Datasets:

nixbel

/

ustest

like 0

Moronic Trump Campaign Thinks Reopened Clinton Email Investigation Will Save Them

Jason Easley

The Trump campaign is so desperate that they are openly celebrating the reopening of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted: A great day in our campaign just got even better. FBI reviewing new emails in Clinton probe @CNNPolitics https://t.co/WBltG2lAK6 — Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) October 28, 2016 The problem with the idea that the emails will save Donald Trump and the Republican Party is that Clinton was beating Trump while the FBI did their first investigation into her emails. Clinton has led Trump all through the Congressional hearings into her emails. She led Trump throughout the FBI investigation into her emails. Clinton won the Democratic nomination with her emails being a story. The point is that Hillary Clinton’s emails aren’t a big issue to the majority of voters. The people who aren’t Republicans in this election don’t care about her emails. When compared to Trump sexually assaulting women, not paying federal income taxes, and being sued in two states for fraud, the emails seem like a quaint political scandal from a much simpler time. There has also never been a shred of proof that Hillary Clinton did anything wrong. Republicans can’t get past the basic hurdle of needing actual evidence to back up their email conspiracy. Hillary Clinton is facing Donald Trump in this election, and only a moron or a truly desperate campaign manager clinging on the last bit of hope that she can find would believe that the reopening of an email investigation will make a bit of difference on election day. The voters are speaking, and they don’t care about Hillary Clinton’s emails.

‘South Park’: After Two Decades, It’s Still by the Seat of Their Pants - The New York Times

Dave Itzkoff

LOS ANGELES — Every day at South Park Studios is different, but Trey Parker said this particular afternoon, Monday, Sept. 12, was especially memorable. “There are times where we go, ‘How do we tell Comedy Central we don’t have a show? ’” he said with sardonic delight. “This is one of those. ” Mr. Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” exuded an appearance of calm as they brainstormed in their airy offices, in a gray building on a stretch of highway at the edge of this city. But they were under considerable pressure to finish the first episode for the 20th season of this satirical animated series, which was due in less than 48 hours and would air that Wednesday. At this stage — on the ninth draft of a script called “Member Berries” — they would like to have 16 minutes of a episode Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker said they had 12 and a half. (“That doesn’t mean that’s what we have done,” Mr. Parker cautioned. “That means that’s all we have figured out. ”) A board in the room showed a nearly nonexistent third act, all empty ovals stacked like pancakes, as the collaborators kicked around the episode’s story elements: a new American national anthem rebooted by J. J. Abrams a comically inept xenophobe running for president and an addictive talking fruit that induces nostalgia for the of one’s youth. How these pieces fit together wasn’t clear yet. But after two decades of making their show in this stressful, way, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker were reasonably certain they would figure out something. “I can’t believe I’m surprised by it,” Mr. Stone said. “How do we get to this point and have no story? But we just go through it again. For the eight millionth time. ” Since its debut in 1997, “South Park” has spun more than 250 tales about fourth graders in a Colorado town that invariably gets swept up in whatever social crisis the nation is facing that week. What began with a show about aliens installing a satellite in a child’s butt has evolved — sort of — into a series that, in its unapologetically crude way, can address debates over transgender bathrooms, racial discrimination or gratuitous sex and violence in “Game of Thrones. ” Even as animation technology has improved and the “South Park” staff has grown exponentially, the show is still fundamentally the work of Mr. Parker, 46, and Mr. Stone, 45, who agonize over every installment. (Mr. Parker has had sole writing and directing credit on all but a few episodes since 2001.) The mechanics of making the show haven’t changed much, but Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker have. The punks who were on LSD at the 2000 Academy Awards have grown up: Mr. Stone telecommutes half the week to be with his wife and children in New York, while Mr. Parker’s office is strewn with the toys of his daughter. In its 20th year, “South Park” offers a pointed and, surprisingly, platform for commentary on current events. New episodes typically draw around two million viewers, many of them the to that advertisers covet, a showing that Comedy Central decidedly needs while its lineup is in flux and other signature franchises like “Inside Amy Schumer” are on hiatus. “For a network that no longer has Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, having ‘South Park’ is extremely important to us,” said Doug Herzog, the president of Viacom’s Music and Entertainment Group, which includes Comedy Central. “With all due respect to Jon and ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘South Park’ is the foundation on which Comedy Central is built. ” If the earliest “South Park” episodes reflected a juvenile desire to see what they could get away with on television, their later work suggests Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone have honed their ability to channel their growing exasperation with a polarized world into comedy. Vernon Chatman, a comedy writer who has worked on “South Park” for more than 15 years, said that Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker have thrived by embracing their roles in “their relationship. ” “Matt has this sharp, analytical mind that’s focused and relentless,” he said. “Trey has the dreamy, emotional storyteller thing. ” Mr. Chatman added, “To be in such a heightened, intense relationship, with so much stakes and pressure on it — the fact that they haven’t killed each other is incredible. ” Already, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone had spent this Monday in a multihour meeting with Mr. Chatman and Anne Garefino, an executive producer, talking through plot points for “Member Berries” and shooting them down. “If we only have three scenes left to write, that’s a win,” Ms. Garefino said. “It’s when you still have that whole last act — ” Her voice trailed off. In the afternoon, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker caromed from office to office in a building decorated with their trophies — “South Park” toys and memorabilia framed posters from their Tony Broadway musical, “The Book of Mormon” — while trying to bring “Member Berries” into focus. For a few minutes, Mr. Parker stepped into a recording booth to perform the voices of two football announcers introducing the new national anthem, while Mr. Stone directed him to be more excitable. Then it was off to an editing suite, where Mr. Parker reviewed a vividly vulgar montage featuring Mr. Garrison, the “South Park” character who has turned into a buffoonish populist demagogue, describing exactly how he’d bring death to America’s enemies. Mr. Parker writes in private, emerging occasionally to pull Mr. Stone from wherever he might be and ask his help. In the writers’ room, the two creators were trying to pin down the motivations of Randy Marsh, the show’s ambivalent adult moral compass, as he grapples with a presidential race between two candidates he dislikes and decides whether he should try the narcotic member berries. Where should Randy be introduced to the enticing fruit — at a bar or in a friend’s house? Do the berries come in boxes or grow in bunches? Mr. Parker was in constant motion as he considered each question, walking many agitated laps around a long conference table. Together, he and Mr. Stone improvised a scene in which the exhortations of the talking berries grow more sinister: Remember “Star Wars”? Remember being a kid? Remember feeling safe? Remember no immigrants? As Mr. Parker stepped away to resume his solitary work, Mr. Stone explained that his role in these moments was to be a sounding board for Mr. Parker but also to remind him that he’s just got to write something down. “There’s no other way to do it,” Mr. Stone said. “If you don’t have that one perfect line, you can fix that later. ” In a phone interview a few days earlier, Mr. Parker explained how he and Mr. Stone had abandoned their preseason ritual of holding a writers’ retreat to drink, carouse and think up ideas. “As soon as we’re like, ‘We could do this, this could be funny,’ we’re like, ‘Stop talking about it,’” Mr. Parker said. “Because in two months, when we’re doing the show, it won’t be funny to us anymore. ” Being more extemporaneous, he said, led to unexpected discoveries like their 19th season in 2015, presented as 10 interconnected episodes that told a broader story about gentrification, identity politics and a perceived resurgence of political correctness. The renewed debate about sensitivity in speech and the policing of language was one that “South Park” could not avoid, for its own sake. “This might finally be the year that we get run out of town,” Mr. Parker recalled thinking at the time. “If we’re going to, let’s make fun of the fact that we’re the old guys at the table. All those shows were an honest part of us going, ‘Should we go away? ’” Instead, the 19th season was a critical hit in a review for The New York Times, James Poniewozik wrote that “South Park” had “gone and revitalized itself,” in part “by asserting that it takes an outrageous comedy to capture an era of outrage. ” Mr. Herzog, who has worked with Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone since the debut of “South Park,” said they have Comedy Central’s “absolute, 1, 000 percent eternal trust. ” As long as the show satisfies the network’s Standards and Practices department, he said, “we’re cool with the show. ” Yet that success created more angst for Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker as they approached Season 20. Were they obligated to tell a serialized narrative again? Did they have to dwell on the 2016 campaign, when their indifference to presidential politics is a subject? All they can do, the “South Park” creators said, is continue to apply a principle that has guided them from the beginning. No matter how serious an issue seems, Mr. Parker said, “Looking at it with a sense of humor is not only healthier for you, it actually makes you think more clearly about things — being able to make fun of either side of an issue, rather than just, ‘Trump is evil and Clinton is good. ’” “There’s always room to equally rip on both of them,” he said. Comedy Central has signed Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone to keep making “South Park” through 2019. Ms. Garefino, who has worked on the show for 19 of its 20 years, suggested they could stick around longer still. “They said they didn’t still want to be making ‘South Park’ when they were 40,” she said. “I think they’ll be doing it when they’re 50. ” She tried to make herself sound as confident that the current episode would be completed under deadline. “There’s always a moment where Trey will fall in love with the show, and the pages start flowing,” she said. “Something will happen. ” “Member Berries” was broadcast at 10 p. m. on Sept. 14, but hardly without incident. That morning, South Park Studios suffered a system crash, and the episode’s audio went missing for an hour and a half. When the episode was transmitted to Comedy Central, it had a mystery sync problem that was finally fixed and delivered one hour before airtime. The following day, Ms. Garefino said, “Trey’s like, ‘I think from now, we should think about getting the show in earlier. ’” Even “South Park” would have to bleep out Ms. Garefino’s response.

'If Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket,' former congressman tweets

Email Former Illinois congressman and conservative radio host Joe Walsh appeared to invite armed insurrection when he tweeted that he was "grabbing his musket" if Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in the presidential election. "On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump," Walsh tweeted. "On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket." "@WalshFreedom what exactly does that mean?" CNN's Jake Tapper tweeted in reply. "@jaketapper It means protesting," Walsh tweeted. "Participating in acts of civil disobedience. Doing what it takes to get our country back." Walsh's rhetoric comes as Americans are already nervous about what will happen on and after Election Day. Trump's insistence that the election is "rigged," and his statement at the last debate that he would keep America "in suspense" about whether or not he will accept the results, have left some in fear that violence could flare up if his supporters refuse to accept the outcome. More than half of Americans expressed concern about violence on election day according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday. Walsh dismissed another Twitter user's concern that his call to arms could draw the attention of the Secret Service saying, "They understand that a musket hasn't been used in battle in almost 200 years." "I'm serious," Walsh tweeted later. "I don't think a musket would do much good these days, but it's time for civil disobedience on the right." Walsh repeated his defense that he was only speaking of civil disobedience to NBC's Chicago affiliate. "We're talking about a musket," Walsh said, according to NBC 5 Chicago. "I could've said grab your slingshot and let's go. Metaphorically, I meant grab your muskets, if Trump loses, man, we're going to do what we have to do. We're going to protest and boycott and practice civil disobedience. We may start a third party." This wasn't the first time Walsh, who served one term before being defeated by Rep. Tammy Duckworth in 2012, drew criticism for an incendiary tweet. In July he got national attention for telling President Obama to "watch out" after five police officers were killed by a shooter in Dallas. "3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded," Walsh tweeted in a post that has since been deleted. "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you."

Warren Buffett: America Will Be Fine Under Trump - Breitbart

Jeff Poor

In an interview broadcasted on CNBC on Thursday, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a supporter of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, “America works,” Buffett said at the New York City premiere of a HBO documentary about his life . “I’ve said this before. It’ll work wonderfully under Hillary Clinton, and I think it’ll work fine under Donald Trump. ” He added the country has a “secret sauce” and although he said the economy doesn’t always work perfectly and experiences “hiccups,” we “do well over time. ” ( The Hill) Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Trump Weighs Infrastructure Bill but Keeps New York Up in the Air - The New York Times

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman

WASHINGTON — President Trump said he was considering “accelerating” the introduction of his $1 trillion infrastructure bill — but he pointedly refused to say whether he planned to include two major New York City transportation projects that his budget for next year would defund. Mr. Trump, speaking in a interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday, described the infrastructure package as a legislative sweetener that he could attach to a revived Affordable Care Act repeal bill or tax code overhaul to attract bipartisan support that thus far he had neither sought nor received. “Infrastructure is so popular that I might want to use it for another bill,” said Mr. Trump, who is in need of a legislative win after the humbling defeat of his health care bill last month. “Infrastructure is so popular with the Democrats and pretty popular with the Republicans. A lot of Republicans want infrastructure, too. ” The president, who inherited and expanded a family fortune built on and real estate development, has proposed eliminating an infrastructure program that would have funded proposals to build a new train tunnel under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, and extend the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan north to East Harlem. State and city leaders say both projects are essential: The subway line is needed to alleviate congestion on Manhattan’s East Side, and the tunnel is needed to improve deteriorating rail service in the heavily trafficked Eastern corridor and provide a new conduit for freight in the event of a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy in 2012. As Mr. Trump discussed his plan, hundreds of thousands of commuters endured a third day of upheaval prompted by a minor derailment at Pennsylvania Station, another reminder of the decrepit, tenuous state of much of the region’s infrastructure and transit systems. Mr. Trump said he planned to examine both New York projects and submit them to an unformed “commission” headed by Richard LeFrak, a fellow scion of a prominent Queens real estate family, and Steven Roth, the chairman of the New Vornado Realty Trust. “Well, I may support them,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m going to look at them. ” “I did great in real estate in New York,” he added. “I know all the developers. I know all of the folks. I know the good ones and the bad ones. And I’m setting up a commission of very smart people that know how to spend money properly. That know how to build on time, on budget. And ideally, under time and under budget. ” New York leaders were not impressed. “Welcome to the party,” said Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “The governor has been saying that we need to rebuild our airports for years, but unlike Washington, we aren’t just talking about needed improvements we are already in the process of rebuilding them. This is exactly why the federal government needs to follow through on its promise to fund infrastructure projects. ” Mitchell Moss, the director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, predicted that Mr. Trump, spurred on by his daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner, would eventually come through for the city. “ is a nice place to golf, but New York is where Donald Trump grew up, and it’s where he will return,” Mr. Moss said, referring to Mr. Trump’s Florida resort. “At the end of the day, Donald, Ivanka and Jared are going to come back here, and they know the city needs a infrastructure. ” It is not that the president thinks the city is not in need. “I think it’s in poor shape,” he said of New York’s infrastructure. “The highways are in poor shape. ” “I think the airports are a horror show,” he added. “I’ve traveled the world, I know the world. ” Mr. Trump, whose knowledge of complex policy issues can sometimes be lacking, then offered a scathing critique of the bent and battered metal median guards on the Van Wyck Expressway not far from his childhood home in Queens. “Whoever the person is that owns that company is a genius salesman,” he said, as his aides — who wanted to talk about their bigger plans — grew restless in their carved armchairs. “That is the worst garbage. I think it bends by the heat, because not that many cars could possibly hit it. It’s the worst garbage. And I also think it’s dangerous because it’s a spear. And if you hit those things, they come flying apart. And if you’re driving, you’ve got yourself a problem. ” Mr. Trump confessed that he had not personally driven in a while, and that it had been years since he had ridden the subway. “It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time,” he said. “I know the subway system very well. I used to take it to School, in Forest Hills, when I lived in Queens. And I’d take the subway to school. Seems a long time ago. I’d take it from Jamaica, 179th Street. Jamaica, right? To Forest Hills. I understand the subway very well. I used to ride between the cars. ” Referring to his parents, he added, “They weren’t thrilled when they heard that. ” Mr. Trump, at the advice of Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence, had intended to tackle health care first — gaining hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings — that would then be rolled into an ambitious tax cut package. Infrastructure, according to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and other top administration officials, was something the administration would handle when the other two bills were passed. But the health care debacle has scuttled the president’s plans, and he is considering merging one or all of the proposals in the hopes of cobbling together a coalition. The idea of merging a big infrastructure plan with a tax proposal is not new: Shortly after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama proposed a similar idea — and his stimulus package included more than $300 billion in tax breaks intended to spur infrastructure and capital investments to stimulate growth. Mr. Trump is confident he will attract Democratic support — even though he has not spoken with the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, for weeks. He said Democrats were “desperate for infrastructure — that’s the thing that they want. ” Mr. Schumer said he was eager to start negotiations but not especially hopeful. “He hasn’t put out anything specific yet,” the senator said. The president, surrounded by staff members including Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, and Reed Cordish, an assistant to Mr. Trump — refused to say how much direct public funding would be included in his proposal. A senior administration official directly involved in drafting the plan said that number would be in the $200 billion to $300 billion range over the next decade, with the balance of the package paid for by tax credits. Mr. Schumer and many congressional Democrats say they will never agree to such large tax breaks for developers and builders, despite the president’s claim that they will fold. And even as Mr. Trump trumpeted the curative political tonic of the infrastructure bill, his aides were on hand to remind him that they had their own priorities, too. “He’s spending an enormous amount of time on trade and taxes,” Mr. Cohn said, interrupting the talk of trains, planes and automobiles. “Those are two big areas. ” A few minutes later, Mr. Cohn — who is ascendant in Mr. Trump’s circle — let out a colossal sneeze. Perhaps that is why the president paid such close attention to Mr. Cohn’s physical . “God bless you. You O. K. Gary?” the president said. “That was a pretty tough one. I’ve got to make sure my man is all right. ”

Breitbart News’ John Carney vs CNN’s Brian Stelter: Should Americans Panic over Donald Trump? - Breitbart

Charlie Spiering

Breitbart News reporter John Carney joined a panel of six establishment media journalists at the Columbia Journalism School to discuss the media’s role covering the Trump administration, including CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter. [Stelter appeared aghast after Carney suggested that there was no reason for reporters to “panic” at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency. Should Americans panic over @realDonaldTrump? Watch @carney and @brianstelter discuss &gt pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) March 3, 2017, “I think that this is the best beginning of a presidency that I have experienced in my adult life,” Carney said, pointing out that Trump was delivering on his campaign promises. As an example, Carney pointed out that despite what cable news channels reported about Trump softening his position on immigration, he repeated his promise during his joint speech to Congress earlier in the week. “There’s not going to be a real wall,” Stelter protested. “This is what people say all the time,” Carney replied. “I believe there will be a real giant wall, and maybe it just got ten feet higher because he might have heard you say that. ” New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller boasted that they were increasing their staff of journalists in Washington D. C. to hold the administration accountable. “I think it’s extraordinary that the press sort of ‘woke up’ after Donald Trump’s election to a moment of clarity about its job,” Carney replied. “I think that is one of the things that actually people find alienating. ” Carney suggested that Trump’s worldview was fundamentally opposed to by many journalists who were tasked with covering the administration. “They can’t hear the word or phrase ‘economic nationalism’ without thinking that is bad. They come from, I would say, a globalist secularist point of view and the idea of a president who uses the phrase ‘America First’ strikes them as disturbing,” he said. Turning to the New York Times editor, Carney asked, “Do you think you have enough people who understand and sympathize with Trump’s worldview in your news organizations or do you think that you are predominantly staffed by people who view Trump’s view as not just wrong but probably also evil?” Bumiller shot back, “Do you have enough people in your news organization who disagree with Trump’s point of view?” During the panel, Carney explained why he moved to Breitbart News from the Wall Street Journal. “Breitbart is the most innovative and exciting source of journalism in America today,” he replied, referring to the familiar “entrepreneurial spirit” at Breitbart that he experienced when he helped create Business Insider. The @carney on why he decided to join @BreitbartNews pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) March 3, 2017,

UK Jobs Market Can Be "Self-sufficient" After Brexit, Says Green

Jack Montgomery

The Lords have been told that there is no need to guarantee employers permanent access to a large pool of foreign labour after Brexit, as investment and higher wages can make the country “ ” in workers. [“We have 1. 5 million unemployed, and one million looking for work,” the former diplomat and chairman of Migration Watch, Lord Andrew Green, has told the Lords Economic Select Committee. “It’s not as if the barrel is empty. ” Lord Green emphasised that “strong public demand to reduce immigration” made achieving a substantial reduction a democratic imperative. The present government remains committed to a target of bringing net immigration down “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” which was first set in 2010 but has been missed by a wide margin every year. “I would say that even 100, 000 [migrants] a year would add about nine million to our population over the next years” Green noted, suggesting that controlling population growth, reducing strain on public services and encouraging community cohesion should be the government’s policy focus. Also providing evidence at the hearing was Philippe Legrain, a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics European Institute and an adviser to former European Commission president José Manuel Barroso. Legrain expressed outrage that Lord Green could suggest that was desirable. “ is clearly feasible,” the economist conceded. “I mean, Robinson Crusoe scraped by on his island. But the idea that it’s desirable is insane!” “What is if not ‘British jobs for British workers’?” Legrain asked again later, clearly incredulous. Paradoxically, the “citizen of the world” has claimed elsewhere that a substantial reduction in the Swedish population between the 1870s and 1910s “relieved pressure on the land, drove up the productivity and wages of those who remained, and helped catapult Sweden from grinding rural poverty to prosperity within fewer than 50 years. ” His own favoured policy on migration is global free movement. He argues that any controls at all are “economically stupid, politically unsustainable, and morally wrong”. Legrain’s extreme open borders advocacy was briefly picked up by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, the former Secretary of State for Scotland, at the hearing: “Basically what you’re advocating is a complete ” he pointed out. “The problem we have is that people can’t get GPs appointments the National Health Service is under enormous pressure there’s huge opposition to building on the green belt. Isn’t this an idealistic economic model which is completely impractical in terms of the real problems that we face?” Legrain countered that “any strains that emerge on public services are not due to [immigration] but rather due to the failure of public services to be flexible or adapt to change”. The hearing comes just week’s after Migration Watch revealed that British businesses would not face a shortfall of workers .

Trump Elected President, Thanks to 4 in 5 White Evangelicals

Kaitlyn Stegall

November 9, 2016 Trump Elected President, Thanks to 4 in 5 White Evangelicals Exit polls suggest that “Never Trump” was never a likely outcome for white evangelical voters, who showed up to support Trump at their highest margin since 2004. Despite reservations expressed by many evangelical and Republican leaders, white born-again/evangelical Christians cast their ballots for the controversial real estate mogul-turned-politician at an 81 percent to 16 percent margin over Hillary Clinton. Evangelicals of color—who represent 2 in 5 evangelicals, but aren’t segmented out in most national political polls—largely preferred Clinton leading up to the election. But she ultimately underperformed among Hispanics and African Americans compared to President Barack Obama before her. “The story here continues to be continuity in the strength of evangelical support for GOP candidates, rather than greater intensity,” said Kevin den Dulk, political science professor at Calvin College. “I suspect there’s some underlying changes in polling responses that would make Trump’s evangelical support seem greater than it has in the past.”

Education System Broken: Let’s Try ‘Ed-Exit’

Ron Paul

Written by Ron Paul Maryland Governor Larry Hogan recently signed an executive order forbidding Maryland public schools from beginning classes before Labor Day. Governor Hogan’s executive order benefits businesses in Maryland’s coastal areas that lose school-aged summer employees and business from Maryland families when schools start in August. However, as Governor Hogan’s critics have pointed out, some Maryland school districts, as well as Maryland schoolchildren, benefit from an earlier start to the school year. Governor Hogan’s executive order is the latest example of how centralized government control of education leaves many students behind. A centrally planned education system can no more meet the unique needs of every child than a centrally planned economic system can meet the unique needs of every worker and consumer. Centralizing education at the state or, worse, federal level inevitably leads to political conflicts over issues ranging from whether students should be allowed to pray on school grounds, to what should be the curriculum, to what food should be served in the cafeteria, to who should be allowed to use which bathroom. The centralization and politicization of education is rooted in the idea that education is a right that must be provided by the government, instead of a good that individuals should obtain in the market. Separating school from state would empower parents to find an education system that meets the needs of their children instead of using the political process to force their idea of a good education on all children. While many politicians praise local and parental control of education, the fact is both major parties embrace federal control of education. The two sides only differ on the details. Liberals who oppose the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind enthusiastically backed President Clinton’s national testing proposals. They also back the Obama administration’s expansion of federal interference in the classroom via Common Core. Similarly, conservatives who (correctly) not just opposed Clinton’s initiatives but called for the abolition of the Department of Education enthusiastically supported No Child Left Behind. Even most conservatives who oppose Common Core, federal bathroom and cafeteria mandates, and other federal education policies, support reforming, instead of eliminating, the Department of Education. Politicians will not voluntarily relinquish control over education to parents. Therefore, parents and other concerned citizens should take a page from the UK and work to “Ed-Exit” government-controlled education. Parents and other concerned citizens should pressure Congress to finally shut down the Department of Education and return the money to American families. They also must pressure state governments and local school boards to reject federal mandates, even if it means forgoing federal funding. Parents should also explore education alternatives, such as private, charter, and religious schools, as well as homeschooling. Homeschooling is the ultimate form of Ed-Exit. Homeschooling parents have the freedom to shape every aspect of education — from the curriculum to the length of the school day to what their children have for lunch to who can and cannot use the bathroom — to fit their child's unique needs. Parents interested in providing their children with a quality education emphasizing the ideas of liberty should try out my homeschooling curriculum. The curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes courses in personal finance and public speaking. The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education. Parents interested in Ed-Exiting from government-run schools can learn more about my curriculum at ronpaulcurriculum.com . Copyright © 2016 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Charlie Sheen on Trump: ’We Look Forward to Impeachment’

Jerome Hudson

Actor Charlie Sheen praised Meryl Streep’s rant at the Golden Globes and said Americans can expect the to be impeached shortly after he’s sworn into office. [“Everything that Dame Streep orated is beyond the pale of truth, and we’re all responsible to heed and honor those words,” Sheen told TMZ. “Those words of wisdom. ” Sheen also called Streep’s critics “a bunch of trolling douchebags. ” Streep’s infamous speech Sunday night, while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, saw the screen star cast Hollywood as the most “vilified” segment of American society following Trump’s election. She also called on the media to stand up to Trump “to hold power to account, to call to the carpet for every outrage. ” The speech has been praised by a bevy of stars including Robert Di Nero, who wrote a letter to Streep thanking her for using her “powerful voice” to say what “needed to be said. ” Asked if it’s now more important that America begins to “look forward” to Trump’s presidency, Sheen said, “We look forward to an impeachment. ” The former Two and a Half Men star recently opened up about his addiction to drugs and the battle of living with HIV, in an interview Wednesday on Good Morning America. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson

The Birth Bump – Do You Feel Like Were Born Into The Wrong Family?

Editor

By Cameron Day Have you ever felt like you ended up in the wrong family? Did you grow up feeling that you were so incredibly different from your parents and siblings, that there must have been some sort of mistake for you to end up with those people? I’m not talking about feeling out of place in the insanity of the current era of human society, I’m talking about something much deeper — a sense that your very parents are not who you were meant to be born to. If you have felt this way, please keep reading, as this may be very important information for you. I have written at length about the ongoing battle to free humanity from the enslavement of the forces of darkness in articles like “ Never Call Them Archons ”, “ First Contact Is Not Happening Soon ”, “ Shifting into 2013 ” and many others. The central theme of these articles is to illustrate that humanity is mired in multiple layers of illusion, deception, energy-draining/harvesting, trauma, manipulation, subjugation and much more. While this is an incredibly beautiful planet, the true beauty of humanity is being actively suppressed by forces that want to keep humans enslaved. At the same time, positively oriented guardians of free will have been working to free humanity from its energetic bonds of slavery, while being careful to avoid creating further trauma within the enslaved populace. How Do You Free Slaves Who Believe They Are Already Free? One of the many challenges to this undertaking is that people are repeatedly told that they are free, that their government cares for them, and that those ugly things like pollution and war are inevitable aspects of “the human condition.” More accurate would be to say that the conditioning and programming imposed on humans produces the horrors of abuse, environmental destruction and war. In order to show people how they have been enslaved, and present them with alternative ways of living, positively oriented beings from higher densities of creation chose to incarnate into human form. In doing so, the free will of humanity is not subjected to a new outside authority arriving and dispensing belief-shattering truth upon the fragile minds of enslaved and abused humans. Instead, positive social change begins to happen from within the race as awakening individuals point out the insanity of the “human condition” and show others how to live in alignment with Earth and natural laws. This is an effective tactic, although it is slow to produce change, and is filled with risks. Due to the overpowered “veil of forgetfulness” that is in operation on the planet, the incarnating helper-soul completely forgets their true identity, takes on a human ego identity, and risks the possibility that they may not awaken to the truth of their mission. Another risk is that the incarnating helper-soul will experience severe traumas that prevent their awakening, or worse, that these traumas will orient their ego towards serving the darkness that they are fighting against. Despite all the risks, many millions of brave souls have incarnated on this planet because we are soldiers who fight for the Infinite Source of all creation, and because humanity is worth fighting for. Parachuting Into a War Zone Many people don’t fully realize it, but this planet is a war zone, and the battle is being fought mostly in the more subtle densities of the planet instead of in 3d with guns and bombs. That’s a good thing for the most part. However, for a helper-soul from a higher density to “parachute” into this war zone, there is a major risk of “landing” in the wrong incarnational vehicle (body) due to dark-side interference. When a being chooses the family they want to incarnate into, they attach a filament of energy into the developing fetus. This attachment allows them to stake their claim on the fetus so that they can enter the body more fully once it is close to being born, or shortly after birth. In a perfect world, this process would proceed smoothly without interference. On a war-zone like Earth, this process can be disrupted. The forces of darkness, which I call ankle-biters, would prefer to never allow a helper-soul to incarnate on their heavily controlled planet. However, they cannot stop us from entering, so they use different tactics to attack the incoming helper-soul. One of their favorite methods is what I call the “Birth Bump.” The birth bump is usually done on the day the baby is being delivered, because this is normally when the incarnating being comes much more strongly into the infant body. During this time, there is a window of opportunity for the dark forces to rip the original filament attachment from the intended body and attach it to a baby being born elsewhere on the same day. The incarnating being’s incoming energy follows their filament, and ends up settling into a body and a birth family that they did not choose. Because this is a dark-side attack, the family that the incoming helper-soul gets bumped into is selected based on their propensity for abuse, neglect, mistreatment, lack of empathy, and so on. This allows the dark forces to effectively neutralize an incoming soldier for the true light, without having to expend nearly as much time and energy on attacking that person as would be necessary if the helper-soul had been born into a loving, supportive home. Sometimes the gender of the body the being ends up in is different from what they had chosen, creating even more confusion and difficulty for the incarnating being. The bad parenting of the “pseudo-parents” serves as a source of constant torment for the infant helper-soul, and they grow up taking on the negative programming of their dysfunctional pseudo-parents. Physical, emotional, mental and even sexual abuse all take their toll on the helper-soul, making their job of waking up, getting clear and fighting against the forces of darkness vastly more difficult. Sometimes the pseudo-parents aren’t overtly abusive, but are still a complete energetic mismatch to the helper-soul. As the child displays budding psychic abilities, the parents will ridicule their perceptions. Or if the child is repelled by certain actions of the family, they will be forced to conform to the family’s normalcy biases. Essentially, the pseudo-parents continually attempt to coerce conformity from the helper-soul child, who they don’t understand at all. When the bumped helper-soul grows up and begins the process of self-clearing, releasing their past, gaining clarity and balance, all it takes is a visit or phone call from their manipulative, aggressive, judgmental, blaming pseudo-parents to put them into a downward spiral of negativity. From the dark forces perspective, this is their most efficient strategy to combat the influx of helper-souls onto planet earth. It requires almost no energy output to impulse a darkness-riddled pseudo-parent to call their grown offspring and project a load of judgmental, guilt-ridden energy upon them. Conversely, for the dark forces to psychically attack an individual requires much more time, planning, energy and resources. Eject! Eject! The newly bumped helper-soul, upon realizing what has happened, has a choice to make: Either “eject” from this body and try to find a new one, or stick it out with the hopes of overcoming the traumatizing childhood later on. The ones who choose to “eject” simply evacuate the body and it dies, manifesting as “crib death” or “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” where the otherwise healthy baby suddenly dies. Not all cases of crib death are from this unusual scenario, but some of them are. For the helper-souls who are brave (or over-confident) enough that they choose to stay, life becomes a daily grind of feeling unloved, alone, unsupported, abused, and alienated. Their earthly home feels like a war-zone where they can be attacked at any time for no reason, where every action can be criticized and result in being berated or spanked (which is just a nice word for hitting a defenseless child). Boys in this type of situation usually leave home as early as possible, often before 18 years of age. Depending on the culture, girls often try to get out by marrying as soon as possible, or by going to study at a school far from home. Regardless of the gender or culture, the drive to get away from the family is usually extremely strong. This is often fodder for more guilt-projection from the pseudo-parents lamenting that their offspring “doesn’t love them” when in reality, they are just trying to protect themselves from the toxic projections of their pseudo-parents. Finding a Safe Distance Along with healing and clearing the stored emotional pains of the past, bumped helper-souls need to energetically disconnect from their parents. The more abusive and painful the childhood, the more distance that is necessary. This starts with living in a different town, not calling too often, and not allowing the parents to project their stuff onto you. If you find yourself in a phone call where a wave of negativity is being projected onto you, just say “I’m not going to listen to this” and hang up! Energetically disconnecting from one’s “bumped family” can be tricky, as they will often call after a major energetic disconnection event. On some level they feel the disconnection, and will attempt to pull you back into their dramas and energetic baggage. This is where standing strong and refusing to engage their particular brand of craziness is essential. Please understand that I am only advocating that bumped helper-souls create this distance from their dysfunctional and abusive families. I do not advocate this for anyone who had normal, non-abusive families, even if they don’t really understand what you do as a helper-soul. What it actually means to establish a safe distance for those who were bumped into abusive families will differ from person to person. Creating Your Comfort Zone For bumped helper-souls, how much distance from your pseudo-parents you create is up to you and your Higher Self. I would recommend a few things in this regard. First, don’t waste too much of your time and energy trying to get your pseudo-parents to admit what a bad job they did in raising you. Even if they do admit to some of their mistakes and apologize, it won’t alter their fundamental behavior, and they will still push your same buttons when you talk to them. Second, stop arguing with them about your own life choices on the phone or in person. You have probably already tried that for years, and gotten nowhere. It is impossible to have real communication with a human being in a state of denial and guilt-projection. If a conversation starts to turn into an argument, just end it and hang up, or leave. Third, do not let them come to your home. Make your home a sanctuary from the ills of the world, especially your pseudo-parents. Do or say whatever you need to keep them out of your home, so that you can end any downward-spiraling conversations by leaving the situation. It is much easier for you to leave a place than to make someone leave your home. Fourth, consider writing them a letter detailing their mistreatment of you and explaining why you are disconnecting from them. A person can’t interrupt a letter, they just have to read it and attempt to deny things after the fact. Writing a letter like this can be a difficult experience that brings up old, painful memories, so make sure that you have done a lot of self-clearing and healing before you go this route. I usually only recommend this if you are going to also consider the next step as well. Fifth, end all contact. This is an extreme measure for extreme circumstances. If the abuse you experienced as a child is still being perpetuated in various, more subtle ways by the pseudo-parents, your best option to maintain your equilibrium is to end all contact with them. This works best if you are living in a different town, and have already begun creating distance. Be prepared for an onslaught of projected guilt and other forms of drama as they try to hang on, and be firm in your convictions that you are not going to be dragged back into their dysfunctional world. Writing the letter to detail their past and present dysfunctional behavior will make it clear to them exactly why they are being cut off, which will preempt any attempt for them to act like victims or project guilt and blame onto you. They will be unable to utter anything like “After all we’ve done for you” if your letter is thorough and detailed. The letter will make clear to them that “After all you’ve done to me, this is the end.” The Art of Forgiveness Once you have established your safe boundaries and worked diligently on healing yourself, there will come a point in your process where forgiveness is needed. This forgiveness is for you and your own peace of mind. It does not require that you call the pseudo-parents and tell them that you are forgiving them, or to reestablish contact with them if you have broken it off. Forgiveness occurs within your heart and mind, and does not need to be spoken about in order to be effective for your own inner peace. While your outward actions towards your pseudo-parents will not change, your inner perception will gradually shift as you incorporate forgiveness into your self-clearing and healing efforts. When you reach a “sticking point” in your clearing process, visualize them and say to them through your Higher Self, “I forgive you for (that particular dysfunctional behavior).” Repeat it as many times as needed, and allow your Higher Self to multiply the energy of your forgiveness so that it can clear out the frozen emotions and traumas within your subconscious mind more and more deeply. The deeper purpose of this forgiveness is so that you can think about the pseudo-parents, or the events of your childhood, without dropping into a low-frequency state of depression, despair, victimization or hatred. Over time, your inner perspective on the pseudo-parents will shift, and you will be able to understand how they came to be so dysfunctional, which is usually from their own parents being abusive or neglectful. When you can think of them simply as damaged human beings who deserve pity more than hate, you will know that you are well on your way. Dropping the False Ego-Identity It is vitally important that bumped helper-souls release every aspect of the false sense of self that they were imprinted with during their traumatic childhood. This is true for all light-workers as well, even those who had good parents. A central part of the 3d incarnation mission is to transcend the ego identity formed in this lifetime and remember our real reason for being here, then take action on that mission. We didn’t come here to support the matrix of illusions and lies, to accrue fame or wealth of fiat currency. We came here to render that entire paradigm obsolete by revealing the truth of the human being, that humanity is a divine species that has been corrupted by darkness and evil, and this must be acknowledged in order to heal our species-wide trauma. We came here to transform and rebuild the fragmented DNA of our bodies, to help others to do the same, so that we can live in 3D vessels that reflect the Divine Inner Self that is our true identity. We came here to help the entire human race heal, which means healing ourselves. This is a monumental task to be sure, and those of you who were bumped have even more work to do, but you can do it. You were strong enough to choose to ride out the roller coaster of a “bumped life” and still fulfill your mission, and you maintained that strength throughout the trials and tribulations of your childhood. Tap into that strength of will, heal yourself, clear the baggage out of your subconscious mind, and begin working on your mission. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to work with the Self-Clearing System Level 1 and Level 2 and make those clearing techniques part of your tool box. The Energy Refund and Reclaiming Energy processes should be done daily to ensure that you are not energetically wrestling with your pseudo-parents. For childhood traumas, use the “backpack of pain” process in Level 2 on a daily basis until you feel a significant, lasting shift in your consciousness. Also, use the “three galaxies” process at the end of Level 2 daily (with or without the recording) to keep your personal energy flowing smoothly. You can transcend the traumas of your past if you are determined, persistent, patient and gentle with yourself. Always remember that who you really are is far more than this one single lifetime, and that you can access the vast consciousness that is your True / Higher / Divine Inner Self to help you heal from the past. Most of all, focus on loving yourself exactly as you are right now, traumas and baggage included. Cultivate that love with your focus on the goal of being fully healed, clear and filled with the light of your true, Divine Inner Self. Much Love, Cameron Day Source: Wake Up World

Comey Accused of Interfering in US Presidential Election

shorty

Dispatches from STEPHEN LENDMAN H ad Comey recommended Hillary be held criminally responsible for mishandling classified State Department documents last July, along with perjury for lying to the FBI and Congress, a firestorm of criticism wouldn’t have followed his Friday announcement. 1. THE COMEY IMBROGLIO Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D. NV) accused him of “tarring Secretary Clinton with thin innuendo,” saying his action “appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another” – claiming he “may have broken the law,” citing the 1939 Hatch Act (An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities). It prohibits federal executive branch employees from engaging in certain forms of political activity – exempting the president, vice president and designated high-level administration officials. Proof of intent is required to hold someone culpable under the law. .. According to the Wall Street Journal , within the FBI, there was “ sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign.” .. In a prominently featured NYT op-ed , Law Professor Richard Painter said “(w)e cannot allow FBI or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power.” .. Not according to former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, saying “Comey’s critics cannot show his letter violated the Hatch Act unless they can prove that the FBI director was intending to influence the election rather than inform Congress, which was (his) stated aim.” .. A Sunday released ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated about a third of likely voters are less likely to support Hillary following Comey’s October surprise. .. The Washington Post said the Justice Department’s public integrity unit blocked the FBI from investigating the Clinton Foundation, claiming inadequate “evidence to move forward.” The department is run by longtime Bill and Hillary ally, Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Last June, she met privately with the former president at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport while Hillary was under FBI investigation – a clear conflict of interest despite her disingenuously claiming “no discussion of any matter pending for the department or any matter pending for any other body” took place. .. In a Washington Post op-ed , former attorney general Eric Holder expressed concern about Comey’s “vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest” – claiming he “violated long-standing Justice Department policies and tradition.” .. Holder disgraced the office he held. Law Professor Francis Boyle called him “a total disaster for the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Human Rights and the Rule of Law.” Speaking in Florida on Sunday, Hillary changed the subject, saying “ there’s a lot of noise and distraction, but it really comes down to what kind of future we want, and what kind of president can help us get there. We won’t be distracted no matter what our opponents throw at us.” .. Clearly, Comey’s bombshell changed the dynamic of the race, whether enough to derail her White House bid we’ll know in days. Reports indicate the FBI will examine an astonishing 650,000 emails from former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop – estranged husband of top Hillary aide Huma Abedin. .. It could take months to review volume this immense, likely extending well beyond November 8 and January’s inauguration, to determine if any evidence warrants prosecuting Hillary, Abedin, Weiner or anyone else for mishandling classified government documents, perhaps compromising national security. 2. INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS & SELF-INFLICTED POLITICAL IDIOCY Harvard Undergrads for Hillary OVERWHELMING SYSTEMIC PROPAGANDA ALLIED WITH A PERVASIVE INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS CONSPIRE TO KEEP MINDS THAT SHOULD KNOW BETTER FROM SEEING THE MOST ELEMENTARY TRUTHS. BEING OFFICIALLY “SMART” IS NO VACCINE AGAINST THE BRAINWASH. A ccording to the student newspaper Harvard Crimson’s October survey , 87% of undergrads support Hillary. A scant 6% back Trump, 5.8% for Libertarian Gary (“what’s Aleppo”) Johnson, and less than 1% for Harvard College and Medical School graduate Jill Stein – the only people’s candidate running. .. Around one-third of undergrads responded (2,128 out of a total 6,645 student body) – so the views of nonrespondents aren’t known. About 91% are eligible to vote in November. Eligibility begins at age 18. A surprising 96% of respondents intend voting, they said. .. The national average is far lower. Whether this year’s contentious election encourages a larger than usual turnout remains to be seen. The Crimson poll was conducted from October 10 – 20 – before FBI Director Comey’s October surprise. Whether it would have changed the results is unknown. Two-thirds of respondents said they support Democrat party candidates, 12% calling themselves Republicans, 19% saying they’re independents. .. Trump and Hillary are the most widely reviled presidential aspirants in US history. Yet 70% of Crimson respondents view her favorably – showing little knowledge of her deplorable public record since the 1990s unless they support her war crimes, racketeering and perjury. What to make of it? Undergrads enter Harvard (and other colleges) as teenagers, young and naive as I was when entering the college long ago. .. After graduation, I discovered the meaning of the term “commencement.” Institutions like Harvard teach students to be good citizens, omitting the ugly stuff about US imperialism, officials advancing it, waging endless wars of aggression. .. The so-called Korean War was ongoing when I was there, an incentive to maintain good grades, stay in school, avoid being drafted and sent to North Korea’s frozen Chosin, an expression used by members of my class. .. The Paper Chase Hollywood film (1973) featured John Houseman as stern Harvard Law School Professor Charles Kingsfield. His most memorable line on day one for first year students was saying “(y)ou teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come here with a skull full of mush. You leave thinking like a lawyer.” .. I began my freshman year “with a skull full of mush,” gradually extracting it. College and graduate school taught me to think. Learning and comprehension mostly came later. The older I get, the greater my understanding of world and national issues. .. I’m long removed from campus life. Back then, students had none of the advantages available today – no computers, no Internet. Daily writing I dearly love now was a dreaded chore back then – requiring research by rolodex cards and library stacks, a time-consuming process. Except for the type primary research I did for my master’s thesis, most everything needed today for compositions or articles like mine is available on our desktops. .. It’s understandable why young minds haven’t achieved the wisdom of the ages. Still it’s disturbing to find Harvard undergrads uninformed and out-of-touch on Hillary’s deplorable public record – when it’s so easy to research it and know what she and husband Bill are all about. .. Why hasn’t the Harvard student body done its homework for perhaps the most important election in our lifetime. The stakes are huge – possible war on Russia with Hillary empowered or improved bilateral relations under Trump. Nothing matters more than saving humanity from the scourge of catastrophic thermonuclear war able to kill us all. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS ABOUT THE AUTHOR STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com . =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.= free • safe • invaluable If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you— ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary. In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week.

Kellogg Layoffs Now Hitting Florida

Warner Todd Huston

Breakfast food giant Kellogg’s is continuing mass layoffs, this time focusing on its distribution center in Weston, Florida, where up to 246 workers have now lost their jobs. [The workers will be laid off starting early in July and continuing until the first week of August, according to a notice filed with Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity, the South Florida reported. The layoffs come as Kellogg’s decided to end its distribution model and to switch to a system. The new plan included the closing of 39 distribution centers around the country and the elimination of over 1, 000 jobs. “While this is the right move for the future of the company, it was a difficult decision because of the impact on affected employees,” John Bryant, chairman and chief executive of Kellogg, said in a statement. “We are doing everything we can to help our employees manage through this transition. ” “Eliminated positions based at the facility include 179 merchandisers (including 119 employed part time) two merchandise managers, four district sales managers, 34 sales representatives, 15 truck drivers, eight warehouse operators, a distribution center manager, a transportation manager, a warehouse manager and a zone scheduler,” the reported. The layoffs in Florida are but a small part of the string of losses announced recently. Among other announcements, nearly 300 were fired in facilities in New York early in May, and only a week later another 219 lost their jobs in Minnesota. The cuts came on the heels of several announcements by the cereal maker that it was slashing its workforce. Kellogg’s has been struggling over the last few years, so much so that by 2016 customer confidence in its brand name had fallen from 60th to 84th place. The company’s fall from grace coincided with Kellogg’s decision last year to cease advertising with Breitbart News, thereby snubbing Breitbart’s 45, 000, 000 readers. In November of last year, Kellogg noted that the conservative readers at Breitbart News are not “aligned with our values as a company. ” While the decision by Kellogg to cease advertising made virtually no revenue impact on Breitbart. com. it did represent an escalation in the war by leftist companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House. After the cereal maker turned its back on conservative customers, Breitbart News launched its #DumpKelloggs petition, which has been signed by more than 450, 000 people. Finally, according to advertising industry watchdog Adweek, Kellogg’s decision to pull advertising from Breitbart and the ensuing controversy over the move inflicted damage to the cereal company’s brand online. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.

52% Voters Approve Trump Job Performance — Stat Buried in 2nd-to-Last Graph of Story - Breitbart

Penny Starr

A Consult poll released on Wednesday shows 52 percent of voters approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance, but that statistic is in the paragraph of the Politico article about the poll. [The article states: Public opinion of the new health care proposal is limited thus far, though the Consult poll does show less fervent opposition to the bill than a SurveyMonkey poll of adult Americans released on Tuesday. Similarly, the Consult survey also shows more positive opinions of the job Trump is doing as president. In the new poll, 52 percent of voters approve of Trump’s job performance, more than the 43 percent who disapprove. But, on balance, most polls show more disapprove than approve of the job Trump is doing. Politico chose instead for its article, entitled “Poll: Voters Wary of GOP Health Care Bill,” to lead with the divide among voters on approval of the GOP’s American Health Care Act: Nearly half of voters support the new Republican health care bill but the elements they like best are holdovers from the Affordable Care Act, according to a new Consult poll. The new survey — conducted in the days following release of the bill by House GOP leaders — underscores the political thicket that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans face in taking on the issue. While Americans are open to the GOP proposal, there is pessimism that rolling back Obamacare will improve quality, price and coverage. Overall, 46 percent of voters approve of the GOP health care proposal, more than the 35 percent who disapprove. Nineteen percent of voters say they don’t have an opinion of the bill. But any support is shallow: Only voters say they either ‘strongly approve’ or ‘strongly disapprove’ of the bill, with strong disapproval (22 percent) slightly outpacing strong approval (18 percent). “Given the wave of criticism from both parties following the rollout of the bill, this is a relatively strong starting point for GOP leaders and the White House,” Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s and chief research officer, is quoted as saying in the article. “However, it will be important to track how public opinion stands up as more information is released in the coming weeks. ” The article notes that the poll was conducted before the Congressional Budget Office released its score of the GOP bill, “but voters were already leaning toward doubt that the House GOP bill would increase the number of Americans on the rolls: Only a quarter thought more Americans would have insurance, fewer than the 38 percent who thought fewer Americans would be enrolled. ” The Consult poll surveyed 1, 983 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. “Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy,” the article’s tag states.

