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Donald Trump Accused of Failure at not being President for a Week

Donald Trump is facing harsh criticism for the job he is doing as a citizen. "Wow, this guy won the election a whole week ago and he hasn't even started being president yet. What were we thinking?" said Skip Homeyer of the Whipperford Post website, adding that "he probably didn't even read the Constitution." NBC News, a news station with reporters and everything, complained that Trump "hadn't kept any of his campaign promises" and added that although "that was because he really hadn't done anything yet" that still was no excuse. Some of the people Trump has chosen to lead his team have also drawn harsh criticism from the media. Some of the names mentioned were Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Adolph Hitler, Adolph Hitler's son and Cerberus. The last three were unofficial. "We expected much more from him. That's why none of us want him to take office" said one reporter who wanted to remain nameless, because he actually had no legal name. He then added that "people are getting fed up with all of Trump's racism that he'll probably do eventually." He then added "Trump did win, right?" Make Jeff Brone's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!)

Comment on “This is My Second One” — Virginia Cop Caught Bragging About Killing Two Unarmed People by Jamieson

Jamieson

Home / Badge Abuse / “This is My Second One”— Virginia Cop Caught Bragging About Killing Two Unarmed People “This is My Second One”— Virginia Cop Caught Bragging About Killing Two Unarmed People Claire Bernish July 27, 2016 7 Comments A former Virginia police officer and U.S. Navy veteran, whose trial for murder begins this week, told a witness, “this is my second one,” after killing an unarmed 18-year-old black man in April 2015. While unclear whether or not the jarring statement amounted to a boast, the camera on ex-Portsmouth Officer Stephen Rankin’s Taser recorded him saying this to a Walmart employee mere seconds after he fatally shot unarmed teen and alleged shoplifter William Chapman in the store’s parking lot in April 2015. Rankin had, indeed, killed another unarmed man, Kirill Denyakin — under circumstances similarly and sufficiently questionable to earn three years’ administrative leave — just four years prior to the shooting for which he now stands accused of first-degree murder. During the final pretrial hearing on Tuesday, the Guardian reported , Rankin’s lead defense attorney, James Broccoletti, argued the former officer’s “statement is not probative of anything,” in an unsuccessful attempt to have it suppressed. Prosecutors countered to Judge Johnny E. Morrison they should not have to “sanitize the evidence” surrounding the fatal shooting. “The defendant made the comment, not just in the presence and earshot of a witness, but to the witness,” argued Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie N. Morales , who heads the case against Rankin. Although Morrison had previously disallowed direct statements to jurors concerning Rankin’s fatal shooting of Denyakin, as the Guardian noted , it now appears the officer’s prior use of deadly force will play an albeit limited role in the prosecution’s case. Troubling details about the killing of unarmed 26-year-old Kazakhstani cook, Kirill Denyakin, on April 23, 2011, would seem to suggest a glib tone in the officer’s later statement to the Walmart employee. Rankin responded to a call about Denyakin drunkenly pounding on the door of a residence where he had been staying with friends. Alleging the cook reached for his waistband and then charged toward him, Rankin shot Denyakin 11 times in the chest and limbs, as The Free Thought Project reported . No weapons were recovered on Denyakin’s body or at the scene — but when the man’s family filed a $22 million civil suit against the officer, the situation took a dark turn. Defending his use of deadly force, Rankin — who had chosen a photograph of a dead Serb who had been lynched by the Nazis in 1943 as his Facebook profile picture — took to a local newspaper’s website, posting roughly 250 comments derisively attacking Denyakin’s character and insulting his family’s attempt to seek compensation, writing : “22 mil won’t buy your boy back … let alone a habitual drunk working as a hotel cook.” Weeks prior to that deadly interaction, one of the officer’s supervisors cautioned senior commanders Rankin was “dangerous” and likely to harm someone. Further revelations included Facebook posts in which the cop referred to his firearms case as “Rankin’s box of vengeance.” A grand jury refused to indict Rankin for the Denyakin’s killing — and though the department placed him on administrative leave for nearly three years, it took just over a year after his return to active duty for Rankin to fatally shoot Chapman under circumstances suspicious enough to now stand accused of murder. On the morning of April 22, 2015, Portsmouth Walmart employees summoned police to report a shoplifter. Rankin responded and confronted 18-year-old Chapman in the store’s parking lot. Several witnesses reported seeing Rankin attempting to handcuff the teen, but their observations of what happened next differ to some degree. Two construction workers said Chapman broke free from the officer, knocking his Taser to the ground; but, in speaking to separate reporters afterward, one described the man “ whaling on ” the officer, the other noted the pair’s subsequent interaction was a “ tussle ” in which the teen had not been close enough to physically strike Rankin. In a report , pathologists noted Rankin would have been at least 30 inches away from Chapman when he was shot, and the medical examiner did not find gunpowder burns or residue suggestive of a point-blank or near point-blank shooting. No stolen items were listed among the victim’s personal effects. Further, body cam footage recorded Rankin holding his Taser, but abruptly and perhaps conveniently, if not outright suspiciously, stopped for the 15 seconds surrounding the shooting — only to pick up after the deadly interaction, with the Taser on the ground. Chapman’s family’s attorney, Jon Babineau, recounting what he was told for Pilot Online , said in December, “The video was operational up until just before the shooting, and then it was not operational for about 15 seconds,” though an unnamed source told him the gap had been caused by a “power source issue” and did not necessarily believe the tape had been edited. In September 2015, a grand jury indicted Rankin for murder and the illegal use of a firearm. Rankin has since been terminated from the Portsmouth force and continues to maintain his innocence. Jury selection for the murder trial is slated to begin this morning. Share Google + Fred Ziffel Anytime the calculated death of a human being is forced by another knowing these actions are not ABSOLUTELY necessary and there was no other immediate threat to life, the act of taking or ending said life becomes murder. Who the perpetrator is, or what his/her occupational profession is, is totally irrelevant. Murder is not justifiable. I hope they prosecute this vigorously and relentlessly. Bill Allyn Justice System Reform List America has a serious, institutionalized, systemic law enforcement problem. Over the last 4 decades, our law enforcement has become increasingly militarized, putting every citizen at risk of being shot and killed for nothing more than reaching for their wallet, as instructed, or less. This may increase safety for police officers (debatable, in the long run), but at the expense of making American citizens far less safe, which is the exact opposite of the goals of law enforcement. We need to create systems that bring back accountability within every level of the justice system. Nationally, we need to: 1. Create citizen oversight committees with powers of subpoena and prosecutorial discretion for every law enforcement agency in the country. A special independent prosecutor must be assigned immediately for officer-involved shootings. Committee members should be randomly selected and replaced often, like grand jurors, to avoid corruption. 2. Require law enforcement officers to be personally insured to protect taxpayers from lawsuits. Too risky for insurance? No insurance, no badge. Insurance could be partially publicly subsidized. 3. Require every law enforcement officer to wear a camera. No camera, no gun. Also, implement GPS tracking on all police cars and cameras. 4. Require yearly psyche tests to screen out potentially abusive officers. 5. Require random drug and steroid tests. 6. All police agencies must keep a database of every officer-caused civilian injury, shooting or killing, and that data must be periodically transmitted to a third-party, non-biased national database. 7. Any officer involved in a shooting must be alcohol and drug tested immediately. 8. Officers should be made aware of studies on abuse of power, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. Ensure there are clear policies on use of force. 9. More training to deal with mentally ill, or a mental illness crisis unit. More training and encouragement to use peacemaking, conflict resolution, and de-escalation skills. Increase educational requirements, focusing on psychology, sociology, and social work. 10. Create a special number (third party, independent of police) to report police brutality. Victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings should immediately be appointed an attorney to represent their position/case. 11. Create national database of abusive officers, so they don’t just get hired elsewhere. 12. Reverse militarization of police forces. Take away military weapons, APC’s, uniforms, and especially the attitude. Police officers are civilians, not a branch of the military. Require at least 5 years between active duty military and civilian police employment. Keep SWAT/military weapons and equipment under lock and key only to be used in genuine emergencies. Quit viewing the community you police as a “war zone”. 13. Prohibit television shows that glorify bad, illegal, or unconstitutional policing, such as “Cops”. Glorifying these behaviors creates a dangerous situation for American citizens and should not be tolerated. 14. Increase community outreach. Hire officers from the community. Officers need to be more in touch with the people they are sworn to protect. 15. End no-knock raids. It is perfectly legal for a home owner to respond to a break in with gun in hand, which gets them killed when the police are the intruders. This makes it unreasonably dangerous on citizens, especially when cops often go to the wrong address. 16. Reform forfeiture laws to protect citizens’ property rights and due process. No forfeiture proceedings until after conviction. All forfeiture proceeds go directly to the victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings. 17. End drug prohibition/war on drugs. Use harm reduction strategies. 18. End private prison industry. 19. Create a national organization dedicated to these ideals. Jamieson This list is brilliant! Great post. Ibcamn cops are just criminals with a badge. Occams Sad that there will be lots of tax-dollars spent just to simply let him walk away, but then, that will satisfy the sheep, as did Hillary’s ‘exoneration’….. As Bill’s ‘Limited Hangout Op’– $650m spent on a blowjob – to hide selling missile secrets to the Chinese. Treason runs deep in the White, these last 30 years. The US military is in Syria, helping ISIS, and US planes recently bombed and murdered over 100 civilians. Treason and murder. Why should the public see any better when it allows all this? Brian King Another psychopath kkkop that needs to get locked up Social Trending

Ron Paul on ISIS: Mortal Threat or Paper Tiger?

Daniel McAdams

If ISIS is such a mortal threat to the United States, why has US military action in Iraq and Syria been proceeding at such a leisurely pace? Is it possible that ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria are being used — or even supported — by the US and its allies as a “regime change” weapon against Syria’s Assad government? The US pursued this policy before, when it used Saudi-trained radicals to fight a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Those radicals became al-Qaeda… Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity .

Diary of a Cruise Season - The New York Times

Vanessa Friedman

This season is a mess. The spring 2017 men’s wear shows are almost over, for goodness sake, and women’s wear is still in the middle of cruise . “Cruise?” you ask. “Huh?” Exactly. Cruise — a. k. a. prespring, a. k. a. resort — are the clothes that arrive in November and stay on shelves through March and sometimes even April. The shows began May 3 with Chanel, an extravaganza in Havana that included 86 looks, some tourism and some controversy, and they extend through next month — yes, into the couture fall season. There is no cohesion to the cruise collections. They include clothes as well as fur (Chanel, Vuitton, Dior, Gucci) as well as small presentations some brands (Chanel, among others) that want to publicize and some (Proenza Schouler, Céline) that don’t, at least until it hits stores. So I gave up trying to make sense of it. Instead, I thought I’d take you along for what is necessarily a somewhat arbitrary ride. After all, in the end we each pack our own bags. May 11 which I watched via livestream (the concept of traveling to an exotic destination for a single show being the kind of seduction that best serves clients, not critics) the emails are starting to pile up, listing presentations in corners of New York. I feel like Tippi Hedren being swarmed by the birds. May 19 Today is Oscar de la Renta day. The label does a series of minishows in its showroom with the creative director Peter Copping, in front of 20 to 30 people at a time. This season, there were 33 looks, which Mr. Copping says were inspired by the idea of “patchwork,” translated through a very luxe lens. Think of baby florals and tweeds and jacquards lace and feathers. That contrast, between a casual idea and an elaborate expression, pretty much summed up the mood of the collection: classic (and classy) de la Rentaisms with the stuffing taken out. May 23 Trying to keep track of who is doing what, I email Burberry, which has had small presentations in the past. The company says it is not doing anything this year because it is jettisoning the idea of seasons altogether and has rejiggered its schedule to show men’s wear and women’s wear together in September and sell the clothes immediately after it shows them. Stella McCartney, who used to be famous for her cruise has decided to show the collection in November in London, before it goes on sale. Mary Katrantzou is taking her collection on the road to New York, but they are not allowing me to tell you about the clothes before they are in stores on pain of Great Brand Excommunication. (Spoiler: they are cheerful.) Diane von Furstenberg’s office calls to tell me that because it just hired Jonathan Saunders as its first chief creative officer, it isn’t having a resort presentation, because he won’t have had a chance to put his stamp on the collection. May 28 This is the week of the . Today, Louis Vuitton is in Rio Zika and political unrest be damned! The brand rules the social media waves. On May 31 and June 2, Dior and Gucci hold their shows in Britain (in Blenheim Palace and Westminster Abbey, respectively). I watch them all on my computer and try to run the numbers on what it costs to bring an entire fashion show to an exotic locale. I am boggled. The brands say it is worth it. June 6 Back in New York, Narciso Rodriguez is at 9:30 a. m.: Lexington and 16th Street. He is interested in “splicing” — i. e. cutting in ever more deceptively simple, but actually highly complicated, ways. See, for example, a gown in heavy silk satin with the weft running in two different directions, so some of the fabric looks glossy and other bits matte. If Veronica Lake had a Modernist moment, she’d be in heaven. Or this dress. Across town on 11th Avenue, some Brits have touched down: Christopher Kane ( pansies, including big lace mitochondrial petal “blobs” inset randomly on iridescent pleated skirts) and Peter Pilotto (haute peasant, with technical taffeta and Peruvian rug embroidery). June 7 “Calling this ‘cruise’ is an error. It should be called ‘destination. ’” Michael Kors is doing his version of — the cruise collection explanation monologue. The destinations he has in mind? “Gstaad, Mustique, Palm Beach, Palm Springs or destination ‘God forbid it’s snowing and I need a new wool coat. ’” Some more of his morsels: “A fox wellie is the kind of basic boot every girl needs. ” “We don’t sell bathing suits people swim in. These are bathing suits people wear in party situations. It’s the new cocktail dress. ” He is feeling graphics, especially polka dots and grommets. “How do you cut through the winter doldrums? Graphic is the way to go. ” Marc Jacobs, fresh from his CFDA women’s wear designer of the year award, thinks 1980s MTV is the way to go, in 54 superbright, looks. (Can this be a coincidence? 54 looks? Studio 54?) The show was supposed to start at 9 a. m. sharp, but during the awards ceremony the night before, we kept getting emailed updates: maybe 9:30, actually 10. Guess you can do that when you win one for the sixth time. At Suno, Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis went on a trip around Africa with a nod to Edwardiana via plaid linen and eyelet, denim and shirting overembroidered with florals, big ruffles paired with generous trousers and full skirts. At Coach, Stuart Vevers was feeling Felix the Cat (the brand made a deal with DreamWorks to use the image) adding him to the rest of the label’s building blocks: prairie dresses, motorcycle jackets, shearling and dinosaurs, used this time instead of Izod alligators on cardigans. What’s up with that? “It’s actually not that ” Mr. Vevers said. “I like that it’s kind of random. ” That’s the thing about cruise: Ask most designers what it is about and they say: “Clothes you wear. ” That sounds absurd, since all clothes are theoretically clothes you wear. But what they actually mean is: not clothes you pose in, clothes you depend on. Think of it that way. Public School is not actually doing cruise: It is combining men’s and women’s wear, and spring and respectively. It is making a statement about the fashion system and the political system. “We need leaders” is on a wall at the end of the show. The wall is apparently supposed to represent “false monuments. ” The show is presumably supposed to represent the future, or the clothes of the rebelling masses. Mostly it feels confused, though the pieces themselves were pretty simple: dystopian tailoring and designer anoraks, accessorized with slashes and asymmetry, accented with yellow and a melting flower photo print. June 9: “It’s good not to always do something new,” says Joseph Altuzarra, in his studio during his . “Sometimes you want to speak a language that you’ve already established. ” His vernacular has to do with pencil skirts, plaid shirtdresses, trompe l’oeil lingerie knits, pastel lace and ribbed stretch cardigans laced with faux leather. “It’s easier to clean that way,” he says. June 13: It’s the Monday after the Friday before, which is to say: after the Moschino show in Los Angeles, which was a combined ’s wear show (with tickets sold to the public for up to $400, list price) along with models (Miranda Kerr, Chanel Iman) celebrities (Katy Perry, Caitlyn Jenner) and 1960s cartoon psychedelia (miniskirts, mirror mosaics, flower power and animal print). Now Valentino is in the former Warhol Factory on Union Square. Like Chanel, it is having a Cuba moment, though its Cuba is a Cuba of the mind. The designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli were thinking about the way Cuba is frozen in the imagination, which led them to their own past, which led them to red, a nod to the favorite color of the label’s founder, but in washed brocade and silk to give the clothes the soft focus of age, plus Tropicana bomber jackets and skirts and dresses encrusted in wooden and, well, a lot more. The Factory is jammed with jersey and lace and camouflage and khaki. The work is eye boggling. Designers spend a lot of time complaining these days about their lack of time, but these two seem exhilarated by it. Rag Bone is in its studio in the meatpacking district. Marcus Wainwright, the is there, waxing laconic on the stripy knits, tuxedo track pants, airy and shearlings that are the label’s signatures. David Neville, the executive, is not there. This doesn’t seem odd, since Marcus is in charge of the design studio. But when they announce two days later that Mr. Neville is leaving the company, it suddenly seems full of portent. June 16 Carolina Herrera, in her 35th year in business, is living the fairy tale. Her resort collection is an enchanting confection of sparkling tulle cocktail and evening gowns in shades from nude to graphic — plus a few denim numbers for day and a terrific pair of wide peach taffeta trousers to wear with a white cashmere sweater striped in sequins. Coincidentally, or probably not, Mrs. Herrera has a new design team — Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim of Monse — and they did even trousers in their own collection, as well as khaki coat dresses and bandanna frocks twisted, pulled and otherwise chopped up in unexpected angles. In any case, Mrs. Herrera isn’t around to discuss her role as resort’s fairy godmother because she’s at a spa in Austria with her husband. Too bad. I could have used a magic wand to transport me to different shores: On June 29, Creatures of the Wind, based in New York, is having a resort show at Spencer House in London. July 3 I know we haven’t actually gotten here yet in real time, but it’s already on my calendar: Miu Miu is unveiling its cruise line in Paris with a event. Later this week, Céline will be showing its line. I can see it, though no pictures will be released until it goes into stores in November. Ditto Proenza Schouler and Chloé. But at that point I’ll be cycling back in fashion time (though forward in real time) to fall 2016, with couture. Enough is enough. I know this is a time of unpredictable weather patterns, but it seems to me that when a new season begins, it’s time for the old one to end.

Only Geniuses & Schizophrenics Can Pass This 3 Question Quiz! - David Avocado Wolfe - DavidWolfe.com

0 - items Only Geniuses & Schizophrenics Can Pass This 3 Question Quiz! Many neuroscientists estimate that as much as 98% of all brain activity is unconscious. Just think about that for a second – 98%. All that unconscious activity is influenced heavily by the world around its subconscious cues. To demonstrate that, we’re going to call on a super cool quiz. The premise is simple; only geniuses and schizophrenics can answer the following three questions. Which one are you? Continue to find out! There are no hints! You either know it or you don’t! The test you’ve just done relies on what researchers call the ‘contraposition method.’ This method tests the extent of a person’s awareness and brain processing power. It’s a super complicated method with tons of ‘moving parts,’ so to speak, but here’s what you need to know for the purpose of this article: There are objects which one can reasonably say are unrelated. Most people would assume, for example, that a race car and a hurricane have very little connection. A genius who thinks outside of the box, however, would deduce some sort of connection. A schizophrenic patient would also deduce a connection because of the way the illness makes people see non-existent connections in just about everything. In other words, if the quiz in this article left you scratching your head, you’re normal. If not, one of two things is true – you’re brilliant, or you have schizophrenia. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you guessing. Here are some facts that will help you figure out which one you are: Geniuses will have taken their time to think before blurting a response. Did you get the answers right? What do you think – are you a schizophrenic or a genius? As far as the schizophrenia angle goes, this post is not a diagnostic tool. It can get you thinking about schizophrenia and, if you have concerns, you can see a psychiatrist for a proper evaluation. Sources:

Report: Colin Kaepernick to Stand for National Anthem in 2017 - Breitbart

Trent Baker

After refusing to stand for the national anthem in 2016, activist and quarterback Colin Kaepernick now plans to stand in 2017, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports. [Kaepernick said from the beginning that he would kneel until he saw a significant change, but that change seems to be when he no longer has a gig in the NFL. The polarizing quarterback opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers this week and will officially be a free agent next week. Per ESPN’s Schefter, Kaepernick is ending the protest because he does not want to “detract from the positive change that he believes has been created,” but the timing of the announcement makes it obvious that the quarterback wants to separate himself from the distraction and controversy. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

ObamaCare on the Brink

Charles Scaliger

As was predicted by opponents from the start, ObamaCare has begun to implode, owing to high costs brought on by government planners. Questions remain: Why, and what next? On Monday, October 3, former President Bill Clinton, in a series of unexpected and perhaps unscripted comments while stumping on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign in Flint, Michigan, took the political world by surprise when he singled out Obama­Care for scathing criticism. “You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world,” Clinton told a crowd of supporters. He added that “the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower-income working person, if you’re already on Medicare or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care.” But overall, Clinton concluded, Obama­Care is hurting the very people it was intended to help, pointing out that “the people getting killed in this deal are the small-business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies.” During Bill Clinton’s own presidency a generation ago, Hillary Clinton was put in charge of creating a system of socialized medicine (so-called Hillarycare), an effort that met with political failure. The Clintons have long been ardent public supporters of socialized medicine (and socialism in general). What would prompt Bill Clinton to attack ObamaCare during a heated presidential campaign? Have the failings of Obama’s disastrous experiment in socialized medicine become so obvious that even Democrats now want to distance themselves from it? In a word, yes. Since its full phase-in earlier in 2016, the Affordable Care Act has — as its many detractors have been predicting for years — inflicted critical damage on an already creaky healthcare system and ruined healthcare coverage for tens of millions of Americans. As Clinton noted correctly, the middle class, students, and small-business owners and their employees have borne the brunt of the damage, although no one but the few who can afford to pay out of pocket for healthcare have been unaffected by ObamaCare. Premiums have skyrocketed alongside deductibles and copays, while President Obama’s most quotable promise — that Americans who liked their pre-Obama­Care health coverage could keep it — has been discarded, as millions promptly lost their coverage or endured deep cuts in benefits and soaring costs with their existing coverage. In a word, ObamaCare has been a scourge on the already troubled American economy, a monumental political and economic mistake that has been a major contributor to our continuing economic malaise, more than eight years after the onset of the Great Recession. Sticker Shock One of the concerns that ObamaCare was supposed to address was rising healthcare premiums, which had outpaced wage increases for years. During the five-year period from 2004 to 2009, for example, healthcare premiums rose an average of 30 percent, while wages increased by only 12.2 percent. Figures such as these buoyed President Obama and other supporters of socialized medicine, and were a crucial factor leading to the passage of ObamaCare in 2010. Yet in the first year after ObamaCare’s enactment, premium costs soared by an additional 9.4 percent, and by 2014, the increase over five years was a whopping additional 28 percent, while wages only grew by 7.8 percent during that same period. While some of the depressed wages were (and are) certainly attributable to the Great Recession and its seemingly never-ending aftermath, it has become embarrassingly clear that Obama­Care has done nothing to halt the rise in healthcare premium costs. With open enrollment in ObamaCare slated to begin in November, another, politically far more damaging consequence has dominated the news in recent days: the soaring cost of ObamaCare premiums in many states. During the last week in October, the election season was roiled by news that the price of ObamaCare premiums will rise on average 25 percent in 2017, with many areas experiencing significantly greater price hikes. Arizona, which will be among the hardest-hit states, will experience a whopping 116 percent increase in its second-cheapest “silver plan,” for which a hypothetical 27-year-old paying $196 per month in 2016 will be paying $422 in 2017. The Obama administration has tried to downplay this latest round of healthcare sticker shock, with glib assurances that eight out of 10 ObamaCare beneficiaries will qualify for subsidies under the terms of the now-ironically named Affordable Care Act. Aviva Aron-Dine of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rushed to assure ObamaCare customers that the government will cover the difference for most of them: Issuers were pricing for a completely new market, one where they could no longer exclude those with the most serious health needs; many set prices that turned out to be too low.... Not only do tax credits bring down the cost of coverage, they adjust dollar for dollar with the cost of the benchmark plan in your area. So even if the cost of benchmark coverage goes up, most consumers will not have to pay more. In other words, the market got pricing wrong at the outset, but now the government, in its omniscience, will fix everything. HHS has indicated that our hypothetical young Arizonan in a silver plan will qualify for government subsidies of about $280 per month — if his annual income is $25,000 or so. If he makes more than $30,000, the subsidy will be much less. Left unsaid in all the posturing and spin is how the government is going to pay for all the new healthcare subsidies that the disastrous rise in premium costs has made necessary. The answer, of course, will ultimately be higher taxes, fees, and public debt, coupled with further contractions of benefits. Another development unanticipated by the Obama administration has been the veritable stampede of healthcare providers and insurers out of ObamaCare. As early as 2013, insurance company Aetna announced that it was opting out of ObamaCare in a number of states, including Connecticut (where the corporation is headquartered), California, Georgia, and Maryland. Other major insurers, such as Blue Cross and United Health Group, have also pulled out of healthcare exchanges in California and elsewhere as the health insurance market continues to contract under centralized control. Meanwhile, many of the nation’s top hospitals and clinics are either opting out of ObamaCare or being very selective in the policies for which they will accept coverage. With the beginning of open enrollment in November, many markets, such as Philadelphia, will be left with only one or two insurance providers participating in ObamaCare, leaving consumers little or no choice. On average, the number of options available to customers will decline by about a third, with competition declining in all but four states that participate in Healthcare.gov’s exchange. Hard-beset Arizona is a fairly typical example of the dizzying decline of healthcare options: In the Grand Canyon State, the number of options available will fall from 65 in 2016 to just four in 2017. Overall, about 21 percent of customers seeking healthcare plans at Healthcare.gov will encounter only one option in 2017 — up from two percent in 2016. Meanwhile, health insurance plans nationwide are plagued by ballooning deductibles — the amount the insured must pay out of pocket for healthcare before insurance benefits kick in. Once a nominal amount, the post-ObamaCare deductible has rapidly morphed into a severe financial threat in and of itself. The average deductible for a typical “Bronze” plan under ObamaCare is now $5,629, while the average deductible for a “Silver” plan is $2,994. The lowest deductibles belong to the “Gold” plans, which average only $1,105 — but feature premiums too expensive for most Americans to pay. As Nathan Nascimento recently pointed out in the National Review : Paying $3,000 or $5,600 before their insurance kicks in simply isn’t an option for most families in times of emergency. A December 2015 survey by Bankrate.com found that 63 percent of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected emergency-room visit costing $1,000. A recent report from the New York Times put it bluntly: Rising out-of-pocket costs have rendered many exchange plans “all but useless” for those already struggling to make ends meet. And participation in America’s Brave New World of healthcare isn’t optional; Obama­Care also levies hefty tax penalties on Americans without health insurance, and has anointed the IRS its collection and enforcement arm. The federal government has — so far — been tentative in enforcing the tax penalties for the uninsured. As Joseph Thorndike, a tax policy analyst, told the New York Times , “It is highly unusual for the federal government to use tax penalties to encourage affirmative behavior. That’s a hard sell.” Even so, tax penalties assessed by the IRS have been rising steadily, in an attempt to browbeat Americans into the system. Many Americans, however, have done the math and prefer, even four years into the ObamaCare abyss, to pay the annual penalty. One Atlanta business consultant in his early fifties told the Times that he was seriously considering dropping his ObamaCare premium, which is costing him $1,400 a month this year to cover his family of four. Next year, his premiums will go up by 60 percent, whereas the IRS penalty will only amount to two months’ worth of premiums. And his story is far from unique. Millions of Americans are prepared to take the risk of a major medical setback and pay a tax penalty of hundreds or even thousands of dollars rather than be saddled with enormously expensive monthly premiums that pay for policies with deductibles so high that only a catastrophic event would be covered at all. Some consumers who buy insurance on the exchanges still feel vulnerable. “Deductibles are so high,” observes the Times , “that the insurance seems useless. So some think that whether they send hundreds of dollars to the I.R.S. or thousands to an insurance company, they are essentially paying something for nothing.” For ObamaCare to even appear to work, it must be able to attract large numbers of healthy, young, low-risk subscribers — yet that is the opposite of what has taken place so far. A large percentage of Obama­Care subscribers are older and/or in poor health, precisely the customer base that would be most attracted to policies that, though expensive, are still preferable to the alternative of paying tens or hundreds of thousands annually for chronic illnesses and long-term disabilities. For those already insured via employer-based plans, rising premiums and deductibles alongside contracting benefits have become a fact of life. Healthcare providers and insurers, hard beset by ObamaCare’s many mandates, are trying to save money any way they can, which includes scaling back benefits for all payers. In a word, Americans now find themselves in a healthcare morass from which there appears to be no deliverance. If current projections are anywhere near the mark, Americans will soon be paying as much or more for government-run healthcare plans than they would have paid by choice before ObamaCare — except with the inefficiencies inherent to any government-run enterprise added on. Moreover, there is every indication that, sooner rather than later, in large swaths of America no insurance provider will participate in ObamaCare at all. Private to Public It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. In reassuring voters of the need for his reforms, President Obama famously promised tens of millions of Americans already satisfied with their healthcare coverage that they would be able to keep their plans if they liked them. We were also assured by a mob of Democrats and their media mouthpieces that ObamaCare could be done cheaply and efficiently, and that it would solve chronic problems with portability, rising costs, and lack of access to quality healthcare for millions of Americans. Yet not everybody was convinced. All the way back in 1993, when Bill Clinton was attempting to pass sweeping healthcare reforms, humorist P. J. O’Rourke famously quipped to a gathering at the Cato Institute: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” As events turned out then, Hillary Clinton and her team of high-paid experts were unable to ram socialized medicine down America’s collective throat. But President Obama was able to enact the long-standing goal of government-run healthcare, and the results have been precisely what O’Rourke and many others on the Right had warned us to expect. Perhaps the only surprise has been the speed of the implosion, but few sober observers doubt that ObamaCare is in a death spiral, courtesy of the implacable laws of economics. The federal government’s meddling in the healthcare system began during the Second World War, an indirect consequence of wage controls imposed by the federal government. Companies were unable to offer competitive wages thanks to FDR’s wartime socialist measures, but when the War Labor Board exempted fringe benefits from the wage controls, companies began offering competitive healthcare insurance benefits instead. When the war ended, the wage controls were lifted, but the expectation of employer-provided healthcare remained. President Truman tried to pass a voluntary government healthcare program, but the politics of the day did not allow him to make any progress. Labor unions, which in general favored programs such as socialist medicine, opted instead to support measures requiring big companies to offer health benefits packages. By 1960, most large public and private employers offered health insurance, whose benefits typically extended to routine care. And not surprisingly, once average Americans were offered government and union-backed benefits packages that incentivized frequent trips to the doctor for checkups, minor colds and injuries, and a range of other elective procedures, prices began to rise with increasing demand. The ObamaCare crisis is but the latest installment in the slow-motion deterioration of the American healthcare system, a trend that began in the mid-’60s after the passage of Lyndon Johnson’s Social Security Amendments of 1965 (a major component of President Johnson’s “Great Society” initiative), which created Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid were the first major interventions in the healthcare sector by the federal government, and were the outcome of decades of pressure by the Left to emulate countries such as Great Britain in instituting socialized medicine. With the passage of these two massive new federal programs, healthcare costs began to rise precipitously, and have been rising ever since, with each new government healthcare “fix” introducing new distortions and disincentives into the healthcare markets. From 1960 to 2013, healthcare spending rose from $147 per person to $9,255 per person, with an average annual increase of 8.1 percent. Per capita income over the same period grew by an average of only 5.7 percent. More tellingly, during this same period there was a massive shift in responsibility for coverage of healthcare costs. In 1960, 77 percent of healthcare costs were covered by private sponsors such as households and businesses, with the other 23 percent covered by government (a surprisingly high percentage pre-Great Society, but these figures include all levels of government). By 2013, private sponsors covered only 57 percent, and government the remaining 43 percent. More specifically, the federal government’s share of healthcare spending rose from 11 percent to 26 percent. The figures tell an interesting story. Over the last 50 years, healthcare has morphed from a mostly private to a mostly government enterprise, in terms of where and how the money is being spent, and the history of healthcare legislation since 1965 is a litany of greater and greater federal government involvement in the healthcare sector. In 1973, Congress passed the Health Maintenance Organization Act, which mandated that companies with 25 or more employees offer federally certified HMO coverage. HMOs were envisaged as a way to streamline and contain already rising healthcare costs, by incentivizing preventive care and healthy lifestyle choices, among other things. But while they were billed as private organizations, their economics were always driven by the federal government, which from the beginning has exercised oversight of HMOs via the use of mandates requiring them to produce particular products. But healthcare costs continued to soar, averaging annual increases well above 10 percent throughout the ’70s. And the barrage of new federal regulations continued. The year 1986 saw the passage of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, whereby the federal government forced hospitals that accept Medicare payments to treat any individual seeking medical treatment, regardless of citizenship status or ability to pay. However, the government does not reimburse hospitals for this service, leaving the Emergency Medical Treatment requirements an unfunded mandate that hospitals must pay for by increasing costs elsewhere. In 1996, Congress passed the massive Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protected health insurance for families and individuals who change jobs or become unemployed. By the late ’90s, such legislation was deemed necessary because healthcare costs had risen so high that one major medical procedure not covered by insurance — let alone treatment for chronic, pre-existing conditions that traditional insurance would not cover — would spell financial ruin for most. But those conditions — a healthcare sector in which those outside the system of employer-provided benefits risked a lifetime of debt for injuries sustained in a car accident, for example — were wholly a creation of government interference in the healthcare sector in the first place, by first incentivizing higher consumer demand than the free market once warranted, and then by systematically mandating a broader range of services, at lower cost, than healthcare providers could possibly provide without taxpayer subsidies or much higher prices for other services. In 2003, Congress passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (shortened to MMA), the largest overhaul of Medicare since its inception. And MMA did not streamline Medicare or defund any part of its provisions. Instead, it massively expanded Medicare coverage to include prescription drugs — paid for, of course, by government subsidies. The cost of new prescription drugs had been shooting up, due mostly to more and more stringent FDA controls and government red tape hindering pharmaceutical R&D. But as it routinely does, government was only too happy to provide a solution (government-subsidized prescription drug coverage) for a government-created problem (exorbitant prices for newer prescription drugs). And the consequences have been predictable: Prescription drug prices continued to soar, driving Medicare costs to Icarian altitudes. Undeterred, the federal government continued its campaign to solve healthcare costs by creative legislation. The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act followed in 2005, and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act in 2009, before President Obama’s mammoth Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) ushered in a new era of truly socialized medicine in the United States in 2010. “Single Payer” But even the Affordable Care Act is not what left-wing radicals have been seeking for almost a century. The real goal is an innocuously named “single payer” system — in essence, a system in which the government pays for everybody’s healthcare, such as healthcare systems in Canada, Great Britain, and many other wealthy countries. Such a system converts healthcare into a wholly public enterprise — and gives the state total authority over matters of life and death, including abortion and euthanasia. Fully socialized medicine has always been near the top of every socialist’s wish list, because it gives the state full control over the health of its citizens. It has been suggested, with some plausibility, that ObamaCare was a ruse, programmed to fail so that Americans would more readily accept single-payer healthcare as a solution. Whether or not the spectacular failures of ObamaCare were anticipated by its creators, the Left is already touting a single-payer system as the solution. Robert Reich, ultra-liberal Harvard professor and secretary of labor under President Clinton, is strongly supportive of a single-payer system. In an August article entitled “Why a Single-Payer Health Care System Is Inevitable,” Reich caricatured the insurance industry, insisting that “the problem isn’t Obamacare per se. It lies in the structure of the private markets for health insurance — which creates powerful incentives to avoid sick people and attract healthy ones.” This, of course, is the only rational way that the health insurance industry can work. Insurance companies, like all businesses, need to turn a profit, which means attracting more people who will pay more into the insurance pool than the sick and injured will withdraw from it. But then Reich, and liberals in general, are viscerally opposed to profit-taking (which they usually style “profiteering”). They have no moral qualms, on the other hand, with using the power of the state to extract ever more taxpayer money to fund Utopian projects such as single-payer healthcare systems that, over time, drain treasuries and degrade the quality of the healthcare they are supposed to improve. ObamaCare’s chief architect, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, has argued at various times that, whether the Affordable Care Act succeeds or fails, a single-payer system is the final goal. In a candid discussion aired on CSPAN, Gruber indicated that if the ACA “doesn’t work, then we’ll have to revisit single payer. This bill is the last, best hope for private insurance.” But at a forum at Harvard University, Gruber disingenuously tried to explode the “fallacy” that “if Obamacare fails, then next we’ll go to single payer.” Instead, he suggested, the eventuality of a single-payer system depends on the success of Obama­Care, stating emphatically that “if you like single payer, then Obamacare has to succeed.” In other words, heads we win, tails you lose; no matter what happens with ObamaCare, America will have a single-payer system. One big surprise for the promoters of a single-payer system has been the speed with which ObamaCare has unraveled. Another surprise has been the election of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has promised to repeal ObamaCare, and the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who was expected to continue and build upon ObamaCare. Instead of having a decade or so to plan a smooth transition into fully centralized government-run healthcare, President Obama and his liberal backers in Washington not only face ferocious opposition to ObamaCare, but the Republicans — having retained majority control of both houses of Congress as well as capturing the White House — are now well positioned to scuttle ObamaCare, if that is what they truly intend to do. But will Trump as well as congressional Republicans who promised to get rid of ObamaCare actually do so? And will they work to replace it with free-market healthcare as opposed to a GOP variant of socialized medicine — ObamaCare-lite, perhaps? Of course, there is no doubt that proponents of single-payer healthcare are not going to give up, even if they are forced to take a temporary step back before advancing their agenda once again. They want full-blown socialized medicine in the United States, and they will eventually get it, unless principled opposition, coupled with a fuller understanding among the voting public of the folly of socialized medicine under any label , forces them into a complete rout. (A version of this article, written prior to the November 8 elections, appeared in the print edition of The New American .) Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment Thank you for joining the discussion at The New American. We value our readers and encourage their participation, but in order to ensure a positive experience for our readership, we have a few guidelines for commenting on articles. If your post does not follow our policy, it will be deleted. No profanity, racial slurs, direct threats, or threatening language. No product advertisements. Please post comments in English. Please keep your comments on topic with the article. If you wish to comment on another subject, you may search for a relevant article and join or start a discussion there.

