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Earlier this week, 21WIRE reported on President Trump s recent ban on transgender persons in the US Military. Predictably, the White House announcement triggered an uproar from Hollywood s progressive alliance and LGBT lobby. US Army whistlerblower Bradley Manning, who later changed his name to Chelsea Manning and is in the process of trying to change his sex to female, tweeted this:The following video was posted by USArmy Drill Sergeant John Burk, where he explains a number of practical issues at play in this debate which are being avoided by America s hopelessly politicized media. WATCH:. READ MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT NEWS AT:21st Century Wire PC FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1 |
The unthinkable has happened, and we are now all forced to live under a Donald Trump administration for the next four years. This is especially terrifying to minorities, since the man that was just declared our next president is a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic bigot, and his vice president-elect, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, is just as bad only much more quietly. Well, there is one person in the United States Senate who won t stand for any of that bigotry when it comes to lawmaking: Bernie Sanders.While Bernie has promised to work with a Trump administration where they can find common ground, he has already warned Trump that there will be no funny business on his watch when it comes to going after minorities. Bernie tweeted:If Donald Trump takes people's anger and turns it against Muslims, Hispanics, African Americans and women, we will be his worst nightmare. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 10, 2016This isn t the first time since Trump s victory that Bernie has warned him against aggressively attacking the rights of minorities, either. On Wednesday, he said: To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him, the Vermont senator said in a statement released Wednesday. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him. This is reassuring, because while the situation is certainly dismal, there are Democrats and Independents in the Senate who still have enough seats to block the Republicans and a Trump Administration from appointing anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant justices to the Supreme Court. While this might, optics wise, looks like Democrats offering retribution for the GOP s refusal to give President Obama s appointee, Merrick Garland, a hearing and a vote, indeed it is not. It is a way to keep Republicans from stripping the basic human rights from groups of Americans they hate.Thank you, Bernie, for having our back. Let s hope that you and Senate Democrats are successful in protecting us for the next four years as we live out this literal nightmare.Featured image via Joshua Lott/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether to block a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft and others by non-U.S. citizens, mainly Muslims, swept up after the Sept. 11 attacks who said they were abused in detention. The senior officials under former President George W. Bush, also including former FBI Director Robert Mueller and Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar, have asked the justices to reverse a 2015 lower court ruling allowing the long-running suit to proceed. The civil rights lawsuit seeks to hold the former officials responsible for racial and religious profiling and abuse in detention that the plaintiffs said they endured after being detained following the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda Islamic militants on the United States. The brief order said two justices, liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, will not participate, meaning only six justices will hear the case. The court remains one justice short following Antonin Scalia’s February death. The suit was filed by a group of Muslim, Arab and South Asian non-U.S. citizens who, their lawyers said, were held as terrorism suspects based on their race, religion, ethnicity and immigration status and abused in detention before being deported. They were charged only with civil immigration violations. But the plaintiffs said they were subjected at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center to 23-hours-a-day solitary confinement, strip searches, sleep deprivation, beatings and other abuses and denied the ability to practice their religion. They said their rights under the U.S. Constitution to due process and equal protection under the law were violated. The plaintiffs include Benamar Benatta, an Algerian Muslim who was seeking refugee status in Canada, and Ahmed Khalifa, an Egyptian Muslim who said he was on vacation. During the U.S. Justice Department’s massive investigation after the 2001 attacks, certain immigrants in the country illegally were detained until being cleared of Sept. 11 involvement. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ashcroft, Mueller and Ziglar could be sued, based on a 1971 Supreme Court ruling. In 2013, a judge had dismissed the claims against them but allowed some against detention facility wardens. Ashcroft and Mueller are represented by the Justice Department, which asked the justices to hear the appeal. Government lawyers say there is no proof Ashcroft or Mueller personally condoned any potential unconstitutional actions. The court will hear arguments and rule by the end of June. In a similar previous case, the Supreme Court in 2009 backed Ashcroft, saying a lawsuit by detainees failed to contain specific details on Ashcroft’s involvement. | 0 |
By now, the whole world knows that the investigation into Donald Trump and his campaign s ties to Russia is likely what led to the firing of FBI Director James Comey. However, new reporting also reveals that Comey really didn t think much of Trump in the first place. According to a report in The Week, Comey had expressed concern about Trump s temperament as it related to the presidency and the leadership of the nation. He allegedly told confidantes that Trump is crazy and outside the realm of normal. Like the rest of the sane people in America, Comey also seemed to believe that Trump s lack of self restraint and his impulsive and reckless statements on Twitter were a danger to the nation. Further, it seems that Trump was angry with Comey on several occasions as well. When Comey testified in open Congressional hearing that there was no evidence to corroborate Trump s claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, Trump was incensed. The same is true of Comey s refusal to pledge loyalty to Trump instead of the United States Constitution.Daniel C. Richman, a close adviser to Comey, says of the situation: With a president who seems to prize personal loyalty above all else and a director with absolute commitment to the Constitution and pursuing investigations wherever the evidence led, a collision was bound to happen. Indeed. And that is the problem: Trump doesn t give a damn about the Constitution or the rule of law; in fact, he seems to only care for himself and what benefits him and makes him look good. He doesn t care about the American people, or the nation. This whole sorry excuse for a presidency is nothing more than the ultimate reality show for an incompetent, unfit fool with the biggest ego in the world. Unfortunately, we re all paying the price.Featured image via Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violent protests against Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on Friday were “mostly under control,” and about 95 people had been arrested, the head of the city’s police force said. “We have maybe a couple hundred people, and then a small group within there throwing rocks at the police ... but we believe that we’ve got it mostly under control,” interim Police Chief Peter Newsham told NBC’s local affiliate. | 0 |
He skips Nancy Reagan and Antonin Scalia s funerals. He pretends not to notice that police officers are being randomly killed across America. But give our Pulitzer Peace Prize recipient a horrendous human rights violator and watch him bow in deep respect.Lest we forget the first time we saw him bow to the Saudi King:And what trip to Cuba would be complete without a picture of our Community Agitator in Chief in front of the repulsive, murderous, revolutionary Che Guevara:Mr. President, you're a disgrace. pic.twitter.com/CNRZk1dm3w Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 21, 2016Only eight more months before this jack-ass is out of our White House for good h/t Weasel Zippers | 1 |
Chicago police officer Robert Rialmo shot and killed Quintonio LeGrier, a mentally ill college student, in his family s home the day after Christmas in 2015. One of the police officer s rounds also struck and killed their 55-year-old neighbor, Bettie Jones. Now Rialmo is suing LeGrier s family for emotional distress. Ther are 911 calls that show that LeGrier called the police three times only to be hung up on by the dispatcher.How much does Rialmo think that the emotional distress he has endured is worth? $10 million dollars. Seriously, this cop thinks that he can kill this family s son and neighbor, get away with it, and then make away with a fortune.The Chicago Tribune reports: Rialmo s lawsuit provides the officer s first public account of the Dec. 26 shooting in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. It says Rialmo opened fire after Quintonio LeGrier twice swung a bat at his head at close range, and LeGrier was shot when Rialmo saw him raising the bat again and thought LeGrier could kill him if LeGrier hit him in the head with the bat.LeGrier s father, Antonio LeGrier, had filed a wrongful death lawsuit saying his son wasn t a threat, and Rialmo s lawsuit, which asks for damages of more than $10 million, is a countersuit in that case. Rialmo also fatally shot Antonio LeGrier s neighbor Bettie Jones, 55, in the confrontation, but police have said her death was accidental. In 2015, the police killed more than 1,000 people in the United States. That s a staggering figure. What s even worse is that none of those police officers have been prosecuted for any potential wrongdoing. In the United States, if you are a cop you can kill someone and not have to worry about the consequences. Apparently that is not good enough for some cops. They saw how fast Darren Wilson got rich after he killed Michael Brown and have decided to get in on the action.You can watch a video report on the story, below. Featured image from video screenshot via YouTube | 1 |
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - Congressman Steve Scalise, the No. 3 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, was in critical condition on Wednesday night after he and three others were shot as they practiced for a charity baseball game. The gunman, who had posted angry messages against President Donald Trump and other Republicans on social media, opened fire on a group of Republican lawmakers and colleagues at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington. He was wounded in a gunfight with Capitol Hill police at the scene and later died. Scalise was shot in the left hip, suffering broken bones, injuries to internal organs and severe bleeding. He underwent surgery but would need further operations, the MedStar Washington Hospital Center said. “Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the truly great people, is in very tough shape - but he is a real fighter. Pray for Steve!” Trump said on Twitter after visiting the hospital on Wednesday night. The gunman, identified by police as 66-year-old James Hodgkinson from the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois, fired repeatedly at the men playing on the baseball field on Wednesday morning. Congressmen at the ballpark described hearing loud noises like the sound of firecrackers and 15 to 20 people lying on the ground and realizing they had only baseball bats to defend themselves against bullets. “When he started shooting, he was shooting to kill people. And thank God he wasn’t a very good shot,” said Representative Joe Barton, the Republican team’s manager. Also wounded were a congressional aide and one former aide who now works as a lobbyist, officials said. One Capitol Hill police officer suffered a gunshot wound and another officer twisted an ankle and was released from a hospital, police said. “It was not only chaotic but it was a combat situation,” Alexandria Police Chief Mike Brown told reporters. While police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was too early to determine whether it was a deliberate political attack, the shooting intensified concerns about the sharp divide and bitter rhetoric in U.S. politics. FBI special agent Tim Slater declined to comment on whether the gunman had a vendetta against Republicans. “We continue to actively investigate the shooter’s motives, acquaintances and whereabouts that led to today’s incidents,” Slater told reporters. No one else was in custody, he said. The gunman was believed to have been in the Alexandria area since March, Slater said. Investigators believe that the suspect had been living out of his vehicle. Wednesday’s shooting revived debate about gun rights in America. Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, urged gun control measures. Scalise has been a strong opponent of gun control measures. Hodgkinson had raged against Trump on social media and was a member of anti-Republican groups on Facebook including, “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Terminate The Republican Party,” and “Donald Trump is not my President,” a search of his Facebook profile showed. As businessman Trump rose to become the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election, his brash style and outspoken views on immigration and other policies led to mass protests, including on the weekend of his inauguration in January. The charity ballgame between a Republican team and a Democratic team will go ahead as scheduled on Thursday at Nationals Park, home of the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team. Representative Tim Ryan, who early on Wednesday was practicing for the ballgame with fellow Democrats, told reporters that Washington politicians needed to cool their rhetoric. “We’ve got to get back to ... where things aren’t so personal and we’re so judgmental of each other. It’s got to stop. A member of the U.S. Congress got shot because they didn’t like (his) political views,” Ryan said. Trump, who announced the gunman’s death, called for unity. “We are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good,” he said. In a show of bipartisanship, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said on the floor of the House: “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” The House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, echoed Ryan’s message. The shooting happened shortly after 7 a.m. There were 20 House members and two senators present, and the shooting lasted about 10 minutes, said Barton. Two lawmakers who were at the scene, Representatives Ron DeSantis and Jeff Duncan, indicated there might have been a political motive in the attack. Duncan said that as he left the field, the man who would later open fire approached him in the parking lot. “He asked me who was practicing this morning, Republicans or Democrats, and I said: ‘That’s the Republicans practicing,’” Duncan told reporters. DeSantis gave a similar account. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who sought the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said he had been told that Hodgkinson had served as a volunteer with his campaign. “Let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms,” Sanders said. Ryan, the House speaker, is reviewing rules on how rank-and-file lawmakers can increase their personal security, according to several lawmakers. “Members get threats on a regular basis and have trouble determining which are real,” House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer told reporters. The shooting took place at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, across the Potomac River from Washington. Representative Mo Brooks told CNN that during batting practice, he heard a “bam” and then a quick succession of shots and saw the gunman shooting through the holes in a chain link fence. When Scalise was shot, he went down on the infield between first and second base, then dragged himself into the grassy outfield as the incident unfolded, leaving a trail of blood, Brooks said. Two Capitol police officers who were there to provide security for the lawmakers engaged the gunman with pistols, Brooks said. “But for the Capitol police and the heroism they showed, it could very well have been a large-scale massacre. All we would have had would have been baseball bats versus a rifle. Those aren’t good odds,” Brooks said. Wednesday’s attack was the first shooting of a member of Congress since January 2011, when Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt at a gathering of constituents in Tucson, Arizona. Six people were killed. Giffords resigned from Congress and became an activist for gun restrictions. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. military officer told the Senate on Thursday that it would harm the morale of U.S. forces to order them to carry out activities such as waterboarding or targeting civilians, options previously cited by leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not comment on U.S. politics, and Trump’s name did not come up in a question put to him by Senator Lindsey Graham or in Dunford’s response. However, when asked by Graham, a former 2016 White House contender and frequent Trump critic, what the impact such tactics would have on the morale of the force, Dunford said: “Those kinds of activities that you described are inconsistent with the values of our nation. And quite frankly I think it would have an adverse effect,” citing fallout on the morale of the force. “And frankly what you are suggesting are things that actually aren’t legal for them to do anyway,” Dunford added. During the campaign, Trump indicated that, if elected president, he might order the U.S. military to break the law on interrogation tactics, including waterboarding. Trump also suggested his willingness to target the families of terrorist suspects. Trump, the Republican front-runner, softened his stance on torture earlier in March, saying he would not order the U.S. military to break international laws on how to treat terrorism suspects. Waterboarding is the practice of pouring water over someone’s face to mimic drowning as an interrogation tactic. Critics say it is torture. Democratic President Barack Obama banned use of the method days after taking office in 2009. | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - An 18-year-old man who came to Britain after his parents were killed in Iraq appeared in a London court on Friday charged with attempted murder in last week s bomb attack on a packed commuter train in the British capital. Ahmed Hassan is accused of carrying out the attack at Parsons Green station in London on Friday which injured 30 people. Wearing a gray sweatshirt and with shoulder-length curly dark hair, he spoke only to confirm his name and address at London s Westminster Magistrates Court. Hassan, from Sunbury-on-Thames, a town to the southwest of London, is charged with attempting to murder passengers on board a train heading to central London from the southwest suburb of Wimbledon. He is also accused of causing an explosion likely to endanger life using the highly volatile triacetone triperoxide (TATP) - known as the mother of Satan - or another explosive substance. Prosecutor Lee Ingham told the court Hassan had expressed hatred for Britain and his warped view had motivated him to carry out the attack. There was no application for bail and the case was adjourned until Oct. 13. The home-made bomb engulfed a carriage in flames, but apparently failed to fully explode. It was Britain s fifth major militant attack so far this year. Police are continuing to question two other men, aged 25 and 30. A 17-year-old, who was detained on Thursday, was released on Friday and will face no further action. Two other men, arrested as part of the inquiry, were also released from custody on Thursday. | 0 |
Paul Ryan nervously giggled during the Republican announcement of the budget and Obamacare replacement this morning. It s interesting to watch all of the Republicans in the video below skip over the elephant in the room by redirecting everyone to other items THEY consider to be positive. Ryan emphasized the funding for border patrol but skipped right over the border wall funding.Why does the left bother with Resistance theatrics when the Republican Congress funds their entire wish list anyway?Is funding the NIH (National Institutes for Health) with 2 BILLION dollars a good thing? That bloated and very wasteful item needs to be looked at more closely. Remember shrimp on a treadmill? Drunk monkeys? Yes, this is the organization that gives out YOUR tax dollars to people to do crazy experiments that are honestly wasteful.The other things like funding Sanctuary Cities? Is anyone else puzzled by this?Why are the Republicans constantly trying to appease the Democrats?Please skip to the 5:15 mark in the video:This is a loser spending bill for the American people! | 1 |
Dinesh D Sousa warned us about Obama s reduction of our nation s nuclear stockpile in his movie, 2016, Obama s America. Shortly after his blockbuster movie appeared in theaters across America, Dinesh D Souza was charged with violating federal campaign finance laws and was sentenced to five years of probation, a $30,000 fine, and eight months in a San Diego community confinement center where he was forced to undergo therapeutic counseling. Here is what Dinesh D Souza predicted:Driven by the alleged anti-colonialist ideology of a father he barely met, President Barack Obama systematically is undermining America economically and militarily leaving it vulnerable to financial collapse, and even as unlikely as the possibility may seem, nuclear attack.And it charges as he slashes the defense budget, Obama is simultaneously pushing to reduce the nation s nuclear stockpile to as low as a few hundred missiles even as other countries like China, Russia and North Korea are modernizing and expanding their arsenals, and Iran widely believed to be close to developing nuclear weapons is threatening to annihilate Israel. From Dinesh D Sousa s controversial 2010 book, The Roots Of Obama s Rage WNDHere is what is actually happening today:The United States cut its nuclear stockpiles by 20 percent between 1996 and 2013, with more reductions likely to come, according to recently declassified information released by the White House.Stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, which is used to fuel a nuclear weapon, were cut from 740.7 metric tons to 586.6 metric tons from 1996 to 2013, according to recently declassified information made available by the Obama administration. This reflects a reduction of over 20 percent, the White House announced. Moreover, further reductions in the inventory are ongoing; the U.S. Department of Energy s material disposition program has down-blended 7.1 metric tons of HEU since September 30, 2013, and continues to make progress in this area. The stockpile reductions are part of an effort by the Obama administration to eliminate nuclear materials and move away from these types of weapons.The move comes as countries such as Russia and North Korea move to increase their nuclear stockpiles. Russia, for instance, has made several announcements about its intent to boost its nuclear stockpile and number of weapons.However, the United States is moving in the opposite direction.Via:WFB | 1 |
A painting on display at a University of Alaska Anchorage art gallery, which depicts the severed head of President Donald Trump, is sparking debate about free speech rights and whether the image is appropriate for display, at a public institution.The artwork, created by Assistant Professor of Painting Thomas Chung, is part of a faculty art exhibition, at the UAA Fine Arts building.In describing his painting, Chung said, It s an image of the actor who plays Captain America, and two eagles are sort of screaming into his ears, and he s holding the severed head of Trump, and there s a young Hillary Clinton clinging to his leg. I was reminded of those 80 s rock posters, where there s a woman in tattered clothes clinging to a strong male hero s leg. Chung says the motivation for the painting was his dismay over the results of the presidential election. After Trump was elected, I spent days just weeping. And it was really surprising, because I m not a political person, Chung said. I am a social artist. I deal mostly in ideals of culture and global culture, but this election bled into that. The painting has prompted debate on social media and complaints to the university.Paul Berger, a former adjunct professor at UAA, went to see the painting, after a family member saw it on display. Berger posted pictures of the painting on his Facebook page. The painting itself, I kind of found disturbing, Berger said. The image itself was very graphic. So from that point of view, and as a father, trying to explain to my children what the artist is trying to say [it s] difficult. Berger said he supports free speech, but questions whether it is appropriate for display, at a publicly-funded institution. Had the roles been reversed, and it was Obama s head hanging there, I think the outrage would be fantastic, Berger said. As a free speech advocate, everyone has a right to express their opinion the way they want to express them. But as a parent and a citizen, there s a discussion. In a university setting, what s appropriate? Chung said he had reservations about putting his painting on display at UAA, because of its political message. I was really torn about putting this piece up a faculty show, because I would never talk about my own political beliefs to my students, Chung said. I would never push that upon them and make them feel uncomfortable, and so I wondered to myself if putting up this painting was in a way doing that. But I realized that I feel very strongly about this, and I think even students that might be pro-Trump supporters could benefit from having a conversation with me about why I feel this way why I painted this. Berger, who describes himself as a political conservative, questions whether a painting, depicting the decapitation of the president, will help civil discourse about politics. Prior to the election, it was important to the opposing side that we accept, move forward, respect our president and respect the rule of law, Berger said. As we raise our kids in our schools, we try to teach them and inculcate them in our civics. Paintings like that I really think send a strong, powerful, wrong message to children and students. Steven Godfrey, chairman of the Fine Arts Department at UAA, said, I guess the people are upset about the work that s being shown. If they were taking a class at the university and made art that was considered controversial, no matter what their political or religious bent is, we would do our best to protect them and protect their rights to make that kind of work in the institution, whether it would be a student or faculty. The exhibition that includes the painting is scheduled to remain on display through April 20, in the Kimora Gallery. KTUUTom Chung was born in New Jersey and grew up in Hong Kong and New York City. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010 and his Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Yale University in 2013. He has participated in numerous group and solo shows throughout the United States. His multidisciplinary work has been written about in Art in America, The New Yorker, and Modern Painters Magazine. | 1 |