Final 2016 Presidential Election Update Before Voting Ends [Video]

Gillian

Leave a reply Greg Hunter – America faces the biggest election in the history of the country. The outcome will have huge implications for the rest of our lives. The desperation is so thick, with the Democrats and the Clinton campaign, you can’t cut it with a hacksaw. President Obama is telling illegal aliens to illegally vote . James Comey is doubling down on making the FBI look like buffoons by reclosing the investigation he reopened a week ago with, once again, no charges for Hillary Clinton. ISIS has announced it will “slaughter” Americans on Election Day, but that is “too stupid to be stupid.” Who would announce a big attack? This looks more like a psychological operation to keep voters away from the polls on Tuesday. Don’t believe it. Greg Hunter gives his analysis and some inspiration you need to hear before you cast the most important vote of your life. I call this the “Final 2016 Presidential Election Update Before Voting Ends,” Tuesday night. SF Source USA Watchdog Nov. 2016 Share this:

Hillary’s High Crimes & Misdemeanors Threaten Constitutional Crisis

Patrick J. Buchanan

Cubans Planning to Leave for U.S. Face a Bleak New Reality - The New York Times

Hannah Berkeley Cohen, Azam Ahmed and Frances Robles

HAVANA — Andrés Iván and his girlfriend grew up in Cuba but had long planned their future in the United States. She left four months ago to find work and made it to Miami, where she was legally welcomed. He stayed in Havana, knowing the United States’ special treatment of Cubans gave him the freedom to rejoin her and marry when the moment was right. Those dreams were dashed on Thursday, when President Obama announced the immediate end of the longstanding policy under which any Cuban who made it to American soil was admitted and placed on a glide path to citizenship. “Our relationship has been built on two things: love, and the idea that we will create a life together in the U. S. — whether that’s in one year or five,” Mr. Iván said here on Friday. “Now I have to realign my entire life plan. ” He is among an untold numbers of Cubans doing so, including what could be thousands stranded midjourney, whether by boat or by land, often through Mexico. Those who arrived at border stations in Arizona, California and Texas on Thursday were let in. Those still on the Mexican side were left to consider whether to try to sneak across or hire smugglers to take them into a country that as of Friday would treat them as illegal entrants, just like those from other countries. Alexander Iglesias Rodríguez, 41, a veterinarian who reared cows in Cienfuegos on Cuba’s southern coast, left the country on Wednesday, six weeks after his wife and his son, Gabriel, 16. They flew to Mexico and then crossed the border in Matamoros. He delayed his departure so as not to draw attention from immigration authorities in Cuba and Mexico. He sold his 1956 Pontiac, his head of cattle and his house, pulling together about $12, 000. He was in Mexico about to cross into the United States when the order came down. “So many years dreaming about this,” Mr. Iglesias said. Now he is in limbo, unsure if he should wait or make a stab at seeking asylum in the United States, a request the government does not always grant. “What do I have in Cuba? Nothing. My wife is in the United States. My son is in the United States. I sold everything I had. I can’t go back. ” Also eliminated on Thursday was a program that allowed Cuban doctors posted to other countries to more easily migrate to America, leaving Ayme Monges, 25, stuck in Bogotá, Colombia, on Friday with all her paperwork in order but nowhere to go. “I got to the embassy this morning and they said, ‘You are Cuban? You can’t pass. That program is frozen,’” Dr. Monges, who had been working in Venezuela, said in a phone interview. “I am stranded here in this country. ” The number of Cubans leaving for America has surged since the two governments resumed relations in late 2014, in expectation that the policy — known as “wet foot, dry foot” because those caught at sea were sent back but those who made it to dry land were allowed to stay — might end. A senior official with the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with agency policy, said the administration decided to end the program immediately to prevent a mass exodus that would risk lives at land and sea. In Cuba, the abrupt change seemed to further divide people along generational lines. Many older Cubans said the decision was a just one that would halt the steady drain of the nation’s citizens — especially educated ones like doctors — to America. One man, selling copies of the newspaper Granma on the street, said the measure was necessary to stop “undermining the Cuban government” by enticing people to “throw their fates to the sea. ” But younger Cubans, for whom the prospect of a life in America offers a glimmer of hope amid economic hardship, were crushed, forced to envision a future with fewer options. Cuban identity, and pride, is in no small part forged by its relationship with the United States, both in the tiny country’s defiance of its bigger neighbor and then in the unique privileges afforded to those who fled and made it to America. To be suddenly placed on equal footing with the millions of others around the world hoping to do the same was an especially hard fall. In Havana, where until recently the internet has been out of reach for most ordinary Cubans, the city’s relatively new parks have become stations of despair following the announcement. For a nation robbed of connectivity for more than a decade, the sudden surge of digital news — through email, messaging and social media — seemed like a particularly cruel way to find out their special treatment had ended. A few blocks from the American Embassy, in the neighborhood of Vedado, the casual atmosphere changed suddenly as the news began to spread. Visitors checking their phones shared the news with those within shouting distance. One youth yelled to the gathered crowds: “Have you heard? This screws up all your lives. ” Miguel Alberto Escalona, 24, sat with his wife in a park in Vedado, bewildered. He sent a text to his family in Miami decrying the change. The news also brought to the surface frustrations for young Cubans, especially concerning the new dynamic that an increase in tourism is bringing to the nation. Food prices have surged to meet the demand, while what scant resources the country are redirected to the outsiders now flooding Cuba, especially Americans. “I’m totally against the change in the law,” Mr. Escalona wrote to his family. “Here in Cuba, we have nothing to live for. Our country is for foreigners, not for our people, no wonder people want to leave. ” For years, most Cubans have been willing to overlook that the policy was unfair to other nationalities, especially to Central Americans, many of whom were fleeing violence at home. But for many on Friday, having had the policy and suddenly losing it was somehow worse, especially if you were in the midst of planning an escape. One young man, who was building his own boat to take to America, sat in the Vedado park, stunned. He said he was nearly finished with the boat, and his departure had been imminent. Those plans now dashed, he began browsing the web for a prospective bride, suggesting he would pay up to $3, 000 to any woman willing to marry him and bring him to the United States. “My plan A was to leave in a boat,” he said with a rueful smile. “So I guess my plan B is to marry an American woman. ” While Mr. Obama’s announcement was met with chagrin among some groups in Cuba, the government applauded the change in American policy, which they have long complained about, especially the program allowing Cuban doctors to immigrate to the United States. Since the program began 10 years ago, nearly 10, 000 Cuban medical professionals have been approved for residency in the United States. Many of them were Cuban doctors sent on medical missions to friendly countries like Venezuela, a program that critics of the Cuban government likened to human trafficking, since the government took in billions of dollars a year in fees from the doctors’ host countries. For those without a career path, the loss of an American escape hatch left them with even fewer employment options. It struck especially hard on those, like Mr. Iván, with deep ties to family and loved ones in the United States. (He declined to be identified by his full name for fear of reprisal by the Cuban government.) His brother made the trek four years ago, through Mexico, and is now living the American dream: a mortgage, a car and a job that pays him a living wage. Now, Mr. Iván is left with a remorse for having not acted sooner. And he wonders if he will ever be reunited with his girlfriend. On Friday morning, he was even having trouble reaching her, given the communication in Cuba. He checked his phone incessantly, hoping for a text from her. “With each blow like this, I feel farther and farther away from you,” he typed to her, frustrated about the shaky connection. Accepting the reality of the new situation, and without a plan, he sent another message: “I want you to know that no matter what happens, I will always love you. ”

Scientists Discover A Lake Under The Sea: Those Who Swim There Never Come Back Alive

Eddy Lavine

posted by Eddie A strange ‘lake’ of super salty dense water is discovered on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where salt deposits bubble up along with methane. Scientists have found an alien, inhospitable world not in the far reaches of the galaxy, but on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico — about a day’s boat ride from New Orleans. Dubbed the “Jacuzzi of Despair,” this pool of super-salty brine kills any unfortunate creature that happens to wonder in — mainly benthic crabs, amphipods and an occasional fish. The circular pool — about 100 feet in circumference and about 12 feet deep — lies nearly 3,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. Everyone who enters this pool at the bottom of the sea will suffer horribly. Erik Cordes, associate Professor of Biology at Temple University, has researched the pool and described his findings in the journal Oceanography . “It was one of the most amazing things in the deep sea. You go down into the bottom of the ocean and you are looking at a lake or a river flowing. It feels like you are not on this world”, Cordes told Discovery News . “ It feels like you are not on this world” The water in the “lake within the sea” is about five times as salty as the water surrounding it. It also contains highly toxic concentrations of methane and hydrogen sulfide and can thus not mix with the surrounding sea. For animals (and people) who swim into it, these toxic concentrations can be deadly. Only bacterial life, tube worms and shrimp can survive those circumstances. For scientists this “lake” is like a playground for their research. They can explore how certain organisms can survive in extreme habitats. “There’s a lot of people looking at these extreme habitats on Earth as models for what we might discover when we go to other planets” Cordes said to “seeker”. Read the original article on Tech Insider Source:

Peinlich: Terrorist vergisst Koffer mit Sprengstoff am Bahnhof

noreply@blogger.com (Der Postillon)

Mittwoch, 2. November 2016 Peinlich: Terrorist vergisst Koffer mit Sprengstoff am Bahnhof Köln (dpo) - Es sollte sein erster Auftrag für eine ausländische Organisation sein – und er wäre beinahe in die Hose gegangen: IS-Terrorist Samir K. (21) hat seinen Sprengstoffkoffer im Kölner Hauptbahnhof vergessen. Nur der Aufmerksamkeit eines Bundespolizisten ist es zu verdanken, dass der schusselige Fanatiker das Gepäckstück letztlich wiederbekam. "Uff! Das ist ja gerade nochmal gutgegangen", stöhnt Samir K. erleichtert und legt eine Hand auf den so wichtigen Koffer. "Hoffentlich erfährt nie einer meiner Mitjihadisten davon, sonst werde ich zum Gespött meiner ganzen Schläferzelle." Der Vorfall ereignete sich bereits gestern Abend: Der 21-jährige Islamist kam gerade mit dem Zug aus Berlin, als er im Ausstiegstrubel versehentlich seinen prall mit Sprengstoff gefüllten Koffer mitten auf dem Bahnsteig stehen ließ und sich in Richtung Ausgang begab. Kurzzeitig herrenlos: Gepäckstück Ein Bundespolizist sah das Missgeschick glücklicherweise via Überwachungskamera auf seinem Monitor und schritt kurzentschlossen ein. Er lief zum Gleis, schnappte sich den Koffer und brachte ihn dem verdutzten Terroristen zurück. "Der Mann - ich schätze, er ist Elektriker, weil aus seinem Koffer Kabel hingen - war ganz überschwänglich und bedankte sich mehrmals bei mir", berichtet der Polizeibeamte Martin Ferber. "Ich selbst würde auch erstmal schlucken, wenn plötzlich der Koffer mit allen meinen Arbeitsmaterialien weg wäre." Dank dem beherzten Einschreiten des Bundespolizisten kann die bereits weit fortgeschrittene Anschlagsplanung von Samir K. und seinen Kollegen jetzt weitergehen: "Wir müssen den Sprengstoff nur noch in ein unverdächtiges Behältnis füllen, einen geeigneten Ort mit vielen Menschen finden, wo dieses nicht weiter auffällt und dann kann es auch schon losgehen." pfg , ssi, dan; Foto oben: Shutterstock/ EduardHert , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Foto unten: Shutterstock Artikel teilen:

Car bomb kills over 80 people south of Iraqi capital

ladylove

Iraq Iraqi firefighters work to extinguish the fire caused by a car bomb explosion at a gas station near the city of Hilla, November 24, 2016. A car bomb has reportedly exploded south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing around 100 people, mostly Shia pilgrims. According to security sources, a truck loaded with explosives went off on Thursday at a gas station in the Shomali village in the suburbs of the city of al-Hilla, located 120 kilometers (75 miles) southeast of the capital Baghdad and around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Karbala. Reports say most of the victims were Iranian nationals. The photo shows the site of a blast at a gas station near Hilla, south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, November 24, 2016. The incident occurred at a time when buses packed with Shia pilgrims were parked at the gas station. The people were returning from Arba’een mourning rituals in the holy city of Karbala. “At least seven buses with pilgrims were inside the petrol station at the time,” an unnamed police lieutenant colonel told AFP. People carry away the bodies of victims from the site of a bomb attack near Hilla, Iraq, November 24, 2016. AFP also quoted an unnamed police intelligence source as saying that “those buses were loaded with Iranians, Bahrainis and Iraqis. Ambulances and civil defense are on their way to the site.” The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing. In recent weeks, Daesh has resorted to similar acts of violence in areas outside its control in a desperate attempt to undermine a large Iraqi battle aimed at liberating the northern city of Mosul, the terror group’s last remaining foothold in the country. ‘Iran won’t waver in backing Iraq’ Hours after the incident, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman strongly condemned the fatal terrorist blast, expressing sympathy with the Iraqi government and nation as well as all the families of the victims. Touching on reports that Iranian citizens were among the victims, Bahram Qassemi said, “The Foreign Ministry and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Embassy in Baghdad are investigating the issue with seriousness” and will take necessary measures in that regard. The Iranian official also stressed that such pre-planned and savage assaults emanate from the desperation of the terrorists, who are taking successive blows on the battlefield. “These brutal and inhumane acts will not affect the Iraqi government and nation’s determination and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s support for the oppressed Iraqi people in the unrelenting fight against terrorism,” Qassemi said. The photo shows the site of a blast at a gas station near Hilla, south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, November 24, 2016. ‘Terrorists killing pilgrims will be brought to justice’ In another development, Iraq’s President Fuad Masum strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Hilla, emphasizing that such terrorist crimes would not go unpunished. Issuing an official statement hours after the terrorist attack, which was claimed by the Daesh Takfiri group, Masum emphasized that terrorists, who target the lives of innocent pilgrims traveling to Iraq from Islamic countries, will be brought to justice. He also called on Iraq’s security forces to double their efforts and take necessary measures to uproot terrorist groups that endanger the life and safety of the pilgrims visiting Iraq’s holy shrines. Iraqi security forces gather at the site of a truck bomb attack targeting a gas station in the city of Hilla south of Baghdad, Iraq, November 24, 2016. (Photo by REUTERS) ‘Takfiris spilling blood in the name of religion’ Meanwhile, Lebanon’s resistance movement, Hezbollah, condemned the explosion as a crime committed by the terrorists, who have no conscience and spill the blood of innocents in the name of the religion. In a statement released on Thursday, Hezbollah extended its condolences to the Iraqi nation over the tragedy, calling for more efforts to root out terror outfits in Iraq and restore security to the country. A man reacts at the site of a truck bomb attack targeting a gas station in the city of Hilla south of Baghdad, Iraq, November 24, 2016. (Photo by REUTERS) Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh terrorists mounted an offensive there more than two years ago, and took control of portions of Iraqi territory. Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters are trying to win back militant-held regions in joint operations. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) says a total of 1,792 Iraqis, among them 1,120, lost their lives in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in October. Loading ...

Israel’s Lieberman Threatens Gazans With Genocide

Stephen Lendman

in: Human Rights , War Propaganda , World News Minister of war Avigdor Lieberman is part of Israel’s lunatic fringe – ruthless, lawless, racist, militant, extremist and nightmarish for Palestinians. A former nightclub bouncer in Moldova before moving to Israel in 1978, he heads the ultranationalist Israel Beiteinu party. Its agenda includes no concessions, no settlement freeze, no Palestinian self-determination (except maybe on worthless, isolated bantustans), no peace process whether or not he admits it. On Monday, Lieberman said Israel’s next war on Gaza will be its last “because we will completely destroy them,” adding: “As minister of defense (sic), I would like to clarify that we have no intention of starting a new war against our neighbors (sic) in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, Lebanon or Syria.” “But in Gaza, like the Iranians, they intend to eliminate the state of Israel…If they impose the next war on Israel, it will be their last. I would like to emphasize again: It will be their last confrontation because we will completely destroy them.” Destroy means genocide. Two million Gazans are trapped by illegal siege and blockade, unable to seek safety next time Israel preemptively attacks them – virtually certain to be worse than last time based on Lieberman’s threat alone. How much death and destruction is too much? How much suffering must Palestinians endure to be free from a gangster, Arab-hating Jewish state? How long will Americans tolerate Washington funding its killing machine with their tax dollars – used for mass slaughter and ruthless persecution? How long will Israelis put up with racist, fascist governance threatening their security and well-being? Israel waged three wars of aggression on Gaza since December 2008/January 2009 – Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud in 2012 and Protective Edge in 2014, each exponentially more destructive than the previous hostilities. Further conflict is certain, likely far more severe than earlier, based on the trend of the last three, exacerbated by lunatics like Lieberman in charge of warmaking, along with leadership under Netanyahu just as bad. Submit your review

Russia Stirs Friction in Balkans, as NATO Keeps an Uneasy Peace - The New York Times

Barbara Surk

ZVECAN, Kosovo — In the densely forested mountains along the contested frontier between Serbia and Kosovo, a patrol of American soldiers under NATO command trudged through snow and mud, keeping an eye out for smugglers or anyone else trying to cross the border. Given the bloody legacy of this area, the situation is quiet now, at least up here. It is down below, in Serbia and Kosovo, where old angers are resurfacing as the Balkan region that spawned so much suffering over the last century is again becoming dangerously restive. And once again, Russia is stoking tensions, as it seeks to exploit political fissures in an area that was once viewed as a triumph of muscular American diplomacy — but that now underscores the growing challenges facing NATO and the European Union. “Russia sees the West meddling in its backyard, and President Vladimir V. Putin wants to show he can reciprocate,” said Dimitar Bechev, an expert on Russia and the Balkans and head of the European Policy Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. “They see the Balkans as the West’s underbelly, and they use it to throw their weight around and project power on the cheap. ” Nearly 18 years after a United intervention ended Serb domination of Kosovo, the border patrols are part of the mission in NATO history. Even as the European Union has made limited progress in brokering a political settlement between Kosovo and Serbia, the presence of NATO forces has maintained an uneasy peace, with animosity between the minority Serbs and majority Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo still palpable. Yet NATO is now confronting its own challenges, whether it is the seeming ambivalence of President Trump toward the alliance or an increasingly provocative Russia. The alliance has sent reinforcements to Poland and the Baltic States to counter Russian actions, but Russian involvement in the Balkans has gotten less attention. Russia has deep historical ties with Serbia and vehemently opposed NATO’s war over Kosovo in 1999. After an bombing campaign, Serbia lost control over the region but continues to support Serbs there, vowing never to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, which it considers the cradle of the Serbian nation and of its Christian Orthodox faith. Mr. Putin has continued to back Serbia, as well as Serbs living in Bosnia and Herzegovina — and continued to dabble in the complex swirl of Balkan politics. For starters, Moscow supported Bosnian Serbs when they held a controversial referendum in November that could lead to more — or even full — independence from Sarajevo. A month later, Russia backed fringe opposition parties in delicate national elections in Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic. The European Union had organized the election to help bring the country back from the brink of collapse. In Montenegro, Serbia’s tiny neighbor and a former Russian ally now set to join NATO, the authorities said they had foiled an October coup attempt that had been orchestrated by the Russians. Then in January, Moscow moved to help Serbia undermine Kosovo’s independence by supporting a series of provocations that have damaged diplomatic normalization efforts, known as the Brussels dialogue, that are sponsored by the European Union. That process had recently produced a small breakthrough, as Kosovo was about to get its own +383 calling code. Since Kosovo declared independence in 2008, however, the ethnic government in the capital, Pristina, has failed to bring the predominantly Serb parts of the country north of the Ibar River under its control, including Mitrovica. But as Kosovars were celebrating this breakthrough, the Serbs erected a concrete wall separating the northern, predominantly Serb part of Mitrovica from the ethnic Albanians in the southern part. It was built on the Serbian side of the bridge that crosses the Ibar, a project that the European Union funded in hopes of linking the divided communities. European Union officials furiously demanded that the wall come down, but the Serbs remained defiant, forcing the official inauguration of the bridge to be postponed. This month, concrete blocks of the wall were bulldozed, but a metal barrier is still standing, blocking traffic and pedestrians. Most inflammatory, the Serbian government sent a train from Belgrade to Mitrovica, adorning its coaches with signs declaring that “Kosovo is Serbia” in more than 20 languages. Kosovo stopped the train at the border, accusing Serbia of wanting to stage an invasion of northern Kosovo, modeled on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Serbia, in turn, accused ethnic Albanians of laying mines along the railway tracks and planning a bombing campaign of Serbs and their holy sites. Serbia’s president, Tomislav Nikolic, who is thought to be backed by Russia as he seeks a second term in the April election, threatened to send his troops back to Kosovo to protect the Serbs, if necessary. “If Serbs are killed, we’ll send the army to Kosovo,” Mr. Nikolic said after the train episode, which was ostensibly intended to restore a line that had been disconnected since the 1999 NATO bombing of the area. He warned officials in Pristina against attempting to provoke a conflict, saying it would “end badly. ” Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Chepurin, wrote in a recent editorial in Serbia’s daily Politika that Moscow would support “Serbia in preventing attempts to create an artificial of Kosovo. ” Milan Nic, a Balkan analyst at the GlobSec Policy Institute, a think tank in Bratislava, Slovakia, said that tough statements on Kosovo were common during Serbian elections but that Serbia could never improve relations with the European Union, let alone join it, by clinging to its former southern province. “If they truly want to improve lives of Serbs in Serbia,” Mr. Nic said, “they do need to give up on this illusion. ” Col. Corwin Lusk, the American commander of NATO’s multinational battle group in eastern Kosovo, agreed that the Serbian elections were fueling the angrier statements and that Russia was playing games, though he was skeptical that Moscow wanted a direct confrontation in the Balkans. “It would be very irrational behavior because it’s a fight they could not win,” he said. “It’s a fight nobody would walk away from without scars and bruises. ” Many ethnic Albanians and Serbs living in Kosovo fear another round of war. Roughly 120, 000 Serbs live in northern Kosovo, near the Serbian border, and mostly embrace the nationalistic fervor of Belgrade. But there are 70, 000 other Serbs scattered in southern Kosovo who feel more exposed to retaliation. In the town of Decani, in southwest Kosovo, 20 Serbian monks are holed up a Serbian Orthodox monastery, which is recognized as a Unesco world heritage site and is being protected by NATO troops to prevent assaults from . The abbot of the monastery, Father Sava Janjic, said the nationalistic talk from Serbia “often comes back to us like a boomerang. ” “Every time they call me from Serbia, they ask: ‘Is there war? Are they trying to kill you? ’’’ said Father Janjic, 52. “I tell them, ‘No, they are not.’ There is no war. I can’t lie. But the situation is far from rosy. ” NATO’s task in the region is deeply complex. Troop levels have dropped to about 5, 000 over the past decade, including 650 American soldiers, and their job includes border patrols as well as navigating the sensitivities of an ethnically divided region. In the absence of an army of their own, most ethnic Albanians see NATO troops as protectors of their state in Kosovo. “They are here to defend us from the Serbs when they want to storm back,” said Belkiza Sahatqiu, 46, a mother of three, who works in a shoe store in the of Mitrovica. Many Serbs living in Kosovo, however, describe the alliance’s forces as occupiers more than protectors, said Lilijana Milic, who owns a farm along the highway between Mitrovica and Pristina. “They are not protecting anybody, certainly not us,” she said. “They came to occupy this land, and now they sit in their bases. Where were they when people were chased out of their homes in broad daylight?” At the same time, Ms. Milic blamed Serbian politicians in Belgrade for the misfortune of Kosovo’s Serbs. “They just talk, talk, talk, talk about defending us,” she said, “but all they ever do is take care of their own interests. ”

Путин о блокаде Крыма: "Думали, на колени встанем? Удивительные идиоты..."

0 комментариев 15 поделились Фото: ONF.ru Форум организован Общероссийским народным фронтом, в мероприятии принимают участие более 350 человек — это активисты ОНФ, федеральные и региональные эксперты Народного фронта, представители исполнительной власти и журналисты. Президент напомнил, что Общероссийский народный фронт был первым общественным объединением , которое начало работу в Крыму после проведения референдума о статусе полуострова. И хотя с того времени была проведена большая работа, однако это недостаточно, подчеркнул он. Глава государства отметил, что в первую очередь следует сосредоточиться на чувствительных для граждан вопросах — модернизации социальной инфраструктуры, обновлении транспортной сферы, создании новых рабочих мест. И при этом грамотно распределять финансы на реализацию всех проектов. "Крайне важно слышать мнение людей, понимать, какие вопросы их больше всего волнуют. Без этого меры по развитию региона не будут в полной мере эффективны", — подчеркнул глава государства, отметив востребованность механизмов Общероссийского народного фронта. "Я надеюсь, что активисты ОНФ продолжат свою работу по мониторингу и анализу наиболее острых проблем, волнующих крымчан, по выработке конкретных предложений по решению проблем", — сказал Путин. По словам главы государства, предыдущие форумы ОНФ ("Форумы действий" в этом году прошли в Ставрополе и Йошкар-Оле — прим.) показали, что такие мероприятия дают возможность не только обменяться мнениями, но и найти способы решения проблем. Отдельно Владимир Путин остановился на преодолении попыток блокады полуострова . По его словам, "в сжатые сроки сняты вопросы энергетической, водной блокады полуострова, хорошими темпами идет строительство транспортного перехода через Керченский пролив". "Рассчитываю, что и подходы к мосту и вся необходимая сопутствующая инфраструктура также будут сданы качественно и в срок", — добавил он. По словам главы государства, в будущем Крымский мост позволит перевозить до 14 миллионов туристов и 13 миллионов транспортных средств в год. Инициаторов же блокады российский лидер назвал "удивительными идиотами". "Думали, что все встанут на колени и будут просить подачку? Удивительные идиоты", - сказал Путин. "Что касается прекращения подачи воды, либо акции, связанной с блэкаутом, прекращением подачи электроэнергии, все это на грани преступления против человека: взять достаточно крупный регион с многомиллионным населением — 2,6 млн человек проживает (в Крыму) — и отключить от электроснабжения зимой", — сказал глава государства . "У нас правозащитные организации что-то воды в рот набрали и язык проглотили и молчат, а на самом деле это серьезное преступление", — подчеркнул Путин. Отдельно президент остановился на проблемах в сфере здравоохранения полуострова. В частности, вопросах информатизации. Накануне на одной из тематических площадок форума речь шла о том, что большая часть компьютерного оборудования, закупленного за последние два года для медицинских организаций Крыма и Севастополя, не функционирует, а сотрудники медучреждений не имеют им пользоваться. К тому из-за плохого качества интернета в Крыму не создана единая сеть медучреждений. "Если вы считаете, что один из таких вопросов, текущих, но важных — информатизация, мы обязательно над этим не просто подумаем, а мы его в самое ближайшее время начнем более эффективно решать, чем это было до сих пор. Министр (здравоохранения Вероника Скворцова) здесь находится. Я вас прошу мне доложить, какие дополнительные шаги, чтобы эту проблему начать прямо сейчас закрывать", — сказал президент, отметив также важность строительства новых медицинских центров в Крыму и Севастополе. Владимир Путин, общаясь с участниками форума, подчеркнул важность процесса реабилитации коренных народов Крыма. На эти цели в Федеральной программе развития полуострова выделяет десять миллиардов рублей. "Прежде всего, речь идет о социально-экономической поддержке, потому что политические вопросы уже решены — это касается языка, культуры, возможности обучения на родном языке, периодических изданий", — сказал Путин. Глава государства отметил, что многие поселки крымских татар находятся в печальном состоянии — там и дороги нужны, и социальные объекты, нет электричества и элементарных удобств. Но этот ресурс, как сказал президент, ограничен и пока что его хватит только на тех представителей коренных народов, которые проживают на полуострове в настоящий момент. Путин обратился к активистам ОНФ следить за тем, насколько ритмично и рационально распределяются эти ресурсы. "Любые средства, которые выделяются федерацией или республикой, или Севастополем, должны находится под общественным контролем", — сказал президент. Один из участников форума пригласил главу государства посетить праздник крымских татар в мае. "У нас есть такой праздник — Хедерлез. Это наш национальный праздник, он есть только у крымских татар. Я знаю, что вы в 2000 году были в городе Казани на сабантуе. И, пользуясь случаем, хочу вас пригласить на Хедерлез в следующем году в мае месяце. Все крымские татары будут рады вас видеть", — сказал участник форума. "Если в России абсолютно в любом месте скажете, что сегодня сабантуй, все поймут, что праздник. Хедерлез пока так широко не известен, но надеюсь, что это тоже будет достоянием культуры жителей всех народов России. За приглашение спасибо большое", — ответил на это Владимир Путин.

Sharp Fall in U.S. Hiring Saps Chance of Fed Rate Increase in June - The New York Times

Patricia Cohen and Binyamin Appelbaum

The government reported on Friday that employers added just 38, 000 workers to their payrolls in May, a sharp slowdown in hiring that is expected to push back a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. The latest snapshot suggested that the economic recovery might have stalled this spring, at least temporarily. Despite the anemic job gains, the official unemployment rate, (which is based on a separate survey of households) fell to 4. 7 percent, its lowest point in nearly a decade. But the decline was primarily a result of Americans dropping out of the labor force rather than finding new jobs. “Boy, this is ugly,” said Diane Swonk, an independent economist in Chicago. “The losses were deeper and more than we expected, and with the downward revision to previous months, it puts the Fed back on pause. ” “The only good news is that wages held,” Ms. Swonk said. Average hourly earnings rose again, 0. 2 percent for the month, for a gain of 2. 5 percent for the last 12 months, an encouraging sign that many more working Americans are finally beginning to enjoy some benefits from a tighter labor market. In close presidential races, the economy’s direction in the months leading to the November election has often played an important role in influencing voters, with credit or blame going to the party that occupies the White House. This is hardly a typical presidential race, though, and Friday’s report is only one indicator of the economy. Still, after revving up over the last two years, the nation’s job engine appears to have sputtered, with the Labor Department shrinking its initial estimates of March and April’s employment totals by 59, 000. The average monthly gain for the last three months was 116, 000 jobs. While subject to further revision as well, May’s figures were the lowest monthly growth since September 2010. The weakness in last month’s job totals was somewhat exaggerated because the estimate reflected the Labor Department classification of more than 35, 000 striking Verizon workers as unemployed. With those people now back on the job, the missing strikers should be added back in the June report. Even apart from that distortion, the average monthly job gains so far in 2016 have fallen far shy of the nearly 240, 000 average of the last two years, a pace that has helped buoy the economy and cut the jobless figure in half since the depths of the recession. Given the uncertainty about the economic outlook, the Federal Reserve is now likely to put off any decision to raise interest rates at its next meeting in and probably avoid lifting rates at its July meeting as well. Lael Brainard, a Fed governor and an ally of the Fed chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, described the May report as “sobering” in a speech on Friday afternoon. Ms. Brainard said the weak job growth was a reminder that the strength of the recovery should not be taken for granted, and she said she did not see clear evidence the economy had rebounded from a weak winter. “Recent economic developments have been mixed, and important downside risks remain,” Ms. Brainard, who has pushed for the Fed to move slowly in raising interest rates, said at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “In this environment, prudent risk management implies there is a benefit to waiting for additional data. ” After the Friday report, investors wrote off the chances of a June rate increase. The probability, as suggested by asset prices, fell to 6 percent from 21 percent in early trading, according to the CME Group. The probability of a rate rise by September fell from about but it remained about either way. With the summer stretching ahead, the sentiment on Wall Street could perhaps be best summed up by the Tempos’ 1959 hit, “See You in September. ” Unless there are further signs of fresh economic weakness, however, most economists expect at least one rate increase before the end of the year. The unemployment rate, which the Fed regards as an important indicator, has finally dropped to where it was before the recession began in late 2007. And claims for unemployment insurance have remained at low levels not seen since the 1970s. On the other side of the ledger, the labor force participation rate declined for the second consecutive month, to 62. 6 percent, and the number of people working part time for economic reasons rose sharply. Apart from the jobs figures, there are several encouraging economic signs, including a surge in home construction and hardy consumer spending. Most analysts expect the pace of economic growth to pick up to about 2. 5 percent over the next three months from the first quarter’s 0. 8 percent. “To be clear, there is no evidence the economy is slowing into recession,” said Steve Blitz, chief economist of M Science, a research firm. Voters’ perceptions of the economy are often a driving force in presidential elections. “It’s always good to be the party in power when the economic cycle is turning up in an election,” said Mark J. Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University. “It’s never advantageous when there is a downturn close to the election. ” This time around, though, history may not be the best guide, Thomas E. Mann, a resident scholar at Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, warned: “We should beware normalizing an abnormal election. ” “Under these circumstances,” he said, “there’s a good chance that the degree of a candidate’s personal unfavorability could be more important than the economy. ” As for the economy’s impact, Mr. Mann said changes in personal income, which are on the rise, tend to sway voters at the margins more than the jobless rate or the pace of job creation. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, has closely aligned herself with President Obama’s economic policies and streak of job gains. Worries about the economy are a more common refrain among supporters of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as well as among those who are backing Senator Bernie Sanders’s bid to lead the Democratic ticket. Mr. Trump was quick to react on Twitter, writing “Terrible jobs report just reported. Only 38, 000 jobs added. Bombshell!” Thomas Perez, the labor secretary, acknowledged that the jobs report was disappointing. But he said: “The closer you get to the summit of full employment, the more there will be between somewhat slower job growth and rising wages, and that’s what we’re beginning to see here in this recovery. ” He, too, continues to be disturbed by the persistently low labor participation rate. Retiring baby boomers would be expected to bring down the proportion of the population in the labor market. But Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at CohnReznick, an accounting, tax and advisory firm, pointed to the significant decline among those in their prime working ages as well. Because so many discouraged job seekers have dropped out of the work force, he said, the relatively low official jobless rate is not capturing the true magnitude of the economy’s underlying weakness. “In policy making, the Fed continues to focus on a measure that is maladjusted,” Mr. O’Keefe said. A broader measure of unemployment that includes people too discouraged to search for work or who are making do with a job because they cannot find a one stayed steady at 9. 7 percent. The heaviest job losses in May were in the construction, manufacturing and mining industries. Not everyone has seen a softening. Tom Gimbel, chief executive of LaSalle Network, a Chicago recruiter, said: “In a weak economy, what usually gets cut first and usually gets put on hold first are jobs at the manager to director level — those earning between $75, 000 and $125, 000 — and I haven’t seen that yet. ” At the lower end of the pay scale, workers have been hungry for an increase in wages that is finally starting to materialize as employers find it harder to fill jobs. increases that have already taken effect in some places may be partly responsible for the uptick in average hourly earnings. Payroll growth was disappointing, said Jeremy Schwartz, an associate in global strategy and economics at Credit Suisse, but it was also consistent with a tightening labor market. As he advised in an alert: “Don’t panic. ”

Israel Just Sent Trump VERY Clear Message Just Weeks From Election!

Mr. Wendal

0 comments Trump has made is very loud and clear that once he gets into the White House, he will be executing “OPERATION: DRAIN THE SWAMP OF D.C.” He wants to take out the corrupted trash that presides there and of course…make America great again. Now in a surprising move by Israel, we are learning exactly who they are rooting for. Something like probably has Hillary shaking in her pantsuit! Trump supporters are popping up all across the world. Check out the scene that unfolded in Jerusalem’s Old City this week. On a rooftop overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, around 200 American-Israeli fans of Donald Trump gathered to proclaim their support for the Republican candidate, convinced he will be Israel’s best friend if elected. Wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, the small crowd, ranging from Holocaust survivors in their 80s to grinning teenagers in Trump t-shirts, said they didn’t care about the sexual assault allegations against the candidate or the online anti-Semitism of some of his supporters. “Trump will let Israel be itself and make its own decisions, that’s what I like,” David Weissman, a 35-year-old from Queens, New York, who moved to Israel three years ago, said at the event late on Wednesday. “He’s not a saint, but look at his achievements. He’s not afraid to identify the enemy as radical Islam, and he’s not going to support the two-state solution,” he said, referring to long-standing efforts to forge peace with the Palestinians. Trump has noticed the support he is getting in Israel. He even had a message for the people over there. This is a far cry from the attitude Obama has had all this time towards Israel. There are many things that Obama should be ashamed of from the past 8 years. He’s ruined America. Cops are criminals, criminals are victims, and people are confused on whether they are a woman or a man, and much much more. However, the way he has poisoned the relationship with our very STRONGEST ally in the middle-east and has done so, as arrogantly as he has…is one of the top reasons why Obama has never been and will never be fit for leadership. We must ensure, his female counter-part…doesn’t find her way back into the White House come November, and Israel agrees Related Items

Nuevas sanciones europeas contra la República Árabe Siria

voltairenet.org

Nuevas sanciones europeas contra la República Árabe Siria Red Voltaire | Bruselas (Bélgica) | 28 de octubre de 2016 français Decisión de ejecución (PESC) 2016/1897 del Consejo del 27 de octobre de 2016 que pone en aplicación la decisión 2013/255/PESC sobre medidas restrictivas contra Siria La Unión Europea ha agregado 10 personas a la lista de « personas y entidades objeto de sanciones contra el régimen sirio » (sic), o sea la República Árabe Siria. Esta decisión eleva a 217 personas y a 69 entidades los blancos de sanciones. Número Nombre Datos identificativos Motivos Fecha de inscripción 207 Adib Salameh (alias Adib Salamah; Adib Salama; Adib Salame; Mohammed Adib Salameh; Adib Nimr Función: General de división, director adjunto de la Dirección de Inteligencia de la fuerza aérea en Damasco Miembro de los servicios sirios de seguridad e inteligencia después de mayo de 2011; director adjunto de la Dirección de Inteligencia de la fuerza área en Damasco; ex jefe del Servicio de Inteligencia de la fuerza aérea en Alepo. Miembro de las fuerzas armadas sirias con rango de coronel o equivalente o un grado superior, en el cargo desde mayo de 2011; tiene rango de general de división. Responsable de la represión violenta ejercida contra la población civil en Siria, como planificador de los ataques militares en Alep, en la que ha participado, y por tener autoridad para ordenar arrestos y encarcelar civiles. 28/10/2016 208 Adnan Abud Hilweh (alias Adnan Abud Helweh; Adnan Abud) Función: General de brigada Tiene rango de general de brigada de la 155ª y la 157ª brigadas del ejército sirio, en el cargo después de mayo de 2011. Como general de brigada de la 155ª y la 157ª brigadas, es responsable de la represión violenta ejercida contra la población civil en Siria, específicamente debido a su responsabilidad en el despliegue y uso de misiles y armas químicas en zonas civiles en 2013 y su participación en olas de encarcelamientos a gran escala. 28/10/2016 209 Jawdat Salbi Mawas (alias Jawdat Salibi Mawwas; Jawdat Salibi Mawwaz) Función: General de división Tiene rango de general de división, oficial superior en la dirección de artillería y misiles del ejército sirio, en el cargo después de mayo de 2011. Como oficial superior en la dirección de artillería y misiles, es responsable de la represión violenta ejercida contra la población civil en Siria, incluyendo el uso de misiles y armas químicas por parte de las brigadas bajo su mando en zonas civiles densamente pobladas, en 2013, en la Ghouta. 28/10/2016 210 Tahir Hamid Khalil (alias Tahir Hamid Khali; Khalil Tahir Hamid) Función: General de división Tiene rango de general de división, jefe de la dirección de artillería y misiles del ejército sirio, en el cargo después de mayo de 2011. Como oficial superior en la dirección de artillería y misiles, es responsable de la represión violenta ejercida contra la población civil en Siria, incluyendo el despliegue de misiles y armas químicas por parte de las brigadas bajo su mando en zonas civiles densamente pobladas, en 2013, en la Ghouta. 28/10/2016 211 Hilal Hilal (alias Hilal al-Hilal) Fecha de nacimiento: 1966 Miembro de una milicia afiliada al régimen conocida como “Kataeb al-Baath” (milicia del partido Baas). Apoya el régimen por el papel que desempeña en el reclutamiento y organización de la milicia del partido Baas. 28/10/2016 212. Ammar Al-Sharif (alias Amar Al-Sharif; Amar Al-Charif; Ammar Sharif; Ammar Charif; Ammar al Shareef; Ammar Sherif; Ammar Medhat Sherif) Influyente hombre de negocios sirio que ejerce su actividad en Siria, activo en los sectores bancario, de seguros y la atención hospitalaria. Socio fundador del Byblos Bank Syria, principal accionista de Unlimited Hospitality Ltd y miembro del consejo de administración de Solidarity Alliance Insurance Company y de Al-Aqueelah Takaful Insurance Company. 28/10/2016 213 Bishr al-Sabban (alias Mohammed Bishr Al-Sabban; Bishr Mazin Al-Sabban) Gobernador de Damasco, nombrado por Bashar Al-Assad y vinculado a él. Apoya el régimen y es responsable de la represión violenta ejercida contra la población civil en Siria, específicamente bajo la forma de prácticas discriminatorias hacia las comunidades sunnitas en la capital. 28/10/2016 214 Ahmad Sheik Abdul-Qader (alias Ahmad Sheikh Abdul Qadir; Ahmad al-Sheik Abdulquader) Gobernador de Quneitra, vinculado a Bashar Al-Assad y nombrado por él. Ex gobernador de Latakia. Apoya el régimen y se beneficia con ello, específicamente apoyando públicamente a las fuerzas armadas sirias y las milicias favorables al régimen. 28/10/2016 215 Dr. Ghassan Omar Khalaf Gobernador de Hama, nombrado por Bashar Al-Assad y vinculado a él. También respalda el régimen y se beneficia con ello. Ghassan Omar Khalaf está estrechamente vinculado a los miembros de una milicia afiliada al régimen presente en Hama y conocida como brigada de Hama. 28/10/2016 216 Khayr al-Din al-Sayyed (alias Khayr al-Din Abdul-Sattar al-Sayyed; Mohamed Khair al-Sayyed; Kheredden al-Sayyed; Khairuddin as-Sayyed; Khaireddin al-Sayyed; Kheir Eddin al-Sayyed; Kheir Eddib Asayed) Gobernador de Idlib, vinculado a Bashar Al-Assad y nombrado por él. Se beneficia con el régimen y lo apoya, específicamente apoyando a las fuerzas armadas sirias y las milicias favorables al régimen. Vinculado al ministro des Awqaf, Dr. Mohammad Abdul-Sattar al-Sayyed, que es su hermano. 28/10/2016

Waking The Masses To The Climate Engineering Assault, Helpful Tools

Dane Wigington

geoengineeringwatch.org How can we wake people up to the ongoing global climate engineering assault when so many have been so completely conditioned to deny this most dire issue? Shocking and compelling visual images are the most effective approach. The one minute video below contains extremely eye opening time-lapse film footage of a massive atmospheric aerosol spraying assault. Up close footage of a jet aircraft spray dispersion is also captured. Visual proof is the most powerful key to raising awareness. Waking someone up to something they don't want to hear and don't want to know is an extremely difficult task, programmed denial is epidemic in our society. Simple straightforward visual tools are (in most cases) the best introduction method. In addition to the many compelling jet spraying videos that can be shared online, an effective informational flyer is almost always far more effective than a verbal dissertation for face to face introductions to the climate engineering/weather warfare issue. "A picture is worth a thousand words" as the saying goes. 2-Sided Flyers Click on the flyer below to download the high resolution PDF flyer file Instructions for downloading: Simply right-click on each image below and choose "Save Link As…" (or the equivalent), save it to your computer, find the file and open/print it. Side 1 Side 2 Effective activism efforts require preparation, planning, and informational materials. In addition to full sized informational flyers, business card sized handouts can also be extremely useful, are very inexpensive, and easy to carry. Click on the business card below to download a high resolution PDF file that can be used for printing these effective informational cards Business Card – Side 1 Business Card – Side 2

Trump’s Far-Right Supporters Turn on Him Over Syria Strike - The New York Times

Matthew Haag

Some of President Trump’s most ardent campaign supporters were among his most vocal opponents on Thursday after he ordered the missile strike against Syria, charging him with breaking his promise to keep the United States out of another conflict in the Middle East. Prominent writers and bloggers on the far right attacked Mr. Trump. They accused him of turning against his voters by waging an attack that he had for years said would be a terrible idea. They also criticized him for launching the strike without first seeking congressional approval — something he said on Twitter in 2013 would be a “big mistake. ” The most vocal in their outrage were leaders from the small but influential white nationalist movement. Paul Joseph Watson, an editor at the conspiracy theorist site Infowars, said on Twitter that Trump “was just another deep puppet. ” He added, “I’m officially OFF the Trump train. ” Richard Spencer, a activist and white nationalist who coined the term “” said he condemned the attack and hinted at supporting another presidential candidate in 2020: Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a Democrat. Ms. Gabbard met with President Bashar of Syria in January and on Thursday criticized the missile strike as shortsighted and reckless. For some on the far right, particularly those who are Mr. Trump’s strike crossed a line. But others praised the president for his quick military decision, which came three days after the Syrian government’s deadly chemical weapons attack on its own people, including children. The radio host Hugh Hewitt said the missile launch was “justice for these children. ” Mark Levin, another conservative host, agreed. “We’re proud of you,” he said of the president. Laura Ingraham, a conservative commentator, noted that the strike brought together three frequent critics of the president — the Republican senators Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain of Arizona, as well as his Democratic opponent last fall, Hillary Clinton. The schism among the president’s supporters had been building since Mr. Trump said his attitude toward Syria had “changed very much” after the chemical weapons attack. His comments signaled a discernible shift in White House policy, and from his stance during the presidential campaign. Some of those supporters claimed, without evidence, that the chemical weapons attack was a hoax carried out by the “deep state” — what they believe to be a nebulous network of military officials working behind the scenes — to drag the United States into war. Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, wrote on his website on Thursday before the missile strike that the chemical weapons attack appeared to be a “manufactured event. ” A few hours before the missile strike, the blogger Mike Cernovich warned his followers in a live video that the United States was going to attack Syria. “Remind Trump who supported him,” he told his viewers. “We got to stop him. ”

’Political Hospice’ Is ’Way Forward’ For White Working Class, Says WashPo Editor - Breitbart

Neil Munro

A advocate says the mostly white communities in the United States must be wheeled into “political hospice care,” and a Washington Post columnist commended his solution “as a way forward. ”[“Economic dislocation and demographic changes are fueling discomfort and desperation among white voters,” wrote WashPo columnist and editorial board member Jonathan Capehart, continuing: While [university professor and author] Justin Gest says that both Republicans and Democrats have exploited these voters, he sees a way forward. “The only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care,” [Gest] said. “These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?” Capehart declined to answer questions from Breitbart about his statement that “hospice care” for mostly white communities is “a way forward” for the nation. He declined to suggest alternative policies or to suggest which of the progressives’ political goals could be traded to win support for white voters in 2020. The offer of political elimination to communities has prompted anger even from some writers, such as Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly. I’m not saying the whole Democratic Party feels this way, but the default position among a lot of progressives since the election has been that to even talk about these folks is to pander to their racism and dilute the party’s commitment to civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and the environment. If we want to draw up our battle lines like that, then they sure as s*** are going to take the hint … I don’t recognize a [political] left that has no better solution for struggling people than to make their inevitable deaths more comfortable. That’s not just a political loser. It’s an indefensible position to take as human beings. Every single community needs a left that will represent them and that doesn’t mean it will tolerate them or give them just enough to ease the worst of their pain. Gest responded to Breitbart’s questions by doubling down, saying immigrants can replace American consumers, workers, and children, and also that expert advice will soothe American communities during their exit: Declining towns need immigrants to reinvigorate their markets, take on unwanted labor positions, and add youth to aging demographies. Once these communities understood the benefits immigrants bring and were consulted about the terms of their integration, they would feel more comfortable with their arrival. Breitbart asked if Americans’ communities can be strengthened by curbs on immigration or trade, but Gest, a strong advocate for globalism, offered only a series of additional government programs to offset the current policies of cheap labor and cheap imports. Public policy can help ease the pressure on ‘outmoded’ communities and facilitate their integration into the modern economy … States can incentivize apprenticeships and job training by the private sector like they do in Montana. They can provide universal health care like they do in Vermont. Other ideas have yet to be pursued: What if welfare benefits increased when recipients were enrolled in university programs or trade schools, so that we subsidize and innovation? What if the quality of school districts weren’t correlated with the income of their neighborhoods, entrenching people into intergenerational poverty? What if minimum wage laws, workplace protections, and family leave policies allowed people to live on the jobs that already exist in the United States today? These ideas don’t require a revolution they require courage and political will … Higher wages can be mandated by policy, and so can more accessible, high quality education. Policy can therefore reduce wage competition at the bottom and help level the playing field for poorer Americans. Gest, an assistant professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, sharply opposed cuts to current high level of immigration, which now imports one immigrant for every four Americans who turn 18. Gest also argued that immigrants are more inventive and hardworking than Americans and are also more useful to the prosperous saying: Immigration is one of the principal engines of [economic] growth in the United States because immigrants disproportionately start new businesses (which hire people) and innovate (by filing patents). They also often take unwanted jobs in meatpacking, cleaning, and agriculture. Would it have been better if Albert Einstein stayed in Germany? What if Jerry Yang’s family stayed in Taiwan? … [also] reducing immigration would actually hurt the middle class. Gest made his hospice comments when Capehart invited him to talk via his podcast about his book on white communities, titled “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. ” Their conversation was revealing because Gest repeatedly admitted that the fight over communities is also a political fight over who gets higher social status. Democrats, he argued, want to grant higher status to their diverse coalition of progressives and various minorities, and are willing to reduce the social status of the white . Many whites supported former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but pulled the lever for Donald Trump in 2016 because Trump’s support for communities was a huge contrast to the disdain from Democrats. “It has become okay [among Democrats] to become classist against poor white people and the [white voters] see it,” said Gest. The party’s coalition includes environmentalists, lawyers, Latinos, hippies, and drivers, Gest said, adding “there are many people in there who like the privileged status that the Democratic Party gives to certain ethnic groups. ” For the party to welcome the white working class, he added, it would be “cheapening” the privileges given to others. Capehart did not disagree and did not counter Gest’s comments during the podcast interview. Capehart did push the claim that white support for Trump is based on mere nostalgia for prior decades, not on a rational hope that Trump’s policies are better than the Democrats’ immigration policies, and might even revive struggling American communities in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states. Gest did not suggest any political fixes for immigration or global trade, saying: For many white working class people, and this is going to be controversial, for many white working class people, not all of them but many, you have a community of people who are advanced in age, whose skill set is for a different economy, who are living in communities that are losing population, losing resources, and so in many ways, the only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care. These are communities that are on the paths to death, and the question is how can we make that as comfortable as possible … Gest inadvertently admitted that the targets of his pity, white communities, actually have a broader, view of their economic circumstances, saying: How can we truly ‘level the playing field’? And what is so remarkable Jonathan, is that that is the language many of my white working class respondents used. It is the language that we’ve heard the civil rights movement use — ‘Leveling the playing field,’ ‘Finding equality.’ That is where Gest defaulted to the palliative policy of giving more taxpayer funds to his peers in the education industry: How can we make an America that has greater mobility … independent of your race, independent of your ethnicity. How can we create avenues for people who start off in these communities in hospice care to live vibrant and dynamic lives of possibility, and I think that so much actually returns to education … education is that avenue to mobility, intergenerational mobility. It allows a steel town to raise children who are not necessarily predestined for manufacturing … our system of education is not allowing us to create a break, an intervention, where we actually prevent these communities destined for death, to be revived. Education can’t be the only answer for Americans if the U. S. labor market is also being flooded with cheap foreign workers, said a highly skilled worker contacted by Breitbart. “I know you don’t know me from a can of paint, but I had to throw in my 2 cents in your article about the WashPo editor,” said the woman, who tunes and operates machine tools in Cincinnati, Ohio. She continued: I work in manufacturing. I have a high school diploma and a associate degree from Wyotech that currently has as much worth to me as toilet paper (and it’s just as disposable). I am a [Computer Numeric Control] Machinist. I set up, tool, program, and operate CNC mills and lathes to make precision parts out of Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene, that nonstick stuff on your frying pan) and can hold tolerances to + 0. 0002″. So I’m wondering, since I am working in a field of a bygone economic era, how dumb do they think I really am that I need “more” education? What is more education going to do for me? So I can sit around and be a great thinker as a white (non) working class individual? What is the threshold of intellectual satiation? How many degrees do we need to be indebted to the federal government before they deem the white working middle class smart enough to associate with people like THAT? I have a hard time understanding how someone like Gest or Capehart can look down their noses at someone like me because I don’t share their desire for overpriced toilet paper. Could either of them program a machine to cut an arc into a piece of material? No, but I can. Could either of them change their oil, replace their brakes, or change their front differential fluid? (I’d be surprised if they knew where the dipstick is to even check it.) No, but I can. I’m a white working class woman that could outsmart them on a common sense basis and on a highly technical basis, and somehow I am the one that needs more education? People like that think that “working class white voters” is a descriptor of who we are as a socioeconomic group, with a dash of race and political functionality. “Working class (white) voters” are machinists, assemblers, machine operators, mechanics, nurse’s aides, waitresses, small retail store managers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, and all the jobs that they wouldn’t dare do themselves, being so much smarter than the rest of us (doubtful they know which end of a wrench to use). Being a “working class white voter” does not make us inferior or intellectually stunted so much that we need to be (re) educated in liberally biased schools of doublespeak and thoughtlessness. All we want to do is work a good job that does present a modest challenge, that does feel rewarding, keeps the lights on and our bellies full and after all of that, we just want to come home, drink some beers, pet the dog and enjoy the sunset in our small suburban slice of heaven. For us, that is what life is all about. We don’t care about revolutions, microaggressions, or how many physical and economic descriptors we can apply to a sub group of a sub group of a sub group. People like Gest and Capehart are more important to themselves, like Narcissus was to his reflection eventually, they will drown in their obsession. And when they do, they’re still gonna be at the counter of a Mom and Pop shop asking some “white working class voter” with grease on his or her face “What’s wrong with my Prius?” Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart. com,

Mattis: Trump ’Wide Open’ on Paris Climate Accord - Breitbart

Pam Key

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Defense Secretary James Mattis said President Donald Trump is “wide open” on whether or not the United States should remain in the Paris climate accord. Mattis said, “We’ve obviously got a discussion going on about our policy in this regard. I was sitting in on some of the discussions in Brussels, by the way, where climate change came up, and the president was open. He was curious about why others were in the position they were in — his counterparts in other nations — and I’m quite certain the president is wide open on this issue as he takes in the pros and cons of that accord. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Watch: ’House of Cards’ Season 5 Trailer Teases ’One Nation Underwood’ - Breitbart

Jerome Hudson

All bets are off in season five of the hit Netflix political drama House of Cards. [The streaming giant released the first trailer for the upcoming season that sees Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) locked in an intense presidential election campaign fight against Will Conway (Joel Kinnaman). “The American people don’t know what’s best for them. I do. I know exactly what they need. ” Spacey says in a chilling voiceover. “One nation Underwood,” he declares. The teased scenes show Frank and Claire Underwood’s (Robin Wright) relationship straining, as their past sins come back to haunt their political future. It’s the first season without series creator and showrunner Beau Willimon, who left the project and has since pursued Trump activism. House of Cards also stars Michael Kelly, Jayne Atkinson, Neve Campbell, Derek Cecil, and Paul Sparks. The fifth season premieres on Netflix May 30th.