Report Rebuts Russia’s Claims of Restraint in Syrian Bombing Campaign - The New York Times

Michael R. Gordon

WASHINGTON — Russian military officials have vociferously denied that their airstrikes have killed civilians in Syria, going so far as to say that eyewitness accounts that a major hospital was bombed last year in the brutal fight to retake Aleppo were mere fabrications. But a new analysis that draws on satellite images, security camera videos, social media and even footage from the Russian television network has challenged Moscow’s claims that its airstrikes on behalf of the Syrian military were an exercise in prudent restraint. The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed. The analysis is presented in a report, “Breaking Aleppo,” which is to be made public on Monday by the Atlantic Council, a policy research center. The report comes as President Trump has signaled an interest in forging better connections with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which could include working more closely with the Russian military in Syria. “Throughout the entire length of the battle for Aleppo, there have been multiple claims of violations of human rights and multiple denials,” said Eliot Higgins, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. “What we have been able to present now is a wealth of evidence confirming the targeting of civilian structures, namely hospitals, which in certain cases has been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” he added. “We have been able to confirm the use in civilian areas of a variety of indiscriminate weapons. ” Syrian forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters, Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force and Russian air power, took Aleppo in late December. The capture of the city was an important milestone that gave the government of President Bashar control over all of Syria’s major cities and strengthened Moscow’s hand in discussions over the country’s future. But while the Atlantic Council report acknowledges that his victory in Aleppo has solidified Mr. Assad’s hold on power, at least for now, it argues that the ruthless strategy and tactics used by the Syrian and Russian governments would make the Syrian president “a poor if not harmful partner” in efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other extremist groups. Experts at the Atlantic Council have long urged the United States to do more to protect civilians in Syria and support the moderate opposition. In the report, the group employs hard evidence, including satellite images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite company, fresh accounts from Syrian activists on the ground and photography published by Russia’s Defense Ministry. Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by Mr. Higgins, a researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat. com. A reconstruction of one key episode — the July 16 bombing of another hospital, known as M2, in the Maadi district — was carried out by Forensic Architecture, a research organization at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was asked to take an independent look at the video and photographic evidence of the bombing. Aleppo was divided in July 2012 between and areas. With the support of Russia, the Assad government began a major offensive in September of last year to take the city. Fragile and temporary were used by the Syrians and their allies to prepare fresh offensives, which, despite Russian and Syrian denials, often targeted civilian areas. One claim that the Atlantic Council report challenges was issued by Lt. Gen. Sergei F. Rudskoi, the head of the operations directorate of the Russian general staff, who insisted in October that no damage had been done to the hospital in a Russian bombing raid. To buttress his case, General Rudskoi displayed satellite photos that he said had been taken between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. Eyewitness accounts to the contrary, he added, were “mere fakes. ” But a comparison of DigitalGlobe satellite photos taken on Sept. 25 and Oct. 13, the Atlantic Council report notes, shows the emergence of a large bomb crater near the hospital, also known as M10, and damage to the hospital building. Security camera videos from inside the hospital offer corroborating evidence of an Oct. 3 attack, as does a photo from the street by a local resident. The report concludes that there were several reasons to think the attacks on the medical centers were deliberate, including the large number of strikes, the Assad government’s knowledge of the terrain, and the Syrian government’s practice of confiscating medical supplies from humanitarian aid convoys. The M2 hospital was damaged by air and artillery strikes at least a dozen times between June and December. Other photographic evidence points to the use of incendiary munitions and cluster bombs. The television channel, Russia Today, provided some of the evidence in video footage it showed in June that had been taken at a Russian air base near Latakia, Syria. (The version of the report that was later uploaded to YouTube deleted the images of the weapons being mounted on a Russian warplane.) When a Russian team later entered eastern Aleppo to clear away unexploded ordnance, a photograph published by the Russian Defense Ministry showed the remains of cluster bombs, the Atlantic Council report notes. A variety of reports from victims and video on YouTube indicate that Syrian government attacks with chlorine gas increased in the final phase of the battle for Aleppo. One video “showed a chlorine gas cylinder with its labels intact,” the report said. The use of chlorine bombs by the Syrian government, Mr. Higgins said, continued even after reports confirming their use were made by the United Nations and an international watchdog organization in The Hague that enforces the ban on the use of chemical agents in war.

Righting Wrongs and Generating Attention for Art of the African Diaspora - The New York Times

Ted Loos

Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department, was relatively new on the job in 2013 when Pamela J. Joyner, a prolific art collector and supporter of artists of African descent, invited her on a trip to Washington to visit the studio of the Color Field painter Sam Gilliam. They looked at Mr. Gilliam’s pieces, a series of striking works with a thin stream of paint poured on board. Ms. Wagstaff knew the Met owned a Gilliam work, “Leah’s Renoir” (1979) somewhere in its collection, and the visit “prompted me to take a second look at it. ” Later, Ms. Joyner donated money to buy another Gilliam, “Whirlirama” (1970) and next year there are plans to exhibit both when the Met reinstalls its modern collection. “Pamela is such an informed champion of her artists,” Ms. Wagstaff said. That trip to Washington was one of the many ways that Ms. Joyner, 58, exerts her power as an influence behind the scenes. She has relinquished a successful business career to become what she calls a “ ” collector of a very specific niche: Abstract art by and members of the global African diaspora. Now she leverages her relationships with the Met in New York, the Tate in London, the Art Institute in Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to help these artists gain traction in the wider world. “It’s no less ambitious than an effort to reframe art history,” said Ms. Joyner, who sees herself as righting a wrong. “First, to include more broadly those who have been overlooked — and, for those with visibility, to steward and contextualize those careers. ” When art collectors publish a book on their treasures, they often include a glamour shot of themselves surrounded by myriad works. But in “Four Generations: The Collection of Abstract Art,” edited by Courtney J. Martin and published last month by Gregory R. Miller, there is no picture of Ms. Joyner anywhere. Instead, there are academic essays by curators and writers, with only a short “question and answer” segment with Ms. Joyner and her husband, Alfred J. Giuffrida. “That’s very deliberate,” Ms. Joyner said recently over coffee in Chelsea. “The focus is on the artists. ” Ms. Joyner, who is based in San Francisco but keeps an apartment in New York, founded and ran a private equity marketing company called Avid Partners. She started the collection 20 years ago and now adds to it with Mr. Giuffrida, an investment executive whom she married in 2004. Her trove, more than 300 works, begins in the 1940s and goes up to “yesterday,” Ms. Joyner said, encompassing four generations. Her definition of “African descent” has broadened to include William Kentridge, the white South African artist whose work has been in Ms. Joyner’s sights for some time. She just acquired her first Kentridge piece the other week in London. As an woman in the corridors of establishment power — an education at Dartmouth and Harvard, and then an entrepreneurial career — she said she knew the feeling of being an outlier. “I’ve operated in environments where some people would construe me to be unusual,” she said. “And I am stitched together in a way that I find myself doing things that aren’t necessarily expected. So I relate to that journey. ” The book’s most telling photograph is from 1950, when Abstract Expressionists gathered in New York to discuss their work. Some were famous — Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell — but the black painter Norman Lewis ( ) whose work Ms. Joyner collects, was also there. “He’s literally at the table, but he gets written out of that history,” Ms. Joyner said. “His first monograph was only published last year. ” She explained some of the factors that kept black artists from gaining a foothold, especially in the 1960s and ’70s. “For a long time, the art world wanted black artists to do black subject matter,” she said. “Art was a political tool. People were viewed as not part of the struggle if they were doing abstraction. ” About 100 artists are in her collection, and Ms. Joyner referred to Lewis and the Washington Color School painter Alma Thomas ( ) as the “Adam and Eve” of the group, stylistically begetting the later generations. (Thomas is the subject of an exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem through Oct. 30.) Ms. Joyner’s largest holding, more than a dozen works, is of works by Mr. Gilliam, who is 82. She also owns pieces by successful midcareer artists like Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon and Mark Bradford, and is scouting out new talents. The artists she is tracking include the Conceptual sculptor Kevin Beasley Hugo McCloud, who uses nontraditional materials in his paintings and Samuel Levi Jones, best known for his works on canvas. The Los Angeles artist Charles Gaines, whose Abstract and Conceptual work is in her collection, said that “Four Generations” crystallized his longtime thinking about the context of his work as part of a continuum. “Pamela’s book is the first legitimate academic effort to theorize some of this material,” Mr. Gaines, 72, said. “It’s a pioneering effort. ” About 60 works from the collection will tour in a museum show, “Solidary and Solitary,” beginning next fall at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans. Ms. Joyner buys about 30 works a year and has never sold one, she said, although she has donated them to museums. “Collecting is a job for Pamela,” said James Rondeau, director and president of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Ms. Joyner’s hometown, where she is a trustee. Over the years, Ms. Joyner has watched prices rise for many artists she has championed. “One curator said that I’m my own worst enemy,” she said with a wry smile. Lorna Simpson, an artist Ms. Joyner has collected and now befriended, noted that Ms. Joyner was no longer alone in her interest in the field. “The market was already starting to move around those pictures when she began,” Ms. Simpson said. “But she was ahead of it. ” Ms. Joyner is the daughter of two teachers, and she used to visit Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” at the Art Institute after attending ballet class. She noted that her mother moved from Mississippi to Chicago, where she attended her first integrated school. “There was a keen sense in my household that you had to be prepared for whatever was going to happen,” Ms. Joyner said. “You needed these literacies, and cultural literacy was one of them. ” Ms. Simpson, who also has family roots in Chicago, said she noted a “black Chicago thing” about Ms. Joyner’s outlook, which she defined as a forthright sense of humor, “a way of seeing the world. ” Ms. Joyner does take breaks from collecting. “I have slumber parties with my girlfriends, and that has included Lorna,” she said. So far, she said she was pleased by the reception to “Four Generations,” and had only one fear: that it might be misunderstood. “The danger of these projects is if people think it’s a politically laden, exercise,” she said, in explaining that race is not the only lens through which to view art. “Those elements are there, but they are not the drivers. Good art is the driver. ”

NASA and FEMA Rehearse for the Unthinkable: An Asteroid Strike on Los Angeles - The New York Times

Christopher Mele

Imagine if scientists discovered that an asteroid was hurtling toward Los Angeles. The possibility has existed on the pages of Hollywood scripts. But in what may be a case of life imitating art, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies engaged last month in a planetary protection exercise to consider the potentially devastating consequences of a asteroid hitting the Earth. The simulation projected a blast wave by an asteroid strike in 2020 that could level structures across 30 miles, require a mass evacuation of the Los Angeles area and cause tens of thousands of casualties. In 1998, the movie “Armageddon” dramatized an even greater fictional threat. In that blockbuster, a ragtag crew was sent on a mission to drill into an asteroid and set off a nuclear bomb to avert a global catastrophe. As the character Harry Stamper, portrayed by Bruce Willis, summed up to his crewmates: “The United States government just asked us to save the world. ” Don’t expect the need for such Hollywood heroics in real life, however. An asteroid that could cause such damage has no significant chance of striking Earth within the next century, Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. said in an email. The center relies on several telescopes, such as the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona, to track potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. These objects, which are leftover matter from the formation of planets, can come dangerously close to Earth or cross its trajectory. The center lists 659 asteroids that have some probability of striking the planet, “but none pose a significant threat over the next century, either because the probabilities are extraordinarily small, or the asteroids themselves are extremely small,” Mr. Chodas said. “Nevertheless, we must continue searching for asteroids in case there is one that is heading our way,” he added. That’s where the planetary protection exercise, conducted on Oct. 25 in El Segundo, Calif. comes in. The simulation that projected a strike in 2020 involved representatives from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. While a warning of four years may seem like a lot of time, it would probably not be enough to deflect an asteroid of the size and orbit outlined in the simulation, Mr. Chodas said. “Engineers think the simplest way to deflect an asteroid is to build a large spacecraft and simply ram it into the asteroid” years before it is predicted to hit Earth, he said. It could take up to two years to build such a “kinetic impactor” spacecraft and another year or more to reach the asteroid, so in the case of this simulation, an evacuation, not a “deflection mission,” was necessary. For the organizers of Asteroid Day, a global movement that seeks to protect the world from dangerous asteroids, such planning is not out of this world. The group, which maintains that one million asteroids have the potential to strike Earth but that only 1 percent of them have been discovered, was set on Monday to release a letter signed by planetary scientists supporting missions to increase knowledge of asteroids. The group promotes the “100x Declaration,” which calls for increasing the rate of asteroid discoveries to 100, 000 per year in the next 10 years. “The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time,” Brian May, an astrophysicist and a founder and lead guitarist for the rock group Queen, said on the group’s website. Asteroid Day is observed each year on June 30, the anniversary of what is believed to be the largest explosion in human history: an asteroid strike in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908. An asteroid, believed to be less than 100 feet in diameter, exploded at the altitude of an airliner and flattened tens of millions of trees across 800 square miles. Researchers estimated the explosion was as powerful as a hydrogen bomb and several hundred times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. While there were no official reports of human casualties, hundreds of reindeer were reduced to charred carcasses in the explosion, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported. In more recent times, an asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, shattering windows for miles and injuring more than 1, 000 people. Scientists have suggested that the Earth is vulnerable to many more space rocks. In research published in 2013 by the journal Nature, they estimated that such strikes could occur as often as every decade or two instead of an average of once every 100 to 200 years as previously thought. Predictions of a catastrophic crash by a celestial object surface with some regularity. In September 2015, the last eclipse of the year fueled imaginative speculation on the internet that a giant asteroid would hit Earth. In a statement debunking the idea, NASA noted that similar forecasts were made in January and March of that year that two asteroids were on dangerous paths toward Earth. The agency noted that the asteroids flew by Earth “without incident — just as NASA said they would. ”

Mall Attack Threat Linked to Islamic State, Minister Confirms

Breitbart London

BERLIN (AP) — A threatened attack against a mall in the western city of Essen is linked to the Islamic State extremist group, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday. [Thomas de Maiziere told public broadcaster ARD that Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, had received “tips of an attack and passed them on” to local security authorities in Essen. “The case was evaluated several times … and it couldn’t be eliminated that there could have been a concrete attack at this mall. This was prevented,” de Maiziere said. Daily papers Bild, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and public broadcaster WDR had reported earlier, citing anonymous security sources, that a German fighter with the IS in Syria had contacted via online messenger a group of fighters — based in Germany and abroad — and tried to motivate them to attack the mall Saturday. De Maiziere also confirmed a connection between “somebody who had traveled there from Germany and indications and assignments from that region. ” The mall in Essen, one of the biggest in Germany, didn’t open Saturday. About 100 heavily armed police officers positioned themselves around the compound to prevent anyone from entering. The apartments of two men were later searched in nearby Oberhausen and they were detained and interrogated. One was released Saturday, police said, with no details. The mall in downtown Essen will open again on Monday because there is no longer an increased threat of an attack, the German news agency dpa reported. Germany has been on the edge following a series of attacks in public places over the past year. When a man went on a rampage with an axe on Friday night at Duesseldorf’s main station and injured 10 people, hundreds of police officers were deployed to the scene, even though it later turned out that he had no links to extremists, but was suffering from psychological problems.

Frank Deford Ends NPR Sports Commentaries After 37 Years - Breitbart

AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — National Public Radio commentator Frank Deford has bid listeners goodbye after 37 years of discussing sports on the network. [Deford gave his 1, 656th and final commentary on NPR’s “Morning Edition” Wednesday, ending a run of what he calls “little homilies” that began in 1980. He thanked NPR for allowing him to choose his topics and allowing him “to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. ” The remains a contributing writer at Sports Illustrated, where he got his start in 1962. Deford has also served as a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” since 1995. Deford received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2013 for “transforming how we think about sports. ”

Comedy Central Cancels Larry Wilmore’s Late-Night Show - The New York Times

John Koblin

For almost a decade, the combination of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert made Comedy Central destination viewing for fans of comedy and barbed political commentary. But over the last 12 months, the and era has not been as easy for the network. On Monday, Comedy Central announced that it was canceling “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” because of falling ratings and a distinct lack of buzz. The final episode of Mr. Wilmore’s 11:30 p. m. show — the slot formerly occupied by Mr. Colbert before he left for CBS — will be Thursday. Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s president, said he informed Mr. Wilmore of the news late last week. The move, Mr. Alterman said in an interview, was made for a simple reason: The show “hasn’t resonated. ” “Even though we’ve given it a year and a half, we’ve been hoping against hope that it would start to click with our audience, but it hasn’t happened, and we haven’t seen evidence of it happening,” Mr. Alterman said. The awkward timing of the cancellation, just 12 weeks before the presidential election, ultimately came down to a contract, Mr. Alterman said. Mr. Wilmore’s deal, along with those of several of the show’s other staff members, was set to expire in a few weeks and the network had to decide now whether to renew or cancel. For the time being, Comedy Central’s 12 a. m. show, “@midnight,” will replace “The Nightly Show” at 11:30 p. m. “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah remains at 11 p. m. Mr. Alterman said he hoped to name a replacement for “The Nightly Show” sometime next year. The cancellation makes Mr. Wilmore, 54, an early casualty of a television comedy slate that has been vastly reordered over the last two years. With the retirement of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Colbert’s move to CBS, a series of new hosts have stepped into the spotlight, including James Corden, Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Mr. Noah. Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show,” has most formidably filled the power vacuum left by his predecessors, earning the highest ratings of any show. While Mr. Stewart was the host of “The Daily Show,” Mr. Wilmore became a fixture as the program’s “senior black correspondent,” offering wry observations on racial issues. In May 2014, Mr. Stewart tapped Mr. Wilmore to get his own show, and Mr. Wilmore formally became Mr. Colbert’s successor when “The Nightly Show” premiered in January 2015. “The Nightly Show” has been known for a signature segment, “Keep It 100,” (slang for telling the truth, no matter the consequences) and for Mr. Wilmore’s often stinging commentary on race and this year’s election. (He called the election to find Barack Obama’s successor “The Unblackening. ”) Though the genre remains heavy on easygoing laughter, any one episode of “The Nightly Show” could occasionally go for prolonged stretches without a single joke, something that intrigued some critics but failed to attract a broader audience. “I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart and our fans to have had this opportunity,” Mr. Wilmore said in a statement. “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well. ” The move by Comedy Central is also the first concession that the transition from Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert — both pioneers of a certain kind of political comedy as media criticism and social commentary — to Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore has not gone as smoothly as the network had hoped. Though Mr. Alterman strongly defended Mr. Noah’s iteration of “The Daily Show” — next month will be his first anniversary as host — both Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore have failed to capture the critical praise that rivals like Ms. Bee, Mr. Corden and Mr. Oliver have enjoyed. This year, for the first time in 16 years, “The Daily Show” was not nominated for an Emmy in the best variety show category. Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore have also lost a good portion of the audience that used to tune in to Comedy Central between 11 p. m. and midnight. “The Daily Show” had an average of 2. 1 million viewers a night in Mr. Stewart’s final year as host, while Mr. Noah’s audience has averaged 1. 3 million, according to data from Nielsen. And Mr. Wilmore has lost more than half the audience that he inherited. In Mr. Colbert’s final year as host of “The Colbert Report,” he had an average audience of 1. 7 million viewers, but in Mr. Wilmore’s first year, that viewership fell to an average of 922, 000 viewers, according to Nielsen. This year, the total has fallen to 776, 000 viewers a night. Likewise, in the demographic most important to Comedy Central — young men — he has not made a dent. In recent months, Mr. Wilmore has even started losing to the show that is on after his, “@midnight. ” Mr. Wilmore’s most visible role in the last year may have been his turn as host of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. But reviews for his act were decidedly mixed, and the exposure did not result in a ratings bounce. Mr. Alterman said that he had hoped that there would be a ratings surge — particularly around the political conventions — and that the decision to cancel “The Nightly Show” was a recent one. “We were hoping that we would get a turnaround along the way including the wild, wild two weeks of the conventions,” he said. “We just haven’t seen it on any level from the general conversation to ratings to any sort of traction on social media platforms. ” That stands in contrast, he said, to what the network has seen regarding Mr. Noah. Calling the perception that Mr. Noah is struggling “a myth,” Mr. Alterman pointed to the show’s strong performance on Hulu — though he is not allowed to disclose figures, he said. Mr. Noah’s show is the No. 2 show among young adults ages 18 to 34, Mr. Alterman said, and his ratings have grown among to men. Mr. Alterman said he “couldn’t be happier” with Mr. Noah’s performance. “In the last couple of weeks — leading up to the conventions and especially the conventions — we feel like Trevor got to a whole new level in terms of having a strong voice and point of view,” he said. “It’s been no surprise to us. We expected him to take time to find his rhythm and find his way. ” It’s unclear whether Mr. Wilmore will stay on with Comedy Central — “We haven’t even addressed that,” Mr. Alterman said — but he is involved in other projects. In addition to developing ABC’s comedy “” he is an executive producer for HBO’s coming comedy “Insecure. ”

The Anatomy of Crisis and the Decline of US Empire

Danny Haiphong

The Anatomy of Crisis and the Decline of US Empire Submitted by Danny Haiphong on Tue, 11/08/2016 - 12:18 Tweet Widget by Danny Haiphong There are multiple dimensions to the crisis that afflicts U.S. imperialism. The latest election is evidence of a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling parties. Americans are estranged from a government that spies on every one its citizens – and on the rest of the world, too. “Unemployment, poverty, racist state repression, and war are all the system has to offer.” Unable to escape a 40-year economic slump, the U.S. instead plots the destruction of its rivals. The Anatomy of Crisis and the Decline of US Empire by Danny Haiphong “ The vast majority of oppressed communities, particularly Black workers, have seen their labor become disposable in a post-industrial society.” Whether one analyzes the economic, military, or political spheres of US imperialism, one thing is abundantly clear. The very fabric of the United States is in deep crisis. The crisis is largely misunderstood by the vast majority of working and oppressed people living under it. But a specter haunts the US and it isn't anything like Hollywood's scary movies. That specter is the possibility that the people will become a conscious force of opposition to the crisis and seek to dismantle the system of capitalist empire that governs it. Crises are genuinely thought of in economic terms. The economic base of capitalism is indeed suffering from protracted economic crisis. The US capitalist economy, and thus the world capitalist economy pegged to its hip, entered a period of stagnation in the mid to late 1970s. What followed was a slowdown in production facilitated by the increased monopolization, financialization, and increased technological capacity of the system. Capitalism's source of profit, labor, was now being exploited by an apparatus too big to expand the profits of the system without intensified exploitation. The aftermath of capitalism's periodic collapses from overproduction and under consumption have been characterized ever since by a complete and total assault on all workers. “Wages have declined or remained stagnant for nearly four decades.” The conditions of the crisis speak for themselves. Workers in the US, and the entire Western world for that matter, have seen conditions rapidly deteriorate as the capitalist system has sought to maximize profits in the face of productive slowdown. Free trade agreements such as NAFTA have given corporations the freedom to eliminate production domestically in order to seek a better deal internationally. Wages have declined or remained stagnant for nearly four decades . Unemployment has become a permanent fixture of life for millions and nearly one of two people in the US are considered poor or "near poor." At this time, the US is a low-wage capitalist economy dominated by service oriented, precarious employment. Racism has played a large part in the disparity inherent under these conditions. The wealth gap between Black America and White America is larger than it was in the Civil rights era. Not only has Black America been the target of racist housing policies from predatory lenders leading up to the 2008 crisis, but the burden of privatization and austerity has been directly aimed at Black families. Hedge funds, for example, have used working class Black communities as the guinea pig to test the effectiveness of massive school closures and teacher layoffs as well as the expansion of charter schools. Thousands of Black teachers have lost their jobs as a result to the mostly white demographic of Teach for America corps members. “ The wealth gap between Black America and White America is larger than it was in the Civil rights era.” However, it is not enough to understand the crisis of capitalism through an economic lens. The crisis possesses many forms. Repressive state activity has become more pronounced, especially in the aftermath of the War on Terror. Racist repression in particular has intensified as the vast majority of oppressed communities, particularly Black workers, have seen their labor become disposable in a post-industrial society. Nearly 1100 Black Americans are killed every year by law enforcement all over the country. The war on Black and indigenous peoples that laid the foundation of the United States has only become more severe, as evidenced by the fact that one of every eight prisoners in the world is a Black American. The Dakota Access Pipeline struggle has shown that not even the concentration camps forced upon indigenous people are safe from the profit-seeking tentacles of the crisis-ridden system. And every American can guarantee that civil liberties are a thing of the past. The NSA, FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community possess access to the entire population's mail and phone devices. A massive surveillance dragnet accountable to no one but the ruling class allows the US state to keep tabs on whoever resists the conditions of the crisis. War at home is ultimately a reflection of the broader war being waged around the world. The US capitalist system is a global system with the largest military state in human history. War has thus played a critical role in the response to system crisis. The US military acts as the enforcement arm of neo-colonialism and capitalist exploitation around the world. It has expanded into nearly every African state through the US African Command (AFRICOM). The US military state continues to support fascism in Ukraine and fundamentalist Islam in places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It has destabilized a number of nations in the last decade alone, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The US has collaborated with NATO, Israel, and Turkey to militarily encircle Russia and China militarily and sponsor terror groups responsible for the massacres in Syria. “The US imperialist system is predicated on the expansion of global capital by any means at its disposal, including the use military force to clear the way for corporate plunder. But the US military is in crisis too. It is plagued by a disillusioned rank and file and the inevitability of a global confrontation with Russia and China if it continues on the current course. The demands of a stagnating global capitalist economy and the ever-increasing exploitation of masses of working people offer no potential for a reversal of fortune. The US imperialist system is predicated on the expansion of global capital by any means at its disposal, including the use military force to clear the way for corporate plunder. The US military state has grown both in size and in violence in order to prevent the global shift of power currently underway. Russia and China have become the number one challengers to US global hegemony. China's economy will soon surpass that of the US and Russia's recovery from post-Soviet collapse has propelled the Putin-led nation back onto the global scene as a major factor in world affairs. These two powers are becoming increasingly close both economically and militarily. This has made the US ruling class increasingly nervous in the midst of economic decline. To maintain hegemony, the US military state set the world ablaze through endless war in every region of the world that dares to seek ties with Russia and China. At this point, the US imperialist system cannot peacefully compete in any way with its so-called rivals to the East. The contradictions of the system have become unmanageable. Unemployment, poverty, racist state repression, and war are all the system has to offer. Another economic collapse is on the horizon. Crisis is built into the global capitalist system's constant drive to accumulate profit in the face of global misery. The decline of US imperialism and empire will not change regardless of the election. What is sure to change is the mass reaction to the decline as life becomes more and more unbearable under the grip of empire. Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at [email protected]

Flood Rips Through Historic Maryland Town, Killing at Least 2 - The New York Times