If there s one thing Donald Trump has made remarkably clear throughout his campaign for the presidency, it s that low ratings are pathetic. He said it about the debates, about how high or low they are, about how certain networks do better than others if they feature him, etc. etc.Taking all of that into consideration, Trump is really going to hate the fact that he has a lower approval rating than any of his predecessors for the past 27 or so years.According to the Pew Research Center: Trump s rating for the job he has done so far presenting his vision to the public is lower than those other recent presidents received following their elections. The partisan gap in ratings of the job Trump has done so far is wider than it has been for any prospective president dating to the 1988 election. Further: Trump also receives low marks for his initial cabinet choices and other high level appointments. By 51% to 40%, more say they disapprove than approve of the cabinet choices and appointments Trump has made so far. In contrast, majorities approved of the choices made by the past four president-elects. In fact, approval ratings for Trump s cabinet choices are 18 points lower than for the next lowest-rated president-elect. And also this: Alongside negative ratings for the job Trump has done explaining his plans and selecting his cabinet so far, most also hold an overall unfavorable view of the president-elect. Here s a look at the visual comparison put out by Pew:Approval rating for Trump during transition lower than for his predecessors https://t.co/PdrJWw1pJl pic.twitter.com/ge2vzQOdnu Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) December 8, 2016Trump receives low marks for his initial cabinet choices and other high level appointments https://t.co/PdrJWw1pJl pic.twitter.com/hiuCwKANCh Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) December 8, 2016Trump's personal favorability far lower than those of past president-elects https://t.co/kkdcf5k0DW pic.twitter.com/O9C3BfkURG Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) December 8, 2016Now, with Trump s obsession for ratings taken into consideration, you know this isn t going to go over very well with him, and he s likely going to take to Twitter very soon to go after how terrible Pew is or something to that affect.The president-elect has very, very thin skin, so grab your popcorn and get ready.Featured Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1 |
As the Democratic Primary wraps up with Hillary Clinton slated to clinch the majority of pledged delegates and thus reach the total amount of delegates needed for victory sources with CNN and the New York Times confirmed that President Obama is ready to make an official endorsement this week.And that candidate is Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Times, the White House has been holding conversations with the Clinton campaign as to where and when to formally endorse. Sources say the President is impatient to begin campaigning for Clinton, who he sees as the one who will succeed his legacy.President Obama claimed that New Jersey and California s results will show a pretty good sense of who the nominee will end up being. With an approval rating averaging over 50 percent across the board, President Obama hopes to use high numbers (a determining factor in elections) to unite not only Democrats but Trump-weary Republicans and Independents.Jennifer Psaki, President Obama s communications director, told the NYT: He has indicated he wants to spend a lot of time on the campaign trail, so when it s time to do that, we ll go out guns ablazing. We are actively thinking through how to use the president on the campaign trail what works for the nominee, what works for him, and how to utilize his strengths and his appeal. Clinton, who will be claiming victory on Tuesday in Brooklyn, is also eager to campaign with the President and Vice President s endorsement.Clinton, who lost the delegates needed to secure the nomination in 2008, backed then-Senator Obama just days later, campaigning across the country on his behalf as a surrogate.President Obama has already shown to be an energetic surrogate for Clinton, telling donors in Miami that the Democrats are in a strong position to win: We ve got the better arguments here. And the issue is going to be do we feel the same sense of urgency, and are we engaged and are we participating to make sure that we win a White House and we get back a Congress that can move this country forward in a constructive way. President Obama is also reportedly excited to take on Donald Trump, as is Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders, who has pledged to stay in the race past California s primary in an effort to influence the DNC platform, has also stated he will do everything to keep Trump out of the White House. Elizabeth Warren, who is reported to be preparing an endorsement, will also continue her attacks on Trump.Imagine that campaign team Clinton, Obama, Biden, Sanders, and Warren on the campaign trail to take on Donald Trump.Featured image via Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whether or not Richard Cordray stays as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until his term ends in July, the agency’s ability to rein in Wall Street will be severely weakened, political insiders, lawyers and consumer advocates said. Doubts are growing that the Democratic director of America’s top consumer watchdog will leave his post to run for Ohio governor, as had been widely speculated, after a lackluster Labor Day speech sparked anxiety over his campaign appeal, according to some party insiders. Cordray, whose term at the CFPB ends in July 2018, is not expected to announce any decision to run until the regulator releases long-awaited rules restricting payday lenders, which are expected within weeks, according to multiple sources. Cordray has evaded questions from the Republican chairman on the House of Representatives Financial Services committee, Jeb Hensarling, about his plans, writing in a recent letter: “At this time, I have no further insights to provide on that subject.” Even if Cordray stays, he will not enjoy a reprieve from Republican efforts to defang the agency which they believe is too powerful and restricts the flow of credit. “He has been under constant attack in his position because of the threat he poses to the status quo on Wall Street,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer advocacy group which has called for Cordray to stay on. “I would imagine that would continue regardless of how long he stays in the job.” Some Republicans, including Hensarling, have introduced legislation to weaken and even dismantle the agency which was created as part of the post-crisis Dodd Frank Act. While those bills have not gotten far, Cordray will still have to play defense against a Republican-dominated Congress poised to suffocate new CFPB rules using the Congressional Review Act, a mechanism already used to kill 14 Obama-era regulations. Lawmakers are also considering amending the government budget to bring the CFPB’s funding, currently provided by the independent Federal Reserve, under the control of Congress, potentially allowing Republicans to starve the agency of resources. President Donald Trump could also take the more extreme step of intervening to remove Cordray. A court ruling last year said the president should be able to fire the CFPB director without cause, which the CFPB is appealing. Even if the CFPB is victorious, Trump may still seek to use causes allowed by the law, such as inefficiency or neglect of duty, to get Cordray out of the way, according to legal experts. The CFPB has declined to comment multiple times on Cordray’s plans, possible successors or how it would operate in his absence. Since Trump came to power, the CFPB has raced to finish outstanding rule proposals and taken numerous enforcement actions, hoping to lock in its work in case Trump appoints a pro-Wall Street replacement, said Quyen Truong, a partner at law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, who was the assistant director and deputy general counsel for the CFPB until early 2016. If Cordray quits or is removed, Dodd-Frank requires his deputy to step up temporarily but lawyers say the legitimacy of that step could be challenged. The act may be superseded by a law that allows the president to temporarily fill vacancies. Alan Kaplinsky, head of the Consumer Financial Services Group at law firm Ballard Spahr and a Cordray critic, said the White House is widely expected to appoint Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as an interim replacement, who would then delegate his duties to lower-ranking officials. Scrapping a new rule allowing bank and credit-card customers to band together in class-action lawsuits and tougher regulation of payday lenders will likely be a Trump appointee’s first moves, Kaplinsky said. This could be done by delaying the rule’s effective date for further study, a common Washington tactic used to stall the implementation of regulation indefinitely. An acting director could also dramatically scale back the consumer complaint database, a key tool the CFPB uses to resolve disputes for individuals and to identify corporate malfeasance, Truong said. Meanwhile, she said, the agency will continue pursuing enforcement cases, but those will likely be much smaller in scope. Jeff Emerson, a spokesperson for Hensarling, said any new director would naturally be bound by the law, but this person would have “a lot of discretion” to make changes. | 0 |
ROME (Reuters) - Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose Democratic Party (PD) is shedding support in opinion polls, suffered a further setback on Wednesday when two allies said they would not contest next year s election. Renzi quit as prime minister a year ago after losing a referendum on his planned constitutional reforms. He aims to return to power at the vote due by May, but the PD has split under his leadership and his prospects seem to be dwindling. On Wednesday Giuliano Pisapia, a former mayor of Milan, announced that his small leftist party, called The Progressive Camp (CP), which had been expected to join forces with the PD at the election, was disbanding. Pisapia said it had proved impossible to continue talks with the PD , and complained in particular about Renzi s unwillingness to push through a contested law making it easier for the children of immigrants to obtain Italian citizenship. Hours later, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, leader of the centrist Popular Alternative party (AP) which governs with the PD, said he would not be running at the election, throwing into doubt the future of the party he founded. The CP and AP have less than 3 percent of the vote each, according to opinion polls, but the latest defections weaken the center-left in which a declining PD is now virtually without any allies. The left and the PD are crumbling away, said Renato Brunetta, lower house leader of Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party which is the lynchpin of a center-right alliance that is expected to win most seats at the election. On Sunday, leftist parties which had already quit the PD joined forces under the leadership of Senate Speaker Piero Grasso to form Free and Equal, a new grouping already credited with around 6 percent of the vote and expected to grow further at the expense of the PD. Posing a potential further headache for Renzi, a parliamentary commission on banking decided later on Wednesday to call a former top banker who a prominent journalist alleged had been put under pressure by a close ally in his government. In a book published earlier this year, the previous director of one of Italy s biggest newspapers said Renzi s reform minister Maria Elena Boschi had in 2015 asked Federico Ghizzoni, then chief executive of UniCredit, to look into buying a struggling bank where her father held a senior position. The cross-party commission investigating banking crises said in a statement it had voted unanimously to call Ghizzoni to speak. A source said his hearing would be held by Dec. 23. Boschi, who is now cabinet secretary, denies ever asking anyone to buy Banca Etruria, which was eventually rescued by the state. She said this week she was taking legal action. Renzi s PD critics say he has dragged the traditionally left-leaning party to the right and lament what they say is his autocratic, domineering leadership style. The party has been steadily losing support since it won over 40 percent of the vote at European elections in 2014. Surveys suggest it would now poll around 25 percent, some 3 points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The center-right bloc is made up of Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League, each with around 15 percent, and the right-wing Brothers of Italy, on around 5 percent. While the center-right is seen winning most seats at the election, opinion polls suggest it will not win an absolute majority, making a hung parliament the most likely outcome. | 0 |
Which begs the question:How many Iraqi s have been placed on trial for similar circumstances? And do the rules of engagement only apply to the US Military? A retrial is set to begin Monday at Camp Pendleton for a Marine convicted in the 2006 killing of an Iraqi civilian one of the most high-profile and legally and politically complex court martials of the Iraq war.Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins was convicted in 2007 by a Marine jury of unpremeditated murder in the killing of a 52-year-old former Iraqi police officer in Hamandiya, west of Baghdad.The killing was meant as a warning to Iraqis to stop planting roadside bombs and cooperating with insurgent snipers attacking U.S. troops.Six other Marines and a Navy corpsman were also convicted in what was called the Pendleton 8 case. As the squad leader, Hutchins got the longest sentence, 15 years, later reduced to 11.Appeals courts twice have overturned Hutchins conviction: once on grounds that the NCIS illegally obtained a confession, once because his lawyer was allowed to retire on the eve of trial. The Marine Corps has opted for a retrial.Hutchins has spent more than six years behind bars, first at the federal prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., and then the brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego. Since mid-2013, he has been free on appeal, restored to his rank of sergeant and assigned to Camp Pendleton, living with his wife and children.The legal case has provoked strong, contrasting opinions among Marines.Several of Hutchins co-defendants, all of whom are long since freed and returned to civilian life, believe the killing, while brutal, saved American lives because attacks on U.S. troops declined in the following months.Other Marines believe the Marine Corps must retry Hutchins to prove that it can hold its ranks accountable for the unauthorized use of deadly force. The Marine Corps is doing what justice demands, said Gary Solis, a retired Marine and now an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University. It is being neither unfair nor harsh, Solis said. An innocent Iraqi male was taken prisoner by Hutchins and his squad and, while he was bound, repeatedly shot in the face [and] murdered. Much of the evidence against Hutchins will come from squad members who were convicted in the case, Solis noted: Given the unusually strong case against Hutchins the Marine Corps would be derelict were it to walk away from the murder of a defenseless Iraqi. But Bing West, former Marine, former assistant secretary of Defense and author of books about combat Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that, given the chaos facing Marine grunts during the Iraq war, a retrial is unwarranted. In a savage war, Sgt. Hutchins, mistakenly believing he was protecting his squad, killed an innocent Iraqi, West said. He has spent several years in the brig. Further punishment would be unjust. It is time to allow him and all of us to move on. Marine prosecutors would not comment.Christopher Oprison, a former Marine and Hutchins defense attorney, has promised a vigorous defense in which he will assert that the Marine Corps is continuing to pursue his client for political purposes. The case, he said, is an indictment of the entire military justice system. The prosecution is basing its case on the information obtained by rogue NCIS agents who forced these young Marines to confess under threats and coercion. Oprison insists that comments made by Navy Secy. Ray Mabus in 2009 alleging guilt by the Pendleton 8 have tainted the case and prevented Hutchins from getting a fair trial. The political pressure to make an example out of Sgt. Hutchins is palpable, Oprison said. Enough is enough. The gloves are off. We hope to have Sgt. Hutchins home with his wife and children on Father s Day a free man. Under military rules, the jury will include officers and enlisted, most of whom, if not all, have served combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan or both. The jury will decide guilt or innocence, and punishment.Via: LA Times | 1 |
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s new immigration order will remove Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens face a temporary U.S. travel ban, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed U.S. officials. Four officials say the decision follows pressure from the Pentagon and State Department, the AP reported. They had urged the White House to reconsider Iraq’s inclusion given its key role in fighting the Islamic State group, it added. Trump is expected to sign the new order on Wednesday. An earlier order was blocked by federal courts. | 0 |
Unless you re an idiot, you know that while the terrorist attacks in Benghazi were a tragedy, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton were at fault for the attacks. Of course, Republicans have never exactly been the sharpest knives in the kitchen. For years, the Right has been waging a desperate war on Clinton, Obama, and sanity with their asinine Benghazi investigations. All across conservative media, we hear that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or both murdered four patriots with their bare hands while blaspheming God s name and murdering babies (or something; it s hard to understand what they are talking about at times).The Republican Benghazi scandal has been slowly going up in flames for quite some time now, but a letter from Trey Gowdy s former counsel has completely decimated any hope they have of getting anything useful out of the millions and millions of taxpayer dollars they wasted on this senseless exercise. Nevertheless, Republicans continue to claim that Obama and Clinton prevented the military from taking action that would have saved the lives of the Americans who died in the attacks. This is the drumbeat to which Republicans have goose-stepped as they attempted to railroad the Obama Administration in court but as much as they try to deny it, reality is a thing. Even more unfortunately for Republicans, their own former counsel in the matter was very clear that no one did anything wrong.On May 16, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the voice of reason in this mess, sent a letter to Gowdy to remind him that his own attorney disputed many of the GOP s claims:Unfortunately, your letter failed to include any statements from your own former Republican Chief Counsel a retired three-star general with more than 33 years of service in the United States Army who repeatedly commended the military s actions on the night of the attacks during closed interviews with Defense Department officials.For example, on January 8, 2016, the Select Committee conducted a transcribed interview with former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. During that interview, your former Chief Counsel stated:I think you ordered exactly the right forces to move out and to head toward a position where they could reinforce what was occurring in Benghazi or in Tripoli or elsewhere in the region. And, sir, I don t disagree with the actions you took, the recommendations you made, and the decisions you directed.Gowdy s former counsel also acknowledged that it was impossible, given time and distances, for military forces to arrive fast enough to make a difference:Your former Chief Counsel acknowledged that it is clear from the time and distances involved that none of the military forces could have gotten to Benghazi in time to save lives.He stated:And, again, sir, I don t mean to suggest that anything could have been done differently to affect the outcome in Benghazi, and I think you would agree with that.But most importantly, there was nothing that could be done at all:In addition, on January 13, 2016, the Select Committee conducted a transcribed interview with the Defense Department s former Chief of Staff, Jeremy Bash. During that interview, your former Republican Chief Counsel stated:I would posit that from my perspective, having looked at all the materials over the last 18 months, we could not have affected the response to what occurred by 5: 15 in the morning on the 12th of September if Benghazi, Libya. So let me start with that positing or that stipulation.Your former Chief Counsel also stated:I don t see any way to influence what occurred there. But what I am worried about is we re caught by surprise On 9/11, we ve got nothing postured to respond in a timely manner and you can debate what s timely, what s untimely, but nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi. The conclusions of your former Republican Chief Counsel match almost exactly the findings from more than two years ago of the House Committee on Armed Services, which conducted its own investigation into the attacks in Benghazi, Cummings wrote, noting that Rep. Buck McKeon, the Republican Chairman of the Committee who led the investigation at the time, was satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn t have done more than we did. There you have it. Barack Obama killed no one. Hillary Clinton killed no one. If anything, Republicans are trying to distract from their own responsibility in the matter. ThinkProgress reported in 2012 that Republicans had cut funding for embassy security because defending Americans abroad was not a priority :For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department s Worldwide Security Protection program well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012 .[In 2011] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans proposed cuts to her department would be detrimental to America s national security a charge Republicans rejected.[GOP vice presidential nominee Paul] Ryan, [Rep. Darrell] Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.These cuts occurred, of course, not long before the deadly attacks the GOP is so desperate to pin on their favorite enemies.Go figure.Featured image via Getty Images (Chip Somodevilla)/Getty Images (Eric Thayer) | 1 |
The sad and almost pathetic end of the Bush dynasty Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had to ask his audience to clap during a speech at a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Tuesday.Here's Jeb Bush asking an audience in New Hampshire to "please clap": https://t.co/xiaOYIufy0 @shiftmsnbc pic.twitter.com/x0Uc5Fl8gr NTA by Mic (@NavigatingTrump) February 3, 2016Bush had just finished talking about how he would protect the country as commander in chief, The New York Times reported. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter, but send a signal that we re prepared to act in the national security interests of this country to get back in business of creating a more peaceful world, he said. The audience responded with silence. Please clap, Bush then said, in a quieter tone, and the crowd laughed and obliged. Via: The Hill | 1 |
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - (This October 3 story has been refiled to Corrects detention period to four weeks, not four months, in seventh paragraph.) A Danish inventor charged with murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall in his home-made submarine had video footage on his computer showing women being violently killed, a court heard on Tuesday. A police prosecutor said officers found images which we presume to be real of women being strangled and decapitated on the hard drive on Peter Madsen s computer in a laboratory he ran. That, together with new post-mortem evidence showing Wall was stabbed in her ribcage and genitals around or shortly after her death, was adding to the case against Madsen, the prosecutor, Jakob Buch-Jepsen, told the Copenhagen court. DNA tests from Madsen s nails, face and neck showed a clear match with Wall s, Buch-Jepsen said, though the exact cause of death remained unknown. Our suspicion hasn t changed, it has been strengthened since (the last hearing on) September 5, he added. Madsen, who denies murdering Wall and another charge of mutilating her body, appeared in court via video link dressed in a green boilersuit. He said the computer searched by police was not his. They are the space laboratory s tools which have been used by everyone in the laboratory, he said. The court heard he had been working on building a space rocket in the lab. He remained calm during the pre-trial session, sitting with his hands folded most of the time. The court ordered him detained for another four weeks as investigations continued. Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who was researching a story on Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in the 17-metre (56-foot) craft in August. Madsen has told the court in past hearings Wall died accidentally, saying she was hit by a heavy hatch cover on his UC3 Nautilus submarine. On August 23, police identified a headless female torso washed ashore in Copenhagen as Wall s. Madsen has also denied amputating her limbs, saying he tried to bury her whole body at sea. | 0 |
Despite claiming that he never watches Morning Joe on MSNBC, it became very clear on Monday morning that Donald Trump lied about that.Political analyst Rick Tyler joined the panel and had a field day mocking the Republican nominee for finally toning down his campaign rhetoric instead of continuing to act like a petulant child. Reince Priebus has been particularly happy about the change and Tyler couldn t resist comparing him to a dad who had just successfully potty trained his toddler. He s sort of talking about his candidate as if he graduated from diapers to big boy pants, Tyler quipped as the studio broke out in laughter. This is not great progress, he continued. His new tone, I don t understand what the new tone is. Tyler went on to question whether Trump s new pivot is the real Donald Trump since he s only doing it late into the campaign after weeks of disastrous poll numbers.Mika Brzezinski chimed in later on that Trump s claim that Hillary Clinton would cause Americans to lose everything sounded like it came from someone who loaded up on alcohol prior to the rally. He belted like, honestly, like he s had a lot to drink, Brzezinski said. His delivery is very Blaaaaaagh! Here s the video via Twitter..@rickwtyler: Reince Preibus sort of talked about Trump as if he graduated from diapers to big boy pants https://t.co/5NlRA9O5L7 Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 22, 2016As it turns out, Donald Trump was watching Morning Joe while they were mocking him, so of course the thin-skinned businessman lashed out on Twitter by attacking Mika and threatened to reveal secrets about her and Joe Scarborough. Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016Some day, when things calm down, I ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016Trump s hissy fit drew a fantastic response from Joe in defense of his co-host. He even thanked Trump for helping the show draw the best ratings. Neurotic and not very bright? Look in the mirror. https://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016Thanks for watching. Morning Joe is enjoying it s best ratings ever thanks to obsessed fans like you. GLAD? https://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016Trump s new campaign staff had one job and they failed. One of the reasons why Trump s campaign has been imploding is because he can t control his reactions towards those who mock or criticize him. So it looks like it only took a morning cable show to end Trump s new tone. That change didn t last long at all.Featured image via John Moore/Getty Images | 1 |