The Left Says I Hate Myself For Voting Trump While Female. I Don't. I Just Hate You. | Daily Wire

The Left Says I Hate Myself For Voting Trump While Female. I Don't. I Just Hate You. By: Amanda Prestigiacomo November 17, 2016 As a woman who rejects third-wave feminism with the burning passion of a thousand suns on a regular basis, I've had my fair share of feminists tell me that I only reject them and their ideas because I suffer from "internalized misogyny," or, in other words, I'm a self-loathing sexist. Here's exactly how Everyday Feminism defines "internalized misogyny," if you're unfamiliar with bats*** crazy: Internalized misogyny, by definition, is sexism turned inward toward ourselves and outward toward other women. It becomes innate as we are socialized to the norms of our culture that indicate, overtly and covertly, that women are less than men – less worthy, less strong, less dependable, less able, less of a leader, less logical – while also more than men: more emotional, more irrational, more complex, more to manage. Of course, this is ridiculous, and I gave such an assertion about as much time as a I would a male feminist hitting on me: zero seconds. But on Wednesday, I learned that Team Hillary, the political left, likewise thought me a self-loathing sexist who passed on my obligation to vote for Queen Pantsuit because I couldn't stomach the thought of a powerful woman, since I apparently believe women are lessers. In fact, I—a woman with a chronic case of "internalized misogyny”—cost Hillary the election; not her decision to engage in potentially criminal activity, nor her inability to campaign her way out of a paper bag. It was my fault. Clinton campaign communications director @jess_mc on election loss: "Internalized misogyny is a real thing" #inners https://t.co/8RV74T0UIh — All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) November 15, 2016 Yeah, no. I didn't pull the lever for Trump because I hate myself. I don't. Not even a little actually. I just hate you. Let me define "you." "You" are the feminists who contend my uterus must dictate all my choices; those who make it their mission to drag down any woman who has the audacity to veer from your ideology one iota. "You" are the feminists who tell me that there's a special place in hell for me if I don't cast my ballot for Crooked Hillary. (Like all of a sudden feminists believe in God and an afterlife. LOL.) "You" are the feminists who tell me I'm super mean and *shame* women when I point out that bragging about murdering unborn babies is gross and despicable. By the way, it is gross and despicable . "You" are the feminists who demonize men with think-pieces on how and why we should banish so-called " toxic masculinity " from this world. "You" are the feminists who shut men up because of their gender while simultaneously telling me gender is a social construct. And no, I will not cater to your preferred pronouns, you entitled brat. (Pro-tip: Once the number of genders you've made-up passes the number of flavors at Baskin Robbins, it's time to admit you have a problem.) "You" are the social justice warriors who tell me I'm a hateful, selfish, capitalistic pig from your iPhone at your local safe space, equipped with coloring books, bubbles and puppies, across from the Starbucks you work weekends at. "You" are the social justice warriors who viciously riot when you don't get your way, meanwhile you're not even registered to vote . "You" are the social justice warriors shouting-down any free speech which doesn't perfectly align with your ideology, ironically in the name of tolerance and inclusiveness. "You" are the virtue-signaling celebrities who think I give a hoot about your political stance. Please, go ahead and move to Canada, no one will miss you. I certainly won't. "You" are the mainstream media so desperate for your leftist narrative that you'll lie to the American people to advance it; so hell-bent on painting middle-America and Republicans as racist you'll frame actual policy discussions into a segment of "Who's The Biggest Xenophobe: Republican Edition." "You" are the leftist telling me I'm a racist for not supporting the divisive hate group Black Lives Matter. First of all, it's mostly comprised of a bunch of loser white kids. Second of all, call me crazy, but once you start calling for and actually assassinating police officers , I'm out. I know, how *racist* of me. "You" are leftists calling me an Islamophobe because I use the term "radical Islam" and resist an influx of refugees whom the FBI said we cannot properly vet pouring into our country. You see, this election had virtually nothing to do with Donald Trump—I could take him or leave him—and almost everything to do with you, the left. Trump was indeed a protest vote; he was a direct repudiation of everything you stand for and everything you tell me I should stand for by virtue of my uterus. So, no, I'm not a self-loathing victim of "the patriarchy" who passed on a vote for Hillary because she's a woman. I just hate you.

Workers Pay More for Health Care as Companies Shift Burden, Survey Finds - The New York Times

Reed Abelson

State health insurance exchanges created under the new health care law are in turmoil. By contrast, the employer market — where the majority of Americans still get their coverage — seems like a bastion of stability. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation released on Wednesday shows that the share of employers offering coverage remained steady this year, and that the cost of premiums for health plans remained largely unchanged. “We see historic moderation in premiums and health spending and costs,” said Drew Altman, the chief executive of the Kaiser foundation, a nonprofit in Menlo Park, Calif. that closely tracks the health insurance markets. But underneath some of those figures, some important changes are underway. The biggest shift is that workers continue to pay an share of their medical bills, a trend for several years now. That is why Mr. Altman said that despite the overall moderation in costs, “it doesn’t feel that way to average people. ” Kaiser’s annual survey of employer health benefits represents a yearly snapshot of the coverage companies offer their workers, and highlights from the survey are being published online in Health Affairs, an academic journal. About 150 million people are covered by an employer, a much larger group than the 11 million or so who buy coverage on the exchanges created under the federal health care law. On Tuesday, the Census Bureau reported that the percentage of uninsured Americans fell last year, to 9. 1 percent, in part because of the strength of the employer market. The latest survey helps shed some light on the quickly evolving insurance industry. Here are a few highlights. Annual family premiums rose an average of 3 percent, about in line with the average increase in workers’ wages, to $18, 142 a year, according to Kaiser, which surveyed more than 1, 900 employers. This continued a significant slowdown in price increases. In the period since 2011, the premiums for plans covering a family rose 20 percent, compared with 31 percent from 2006 to 2011, and a 63 percent increase from 2001 to 2006. How long will this last? Mr. Altman says he is doubtful that the reprieve from sharply rising costs is permanent and that he thinks rates will go up again, especially if the economy heats up. “I don’t think we’re living in a new world,” he said. Exactly why the increases have been so modest in recent years is up for debate. The Obama administration argues that some measures in the federal health care law have helped slow the rise in health care costs. Some other experts tend to point to the lingering effects of a sluggish economy as well as the push by employers to shift more costs onto workers. While plans typically have much lower deductibles than the most popular plans found on the exchanges, more employees have deductibles, and those deductibles are increasing. Over all, employees have deductibles that are about 50 percent higher than they were five years ago. Four out of five covered employees pay a deductible, which averages about $1, 500 each, Kaiser found. Employees who get insurance through a smaller company have deductibles that now average $2, 100. Workers are also paying a greater share of the premiums, contributing $5, 277 annually toward a family plan, nearly a third of the total cost. The move by employers and insurers to push more health costs onto workers is significant, said Mr. Altman, who describes it as a stealth move to “skimpier insurance. ” Proponents of higher cost sharing say that asking people to pay more of their medical bills causes them to be more discriminating about what health care they use. Remember the days of being able to go to any doctor or hospital of your choice? Many employers still choose plans that let workers visit a doctor out of network, although employees are paying increasingly more for the privilege. But more companies are opting for less choice for their employees. This year, slightly fewer than half of workers are enrolled in preferred provider organization plans, or P. P. O. s, compared with 58 percent in 2014. While you pay more when you go outside the plan’s network, you are still covered if you go to a doctor or hospital that does not belong. Employers started turning to these plans in the 1990s, when resistance to health maintenance organizations, or H. M. O. s, grew. Employers and insurers tend to favor more restrictive plans because they usually contain costs better. The tide may be reversing somewhat. The H. M. O. has been rethought in new forms that are without some of the drawbacks of the health maintenance organizations, like requiring people to get permission to go to a specialist. As a result, some employers are dropping P. P. O.s in favor of the more restrictive plans, Mr. Altman said. “We’re beginning to see that reverse,” he said. The trend toward narrower networks is also seen in plans offered on the exchanges, where the McKinsey Center for U. S. Health System Reform recently estimated that were H. M. O.s offering a sharply limited choice of doctors and hospitals this year. The recent Kaiser survey also emphasizes the endurance of the employer market, despite earlier predictions that the health care law would usher in its demise. Most companies are still offering health benefits to their employees, with the percentage virtually unchanged from last year at 56 percent. “We’re just not seeing a big impact on employers,” Mr. Altman said. There is also little proof that companies are cutting workers’ hours to avoid the law’s requirement that they offer workers health insurance. Employers with at least 50 workers are required to offer benefits or pay a penalty. More than 90 percent of companies with at least 50 workers are offering coverage.

Jerry Brown’s AB 109 ’Reform’ Put L.A.’s Most Wanted Back on Streets - Breitbart

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly

On Monday, an accused cop killer, gang member Michael C. Mejia, reportedly laughed as he was arraigned in court, according to the local ABC News affiliate. [Mejia was once released under AB 109, Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature prison reform, and now stands accused of committing two murders, including the murder of a Whittier police officer in February. The explosion of violent and serious crimes across Southern California in the past several months — some committed by offenders that Brown released from state supervision, promising they were “ “ ” and “ ” — has sparked a heated discussion about whether or not the controversial “prison reforms” known as AB 109 and Propositions 47 and 57 are responsible for recent deadly assaults on law enforcement officers. Three days after the February 20 murder of Keith Boyer, a old Whittier Police Officer, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote a scathing editorial attacking Officer Boyer’s grieving boss, Whittier PD Chief Jeff Piper, for putting the blame on “criminal justice reforms” championed by Gov. Brown and the Times. The board severely chastised Piper for “mischaracterizing” the AB 109, Prop 47 and 57 prison and sentencing reforms in his moment of grief, claiming he “need[s] to be held accountable for false or misleading statements that are calculated to sway opinion on important policy matters, even if those comments come during times of great duress … [Chief] Piper misused the occasion of Boyer’s traumatic death to lash out at recent criminal justice reforms. ” No one likes to be wrong — and when someone is caught in a lie, they often double down — but it’s unfortunate to see a major Los Angeles newspaper engage in a campaign of deliberate distortion. Take Mejia, Boyer’s alleged murderer, whom the Orange County Register reported had been serving time for grand theft auto before he was released from Pelican Bay State Prison in April 2016. According to the Times, Mejia was not the beneficiary of “early release” or “otherwise at large because of some supposed defect in AB 109, the 2011 ‘realignment’ law that assigned more criminal justice responsibilities to counties. ” Michele Hanisee, President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, destroyed the Times‘ claim in a single comment. “Under the old system, [Mejia] would not have been out there to kill Officer Boyer. Simple as that,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday with Breitbart News. “Under custody of the state parole system,” Hanisee explained, “Mejia would have been thrown back into state prison for a full year for any one of the five — yes, count ‘em — five violations he committed after being released. ” Tragically, Mejia’s final probation violation occurred on February 2nd, 2017 — only 18 days before Officer Boyer’s murder. If only AB 109 had not restricted law enforcement from sending Mejia back behind bars for a longer period of time than 10 days for his repeated violations, Officer Boyer might be alive today. Instead, thanks to Jerry Brown’s AB 109 “reform,” Mejia was only required to report to Los Angeles County Probation, under the program known as “Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS)” — and under AB 109, probation violations are limited to a maximum “flash incarceration. ” Hanisee recently condemned AB 109 in the harshest possible terms on 790 KABC’s McIntyre in the Morning Show, according to a local affiliate of ABC in Los Angeles (KABC 7). “‘If you open these profiles and read them, every time it says, ‘this individual was qualified to be released to the supervision of parole under AB 109 because their current commitment offense is defined as . ’” She says AB 109, like Propositions 47 and 57, was sold to the public by the politicians. “And they also give them really catchy names like ‘Public Safety Realignment Act’ rather than ‘Transfer Dangerous Felons to Your Jurisdiction Supervision Act. ’” Hanisee says AB 109 continues to threaten public safety, citing the descriptions of the 120 persons currently on the “L. A.’s Most Wanted. ” “It’s horrifying, absolutely horrifying. ” And the result for L. A. and the state? “This is a great place to commit crime. You’re going to get off easy and you’re going to get out early if you go in. ” Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman and author who is doing a book tour for his new book: Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless. He ran for governor in 2014. FaceBook: https: . facebook. . donnelly. Twitter: @PatriotNotPol

Marco Rubio and John McCain Win Primaries in Florida and Arizona - The New York Times

Lizette Alvarez

MIAMI — Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and John McCain of Arizona brushed off primary challenges on Tuesday from Republican contenders. Mr. Rubio will face a race against Representative Patrick Murphy, a Democrat, in a crucial contest for control of the Senate. Mr. McCain, seeking a sixth term, could also face a serious challenge, from Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, who has made it a point of her campaign to court Latinos and American Indians in an increasingly diverse and competitive state. The contest between Mr. Rubio and Mr. Murphy is likely to be among the most expensive Senate contests in the country. With his onetime rival Donald J. Trump at the top of the Republican presidential ticket, Mr. Rubio, 45, will seek to fend off Mr. Murphy, 33, who has faced recent accusations of résumé padding. They were not the only recognizable names to win races on Tuesday and move on to the Nov. 8 general election. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the embattled former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, won her South Florida battle against a law professor who was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The primary results appeared to point to a preference among voters in Florida, a pivotal swing state, to eschew more extreme candidates on the right and the left in favor of establishment lawmakers favored by national party leaders. Mr. McCain, 80, of Arizona faced a challenge from his right from Kelli Ward, a family doctor and a former state senator. In Florida, Mr. Rubio, who was asked by Republican leaders to enter the Senate race after saying he would not seek defeated Carlos Beruff, a wealthy gulf coast homebuilder. Mr. Beruff, who spent $8 million of his money on his bid, is an avid supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Rubio’s Democratic opponent, Mr. Murphy, bested Representative Alan Grayson, a liberal provocateur who was favored by many progressives but faced ethics inquiries in the House and accusations that he had abused his former wife. “I commit to you that I will serve my full term,” Mr. Murphy told supporters Tuesday night, suggesting that Mr. Rubio would run for president again instead. Earlier Tuesday, in an interview on CNN, Mr. Rubio had been reluctant to commit to a full term, saying, “No one can make that commitment because you don’t know what the future’s going to hold in your life personally or politically. ” In a victory speech on Tuesday night, Mr. Rubio pointed out that Mr. Murphy, whose father is a millionaire, grew up wealthy, a sharp contrast to Mr. Rubio’s humble upbringing. Mr. Rubio added that he had no intention to deliver a “rubber stamp,” no matter who was elected president in November. Florida voters were asked to cast ballots for an unusually high number of contested congressional primaries, the result of a redistricting map that changed 24 of the state’s 27 districts. One tough fight on Tuesday was the Democratic primary in Miami’s 26th Congressional District, where former Representative Joe Garcia defeated Annette Taddeo, who was selected by former Gov. Charlie Crist to be his running mate in his failed 2014 bid to recapture the governor’s office. Mr. Garcia had faced criticism over fraudulent absentee ballots in 2012, but was never charged with wrongdoing. One of his former staff members pleaded guilty and served jail time. Mr. Garcia will face a incumbent, Representative Carlos Curbelo, whose seat is threatened by the new redistricting map, which made the district less hospitable to Republicans. Mr. Curbelo won the seat from Mr. Garcia in 2014. Farther north in Florida, Representative Corrine Brown, a House stalwart who more than 20 years ago became one of the first elected to Congress from Florida, lost her seat to Al Lawson, a former state senator. Ms. Brown and her chief of staff were indicted in July on federal charges of conspiracy and fraud. But Ms. Brown’s troubles predated her indictment. Her district was changed significantly, making it harder for a Democrat to win.

Amazon Claims Web Shutdown Was Due to Typo - Breitbart

Charlie Nash

Amazon claims that the shutdown on Tuesday of over one million websites who use the company’s service was due to an employee “typo. ”[“At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process,” explained Amazon Web Services in a post on their website. “Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended. The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems. ” “We are making several changes as a result of this operational event. While removal of capacity is a key operational practice, in this instance, the tool used allowed too much capacity to be removed too quickly,” they continued. “We have modified this tool to remove capacity more slowly and added safeguards to prevent capacity from being removed when it will take any subsystem below its minimum required capacity level. This will prevent an incorrect input from triggering a similar event in the future. We are also auditing our other operational tools to ensure we have similar safety checks. ” Amazon finished off their post apologizing to those who were affected by the outage. “Finally, we want to apologize for the impact this event caused for our customers. While we are proud of our long track record of availability with Amazon S3, we know how critical this service is to our customers, their applications and end users, and their businesses,” Amazon concluded. “We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to improve our availability even further. ” The outage on Tuesday affected several large sites, including Quora, Trello, Wix, Snap, and Alexa. Some government agencies were also hit by the unexpected shutdown, as well as Isitdownrightnow. com — a service used to see what other sites are down. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

Hope, Change, Lies and Greatness

Scott Buss

One of the themes of this election cycle in America is clarity. God is showing us what we’ve become. Clearly. With each passing political curveball and October surprise, painful and embarrassing clarity abounds. We’ve learned and are continuing to learn a lot about our “Christian leaders”. Same goes for our concepts of freedom, liberty, justice, peace, and security… none of which do we dare understand, much less pursue, in an explicitly biblical manner anymore. We have quite thoroughly rejected Christ as King. We claim him often as Savior, but have no intent on serving Him as King in practice…political practice, legal practice, educational practice, economic practice, or pretty much any other kind of practices. He’s our favorite trinket, and little more. That’s the brutally ugly bottom line being emphasized and highlighted and pointed out again and again by God right now in America. The grace God is showing in the provision of this clarity is something that’s easy to miss, and easy to want to miss , since said clarity serves as just the sort of detailed, inescapable, and unassailable indictment that we’d prefer didn’t exist. But it does exist. And He’s waving it in front of our eyes. He’s giving us detail upon pathetic detail and revelation after ugly revelation. He’s stacking them high and giving us chance after chance after undeserved chance to acknowledge and repent of that which is being made excruciatingly and redundantly plain. All we need do is take off our blinders and look at the whole picture plainly presented before us in its crystal clear, wide-open totality as it actually exists, rather than focusing on distractions and little snippets out of context while ignoring the building mountains of truths that deep down we know are fatal to the narratives we prefer over reality. If we simply look at the whole picture through the lens of a basic biblical worldview, we’ll have no trouble at all seeing why we’re circling the drain as a culture (and why we deserve to do so). Just look at what we’re into: “Hope and change”…apart from submission to Christ as King. . “Making America great again”…apart from submission to Christ as King. . Supporting public schools…even though State-run children’s education is inherently anti-Christ, is literally designed to promote an increasingly anti-Christ population, and is based upon an approach to the pursuit of knowledge (aka “education”) lifted directly from the serpent’s tongue in Genesis 3. . Preserving Social Security…even though the flagrantly socialist/Marxist construct encourages the State to claim yet another role assigned to family and church, thus growing the power of the State and making the masses more dependent upon the State. . Maintaining/expanding a gigantic, globe-spanning military…even though we are supposedly broke and are open, proud champions of socialism, Marxism, Satanism, homosexuality, and any number of fundamentally anti-Christ concepts. . Maintaining our imagined “freedom” and “liberty” to produce, market, and consume porn…even though the God who defines and sustains all true liberty and freedom despises these things and promises to crush those who defend them. . Maintaining our imagined “right” to murder our own children for convenience (or for no reason at all)…even though the God who authored and sustains human life despises child sacrifice and has promised to crush civilizations that embrace it. . Maintaining our imagined “right” to marry someone of the same gender…even though the God who sustains all true rights and defines marriage calls such relationships abominations and routinely destroys cultures that promote them. . Being ever ready to pledge on cue our personal allegiance to the indivisible political power ruling over us, all in the name of a love for America (which has been made into our ruling idol)…even though no such pledge would even be considered by an actual American Founding Father. (The mere fact of their Founding Father status confirms that they did not believe in the indivisible political power of the state, and the fact that we now pledge our allegiance to such power on command by reciting an oath written by a Socialist in the 1800s for the purpose of selling American flags to public schools says a whole lot about how profoundly confused and easily manipulated we’ve become since the time of the Founding Fathers.) . Believing that “We the People” must submit to the systems placed above us…no matter how wildly anti-Christian they become. This has been promoted through a Hitlerian approach to Romans 13 (and other passages from Scripture) as embraced by the vast majority of even the most “conservative, Bible believing” church leaders in the land. . We must support the “lesser” of two evils offered to us by the system under which we are told we must live as good Americans…no matter how vile, sinister, vulgar, corrupt, and overtly anti-Christ those options may be. (See: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.) Obviously this is a list that could go on for a while, but we’ll pause it here and assume that you get the picture. We bring these items to focus again in light of an article recently published entitled Once the hope candidate, Obama in his final days faces a hopeless electorate , wherein The Washington Post noted how we live in an age of hopelessness on many levels as we roll from the Obama era on into the Trump or Clinton follow-up. The hopelessness that has been inspired by our approach to law, liberty, truth, justice, economics, politics and everything else has been building for hundreds of years. Contrary to what pagan political prognosticators of the day would have us believe, the current cultural wreckage is not something that can be understood, much less corrected, by pagan, unbelieving means. There is and will never be hope for law apart from submission to Christ as King in practice. There is and will never be hope for education apart from submission to Christ as King in practice. There is and will never be hope for economics apart from submission to Christ as King in practice. There is and will never be hope for culture and civilization apart from submission to Christ as King in practice. That’s how things work in God’s creation, America included. Until we understand this and repent accordingly, our hopelessness will only deepen and our implosion will only continue. May God grace His people with the clarity to see, repent, live, and thrive accordingly in this remarkable time…even as an unrepentant American empire crumbles around them. Article posted with permission from Fire Breathing Christian Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares

ESPN Layoffs at Leading Edge of the Coming ’Sports Bubble’ - Breitbart

Warner Todd Huston

As the sports media industry stews over ESPN’s mass layoffs, some believe its the leading edge of the coming “sports bubble. ”[After news broke this week that cable sports network ESPN was firing 100 writers, reporters, and some staffers, nearly everyone in sports media had a take on why it happened. But, could ESPN’s firings be just the start of a growing problem for the entire industry as the “sports bubble” begins to burst across the world of sports broadcasting? The whole idea of a coming sports bubble was raised by TV answer man Phillip Swann, who writes on current trends in TV. Swann insists that ESPN may not be the only network to experience significant restructuring due to financial losses. In his analysis, Swann notes that much of the trouble at ESPN is the “cord cutting” indulged by former customers, because subscribing to sports channels has become prohibitively expensive for the average person. About five years ago, Swann noted, cable carriers began to cut their habit of including multiple sports channels in cable packages. It started because “the channels began raising their fees to unprecedented levels to offset the huge contracts they signed for the rights to broadcast the games,” he said. “Pay TV operators concluded that the escalating fees would soon dent their profit lines and they began to say no,” Swann wrote. “Compounding the pressure on the pay TV ops was the need to raise subscriber fees to make up for the higher carriage costs. Customers started to howl over the annual bill hikes, and that led to talk that they would drop their pay TV service, a practice known as . ” Swann went on to give more examples of cable providers backing away from the costs of sports packages on cable, and added that this bubble could eventually affect every sports channel. “Pay TV operators can’t afford to keep raising their monthly subscriber fees, and the only way they can stop doing it is stop paying excessive carriage fees,” he wrote. “And eventually,” Swann concluded, “as sports channels are forced to reduce their internal spending, they will also be forced to reduce their spending on the rights to air games and that will eventually force the leagues and teams to tighten their belts. ” But, if this trend in sports TV broadcasting continues, the financial strain won’t just be relegated to sports broadcasters. This bubble could very well spread and burst across cities that spend — and some contend waste — tax dollars on stadiums. These costs could even cascade to the unseemly amount of money teams already charge at ballpark gates. Once cable sports networks start folding because no one wants to pay their higher rates, the huge dollars they pay for broadcast rights will cease rolling into league pockets. This will cause the leagues to scramble to replace that lost revenue, and it will mean that prices will be raised for tickets that are already out of reach for the average fan. Worse, leagues will also likely begin ramping up their demands that local taxpayers pick up more and more of their expenses. This will likely cause a downward spiral in professional sports. Eventually, the increasing ticket prices will keep fans at home, and with fewer people attending games local politicians will find it harder to excuse handing tax dollars to billionaire team owners. After all, claims of the benefits of increased visitors to the areas where stadiums sit will become increasingly erroneous when fewer people are seen attending games. So, politicians will have no excuse to so readily hand out tax dollars like they do today. It is quite possible that in the years to come players will see their dollar salaries falling, teams will find fewer fans in the stands, cable TV will see fewer sports channels in existence, and the billions of dollars that currently flow throughout professional sports will dwindle. It is quite conceivable that the gravy train is just about ready to come to an end. Make no mistake, this will also eventually impact college sports, too. Ultimately it may cause a renaissance in sports. And maybe, just maybe, we will finally get back to playing sports for the love of the game instead of for the money. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.

As Warriors Prepare for Game 7 Pressure, LeBron James Says He Doesn’t Feel Any - The New York Times

Scott Cacciola

OAKLAND, Calif. — Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, told his players that they ought to feel pressure. How could they not ahead of Game 7 of the N. B. A. finals on Sunday night at Oracle Arena, with a chance to cement their place as one of the league’s forever teams against a fearsome opponent like the Cleveland Cavaliers? “Of course they’re going to feel pressure,” Kerr said. “Of course there’s going to be some anxiety. But how lucky are we to feel that pressure? You could play on a lottery team your whole career and just make a bunch of money and go watch the playoffs every year. ” Instead, the Warriors and the Cavaliers will put it all out there for the final time this season. As the Cavaliers’ LeBron James has said more than once as the series has unfolded, Game 7 has meant something special and rarely attained. The spotlight can be searing — for some people. Not everyone. Not James. “Listen,” James said, “at the end of the day, I go out every single night and give everything I’ve got to the game. The game has always given back to me. So I’m O. K. with whatever. ” James has been an indomitable force in the series. He leads all players in points (181) assists (51) steals (16) and blocked shots (13) and he is tied with his teammate Tristan Thompson for the most rebounds (68). James is shooting 51. 4 percent from the field and 40 percent from range. He has scored 41 points in each of the last two games, both wins for Cleveland. In the process, James has twice coaxed the Cavaliers away from the ledge of elimination — a remarkable feat given the stakes and Golden State’s dominance up to this point. The Warriors went the entire regular season without losing consecutive games, and they have never lost three straight games under Kerr in his two seasons as coach. That is what is required of the Cavaliers now: three straight to close out the finals and claim their first championship in franchise history. No team has ever come back to win the title after trailing in the finals by three games to one. The Cavaliers would be the first. James has already done a lot of fancy stuff in his career — he won two championships with the Miami Heat. But this, he said, would be the pinnacle. “I came back for a reason,” James said, “and that is to bring a championship to the city of Cleveland, to northeast Ohio and all of Ohio and all Cavaliers fans in the world. ” It has, to some extent, become a series of attrition. The Warriors lost Andrew Bogut, their starting center, for the remainder of the series when he injured his knee in Game 5. There was more carnage in the Cavaliers’ Game 6 win. The Warriors’ Andre Iguodala tweaked his back in the first half, and the Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving injured his left foot in the second half. Each player is important to his team’s title hopes — Iguodala defends James, and Irving pushes the pace. Both assured reporters that they would be fine for Game 7. “I’m breathing,” said Iguodala, who sat out Saturday’s practice to receive medical treatment. “Everybody’s banged up a little bit. ” James, who is making his seventh appearance in the finals, performed well in his only previous finals Game 7. In that game, on June 20, 2013, he scored a 37 points and shot 12 of 23 from the field as the Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs, . “I remember pretty much everything about the game,” James said. The Warriors are no strangers to adversity, either. In the Western Conference finals, they rebounded from a series deficit against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Cavaliers have presented another set of challenges. The Warriors’ Stephen Curry, who lost his composure when he fouled out of Game 6, said he dreamed of Game 7s as a child. “I need to play my best game of the year, if not my career, because of what the stakes are,” he said. “That doesn’t mean scoring 50 points, though. That means controlling the tempo of the game. When I need to be aggressive — well, I need to be aggressive. But when I need to push the envelope, do it, but do it under control. ” There have been 18 Game 7s in the history of the N. B. A. finals, and the home team has won 15 of them. The last time a visiting team clinched a title in a Game 7 was in 1978, when the Washington Bullets defeated the Seattle SuperSonics, . The home team has won six straight Game 7s. “The word everyone likes to use in sports is ‘pressure,’” James said. “I don’t really get involved in it. But I guess in layman’s terms, it’s pressure. I think it’s an opportunity to do something special. ”

State Dept. Dissent Cable on Trump’s Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures - The New York Times

Jeffrey Gettleman

NAIROBI, Kenya — It started out in Washington. Then it went to Jakarta. Then across Africa. One version even showed up on Facebook. Within hours, a State Department dissent cable, asserting that President Trump’s executive order to temporarily bar citizens from seven countries would not make the nation safer, traveled like a chain letter — or a viral video. The cable wended its way through dozens of American embassies around the world, quickly emerging as one of the broadest protests by American officials against their president’s policies. And it is not over yet. By 4 p. m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1, 000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it. The State Department has 7, 600 Foreign Service officers and 11, 000 civil servants. The letter had been evolving since this weekend, when the first draft emerged. It was edited as it moved along, with some diplomats adding words and others striking out passages. For example, one diplomat suggested this sentence should simply end on “lasting shame”: “The decision to restrict the freedom of in the United States and foreign nationals who wanted to travel to or settle in the United States during the 1940s has been a source of lasting shame for many in our country. ” Some officials who were trying to sign the document on Tuesday said it was not clear who was in charge or who was collecting signatures. The letter was passed through official State Department email accounts and on government time — several diplomats said union rules allowed them to work on dissent memos on the clock. “Policy dissent is in our culture,” said one diplomat in Africa, who did not want to speak publicly before the letter was released. “We even have awards for it. ” The letter, which harshly took apart the executive order, said the visa ban would “alienate allies” and “hurt America economically. ” Foreign travelers inject nearly $250 billion into the American economy, the letter said, supporting more than one million jobs. Some diplomats said they joined the dissent by sending an email saying “I’m in” or “Please add my name as a signer” along with their full name, title, position and post. The letter was apparently circulated through informal networks of diplomats and not through any State email list. One diplomat on vacation in the United States said he received the letter from a colleague in another part of the world who was not connected to the drafters and was simply passing it along. The diplomat predicted that hundreds of other diplomats would be eager to sign it if they could, but because of the complications of figuring out where the dissent memo originally came from, he was not sure how many would actually sign it. Most people in the State Department have never seen anything like this, the diplomat said. He said dissent memos were reserved for major policy issues, not for little grumbles like bad food in the embassy cafeteria. That diplomat also requested anonymity, saying that Foreign Service officers were not supposed to criticize American policy publicly and that he did not want to open himself up to accusations that he had violated the rules. That could threaten his job, he said, especially in such a polarized environment. This is exactly what the dissent channel, as it is called, was intended for. Starting in 1971 during the Vietnam War, the channel encourages department officials to voice their criticisms internally through a process of sending a memo or a cable to the secretary of state expressing their concerns and suggesting solutions. The final part of the visa ban memo lays out detailed alternatives, including increased vetting for specific nationalities. State Department rules are supposed to protect dissenters from being retaliated against, and last year several dozen diplomats signed a dissent memo criticizing American policy on Syria. But however officially tolerated, several veteran diplomats said dissent was still risky. When it comes to ambassadorships, the selection process is highly competitive — and highly subjective — and the diplomats said it would be impossible to prove why someone had been blocked from a coveted post. Previous dissent could easily be used against the person. Some State Department officials said on Tuesday that they would not sign the letter because of those risks. While one said he disagreed with the visa ban, he considered it his job to enforce American government policies whether or not he agreed with them. Other diplomats said the letter did not mean that dissenters would disobey the visa ban. The intent was to try to change the policy so the ban would be lifted, they said. The diplomat who said he would not use a dissent memo to complain about cafeteria food said that he had been torn when the United States invaded Iraq because he was strongly against the war, but that he did not know how to express his concern. He said he was just starting out at the time. The visa ban, he said, “was such obviously bad policy” that he was trying to find a way to sign the dissent letter. He also said that many diplomats were using the letter as a vehicle to express broader concerns about the way the Trump administration has appeared to sideline the State Department. The diplomat spoke in defense of refugees, saying that the tiny percentage from, say, Somalia who had been approved for resettlement in the United States had been scrutinized by several agencies and were among the most vulnerable of very vulnerable people. Now, many are stuck in limbo in transit centers. The diplomat also criticized Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, who said on Monday that State Department officials who did not agree with Mr. Trump’s agenda “should either get with the program or they can go. ” He called that “bullying at the highest levels. ”

Cuban on Trump: ’I Don’t Think He Lasts Four Years’ - Breitbart

Pam Key

Wednesday in New York City, owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban told TMZ he didn’t think President Donald Trump would last four years. Cuban said, “Some of his policies are fine, right, some of his policies — tax reform, reduction of bureaucracy … I think There are a lot of positives there, but I don’t think those are necessarily his ideas, and the execution, particularly on the ban, has been horrible. I mean, I don’t think he lasts four years. ” He added, “Look, it’s our country, we want him to do well and want the country to do well, there’s a lot of great opportunity here. It’s not about policies. It’s about temperament. It’s about approach. It’s about investing the time to learn. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Packers. Patriots. Steelers. Falcons. Who Has the Edge? - The New York Times

Benjamin Hoffman

Road teams finally found the success they were missing in this season’s playoffs, with Green Bay and Pittsburgh advancing to the conference championships. Both will have to repeat that road success if either team wants to make it to Super Bowl LI in Houston, as the Packers will travel to Atlanta and the Steelers will be on their way to New England. Here’s a quick preview of the conference championships: No. 4 Green Bay Packers ( ) at No. 2 Atlanta Falcons ( ) Time: 3:05 p. m. Eastern, Fox Spread: Falcons are favored by 4. They say “defense wins championships,” but the N. F. C. will almost assuredly be decided by which team’s superstar quarterbacks is able to do more damage. Aaron Rodgers has led the Green Bay Packers to eight consecutive wins, repeatedly delivering under intense pressure, and Matt Ryan looks like a completely different player than the one who struggled in recent seasons. Green Bay will be trying to win a a second consecutive playoff game on the road, and Atlanta, after an easy win over Seattle in the divisional round, will be trying to reach the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1998 season. No. 3 Pittsburgh Steelers ( ) at No. 1 New England Patriots ( ) Time: 6:40 p. m. Eastern, CBS Spread: Patriots are favored by 6. At one point during the season the Patriots seemed nearly unbeatable, but they have had to work far harder in recent weeks to keep things going. The Steelers, meanwhile, have hit their stride defensively, with an offense led by the usual suspects of Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown. It will be New England’s 11th appearance in the A. F. C. championship game in the 16 seasons of the Tom Brady Era, and the team will be trying to reach the Super Bowl for the seventh time in that span. The Steelers, who have won two Super Bowls with Roethlisberger, are hoping to make an appearance in the game for the fourth time in 12 seasons. Here’s how all four teams got here: It may not have been the type of game the Pittsburgh Steelers prefer to play, with all of the team’s scoring coming from their kicker’s foot, but in the playoffs a win is a win. And the Steelers’ ugly victory over the Kansas City Chiefs was just enough to earn the team a trip to New England to face the Patriots in the A. F. C. championship game. It was a game largely defined by Pittsburgh’s inability to punch the ball into the end zone after moving the ball well between the lines. The game’s biggest moment came near the end when Sean Davis, the Steelers’ defensive back whose hit helped set up a late touchdown for Kansas City, was able to help break up the Chiefs’ conversion attempt that would have tied the game. The Steelers wasted a tremendous effort by running back Le’Veon Bell, who broke his own franchise postseason record by gaining 170 yards on 30 carries. Despite Bell’s success, Pittsburgh was forced to turn to Chris Boswell, the team’s kicker, for a postseason record six field goals, breaking the previous record of five that been accomplished eight times. In an interview after the game, Boswell rejected the notion that he was the team’s newest “Killer B” along with Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Bell. “It was just about doing my job,” Boswell said. “Come out here and put it through the yellow pipes and don’t really think too much, don’t think ‘I’m the guy’ or anything. ” The Chiefs had started the game well, becoming the first team this season to score against Pittsburgh on an opening drive, but the offense went quiet after that, managing one field goal and one late touchdown which was too little, too late. Pittsburgh’s defense largely eliminated Tyreek Hill, the Chiefs’ versatile offensive weapon. He was limited to 18 rushing yards and 27 receiving yards, serving as a decoy on many of Kansas City’s plays. The Steelers will now go on the road against New England trying to earn its fourth trip to the Super Bowl in the Ben Roethlisberger era. “I think it’s going to be a showdown,” Bell said in a televised interview. “Obviously, two great quarterbacks going two of the best teams in the A. F. C. so it’s time to settle it next week. ” The Green Bay Packers could not hold on to a huge early lead, but in the game’s final seconds Aaron Rodgers was given one more chance to score, and his long completion to Jared Cook set up Mason Crosby’s field goal in a victory over the Dallas Cowboys that earned the Packers a trip to the N. F. C. championship game next week against Atlanta. After a string of boring playoff blowouts this season, all won by home teams, Green Bay bucked the trend in a thrilling game in which the Packers raced to a lead only to slowly let Dallas back into the game. The Cowboys tied it up at before the teams traded long field goals, with Crosby’s and makes beating out the from Dan Bailey that nearly resulted in overtime. There were offensive fireworks on both sides, as Rodgers threw for 356 yards and 2 touchdowns while Dak Prescott, the Cowboys’ Cinderella story at quarterback, threw for 302 yards and 3 touchdowns. While Rodgers walked away with the win, Prescott showed exactly why the team confidently kept him as the team’s starter even after longtime starter Tony Romo was declared healthy. In the end, however, Rodgers had just enough to overcome Dallas’ furious comeback. He rattled the Cowboys’ defense all game, catching them moving too slowly on substitutions, taking advantage of penalties, and deftly avoiding the rush to set up passing plays. And on the final drive, when his team needed him most, he found Cook downfield for a shocking gain that set up Crosby’s . Cook just barely got his feet down before going out of bounds, with the play requiring a review after officials disagreed about whether or not he made the catch. Rodgers was all smiles in an interview after the game, saying the game was fun. But when asked about what he was thinking as his long pass to Cook was reeled in, he gave all the credit to Cook. “It was a great catch by Jared,” Rodgers said, adding “It’s just kind of schoolyard at times late in the game like that. ” Rodgers was forced to play the entire game without his top wide receiver, Jordy Nelson, but he was able to succeed thanks to strong games from Cook, Davante Adams and Randall Cobb. Ty Montgomery, the wide back, chipped in with 11 carries for 47 yards and 2 touchdowns, while also catching 6 passes for 34 yards. That the game was left to Crosby’s strong right leg may have worried some Packers fans, but the veteran kicker had an incredible final four minutes of the game. His make set a franchise playoff record, and he had to make the attempt twice as Dallas used a timeout to erase his first attempt. While the was a fairly low kick, it easily made it over the crossbar, completing the Green Bay victory. Green Bay has now won eight consecutive games after Rodgers vowed to “run the table” following the team’s loss to Washington in Week 11. While the quarterback’s long streak without an interception finally ended in the second half, he continued to show off the M. V. P. form that had eluded him in the first half of the season. The loss ended what had been a remarkable season for Dallas, a team that captured the No. 1 seed in the N. F. C. despite losing Romo during the preseason and being forced to hand over the offense to Prescott, a draft pick who few expected to play, let alone start. But Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott, along with some tremendous play by the team’s offensive line, formed an offense that few could keep up with. As the No. 4 seed in the conference, Green Bay will travel to face the No. Falcons in Atlanta next Sunday. ■ Matt Ryan led the Atlanta Falcons to a win over the Seattle Seahawks and heard choruses of “M. V. P.! M. V. P. !” which seemed justified by his performance. That his return to the playoffs was a huge success against Seattle’s Legion of Boom secondary was quite an accomplishment, though it comes with the asterisk of Earl Thomas having missed the game. Thomas, the safety, was sorely missed, especially on a by running back Devonta Freeman, who executed a fake that left Thomas’s replacement, Steven Terrell, grasping at air as he fell to the turf. ■ The Houston Texans’ defense was the only thing keeping the team together all season, and the unit did its best in a lopsided loss to the New England Patriots in which the team intercepted Tom Brady twice but also saw Dion Lewis become the first player in the Super Bowl era to score touchdowns on a run, a pass and a kickoff return in a playoff game. The Houston defense got little help from Brock Osweiler, the team’s quarterback who seemed to change a few minds last week, then reminded everyone of his flaws with three interceptions on Saturday. Even with a victory for the Patriots, the game showed a great number of flaws for New England going forward. Pretty or not, the Patriots are headed to the team’s 11th conference championship game in the last 16 seasons.

Fake Company, Facebook, to Battle Fake News?