Mike McPhate

Ellicott City, Md. a historic town west of Baltimore, was devastated by flooding on Saturday night after more than six inches of rain fell in just two hours, sending a current down its Main Street and leaving at least two people dead. Officials and witnesses said the floodwaters rushed through the downtown area after torrential rain fell between 7 and 9 p. m. It ripped up sidewalks, gutted many of the town’s quaint shops and carried off vehicles, depositing some of them blocks away. The body of a woman was recovered from the nearby Patapsco River early on Sunday, and the body of a man was also found, said Mark Miller, a spokesman for Howard County, where Ellicott City is the county seat. “This was a different type of flooding than you would normally get when just the Patapsco rises — far more devastating,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s like the water was a piston. The water came through with such force. ” Gov. Larry Hogan and Representative Elijah E. Cummings visited the destruction early on Sunday. Mr. Hogan signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency for Howard County. Mr. Cummings, who has an office on Main Street, said in a statement that the flooding had “devastated countless businesses and residents in Ellicott City. ” “Recovering from this disaster will be long and difficult,” he said. The downtown area has been evacuated and closed off while emergency crews assess the safety of the buildings there. County officials asked residents to be patient during what some anticipated would be a monthslong rebuilding process. Founded in 1772 as a mill town, Ellicott City has for the past several decades catered to tourists with its historic charm and antique shops, said Shawn Gladden, the executive director of the Howard County Historical Society. The town’s location in the Patapsco River Valley has made it susceptible to flooding. On Sunday, some of its roughly 65, 000 residents were already drawing comparisons to the two biggest floods in its recorded history, the flood of 1868 and flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. “They call them the floods,” Mr. Gladden said. “And this one may rival that. ” The National Weather Service had issued warnings about potential floods on Saturday, and at one point sent a sharply worded bulletin: “This is a particularly dangerous situation. Seek higher ground now!” Despite the warnings, the ferocity of the waters came as a surprise to many workers and residents in downtown Ellicott City, trapping them where they were. Inside Bean Hollow, the water rose swiftly to about three feet. With no time to flee, the coffee shop’s workers scrambled to an apartment on the second floor. “This was a true flash flood,” said Jim Bolton, who has owned Bean Hollow with his wife for about 14 years. “By the time people realized there was a potential hazard, it was far too late for anyone to do anything. ” Mr. Bolton said he expected the rebuilding of Ellicott City to be a long road. “It’s decimated right now,” he said. “But it’s certainly had its share of floods and fires and all sorts of madness over the years. It will rise again. ”

‘McCarthyism’ Rides Again. And It's Again Poisoning the Foundations of a Free Society in the US - Justin Raimondo

‘McCarthyism’ Rides Again. And It's Again Poisoning the Foundations of a Free Society in the US Smears and intimidation vs. free debate, civil liberties and peace Originally appeared at Anti War I’m often taken to task by some of my readers for characterizing the current anti-Russian hysteria as “McCarthyism.” After all, they say, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right – there were, indeed, high-ranking individuals in the US government covertly sympathetic to the Soviet regime. And, yes, we now know that many of these were working directly for Soviet intelligence. This was the predictable result of our wartime alliance with Russia: combined with the left-wing proclivities of the Roosevelt administration, and the “Popular Front” politics of the Communist Party USA during this period, it’s surprising that Soviet penetration of US government circles wasn’t more extensive than it turned out to be. In any case, what we are seeing today with the revival of the cold war mindset is in many ways the complete opposite of the “old” McCarthyism: the target may be the same – Russia as the bogeyman de jour – but the methods and sources of the neo-McCarthyites are quite different. To begin with, the “old” McCarthyism was a movement generated from below, and aimed at the elites: the “new” McCarthyism is a media construct, generated from above and created by the elites. The average American, while hardly a Putin groupie, is not lying awake at night worrying about the “Russian threat.” The fate of Ukraine, not to mention Crimea, is so far from his concerns that the distance can only be measured in light-years. And when some new scandal breaks as a result of WikiLeaks releasing the emails of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, Joe Sixpack doesn’t think “Oh, that just proves Julian Assange is a Kremlin toady!” WikiLeaks is merely confirming what Joe already knew: that Washington is a cornucopia of corruption. The Acela corridor elite, on the other hand, does lie awake at night wondering how they can pull off a regime change operation that will eliminate the “threat” represented by Putin once and for all. Ever since the Russian leader started mocking Washington’s hegemonic pretensions, criticizing the US invasion of Iraq, and pointing out how US-funded Syrian “rebels” are merely jihadists in “moderate” clothing, Putin has been in their crosshairs – and the propaganda war has been relentless. This barrage has gone into overdrive with the launching of the Clinton campaign’s effort to smear Donald Trump as a Kremlin “puppet. ” You have to go all the way back to the earliest days of our Republic, when pro-British supporters of Alexander Hamilton were sliming the Jeffersonian Democrats with accusations that they were agents of the French revolutionaries, to come up with the historical equivalent of Hillary’s “you’re a puppet” charges directed at Trump. And the media, being an auxiliary of the Clinton campaign, has been filled with even more virulent screeds purporting to “prove” Trump is the Manchurian candidate . One way in which the new McCarthyism is very much like the old is that it threatens to poison the intellectual atmosphere in this country, endangering the very foundations of our free society and academic standards of free inquiry and debate. Emblematic of this trend is a tweet authored by Dan Drezner , professor of international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a foreign affairs columnist at theWashington Post, in which he commented on a talk he heard at the Valdai conference, a regular event held in Russia focusing on Russo-American relations: “At Valdai, John Mearsheimer says the Chinese and Russians love his realism. ‘I’m much more comfortable in Moscow than Washington!’" Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science at the University of Chicago, the author of six books, and the leading theoretician of the school of international relations known as “offensive realism.” He is, in short a scholar of some renown – and yet Drezner, considerably lower on the academic totem pole, feels empowered to slime him as somehow disloyal. How did we come to this sad state of affairs? The poisoning of a society with propaganda used to take some time: today, the process is much faster, due to technological innovation, and especially the rise of the Internet and the growth of social media. In the old days, the McCarthyites had to rely on print media and radio to smear those “pinko college professors” and drive them out of academia. Today, someone like Drezner can sign in to their Twitter account and snark about how John Mearsheimer is more at home in Moscow and Beijing than in the good ol’ US of A, and his thousands of Twitter followers get the idea – that Mearsheimer is somehow anti-American – in an instant (and in only twenty words!). The “old” McCarthyism was dangerous because, in some cases, people were targeted unfairly: anybody with dissident views was suspect, and especially anyone with vaguely left-wing opinions. And McCarthyism, which in its original form saw the main danger to America to be internal, soon morphed into something else entirely: a movement that sought a military confrontation with the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was McCarthyism that was the bridge that allowed neoconservative interventionists to invade the conservative movement and displace the “isolationism” of the Old Right. The new McCarthyism poses new dangers that are, perhaps, more virulent than the old version and will have more immediate consequences. The above-mentioned smear of Prof. Mearsheimer encapsulates what the dangers are to academia: in the 1950s, left-wing professors had at least some protection from populist McCarthyites in that academics tended to jealously guard their turf and protect their own from outside incursions. Today, with the elites pushing Russophobia, those protections fall by the wayside. Furthermore, the political class, where the new McCarthyism is rampant, has power – that is, it can translate its prejudices into policy more readily than any mass movement such as the one led by “Tail-gunner Joe.” If Hillary Clinton and her advisors really believe that Putin is out to defeat her and elect her opponent, then what can we expect will happen to US-Russian relations if and when she’s elected? And while the American people aren’t exactly up in arms over the prospect of a “Red Dawn” scenario unfolding in the streets of America’s cities, the “mainstream” media’s longstanding anti-Russian crusade is clearly having an effect. A Pew poll shows that anti-Russian sentiment in the United States rose “from 43% to 72% from 2013 to 2014.” The “trickle down” effects of war propaganda work just as effectively as the “trickle-up” model, if not more so. The real world consequences of a conflict with Russia, a nuclear-armed state, are fearsome to even contemplate: the political class in this country is playing a dangerous game of chicken, and they’re playing it with our lives and the lives of every person on earth. Aside from the prospect of World War III, the effects of the new McCarthyism will be to distort our politics, infect our culture, and threaten our constitutional rights as Americans. It is entirely possible that a new witch-hunt will be launched by the Russia-haters in our midst, with a revived “Un-American Activities Committee” replete with congressional hearings, as well as “investigations” by law enforcement of “pro-Russian”“subversive” activities. With the media acting as a cheerleading section for these official and unofficial arbiters of political correctness, our future as a free society will be increasingly in doubt. Finally, the new McCarthyism underscores the cynicism, opportunism, and downright viciousness of our political class, and especially the media, which has done nothing to question and everything to bolster the Russophobic propaganda put out there by self-serving lobbyists and politicians. It truly is a sickening sight, made all the more so by the self-professed “liberalism” of those who are in the vanguard of this revolting trend. What these folks should remember is that the “old” McCarthyism was in large part a reaction to the “ Brown scare ” of the Roosevelt era, when “isolationist” conservatives were smeared as “agents of Hitler,” driven out of their jobs, and in some instances charged with “sedition.” This bout of war hysteria was driven, first of all, by the Communist Party and its media contingent, which had become more-patriotic-than-thou when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Communist line on the war changed overnight. However, when the world situation changed again, and the Soviets were in Washington’s sights, the tables were abruptly turned – and Sen. McCarthy’s crusade took off. The same thing can happen again. If the consequences of the new McCarthyism come to fruition in an armed conflict with Russia, or even a nuclear exchange, as Americans emerge from the radioactive wreckage they’ll be looking for someone to blame – and scapegoats won’t be that hard to find.

Young musicians from France at Motorola funeral share their emotions at the Saur Mogila Memorial

Tom Winter (noreply@blogger.com)

November 25, 2016 - Fort Russ News - - Christelle NEAN in DONiPRESS, translated by Tom Winter - СПАСИБО! Thank you! Donetsk 25 Nov 2016 The program of the third day of visit of the French group was totally turned around by the always moving news of the Donbass. That was the day of the funeral commemoration of Commander Motorola, murdered three days earlier during a bomb attack in the elevator of his building. Our visitors took part in this moving ceremony, placing flowers near his coffin, and joining the people gathered in the center of Donetsk to bid farewell to one of the most emblematic and well-known commanders of the People's Republic of Donetsk (RPD). They saw with their own eyes the incredible number of ordinary citizens who came to pay homage to this hero of the republic. The first approximate figures of 30,000 people were adjusted later to at least 50,000 people who were there to bid farewell and show their attachment to this commander who had come to help the people of Donbass to defend their freedom. Billboards were installed in the city center with the photo of Commander Motorola and the phrase "Heroes do not die." It was only proper that we go immediately after the funeral to the high place of commemoration of the heroes fallen for the defense of freedom: the hill of Saur Mogila. What better place than this height, twice the subject of intense fighting, and twice retaken at great cost by soldiers defending freedom, to ponder on all those who have, like Commander Motorola, sacrificed their lives for this ideal? The memorial is no more than a field of ruins, yet several times a year people come here by thousands to celebrate, for example, the Liberation of the Donbass in 1943 or the Victory Ceremonies of 1945. The tombs both at the foot and at top of the hill are there to remind that during the present war, again, the defenders of the Donbass have paid a heavy price for this freedom that they cherish so much. "It's here in the Donbass that they are fighting for freedom, and in the West they're called terrorists," Roxane said. The people of Donbass, like the people of Russia, cultivate and maintain their memory and their history, so that the errors of the past can no longer be repeated. Follow us for the interview of Antoine and Roxane at the end of this day full of emotions, with their comments on the soul of the Donbass, who are the real terrorists in this war, the support of the Donbass population towards their army, and what their journey has already brought them at the end of these three days: Follow us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Donate!

“He is a pig,” says morbidly obese and tattooed “model” while wearing a ‘Dump Trump’ T-shirt in Times Square – BARE NAKED ISLAM

BNI Store Oct 31 2016 “He is a pig,” says morbidly obese and tattooed “model” while wearing a ‘Dump Trump’ T-shirt in Times Square Tess Holliday is using her platform as a jumbo-sized so-called “model” to speak out against Donald Trump’s treatment of women. The 31-year-old took to Instagram to share a photo of herself posed with her hands on her mega hips wearing the ‘Respect Women #Dump Trump’ shirt. ( Hey, why wasn’t she arrested for causing visual pollution in Times Square? ) UK Daily Mail ‘Respect Women,’ she captioned the image. ‘Our bodies are not for you to stare at or touch without our consent. Women are not just sexual objects, women are not here for your consumption. (One problem you don’t have, cupcake) The 31-year-old took to Instagram over the weekend to share an ad of herself posing in New York City’s Times Square while modeling a New Look Fashion T-shirt that reads: ‘Respect Women #Dump Trump.’ So many of us have a sexual assault story, myself included,’ she continued. (Gee, were you 100 pounds lighter then?) ‘To endorse someone who not just condones this behavior but actively engages in it would be an awful step backwards for women not just in the US but across the world. ‘Also might I add I’m NOT telling you who to vote for. Trump is a pig & that’s a fact.’ (But obviously, you are supporting a pig – Hillary Clinton – who has verbally abused all the women who were sexually assaulted/raped by her husband) Last week Tess made an appearance (above left) alongside model Iskra Lawrence and Orange is the New Black star Danielle Brooks at Refinery29’s Every Beautiful Body Symposium in New York City, wearing a figure-hugging dress. In celebration of Halloween, Tess also posted a throwback photo of her and Nick dressed as Miss Argentina and Beetlejuice from the 1988 film. ‘But how do I top last year?’ she wrote. We pulled these costumes off in two days, and I’m pretty darn proud.’ There was also a fierce debate about whether or not Tess’ post could be seen as an endorsement for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and some people who disagreed with her statement attacked the size 22 model for her weight. ‘There is some super hateful stuff on here,’ one woman wrote. ‘And targeting her weight because you disagree? Really? People are crazy, keep up your positive messages Tess! Whatever your political views are, I still love what you represent!’

How Secure is Your Cellphone ??

Eddy Lavine

posted by Eddie Ever wonder how cellphones went from being a point of wealth to household commodity? Well, there’s reason to believe that the accessibility of cellphones isn’t purely coincidental. The thought originated with metadata and the possibilities made possible through the documentation of information that cellphones provide, through both backdoor access and the location data each phone provides. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is an incredibly secret court that answers to no one and, has autonomy in not only their proceeding and rulings, but, is also highly-classified. Through this system, President’s George Bush and Barrack Obama have enabled their own domestic surveillance practices. Although, The NSA is heavily involved as well. In doing so, the government has created programs and jobs that are specific to collecting and translating meta-data. The government would have you believe that meta-data is not as invasive as specific data, but, let’s consider it this way. Imagine your coordinates being reported by the second, from the time you wake in the morning, during your commute to work, and whichever plans you have afterwards. This data system gives insight into each particular location, phone call, and the duration of said phone calls to these data collectors. Imagine being able to see each and every step your better half or child has throughout the day, and you notice they stops at location that seem unusual or speak/communicate with numbers/people unfamiliar to you while having access to the duration of those calls. Although, this leaves an opportunity for misconception, but, it also brings us to an objective truth, how revealing metadata can be. Edward Snowden, a former NSA employer who specialized in technology in the cyber division, released classified documents involving both government programs that enacted policies, and, FISA court rulings on said programs. These revelations brought his need to flee for asylum in China, and then and currently, Russia. Snowden’s attempt of transparency let Americans learn just how much census data has changed and the contracts deployed between the government and the major communications companies, such as AT&T. These companies have made millions by granting backdoor access and data to the government. Yet, this isn’t all bad. Local officials have occasionally solicited access, through communication companies, to find criminals and perpetrators of crime. For example, in 2013 California officials used the data and cellphone accessibility to find the murderer that slaughtered a man, his wife, and their two children. Until the solicitation, the local officials weren’t close to right suspect. After collaboration, the local officials were able to find, through metadata collection, analysis, and cellphone GPS, the exact location of the murderer. So, you tell me, do you think your phone is as private as you think? Written by Anthony A Fabrikant. From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8889 Posts ) Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. and Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media.

The Guide to Being an Airbnb Superhost - The New York Times

Brian X. Chen

IN my spare time, when not writing about consumer technology for The New York Times, I have a sideline renting out a cabin on Airbnb. So when Jose reserved the property last October, it was nothing unusual. He said he wanted to host some relatives for a quiet weekend in the mountains. I welcomed him without hesitation. That Saturday, my neighbors texted me as they watched caterers carry large white pillars and bouquets into the backyard. Then 10 cars surrounded the front yard and dozens of people wearing suits and dresses poured into the house. It became clear this was no intimate . For a day, my Airbnb rental was turned into a wedding venue, which broke city laws. My business would be in jeopardy if the police were notified. Such is life as an Airbnb “Superhost. ” Since buying my cabin in Northern California in late 2015, I have hosted about 30 groups and become part of the booming ecosystem for Airbnb, the online reservation marketplace that lets people turn their homes into vacation rentals. With more than 140 million guest arrivals to date, Airbnb has proved a boon for hosts and an attractive option for travelers looking to avoid hefty fees from hotels. In the process, I have been named a Superhost, which means I have hosted many guests and consistently received reviews. It’s a small group — researchers say only about 7 percent of hosts are Superhosts. In exchange, I get more visibility in search results, invitations from the company to exclusive events and a medal next to my profile photo. The designation as a Superhost has paid off: My house is a few bookings away from netting a profit. Yet vaulting to Superhost status is hardly intuitive, and I learned hard lessons along the way. Here are some tips on running a successful (and lucrative) Airbnb rental based on interviews with Superhosts and my experience. People who rent your house on Airbnb are choosing it over a hotel. So you had better be as hospitable, friendly and communicative as a hotel. For your rental, that means a few things. Provide staples like cooking equipment, cable TV, soap for bathing and cleaning, towels, toothpaste and toilet paper. Your house should work as advertised — faulty appliances should be repaired or replaced. For another, be extremely responsive to guests, much like a hotel front desk. Nobody trusts a host who is slow to respond. Jasper Ribbers, a of “Get Paid for Your Pad,” a book about his experience as an Airbnb Superhost who has completed more than 300 stays, uses the app AvivaIQ to respond automatically to messages from potential guests, which comes in handy when he is asleep. When he is awake, he can continue the conversation. Being dishonest about your listing will hurt when it comes time for a guest to leave a review. It’s better to be straightforward about what you are offering and transparent about any imperfections. In my experience, guests were surprised in the summer that the house lacked even though the listing never said it had . I resolved this with subsequent guests by saying explicitly in my welcome email that the house lacked and that portable fans were in each room. Be quick to address complaints, or risk facing a negative review. If a dishwasher breaks or the shower pressure is too low, send a plumber. If a remote control was misplaced or stolen by a previous group, have a backup remote ready in a drawer. If you host the property remotely, the best option is to befriend someone trustworthy in the neighborhood who can act as a property manager. Pay the manager a fee for each task. Airbnb attracts travelers from all over the world, and it is remarkable how standards for cleanliness differ from person to person. My jaw dropped when one guest left a positive review about her stay, but dropped me one star because the brush was dirty. (Couldn’t she have used the clean sponge instead?) There is no point acting defensive. The solution is to hire superb professional cleaners. Relay any negative feedback from guests to your cleaners so they improve over time. Depending on where your house is, demand may be higher at certain times of year. If you hope to ever make a profit, you will want to set prices higher during peak rental seasons, and reduce prices during slow seasons. But constantly changing prices on your listing can be daunting. I use a dynamic pricing tool, BeyondPricing. com, that automatically adjusts prices based on demand, including factors like holidays, peak travel season and the day of the week. (Airbnb provides its own dynamic pricing tool called Smart Pricing, but in my experience it chooses rates that are too low.) Last year, Airbnb introduced an policy that urged hosts to welcome guests regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and age. That makes sense, since Airbnb wants to connect hosts with travelers from all over the world. But it doesn’t mean you should let just anybody into your home. Hosts reserve the right to decide what types of groups they would like to host, especially when taking into consideration city laws. For my rental, city law forbids loud parties past 10 p. m. When guests request the house, I ask them the purpose of the visit and ask them to carefully read and agree to my house rules, including one about loud noise. I am less inclined to book a group of college students looking to have a party than I am to book a family planning a winter vacation. (Though if the students promised to stay quiet, I would probably book them.) Mr. Ribbers, the Airbnb Superhost, said he preferred families or couples staying in his apartment in Amsterdam partly because of the size constraints. He also typically accepts bookings only from guests who already have positive reviews themselves. When guests reserve his home, he reads their profiles to get a sense of their personalities and check if they have verified their identities with Airbnb by providing driver’s license information, among other documentation. Some vetting is permitted by Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy, which says hosts can decline to rent based on factors that are not prohibited by law — so my rejection of those planning to have loud parties fits the bill. Another important point is to describe your listing depending on the guests you want. Mr. Ribbers titled his listing “Couples Getaway. ” My listing, intended to attract family ski trips, advertises the house’s proximity to the ski lifts. Most guests are not bad people. But perhaps one out of 10 times, a rotten egg will pass your smell test. The lesson I learned from Jose was that being a Superhost did not make me impervious to the actions of a misbehaving guest. To protect yourself, diligently document everything valuable in your house. Take photos of countertops, the refrigerator, stove, dining table, barbecue grill and television set. In the event anything is damaged, Airbnb will ask for photos to prove that guests caused the damage. With Jose, after an Airbnb representative evicted the group for breaking my house rules, I found a large chip in my kitchen countertop. After sending Airbnb the photo of the damaged countertop, a company representative concluded it was not reasonable to let me keep Jose’s security deposit because “there is no way to document whether or not the chip on the counter was there before or after this guest stayed at the listing. ” Airbnb did agree to charge Jose for excess guests — but only for those my neighbors were able to photograph. Nick Shapiro, an Airbnb spokesman, said I should have been treated better and the company apologized that its resolution process “did not work as it was supposed to in this incident. ” In my conversations with Jose, he insisted that he did nothing wrong and that I broke the contract by kicking his group out of the house. Neither of us could leave each other a review because his reservation was voided.

3 Year Old Son of Singer Michael Bublé Diagnosed With Cancer

You Are Here: Home » Cancer » 3 Year Old Son of Singer Michael Bublé Diagnosed With Cancer 3 Year Old Son of Singer Michael Bublé Diagnosed With Cancer Prev post Next post There isn’t a single parent alive, famous or not, that doesn’t fear for their children’s health and safety. None of us ever wants to confront the reality that one of our kids is sick, but that’s just what singer Michael Bublé and his wife, Luisana, are facing. Their eldest son, Noah, was just diagnosed with cancer. He’s just three years old. The family were dealt the tragic blow after the youngster visited doctors with a suspected case of mumps , Argentinian website La Nacion reports . “They’re staying positive and Noah is a fighter.” Argentinian journalist Tomas Dente read out a text message from Daniela on a morning TV show which said: “To tell you the truth I’m devastated. This is very recent. “The only thing I ask is that you don’t speculate because not everyone has children and can understand what this means. A story on Buzzfeed shares the couple’s statement, in which the singer asks for privacy as he and his family fight this battle. According to BuzzFeed , the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion reported that Noah was initially taken to the doctor for a suspected case of the mumps and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, every parent’s worst nightmare. As Bublé said in his post, “We are devastated about the recent cancer diagnosis of our oldest son Noah who is currently undergoing treatment in the US. We have always been very vocal about the importance of family and the love we have for our children.” A photo posted by Michael Bublé (@michaelbuble) on Oct 16, 2016 at 7:25am PDT It seems clear that this isn’t a family that will take this situation lying down. Noah’s cancer is in for a fight. The battle won’t be easy, especially since childhood cancer research is woefully underfunded. The St Baldrick’s Foundation states that only 4% of cancer research is devoted to childhood cancer, despite the fact that, according to Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman, head of the division of pediatrics at the Children’s Cancer Hospital at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, “Curing childhood cancer is the equivalent of curing breast cancer in terms of productive life years saved.” Bublé and his wife are putting their careers on hold to tend to their son, and expressing hope that, with the “support of family, friends and fans around the world, we will win this battle, God willing.” Recently, the singer had expressed his joy at being a dad, telling Entertainment Tonight , “The only regret that I have in my life is that I took this long to have kids, because I had no idea the perspective it would give me. I had no idea how much I would love being a dad.” And now he has to face that hardest battle any parent could imagine. Hopefully, that love will be enough, and his son will pull through. Vanquishing Viruses – 10 Natural Antiviral Remedies by Martin Hum – Institute For Optimal Nutrition Colds, flu and other viral infections are common during the spring. Although prevention is best, when a virus strikes there are a number of natural remedies that can stop it in its tracks. Dr Martin Hum digs up the research on 10 natural antivirals. At this time […] Chia Seeds: The Ancient Aztec Super-food Chia seeds have been used for centuries for their numerous health benefits – omega-3 fatty acids, protein, fiber, calcium, antioxidants and so much more! by Cindy Murdoch – Staff Writer What are Chia Seeds? Salvia hispanica, a member of the mint family, is the plant that produces the seeds. Believed to have originated in Central […] Can Marijuana Treat Autoimmune Disorders? Medical cannabis, medicinal marijuana, medical mary jane – no matter how you refer to it, cannabis has been demonstrated in an increasing amount of studies to be medically useful! by Elizabeth Seward – Staff Writer Although the plant was once thought to be a troublesome gateway drug in mainstream America, recent polls show that 80% […] Astaxanthin: The Most Potent Antioxidant On the Planet Astaxanthin – The algae that heals, protects, and prevents DNA damage. Astaxanthin is a natural carotenoid extracted from a marine algae found in… you guessed it — Hawaii! Well, at least the kind that I buy is made from algae harvested here in our islands. The blue-green pigment in certain types of marine micro-algae is […] Estimated 75% of world’s population lactose intolerant Did you know approximately 75% of earths population is lactose intolerant? Don’t agree with that statement? Reading this may change your mind. Humans are the only species on the planet that drinks milk from other species. And although the statistics vary from race to race and country to country, overall it remains consistent. Most everywhere, […] 9 Healthy Food Scraps You Shouldn’t Be Throwing Away by Mae Chan – Prevent Disease We waste a third of the world’s food supply every year along with all the energy and water needed to produce it. However, we may be chucking away food scraps that are not scraps at all. Many fruit and vegetables have skins and leaves which we commonly discard that are more […] Panic attacks and anxiety linked to low vitamin B and iron levels If you suffer from anxiety or develop occasional panic attacks marked by bouts of hyperventilation, you could merely be experiencing the side effects of an underlying nutrient deficiency that is easily correctable, says Jonathan Benson of Natural News. This definitely appears to have been the case with 21 people who participated in a recent study […] The Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening At this time, many things are changing in the world. We live a time of awakening and desire to change, never seen before. A lot of people become more conscious and aware of issues and practices that have lasted for too long and that must change. Many people now want to take their lives back […] An Avocado a Day Keeps Body Fat Away Avocado a day keeps the fat away! by Tricia Pingel, NMD – Holistichealingnews.com People are terrified to eat fat. Calorie counting, non-fat diets are a craze in the dieting world, but they make no differentiation between calorie sources. In these diets all calories are created equal, but this is a dietary falsehood. Our bodies need fat. […] Why You Should Stay Away from Canola Oil There’s an urban legend about canola oil stating it causes teeth to fall out, hair to disappear, lesions to appear, hands and feet to numb, and more horrifying results By Matt Hall — Staff Writer While these consequences are over-exaggerated (and sometimes completely false), we do know canola oil is frequently (and deceivingly) mislabeled as non-GMO, […] Home Remedies For Inflammation Inflammation is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. It is a definite indiction and often the root cause of an underlying illness, infection, or even arthritis. by Homemade Medicine Inflammation is a natural reaction to injury or infection. And, surprisingly it can also help make your body heal. The affected tissues swell, redden, […] Bronchitis Home Remedies by Staff – Best Health Magazine Anyone who’s suffered from bronchitis knows what a pain it can be. But if you treat yourself right with these simple home remedies, you can help clear your body up. Your goal when you have bronchitis: Thin the phlegm in your chest and get it moving, so you can cough it […] Do You Truly Know How to Love Yourself? by Louise Hay I am not a healer. I do not heal anyone. I think of myself as a stepping stone on a pathway of self-discovery. I create a space where people can learn how incredibly wonderful they are by teaching them to love themselves. After years of individual counseling with clients and conducting hundreds […] Yeast Infection Natural Remedies by Joseph Bennington-Castro – Everyday Health A Yeast infection (vulvovaginal candidiasis) is the most common type of vaginal infection after bacterial vaginosis, according to a 2007 report in the medical journal The Lancet. Vaginal yeast infections are the result of an overgrowth of the fungus Candida albicans, and less frequently other Candida species, particularly C. glabrata. Treating yeast infections typically requires killing the fungi with antifungal medications […] Join For Free! Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, Schumer tells labor leaders

Kaitlyn Stegall

November 11, 2016 The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, Schumer tells labor leaders The Senate’s soon-to-be top Democrat told labor leaders Thursday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal at the center of President Obama’s “pivot” to strengthen ties with key Asian allies, will not be ratified by Congress. That remark from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to be the incoming Senate minority leader, came as good news to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, which met Thursday in Washington. Schumer relayed statements that Republican congressional leaders had made to him, according to an aide who confirmed the remarks. Obama’s signature global trade deal had been on life support for months as both Democrats and Republicans campaigned against unfair trade policies ahead of the Nov. 8 election. And Donald Trump’s triumph in the presidential race cemented its fate. “There is no way to fix the TPP,” Trump said in a June economic address. “We need bilateral trade deals. We do not need to enter into another massive international agreement that ties us up and binds us down.”