Secret Service agents rushed Donald trump offstage on Saturday evening during a rally in Reno, Nevada after they determined a protester in the audience posed a threat to the Republican presidential candidate. Go! Go! agents shouted as they whisked him away and a combination of local police and private security wrestled the suspect to the ground. Thousands of people scattered like a sea of bodies, screams rang out and authorities dragged the man away as he kicked and strained after someone shouted gun in the audience, causing the ensuing chaos. Read more: Daily Mail | 1 |
SYDNEY (Reuters) - About 20 asylum seekers on Friday left an Australian-run detention center due to close down in Papua New Guinea, but hundreds of holdouts faced forcible eviction amid an immigration standoff that has blighted Australia for years. Nearly 600 men have barricaded themselves into the Manus island center for more than 10 days without regular food or water, defying closure attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea in what the United Nations calls a looming humanitarian crisis . The deadline to move is Saturday. The asylum seekers fear reprisals if they move to transit centers pending possible resettlement in the United States. The main camp was closed on Oct. 31 and water and power have been cut off. Some locals are angry at what they perceive as preferential treatment for the asylum seekers, many of them well educated, in a poor, rural society, and some of the detainees have come under attack when on release from the camp. Bowing to pressure from Papua New Guinea, which said it would forcibly evict and apprehend any holdouts on Saturday, around 20 men left the camp for one of the transit centers, three asylum seekers told Reuters. The rest vowed to stay put, setting the scene for a possible clash. Volker Turk, assistant high commissioner for protection at U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, called on both governments to exercise restraint and not to use violence, taking into account people who had been in the processing center for years. They re in a very vulnerable state with not much hope in sight, he said. We have been visiting Manus island several times over the last couple of years, we have reported on the very dire conditions in these centers. It s now really high time to bring an end to this unconscionable human suffering. In Sydney, about 200 protesters picketed a fundraiser for the ruling Liberal Party, heckling arriving guests and demanding that the men be allowed to settle on the mainland. In Melbourne, more than 1,000 people held similar protests, the Australian Associated Press news agency said. Australia has used the center, and a camp on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, to detain asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. It says boat arrivals will never enter Australia, even if found to be refugees, as this would encourage people smugglers in Asia. Australia says the policy prevents people drowning at sea, but it has been widely condemned. We aren t going to be stood over by people that have better accommodation to move to, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in a radio interview. The U.N. Human Rights Committee urged Australia to bring its migration laws into line with world standards. It is concerned about conditions in Manus and on Nauru, citing safety fears and instances of assault, sexual abuse, self-harm and suspicious deaths. The asylum seekers, drawn largely from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Syria, use rubbish bins to collect rainwater and set up makeshift shelters to protect against the tropical sun and rain. Papua New Guinea police returned to dismantle parts of the camp on Friday, large parts of its fence having been removed the previous day. They are destroying our shelters, said Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran, detained for more than four years. They destroyed the rubbish bins where we have been collecting water too. | 0 |
The horror that is Donald Trump s rise to the top of the GOP presidential race continues, and now his former nemesis turned ardent supporter Ben Carson went on Fox and Friends on Monday morning to warn the Republican Party that they better nominate Trump or else.It s no secret that the Republican establishment can t stand Trump, but is, like the rest of us, at a loss as to what to do to stop him. The guy is like Teflon his supporters are so brainwashed that they don t care how many lies he tells or how many people he insults. They just want Trump in the White House. Carson said to the hosts: I can tell you this. If there are shenanigans, if it s not straightforward, all of those millions of people that Donald Trump has brought into the arena are not going to stay there.And the Republicans are going to lose. And it s going to be not only the presidency, but it s going to be the Senate, and it could even be the House. It s going to be absolute destruction. The thing is, though, the GOP is done either way if Trump gets the nomination. The majority of Americans are not bottom feeding racists, misogynists, and homophobes like Trump supporters are. They are the lowest of the low, and everyone knows it. Make America Great Again is nothing more than code for Make America White Again. Most people, regardless of political persuasion, know how dangerous Donald Trump and his horrible rhetoric are. He and his supporters are reminiscent of the rise of Adolf Hitler, and we all know how that turned out.Carson went on to opine: And if they re more concerned about America, they will not blow up a straightforward process. They will let the will of the people prevail. I guarantee you, Mr. Carson, the will of the majority of Americans is NOT a Donald Trump presidency.Watch the video below, as posted by Raw Story:Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey intends to form closer ties with Iraq s central government after the Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday, adding that Baghdad would control borders, airports and oil. Yildirim made the comments in an interview broadcast simultaneously on multiple Turkish television channels. He said Turkey would not launch adventures but would retaliate in kind if there is a threat against its interests. | 0 |
Maybe Hillary or Bernie can use this footage in their next campaign ad. What a great way to bring American voters over to their side A poster on Twitter who identifies as a Black Muslim man claims to have been the person seen on news video chasing and tackling a young white male Trump supporter following a Trump rally in San Jose Thursday. Using the Twitter handle Houdini @sizzle_seyf , the man posted the news video and retweeted congratulations on his chasing and tackling the Trump supporter.This video shows anti-Trump thugs sucker punching and attacking Trump supporters. Near the end of the video, the young white Trump supporter can be seen running from the mob. The pictures and video below show what happened when the black Muslim man finally caught up to him:Here are the still images of anti-Trump Muslim Houdini chasing and tacking a Trump supporter leaving the rally in San Jose, California.Before the Trump rally, Houdini had been posting about My Ramadan. The Muslim punk who calls himself Houdini has made his Twitter account private since bragging about tackling this young Trump supporter Here s the video:Outside Trump rally protestors chased down this kid and tackled him. When he got up we pointed him to police. pic.twitter.com/83O2oNzcMx Tom Llamas (@TomLlamasABC) June 3, 2016Via: Gateway Pundit | 1 |
Contrary to what the media would like us to believe, Obama has not remained silent when it comes to policy that President Trump put in place by executive order. Neither he nor his Democratic henchmen remained silent when President Trump desperately tried to convince Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, or when he had the opportunity to attack him over his handling of the Charlottesville controversy. The media celebrated Obama s post-Charlotseville tweet designed to make our former President look like he was in favor of uniting the nation (which we all know is a bald-faced lie), while falsely giving the impression that President Trump was choosing sides.Before the media gets into a full-blown tizzy about Obama using social media to bash our current president over DACA, they might consider that most of America aren t stupid enough to believe that Valerie Jarrett didn t move into Barack Obama s DC home because he needed a friend to play checkers with. He may not be making public statements to voice his opposition against our current president, but one thing we do know is that he and Valerie Jarrett aren t sitting on their hands, while President Trump unwinds everything they worked so hard to make happen, including DACA.Hotair You know it s killing this guy not to be on camera every day scolding Trump in his usual that s not who we are terms but that would be a strategic disaster so obvious that silence is really the only option. A Trump vs. Obama fight over almost any issue would unify most of the right behind the president and O knows it; the most brutal thing he can do to Trump is to deny him that our-guy-versus-their-guy dynamic. I don t think it s crazy to believe that Trump s job approval would be five to 10 points higher if Obama had spent the last seven months sniping at him regularly. By withholding his criticism, he s made it possible for soft Republicans and right-leaning independents to criticize POTUS without fear of being accused that they re carrying O s water.Two days before President Trump s inauguration, Obama warned him that he would come out against him if Trump rescinded his unconstitutional DACA.Why attack Trump now? I think there s more to it than DACA just being near and dear to Obama s heart. He knows that congressional Republicans are going to be jammed up here to an unusual degree. Immigration is a fraught issue for the GOP under the best of circumstances but DREAMers are an especially hard case due to their having come here as children. They re the one class of illegals about whom even Trump speaks warmly. In fact, the president s going to end DACA not because he wants to but because Republican AGs are squeezing him to do so, replete with the threat of a court battle; even then, Trump is still so reluctant to pull the plug that he s willing to hold off for another six months. The entire GOP (apart from Steve King) will spend those six months telling every voter who listens that they re open to legalizing DREAMers. All they ask in return is some face-saving security measures so that they can semi-plausibly argue to their base that they didn t roll over completely on amnesty.Having Obama wade in publicly on the side of DREAMers will complicate all of that. With O banging the drum for amnesty, Republican voters who are lukewarm on the idea in the first place will start to turn frosty. Populists will have a field day attacking Ryan and McConnell (and Trump?) for essentially doing Obama s bidding by negotiating for a DREAM bill. Some congressional Republicans might start to get cold feet. The more hostile Trump and the congressional GOP become towards a DREAM deal as part of a backlash towards Obama, the more ammo Schumer will have to say that Republicans are being cruel to poor illegal children whose only mistake was trusting the federal government. The whole GOP we like DREAMers too! messaging effort will be scrambled. Either negotiations will end up collapsing in Congress, with Dems using the DREAM failure against Republicans next fall, or Trump, Ryan, and McConnell will have to swallow hard and approve an amnesty cheered on by Barack farking Obama, which is about the RINO-iest move a modern Republican is capable of making. Either the GOP base ends up angry at the White House or everyone else does. Obama speaking out is tinder for the match Trump is about to strike.Let s hope President Trump will be able to locate and tweet this pesky little video of candidate Obama telling his constituents how he disagrees with law breaking illegal aliens living and working in America: | 1 |
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation back in his home country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia s administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been banned in the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naik s presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicized Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election - the ruling coalition s worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has aroused controversy with his puritan brand of Islam - recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. A Youtube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him . Last week, India s counter-terrorism agency prepared charges against Naik, saying he has been promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures. Bangladesh suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naik s preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects, said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public. At his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, a female Reuters reporter asked about the investigation in India. Naik would only say: Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public. Naik did not respond to subsequent requests for comment from Reuters. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given preferential treatment . Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him, Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India related to terrorism allegations involving him , he added. Zahid and the prime minister have both posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society - about 40 percent of Malaysia s population is non-Muslim. The group said it was unaware Naik had been going to the Putrajaya mosque - or where he might be in Malaysia. Officials at the Putra Mosque said Naik has been attending Friday prayers there for about a month. He has also been spotted in other mosques, hospitals and restaurants in the administrative capital in recent months, according to witnesses that Reuters spoke to. Naik has in the past denied India s allegations. In an interview with a Kuwaiti television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi because of his popularity. Malaysia s opposition Islamic Party (PAS), which has defended Naik in the past, last week urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, saying the allegations aim to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community. Islamic groups have stoked controversy for trying to impose their ethos in a multi-cultural country. Malaysian authorities canceled a planned beer festival last month, citing security concerns, and for some years now international pop stars who wish to make appearances in Malaysia face restrictions over clothing and dancing. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. The laws, however, are secular, though the country does have sharia courts for civil cases for Muslims. Malaysia s nine sultans, who take turns as the mostly ceremonial monarch and are the official guardians of Islam in Malaysia, last month called for unity and religious harmony after what they described as excessive actions in the name of Islam. One of them harshly condemned a Muslim-only launderette. We are seeing this gravitation toward fundamentalism and a conservative idea of Islam because the current government doesn t want to be seen as secular anymore, said Ahmad Farouk Musa, founder of a moderate Islam think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF). To ensure Malay support, the government thinks it has to have Islamic credentials just like PAS, Farouk told Reuters. said. Islam sells. In September, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol was detained for giving an unauthorized speech in the Malaysian capital, in which he argued that governments shouldn t police religion or morality. Zahid, also the home minister, said Akyol s book Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty has been banned as it contravened norms of the society in Malaysia . Farouk, who organized the speech, said he now faces charges for abetting Akyol. | 0 |
It s easy to glance at Tuesday s popular vote which, with 92 percent of all precincts reporting, shows Hillary Clinton with six million fewer votes than Barack Obama won in 2012 and reach the conclusion that Clinton lost the White House because she failed to turn out the Democratic base. But the truth is much more complicated. While she underperformed relative to Obama s 2012 totals in several Midwestern states Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin Clinton ran virtually even with Obama in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. What s more, she far surpassed Obama s 2012 vote total in Florida, the country s biggest swing state. Yet somehow, while Obama carried Florida, Clinton lost it. Which brings us to an important question: Was Donald Trump just good enough to beat a bad Democratic opponent on Tuesday, or does he deserve far more credit?A review of vote totals in the past two elections reveals that Trump 2016 would have defeated Obama 2012 in the electoral college. (Disclaimer: This obviously is an apples-to-oranges exercise because no two elections are the same, nor are any two electorates. Still, unlike debating whether the 2016 Cubs would defeat the 1927 Yankees, this is not an entirely abstract argument; a comparison of their respective performances in the country s most competitive states shows Trump edging Obama in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.) The math might seem impossible. After all, Obama won nearly 66 million votes in 2012; Trump is currently at 59.5 million and should finish around 60 million, which will actually be one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney won. How, then, could Trump have topped Obama in the electoral college? The answer: Republican turnout lagged in certain parts of the country but shot through the roof in the nation s most critical battleground states. Let s look at them individually, in descending order by population, and do the electoral-vote math. The 2016 totals aren t yet final because not all precincts have reported.FLORIDA 29 EVs 98 percent reportingObama 2012: 4,235,270Clinton 2016: 4,485,745Romney 2012: 4,162,081Trump 2016: 4,605,515Conclusion: Trump beats Obama by some 370,000 votes and wins Florida. (Note: Clinton herself won 250,000 more votes in Florida than Obama did in 2012.) PENNSYLVANIA 20 EVs 97 percent reportingObama 2012: 2,907,448Clinton 2016: 2,844,705Romney 2012: 2,619,583Trump 2016: 2,912,941Conclusion: Trump squeezes past Obama by a margin of some 5,000 votes and wins Pennsylvania. (Note: Clinton runs about 60,000 votes behind Obama, but would ve had more than enough to defeat Romney in 2012.) OHIO 18 EVs 94 percent reportingObama 2012: 2,697,260Clinton 2016: 2,317,001Romney 2012: 2,593,779Trump 2016: 2,771,984Conclusion: Trump edges Obama by roughly 75,000 votes and wins Ohio. (Note: Clinton s worst battleground state showing was Ohio, winning 380,000 [!] fewer votes than Obama.)Stop right there and crunch the numbers: Florida (29) + Pennsylvania (20) + Ohio (18) = 67 EVs.Romney finished with 206 EVs. By protecting all of those, and then taking 67 from Obama, Trump would hit 273 and win the presidency.The question: Did Trump 2016 defeat Obama 2012 in all of the states Romney won? Yes. Here s a look at the competitive ones: NORTH CAROLINA (98 percent reporting):Trump 2,339,603 Obama 2,178,388 ARIZONA (73 percent reporting):Trump 947,284 Obama 930,669 GEORGIA (93 percent reporting):Trump 2,068,623 Obama 1,761,761 UTAH (78 percent reporting):Trump 360,634 Obama 229,463A review of the Romney 2012 states confirms that Trump, in this hypothetical matchup, would have carried every single one against Obama. It doesn t matter that Obama would have trounced Trump by nearly 300,000 votes in Michigan; by more than 200,000 in Wisconsin; by 175,000 in Virginia; and by 160,000 in Colorado. It s similarly meaningless that Obama would have narrowly defeated Trump in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. The 44th president carried all of those states in 2012, and in this hypothetical contest, he would successfully defend all of them. But it wouldn t be enough. The electoral college would produce a razor-thin margin: Trump 273, Obama 265.Via: National Review | 1 |
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Voting for the new leader of South Africa s ruling ANC ended on Monday about ten hours after delegates began casting ballots for either Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a senior party source told Reuters. Voting for top 6 is done, said the source, referring to the position of president of the African National Congress and the party s five other senior posts. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee could help decide the fate of his moves to undo climate-related U.S. regulations, but legal experts said Neil Gorsuch’s judicial record makes it hard to predict whether as a justice he would back a sweeping rollback. If confirmed to the lifetime job by the Senate, the Colorado-based federal appeals court judge would restore the court’s 5-4 conservative majority. The Senate is planning an April 7 confirmation vote although many Democrats are fighting to block Gorsuch. On the court, Gorsuch could become a pivotal vote on the Republican president’s deregulation agenda, along with fellow conservative Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes joins the court’s four liberals in close cases. That agenda includes Trump’s effort to kill Democratic former President Barack Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan, blocked by the high court last year, aimed at reducing climate-warming carbon emissions from mainly coal-fired power plants. Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order kicking off a lengthy review process that environmental groups and Democratic-governed U.S. states have promised to challenge in court. Gorsuch’s views on issues related to climate change are unclear. His mother headed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Republican former President Ronald Reagan for two years in the 1980s. Gorsuch was not asked about climate issues during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing last week. In his 11 years as a judge, the only major ruling touching upon climate policy came in 2015 when he was on a three-judge panel that upheld a Colorado measure requiring power generators to ensure a fifth of their electricity came from renewable sources. A 2016 case on federal agency power is potentially more instructive on how he might approach broad moves to slash current regulation, according to experts. In that case, Gorsuch questioned a 1984 Supreme Court precedent giving federal agencies broad deference to interpret laws. Gorsuch called the doctrine, enshrined in the Chevron v. Natural Resource Defense Council ruling, an “elephant in the room” that concentrates federal power “in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution.” Questions remain over how that approach would manifest itself if applied to efforts by Trump’s EPA to weaken or rescind existing agency regulations on fighting climate change. Some environmental lawyers say it could mean Gorsuch would be skeptical of any big changes at the agency level. The EPA under Obama compiled detailed scientific data to support its efforts to curb carbon emissions. “That could hamper the Trump administration,” said Jonathan Adler, a conservative law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland. Sean Donahue, a lawyer who represents environmental groups, agreed, saying if the EPA were to “advance fancy interpretive footwork to try to make greenhouse gases not a Clean Air Act pollutant,” the administration may not get the deference it wants. The extent to which the U.S. Clean Air Act, the law that tackles air pollution, applies to carbon emissions is heavily contested in the courts. The Supreme Court, in the landmark 2007 decision Massachusetts v. EPA, held that carbon is a pollutant that could be subject to regulation under the law. In a 2014 case, the court largely upheld the Obama administration’s first batch of greenhouse gas regulations. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club have said they are ready to pounce if they see signs that Trump’s EPA, headed by fossil fuels industry ally Scott Pruitt, is ignoring science in making climate-related regulatory changes. “I think the bottom line is that we hope any anti-regulatory rule-making should be so unscientific ... almost any federal judge should see through the Trump administration maneuvering,” said Pat Gallagher, a Sierra Club lawyer. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Faced with a growing test of resolve for a new U.S. president who vowed while campaigning to get tough on North Korea, Donald Trump’s aides are pressing to complete a strategy review on how to counter Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear threats. Pyongyang’s latest missile launches and the assassination in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother have added urgency, driving home the need for Washington to confront the security challenge. All options are on the table, ranging from tighter sanctions aimed at pushing North Korea back into disarmament talks, to a return of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea, and even pre-emptive air strikes on North Korean missile installations, senior U.S. administration officials said. They added a consensus was forming around relying for now on increased economic and diplomatic pressure – especially by pressing China to do more to rein in North Korea - while deploying advanced anti-missile defenses in South Korea and possibly in Japan, as well. Among the other possibilities, one U.S. official said, was returning North Korea to the U.S. list of countries that support terrorism. That would be a response to the suspected use of nerve gas to kill Kim’s brother at a Malaysian airport last month. It would subject Pyongyang - already heavily sanctioned by the United Nations and individual states, so far to little effect - to additional financial sanctions that were removed when it was taken off the list in 2008. For now, U.S. officials consider pre-emptive military action far too risky, given the danger of igniting a regional war and causing massive casualties in Japan and South Korea and among tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in both allied countries. Such ideas could gain traction, however, if North Korea proceeds with a threatened test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Just before he took office in January, Trump tweeted: “It won’t happen!” when Kim said North Korea was close to testing an ICBM. Trump also could opt for escalating cyber attacks and other covert actions aimed at undermining the North Korean leadership, a U.S. government source said. The review is expected to be completed by the end of the month, officials said. Decisions could be held up, however, by the slow pace at which Trump has been filling national security jobs. Trump is known to have little patience for detailed foreign policy discussions, but officials said he seemed to have heeded a warning from his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, that North Korea would be the most urgent international issue he would face - so much so that he requested intelligence briefings on the issue. While officials have stressed the need to persuade China to do more to pressure North Korea, Trump’s first concrete response to North Korea’s missile tests has been to start installing an advanced anti-missile defense system in South Korea, which has incensed Beijing. Diplomats said the move might reassure U.S. allies but could backfire by antagonizing China, which regards the system as a threat, and make it less willing to step up sanctions on its neighbor. “You have to adjust and calibrate all the options based on the facts on the ground,” said an administration official, who added that media reports highlighting military options were overblown. “The ability to have sanctions that pack some punch and are more dynamic than we have had in the past is going to be dependent to some extent on Chinese cooperation,” he said. Chinese diplomats argue that Beijing is doing all it can. Bonnie Glaser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies said China could close banks that conduct illicit financial transactions with North Korea, prosecute front companies facilitating business, cut off oil exports and expel North Korean workers. Glazer said she saw no good military option. While past talks have failed, she would not be surprised if Trump wanted to try diplomacy. One idea could be to discuss a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, which would fall short of current demands for nuclear disarmament. “North Korea may insist on being recognized as a nuclear weapons state as a precondition, in which case the U.S. would have to decide whether to make that concession,” she said. Evans Revere, a former senior diplomat who dealt with Korea under President George W. Bush, said Washington should pressure North Korea with sanctions, military deployments and covert operations. “Doing this would ... compel the regime to rethink its course and make it more likely to return to dialogue and denuclearization, lest it risk collapse,” he said. Whether Trump will be willing to tolerate the level of risk needed to make such a strategy work remains unclear. “This is an administration that is more inclined to be averse to regime change than previous administrations,” the first administration official said. “That’s from the top down.” “This administration intends to come up with options based on the cards we are dealt; not try to change the deck entirely, which is what regime change is.” | 0 |