Daily Bell Staff

Fake Company, Facebook, to Battle Fake News? By Daily Bell Staff - November 19, 2016 Zuckerberg: Facebook will develop tools to fight fake news … Fake news sites designed to trick you … Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a series of measures that should help prevent fake news from being shared on Facebook. The planned controls, which were announced in a late night Facebook post, follow accusations that a flood of fake news stories influenced the U.S. presidential election. -CNN Facebook is taking steps to counteract “fake news” but in many ways Facebook is a fake company. We wrote about it here, quoting an article entitled, “Behind Facebook—A New World Order Agenda?” Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC. The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”. Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet. Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence. She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development. We can see that Facebook’s initial funding came from individuals affiliated with US government/intel facilities: the CIA and DARPA. There is no doubt the US government has promoted Facebook around the world. It is an affiliate of the Deep State far more than it is a “private company.” And what about CNN, excerpted above? CNN is in a sense a fake news organization just as Facebook is a fake social media facility. CNN reportedly receives payments to promote stories that governments want publicized. For instance, former CNN reporter Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy award winner exposed CNN in 2015 for receiving payments from the US government and foreign governments to pick and choose news items, see here . More from CNN: “The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” wrote Zuckerberg. “We take this responsibility seriously. We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done.” The CEO said that Facebook (FB, Tech30) is working to develop stronger fake news detection, a warning system, easier reporting and technical ways to classify misinformation. … Zuckerberg did not say how quickly the measures would be in place. But they should make it much easier for users to flag misleading content — similar to the way cyberbullying can be reported with a single click on some social media. The idea that users can flag “fake” news content would be more credible if the US government along with other governments had not already created squads of Internet monitors, see this article entitled, “US Government Using Trolls To Attack Conspiracy Theorists, here. These monitors will surely be able to click articles that are in some sense inimical to various vested globalist interests. The entire fake news controversy is suspect, starting with the idea that fake news “helped” Donald Trump get elected president of the US. As we recall, there was a good deal of fake news, but most of it seemed to emanate from the mainstream media. This mainstream resolutely would not investigate or report on the worst of the Clintons’ apparent criminality – including potential rape, mishandling of classified data and “pay-to-play” donations to the Clinton Foundation. Additionally, the mainstream reported a steady stream of polls favorable to Hillary by using tactics that exaggerated her voter endorsements. We arrive at the justifiable conclusion that the “fake news” controversy is itself a fake one, that outfits such as CNN that are reporting on it are fake and that Internet facilities charged with identifying fake news items like Facebook are also fake. Those behind this gambit obviously intend to use it to attack the alternative media, which has been very effective in puncturing the propaganda of the Deep State. The very largest irony is that this fake news meme is aimed at truth-telling in the alternative media. Conclusion: Whether or not this will work is a separate question, as we wrote here . But the idea is to create such a large lie that people will believe it. This has happened before.

Wikileaks Emails Disclose Aliens Linked to Vatican!

Arnold Monteverde (noreply@blogger.com)

Sound too “strange” to be true? We have proof! Contained in the Pedestal email files that were leaked by Julian Assange’s Wikileaks were hidden a set of emails sent to John Podesta from Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, evidence that they are getting updates from the Vatican about their awareness of extraterrestrial life, UFO’s. In the video below, the famous author, pastor and speaker, Billy Crone, reveals his dealings with UFO’s and alien life. Additionally, he delves into how October will end with a Satanic BANG and how Hillary is involved. All that and more in this exclusive report… Locklip SOURCE

'Rebel' snipers shoot at 40 civilians trying to flee Aleppo while Russia facilitates large-scale humanitarian efforts

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 17:19 UTC © Abdalrhman Ismail / Reuters Terrorists in eastern Aleppo opened sniper fire on around 40 civilians who were trying to escape the rebel-controlled area of the city , the Russian Ministry of Defense announced, confirming that no airstrikes have been conducted in the area for nine days. "Because of the sniper fire from the militants, another attempt of the Syrian authorities and the Russian reconciliation center to evacuate around 40 people from eastern districts of Aleppo to safe regions of the city was derailed," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday, adding that the incident happened overnight . The general also said that Russian and Syrian planes have stayed at least 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away from Aleppo for nine days, after the sorties were halted on October 18. Two days after the strikes ceased, Damascus and Moscow organized safe passage corridors for those wishing to leave the besieged neighborhoods. Six safe routes are now being offered to civilians, while two have been designated for armed rebels. The jihadists, however, refuse to surrender and constantly shell escape routes and government-controlled parts of the city. "The terrorists continue indiscriminately shelling residential districts of the city with makeshift rocket launchers, blocking the civilians from leaving using the humanitarian corridors," the general said. While air raids are suspended, Russia continues to facilitate aid deliveries to Syria's second largest city. On Wednesday, some 15 tons of aid was delivered to residents of Aleppo's Kurdish-run Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood, located close to the demarcation line, the Russian reconciliation center announced. The nine kilogram (19.8 pound) packages included rice, macaroni, and cooking oil. The humanitarian rescue mission was discussed at the UN Security Council meeting earlier on Thursday, where the Russian envoy accused UN teams on the ground of failing to negotiate safe passage for civilians aiming to escape eastern Aleppo. In response, the UN's under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, blamed the parties involved in the conflict for their failure to provide adequate security guarantees. Comment: Jan Egeland, special adviser to UN special envoy de Mistura, was more honest, simply stating : "It was very clear today that the Russians want to help us," Jan Egeland said after a meeting in Geneva on the relief effort in Syria. "They would like to help us get access to east Aleppo." O'Brien on the other hand, was moved to American-like heights of pseudo-indignation. Egeland added: "The United States and the like-minded pledged to help us in our humanitarian diplomacy with the armed opposition side, which is difficult and which in the case of medical evacuation was not satisfactory . We lost a lot of time because of all of the conditions that were raised also on that side," he said. Egeland added that "there simply was too little trust, there simply was too much fear, there were too many misunderstandings, there were too many confusing messages for this very complex and very dangerous operation... to take place." The ICRC also welcomed Russia's humanitarian efforts, guaranteeing to do everything possible to protect civilians and evacuate Aleppo. Comment: Murad Gazdiev continues his on-the-ground reporting from Aleppo. In his latest, he speaks to Emenour, Aleppo's only female taxi driver, about life before the war.

Uncensored Truth: Here’s What Really Happened at #NoDAPL Protests Yesterday

hqanon

( SSC ) Cannonball, ND — Over 300 police officers in riot gear, 8 ATVs, 5 armored vehicles, 2 helicopters, and numerous military-grade humvees showed up north of the newly formed frontline camp just east of Highway 1806. The 1851 Treaty Camp was set up this past Sunday directly in the path of the pipeline, on land recently purchased by DAPL. Today this camp, a reclamation of unceded Dakota territory affirmed as part of the Standing Rock Reservation in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851, was violently cleared. Both blockades established this past weekend to enable that occupation were also cleared. In addition to pepper spray and percussion grenades, shotguns were fired into the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet. A prayer circle of elders, including several women, was interrupted and all were arrested for standing peacefully on the public road. A tipi was erected in the road and was recklessly dismantled, despite promises from law enforcement that they would merely mark the tipi with a yellow ribbon and ask its owners to retrieve it. A group of water protectors was also dragged out of a ceremony in a sweat lodge erected in the path of the pipeline, wearing minimal clothing, thrown to the ground, and arrested. A member of the International Indigenous Youth Council (IIYC) that had her wrist broken during a mass-arrest on October 22nd was hurt again after an officer gripped her visibly injured wrist and twisted it during an attempted arrest. At least six other members of the youth council verified that they had been maced up to five times and were also shot and hit with bean bags. In addition to being assaulted, an altar item and sacred staff was wrenched from the hands of an IIYC member by police. Several other sacred items were reported stolen, including a canupa (sacred tobacco pipe). Two medics giving aid at front line were hit with batons and thrown off the car they were sitting on. Then police grabbed another medic, who was driving the car, out of the driver side while it was still in motion. Another water protector had to jump into the car to stop it from hitting other people.

Times When the “Mainstream Media Created Fake News”… And People Died As a Result

Contributing Author

This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project . Editor’s Comment: While the powers that be are determining the fate of alternative media voices that are now branded under the dubious label “fake news” and blacked out from online search results , it is worth keeping in mind all the disinformation and downright lies that have been perpetrated by the corporate news media – typically hand in hand with a political agenda. Whether it is lies that took us to war, or the perception that a deadly attack was carried out by a certain group, the impressions they create play a significant role in determining world events. Often times, that role is one of deception, ensnaring people into supporting deadly and costly actions – in spite of the true facts. These misleaders are the fake news, and the fake news problem has helped to ruin this country. 5 Times Corporate Media Got Caught Publishing Fake News Causing the Death & Suffering of Millions by Claire Bernish A now-notorious list of ostensibly “fake” news sites — created by a liberal professor, seemingly out of thin air — spread like wildfire online in the past two days and was eagerly reprinted by corporate media presstitutes hoping to vindicate their own failed reporting on the 2016 election. But branding perfectly legitimate outlets with the same scarlet letter as those devoid of integrity deemed the professor’s list a spurious attempt to defame alternative and independent media — anyone dissenting from the left’s mainstream narrative — as a whole. This is, in no uncertain terms, a hit list — or, at least, a laughable attempt — and it fits conveniently into the establishment’s burgeoning war on independent media disguised as a battle against fake news . When corporate media outlets from the Independent and Business Insider , to the Los Angeles Times and NYMag scrambled over one another to reprint this irresponsibly contrived hit list, they proved yet again a lack of journalistic integrity — the same issue that originally caused regular subscribers to abandon them in the first place. Indeed, in this otherwise unknown professor’s foray into the world of journalism, a glaring mistake was made — the only mainstream outlets making the list were those who had heralded Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for the White House. Such an obvious attempt to control thought could only be conjured in a totalitarian regime. In fact, failing to place the exact corporate media organizations on the list, who for nearly a year praised fealty only to Hillary Clinton — and for decades have foisted on the public countless mendacious whoppers — constitutes a comedic lack of honesty. So, to bring that irony front and center, it’s imperative to examine some mainstream lies — most of which had appalling consequences — including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the United States and around the world. 1. George W. Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction President George W. Bush decided to unleash the full force of the U.S. military upon the world in a new policy of war writ large disguised as a war on terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. First arbitrarily designating Afghanistan as its primary victim due to the supposed identities of the attackers, Bush then chose Iraq to feel the wrath, and set out to invade the country following dubious claims Saddam Hussein harbored destructive chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking far stronger munitions. “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” the president asserted in a public address on March 17, 2003. “This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.” Bush’s assertions were questioned by not only human rights experts, but by U.N. weapons inspectors and countless others — so shortly after the U.S. invaded the sovereign nation, the New York Times took up the slack to fill in the appropriate casus belli . Judith Miller notoriously reported on a source she described only as an Iraqi scientist who had seen several extensive caches of such weapons stored somewhere in the country. American weapons experts, she claimed, “said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein’s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990’s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq’s giant weapons plants.” In hindsight, Miller’s problematic report turned out to be horrendously flawed , and the Times spent months attempting to backtrack , but the damage — fomenting widescale public support for a war no one wanted the military to undertake — had been done. Years later in 2014, the Times — after much internal strife — again took up Miller’s case, in a series reporting catastrophic injuries U.S. military personnel suffered in handling chemical weapons in Iraq. But that report, and the parroting of it by multiple other mainstream mainstays, failed to fully disclose Hussein had been oblivious to the stockpiles presence — something the CIA had clearly stated in a report . 2. Gulf of Tonkin Incident Often, the American mainstream media becomes a de facto government employee, taking the claims of U.S. officials and reporting them as proven fact — and nothing exemplifies this penchant better than reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin incident — perhaps one of most flagrant lies ever dreamed up as a justification for war. On August 5, 1964, the New York Times reported “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.” Additional outlets, such as the Washington Post , echoed this claim. But it wasn’t true. At all. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as it became known, turned out to be a fictitious creation courtesy of the government to escalate war in Vietnam — leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese, fomenting the largest anti-war movement in American history, and tarnishing the reputation of a nation once considered at least somewhat noble in the eyes of the world. In 2010, more than 1,100 transcripts from the Vietnam era were released, proving Congress and officials raised serious doubts about the information fed to them by the Pentagon and White House. But while this internal grumbling took place, mainstream media dutifully reported official statements as if the veracity of the information couldn’t be disputed. Tom Wells, author of the exhaustive exposé “The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam,” explained the media egregiously erred in “almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information” and “reluctance to question official pronouncements on ‘national security issues.’” If due diligence had been performed, and reporters had raised appropriate doubts about the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, it’s arguable whether support for the contentious war would have lasted as long as it did. 3. Suppression of brutality perpetrated in Bahrain during the Arab Spring CNN sent reporter Amber Lyon and a crew to U.S. ally Bahrain for a documentary about technology’s role in the 2011 people’s uprising known as the Arab Spring, ultimately titled “ iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring ” — but what they encountered instead bore the hallmarks of a repressive and violent regime, and its attempt to filter and censor the truth. Lyon and the other CNN reporters went to great lengths to speak with sources participating in the massive uprising — one the Bahraini government wished to quash at all costs. “By the time the CNN crew arrived,” the Guardian reported , “many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. Leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was charged with crimes shortly after speaking to the CNN team. A doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village and arranged meetings with government opponents, Saeed Ayyad, had his house burned to the ground shortly after. Their local fixer was fired ten days after working with them.” Even the CNN crew experienced the wrath of the regime, upon showing up to interview one source, the Guardian continued, “‘20 heavily-armed men’, whose faces were ‘covered with black ski masks’, ‘jumped from military vehicles’, and then ‘pointed machine guns at’ the journalists, forcing them to the ground. The regime’s security forces seized their cameras and deleted their photos and video footage, and then detained and interrogated them for the next six hours.” After returning to the U.S., Lyon felt it her duty to expose the abuse being perpetrated by the government of an ally nation — but CNN International didn’t agree. CNN U.S. eventually aired the one-hour documentary. Once. CNN International never did — worse, the organization gave Lyon the cold shoulder, ignoring her repeated requests to return to Bahrain, which would have put CNN ahead of the game in reporting government brutality. Its failure to air the documentary and refusal to provide justification for doing so angered seasoned CNN and other mainstream established journalists across the board. Lyon met with CNN International president Tony Maddox twice — he first promised to investigate why the documentary wasn’t aired, and then turned against her, warning the journalist not to discuss the matter publicly. Bahraini officials contacted CNN International repeatedly complaining about Lyon’s continued reporting on what she’d witnessed. Intimidation continued until she was eventually laid off, putatively for an unrelated matter. Attempting to save face, CNN International rebuffed the Guardian ’s account and interview with Lyon — but the effort was an impotent justification for the obvious failure of integrity. But threats for Lyon to remain silent followed her off the job, and when she persisted in exposing the Bahraini regime, as well as the suppression by CNN , the outlet sent a stern warning to halt. Lyon, however, said she had never signed a non-disclosure agreement and would not be pressured into their lies — ultimately walking away reputation in hand — something that could not be said for CNN . 4. That time Fox News hired a CIA operative who wasn’t a CIA operative Wayne Shelby Simmons made guest appearances on Fox News as a security expert with insider expertise from his work as a CIA operative — for over a decade. However, Simmons had never been employed by the agency — in fact, the imposter’s lies eventually caught up with him and he was arrested and sentenced to 33 months in prison . “Instead of verifying whether Simmons had actually worked for the CIA, Fox News and the Agency allowed him to make fools out of Bill O’Reilly , Sean Hannity , Andrew Napolitano , Neil Cavuto , and everyone at Fox & Friends for over the last twelve years. After building a false reputation as a CIA agent on Fox News, Simmons obtained an interim security clearance when an unnamed government contractor hired him in 2008. Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA , and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000,” The Free Thought Project ’s Andrew Emett explained . In other words, mainstream Fox News didn’t bother with journalism at all — proffering fake expertise as the real deal — because the outlet failed the most basic of tasks any hourly wage employer would perform. Simmons’ commentaries weren’t harmless stabs in the dark, either — relentlessly parroting baseless Islamophobic rhetoric to drum up support for the government’s insidious war on terror likely poisoned the minds of thousands of viewers, furthering the already divisive atmosphere in the U.S. 5. Vapid anti-marijuana propaganda and the furtherance of the war on drugs According to the Drug Policy Alliance, over $51 billion is spent fighting the war on drugs in the United States — each year. In 2015, a striking 38.6 percent of all arrests for drug possession were for cannabis — 643,121 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses. What those figures don’t show are the millions of lives ruined by criminal conviction for the government’s unjustifiable quest to eradicate, demonize, and vilify this beneficial plant. It would be an impossible task to tally the number of families whose homes have been destroyed by SWAT teams searching for marijuana — whether or not police bothered to verify an address . An untold number of others have been slain by police for the same reason. But worst of all, the mainstream media propagates nonsensical, false propaganda about cannabis to convince the gullible and ignorant among us to equate it with heroin, cocaine, and other ‘illicit’ substances. And while a majority of the populace has seen through such lies, some outlets have obstinately continued the drug war — seemingly of their own volition. One stunning example occurred in March last year, when Dr. David Samadi made a guest appearance on Fox News to fearmonger the horrors of marijuana and scare the bejeezus out of the viewing audience. “It actually causes heart attacks. It increases your heart rate. And on and on,” Samadi claimed , fecklessly distorting statistics. “We’re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency [room] and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana. Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.” Fortunately, the Internet has provided the public with alternatives to these corporate media lies — and as of two years ago, despite these and other claims about pot being a dangerous substance, Pew Research Center found fully 69 percent of the population felt alcohol was more harmful than cannabis. * * * While this list presents only a few of the bigger lies of the corporate press, there are innumerable examples of its proud history of actual fake news. Keep these in mind when the mainstream presstitutes rush to reprint a hit list targeting journalists and outlets whose narratives counter the establishment. Indeed, it would be the corporate media — with its vast captive audience — who most deserves to be listed as propagators of lies. This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project .

Fact-Checking Apple’s Claims on E.U. Tax Ruling - The New York Times

Katie Benner

SAN FRANCISCO — Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, issued a defiant letter to his European customers on Tuesday after the region’s antitrust enforcer ordered Ireland to collect 13 billion euros, or about $14. 5 billion, in back taxes from the company. By turns outraged and scolding, Mr. Cook pushed back on the findings by Europe’s competition commission, which said that Apple had made inappropriate deals with the Irish government that let the technology company pay almost nothing on its European business in some years. Instead, Mr. Cook framed Apple’s operations in Ireland as an investment in the people there, declared that Apple has a history as a good corporate tax citizen, and added that the European Commission’s decision will hurt investment and business growth in Europe. We examined some of the points Mr. Cook made in the letter, consulting with five tax experts to the chief executive’s statements. While Mr. Cook was technically truthful, he omitted some context and shifted the spotlight from the thrust of the European Commission’s case: whether Apple took advantage of loopholes in Irish tax laws. MR. COOK’S LETTER “As our business has grown over the years, we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland, the largest taxpayer in the United States, and the largest taxpayer in the world. ” FACT CHECK While it’s not a bad guess that Apple is the largest taxpayer on the planet because of the company’s immense size, even Mr. Cook said in testimony before Congress in 2013 that this was just an estimate. United States corporate tax information is private, so there is no way for Apple to say for sure that it is the biggest taxpayer in the country, much less the world. The issue of how much money Apple pays in taxes is also a bit of a red herring. “This fight with the European Union is not about what the company has paid in taxes overall, but about how much it should pay,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “Tax systems are not a system. ” _________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “In Ireland and in every country where we operate, Apple follows the law and we pay all the taxes we owe. ” FACT CHECK Apple, along with many multinational companies, takes advantage of differences in national tax laws by moving money around the globe in ways that shrink their overall tax burdens. While a company like Apple may pay all of the taxes that it owes, it also tries to find legal ways to owe as little as possible. The European Union wants to crack down on the ways that companies minimize their tax bills in Europe, especially in Ireland. In the 1980s, Ireland began modeling itself after Bermuda, a corporate tax haven, said Khadija Sharife, a forensic financial researcher and an editor at the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting. Ireland’s corporate tax rate is 12. 5 percent, compared with 35 percent in the United States. While Ireland is phasing out some rules, “companies will continue to come up with ways to pay less taxes in other countries until all countries across the world can agree on corporate tax rules,” said Lisa De Simone, assistant professor of accounting at Stanford University. __________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals. ” FACT CHECK The European Commission makes clear, and tax experts agree, that Ireland let Apple determine how much of the income that it generated in the country would be recognized and taxed there. The rest of Apple’s income that was not recognized and taxed in Ireland could be put in other corporate structures that were effectively stateless. That meant the money in those structures was not taxable anywhere — not even in Ireland — and thus not subject to Ireland’s 12. 5 percent tax rate. While other companies have also had the right to negotiate with Ireland, the commission considers these sorts of loopholes a . “In the U. S. states can fall all over themselves to offer subsidies and loopholes, but that is exactly what is illegal in Europe,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. __________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “The Commission’s move is unprecedented and it has serious, implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been. ” FACT CHECK Mr. Kleinbard said the commission is not replacing Ireland’s tax law with a view of what the commission thinks should happen. It is simply asking Ireland to enforce the tax rate that it has and close loopholes that allow companies like Apple not to recognize large portions of the income they generate in Ireland and pay even less. __________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of E. U. member states over their own tax matters, and to the principle of certainty of law in Europe. ” FACT CHECK Stanford’s Ms. De Simone agrees with Apple that the E. U. ruling hurts the sovereignty of its member countries. If Ireland wants to create rules that allow for stateless entities not to pay taxes anywhere, up until now that has been Ireland’s decision to make. While the E. U. has been trying to create harmony across the region when it comes to how to treat corporate taxes, for now taxes are “an issue for each individual member state in Europe,” said Dr. Liza Lovdahl Gormsen with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. She said this case creates uncertainty for many multinational companies across Europe. __________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States. ” FACT CHECK It’s true the majority of Apple’s profits are taxed in the United States. But Ms. De Simone said Apple has also kept more than $200 billion in accumulated profits offshore. That money could someday be brought home and taxed, but Apple is in control of whether or not that actually happens. __________ MR. COOK’S LETTER “Beyond the obvious targeting of Apple, the most profound and harmful effect of this ruling will be on investment and job creation in Europe. ” FACT CHECK There is support among tax experts for this statement. Mr. Rosenthal of the Tax Policy Center said so many countries are motivated to use low tax rates to generate business that Europe could lose multinational business if companies are discouraged by the commission’s ruling on Irish tax treatment of Apple. But Mr. Rosenthal said the issue is ultimately broader than Europe. People would do well to also remember the total amount of government revenue being lost to tax deals, he said. “If we allow companies like Apple to pick its tax haven — to place a few thousand employees in a place for a lower tax rate — we do add a few jobs,” he said. “But more widely, the taxes given up globally could be used for public service, worker training and infrastructure repair. ”

Donald Trump Rebukes Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Deriding His Candidacy - The New York Times

Maggie Haberman

Donald J. Trump on Tuesday assailed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court for speaking out on the presidential race, calling her disdainful remarks about his candidacy “highly inappropriate” and suggesting that she owed other justices an apology. Mr. Trump’s remarks came in a telephone interview with The Times two days after Justice Ginsburg was quoted as saying she was frightened about what the nation would look like if he were elected. “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Justice Ginsburg told The Times in an interview published Sunday. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that. ” She even joked ruefully about moving to New Zealand. Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, said he found those remarks unbefitting a member of the high court. “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it’s a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. ” He continued: “That she should be saying that? It’s so beneath the court for her to be making statements like that. It only energizes my base even more. And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible. ” Mr. Trump also said he expected to announce his choice of a running mate by Friday, winding down a process that has been closely watched as in all likelihood the most significant decision he will make in his campaign. “I have five candidates, plus two, two that are unknown to anybody,” Mr. Trump said from Chicago, where he was raising money for his campaign. “I will be making a decision over the next to period of time, and I think it will be a decision that will be a very good decision for a lot of people,” he added. Mr. Trump said that he was not basing his selection on prowess or potential, and indicated that he had had enough experience with many of those he has been considering for the job that their tryouts on the campaign trail would not necessarily be determinative. “I’ve been with these people for a long time — I know them,” Mr. Trump said, specifically invoking Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. “Christie was excellent yesterday and Newt is excellent. ” Mr. Trump will appear on Tuesday night in Indiana with Gov. Mike Pence, who has risen in the estimation of many of the nominee’s advisers. Mr. Trump said his decision was largely coming down to instinct. “A lot of is gut. A lot of it is,” he said. “My whole life has been about gut. ” He also suggested that he would consider polling in states like heavily Democratic Connecticut, which he again said he believed he could put in play in November. Asked for quick thoughts about each of the candidates he is known to be considering, Mr. Trump played along. Governor Christie? “Strong,” he said. Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn? “A patriot. ” Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa? “A terrific, exciting person. ” Governor Pence? “Solid as a rock. ” And Mr. Gingrich? “Newt is Newt. He’s a good guy. ”

RT reaches 4 billon views on YouTube

Truth Broadcast Network

18 mins ago 2 Views 0 Comments 0 Likes Check Keiser Report website for more: http://www.maxkeiser.com/ In this episode of the Keiser Report Max and Stacy discuss howls at the moon as the Bank of Japan attempts to taper the Tokyo condo market ponzi. They also discuss the newly announced interventions by the UK government in the nation’s deflating property pyramid. In the second half Max interviews journalist and comedy writer, Charlie Skelton, about his observations on the US elections. He concludes that Hillary is the face in the machine of the Matrix and that the craziness is the system. WATCH all Keiser Report shows here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL768A33676917AE90 (E1-E200) http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC3F29DDAA1BABFCF (E201-E400) http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPszygYHA9K2ZtV_1KphSugBB7iZqbFyz (E401-600) http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPszygYHA9K1GpAv3ZKpNFoEvKaY2QFH_ (E601-E800) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPszygYHA9K19wt4CP0tUgzIxpJDiQDyl (E801-Current) Subscribe Like

Thieves’ Picnic at Trust Bank: Russia’s Biggest Bank Heist Gets Worse, and Worsley

Lambert Strether

by Lambert Strether Lambert here: John LeCarré, contemporary historian. By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears In the first tale of the thieves’ picnic, published by Leslie Charteris in 1937,a gang of robbers, kidnappers, and smugglers starts to fall apart over a $2 million lottery ticket one of the thieves stole from the gang’s pot. The detective who recovers the ticket, and rescues a diamond-cutter who’d been abducted for the gang’s diamond-smuggling operation, rolls up the crimes by pretending to be a gangster himself, and encouraging the others to betray each other. By the standards of Ilya Yurov and Benedict Worsley, the original thieves’ picnic was a fight over peanuts. Yurov, the control shareholder of Trust Bank, managed the disappearance of $3.3 billion in Trust Bank funds until December 2014, when the Central Bank stopped his operations, and financed Otkritie Bank to take over in his place. Within weeks, Russian government investigators found the gap between Trust’s assets and liabilities had jumped from Rb67.8 billion to Rb114 billion; in pre-devaluation terms, that’s from $2 billion to $3.3 billion — bigger larcenies than the previous records set by Sergei Pugachev at Mezhprombank and Andrei Borodin at Bank of Moscow . Worsley had helped Yurov by operating hundreds of offshore companies and bank accounts through which the money was moved, mostly as sham loans. Yurov is now living in Kent as a guest of the British government. Worsley, who divides his time between Cyprus and Dubai, is now employed by Otkritie Bank, Trust’s new owner. Worsley is being paid $32,500 per month as an informer, with a promise of a bounty of up to 4% of the recovery value of the assets Yurov and he allegedly stole and laundered, plus an indemnity from prosecution. The Worsley arrangement was kept secret by Otkritie Bank until revealed recently in the High Court in London. The informer reward deal is unprecedented in the history of Russian bank fraud, according to London bankers and lawyers. “In a multi-billion fraud of this size,” said one international bank source, “a deal like this can be justified if the recovery is large enough – that is, if Otkritie Bank and the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency couldn’t follow the money trail without the informer, and if they manage to recover significantly more than they pay out to the informer. But why has Otkritie tried to keep the deal secret? The court papers show that $3.3 billion is missing from Trust Bank; Yurov’s bank accounts and assets add up to $830 million. How much is Worsley holding back? Does he stand to get richer with the Otkritie deal than he got with Yurov?”Ben Worsley, according to London sources, is about 50 years of age, with a round head, bald pate, dark-rimmed glasses, an uncanny resemblance to the actor Alex Guinness (right) — and a severe allergy to being photographed. In 2014 a videotape of him surfaced on the internet, filmed secretly by a disgruntled employee at a palatial estate near Montpellier, in the south of France. Worsley claimed the house belonged to “a Russian banker”, but he lived in it as if it were his own. All traces of the videotape, and of photographs of Worsley, have disappeared. Once employed in Moscow by Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa banking group, Worsley became acquainted with one of Alfa’s inter-bank clients, Trust Bank. This had been taken over by Yurov and his associates from Mikhail Khodorkovsky, after the latter took what Yurov has subsequently claimed to have been $300 million out of the bank’s capital. High Court papers presented by Otkritie Bank, as well as a recent interview Yurov has given to a Moscow newspaper, document the role Yurov hired Worsley to play for him and for Trust Bank in Cyprus. Ruling this past July 28 to uphold a freeze order over $830 million in Yurov’s Swiss and other bank accounts and his UK home, Justice Sir Stephen Males (right) said Worsley “had first-hand, contemporaneous interaction with [the Trust shareholders] and was involved in setting up their network of secret companies. The claims are based in large part on documentary evidence of the terms and (non-) performance of the loans, and the connections between the borrowers and [the shareholders] exposed by Mr Worsley (and supported at least in part by the documents he has provided, including the various trustees and shareholding documents.” The evidence, according to Males, was that in May 2015 Worsley had still been working with Yurov, when the two of them were negotiating with Otkritie for the return of the bank’s money. Six months later, Worsley had changed sides. On November 17, 2015 — Males confirmed the court was subsequently told by Otkritie Bank – an agreement was signed with Worsley to trace money through the offshore companies he had managed and controlled. “In return, Trust Bank [Otkritie Bank] has agreed to pay a monthly retainer to Mr Worsley of US $32,500 and to indemnify him against any claims that may be made against him by third parties (including [the shareholders]) in relation to any new instructions (but not for acts that happened in the past). Mr Worsley also agreed to provide a witness statement setting out truthfully his dealings with [the shareholders] and Trust Bank.” The judge said he is not sure whether a commission of between 1.5% and 4% of the “net value of certain assets recovered” was part of the Worsley deal. Otkritie has sought no freeze over Worsley’s bank accounts or property; there are no criminal charges against Worsley in the Russian, Swiss, British or Cypriot courts. How much Worsley may have concealed from Yurov in order to benefit himself the judge didn’t venture to guess. Males has written that he is sure Worsley has received from the bank a pledge not to prosecute him for what he had done, and to pay his legal fees if someone else prosecutes. “The agreement also includes (i) a release of any claims by the bank, (ii) a promise by the bank to provide support and assistance in any proceedings against Mr Worsley relating to his past conduct and to consider providing an indemnity, and (iii) a promise to tell any prosecutor or other authority that any claims which the bank may have against Mr Worsley have been amicably resolved and that the bank does not wish to pursue any prosecution or complaint against him.” Yurov (right) has responded that Worsley is a turmcoat who is being paid to testify falsely against him. Yurov has defended himself in court and in the Moscow press by suggesting Otkritie had kept its deal with Worsley secret to protect Worsley’s share of the assets, along with other beneficiaries. Yurov says he had instructed Worsley to trace the funds owed to the bank; and that Worsley is now lying to save himself. How much money was lost through companies Yurov didn’t know, and through transactions Worsley decided in his stead, is yet to be tested in court. That’s when the thieves’ picnic will be clearer to all. The High Court record reveals that Otkritie and the judge agree with Yurov that not all of the Trust Bank losses went to benefit Yurov or his associates. There had been, according to Males, “transactions of immense complexity which give rise to what appears to be a strong inference of money laundering and the siphoning off of at least some funds to the shareholders’ personal accounts. Nevertheless, the bank did make clear when applying for the freezing order that its case was that although some substantial sums had been misappropriated to the shareholders’ personal use, this did not apply to all or even most of the funds which were the subject of improper loans.” The judge continued by quoting from testimony given by Dmitry Popkov (right) , currently deputy chief executive of Otkritie Bank and a director on the new Trust Bank board. “Thus Mr Popkov said that: ‘It is not Trust Bank’s case that the entire US $830 million lost by Trust Bank was stolen by [the shareholders] or their personal benefit. The losses were caused by a combination of [the shareholders] misappropriating money by channelling into their own projects; their paying off other bad loans, including to their companies; and misconduct by [the shareholders] over many years. It is also likely that the losses have been exacerbated by the deterioration of the Russian real estate market and the contraction of the Russian economy due to international sanctions and the drop in oil prices, coupled with the dramatic devaluation of the rouble.’” The judge ruled “the decision [by Otkritie] not to disclose the Settlement Agreement [with Worsley] was clearly deliberate.” But Males decided to dismiss Yurov’s appeal to lift the freeze on his cash and property because “although Mr Worsley’s evidence (and therefore his credibility) may prove to be important, I doubt whether it will be critical…. Mr Worsley’s primary importance to the bank is likely to be as a source of documents, including documents signed by the shareholders themselves which appear to confirm their ultimate beneficial ownership of the offshore companies which the defendant now says were in fact beneficially owned by the bank.” For details of the offshore company scheme which Worsley ran for Yurov, read this . At the time of that report, on November 5, 2015 — ten days before Worsley finalized his deal with Otkritie — the bank’s spokesmen Alexander Dmitriev and Maria Gurevich were asked what they knew of Worsley’s role. “Do most or all the offshore companies on record as having received loans from Trust have a common management address in Cyprus? Can you confirm that most or all the offshore companies with loan and brokerage accounts at Trust were signed by a single person, Ben Worsley, or by authorized subordinates employed by Ledra Management or Teos Management?” Otkritie’s spokesmen refused to say. “We are not disclosing details that may influence the judicial proceedings.” The reference to Ledra is to an offshore entity operating group in Cyprus called Ledra Management. This is owned and run by Christodoulos Vassiliades, a Cypriot lawyer, whose law firm has its headquarters at Ledra House in Nicosia. In the proceedings so far, Vassiliades is not identified nor accused of any wrongdoing. He has declined the invitation to clarify the role his law firm or Ledra Management played in Trust Bank’s operations under Yurov. Teos Management is one of the companies Worsley created in Cyprus. Cyprus company records show he has been managing director of the firm since it was set up in August of 2013. Last November Worsley was contacted at the Teos office in Nicosia and asked to clarify his relationship with Yurov and Trust Bank. Worsley was travelling, according to his secretary. He did not respond to telephone calls and emails. On October 3, 2016, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySec) issued a notice revealing that in September it had reviewed a case against Teos for failing to “appoint… a compliance officer with the prior approval of the CySEC from September 2015 to 22.03.2016”. This was a serious offence, the regulator claimed . But there were mitigating factors – there had been no prior offence by Teos; and the company had already notifed CySec it was going out of business. A fine of €5.000 was imposed. The telephone number at Teos is now disconnected. Emails have been directed to Worsley at Teos, asking him for his comment on the terms of the Otkritie agreement and Yurov’s counter-allegations. The emails are returned with a notice that they have been blocked by the Teos server. Worsley is playing “a masterful game”, observers in London and Nicosia say. “While Yurov & Co. came up with the scheme to do what they claim they had to do,” claims one of the sources, “I suspect the mastermind of the offshore schemes was Ben Worsley. Yurov may have stolen a few tens of millions, but a lot more has gone missing. Yurov claims he is notthe beneficiary of many of these companies. He probably is not. Beneficial ownership was also in hands of Worsley. He claims now that in all those beneficial ownerships he was a nominee or trustee of Yurov. I suspect that is not quite the case.” Asked this week to clarify why the bank tried to keep the Worsley deal secret from the London court, Otkritie has not replied by press time. 0 0 0 0 1 0

Killing Twice for ISIS and Saying So Live on Facebook - The New York Times

Alissa J. Rubin and Lilia Blaise

PARIS — He stabbed an police officer and left him bleeding to death on his own doorstep. He forced his way inside the home and stabbed and killed the officer’s female companion. He then sat down and videotaped himself live on Facebook declaring allegiance to the Islamic State, according to the French law enforcement authorities. Sitting just behind him was the couple’s son, a terrified boy, of whom Larossi Abballa, the killer, said dismissively, “I have not decided what to do with him,” according to David Thomson, a French journalist for Radio France Internationale and the author of a book on jihadists who saw Mr. Abballa’s online posts before they were taken down. The events that unfolded between about 8 p. m. and midnight on Monday — when elite police forces broke into the house in the small town of Magnanville, fatally shot Mr. Abballa, 25, and rescued the boy — were the second time within 48 hours in which a person appearing to act alone claimed to kill in the name of the Islamic State. In the attacks in both Magnanville and Orlando, Fla. the killers had more than just brushed up against the authorities before, in what has become a distressingly familiar pattern — from the set of attacks in Paris in November, to those in Brussels in March and beyond. The Orlando gunman, Omar Mateen, had been interviewed twice by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his possible links to terrorism, and Mr. Abballa had been convicted for having links to a terrorist network and served about two years in jail before being released. Further complicating the job of protecting Western nations are governments’ dual goal of preserving civil liberties while trying to make people feel secure. The attack in France was shocking not only to neighbors in Magnanville, about 35 miles from Paris, but across the country because it underscored that extremist attacks can happen in the most ordinary places, above all in those where people believe they are safe. Mr. Abballa’s Facebook post from Monday night made clear that he wanted to terrify and destroy those he deemed “unbelievers,” people he had come to hate. He also wanted to encourage other lone wolves to do the same. “It’s super simple,” he said, looking into the camera. “It’s enough to wait for them in front of their offices don’t give them any respite. Know this, whether you are a policeman or a journalist, you will never feel calm again. One will wait for you in front of your homes. This is what you have earned. ” Boasting that he had “just killed a policeman and I just killed his wife,” he called on fellow believers to give priority to killing “police, prison guards, journalists. ” He specifically named several writers and journalists, adding rappers to the list because, he said, they “are the allies of Satan. ” Even more chillingly, he warned that jihadists had “reserved some other surprises for the Euro I am not going to say more. ’’ “The Euro will be a cemetery,” he said, referring to the Euro 2016 soccer tournament being played over the next several weeks in 10 French cities. It was unclear whether Mr. Abballa had specific knowledge of a potential attack on the matches or the crowds gathered for them. The version of the video released by the Islamic State’s Amaq news agency was trimmed by a couple of minutes to omit images of the boy and Mr. Abballa’s references to him. On Twitter, opinion was divided between those who thought the images of a defenseless child were tasteless even by the standards of the Islamic State’s hardened propagandists and those who speculated that the extremist news agency did not want to show Mr. Abballa as unwilling to kill a child. As the special police forces surrounded the murdered officer’s house, where Mr. Abballa was holed up, cordoning off the modest neighborhood that is home to both and Muslims, Mr. Abballa asked his “brothers” to pray to Allah that he might become a martyr. The video was posted a little before 9 p. m. on Monday as the police began to try to negotiate with him. By the time the security forces reached the couple’s son three hours later, he was in a “stunned” state as people are after a profound shock, said Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister. Many questions remain about Mr. Abballa’s path from his birth and early life in nearby Meulan, France, as the child of parents of Moroccan origin, to his death at the hands of a police SWAT team. Along the way, he spent time in prison and proselytized to other inmates about Islam, said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor. When he was released, he started a small business, which he named Dr. Food. It delivered sandwiches, according to a Facebook clip he posted. He was one of eight men convicted in Paris in 2013 of aiding a group that had been intending to commit terrorist acts and had planned to go to Pakistan for training. He received a sentence on Sept. 30, 2013, including a suspended sentence. He was allowed to go free after his conviction because he had spent two years and two months in jail awaiting trial. However, he was under surveillance for another two years and two months, until Nov. 30, 2015, said Mr. Molins, the prosecutor. “At the trial, Abballa seemed like someone who was not dangerous but was rather stupid,” said Hervé Denis, a lawyer who represented Zohab Ifzar, one of the other defendants. The officer killed on Monday had nothing to do with the investigation that resulted in Mr. Abballa’s imprisonment, Mr. Denis said. “He appeared to be the perfect soldier,” Mr. Denis said — someone who would do whatever was needed to help the effort — and was “very determined. ” More recently, Mr. Abballa came to the attention of the French law enforcement authorities when he was among several people questioned in a counterterrorism inquiry that Mr. Molins’s office began on Feb. 11 into a group believed to be planning to go to Syria. As part of that inquiry, investigators gathered intelligence from telephone intercepts and various geocoding technologies, but none of the findings indicated that Mr. Abballa was on the verge of violence, Mr. Molins said. Three men in Mr. Abballa’s circle — ages 27, 29 and 44 — were detained for questioning after the killings on Monday. The attack in Magnanville has already prompted calls in France for more stringent handling of those convicted of activities. On early morning broadcasts on Tuesday, some members of Parliament called for all people suspected of potential terrorist leanings to be placed in detention. But France is already stretched to the limit, both in prison capacity and in the numbers of suspects it can monitor. The police and intelligence agencies are described as working constantly to track jihadists. The antiterrorism directorate of the judicial police and of the internal security department of the Interior Ministry have detained 100 people this year over their suspected ties to terrorism, Mr. Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said Tuesday. He added that the terrorism threat in France was “very high. ” In testimony before members of the French Parliament on May 10, Patrick Calvar, head of domestic intelligence, said about 2, 000 French citizens or residents were of concern to the security forces. He testified that at least 645 French citizens or residents of France were in Syria and that about 400 of those were fighting with militant groups. In addition, Mr. Calvar said, 244 French citizens have returned to France from Syria or Iraq, and the French intelligence services say they have identified an additional 818 people who they believe want to join extremists. The French authorities have repeatedly said it is impossible to monitor all of them at all times.

DNI: Homegrown Jihadists Remain ‘Most Frequent and Unpredictable’ Terror Threat to U.S.

Edwin Mora

WASHINGTON, DC — The American homeland is facing “the most frequent and unpredictable” Islamic terrorist threat from Sunni “U. S. homegrown violent extremists (HVEs),” warns the most recent Worldwide Threat Assessment issued by the United States intelligence community (IC). [“We assess that ISIS [Islamic State} maintains the intent and capability to direct, enable, assist, and inspire transnational attacks. The number of foreign fighters traveling to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria will probably continue to decline as potential recruits face increasing difficulties attempting to travel there,” states the assessment presented Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats during a hearing Thursday held by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The number of ISIS foreign fighters leaving Iraq and Syria might increase, increasing departures would very likely prompt additional fighters to look for new battlefields or return to their home countries to conduct or support external operations. ” The IC’s Worldwide Threat Assessment is consistent with a 2017 terrorism forecast by the House Homeland Security Committee showing that the rate at which Americans are being radicalized at home is “alarming. ” “There have been nearly 200 total homegrown jihadist cases in the United States since (the figure currently stands at 193) a majority having taken place in just the past few years,” notes the report. Many countries, including the United States, are concerned about the return of Americans who traveled to Iraq and Syria to engage in jihad on behalf of the Islamic State ( ) (AQ) and other terrorist groups. Last month, U. S. Department of Homeland Security John Kelly sounded the alarm on “holy warriors” who traveled to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria potentially returning to “wreak murderous havoc” in the United States and other countries once they return home. In the past 12 months alone, the number of homegrown terrorism cases reached 36 in 18 U. S. states, revealed Kelly, noting, “Over the past few years, we’ve seen an unprecedented spike in homegrown terrorism. ” Echoing Secretary Kelly, the World Wide Threat Assessment, pointed out: homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) will remain the most frequent and unpredictable Sunni violent extremist threat to the US homeland. They will be spurred on by terrorist groups’ public calls to carry out attacks in the West. The threat of HVE attacks will persist, and some attacks will probably occur with little or no warning. In 2016, 16 HVEs were arrested, and three died in attacks against civilian soft targets. Those detained were arrested for a variety of reasons, including attempting travel overseas for jihad and plotting attacks in the United States, in addition to the HVE threat, a small number of based Sunni violent extremist groups will also pose a threat to the US homeland and continue publishing multilingual propaganda that calls for attacks against US and Western interests in the US homeland and abroad. In recent years, the Sunni Islamic State ( ) group has inspired many attacks inside and outside the United Sates, both successful and foiled. The threat assessment explains: The Islamic State of Iraq and (ISIS) continues to pose an active terrorist threat to the United States and its allies because of its ideological appeal, media presence, control of territory in Iraq and Syria, its branches and networks in other countries, and its proven ability to direct and inspire attacks against a wide range of targets around the world. However, territorial losses in Iraq and Syria and persistent counterterrorism operations against parts of its global network are degrading its strength and ability to exploit instability and societal discontent. ISIS is unlikely to announce that it is ending its self declared caliphate even if it loses overt control of its de facto capitals in Mosul, Iraq and Al Raqqa, Syria and the majority of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. Former FBI Director James Comey warned in July 2016 that the United States should remain vigilant against an unprecedented “terrorist diaspora” sparked by ISIS losing territory, particularly in the group’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria. ISIS is not the only terrorist group that poses a threat to the United States. has capitalized on the U. S. coalition primarily focusing on decimating ISIS. DNI Coats notes: During the past 16 years, US and global counterterrorism (CT) partners have significantly reduced Qa’ida’s ability to carry out mass casualty attacks, particularly against the US homeland. However, ’ida and its affiliates remain a significant CT threat overseas as they remain focused on exploiting local and regional conflicts, in 2016, Front and ’Ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) faced CT pressure in Syria and Yemen, respectively, but have preserved the resources, manpower, safe haven, local influence, and operational capabilities to continue to pose a threat. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, where U. S and NATO troops have been combating since October 2001 in response to the group still “maintain the intent to conduct attacks against the United States and the West. ”

World Community Fears Hillary Kill List

Mikael Thalen

World Community Fears Hillary Kill List The terrifying prospect of a Clinton presidency Infowars.com As the presidential election draws closer, millions are becoming increasingly fearful over the prospect of Hillary Clinton being in control of the US nuclear arsenal. Clinton’s unhinged comments on attacking Russia, a nuclear world power, shows just how dangerous the future could be under her rule. Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles Download on your mobile device now for free. Today on the Show Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars crew. From the store Featured Videos FEATURED VIDEOS Victim Of Hillary Chicago Violence Speaks Out - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . Trump Responds To New FBI Investigation Of Hillary - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . ILLUSTRATION How much will your healthcare premiums rise in 2017? >25% © 2016 Infowars.com is a Free Speech Systems, LLC Company. All rights reserved. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice. 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force

In Michael Chabon’s ‘Moonglow,’ Deathbed Stories Illuminate an Era - The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani

Storytelling matters desperately to Michael Chabon’s characters. It’s a way to remake an unhappy reality and exert control (“Werewolves in Their Youth”) a means of grappling with personal or historical disaster (“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay”) or, in the case of his elegiac and deeply poignant new novel, “Moonglow,” a tool for connecting the dots of a family’s life and making sense of the past. “Moonglow” takes the form of a faux memoir by the narrator, Mike, a writer who bears more than a passing resemblance to the author himself. The story centers on tales told by his maternal grandfather as he lies dying of cancer, high on painkillers that have cracked his habit of silence and made him eager to spill “a record of his misadventures, his ambiguous luck, his feats and failures of timing and nerve. ” His grandfather’s disjointed accounts of being a soldier in World War II and his fascination with rocketry and space travel have a hallucinatory, sheen, and they are tangled up with his wife’s enigmatic and contradictory retellings of her experiences in occupied France. Mr. Chabon weaves these tales together into a tapestry that’s as complicated, beautiful and flawed as an antique carpet. The novel would have benefited from some rigorous editing — there are digressions about business travails, rockets and “Gravity’s Rainbow” that are tedious and superfluous. But the fraying story lines seem to be a deliberate narrative strategy meant to convey the chaos of life and distortions of memory, and the bright threads of meaning that can be extracted, with imagination and will, from the mess. Mr. Chabon is one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists, and in novels like “Telegraph Avenue” and “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” he’s demonstrated his mastery, his ability to move effortlessly between the serious and the comic, the existential and merely personal. In “Moonglow,” he writes with both lovely lyricism and highly caffeinated fervor. He conjures Mike’s childhood with Proustian ardor, capturing his fond memories of his mother (who smelled of Prell shampoo, making him think of those old TV commercials showing a pearl languidly drifting through the mentholated green) and his worst boyhood fears (convinced that a gaggle of puppets were lying in wait, plotting to kill him). He makes Oakland, Calif. in the 1970s come alive — and does the same for Baltimore in the 1950s and Florida in the late 1980s. There are sharp, funny portraits of the many eccentric characters who wander through the lives of the narrator’s family, but it’s Mike’s grandfather who bestrides the novel — an Augie hero who careens through life like a wildly thrown bowling ball, knocking over those who stray into his path while nearly crashing his own dreams. He goes at things freestyle, and often seems like the very embodiment, in Mr. Chabon’s mind, of America itself — proud, romantic, naïve, impulsive. He’s a roughneck and a dreamer, a pool hustler and a soldier, a jailbird and an engineer enraptured by the space race and the moon shot. “One glance at you and I know the whole story,” William J. Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, who recruits him during World War II, says. “You’ve been looking for trouble all your life. ” His grandfather’s romance with the woman who becomes his wife — a French refugee who already has a young daughter (who will grow up to become Mike’s mother) — is a love story about two people who build new lives together after the war but who can never really manage to swim free from the undertow of the horror they witnessed in Europe. His grandfather suffers from a form of stress disorder, while his grandmother slips into bouts of madness that seem to be part mental illness, part guilt or shame over something that happened to her during the war. The novel’s title and some of its most moving passages come from his grandfather’s fascination with spaceflight. During the war, he becomes obsessed with rocketry and Wernher von Braun — the brains behind Nazi Germany’s rocket, who would later oversee development of the rockets that propelled Americans to the moon. His grandfather drives to Cape Canaveral, Fla. for every space shuttle launch and gets a job with NASA building scale models of aircraft and vehicles as part of the educational and research and development process. He once promised his wife that he would fly her “to find refuge on the moon,” and after her death, he pictures the two of them in spacesuits like the ones worn by the astronauts in “2001: A Space Odyssey” — “an orange one for him, a blue one for her” — out for a spin in a lunar rover. He imagines her “cutting flowers in her hydroponic garden as the world hid its nightside and peace descended on their refuge in space. ” Although “Moonglow” grows overly discursive at times, it is never less than compelling when it sticks to the tale of Mike’s grandparents — these damaged survivors of World War II who bequeath to their family a legacy of endurance, and an understanding of the magic powers of storytelling to provide both solace and transcendence.