Why Corporate America Is Leaving the Suburbs for the City - The New York Times

Nelson D. Schwartz

WILMINGTON, Del. — For decades, many of the nation’s biggest companies staked their futures far from the fraying downtowns of aging East Coast and Midwestern cities. One after another, they decamped for sprawling campuses in the suburbs and exurbs. Now, corporate America is moving in the other direction. In June, McDonald’s joined a long list of companies that are returning to downtown Chicago from suburbs like Oak Brook, Northfield and Schaumburg. Later this month, the top executive team at General Electric — whose wooded campus in Fairfield, Conn. has embodied the quintessential suburban corporate office park since it opened in 1974 — will move to downtown Boston. When the move is completed in 2018, the renovated red brick warehouses that will form part of G. E.’s new headquarters won’t even have a parking lot, let alone a spot reserved for the chief executive. But even as they establish new urban beachheads, business giants like G. E. are also changing the nature of their headquarters, staffing them with a few top employees and a smattering of digital talent, rather than recreating the endless pods they once built in the ’burbs. “Part of it is that cities are more attractive places to live than they were 30 years ago and are more willing to provide tax incentives, and young people want to be there,” said David J. Collis, who teaches corporate strategy at Harvard Business School. “But the trend also represents the deconstruction and disaggregation of the traditional corporate headquarters,” he explained. “The executive suite might be downtown, but you could have the back office and administrative functions in Colorado, the finance guys in Switzerland and the tax team in the U. K. ” Reinforcing the trend, Chemours plans to announce on Tuesday that it is staying here in Wilmington after considering suburban locations, most likely in the headquarters it inherited from DuPont when the chemical giant spun out Chemours last year. Unlike Chicago and Boston, Wilmington’s urban renaissance remains a work in progress, and Chemours was very close to moving to a new home in southern New Jersey or suburban Philadelphia, despite the DuPont family’s deep roots in Wilmington and the state of Delaware. But the company’s chief executive, Mark Vergnano, ultimately came to the same conclusion that leaders of bigger and firms did: To attract younger workers, it helps to be in the city. “We are going through a change in our work force, and we wanted to be where we could attract millennials,” Mr. Vergnano said. “This is a group that likes to be in an urban setting, with access to public transportation. They don’t want to be confined to a building with a cafeteria or be next door to a shopping center. ” To be sure, cash from the State of Delaware and other incentives played an important role in the decision as well. In addition to providing Chemours, which produces a range of industrial chemical products, with a $7. 9 million package of grants, Delaware overhauled its corporate tax code, sacrificing revenue and easing the company’s tax burden as an added lure to stay put. For Wilmington, where the unemployment rate of 5. 7 percent is above both the national average and Delaware’s overall 4. 2 percent level of joblessness, keeping Chemours’s 800 headquarters jobs in the city counts as a major win. “In a more perfect world, states would be competing on the quality of schools, infrastructure, work force and so forth,” said Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware. “We live in a world that’s not perfect, so if other states are competing on the basis of these dollar incentives, we need to be in the same arena. ” In an era of relentless many corporate moves these days coincide with downsizing. Kraft Heinz, for example, had 2, 200 workers when the company was based in Northfield it has 1, 500 now in downtown Chicago. With advanced communications tools making it easier than ever to separate headquarters from other corporate operations, location is increasingly being driven by function. The first 175 members of G. E.’s management team, including Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive, will move to Boston’s Fort Point section on Aug. 22. Even after the move is completed, about 800 G. E. employees will be based there. Hundreds of other workers in functions like human resources, legal and finance will be scattered among G. E’s existing locations in Cincinnati, Norwalk, Conn. and Schenectady, N. Y. The headquarters of Motorola Solutions will start moving to downtown Chicago on Aug. 15, though more workers will stay in suburban Schaumburg than move to the new offices near Union Station. But for the first time in half a century, top executives from the company will again be in downtown Chicago. “Where you work really matters,” said Greg Brown, the chief executive of Motorola Solutions. “No disrespect to Schaumburg, but customers and new hires didn’t want to come to the suburbs an hour outside of Chicago. We wanted energy, vibrancy and diversity, and to accelerate a change in our culture by moving downtown. ” Mr. Brown and most of the executive team will be in the city, along with data scientists and design engineers workaday functions like procurement, training and supply chain management will stay in Schaumburg. Over all, Motorola Solutions will have 1, 100 employees in downtown Chicago, and 1, 600 still in Schaumburg. Unlike many other corporate migrants, the company did not receive any financial incentives to move, Mr. Brown said. “This was the right thing in terms of strategy,” he said. “Millennials want the access and vibrancy of downtown. When we post jobs downtown, we get four or five times the response. ” As for G. E. executives were focused on moving to a city from the beginning of its search for a new headquarters, said Ann R. Klee, director of Boston operations and development for the company. Along with eliminating the parking lot (workers are being encouraged to use public transit) G. E. wanted to do away with security gates and the sense of isolation that characterizes many corporate campuses. “This is going to be the exact opposite,” Ms. Klee said. “We want it to be open and to bring the public in with a museum and exhibits of technology like printers. ” Besides icons like G. E. McDonald’s and Kraft Heinz, venture capital investors and are increasingly looking to urban centers, particularly on the West Coast, said Richard Florida, an urban theorist and professor at the University of Toronto. “The period of companies moving to suburbs and edge cities has ebbed, but I had thought that would continue to locate in nerdistans, like office parks,” he said. But a recent study by Mr. Florida showed more than half of new venture capital flowing into urban neighborhoods, with two San Francisco ZIP codes garnering more than $1 billion each, he said. The return of a top echelon of executives to American cities reflects — and may well reinforce — disparities driven by widening inequality, underscoring how jobs are disappearing in other locales. Over all, there has been a slight pickup in employment and population in the central core of big cities, said Joel Kotkin, an author and urban geographer at Chapman University in California. But many suburbs and neighborhoods are withering, particularly in the Northeast. More distant suburbs and exurbs are still thriving, especially in the Sun Belt. “The elite functions are going downtown,” Mr. Kotkin said. “But at the same time, jobs are moving to the suburbs in places like Dallas, if they’re not leaving the country entirely. ” In Wilmington, local shopkeepers were elated that Chemours decided not to follow its former corporate parent, DuPont, to the suburbs. “Anybody who has a business in downtown Wilmington doesn’t want to lose Chemours,” said Leonard Simon, whose men’s clothing store, Wright Simon, has been around the corner from Chemours since 1952. “I’m thrilled. ” Jeffrey C. Flynn, director of economic development for Wilmington, said that the advantages of city life ultimately proved to be a compelling selling point. “We’re not Philadelphia,” Mr. Flynn said, “but we do have an urban atmosphere. ”

Comment on Understanding Misleading Food Labels: An Infographic Breaks Down Which Foods They’re Used On & What They Mean by Understanding Misleading Food Labels: An Infographic Breaks Down Which Foods They’re Used On & What They Mean – Collective Evolution - walkertecharts.com

Understanding Misleading Food Labels: An Infographic Breaks Down Which Foods They’re Used On & What They Mean – Collective Evolution - walkertecharts.com

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” the great Hippocrates once said. This can sometimes be a torturous realization for me as I contemplate eating something that I know will not serve my body, mind, and spirit well. But if only it were that simple — merely having to decide between a cookie or a piece of fruit, rather than trying to understand how their ingredients may help or harm me. advertisement - learn more Labels in particular are one giant headache, but they can also make a world of difference between choosing a good food and a bad one. Labels on the majority of packaged foods need to meet strict requirements, relaying important information for people with food allergies, exposing food additives, and offering food storage instructions. But with the plethora of food labels out there, how can one keep up? It’s not even a matter of whether you can or not, or even want to or not; you simply need to know what you are putting in your body. We all shop for food, and as we do, whether it be online or in the store, we come across so many ingredients, brands, and ultimately, labels. There’s “cage free” and “humane certification,” there’s “natural”and “no antibiotics,” and then there’s “organic.” All of these labels can tell you important information about how animals are fed and handled, how crops are grown, and even how the workers are treated. They say ignorance is bliss, but when it comes to your health and humanity, the saying doesn’t always hold up. Have you ever seen a video online, listened to a descriptive story, or watched a full-length documentary about the way our food is made and by whom, and been utterly turned off, disgusted, or even beside yourself with anxiety and sadness? There’s a reason such exposures exist: to make people wake up and realize that the system isn’t as cut and dry as healthy and unhealthy. So when it comes to labels, while it can seem like far too much information to comprehend, it remains our duty to ourselves and to our families to learn what each signifies. And it doesn’t even have to be that difficult. advertisement - learn more Ghergich & Co. teamed up with Woodside to create an infographic on food labels in the hopes that they could easily share a go-to guide for consumers to understand exactly what the labels on the food they’re considering buying mean. They cover terms like cage free, certified humane, free range, free roaming, grass fed, and wild caught. Certified Fair Trade products, for instance, are made in safe and healthy working conditions. Both the farmers and producers receive a fair price and have a voice in how their workplace is run. “Natural,” on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily hold up to what consumers may assume. While these products don’t contain artificial ingredients or added colour and are minimally processed, growth hormones can still be used, they’re not always organic, and they don’t require that animals are raised in open space, either. Take a closer look at the following infographic to learn some valuable truths and important information for you to consider the next time you go grocery shopping. The Sacred Science follows eight people from around the world, with varying physical and psychological illnesses, as they embark on a one-month healing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle. You can watch this documentary film FREE for 10 days by clicking here. "If “Survivor” was actually real and had stakes worth caring about, it would be what happens here, and “The Sacred Science” hopefully is merely one in a long line of exciting endeavors from this group." - Billy Okeefe, McClatchy Tribune

Hillary Is The Perfection of a Corrupt System

Charles Hugh Smith

Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of a corrupt political system won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption. Let’s set aside Hillary Clinton as an individual and consider her as the perfection of a corrupt political system. As I noted yesterday, Politics As Usual Is Dead , and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate product of the political system that is disintegrating before our eyes. The corruption of pay-to-play and the commingling of public and private influence is not the failing of an individual–it is the logical conclusion of a thoroughly corrupt political system. Given the incentives built into politics as usual , public/private pay-to-play doesn’t just make sense–it is the only possible maximization of the political system . Cobble together a multi-million dollar private foundation, millions of dollars in speaking fees from big-money contributors, conflicts of interest, the secrecy of private email servers, pay-to-play schemes and corrupted loyalists planted in the Department of Justice, and the inevitable result is a politics as usual money-harvesting machine that lays waste to the nation, supporters and critics alike. All the Clintons did is assemble the parts more effectively than anyone else. Now that the machine has scooped up hundreds of millions of dollars in “contributions” and other loot, vested interests and corrupted loyalists within the federal government will do anything to protect the machine and its vast flow of funds. The nation’s political system needs a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of politics as usual won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption. That will require rooting out the incentives that made the Clintons’ perfection of corruption both logical and inevitable. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ). Contributed by Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds .

Have Skin Problems? Take Vitamins… [w/ Infograph]

Heather Callaghan

Do you have an unhealthy skin that is prone to acne, shingles, rosacea and other common women’s skin problems? If so, then it is probably because your body is deficient in certain vitamins. Vitamins...

Earth’s Magnetic Field is Collapsing — Are the Poles About to Switch?

Editor

As it turns out – according to studies— our planets magnetic field could flip in our lifetime. According to experts , the position of the South Pole has shifted and is not located precisely at Antarctica, the North Pole is also believed to be ‘racing’ across the Arctic Ocean. Earth’s magnetic field appears to be collapsing which could severely damage our climate and WIPE OUT power grids across the world. Our planet’s magnetic field exists because Earth has a massive ‘ball of iron’ at its core which is surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal. As the earth’s magnetic field varies over time, the positions of the north and south magnetic poles gradually change. The magnetic declination at a given location also changes over time. As it turns out a lot has changed in the last couple of hundred years, and to see what we are taking about visit NOAA and take a look at Historical Magnetic Declination . Interestingly, according to previous studies, Earth’s magnetic field – which shields our planet from blasts of deadly solar radiation has dangerously weakened in the last couple of years. According to reports from the European Space Agency , the biggest weak spots seen in the magnetic field are located in the western hemisphere. Experts are unsure why the magnetic field is weakening but one of the MOST LIKELY reasons is that our planets magnetic poles are getting ready to flip said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA’s Swarm mission manager. Researchers have concluded that the magnetic field had diminished at a rate of around five percent per century. However, new studies who that the magnetic field is weakening at an accelerated rate of five percent per decade –meaning that it is deteriorating five times faster than previously believed. If we take a look at the animation of secular variation in geomagnetic total intensity for the last 400 years, we will see that the magnetic field began weakening in 1600 . Animation of secular variation in geomagnetic total intensity for the last 400 years: Furthermore, the magnetic field weakened a staggering 10 percent from the 1800’s to 2000. Ok so… what would happen if it really flips? According to experts, if the pole switch does happen the entire planet and everything on it will become exposed to solar winds which could punch giant holes into the ozone layer which in turn could have a devastating effect on mankind. If the planet’s Magnetosphere starts collapsing power grids could collapse, the weather would abruptly change and humans would have serious health risks. According to reports from the European Space Agency, as of 2014 the magnetic field is continuing to weaken rapidly . With the help of SWARM, scientists have obtained unprecedented insights into the complex workings of Earth’s magnetic field. Reports show that the general trend of the magnetic field is weakening and the most dramatic declines are present over the Western Hemisphere. The latest measurements also confirm the movement of magnetic North towards Siberia. It is believed that the magnetic field is speeding away at a rate of about 40 miles per year. But what is most terrifying is perhaps a study that warns that magnetic reversals lead to extinction events. The highlights of the study indicate : Geomagnetic field reversal substantially weakens the protection for the atmosphere. Solar wind energizes more oxygen ions to escape when geomagnetic field is weakened. Oxygen escape may explain the drop of atmospheric level during mass extinction. The causal relation between reversal and mass extinction should be “many-to-one”. The simulated oxygen escape rate based on knowledge of Mars support our hypothesis. Furthermore, it is believed that magnetic reversals can be responsible for floods of biblical proportions as you can see in the video below: Source: EWAO Related: The White House Just Issued An Executive Order officially Preparing For The “Event?” — Geomagnetic “Collapse” and Storms 1 Day Later New Shocking Evidence Points to Pole Shift Inuit Elders tell NASA Earth Axis Shifted Ancient Huts May Reveal Clues to Earth’s Magnetic Pole Reversals The Sun’s Mysterious Tilt Gets A Surprising Explanation Astronomers point to Planet Nine Mysterious Planet Nine Might Explain Tilt in Solar System

Is it possible that Saudi King be tried in US courts by JASTA Law?

Email According to the JASTA law which allows government and leaders of foreign governments’ harassment by families of victims of the terrorist attacks, it is so likely that Saudi king be tried. According to experts, the passing of JASTA may cause international chaos. Especially after some governments threat they will pass similar legislation to prosecute US officials if US do so. Is it possible that Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz being tried for potential liability in events of September 11? The trial is possible by the legislation of Jasta. By Jasta law the families of the victims could sue governments and this will lead to chaos in international relations. In late September, United States Congress ignored President Obama’s advice and his veto and passed JASTA law, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. This law made US-Saudi relation more chaotic. US confederate states expressed concern to JASTA legislation Not just Saudi Arabia expressed concerns to JASTA, US confederate states also expressed concern about breaking the US quasi-sacred treaty with Saudi Arabia and asked for appealing. France and the Netherlands have threatened to pass similar laws which lead to a series of judicial complaints against USA and its military and diplomacy allies. John Kerry, United States Secretary of State, showed his displeasure and called it a huge risk. A few days ago Kerry and Adel al-Jubeir discussed about the ramifications of JASTA and pointed out the negative impact on the diplomatic immunity of US interests. He said: “there are ways to fix the problem.” While experts agreed that it is only possible to reduce the strength of America in complaining by circumvent the law. Even Saudi minister warned the danger of chaos in the international system. According to Hussein ibish, an expert on the Persian Gulf littoral states, JASTA will cause chaos at the international level. Last September, European Union warned: “Other countries may also want to pass similar legislation and discuss impunity. This threat was an addition written letters to US government. Also France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom representatives discussed about the feedback of this law. The Gulf littoral states, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Japan Protested against JASTA. The Saudi-US Relations in danger of Jasta Bernard Haykel, Princeton University Professor, said: “If Saudi king does not appear in New York court to be interrogated, warrant will be issued against Saudi Arabia.” Riyadh and Washington relations declined over the past three years especially with Obama's policies on Syria.” JASTA shows Saudi ruling that Obama turned his back to its allies in the Middle East,” he added. Riyadh strictly denies his involvement in 9/11, While 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia. Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, also comments:” America wants to invade his most loyal friend over the past 70 years.” Jasta law does not refer to Saudi Arabia. It would allow families of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue the perpetrators of the attack.

Stephen Hawking: Mankind Will Have to Populate Another Planet Within 100 Years to Survive - Breitbart

Charlie Nash

Physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking has predicted that mankind will have to populate another planet within 100 years to survive. [Hawking made the prediction in an upcoming documentary titled Expedition New Earth, which the BBC has teased with Hawking’s comments. “Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive,” reiterated the BBC in a statement. “With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious. ” Hawking has become known for his futurist predictions, in 2014 he also claimed that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. ” Michael Guillen Ph. D. a former science editor for ABC News, disputed Hawking’s prediction in an article for Fox News, claiming that the author has “become a celebrity, who’s flung off the chains of academic rigor to make sensational pronouncements. ” “Does Stephen really expect to be taken seriously? I doubt it,” Guillen proclaimed. “Despite everything, he is too smart for that. My impression is he’s become the Donald Trump of science, given to saying outrageous things for the fun of it and to attract attention. ” “Apart from being spectacularly unscientific, his prophecy is also wrongheaded,” he continued. “Hawking says we ought to escape to Mars. Interestingly, some scientists think once lived on the Red Planet. But a global catastrophe produced what we see today, a moribund world lacking a thick, atmosphere — wanting for greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to keep warm. ” Guillen added that “Winter temperatures can dip below minus 195 degrees Fahrenheit and summer temperatures barely reach 70 degrees,” before declaring that “for the adventure, I’d go to Mars this minute. But for refuge? !” “No thanks, Stephen. I’m not giving up on Earth,” he concluded. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

Obamas Make Book Deal With Penguin Random House - The New York Times

Alexandra Alter

Penguin Random House will publish coming books by former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama, the publishing company announced Tuesday night, concluding a heated auction among multiple publishers. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but publishing industry executives with knowledge of the bidding process said it probably stretched well into eight figures. Robert B. Barnett and Deneen C. Howell of Williams Connolly represented the Obamas. Penguin Random House acquired world rights to the books, and worldwide sales could be substantial. No decision has been made yet as to which of the company’s major imprints — which include Random House, Doubleday, Alfred A. Knopf and Crown — will publish the books. Mr. Obama’s previous books were published by Crown, which also published Mrs. Obama’s book “American Grown,” about the White House garden. A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House would not say whether the books would be memoirs and referred questions to representatives of the Obamas. Speculation about the Obamas’ books and how much they would sell for have been circulating in the industry in recent weeks, as executives at the top publishing houses met separately with the former president and first lady. Some publishing executives who followed the bidding process said that the opening offers for Mr. Obama’s book alone were in the $18 million to $20 million range. The publisher plans to donate one million books in the Obama family’s name to First Book, a nonprofit organization that provides books to disadvantaged children, and it will continue to provide digital copies to Open eBooks, which grew out of the 2016 White House digital education initiative. The Obamas also plan to donate part of their advances to charity, including the Obama Foundation. “We are absolutely thrilled to continue our publishing partnership with President and Mrs. Obama,” Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, said in a statement. “With their words and their leadership, they changed the world, and every day, with the books we publish at Penguin Random House, we strive to do the same. Now, we are very much looking forward to working together with President and Mrs. Obama to make each of their books global publishing events of unprecedented scope and significance. ” The Obamas’ advance is likely to exceed even the stratospheric figures that other recent presidents and first ladies have received. Former president Bill Clinton sold his memoir “My Life” for more than $10 million, and Hillary Clinton reportedly received an $8 million advance from Simon Schuster for her memoir “Living History. ” George W. Bush’s memoir “Decision Points,” became a hit, selling about two million copies and earning him an estimated $10 million. (Mr. Barnett, a lawyer, has handled many of these lucrative deals and represents some of the capital’s most powerful players, including the Clintons Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush Speaker Paul D. Ryan and former Vice President Dick Cheney.) It is unusual, however, for a former president and first lady to make a collective deal for their memoirs, and some publishing industry insiders said that early on the process, it appeared that the books were going to be auctioned separately. (It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the books will be published by different imprints in the Penguin Random House conglomerate, which could also help the company absorb the cost of a large advance, by sharing it between imprints.) Mr. Obama has a proven track record in publishing as an author of multiple best sellers. His three books — “Dreams From My Father,” “The Audacity of Hope” and “Of Thee I Sing” — have sold more than four million copies. According to financial disclosures, he earned more than $10 million from those titles. Reviews have praised him as a gifted prose stylist. But a postpresidential memoir has even greater potential to be a critical and commercial hit. Mr. Obama kept a journal during his time in office, which suggests his memoir could include moments that were captured as major events unfolded. A frank discussion of his time in the White House, and of issues like race relations in America, could reach an even wider audience, becoming a worldwide blockbuster. Penguin Random House, a global publishing house with more than 250 imprints, has worldwide rights to the books, which means the company can make a good deal of money overseas and in translation. For the Obamas, the books may be valuable beyond the advances. The deal was announced, probably coincidentally but somewhat awkwardly, on the night that President Trump gave his first address before Congress. These books could provide a chance to reframe and highlight the former president’s legacy, at a moment when a new Republican administration is making an effort to dismantle some of his signature legislation.

Trump is The Lesser Evil Because He’s Such a Narcissist :

Prof. Michael Hudson

Trump is The Lesser Evil Because He’s Such a Narcissist By Prof. Michael Hudson She a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons Well, both Hillary and Donald Trump say the election is about the lesser evil. So, if that’s true, who’s the greater evil? Posted November 08, 2016 Ross Ashcroft: You’ve got two candidates in the U.S. and one is very pro-Wall Street, specifically Goldman Sachs. She might as well be on the payroll. In fact, she is on the payroll. And the other is a rent-seeker -in-chief, and he’s built real estate and used the banks. So you’ve got Trump and you’ve got Clinton. Both of them are in bed with Wall Street, fundamentally. But the people get it now. Michael Hudson: Well, I think Hillary Clinton has a 79 percent disapproval rating, and Trump has an 81 percent disapproval rating. So you have the two most unpopular politicians in the United States as the choice. So basically, the voters in the United States are given a choice: “Yes,”—“Yes, please,” and “Yes, thank you.” I think Trump missed his big chance to make a populist push. Instead of saying he’s going to cut taxes on Wall Street, he can say, “Look, I stiffed the banks. I went bankrupt four or six times. I screwed the banks and they didn’t get paid and I can screw the banks for you people. Vote for me. I know how to do it.” Ashcroft: Yes, he’s missed that. Hudson: I think that would have been his winning ploy. Ashcroft: You should be his campaign strategist. Hudson: Well, except I don’t think I’d have many friends if I worked for Donald Trump. And we don’t know that if he agreed with me today what he’d do tomorrow. That’s part of the problem. He doesn’t play well with colleagues. Ashcroft: You sort of prefer him though—would that be right? Because he doesn’t play well with colleagues, because he’s awkward, because he’s a loner, because—because you’re saying you don’t want a resourceful, intelligent and influential type in the job because the job’s so powerful. Hudson: Well, both Hillary and Donald Trump say the election is about the lesser evil. So, if that’s true, who’s the greater evil? Hillary has a whole crowd behind her—the neocons, who basically want to be very confrontational toward Russia and continue what she was doing in Libya to Syria—militarily confrontational. Or you have Donald Trump, who doesn’t really know who he can appoint and whether he can get enough people to work with him. So if the direction of America is to try to hold on to a unipolar world—militarily confrontational—you want a president who is least able to do evil. And there’s no question, Trump is the lesser evil because he’s such a narcissist, and really sort of a blank slate. And I’d rather take a “pig in a poke” than someone who—you already know what Hillary will do. She’ll do what the husband does. And it’s—the Clintons have corrupted the Democratic Party. That’s what Bernie Sanders ran on against her— Ashcroft: And did very well. Hudson: And did very well. But then he didn’t realize that there really cannot be any progress by the labor unions, or consumers, or the 99 percent as long as the Democratic Party is controlled totally by Wall Street and by the Robert Rubin gang that they brought in. And they’re really like a mafia gang. If you think the financial sector and the banking sector as crime—and after all, remember, they’ve paid billions and billions of dollars in civil fines without a single banker being sent to jail—that’s what a criminal wants to do. When the criminals take control of the justice system and take over the police force and bribe the judges—all the Hollywood movies in the 1930s were that—then you’ve got the criminals in control. And you’ve got the financial sector criminalized. That’s what my colleague Bill Black at the University of Missouri at Kansas City has been emphasizing, and he’s convinced all of us that the business plan of the big banks—Citibank, Bank of America, we’ve just got, and Wells Fargo, with all of the huge frauds that are coming out—that was their business plan: fraud. And people are afraid to say that fraud is banking. They’re afraid to say just exactly what the evidence is because it’s considered impolite to talk about reality. Ashcroft: What sort of president then will Hillary Clinton be? Hudson: A dictator. She a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons in the secretary of state, in the defense department, appointing Wall Street people in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and the class war will really break out very explicitly. And she’ll—as Warren Buffet said, there is a class war and we’re winning it. Ashcroft: As in the one percent are winning it. Hudson: The one percent are winning it. And she will try to use the rhetoric to tell people: “Nothing to see here folks. Keep on moving,” while the economy goes down and down and she cashes in as she’s been doing all along, richer and richer, and if she’s president, there will not be an investigator of the criminal conflict of interest of the Bill Clinton Foundation, of pay-to-play. You’ll have a presidency in which corporations who pay the Clintons will be able to set policy. Whoever has the money to buy the politicians will buy control of policy because elections have been privatized and made part of the market economy in the United States. That’s what the Citizens United Supreme Court case was all about. Ashcroft: So that’s another example of rent-seeking. Hudson: Yes, political payoffs. And that’s the largest rent-seeking of all. Basically, for paying one penny, you get a whole dollar’s worth of special privileges. And rent is really payment for a privilege. It’s for a privilege that’s created from the private sector. And basically as Balzac said, every great fortune originates in a great theft that isn’t considered a great theft anymore because it’s all viewed as part of the market. It’s viewed as if that’s how the world works. So you’ll have a theft taking place and the Clintons will say, “That’s just how the world operates and GDP is going up because we’re getting richer, enough to offset the degree by which you 99 percent are getting poor.”

‘Solar Winds’ Spur Geomagnetic Storm That May Affect Power

« on: Today at 08:41:54 PM » ‘Solar Winds’ Spur Geomagnetic Storm That May Affect Power 25 October 2016 , by Brian K Sullivan (Bloomberg) - Geomagnetic storms can cause voltage corrections, false alarms- Space weather center lowered alert to “moderate” level storm Also see:

Life: After 55 Years Of Research, Jane Goodall Shares Her 6 Most Fascinating Discoveries About Chimpanzees

Email Jane Goodall has dedicated her life to studying primates, and the insights she has gained into our evolutionary ancestors are truly powerful. Prepare to have your breath taken away by Dr. Goodall’s words. 1. Chimps will betray their own to get their hands on Italian food: “As with all chimps, the ones I studied in Gombe were absolutely obsessed with Italian food and would go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on some. One day, the troop’s alpha male, whom I called Goliath, managed to acquire a plate of linguine. Humphrey, a younger male, saw Goliath’s linguine and became incredibly jealous. He offered to give Goliath his most prized possession—a vacant hornet nest that he enjoyed having sex with—in exchange for the linguine, but Goliath declined, as he already had a hornet nest of his own. Desperate to eat the linguine, Humphrey threw some pebbles to divert Goliath’s attention, then snuck up behind him and ripped his head off, allowing him to take the Italian food from his superior. It was a gruesome yet utterly fascinating scene.” 2. When chimpanzee communities encounter a Japanese researcher, they will try to put them in jail: “My colleague, Dr. Kiyoshi Yamamoto, discovered this when chimps dragged him from his tent in the middle of the night down to the local prison. The apes would then approach the town’s sheriff with their hands out, expecting a food reward. It was truly shocking to learn that chimpanzees are capable of such things. Nature is not always pretty.” 3. Most chimps can vocalize the phrase “oh no”: “They like to yell it while they defecate.” 4. Chimps don’t like it when you blow up one of their family members with a grenade: “One of my young researchers, Sofia Manfredi, discovered this after rolling an active grenade into a ditch where several male siblings were sharing a lunch of termites and soup. The grenade exploded the youngest one into a red mist of viscera and bone, and, curiously, the other brothers seemed to become rather disheartened.” 5. Chimps revere hippos: “When they become aware of a hippo in the vicinity, chimps stop whatever they’re doing and take turns honoring the beast. They bring offerings of plump salamanders, crushed soda cans, and other treasures they’ve found in the dirt, and they join together in an angelic chorus of growls to soothe the hippo. New mothers will rub their infants against the hippo’s groin to bless them with his virility. The troop’s elders will break off their incisors with a rock and fashion a crude crown of teeth for the hippo to wear. If the hippo becomes aggressive towards them, they do not resist; in fact, it is an honor for them to be crushed by the hippo, and they will often place their heads on the ground next to his hooves in hopes that he might accidentally stomp their skulls flat.” 6. If a chimp dunks its head into a bucket of horchata for an hour, it will die: “Whenever chimps discover a large pail of horchata in the forest, the eldest female of the group will approach it and slowly lower her head into the liquid, remaining there for an hour or more until another chimp yanks her out of it. It was fascinating to observe the way their social structure altered afterwards, with the next eldest female unfailingly rising up to lead the group’s children in licking the sweet rice milk from their deceased matriarch’s body.”

Storm That Roared Through the South Sweeps Into the Northeast - The New York Times

Nate Schweber and Eli Rosenberg

The storm that devastated parts of the South over the weekend swept into the Northeast with strong gusts of wind and heavy rain, knocking down power lines and tree branches, flooding some coastal towns and disrupting transit across the region. By Tuesday morning, the worst of the storm had passed. The damage was significantly less than the storm’s southern passage, which left at least 20 people dead, including 15 in Georgia. On the Jersey Shore, flooding closed some roads in places like Wildwood, Atlantic City and Sea Bright. Photographs and videos shared on social media showed water pooling in and outside of the Hoboken Terminal. On the South Shore of Long Island, rain flooded the streets in Freeport and Lindenhurst. Some New Jersey school districts were closed or delayed opening on Tuesday because of the weather. In New York, small sections of the Belt Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway and Expressway were flooded briefly. Power failures were reported in parts of Long Island, New Jersey, Staten Island and Queens. Wind speeds of more than 60 miles per hour in New Jersey and about 40 m. p. h. in New York prompted warnings from city officials on Monday, but the wind tapered significantly by Tuesday morning. The storm surge caused water to rise about feet in New York, which officials described as mild. About 70 to 80 trees were blown down, said Nancy Silvestri, a spokeswoman for the New York City Emergency Management Department. “There are no major impacts from either last night’s high tide period or this morning,” Ms. Silvestri said. Residents from around the region spoke about the inconveniences and less about damage: The memory of hurricane Sandy, which caused a storm surge of more than 10 feet in places and left behind significantly more destruction, loomed larger. Sam Patel, owner of a Welsh Farms convenience store in Asbury Park, N. J. said the electricity went out a few times Monday night but came back on within five minutes. The wind also ripped off a piece of his storm gutter, which he refastened with tape. “All day the gusts were just like the classic hurricane type,” he said. “You could hear the rattling of the gutters, the hissing. ” What spared the area, he said, was that the rain was not particularly heavy. In Monmouth Beach, N. J. some flooded streets were blocked off with orange traffic cones. Tattered flags shook on flagpoles in a wind that had yet to fully dissipate on Tuesday morning. Toppled trash cans dotted main commercial streets. In Lindenhurst, Long Island, high tide peaked around 7:20 a. m. The canal used for crabbing and swimming in the summertime had overflowed into the road. Curbs disappeared under the pooled water. The six inches of floodwater did not reach the levels left by Hurricane Sandy, when “you could go kayaking in the streets,” said Darren Greene, 13, waiting for a bus to take him to school. He was not entirely confident about when, or if, the bus would come. The road had been blocked off just past the stop. Michael Gandolfi, his wife and their son were stuck at home in Lindenhurst with about a foot of water in front of their house. So Mr. Gandolfi, 37, planned to use the day to play with his boats. In the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, small bodies of water covered roads. But the delivery crews, workers and early risers navigating the streets before dawn on Tuesday were not fazed. Alongside the loading docks of a Fairway Market grocery store, a pool of water formed the width of the street and about 50 yards long. “It’s like this any time it rains hard,” a Fairway employee said. A couple of drivers used a swath of the dry curb to pass, while a motorist in a vehicle charged through the pool of water. Bruce Sullivan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, described the storm on Monday as a “strong nor’easter,” because of the high winds and heavy rain. The storm had deposited between an inch and an inch and a half of rain by Tuesday morning. Passengers at the region’s three major airports had faced long delays and cancellations on Monday. The weather forced the suspension of AirTrain service at Newark Liberty International Airport on Monday buses ran in its place. New Jersey Transit and Amtrak temporarily suspended service along some lines on Monday because of downed power lines. Two systems contributed to the storm, Mr. Sullivan said. One, from the south, was weakening as another moved in from off the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Alien-Looking Skull From Peruvian Desert Awaits Further Investigation

noreply@blogger.com (Alexander Light)

. Alien-Looking Skull From Peruvian Desert Awaits Further Investigation We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many o... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/alien-looking-skull-from-peruvian.html We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many others, in a cave in the southern desert of Peru; exact location to be given, hopefully, in the future. The underside of the skull (full set of images below) indicates that this artifact is bone, about 3 to 5 mm thick, and still has a stiff, grey, skin-like material attached to it. Note the very narrow foramen magnum aperture where presumably a very thin vertebral system once entered the skull. The adult hand indicates the size of the specimen, and note that it is relatively bilaterally symmetrical, and that the skull is greatly elongated.Though easy to state that it is a complex fake, the caretaker and those that presumably found it, along with other specimens, have no access to artisans or taxidermists that could have made them. The caretaker removed some of the bone from the underpart of the skull and exposed what is presumably marrow. This, as well as the bone and skin can be sampled for DNA and radiocarbon testing in prominent laboratories in North America that we are working with already. The television series Ancient Aliens has shown initial interest in the specimen, and more specimens like this, from the same location may soon be available for observation and study. Here's the full set of images from Brien Foerster's website : Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue. Stay updated via Email Newsletter: Related

Trump Taps Hollywood’s Mnuchin for Treasury and Dines With Romney - The New York Times

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Binyamin Appelbaum and Maggie Haberman