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Two sons of former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli were paid $49 million by Brazilian engineering company Odebrecht through a network of shell companies, Panama s prosecutors office said on Thursday. The two sons, whose whereabouts are unknown, were paid to facilitate paperwork for contracts that the company had won, prosecutors said in a statement. Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enriquez Martinelli were paid through accounts in Panama and abroad from 2010 to 2014, they said. Odebrecht agreed in August to pay $220 million in fines to Panama and to cooperate with investigators probing bribes of Panamanian officials. Odebrecht allegedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in association with infrastructure projects in 12 countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Panama between 2002 and 2016. | 0 |
Many Republicans have a clever way of remembering history. Instead of acknowledging that former President George W. Bush had the terror which occurred on 9/11/01 happen under his watch, they skillfully say nothing happened after 9/11/01. Completely ignoring the fact that yes, in fact, intelligence was ignored completely, and George W. Bush, alongside his administration,p f*cked up big time. BIG time. If they d own that, you could almost respect the candor, but since they can t, they just look utterly moronic and slightly evil.This is what just happened, yet again, on Real Time with Bill Maher when Republican Bush apologist Ana Navarro was trying to defend George W. Bush and state the case for Jeb Bush. Not only that, she couldn t seem to acknowledge the fact that what W did to get us into a war in Iraq was not only false and horrific, but should be considered a war crime. He and his administration manufactured intelligence to make their case. And with most smart-minded folks out there understanding this and willfully acknowledging this fact, many would even go so far as to call him a war criminal. Which is exactly what fellow Real Time guest Margaret Cho did.After a discussion about how the best way to prevent veterans from needing help would be to not create veterans in the first place by unnecessarily going to war, Cho chimes in, and says: I think George W. Bush is a war criminal. He sent all those people to die. And as harsh as that sounds, it s true. He betrayed the trust of not only the American people, but more so of our men and women in uniform. He sent them to a war based on lies and thousands of them died, and even more came home injured both physically and mentally. It is most definitely criminal behavior and W alongside his administration should still be held accountable.Navarro, unwilling to accept reality, came back at Cho with: Let s not throw around that term so loosely. I mean, I know you are a comedian and everything, but war criminals are Nazis. Which is when Maher chimed in and asked her not to use comedian in such a disparaging tone as though those who are funny for a living can t be serious. In fact, comedians, of all people, are able to dissect reality much more thoroughly than others who just view it on the surface and their insight is quite valuable, because they can often see things others can t.If you find yourself defending the incompetency of George W. Bush and ignoring the reality that 9/11/01 occurred on his watch, or defending his lies that led us into Iraq, you need to take a good, long look at yourself and what you really stand for as a human being living in what s supposed to be a civilized society.Watch the tense moment between panelists here:Video/Featured image from YouTube | 1 |
The members of a Roman Catholic church in Poland have demonstrated to the world how compassionate Christians can shut down priest when they preach politics, not religion, from the pulpit.The women were at a Roman Catholic church in Gdansk, which is spearheading the outlawing of abortion in the Eastern European country. The Priest began reading a letter to the congregation in favor of the ban, which triggered a large number of mostly female worshippers to stand, turn their back on the Priest, and leave the church.As The Journal reports:The message from Poland s Catholic bishops, presented at churches nationwide, called on lawmakers to back the proposal being considered by Poland s right-wing government.The move would tighten what are already some of Europe s most restrictive laws on pregnancy termination. Current legislation, dating from 1993, already bans all terminations except when pregnancy results from rape or incest, poses a health risk to the mother, or if the foetus is severely deformed.Pro-life activists support even tougher legislation but the move has sparked a backlash and thousands of marchers took part in a protest outside the country s parliament in Warsaw yesterday, as well as in several other cities.The move is in sharp contrast to Christian conservatives in the United States, who are actually rallying behind candidates and religious leaders who wear their prejudice and intolerance on their sleeve. Even Pope Francis is being pilloried by the Christian Right in America for his refusal to hate and preach against Muslims.In fact, there is not a candidate left in the GOP race for president who believes in a woman s reproductive rights over her own body. Donald Trump believes women should be punished for having abortions. Ted Cruz would outlaw abortion, with no exceptions even in cases of incest or rape. Even the candidate who is selling himself as the moderate, John Kasich, also calls for a total ban on abortion. There is no pro-choice version of the Republican message anymore.In economic policy, the ultra-right of the conservative movement has killed off the Eisenhower Republicans the GOP lawmakers and voters who believed in investment, taxation and welfare as the pillars which support free enterprise and a stable, prosperous society. At the same time, the evangelists have killed any hope of social liberalism in the party.What s left behind is a cold, cruel, and crazy mob, who simply do not care about facts, evidence or rational discussion. They are zealots. Let us hope that for the sake of the Republican Party, and the country, that a complete slaughtering in election 2016 brings everyone back to their senses. https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153656792786939/?__mref=message_bubbleFeatured Image via Screengrab | 1 |
Well, first of all, I didn t have my hands in the cookie jar. I m an operative, I m a strategist, and part of what my role was, in addition to being a political pundit, was to help advance the cause of justice and equality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrCEUL19-cM | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and the New York Daily News are not clowning around. Trump fired back on Twitter on Wednesday against the New York Daily News, after the tabloid published a photo of Trump edited to make him appear similar to “The Joker,” a clown-like villain from the Batman comic series. “Dopey Mort Zuckerman, owner of the worthless @NYDailyNews, has a major inferiority complex. Paper will close soon!” Trump (@realDonaldTrump) tweeted Wednesday. The front page headline jeered at New Hampshire voters for handing the Republican presidential candidate a win in the state’s primary election, calling the vote “dawn of the brain dead,” an apparent reference to the zombie horror movie “Dawn of the Dead.” Trump won the New Hampshire primary by almost 20 points Tuesday night, after finishing second in last week’s Iowa caucus. He has been the most popular candidate on social media throughout the campaign, regularly outpacing his competitors in social media buzz during debates. Wednesday’s online quarrel is hardly the first time that the tabloid paper and the tenacious tycoon have clashed. From his politics to his questionable coif, Trump has long been a target of the Daily News. On June 17, the paper reported that Trump was running for president with the front-page headline “Clown Runs for Prez.” The headline was accompanied by a photo of Trump that had been edited to depict him as a clown, complete with a red nose. That same day, Trump tweeted a retort. “Only a fool would buy the @NYDailyNews. Loses fortune & has zero gravitas,” Trump wrote. “Let it die!” Trump also came under fire from some Twitter users Tuesday night, as the former reality TV star gained momentum in the Granite State. The hashtag #TrumpRunningMate emerged on the social media site, and Twitter users cracked wise about who - or what - would join Trump’s ticket, if he were to win the Republican presidential nomination. “Heavily over-salted takeout that gives you two day bloat. #TrumpRunningMate,” tweeted Fledgeling Feminist (@fledgelingfem). “#TrumpRunningMate Kanye, and then Kim for State,” tweeted Ross Burnett (@rossburnett) on Tuesday evening. (Reporting By Amy Tennery; Editing by Marguerita Choy) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has distanced herself from President Barack Obama on a number of high-profile issues since starting her bid for the White House. Now, under pressure from left-leaning challenger Bernie Sanders, she is embracing him and his legacy with fervor. That strategy could pose problems for Clinton in the long run as Republicans look for fodder to portray her as representing Obama’s third term should she win the Democratic nomination. As she faces an unexpected challenge from Sanders in the early voting states, Clinton’s move to portray herself as an heir to Obama’s policies is aimed at courting young voters and progressives who are part of the president’s political base. But she could be setting herself up for difficulties with a general electorate weary of the status quo. Over and over again during a tense Democratic presidential debate on Sunday, Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state for four years, played up her ties to the president and accused Sanders of undermining him. Gone were her mentions of differences with the president over Syria, trade, and immigration. Instead, Clinton praised the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature healthcare law. She highlighted her connection to the administration’s Iran nuclear deal and lauded the White House for sending staff to Silicon Valley to discuss cybersecurity. Clinton, who ran against Obama for the 2008 Democratic nomination and then joined his administration, said she could accept Sanders’ criticism of her campaign donations - one of the Vermont senator’s favorite critiques - but wouldn’t tolerate similar criticism targeted at her former boss. “The comments that Senator Sanders has made ... don’t just affect me, I can take that, but he’s criticized President Obama for taking donations from Wall Street. And President Obama has led our country out of the Great Recession,” she said. “I’m going to defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street, taking on the financial industry, and getting results.” Clinton played up her service as his top diplomat, emphasized her hours advising him in the Situation Room, and accused Sanders of wanting to throw out Obamacare, all while debating in South Carolina, a state in which Obama is well liked. Republicans welcomed the opening Clinton provided for them to cast her White House run as a bid for a third Obama term. “When you have a president who is so unpopular as President Barack Obama ... and his chief diplomat is embracing those policies and running as his third term, it’s going to be next to impossible,” said Ric Grenell, a former U.S. spokesman at the United Nations under Republican President George W. Bush. Dissatisfaction with Obama and the agenda in Washington have helped propel two candidates outside the Republican establishment - businessman Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas - to the top of the party’s crowded presidential field. Trump appeared to reference Clinton’s comments about the president’s policies in a speech at Liberty University on Monday, saying the country cannot afford another four years of the same thing. “We can’t have another four years of Barack Obama,” he said. “We can’t have another four years of Hillary Clinton.” Perhaps foreshadowing future ads, the Republican National Committee noted that Democrats at Sunday’s debate had backed the current occupant of the White House. “Not content with Barack Obama’s legacy of a toxic Iran deal and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, Democrats doubled down on the extreme and failed policies of the current administration,” the RNC said in a statement. Democrats said Clinton was embracing Obama because he is popular with the party’s base, including in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest, called a caucus, on Feb. 1. “It just makes sense to highlight where you agree with a president who is popular among caucus goers, and Secretary Clinton found ways to get that done,” said Brent Colburn, a former Obama administration official who served as communications director for his 2012 campaign. Democratic strategist Richard Socarides, a Clinton supporter, said Republicans were bound to portray her potential presidency as a third Obama term anyway. “She deserves a lot of credit for putting the country first and going to work for him,” Socarides said. “After Iowa and New Hampshire especially, that will matter to a lot of Democratic primary voters. And she is right to point out that Bernie has not always been there. She has.” (Additional reporting by Alana Wise and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Caren Bohan, Mary Milliken and Marguerita Choy) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0 |
Individual people can be bullied into submission but as a group we can t be silenced If we are to really live in an environment where race is not a factor, we need to stop allowing the union of Obama-Holder-Sharpton-Soros-#BlackLivesMatter terrorists-Black Panther-Louis Farahkan-Black Liberation Theology-CAIR-liberal academia-Socialist Party-Democrat Party-Anarchists-Communist Party to stop making it an issue. White students are not a minority, but they are currently being treated worse than most minorities, if they break rank with the left-wing multicultural orthodoxy that is hellbent of persecuting expression of whiteness. White student unions are springing up at universities across Australia, as well as at universities and colleges across America.More than 30 White Student Union pages have recently sprung up over the last several days on Facebook, pages that affiliate themselves with various universities around the nation.The creation of an Illini White Student Union Facebook page that surfaced Nov. 18 in response to a Black Student Solidarity Rally at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gained national attention, but apparently it s just the tip of the iceberg.Over the last week, at least 33 other White Student Union pages have appeared on Facebook, according to research conducted Sunday by The College Fix.Notably, White Student Union Facebook pages have been created for Stanford, Penn State, UCLA, UC Berkeley, the University of Missouri, and NYU, along with many others.These White Student Union pages currently exist only as social media creations, and it is not clear whether they are created by students at their respective universities. It is also unclear if these groups plan to become actual student organizations on campus, although a North Carolina university page states they plan on holding group meetings, info sessions, rallies, and protests on the UNC campus. White Student Unions say they are supporting and defending the interests of white students who they say are becoming marginalised from on-campus life and political debate.This video truly exposes the hypocrisy of the Left. From the Illinois White Student Union Facebook Page:At least seven unofficial unions have formed at rapid speed in the past week, claiming to represent students of European descent at the University of Queensland, the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Technology, Sydney, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of NSW and the University of Western Australia.However, there are allegations that the movement is in fact an elaborate attempt to troll universities and the media, by the likes users of online bulletin boards 4chan and 8chan.If it is a hoax, it is a pretty sophisticated one, with members reaching out to news.com.au to share their views on the need to advance our interests as white students .The proliferation of white student unions follows a similar trend in the US, where groups have built considerable support on social media and many intend to establish an on-campus presence in the new year. However, this has also been dismissed as a hoax.Australian universities have distanced themselves from these unofficial groups, which are copping backlash on social media by fellow students and others who accuse them of white supremacy and racism. Responses to the groups on social media have ranged from be proud of your heritage! to f*** off Nazis .Others have responded with utter incredulity: This page is satire, right? one person asked.But the students behind the unions deny white pride is akin to racism, and argue they have as legitimate a place in university life as any other student group. ALL WE WANT IS EQUALITY The White Students Union at the Western Sydney University, which formed over the weekend and is already into the double digits of members, is not out to antagonise anyone , according its spokesman.The spokesman, who approached news.com.au to write a story, said he was a 24-year-old journalism student and gave us his name, but we have chosen not to publish it because we could not verify it.He said the group, which will seek formal registration with the university in 2016 and already has a six-person committee, was designed to advance our interests as white students and promote a safe space where we can come together as a community and organise . We re a genuine group, we re not doing it to troll anyone, he told news.com.au. If you roll up to any university these days you ll have gay safe spaces, Muslim safe spaces: in the last four or five years it s become very politically correct. That s great. I m as PC as they come. We re staying within the narrative. All we want is equality. He said he was absolutely expecting a backlash, but wanted to test the boundaries of what they re willing to acknowledge . We just thought, why not? Everyone else is doing it, why can t we do it? Anecdotally we have a lot of support from the ethnic students, he said. Our main antagonists are actually the older, white academics. These people say they re all about equality. The academics try to build this narrative that nobody supports this stuff, but it s happening. We re just using that language ourselves. Despite the hoax claims, universities are taking the rise of these unions seriously.In a statement, a spokesman for Western Sydney University said the group was not an official or authorised student group, adding: The university prides itself on the diversity of its university community and condemns any action that seeks to undermine this. Has there been a SINGLE college or university who has made this sort of claim about a Black Lives Matter organization or protest? Why the double standard? The University of Technology, Sydney, and Macquarie University both said white student unions formed by their students were not official and did not reflect the views of the universities or the majority of their students.In the About section of the Facebook page for the UTS White Student Union, it says the group was advancing the rights for the people of European descent and anyone from any background can join .A spokeswoman for Macquarie University said it had publicly contacted the administrators of the page yesterday, requesting that they remove the campus image and refrain from referring to themselves as a student organisation at Macquarie University . We understand this page is likely to be part of a wider hoax, stemming from North America, nevertheless we are continuing our investigations into the origin of this page, the spokeswoman told news.com.au.The University of Queensland went so far as to condemn the University of Queensland White Student Union, which was formed last Tuesday, as a racist web hoax .On its Facebook page, which has 378 likes, the University of Queensland White Student Union group rails against university overcrowding and rich international students outbidding white Australian students for rental housing and casual work. We re forced to put up with an overcrowded campus that hosts thousands more students than it was ever designed for. Not enough parking, not enough toilets, not enough computers, not enough study spaces, a post dated November 24 reads. We re forced to do group work with internationals who can t speak English, we carry the load and do all the work while our marks are dragged down. We re forced to put up with the anti-social behaviour of a particular group of students who treat study spaces as social spaces and constantly attempt to reserve public resources such as computers. Enough is enough. The founders of the UQ group asked not to be identified but said they represented white students who ve had their voices silenced by political correctness . Individual people can be bullied into submission but as a group we can t be silenced, the group told news.com.au Political correctness and free speech are issues that are becoming more and more important. The group said existing student organisations were obsessed with catering to minorities and they planned to establish their own society on campus in 2016. We re very clear on our position that white people have every right to organise themselves and act collectively to further their mutual interests, they said. We don t think whites are inherently superior and definitely don t think they should rule over anybody else. We think the ideas and issues we re raising have become more relevant to students as a new strain of political correctness has swept across the Western word over the past few years promoting ideas like white privilege . There are all these nasty ideas around now that white people, particularly white men, are always privileged regardless of their background and personal circumstances and that if they suffer hardship they deserve it, and that white people are the cause of everything that s wrong in the world. News.com.au asked the spokesman to prove that he was a legitimate student at the university, but he said he thought it was in his best interests to maintain anonymity due to death threats the group had received.Third-year University of Western Australia student Michael (who did not wish to reveal his last name) said he founded the UWA White Student Association on the weekend.He said ensuring all students and staff spoke fluent English, making sure the full breadth of white, European holidays and festivities were celebrated on campus, getting racist attacks on white students recognised as racism, and having the recently dumped European studies major reinstated were among the issues his group intended to lobby for. Our basic aims are to represent the interests of white students on campus, as well as do our bit to reverse what we view as the rapid decline of Western civilisation, caused by mass immigration resulting in a clash of values, and the decline of family values, Michael told news.com.au.A spokesman for UWA said the university did not endorse behaviours and actions which are deemed to be racially and culturally intolerant or offensive . UWA has a strong track record on promoting cultural and religious diversity and the university is committed to produce graduates who are intellectually and emotionally comfortable with difference, the spokesman said. In response to accusations of racism, Michael says he and the group were not racists and we never will be . Supporting white students doesn t imply hatred of other races, it s not a logical accusation, he said. We would be happy to work with other ethnic clubs to fulfil mutual goals. (Groups that represent ethnic minority groups) are nothing new, and we don t have an issue with them. What is new is the increasing difficulty white students face in expressing their views, identity, or culture on campus without being shouted down and labelled. White students are not a minority, but they are currently being treated worse than most minorities, if they break rank with the left-wing multicultural orthodoxy that is hellbent of persecuting expression of whiteness. The emergence of white student unions at universities in the US, including Berkeley and Harvard, have been suggested to be a response to a wave of recent anti-racism protests. One such union at the University of Illinois sprung up hours after a black solidarity event was held on campus. Others, however, have been revealed as hoaxes. So where we may have a scholarship program for indigenous students, or we may have programs that seek to enhance the experience of international students on campus, and that s perceived at discrimination, it s very disappointing when people take that position. Dr Gale said it was also disappointing some people who were part of mainstream Australia didn t have an appreciation for the privileged position of being at university.For entire story: News com.au | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday rejected a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to prevent the U.S. military from accepting transgender recruits starting Jan. 1, the second court to issue such a ruling this week. Four federal judges around the country have issued injunctions blocking Trump’s ban on transgender people from the military, including one that was also handed down on Friday. The administration has appealed the previous three rulings. In a six-page order, the three-judge-panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the administration had “not shown a strong likelihood that they will succeed on the merits of their challenge” to a district court’s order blocking the ban. On Thursday the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was denying the administration’s request while the appeal proceeds. The two courts’ actions could prompt the administration to ask the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Also on Friday, a federal trial court in Riverside, California, blocked the ban while the case proceeds, making it the fourth to do so, after similar rulings in Baltimore, Seattle and Washington, D.C. U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal said without the injunction the plaintiffs, including current and aspiring service members, would suffer irreparable harm. “There is nothing any court can do to remedy a government-sent message that some citizens are not worthy of the military uniform simply because of their gender,” he added. The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline for accepting transgender recruits was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1, 2017, to begin accepting transgender recruits, but Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, postponed that date to Jan. 1. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. | 0 |