Celebrating Food and Wine in Bordeaux - The New York Times

Charly Wilder

This week, we roam France, sampling three regional cuisines: the richness of Gascony, the earthy pleasures of Médoc, and the new vibrancy of Bordeaux (below). Also check out the Food section’s guide to French cooking and our survey of five classic specialties, from bouillabaisse to galettes. On a Sunday afternoon, people streamed across the Place de la Comédie, a grand Haussmannian square in central Bordeaux. The crowd was diverse in age, social class and ethnicity, but, this being France, the majority wore artfully draped scarves. They rode by on public share bikes and sipped espresso at the terrace cafes on the square’s southern edge, in the shadow of an elongated sculpture of a head by the contemporary Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. They clustered in pools of sunlight on the limestone steps of the Grand Théâtre and trickled contentedly out of Gordon Ramsay’s Le Pressoir d’Argent and Philippe Etchebest’s Le Quatrième Mur, part of a recent wave of restaurant openings in this comely port city in southwestern France. As I took in the scene, it was hard to believe that not so long ago Bordeaux was considered somewhat of a backwater. Despite being one of the world’s major wine industry capitals, the city was known for years as La Belle Endormie, or Sleeping Beauty, as much for the walls of its center as for its sleepy, overlooked reputation. But in the last two decades, Bordeaux has come awake. An ambitious revitalization campaign begun in the by Alain Juppé, the longstanding mayor and a former prime minister, cleaned up the city center, making it more welcoming to pedestrians. The project also established a tram system and transformed over 7, 500, 000 square feet of former docklands into an agreeable terrain of walkways, bike paths, landscaped gardens and public waterside attractions. In 2007, half of the restored city received Unesco recognition, making it the largest urban World Heritage site. In 2013, Bordeaux was ranked as France’s city, after Paris. Last June, the city added to its offerings La Cité du Vin, an ambitious new museum on the banks of the river Garonne dedicated to the history of French viticulture, and as of December, a new train line, set to begin service this summer, will run from Gare Montparnasse in Paris to Bordeaux in just over two hours. Yet it’s the food scene that has taken center stage, and today, the heart of Bordeaux’s left bank is cluttered with interesting new offerings like experimental modern bistros, elaborate sanctums of haute cuisine and cozy gastrobars. “It’s a totally new city,” said Le Bras, a chef who moved to Bordeaux last year to reopen the restaurant La Grande Maison, in a luxury hotel, with the French chef Pierre Gagnaire. Mr. Le Bras last spent time in the city 25 years ago, back when it was “dark and dodgy,” he said. Now, he added, “It’s very dynamic … there’s so much to do. ” Owned by the French multimillionaire wine magnate Bernard Magrez, La Grande Maison opened in late 2014 in a stately white stone mansion set back from the street by tall gates that enclose a circle drive and a Andalusian olive tree. The Napoleon interiors feature chandeliers, opulent stone and embroidered silk. Mr. Magrez initially worked with Joël Robuchon, among the world’s most decorated chefs, but replaced him over the summer with Mr. Gagnaire, who has redone the menu with dishes like creamed hen pheasant consommé with brut Champagne, served with crispy white cabbage, prune and aloe vera, all part of a (about $63) “hunting” trio off the à la carte menu. A and degustation costs €135 and €185. Then there’s the wine list, as elaborate as one might expect from Mr. Magrez, with more than 160 chateaus and every cru classé (a term denoting recognized, vineyards) from the Bordeaux region. But the city’s abundant food scene includes more casual offerings as well. My first stop was Garopapilles, a restaurant and wine cellar that opened two and a half years ago on a quiet leafy street in Bordeaux’s center. The chef, Tanguy Laviale, 35, presides over a small open kitchen at the end of the dining room, which looks on a glassed inner courtyard planted with aromatic herbs. Mr. Laviale was designated a Great Chef of Tomorrow in the 2016 Gault Millau guide for his rotating, seasonally driven prix fixe “market menu,’’ available Tuesday to Friday for lunch and Thursday and Friday for dinner. Lunch, including starter, main and dessert, costs €32, with optional wine pairing by the house sommelier (the tasting dinner menu is €59). Ours began with a selection of : bell pepper cream with feta cheese over a bed of black caviar, a clam served in the shell topped with a smoked lard emulsion foam. Then came a marbled, luscious foie gras terrine served with a bright quince purée, pickled porcinis and a mushroom shizu sauce, followed by veal in mushroom sauce served with tomato, oyster and wakame seaweed, a swirl of earthy complexity, finished with a dessert of delicate white cheese ice cream with mango crème and pumpkin espumante purée. Around us, men in unbuttoned blazers and glasses swirled glass after glass selected from the carefully curated, wine list, knowledgeable waiters expounded on the ingredients and several young couples seemed to be Instagramming the better part of their meal. The vibe was urbane but convivial everyone appeared to be having a good time. Garopapilles is one of several modern French restaurants recently opened in Bordeaux by impressive young chefs, including locavore Belle Campagne, inside a townhouse in the city center Le Chien de Pavlov, a bistrot that has earned raves for dishes like crab and Kaffir lime ravioli and Côté Rue, which, since opening in July 2015 near the Musée d’Aquitaine, has become one of the hottest seats in town. Côté Rue’s dining room, featuring crown molding and bold abstract oil paintings, is regularly booked by stylish locals who come for the innovative dishes like beechwood smoked beef with cinnamon leaf and foie gras with citron and Jerusalem artichoke. “So many young chefs are here in Bordeaux right now,” said Rudy Ballin, 25, Côté Rue’s head chef. “The same thing happened in Lyon 15 years ago,” he added. “Everyone wants to move to Bordeaux because so much is happening, so there’s all this young energy, and people move here, start their own businesses, try new things. ” A sizable segment of Bordeaux’s new wave has turned east, bringing Asian influences to play on native culinary styles at relaxed neo bistros like the restaurant Dan as well as Miles, which has attracted a cult following since opening three years ago in the center near the Place de la Bourse. Miles’s experimental melding of geographical influences is inspired by the provenance of its three from France and French Polynesia, Israel and Japan. At Miles, as at so many of Bordeaux’s neo bistros, a rotating multicourse tasting menu is served from a small open kitchen: pleasingly concoctions like hazelnut oil confit egg yolk with smoked chestnut purée and raw mushrooms, or sous vide monkfish with eggplant, mussel foam and a gremolata of coconut, coriander and lime. A year ago, the team behind Miles opened a more informal restaurant nearby: Mampuku (Japanese for “full belly”). Shared plates focus on the street food of the chefs’ places of origin, like steamed Vietnamese bao buns stuffed with braised beef cheek and cilantro grilled and smoked eggplant with honey, labane sauce, pomegranate and fresh herbs and “Saba Tastutaage,” crispy mackerel and broccoli tempura served with umeboshi, daikon radishes and a dip. On a recent Saturday afternoon, lunch guests filled the cavernous dining room, sampling the diverse offerings over what seemed like a great many bottles of wine. You have to go farther upriver, though, to visit the city’s most newsworthy gastronomical attraction: La Cité du Vin, a museum of wine and viticulture that opened in June. Designed by XTU Architects to mimic wine swirling in a glass, the shimmering facade towers over the partially redeveloped docklands of the Bassins à Flot district. Some seven years and $90 million in the making, La Cité du Vin at times seems more like a theme park than a museum. There are copious projections, holograms, interactive elements and even a ship simulator that reimagines the maritime journeys of wine merchants throughout history. Thanks to video mapping technologies, an Armenian feast magically appears on a white table, then transforms into a traditional Jewish festive spread, as a virtual guide explains various culinary and viticultural traditions. In the “gallery of civilizations,” light boxes feature 3D animations tracing wine culture from ancient Greece and Egypt up to the present and a “buffet of the five senses,” where visitors can test different smells by releasing them from glass cloches. There are video installations devoted to wine’s role in religion, mythology, eroticism and the arts, with special attention paid to the history of viticulture in Bordeaux and the surrounding region of Aquitaine, where some of the world’s best wine has been harvested for two millenniums. La Cité du Vin also features a wine shop with more than 800 varieties, a auditorium and Le 7, a fine dining restaurant. Yet Bordeaux’s most enticing gastronomic attraction still may be one of its oldest: the Marché des Capucins, a huge covered food market in the heart of the multicultural St. district that dates to the . Known colloquially as the “belly of Bordeaux,” the Marché des Capucins is a pandemonium of scents, flavors and ungentrified French charm. Under the domed roofs of adjoining market halls, locals visit the seafood stands to consume oysters and sauvignon blanc, and to inspect crates of heirloom tomatoes and cabbages that evoke Émile Zola’s account of “exquisite flowery masses the color of wine, crimson and deep purple. ” Cheese sellers offer brusque expertise while slicing off luxurious chunks of Chaubier and Roquefort, and men drink espresso and roll cigarettes at counters, as they have for centuries. There’s nothing innovative or trendy about it, and yet here, perhaps more than anywhere in the city, you can feel that behind Bordeaux’s recent culinary success is a and enduring passion for food deep in the heart (and belly) of its inhabitants.

Lacking E.M.T.s, an Aging Maine Turns to Immigrants - The New York Times

Katharine Q. Seelye

SOUTH PORTLAND, Me. — Jolly Ntirumenyerwa ran her fingers over the stethoscope that she had slung around her neck. It was a comforting connection to her career as a physician in her home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she worked in emergency medicine. Her credentials did not transfer when she moved to the United States in 2012, and she could not work as a doctor. So, she took jobs as a health aide in an assisted living facility. Now, thanks to an unusual program that is training immigrants to become emergency medical technicians, she is preparing to make better use of her medical background and, she hopes, work her way up to becoming a physician assistant if not, someday, a doctor. “I want to do what I was trained to do,” Ms. Ntirumenyerwa, 37, said the other day as she took a break from her E. M. T. class, being conducted in a cavernous ambulance bay at Southern Maine Community College. “I put in a lot of years training to be a physician, and I don’t want to throw them away. ” But the program goes beyond helping Ms. Ntirumenyerwa (pronounced ) achieve her personal career goals. It is also helping to address some serious problems in Maine. One is a shortage of E. M. T. s. Another is a shortage of a work force in general, particularly of young people who can help sustain the state economically as its population ages. Maine is the nation’s oldest state, with the highest median age and the highest concentration of baby boomers, and its birthrate is dropping in 2016, just two of its 16 counties had more births than deaths. Economists regard Maine’s rapidly aging population as a demographic tsunami that has severe implications for the state’s labor pool, health care system and overall socioeconomic . But the state can grow, they say, with more international immigration — though that may become more difficult under the Trump administration. Thanks mainly to a small influx of immigrants, the state’s population inched up last year by about 2, 000 people over 2015, despite the sentiments expressed by Gov. Paul R. LePage. But the state recorded 1, 300 more deaths than births, a downward trend in which Maine and West Virginia lead the nation. Like other graying states in New England, Maine is struggling to keep its young people living and working here. This is where the E. M. T. program comes in. “This program is a ” said David Zahn, chairman of the global languages department at the community college, which started the program. He said he basically put two and two together. Surveys showed that employers, especially municipal and private ambulance services, needed more E. M. T.s other surveys showed that many immigrants in the Portland area are underemployed and have medical backgrounds. When the E. M. T. course for immigrants was announced, three times as many people applied as could be accommodated. The first class is small, with 13 participants. But to Dana Connors, the president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, the program is a big step in the right direction. “It may be a small number, but it looms large in message and significance,” Mr. Connors said. The program, he said, illustrates what opportunities exist “when we recognize immigrants as part of our solution. ” Many of those opportunities are in health care. As residents live longer, the need for health care workers — and E. M. T.s — is only increasing. The E. M. T. shortage stems in part from the low pay — $10. 50 an hour for an job, a result of low federal reimbursement rates, said Robert Russell, the chief executive of North East Mobile Health Services, a private medical transport company in nearby Scarborough. In addition, he said, training involves a major commitment of time. This course requires eight hours a week for 16 weeks. Mr. Russell said his company would interview the immigrants who successfully completed the course. He said he was grateful to have an expanded pool of applicants, especially people who are multilingual (Ms. Ntirumenyerwa, for example, speaks French, Lingala and Swahili, in addition to English) and who can bridge cultural divides. “It’s a huge added benefit,” he said, when employees reflect the customers they are serving. Paul Froman, the course instructor, said that he did not vary the program for the immigrants, and that they must pass the same tests and meet the same requirements for licensing as participants. But because of their medical backgrounds, he said, the immigrants “are informed, and you can get a lot deeper. ” David Ngandu, 33, who was also a doctor in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is taking the E. M. T. course, said that in some ways, it was easier to treat patients here than in Africa because of the availability of equipment and supplies. “For example,” he said, “oxygen is very expensive in the Congo. I knew what needed to be done, but I didn’t always have the equipment. ” The course is financed by a work force development grant of $29, 000 through the Maine Community College System and additional support from the John T. Gorman Foundation, which helps disadvantaged people in Maine. Most of the immigrants cannot pay for the course on their own. While many work force development programs help immigrants learn English, Mr. Zahn said, this is the first of which he is aware that teaches English in the context of E. M. T. training, with participants learning terminology and a higher level of English than those in, say, the food services industry. “Because of their extensive medical backgrounds, we’ll have people on ambulances who have a higher level of skill” than some other newly minted E. M. T. s, Mr. Zahn said. And, he added, the program might help restore an underemployed immigrant’s sense of dignity. “They are doctors,” he said. “And they’re cleaning toilets? We’re taking advantage of their skills and getting them back into their own arena. ”

Israeli Minister sparks Scandal after showing Satisfaction for Italy's Earthquakes

The European Union Times

Two earthquakes, which struck Italy this week, were “retribution” for the country’s support of the UNESCO resolution disregarding the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, Israeli Deputy Minister for Regional Cooperation Ayoob Kara said. “I’m sure that the earthquake happened because of the UNESCO decision,” Kara, a member of the ruling Likud Party, wrote in a memo, Ynetnews website reported. Ironically, the Israeli politician was on a state visit to the Vatican when the quakes hit central Italy on Wednesday, killing one and injuring 10 people. Earlier the same day, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), passed a resolution criticizing Israel for its handling of the holy site in Jerusalem – called Temple Mount by Jews, and Haram al-Sharif by Muslims. The document was adopted after heated debate over its wording, and particularly the Arabic names used in the document. Italy was among the nations voting in favor of the resolution. Israel blasted UNESCO and its Arab members for trying to undermine Jewish connections to the holy site. Kara arrived in the Vatican in a fruitless effort to avert the resolution, but still managed to have a small chat with the leader of the Catholic Church. According to Kara, Pope Francis “strongly disagreed” with the resolution. “He (the Pope) even said publicly that the holy land is connected to the Nation of Israel,” the deputy minister stressed. As for surviving the natural disaster, the Israeli politician said that “going through the earthquake was not the most comfortable of experiences, but we trusted that the Holy See would keep us safe.” Source

Back with the People: Trump to Rally in Florida this Weekend - Breitbart

Ben Kew

Donald Trump will hold his first rally as President of the United States this weekend at International Airport as he seeks to shore up support for his administration’s agenda. [The rally will come after a tumultuous week for the administration, with the resignation of Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, as well as bilateral press conferences with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a tweet, Trump urged supporters to “join me this Saturday at 5pm for a rally at the International Airport,” accompanied by an image pledging to “put America back to work” and to put “people before government. ” Join me in Florida this Saturday at 5pm for a rally at the International Airport! Tickets: https: . pic. twitter. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017, Volusia County Republican Party Chairman Tony Ledbetter told USA Today Trump is “likely to talk about his early accomplishments as president and his plans for the future. ” The event will be Trump’s first individual rally since his inauguration, after having held a “Thank You Tour” in the states that put him over the top to the presidency. Trump was victorious in the key swing state of Florida in last November’s election, defeating Hillary Clinton by over 100, 000 votes, and by a margin of 1. 2 per cent. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com

Rap Trio Migos Cracks the Code to a No. 1 Hit, One Drop at a Time - The New York Times

Joe Coscarelli

By the time Donald Glover puzzled Hollywood’s finest by thanking Migos, the trendsetting Atlanta rap trio, during his Golden Globes acceptance speech this month, the group had already locked up its first No. 1 hit on the Billboard chart. Not that you would have known it by the behavior of the music industry’s mainstream gatekeepers. While “Bad and Boujee,” which Mr. Glover, the star and creator of “Atlanta” on FX, unexpectedly called “the best song … ever” onstage, had been building in clubs and online since its August release, it had only recently reached radio and was far from the of other more anodyne (and, notably, whiter) streaming smashes. For weeks, as the song turned into a sensation through a torrent of internet memes and listens on YouTube and Spotify (with now more than 250 million combined streams) representatives for Migos had been trying to book the roguish group — made up of the rappers Quavo, Offset and Takeoff — a performance on television, a rite of passage for rising acts. They were repeatedly brushed off. “They gave all kinds of excuses — not the right time, it’s not this, it’s not that,” recalled Pierre Thomas, better known as Pee, the chief executive of Quality Control Music, Migos’s label. “But as soon as Donald Glover did that, the next day, all the people who had just denied us wanted them on their show. ” The very next week, Migos took “Bad and Boujee” to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Battling fickle tastes has been a constant for Migos since the trio stormed the firmament in 2013, bringing a Gucci bag full of flashy new tricks, including their trademark stuttering, triplet flow and an endless series of sticky catchphrases, and vocal tics (“Grrr,” “That way! ”). But those who start trends don’t always reap the rewards. “Versace,” the group’s breakout song, was lifted, but then eclipsed, by Drake’s faithful remix, while “dabbing,” once Migos lingo, morphed into a dance craze. As repeated arrests sidelined Migos’s members at crucial moments, like the to their debut album, “Yung Rich Nation” — a commercial flop in 2015, selling just 15, 000 copies its first week — the group risked becoming another casualty of rap’s culture, where younger viral artists are always bubbling, especially in Atlanta. With a refined strategy for harnessing the rise of streaming, where young listeners flock to rap, Migos is now zooming at an even higher level. With the release of its second album, “Culture,” out digitally on Friday, the trio focused its exuberant songwriting. It is choosing more airy, ornate trap beats and taming its staccato verbal onslaught to make better use of empty space, while tending to both its online and boosters. In New York this week, Takeoff, 22, the group’s most reserved member, compared the album to Christmas Eve, his sleepy eyes lighting up. “You just know that everything you asked for is going to be there up under that Christmas tree,” he said. “It’s our time now. ” Migos’s de facto leader, Quavo, 25, is its most alluring presence and a melodic songwriter. He was defiant about the group’s sometimes samey or excessive output, which has included more than a dozen free online mixtapes since 2011. “We’re doing the same thing we’ve been doing, making the same music,” he said “I feel like the world just caught up. ” The group’s business team is more realistic — and, by necessity, more strategic. “Truth be told, we did have a minor setback for a major comeback,” Kevin Lee, the Quality Control executive known as Coach K, said. After a rocky 2015, which, amid legal issues, still included the release of five Migos projects with middling effect, 2016 was about slowing down and spreading out. Though Migos released just one official mixtape last year, its members appeared as guests on an unfathomable number of tracks by other artists, pop and street, expanding their sonic palette and fans’ understanding of their individual attributes. “I applaud them in stretching their tentacles and bringing it back to the nucleus,” said Kevin Liles, the veteran executive whose label, 300 Entertainment, distributes Migos’s music in partnership with Quality Control. “That only made the nucleus stronger. ” Coach K said that Quavo’s blistering solo run, especially — honored in the hourlong D. J. mix “Featuring Quavo” — motivated Offset and Takeoff, adding, “Once it all came back together, it was an explosion. ” It’s fitting, then, that the group’s crowning achievement thus far was started by Offset — who spent two monthslong stints in jail on weapons charges and probation violations during Migos’s rise — one night while he was home alone. After creating the “ top” hook for “Bad and Boujee” that would go on to fuel endless Twitter chatter, he sent it to the team for completion, certain it could be a hit. The Platonic ideal of a Migos song, the track mixes sensational talk with an overriding sense of personal uplift. “Some opportunities were probably lost because of my situation, but I was fortunate to have brothers that could keep the train moving,” Offset, 25, said. “This song is like a rebirth. ” Migos’s labels put “Bad and Boujee” in the best position to succeed with a few deliberate distribution tweaks, giving it its premiere only on SoundCloud — “where the kids live,” Coach K said — to build buzz, and timing its wider release to Labor Day weekend, when rap radio relies on D. J. mix shows instead of more fixed playlists, leaving the door open for emerging sounds. (The next single, “” was released with similar precision, first with a majestic, arctic video, and then the official audio ahead of Martin Luther King’s Birthday.) Quality Control also sent Migos back to basics — working the Atlanta strip club scene — to build momentum and “get the vibe of the people,” Pee said. “When you see girls on that stage singing the words, you know you got a hit on your hands. ” Migos’s zealous army of online supporters (see the earlier “better than the Beatles” meme) also did its part, disseminating everything from an impromptu jingle for potato chips to a clip of the group performing “Bad and Boujee” live in Nigeria. Crucially, there has never been a dearth of Migos content to spread, even during seemingly fallow periods, thanks to the group’s commitment to creating constantly. In Manhattan on Tuesday, the trio had about three hours of downtime in between promotional obligations, but as the members pulled up to their Times Square hotel, they noted that the famed recording space Quad Studios was just across the street. There was little discussion before a decision was reached. (When the group’s handlers called me to find out where the rappers were, a member of Migos’s inner circle grabbed the phone to hang up.) “Wake up,” Quavo said. “Time to work. ” Once inside, after some finagling, the group rolled weed and ate pepperoni pizzas as its recording engineer, who travels with the trio, set up. Alone in front of the microwave, Takeoff counted comically large stacks of money as Quavo changed into a fuzzy pair of “lucky studio socks. ” “What’s the point of going to sit at the hotel?” he said before entering the vocal booth. Four hours later, a new song was done, but then Migos was late to a listening party for its own album. The rappers had been too busy making more music, refusing to leave the studio until all three had finished their verses.

Syria, N.S.A., Michelle Obama: Your Evening Briefing - The New York Times

Karen Workman, Karen Zraick and Sandra Stevenson

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Hurricane Matthew is barreling toward the U. S. after killing nearly 300 people on its rampage through Haiti, above. The storm is expected to make landfall in Florida early Friday. (Follow our live coverage.) “You need to leave. Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,” Gov. Rick Scott told the 1. 5 million residents in evacuation zones. “This storm will kill you. Time is running out. ” ____ 2. The N. S. A. contractor arrested on suspicion of stealing highly classified information, Harold Martin III, doesn’t fit any of the usual profiles of an “insider threat,” officials say. One of the officials described Mr. Martin, a Navy veteran, as a hoarder. He worked at the same consulting firm as Edward Snowden, but investigators suspect that he began taking material — some of it was code used to hack into the networks of foreign governments — before Mr. Snowden’s actions became public. ____ 3. Donald Trump says he should be elected because of his business acumen. But a close look at about 60 ventures started or promoted by him showed that flopped or had problems. Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s running mate, declared that Mr. Trump no longer wants to impose a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants — a significant reversal. And the places Hillary Clinton’s campaign views as most critical can be identified through the presence of a particularly powerful advocate: Michelle Obama. ____ 4. Your surgeon is probably a Republican and your psychiatrist is probably a Democrat. That’s according to our new data analysis, which found that physicians’ political leanings tend to vary according to their specialty. Urologists and anesthesiologists also tended to be registered Republicans, while of doctors in infectious disease, psychiatry and pediatrics are Democrats. ____ 5. The Syrian war is often cast as a contest between competing rebel groups and the government of President Bashar . The truth is messier. A tangled array of allies is fighting on the government’s behalf, including Iraqi militias, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Afghan refugees and Hezbollah. They’re backed by Russia, but not fully controlled by it, adding to the chaos on the ground. ____ 6. West Bank settlers are preparing for a clash with the Israeli government. One flagship settlement, Amona, was the site of a bloody 2006 confrontation between settlers and thousands of police officers sent to raze nine homes. Now the Supreme Court has ordered that the entire outpost be dismantled by Dec. 25. Israel plans to move residents to a nearby settlement. The Obama administration has condemned that plan. ____ 7. Governments from more than 190 countries adopted a measure to reduce the climate impact of international jet travel. Rather than reduce emissions, the plan calls for carriers to buy credits — things like forest conservation programs — to offset them. The measure takes effect in 2021. But it will be voluntary for the first six years, and countries can opt out. ____ 8. A surge in deaths from drug overdoses across the U. S. has become a lifeline for people waiting for organ transplants. “It’s an unexpected silver lining to what is otherwise a pretty horrendous situation,” said Alexandra Glazier, chief executive of the New England Organ Bank. ____ 9. “From now on, this is it. Humans will never get older than 115. ” That’s according to an expert on aging who, with two graduate students, published evidence that we might have hit our ceiling on longevity. Not everyone agrees. And for the sake of Yisrael Kristal, who celebrated his bar mitzvah last weekend at the youthful age of 113, let’s remember that there are always outliers. Mr. Kristal, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, is the world’s oldest man. ____ 10. “The Birth of a Nation,” the debut film from the director Nate Parker, above, hits theaters Friday. The film dramatizes the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner, played by Mr. Parker, in Virginia in 1831. It was billed as the movie of the year. But details that emerged about a 1999 sexual assault case involving Mr. Parker made it simultaneously the “won’ ” movie of the year, our critic writes. ____ 11. Finally, New Yorkers can now remain close to their pets even after death. A new law allows pets to be buried alongside their owners in cemeteries meant for people. It can be a dog, a cat, a turtle — any domestic animal. “It’s like having a kid, so it’s like having a kid buried next to you,” a pet owner said. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com.

Will it be representative government or thugocracy?

Erik Rush

Will it be representative government or thugocracy? Exclusive: Erik Rush envisions Clinton using high court 'as a bludgeon' against liberty Published: 15 mins ago Erik Rush About | | Archive Erik Rush is a columnist and author of sociopolitical fare. His latest book is "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession." In 2007, he was the first to give national attention to the story of Sen. Barack Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, initiating a media feeding frenzy. Erik has appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," CNN, and is a veteran of numerous radio appearances. Print “ I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy. For me, that means that we need a Supreme Court that will stand up on behalf of women’s rights, on behalf of the rights of the LGBT community, that will stand up and say no to Citizens United, a decision that has undermined the election system in our country because of the way it permits dark, unaccountable money to come into our electoral system. ” – Hillary Clinton The first salvo from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (or rather, her answer to the first question posed by Fox News’ Chris Wallace to her and Donald Trump at the third presidential debate) was as chilling as it was an exemplar of hypocrisy. Those on the left are quite fond of leveling the accusation against conservatives of employing “dog whistle politics,” rhetoric that allegedly contains hidden or esoteric derogatory messaging which targets a specific subgroup within the opposition. Ms. Clinton’s response to Wallace’s question (where they wanted to see the Supreme Court take the country, and their views on how the Constitution ought to be interpreted) however, was representative of this tactic. While women’s rights and those of the LGBT community may seem to be a curious focus for the high court (since objectively, women wouldn’t appear to be particularly oppressed given that one has been nominated to run for president, and the LGBT community accounts for less than 5 percent of the American population), Clinton’s answer revealed the focus she believes the court should have once she becomes empress. “Women’s rights” is of course “dog whistle” for unfettered abortion, even late-term abortion, which is essentially infanticide via dismemberment. “LGBT rights” is “dog whistle” for disenfranchising the majority of Americans who hold traditional values, primarily Christians. Leveraging a vocal minority of homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender individuals whom the left has whipped into a froth against Christians is the methodology that was employed to negate the political power of Christians in Europe and Canada. A direct assault via legislation in this area would not work in the U.S. (at least not at present); however, judicial rulings could effectively bring about the same result. Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that judicial activism is unethical and skirts the Constitution and that Clinton’s overall objectives are manifestly evil. Hillary Clinton’s stated priorities for the Supreme Court are a clear indicator of her desire to use the court as a bludgeon against the Constitution and individual liberties, rather than allowing it to perform its designated function. The hypocrisy attendant to Clinton citing the rights of women and homosexuals when she is beholden via financial contributions to nations that institutionally persecute and murder members of these groups remains plain for all to see, despite being conveniently ignored by the press. Clinton’s reference to “powerful corporations and the wealthy” and the malign influence of that sinister conservative organization, Citizens United, was of course another exercise in blatant hypocrisy. Clinton is quite wealthy, and corrupt or otherwise compromised powerful corporations have been instrumental in bringing about the designs of American socialists. Even if Citizens United were a vehicle for “dark, unaccountable money,” the scope of its influence would pale next to the subversive designs of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Bill and Hillary Clinton have been partnered for decades, or the myriad tentacles of organizations funded by George Soros, the former Nazi collaborator dedicated to advancing oligarchical collectivism in America, someone with whom the Clintons also have a long association. One need not attempt to decipher the thinly veiled intent behind Clinton’s debate rhetoric to discern what a Hillary Clinton presidency might look like. Her actions to date – and particularly those in the pursuit of seeking that office – should suffice quite nicely. Despite the craven complicity of the establishment press (mainstream media), there is ample evidence for even the most indolent news consumer to reach the conclusion that she and the Democratic leviathan supporting her, and which facilitated Barack Obama’s rise to power, are fundamentally malignant. In recent days, we’ve become aware of all manner of unethical conspiracies and outright criminality that’s been brought to bear in getting Clinton elected, from Democratic officials tampering with the outcome of the illegal email server investigation, to the oversampling of key demographics in polling in order to enhance the public perception of Clinton’s popularity, to the recent revelation of criminally prosecutable actions on the part of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the White House. The bottom line here is that Hillary Clinton represents a class of people who transcend even the loathed archetypal modern politician in their rapaciousness and amorality. What all Americans – not just voters, and not just Republicans – need to realize is that leaders at the highest levels in the Republican Party are every bit as culpable as the gutter operatives of the Democratic Party who pay miscreants to dress up as ducks, instigate fistfights at opposition rallies and, yes, even vote for their candidates. The burning question is this: In the end, are we to be governed by the will of the people, or are we going to continue pretending that we have a representative government, when we are in effect being ruled by abject thugs operating behind a faux veneer of government? Media wishing to interview Erik Rush, please contact . Receive Erik Rush's commentaries in your email BONUS: By signing up for Erik Rush's alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email. Name *

Facebook’s Loss in Court Doesn’t Dim Excitement Over Huge Growth - The New York Times

Mike Isaac and Nick Wingfield

SAN FRANCISCO — From the spread of fake news to a nasty court fight in Texas, it has been a rough few months for Facebook. But company executives can take heart in two things: Despite an audience nudging toward two billion users, more and more people are still flocking to the service, and more and more advertisers are spending money on it. Facebook’s sales, announced Wednesday, handily beat Wall Street estimates. And even a $500 million jury verdict that went against the company earlier in the day did little to diminish enthusiasm about its finances. Facebook said sales had totaled $8. 8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 51 percent compared with a year ago, surpassing analysts’ expectations of $8. 5 billion. Not surprisingly, user growth is at a peak. The announcement of the blockbuster quarter comes as Facebook grapples with complaints that it has not done enough to stem the rise of false news stories and misinformation across the social network. Since those complaints began to mount, Facebook has started to address the problem. “In the past we’ve taken steps to reduce spam and clickbait, and now we’re approaching misinformation and hoaxes the same way,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said during a conference call with investors. He pointed to the company’s closer ties to publishers and organizations and the high priority it had placed on making changes to its news feed and ad network. The controversy over fake news seemed to have little effect on users’ appetite for the website. Total profit for the quarter was $3. 6 billion, annual ad revenue was up roughly $10 billion compared with 2015, and more than half of the site’s 1. 86 billion regular visitors used it daily. Against that backdrop, a jury verdict on Wednesday in a legal fight in federal court in Texas over virtual reality technology made by Facebook’s Oculus division did not appear to faze company executives. “The verdict is nonmaterial to our business,” Sheryl K. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “We had a really strong quarter, capping off a really great year. ” Facebook paid $2 billion to acquire Oculus, which makes a headset, the Rift, that immerses users in games and videos. Mr. Zuckerberg has predicted that virtual reality could be the next big computing platform, like the smartphones of today or the personal computers of a decade ago. The financial damages were far lower than the up to $6 billion that the plaintiff, the games publisher ZeniMax Media, had sought, in part because the jury was unmoved by its argument that Oculus employees stole ZeniMax trade secrets. In a statement, Tera Randall, a spokeswoman for Oculus, said the company planned to appeal the verdict. “The heart of this case was about whether Oculus stole ZeniMax’s trade secrets, and the jury found decisively in our favor,” she said. “We’re obviously disappointed by a few other aspects of today’s verdict, but we are undeterred. ” The damages were nonetheless meaningful to ZeniMax, which publishes the Elder Scrolls series, the Fallout series and other video games. The jury based the damages award on finding a series of copyright and trademark violations involving ZeniMax software by one or more of the defendants, a group that included Oculus and several of its employees. The biggest portion of the award stemmed from the finding that Palmer Luckey, an Oculus founder, had violated a confidentiality agreement he signed with ZeniMax as he was forming Oculus. ZeniMax said it was exploring options for preventing Oculus from its continued use of computer code that infringes on ZeniMax copyrights, including seeking a court order. “Technology is the foundation of our business, and we consider the theft of our intellectual property to be a serious matter,” said Robert Altman, ZeniMax’s chairman and chief executive. “We appreciate the jury’s finding against the defendants and the award of half a billion dollars in damages for those serious violations. ” That figure may decrease as litigation between the companies continues. But Facebook may not be too worried about it. As the results announced Wednesday showed, Facebook’s dominance in internet advertising is surpassed only by Google’s. And Ms. Sandberg’s latest efforts to woo small businesses are paying off: Tens of millions of businesses market their products across Facebook and Instagram, the app it owns. Shares of Facebook rose 2. 5 percent, to $136. 69, in trading. Wall Street is looking for Facebook to show revenue growth outside its news feed, the social network’s moneymaking ad machine. The company has cautioned analysts that it is nearing the limit of its ad load — the amount of ads it chooses to place between content like news stories and status updates — inside the feed. That means increased pressure on properties like Instagram, which recently announced that it had more than 600 million users. Although Facebook does not disclose revenue figures for Instagram, it said on Wednesday that five million businesses were now on the app and that its latest feature — a messaging service similar to Snapchat — was already being used by a quarter of Instagram’s user base.

Customizing Truth

License DMCA Part I -- Liars For those who might wonder why foreign policy makers repeatedly make bad choices, some insight might be drawn from the following analysis. The action here plays out in the United States, but the lessons are probably universal. Back in the early spring of 2003, George W. Bush initiated the invasion of Iraq. His public reason for doing so was the belief that the country's dictator, Saddam Hussein, was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. The real reason went beyond that charge and included a long-range plan for "regime change" in the Middle East. For our purposes we will concentrate on the belief that Iraq was about to become a hostile nuclear power. Why did President Bush and his close associates accept this scenario so readily? The short answer is Bush wanted, indeed needed, to believe it as a rationale for invading Iraq. At first he had tried to connect Saddam Hussein to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the U.S. Though he never gave up on that stratagem, the lack of evidence made it difficult to rally an American people, already fixated on Afghanistan, to support a war against Baghdad. However, the nuclear weapons gambit proved more fruitful, not because there was any hard evidence for the charge, but because supposedly reliable witnesses, in the persons of exiled anti-Saddam Iraqis, kept telling Bush and his advisers that the nuclear story was true. What we had was a U.S. leadership cadre whose worldview literally demanded a mortally dangerous Iraq, and informants who, in order to precipitate the overthrow of Saddam, were willing to tell the tale of pending atomic weapons. The strong desire to believe the tale of a nuclear Iraq lowered the threshold for proof. Likewise, the repeated assertions by assumed dependable Iraqi sources underpinned a nationwide U.S. campaign generating both fear and war-fever. - Advertisement - So the U.S. and its allies insisted that the United Nations send in weapons inspectors to scour Iraq for evidence of a nuclear weapons program. That the inspectors could find no convincing evidence only frustrated the Bush administration and soon forced its hand. On 19 March 2003 Bush launched the invasion of Iraq. The expectation was that, once in occupation of the country, they would surely find those nukes. They did not. Their Iraqi informants had systematically lied to them. Part II -- Social and Behavioral Sciences to the Rescue? The various U.S. intelligence agencies were thoroughly shaken by this affair, and today, 13 years later, their directors and managers are still trying to sort it out -- specifically, how to tell when they are getting "true" intelligence and when they are being lied to. Or, as one intelligence worker has put it, we need "help to protect us against armies of snake oil salesmen." To that end the CIA et al., are in the market for academic assistance. A "partnership" is being forged between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which serves as the coordinating center for the 16 independent U.S. intelligence agencies, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The result of this collaboration will be a "permanent Intelligence Community Studies Board" to coordinate programs in "social and behavioral science research [that] might strengthen national security." Despite this effort, it is almost certain that the "social and behavioral sciences" cannot give the spy agencies what they want -- a way of detecting lies that is better than their present standard procedures of polygraph tests and interrogations. But even if they could, it might well make no difference, because the real problem is not to be found with the liars. It is to be found with the believers. - Advertisement - Part III -- Believers It is simply not true, as the ODNI leaders seem to assert, that U.S. intelligence agency personnel cannot tell, more often than not, that they are being lied to. This is the case because there are thousands of middle-echelon intelligence workers, desk officers, and specialists who know something closely approaching the truth -- that is, they know pretty well what is going on in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Israel, Palestine and elsewhere. Therefore, if someone feeds them "snake oil" they usually know it. However, having an accurate grasp of things is often to no avail because their superiors -- those who got their appointments by accepting a pre-structured worldview -- have different criterion for what is "true" than do the analysts. Listen to Charles Gaukel, of the National Intelligence Council -- yet another organization that acts as a meeting ground for the 16 intelligence agencies. Referring to the the search for a way to avoid getting taken in by lies, Mr. Gaukel has declared, "We're looking for truth. But we're particularly looking for truth that works." Now what might that mean? I can certainly tell you what it means historically. It means that for the power brokers, "truth" must match up, fit with, their worldview -- their political and ideological precepts. If it does not fit, it does not "work." So the intelligence specialists who send their usually accurate assessments up the line to the policy makers often hit a roadblock caused by group-think, ideological blinkers, and a "we know better" attitude.

Wider Racial Gap Found in Cervical Cancer Deaths - The New York Times

Jan Hoffman

The death rate from cervical cancer in the United States is considerably higher than previously estimated and the disparity in death rates between black women and white women is significantly wider, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cancer. The rate at which black American women are dying from the disease is comparable to that of women in many poor developing nations, researchers reported. What makes the findings especially disturbing, said experts not involved in the research, is that when screening guidelines and monitoring are pursued, cervical cancer is largely preventable. “This shows that our disparities are even worse than we feared,” said Dr. Kathleen M. Schmeler, an associate professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. “We have screenings that are great, but many women in America are not getting them. And now I have even more concerns going forward, with the” — expected — “repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which covers screening, and the closing of family planning clinics, which do much of that screening. ” The racial disparity had been noted in earlier studies, but it had been thought to have narrowed because cervical cancer death rates for black women were declining. But this study said that the gap was far greater than believed. In the new analysis, the mortality rate for black women was 10. 1 per 100, 000. For white women, it is 4. 7 per 100, 000. Previous studies had put those figures at 5. 7 and 3. 2. The new rates do not reflect a rise in the number of deaths, which recent estimates put at more than 4, 000 a year in the United States. Instead, the figures come from a of existing numbers, in an adjusted context. Typically, death rates for cervical cancer are calculated by assessing the number of women who die from a disease against the general population at risk for it. But these epidemiologists, who looked at health data from 2000 to 2012, also excluded women who had had hysterectomies from that larger population. A hysterectomy almost always removes the cervix, and thus the possibility that a woman will develop cervical cancer. “We don’t include men in our calculation because they are not at risk for cervical cancer and by the same measure, we shouldn’t include women who don’t have a cervix,” said Anne F. Rositch, the lead author and an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If we want to look at how well our programs are doing, we have to look at the women we’re targeting. ” Although the study did not explore reasons for the racial disparity, some doctors said it could reflect unequal access to screening, ability to pursue test results, and insurance coverage. A recent study in the journal Gynecologic Oncology that looked at 15, 194 patients with advanced cervical cancer found that more than half did not receive treatment considered to be standard of care, and that those patients were more likely to be black and poor. According to the analysis published Monday, the mortality rates put black American women on par with women living in some underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, particularly in Africa. Certainly removing women who had hysterectomies from the data pool had a significant effect. About 20 percent of women in the United States have a hysterectomy, often for problems unrelated to cancer, like excessive bleeding and fibroids, with prevalence higher among black women than white. In years to come, mortality and incidence rates should decline as more women receive HPV vaccines, which prevents many cervical cancers. In recent years, with recognition of the slow progression of the disease, the success of the vaccine and more sophisticated screening tests, guidelines for cervical cancer assessments have shifted. Depending on circumstances, some women need to be screened only every five years. The guidelines suggest that screening end at age 65 for women who have had two or three consecutive negative results in the previous decade. The current study says that the greatest mortality rates hit black women 85 and older. But experts said the new findings did not necessarily point to the need to revisit the upper end of the guidelines. Cervical cancer progresses so slowly, with so many stages, experts said, that it is highly unlikely that a woman who had met guidelines’ requirements would subsequently develop the disease. But given the rigor of the guidelines and screenings, Dr. Rositch said, why do American women not only still get cervical cancer but die from it? And with such pronounced racial and age divides? Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said that the new study pointed to inequity of access and good treatment. “When we look at the difference between black and white, and rich and poor, we find the same disparity,” he said. “The quality of assessment and treatment can be different. The question becomes: how do we get adequate preventive care to all people?” Although this study looked at the divide between black and white women, Dr. Schmeler said that it implicitly raised alarms for other poor women of color. Along border towns in Texas, with an overwhelmingly poor, Hispanic population, she said that rates of incidence and death from cervical cancer were considerably higher than national figures. Studies such as this latest one consider death rates from a broad epidemiological perspective statistically, its grimmest news is about older black women. But on the ground, Dr. M. Margaret Kemeny, the director of the Queens Cancer Center of Queens Hospital, a public institution in New York, said she had treated many younger women of color with a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Although the disease is preventable and, if detected early, treatable, Dr. Kemeny’s patients have often never had Pap smears. She recently had to perform total pelvic exenterations on two women, each with recurring cervical cancer, one Chinese, the other Hispanic. She removed the cervix, vagina, rectum and bladder, inserting two ostomy bags, which are worn outside the body to collect urine and stool. “One was 39,” Dr. Kemeny said, “and the other was 25. ”

Hillary Clinton Defies Trump Immigration Restrictions: ‘This Is Not Who We Are’ - Breitbart

Charlie Spiering

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her defiance to President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting the entry of travelers and immigrants from countries in the Middle East and Africa. [“I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values our Constitution,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is not who we are. ” I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values our Constitution. This is not who we are. — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 29, 2017, Clinton made her comments as thousands of protesting liberals stormed airports to signal their opposition to the new travel and immigration restrictions, which Trump instituted to protect the safety of Americans from terrorism. President Trump campaigned on a process of “extreme vetting” in the cases of travel from high risk countries to the United States, allowing them in only a basis. The Department of Homeland Security asserted in a statement today that they would continue to implement Trump’s executive order. “The Department of Homeland Security will faithfully execute the immigration laws, and we will treat all of those we encounter humanely and with professionalism,” the statement read. “No foreign national in a foreign land, without ties to the United States, has any unfettered right to demand entry into the United States or to demand immigration benefits in the United States. ”

Anonymous

Its true you know the CATHOLICS ARE BEHIND EVERYTHING , HE CURSED THE POPE NEXT THING YOU KNOW ..Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made a solemn promise: no more swearing. Duterte, who famously cursed the pope and used a slang term that translates as “son of a whore" while denouncing President Obama, said he was flying back from Japan late Thursday, looking at a vast expanse of sky, listening to his colleagues snore, when he heard a voice say, “If you don’t stop epithets, I will bring this plane down now.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/28/philippines-duterte-god-told-me-to-quit-the-cussing/ Thats who JFK was talking about in his speeches , andthink about it they have been roaming into countries for ever unscathed undermining every country they enter . Mexico is a typical example . And just look at the crimes they have committed in their history .

POLL: Who will win Florida? - USAPoliticsNow

Comments Donald Trump has a 2 percentage point edge over Hillary Clinton in Florida, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll released Wednesday, as both presidential campaigns blanket the critical swing state in a full sprint to Election Day. Who do you think will win in Florida? We are giving you a chance to vote on our poll and choose one of the two possible candidates. Who will win Florida?

Fox News Sexual Harassment Inquiry Is Said to Look at What Others Knew - The New York Times

Jim Rutenberg and Ben Protess

Investigators looking into sexual harassment accusations against the former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes are also examining whether other executives knew of alleged improper behavior by Mr. Ailes and failed to act on it, people briefed on the inquiry said on Wednesday. The investigation, focused on accusations against Mr. Ailes, has not broadened into a comprehensive look at the workplace culture at Fox News, these people said. But investigators will pursue information presented in interviews about others at the company who might have effectively enabled Mr. Ailes’s reported behavior. The inquiry is continuing, these people said, with more current and former Fox News employees scheduled for interviews. As of last week, nearly 20 women had reported inappropriate behavior by Mr. Ailes, according to one of the people. The accounts, though unverified, led the leadership of 21st Century Fox, Fox News’s parent, to determine that Mr. Ailes could not stay on, this person said. The investigation by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison began on July 6, the day that Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Mr. Ailes. Mr. Ailes, who denied the allegations, stepped down 14 days ago. A 21st Century Fox spokeswoman declined to comment, but on Tuesday said in a statement that the law firm “remains counsel to us and is dealing with any and all issues as they arise. ” Scrutiny of Mr. Ailes’s behavior and Fox’s operations increased on Friday with an article in New York magazine about the experiences of a former booker, Laurie Luhn, who said that Mr. Ailes had harassed her and subjected her to “psychological torture. ” In the article, she tells of Mr. Ailes using company resources and staff members, including Bill Shine, Mr. Ailes’s deputy, to facilitate the relationship. Mr. Shine, who is now part of the interim management team at Fox News, has told associates that he did not know Mr. Ailes was having a relationship with Ms. Luhn. The New York Times spoke to more than a dozen women for an article published last month, who told of being harassed by Mr. Ailes or other managers and suggested there was a broader culture of harassment and intimidation in the workplace. Later on Wednesday, 21st Century Fox reported its quarterly earnings, and Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman, began a conference call with analysts by addressing the situation at Fox News. “Throughout this process we have moved quickly and decisively to protect the business, to protect its employees and to protect the unique and important voice Fox News broadcasts,” he said. Noting that his father, Rupert Murdoch, had taken over the daily management of Fox News, he added, “There is no one more dedicated or more able to transition Fox News to new leadership. ” Lachlan Murdoch called the team left behind by Mr. Ailes “extraordinarily strong and equally devoted to its success. ” From there, 21st Century Fox executives, including James Murdoch, the chief executive and Lachlan Murdoch’s brother, focused attention on the company’s broader operations, including the Hulu streaming service and coming movie releases. Only one analyst asked for greater “color” about the situation at Fox News, which contributes roughly 20 percent of the company’s total annual profit. Lachlan Murdoch replied that he expected Fox News to remain strong. For its fiscal fourth quarter, 21st Century Fox had a profit of $567 million, or 30 cents a share, compared with $87 million, or 4 cents a share, a year earlier. Adjusting for items in both quarters, including a recent tax benefit, the company had earnings of 45 cents in the most recent quarter, compared with 39 cents a year ago. Revenue totaled $6. 65 billion, a 7 percent increase from a year earlier. Analysts had expected 37 cents in earnings and $6. 68 billion in revenue. Domestic advertising was a bright spot in the quarter. Ad revenue increased 13 percent at the company’s domestic cable networks, reflecting higher ratings and pricing at channels like Fox News and Fox Sports 1. Revenue from domestic affiliate fees increased 6 percent, with FX and Fox News leading the way. But a 15 percent rise in total programming costs essentially washed away those increases. For the fourth quarter, 21st Century Fox’s cable television division had an operating income of $1. 2 billion, flat from a year earlier. Fox News had higher expenses related to the presidential campaign the company also had to pay more for sports rights. The company’s movie studio also struggled with costs. During the quarter, 20th Century Fox spent heavily to market movies like “ : Apocalypse,” “Independence Day: Resurgence” and “Ice Age: Collision Course. ” Only one, “ : Apocalypse,” was fully released in the quarter, and worldwide results were poor, falling 29 percent behind the grosses generated by the previous “ ” effort. Lachlan Murdoch noted that a studio regime change was put into motion in the quarter. “Ultimately, it’s about having a higher standard for storytelling and making better movies,” he said.