WASHINGTON — Steven Mnuchin, a financier with deep roots on Wall Street and in Hollywood but no government experience, is expected to be named Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary as soon as Wednesday, people close to the transition say. Mr. Mnuchin, 53, was the national finance chairman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, and his selection would elevate a wealthy loyalist to a pivotal economic post. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner, before creating his own hedge fund, moving to the West Coast and entering the first rank of movie financiers by bankrolling hits like the “ ” franchise and “Avatar. ” If confirmed, Mr. Mnuchin would play a critical role in carrying out Mr. Trump’s promised economic policy changes, including the enactment of a large package of tax cuts, sweeping changes to foreign trade agreements and the fulfillment of a huge new infrastructure spending program. He could also help lead any efforts to roll back President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and the administration’s opening to Cuba by reimposing sanctions on Tehran and Havana. Mr. Mnuchin’s selection fits uneasily with much of Mr. Trump’s campaign attacks on the financial industry. Mr. Trump, in a campaign ad intended as a closing argument, portrayed the chief executive of Goldman Sachs as the personification of a global elite that the ad said had “robbed our working class. ” The selection of Mr. Mnuchin (pronounced ) came as Mr. Trump moved on Tuesday to fill the ranks of his domestic policy team with seasoned Washington insiders chosen to help smooth the way in Congress for his two marquee campaign promises: the repeal of Mr. Obama’s health insurance coverage law and the large package to repair infrastructure, which could reach $1 trillion. Mr. Trump also took time Tuesday night to have dinner with Mitt Romney, whose name has been mentioned as a potential secretary of state, and who has become a source of contention among members of the transition team. Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who called Mr. Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” during the Republican primaries, sat down for a meal Tuesday night at a Michelin restaurant at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan. Mr. Romney emerged several hours later to heap compliments on the who has bristled privately that Mr. Romney never apologized for insulting him during the race. There was no apology, but Mr. Romney said he had been impressed by Mr. Trump’s victory speech on election night, his transition effort and his personnel decisions. “He did something I tried to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing: He won the general election,” Mr. Romney told reporters. The appointments on Tuesday included Elaine L. Chao — a veteran of past Republican administrations who is married to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader — as transportation secretary. She will be charged with steering the infrastructure initiative through a divided Congress and the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Trump also announced that he would nominate Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, a physician who has been a fierce opponent of the health care law, as his secretary of health and human services — tasked with leading his efforts to dismantle the measure. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump will announce Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor, as his secretary of commerce, according to the transition team. The moves suggested that Mr. Trump was seeking experienced policy makers who have deep relationships in Washington to shepherd his most sweeping pledges. In Ms. Chao, Mr. Trump is turning to a former secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. Her experience on Capitol Hill will be necessary to take on what will have to be a bipartisan infrastructure effort in Congress. Aides said Mr. Trump’s choice of Mr. Price underscored the ’s commitment to move swiftly — as early as his first day in office — to roll back the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, and replace it. Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, brings a third woman to positions in a Trump administration and an additional degree of diversity to the ’s team, so far filled largely with conservative white men who have scoffed at political convention. Democrats said they were cautiously optimistic about working with Ms. Chao to forge a bipartisan infrastructure deal. “I hope Secretary Chao shares that ambitious goal and is willing to work with Democrats to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs along the way,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who is set to become the new minority leader. But Ms. Chao was quickly criticized by liberal groups who said she was emblematic of the very political establishment Mr. Trump had promised to dismantle. Some policy analysts argued that as labor secretary she had inadequately protected employee rights, and the Center for American Progress called her selection an “ominous sign for workers. ” The selection of Mr. Price, who has served in Congress since 2005, revealed deeper partisan divisions. Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, called Mr. Price “a brilliant choice,” adding, “I’m glad that we’ll have a doctor who knows health care inside and out leading the way. ” But Democrats and their allies voiced alarm. Richard J. Fiesta, the executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, which represents retired union members, said he was “horrified” by the selection of Mr. Price. Marcia D. Greenberger, a president of the National Women’s Law Center, a research and advocacy group, said Mr. Price “would have a devastating impact on women’s health. ” In Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Trump has an ally whose nomination is expected to be well received on Wall Street, a number of traders and bankers contacted on Tuesday said. Since Mr. Trump’s victory, United States equity markets have hit record highs, with financial institutions leading the way. Having a Treasury secretary with broad experience as a financier is likely to sustain the view that a Trump administration will look favorably on Wall Street, not least in terms of pulling back some regulations put in place by Mr. Obama. Mr. Mnuchin was an early supporter of Mr. Trump. When Mr. Trump won New York’s Republican presidential primary contest in April, Mr. Mnuchin attended the victory party. The next day, he accepted Mr. Trump’s invitation to become the campaign’s national finance chairman. Mr. Mnuchin, the son of a Goldman Sachs partner, joined the firm after graduating from Yale. He worked there for 17 years, rising to oversee trading in government securities and mortgage bonds. He would be the third Goldman Sachs alumnus to serve as Treasury secretary, and the announcement of his appointment drew swift condemnation from liberal groups who said he had cashed in on the country’s financial collapse. “He purchased a bank for pennies on the dollar and then aggressively foreclosed on tens of thousands of families,” Jon Green, a spokesman for the Take on Wall Street campaign, said in a statement. “Anyone concerned about Wall Street billionaires rigging the economy should be terrified by the prospect of a Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. ” The group was apparently referring to Mr. Mnuchin’s role in 2009 in a group that bought the failed California mortgage lender IndyMac from the government. He became the chairman of the company, renamed OneWest, which was ultimately sold to CIT, the nation’s largest lender, in 2015 for more than twice the price the group had paid. During Mr. Mnuchin’s tenure, OneWest faced allegations that it had foreclosed improperly on some borrowers. groups also filed a complaint with the federal government, claiming that OneWest was not meeting its legal obligation to make loans in minority neighborhoods. Mr. Mnuchin was the latest in a string of wealthy donors whom Mr. Trump has selected for top posts in his cabinet, including Mr. Ross Todd Ricketts, a Republican megadonor and an owner of the Chicago Cubs, who is expected to be the deputy commerce secretary and Betsy DeVos, a school choice activist and Republican who he announced would be his education secretary. Mr. Mnuchin has conducted past business deals with the — but not always under the best of circumstances. Mr. Mnuchin’s hedge fund, Dune Capital Management, helped finance construction of a Trump project in Chicago. In 2008, Mr. Trump sued Dune and other lenders to extend the loan terms. The parties ultimately settled. The selections on Tuesday came as Mr. Trump huddled with advisers and potential cabinet officials in Trump Tower in Manhattan. Among the issues is whether Mr. Trump should name Mr. Romney as his secretary of state. After their dinner, Mr. Romney told reporters that Mr. Trump “continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together, and his vision is something which obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way. ” He said Mr. Trump’s conduct since winning the election gives “me increasing hope that Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future. ”

Rand Paul on Unmaskings: ’We Can’t Live in Fear of Our Own Intelligence Community’ - Breitbart

Pam Key

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul ( ) said he wanted to know if presidential candidates were unmasked by the Obama administration for political purposes. Paul said, “I’ve sent several letters to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee and also the White House asking political figures were presidential candidates unmasked by the Obama administration? If the Obama administration used intelligence for political purposes, this is a really, really serious abuse of power and must be investigated. There are rumors swirling about Susan Rice. There are rumors now swirling about Samantha Powers. So we need to know. Were they actually looking into people’s phone calls for political purposes? If that happened, really, we have to do something about it. We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. ” He continued, “We cannot have anybody in the intelligence community — they have such power to suck up every bit of every transmission of every communication we ever made — We can’t have them releasing classified information to the public. ” He added, “We cannot live in fear of our own intelligence community. So, yes, absolutely from top to bottom we need a reform, and we need to go in and say the American people need to have oversight of this because we can’t let them listen to legislators phone calls or the president’s phone calls and blackmail the president. Something has to change. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Bathroom Case Puts Transgender Student on National Stage - The New York Times

Sheryl Gay Stolberg

WASHINGTON — The bespectacled teenager in the gray A. C. L. U. hoodie and cargo pants stood, back pressed against a fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, under a sign saying “No Trespassing, Authorized Personnel Only. ” The White House, illuminated at night, cast a glow over who, having just wrapped up a protest against President Trump, waited in line to pay homage to Gavin Grimm. Mr. Grimm looked a little flustered. “Absolutely humbled,” he pronounced himself, as his admirers thanked him for being brave. With Mr. Trump’s decision this week to rescind protections for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, the next stop is the Supreme Court, where Mr. Grimm — an engaging yet slightly awkward young man — is the lead plaintiff in a case that could settle the contentious “bathroom debate. ” Amid a thicket of conflicting state laws and local school policies on bathroom use, the suit, which pits Mr. Grimm against his school board in Gloucester County, Va. could greatly expand transgender rights — or roll them back. Mr. Trump has portrayed the issue as one of states’ rights, and already the country’s transgender students face differing realities depending on their school. Some are restricted to the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate. Others are not. Then there are the students like Mr. Grimm, who have had separate facilities set aside for them. At issue in Mr. Grimm’s case is whether Title IX, a provision in a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money, also bans discrimination based on gender identity. President Barack Obama concluded that it did. Despite Mr. Trump’s action, lawyers for both Mr. Grimm and the school board said Thursday that they expected the case to go forward, with oral arguments set for March 28 and school officials across the country awaiting the result. “No one was in a rush to bring this case to the Supreme Court,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Grimm. “Gavin didn’t choose this fight this fight happened to Gavin. But now that we are here, lives are at stake, and they are at stake in a way that is even more acute because you don’t have a federal government anymore to protect us. ” For Mr. Grimm, who said he knew he was a boy “as soon as I was aware of the difference between boys and girls,” the case amounts to a crash course in government and media relations. It bears his initials, G. G. because he is a minor, and the name of his mother, Deirdre. At home in rural Gloucester, he is a kid with a pet pig named Esmeralda, a geek’s love of Pokémon cards and Facebook friends. He wears $12 sneakers from Walmart and likes eating at Fuddruckers because the name sounds funny. He is applying for college, but doesn’t want to talk about it. But here in the nation’s capital and in big cities around the country, Mr. Grimm is now a hot property, the new face of the transgender rights movement. Laverne Cox, the actress and activist, gave him a public at the Grammys. (“Everyone, please Google ‘Gavin Grimm,’” she said.) After his appearance here Wednesday night, he dashed off to New York to appear Thursday morning on ABC’s “The View. ” At the protest here Wednesday night, he was the star speaker, besieged with teary hugs and cellphone selfies. The mother of a transgender child burst into tears when she saw him. A government lawyer shook his hand. Activists posed for pictures. Suddenly, he is hearing his name mentioned in the same breath as Norma McCorvey, the eponymous plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that established a national right to abortion (and who died last week) and Jim Obergefell, whose case led to the legalization of marriage. Mr. Grimm looked at the thought. “I just hope I do it justice,” he said quietly. When Mr. Grimm was about 12 or 13, he said, he was able to put a name to what he was feeling and recognized himself as transgender. He came out first to his friends, which was easier than telling his parents. For the family, it was a jolt, his mother said. It made her question preachers — she eventually left her church — but strengthened her faith. “God gave me this child to open my heart and my mind,” Mrs. Grimm, a nurse, said. In 2014, when Mr. Grimm was 15 and starting his sophomore year, the family told his school he was transgender. Administrators were supportive at first and allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom. But amid an uproar from some parents and students, and after two tense school board meetings, the board barred Mr. Grimm from using the boys’ bathrooms and instead adopted a policy requiring transgender youth to use separate “single user” restrooms. The school now has three such restrooms, but two are in refurbished utility closets, said Mr. Block, the A. C. L. U. lawyer. Kyle Duncan, a lawyer for the school board, said the board “agonized” as it sought a thoughtful way to accommodate Mr. Grimm while protecting students who felt uncomfortable. “This is a sensitive and difficult issue in which everyone’s privacy rights need to be respected,” he said. But Mr. Block said that Mr. Grimm had been singled out for “classic sex discrimination. ” Mrs. Grimm was more pointed: “This school board has targeted my child. ” Her son did not always have such aplomb. Before he began “living authentically,” his mother said, he was introverted, often retreating to his room. She winces at the times she tried to curl his hair and make him wear dresses. Mr. Grimm is, by all accounts, the perfect plaintiff, poised beyond his years. He knows how to deflect unwanted lines of questioning (he will not talk about his twin brother, friends or teachers) and is unfailingly polite in replying to intimate queries about his bathroom habits (“If I have to go, I go to the nurse’s restroom,” he told a local television reporter on Wednesday night) and his emotions (“It’s incredibly frustrating, it’s embarrassing, it’s very uncomfortable. I have this neon sign above my head that says I’m different from my peers”). But at heart, he is still a kid. Once, while touring the National Archives here, Mr. Grimm excitedly played Pokémon Go in front of the Declaration of Independence, as Bill Farrar, a spokesman for the A. C. L. U.’s Virginia affiliate, patiently tried to remind him that he was probably “the only person here who has a legal proceeding before the Supreme Court. ” The two have bonded over hours of travel, including a dash from Gloucester to Washington on Wednesday. Mr. Grimm stuffed his belongings in a white trash bag, sticking in a dress shirt at the last minute, which proved handy for “The View. ” Because Mr. Grimm is to graduate this year, it is unlikely that he will benefit if the court finds in his favor. And legal experts say that is a big if. The Supreme Court could rule narrowly, send the case back to the appeals court for further review, or decide to wait until similar suits percolate through the federal court system. And with just eight justices on the court — confirmation hearings for Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the ninth seat, are scheduled to begin March 20 — the justices might be inclined to wait. “There are many reasons not to resolve this issue now,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, who has followed the case. But Vanita Gupta, who ran the Civil Rights Division in Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and helped write the directive that Mr. Trump rescinded, said the Grimm case had already advanced the cause of transgender rights, just by raising awareness. “There has been such social and cultural change in the hearts and minds of people in this country,” she said, “and I think that’s only going to grow, even if there is a legal setback. ” Whatever happens, Mr. Grimm appears destined for a life of advocacy. He says he feels a heavy burden standing up for other transgender people, knowing that everyone is different. He worries that other young people will not have the support that he has had. While he is not much on school (he is taking only the two courses he needs to graduate) he would like to be a geneticist. He wants to know how the brain works. But asking him about his career plans brings a answer — wry and pointed. “I want to be,” he said, “someone who doesn’t have to talk about where he is going to use the bathroom. ”

Obama on Dallas: No Reprise of ’60s Racial Strife - The New York Times

Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear

WARSAW — President Obama expressed optimism on Saturday that the killings of young black men and white police officers this week have not left the United States as racially divided as it was during the strife and riots that racked the country in the 1960s. Speaking in Warsaw at the conclusion of a security summit meeting with European leaders, Mr. Obama said the United States had suffered “a tough week,” but he pledged to try to build upon good will among protesters and police officers alike. “There is sorrow, there is anger, there is confusion about next steps,” Mr. Obama said at the start of a news conference. “But there is unity in recognizing that this is not how we want our communities to operate. This is not who we want to be as Americans. ” The president said he would visit Dallas early next week to pay homage to the police officers who were killed there. And he said he would invite activists, police officials and others to the White House next week to seek “constructive actions that are actually going to make a difference. ” Mr. Obama acknowledged that the killings had unleashed some harsh speech, and he urged people of all points of view to be careful in how they express their opinions. But he said he believed that most people were simply saddened by the lives lost. “When we start suggesting that somehow there is this enormous polarization and we’re back to the situation in the 1960s — that’s just not true,” Mr. Obama said. “You’re not seeing riots, and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully. ” Asked to comment on how he will be remembered for dealing with racial issues, Mr. Obama said he would prefer to leave that question to historians. But he then continued to discuss, with some emotion, how he has sought to confront the divisive issue. He said he has tried to speak honestly about race in ways that he hoped would help people reach solutions. “More than anything, what I hope is that my voice has tried to get all of us as Americans to understand the difficult legacy of race,” Mr. Obama said. “If my voice has been true, and positive, then my hope would be that it may not fix everything right away, but it surfaces problems, it frames them, it allows us to wrestle with these issues,” he added. “I’d like to think that, as best as I could, I have been true in speaking about these issues. ” Mr. Obama deflected questions about the motives of the man who shot the police officers in Dallas. But he said whatever the motive might have been, people should not assume that the gunman speaks for Americans protesting police killings or anyone else. He said that the white individual who is charged in the shooting of nine black parishioners in South Carolina did not represent the views of all white Americans. And Mr. Obama said that people should not make the assumption that a “troubled Muslim individual” who engages in a shooting represents all Muslims. “I think the danger is that we somehow suggest that the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country,” he said. “It doesn’t. ” The president also defended his mention of the need for new gun laws in the hours after the shooting in Dallas. He said the easy availability of guns in America was “a contributing factor” to the country’s gun violence. Critics have charged that Mr. Obama should not have raised what they say is a political issue in the moments after the shooting, calling it an insult to the memory of those killed and to the families of the dead who were still in the early stages of mourning. The president rejected that accusation and vowed to continue talking about the issue. “Part of what’s creating tensions between communities and police is the fact that police have a really difficult time in communities where they know guns are everywhere,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m not going to stop talking about it. ” The president noted that violent crime in the United States is significantly lower now than it has been in decades. But he acknowledged that people’s fears are understandable, especially in the wake of a terrorist attack or a gruesome killing captured on video. “We should never be satisfied when any innocent person is killed,” he said, “but that is not something that should be driving our anxieties, relative to where we have been in the past. ”

SONEG El Mundo Today 2×11: ¿Hasta qué punto es necesaria la electricidad?

Redacción

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Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won’t

WakingTimes

Waking Times Politics in America has devolved into a contest of personalities, where policy, history, and reality are rejected in favor of style, skin color, gender and celebrity factor. This is unsurprising, though, in a nation that has for generations been weened on television and state indoctrination. We’ve been trained to look to politicians for leadership, but the real heroes and change makers in our world are the fearless truth-tellers who work to free our minds and inspire us to greatness by setting an example with their words and deeds. As we stare down the barrel of a critically divided society under the thumb of an all-powerful government and police state, righteous voices of non-partisan, no-bullshit truth who apply logic, common sense, and critical-thinking in defense of community and humanity are needed now more than ever. One such example is hip-hop artist, civic leader, social activist, and entrepreneur Michael Render, aka Killer Mike . His articulation of the problems we all face, accompanied with real ideas for meaningful action, make for an excellent reminder of what true leadership can look like. He’s done a ton of interviews in recent years, and although he mentions being a conservative, even advocating for the 2nd Amendment in response to public shootings, he played a big role in Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination in an effort to help educate and awaken black voters. Consider the following clips of Killer Mike speaking on a number of today’s critical issues. Firstly, he talks to TMZ about the importance of participating in local elections and in using your vote to hold political parties accountable, while helping to see through the phony logic of voting for the lesser of two evils. “Scaring me with the boogie man is not going to work as effectively as giving my community something that helps.” ~Killer Mike In his song, ‘ Reagan, ‘ he rails against Obama, along with all the other authoritarian presidents we’ve had, as a member of an organization of war and profit, saying what so many Obama supporters are afraid to acknowledge. “Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor Just an employee of the country’s real masters Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters If you don’t believe the theory, then argue with this logic Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Qaddafi We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor If I say any more they might be at my door” ~Killer Mike, Reagan As a leader in the black community, he is keenly aware of the affects of racism and police brutality today, but rather than advocating for protests or riots as an expression of justifiable anger, he breaks down how black people can overcome systemic corruption and racism by using the one weapon that is most effective in a capitalist culture: money. Furthermore, on the Bill Maher show on HBO , he goes into relationship between politicians and police, pointing out how politicians themselves use police as pawns. Final Thoughts The President of the United States of America is the figurehead of an authoritarian and corporatized organization that masquerades as benevolent, but POTUS is a puppet, not a leader. As Americans go at each other’s throats over about the election, it may serve us well to remember that individuals are the true leaders in our community and in our world. “My criteria is probably Libertarian views, where you just let the free market reign, you let people do what they want to, and the government takes care of protecting us from foreign interests and one another.” ~ Killer Mike About the Author Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at . This article ( Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won’t ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. ~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family…

Indy 500 Drivers Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti Robbed at Gunpoint at Indianapolis Taco Bell

Warner Todd Huston

Two Indy 500 drivers, Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti, were robbed at gunpoint at about 9:40 p. m. while sitting in line at an Indianapolis Taco Bell restaurant that is only a half mile from the race track, police reported. [Only a few hours after Dixon won the pole position for the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500, the two drivers accompanied by Dixon’s wife, Emma were confronted by two teenagers, one of whom was armed with a gun, Indy’s Fox 59 reported. A police report of the incident noted, “The victims stated two males robbed them at gunpoint and fled north on Berwick (Avenue) on foot. ” The thieves took the drivers’ wallets, IDs, credit cards, and cash, police reported. Police later arrested a and a and charged them with the crime. The older suspect was also charged with resisting arrest. Earlier in the day, Dixon, who drives for Honda Motors, was awarded the pole position with the fastest speeds in 21 years. The New driver finished with a average of 232. 164 mph, easily surpassing starters, Ed Carpenter at 231. 664 and defending Indy 500 champ Alexander Rossi at 231. 487, ESPN reported. Dixon last won the 500 in 2008 and Franchitti, a Indy winner, retired from racing in 2013 after breaking his back in a serious crash. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.

Radio Derb Transcript For October 21 Up: The Magic Bricks Of PS 199, Et Cetera

John Derbyshire

Photos: Islamic State Says It’s Again Deploying Drones in Mosul

Aaron Klein and Ali Waked

Photos released by the Islamic State group purport to show that its jihadists are again using small unmanned drones to attack targets in the area of Mosul where IS is in the midst of a battle with the Iraqi army. [The use of drones was allegedly renewed after about a month during which the group avoided deploying them in combat. In the photos released by ISIS on the group’s Telegram account, its small unmanned aircraft can be seen attacking Shi’ite militia targets on the outskirts of Mosul (above and below). Earlier this month, a U. S. coalition airstrike reportedly struck an IS drone factory in Mosul. The U. S. international military coalition killed Islamic State foreign drone experts and destroyed a drone factory in western Mosul on Monday. The redeployment of IS drones comes as the group finds itself being pushed back toward the Old City of Mosul, a zone without many open areas where the aircraft can operate. Meanwhile, reports circulated on Iraqi social media citing Shi’ite activists saying the U. S. has supplied the Iraqi army with equipment designed to neutralize and disrupt the use of IS drones. مصادر إعلامية | تزويد #فرقة_الرد_السريع في #الموصل باسلحة تشويش تم استيرادها من #الصين لمواجهة طائرات #داعش المسيرة pic. twitter. — غريب (@2011iqbgd2017) April 14, 2017, In February, the Iraqi army claimed that it had raided a drone factory near Mosul. Also that month, the Stratfor global intelligence newsletter investigated the IS drone threat, writing, The Islamic State is taking to the skies as the fight for Mosul wears on. Over the past several weeks, the extremist group has been flaunting its use of unmanned aerial vehicles against Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in and around the city. Propaganda videos feature dramatic aerial footage of the precision attacks, and they have produced their intended effect, receiving heavy coverage in mainstream media outlets. So far, the Islamic State has deployed this technique only in Iraq and Syria. That’s likely soon to change, though, considering the attention the group’s drone attacks have been getting and the prevalence of drones in the West. Drone attacks are coming. But they do not necessarily portend death from above. Reuters last month reported on less sophisticated IS drones: For the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have been a cornerstone of America’s campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Greater Middle East. Predator and Reaper drones crisscross the globe firing Hellfire missiles on U. S. enemies. Other countries have operational drone fleets, but few match the might and ubiquity of America’s. But journalists on the front lines in Iraq have seen a disturbing new trend — Islamic State using retail quadcopters to drop their own munitions with surprising accuracy. Mosul is the frontline in the fight against ISIS as well as the frontline in a new arm’s race. One that pits the tiny drones of the Islamic State against the budding technology of the West. To be clear, Islamic State’s commercial quadcopters rigged with grenades and manufactured missiles is nothing compared to the power of a Predator firing off Hellfire missiles with pinpoint accuracy. But that’s cold comfort to a civilian killed by a handmade explosive dropped by a quadcopter over the streets of Mosul.

Ireland’s Prime Minister in Crisis Over Case of Police Whistle-Blower - The New York Times

Sinead O’Shea

DUBLIN — Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister since 2011, is facing one of the worst political crises of his career over a convoluted police scandal that has dragged on for more than a decade. The scandal has been compared to the case of Frank Serpico, the detective whose testimony in the 1970s brought to light corruption in the New York Police Department. The matter dates to 2006, when an officer began raising concerns about misconduct within the National Police Service. The officer, Sgt. Maurice McCabe, quickly found himself shunned by his fellow officers. But he persisted, exposing what he said was a practice of deleting penalty points incurred by drivers for minor traffic violations. Eventually, a government inquiry found in his favor. But the case won’t go away. Last week, The Irish Examiner and the public broadcaster RTE’s “Prime Time” program reported that Ireland’s child protection agency had created a file on Sergeant McCabe containing a false accusation of child sexual abuse — a mistake that the agency has attributed to what it called a clerical error. The news organizations also reported that this wasn’t the first time Sergeant McCabe had been wrongly accused of such a crime an earlier complaint against him had been made, in 2006, and dismissed. The disclosure that a could face such accusations in apparent retaliation has raised unsettling questions about Ireland’s culture of policing and the possible collusion of other agencies, including the child protection agency. The case has affected the highest levels of the Irish government, bedeviling Mr. Kenny. He has been attacked by critics who charge that he missed opportunities to resolve the mess in 2014, and supported the police chief at the time and his justice minister for too long. Mr. Kenny failed at first to give a complete account of when he learned of the false abuse allegations, and has insisted that he knew nothing of a broader smear campaign — an assertion that his critics in Parliament have contested. There were heated exchanges between Mr. Kenny and Gerry Adams, the leader of the opposition Sinn Fein party. At one point, Mr. Kenny called Mr. Adams an “absolute hypocrite” and attacked him for playing down, years earlier, the case of a former Sinn Fein member who said she was sexually abused by IRA members — a charge that Mr. Adams denies. Mr. Kenny has pledged a new official inquiry into the latest developments in the McCabe case. Late Wednesday night he survived a motion put forward by Sinn Fein. Both Mr. Kenny’s party, Fine Gael, and the Fianna Fail party, whose support Mr. Kenny needs, had little appetite for fresh elections that could unsettle their fragile alliance. But observers say the prime minister has been wounded by the scandal, and may not survive long after he returns from a trip to Washington to meet President Trump for St. Patrick’s Day. On Wednesday evening, ahead of the vote, Mr. Kenny apologized in Parliament to Sergeant McCabe. He called the allegations against him “appalling. ” “He and his family deserve the truth, as do all against whom allegations have been made,” Mr. Kenny said. “And I therefore offer a full apology to Maurice McCabe and his family for the treatment handed out to them as exposed in recent programs. ” Sergeant McCabe, and his wife, Lorraine, said in a statement that they had been victims of a “long and sustained campaign to destroy our characters. ” They added: “We have endured eight years of great suffering, private nightmare, public defamation, and state vilification arising solely,” they said, from Sergeant McCabe’s determination to ensure that the police agency “adheres to decent and appropriate standards of policing in its dealings with the Irish people. ” Sergeant McCabe, 55, a father of five from County Westmeath in the center of the country, has been on sick leave since last year. The McCabe case has exposed the secretive and insular nature of the police service. An internal investigation into Sergeant McCabe’s complaints found no evidence of corruption, but concluded that some officers had failed to follow procedures. But a police chief, Martin Callinan, stunned the country when he told lawmakers in 2014 that like Sergeant McCabe were “disgusting. ” (He later took early retirement.) Dermot Walsh, a law professor at the University of Kent in England who has studied police and criminal justice in Ireland, said the uproar “was not so much what he was complaining about as the fact that he took his complaints outside the force — in other words, he was seen as not a team player, not a member of the club. ” Professor Walsh added that Sergeant McCabe “had stepped over to the other side of the line between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ ” and compared the case to that of Detective Serpico. He also said the hierarchical organization of the police agency made it resistant to criticism from its lower ranks. In 2014, the justice minister, Alan Shatter, resigned after a report commissioned by the government found that the government and the police had failed to address Sergeant McCabe’s allegations adequately. A second report, prepared by a commission led by a judge, Kevin O’Higgins, found that Sergeant McCabe had performed “a genuine public service at considerable personal cost. ” Now, the case is about to get yet another look. Mr. Kenny has promised to investigate whether a smear campaign targeted Sergeant McCabe. The task was originally assigned to a private commission of inquiry, led by a judge, but after the latest furor, Mr. Kenny agreed to appoint a tribunal, whose proceedings will be open to the public — something that Sergeant McCabe said he believed was essential. Another Superintendent David Taylor, a former police press officer, has come forward to say that the existence of a smear campaign against Sergeant McCabe was widely known within the police force and by his superiors, including Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan. She has asserted her innocence. “I have made it clear that I was not part of any campaign to spread rumors about Sergeant McCabe and didn’t know it was happening at the time it was happening,” Commissioner O’Sullivan said in a statement on Monday. Yet another police officer, Superintendent Keith Harrison, has come forward, saying that he stopped a colleague for drunken driving in 2009 and, in retaliation, found his family referred to the child protection agency over a baseless allegation.

Evidence Scrubbed, Accounts Suspended As Citizen Researchers Delve Into the Hell That is “Pizzagate”

Contributing Author

This article/video was originally published at SGTReport.com . Editor’s Comment: The evidence is now overwhelming – whatever the full truth of the matter, something is very, very suspicious about the “pizza code” that has been discovered in the leaked Podesta emails that many believe is connected to a ring of pedophilia activity. Independent researchers have been scouring the web for supporting information, and have pieced together a disturbing pile of circumstantial evidence connecting many of DC’s most powerful to lewd comments, references to illegal sex acts and child trafficking, dark art and more. It is very likely that this could go to the very top, where powerful people are protected by people with ranking positions inside the power structure. Perhaps that is why many channels and researchers are meeting censorship, threats and bans. Reddit’s thread on the topic, which was quickly becoming the definitive gathering place for the information, was shut down. Meanwhile, the entire The Daily Sheeple website was shutdown temporarily over a copyright claim about an image in “pizza gate” story (see video at bottom). Numerous YouTube accounts have been suspended or blocked as well. Read more: The Disturbing, Disgusting Pedophile Code Hidden in the John Podesta Emails Will the phony clamp down over “fake news” be used to completely cover-up the evidence of what appear to be very serious crimes? PizzaGate Is a Worldwide Citizen Investigation Now by SGT Report While the NY Times tries to soft peddle #PizzaGate, Reddit tries to kill the Sub-Reddit investigation and Twitter attempts to censor breaking news on the global pedophile ring – it’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle. We will not be stopped. Truth will be revealed. Because #PizzaGate is a WORLDWIDE CITIZEN INVESTIGATION NOW. And the pedos are running scared. PIZZAGATE IS A WORLDWIDE CITIZEN INVESTIGATION NOW. Charles Ortel: Pardons Won’t Save Clintons From Clinton Foundation Crimes? The De- The De-Occulting of John Podesta (by martyleeds33) Understanding #PizzaGate – Opening the Rabbit hole (by Stirling) INFOWARS WEIGHS IN: PIZZAGATE IS REAL!!! PizzaGate Definitive Factcheck: Oh My God. Our Site Got SHUT DOWN for #Pizzagate Podesta Wikileaks Story This article/video was originally published at SGTReport.com .

Hillary Arrives At Rally, Makes One Weird Move That Left Onlookers Puzzled

Alisha Rich

Hillary Arrives At Rally, Makes One Weird Move That Left Onlookers Puzzled Posted on October 27, 2016 by Alisha Rich in Politics Share This As Hillary Clinton makes her last few rounds of appearances before election day, the presidential hopeful will feel a little bit of the pressure that the presidency will demand. However, when she arrived at her rally in Lake Worth, Florida, she attempted to make one move that she hoped no one would notice. There have been many questions over the course of Hillary Clinton’s campaign regarding her health. As a result of her age and her lifestyle, there’s no doubt that her body is starting to feel the effects of aging – whether she likes to admit it or not. However, video footage of her recent rally in Florida shows how desperate she is to keep her health problems hidden, but her attempt was met with failure the moment she hit the stage. In fact, the Democratic presidential candidate struggled to climb one single step. The video captures one of her aides rushing towards her side as she attempted to climb up the riser. “She needed assistance to get onto it as she could be seen reaching her hand out for a boost or some added steadiness,” according to The American Mirror . “The aide extended his hand and Clinton held on tightly as she made her way up the 18 inches.” Although Hillary Clinton insists that her health isn’t an issue, the number of incidents she has had paints quite a different picture. If you take a close look at the video, the aide can even be seen standing behind her, reaching for her waist – probably preparing for the event of her falling. We have said it time and time again – she’s not fit to be president. Although her health is a major concern considering how demanding the presidency can be on a person, it’s her disastrous political history that raises, even more, concerns.

15 Foods That Contain The Mother Of All Antioxidants

REALdeal

-Onions -Red peppers Notice they are all healthy foods we often don’t get enough of? This is another big issue with our diets. We consume a lot of junk, meat, dairy and processed foods, items that clinically have been proven to be the number one causes of heart disease and illness yet we consume them in huge quantities. The key is to limit these and eat a lot of fresh, lively foods that provide nutrients and don’t ask the body to perform a mega job to digest. You can also increase your exercise as glutathione production increases when you exercise. Breathing and sweating are also great ways to get rid of toxins in the body. Glutathione Protects Against Chronic Illness What makes glutathione so important and powerful is that it recycles antioxidants. When your body is dealing with free radicals, it is essentially passing them from one molecule to another. They might go from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then to glutathione where they are cooled off. Antioxidants are recycled at this point and the body can now regenerate another glutathione molecule to go back at it again. Glutathione is crucial for helping your immune system fight chronic illness as it acts as the carrier of toxins out of your body. Like a fly trap, toxins stick to glutathione and they are carried to the bile into the stools and out of the body. Glutathione is also powerful enough that it has been shown to help in the treatment of AIDS greatly. The body is going to get in touch with oxidants and toxins, the more we can deal with those the better our body will be at staying strong, this is why glutathione is so important. Dr. Mark Hyman has given 9 tips to increase your Glutathione levels. Check them out! 1. Consume sulfur-rich foods. The main ones in the diet are garlic, onions and the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, cauliflower, watercress, etc.). 2. Try bioactive whey protein. This is great source of cysteine and the amino acid building blocks for glutathione synthesis. As you know, I am not a big fan of dairy , but this is an exception — with a few warnings. The whey protein MUST be bioactive and made from non-denatured proteins (“denaturing” refers to the breakdown of the normal protein structure). Choose non-pasteurized and non-industrially produced milk that contains no pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics. Immunocal is a prescription bioactive non-denatured whey protein that is even listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference. 3. Exercise boosts your glutathione levels and thereby helps boost your immune system, improve detoxification and enhance your body’s own antioxidant defenses. Start slow and build up to 30 minutes a day of vigorous aerobic exercise like walking or jogging, or play various sports. Strength training for 20 minutes 3 times a week is also helpful. One would think it would be easy just to take glutathione as a pill, but the body digests protein — so you wouldn’t get the benefits if you did it this way. However, the production and recycling of glutathione in the body requires many different nutrients and you CAN take these. Here are the main supplements that need to be taken consistently to boost glutathione. Besides taking a multivitamin and fish oil, supporting my glutathione levels with these supplements is the most important thing I do every day for my personal health. 4. N-acetyl-cysteine. This has been used for years to help treat asthma and lung disease and to treat people with life-threatening liver failure from Tylenol overdose. In fact, I first learned about it in medical school while working in the emergency room. It is even given to prevent kidney damage from dyes used during x-ray studies. 5. Alpha lipoic acid. This is a close second to glutathione in importance in our cells and is involved in energy production, blood sugar control, brain health and detoxification. The body usually makes it, but given all the stresses we are under, we often become depleted. 6. Methylation nutrients (folate and vitamins B6 and B12). These are perhaps the most critical to keep the body producing glutathione. Methylation and the production and recycling of glutathione are the two most important biochemical functions in your body. Take folate (especially in the active form of 5 methyltetrahydrofolate), B6 (in active form of P5P) and B12 (in the active form of methylcobalamin). 7. Selenium. This important mineral helps the body recycle and produce more glutathione. 8. A family of antioxidants including vitamins C and E (in the form of mixed tocopherols), work together to recycle glutathione. 9. Milk thistle (silymarin) has long been used in liver disease and helps boost glutathione levels.