KAMPALA (Reuters) - At least one person died as police fired bullets and teargas to disperse a crowd of opposition supporters rallying on Wednesday against plans to extend Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni s rule. Police have broken up a series of protests in recent days against a bill to let the 73-year-old president stand again in 2021 elections - the constitution currently sets an age limit for candidates at 75. Rights organizations and activists have criticized moves by several other long-serving African rulers, notably in Rwanda, Burundi and Burkina Faso, to stay in power by extending term limits. Police spokesman Elly Maate said one person died after officers fired bullets in the air to disperse a crowd gathering for what he called an illegal rally near a stadium in the southwestern town of Rukungiri. Opposition party member Ingrid Turinawe and a local government official both said two men died. Turinawe said a bullet also struck a vehicle carrying opposition leader Kizza Besigye. He was not hurt but an image showed a gaping hole in the rear window of his vehicle. A Museveni-allied legislator introduced the bill to remove the presidential age limit last month. Museveni met MPs backing the measure last week and for the first time openly expressed his support for the legislation, several local media outlets reported. | 0 |
By now, we ve all seen the tweet where Trump said that he won the popular vote in a landslide if millions of illegal votes are taken out of the count. We also all know that Trump wouldn t be saying a damn thing if he were confident that possible recounts didn t have a hope in hell of overturning the election results. Regardless, where in the name of all that s profane is he getting this idea that millions of illegal votes were cast?Trump is a conspiracy theorist. He believes people like Alex Jones. And Alex Jones is probably the most prominent person to report on these supposedly illegal votes right now. According to Politifact, about six days after the election, InfoWars published a story with a headline that reading: Report: 3 Million Votes in Presidential Election Cast by Illegal Aliens. That s a rather serious claim to make. This is Alex Jones, though, so wondering if he has legitimate supporting evidence for that claim is pointless. He actually got his number from a pair of tweets from Gregg Phillips, the founder of VoteStand. VoteStand is a voter-fraud detection app, and he says he s gone through 180 million voter registrations and found 3 million non-citizens on the rolls:Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations.Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million.Consulting legal team. Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 11, 2016We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens.We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 13, 2016Sprinkled throughout Phillips Twitter feed are more tweets claiming he s got the evidence, but he won t release it to Politifact or anybody else. Yet, just the existence of tweets from an app founder who s paranoid as all fuck about voter fraud is enough for Jones, which is enough for Trump. So Trump will loudly proclaim he won the popular vote, because obviously.And there you have it. We have a president who s likely to turn the next four years into a giant InfoWars episode. It s enough to make us want to put our fists through a window.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - One of Australia s largest independent publishers said it decided to delay the publication of a book that alleges widespread Chinese government influence in Australian institutions due to legal concerns. Sydney-based Allen & Unwin said in a statement on Sunday it had decided to delay publication of the book, Silent Invasion , following extensive legal advice . It said the book s author, Clive Hamilton, was unwilling to delay publication and requested the return of the book s rights. Hamilton said the publisher s chief executive, Robert Gorman, sent him an email on Wednesday saying the reason for the delay was due to concerns over possible legal action from Beijing. The email from Gorman, which was reviewed by Reuters, said the scheduled publishing date of April next year was too soon to publish the book and allow us to adequately guard against potential threats to the book and the company from possible action by Beijing . The email cited fears of a defamation action . Allen & Unwin s statement on Sunday, from Louise Cornege, its head of publicity, did not specify which court cases it was referring to. Gorman did not respond to requests for comment. Hamilton, an Australian who has previously published eight books with Allen & Unwin, said the shadow cast by Beijing is enough to make them so nervous about the consequences of publishing criticism of the Communist Party . Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Monday that, while she was unaware of the specific contractual details between the author and publisher, she would be concerned if there were any attempts to stifle free speech in Australia, particularly at the behest of a foreign government . China s State Council Information Office, which doubles as the ruling Chinese Communist Party s spokesman s office, did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily news briefing on Monday that he was unaware of the issue, but that China was committed to developing exchanges and cooperation with Australia in all areas on the basis of mutual respect and equality. Concern in Australia that Beijing may be extending its influence in the country has become a topic of political debate and media coverage over the past year. In June, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, published reports saying that there was a concerted campaign by China and its proxies to infiltrate the Australian political process and institutions to promote Chinese interests. China has denied the claims in the reports, which the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said were totally unfounded and irresponsible . Fairfax and the ABC declined to comment. Australia s Attorney-General George Brandis said in June that the threat of political interference by foreign intelligence services is a problem of the highest order and is getting worse . He said the Australian government had conducted a comprehensive review and planned to strengthen the country s espionage and foreign interference laws. Hamilton said his book was the first comprehensive national study of Beijing s program of exerting influence on another nation . The book documented the influence and penetration of the Chinese Communist Party in Australian political parties, universities and cultural organizations, as well as the Chinese diaspora in Australia, he said in a telephone interview. The delay of the book comes after two international publishing houses - Springer Nature, which publishes science magazines Nature and Scientific American, and Cambridge University Press - were criticized recently for restricting access to articles on sensitive subjects in China. In August, Cambridge University Press, which had initially blocked online access to hundreds of scholarly articles in China reversed its position and reposted the material, following an outcry over academic freedom. Cambridge University said at the time that the move to block content had been a temporary decision . Springer said early this month that it had pulled access to a small number of articles in China to comply with regulations, adding that it viewed the move as regrettable but necessary. Beijing has said all publications imported into China must comply with Chinese laws and regulations. | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif spoke directly during talks at the United Nations on Wednesday in what a European diplomat described as a very difficult meeting. Tillerson and Zarif spoke directly for a relatively long time. There was no real great surprise in the positions expressed, the diplomat said. The diplomat said there was unanimity that the nuclear deal was being respected, but the debate had not really focused on its implementation. There was no real visibility on what the American decision will be in October, the diplomat said. | 0 |
Republicans need to get a backbone, says former Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) when asked about the testimony of Jared Kushner before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Every time the Democrats say they need to call up Jared Kushner or Donald Trump Jr., then call up Chelsea Clinton, call up the Clintons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md3pmA-IZ_EChaffetz was on fire: There we have an Inspector General who issues a report stating an actual crime. You have Bill Clinton, the former President, taking millions and millions of dollars from countries that Hillary Clinton was then going into and doing business. So every time a Democrat says, I gotta talk to Donald Trump Jr., then go up and bring Chelsea Clinton in there. Because she was involved in the Benghazi situation, she was involved with the Foundation. I mean, when I tried as the chairman of the Oversight Committee, to bring in Ben Rhodes to talk about the Iran situation, nobody knows what the deal with Iran was, they claimed executive privilege. Chaffetz says they would never do this to the Clintons and he s right on the money: They would never, ever, ever do this to the Clintons. And that is what is fundamentally wrong with this. They could have easily, out of all the people in the world they could have easily claimed executive privilege on this one, proximity to the President, it s his son-in-law, he s his closest adviser, he could have easily pulled that off. But there he is, he s gonna go in there as an open book and they should get a lot of credit for it. Read more: Rick Wells | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump said he had a “constructive” meeting with members of U.S. intelligence agencies on Friday and plans to appoint a team to give him a plan to combat cyber attacks within 90 days of taking office on Jan. 20. “While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,” Trump said in a statement after the briefing from spy chiefs who have accused Russia of hacking to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Russia denies the allegations. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah will endorse Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz on Thursday, becoming the first member of the Senate to back Cruz, BuzzFeed News and Politico reported. Politico reported the pair would make the announcement later on Thursday at an event in Miami. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has slammed Cruz on the campaign trail for not having received any endorsements from fellow senators. Lee’s office could not confirm the reports. (Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Writing by Eric Beech) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not looking for the corporate tax rate reduction that the White House is seeks to be phased in over time. “Hopefully not,” Trump told reporters when asked about the issue during a meeting on tax reform at the White House. Trump said he wanted lawmakers to pass a tax reform bill by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday in late November. | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Failure to pass the government s flagship piece of Brexit legislation through parliament will result in holes in the statute book and increased uncertainty, two junior British ministers said on Thursday. This bill is about how we leave, it s about delivering certainty and continuity in the law as we leave the European Union, said Steve baker, a minister in the Brexit department. If this bill were not to pass ... then of course there would be holes in the statute book. The result would be that the statute book would not function as intended. | 0 |
Socialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday . It s an extreme situation, says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared. Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without. Camacho says she refuses to buy toilet paper from the black market on principle. In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket, Camacho told Fusion. We don t want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don t have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper at a supermarket . Recently, Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband. So now Camacho s guests could potentially have their toilet paper confiscated before they even make it to the hotel. Shortages, queues, black markets, and official theft. And blaming the CIA. Yes, Venezuela has truly achieved socialism.But what I never understood is this: Why toilet paper? How hard is it to make toilet paper? I can understand a socialist economy having trouble producing decent cars or computers. But toilet paper? And soap? And matches?Sure, it s been said that if you tried communism in the Sahara, you d get a shortage of sand. Still, a shortage of paper seems like a real achievement.Read more: CATO | 1 |
After being shot 3 months ago (see below), Majority Whip Steve Scalise returned to the House floor today. He got a standing ovation as he walked in and then spoke to the members of Congress (see below).Majority Whip Steve Scalise gets a standing ovation as he returns to the House Floor three months after being shot. https://t.co/YgFbAZnWTl #MenendezTrial (@NewtTrump) September 28, 2017Scalise spoke about the power of prayer and that praying was the first thing he did after being shot: The power of prayer is something that you just cannot underestimate Steve Scalise: The power of prayer is something that you just cannot underestimate pic.twitter.com/L6au1hZBSu Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 28, 2017 It s so important that as we re having those political battles, we don t make them personal Steve Scalise: It s so important that as we re having those political battles, we don t make them personal pic.twitter.com/BLhS3V7ftx Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 28, 2017He tweeted earlier in the day: I m back Rep. Steve Scalise tweets I m back upon returning to Capitol Hill after Alexandria shooting; he s expected to make speech on House floor. pic.twitter.com/Xbrttk0sHy ABC News (@ABC) September 28, 2017Remember that a crazed leftist tried to massacre Republicans just a few months ago:Rep. Steve Scalise was shot Wednesday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, in a deliberate attack. A congressional staffer was also shot. Scalise is in surgery right now and is expected to recover.Rand Paul said Scalise being there likely saved everyone because his presence (he s leadership) meant Capitol Police were there.Scalise, a member of the House Republican leadership as the majority whip, appeared to have been shot in the hip and it appeared two Capitol Hill police agents were shot, according to Rep. Mo Brooks who was on deck when the shooting occurred. The shooting took place at a practice for the GOP congressional baseball team.NBC News Special Report: Congressman Scalise, aides shot at baseball practice in Virginia https://t.co/KD9i1iP9MZ Jason Calabretta (@JasonCalabretta) June 14, 2017In a statement, Texas Rep. Roger Williams, one of the team s coaches, said one of his staff members was shot during the incident and is receiving medical attention. There was no information on the staffer s injuries.According to both congressional and law enforcement sources, the shooting appears to be a deliberate attack. Two law enforcement sources say the suspect is in police custody, has been taken to a hospital.Lawmakers who spoke at the scene to reporters described a normal morning practice, at a field where they ve practiced for years, when all of a sudden shots rang out. Lawmakers, staff members and even the young son of one of the members ran for cover, jumping into dugouts and over fences to avoid the gunshots.Congressmen in attendance described an injured Scalise dragging himself roughly 15 yards away from second base and lying there until the shooter was shot. The Congressmen then ran to help him. Once they were able, Sen. Jeff Flake said he and Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who is a physician, went out to where Scalise was lying to apply pressure to the wound. Nobody would have survived without the Capitol Hill police. It would have been a massacre without them. -Rand Paul We had nothing but baseball bats to fight back against a rifle with. Congressman Mo BrooksArizona Sen. Jeff Flake added that he saw a member of Scalise s security detail return fire on the gunman for what felt like 10 minutes, even though the police officer was wounded in the leg. 50 shots would be an understatement, I m quite sure, Flake said when asked about the total amount of gunfire, including police returning fire. Flake said two members of Scalise s security detail were wounded, and another man was wounded in the chest. Brooks said the shooter appeared to be a white male but added that I saw him for a second or two. He said the shooter was behind the third base dugout and didn t say anything. The gun was a semiautomatic, Brooks said, adding that he was sure it was a rifle but unsure what kind. It continued to fire at different people. You can imagine, all the people on the field scatter. It s come to this How will we bring America together if the Democrats keep fanning the flames of division?Read More: FOX News | 1 |
The left believes these are all perfectly acceptable topics to discuss with our young children. Whatever you do, just don t mention God!A public hearing is taking place Wednesday morning in the Massachusetts State House to look into a controversial sex survey given to middle school and high school students.Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the survey asks students as young as 12 a series of very personal and highly ideological questions.The survey asks students if they are homosexual and if they are transgender. It also asks if they have had oral or anal sex and if they have performed such acts with up to six people.Whether or not they have carried a gun, smoked cigarettes, consumed alcohol and how much also appear on the questionnaire, as well as whether they have taken drugs, such as OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. It asks how often their guardian uses a seat belt, if the youngster has a sexually transmitted disease, and where they sleep.The group MassResistance says the survey is psychologically distorting and will lead the child to think he is abnormal if he is not doing it all. The group stated that having children reveal personal issues about themselves and their family can have emotional consequences. They also complain that the survey results are used by radical groups from Planned Parenthood to LGBT groups to persuade politicians to give more taxpayer money [to] these groups. Though students fill out the survey anonymously, MassResistance warns that they are administered by the teacher in the classroom and there is often pressure for all kids to participate. The test is given nationally and not without controversy. The Chicago Tribune reported two years ago that a Chicago teacher was reprimanded for telling students they had a constitutional right not to fill out the survey.Via: Breitbart News | 1 |
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - It is necessary to prevent new sanctions against Iran and preserve Tehran s nuclear deal with world powers, RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Wednesday. | 0 |
Madonna has never been shy about expressing the fact that she hates President-elect Donald Trump with a burning passion. Not only was she a major supporter of Hillary Clinton, but after Trump was elected she was noting saying that she was ashamed to be an American (who could blame her?) and that America was f*cked .And she s far from done speaking about Trump. In a recent interview with Harper s BAZAAR, Madonna got real about how everyday life has been since the Electoral College allowed a completely undeserving bigot to lead this country for the next four years. Opening up about a feeling that many of us are now all too familiar with, Madonna said that every day she s woken up and it s felt like when you break up with somebody who has really broken your heart. Many Americans have been equally heartbroken and disappointed about the election results, and are frightened about the future of the country. She said: It s like being dumped by a lover and also being stuck in a nightmare. Reflecting on the night Trump was elected, Madonna said she was doing what most Americans were: I was sitting at a table with my agent, who is also one of my very best friends, and we were truly praying. We were praying We were doing everything: lighting candles, meditating, praying, offering our lives to God forever, if only. Despite the collective despair that many Americans are feeling right now, Madonna says that she and every other American that rejected Trump can t quietly accept defeat. Putting herself and fellow celebrities on blast, Madonna urged anyone with a platform to speak out. She said: I have to get way more vocal and become a little bit less mysterious. What I find really astonishing is how quiet everybody is in my industry. She revealed that while many celebrities are disgusted by Trump, they are afraid to get involved because they still want to maintain their popularity and because it doesn t affect their daily life yet, no one s doing anything about it. If Trump s disastrous, bigotry-filled transition and upcoming administration is any indicator, our lives will be affected before we know it. Now is not the time to be silent.TwitterTwitterFeatured image via Stephen Lovekin and Drew Angerer / Getty Images | 1 |
Right-wingers never have been very smart, but this one really takes the cake. There is an idea that the fact Girl Scout cookies are sold means America needs to end child labor laws. No, this isn t a joke and it isn t an exaggeration.A piece from The Federalist is suggesting that children engaging in an annual fundraising drive by selling cookies are somehow no more offensive than 10-year-olds working in steel mills, or coal mines, for 10 or more hours per day, 7 days a week.To quote the article:The Girl Scout cookie program, in other words, teaches young girls how to be entrepreneurs; it teaches them how to work. It is, after a fashion, child labor. The great scandal is not that the Girl Scouts are promoting child labor, it s that there isn t more child labor in the United States today.Source: The FederalistThe author then complains about the fact the government has outlawed every meaningful kind of occupation for children younger than 14, Citing any manufacturing occupation, most processing occupations, all work requiring the use of ladders, scaffolds or their substitutes, outside window washing. Children younger than 14 should not have any meaningful kind of occupation other than school student! The sheer insanity of this is beyond words.He goes on to say that there is even a strong case for abolishing what he calls compulsory education, by letting them not go to school in exchange for being able to work full-time instead. I m sure a 10-year-old will land a good-paying full-time job where they can support themselves over the next 70 years with no schooling.The American right-wing has totally gone off the deep end. You might say But this is only one writer s opinion. The problem is, it isn t. Elected federal-level Republicans have resurrected the idea of removing safeguards against child labor just a few years ago. Even wannabe presidential candidates have advocated for it. It s a real thing that Republicans want to do, and that scares the hell out of me.If those freeloading Girl Scouts can safely sell harmless boxes of cookies for one month a year, why aren t they working the other 11 months in a steel mill instead of wasting time being forced to go to school. Right? God help us if these people take control.Featured image via wikicommons | 1 |