Inflation in 2017 Ticking Time Bomb!

IWB

Inflation in 2017 Ticking Time Bomb! by IWB · October 27, 2016

Bill Cunningham, Legendary Times Fashion Photographer, Dies at 87 - The New York Times

Jacob Bernstein

Bill Cunningham, who turned fashion photography into his own branch of cultural anthropology on the streets of New York, chronicling an era’s social scene for The New York Times by training his busily observant lens on what people wore — stylishly, flamboyantly or just plain sensibly — died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 87. His death was confirmed by The Times. He had been hospitalized recently after having a stroke. Mr. Cunningham was such a singular presence in the city that, in 2009, he was designated a living landmark. And he was an easy one to spot, riding his bicycle through Midtown, where he did most of his field work: his frame draped in his utilitarian blue French worker’s jacket, khaki pants and black sneakers (he himself was no one’s idea of a fashion plate) with his camera slung around his neck, ever at the ready for the next fashion statement to come around the corner. Nothing escaped his notice: not the fanny packs, not the Birkin bags, not the gingham shirts, not the fluorescent biker shorts. In his nearly 40 years working for The Times, Mr. Cunningham snapped away at changing dress habits to chart the broader shift away from formality and toward something more diffuse and individualistic. At the Pierre hotel on the East Side of Manhattan, he pointed his camera at New Yorkers with names like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Downtown, by the piers, he clicked away at Voguers. Up in Harlem, he jumped off his bicycle — he rode more than 30 over the years, replacing one after another as they were wrecked or stolen — for in jeans. In the process, he turned into something of a celebrity himself. In 2008, Mr. Cunningham went to Paris, where the French government bestowed the Legion of Honor on him. In New York, he was celebrated at Bergdorf Goodman, where a mannequin of him was installed in the window. It was the New York Landmarks Conservancy that made him a living landmark in 2009, the same year The New Yorker, in a profile, described his On the Street and Evening Hours columns as the city’s unofficial yearbook: “an exuberant, sometimes retroactively embarrassing chronicle of the way we looked. ” In 2010, a documentary, “Bill Cunningham New York,” premiered at the Museum of Modern Art to glowing reviews. Yet Mr. Cunningham told nearly anyone who asked about it that the attendant publicity was a total hassle, a reason for strangers to approach and bother him. He wanted to find subjects, not be the subject. He wanted to observe, rather than be observed. Asceticism was a hallmark of his brand. He didn’t go to the movies. He didn’t own a television. He ate breakfast nearly every day at the Stage Star Deli on West 55th Street, where a cup of coffee and a sausage, egg and cheese could be had, until very recently, for under $3. He lived until 2010 in a studio above Carnegie Hall amid rows and rows of file cabinets, where he kept all of his negatives. He slept on a cot, showered in a shared bathroom and, when he was asked why he spent years ripping up checks from magazines like Details (which he helped Annie Flanders launch in 1982) he said: “Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive. ” Although he sometimes photographed upward of 20 gala events a week, he never sat down for dinner at any of them and would wave away people who walked up to him to inquire whether he would at least like a glass of water. Instead, he stood off to the side photographing women like Annette de la Renta and Mercedes Bass in their beaded gowns and tweed suits. As Anna Wintour put it in the documentary about Mr. Cunningham, “I’ve said many times, ‘We all get dressed for Bill. ’” Mr. Cunningham’s position as a perennial outsider among a set of consummate insiders was part of what made him uniquely well suited to The Times. “His company was sought after by the fashion world’s rich and powerful, yet he remained one of the kindest, most gentle and humble people I have ever met,” said Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. The Times’s publisher and chairman. “We have lost a legend, and I am personally heartbroken to have lost a friend. ” Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, said: “He was a hugely ethical journalist. And he was incredibly about fashion. To see a Bill Cunningham street spread was to see all of New York. Young people. Brown people. People who spent fortunes on fashion and people who just had a strut and knew how to put an outfit together out of what they had and what they found. ” Michele McNally, The Times’s director of photography, said: “Bill was an extraordinary man, his commitment and passion unparalleled, his gentleness and humility inspirational. Even though his talents were very well known, he preferred to be anonymous, something unachievable for such a superstar. I will miss him every day. ” Mr. Cunningham particularly loved eccentrics, whom he collected like precious seashells. One was Shail Upadhya, whose work as a Nepalese diplomat is perhaps less memorable than his penchant for polka dots, Pucci prints and other assorted peculiarities, like a coat made from his retired sofa. Another was Iris Apfel, a Palm Beach socialite who became the subject of Albert Maysles’s last documentary film only after Mr. Cunningham took pictures of her on the street in her shiny black saucerlike glasses and chunky costume jewelry. “Bill photographed me before anyone knew who I was,” Ms. Apfel said. “At 94, I’ve become a cover girl, and he was very largely responsible for my ultimate success. ” Mr. Cunningham’s most frequent observation spot during the day was Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, where he became as much a part of the scenery as Tiffany Company. His camera clicked constantly as he spotted fashions and moved with speed to record his subjects at just the right angle. “Everyone knew to leave him alone when he saw a sneaker he liked or a dress that caught his eye,” said Harold Koda, the former curator in charge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. “Because if you were in the way of someone he wanted to photograph,” said Kim Hastreiter, the editor of Paper magazine and a friend of Mr. Cunningham’s, “he would climb over you to get it. He was like a war photographer that way, except that what he was photographing were clothes. ” Mr. Cunningham himself once said: “When I’m photographing, I look for the personal style with which something is worn — sometimes even how an umbrella is carried or how a coat is held closed. At parties, it’s important to be almost invisible, to catch people when they’re oblivious to the camera — to get the intensity of their speech, the gestures of their hands. I’m interested in capturing a moment with animation and spirit. ” His survivors include several nieces and nephews. William John Cunningham Jr. was born on March 13, 1929, in Boston, the second of four children in an Irish Catholic family. In middle school, he used bits of material he got from a dime store to put together hats, one of which he gave to his mother to wear to the New York World’s Fair in 1939. “She never wore it,” Mr. Cunningham once said. “My family all thought I was a little nuts. ” As a teenager, he got a job at the department store Bonwit Teller, then received a scholarship to Harvard, only to drop out after two months. “They thought I was an illiterate,” he said. “I was hopeless, but I was a visual person. ” With nothing to do in Boston and his parents pressuring him to find some direction, he moved to New York, where he took a room with an uncle, Tom Harrington, who had an ownership stake in an advertising agency. “My family thought they could indoctrinate me in that business, that living with my uncle it would brush off,” Mr. Cunningham said. “But it didn’t work. I had always been interested in fashion. ” So when Mr. Harrington issued his nephew an ultimatum — “Quit making hats or get out of my apartment” — Mr. Cunningham chose the latter, relocating to a apartment on East 52nd Street that doubled as a showroom for his fedoras and toques. To make extra money, Mr. Cunningham began freelancing for Women’s Wear Daily, then quit sometime in the early 1960s after getting into a feud with its publisher, John Fairchild, over who was a better designer: André Courrèges or Yves Saint Laurent. “John killed my story,” Mr. Cunningham later recalled. “He said, ‘No, no, Saint Laurent is the one.’ And that was it for me. When they wouldn’t publish the Courrèges article the way I saw it, I left. ” By then, feminism was on the ascent, and paired with flouncy tops were replacing pink suits and pillbox hats. To Mr. Cunningham, it was becoming clear that his days as a milliner were numbered. Around 1967, he got his first camera and used it to take pictures of the “Summer of Love,” when he realized the action was out on the street. He started taking assignments for The Daily News and The Chicago Tribune, and he became a regular contributor to The Times in the late 1970s. Over the next two decades, he declined repeated efforts by his editors to get him to take a staff position. “Once people own you,” he would say, “they can tell you what to do. So don’t let ’em. ” That changed in 1994, after Mr. Cunningham was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle. Explaining why he had finally accepted The Times’s offer, he said, “It was a matter of health insurance. ” Occasionally, Mr. Cunningham allowed people to celebrate him in one way or another. For example, in 1993, he was honored by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and biked onto the stage to accept his award. But that was largely out of character. Later on, Mr. Koda approached him to see if he would be interested in curating a retrospective of his pictures at the Met. Mr. Cunningham turned him down. “He said to me, ‘I have a job I love,’” Mr. Koda recalled. “He thought it would be a diversion. He did what he loved, and what he loved is documenting this very ephemeral world. ” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Cunningham was a reluctant participant in his own documentary. According to its director, Richard Press, Mr. Cunningham would agree to be interviewed, then spend months canceling or postponing shoots. Mr. Cunningham said until his death that he had not seen the film. “We tried to get him to go to the opening,” Mr. Press said. “He just said: ‘Oh, kids, you made a movie. I’m too busy.’ He came to our party and he photographed it. He put the directors from the festival in his column, but he didn’t even say why they were there or what they were celebrating. ” Mr. Cunningham also resisted the trends of celebrity dressing. He had seen actresses in their fishtail dresses preening and posing before the phalanxes of photographers at ceremonies like the Golden Globes and the Oscars. They were poised. They looked pretty. Yet he could not muster enthusiasm for them. It wasn’t simply that he was nostalgic for another time, back when famous women like Lauren Bacall and Brooke Astor actually dressed themselves. That era may have held a certain appeal for him, but even when he was in his 70s and 80s, he still had plenty of subjects he loved to shoot. One was Louise Doktor, an administrative assistant at a New York holding company who had a coat with four sleeves and a handbag made from a soccer ball. Another was Andre J. a bearded man with a taste for ’ dresses. “He had people who recurred in his columns,” Mr. Koda said. “Most of them were not famous. They were working people he was interested in. His thing was personal style. ” Mr. Cunningham put it this way in an essay he wrote for The Times in 2002: “Fashion is as vital and as interesting today as ever. I know what people with a more formal attitude mean when they say they’re horrified by what they see on the street. But fashion is doing its job. It’s mirroring exactly our times. ”

Get Ready For Civil Unrest: Survey Finds That Most Americans Are Concerned About Election Violence

Michael Snyder

Michael Snyder Could we see violence no matter who wins on November 8th? Let’s hope that it doesn’t happen, but as you will see below, anti-Trump violence is already sweeping the nation. If Trump were to actually win the election, that would likely send the radical left into a violent post-election temper tantrum unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Alternatively, there is a tremendous amount of concern on the right that this election could be stolen by Hillary Clinton . And as I showed yesterday, it appears that voting machines in Texas are already switching votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton . If Hillary Clinton wins this election under suspicious circumstances, that also may be enough to set off widespread civil unrest all across the country. At this moment there is less than two weeks to go until November 8th, and a brand new survey has found that a majority of Americans are concerned “about the possibility of violence” on election day… A 51% majority of likely voters express at least some concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day; one in five are “very concerned.” Three of four say they have confidence that the United States will have the peaceful transfer of power that has marked American democracy for more than 200 years, but just 40% say they are “very confident” about that. More than four in 10 of Trump supporters say they won’t recognize the legitimacy of Clinton as president, if she prevails, because they say she wouldn’t have won fair and square. But many on the left are not waiting until after the election to commit acts of violence. On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame was smashed into pieces by a man with a sledgehammer and a pick-ax… Donald Trump took a lot of hits today, and not just in the Presidential race. With less than two weeks to go before America decides if the ex- Apprentice host will pull off a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed early Wednesday morning by a man dressed as a city construction worker and wielding a sledgehammer and pick-ax in what looks to be a Tinseltown first. And there were two other instances earlier this year when Donald Trump’s star was also vandalized. One came in January, and the other happened in June … This is of course not the first time the GOP candidate’s star has been attacked or defaced since Trump announced his White House bid in summer 2015. The most extreme measure was a reverse swastika being sprayed on the star at 6801 Hollywood Blvd in late January. In June this summer, a mute sign was painted on Trump’s star in a seemingly protest against the antagonistic language and policies some have accused Trump of promoting and reveling in during the campaign. In both cases, Trump’s star was quickly cleaned and back as new within a day. We have seen anti-Trump violence on the east coast as well. Earlier this month, s omeone decided to firebomb the Republican Party headquarters in Orange County, North Carolina . On the building next to the headquarters, someone spray-painted “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” along with a swastika. There have also been other disturbing incidents of anti-Trump violence all over the nation in recent days. A recent Lifezette article put together quite a long list, and the following is just a short excerpt from that piece… On Oct. 15 in Bangor, Maine, vandals spray-painted about 20 parked cars outside a Trump rally. Trump supporter Paul Foster, whose van was hit with white paint, told reporters, “Why can’t they do a peaceful protest instead of painting cars, all of this, to make their statement?” Around Oct. 3, a couple of Trump supporters were assaulted in Zeitgeist, a San Francisco bar, after they were allegedly refused service for expressing support for Trump, GotNews reports. “The two Trump supporters were attacked, punched, and chased into the street by ‘some thugs’ that a barmaid called out from the back.” Lilian Kim of ABC 7 Bay Area tweeted a photo of the men, in which one was wearing a Trump T-shirt and the other was wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt. On Sept. 28 in El Cajon, California, an angry mob at a Black Lives Matter protest beat 21-year-old Trump supporter Feras Jabro for wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. The assault was broadcast live using the smartphone app Periscope. There is a move to get Trump supporters to wear red on election day, but in many parts of America that might just turn his supporters into easy targets. Let’s certainly hope that we don’t see the kind of violent confrontations at voting locations that many experts are anticipating. Of course there are also many on the right that are fighting mad, and a Hillary Clinton victory under suspicious circumstances may be enough to push them over the edge. For example, this week former Congressman Joe Walsh said that he is “grabbing my musket” if Donald Trump loses the election… Former Rep. Joe Walsh appeared to call for armed revolution Wednesday if Donald Trump is not elected president. Walsh, a former tea party congressman from Illinois who is now a conservative talk radio host, tweeted, “On November 8th, I’m voting for Trump. On November 9th, if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket. You in?” And without a doubt, many ordinary Americans are stocking up on guns and ammunition just in case Hillary Clinton is victorious. The following comes from USA Today … “Since the polls are starting to shift quite a bit towards Hillary Clinton, I’ve been buying a lot more ammunition,” says Rick Darling, 69, an engineer from Harrison Township, in Michigan’s Detroit suburbs. In a follow-up phone interview after being surveyed, the Trump supporter said he fears progressives will want to “declare martial law and take our guns away” after the election. Today America is more divided than I have ever seen it before, and the mainstream media is constantly fueling the hatred and the anger that various groups feel toward one another. Ironically, Donald Trump has been working very hard to bring America together. In fact, he is solidly on track to win a higher percentage of the black vote than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960 . If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats win on November 8th, things will not go well for Hillary Clinton’s political enemies. The Clintons used the power of the White House to go after their enemies the first time around, and Hillary is even more angry and more bitter now than she was back then. And the radical left is very clear about who their enemies are. This is something that I discussed on national television earlier this month … As I write this, it is difficult for me to even imagine how horrible a Hillary Clinton presidency would be. But at this point that appears to be the most likely outcome . Out of all the candidates that we could have chosen, the American people are about to put the most evil one by far into the White House. Perhaps Donald Trump can still pull off a miracle and we can avoid that fate, but time is rapidly slipping away and November 8th will be here before we know it. Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this:

Full Text: James Comey’s Prepared Remarks for His Congressional Testimony - Breitbart

Breitbart News

Former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify before the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Thursday regarding his firing by President Donald Trump and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. [The committee has released the full text of Comey’s prepared remarks. Read them below: Chairman Burr, Ranking Member Warner, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I was asked to testify today to describe for you my interactions with and President Trump on subjects that I understand are of interest to you. I have not included every detail from my conversations with the President, but, to the best of my recollection, I have tried to include information that may be relevant to the Committee. January 6 Briefing, I first met Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment. The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing. The Director of National Intelligence asked that I personally do this portion of the briefing because I was staying in my position and because the material implicated the FBI’s responsibilities. We also agreed I would do it alone to minimize potential embarrassment to the . Although we agreed it made sense for me to do the briefing, the FBI’s leadership and I were concerned that the briefing might create a situation where a new President came into office uncertain about whether the FBI was conducting a investigation of his personal conduct. It is important to understand that FBI investigations are different than the known criminal investigative work. The Bureau’s goal in a investigation is to understand the technical and human methods that hostile foreign powers are using to influence the United States or to steal our secrets. The FBI uses that understanding to disrupt those efforts. Sometimes disruption takes the form of alerting a person who is targeted for recruitment or influence by the foreign power. Sometimes it involves hardening a computer system that is being attacked. Sometimes it involves “turning” the recruited person into a or publicly calling out the behavior with sanctions or expulsions of intelligence officers. On occasion, criminal prosecution is used to disrupt intelligence activities. Because the nature of the hostile foreign nation is well known, counterintelligence investigations tend to be centered on individuals the FBI suspects to be witting or unwitting agents of that foreign power. When the FBI develops reason to believe an American has been targeted for recruitment by a foreign power or is covertly acting as an agent of the foreign power, the FBI will “open an investigation” on that American and use legal authorities to try to learn more about the nature of any relationship with the foreign power so it can be disrupted. In that context, prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBI’s leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure Trump that we were not investigating him personally. That was true we did not have an open case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our meeting at Trump Tower, based on Trump’s reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance. I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) — once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine conversations with President Trump in four months — three in person and six on the phone. January 27 Dinner, The President and I had dinner on Friday, January 27 at 6:30 pm in the Green Room at the White House. He had called me at lunchtime that day and invited me to dinner that night, saying he was going to invite my whole family, but decided to have just me this time, with the whole family coming the next time. It was unclear from the conversation who else would be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others. It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks. The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to. He said that lots of people wanted my job and, given the abuse I had taken during the previous year, he would understand if I wanted to walk away. My instincts told me that the setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch. I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my term as Director. And then, because the made me uneasy, I added that I was not “reliable” in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody’s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President. A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty. ” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner. At one point, I explained why it was so important that the FBI and the Department of Justice be independent of the White House. I said it was a paradox: Throughout history, some Presidents have decided that because “problems” come from Justice, they should try to hold the Department close. But blurring those boundaries ultimately makes the problems worse by undermining public trust in the institutions and their work. Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job, saying he was very glad I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great things about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said, “I need loyalty. ” I replied, “You will always get honesty from me. ” He paused and then said, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty. ” I paused, and then said, “You will get that from me. ” As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase “honest loyalty” differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further. The term — honest loyalty — had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect. During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it. As was my practice for conversations with President Trump, I wrote a detailed memo about the dinner immediately afterwards and shared it with the senior leadership team of the FBI. February 14 Oval Office Meeting, On February 14, I went to the Oval Office for a scheduled counterterrorism briefing of the President. He sat behind the desk and a group of us sat in a of about six chairs facing him on the other side of the desk. The Vice President, Deputy Director of the CIA, Director of the National CounterTerrorism Center, Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and I were in the of chairs. I was directly facing the President, sitting between the Deputy CIA Director and the Director of NCTC. There were quite a few others in the room, sitting behind us on couches and chairs. The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. The last person to leave was Jared Kushner, who also stood by my chair and exchanged pleasantries with me. The President then excused him, saying he wanted to speak with me. When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn. ” Flynn had resigned the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify. The President then made a long series of comments about the problem with leaks of classified information — a concern I shared and still share. After he had spoken for a few minutes about leaks, Reince Priebus leaned in through the door by the grandfather clock and I could see a group of people waiting behind him. The President waved at him to close the door, saying he would be done shortly. The door closed. The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot. ” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. ” I replied only that “he is a good guy. ” (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would “let this go. ” The President returned briefly to the problem of leaks. I then got up and left out the door by the grandfather clock, making my way through the large group of people waiting there, including Mr. Priebus and the Vice President. I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership. I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn’s departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI’s role as an independent investigative agency. The FBI leadership team agreed with me that it was important not to infect the investigative team with the President’s request, which we did not intend to abide. We also concluded that, given that it was a conversation, there was nothing available to corroborate my account. We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in investigations. (He did so two weeks later.) The Deputy Attorney General’s role was then filled in an acting capacity by a United States Attorney, who would also not be long in the role. After discussing the matter, we decided to keep it very closely held, resolving to figure out what to do with it down the road as our investigation progressed. The investigation moved ahead at full speed, with none of the investigative team members — or the Department of Justice lawyers supporting them — aware of the President’s request. Shortly afterwards, I spoke with Attorney General Sessions in person to pass along the President’s concerns about leaks. I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened — him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind — was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply. For the reasons discussed above, I did not mention that the President broached the FBI’s potential investigation of General Flynn. March 30 Phone Call, On the morning of March 30, the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as “a cloud” that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to “lift the cloud. ” I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then the problems this was causing him. Then the President asked why there had been a congressional hearing about Russia the previous week — at which I had, as the Department of Justice directed, confirmed the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. I explained the demands from the leadership of both parties in Congress for more information, and that Senator Grassley had even held up the confirmation of the Deputy Attorney General until we briefed him in detail on the investigation. I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump. I reminded him I had previously told him that. He repeatedly told me, “We need to get that fact out. ” (I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.) The President went on to say that if there were some “satellite” associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out, but that he hadn’t done anything wrong and hoped I would find a way to get it out that we weren’t investigating him. In an abrupt shift, he turned the conversation to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, saying he hadn’t brought up “the McCabe thing” because I had said McCabe was honorable, although McAuliffe was close to the Clintons and had given him (I think he meant Deputy Director McCabe’s wife) campaign money. Although I didn’t understand why the President was bringing this up, I repeated that Mr. McCabe was an honorable person. He finished by stressing “the cloud” that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn’t being investigated. I told him I would see what we could do, and that we would do our investigative work well and as quickly as we could. Immediately after that conversation, I called Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente (AG Sessions had by then recused himself on all matters) to report the substance of the call from the President, and said I would await his guidance. I did not hear back from him before the President called me again two weeks later. April 11 Phone Call, On the morning of April 11, the President called me and asked what I had done about his request that I “get out” that he is not personally under investigation. I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that “the cloud” was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. He said that perhaps he would have his people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way his request should be handled. I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel. He said he would do that and added, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal we had that thing you know. ” I did not reply or ask him what he meant by “that thing. ” I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended. That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.

Happy Halloween: Here’s How Witches Could Save the Planet

Madeline

Alternet There are all kinds of bad words for “woman.” They are designed to degrade, frighten and dehumanize us. Among the most ancient is the word “witch.” “Witch” is the first rallying cry, used to kill and diabolize outspoken women ever since the witch trials of Salem, and the widespread witch hunts of Europe before them. Beginning with “witch,” society has attached a stigma to any woman who dares break with a social mold that would have her lower her eyes and smile politely in the face of injustice. Note the recent “nasty woman” comment presidential candidate Donald Trump directed recently at his opponent, Hillary Clinton, because he didn’t like the way she spoke. Look no further than the trolls of the internet and their daily insults and death threats against any woman who dares call herself feminist or in any way ruffles the feathers of patriarchy. It’s inarguable that, still today, if a woman is anything but small and pleasing, there are men out there who will dub her a villain and hunt her down. And it’s easy to trace much of that mentality back to the witch hunts. Now, a backlash is brewing. Women across the world, are “coming out of the broom closet” en masse to take back the term witch. The idea behind the re-witching movement is that the feminine components innate to humanity—things like compassion, self-love, feeling our emotions, tuning into the planet’s cycles, protecting nature—have been trampled in favor of patriarchy. The overly masculine way of thinking, witches will tell you, is based on conquering and exploiting, and has led humanity down its current destructive path. It is a path of blind progress and hunger for power, which uses the planet and its resources for capital gains with little regard for life. Without the input of the feminine (which promotes nurturing, healing, sustaining), shit has gotten way out of whack. Suddenly, witchy is trendy. Walk into an Urban Outfitters anywhere and you’ll find tarot card-printed sheets; candle holders (and 50 other trinkets) that pay homage to the lunar cycles; cauldrons and black cats plastered everywhichwhere; and coffeetable books like The Modern Guide to Witchcraft (which is frequently sold-out in the online store). While these plastic trinkets and commercialization might lead one to see the witch reemergence as a superficial passing fad, it’s more like a reaction to something authentic. Maybe the mass-production of “witchy” is a clever marketing response to the growing popularity of witchiness online, or a patriarcial backlash attempt to cheapen a genuine uprising of women. Either way, a very real cultural shift appears to be underway. One brilliant example of this was Alexandra Petri’s satirical response to Trump’s “nasty woman” comment in the Washington Post on October 20. She used witch imagery to spotlight the long-entrenched tradition of demonizing strong women in society. Modern-day witches aren’t woo-woo cult groupies oblivious to how out-there it might sound to call oneself a witch. They are normal women with careers, children, families and social lives who are fed up with the way things are going and want to do something radical about it. As we find ourselves at this moment in history in which every reputable scientist in the world says we’re on the brink of all-out climate disaster, it’s time for women to step into the sacred role of the healer (witch) and reverse the toxic masculinity overload before it’s too late. So say the witches. In groups across social media, women hold meetings about how hard it is to come out as a witch for fear of judgment and ridicule, because the term “witch” is so deeply rooted in the modern psyche as a wart-nosed, green-skinned, cackling, spell-casting devil worshipper. This imagery was no accident. The same powerful male architects of the witch hunts crafted demonic, unappealing propaganda to scare women out of summoning their power, explains modern-day witch culture icon and activist Sarah Durham Wilson. “A ‘witch’ in the witch hunts in Salem, or the witch hunts all over Europe, which were massive femicide, was basically just any strong woman,” Wilson explains, noting that women who were healers, and midwives in particular, were labeled witches and killed because the men who wanted to control the medical/bodily world saw them as a threat. Women who were outspoken, who stood up against injustices, who reflected unpleasant truths back to men in power by being “too pretty” or “too ugly” or “too smart” were all deemed witches and murdered. “If you read some of the transcripts of the judges sentencing witches to the gallows, it was because of the way these women made them feel, you know, like too lustful, or facing parts of themselves they didn’t want to face,” Wilson says. The modern rehashing of ancient ceremonies and witchcraft is nothing new. It has been gaining speed since the neo-paganism revival of the 1970s, and Wilson and her ilk are following in a line of women who stuck their necks out in the name of the feminine at a time when doing so was much more dangerous than it is today. One example Wilson, who is in her 30s, notes as a predecessor of, and inspiration behind, the current movement is Z. Budapest. She calls Budapest “a bad ass, great feminist witch from the ’70s.” She says Budapest “really paved the way for a lot of us.” When Budapest started calling herself a witch, Wilson says, “she had to have cops escort her and things like that because people were still so terrified of witches as devil worshipers, when she was doing exactly what we’re all doing now, which is honoring the Earth, and coming together with women.” Wilson is perhaps the biggest modern pioneer of the new witch movement. She doesn’t identify with any specific group, i.e. paganism, Wicca, and so on. She sees a witch as someone who works to refeminize our culture and refocus our social priorities toward healing. When she publicly claimed the title of witch six years ago, she defined it to mean any woman who is a healer, and is strong in herself and her connection to the Earth, moon and nature’s cycles. (Read her 2014 article “ 13 Signs You’re a Witch ” in Rebelle Society.) It was a radical move that ostracized her from certain parts of her life. But it gained her a large, devoted following on social media and a sense of deep empowerment. Wilson has inspired thousands of women to “come out of the broom closet,” as she puts it. While feminist-witch figures like Wilson aren’t new, there’s a new urgency bolstering the cause today: climate change. Among many bigger organizers of witchy/divine feminine retreats, secret online covens and feminine empowerment gatherings—which have been cropping up across the internet and beyond—there is a common rallying cry: The Earth is suffering and needs healing. Earth connection is a major theme in just about every witchy circle, and Facebook is splattered with groups both secret and open that are dedicated to reclaiming the word “witch,” relearning herbal remedies and reconnecting with the planet via ancient pagan ceremonies. Ceremonies like the Celtic holiday Samhain, which celebrates death and ancestors, and was the basis for Halloween. As far as Sarah Durham Wilson is concerned, healing the planet is the ultimate work of witches—and, really, everyone. Following her career as a celebrity journalist for outlets like Rolling Stone, VH1 and Vanity Fair, she fell deep into the rock ‘n’ roll party lifestyle and a bout of self-disconnect. One night she “hit rock bottom” and “drank a ton of wine, swallowed a bunch of pills and hoped never to wake up.” When she did wake up, she had a profound experience of what she calls an awakening of “feminine goddess energy.” She rededicated her life to writing about the “divine feminine,” and helping other women answer the call of the healer/goddess/witch. For the last six years she has led paid retreats and group phone calls like her series of “Coven Conversations,” via her organization Do It Girl, which has almost 50,000 followers on Facebook. Following a recent experience in ceremony with the traditional indigenous psychedelic plant ayahuasca in Peru, Wilson has decided to refocus her platform on the Earth’s plight. Wilson recently spoke with AlterNet about reclaiming “witch,” making activism sexy, ayahuasca, and how strong women (witches) can save the planet. The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Image via Shutterstock.com / Hannamariah April M. Short: The word ‘witch,’ the word ‘goddess’ and the phrase ‘divine feminine’—all these different sorts of spiritual-feminism terms are so hot with women on social media right now. I think it’s important to clarify what they mean, what is their purpose. We’ll start with, why reclaim the word witch? Why reclaim something so demonized rather than just come up with a new term? Sarah Durham Wilson: In the book In the House of the Moon: Reclaiming the Feminine Spirit Healing by Jason Elias and Katherine Ketcham there’s a chapter called “The Goddess and the Witch” that links the two. The beauty of the goddess and the healing of the witch, and it goes through the witch hunts to explain that witches were healers, and they did have power. It is the power of love and the power of the Earth. The Earth is incredibly powerful. I mean, we’ve done a good job of killing her, but her cycles of life, and rebirth, and all her healing properties—the plants and the ocean and the beautiful creatures that she birthed. It’s an incredibly magical place, and we knew that as children, but we’ve forgotten it and we’ve all stayed inside behind our technology and really cut ourselves off from the Earth. That’s partially why she’s dying, her children have turned their backs on her. So, witch. To take back that word is to take back our power. Do your own research on the witch hunts. Open one book on the witch hunts, and you’ll be like “What the f*ck?” But instead you let history, instead of herstory, tell you the story. They can say that, you know: We worked with the devil, we hexed people and cast evil spells. Then you do a little bit of research yourself, you open one goddamn book and you see they were just women. And then your rage just wakes you up, and you take the word back. When I took the word back, I wanted to, like, stand in grocery store checkout lines and scream out. Coming out of the broom closet is a huge thing. To reclaim your power as a witch is to reclaim your power as a woman. End of story. As a self-healer, as someone with deep intuition, as someone linked to the Earth. It is a beautiful gift, a gift of true femininity, intuition and oneness. A higher goddess moving you through life, and so many faces of the goddess represent so many faces of woman. We’re not just one thing you can put in a box. We are ugly and terrifying, and beautiful and nurturing, and deathly. We are all the things nature is. She is unending, and we are that. So take back witch. Take back being a woman. AMS: What is feminine about the Earth, nature and healing the Earth? SDW: Women’s bodies are directly linked to the Earth. When I say my body and the Earth are one, it’s like, I have the power to create life the way the Earth has the power to create life, and to wax and wane like the Earth and the moon do through seasons and phases. I have a 28-day cycle, and my body is like the moon. I have the power to create life in my womb, just like the Earth itself. And then, as women, the way the Earth rebirths herself in spring and goes through a full moon in the summer, we’re on fire, and then in the fall we notice our energy starts to wane, and then in winter we die only to be reborn again. When you really start to link up to the cycles of the Earth, you realize you and the Earth are one and it’s the most natural thing to do is to align with these cycles. In a linear, patriarchal society we’re told to go, go, go everyday, and everyday should be 70 degrees and sunny, right? We should always be fine, always shine like the sun, when really we’re much more like the Earth and moon where we wax and wane and glow and then offer birth, and then kind of die again. We’re changing constantly. We’re not supposed to be the same forever. We’re supposed to constantly be growing, changing, dying in that life, death, rebirth cycle the Earth itself is in. That is what I attune women to, that more feminine rebirth cycle. The way a snake sheds its skin or the Earth dies in the winter to be reborn again. That cyclical nature of life is the cyclical nature of women, of the feminine. AMS: I want to talk about the less appealing sides of the feminine that have been repressed, and maybe labeled “witch.” SDW: Well, a witch in the witch hunts in Salem, or the witch hunts all over Europe, which were massive femicide, was basically just any strong woman. There was one town in Scotland that left one woman standing. Everyone else was burned at the stake or hung or drowned. They were, it was basically just “woman” who they were after. The witch hunt manifesto is called the Malleus Maleficarum [Editor’s note: usually translated as Hammer of Witches ] written in 1486. That was how the whole witchcraft-devil thing came about. That lie that women were like the devil. They even, when they wrote the Maleficarum they described the devil as the shape of basically our reproductive system, right, the uterus and the ovaries, that horned head. If you read some of the transcripts of the judges sentencing witches to the gallows, it was because of the way these women made them feel, you know, like too lustful, or facing parts of themselves they didn’t want to face. A woman could be too beautiful, or too ugly, or too smart or a lesbian or own land that the government wanted or was owed, or if she was, god help her, a midwife or a healer. Midwives “stole” from the doctors of the time, so the men. And of course, now we’re having midwives and doulas come back, but giving birth is still not just women. And of course women knew more about birth than male doctors, and always have. Witches were the healers, women who honored the goddess or honored the Earth. And covens were dismembered and became illegal because women coming together with the same intention proved far too powerful. That’s why witches wear black, because they had to move through the night in all black, in cloaks, and try to blend into the night. I mean, too lovely, too pretty, too smart, too stupid… If a woman sneezed around someone and the next day that person got a cold, she was a witch. If she was a widow, she was a witch. Basically if you were a woman you could die. If you didn’t fit in completely to the standards of the society you could be killed, which, even though we can’t be sent to the gallows now for being different, we can in our own way these days. We’re too powerful. Definitely too powerful. It’s a crime in society. AMS: We should talk about that a little. Modern-day witch hunts. SDW: Yeah, look what happens to Hillary Clinton, you know? Look what happened to Yoko Ono. Women who are too emotional, or too smart, or too powerful are called crazy. Look at Trump calling Hillary a “nasty woman” because she wasn’t behaving the way he wanted her to behave, which is polite and pleasing, right? And small. How dare a woman beat him, in public. AMS: Yes, and I love the way women have been reclaiming that, by the way, speaking of reclaiming. The “nasty woman” trending memes and things are hilarious. SDW: I know! I when I saw him say that I was like, You’re gonna wish you hadn’t said that. I was so happy he did, you know? Because “no one respects women more” than he does. [Laughter] AMS: I also wanted to ask you about darkness—the darker side of the feminine, and if it fits, how the darkness of femininity and darkness of being human in general, relates to the season, as we have this traditional “death season” upon us, Halloween. And we can also talk about Halloween, and how everything’s become so sensationalized around death and darkness. SDW: And commercialized. AMS: Yes, commercialized, that’s maybe even more important. SDW: Yeah. The wheel is turning dark. It’s Samhain, and it’s a really beautiful time as we’re entering the feminine, we’re entering the underworld. You might have noticed yourself feeling more, as Western medicine would say, depressed, as the wheel turns towards fall. And not to say if you’re depressed to not to go get help, but just not to fear so much the underside of your life, and the underside of your feelings, the down parts and low parts. Spend some time with those, and really investigate what they’re trying to tell you. It’s the beginning of the death season, so what hasn’t served you in your life? What hasn’t served you this year? What do you need to let go of? What patterns are making you sick or unhealthy or small or tired or weak? Why I think my voice resonates is that I’m able to talk about the more feminine maladies—alcoholism, depression, anxiety. I have been looking at some stuff I’ve done and ways I’ve been that, if I could just keep going like a sunny summer day I might be able to avoid. But fall asks of us to slow down and winter asks of us to stop and die, and if you notice how these leaves are falling, to let go. And how beautiful these trees look letting go, right? They’re at their most beautiful in their surrender. The season asks us to give up that masculine fight. Summer is full of masculine energy. It’s all masculine energy. It’s go, go, go, do, do, do. All masculine. Then fall is, I surrender, I move down, I move towards my public identity of death. As the trees are stripped down to nothing, who am I with nothing? Who am I without my identity?” And that’s what winter asks of us. The beauty of that is every year— until this beautiful planet might not make it—but every year in spring, life comes back. We come back. But every year the alignment with Earth teaches us slow down, and then in winter die to what you’ve been, so that you can compost the old, let go of what didn’t work, and enrich what has worked in the dreamtime of winter, and then become new again, reborn and new. And that’s the beauty of life cycles, and the beauty of aligning with the feminine. Samhain is so beautiful because the veils are so thin, and especially around October 31st, the veil is thinnest [between life and death]. We can really feel our ancestors if we bow to them. I love doing retreats and workshops [in this season]. One year at Joshua Tree we did an altar to our ancestors for Samhain and it was so beautiful, moving everyone in circles, drawing pictures of memories, and placing candles. We bowed to our ancestors and asked for their healing and asked for their guidance, and really felt moved by them and protected by them, and loved by them. The commercialization—especially the parody of witches with their ugly noses, and warted noses, and green skin—that’s all propaganda that was used for years to try to encourage people to fear the witch, because the witch was the powerful woman. And if we feared ourselves, we would never unlock our own power, and therefore always bow to a power external. We stay pretty, small, safe, and contained, if we think the power is outside of us and not inside of us to change our lives and to heal ourselves. AMS: And now Halloween season is about this commercialization and making light of darkness and death. We throw candy at it and laugh it off as a children’s holiday rather than what you were describing about Samhain, slowing down, embracing the cycle of the year, the reality of death and remembering those who’ve passed, connecting. SDW: Yeah. It’s a really beautiful time and unfortunately we live in a culture that doesn’t really know how to honor death. What the feminine teaches us is to honor our own death. I think Joseph Campbell says, if you’re blessed you’ll live many lives in one lifetime. But that involves going through many deaths, right? Change is death, of what you know and who you’ve been. And when we learn to honor our own deaths, we really put to rest what hasn’t served—relationships, ways of being, ways of identifying, ways of showing up in the world—and allow that winter space for something new to be born. That’s a really beautiful way to live. Honoring those who’ve passed is so important, and the slowdown time of Samhain takes time to stop and honor those who’ve come before us. That for me is how the holiday should be honored, is by honoring the dead and death itself as something that brings rebirth. AMS: Let’s talk about ayahuasca and your travels to Peru. What was your experience like and how did it impact you? SDW: I’ve been [to Peru] five times. The most seminal part of the most recent trip, other than meeting the man who will now be the father of my child, was meeting Pachamama, the spirit of great Gaia, the great mother goddess of the Earth. I went into the ayahuasca experience intending to deal with my own depression, and it really helped my mind to get calm. It also slapped me out of the pretty, pleasing priestess stuff, and because she is the voice of the Earth, showed me how sick the Earth is. She infused me with Pachamama and showed me how I need to be devoted to my planet. I’m a proponent of ayahuasca, but not a proponent of using it to escape yourself. I’m a proponent of using it to enter yourself, and then never, ever abuse it the way some people really do. I know that sounds crazy, but a lot of people do use it to leave the planet, leave their bodies instead of enter. I highly suggest a pilgrimage to Peru and three doses, then go home and embody and use the wisdom she’s offered you to change your life and be an activist for the planet. It’s not a magic pill or anything. It will bring your demons to the surface. It’s nothing to be taken lightly. It’s the voice of a dying planet. It can be a very scary experience if you’re not in the right headspace. Make sure you’re with the right shaman. It’s the voice of the Earth, and everyone should hear the voice of the Earth in some way. If not through ayahuasca, through spending more time outside, through getting off social media, and through taking true action for her. What she will tell you is, “I’m dying, do something.” AMS: Earlier you said, ‘This beautiful planet might not make it.’ Could you talk more about climate change, and the state of the planet as it relates to women, witches and the work you’re doing? SDW: The work that I’m doing now is really focused, completely, on the state of the planet. I think that mass-spirituality has gotten pretty watered down to “love and light” and “lightworkers” and “meditate on it,” and not really focused on the darkness. Which is insane, to try to pretend there isn’t darkness now. Z. Budapest is a bad-ass, great feminist witch from the ’70s, and really paved the way for a lot of us. She had to have cops escort her and things like that because people were still so terrified of witches as devil worshipers, when she was doing exactly what we’re all doing now, which is honoring the Earth, and coming together with women. A few years ago she got online and started looking at women who were out, calling themselves witches. She said she was really disappointed in this movement. She said all of you are trying to be so pretty and pleasing. Basically, she was saying we were still conforming to patriarchy and she said, where is the anger? Why aren’t you mad? Look at what has been done to this Earth, and get mad. I felt like it was a real slap in the face that I definitely needed, because I’m a motherless daughter, which is why I do a lot of self-mothering work. But I didn’t really have that good wakeup call from my mom. So I look to the elders in this movement to remind us that this isn’t a popularity contest. “Witch” has become such a hot word, but witches and priestesses made a sacred vow to protect the Earth, to protect the innocent, to protect creatures. When we make it about our photoshoots and our likes on social media we’re really off course. So, rage to me equals change—justifiable, healthy rage for what’s been done to the planet. I mean look at how, in these three presidential debates they never talked about climate change, they never talked about the dying planet. How is that possible? So, it’s good to get really mad, to speak up for the Earth. And that goes back to Pachamama, goddess Gaia, who, having worked with ayahuasca, she has shown me again and again, she’s on her deathbed. She’s hooked up to life support. There isn’t much time left. That should make us all weep, and then that should make us all fight. As witches, we’re all women that grew up being told, “That’s just a dog, stop treating it like a human, you like animals better than humans.” Or, “Stop talking to that tree.” Or whatever. But it wasn’t that we liked animals better than humans, or that we’re crazy for talking to trees. We knew that animals and the Earth were sacred and to be loved and protected. But we were told on the mass scale to stop talking about it and to stop devoting ourselves to innocent creatures and innocent plants. But now, as we wake up and reclaim our voices, we were right as innocent children about the Earth and about animals. Every single day a new animal goes up on the extinction list or the endangered species list, and every single day we lose more and more of the oceans, and more and more of the forests, more of the Earth itself. This should be the number-one topic of politicians and journalists and everyone, everywhere. The Earth should be way bigger than the Kardashians. But it’s not, and that’s a huge problem. AMS: You have tens of thousands of followers on social media; you’ve inspired thousands of women to ‘come out of the broom closet’ and publically reclaim the term ‘witch.’ Do you think the state of the Earth today, the climate crisis and where we are in history has to do with that? Why do you think so many women are responding to your message? SDW: Actually I’ve really taken a break from social media, one because I’m pregnant and all my energy is going in and not out, but two because I’ve found a real pushback against me trying to talk about the planet. People wanted the safe and happy memes. They wanted safe and easy messages instead of the take-action messages. That was really driving me crazy. But I know there’s a better way—I’m kind of starting over and changing everything about my brand so that nobody’s confused when they come to my page that I’m there to be spiritually correct or pretty and pleasing and small for them. I started off being a really radical rebel in all of this, and I sort of miss that voice because, you know, you get an audience, and then you get self-conscious. It watered down my message, and I, for my child, I really want to embody Pachamama, which is not a silent bystander in the Earth’s demise. So, yeah, there is a mass awakening to the Earth, and it is mostly, amongst women. (I keep saying I wish Donald Trump could get pregnant because there’s nothing that brings you more into your body and into this sort of awakening.) What happened with me in my awakening is I ascended out of my body and out of my pain, and it was a way to sort of abandon my human mask, and now I’m in my body and on the Earth in a way I’ve never been, and it’s such a literally sobering time, to be pregnant, and to look at the state of the Earth right now. To look at ways that I sort of spiritually glossed over my life, my mistakes, my pain, my regrets. So, when I come back online it’s gonna be far more about the human awakening than the spiritual awakening, and a return to the Earth in a very unapologetic way. About what’s going on with the planet, in a way to hopefully wake women up further to the pain of the planet. That to me is the work of the priestess. It’s not to over-spiritualize things, because again, that’s a way of waxing everything sort of pretty and light. And I just don’t think that really serves. I think what serves is rooting people into their bodies and back to the Earth. I think that’s the only chance the Earth has, is if we all reconnect to her and back to ourselves, and back to our pain. To really hear her cries, and answer those to the best of our ability. Image via Shutterstock.com/ Simon Hofer . AMS: It is surprising to me that people have reacted that way to your speaking up more about the planet. I guess it shouldn’t be, because I know that many people do not like to hear about the state of the Earth. In the online news world, the stories about climate change and serious realities about the planet tend to get less attention. SDW: We’re all guilty. I remember, I used I really look up to Anne Lamott, and I still do, she’s such an amazing writer. But I remember in one of the times I was trying to get sober like five years ago, I was like, Well how does she get her rocks off? You know? It was like, OK, if I’m not gonna drink wine and smoke a joint, what am I gonna do? And she was like, “Honestly, I read ad tabloids and pile all the dogs onto my bed at once.” And I was like “Anne Lamott reads tabloids?” Something about that Anne Lamott, a heroine of mine, gave me permission. The first trimester can be really tough, and you go through what’s called prenatal depression: Who am I to raise this child? You have to go through a huge death before a birth, to become a mother. Sometimes I literally can’t take the pain of the Earth and I find myself on like crappy Daily Mail and things like that. We all do it, we all want to distract ourselves, because it is so sad, and it is so scary. The real work is turning and facing not just our pain but the Earth’s pain, which is all one. AMS: It’s interesting that people resonated with you coming out and being this strong woman reclaiming witch as that feminist/feminine connection to self and the Earth, but when you took that a step further and connected it with the reality of things, they turned away. Why do you think women who resonate with the message of “witch as healer” and “women are close with the Earth” aren’t ready to connect to the hard truth? SDW: Because it’s Debby Downer. To get people acting, that’s the healthy balance of the masculine and the feminine. The feminine side of us dreams, and the masculine side of us does. And if we put that action into our dreams, that’s how we become whole and make a change in our lives and the world. We can’t just talk and dream about changing the world. We really have to take action. When I saw that actress Shailene Woodley get arrested at Standing Rock, and the way other people are taking action with protests and things like that, I was lying in my bed sick from the baby in my belly, and I had this, really—we need a better word for it, but it’s like this good jealousy of “you go, girl, and I wish I was doing that.” It’s not jealousy and it’s not envy, but it’s healthy visceral inspiration, I guess. Now it’s about figuring out a way to take action. I’m one of those people who shares a million petitions on Facebook and gets like two likes, you know? I still don’t know a way to make activism sexy, and until I do I’m not really gonna put myself out there, because while my voice has been a pretty cool agent for change, for me it’s not doing enough anymore. It’s tough to make the state of the planet sexy. Having been a journalist I know everything needs a hook, it needs to be sexy. It frustrates me when I see people with big platforms using it to hawk makeup or something, which is going to the landfills, instead of using it to hawk change. That’s why I love people like Leonardo DeCaprio (even though he’s a total horndog). At least he’s using his platform for the ecological crisis. AMS: Yeah. I love to see people using their voices that way. SDW: There’s nothing hotter than activism. There’s this woman, she’s kind of famous, she’s on Chicago Med and One Tree Hill, Torey DeVitto … she really uses her voice for animals. She once regrammed something I did about Donald Trump, and she got all this hate and like half the likes, because—how dare she not just post a sexy selfie? How dare a celebrity talk about the biggest choice in the world coming up right now? It’s hard to stick your neck out and risk alienating or losing some audience, but she doesn’t seem to care, and I really respect people who do that in the limelight. AMS: Me too. And I do see how it’s hard to do that. SDW: Yeah, but it gets to the point where you think about all of the innocent people who could be saved by you using your voice for activism. You gotta stick your neck out there, you gotta stir the pot. How are you going to make a change if not? Pretty and pleasing won’t save the world. What will save the world is people standing up and using their voice, and when you do that, you’re gonna get stuff thrown at you. My problem was, and I do use a lot of goddess images, so I was standing on this throne and people were throwing tomatoes at me, and when I was really in my maiden stage I would pick up the tomato, throw it back, and cry. Now, as the queen, you just sit in the throne. You’re not gonna get down and get yourself dirty and get into the fight. That’s just what they want, they want negative attention. Ignoring the tomato throwers takes being so rooted. And again, that’s Pachamama, and root chakra, and Mother Earth. You have to be so rooted in yourself and on your throne and know who you are to use your voice. You can’t just speak the speak, you have to really be sure that you’re being ignited and inspired by soul, and not ego. Then, when they throw tomatoes, it won’t hurt as bad. If you say something you’re not quite sure of, when they throw tomatoes it’ll hurt. That’s why, speaking for the Earth, you can’t lose. I’m not making my life about me anymore. I’m now the mother. And if you think about the word “mother” it holds this sacred word “other.” And the beauty of becoming the mother to yourself and the world is in caring for the other and giving to the other, you receive. The maiden is trapped in this cage of herself, and it’s a very lonely, isolating place. But the mother is the giver and the nurturer, and the mother has a cause, which is the other. The child, the planet. Which is why you see all those beautiful images on Pinterest of a woman holding her womb, but it’s the Earth. Really, to hold the Earth, to calm its cries, to rise. Really, if you look at the world, everyone, everywhere is crying out for mother. The comparison, and the feminine and the healing of the wounds is missing on the planet. That’s what we rise into, and then we care for the Earth like the sacred other, and then we receive from that work. AMS: When you were talking about the tomatoes it really flashed for me that that’s where the spirituality side of things, the self-work can come in. And this is kind of what past activists and leaders have said, too: When you find that strength in yourself, that light and that deep goodness, you use that to root yourself down and then no one can shake you when you do the real work. SDW: Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about in creating the fear around the witch—it creates the fear around yourself. The witch as a woman who might not be so pretty and pleasing and fit the norm. If you’re so scared not to be pretty and pleasing and fit the norm, you never enter these darker chambers of yourself and start to really discover yourself. That treasure is always buried. If you never enter the buried parts of yourself, you never find the treasure within you. And then, you never unlock your power. That was the whole point of patriarchal propaganda, was to fear the witch. We fear these wild, unknown places in us, so we stay away from them, but that’s where our power lies. In our dreams and our fears and the idea that we might not be our true selves yet. There might be so much more to us, and that could scare us too, because then what would happen to our life as we knew it? It would probably dissolve, and fall apart. Finding ourselves, once we leave normal society—which, you have to sort of break up with that to really go on these heroine quests—then we find the power to stay rooted in ourselves to do this work and to go public with this work. You need a lot of inner grace, a lot of inner power to put yourself out there. AMS: So what can men do? What’s the role of men in all of this as you see it? AMS: My dad’s a really great example, Bernie’s a really great example of the sacred masculine. You know, the men that are awakened to the feminine. Deep compassion for the Earth and animals, that’s a feminine side that all men have, but fear that it makes them weak to feel emotion or care too much. Because patriarchy has made them think they have to be so tough, and abandon their feminine side, which would save their lives: self-love and self-compassion and intuition and oneness with all. Men can wake their feminine. Men can start to open books and explore what the feminine means in men. There are men’s groups. You can go into men’s circles where men are safe to cry together. That’s step number one: Feel your feelings. And know that that is safe. Know that your anger is probably masking your pain, and look at your pain. The “heal yourself to heal the world” message almost more applies to men. If men like Trump could look at his anger and realize it was all his pain and fear of not being loved, he wouldn’t be on this intense, destructive warpath. He would sob at his knees and ask for love instead of power. Men feeling their feelings and feeling safe to do that, and connecting back to the Earth—and Andrew Harvey’s great about talking about this: Everybody, men included, ask themselves once they’ve gone into their pain, “What breaks your heart the most on this planet?” And the cool thing about human individuals is everyone is programmed, or geared to have a special cause. For me, everything breaks my heart, but animal cruelty or the pipelines [the most]. Whatever it is that you can’t even look at online, make that your cause. Andrew Harvey says, “Find what breaks your heart the most and move towards that.” So, figure out what specific thing that’s killing the planet is killing you, and move towards that. Or, you know, if it’s alcoholism or homelessness or not just something environmental. Get involved in a cause that connects you to others and makes you of service. Men getting not in military services, but volunteering service, activism services and connecting in and becoming the sacred masculine that serves to protect the feminine and protect the Earth and innocents. That’s a really good way for men to get involved. Stand up as our warriors and our heroes, not as our villains or our bystanders. April M. Short is a yoga teacher and writer who previously worked as AlterNet’s drugs and health editor. She currently works part-time for AlterNet, and freelances for a number of publications nationwide.