Taking Refuge in Dollar Could Expose World Economy to New Perils - The New York Times

Peter S. Goodman

It is known as the flight to safety, yet it may be leading the global economy toward fresh danger. In the week since Britain stunned the world with its vote to quit the European Union, coloring markets in uncertainty, investors have dumped much that seems risky — the pound, the euro and shares on stock exchanges around the world. They have entrusted the proceeds to that rare sure thing, United States Treasury bills. Too much money may now be sloshing toward the dollar. For the United States, a stronger currency makes exports more expensive on world markets, complicating an already halting economic expansion. For emerging markets, the move into the dollar could presage a tide of investment flowing out, imperiling economies from Brazil to Indonesia. For Europe, a weaker euro underscores fundamental doubts about whether leaders can finally muster a formula for economic vibrancy after years of disappointment and recrimination. When economies function in healthy fashion, money flows across investments in pursuit of rewards that are supposed to be correlated to risks. But when a shock hits and fear takes hold, investors tend to trust only storehouses with one key trait — the certainty of survival. Since Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, or “Brexit,” the dollar has gained nearly 3 percent compared with a broad basket of currencies, about 2. 5 percent against the euro, and nearly 12 percent against the pound. The latest surge came on Thursday, when Mark J. Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said the central bank would probably have to lower interest rates to support the economy. That sent the pound hurtling downward anew. On Friday, the yield on United States Treasury notes dipped to a record low, 1. 385 percent, reflecting the eagerness of investors to lock their money in a safe place even for minuscule returns. The charge into the dollar says less about investors’ faith in the United States and more about the alarming situations confronting other major economies. With the vote, Britain has jeopardized its dominant financial center and trade with Europe, the largest common market on earth. The country is now enmeshed in a leadership crisis that makes everything uncertain, including who will negotiate the terms of a messy divorce with the European Union. If leaders follow through and initiate that process, Britain must haggle with the remaining bloc, made of 27 different European governments operating with their own domestic politics. The 19 countries that share the euro appear vulnerable to political discord and widening separatism as they contend with an influx of refugees, aging populations and tepid economic growth. Years of confusion may be unfolding — the sort of turmoil that could make a money manager crave safety. The United States is not without risks. Its public debt exceeds $19 trillion. Fractious politics have in recent years brought the country to the verge of default. It has economic inequality rivaling the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and tens of millions of working people who have essentially lost faith in the American economic bargain as living standards have declined. The Republican Party is on the verge of nominating Donald J. Trump as its presidential candidate. His intimations that he might oversee the Treasury much as he has managed Atlantic City casinos — by renegotiating with creditors — sent shudders through global markets. And yet, the United States can print its own money while finding seemingly limitless demand for its debt. The dollar remains the foundation of global finance, the one piece of a cosmically complex puzzle in which continued faith is required or the totality ceases to make sense. So powerful is the market’s craving for dollars in times of crisis that it has intensified even when the United States has itself been the locus of trouble. From September 2008 to February 2009, as the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers turned a crisis into the worst financial panic since the Great Depression, the dollar surged by nearly 10 percent. “Rightly or wrongly, there are existential questions about the future of the euro,” said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Say what you will about the dollar, no one questions that it will be around 10 or 20 years from now. ” In recent years, as European leaders failed to spur growth and as Greece slipped toward the abyss, nearly abandoning the euro, a lack of effective political coordination has time and again bedeviled effective response. The countries, like Greece, Spain and Portugal, have sought to unleash government spending, running deficits to stimulate their economies. Germany, the eurozone’s most powerful member, has vetoed that move, demanding that they instead cut spending, including on pensions and social services. Britain’s decision to leave the union has been widely construed as an angry admonition to the establishment from working people who have absorbed global trade, immigration and European political integration only to see their living standards stagnate. Britain has its own currency and authority over its budget. It has much lower unemployment and healthier economic growth than the eurozone does. If such ferment can explode in Britain, the eurozone looks like a tinderbox. “The people running Europe have gotten so disconnected from what the majority wants, and has always wanted for decades,” said Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Will Britain’s withdrawal alter the politics and spur Germany to moderate its obsession with austerity? Will Berlin assent to less dogmatic economic policies aimed at bolstering growth and spreading the spoils? Those are questions lacking answers. At the same time, the British vote to leave has energized populist movements with separatist inclinations in Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. Every new development heightening doubts about the cohesion of the European project risks provoking investors to demand greater compensation for loans to borrowers like Italy, Portugal and Greece. The more those countries have to pay to keep credit flowing, the greater the worries about the health of their banking systems. The greater the reduction in banks’ willingness to lend, the tighter the chokehold on European economic growth. And the absence of growth is both cause and effect of the populist inclinations coursing through the region. And so the cycle potentially turns, with only one predictable outcome: a flight to safety. “Continuing uncertainty is going to make the dollar go up more,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at Harvard. “If the uncertainty continues, it’s going to hit the periphery of Europe,” he added. “It’s probably going to hit emerging markets. ” World markets are now so interconnected that when money shifts with unexpected severity, it can yield unanticipated effects. Such was the case in 2013, as the Fed signaled its intention to slow the pace of its extraordinary interventions. The Fed had been buying vast quantities of bonds to keep interest rates low after the financial crisis. Ben S. Bernanke, then the chairman, let slip in May 2013 the Fed’s intention to “taper” such purchases. The result became known as the taper tantrum — a damaging stampede out of emerging markets. Currencies dropped in Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey. Stock markets fell. Businesses suffered, laying off workers. A repeat today would unfold at an especially difficult time. The slowdown of China’s economy has diminished the appetite for goods produced worldwide. Weaker growth in Europe puts more pressure on emerging markets. The Fed is supposed to serve American interests, yet as the taper tantrum brought home, its impacts are felt everywhere. Now, the Fed is weighing when to lift rates after years of maintaining them near zero. “There’s a potential for huge volatility and huge shocks,” said Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University. “The part of this that no one can say out loud is that the Fed is the global central bank. ”

Parents of Terror Victim Sue Chicago-Area Palestinian Groups to Collect Jury Award

Breitbart Jerusalem

(AP) CHICAGO — The parents of a yeshiva student fatally shot in the West Bank by Hamas terrorists in 1996 filed a federal lawsuit Friday against two groups to collect on a legal judgment stemming from the death. [Stanley and Joyce Boim filed the lawsuit in Chicago against American Muslims for Palestine and Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation. The Chicago Tribune reports the couple alleges the organizations are “alter egos” of three Islamic fundraising groups held liable several years ago for the death of their son, David, who was killed in a shooting in Beit El. The Boims initially filed a lawsuit in 2000, alleging the American Muslim Society, the Islamic Association for and the Quranic Literacy Institute gave to Palestinian charities that ultimately helped fund terrorism. A federal jury entered a $52 million judgment against the charities in 2004, and the trial judge tripled the amount to $156 million. A federal appeals court upheld the judgment in 2008. The Boims’ attorney, Stephen Landes, said the family received only a fraction of the award because the defendants said they had no money to pay the judgment and shut down. He said the successor groups named in Friday’s lawsuit formed later with many of the same men in similar leadership roles. “What we ended up finding is they just tried to rebrand themselves, and they set up down the street,” Landes said. If the groups are allowed to move on without paying the judgment, Landes said, “it makes a mockery” of federal laws. Messages left with American Muslims for Palestine by the Tribune were not returned. Friday’s lawsuit also names three individuals identified as leaders of the group, including Abdelbasset Hamayel, identified as its executive director and the of the defunct Islamic Association for Palestine. Hamayel told the Tribune he was unaware of the lawsuit and declined to comment. He didn’t immediately return a message left at his office by The Associated Press. It is unclear if Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation is still operating it doesn’t have a separate website or a publicly listed phone number.

Livewire: 89th Annual Academy Awards

Daniel Nussbaum &amp Jerome Hudson

Welcome to Breitbart News’s livewire of the 89th annual Academy Awards. [The Oscars kick off at 5:30 p. m. PT, but Hollywood’s biggest stars have already begun arriving on the red carpet. Jimmy Kimmel hosts this year’s ceremony live from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. The storylines to watch: — How many wins can the musical La La Land rack up out of its record 14 total nominations? Director Damien Chazelle and leads Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are all hoping for big nights in their respective categories, though Gosling faces stiff competition from Denzel Washington (Fences) and Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea). — Which stars will use the Oscars stage to launch Trump tirades? Meryl Streep — up for a record 20th Oscar nom for Florence Foster Jenkins — is set as a presenter, so there is a decent possibility of a Golden encore, but it could really come from all angles tonight. Look out for Kimmel to zing Trump in his opening monologue. — Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge is up for six awards, but don’t expect him to win Best Director. Chazelle is the overwhelming favorite in the category, though Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) or Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) could pull it out. Follow along with Breitbart News as the Oscars get underway in Los Angeles. Latest updates at the top. All times Pacific. 9:25 P. M. — That’s it for the livewire. Stay tuned for some coverage, including what just happened with the Best Picture announcement, which was probably the most epic gaffe in Oscars history. So long for now, . N. . H. 9:13 P. M. — Good god. This has got to be the most surreal ending to an Oscars broadcast ever. Moonlight has won Best Picture. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway read the wrong title off the card, announcing La La Land as Best Picture. Kimmel blames Steve Harvey. No one in the audience can quite believe it. This is an epic . More coming shortly. New rule: After that astonishing #Oscars gaffe, no one in Hollywood can make fun of @realDonaldTrump for anything over the next eight years. — Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) February 27, 2017, 9:03 P. M. — Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway appear together on stage to present Best Picture. Awesome. 9:00 P. M. — One more big one to go. With 11. 9 seconds left in the fourth, Clippers: 113, Hornets: 113. 8:55 P. M. — Emma Stone wins her first Oscar, Best Actress for La La Land. An emotional Stone gives a heartfelt to the other actresses in the category and thanks her family and the filmmakers. 8:48 P. M. — Casey Affleck wins Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea. Wow. I thought Denzel had this one on lock. Looks like Affleck got his out of the way last night, though, because this acceptance speech is short and sweet. “I wish I had something bigger and more meaningful to say. ” We don’t, so thanks for keeping it short. 8:43 P. M. — At 32, Damien Chazelle becomes the youngest director ever to win the Best Director prize, for La La Land. 8:34 P. M. — Barry Jenkins and Tarrell Alvin McCraney win Best Adapted Screenplay for Moonlight. Both men wear ACLU ribbons, and get slightly political with their speeches. Jenkins vows to work over the next four years to inspire those who feel they’re not represented in films, while McCraney dedicates the award to boys, girls and “ conforming” young people. Barry Jenkins: ”For the next 4 years it will not be you alone. We will not forget you.” #Oscars pic. twitter. — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 27, 2017, 8:31 P. M. — Kenneth Lonergan wins Best Original Screenplay for Manchester by the Sea. Some observers thought this one was a lock for La La Land (Chazelle) or even Hell or High Water (Taylor Sheridan) so this is a big win for Lonergan. 8:28 P. M. — Ok, this is great. Kimmel is participating in the celebrity “inspiration” videos, talking about how his nemesis Matt Damon has inspired him. The movie that most inspired him is Damon’s We Bought a Zoo. The Oscars announcer introduces “Ben Affleck and Guest,” as Affleck and Damon take the stage. The music guy cuts off Damon every time he tries to speak. The camera pans back and it’s Kimmel directing the orchestra. Probably the funniest bit of the night. 8:26 P. M. — With 8:44 to go in the fourth, Charlotte has taken the lead. Clippers: 89, Hornets: 90. 8:20 P. M. — Sara Bareilles performs along with the “In Memoriam” segment. 8:18 P. M. — Justin Hurwitz is back onstage along with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul to accept the award for Best Original Song, for “City of Stars” from La La Land. 8:15 P. M. — Justin Hurwitz wins Best Original Score for La La Land. No surprises there. 8:04 P. M. — John Legend performs “City of Stars” and “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land. 8:00 P. M. — Linus Sandgren wins Best Cinematography for La La Land. Shouts out Damien Chazelle, who he calls a “poetic genius. ” 7:56 P. M. — Javier Bardem talks about how much Meryl Streep has inspired him in a segment. “Meryl Streep is a goddess,” Bardem says. With 9:08 left in the third, Clippers: 68, Hornets: 53. 7:51 P. M. — Another shot at Trump. Kimmel is upset that Trump isn’t tweeting about the Oscars. He tweets Trump directly: “U up?” And then again: “#Merylsayshi. ” Jimmy Kimmel tweets at @realDonaldTrump during the #Oscars: ”Meryl says hi.” pic. twitter. — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 27, 2017, 7:49 P. M. — Sing wins Best Live Action Short Film. Not that Sing, the other Sing. 7:45 P. M. — The White Helmets, a film about aid workers in Syria, wins Best Documentary Short Subject. 7:43 P. M. — At the half: Clippers: 57, Hornets: 51. 7:34 P. M. — Seth Rogen describes how much he loves Back to the Future in a segment, before stepping onstage with Michael J. Fox to present Achievement in Film Editing. Winner: John Gilbert, for Hacksaw Ridge. 7:30 P. M. — The Jungle Book wins Best Visual Effects. A win. The CGI animals in that movie looked completely real. 7:18 P. M. — This is an interesting bit. A group of tourists on a guided tour of Hollywood are ushered into the Oscars, to their astonishment. The celebrities play along, including Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali, who lets the tourists touch his Oscar. We’ll get video of the segment up shortly. Watch Denzel Washington marry two of Jimmy Kimmel’s surprise guests at the #Oscars. pic. twitter. — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 27, 2017, 7:14 P. M. — David Wasco and Sandy win Best Production Design for La La Land. 7:11 P. M. — Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer win Best Animated Feature Film for Zootopia. In presenting the award, Mexican actor Gael makes a political statement: “As a as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that wants to separate us. ” 7:09 P. M. — Piper wins Best Animated Short Film. 7:05 P. M. — Ah, here’s the New York Times‘ Oscars ad, placed right in the middle of the broadcast: 7:02 P. M. — Sting performs a portion of his song “The Empty Chair,” from the film Jim: The James Foley Story. 6:56 P. M. — Charlize Theron and Shirley MacLaine appear together to present Best Foreign Language Film. Winner: The Salesman. Asghar Farhadi, the director of The Salesman, boycotted the Oscars over Trump’s temporary immigration ban. Instead, someone else accepts the award on his behalf, and reads a statement from the director in which he calls Trump’s executive order “inhumane. ” Full statement read on behalf of Asghar Farhadi, winner for Iranian film ”The Salesman.” #Oscars pic. twitter. — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 27, 2017, “I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight. My access is out of respect for the people of my country and those of six other nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U. S.,” the statement read. “Dividing the world into us and our enemies categories creates fear. Filmmakers can turn their cameras to create and capture human qualities. They create empathy between us and others. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression. ” “6:55 P. M. — Kimmel jokes that Viola Davis was just nominated for an Emmy for her acceptance speech. Introduces a segment in which current stars talk about the stars of the past that inspired them. First up is Charlize Theron talking about Shirley MacLaine. Seems pretty late into the broadcast to be introducing a segment like this. This show is gonna go on for well over 3 hours. Get comfortable. 6:44 P. M. — Viola Davis wins her first Oscar, Best Supporting Actress for Fences. Davis was a lock for this category. An emotional Davis says when people ask her what stories she wants to tell, she points out that dead people in graveyards have stories that are never told. “We’re the only profession to celebrate what it means to live a life. ” Video of Davis’ speech: Viola Davis: ”I became an artist because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” #Oscars pic. twitter. — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 27, 2017, 6:29 P. M. — Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert MacKenzie and Peter Grace win Best Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge. Go see this movie. #HacksawRidge wins for Best Sound Mixing at the #Oscars! pic. twitter. — Entertainment Weekly (@EW) February 27, 2017, 6:28 P. M. — Syvain Bellemare wins Best Sound Editing for Arrival. This may be the only award the brainy movie wins all night. 6:23 P. M. — Kimmel roasts Trump again by introducing Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, “a president who believes in both arts and sciences. ” More Trump shade from Kimmel #Oscars pic. twitter. — Mashable (@mashable) February 27, 2017, Boone Isaacs praises the Academy and the nominees’ increasing diversity in a brief speech. 6:15 P. M. — Miranda and Auli’i Cravalho perform their song “How Far I’ll Go,” from the animated film Moana. 6:11 P. M. — Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow’s O. J.: Made in America wins Best Documentary Feature. Oscar purists were upset that O. J. was allowed into the category, as it’s essentially an miniseries. Edelman dedicates his award to “victims of police violence, police brutality, violence and criminal injustice. ” Oscar winner for ”O. J.: Made in America” dedicates award to victims of police brutality #Oscars pic. twitter. — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 27, 2017, Kimmel: “O. J. you get an extra slice of bologna on your sandwich tonight. ” 6:09 P. M. — Kimmel gets in a shot at Ben Carson by calling Dr. Strange the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The political jokes are flying fast and furious tonight. 6:01 P. M. — Colleen Atwood wins Best Costume Design for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. 5:59 P. M. — Suicide Squad‘s makeup and hair team wins Best Makeup and Hairstyling. “I’m an immigrant. I come from Italy. This is for the immigrants. ” 5:56 P. M. — Kimmel: “If there’s anyone here from CNN, or anyone from the New York or Los Angeles Times is here, please leave the building … We don’t like fake news here. ” 5:49 P. M. — No surprises with the night’s first award as Mahershala Ali wins Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight. 5:35 P. M. — Kimmel is on. “This broadcast is being viewed by millions around the world, and in 225 countries that now hate us. ” Kimmel says the country is divided, and that he’s been told he needs to say something to unite us. Says there’s only one “Braveheart” in the room, and he’s not going to unite us. Cue an awkward pan to Mel Gibson. Wow. Kimmel urges the audience to reach out to one person you have a disagreement with, not as a liberal or conservative, and have a positive conversation with them. That would be a way to “make America great again,” he says. But the moment is as Kimmel calls President Trump a racist just one minute later. He thanks the president: “Remember last year when we thought the Oscars were racist?” The host also roasts the stars by saying (rightly) that no one came out to see their films. Gives a special to Meryl Streep, who gets a standing ovation from the Oscars audience: “Nice dress. Is that an Ivanka?” Full video of Kimmel’s monologue: Jimmy Kimmel: ”I want to say thank you to President Trump … last year it seemed like the #Oscars were racist.” pic. twitter. — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 27, 2017, 5:30 P. M. — Showtime. Justin Timberlake kicks off the festivities with a performance of his Best Original “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” from the movie Trolls. 5:21 P. M. — Mel Gibson on the red carpet: “As far as I’m concerned, the nomination is the win. ” Gibson says he’s not going to win, but he’s happy to be here. Calls Desmond Doss’s story the “pinnacle of heroism. ” If you haven’t seen Hacksaw Ridge yet, turn off the TV and go see it now. You’re welcome. 5:15 P. M. — Chatter says the night will kick off with the presentation of Best Supporting Actor. Barring a major upset, look for Moonlight‘s Mahershala Ali to win. 5:09 P. M. — 20 minutes to showtime. Most of the stars have already arrived on the red carpet. If you’d like to see all the red carpet “looks,” check them out here, courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter. We’re not gonna post ’em. 5:00 P. M. — Meryl Streep has arrived. God herself blowing kisses #Oscars pic. twitter. — p. c 🍒 (@90sIover) February 27, 2017, 4:55 P. M. — TMZ reports that a stage prop toppled over and crushed a camera during rehearsals this morning. Jimmy Kimmel was reportedly working on a skit at the time but was off stage, and no one was hurt. 4:48 P. M. — The stars are arriving on the red carpet the ceremony hasn’t begun yet and we’ve got out first political statement of the night. Loving actress Ruth Negga — up for Best Actress — is sporting an ACLU ribbon on her dress. There will be undoubtedly be plenty more of these tonight Casey Affleck also rocked one on his lapel during the Independent Spirit Awards last night. Yeah, looks like Miranda (Best Original Song nominee) is wearing one too. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum, Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson

BOMBSHELL AUDIO: Hillary Clinton Herself Recorded Calling for Rigging Election

K. Campbell

Huckabee Responds To Flag-Burning Trump Hater…“What’s Happened To This Country?” “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” Clinton told editor Eli Chomsky. “And if we were going to push for an election,” she added, “then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.” The election resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas over the U.S.-preferred Fatah — something Clinton, apparently, thought could have been avoided if we had somehow influenced the outcome (aka: “rigged” the election). Advertisement - story continues below Listen to the audio here: Chomsky said he recalled being taken aback that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the U.S. should be in the business of fixing foreign elections,” according to the Observer . But for conservatives who have been warning against Clinton for years, it comes as little surprise that she would want to use her political power to influence the outcome of an election inappropriately. Advertisement - story continues below

A Reunion 21 Years in the Making - The New York Times

John Otis

He survived conscription in Eritrea, conspired to confront his country’s injustices and faked an emergency to elude the authorities when they discovered his plan. He fled across the African country’s border to Ethiopia and made his way to a refugee camp, braving horrific conditions and rationed food and water for a chance to eventually get to the United States. Yet it was in a terminal at Kennedy International Airport in March that Melake Gebreselase was overcome with anxiety. Now living in New York, he arrived there three hours before his wife of 21 years, Sebentu Aynu Kidane, was supposed to exit customs. Then her plane landed but she was nowhere to be found. “You can worry: ‘What happened? Did she not come? ’” Mr. Gebreselase, 38, said. After a delay passing through immigration, however, Ms. Kidane, 41, emerged and they embraced, both free and together at last after years of forced separation, including a period during which they did not speak to each other. Mr. Gebreselase, who is still learning English, said in a recent interview that he could not articulate in his new language the emotions he felt that March day. Ms. Kidane, however, remembered what was on her mind. “When I came here, I told him that I liked very, very much to have baby,” she said. “Now that I’m pregnant, I’m happy. ” In April, the couple will welcome their first child. Various forces prevented them from starting a family for nearly two decades. The couple married in 1995 in Eritrea, where military conscription is mandatory and indefinite. Mr. Gebreselase was pulled into military service a couple of years after he married Ms. Kidane. He hoped he would have to serve for only a year and a half. After eight years, he felt certain he would be stuck there until retirement. The only time he saw his wife, friends and other relatives was during periods of leave that lasted roughly 10 days. “It was not enough to meet with her to have a baby,” Mr. Gebreselase said. On a visit home in 2005, Mr. Gebreselase, indignant about his conscription and about injustices in his country, held a meeting with villagers about a plan to criticize the government. His actions attracted the attention of the authorities, and he was arrested. Fearing the horrors that awaited him in jail, Mr. Gebreselase feigned a bathroom emergency — and made a run for it, reaching the refugee camp in Ethiopia. According to Amnesty International, the mass of young Eritrean people fleeing the country’s national service has contributed to the global refugee crisis. Mr. Gebreselase, separated from his wife, would not speak to her again until 2013 Ms. Kidane said that all she knew about her husband’s fate was that he was alive. In the camp, eight people were assigned to share one small hut. Refugees were given paltry food rations and had to wait hours in line to get water, Mr. Gebreselase said. In 2013, Mr. Gebreselase received legal refugee status and arrived in New York, where he called his wife. He urged Ms. Kidane to go to Ethiopia and then to try to join him in the United States. Mr. Gebreselase moved into an apartment in the Bronx with three roommates and found work at a restaurant. He also enrolled in classes to learn English. “From Monday up through Friday, I was working,” Mr. Gebreselase said. “Saturday, I was at school. ” Mr. Gebreselase sent money to Ms. Kidane, who by then had reached Ethiopia, where she stayed first in a refugee camp and later in an apartment in Addis Ababa, the capital. Mr. Gebreselase said that the more time passed, the more nervous he became about being able to have a child with his wife before she grew too old. Eventually, Ms. Kidane was granted refugee status, and she arrived at Kennedy on March 13. The couple rented a single room for $600 a month in an apartment in the Bronx. They will have to find a new place to live, because the friend they are renting from will soon be having family members move in with him. For now, Mr. Gebreselase works six days a week at a restaurant, where he earns $9. 25 an hour. Ms. Kidane works part time at a hardware store, earning $10 an hour. The couple also receives $39 a month in food stamps. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund, used $500 from the fund to enable the couple to buy a crib, a stroller and baby clothes. They hope their child will be the first of at least two. Ms. Kidane expects to enroll in nursing school soon. Mr. Gebreselase is considering becoming a cabdriver. He is committed to remaining in New York. “If you don’t work hard, you will not have,” Mr. Gebreselase said. “We’re going to work hard. We need a good life. ”

Avoiding the Dreaded Middle Seat May Now Cost You - The New York Times

Martha C. White

As flying goes, the only thing more uncomfortable than sitting next to a couple having a spat on an airplane, Maury Rogoff learned, is sitting between that couple — especially when one partner prefers bare feet. Ms. Rogoff, who owns a public relations firm with offices in New York and Florida and travels frequently, discovered what a growing number of travelers now know: The middle seat has become the third rail of flying — and it is getting harder to avoid. As planes fly at record capacity and new cabin configurations squeeze in ever more passengers, airlines are, intentionally or not, nudging fliers into paying extra to avoid drawing the proverbial short straw. “I was literally in the middle of their argument,” Ms. Rogoff said. “It was just that awful. ” Her discomfort was magnified when the husband kicked off his shoes and crossed his legs, thrusting a bare foot into Ms. Rogoff’s space. Her entreaties with his wife to swap seats fell on deaf ears. “Of course she had no interest because it was middle, and because it was a smelly foot,” Ms. Rogoff said. For travelers like Ms. Rogoff, airlines are making it harder than ever to avoid the middle seat based on luck alone. Southwest, which does not assign seats, raised the price of an pass to $15 from $12. 50 last month. For those who do not pay up, it is a mad rush when online opens 24 hours before the flight. Delta Air Lines’ Basic Economy fare, introduced last year, does not allow seat assignments to be made until after — when customers have had a chance to claim window and aisle seats. American Airlines and United Airlines plan to introduce similar fares this year. Neither would confirm whether selecting a seat would be one of the perks eliminated, but one airline analyst said it was likely, given the competition legacy airlines face from carriers. “It’s a way to compete,” said Max Rayner, a partner at Hudson Crossing, a consulting firm in New York. “If you want to go at premium times, there will be far fewer seats available at the lower end of prices. ” Mr. Rayner suggested that this shift in pricing models wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, saying it could be a boon for the most customers. “You can think of it actually as opening up choice,” he said. “You just want basic transportation — sure, here it is. ” But the crunch has left some travelers taking extreme measures to avoid getting stuck in the middle. Fliers said they have offered fellow travelers money or drinks to switch seats, paid the fee to upgrade to a premium or exit row, feigned illness or switched flights. Some travelers even report buying two seats, just to have an empty one next to them. Dr. Sachin Shridharani, a plastic surgeon in New York, found himself on an overbooked flight back from San Diego, and a middle seat was the only one available. “I told them I’d be willing to take another flight,” he said. “I’ll pretty much do just about anything to avoid sitting in that notorious, infamous middle seat. ” The was to wait in the airport for four hours, but Dr. Shridharani said it was worth it so he could work on the way home. “You can’t have someone looking over your shoulder,” he said. In the end, analysts say, airlines are selling a form of real estate, but they are trading in square inches, not square feet. “People buy work space that’s really what they buy on board,” said Robert W. Mann Jr. an airline industry consultant. “Some of those configurations may not give you enough room, for example, to take out a laptop and use it productively. ” One carrier, though, has tried to address the issue. Frontier Airlines recently installed new seats on its Airbus A319 and A320 planes, with the middle seats about an inch wider than the window and aisle seats. But for most passengers, the tight squeeze continues, and business travelers say counting on their status to avoid the middle seat is no longer a sure thing. “You can’t show up at the airport hoping to talk your way into an upgrade,” said Mark Jeffries, a corporate speaker and author. “You don’t see free seats anymore. ” Mr. Jeffries said he sometimes buys two seats — a window or aisle, and a middle. It’s cheaper than buying a or ticket on a legacy carrier, he said. “We find that people will pay for premium economy or any kind of seat assignment if they’re traveling solo to avoid the middle seat,” said Julia Douglas, owner and president of Jet Set World Travel in Chicago. Some travelers will spend hundreds of dollars more, she added. Another approach is to appeal to another traveler. “There have been instances where I’ve bought someone an upgrade,” said Michael Winston, who used to travel once or twice a week while working in management consulting. At times, he said, he had resorted to bargaining with seatmates to avoid the middle seat. It is not an uncommon transaction, frequent travelers say, with cash, upgrades and cocktails all serving as forms of currency. But that is assuming that the seats are available. Last year, airline capacity again hit a record high, just shy of 85 percent, meaning that a lot of flights are full. And that leaves flight attendants and travel agents acting as de facto referees for games of midair musical chairs. The excuses passengers use to avoid the middle seat are many, they say. “Long legs is always one,” Ms. Douglas said. She then listed the most common complaints: claustrophobia, a need for frequent trips to the bathroom, panic attacks and a penchant for airsickness. “I don’t know if any of them are truly medically founded,” she said. “I just think it’s anxiety about being in that middle seat. ” Of all the excuses, genuine or exaggerated, the one that seems most effective is the threat of gastrointestinal distress. William Bauer, who travels frequently as an executive at a manufacturer of leather goods, said that hinting at a medical need for quick access to the bathroom usually prompted either gate agents or fellow passengers to make the switch for him. “Make it clear that you need that aisle seat. Really convey a compelling sense of urgency,” he said. “Thus far, I’ve never been rejected. ” On one recent flight, though, the tables were turned when Mr. Bauer found himself on the receiving end of a plea to swap seats on a flight. “There was a woman I gave up my aisle seat for because she cried,” he said. “If you cry, you win. ”

Ernie Els: ‘We Would Not be Playing For the Money We Play For If It Wasn’t For Tiger’ - Breitbart

Robert J. Marlow

South African golfer and major champion Ernie Els looks forward to the return of Tiger Woods at the Farmers Insurance Open next week at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, California. [The smooth swinging Els, AKA The Big Easy, thinks it quite plausible that Tiger can work his way back to winning tournaments again, including major championships. Els, who won the last of his four major at the British Open at Royal Lytham St. Annes Golf Club in 2012 at age 42, points out, “If players like myself, Darren Clarke and Mark O’Meara won (majors) in our 40s, surely Tiger thinks he can do it too. I am sure it’s on his agenda. ” Els says he would love to see Tiger play like his old self and thinks that he can do it if he can get it going at some of his favorite tournaments. “Mentally, he is as strong as anybody but he needs to find some momentum at his favorite events and if he gets that, he can start believing again. I would love to see him play like he did back in the 90s, but I am not sure that is going to happen,” Els told reporters on Wednesday. Certainly, there are a number of events he likes and no one exemplifies the idea of “horses for courses” more than Tiger. Woods has dominated more golf courses than any golfer in the history of the sport. He’s won at least four times on the same course at seven different Tour stops: Cog Hill (former home of the BMW Championship) Firestone (WGC Bridgestone) Doral (WGC Cadillac) Muirfield Village (the Memorial) Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer Invitational) Augusta National (the Masters) and Torrey Pines (Farmers Insurance Open). The South African knows where his bread is buttered and who has held the spreader for the last couple of decades. “We would not be playing for the money we play for if it wasn’t for Tiger, so we have to thank him for that, for what he has done for the game and it can only be good if he plays well. ” Els praised Tiger for his achievements, observing that “It’s been 20 years since he won his first major at the Masters and it’s quite amazing what he has achieved. ” He added, Woods “has won 14 majors in that span and he was injured for at least three or four of those seasons, so it’s really a major for every year he has been healthy as a professional. That’s incredible. ”

Comment on What’s that strange lump embedded in Hillary Clinton’s face? by mildred.kraus

mildred.kraus

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn Hillary Clinton is like a chameleon . Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams , who’s a trained hypnotist and observer of facial nuances, calls it an “unusual level of variability” in her physical appearance. In his words, Hillary “looks like an entirely different person every few days. See “ Chameleon Hillary Clinton is back to looking like sh*t — and the return of her medical handler ” and “ Hillary Clinton’s teeth, tongue-hole & now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t wrinkles ” On Monday, October 24, 2016, Hillary Clinton was in St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire for a rally , accompanied by “Fauxcahontas” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Close-up images of her face show that she’s morphed again, back to yellow teeth and a face crisscrossed with wrinkles. What happened to the porcelain-doll Hillary with dazzling-white teeth of the July 2016 Democratic National Convention? But this time, at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, there’s something even stranger. Tuesday, Matt Drudge tweeted two close-up images of Hillary at the NH rally, which show something embedded under the skin of her right cheek . Here’s the tweet: Here are the two images again, enlarged. I painted yellow arrows pointing to the lumps: According to plastic surgeons , Botox injections don’t cause lumps under the skin. Dr. Richard Baxter explains that “Botox relaxes muscles that are hyperactive and so wrinkles caused by those muscles are smoothed,” but don’t lead to lumps. Dr. Janet Turkle says that although “Botox injections can result in temporary bumps due to the injection,” the bumps last “only a few minutes”. According to the American Academy of Facial Esthetics , however, “some of the risks of facial injections are lumps (granulomas/nodules) which are a potential risks [sic] associated with Radiesse, Sculptra, Juvederm, and ArteColl.” Facial injections are injections of facial fillers such as collagen, hyaluronic acid and calcium hydroxyl apatite that rejuvenate facial skin by reducing or eliminating wrinkles, raising scar depressions, enhancing lips and replacing soft-tissue volume loss. H/t FOTM ‘s TPR Dr. Eowyn’s post first appeared at Fellowship of the Minds 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:

Rachel Maddow: Trump ’Totally’ Could Have Leaked His Own 2005 Tax Return - Breitbart

Pam Key

Wednesday on ABC’s ‘The View,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said President Donald Trump “totally” could have leaked his own 2005 taxes, which she featured on her show last week. Maddow said, “It totally could’ve come from Trump, which is like such a bizarre human drama at the center of this. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that matters is, is that document real? That’s the story. ” ( RCP Video) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Football Follies 2016: NCAA Week 9

J.E. Dyer

Print Of all the weeks to turn in a late Follies post from your LU Football Commentary Service. We’ve already had two outcomes for our Inner Circle (more below, in case you’re still in suspense). But we’re also in a position to ask the eternal question: if Cal and USC play and no one pays attention, did anything happen? (FWIW, USC won, 45-24. Another Storied Rivalry settled for 2016. Cal ballcaps back in the closet, folks.) Next week: CFB rankings to lampoon. Tennessee whupped up on Jacksonville Thursday night in the pros. As nature seems to have intended this year. Get a defense, Jags. Inner circle The University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane (4-2), which beat Notre Dame 28-27 on 30 October 2010, will be at Memphis Saturday for an American West showdown. The Tigers are giving 6.5, but we think TU has a better shot than that. Should be a good game. Oklahoma, holding steady at #16, hosts Kansas (motto: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”) on Saturday evening, while laying a ridiculous 40.5. Has the betting fraternity been held in isolation for the last six weeks? Kansas isn’t nearly as bad as they were a year ago, and Oklahoma’s defense couldn’t stop a gum-wrapper chain if it were barreling down the field. Anything could happen, but this is just the sort of situation where Oklahoma ends up struggling in the final 2 minutes to stay on top of a 3-point lead. We’ll believe 40 when we see it. Oklahoma State gets to host #10 West Virginia, pride of the Big 12, in Stillwater early Saturday. As befits a ranked visitor facing a Gundy squad, the Mountaineers are giving, but not a lot – 3.5. That said, WVU could well find a way to rattle Cowboy QB Mason Rudolph. Game by game, the Mountaineers have tended to be a one-trick pony on defense this year, but they keep finding the right trick to get the job done. New #22 Navy will be squaring off with South Florida at Ray-Jay in Tampa by the time this goes to post. The 6-2 Bulls top the American East at the moment, while 5-1 Navy leads the American West, so there will be a lot of talk about a conference-champ preview. The Bulls scored 35 on Florida State in a wild early-season loss, but just took a bad dive last game against Temple. They’re favored by 6, but Navy’s likely to cover. (Umm. Well, any minute now, Navy’s going to start getting in the same hemisphere as “covering.” Good grief, Navy’s secondary just can’t keep up with these guys.) Army will be in Winston-Salem to take on Wake Forest Saturday, on the short end of 7. Wake could more than cover, but Army took a drubbing from North Texas last week, and will be out for blood. Key week to see if this year’s Black Knights are for real. Air Force , also coming off a painful loss to Hawaii, heads to Fresno State Friday evening for the late game. Falcons give 14.5. We think the Bulldogs will cover. Virginia Tech , back at #25 (for now), knocked off Pitt 39-36 in a rock-‘em-sock-‘em slugfest last night in Pittsburgh. Hard-fought battle with major yardage on both sides, but some intermittently impressive defense poking through as well. See what you can do, Hokies, when you don’t eat yourselves alive with penalties and turnovers? Nevada , we’re happy to say, has the week off. New #19 LSU is off this week as well, preparing for the rivalry bout with Alabama next week. For all you offense fans out there, TCU hosts Texas Tech on Saturday. We, personally, are going to be extremely disappointed if the combined total points clock in anywhere south of 130. Toads give 9.5. Kansas State is off to Iowa State to see what the Wildcats can do with the 1-6 Cyclones’ bad habit of losing. K-State is 4-3 and a solid shot for a bowl bid – but, still facing OK-State, Baylor, rival KU, and TCU down the stretch, they really want to add to the “W” column this weekend. Toledo is our other Thursday night winner, because we just know they had a Great Learning Experience coming in second to Ohio last night (31-26, for those with a thirst for data). Apparently it’s been quite a while since the Bobcats won in Toledo. Seemed to be all anybody could talk about. Rockets go to 6-2; their biggest conference game at division-leader (and #20) Western Michigan will be Thanksgiving week, and when they win that one, they may just get another crack at Ohio for the MAC crown. Wyoming hosts #13 Boise State, and it’s a measure of the Cowboys’ improved performance this year that the Broncos are only laying 13.5. It wouldn’t surprise us, exactly, for the Pokes to cover. Top 10 #1 Alabama is off, preparing as any sensible team would to meet LSU. New #2 Michigan heads to East Lansing for something they’ve been wanting to do since 2012: win the Paul Bunyan Trophy back from Michigan State. This is the year they can do it. The Wolverines give 24 at the moment. The 2-5 Spartans will play them tough, of course, but we’re figuring on Blue from out here in the cheap seats. And who cares if the trophy looks like a manly man’s Hummel figurine? There’s nothing foofy about, you know, collecting. In default of better options, Clemson is cycling back through #3, and takes on #12 FSU in Tallahassee, in the marquee slot on Saturday evening. Tigers give only 4, even though the ‘Noles haven’t been all that, recently. The one and only Paul Bunyan Trophy, in play once more. (Image: Wikipedia) New #4 Washington is at #17 Utah, giving 11. New #5 Louisville heads to Charlottesville with a gift of 33 for hapless Virginia. New #6 Ohio State, which owes us all an apology for upsetting the top 10 in this incontinent way, hosts Northwestern, giving 27.5. New #7 Nebraska will be at #11 Wisconsin, facing the real probability of losing top 10 standing in their Storied Rivalry game, not to mention the Freedom Trophy. Which may be Just A Trophy, but is discreetly attractive at least. Badgers give 9.5. Why they fight. (Image: UW Athletic Communications via Fox Sports) New #8 Baylor is at Texas, giving 3.5, and better watch its six. #9 Texas A&M hosts New Mexico State, which makes for a meeting of Aggies but doesn’t seem to have a lot of other merits. A&M is laying 43.5. Best of the rest We can’t vouch in advance for the football, but it’s always an exciting weekend when Florida (#14) and Georgia meet in their Storied Rivalry to fight for the Okefenokee Oar. #15 Auburn at Ole Miss might be kind of interesting. Miami at Notre Dame holds possibilities, featuring a tight 1.5-point spread (Arsh) and the usual primo slot on the Notre Dame Broadcasting Channel. The Okefenokee Oar’s glamour shot from its Facebook page. Other ranks In FCS, McNeese State hosts Abilene Christian for the Cowboy Homecoming on Saturday evening. Abilene Christian is 1-7 and sucks royally, but they are coming off their one win (over Incarnate Word), and McNeese has whiffed on some softballs this season. But Go Pokes! 70s and clear for the 6 PM game start. In Div II, Slippery Rock (5-3) heads to Clarion to take on PSAC rival Clarion U. on Saturday. The Eagles are 2-6 and have already had their obligatory losses to ranked powerhouses California U. (PA) and IUP. We don’t want to say it’s cake for Clarion from here on, but we do suspect SRU may be a tad more motivated. Little Clarion P-A (pop. 5,000) is northeast of Pittsburgh (and Slippery Rock), and just southwest of the Allegheny National Forest, where it will be in the 60s and clouding up something fierce for the noon kickoff. In Div III, Rose-Hulman , AKA The Bomb, is now 6-2 and perched atop the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference after the epic win over Franklin. The Fightin’ Engineers host Bluffton U. (OH) in Terre Haute on Saturday, in a game that could be a showstopper. The Beavers come in 6-1 (4-1 conference), and although they lost to Franklin, they beat RHIT’s archrival Mt. St. Joe in September. Fight hard, Engineers. 70s and overcast for the 1:30 PM kickoff. Christopher Newport , now 5-2 after the owwie at Frostburg State, could do itself some major good hosting Salisbury U. (MD) for Homecoming Saturday night. Salisbury (6-1) is second in the NJAC, behind Frostburg, but also ranked #17 in the Coaches’ Poll. See how easy? Vault Salisbury and Wesley (which CNU beat a few weeks ago) in the NJAC, and maybe surge back into the top 25. Well, it’s a goal. Topping out at 70, with clear skies, for the 4 PM game start. Merchant Marine has the week off. Pros Our Redskins lead us off Sunday morning, playing Cincinnati at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM PDT because they’ll be at Wembley Stadium in London. Bengals give 3. New Orleans hosts Seattle (-2.5) in the (godlier) early slot. San Diego and Denver are going to get right back on that horse in Sports Authority at Mile High, and we’d like to see the Broncos do something with their 4-point give this time. They did wallop the Texans, for what that’s worth. Dallas has a big one coming up Sunday night, hosting Philly in Arlington. The 5-point Cowboy advantage isn’t completely unjustifiable. Steelers have the week off. Monday night gives us Minnesota (-4.5) at Chicago.

Palestinians say ‘oui’ to Paris peace conference after Israel balks

Kaitlyn Stegall

November 8, 2016 Palestinians say ‘oui’ to Paris peace conference after Israel balks Palestinians on Monday welcomed a French plan to hold an international conference on the two-state solution in Paris at the end of December. “We have encouraged France to go ahead with its initiative and supported its efforts to have a multilateral conference before the end of the year,” PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said after meeting with French envoy Pierre Vimont in Ramallah. Email (will not be published) (required) Website Sow a seed to help the Jewish people Follow Endtime Copyright © 2016 All Rights Reserved Endtime Ministries | End of the Age | Irvin Baxter Endtime Ministries, Inc. PO Box 940729 Plano, TX 75094 Toll Free: 1.800.363.8463 DON'T JUST READ THE NEWS... understand it from a biblical perspective. Your Information will never be shared with any third party. Get a 2-year subscription, normally $29, now just $20.15. ONLY 500 deals are still available. Offer available while supplies last or it expires on December 31, 2015. close We are a small non-profit that runs a high-traffic website, a daily TV and radio program, a bi-monthly magazine, the prophecy college in Jerusalem, and more. Although we only have 35 team members, we are able to serve tens of millions of people each month; and have costs like other world-wide organizations. We have very few third-party ads and we don’t receive government funding. We survive on the goodness of God, product sales, and donations from our wonderful partners. Dear Readers, X close We have experienced tremendous growth in our web presence over the last five years. In fact, in 2010 we averaged 228,000 pageviews per month. Last year we averaged just over 2,000,000 pageviews per month. That’s an increase of 777% in five years! However, our servers and software are outdated, which causes downtime on occasion for many of you and additional work hours and finances to maintain for us at Endtime. Updating our servers and software as well as maintaining service for a year will cost us $42,000. If each person reading this gave at least $10, our bill to provide FREE broadcasting and resources to the world via our website would be covered for over a year! Learn more - Click Here ► Dear Readers,

Room 101

Better this than letting them regroup and counter.

If they don’t want to break up families, why do the encourage “unaccompanied minors?”

Dr. Patrick Slattery

175 Views Share: Commentary — Seriously, you always hear that we mustn’t deport people because it could break up families. Yet we are encouraging teenagers to run away from their families and try their luck on America’s streets! Latino Invasion Set for New Record The New Observer March 2, 2016 More than 17,000 “unaccompanied alien minors” had invaded the US over the Mexican border in the past few months, and the number of “family units” has increased to 21,000, the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security has been informed. The House was also told that if the present trends continue, there will be a 30 percent increase on the record number of 260,000 invaders who entered the US in 2014. “In the past few months the number of unaccompanied alien minors unlawfully entering the US soared to over 17,000 and the number of family units increased to 21,000,” Chair Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) informed the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security in a February 4 hearing on Capitol Hill. “If these trends continue it is predicted there will be a 30 percent increase in the record high numbers we witnessed in 2014.” The widespread criminal violence endemic in the nonwhite Third World countries to the south continues to be a major factor in the ongoing invasion, Omar Zamora, public affairs officer for the US Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector told the local KVUE TV station. “We’ve got gangs over there that are controlling the neighborhoods, controlling the cities,” Zamora said. Agents of the RRGV Sector, he said, “man the front lines of the battle against drug trafficking and human smuggling.” The US government has mounted an ad campaign along the Guatemala–Honduras border warning would-be invaders what to expect from human traffickers. According to Zamora, the human traffickers engage in everything from child molestation and rape to extortion and fraud. READ Cologne Police Officer Confirms: It was “Refugees” “I think the biggest misconceptions are, ‘Hey they’re just children down there, right? It’s a humanitarian crisis,’” said Zamora, “But what I want to stress is there’s the 50 percent of the other individuals that are running, that are fighting, that have criminal records.” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the House Border Security Caucus, told KVUE that “If people figure they have a 95 percent chance of being allowed to stay and work and get government benefits, they’re going to come no matter what they might hear on the street or on the radio or see in a leaflet.” In a February 23 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked agency Acting Chief Ronald Vitiello whether giving undocumented immigrants the impression they won’t be allowed to stay in the US without a legal claim would act as a deterrent and slow the flow of unauthorized crossings. “Yes, I believe that matters,” Vitiello answered.

Indian Software Mogul: Hire Americans Now Because Trump Opposes H-1B Outsourcing Visas - Breitbart

Neil Munro

A leading Indian software entrepreneur says Indian companies must accept President Donald Trump’s policies and must start hiring Americans instead of sending Indian visa workers into American job sites. [The startling Feb. 2 recommendation came from N. R. Narayana Murthy, the president and of the outsourcing firm, Infosys Limited, which has asked for more than 100, 000 work visas since 2013. The company uses the visas to send their Indian employees to work in U. S. banks, manufacturers and service companies throughout the United States. “We should stop using visas and [stop] sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services,” he said in an interview on an Indian affiliate of Microsoft’s MSN network. We have to recruit from colleges there, we have to train those local people [to work with] Indian companies … it is great opportunity for Indian companies to become more and more multicultural. Murthy’s televised concession appears as Indian and American companies rally to stop Trump from implementing his campaign promise to reform the outsourcing visa program. Roughly 650, 000 foreign workers are employed in a wide variety of jobs in the United States, including roughly 100, 000 as academics, teachers, doctors, therapists, scientists, and designers at American universities. Overall, roughly 1 million foreign are employed as contract workers in the United States, even as 800, 000 Americans graduate from college each year with skilled degrees to compete for jobs. Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump criticized the program, which is used by many American companies, including Comcast, Carnival, Disney, McDonalds, Caterpillar and Uber. The Indian firms usually rent their employees out to American companies. The increased supply of foreign graduates pushes many American professionals out of their careers, and pushes younger American graduates into different careers with lower salaries. The sidelined American professionals and their families have been a huge source of support for Trump among voters because of Trump’s promise to reform the program. Trump’s plan to reform the programs is expected to appear in the next few months, amid determined efforts by major U. S. companies — such as Microsoft and Google — to keep their reserve army of foreign professionals. On Friday, Trump met with top business advisors, many of whom oppose his January decision to exclude immigrants with “hostile attitudes. ” In his TV interview, Murthy said Indian companies must hire Americans to become global firms: I personally believe that Indian software companies must truly become multicultural. They must recruit American citizen [and] American residents in the U. S. they must recruit Canadians in Canada, British people in Britain, etc. That’s the only way we can become a true company and in order to do that, we should stop using visas and sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services. We have to recruit from college there, we have to train those local people [to work with] Indian companies. Therefore, I think, even if the [Trump] Executive Order comes, we should look at it more as an opportunity for Indian companies to become more multicultural … it is great opportunity for Indian companies to become more and more multicultural. Indian managers need to learn skills from American graduates, he said: I think by and large, the Indian mindset is always to take the soft option. … Our managers will have to learn with professionals … how to make sure that we understand the rules of crossing cultures. So therefore I think this is a learning opportunity for our senior people. This is not an easy option, it is s very tough option, but the earlier we start, the better it is for us. Companies also have to hire Americans because of legal risks, including Trump’s planned reform of the outsourcing program: This is the only way you can remove a very important risk, which is the risk of governments mandating things like the Executive Order that we are talking about. I would think risk mitigation is a very important duty of any [company] board, and I have no doubt that all the boards of Indian software companies will at least now start thinking of this as a very important risk and will take action to mitigate. The TV interviewer responded by saying, “I certainly hope that Indian companies are listening to that because you are the best person to advise them on the road ahead.“ But many Indians criticized Murthy’s advice as bad for their nation’s industry and as hypocritical, because he made his fortune and name by renting India’s cheap programmers to American companies. Major clients of Infosys:~ Bank of America~ Wells Fargo~ JP Morgan Chase~ Morgan Stanley#OutsourcedHypocrisyhttps: . — Dr. Sania 🇳 (@DrSaniaMaan) February 3, 2017, Murthy’s company is already facing legal threats in the United States because of its hiring practices. According to an November article in ComputerWorld, a judge has approved a lawsuit to proceed against Infosys for discriminating against Americans: The plaintiffs, four IT workers from around the U. S. brought their discrimination lawsuit against the IT services giant in 2013. This week, they filed a motion seeking certification from 2009, and say the potential pool of plaintiffs may be as large as 125, 000 … There were some 50 exhibits filed in this case, including one from a former Infosys recruiter who said, in a declaration, that in conference calls “many of the highly qualified American candidates we presented were being rejected in favor of Indian candidates. ” The company’s reliance on Indian workers may also have helped torpedo President Barack Obama’s disastrous Obamacare rollout: One plaintiff was hired by Infosys to work on a $49. 5 million Affordable Care Act, development project for the District of Columbia. There were about 100 Infosys employees working on the healthcare project, but only three were American, the lawsuit claimed. The plaintiff alleged harassment, and was denied promotion, the complaint said. U. S. officials say the program suffers from fraud and extensive corruption, especially in India where inflated resumes and faked documentation are used to get poorly trained and poorly paid Indian workers into American job sites. One U. S. government cable released via Wikileaks said that: fraud is one of the top two visa categories for fraud throughout Mission India. All posts regularly encounter inflated or fabricated educational and employment qualifications. The vast majority of these documents come from Hyderabad. In the 18 months prior to the of consular operations in Hyderabad, FPU Chennai investigated 150 companies in Hyderabad, 77 percent of which turned out to be fraudulent or highly suspect (ref F). Most of those cases slated for site visits were to verify the experience letters for applicants who did not meet minimum educational qualifications. Murthy’s recommendation to hire more Americans was cautiously welcomed by one American software expert, who was forced out of regular work in the early 2000s when companies began hiring from the pool of 500, 000 younger and cheaper contract workers now working in the sector. A recruiter for Infosys recently called him to talk about possible work, he said, but he remains skeptical: There are a lot of conversations going on, but until I confirm a start date and confirm compensation terms with the hiring company, it’s all nice . … Most of the job leads I on — I’m talking to someone clearly not born in the USA. This seems to me to be a structural discrimination based on national origin when American [ ] most of the time, find themselves talking to recruiters or hiring managers. It’s like our tech labor market has been colonized. Another American technology expert, who is a legal immigrant, told Breitbart News that the inflow of foreign workers has crushed career prospects for Americans, who are discriminated against because they are Americans and . I have been turned down by every single possible employer. Every job in Atlanta that is advertised by the [Atlanta Journal Constitution] says that you can ‘apply, even if you have a university degree from another country,’ meaning from India. Microsoft’s CEO is from India. Google has hundreds of Indian and foreigners that have taken our jobs from us, Comcast is doing the same, and so is Facebook, etc. … I am in perfect health, I have no defects, I have no criminal records, my credit score is perfect, I taught at very prestigious universities (taught math and computer science, applications, C++ English language and Spanish language. … A few years ago I was making $50 an hour with a major corporation in Atlanta … A few weeks ago I was willing to accept $21 an hour from [a company] working at their headquarters. I had four phone interviews. They were ready to offer me the job. Until they saw me in person. They discriminated as they thought I was ‘too old’ for them. They said to the recruiter, that ‘I was going to get bored with the Job.’ I feel I was … I have two small children to feed and clothe. How could I allow myself to get bored? visa workers are used throughout the American economy, and there is no annual cap on the number of visas, or or OPT visa graduates which can be brought into the United States. Companies are not required to interview or hire Americans before they hire foreign and are not required to pay them market wages, and in some case, are not required to pay some taxes. Also, each year, companies are allowed to provide a huge bonus to as many as 150, 000 foreign contract workers who have worked long hours — the very valuable prize of U. S. citizenship for the workers and their family. The numbers and jobs of workers are tracked at this website. Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart. com

Police: Engaged Boston Doctors Murdered in Penthouse - Breitbart

Katherine Rodriguez

Two Boston doctors were allegedly murdered in their penthouse Friday night, police said on Sunday. The victims were reportedly engaged to be married. [Boston Police Department responded to a call about “a suspect with a gun at a luxury condominium in South Boston” where Dr. Richard Field and Dr. Lina Bolanos lived. Police said the suspect “immediately began firing at the officers,” NBC News reported. The suspect is Bampumim Teixeira, who reportedly missed shooting the police officers however, police fired back at him multiple times, wounding the suspect in the process. Officers took him into custody and took him to Tufts Medical Center where he is undergoing treatment for injuries that are not considered the Daily Mail reported. Officers found the bodies of Field, 49, and Bolanos, 38, with both of their throats slit and their hands bound when they entered the apartment. The Boston Globe reports that police found blood and a “message of retribution” on the walls of the apartment, along with photos of the two doctors cut into pieces. Police say the victims and the killer knew each other, but the police have not yet to pin down a motive for the killings, WCVB reports. CBS Boston reports that the apartment building was not lacking in security either — the building required the use of a special key to get inside and use the elevator. Field worked as a pain management specialist at North Shore Pain Management where his colleagues said he was known for his “tireless devotion. ” “Dr. Field was a guiding vision at North Shore Pain Management and was instrumental in the creation of this practice, in 2010,” the company said in a statement. They also noted that he “was noted for his tireless devotion to his patients, staff, and colleagues. ” Prior to working at North Shore, he worked as an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist at Beverly Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Bolanos worked as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary where she was regarded as “outstanding” in her profession and as an anesthesiology instructor at Harvard Medical School. “The entire Mass. Eye and Ear community is deeply saddened by the deaths of Dr. Lina Bolanos and her fiancé,” the hospital’s CEO John Fernandez said in a statement. “Dr. Bolanos was an outstanding pediatric anesthesiologist and a wonderful colleague in the prime of both her career and life. ” NBC Boston reports that Teixeira will undergo arraignment Monday and that police expect he will face multiple charges. Teixeira recently served nine months out of a prison sentence for two counts of larceny that he pleaded guilty to in September 2016.

Mexican Governor Fighting U.S. Extradition for Cartel Case

Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby

The accused former governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas claimed in Italian court that he does not want to be extradited to the U. S. for multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The politician faces allegations of being a surrogate of Mexico’s Gulf, Los Zetas, and Beltran Leyva Cartels. [According to information provided Italian authorities, Yarrington made a court appearance on Wednesday to announce his wishes against extradition. He will remain in an Italian prison as a flight risk to the U. S. Department of Justice until the matter is settled. As Breitbart Texas reported, Yarrington was charged out of the U. S. Southern District of Texas on multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The allegations in the indictment point to Yarrington having worked for various Mexican cartels while serving as governor of Tamaulipas. While U. S. agents tracked him down for years, Mexican authorities gave the politician official protection details. On Sunday, agents with Homeland Security Investigations and Italian police arrested Yarrington in at a restaurant. The arrest was based on the investigation done by U. S. authorities and the Italian government however, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) issued a news release taking credit for the collar and claiming that Yarrington would be returned home. The claims by the PGR were proven to be lies by Breitbart Texas this week when it quoted diplomatic officials revealing that the arrest was solely a U. S. based operation. Soon after, the PGR tried to backtrack by stating they provided information beneficial in locating Yarrington. One day later, Breitbart Texas reported that Mexican officials told the DOJ that they would not oppose Yarrington’s extradition to the U. S. While the PGR tried to claim the story was not accurate, Reforma published documents proving that PGR had once again lied. The PGR again issued a series of news releases to “clarify” previous statements. One release by the PGR revealed that the agency requested Yarrington’s extradition two days after his arrest, while the U. S. acted much earlier. Breitbart Texas has since learned that the request filed by Mexico is only a temporary hold and is not considered a formal extradition document. In an apparent attempt to ease tensions between the two countries Wednesday, both the PGR and DOJ issued a joint news release claiming they “are working together on a legal strategy which will allow Tomas Yarrington to face justice in both countries. ” Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Pro-sovereignty Legislators Demand That Administration End Border Anarchy

Brenda Walker

bluuder

He is alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iO8YZLwqlY

Cyprus Fears Russian Meddling in Its Settlement Talks - The New York Times

Andrew Higgins

NICOSIA, Cyprus — As the United Nations geared up for negotiations that it declared the “best and last chance” to unite Cyprus after more than four decades of acrimonious division, Russia’s ambassador attended a seminar dedicated to derailing any prospect of an agreement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The presence of the ambassador, Stanislav Osadchiy, delighted Greek Cypriot politicians in Nicosia, the capital of the south of the divided island. They had helped torpedo a 2004 reunification plan supported by the United States and have now rallied together to defeat a new push for a settlement that began on Jan. 12 with an international conference in Geneva. But Mr. Osadchiy’s attendance at the seminar, which Western and other diplomats shunned, angered Nicos Anastasiades, the president of the Republic of Cyprus and a strong supporter of efforts to resolve an interethnic dispute as intractable and nearly as protracted as the conflict. In an interview in Nicosia, Mr. Anastasiades said that, when questioned, the ambassador had apologized and said he had misunderstood the nature of the seminar, despite its clear agenda and the fact that it had been organized by five small political parties all bitterly opposed to a compromise deal in Geneva. The president said he accepted the ambassador’s explanation and his insistence that he had not meant to endorse the rejectionists by attending. But, Mr. Anastasiades added, “I consider any intervention by any third country as not what we are looking for. ” Like countless previous diplomatic efforts to reunite Cyprus since Turkey invaded in 1974 and split the country in two, the recent Geneva talks failed to achieve a breakthrough, though they did make some progress. Mr. Anastasiades said the two sides were “halfway” to an agreement but still had deep divisions, notably on the issue of whether Turkey, Greece and Britain, the former colonial master, should retain their status as “guarantors” of the island’s security, a setup that Russia rejects. Bound to Russia by a shared Orthodox Christian faith and its role as a financial and banking center for Russian business, the Republic of Cyprus, the nation in the south of the island, has long looked to Moscow as a protector rather than a troublemaker. But accusations that Moscow intervened to skew the United States presidential election and supported forces across Europe have stirred a wave of alarm about Russia in the European Union, of which the Republic of Cyprus is a member. This alarm, which Russia dismisses as Russophobic hysteria, has given new force to voices in Cyprus warning that Russia’s geopolitical interests have made it determined to upset a Cyprus settlement. Makarios Drousiotis, a researcher who has long bucked sentiment in Cyprus and sought to expose what he sees as Russian meddling, said events in the United States and Europe were shaking his compatriots’ view that Moscow had only their best interests at heart. “What they have been doing in America and Europe they have been doing for 50 years in Cyprus,” said Mr. Drousiotis, who in 2014 published a book, “The Cyprus Crisis and the Cold War,” that demolished what he called a “myth” that the West is to blame for Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island and the decades of division that followed. The book, denounced by Russia’s diplomatic mission in Nicosia as “politically unacceptable,” portrayed Moscow as a duplicitous partner that had for decades used disinformation, front organizations and other tools of subterfuge to woo support among while working behind the scenes to stoke tensions to ensure that Cyprus never aligned too firmly with the West or became a NATO member. To Moscow’s fury, this once taboo view that Russia wants to block a settlement has in recent weeks been discussed openly in some Cypriot media outlets. The Cyprus Mail, for example, described Russia’s ambassador, Mr. Osadchiy, as “the darling” of forces “because he regularly says things aimed at undermining the talks or making the pursuit of a deal more difficult. ” Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Moscow was “surprised by the comments in the Cyprus media” and accused the media of creating “a smoke screen for the real problems that need to be tackled as part of the Cypriot settlement. ” Mr. Drousiotis said the Russian ambassador’s apparent support for rejectionist politicians ahead of the Geneva talks fit a long, but previously mostly ignored, pattern. “Every time there has been an attempt to solve the Cyprus issue, the Russians have jumped in to block a settlement,” Mr. Drousiotis said. A solution in Cyprus would end a deep rift within NATO between Turkey and Greece, both members, and open the way to the development of large gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean that could upset the grip of Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, on the Turkish market. Turkey imports nearly 99 percent of its natural gas, more than half from Russia, its biggest supplier by far. Gas from Egyptian, Israeli and Cypriot fields in the Mediterranean would be cheaper than supplies from Gazprom, but it has little chance of reaching Turkish consumers so long as arguments over territorial waters and other matters between Greek and Turkish Cypriots obstruct the development of pipelines. In 2004, ahead of a referendum in Cyprus on whether to accept a reunification plan proposed by Kofi Annan, who was the secretary general of the United Nations at the time, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution relating to security arrangements on the island that all other Council members supported. Hopes for the Annan plan then took another big blow when AKEL, the influential communist party in southern Cyprus, dropped its previous support and, on the eve of the referendum, urged voters to reject the plan, as did the Orthodox Church. In the end, the north voted to accept the plan, while voters in the south rejected it. Yet another international effort collapsed after hackers penetrated the United Nations computer system and, in 2009, leaked emails and documents to a Cypriot newspaper. Some of the documents were doctored in a way that inflamed fears of any settlement. The United Nations concluded that only a foreign intelligence service could have orchestrated such an operation. Mr. Anastasiades, speaking at the presidential palace in Nicosia, said that his country counted Russia as a friend, but that it had to take care not to give fuel to those who questioned Russia’s intentions, as the ambassador did by attending the seminar. Russia has responded angrily to accusations that it has been working against its own stated policy in favor of a Cyprus solution. Vladimir A. Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, issued a scathing statement on Jan. 13 to denounce what he called “preposterous” reports that Russia wanted to block a settlement. “Evidently, hysteria is becoming contagious. Overzealous fighters of the (dis) information front are working day and night trying to implicate Russia in all sorts of problems, including those that are the direct result of shortsighted and arrogant policies of others,” Mr. Chizhov, a veteran diplomat who earlier served at the embassy in Nicosia, said in the statement. Harry Tzimitras, director of the Nicosia branch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said many obstacles blocked a settlement irrespective of Russia, notably the gulf between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the issue of whether the Turkish military should be allowed to keep troops on the island after reunification. “The fundamental mistrust” between the two sides, Mr. Tzimitras said, is the main reason for the failure of decades of diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement. “In Cyprus, you rarely fight facts,” he said. “You fight perceptions and ghosts. ” All the same, he added, some think that Russia has many reasons, despite its public position, to want the island to stay divided. “In this view, the status quo is working very well for Russia,” Mr. Tzimitras said. “They don’t want it disrupted. ” Aside from strengthening NATO and damaging Gazprom, a reunification deal would deliver a success to the United States, whose diplomats have been particularly active in trying to prod Greece, Turkey and their ethnic kin in Cyprus toward an agreement. Mr. Anastasiades said the main obstacle to a solution was Turkey, whose increasingly autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently said Turkish troops must be allowed to stay in Cyprus “forever. ” Mr. Anastasiades has forged good relations with the leader of northern Cyprus, Mustafa Akinci, but, he said, “the solution does not depend on the Turkish Cypriots but on Ankara’s will. ” The issue of troops is tightly connected with another big hurdle — demands by Mr. Anastasiades, urged on by Russia, that Turkey, Greece and Britain be stripped of their role as guarantors. Moscow has long wanted to scrap this system, continuing a policy that was based in part on its desire to weaken the role of Britain, a NATO member that has military bases and a listening post in Cyprus. Mr. Anastasiades said it was up to Mr. Erdogan to decide what he wanted. “His rhetoric is that he is in favor, but what remains to be seen is whether in practice he is supporting a solution,” Mr. Anastasiades said. As for Russia and the United States, Mr. Anastasiades said, Cyprus understands “the games superpowers play. ” “We want the support of everyone who can give support,” he added. “It is a matter of survival. ”

Attkisson’s Feb 19 ’Full Measure’ Investigates VA Contractor Accused of Cheating Veterans - Breitbart

Dan Riehl

On her February 19th episode of “Full Measure,” host Sharyl Attkisson investigates new concerns involving the Department of Veterans Affairs. Attkisson examines allegations in a lawsuit against a Veterans Administration contractor getting millions of taxpayer dollars while accused of cheating veterans. [Cleaning up the Department of Veterans Affairs was one of the main themes of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Attkisson’s “Full Measure” provided Breitbart News the following excerpts of her upcoming show. Born in Iran, David Vatan attended medical school and came to live in the U. S. He got a job in California working for a VA contractor under Lockheed Martin: QTC Medical Services. Vatan’s job was to review medical files of Vietnam vets to see if they’re eligible for payments for injuries from Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide used to remove leaves from trees in jungles where the enemy hid. Vatan: By reviewing their files, I was honored and I felt that I, there is a purpose in what I do and at the end of the day every day, I felt so good if I reviewed a file and I found the evidence that could benefit our veterans. That’s the least I could do. Sharyl: So their ability to get payments or benefits hinged on the reviews that people like you were doing, of their medical files? Vatan: Absolutely. But Vatan says he quickly saw major problems at QTC: large numbers of vets denied benefits after he says their medical files weren’t properly reviewed. Sharyl: What made you think that something wasn’t right? Vatan: I noticed that some of my are reviewing claim folders a lot faster than I did, and then I realize some of them do not have the necessary background to review and understand the highly complex medical records. And, much to my surprise, some of them had only high school education. QTC got $300 to $350 per file. The faster the analysts worked, the more money QTC made. Sharyl: How many files do you think could reasonably be reviewed in a day? Vatan: Five or six based on my observation. Sharyl: But some people were doing fifty? Vatan: Fifty and sixty. QTC staff emails confirmed the files were being pushed through in what Vatan sees as impossibly fast: “We are running behind,” the staff were told. “We were 30 short. ” “We did not do well yesterday. ” “We need to make it up today. ” Vatan reported his concerns to QTC’s senior leadership and parent company, LockheedMartin. Vatan: I approached the management and I was challenged, and then I approached the Lockheed Martin ethics office. Sharyl How did you tell Lockheed Martin what you thought was wrong? Vatan: I told them I believe it’s unethical, unprofessional and as a result, based on the statistics that they have released, it’s unacceptable. Sharyl: The company was getting a huge amount of tax dollars to conduct these reviews? Vatan: Absolutely. I think it’s close to 50 million dollars. That’s your tax money. Sharyl: What would they say? Vatan: They say, “We’ll look into it,” and they conducted several interviews with me, of course the ethics office did, and they took their time and then eventually they send me an email. They said, “your allegations were unsubstantiated. ” After blowing the whistle, Vatan says he faced harassment and retaliation. QTC’s CEO admonished him for “creating a disruptive work environment. ” He was eventually fired for misconduct, which he denies. Vatan filed a whistleblower suit in federal court, alleging fraud and retaliation. The case was dismissed. He’s appealing. Vatan: I felt that not only they’re defrauding for our government, but also at the same time they’re scamming and screwing our veterans. Rep. Phil Roe, : If what he says is true, then these claims have not been properly adjudicated. Congressman Phil Congressman Phil Roe, Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is looking into the handling of Agent Orange claims and Vatan’s allegations. Rep. Roe: I think it needs to be investigated. I think we need to look at it. We certainly have asked the VA for an explanation for it here. QTC has been under scrutiny before. A 2008 audit by the Inspector General found QTC overcharged taxpayers more than $6 million for vets’ medical exams. Yet four years later, QTC got the lucrative government contract to review Agent Orange claims. Rep. Roe: I think the veterans deserve more for the money we’re spending. The VA didn’t respond to Attkisson’s interview requests. Also, QTC declined to comment “due to ongoing litigation. ” Dr. Vatan hopes his story will make the VA and its contractors more accountable, and he still sees the U. S. as among the best countries the world. Sharyl: I see you’re wearing an American pin, an American flag. Why is that? Vatan: I’m proud of this country. It’s one of the safest countries in the world and the safety and security that we all enjoy, we owe it to our veterans because they fought the wars outside of our border in the past. Though QTC and Lockheed Martin wouldn’t talk with Attkisson, their lawyers argued in court, “There is nothing inherently wrong with QTC encouraging people to work quickly. ” QTC said Vatan’s level wasn’t the final say in reviews, because files were then sent to doctors hired for that purpose. They noted that Vatan was part of the first step review, because although he has a medical degree, he did not have a license. The main “Full Measure” website is here and the February 19 show will be available here. “Full Measure” airs Sunday on Sinclair stations nationwide and is streamed live on Sundays at 9:30 a. m. ET at www. fullmeasure. news.