Trump s transition team is certainly doing a good job of keeping things moving along, but that s about the only thing they re doing well. What they re busy doing, while keeping things humming along, is another story entirely. Trump s pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency is enough to send alarm bells ringing, but then his transition team had to go and make things considerably worse.Trump s team has contacted the Department of Energy with some unusual requests that would worry pretty much anyone. They want to know who had attended the U.N. s climate summits over the last five years. As we all know, there was a major climate change summit in Paris at the end of 2015, and we eventually ended up signing onto the agreement that emerged, much to the dismay of climate deniers who want to derail all the progress we ve made as a global climate leader.Their questionnaire, which has 74 questions (more than many tests, employment exams, etc.), also asked who had attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, which is what our government uses to determine the costs and benefits of new climate and energy regulations. They also want a list of all publications from employees who are at the 17 national laboratories run by the Dept. of Energy for the last three years. Dan Reicher, a professor at Stanford University, said: They re certainly sending an aggressive signal here with some of these questions and they need to be careful. Yeah well, Trump and his cronies, his lapdogs, and the people who are giving him blow jobs and sucking his balls don t really want to be careful. They want to prove they re on Cheetolini s side. Why? Likely because Trump is a massive climate denier, regardless of what he says now, and because everyone he s choosing to run the agencies in charge of both energy production and environmental protection are avid climate deniers.If you re not a climate denier, good luck keeping your job. Trump and his cabinet picks could undo every environmental regulation we ve implemented in the last, well, who knows? 20 years? 30? The people who oppose that, and the people who are just dying to sleep with King Cheeto, would rather perform fellatio than stick by the truth of climate change.Some employees at the Dept. of Energy feel like this is an enemies list, of sorts: When Donald Trump said he wanted to drain the swamp it apparently was just to make room for witch hunts and it s starting here at the DOE and our 17 national labs. Yup. Most likely. Energy and environmental policy are good places to start since not many people really think about those things. Care? Absolutely, but not think about on a daily basis, which is sad considering the fact that we still need this planet to survive, and if it changes faster than we can adapt, we ll all die.But who cares about that, right? Climate change is always happening, and it s not man-made because man can t be so arrogant as to thwart the Almighty Christian God, so trying to save the environment is dumb since businesses need profit and man will either survive or die anyway.Or that s how they sound.Anyway.The Dept. of Energy should be afraid because they might be the start of a government-wide purging of people who don t agree with every single syllable Trump utters, either in front of a mic or on his Twitter account. They ll be first, but who might follow?Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images | 1 |
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Three workers, two of them Sudanese, died in an accident at Libya s Zelten oil and gas field on Saturday, an oil source said. They died after inhaling gas during maintenance works, the source said, adding that a fourth person was being treated in hospital. The nationality of the third dead was not immediately known. The field belongs to Sirte Oil Company and pumps between 35,000 and 40,000 barrels a day. | 0 |
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq stopped selling dollars to leading banks in Kurdistan and banned foreign currency transfers to the autonomous region on Tuesday, stepping up its retaliation for the Kurds independence vote. The financial sanctions follow a ban on direct international air travel to the region imposed by the central government on Friday. Iraq s central bank informed the Kurdistan Regional government (KRG) that it would stop selling dollars to four major Kurdish banks and stop all foreign currency transfers to the region, banking and government sources told Reuters. Businesses in need of foreign currency and foreign workers in Kurdistan, whose pay and remittances are usually in dollars, will be the most affected by the new measures. Business people and expatriates were also the most directly hit by the ban on international flights to the Kurdish airports of Erbil and Sulaimaniya. It forces them to travel via airports in Baghdad and southern Iraq, increasing cost and adding delay. The condition for ending the dollar sale prohibition is to have the Kurdish banks under the central bank s control, said an Iraqi official. But a Kurdish official in the KRG capital Erbil said the region s banks already reported to the central bank in Baghdad, and the airports of the Kurdish region already reported to the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority. Iraq s parliament on Tuesday said it had voted for financial sanctions which would preserve the interests of Kurdish citizens and target the Kurdish leadership. The Shi ite Arab-led Iraqi government has rejected an offer by the Kurdish government to discuss independence. It has demanded that it cancel the result of the Sept. 25 referendum or face continued sanctions, international isolation and possible military intervention. The U.S. administration strengthened its alliance with Iraq s Kurds during the war on Islamic State, but is taking the side of Baghdad in the crisis in refusing to recognize the referendum. Iraq s powerful neighbors Iran and Turkey are backing Baghdad, fearing the spread of separatism to their own Kurdish populations. | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of children and teenagers, including large numbers of girls, were referred to Britain s often-criticized counter-terrorism program Prevent, new official figures showed on Thursday. Prevent is a key strand of Britain s security strategy which was launched in 2003 to combat extremism after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States. It has grown in prominence since the 2005 suicide attack on London s transport network which killed 52 people and the rise of the Islamic State in recent years. It has been dogged since its inception by claims that it is used to spy on Muslim communities and a 2015 government edict instructing public bodies such as schools, health workers and universities to report concerns further exacerbated those fears. The first official Prevent figures from Britain s Home Office (interior ministry) showed that of the 7,631 individuals thought to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism from April 2015 to March 2016, almost a third were children. Of all those referred, only five percent, the 381 assessed to be the most at risk, were eventually deemed to need support from specialist mentors in the voluntary, de-radicalization scheme known as Channel. Some 63 individuals withdrew from the process and the Home Office said there was no data about whether they or any others who had been referred to Prevent or gone through the Channel process had later gone on to be involved in extremism. Two-thirds of Prevent referrals were made over fears of Islamist extremism and 10 percent because of far-right concerns. The vast bulk came from the education sector and police, with 2,127 aged under 15, including 532 girls, and 2,147 aged 15 to 20, with 420 female. A senior Home Office official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cited the case of a nine-year-old boy who had been referred to Prevent after he stood up in class and said he supported Islamic State. The boy, who had been bullied at school, had been watching IS execution videos after searching for news coverage after the Paris attacks. After a year of support, his life was turned around, the official said. In the last two years the number of teenagers has spiked and the number of teenagers that I ve had who are on the autistic spectrum has also spiked, one of Channel s Islamist mentors, told reporters. What IS and these groups have understood is young people need narratives and they ve created narratives which make a very complex world seem very simple. Britain suffered four militant attacks this year that killed 36 people - the deadliest spate since the London 7/7 bombings of 2005. Britain s Home Secretary has been meeting representatives of leading U.S. tech firms Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter in Washington this week as part of her ongoing effort for them to do more to tackle online extremism. A Prevent coordinator said the proliferation of extremist online content was an accelerant rather than a cause. It s the petrol going on the fire, but it s not the tinder which sparks the flame in the first place, he said. | 0 |
A top gun lobbyist has just warned Americans that if a conservative candidate (meaning Donald Trump) doesn t get elected into the White House, right-wing gun nuts just might open fire.Larry Pratt, who is the executive director of Gun Owners of America and a former Virginia lawmaker, went on his Gun Owners News Hour radio program earlier this week to share a message with anyone who isn t voting GOP in November. In a ridiculous rant, Pratt warned that if Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton get into the White House this election, they ll likely nominate a Democrat as a U.S. Supreme Court justice a move that could, according to Pratt, threaten gun lovers precious Second Amendment rights.While pro-gun conservatives have often used this particular argument to scare voters into doubling down on their support for the GOP, Pratt s solution to this problem was concerning, to say the least. He said: We would have to come to an understanding, which we ve been sort of taught, it s been taught out of us, that the courts do not have the last word on what the Constitution is. They decide particular cases, they don t make law. Their decisions, unlike the Roe v. Wade usurpation, don t extend to the whole of society, they re not supposed to, and we may have to reassert that proper constitutional balance, and it may not be pretty. So I d much rather have an election where we solve this matter at the ballot box than have to resort to the bullet box. Yes, Pratt just threatened to use gun violence to get a Republican into the White House. After making this ridiculous remark, his guest American Civil Rights Union fellow Robert Knight offered another ridiculous solution. Knight said, Well, there s impeachment, too. You can listen to the crazy conversation between these two idiots below:This isn t the first time Pratt has suggested gun violence to solve a problem and get his way. In March, Pratt objected to President Barack Obama s preferred replacement for the late Antonin Scalia. When Obama announced Merrick Garland as his judicial nominee, Pratt said: The Second Amendment is all about people like Judge Garland. Featured image via Richard Ellis / Getty Images | 1 |
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi defended the role of an Iranian-backed paramilitary force at a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Monday in Baghdad. Tillerson arrived on Monday hours after the Iraqi government rejected his call to send home the Popular Mobilisation, an Iran-backed force that helped defeat Islamic State and capture the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk. In his opening remarks at the meeting with Tillerson, Abadi said Popular Mobilisation “is part of the Iraqi institutions,” rejecting accusations that it is acting as an Iranian proxy. “Popular Mobilisation fighters should be encouraged because they will be the hope of country and the region,” he added. Iraq is one of the few countries allied closely to both the United States and Iran, and Tillerson’s effort to drive a wedge between Baghdad and Tehran appeared to have backfired, drawing a sharp statement from the prime minister’s office. Tillerson visited Iraq a day after a rare joint meeting with Abadi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. After that meeting, he called on Iraq to halt the work of the Tehran-backed paramilitary units, which have operated alongside government troops in battles against Islamic State and, since last week, in a lightning advance that seized the oil city of Kirkuk from Kurdish security forces. At his meeting with Abadi in Baghdad, Tillerson urged the Iraqi government and Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil to resolve their conflict on Kurdish self-determination and disputed territories through dialogue. “We are concerned and a bit sad,” Tillerson said. “We have friends in Baghdad and friends in Erbil, and we encourage all parties to enter into discussion ... and all differences can be addressed.” Iraqi forces are deploying tanks and artillery just south of a Kurdish-operated oil pipeline that crosses into Turkey, a Kurdish security official said, the latest in a series of Iranian-backed operations against the Kurds. “Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home,” Tillerson said on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. Abadi’s office responded sharply. “No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters,” a statement from his office read. It did not cite the prime minister himself but a “source” close to him. It referred to the mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation as “patriots”. One of the closest groups to Iran within Popular Mobilisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, reacted to Tillerson’s comment by saying it would be Americans who will be forced to leave Iraq. “Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh’s presence is over,” said Asaib’s leader, Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, according to the group’s TV channel, al-Aahd. The international battle against Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq since 2014 saw the United States and Iran effectively fighting on the same side, with both supporting the Iraqi government against the militants. Washington has 5,000 troops in Iraq and provided air support, training and weapons to Iraqi government forces. At the same time, Iran armed, trained and advised Shi’ite paramilitaries that often fought alongside the army. The latest twist in the Iraq conflict, pitting the central government against the Kurds, is trickier for U.S. policymakers. Washington still supports the central government but has also been allied to the Kurds for decades. Iran is the pre-eminent Shi’ite power in the Middle East. Shi’ites, including Abadi, are the majority in Iraq, but it also has large Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities. In the campaign for the Kurdish referendum, Iran backed the government against the Kurds. Major-General Qassem Soleimani, commander of foreign operations for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders to withdraw from the oil city of Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed fighters, Kurdish officials briefed on the meetings said. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed Tillerson’s remarks. The paramilitaries could not go home because “they are at home” already, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. Abadi has asserted his authority with the defeat of Islamic State in Mosul and the Iraqi army’s sweep through Kirkuk and other areas that were held by the Kurds. The buildup at the Kurdish oil export pipeline is taking place northwest of Mosul, an official from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s security council said. The loss of Kirkuk dealt a major blow to the Kurds, who had been steadily building an autonomous region in northern Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, who oppressed them for decades. “We are concerned about continued military build-up of Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces towards the Kurdistan Region,” said the Kurdistan Region Security Council in a statement. Elections for the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s presidency and parliament set for Nov. 1 will be delayed because political parties failed to present candidates, the head of the electoral commission, Hendrean Mohammed, told Reuters. Parties have been unable to focus on the elections in the turmoil that followed the referendum, a Kurdish lawmaker said on condition of anonymity. | 0 |
Sally Yates testimony before a congressional committee on the events leading up to Trump s disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigning and her own firing for speaking out against him had always promised to contain some explosive revelations. And it didn t take long for the match to be lit.Early into Yates appearance in front of the committee, she got down to brass tacks. She had told Trump three separate times that Michael Flynn was trouble. In every case she was ignored, save for White House counsel demanding to know whether Flynn was facing a criminal charge. What s more, Yates testified that she has specifically told the Trump administration that there was a great deal of evidence to suggest Flynn was either susceptible to blackmail from the Russians or already compromised. Again, she was ignored and then later fired.Particularly damning, Yates said that she watched in horror as Flynn s own lies about his involvement with the Russians was being passed along to the media by others within the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence. (Pence later confirmed this by claiming he had believed what Flynn was telling him at the time.) She noted that this created a situation where the national security adviser was digging an increasingly deep hole for himself with lies and implicating everyone around him as well. She added that this was not lost on the Russians, who given their relationship with Flynn were holding cold, hard proof of Flynn s lies and could threaten to release it at any time.Yates: the National Security Adviser, essentially, could be blackmailed by the Russians. via @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/DTIAQcZ6y0 Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 8, 2017It s a classic blackmail set up: Let the mark get in too deep, make sure the risk of exposure is too big a cost to bear, then use that vulnerability against him or her.Unfortunately, Trump s administration chose to stick by Flynn rather than slip out of the noose that was rapidly tightening around their necks. Making matters worse, by repeating Flynn s lies, they were also exposing themselves to blackmail. A White House run by a person famous for never apologizing to anyone in his life was walking headlong into a massive scandal what would they do to avoid responsibility for it?As Yates put it: You don t want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him At some point, the debate over what exactly Trump knew and when he knew it becomes moot. Even if Trump were completely blameless in the coordinated relationship between his trusted adviser and the country undermining American democracy, it would only reinforce that his stupidity qualified as criminal negligence. Obama warned him. Yates warned him. The FBI warned him. The media warned him. And he ignored all of them to protect his friend a man now claiming to be a foreign agent.Featured image via Twitter | 1 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders on Thursday reaffirmed their full commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, hoping that the U.S. Congress would not let it collapse despite relentless criticism by President Donald Trump. But the bloc, reluctant to isolate itself completely from Washington, is also stepping up criticism of Iran s ballistic missile program and its role in what the West sees as fomenting instability in the Middle East. Trump last week adopted a harsh new approach to Iran by refusing to certify its compliance with the nuclear deal, struck with the United States and five other powers including Britain, France and Germany after more than a decade of diplomacy. We fully stay committed to the complete implementation by all sides of the Iranian nuclear deal. We see this as a key security interest for the European Union and the region, said the bloc s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini. The EU leaders joint statement, agreed after talks in Brussels on Thursday, reaffirms full commitment to the Iran nuclear deal . The bloc has been stepping up efforts to save the deal, saying it was crucial to regional and global security, and it has appealed to the U.S. Congress not to let it fall. Trump has given Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran, lifted under the pact in exchange for the scaling down of a program the West fears was aimed at building a nuclear bomb, something Tehran denies. The EU leaders also highlighted the need to protect their companies and investors dealing with Iran from any adverse effects should Washington reinstate the sanctions, officials said. Should Trump walk away from the deal, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Iran would shred it. The bloc sees the agreement as a chief international success of recent years, and fears tearing it apart would hurt its credibility as well as harming diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions around a nuclear stand-off with North Korea. In outlining his tougher stance, Trump said Tehran must also be held accountable for advancing its ballistic missile program and its regional political role. We will defend the nuclear deal and stand by the nuclear deal and implement the nuclear deal. But we also don t want to be standing on a completely opposing side to the U.S., an EU official said. If they withdraw, we would be left in a rather interesting company with China and Russia. So there may be an issue of separating the nuclear deal from the ballistic program and Iran s regional role, sending signals on the latter two. Iran s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Thursday the ballistic missile program would accelerate despite U.S. and EU pressure to suspend it, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The EU, which has expressed concerns related to ballistic missiles and increasing tensions in the Middle East, has said these issues should be discussed without direct links to the nuclear deal. They were never very fond of the nuclear deal in the first place but now the situation has changed a lot. Both many Democrats as well as some Republicans feel like they need to play a more active role on foreign policy to restrain the president, the official said. | 0 |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Home improvement retailers Home Depot Inc and Lowe s Inc said on Wednesday they have started shipping emergency material to Florida in anticipation of Hurricane Irma, even as they continue recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Irma, which hit the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Wednesday, is expected to make landfall in Florida during the weekend but its precise trajectory remained uncertain. Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland after Harvey killed more than 60 people and caused as much as $180 billion in damage after hitting Texas late last month. This is unusual because we are now juggling two different storms in two different phases. One is approaching while the other market is in the recovery phase, Home Depot spokesman Matthew Harrigan told Reuters. Home Depot is following the same script preparing for Irma as it did for Harvey. The retailer s merchandising and supply chain teams have previously dealt with different weather-related disasters at once, Harrigan said without giving specific examples. Before Harvey hit Texas, the world s largest hardware and home improvement chain activated its disaster-response plan, asked managers to freeze prices in stores around the region and move storm related merchandise to the front of the store. It followed a plan honed over many hurricane seasons to minimize disruptions, deliver essential material to affected areas and capitalize on a surge in demand for products once repairs begin. Home Depot said it takes up to two months to open stores that are hit hard by a hurricane. Stores that are minimally impacted are usually opened within a few days. Both Home Depot and Lowe s had activated a hurricane command center during Harvey that is now continuing to monitor the path of Irma and mobilizing resources such as supplies. Home Depot said it has despatched 300 truckloads to Florida so far. Rival Lowe s said it has sent 400 truckloads of hurricane prep material including flashlights, batteries and weather radios to Florida. Analysts have said investments in logistics and supply chain by home improvement chains during a weather-related disaster typically brings about 10 to 15 times more in sales. Shares of both Home Depot and Lowe s traded up nearly 2 percent on Wednesday morning. | 0 |
What is the one thing that might actually scare Donald Trump? That s right the prospect of releasing his tax returns has him terrified. The mere thought of making them public, just as every single presidential candidate in recent memory has done, is more abhorrent to him than his sexual obsession with his daughter is to the rest of us. But unfortunately for The Donald, he may not have a choice in the matter if Senate Democrats have their way.The Connecticut Mirror reports that Senators Chris Murphy and Ron Wyden have come up with a solution to Trump s nonsensical refusal to be honest with the American people about his taxes something even George W. Bush was able to accomplish:Partnering with fellow Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Murphy on Thursday pressed for votes for a bill that would require all presidential candidates from major parties to make public their tax returns within two weeks of their parties national conventions. The effort is part of a renewed Democratic campaign over Trump s tax filings.In keeping his tax returns under wraps, Murphy said Trump is violating a 40-year-standard of campaign transparency and may even be running for president to change tax laws that benefit his companies. This is an extraordinary moment in which the candidate may be seeking the presidency to protect his investments, Murphy says of his effort.What is Trump hiding? Many people are saying he has made substantial donations to NAMBLA the North American Man-Boy Love Association he does not want to become public. While this is a long-shot, as the organization is not actually tax exempt and would not show up on Trump s tax returns, it is clear that he fears their release. In any case, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act would let the public know all of Trump s dirty little tax secrets he desperately wants to keep hidden.In fact, it would force the FEC to post candidates returns on the official website for all to see anytime they wish if the candidate did not voluntarily disclose them within two weeks of their party s national conventions.So far the bill only has five co-sponsors, including Tim Kaine, but the idea seems popular.Not only would this be a great idea, but it would lead to the most hilariously humiliating concession speech one can imagine.Featured image via Getty Images/Brian Bianco | 1 |
White House press briefings have gone completely dark. Sean Spicer and Donald Trump s press team are either skipping daily briefings altogether or they re holding them, but with no video and no audio.Jim Acosta, CNN s top White House Correspondent, might not be able to broadcast the press briefings, but he took to Twitter and let the White House have it.WH briefing about to start. We re told we cannot use video or audio from this gaggle. So I took this pic before going in. Shh don t tell. pic.twitter.com/7GcZjJIriS Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017The Spicer off-camera/no audio gaggle has begun. I can t show you a pic of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd pic.twitter.com/wO9erspwYa Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017Call me old fashioned but I think the White House of the United States of America should have the backbone to answer questions on camera. Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017No wonder Acosta is pissed, with this:At off camera no audio briefing, Spicer took a question from a Russian reporter but not from CNN. #pravda Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017And for the inevitable Trump tweet calling CNN fake news, We are real news Mr. President. #realnews Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 18, 2017The White House will find and is finding that shutting out the American media is a huge mistake. Trump is managing to make enemies of the news media. Not only that, keeping Americans in the dark is a sure fire way to turn Americans against Trump as his administration falls under further and further scrutiny. While questions over whether Trump colluded with Russia surround the White House, their refusal to answer questions for the American people is certainly not making them look innocent.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images. | 1 |