MUFON International tracking multiple triangle UFO reports

Editor

Four triangle UFO cases were reported to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) international desk in recent months from Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada and Iran. A Switzerland witness at Neuchatel recalled an incident from March 2011 when he and his wife were sitting in the living room of their apartment at Rue de la Cote. “My wife sat under a side window of the room from where you can see the Rue Auguste Bachelin,” the witness stated.“It was already dark outside and there were nearly no cars in that road anymore. There is anyway not much traffic in that road. It was very silent outside and inside we had no light switched on as we were watching TV. It is impossible that this is any reflection from the inside. Then I turned around to talk to my wife and I saw a huge triangle with three lights under each corner.” The witness described the object. “It was approximately 15-20 meters wide and maybe 1.5 meters high. The edges were rounded and there were no windows or anything to see. Maybe there was something on the top, but that was not visible from that angle. The object was flying/hovering maybe 10 meters or lower from west to east, following the street.” The witness was able to watch the object for between 10 and 20 seconds. “The speed was very low, but I cannot tell how fast it was. It seemed to me like it was searching something like a police helicopter, but it was sure no helicopter. I am a FPV drone pilot myself and I know how a helicopter flies and that it has to make a lot of sound when flying so low. Surface was black matte without any symbols or markings as far as I have seen it.” The witness submitted one illustration with the report. “The next week I have searched in Google for a triangle UFO and it looks nearly exactly like the one described in the ‘Belgium UFO Wave’ from 1989 but without the red light in the middle. My wife asked me what was wrong, but before I could answer the object was gone. She was making jokes of me so I didn’t talk to anybody about that until now. But I am nearly sure that someone else must have seen it. Please let me know if there are other reports so I know I am not crazy.” MUFON International CAG team member Wolfgang Stelzig closed this case as an Unknown. A New Zealand witness at Christchurch recalled a UFO event from 1990 when a V-shaped UFO about 120 feet long moved overhead on November 12. “I could see the struts quite clearly,” the witness stated.“It was the shape of electrical pylons on its side. As it passed over there was no noise. I could see part of blue light /disc upfront and two light blue lights at the rear.” A New Zealand witness said the triangle UFO had blue lights. Pictured: Christchurch, New Zealand. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The witness explained his position. “We lived on Cashmere Hills quite high up. After viewing this object for about 20 minutes, I asked my wife to get the video camera. I filmed it for 10 minutes. It somehow turned into a circular light jumping all over the place.” The object the moved toward the witness. “When the craft passed over, it was a huge triangle shape with light blue discs on the rear and front. There was no noise.” The witness stated that he was later visited by “three men in suits” and questioned about the events.No images or videos were included with the MUFON report. New Zealand MUFON National Director and STAR Team Member Roger Stankovic is investigating. A Canadian witness at Estevan reported being overcome with fear after watching two, triangle-shaped UFOs move to the ground level at 8:15 p.m. on August 20, 2016. The witness was at his kitchen table when the lights on the objects caught his eye. A Canadian witness at Estevan reported being overcome with fear after watching two, triangle-shaped UFOs move to the ground level . Pictured: Estevan. (Credit: Google) “They formed a triangle,” the witness stated.“There was a bright, orange-red light at the corner of each of them forming a triangle. These triangles that were formed were big. The size, location, and what had appeared they were doing scared me. They were floating, came down to the ground and appeared to be doing something. They were there for some time.” The witness watched for about 20 minutes. “I stopped watching them and closed the curtains. I felt that if I continued to watch them, that they would sense my presence there, even perhaps pick up on what I was thinking. At first I thought that a couple of semi-trucks took a wrong turn and had to turn around on our property. As I kept watching I soon realized I was wrong. I was stricken with fear and panic as I had watched what they were doing. I tried to calm myself. I was so worried that they would sense my presence being so close.” Canadian MUFON Field Investigator Peter Derrick is investigating. An Iranian witness at Shiraz reported watching a triangle UFO emitting an intense, red light that quickly disappeared about 3:30 a.m. on September 14, 2016. The Iranian witness said the low flying triangle UFO shone blue light on the area below. Pictured: Shiraz is in southwestern Iran. (Credit: Google) “I was awake studying for my post PhD exam,” the witness stated.“I did what I used to do every night. I went out in front of the house and stood right beside the dry river that is just in front of the house. That is when it happened. I saw a red light in distance. It came closer and closer. OMG, I still get goosebumps when I think about it. I couldn’t move at all. I mean I was just like a statue staring at that thing. I am usually very brave compared to my friends and family, but that was the most frightening event of my life.” The witness said the object was emitting light. “It then started scattering a red light over the area. I mean everywhere was red. After a minute, it came up and just disappeared in a second. I mean, the way it disappeared was even scary, like blinking. I have never said this to anyone because I think it will probably sound crazy. I didn’t know what to do, who to tell. I just found this site and reported what happened. I also never went back to that spot for smoking. Anyway, just writing about it here made me feel better already. Thank you.” MUFON International is investigating. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com. Source: Open Minds Related: TR-3B Black Triangle: Man Made Anti Gravity Craft Is This the TR-3B? New Footage Of Alleged “Triangle UFO” Surfaces Secret Space Program: TR-3B Triangle-Shaped Craft Spotted in Apollo 17 Mission Images Mysterious Triangular UFO Appears Again Over England Authentic Image: NASA Astronauts Snaps image of Triangular UFO in Space NASA Hacker Claims USA Has War Ships In Space Astronaut Scott Kelly Tweets Photo of UFO from ISS A Video Shows Mysterious Lights of Unknown Black Triangle UFO in San Diego Seen Over Northern California Witness with military background videotapes triangle UFO (Video) Silent, low flying triangle UFO moves over Austin

Recall the 'Kremlin Opponent' Putin Whacked in a Washington Hotel? American Investigators Find He Actually Drank Himself to Death - Paul Robinson

About Reality check media Recall the 'Kremlin Opponent' Putin Whacked in a Washington Hotel? American Investigators Find He Actually Drank Himself to Death Clear evidence that Washington Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI and the US Attorney for the District of Columbia are working for the Russians Irrussianality In November last year, Mikhail Lesin was found dead in a hotel in Washington, DC. From 1999 to 2004, Lesin was Minister of Press, Broadcasting and Mass Communication of the Russian Federation, and from 2004 to 2009 he was adviser to the President of the Russian Federation for mass media relations. Thereafter, he occupied a number of other senior positions, including head of Gazprom Media from 2013 to 2015. Reports that Lesin had died of ‘blunt force trauma’ led many commentators to surmise that he had been murdered on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Daily Beast, for instance, reported that the American authorities had been investigating Lesin for ‘corruption and human rights abuses in Russia’, and that : The mystery surrounding Lesin’s death had fueled speculation that Lesin was murdered after coming to Washington to cut a deal with the FBI. The conspiracy theories are arguably well-founded, because it wouldn’t be the first time someone who posed a political threat to Putin wound up dead under unusual circumstances. Similarly, in an article entitled ‘Another Defector Dead in Washington’, former NSA analyst John Schindler claimed that Lesin and the Kremlin had had a ‘major falling out’, and that Lesin was ‘believed to have been cooperating with the FBI’. Schindler compared Lesin’s death to those of Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered in London in 2006, and Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky, who died in mysterious circumstances in Washington in 1941. Schinder concluded : While he certainly may have taken his own life in despair, Mr. Krivitsky’s murder by Soviet agents appears at least equally plausible. It would be a terrible fate if the eerily similar death of Mikhail Lesin goes unsolved too. If Kremlin agents are conducting assassinations on American soil, brazenly in our capital, the public has a right to know. Robert van Voren, Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania) and Ilia State University in Tbilisi (Georgia), likewise remarked that, ‘an increasing number of people from Russia’ were ‘dying under rather suspicious circumstances’, and that the Lesin case was ‘rather suspicious, and one has increasingly the feeling that Putin is getting rid of people who know too much.’ Van Voren said, ‘It is not unusual behaviour: being the Al Capone of a gangster state, he [Putin] must be constantly worried about everything people know about him, his past and his corrupt businesses.’ Without directly accusing Putin of murder, various mainstream media outlets have implied it by including Lesin in lists of ‘opponents’ of the Russian ‘regime’ whom the Kremlin has allegedly ordered killed. In August of this year, for instance, the New York Times mentioned Lesin in an article entitled ‘More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead’. And National Public Radio (NPR) included Lesin in a broadcast called ‘The Curious Deaths of Kremlin Critics’. According to NPR: Evelyn Farkas, who served until recently as the top Russia official at the Pentagon, says she’s never seen proof that the Kremlin is ordering hits on people. Still, she says, ‘The fact that someone like Mikhail Lesin all of a sudden shows up dead in a Dupont Circle hotel, to me, is fishy. The message is to all the other people who are Putin cronies, who are oligarchs, that these kinds of things could happen to you.’ It turns out, however, that Putin did not kill Lesin. On Friday, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia issued the results of a joint investigation with the FBI and Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department. Lesin died of a combination of ‘acute ethanol intoxication’ and falls caused by ‘days of excessive consumption of alcohol.’ The case is now considered closed.

Fordham Prof Greer: ’You Don’t Need Men to Have Patriarchy’ - White Women Have Upheld It for Generations - Breitbart

Ian Hanchett

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Fordham University Associate Professor of Political Science Christina Greer argued, “you don’t need men to have patriarchy. So, white women are upholding patriarchy in very clear ways. They have for generations. ” After Greer referenced “what they’re [Republicans] doing to women, especially the women who voted for them — . ” Host Ari Melber cut in, “I mean, you have tons of Republicans, legislators and Republican citizens, who would say there’s nothing white supremacist about what they want. they have values, and a lot of women are as we know. And to pick one example, and you respond, white women under 30 broke for Trump, not Hillary Clinton. What do you make of that? And do you think that these policy choices — right — will now change some of that? Greer responded, “First of all, you don’t need men to have patriarchy. So, white women are upholding patriarchy in very clear ways. They have for generations. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

New York Times Reinstates Managing Editor Role and Appoints Joseph Kahn - The New York Times

Sydney Ember

The New York Times announced on Friday that it was reviving the title of managing editor and naming Joseph Kahn, an assistant editor for International, to the position. The elevation of Mr. Kahn, 52, to the newsroom position establishes him as a leading candidate to succeed Dean Baquet as executive editor, as The Times continues its shift to the next generation of leaders. As part of the announcement, the company also said that Susan Chira, 58, one of three deputy executive editors, was leaving that role to write about gender issues for The Times. The move comes as The Times’s newsroom undergoes significant changes aimed at making it better positioned for its digital future. When Mr. Baquet retired the managing editor title in 2014, he said the changes to the leadership structure were intended to make titles more fluid and the newsroom more nimble and responsive. But in an interview on Friday, he said he came to realize that his job as the top editor “had become really large” because he also had to consider the newsroom’s overall strategy. Mr. Baquet said he decided to appoint a managing editor about three weeks ago, and told Mr. Kahn soon after. “It’s one thing to have great ideas about how to change a newsroom and create a modern newsroom, it’s another thing to actually do it,” Mr. Baquet said. “I thought that I really needed a partner in it, if we were really going to pull it off. ” Succession plans at The Times have been a frequent topic of debate for decades, and Mr. Kahn’s promotion will most likely set off a fresh round of guesswork and forecasting. When James Bennet, 50, rejoined The Times this year as editorial page editor, his appointment also spurred speculation inside the newsroom and out that he would eventually succeed Mr. Baquet, who turns 60 next week. “I very much think that Joe should be a candidate to succeed me,” Mr. Baquet said. But he added, “He’s not the only candidate — I’m not setting him up in any way more than anybody else. ” Mr. Baquet was managing editor before he was named executive editor in May 2014, replacing Jill Abramson. Executive editors at The Times traditionally serve until they are 65, though some leave earlier. Also looming over The Times is the question of who will take over as publisher when Arthur Sulzberger Jr. steps aside. At the company’s annual meeting in May, Mr. Sulzberger said succession planning had begun and that by next May the company will have named a deputy publisher, a position that traditionally precedes an appointment to publisher. Mr. Baquet said a decision on the deputy publisher would come “soon. ” In the newsroom, Mr. Kahn’s promotion was less of a surprise than Ms. Chira’s decision to leave her role as the main masthead editor overseeing daily news coverage. Ms. Chira said the move was her decision and that this was her next chapter at The Times. “Dean would have loved for me to stay on the masthead, but I decided that this change was an opportunity for me,” Ms. Chira said in an interview. She said she had loved working with Mr. Baquet and the other deputy executive editors, “but as the situation changed, I thought, you know I have been basically on the treadmill of breaking news for 13 years” and she wanted to focus more on gender issues and writing. In her new role, Ms. Chira, who was previously the foreign editor for The Times for eight years and has helped oversee coverage that has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, will cover gender for both the Opinion section and the newsroom. She will also help the editor of a new unit focused on gender issues that The Times plans to create. Ms. Chira has long been a champion of women in the newsroom. The other two deputy executive editors, Matthew Purdy and Janet Elder, will become deputy managing editors. Mr. Purdy, 60, will continue to oversee investigations and enterprise, while taking on additional responsibilities involving daily news coverage. Ms. Elder, 60, will continue her role running newsroom operations and personnel. In a note to the staff on Friday, Mr. Baquet said Mr. Kahn’s primary responsibility in the next year would be “to lead our efforts to build The Times of the future, and to grapple with questions of what we cover going forward, and what our desks should look like. ” In his new role, Mr. Kahn will be in charge of putting into effect changes proposed by a group that is working to prepare and transform the newsroom for a digital future. Mr. Kahn said in an interview that while he will be more focused on strategy in his role, he will also have a hand in the daily newsroom report. He expects to attend news meetings, he said, and will be involved with big stories. ” I don’t think it’s going to be 80 percent of my time,” Mr. Kahn said about his coverage responsibilities. “But it’s going to be a lot bigger than zero. ” The Times plans to name Michael Slackman, the international managing editor, as its new international editor on Monday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity. The appointment of Mr. Kahn is a reaffirmation of The Times’s commitment to its international expansion, an initiative that Mr. Kahn, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has helped lead and that has been viewed as a pillar of the company’s future growth. In April, The Times said it would invest $50 million over the next three years to expand its international digital audience and increase its revenue outside of the United States. Mr. Kahn joined The Times in 1998 from The Wall Street Journal. He covered Wall Street and international economics and served as The Times’s Beijing bureau chief before returning to New York to work as deputy foreign editor and then international editor. In his note to the newsroom, Mr. Baquet praised Mr. Kahn’s leadership on “the transformation of our international presence,” saying he had helped bring the newsroom together “with our consumer, advertising, technology, product and data teams to help the company think and act globally. ”

Want to Find Fulfillment at Last? Think Like a Designer - The New York Times

Steven Kurutz

STANFORD, CALIF. — Take out your flow journals. We’re going to talk about flow moments. You’re going to learn how to find a fulfilling career. You’re going to learn how to better navigate life’s decisions and kill your “wicked problems” dead. How? By training yourself to think like a designer. That, anyway, is the premise of “Designing Your Life,” a class taught at Stanford University (the school’s “most popular class,” according to Fast Company magazine) as well as the book that grew out of it, “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Joyful Life” (Knopf). The two men who created the class and wrote the book are Silicon Valley veterans, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They believe they have hit upon a system to help you deal with almost any challenge. “How do you find the one to love — we don’t do that,” Mr. Burnett said. “We also don’t give advice on weight loss. ” But everything else? The two professors claim that you can design an amazing life in the same way that Jonathan Ive designed the iPhone. They say the practices taught in the class and the book can help you (in ) “reframe” dysfunctional beliefs that surround life and career decisions and help you “wayfind” in a chaotic world through the adoption of such design tenets as prototyping and . After nine years of teaching their secrets to future Google product managers and wunderkinds, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans are opening up the curriculum to everyone. “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and “Am I living a meaningful life?” aren’t only subjects for dorm hangouts, the men said. “The question of ‘What do I do with the rest of my one wild and wonderful life?’ is on everyone’s mind,” Mr. Evans said. Mr. Burnett recalled a conversation with Stanford’s dean of the engineering department, who was about to retire. “He said: ‘Can I take your class? Because I don’t know what I’m going to be now that I’m not the dean anymore. ’” Mr. Burnett added: “One of the out there is that you should figure it out by 25, or maybe it’s 27 now. Then there’s the other thing of failure to launch, that millennials are slackers. Part of the permission we give people is: Reframe this. You’re not supposed to have it figured out. ” Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans looked on as the roughly 50 Stanford students in their charge took out and read from their flow journals. Then they broke the class into discussion groups of six or seven. It was early May, and the students were in the final weeks of “Designing Your Life. ” Standing in the front of the room, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans began to make their way through a PowerPoint presentation. “When did you seem the most animated, the most present?” Mr. Burnett said, by way of guiding the discussion groups. Silviana Ilcus, an art history major who had completed more than 230 units at Stanford without having arrived at a firm idea of what she wanted to with her life, addressed the other members of her group. “I don’t have flow when I’m doing art history,” Ms. Ilcus said. “I hate writing. ” The others listened patiently. “My flow was doing math,” she said, seeming to have a moment in real time. “I’m wondering why it didn’t guide my choice of major. ” Sitting at an outdoor campus food court after class, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans nodded in recognition after hearing of the exchange. “The course surfaces stuff that people haven’t worked through yet, almost universally,” Mr. Evans said. Mr. Burnett said, “It’s a place to have this conversation, because nobody is asking them these questions, and they’re not asking themselves. ” College students are promising empty vessels, as yet unburdened by the and compromises that keep the rest of us up at night — say, hating your corporate job but loving the house it pays for, or wanting to fulfill your dream of backpacking across Europe with two young children in school. To make “Designing Your Life” workable for people in midcareer, the professors had to do their own reframe of the curriculum. The book includes things that are not in the class, like what Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans call “anchor problems” — overcommitted life choices that keep people stuck and unhappy. A common mistake that people make, they said, is to assume that there’s only one right solution or optimal version of your life, and that if you choose wrong, you’ve blown it. That’s completely absurd, Mr. Evans said: “There are lots of you. There are lots of right answers. ” As messengers, the two men are an odd couple. Mr. Burnett, 59, is a acerbic, existential atheist with an earring, while Mr. Evans, 63, is an outgoing, verbose, practicing Christian with the gray beard of a philosopher. Both are Stanford grads, and while they have accomplished résumés (Mr. Burnett helped to design the original “Star Wars” toys and worked at Apple before becoming executive director of Stanford’s design program Mr. Evans also worked at Apple and Electronic Arts, the game company) each said his younger self would have been well served by the course. For his part, Mr. Evans struggled as a biology student, a major he chose because he had watched a Jacques Cousteau television special as a boy, and one he clung to because, he said, “I don’t think I had conscious permission to not know what I was doing. ” He switched to mechanical engineering and graduated with a master’s degree in the ’70s. But when an Apple recruiter called, he initially hung up, because he was bored by computers. In doing so, Mr. Evans said ruefully, he violated several principles of “Designing Your Life,” among them staying open to “latent wonderfulness. ” “If you’re wrong, you go: ‘Oh, computers are boring. O. K. I’m going home now,’” Mr. Evans explained. “ ‘Yes’ is easy. ‘No’ is hard to come back from. ” Mr. Burnett had an easier time on the surface, finding his way to the design program at Stanford and a lifelong vocation. Through a professor mentor, he landed a job as a toy designer and went on to greater success. But, he said: “My method was a blind walk. I didn’t have any strategies. I trusted my intuition, but I worried that I didn’t know what I was doing. ” Before joining forces, they hashed out the concepts they had been developing over a lunch at a Portola Valley beer garden then known as Zott’s (short for Rissotti’s it is now called the Alpine Inn) using their life experiences as grist for the curriculum. In a place like Stanford, where yearly tuition is about $50, 000, they thought it was worthwhile to send students into the world with practical knowledge about how to find a fulfilling job and excel at it. They began holding workshops for adults a few years ago, including for the employees of Google. The workshop and the book are an effort to take their approach beyond its cloistered campus setting. As Mr. Evans put it, “We’re trying to give this thing away. ” If you can get past the language and Silicon Valley preciousness, many of the principles of “Designing Your Life” are, in fact, helpful. Design thinking, as rendered in the book, is about treating life in a more improvisational way. It’s a welcome counterbalance to the engineering gripping the culture. Follow Mr. Burnett’s and Mr. Evans’s teachings, and the process of decision making suddenly seems more playful. Their method is experiential and accepts that failure is part of the process. Central to the philosophy is prototyping, a concept borrowed from how product designers work. Let’s say you’re thinking of changing careers. Interview someone who does the job you’re considering. Better yet, ask to shadow them for a day, or work in the field on weekends. If it feels right, take it a step further if it doesn’t, move on. “It’s a classic form of design,” Mr. Burnett said. “You build a lot of stuff, you try a lot of stuff. But it’s always less than the whole product. ” Prototyping big decisions like a career change or a move, meanwhile, guards against blowing up your life to rush headlong into the alluring unknown, or worse, taking no action for years, unhappily. Emma Wood, a Stanford graduate and a consultant at McKinsey Company who took “Designing Your Life” as an undergraduate, said the class released the pressure she felt about the life she would face after graduation. “Your whole future and happiness aren’t tied to this one plan working out,” she said. “You can make mistakes. Failure is good. ” The capstone of the Stanford class, and a key part of the book, is an assignment to come up with three “Odyssey Plans” that map out the next five years of your life in radically different ways. The activity is designed to reinforce the sense of multiple viable options, unlock the imagination and eliminate the attractive power of the unknown alternative. Lingtong Sun, who graduated from Stanford last year, said he continues to use the “Odyssey Plan” and other concepts from the class to decide his career. “On the grand level, I haven’t figured out what I want to do yet,” said Mr. Sun, who works as a software engineer for a tech in the Bay Area. “But I’m more open to trying something and seeing how it goes. It’s that bias toward action. You can’t think your way into your future. ” Breaking down the system to its basic parts, as a designer would, Mr. Evans said, “There are only two things we offer in the class: ideas and tools. ” He added, “If you think with these ideas rather than the ones you had before, and you use these tools, we believe your chance of building and getting what you want will go up. ”

An Alabama Reader Is Pleased To Report That Jeff Sessions Reads Ann Coulter!

VDARE.com Reader

November 7, 2016, 7:46 pm A+ | a- From: Benjamin In Alabama [ ] During a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire, Jeff Sessions, the majestic Senator from my adopted state of Alabama was gearing up (with apparent pleasure) to talk about Ann Coulter’s most recent article when he was interrupted by a woman who was, judging by the sound of her voice, an immigrant. The interruption was a happy one, however, since the woman was down from Massachusetts, where she said Trump has a lot of support. Sadly, Sessions did not recover his train of thought regarding Coulter’s article, but immediately began to talk about immigration, which more than made up for the loss. I think he must be the very best Senator. So noble and sincere. And the fact that he reads Ann Coulter adds to his charm.

After Escape From Syria, Another Dangerous Foe: Diabetes - The New York Times

Rana F. Sweis

MAFRAQ, Jordan — Nisreen thought the worst was behind her family when it fled to Jordan from Homs in Syria. Then, two years later, though safe from the shelling and the Syrian civil war, her son Hisham, who was 5, began to rapidly lose weight. When Ms. Najjar and her husband, Haitham took him to a clinic, a doctor prescribed cold medicine and dismissed him. But a few days later, Hisham got worse and complained of chest pain and aches in his sides. When his parents rushed him to the emergency room, doctors determined that his blood sugar was dangerously elevated. Doctors said Hisham had Type 1 diabetes that had gone untreated for years. He was quickly placed in intensive care, and doctors told his mother that the situation was dire. The next 24 hours will determine whether Hisham lives or dies, she recalled them saying. As she reflected on the harrowing episode in an interview this month, Ms. Najjar began to cry, trying to hide her tears from Hisham. He sat behind her with his two siblings, Yousef, 6, and Mais, 3, who was born in Jordan, in their small, cold apartment here, 40 miles north of Amman, the capital. “I’m sorry,” said Ms. Najjar, 26, wiping her eyes. Hisham, who is shy and has large dark brown eyes, left the room to play with balloons. “It’s just that I almost lost him, not to violence or to war, but to diabetes. ” A few birds singing in their cages brighten the grim space where Hisham’s family lives. But they also remind the family of what it left behind and how the lives of the couple and their children have been upended. About a year after the civil war started in Syria in 2011, the family packed up a few of its belongings, leaving behind almost everything, and left its apartment in Homs for the nearby home of Mr. Abrash’s parents. Ms. Najjar and Mr. Abrash thought they would be gone for 10 days, waiting for the fighting to dissipate. Most of the family’s neighbors in western Syria were also leaving. The temporary departure soon became permanent. After tank fire and shelling erupted one day near the home where the family had sought refuge, it drove to Damascus to get passports, then south to enter Jordan legally at the Jaber border crossing. Back in Homs, the city in Syria, hundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed. Many structures remain skeletons of their former selves, the walls and windows blasted out. The city was once a foothold for rebels fighting the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar but many fighters started to leave at the end of 2015 under a deal with the government. The city is now back under the president’s control. Ms. Najjar knows that if Hisham had fallen sick while in Syria, he probably would have died. Power disruptions, common in Syria, essentially shut down hospitals, cutting off electricity to refrigerators storing insulin. And he and his family would have risked their lives just trying to travel to the hospital. They have no plans to return. “Of course I was sad when I realized I wasn’t going to return home after a few months,” Ms. Najjar said. “There is nothing really to return to anymore. ” More than 650, 000 Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan, many of them settling in urban areas. They mostly live in cramped apartments where the rent consumes any humanitarian aid they may receive. The rest of the refugees, about 8 percent, according to some estimates, live in three refugee camps that offer basic services and are free, but also limit freedom of movement. Many of the Syrians arrived in Jordan six years ago, near the start of the civil war. The flood of refugees has put a strain on the country’s limited resources, and public clinics in Jordan no longer provide free health care to Syrians. The protracted crisis is increasing pressure on aid organizations to take on additional roles and provide refugees with more than emergency care, such as treatment for cardiovascular diseases, respiratory ailments and diabetes. Nearly a year ago, Amnesty International warned that Syrian refugees in Jordan were unable to get access to health care and other vital services, citing “the combination of grossly inadequate support from the international community and barriers imposed by the government of Jordan. ” The report also found that even if Syrian refugees could get access to health care, many could not afford it without forgoing basic needs. The United Nations refugee agency provides Hisham’s family with $137 a month in cash assistance the money goes directly toward the $193 rent and the electricity bill, which is $28. In addition, the family receives $70 in food coupons. The International Rescue Committee, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, provides Hisham with free regular checkups and insulin, worth nearly $30 a month. The organization also paid for a glucose meter, but lacks the funding to pay for glucose test strips. The family must pay for them — $27 a month. Ms. Najjar takes her son to a diabetes clinic every three months in the northern town of Irbid, about 30 miles from here. Each checkup, including the cost of travel, is $35. Across northern Jordan, the International Rescue Committee provides nearly 9, 000 refugees and vulnerable locals with free primary health care. The group uses mobile health clinics, each with two doctors, two nurses, a midwife, a counselor and a mobile pharmacy. Patients with diabetes require more frequent care, and wait times for consultations at the group’s clinics are increasing. When the family first arrived, some Jordanians and informal charities helped it cover the rent. But with no immediate prospects of returning to Syria and Jordanian poverty levels rising, it is becoming harder for this family of five to pay the bills. When Mr. Abrash, 37, first arrived in Jordan in 2012, he spent five months searching for work. The unemployment rate among Jordanians exceeds 14 percent, and is almost double that among youth. Syrians, until recently, were not allowed to work. In Syria, Mr. Abrash was a tailor, mainly sewing women’s jeans. Five months after he arrived in Jordan, he began working as a tailor, sewing pillows and mattresses for customers who were referred to him. More recently, he also began selling birds. A bulging disk in his neck is preventing him from working full time at garment factories. After Hisham was found to have Type 1 diabetes, his mother attended awareness sessions about the disease and started to change the way the family eats. Today, it mainly eats vegetables and rice. In the morning before school, Hisham eats wheat bread with eggplant and has a cup of tea. He walks to school with his friends. His mother makes sure he takes an insulin shot before he leaves in the morning, after lunch and before he sleeps at night. “The insulin shots let me lead a normal life, like my friends,” Hisham, 7, said as he watched cartoons. “Sometimes I cheat and I eat something I’m not supposed to at school, but my mom makes sure I eat well at home. ” His mother also checks his blood glucose levels regularly. Hisham does not remember his home in Syria. All his memories are in Jordan. “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t remember anything. ” His home here has two small plastic toy cars and a few plush animals donated by a charity nearby. “When I’m not at school, I mostly jump on the sofas, play soccer with the inflatable balls we have,” he said, as his younger sister followed him around from one room to another.

Sen. Rand Paul: I Talked to President Trump Last Night He’s ’Very Open to Negotiation’ on Obamacare Repeal

John Hayward

Senator Rand Paul ( ) an outspoken critic of the House Republican replacement for Obamacare, joined SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily. Paul revealed he has been in constant contact with President Donald Trump about the issue, including a phone call Thursday night, and said the president is “very open to negotiation. ”[Kassam asked if House Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) was correct to argue that repealing Obamacare without an immediate comprehensive replacement plan is impossible, and the plan his caucus has put on the table is the closest to repeal they can get. “I’ve always been for repeal and replace at the same time, but not necessarily in the same bill,” Senator Paul replied. “The reason why I think you need ‘replace’ is we need to offer hope, and we need to offer an insurance product that is inexpensive, and something that will fix the marketplace so everybody can get access to health insurance. ” “The problem with putting replace and repeal in one bill is that we all tend to agree on the repeal aspect, Republicans, but we tend to disagree on the replacement aspect,” he said. “My idea of replacement is trying to let the marketplace work, encouraging people to join and healthcare associations so they can drive prices down, and the sale of all kinds of insurance. ” “Some of those things we actually agree with Paul Ryan on. The problem is Paul Ryan has a lot of Obamacare Lite stuff that he wants to keep in there,” Paul said. “He wants to keep the Obamacare subsidies. He calls them tax credits, refundable tax credits. He wants to keep the Obamacare taxes, all of the taxes, for a year — and then he wants to keep the Cadillac tax, the tax on good insurance, forever. ” “He also has an individual mandate in there, which is curious, because if you’ve listened to the debate for the last six, seven years, one of the things Republicans have hated the worst is the individual mandate,” Paul added. “He keeps the individual mandate. You just don’t pay the government you have to pay the insurance company. I think if you talk to customers and patients across the country and talk to doctors, there’s not a great deal of difference in dislike between the government and the insurance companies. You’re not going to make a lot of us happy if we have to pay the insurance company a penalty instead of the government. ” “But there’s also insurance company bailouts in there. This gets to the fundamental heart of the problem. The problem with Obamacare is they tell people, ‘You know what? You can wait to buy insurance until after you’re sick.’ When they do that, nobody buys insurance until they’re sick, and the price of the insurance goes up. Ryancare doesn’t fix that. If you do not fix that, the premiums will continue to skyrocket, but we’re going to be blamed for it,” the senator warned his fellow Republicans. “After repeal is voted on, and even if it’s an incomplete repeal or Obamacare Lite, Republicans will own this. So we’ve got to get it right before we do this. We have to understand fundamentally that if you wait to let people buy insurance until after they’re sick, they will,” he said. “The interesting thing about the individual mandate in the Ryan plan is that let’s say you do lose your job, or let’s say you can’t buy insurance for a while. Now you know that when you buy it again, you have a 30 percent penalty. You don’t get the penalty until you buy it. So why would you buy it? You’re going to wait to buy it until you get sick. So once again, as the adverse selection gets worse, the death spiral of Obamacare continues after Ryancare,” Paul argued. Kassam noted that the White House is making a push for the House bill on Paul’s home turf in Kentucky and asked if the situation had devolved into “ war” between Senator Paul and the executive branch. “Actually, I think the president is very open to negotiation,” Paul replied. “I talked to him again last night by phone. I’ve talked to him twice a week, which is quite a bit for anybody to talk to the president that’s not in the administration. ” “I talked to him again last night. He said he’s open to negotiation, but I reiterated to him that Paul Ryan went on TV for 45 minutes yesterday with a press conference, and he said, ‘The response to this, the choices are binary.’ Well, binary means there are two choices: either we take it or leave it. Either we take Obamacare Lite or we get nothing. That isn’t sitting well with conservatives, and I promise you, the more we hear Paul Ryan say, ‘Take it or leave it,’ the less we’re willing to take it,” he said. “Also, we are concerned that if we vote for Obamacare Lite, and insurance premiums still continue to go through the roof, and a year from now, insurance companies are going bankrupt the same way they’re going bankrupt now, people will say, ‘What did you guys do? You had six years to figure this out, and you couldn’t get it right,’” Paul said. When Kassam asked if opponents of the Ryan bill had the votes to keep it from passing, Paul replied, “The proof’s in the pudding. ” “There are 40 members of the House Freedom Caucus. They will make their decision. So far, their leadership and their voting has been that they’re for clean repeal. I believe they voted 80 percent to take a position of clean repeal. And that’s my position: separate repeal from replace,” he said. “You do replace. I do replace it on the same day. We’re not completely unable to vote on more than one thing in a day,” he pointed out. “We should put the repeal forward that we voted on a year ago, and that passed unanimously. Put it on, and the same day, let’s put up replacement,” Paul recommended. “Now, what House leadership will tell you is, you probably won’t get to 60 votes. I can’t guarantee 60 votes. All I can guarantee is what we’re for. We should put it forward, and if Democrats block replacement, they still own the whole thing. ” Paul agreed with Kassam that many Republicans do not seem to understand they hold the high ground on Obamacare repeal and could make Democrats pay a political price for interfering with vitally needed measures to deal with the failing program. “I don’t think they understand that yet. I’m still trying to get that through to them,” said Paul. “I am for replacement. I do want to pass replacement — but if they don’t, instead of Republicans fighting with each other, why don’t we make sure that the Democrats still are responsible? If they choose to block replacement, they’re still responsible. ” “I think we could pass replacement, though. I think there actually are some Democrats who will come around,” he predicted. “Some of these ideas are really reasonable. For example, what if we put up the individual idea that every patient in America should be allowed to join a healthcare association? We expand healthcare associations in one vote. That’s a tough vote for Democrats to say they’re against the consumer to join a buying group to get a lower price and to get guaranteed issue. ” “This is the other thing nobody understands,” he elaborated. “They think you have to mandate guaranteed issue — you know, that you can buy insurance after you’re sick by law. The other way you do it is you let people get group insurance. You join a you join the health buying group, and when you buy it, you have group insurance. Group insurance is protected, and if you get group insurance, you will not be let go. Your prices will not go up. ” Paul predicted such a reform would “completely transform” the company relationship. “Let’s say you’re part of a buying group. Now you have enormous leverage, so instead of us kissing the boots of the insurance executives, it’ll be the opposite. The insurance executives will be begging to talk to our person, whoever’s in charge of this,” he said. “And I promise you, whether you make $30, 000 or you make $100, 000 in our country, people don’t like the way they’re being treated by the health insurance companies. ” He said that under Ryancare, insurance companies would “continue to lose money, but Ryan’s going to give them a backstop, a bailout. ” “The chronic insurance company bailout that was in Obamacare is still in this new Obamacare Lite bill,” Paul said. He also expressed strong support for tort reform as part of a plan to bring medical costs down. “I’m a physician,” he reminded the audience. “We’ve got to try to stop the frivolous lawsuits, not only for the expense of them, but everybody orders about a million too many test, because they’re afraid of being sued. We need to fix that. ” “Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on how you look at it — that probably has to be done at the state capitols, because people get sued at the state courts, and the state courts are under the purview of state law,” he added. “Some states have fixed this, frankly, or made it a lot better. They have review panels. They have caps on damages. I don’t know if any have but I like the aspect also. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN:

China Lending Inflates Real Estate, Stocks, Even Egg Futures - The New York Times

Neil Gough

HONG KONG — China is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its economy in a new effort to support growth. Some of it is going into roads and bridges and other big projects that will keep the economy humming. And some of it is going into eggs. China’s latest lending deluge has sent money sloshing into unexpected parts of the economy. That includes a financial market in Dalian where investors can place bets on the future productivity of the country’s hens. Egg futures have surged by as much as since March, the sort of move that would be justified if investors believed China’s chicken flocks were headed for an unfortunate fate. But the market’s usual participants say the flocks are fine. In fact, the actual price of eggs in the country’s markets has fallen from a year ago, according to government statistics. The reason for the unusual jump in egg futures, they say, is China’s tendency to experience investment bubbles when the government steps up spending and lending. China’s previous efforts to bolster growth unexpectedly sent money into real estate and the stock market — markets that had unexplained rises followed by striking drops. “Many commodities prices have gone up crazily,” said Du Shaoxing, a futures trader in Guangzhou, in southern China. “We surely hope for a more stabilized trend where futures can reflect economic fundamentals. The way in which recent commodity prices went up is worrisome. ” China’s latest bubble illustrates the potential risks of its newest effort to spur growth. The Chinese economy is already burdened with too much debt, economists say. And sometimes, stopgap measures to help the economy create problems. China is the world’s biggest producer of eggs, but it is not clear whether the investment surge in eggs will have an impact on prices. Jumps in the futures prices on commodities markets can take months to trickle down to the real world, and if the commodities surge subsides, then the price of eggs in local markets may not budge. Eggs are not the only commodity suddenly out of kilter. Domestic prices and trading volumes on steel, garlic, cotton, iron ore and other items have all soared. This despite the fact that China’s economic slowdown has hurt demand for many items. Officials at Chinese commodities markets are now taking steps to cool speculative fervor to avoid crashes, and prices have begun to ease. By the frenzy made Shanghai futures contracts in steel rebar, the rods used in construction to reinforce concrete, the most actively traded in the world — overtaking trading volumes of two major oil futures contracts, West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude, that have helped set oil prices for decades, analysts at Citigroup said in a report last week. “There is very little rational or fundamental basis for why prices have gotten as out of hand as they have, or why volumes are so high, other than just irrational exuberance,” said Alex Wolf, an emerging markets economist at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, who previously worked as an American diplomat based in Beijing and Taipei. Economists blame Beijing’s new efforts to shore up its economy. Government officials increased lending by banks and offered other support measures in the first few months of the year as economic growth slowed and longtime drivers like manufacturing and exports showed continued weakness. Saad Rahim, the chief economist at Trafigura, one of the world’s biggest traders of metals and oil, calculates that China added about $1 trillion in new liquidity in the first quarter of the year — an amount that would be roughly equal to the entire quarterly economic output of Germany during the same period. “This kind of scale is unprecedented and some of it will leak into speculative investments,” Mr. Rahim said. In the short term, the new lending may be good news for global growth, if it works. China’s growth came in at 6. 7 percent, about where economists had expected, despite some indications that growth had weakened further. But in turning to its old playbook, China risks adding to its already pile of debt, which by some estimates is nearly 300 percent of gross domestic product. The problems are most acute when it comes to China’s corporate borrowers, which have gorged on cheap credit in the years since the global financial crisis. In a report released in April, the International Monetary Fund found that nearly 600 companies had almost $400 billion of debt that was considered at risk, accounting for 14 percent of total corporate borrowing in China. But the renewed push for growth shows that policy makers’ concerns about China’s debt burden appear to have been set aside for now. By delaying efforts to wean itself off cheap credit, China may be setting itself up for some problems related to debt and industrial overcapacity. There are few places for China’s money to go. The country has tightened already stringent limits on how much money its people can send or invest abroad. Its stock market is still recovering from a crash last year. And its property market remains saddled with a glut of apartments in many cities. A property market bubble arose from the huge stimulus that Beijing deployed after the 2008 financial crisis, which set off a building boom. Stocks overtook property in investor interest last year. A raging bull market that was cheered on by official news outlets like People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper, skidded to a halt in June. As for eggs, Chen Jie, who works in the futures department at Hubei Shendan Healthy Food, the biggest egg company in China, said in a phone interview that “there is definitely speculative capital in the market. ” Her company supplies eggs to KFC and McDonald’s restaurants, and sells them at more than 10, 000 supermarkets across China, including those of chains like Walmart, Carrefour and Metro. Hubei Shendan uses the futures market to hedge its bets against swings in actual egg prices. An abnormally volatile futures market makes that job more difficult. “The reason we are in the egg futures market is because the big swings in egg prices will affect our profitability, and a good futures market will help us in that regard,” Ms. Chen said.

