty-two percent said they would not support either candidate for the Nov. 8 election. Throughout the campaign, Clinton has been dogged by her use of a personal email server during her years as the nation's top diplomat. Over the past several months, she has handed over thousands of pages of emails to investigators and responded to a number of government inquiries. Clinton has repeatedly said she never sent or received classified documents on her private servers, yet the public appears distrustful of her, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. In early May, 63 percent of Americans, including 36 percent of Democrats, said they did not believe Clinton was "honest and truthful." But Clinton has led Trump most of the year among likely voters. Since mid-May, she has maintained a relatively consistent level of support among likely voters, while Trump's popularity has eroded as his campaign wrestled with a variety of issues. Republican leaders distanced themselves from Trump after he suggested a federal judge was biased because of his Hispanic heritage and after he doubled down on a pledge to block Muslims from entering the country. On Tuesday, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan criticized a tweet posted by Trump over the weekend that many deemed to be anti-Semitic. Trump's level of support among likely voters was about 10 points below what 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney received in early July 2012. Among Clinton's supporters, nearly half said they were backing her because "I don't want Donald Trump to win." A further 39 percent said they "agree with her positions," and about 13 percent said they "like her personally." The online national poll of 1,441 American adults had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.