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s turnabout on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia has rocked his administration, leading to rising speculation that some top officials may be looking for a way out. A parade of business executives broke ties with Trump on Wednesday, a day after he blamed white nationalists and counter-protesters in equal measure for the weekend clashes that left one woman dead. Now, frustrated aides could be next. Trump’s remarks have left some wondering if sticking by the president comes at too high a cost to their reputations. “A lot of us joined this administration thinking we could bring to it the experience and expertise that the president didn’t have an opportunity to gain in his business career, and to encourage some restraint in what he says publicly and to our allies,” said one senior official who is contemplating whether to resign. “After yesterday, it’s clear that there is no way for anyone, even a Marine general, to restrain his (Trump’s) impulses or counter what he sees on TV and reads on the web.” It was hoped that retired General John Kelly, Trump’s new chief of staff, could impose some form of discipline on Trump that his predecessor, Reince Priebus, could not. But Kelly stood with his eyes fixed on the floor when Trump veered off-script at his Manhattan office tower on Tuesday. The president accused the protesters, who rallied against neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, of being “very, very violent.” In the uproar that followed, chief executives at companies such as Merck & Co Inc , Under Armour Inc , Intel Corp , Campbell Soup Co and 3M Co quit advisory councils to the White House. Trump then dissolved the councils. The exodus of executives sparked talk that Gary Cohn, Trump’s top White House economic adviser and a key liaison to the U.S. business community, might resign in protest as well. Cohn, who is Jewish, was upset by Trump’s remarks, though he is remaining with the administration for now, sources said. Cohn, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stood by Trump during his remarks at Trump Tower on Tuesday. Cohn in particular looked self-conscious and uncomfortable. “He just did not want to be in that position ... and he was not good at hiding his body language for that,” said a former administration official who knows Cohn. Cohn did not comment on the president’s language. David Shulkin, U.S. secretary of Veterans Affairs, told reporters on Wednesday that as a Jewish American, he was “outraged” by neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups and felt obligated to speak out against them. “I am not going to condone in any way the behavior of Nazis. I believe this clearly cannot be tolerated,” Shulkin said when asked about whether it was appropriate to compare the actions of the white nationalists to the protesters opposing them. Shulkin, however, defended Trump’s approach. “I think he’s been clear that this is totally unacceptable,” Shulkin said. Cohn, who came to the White House from a successful career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, is mindful the effect his Trump tenure could have on his professional reputation. “He’s worried about his reputation being trashed, which is much more valuable to him than anything else,” the former administration official said. Cohn has served as a point man on top White House priorities such as tax reform and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, but both of those efforts have been muddled by Trump’s increasingly combative relationship with Congress, one that was strained even further by his comments on Charlottesville. Cohn’s departure would further set back those efforts and perhaps give the upper hand in the White House to a group of advisers seeking to scale back foreign trade, said a Wall Street executive who asked not to be named. “Gary knows he’s a moderating influence,” the executive said. “It may give you short-term satisfaction to see Gary go, but it may be bad for the country in the long term. The calculation is: What do you think is best for the country versus what’s best for Gary?” Steve Bannon, a White House senior adviser with close ties to far-right groups, told the American Prospect in an interview published Wednesday that he constantly butts heads with Cohn over issues such as trade with China. “That’s a fight I fight every day here,” Bannon said. Cowan and Company, a financial services firm, said on Wednesday that the departure of the pragmatic and business-friendly Cohn could adversely affect markets. “For us, the biggest question is what is the tipping point that would cause National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn to quit?” the firm wrote. Trump thinks highly of Cohn and has spoken often of the financial sacrifices he made to leave Goldman to join the administration. He is widely considered to be a leading candidate to chair the U.S. Federal Reserve should Trump choose not to retain Janet Yellen. That decision would insulate Cohn from the day-to-day drama of the Trump White House, but likely is months away. In the meantime, Cohn has to decide whether he can stick it out. Another Wall Street executive told Reuters that Trump’s remarks may prove to be too much for him. “Until yesterday, Cohn did a great job insulating himself from Trump and staying in the economic lane. But all of a sudden he was standing behind him when he goes off on a rampage and the true price of working for him comes home,” the executive said. “What can you do?” | 0 |
Ohio State Senate Majority Leader Tom Patton is a term-limited Senator who has decided to run for the State House of Representatives to keep his political career alive. His opponent is a young woman named Jennifer Herold, who is the mother of 2 toddlers. Patton, proving that he has more than enough misogyny to be a card-carrying member of the Republican party, has decided Herold is unqualified to run against him.You see, Jennifer Herold isn t a 62-year-old man like Patton is. As a woman under 30 with two children, she has no business in politics. Patton said in a radio interview recently: The gal that s running against me is a 30-year-old, you know, mom, mother of two infants. And I don t know if anybody explained to her we ve got to spend three nights a week in Columbus. So, how does that work out for you? I waited until I was 48 and my kids were raised and at least adults before we took the opportunity to try. Well then. There are so many things wrong with that statement it s hard to choose where to begin. First, don t call her gal. It s insulting and cheapens your attack even more, if that s possible. Newt, Columbus isn t all that far; Mrs. Herold could easily make the commute if she wanted to. It s difficult to imagine a fragile little gal having the ability to oh, say drive a car, we know. Last, have you considered, Senator, that she may have a husband at home who doesn t believe it s the woman s job to take care of the kids 24/7?How old you are and your warped sense of how a modern family works is irrelevant, you insufferable douchebag.It gets worse. While talking polling numbers, Patton said: I want to tell her, Hey Sweetie, I just got 27 percent of the pie in just my district, which is nine times what should have been done. Seriously? Hey, Sweetie? What is unfortunate is that his message will resonate with the sexists who populate his party. They don t like people who don t have penises representing them, because what could a woman possibly know about anything other than child-rearing and pleasing her husband? Patton is the perfect poster boy for the GOP.Herold responded with pure class and dignity in a statement: We realize the sacrifice that is involved in holding such a position. However, Tom Patton has crossed a line by trying to turn the fact that I am a mother of two children into a negative campaign issue. It s insulting for my opponent to suggest that motherhood is a liability. In fact, my experience as a mom is perhaps my greatest strength. Tom, only one man in my life is allowed to call me sweetie. From now on, I respectfully ask you to refer to me as Jen, Jennifer, Ms. Herold, or your opponent. Well said, Ms. Herold. Patton has since apologized, calling his words poorly chosen. What he doesn t seem to understand is that it isn t the words he chose that are disturbing, it s the way he thinks. It s the sexism and utter disrespect for Herold as a woman and a human being that make him so despicable.Too little too late, Senator. Hopefully you get your ass handed to you so you ll have no choice but to stumble off into the sunset and obscurity. Featured image via screen capture | 1 |
NBC News third post-leaked audio, post-second debate poll shows something quite shocking (but not really): Hillary Clinton is gaining an insurmountable lead over Donald Trump, with just three weeks left to go until election day.The new poll, conducted October 10 through the 13th, with 1,000 respondents, shows Clinton with an 11-point lead, 48 to 37 percent over Trump. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has seven percent in support and Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 2 percent.In a head-to-head matchup, Clinton maintains a 10 point lead, 51-41, with 10 percent undecided.As NBC News put it:To put Clinton s current 11-point lead into perspective, Barack Obama beat John McCain by seven points nationally in 2008. And Obama s margin of victory over Mitt Romney in 2012 was four points.Both pollsters who coordinated with NBC News, Democrat Fred Yang and Republican Bill McInturff, both came to the conclusion that Trump does not have a chance of winning the presidency.One of the biggest contributing factors to Clinton s lead in her 20 point advantage with women (55-35 percent), her 60 point advantage with non-white voters (76-16 percent), and her gain among men in which she s behind by just three points, 48-45 percent.The poll als0 shows President Obama s approval rating at 53 percent, a positive for Clinton heading into the final stretch of the election.Now that the polls have shown a consistent lead for Clinton, Trump has no other way to legitimize his failing, pathetic campaign than to claim it s going to be rigged against them thanks to minority communities, dead people, a globalist conspiracy.Now that InfoWars has overtaken his campaign, the public has been turned off and are showing that they are ready for Hillary.Nate Silver s FiveThirtyEight currently gives Clinton an 86 percent chance of winning the election and Trump a 14 percent chance. This marks the 10th day that Clinton has been in the high 80s, the same place she was at after the Democratic National Convention.Trump has a lot of ground came to catch up on. Can he do it in three weeks? Who knows, but it s not looking good for him.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1 |
We know that Trump wants to ban Muslims from being able to enter the U.S. at all, but faces significant hurdles to actually do it. So he just did an end run around all those obstacles by instituting what he keeps calling extreme vetting, because he apparently believes that our current vetting process for refugees is not only non-existent, but preferential towards Muslims, and discriminatory towards Christians.Today, he signed two executive orders one to spur new defense spending, and another to ban visa entries from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen (but not countries where he has business, because of course), and to institute extreme vetting for refugees: I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don t want them here.We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people. Can we say Muslim ban? There s the above, plus Trump actually told the Christian Broadcasting Network s David Brody the following: [Syrian Christians have] been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them. There are a lot of conclusions that can be drawn from that alone, but aside from Trump s insane lie namely that we deliberately discriminate against Christians this action sounds an awful lot like a precursor to his Muslim ban. If he were to support Sen. Tom Cotton s bill that would allow religious minorities to apply directly for refugee status here, while Muslim refugees would likely still have to go through the U.N., suddenly Muslims have a harder time getting here than anyone else.It s true that we get a lot more Muslim refugees than Christian refugees, but there s a reason for that and it s not because we re favoring Muslims. Currently, refugees are generally referred to the United States via the United Nations refugee camp in Jordan they don t apply to the U.S. directly. It s a majority Muslim region therefore most applicants are going to be Muslims.Christians then go to the more urban areas where they re likely to be safer, and they might be coming into the U.S. by way of other immigration pathways.Put all of these things together, along with Republicans desire to end funding for the U.N., and we re most of the way to an out-and-out Muslim ban without actually creating a law or an edict that bans Muslims.Featured image by Olivier Douliery via Getty Images | 1 |
What s happening in the United States is not okay. What s being allowed to happen is not okay. We currently have a person running for President of the United States who is not only condoning violence, but instigating and encouraging it. Recent Donald Trump rallies have turned into something very reminiscent of Nazi Germany from the 1930s and 40s. If this doesn t terrify you, wake up. If you approve of this, you re part of the problem.In yet another move to motivate his band of merry morons who are clearly unhinged and will do his bidding at a moment s notice, Trump tweets out a direct threat to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as well as his supporters who attend his rallies. The real estate mogul seems to think that Sanders is lying when he says that his supporters aren t told to go to Trump events, so he took that as his cue to threaten Sanders back.Trump said: Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren t told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours! Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2016This threat isn t even thinly veiled. Telling someone to be careful insinuates harm may follow. He s literally giving permission and telling his version of brownshirts to go to Sanders rallies. This tweet will most certainly encourage several of his supporters to go. This is getting very scary, folks, and Trump needs to be held accountable for inciting violence.Bernie Sanders has since spoken out against Trump and his ridiculous allegations. The Sanders campaign just retweeted this to make the message clear. Bernie said while on ABC News: Well, I think anybody who understands Mr. Trump s campaign knows that he tells the truth very, very rarely, and I m afraid that on this occasion, he s lying again. First of all, he calls me a communist, obviously that s a lie. Then he says that our campaign is organizing disruptions of his rallies, that s a lie We have millions of supporters out there, and clearly some of them were at that rally along with many many other protesters. But to say that we organized that totally untrue. WATCH: @BernieSanders says @realDonaldTrump's claim he organized protesters at Trump rally is "totally untrue." https://t.co/ZaGeKnEZ11 This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 13, 2016Featured imag via Flickr/Flickr | 1 |
Just two years ago, the Obama White House welcomed Russia s top internal security official, Alexander Bortnikov, to Washington, as the head of a Kremlin delegation attending a highly publicized U.S. government summit on countering violent extremism.Obama was caught on an open mic telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (on the left) who is pictured toasting with Vladimir Putin and Head of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov, that he would have more flexibility after his second term. Of course, the mainstream media all but ignored the disturbing conversation. They re all over the fake news story however about Trump and his alleged Russian ties, of which they have absolutely NO evidence. What U.S. officials did not then know is that officers of the agency that Bortnikov heads, the FSB or Federal Security Service, were at that moment directing an audacious state-sponsored cyberattack to penetrate Yahoo s email network, deploying criminal hackers to steal data on 500 million email users, according to criminal charges unveiled by the Justice Department on Wednesday. The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in California charged two FSB officers and two civilians one Russian and one from Kazakhstan, now living in Canada with crimes including computer hacking and economic espionage.The FSB sponsored cyberattack, which lasted from 2014 to last September, was described by government officials today as one of the largest data breaches in history: It involved the theft of vast amounts of credit card data and other financial information, as well as personal details on individuals of high interest to the Russian government: journalists, U.S. officials and U.S. and foreign corporate executives and employees, including a senior officer of a major U.S. airline and even a Nevada gaming official.But what was especially galling to U.S. officials is that the two FSB officers at the center of the plot, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, were assigned to the agency s Center for Information Security, or Center 18 a cybercrime unit that was the FBI s point of contact for investigating criminal hacking operations. What this shows is that we ve been had, said Steve Hall, a former CIA station chief in Moscow who later directed agency operations in Russia. Center 18 was the part of the FSB that was supposed to be working with us. But instead of working with the FBI and CIA to catch hackers, the FSB officers were actually working with hackers themselves, according to the Justice Department charges. In the Yahoo attack, two alleged cybercriminals were also charged as co-conspirators in the plot. One of them, Alexsey Belan, a notorious cyberthief who has been twice indicted in the United States and is on the FBI s Cyber Most Wanted list, received sensitive law enforcement and intelligence information from the FSB that helped him avoid detection by the FBI and facilitated his theft of proprietary Yahoo data including stealing the company s Account Management Tool (AMT), a system that Yahoo used to make and log changes to user accounts. His purpose, a senior U.S. official said today, was to line his own pockets with money. For entire story: Yahoo News | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British primatologist Jane Goodall sent a letter to every U.S. senator on Tuesday urging them to oppose a push in the U.S. Congress to allow oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a region environmentalists say is one of the world’s last paradises. The Republican-led Senate is trying to open up the 1002 region on the coastal plain of the ANWR, a region inhabited by Gwich’in natives, caribou herds, polar bears and millions of birds that migrate to six of the world’s seven continents. “If we violate the Arctic Refuge by extracting the oil beneath the land, this will have devastating impact for the Gwich’in people for they depend on the caribou herds to sustain their traditional way of life,” Goodall said in the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. The ANWR’s “very wildness speaks to our deeply rooted spiritual connection to nature, a necessary element of human psyche,” wrote Goodall, best known for her study of chimpanzees in Tanzania. Last week, a group of 37 U.S.-based scientists whose research focuses on Arctic wildlife asked senators to not open the ANWR, saying that drilling would be “incompatible with the purposes for which the refuge was established.” The Senate energy committee on Wednesday will consider a bill spurred by Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska and the head of the panel, to hold at least two lease sales in the ANWR over the next 10 years. Some Native Alaskans support drilling believing it will provide jobs. Matthew Rexford, a member of the Iñupiat tribe and the tribal administrator of the village of Kaktovik, has said he believes technological advances mean drilling can be performed with little impact to the land. The administration of President Donald Trump is pursuing a policy to make the country “energy dominant” by maximizing oil, gas and coal production. Republicans say the 1002 portion of the ANWR is a “non wilderness area” because the government put it aside decades ago for drilling. Republicans have attached the ANWR measure to budget legislation, which needs only 50 votes to pass the Senate, but faces hurdles with many provisions being added to it. Democrats are fighting the ANWR bill saying that Republicans are trying to sneak it through the budget process, and that it would not survive as stand-alone legislation that would need 60 votes to pass. Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the energy committee, told Reuters she was urging her fellow lawmakers to listen to scientists. “Does it take the voice of Jane Goodall to beg Senators to stop hurting indigenous people and animals?” asked Cantwell.” “She’s calling on them to set a conservation example instead of creating the next tragedy.” | 0 |
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Friday for the United States to step back from its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital after the United Nations voted against the move despite what he called ugly and unforgivable U.S. threats. More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Despite threats, the U.N. took an honorable stance, Erdogan said at a meeting of his AK Party in Istanbul. The U.S. should turn back from this wrong step. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote. The U.S. attitude ahead of the U.N. vote will be remembered in the history of democracy as an ugly and unforgivable act, Erdogan said. Trump s warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. The White House picked up the phone and called these countries one by one, threatening them blatantly, Erdogan said, without elaborating. | 0 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union expressed serious concern on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying it could have repercussions for peace prospects. The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and saying Washington would begin the process of moving its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. | 0 |
Donald Trump s first debate against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton went just as poorly as we thought it would and conservatives know it. It s never been more clear that Trump doesn t even deserve to be on the same stage as Clinton, and all the holes in his campaign are being exposed effortlessly. Between the fact-checking and not having any real policies or plans in place, Trump is f*cked big time. Luckily, Fox News is coming to the rescue with some (truly awful, somewhat hilarious) advice for the inexperienced man-baby.Fox News host Charles Krauthammer thinks that Trump s greatest chances of succeeding during Sunday s second presidential debate will rely on Trump s amazing ability to lie about everything. Basically, Krauthammer thinks Trump can win if he can deny it ever happened and ignore the fact-checkers. The Fox host pointed out where Trump had gone wrong during the first debate: I think the most important thing here for Trump is the morning after. He might have lost the debate. It was pretty close. It was not the rout that people say it was. But he really threw it away the morning after when he went after he went down the rabbit holes on the Miss Universe and all the other stuff. And that s happened to him before. Krauthammer then tried to give Trump some pointers on how to beat a far more experienced, qualified Clinton: I think he can hold his own. He just needs to be to ignore, as everybody here has said ignore the bait. He should just dismiss all the quotations that he hears, the way that Pence did. Deny it ever happened and then ignore the fact checkers the next day. It is hilarious that anyone would suggest that Trump can ignore the bait. Trump is a loose cannon with the temperament worse than a toddler. Literally every time he gets baited (even by Clinton herself), he cannot resist taking it and making a bigger ass out of himself. Krauthammer is basically begging Trump to keep his ego in check, even though he s proven that he s incapable of doing that. Conservatives need to start accepting that Trump is going to blow this debate just like the first one, no matter how hard they try to guide him.You can watch Krauthammer try to help Trump below:[ad3media campaign= 1075 ]Featured image via Ethan Miller / Getty Images | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States government upholds and sticks to the “one China” policy, U.S. President Donald Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday during talks in Beijing, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported. As president-elect, Trump broke with protocol and accepted a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in December, angering China, which claims the self-ruled island as integral Chinese territory. | 0 |
JAKARTA (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will visit Japan and Indonesia as part of an Asian tour next month, sources said on Monday, amid concerns the Trump administration is rolling back Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia.” U.S. President Donald Trump has already withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which was seen as an economic pillar of the strategy. A Trump administration official told Reuters: “The vice president is going to Asia next month I believe.” The tour will include South Korea and Australia, the Nikkei Asian Review reported, with North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs and South Korea’s political crisis likely topics for discussion. China has been infuriated by South Korea’s plan to deploy a U.S. missile defense system targeted at the North Korean threat. South Korea is also going through political turmoil after a court removed President Park Geun-hye from office over a graft scandal. Pence is also expected to visit Tokyo for a U.S.-Japan economic dialogue, according to a source familiar with the matter. The visit will come as North Korea’s latest missile launches and the assassination in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother add urgency to the region’s security. It will also follow this month’s trip by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Japan, South Korea, and China. The TPP had been the main economic pillar of the Obama administration’s pivot to the Asia-Pacific region in the face of a fast-rising China. Proponents of the pact have expressed concerns that abandoning the project, which took years to negotiate, could strengthen China’s economic hand in the region at the expense of the United States. Indonesia’s chief security minister said Pence would meet President Joko Widodo to discuss terrorism and other security issues. Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and has recently grappled with a series of low-level militant attacks inspired by Islamic State. “We discussed the planned visit of U.S. vice president Mike Pence to Indonesia and the strategic problems that can be on the agenda to discuss with our president,” chief security minister Wiranto told reporters after meeting the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta. He added that no dates have been finalized. In Indonesia, Pence is also expected to discuss a brewing contract dispute between the government and American mining group Freeport McMoRan Inc, said two Indonesian government sources. Freeport has threatened to take the Indonesian government to court over newly revised mining regulations that have prompted a major scale-back in its operations in the eastern province of Papua. | 0 |