What You Should Watch: ‘Mustang’ and Good Background Shows - The New York Times

Margaret Lyons

Welcome to Watching, The New York Times’s guide. We comb through releases big and small to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. You can browse previous guides here, and to receive recommendations straight to your inbox, sign up here. Stay tuned for our upcoming website. Emmy nominations came out yesterday. You can read our full report here as well as our look at the surprises and snubs. I’ll offer my usual caveats that awards don’t measure anything other than an ability to win awards. But still — that’s a fun ability to measure at least sometimes, isn’t it? This weekend, I’ll be waiting for everyone to binge all of Netflix’s supernatural drama “Stranger Things” so I can talk about it excitedly. As always, if you’d like to share your thoughts with me and Team Watching, we’re at watching@nytimes. com. Stay cool out there. “Vice Principals,” Sunday, 10:30, HBO Watch if you miss “Eastbound Down,” or like creative cursing and shows with a dark streak. If you like Danny McBride’s signature characters, “Vice Principals” is your jam. The show stars McBride and Walton Goggins (from “Justified” and “The Shield”) as rival vice principals who are deeply aggrieved when neither is promoted to principal. The show can be silly, but there’s a through line of genuine meanness that’s not for everyone. “Black Mirror” (Netflix) Watch if you like the scariest episodes of “The Twilight Zone. ” Warning: This is not a show you should binge. But if global affairs have you feeling not great, and all the Pokémon Go madness has you feeling a tiny bit conflicted about the role of technology in our society, go ahead and drive into that skid with the anthology series “Black Mirror. ” Every episode (there are only seven so far) is a story, so there’s no need to watch them in order, and each episode has something intriguing to offer, so you can’t go too wrong. Season 1’s “National Anthem,” is the most overtly critical of power (it’s about the British prime minister being put in an impossibly vile position) Season 2’s “White Bear” is the most outright disturbing and “The Waldo Moment” is the most pessimistic about the populace at large. One of those should suffice. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (Hulu) Watch if you like reality contest shows. The eighth and most recent season of the show that’s “Project Runway” for drag queens is now streaming on Hulu. If you’ve never watched the show, I encourage you to check out at least one season before jumping in here, since there’s a lot of history baked into the show. (Season 4, also streaming, is a good place to start.) “Drag Race” outshines other similarly constructed shows with its confessionals: Grandiose insults are part of drag culture, so contestants have far better quips than the people on, oh, “America’s Next Top Model” or “Top Chef. ” Are you looking for your next great TV love? (Or your next great show divorce?) Watching is here to help. Send in a question to watching@nytimes. com. I have lots of chores and would like some TV options to keep me company during my attempts to be productive. Preferably something that doesn’t require tons of attention (or wouldn’t be horribly ruined if I miss a little bit of dialogue here and there) but is fun enough to help the time move by quickly. Any advice? — Katherine Dear Katherine, I feel you. If I’m home, I’m always watching (or at least listening to) something. Saying these are good shows is not at all meant as a knock, and of course you would get more out of them with devoted viewing. But perhaps not a ton more. These are organized from least to most you could do your taxes while watching the shows at the top of this list, but I’d save the ones farther down for chores. • “My Cat From Hell” (some episodes available on OnDemand) has pretty much the same plot every time: There is a cat (often multiple cats) they complain, scratch and relieve themselves at inopportune times their owners are despondent — but usually weirdly complicit in this behavior hero cat whisperer Jackson Galaxy saves the day. It’s also fine for all ages, as long as your kids aren’t freaked out by how weird human beings are. • “The Profit” (Hulu) follows entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis as he goes around to failing small businesses. Much like “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover,” it’s secretly a show about how much debt many people are in, though this has more of a spirit. I love it, but it’s the kind of show I watch with a lot of because every important moment gets played at least twice this is a good one to watch if you’ll be in and out of the room. • “America’s Test Kitchen” (Netflix America’s Test Kitchen’s website) is the most educational food show on TV, but unlike the screaming carnival atmosphere of Food Network shows, this is more of a calm PBS oasis. Where to start? It doesn’t matter! Every episode is equally good. • “Drop Dead Diva” (Netflix) has some of the courtroom scenes and legal strategies any lawyer show has ever had. Its plot, in which a model is reincarnated as a lawyer, is somehow more believable. It’s an easy, charming, gentle show — nothing major, but more endearing than you’d expect. • “Elementary” (Hulu) is one in a line of many iterations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but this is the one that has Lucy Liu. • “Sleepy Hollow” (Hulu) is just at the cusp of being too engrossing for this kind of task, so save it for something mindless like . Time travel, American history, ghosts, monsters, but ultimately yes, another cop show. Season 1 is fantastically fun, but things get way — and then way — worse after that. But 13 episodes of snappy, horror fun is better than nothing. ’’ • “East Los High,” complete fourth season, Hulu • “Power” Season 3 premiere, Sunday, 9 p. m. Starz • “Ballers,” Season 2 premiere, Sunday, 10 p. m. HBO Looking for a foreign language drama about the perils of growing up? In the Oscar nominated 2015 Turkish film, “Mustang,” five young orphans earn the scorn of their guardians when they’re caught playing with their male classmates on the beach. With their freedoms restricted, the girls make use of what’s left of their childhood before forced arranged marriages. Although this is a stormy story, the sisters’ relationships with one another remain strong, and they find a few empathetic women in their family who understand their struggle against a conservative father figure. Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven captures the quiet beauty in the sisters’ playtime, in their routines and in the world around them, even though it is shrinking. With a bittersweet running time of only 97 minutes, it’s just enough subtitled teen angst. (Available on Netflix) — Monica Castillo

Times Journo Calls for Assassination of President Trump

Donna Rachel Edmunds

Times columnist and author India Knight has called for the assassination of U. S. President, Donald J. Trump. [During a invective against the newly inaugurated President on Twitter in which Knight called Mr. Trump a “moron,” “mad,” “needy,” and an “arse,” among other things, before telling him to “shut up,” she mused, “The assassination is taking such a long time”: The assassination is taking such a long time. — India Knight (@indiaknight) January 28, 2017, Knight’s attitude is directly with the British media class, many of whom she has cheered on via Twitter over the last few days. Watching the joint press conference held by Mr Trump and the British Prime Minister Theresa May, in which they heralded a rebooting of the Special Relationship between their two countries, Knight retweeted a post by Buzzfeed political editor Jim Waterstone which implied that the American Secret Service were so incompetent that they couldn’t understand the British conventional way of rendering dates into numerical format ( ). Another from fellow Times journalist Hugo Rifkind highlighted that the British press had use the question and answer session to call Trump a racist and a liar. British press corp is locked outside the White House because our birthdates were submitted in UK format and secret service don’t get it. — Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) January 27, 2017, Two questions in, the British press have so far called Trump a racist and a liar. — Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) January 27, 2017, Knight herself also cheered on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, who used her question during the QA to attack Mr Trump in such a manner that he was moved to respond, “That was your question? There goes that relationship!” Knight tweeted “Go @bbclaurak! [Kuenssberg]” followed by “I love the British press”. Go @bbclaurak! — India Knight (@indiaknight) January 27, 2017, I love the British press. — India Knight (@indiaknight) January 27, 2017, She later posts from British journalists celebrating forcing the Prime Minister to respond to demands from the British press pack to condemn the President’s decision to pause immigration from some countries. But Knight’s opposition to Mr Trump — and in particular her call for his assassination — has not gone down well with fellow Twitter users. Members of the public tweeted back to call her a “horrible person” and a “psychopath” for wishing death on anyone, while one person mused that she was typical of “tolerant” liberals. @HeimishCon @indiaknight if the only way to get your way, involves murder, you might be a psychopath, — existino (@existino) January 29, 2017, @indiaknight Wow. You have a different opinion than someone so wish them dead? What a horrible person you are. — Aidan (@engcricketfan75) January 28, 2017, @indiaknight Just another peace loving, tolerant liberal. Nothing to see here. — Mark (@n7gooner72) January 29, 2017, Others noted that they had reported her Tweet to the authorities and to Twitter. A number of people have been jailed in the past for tweeting abusive messages most notably student Liam Stacey who in 2012 was jailed for 56 days for tweeting racist comments while drunk — a sentence which the judge said must be imposed due to the level of “public outrage”. Knight’s comment comes days after a German newspaper editor suggested on television that “murder in the White House” could be a way to end the “Trump catastrophe”.

Even Hillary’s Niece Is Voting Trump

Gillian

Leave a reply ‘She Wants To Be First Woman President For Selfish Reasons’ – Macy Smit The Daily Sheeple – Hillary Clinton can’t even convince her own family members to vote for her. The only daughter of Bill Clinton’s druggie brother explained to Radar Online that she will be voting for Donald Trump instead of her “selfish” aunt. Macy Smit, a hairstylist from Tampa, Florida said, “I support Donald Trump — 100 percent! I have been a Democrat my entire life, but Trump is what we need right now — somebody who is going to stand up for us. I think at this point Hillary just wants it for the history books — to be the first woman president for selfish reasons.” Macy’s husband Derrick Smit is a meteorologist with the US Air Force and is currently on active duty in Kuwait, where he assists with air operations into and out of Iraq. Macy’s mother, Martha Spivey, agreed with her daughter about Hillary Clinton’s selfish nature. In an interview with Radar, she said, “The Clintons are all talk! Hillary says she’s all about family, but she’s got a niece she’s never met and never acknowledged. The Clintons have never helped us out.” Macy explained in the interview that her estranged father, Roger Clinton, makes a lot of promises that he never keeps. Does this sound familiar? SF Source The Daily Sheeple Nov. 2016 Share this:

Who Will Be In Trump's Cabinet? A Few Possibilities :

David M Jackson

Rotten To The Core Who Will Be In Trump's Cabinet? A Few Possibilities By David M Jackson November 10, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " USA Today " - After a stunning win that upended the American political landscape, President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers now must put together a White House staff and Cabinet — a group that may well include some of those same advisers. Here are a few possibilities for some of the most powerful roles in a new Trump administration : Rudy Giuliani The ex-New York City mayor became one of Trump's highest-profile surrogates. The former prosecutor could now be in line for attorney general. Newt Gingrich The ex-House speaker became a top adviser and television spokesperson for Trump during the campaign and was even among the real estate mogul's finalists for running mate. He is said to be interested in becoming secretary of State. Bob Corker The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could also be a possibility to lead the State Department. Ben Carson A onetime Trump rival, Carson emerged as one of Trump's most steadfast surrogates. The renowned physician would be an obvious candidate to be surgeon general. Mike Flynn The retired general emerged as Trump's most visible military adviser. He could be in line for Defense secretary or some other national security position. Jeff Sessions During the primary campaign, Sessions became the first sitting member of the U.S. Senate to endorse Trump's campaign. Now, the Alabama senator could be another possibility to lead the Pentagon. Reince Priebus The chairman of the Republican National Committee — which ran the Trump campaign's get-out-the-vote operation — could wind up as Trump's White House chief of staff. Steve Mnuchin Trump's finance chairman, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is in line to possibly become Treasury secretary. Chris Christie Though shadowed by the recent Bridgegate trial, the New Jersey governor has been a fixture at Trump's side since endorsing him in February and will likely have his eye on a spot in the new administration at the Justice Department or in the White House. Steve Bannon The Breitbart News executive became Trump's campaign CEO in August. He could be in line for a spot as a White House adviser. Mike Pence While his job is already known — vice president — the Indiana governor and former congressman is expected to play a large role in the Trump administration as a partner to the new president, who lacks any experience serving in government.

O Departamento de Estado equipara resistência ao imperialismo a terrorismo

Alva

O Departamento de Estado equipara resistência ao imperialismo a terrorismo Rede Voltaire | 2 de Novembro de 2016 français Español Türkçe italiano Deutsch عربي O Departamento de Estado anunciou colocar o Libanês Haytham "Ali Tabataba"i, dito «Abu ’Ali al-Tabataba’i», na lista de «terroristas globais». Esta colocação é particularmente reveladora: o Departamento de Estado reprova a este oficial superior do Hezbolla o apoio à República Árabe Síria, um Estado membro das Nações Unidas. Para fazer boa figura, a notícia do Departamento de Estado reporta igualmente que ele foi visto no Iémene. Baseado apenas nesta informação, acusa-o de se bater ao lado da Coligação dos Hutis com os Partidários do antigo presidente Saleh, a qual controla a maior parte do país. Em caso algum acusa o Departamento de Estado este oficial da menor acção terrorista. Equipara apenas a Resistência ao imperialismo norte-americano a terrorismo. Tradução Alva

Mom's Punishment for 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Was Sexting Has People Horrified Over 'Bad Parenting'

Reid Mene

No parent ever wants to find out that their child is sexting. But if happens, how far is too far when it comes to teaching them a lesson? Last week, a 13-year-old girl from Riverside, California, could be seen “bawling her eyes out” on the corner of a busy intersection as she held a handwritten sign that read: “I'm 13 and I ask for d*ck pics.” Image Credit: Screenshot/ NBC LA According to NBC LA, the teen was forced to be publicly humiliated by her parents after they found out she was sexting. Witnesses said the teen had been standing near the busy street for hours while her mother kept watch from a nearby car. The teen had to hold the sign up for so long, in fact, that local resident, Krista Wilson, called the police to complain about possible child abuse : Wilson also stated that as people drove by the teen, she could see "tears running down her face,” while “grown men were reading it [the sign] and laughing.” Wilson wasn't the only person who complained. A witness snapped a photo of the girl then posted it to a Facebook news page and, in no time, it received countless views and comments. Many were completely outraged by the parents' actions: “This is so horrific! That poor little girl; she is 13! This is NOT the way to teach a child appropriate behaviour. She is a product of a hyper-sexual culture and doesn't deserve public humiliation like this. I'd be surprised if this doesn't contribute to actual trauma.” While another wrote: “It certainly was a teachable moment, instead her so called parents have shamed her. 13 is such an impressionable age for self esteem and the like. Way to go crappy parents ????” One commenter simply said: “Exploitation and abuse.” On the other hand, there were those who defended the mother's punishment, stating that something worse could have happened if the child's sexting continued: “I'm with the mom! Great job all the people who say oh it's bullying and etc etc get over it! This girl was being taught a lesson. Most parents don't give two shits these days what their kids are doing. I don't care about all the haters either. GOOD JOB MOM!!! Keep up the good work.” Another supporter of the parents' decision said: “Stop judging the parents, they are doing what they feel is the best course of action given the situation! If the teenager wasn't embarrassed to show her body and ask for the same in return, than she shouldn't be embarrassed for the punishment her parents gave her either!” Another suggested this could have been the last straw for the parents: “Maybe the parents tried a different approach and Lil kid tryna to be grown didn't learn so now shes learned the hard, embarrassing way.” During the incident, police did arrive on scene to assess the situation. They spoke to the mother and concluded that the punishment, while extreme, was not enough to warrant child abuse charges. So far, no legal action has been taken against the mother. However, it has been reported that a social worker would be contacting the mother to help her with parenting strategies.

Washington Post Flips Out over Conservatives with WH Access

Breitbart News

Paul Farhip, a objective reporter for the extremely ideologically unbridled Washington Post, frets about “partisan” news outlet The Daily Signal being part of the White House press corps — quite literally stating that conservatives gaining White House access evinces a slippery slope where “extremist or racist organizations” could do the same. [From the Washington Post: In an age of partisan media, the lines between “partisan” and “media” can sometimes blur. Case in point: The pool reporter covering Vice President Pence on Thursday — that is, the reporter who supplied details about Pence’s daily activities as proxy for the rest of the press corps — was an employee of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. In other words, the news that reporters received about the vice president came from a journalist employed by an organization with a vested interest in the direction of White House and federal policy. The development is unusual the reporter, Fred Lucas, is the first member of his organization to take on pool reporting duties, which are typically handled on a rotating basis by mainstream news organizations. Lucas also covered Pence as the pooler two weeks ago. Lucas writes for the Daily Signal, a news and commentary site started nearly three years ago by Heritage, one of Washington’s leading policy shops. The Signal covers issues that are a focus of Heritage’s conservative agenda, such as an Obamacare repeal, tax policy and illegal immigration. While there were no objections to Lucas’s pool reports on Pence, some journalists suggested the presence of the Signal as a member of the pool crossed a symbolic line, into greater legitimacy for the partisan press. Read the rest of the story here.

Лишь бы не подумали чего…

Ирина Солетова

Лишь бы не подумали чего… 30 октября 2016 Происшествия Принято считать, что для родителей здоровье и жизнь их детей – это чуть ли не высшая ценность, для сохранения которой они пойдут на всё. В нормальных семьях именно так дело и обстоит, но, к сожалению, в нашей стране достаточно много семей неблагополучных. С такими родителями дети никогда не могут быть уверены в том, что их интересы будут соблюдены. Очередной случай, доказывающий эту печальную истину, недавно произошёл в Санкт-Петербурге. В ночь с 28-го на 29-ое октября текущего года на пульт дежурного сотрудника Главного управления МЧС России по г. Санкт-Петербургу поступило сообщение о том, что в доме №24 по Белградской улице необходима помощь. Информированные источники сообщали, что в этом доме из окна выпал девятилетний ребёнок Мальчик получил травмы, однако его родители вовсе не озаботились вызовом медиков. Случайные прохожие вызвали «скорую», но пока она ехала, родители сами подняли ребёнка обратно в квартиру и закрылись в ней. Открывать дверь приехавшим по тревожному сигналу врачам мать и отец пострадавшего мальчика категорически отказались. Поэтому медики обратились к правоохранителям, правоохранители – к спасателям, и все вместе, дружной командой, представители этих ведомств отправились на место происшествия. Увидев такую процессию, родители упавшего ребёнка сменили тактику и поспешили открыть дверь. Мальчика доставили в больницу в тяжёлом состоянии, врачи борются за его жизнь. А в отношении его матери и отца проводится проверка по факту травмирования ребёнка и недостаточного выполнения родительских обязанностей. Некоторые источники сообщают, что при падении мальчик получил множественные переломы костей скелета, сопровождавшиеся повреждениями внутренних органов и внутренними кровотечениями. Стали известны и подробности «неблагополучности» семьи пострадавшего мальчика: его родители – алкоголики. Будем надеяться, что ребёнок все же сможет выкарабкаться и продолжить свою только начавшуюся жизнь. И что рядом с ним окажутся люди, которые если и не будут стремиться сделать для него как можно больше хорошего, то хотя бы не станут ему вредить.

WikiLeaks releases more emails on eve of election

The European Union Times

WikiLeaks has released the 34th batch of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, on the eve of the election. This latest tranche includes 888 communications. Much of the latest emails’ content repeats from previous WikiLeaks releases, because entire email threads are not always released at once. ‘Needy Latinos’ considered for VP In one leaked email, dated August 21, 2015 with the subject line ‘Needy Latinos and 1 easy call,’ Podesta writes to Clinton, “A few calls you might consider making,” apparently in relation to potential vice president choices. Podesta then names Federico Pena, Bill Richardson and South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges. The first two are presumably the “needy Latinos.” Pena, former secretary of the US Department of Transportation under President Bill Clinton, endorsed Barack Obama over Clinton for the 2008 election and served as his campaign chair. He is covered extensively in the email. Podesta goes on to say that Pena’s “Cabinet stints ripped up his family,” and that Pena “gave everything to the cause and no time to his family, he went through a messy divorce in the late 90’s and was left really down and felt like no-one reached out to him then so he felt pretty cut off from Clinton World.” Podesta, passing along all of this information after speaking with former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, gives Clinton four steps in completing a call with Pena, writing: “1) you really enjoyed seeing Cindy at the Chambers event and appreciate her support. 2) ask him how he’s been doing 3) ask about his views on the race and what she should be doing in Colorado 4) ask that he consider publicly supporting you.” An email reply from Hillary Clinton herself reads: “Agree about calls. Just a few additional points: several Latinos have asked that I consider Pena for VP.” On Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico and US ambassador to the UN under President Clinton, Podesta writes that a recent phone call between Bill Clinton and Richardson went well, “not withstanding the fact that [Richardson] can be a dick.” “He had a good conversation with the President and has been good in his interviews since,” Podesta says of Richardson, telling Hillary that a call to Richardson ahead of his upcoming appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ might seal an endorsement. Donna Brazile The extent of the cozy relationship between the Clinton campaign and CNN was revealed in an email from the former head of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile, which contained, almost verbatim, the wording of a question Clinton was to be asked at a town hall in Ohio. Sent the day before the televised event, which aired on March 13, 2016, Clinton is given the wording for a question she will be asked regarding discrimination amongst trade unions. Also included is the wording of a question her opponent Bernie Sanders is to be asked on income inequality. Source

Des traces de vin rouge détectées dans le Beaujolais nouveau 2016 >> Le Gorafi

Feminists Sue University for Failing to Protect Them from Mean Internet Comments - Breitbart

Tom Ciccotta

A feminist student group at the University of Mary Washington has filed a Title IX lawsuit against the institution for failing to protect them from mean comments on the internet. [Feminists United, a student group at the University of Mary Washington, has claimed in a recently filed lawsuit that the administration failed to protect them from posts made on the anonymous social media app, Yik Yak. The suit alleges that the university failed to protect the students by refusing to ban access to the app via the university’s wifi system. The complaint ignores the reality that most students have access to the app via LTE internet service on their cellular devices, which would render a ban on the university’s wifi system almost worthless. The students claim that the university’s decision to allow students to access the app via the school’s wifi network fostered a hostile environment in which the students were subjected to “overtly ” anonymous messages. Writing on the lawsuit for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Susan Kruth argued that the university did not violate Title IX policies by refusing to act on comments made on the anonymous app, Yik Yak, which was recently shut down in May.

Almost 100, ‘Forgotten Legend of Basketball’ Still Marvels at the Game - The New York Times

Louie Lazar

MINNEAPOLIS — John Kundla sat in a wheelchair playing cribbage opposite his son, calling out numbers in a quiet, deep voice. The efficiency apartment here had a twin bed under a painting of Jesus tending sheep a desk topped with a large magnifying glass and a Bible and, resting on a shelf, a photograph taken on a basketball court in 1952 showing Kundla atop the shoulders of a jubilant George Mikan, the sport’s most dominant big man in the first half of the 20th century. Kundla, 99, was the head coach of the Minneapolis Lakers’ championship teams of the 1940s and 1950s — professional basketball’s first modern dynasty. He is the oldest living Hall of Famer in any of the four major American team sports and one of three N. B. A. coaches, along with Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson, to have won three or more consecutive titles. Kundla is “a forgotten legend of basketball,” according to the historian John Christgau, author of the book “The Origins of the Jump Shot. ” Kundla’s Lakers ruled the league in the years before the shot clock, when players were still shooting free throws underhand. Kundla coached in the N. B. A. ’s first four Games, and his five league titles are tied for third with Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich. He is also the only coach in league history to win a title in his first two N. B. A. seasons (the first when it was called the Basketball Association of America) — a feat that Steve Kerr will match if the Golden State Warriors win this season’s championship. Yet even at the peak of his team’s success, Kundla was so during games and overshadowed by his talented players that The Sporting News once said, “Few ever heard of John Kundla. ” After coaching, Kundla taught physical education today, he lives about five blocks east of the Mississippi River, in an assisted living home where he plays bingo several days a week, and where, sometimes, he positions his wheelchair a few inches from a small analog television and watches basketball, marveling at the size and speed of modern players. Kundla dresses and cooks by himself, and he exercises daily on a stationary bicycle. His hearing and eyesight have waned, though, and recollections of certain events and facts — like the circumstances surrounding his Lakers hiring and how many championships he won — have grown hazy with time. Identifying dates and years can give him trouble. But many memories remain vivid and accurate: details about his youth the story of how he met his wife the names and tendencies of players he coached. He still visualizes and recounts plays that he designed around Mikan. He tells of how playing in New York made him a “nervous wreck” of how after winning one title there, he and his players celebrated at the Copacabana nightclub of the joy he felt in that moment, after capturing another championship, when Mikan lifted him onto his shoulders. And it was early one recent evening, in front of a shelf stuffed with worn books on his Minneapolis Lakers and on basketball history, that Kundla spoke about his life, and the game that has defined it. Born in Star Junction, Pa. Kundla moved to Minneapolis at age 5 with his mother, an immigrant. Neither spoke English. But Kundla learned the language — and basketball — and went on to star in high school and at the University of Minnesota. In 1937, The New York Times heralded the Kundla as one “of the finest players in the Midwest. ” In the early 1940s, he coached at Ascension, a Catholic grade school, and then at DeLaSalle, a high school on an island in the Mississippi River. After serving in the Navy during World War II — he played pickup basketball games on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, he said — he coached at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul. In 1947, two Minnesota businessmen bought the Detroit Gems, a team in the National Basketball League that had disbanded after a season. The new club was called the Lakers, and Kundla, at 31, became its coach. The franchise signed Jim Pollard, a swift and forward, and Mikan, the center who wore thick glasses and had an unstoppable hook shot with each hand. Kundla developed set plays, including a game involving his two superstars, and preached wise shot selection. “Don’t shoot too quick,” he urged his players. “Nobody in for a rebound. ” He emphasized fundamentals, like sprinting back on defense after missed shots and communicating passionately while defending screens. The Lakers were and won the 1948 N. B. L. championship. The next season, they joined the B. A. A. (which the N. B. A. considers its predecessor) defeating the Washington Capitols, coached by Auerbach, in the finals. The Lakers played most of their home games at Minneapolis Auditorium, which had steep seats and a theatrical stage behind one basket. Christgau, 82, who attended Lakers games there growing up, recalls peering through the arena’s cigar smoke during timeouts to see an “always calm and cool” Kundla, with “players all clumped around him, like a hog pile, all listening and paying attention. ” Road trips often meant long journeys by train, during which Kundla and his players bonded over card games. “It was like a family playing for John,” said Arnie Ferrin, 90, who played for the Lakers from 1948 to 1951. Before the season, the B. A. A. and the N. B. L. merged to form the N. B. A. The Lakers acquired the rookies Vern Mikkelsen, a rugged and savvy big man, and Slater Martin, a short, Texan known for gritty defense. They were and beat the Syracuse Nationals in the championship. Guard Pep Saul, whom the Lakers purchased in 1952, was struck by how quiet Kundla was compared with other coaches. If a player made a mistake, “he didn’t holler at you,” Saul, 92, said. “He would talk to you like a man and say, ‘Here’s what you have to do to correct it.’ He was a teacher as well as a coach. ” The Lakers kept winning, even after the league doubled the lane’s width in 1951 to slow down Mikan, who had led the N. B. A. with more than 27 points per game for three straight seasons. They beat the Knicks in the 1952 and 1953 championships, and in 1954, they won their third straight title and fifth in six years. By late 1956, Mikan and Pollard had retired. The game had evolved: Scoring was up — the shot clock had been instituted in 1954 — and the racial makeup of the league was changing. The Lakers’ title teams had been all white in the season, the team had three black players. The Lakers were that season. Behind the rookie Elgin Baylor, they advanced to the championship before falling to the Boston Celtics, led by Bob Cousy and Bill Russell. Kundla resigned at age 42 with a record. (In 1960, the Lakers moved to Los Angeles, becoming the league’s first West Coast team.) Kundla, meanwhile, took over as head coach at the University of Minnesota. During his tenure, the basketball program included black players for the first time, and he became its first coach to give scholarships to players. (Hate mail arrived regularly at his house, he said.) Led by the future N. B. A. Lou Hudson and Archie Clark, the Gophers were in and in . In 1968, Kundla retired, finishing his career there with a record. He accepted a position teaching physical education on the university’s St. Paul campus, including courses in basketball and tennis. He and his wife, Marie, who had met as undergraduates, had raised six children in a white, suburban house with a wooden hoop nailed to the garage. The couple went ice skating together every Tuesday and took their children on fishing trips. In 1981, Kundla retired from teaching. Throughout the years, he had remained close with Mikan and Mikkelsen often, the three would meet for breakfast, and reminisce. In a 1992 column for USA Today, Peter Vecsey, lamenting Kundla’s exclusion from the Hall of Fame, labeled him “all but forgotten. ” From Kundla’s window, one can see beyond the river, to downtown Minneapolis, where the Lakers’ arena once stood. He moved into this assisted living community in 2008, the year after Marie died, after 67 years of marriage. Kundla’s son James, a retired railroad track worker, walks over every morning from his nearby home and keeps him company. Once a month, Kundla rides by bus with fellow residents to a church downtown for bingo and lunch organized by the League of Catholic Women. He also plays bingo downstairs and at an adjoining nursing home, where he sits beside residents in need and helps them with their cards. Kundla keeps his own winnings, green notes called Bingo Bucks, in a billfold in the cupboard under his TV, which he redeems every Friday for Hershey bars. At night, Kundla, who has short silver hair and wears hearing aids, watches TV programs like “Dancing With the Stars” and reruns of “The Lawrence Welk Show. ” Earlier this year, James said, the cable company offered a free promotion allowing Kundla to watch N. B. A. games daily. But when the deal expired, the additional cost was “not in the budget,” James said. Kundla listens to Minnesota Timberwolves games on the radio, and when he watches a game on TV, he looks for those “little things,” he said — like distinguishing between a good and bad shot — that consumed him as a Lakers coach. Basketball has changed for the better, he said. Defensive intensity has improved (“Jeez, they get after you!” he said) and when a team hustles back on defense after a missed shot, he is delighted. The shot excites him. “That’s the big difference,” he said. “You get behind — you can catch up, you know?” Referring to today’s players, Kundla said: “It’s unbelievable how big they’ve grown. But there’s still finesse in there — the way they handle that ball, pass it around. ” For Kundla, who turns 100 on July 3 (“Another day and I would have been born with a bang,” he likes to say) proper recognition came relatively late in life: He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame at age 78, in 1995. The next year, for the “N. B. A. at 50” celebration, he was voted one of the top 10 coaches in league history. In 2002, during a ceremony at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Kundla and living Minneapolis Lakers players were awarded championship rings, and two banners commemorating their dynasty were raised. Since then, four of the five Hall of Famers who played on Kundla’s title teams have died: Mikan, Mikkelsen, Martin and Clyde Lovellette. (Pollard died in 1993.) Bob Harrison, 88, who hit a long for the Lakers to win Game 1 of the inaugural postmerger N. B. A. championship in 1950, was emotional when reached at his home in Palm City, Fla. and asked about Kundla. In 1954, Harrison said, upon being traded to the Milwaukee Hawks, Kundla sat him down and apologized. “He made me feel important,” Harrison said. “A lot of coaches are more interested in building their reputation, and John wasn’t like that. Naturally, he wanted to win, and he did. But he did it with kindness and love. ” One evening in May, Kundla sat glued to a TV in the dimly lit lounge down the hall from his apartment, watching Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. “Look at the tattoos on the shoulders — jeez,” Kundla said, as the Cavaliers’ J. R. Smith shot free throws in the first quarter. The second quarter was a noisy blur of fast breaks, and acrobatic layups by the host Cavaliers. Kundla looked riveted, gradually inching his wheelchair closer to the screen. On one play, Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving blew past a defender on a fancy dribble and converted a layup. “Jeez,” Kundla muttered, “poor defense there by Toronto. ” With the Cavaliers ahead by 15, Kundla watched as LeBron James drove the baseline, cupped the ball in his right hand and dunked ferociously, screaming in celebration as he backpedaled. “Oh, my God, another one,” Kundla said. At halftime, Kundla returned to his room. A nurse arrived to check in and then left, and Kundla was alone. On a desk next to his bed was a picture of Kundla and Marie on their wedding day, and a photo of a smiling Mikkelsen in his later years, signed: “To John, my leader and good friend. ” Kundla settled into bed. It was dark now, but from the wall by his pillow came a radiant orange glow: from a tiny night light, in the design of a basketball.

Typical FBI Swaggering Far Away Resonates its Lies Lies Lies in DC

Christopher Manion

Christopher Manion https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/typical-fbi-swaggering-far-away-resonates-lies-lies-lies-dc/ The good news from the Bundy trial includes a mention of the Orwellian tactics they use on law-abiding Americans – but won’t use on Hillary. Almost 25 years ago I was at my cabin in northern Idaho on Gold Ridge, one ridge south of Ruby Ridge. When I arrived a neighbor told me that the FBI was “looking for a right-winger hiding out on a ridge north of town.” Uh-oh. Should I turn myself in? Well, Ruby Ridge: that’s where FBI’s infamous legal murderer Lon Horiuchi shot and killed Vicki Weaver while she was holding her infant daughter Elisheba – and I got there during the FBI “operation.” We all know how that intentional killing went down (Horiuchi shot her at a range of some 200 yards; a trained sniper, he could have hit her at 1000). My neighbors in Idaho demanded Horiuchi be prosecuted. Idaho tried but the feds pulled the case into their compliant courts and decided that Horiuchi was “just following orders.” (He’s from around here and I’ve had to be near him in church – yes, he goes to church – a couple of times. Had he been a Nazi prison guard, just following orders, he’d have hanged long ago…. I was tempted to ask him if that kill shot was really unintentional …. but I digress). What really bugged me was the FBI army that invaded nearby Sandpoint. They were everywhere – boozing, swaggering, and bragging: “We’re gonna get him on my shift!” one lout shouted in a restaurant, to the horror of the locals who worked there (Sandpoint residents stayed home during those dismal days, hoping to avoid the determined killers…. a harbinger of dark days and occupations to come). The waitresses had to walk on eggshells (Idahoans love their guns and are pretty good at using them – something a gal doesn’t want to mention to a heavily-armed drunken boor far from home.) Idaho’s senior senator at the time, Steve Symms, had it right. “We have the election box and the jury box. If they don’t work, we have the cartridge box.” This time the jury box worked. 11:36 am on October 28, 2016

How the West Provoked the New Cold War

Consortiumnews.com

How the West Provoked the New Cold War October 31, 2016 The mainstream U.S. media portrays the New Cold War as “white-hatted” Americans standing up to “black-hatted” Russians to stop aggression against NATO and to save children in Syria, but the reality is much more gray, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. By Ray McGovern How did the “growing trust” that Russian President Vladimir Putin once said marked his “working and personal relationship with President Obama ” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? Their relationship reached its zenith after Mr. Putin persuaded Syria to give up its chemical weapons for verified destruction, enabling Mr. Obama at the last minute to call off, with some grace, plans to attack Syria in late summer 2013. President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly’s seventy-first session on Sept. 20, 2016 (UN Photo) But at an international conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi last week, Mr. Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations and lamented: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” He complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice” and, referring to Syria, decried the lack of a “common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises.” A month earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov , who chooses his words carefully, told Russian TV viewers, “My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the U.S. military machine. Despite [Mr. Kerry’s] assurances that the U.S. commander in chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin) apparently the military does not really listen to the commander in chief.” Do not chalk this up to paranoia. The U.S.-led coalition air strikes on known Syrian army positions killing scores of troops just five days into the September cease-fire — not to mention statements at the time by the most senior U.S. generals — were evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia. A New Nadir Relations between the U.S. and Russian presidents have now reached a nadir, and Mr. Putin has ordered his own defense ministry to throw down the gauntlet. Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo) On Oct. 6, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft — including any stealth aircraft — over Syria, and warned ominously that Russian air defense will not have time to identify the origin of the aircraft. It seems possible that the U.S. air force will challenge that claim in due course — perhaps even without seeking prior permission from the White House. Last week, National Intelligence Director and former Air Force General James Clapper commented offhandedly, “I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft … if they felt it was threatening their forces on the ground.” Injecting additional volatility into the equation, major news outlets are playing down or ignoring Russia’s warnings. Thus, Americans who depend on the corporate media can be expected to be suitably shocked by what that same media will no doubt cast as naked aggression out of the blue if Russian air defenses down a U.S. or coalition aircraft. Meanwhile in Europe, as NATO defense ministers met in Brussels on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters the U.S. is contributing “a persistent rotational armored brigade combat team” as a “major sign of the U.S. commitment to strengthening deterrence here.” “This was a decision made by the alliance leaders in Warsaw,” he explained, referring to NATO’s July summit meeting in the Polish capital. “The United States will lead a battalion in Poland and deploy an entire battle-ready battalion task force of approximately 900 soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is based in Germany.” On Thursday, at the Valdai Conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Putin accused the West of promoting the “myth” of a “Russian military threat,” calling this a “profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defense budgets … expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units, and arms closer to our borders.” Myth or not, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was correct to point out last spring that military posturing on Russia’s borders will bring less regional security. Mr. Steinmeier warned against “saber-rattling,” adding that, “We are well advised not to create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.” Speaking of such pretexts, it is high time to acknowledge that the marked increase in East-West tensions over the past two-and-a-half years originally stemmed from the Western-sponsored coup d’état in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, and Russia’s reaction in annexing Crimea. Americans malnourished on the diet served up by “mainstream” media are blissfully unaware that two weeks before the coup, YouTube published a recording of an intercepted conversation between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, during which “Yats” (for Arseniy Yatsenyuk) was identified as Washington’s choice to become the new prime minister of the coup government in Kiev. This unique set of circumstances prompted George Friedman, president of the think-tank STRATFOR, to label the putsch in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, “really the most blatant coup in history.” It’s time for Western politicians and media to learn their lesson and pay attention to the statements coming out of Russia. Ask yourselves: Why all this hype now? Ray McGovern (rrmcgovern@gmail.com) was an Army officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, during which he was chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and later a presidential briefer during President Reagan’s first term. [This article was originally published in The Baltimore Sun and is reposted here with the permission of the author.]

N.F.L.: Cowboys Like Their New QB, Patriots Love Their Old One - The New York Times

Benjamin Hoffman

■ On the Tom Brady Revenge Tour there will be no such thing as “enough” offense. The Patriots quarterback, fresh off of a suspension, threw for 406 yards and three touchdowns in a blowout win over the Browns but spent his postgame interview talking about how rusty he felt. ■ You never know what you’ll get with rookie quarterbacks. Some make the transition to the N. F. L. look easy (Dak Prescott of the Cowboys) some make mistakes that cost their team badly (Carson Wentz of the Eagles trying to air it out with a yard heave that was intercepted by Detroit). Some can’t do enough to carry their defense (Paxton Lynch of the Broncos) and some can’t finish the game (Cody Kessler of the Browns, who left his team’s loss to the Patriots with a rib injury). ■ Guessing the last team to remain unbeaten can be tricky, and very few predicted the Vikings would open the season playing without the team’s two most famous names (Peterson and Bridgewater). But with a defense that is almost impossible to pass against, Minnesota goes into the bye week with a legitimate claim as the hottest best team in the N. F. L. ■ Whatever coach Rex Ryan said to his team after a Week 2 loss must have been impressive, because the Bills have won three straight games behind tremendous defense and a great running game. Ryan could not help gloating a bit, saying sarcastically “You guys know me, I’m just an average coach. I never win three straight games. ” Perhaps the most impressive part of the streak is that two of the three wins have been on the road. On the 321st snap of Dak Prescott’s rookie season, the young quarterback finally committed his first turnover. Luckily for the Dallas Cowboys, the team was off to a start at the time of the fumble in what proved to be a over the Cincinnati Bengals. Committing a breach of ball security was the exception that proves the rule for Prescott, who was drafted in the fourth round and has thus far done an incredible job filling in for the injured Tony Romo, showing a veteran’s ability to take chances while rarely taking unnecessary risks during the team’s start to the season. Between his efficiency, and the running game led by his fellow rookie, Ezekiel Elliott, there is little reason for Cowboys fans to hope Dez Bryant and Romo can come back soon, as the team is in good hands. The easy win proved to be a relatively modest day for Prescott, who completed 18 of 24 passes for 227 yards and 1 touchdown. Along the way he did manage to increase his rookie record for consecutive passes without an interception to 155. A big passing day by Prescott was not necessary as Elliott continued his assault on opposing defenses, taking advantage of the huge holes afforded him by the Cowboys’ dominant offensive line, rushing for 134 yards on 15 attempts, including a touchdown run in which he was not touched. For good measure he even recovered an onside kick late in the fourth quarter to help preserve the win. Prescott, Elliott and the rest of the Cowboys will have a tough test next week on the road against the Green Bay Packers and then will have a bye week before a Week 8 matchup against Philadelphia that has been cited as potential return date for Romo. If Prescott can beat the Packers at Lambeau Field, there may be talk of a quarterback controversy. If today’s game is any indication, the Tom Brady Revenge Tour around the N. F. L. is going to be ugly for the opponents of the New England Patriots. Brady, having returned from a suspension, was at his best against a terrible Cleveland Browns defense, completing 28 of 40 passes for 406 yards and three touchdowns. His 271 passing yards in the first half broke the franchise’s previous record of 264, and the Patriots won easily, . At his postgame news conference, Brady seemed uninterested in discussing his suspension, saying it was not a time to reflect on things and that he had simply focused on being ready for the game. “It felt very much like a normal week for me once I got into it,” Brady said. “It was fun to come out and play and fun to win. ” Brady showed very little or no rust from the long layoff. He completed passes to seven different receivers, with all three of his touchdown passes going to acquisition Martellus Bennett, who appears to being the of New England’s two tight end offense alongside Rob Gronkowski. He opened the third quarter scoring with an incredible where he streaked down the sideline with the ball and jumped over a defender into the end zone. In a diverse attack, Chris Hogan led New England with 114 receiving yards on just 4 catches, Rob Gronkowski looked revitalized with 5 catches for 109 yards, and Bennett finished the day with 6 catches for 63 yards. The Denver Broncos finally found a quarterback they could not win with. Paxton Lynch, a rookie pressed into service because of an injury to Trevor Siemian, struggled to get anything going on offense as the Broncos’ vaunted defense faltered in a loss to the Atlanta Falcons. Denver’s defense did an excellent job limiting Julio Jones, the Falcons’ star wide receiver, who had just 2 catches for 29 yards a week after he torched Carolina for 300 yards. But running back Tevin Coleman had a touchdown reception as part of a day and the Falcons, not known for defense, were able to keep Denver from getting back into the game after a slow start. Siemian, who has a strained AC joint in his shoulder, is expected to be back on Thursday night against the Chargers. He may not have quite the pedigree of Lynch, was drafted in the first round this year, but he is clearly farther along in his development. Darius Slay almost ended the unbeaten start to Carson Wentz’s career. With a forced fumble and an interception in the fourth quarter — the first interception of Wentz’s career — Slay helped the Detroit Lions reverse a collapse and beat the Philadelphia Eagles, . The first half had been all Detroit, with Matthew Stafford throwing three touchdown passes on the way to a start to the game. But in the second half, Philadelphia’s defense tightened up and Wentz, the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, steadily got his team back into the game. But that is when Slay took over. With his team trailing in the fourth quarter, the cornerback jarred the ball free from Ryan Mathews on a rushing attempt. The Lions recovered the ball and drove 34 yards for a field goal, with 27 of the yards coming on a big reception by Golden Tate, the team’s embattled wide receiver, who had just one catch last week. Given the ball back with a chance to engineer a drive, Wentz, who to that point had begun his career with 134 passes without an interception, aired the ball out in an attempt to catch the Lions off guard. But Slay once again came through, jumping over Nelson Agholor for the ball and sealing Philadelphia’s fate. It was more of the same for the Minnesota Vikings, as the team improved its record to with a familiar formula of stifling defense and efficient offense. Sam Bradford threw for two passing touchdowns and Matt Asiata ran one in as part of a blowout of the Houston Texans. The Vikings’ stellar secondary frustrated Houston’s Brock Osweiler all game, holding the young quarterback to just 19 completions on 42 attempts and Minnesota ended up outgaining Houston 351 to 214. Minnesota goes into its bye week with a perfect record and some extra time to prepare for a matchup with Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 7. Read more about the unbeaten Vikings here. For what it is worth to the Giants, Green Bay’s quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, wore a disgusted look while walking to the sideline almost as frequently as his counterpart on Sunday, Eli Manning. With both teams missing critical players in the defensive secondary, Rodgers and Manning seemed likely to amass big passing statistics on Sunday night at Lambeau Field. That is not how things played out. An unexceptional Rodgers threw for two touchdowns and two interceptions in the Packers’ victory. Manning struggled for the second consecutive week as the Giants scored just one touchdown and lost their third straight game. — Pat Borzi Here’s our report from Lambeau Field. ■ Chargers Melt Down Again: Derek Carr threw a touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree on a gamble and added another TD pass to Amari Cooper to lead the Oakland Raiders to a victory over the San Diego Chargers. San Diego ( ) committed four turnovers and then botched the hold on a potential tying field goal. Rookie Drew Kaser couldn’t hold the snap on what would have been a field goal attempt. Here’s how the Raiders won. ■ Steelers Pick Jets Apart: Ben Roethlisberger passed for 380 yards and four touchdowns and the surging Pittsburgh Steelers pulled away in the second half for a win over the New York Jets on Sunday. Sammie Coates caught six passes for a 139 yards and two scores, including a for a score on Pittsburgh’s opening drive as the Steelers moved the ball at will against a secondary missing injured star Darrelle Revis. Read more about the Steelers’ victory here. ■ Redskins Win Third Straight: The Washington Redskins abandoned their usual formula for victory — the passing of Kirk Cousins — to extend their winning streak to three. Washington used an punt return by Jamison Crowder and an uncharacteristically strong performance by its defense to beat the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. The Redskins ( ) allowed 108 points in their first four games and came in with the league’s defense. In this one, Washington gave up a touchdown on the game’s opening drive and smothered the Ravens ( ) the rest of the way. Read more here. Bills Beat Rams: Nickell returned an interception 41 yards for a touchdown, LeSean McCoy rushed for 150 yards, and the Buffalo Bills won their third consecutive game by defeating the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday. Here’s how the Bills won their third straight game.

BREAKING: We Caught Obama Spending 30 Million Dollars Against Trump To Rig This Election | EndingFed News Network

Email Print It’s no secret that Obama and his puppets are doing everything they possibly can to rig the election against Trump. Positive Trump polls are coming all the time, so it’s all hands on deck from the Democrats to do whatever it takes to hand the election to Hillary. Obama’s latest move involves registering immigrant voters who will most likely be voting for Hillary in November and he’s spent TONS of your taxpayer money doing it. From Judicial Watch : Months after the Obama administration spent $19 million to register new immigrant voters that will likely support Democrats in November, it’s dedicating an additional $10 million in a final push as the presidential election approaches. The money is distributed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees lawful immigration, to organizations that help enhance pathways to naturalization by offering immigrants free citizenship instruction, English, U.S. history and civics courses. Officially, they’re known as “citizenship integration grants.”[…] Judicial Watch went on to say… The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been aggressive in promoting its citizen integration grant program this year, offering large sums to recruit new groups that can offer immigrants the services they need to become citizens. Clearly, the ultimate goal is qualifying as many immigrants as possible to vote since they tend to cast ballots for Democrats. “We intend to award about $1 million to first-time recipients in the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program for fiscal year 2016,” the agency’s grant announcement states. “If you represent one of these organizations, or know of an interested organization, we strongly encourage that organization to consider applying. Additionally, another $9 million will fund programs that provide both citizenship instruction and instruction and naturalization application services.” Some might consider this a cash giveaway.[…] Practically every federal agency is participating in the effort by contributing resources and creating programs to help immigrants. For example the Department of Labor (DOL) is implementing “new workforce programs” for the “new Americans” and the Department of Education is promoting “funding opportunities” to assure that the immigrants “are provided the tools they need to succeed.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is collaborating with other agencies to release a career and credentialing toolkit on “immigrant-focused career-pathways programs.” The Department of Justice (DOJ) and USCIS are making sure the new Americans have worker rights and protections and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is launching a two-year pilot to assure that non English speakers have “meaningful access to housing programs” subsidized by American taxpayers. Obama likes to pretend that he’s doing this for the greater good of America, but the truth is it’s just part of the overall agenda to do whatever it takes to make sure Democrats run Washington and continue to drive our country into the ground. SHARE this on Facebook below…America needs to know! Join us on Facebook to Stop The Takeover. Click on the button to subscribe. Leave a comment...

Trump Begins to Walk Back Illegal Immigration Promises | Daily Wire

Frank Camp November 13, 2016 During an interview with Lesley Stahl for 60 Minutes , which will air in its entirety Sunday night, Donald Trump began to walk back his campaign promise regarding the deportation of illegal immigrants: "We are getting them out of our country," the president elect said about the several million illegal immigrants with serious criminal records. "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people you're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people who we're going to make a determination on, but before we make a determination, we want to secure our border." Gasp. Donald Trump rose to political fame on the back of his strong stance on illegal immigration. Throughout the primary process, he promised a " deportation force ," telling MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski in November 2015: "You're going to have a deportation force, and you're going to do it humanely. Don't forget, Mika, that you have millions of people that are waiting in line to come into this country and they're waiting to come in legally. And I always say the wall, we're going to build the wall. It's going to be a real deal. It's going to be a real wall." In August, Trump delivered a major immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, in which he softened his stance a bit, focusing on illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes: "Within ICE, I am going to create a new special deportation task force focused on identifying and quickly removing the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants in America who have evaded justice." He then added that "anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don’t have a country." During the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump reiterated his position against amnesty: "Well, first of all, [Clinton] wants to give amnesty, which is a disaster and very unfair to all of the people that are waiting on line for many, many years. We need strong borders." For Trump diehards, these statements were enough. Their guy was going to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, and no one would tell them otherwise. However, as anyone with access to Google should know, the president elect has long supported amnesty in some fashion. In July 2015, Donald Trump told CNN's Dana Bash: "I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal…A lot of these people are helping us…and sometimes it’s jobs a citizen of the United States doesn’t want to do. I want to move ’em out, and we’re going to move ’em back in and let them be legal." What Trump was talking about is known as "touchback amnesty." Such a plan would indeed involve the deportation of illegal immigrants, but allow them an expedited means of returning to the United States in order to obtain legal status. In other words, they touch base in their home country, then come right back. In November 2015, Eric Trump repeated his father's plan during an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly: "The point isn’t just deporting them, it’s deporting them and letting them back in legally. He’s been so clear about that and I know the liberal media wants to misconstrue it, but its deporting them and letting them back legally." Going back further, Trump's support for amnesty is even more stark. Speaking on Fox & Friends in 2012, he said: "For people that have been here for years that have been hard-workers, have good jobs, they’re supporting their family–it’s very, very tough to just say ‘By the way, 22 years, you have to leave. Get out’…I’m one of the world’s very conservative people, but I have to tell you on a human basis, how do you throw somebody out that’s lived in this country for twenty years?" During the 2012 presidential election cycle, Trump even called Mitt Romney's idea of self-deportation " maniacal ," and remarked that Republican Party policy toward illegal immigrants was " mean-spirited ." Donald Trump is a man who will say whatever he needs to in order to win. Now that he has won, he's already backtracking on multiple campaign promises, from the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to the deportation of illegal immigrants. Tags