There is no other President in the history of the United States who has mastered the art of going around Congress to achieve his radical goals, better than Barack Hussein Obama. In normal times, this scenario would not be of concern to every day Americans. We are not however, living in normal times. We are living in time where our President has actually stated that his goal is to fundamentally transform the United States of America Pray for our nation.The Senate is currently in recess until February 22. The recess began on Friday. Whether this opens an opportunity for a recess appointment depends upon how Senate leaders interpret an adjournment resolution approved last Friday. That will determine whether it will meet for brief activity during the recess, which could close that opportunity.Here s the scenario in which President Obama may be able to appoint a temporary Supreme Court Justice: The Constitution not only assigns to the president the task of making nominations to the Supreme Court, setting off Senate review that may or may not result in approval, but it also gives the Chief Executive the opportunity to fill a vacancy on the Court temporarily, bypassing the Senate initially, if a nominee languishes in the Senate without final action.Within a few hours after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, it became abundantly clear that, first, President Obama will choose a possible successor and try to get the Senate to go along, and, second, the GOP leadership of the Senate say they will try to block any such nominee from final approval.If that does result in an impasse, President Obama may ponder the possibility of putting on the Court a new Justice of his choosing, to serve temporarily. The problem, though, is that less than two years ago, the Supreme Court severely narrowed the flexibility of such temporary appointment power, and strengthened the Senate s capacity to frustrate such a presidential maneuver.It is true that one of the Justices regarded as a giant on the Court s history, William J. Brennan, Jr., actually began his lengthy career with just such a short-term appointment. The chances of that happening again today seem to have diminished markedly.The presidential authority at issue in this possible scenario exists, according to Article II, when the Senate has gone into recess and the vacancy a president seeks to fill remains. Such an appointment requires no action at all by the Senate, but the appointee can only serve until the end of the following Senate session. The president (if still in office) can then try again during a new Senate session, by making a new nomination, and that must be reviewed by the Senate.The Supreme Court had never clarified that power until its decision in June 2014 in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning.The decision was something of a compromise. The Court expanded the concept of when the Senate would be in recess so that the president could make a temporary appointment, but it also gave the Senate more control over when it does recess and how long the recesses last. The gesture toward the Senate s choices was probably the more important result.Here, specifically, is what the Court decided:First, on the president s side, the Court ruled that the recess appointment power applies when the Senate leaves town for a break in the middle of an annual sitting, or a break at the end of each annual session.Second, also on the president s side, the decision declared that the president during a recess can fill a vacancy even if the opening occurred well before the recess began.Third, on the Senate s side, the ruling made clear that it has to last more than three days, without saying how much more time must pass without the Senate out of town and doing nothing.Fourth, strongly on the Senate s side, the decision left it largely up to the Senate to decide when it does take a recess, allowing it to avoid the formality of a recess by taking some legislative action, however minor or inconsequential and however few senators actually take part in some action.Suppose President Obama goes ahead with a nomination to the open seat on the Court, and suppose that the Republican-controlled Senate chooses not to allow that nominee. The GOP has enough seats in the Senate to control that scenario.Suppose, then, that the Senate goes into recess to allow its members who are running for reelection to spend some more time campaigning back home.Could President Obama make a nominee during that recess? Only if the Senate is taking a recess lasting longer than three days, and does not come in from time to time during that recess to take some minimal legislative action. Both of those circumstances would be entirely within the Senate s authority.In that circumstance, a recess appointment to the Court would not be within the terms of the Constitution, as spelled out in Article II.Read more: scotusblog | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will arrive in Kazakhstan s capital on Friday to take part in Syria peace talks, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, according to Russia s state news agency RIA. De Mistura will fly to Astana after talks in Moscow on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kazakhstan is hosting negotiations that aim to end the Syria crisis. Discussions in the past few months have focused on establishing de-escalation zones in Syria. | 0 |
Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 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 barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Andy Nowicki host of The Nameless Podcast, Jay Dyer Jay s Analysis, Stewart Howe and ACR regular InfidelPharaoh for the 94th episode of BOILER ROOM. Water the kids, put the plants to bed and get your favorite mead horn ready so you can drop deep into the Boiler Room with the ACR brain-trust.Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!Listen to Boiler Room Episode #94 on Spreaker.Reference Links: | 1 |
Steven Crowder is an amazing and ALWAYS unafraid conservative comedian. He was present at the union battle for Right To Work in Michigan where he was famously punched in the face by a union thug, when he confronted union thugs and demanded they stop cutting down a massive tent with pro-Right-to-Work conservatives inside (including an elderly woman who was trapped inside, while in a wheelchair when the tent was cut down).Crowder is one of unafraid to take on the Islamification of our schools and small towns, while government officials and liberals persecute Christians and Christian groups in America. Crowder is also passionate about exposing the dangers of political correctness. Crowder uses his very popular videos to prove undeniable facts that support our free speech and gun rights.Steven Crowder s latest project should be on every news network across America, however, you will likely only find this blockbuster video confirming that Antifa is indeed, a domestic terror group on conservative sites like ours or on Twitter and other social media platforms. That s because the media has been going out of their way to soften the image of ANTIFA. They ve been working in unison to make ANTIFA look like a bunch of rabble-rousers who are simply helping to eradicate speech that Americans the Left doesn t agree with. They re just a group of concerned citizens who want to defeat Nazism Trump supporters in America. The leftist media has been begging their viewers to see things from ANTIFA s point of view after all, they re just a group of non-violent violent kids looking to solve the problems of the world through passionate activism violence, intimidation and yes, domestic terrorism.Watch ABC Nightline journalist Dan Harris gut-wrenching reaction to the video that clearly exposes ANTIFA as a domestic terror group: | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - France s young new president, Emmanuel Macron, said life as a world leader is less cool than it might seem, citing talks with Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan as an example. Asked by Le Point magazine in an interview if he was trying to be the new cool kid on the global stage, Macron replied: The global stage is not really a cool scene, you know. Asked to give an example, he said: I am the one who has to talk with Erdogan every 10 days. He did not elaborate. Erdogan is often criticized by leaders in Western Europe and he has clashed with the European Union over human rights and other issues. The last known conversation between Macron and Erdogan was on Aug. 27, when they discussed the fate of a French journalist jailed in Turkey. An aide to Macron later said the French president had not meant to mock or criticize his Turkish counterpart. The conversations with Mr. Erdogan are always very serious, the aide explained. | 0 |
Women, especially women in the public eye, are the constant victims of body policing. We re too fat, we re too thin, our breasts are too small, too large, or too fake. Comedian Amy Schumer is one woman who is the constant victim of such comments, specifically those regarding her weight. Schumer may not be a skinny minny, but she is a strong, healthy, beautiful woman who is not ashamed of who she is or how she looks. That never stopped hateful trolls from calling her fat, though. Well, Schumer decided to take those trolls to task via Instagram in the most perfect way by posting a photo of herself in a swimsuit.The post was captioned: I meant to write good morning trolls! I hope you find some joy in your lives today in a human interaction and not just in writing unkind things to a stranger you ve never met who triggers something in you that makes you feel powerless and alone. This is how I look. I feel happy. I think I look strong and healthy and also like miss trunchbull from Matilda. Kisses! Here is the embed of the post:I meant to write good morning trolls! I hope you find some joy in your lives today in a human interaction and not just in writing unkind things to a stranger you ve never met who triggers something in you that makes you feel powerless and alone. This is how I look. I feel happy. I think I look strong and healthy and also like miss trunchbull from Matilda. Kisses!A photo posted by @amyschumer on May 24, 2016 at 10:44am PDTKudos to the brilliant Ms. Schumer for her response to people who would dare to shame her for being proud of her body. The world is so unkind to those who are not a size 0, and that is nothing short of shameful.Amy Schumer is an excellent role model for women and girls and how we should deal with people who think they have the right to constantly comment on our bodies.Well done!Featured image via Brian Bedder/Getty Images | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal spending agreement reached late on Sunday will reimburse New York City for money spent securing U.S. President Donald Trump and his family at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Altogether, New York City and other state and local governments that have hosted the president would receive $61 million in the latest federal budget deal. Officials in Florida’s Palm Beach County, home to Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago, have also asked for help in paying security costs. “We are getting what we are owed,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement on Monday. “That’s good news for our city and the hardworking police officers faced with this unprecedented security challenge.” He and Police Commissioner James O’Neill worked for several months with New York’s congressional delegation to have the funds included in the deal, he said. Congress is expected to approve the legislation by the end of the week. The deal includes $20 million for costs incurred between Election Day in November and Inauguration Day in January, as well as $41 million after Trump was sworn in. The funding, which must be shared with other local governments, is on top of the $7 million allocated last fall. The city spends on average $127,000 to $146,000 a day for the New York Police Department to protect First Lady Melania Trump and the couple’s young son when President Trump is not in town. Those costs are expected to swell to a daily average of $308,000 when Trump is in the city, the mayor’s office said. Their home atop the 58-story skyscraper on Fifth Avenue near Central Park is the site of regular protests and is in an area popular with tourists. When outlining his $84.9 billion executive city budget for fiscal 2018 on Wednesday, de Blasio said the city normally handles occasional visits from Presidents, but not ongoing costs to keep the First Family secure in Trump Tower. “We’re not budgeting for something that’s a federal responsibility,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “It is ridiculous to expect local law enforcement... to bear the extraordinary and ongoing costs of protecting the President of the United States,” Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who helped lead the state’s congressional delegation in making the reimbursement request, said in a statement on Monday. | 0 |
When people think of rape, they generally imagine some masked man grabbing a woman and dragging her into a dark alley or the woods and assaulting her. However, it generally doesn t happen that way. Most sexual assault occurs at the hands of someone the victim knows this is usually referred to as date rape, or acquaintance rape. That is what makes these cases so difficult to prosecute. That is also what makes things like the processing of rape kits and other physical evidence following an assault so vital. However, one Idaho sheriff has gotten the idea in his head that most rapes are consensual sex, and thanks to that, he doesn t think his state needs laws making sure rape kits get processed.However, following rightful public outrage, Bingham County Sheriff Craig Rowland is backpeddling. He took to the Sheriff Department s Facebook page to try to explain just why he made the outrageous and despicable assertion that most rapes are actually, to use his words, consensual sex. Here is this neanderthal s Facebook apology : I want to explain what I was trying to say in the interview. I misspoke when I said the majority of our rape cases are consensual sex. The meaning behind my statement that has been misunderstood is that when a case is called into the dispatch center each and every one is thoroughly investigated. A Deputy is sent to every one of these cases and that Deputy then in turn contacts the on-call detective to help with the investigation. In some of these cases through the investigation it may be determined that the sex was consensual, but not always. In these types of cases after the investigation is complete and it was determined that the sex was consensual. I don t believe that those kits should be sent to the lab. Then, as if that sorry excuse for an apology weren t enough, Rowland then went on to go down the old I m sorry if you were offended road, and then proceeded to paint HIMSELF as a victim here, talking about cyber-bullying : I know that it is hard for victims to come forward on sexual assault cases. I spoke to a rape victim today and told her that I knew it was hard for her to come forward. I want to apologize to anyone who I might have offended with my statement as my main responsibility is to the public s safety and well being and maintaining their trust., he wrote. I can also say with regret that I now know what it is like to be cyber bullied. Not only have I been threatened but so has my family. I hope that this will clear things up a bit. Sure, it clears things up, Sheriff Rowland, but not in the way you think. What you ve said here is no different from what you said before. You re victim-blaming. Nine times out of ten, if a woman says she was raped, she was. You say yourself that it s hard for victims to disclose. So, why the hell would anyone make something like that up? It s men like you, Sheriff Rowland, who keep rape culture alive and well.You have no business in law enforcement, and I sincerely feel for the rape victims for whom you are their only source of so-called help. Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross held out hope on Thursday that the Trump administration will revive the U.S. Export-Import bank’s full lending powers, saying the institution is part of its “trade toolbox” to boost exports. The U.S. government trade lender has been hobbled for the better part of two years by conservative Republicans in Congress who tried to shut it down in 2015 by revoking its charter, and then limited its lending powers last year by blocking nominations to its board of directors. With only two active members on its five-seat board, the bank cannot make or guarantee loans over $10 million, preventing it from financing large exports such as U.S.-built commercial aircraft, nuclear reactors or petrochemical plants. Thus far, Trump administration officials have not said publicly whether they support reviving EXIM’s full lending powers, but some members of Congress say that Trump has told them privately that he supports the institution. “The bank is part of a domestically focused trade toolbox that this administration will continue to focus on in the coming months,” Ross said in brief video remarks to EXIM’s annual conference in Washington. “We will use that toolbox to rebalance our trade policy in order to put American workers first.” Ross did not provide details of how EXIM will be used in his trade strategy or whether the administration has specific plans to nominate new board members. He urged hundreds of U.S. manufacturers, lenders and foreign government and company officials attending the meeting to work towards increasing U.S. exports to create jobs. U.S. Representative Chris Collins of New York, a Republican Trump ally who headed a small manufacturer that used EXIM working capital loan guarantees in the past, told the conference that Trump told him on Feb. 16 at a White House meeting that he was “all in” on supporting EXIM. “We asked him very directly about the five board seats,” Collins said. “The president looked to his right and to his left and said ‘Can you get me some names? I’m all in.’ There was no hesitation whatsoever.” Reviving EXIM, however, would anger conservative groups backed by the Koch brothers, the influential billionaire Republican donors. The groups have waged a campaign that has painted EXIM as unnecessary corporate welfare even though it is self-funding through the interest and fees it charges borrowers. | 0 |
DELBRUECK, Germany (Reuters) - Turks can safely come to Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, dismissing a warning from Ankara that its citizens should take care when traveling there due to what it said was an increase in anti-Turkish sentiment. Tensions between Berlin and Ankara have been bubbling for months and Turkey s warning on Saturday came after Germany s foreign ministry said on Tuesday Germans traveling to Turkey risked arbitrary detention even in tourist areas. I want to say very clearly that all Turkish citizens can travel here, Merkel said in the northwestern German town of Delbrueck during a campaign event ahead of a Sept. 24 election. No journalists get arrested here and no journalists get put in custody. Freedom of opinion and the rule of law prevail here and we re proud of that, Merkel said. She pointed to German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel, who has been detained in Turkey for more than 200 days. He is one of 12 German citizens now in Turkish detention on political charges, four of them holding dual citizenship. We think there s no justification at all for him being in prison and the same applies to at least 11 other Germans, Merkel said. Merkel, who infuriated the Turkish government last weekend by saying she would seek an end to Turkey s membership talks with the European Union, is expected to win a fourth term in the upcoming election. Polls give her conservatives a double-digit percentage lead over their rival Social Democrats (SPD). | 0 |
She s pulling down a cool $2 Million a year as the race-baiting host of ABC s flailing The View talk show.Watch Goldberg take a line from Hillary s dead broke book during this segment: | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - French voters view far leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon as the strongest opponent of President Emmanuel Macron, according to a new poll on Tuesday that highlights the weakness of mainstream opposition. The Ifop-Fiducial poll showed Macron s popularity has dropped sharply since he took power in May but its key finding could help him as he embarks on reforms because polls show voters see Melenchon as too extreme to be a serious candidate for power. Melenchon is very much on the protest front but not seen as an actual alternative (to Macron), said Frederic Dab of Ifop pollsters. That can be an opportunity for Emmanuel Macron, allowing him to create a vacuum around him and replace the left-right divide by a reform vs protest debate. The poll for Paris Match and Sud Radio showed 45 percent of voters say Melenchon s France Unbowed party provides the strongest opposition to Macron. That is more than twice the figure for the conservative Republicans (LR) or the far-right National Front (FN). Only 8 percent mentioned the Socialists. France Unbowed has been much more vocal than the conservatives or Socialists. The Republicans have been subdued in the wake of their defeat in the presidential election and divided over what stance to take toward Macron, whose economic policies resemble what many in their party have asked for for years. All three parties are struggling to get their voices heard above Macron and Melenchon s criticism of each other. Macron is trying to eliminate anything there is between him and extreme parties. I won t let him do that ... I won t resign myself to Melenchon being the only opposition to Macron, Laurent Wauquiez, the frontrunner to win LR s leadership in December, said on Sunday. A government source said Melenchon s relative strength was welcome and he was Macron s only proper opponent. I was praying to have Jean-Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen in parliament ... The Emmanuel Macron/Edouard Philippe alliance was meant to get the Socialist Party and the right to explode and we are not disappointed, the source said. He was referring to the fact that Macron s prime minister Philippe comes from LR. Melenchon strongly opposes Macron s plans to overhaul labor laws but his party can do little to block the measures because it has just 17 lawmakers in the 577-strong parliament. Melenchon, an anti-NATO euroskeptic known for his fiery debating style, has called on his supporters to march on Sept. 23 to protest the labor reforms, which will give companies more flexibility on firings, pay and working hours. The poll confirmed Macron s drop in popularity with 46 percent saying they approved of his policies, down 10 points from July. | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces alliance (SDF) has launched an operation against Islamic State militants in the north of Deir al-Zor province in eastern Syria, a statement said on Saturday. The statement from the Deir al-Zor Military Council, fighting as part of the SDF, said assaults would aim to drive the jihadist militants out of areas they hold north and east of the Euphrates river. | 0 |
ATHENS (Reuters) - Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos went on strike on Monday to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a prison for migrants and refugees. Islanders shut businesses, shops, municipal offices, nurseries and pharmacies and dozens rallied on a central square, calling on the government to transfer asylum-seekers to the mainland. Lesbos is not a place of exile, a banner read. Just a few miles from Turkey s coast, Lesbos has borne the brunt of Europe s migrant crisis. In 2015, nearly a million people - most fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - landed on its shores before heading north, mainly to Germany. It is now hosting some 8,500 asylum-seekers in facilities designed to hold fewer than 3,000. Lesbos is not an open prison, nor will we allow anyone to view it as such, Mayor Spyros Galinos was quoted as saying by the Athens News Agency. Thousands of asylum-seekers have become stranded on Lesbos and four other islands close to Turkey since the EU agreed a deal with Ankara in March 2016 to shut down the route through Greece. Some have been moved to camps on the mainland, but authorities say the terms of the agreement prevent asylum-seekers from traveling beyond the islands. Rights groups have described conditions in camps across Greece as deplorable and unfit for humans. On Lesbos, violence often breaks out over delays in asylum procedures and poor living standards. The message (today) was that we can t take it any more, Galinos said. Lesbos is in a state of emergency. | 0 |
Nothing is more repulsive than PAC representing Gov. John Kasich, who is polling at almost negative numbers, working to take down the GOP frontrunner. Doesn t it seem kinda futile to attempt a take down of the GOP frontrunner if their candidate has had several opportunities to do so himself on the debate stage and failed miserably? Watch for a YUGE backlash against the GOP establishment in 5 4 3 2 1 One has to wonder if the GOP establishment has anything to do with this coordinated effort to take out Trump? And if they do, is this really about Kasich or is it about keeping Rubio and Bush in the game? Donald Trump s presidential campaign warned the Republican Party on Tuesday about donors pooling funds for attack ads, saying Republicans must treat him fairly if they want to keep him from launching an independent bid.Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told CNN that if Republican donors backing different presidential candidates come together for an anti-Trump advertising campaign, it would be a bad, bad decision. The Super PAC planning the attack is New Day for America, which is supporting Ohio Governor John Kasich s presidential bid. Its spokesman, Matt David, said on Sunday that 10 new donors had pledged money since Thursday when Politico reported the group s plans to attack Trump in New Hampshire.Trump signed a pledge to run as a Republican in the 2016 presidential election, but Cohen indicated the agreement would be invalid if Republicans target the billionaire real estate mogul. If they treat him fairly, he will honor the pledge because he s an honorable guy. If they break that agreement with him, as they say woe be on them,' Cohen told CNN.Cohen said the Republican Party may claim it has no control over Super PAC activities. But he insisted Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus has an obligation to treat Trump fairly. If they don t, this will be a very, very bad thing for the Republican Party, Cohen said.RNC representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Trump is leading in polls of Republican primary voters both nationwide and in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. His numbers have risen despite criticism about his business record and backlash from his contentious statements about immigrants and Muslims, among other things.Via: Reuters | 1 |
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