The Art of Flavor at Flora Bar in the Met Breuer - The New York Times

Pete Wells

I’m on the verge of giving up trying to explain why Ignacio Mattos’s food is so good. I once wrote that the cooking at his first restaurant, now closed, dabbled in “deep, surrealist weirdness. ” At Estela, the place on Houston Street that put him on the map, I described his food as “almost familiar, but not quite. ” What struck me at his most recent restaurant, Café Altro Paradiso, was “the inverse relationship between prettiness and deliciousness. ” (What I ate was unpretty and highly delicious.) In retrospect, nothing I wrote captured the qualities that made the food compelling. I latched on to visual style because I couldn’t figure out how to explain why the flavors grabbed me the way they did. After spending some time at Flora Bar, which Mr. Mattos opened in October, I’ve started to think that whatever it is that sets his food apart is something you can’t see. It’s a kind of cooking that’s almost invisible. Flora Bar is inside the Met Breuer museum, Marcel Breuer’s blunt and muscular stack of granite and concrete on Madison Avenue in the 70s, regarded as a masterpiece of the brutalist style. “The taste for its disconcertingly inverted pyramidal mass grows on one slowly,” the architecture critic for The New York Times, Ada Louise Huxtable, wrote in 1966, “like a taste for olives or warm beer. ” The food at Flora Bar is much easier to like than warm beer. Under the direction of Jake Nemmers, the executive chef, it comes out of the kitchen in a series of tidily formal circles and squares. The rough edges of the cooking at Altro Paradiso and Estela have been refined, which makes it even more astonishing when the flavors come at you out of nowhere. A simple red disc on a white plate, Flora Bar’s tuna tartare isn’t like any I’ve had before it pops with toasted flax seeds and crunches with fried shallots, neither of which hides the clean, cold taste of chopped yellowfin tuna. Flora Bar does not quite reinvent tuna tartare the way Estela reinvents beef tartare, but it comes closer than you’d think was possible. Steak comes with béarnaise and beet hunks. The beets look a little wrinkled, like prunes, and have an uncannily focused flavor. The béarnaise is silky and light on the herbs. The steak looks like steak, sliced. It is tender, and the flavor goes on and on as you chew, yet it doesn’t have the stink of beef. Something must have happened to make it so extraordinary, but the answer is not visible. (The beef has been given, among other treatments, a surreptitious marination in fish sauce.) How can a shrimp cocktail hold any surprises? Well, there’s the price, $29, which may be a record. But then there’s the astonishingly fine flavor and texture of the blue shrimp themselves, glossy and appealingly slippery on a bed of ice pebbles. They’re terrific, and so is their dark, uncloying cocktail sauce. Note the name. Flora Bar is, when you get down to it, less a restaurant than a wine bar. The plates are almost all small even the steak, which could pass as a main course, is a far cry from a steakhouse portion. Flora Bar is not trying to be a utilitarian cafe for museum patrons who knocked themselves out taking in Kerry James Marshall’s show upstairs and now want a cheap, filling meal. That job goes to Flora Coffee next door, where you can get sandwiches and pastries during the day. The wine list at Flora Bar is about as exhaustive as any artist’s career retrospective. It contains multitudes, and in three visits, I barely scratched the surface. And I left the shelves and shelves of tempting, knowledgeably chosen spirits mostly untouched, apart from the slug of gin that went into my very soothing Tuxedo No. 2 cocktail. As wine bars go, it’s somewhat stiff. The service can be punctilious in a way that I imagine is meant to appeal to the Upper East Sider, but fans of Estela (and there are many Upper East Siders in that group) may find it slightly . Or Mr. Mattos and his business partner, Thomas Carter, may just be trying to live up to the space. It’s an exceptionally dramatic one, with marble surfaces and banquettes of dark leather and windows the size of billboards that look out on Breuer’s bridge across the moat below Madison Avenue. A sculpture garden when this building still housed the Whitney Museum of American Art, the moat is now an outdoor extension for Flora Bar. I miss the art, but the tables look inviting enough to make me come back when the weather warms up. The menu is part tapas, part sashimi and part something else. On the tapas side, we have wonderfully crunchy croquetas with a soft core of warm raclette, pink shavings of jamón Ibérico, and a plate of anchovies, three cured in oil and three in brine. The quality is impeccable if you can get over paying $18 for six anchovies. I couldn’t. Representing sashimi, there is shimmering raw seafood, some of it on or under squares of nori. You’re meant to treat the nori like a tortilla. A month ago, the filling in this taco was raw scallops and a salty streak of plum paste, and I was quietly happy. When I went back, the nori covered sticky raw red shrimp and sea urchin, and I went completely giddy. It took me a minute to warm up to another raw dish, the lobster crudo. Raw lobster is not something you naturally want to cuddle up with. Here it is chopped with shiso and molded into a disc, ready to be swabbed in a mayonnaise. It’s refined and almost comforting. As for something else, you tell me how to characterize raclette and golden slices of rutabaga over a thin, buttery tart shell, or an omelet that is in fact cooked in a thin disc, inverted on to the plate down, and then topped with spoonfuls of hackleback caviar, firm trout roe and crème fraîche. There’s a fine line between simple and dull, and one or two dishes fell on the wrong side. Stracciatella with lemon peel and cubes of fennel struck me as an ordinary burrata salad traveling under an alias. Halibut with wild mushrooms was no more than the sum of its parts, although they were very good parts. Natasha Pickowicz’s desserts sound safe but can be daring. Mandarin sorbet in a kind of cradle made of coconut was served with a yuzu sauce so sour it made me sit up straight. After the initial shock, I loved it. If I’d expected the parfait of chocolate and amarena cherries to be a layered dessert served in a tall glass, like other parfaits, I was wrong. This was chocolate, as dense as ganache, and served in the shape of, you guessed it, a disc.

REVEALED: Town in the heart of Europe where ONLY Arabic can be spoken and Arabs can live

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By LAURA MOWAT Locals are fuming because they are are only allowed into the site in the south-eastern Europe country if they are servants or cleaners. The complex is surrounded by heavy security, gates and high walls and the locals think it is unlawful for foreigners to buy up part of the country and then ban them from entering. Women reportedly bring up their children there and their husbands are just occasional visitors. Investors from the Middle East built the 160-home luxury estate near Tarcin, which is close to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The homes, which are being marketed in Kuwait, are being sold for £133,000. Adverts for the homes call Bosnia a Muslim country “gifted with beautiful nature by Allah”. An estate agent told

MILO: Trump Slims Down Lena Dunham. Is There Anything He Can’t Do? - Breitbart

Milo

Lena Dunham claims (claims!) she is losing weight because Donald Trump has convinced her not to eat. The Catholic church won’t declare a person a saint until after their death, but if this extraordinary statement is true, maybe a miracle of this magnitude deserves an exception? [Dunham revealed the news on the Howard Stern Show, during which the actress went through her tired routine of explaining that promising to move to Canada was “just a joke. ” She also said Hillary Clinton was “the best qualified candidate we’ve ever had. ” But in the middle of her schtick, an amazing revelation emerged. Lena said “Donald Trump became president and I stopped being able to eat food … Everyone’s been asking like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, try pain and devastation and hopelessness and you, too, will lose weight. ” Now that we’ve collectively pulled ourselves together, stopped guffawing and picked the sick out of our keyboards, let’s unpack that statement for a moment. None of us really believes that Lena Dunham can stay off cheeseburgers for long. But if it is true, Trump’s achievement is on par with curing the sick and returning sight to the blind. You’ll recall that when Lena made disgusting comments about abortion, her excuse was that they were said as part of a “delusional girl persona” she “often inhabits. ” Perhaps these weight loss comments were made as part of another persona, one that doesn’t want to die lonely and far too young due to obesity and feminism … but I repeat myself. I’ve had my with Dunham. Without a doubt she is one of the best examples of how feminism attracts ugly women. I even offered to buy her ticket to Canada before she explained it was all of course just a joke. Before the election, I used my Dangerous Faggot college tour stop at Ohio University to point out something Dunham was serious about — the extinction of white men. Maybe the real reason she’s lost her appetite is that she realized her antics directly contributed to Daddy’s election! A reasonable person at this point would say, “Why should we pay any attention to Lena Dunham at all?” And it is a fair question. Her HBO series Girls is long gone, and her lack of comedic chops and acting skill ensures she won’t have a serious career outside of small parts given to her out of pity and ideological sisterhood by producers and directors. As President Donald Trump correctly put it,”Well, she’s a . You know, she has no — you know, no mojo. ” One could argue she has no mojo because that would be cultural appropriation from indigenous tribes, but either way, she certainly lacks the elusive star factor needed in Hollywood. But I’d argue Lena Dunham is an important person to keep an eye on, even now, because she represents the continued lunacy of the left and the progressive march off the cliff. They’ve doubled down on stupidity, and little lost Lena is a perfect case study of the terrible . (I say “keep an eye on,” but I mean this metaphorically. Even a few Lena Dunham photos can cause irreparable mental scarring and random malfunctions in the optic nerve.) Dunham has also revealed herself to be something of a chameleon, which is another reason we ought not count her out just yet. Consider the drastic changes she has undergone since the election. In the past she was content to be a typical feminist and an ugly poster child for the body positivity movement. But since the election she has vomited forth a steady stream of hysteria and worse. Her immediate reaction to the election was to blame her fellow white women for the loss, inventing a new privilege called violent privilege to do so. It is certainly instructive that the sisterhood falls apart at the first sign of trouble. Dunham then posted a selfie while sitting on a toilet in December. It was a torrid cry for help from a frightened little girl — not a brave move from an empowered woman. She had no clue why people didn’t applaud her for it, either. Just a few weeks into the Trump presidency and the porcine princess of progressive politics is on hunger strike. What’s not to love? And what could be coming next? It’s all just so exciting. Because the deterioration of Lena’s piddling reserves of sanity is speeding up. Will she next be spotted “punching a Nazi” (i. e. anyone to the right of Jane Fonda)? Will she run for the Senate against Al Franken, because he isn’t unfunny enough to be the left’s former star in Washington? Who can say! I guess there’s a chance she will calm down and moderate her politics instead of attempting to further divide America. But realistically, there is a higher chance of me doing a photoshoot naked in a public bathroom eating cake. Not that such a shoot wouldn’t be, like, super hot. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! Follow Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Hear him every Friday on The Milo Yiannopoulos Show. Write to Milo at milo@breitbart. com.

Trump Calls for Investigation into the Clintons’ Russian Ties

Jerome Hudson

President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday evening and asked why aren’t congressional lawmakers probing the various deals, transactions, and connections former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have to Russia. [“Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech,” read Trump’s first tweet, which was followed by, “ … money to Bill, the Hillary Russian “reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!” Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech … . — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017, … money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ”reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017, Trump’s assertion that of State Clinton “allowed big Uranium to go to Russia” and Bill Clinton’s “Russian speech” were allegations first reported by The New York Times (NYT) and based on research from the NYT bestseller Clinton Cash, authored by Breitbart News Peter Schweizer. The facts found in Clinton Cash, reported by the NYT, and deemed accurate by establishment media reveal how Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State coincided with the influx of tens of millions of dollars from foreign sources into the Clinton Foundation which resulted in favorable actions for Russia’s government. Indeed the Clinton Foundation had received millions in donations from several investors in Uranium One, a company in which a majority stake was sold to Russia’s nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, in a lucrative deal needing approval from Clinton’s State Department and eight other federal agencies. “The sale gave the Russians control of of all uranium production capacity in the United States,” The New York Times confirmed. The “deal,” as Trump points out, refers to how donations to the Clinton Foundation from executives of Uranium One had exceeded $145 million, according to the New York Times. In fact, those Clinton Foundation donations from uranium investors spiked just as the deal for Russia’s Rosatom to secure Uranium One was being finalized. A troublesome series of undisclosed donations came from former Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer. Telfer made four foreign donations totaling $2. 35 million to the Clinton Foundation while the uranium deal was being negotiated. However, the Times noted, “those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. ” “We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them,” The Clinton Foundation admitted at the time. But Hillary Clinton’s failure to disclose the millions in donations her family foundation received from Teller was a direct violation of the Memorandum of Understanding she signed with the Obama administration promising to disclose all foreign donations during her tenure as Secretary of State. More troubling still, was the $500, 000 speech Bill Clinton delivered in Moscow that was paid for by “a Russian investment bank that had ties to the Kremlin” at the time of the Uranium One deal, the New Yorker confirmed. “Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was Secretary of State?” asks the liberal publication. Trump’s calls for a federal investigation into the Clintons’ Russia ties come amid a partisan push to link the President and his aides to Russian and collusion during the presidential campaign. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

SHOCK: NYT Goes Gutter… Accuses Trump of Victimizing Little Girl

Wilmot Proviso

BREAKING: Soros Election Tampering Explodes… Illegally Funneling Cash I am very sorry when children have nightmares. I don’t want children to have nightmares. Nobody on Conservative Tribune’s staff wants children to have nightmares. I think I can safely stake that out as our editorial policy without consulting too many of my superiors. However, from that starting point on which Ms. Schmidt and I can surely agree, here are two reasons why I believe this story is prima facie bosh. Firstly, I question the genesis of this nightmare, and I find it unbelievable that the writer didn’t. Did Schmidt not think that the child’s bad dreams might have been the result not of the perfidy of Donald Trump but of the political leanings and discussions of her parents? If she did, does she not feel that maybe the tone of the piece was out of line? Secondly, let’s assume that these parents have been completely unbiased in presenting the election to their children (which I find an unlikely possibility, but hey, it could happen). The world can be a nightmarish place — and unfortunately, one of the things that makes it that way is an extremist movement connected, however tangentially you believe it to be, to their religion. If you want to talk about bad dreams, talk to survivors of the San Bernardino terrorist attack . Talk to survivors of the Boston bombing. Talk to survivors of 9/11 . These people have very real nightmares, sometimes each and every night, about very corporeal things done to them in the name of Islam — and they’re the ones who survived . These aren’t idle thoughts. They are concrete events. For that matter, it’s worth pointing out that the same terrorists probably wish to perpetrate the same nightmarish fate (or worse) on this 7-year-old and her family, simply for the crime of being Westernized. Is this what we wish to ignore in the name of making Donald Trump our national bogeyman? If Schmidt is so concerned about the nightmares that Trump’s candidacy is giving 7-year-olds, perhaps she ought to go talk to grown men and women who still have those nightmares, thanks to radical Islamic terrorism. If the topic of radical Islamism and how to prevent it is so traumatizing to your children, it’s time to turn off the TV instead of blaming those willing to address it. Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree The New York Times’ story is balderdash. What are your thoughts on this story? Scroll down to comment below! Advertisement Popular Right Now

Sisi: Israeli-Palestinian Deal A Top Priority for Egypt

Breitbart Jerusalem

The Times of Israel reports: Egyptian President told a delegation from an umbrella group of US Jewish groups that reaching an end to the conflict is one of his top priorities. [Meeting in Cairo, Sissi told representatives from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that reaching a peace deal would remove a main impetus behind terror attacks. Sunday’s meeting came as an Israeli media report detailed a secret summit between Sissi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah and US secretary of state John Kerry last year aimed at cobbling together a regional peace initiative. Read more here.

VIDEO : Watters World Interviews Delicate NYC “Snowflakes” Post-Election

EdJenner

Go to Article Liberals are a mess right now. They’re either crying like babies or raging like third-world anarchists on a violent bender, as they burn down cities and attack pregnant women with baseball bats. Fox News Jesse Watters went into the hub of liberal madness – New York City – to check in on the snowflakes post-election. Watch the video: Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. Comment on this Article Via Your Facebook Account Comment on this Article Via Your Disqus Account Follow Us on Facebook!

UN failed to organize evacuation of civilians from rebel-held Aleppo

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 08:27 UTC Aleppo destruction Russia's ambassador to the United Nations has criticized UN's failure to properly organize humanitarian evacuations of the wounded from terrorist-held areas of Aleppo. The UN envoy to Syria defended the team, pinning the blame on the warring parties. "We regret to note that the United Nations has not properly worked out an operation to evacuate the sick and the wounded," Vitaly Churkin noted at the UN Security Council session, according to RIA. The ambassador added that the UN work with various opposition groups in Aleppo and the local council was "left to take care of itself." He stressed that the UN personnel did not "exert the necessary pressure" on "sponsors" of illegal armed groups to convince them to cooperate with the aid workers on the ground. Besides criticizing the UN team, the Russian envoy also accused entities that have influence over fighters in besieged neighborhoods of Aleppo of not applying enough pressure on the militants to make the most of the Russian-Syrian humanitarian pause. "External patrons of entrenched groups in eastern Aleppo could not or did not want positively influence the fighters and convince them to stop the shooting, to release civilians or leave the city themselves," Churkin said. The ambassador noted that militants in Aleppo continue to get supplies and arms, including portable surface-to-air shoulder launchers (MANPADs) and missiles. The humanitarian pause was introduced in Aleppo on October 20, as Syrian and Russian jets halted all strikes in the vicinity of the city. While only an estimated ten percent of the city's populace live in terrorist-held Eastern Aleppo, Moscow is doing everything possible to secure the evacuation of civilians. Those civilians who want to leave jihadist-held areas may use six humanitarian corridors. Fighters can also leave the city with their weapons by using two other corridors established by the Russians and the Syrians. However, terrorists have refused to leave and instead resorted to shelling the civilian escape routes. Russian and Syrian planes have stayed out of the city for eight consecutive days. In that time, only a few dozen civilians managed to escape the terrorist-held areas. Meanwhile, the Russian reconciliation centers continued to pour aid into Aleppo. During the Security Council session, the UN official in charge of humanitarian aid defended the world organization's actions in Syria, laying blame at both the rebels, Damascus, and Moscow for not allowing the UN humanitarian assistance to take place. "The United Nations were ready to launch our operations on Sunday, 23 October. However, objections by two non-State armed opposition groups, namely Ahrar as-Sham and Nureddin Zenki, scuppered these plans. The United Nations made every effort to get assurances from all parties, only for the parties to then fail to agree on each other's conditions about how evacuations should proceed," said Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stepen O'Brien. In the meantime, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent teams working in Aleppo have complained that delivering the humanitarian aid and treating the wounded has been a challenge, as the ICRC failed to "secure the security guarantees of some armed groups." Back at the UNSC, O'Brien painted a clear picture for the members of the UN Security Council of human suffering in Eastern Aleppo where terrorists use civilians as human shields. In a graphic yet poetic account, O'Brien said that civilians - mostly children and elderly - are stuck in basements where "the stench of urine and the vomit caused by unrelieved fear never leaving your nostrils" is omnipresent. "Or scrabbling with your bare hands in the street above to reach under concrete rubble, lethal steel reinforcing bars jutting at you as you hysterically try to reach your young child screaming unseen in the dust and dirt below your feet, you choking to catch your breath in the toxic dust and the smell of gas ever-ready to ignite and explode over you." "These are constant, harrowing reports and images of people detained, tortured, forcibly displaced, maimed and executed," O'Brien added. While mentioning the destructive role of terrorist on the ground, the UN envoy to Syria went out of his way to blame Damascus and Moscow for their air raids. "Aleppo has essentially become a kill zone. Since my last report to this Council less than a month ago, 400 more people have been killed and nearly 2,000 injured in eastern Aleppo. So many of them - too many of them - were children," O'Brien said. "Never has the phrase by poet Robert Burns, of 'Man's inhumanity to man' been as apt. It can be stopped but you the Security Council have to choose to make it stop," the envoy added. Taking the mic at the UNSC meeting, Churkin criticized O'Brien's report, which he said lacked factual information and failed to stress the cessation of Syrian and Russian air raids on the city. He asked O'Brian not to recite poetry but base his reports on concrete facts. "If we wanted to hear a sermon, we would go to church. If we wanted to hear poetry, we would go to a theater," Churkin said. Security Council members wanted to hear "objective analysis" of the situation on the ground from O'Brien, the Russian ambassador stressed. "You clearly did not achieve this," Churkin said, reminding O'Brien that no strikes have been conducted over Aleppo since October 18. Calling O'Brian's statement "provocative and unacceptable," Churkin pointed that in the past eight days Syrian and Russian planes had not flown over Aleppo, staying at least 10 km away from the city. "This moratorium on the flight lasted eight days [now]. Mr. O 'Brian, you did not mention a single word about it. You have built your speech so to paint a picture that aerial bombardment did not stop for one day and that it is happening now, as we speak," said Churkin. US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power also criticized the Russian humanitarian corridors in Aleppo. "Russia made an announcement about 6 humanitarian corridors and urged to take these corridors, including people with arms. But those families were terrified about entrusting their fates to the people who have been bombing their neighborhoods," she said. Churkin replied that Power resorted to her usual tactics - "distorting the Russian stance to the point of absurdity." "It is terrifying to live here [in Aleppo]. And the US is asking: 'What can we do?' We told you what to do - to have both Russian and American military work together on Castello road [in Aleppo]. You said no!" Churkin said. Power and the US delegation, along with the UK, French, and Ukrainian delegations, later staged a walkout as Churkin passed the floor to the Syrian representative.

The Lethal Gaps in How the Supreme Court Handles the Death Penalty - The New York Times

Adam Liptak

Seven of the 12 jurors who convicted Ronald B. Smith in the murder of a convenience store clerk voted to spare his life. When the case reached the Supreme Court, four of the eight justices voted to stay his execution. The arithmetic of capital punishment can seem curious. Mr. Smith was executed Thursday night. Mr. Smith was convicted of murdering the clerk in 1994 in Huntsville, Ala. The jury recommended life without parole, but the trial judge overrode that determination, sentencing Mr. Smith to death. Alabama is the only state that allows such overrides. It is a good bet that the Supreme Court will soon weigh the constitutionality of the practice. That will be too late for Mr. Smith, who came up one vote short on Thursday night, illuminating a lethal gap in the Supreme Court’s internal practices. It takes four votes to put a case on the court’s docket, but it takes five to stop an execution. Over the years, in fits and starts, some justices have sought to address this anomaly by casting a “courtesy fifth” vote to stay an execution when four justices thought the case worthy of further consideration. In a 1985 concurrence, Justice Lewis F. Powell explained his reluctant decision to supply such a courtesy vote. The inmate’s case had “no merit whatever,” he wrote. “But in view of the unusual situation in which four justices have voted” to hear it, he wrote, “and in view of the fact that this is a capital case with petitioner’s life at stake, and further in view of the fact that the justices are scattered geographically and unable to meet for a conference, I feel obligated to join in granting the application for a stay. ” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was asked about the practice at his confirmation hearing in 2005. “How would you feel, if you were chief, if you had four of the justices now voting for a stay of execution?” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, asked. “Do you feel as chief you would do the courtesy of kicking in the fifth one?” Chief Justice Roberts seemed receptive. “I don’t want to commit to pursue a particular practice,” he said. “But it obviously makes great sense. ” “You don’t want to moot the case by not staying the sentence,” he added. In the 11 years that Chief Justice Roberts has led the Supreme Court, its commitment to such courtesy votes has been inconsistent. Until Thursday, though, it seemed to be on the upswing. The recent trend started with a case on transgender rights. A Virginia school board wanted to stop a transgender boy, Gavin Grimm, from using the boys’ restroom at his high school while the Supreme Court considered an appeal from a decision in Mr. Grimm’s favor. In August, the court’s four more conservative members — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — voted to grant a stay. Justice Stephen G. Breyer added a fifth vote “as a courtesy. ” Justice Breyer’s motives were not hard to discern. He was concerned about execution chambers, not restrooms. The only case he cited in his concurrence in the transgender case was Medellin v. Texas, a death penalty decision in which he had expressed frustration that “no member of the majority has proved willing to provide a courtesy vote for a stay. ” Last month, Justice Breyer’s gambit seemed to pay off. On Nov. 3, the court considered an application for a stay of execution from another Alabama death row inmate, Thomas D. Arthur. Chief Justice Roberts provided the fifth vote needed to halt the execution. He said he would not ordinarily have favored a stay, but noted that four justices had voted in favor of one. “To afford them the opportunity to more fully consider the suitability of this case for review,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “I vote to grant the stay as a courtesy. ” On Thursday, in Mr. Smith’s case, the court’s more liberal members — Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — voted for a stay. But this time there was no courtesy fifth vote. Upon hearing that news, Mr. Smith’s lawyers immediately filed a request for reconsideration. “The court should not permit executions in the face of four dissents,” the motion said, adding that the court’s practices in this area “clash with the appearance and reality both of equal justice under law and of sound judicial decision making. ” That motion was denied, too, this time without noted dissent. The leading student of the courtesy fifth is Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. The title of his 2015 law review article on the subject makes his views plain: “No Execution if Four Justices Object. ” On Thursday night, as it became clear that Mr. Smith was going to die, Professor Freedman made a more modest point. The justices, he said, should at the least explain their reasoning and standards. “The time has long ago passed for the court to address forthrightly a situation which is simply unseemly,” Professor Freedman said. “For people to live or die in the middle of the night on the basis of no visible rule is simply at odds with any defensible system of judicial decision making. ”

Like a good little sharia-compliant female, Prince Charles’ wife Camilla removes her shoes to enter a mosque in Abu Dhabi, but the Prince of Wales keeps his shoes on

BareNakedIslam

BNI Store Nov 6 2016 Like a good little sharia-compliant female, Prince Charles’ wife Camilla removes her shoes to enter a mosque in Abu Dhabi, but the Prince of Wales keeps his shoes on The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have visited the spectacular Sheikh Zaved Grand Mosque to promote religious tolerance. ( HAH! ) UK Daily Mail Charles was dressed in a linen suit and striped tie, while Camilla wore a blue headscarf, long jacket and trousers. Visitors to the mosque must remove their footwear, BUT Charles walked round in black shoes while his wife went barefoot with her head covered. The mosque was established in 2008 and sits at the entrance to Abu Dhabi City Island. It aims to work with research centres and religious, educational and cultural institutions within the United Arab Emirates and across the world.

And Then There Was Trump - The New York Times

Thomas B. Edsall

How do you deal with an opponent immune to the truth, whose appeal is atavistic rather than rational? How do you pick off enough of his constituents and prevent him from making inroads into yours? In Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies face a candidate for whom there is no precedent in presidential politics. It remains unclear whether Trump can be brought to his knees the way Mitt Romney was by ads like “Coffin” and “Firms,” which alleged that Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, closed factories and shipped jobs abroad. In April, during the primary campaign, Politico reported that Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster currently working for the “super PAC” Priorities USA Action, contended in a phone interview that Trump’s immunity to criticism worked only in the primaries among Republican voters: “Trump is not Teflon. ” Among all voters, Garin argued, “a majority has come to the conclusion that Trump is unfit for the job and that he would represent a significant risk as president. ” Polling and focus group testing, Garin said, have shown that one ad produced by Priorities, “Grace,” has been highly effective. It shows Grace, who was born with spina bifida, her parents, Chris and Lauren Glaros, and a clip of Trump ridiculing a disabled New York Times reporter. The ad concludes with the father on camera: I asked Garin, along with other strategists and political observers, how they would respond to a long list of Trump’s rambling, theatrical promises, which he would, in fact, be unable to keep. Just a partial list of these includes refusing to defend America’s NATO allies, returning 11 million undocumented immigrants to their home countries, saving $300 billion annually on a prescription drug program that spends only $78 billion a year, nationalizing concealed weapons permits and vowing that “If I become president, we’re gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store . .. You can leave Happy Holidays at the corner. ” Should Democrats, I inquired, point to the infeasibility of Trump’s proposals and the damaging results of any attempts on his part to follow through? That approach would not work, Garin said, because voters, including many of Trump’s supporters, don’t really “believe he will build a wall, or get Mexico to pay for a wall” — they have already discounted many of Trump’s assertions as hyperbole. “The real case has more to do with his character and temperament,” Garin said. “The biggest concern is that he is temperamentally unsuited to lead the country. ” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with the Clinton campaign, argued in an email that there were risks in attacking specific Trump proposals as unrealistic: In an interesting warning to Democrats, Arthur Lupia, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, wrote me: Making a related argument, a Democratic strategist who sought anonymity in order to protect his relationship with the Clinton campaign, wrote me: This strategist cited the futility of accusing Trump of hyping crime: Democrats have to negotiate a tricky path in communicating their candidate’s “identification with the main concerns of many of Trump’s voters” on such issues as immigration, the strategist argued. This empathy has to be Robert Borosage, of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group, described the problem of attempting to refute Trump : Clinton’s task, in Borosage’s view, is not an easy one for a politician who has been in the national spotlight for more than a quarter of a century: “H. R. C. ’s challenge is to claim the future — one that is different than the past,” Borosage wrote. In his speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Bill Clinton sought to address the issue Borosage raises of how Hillary Clinton can plausibly “claim the future. ” The former president referred to his wife’s record of making “positive changes in people’s lives” and noted that his wife is a “woman who has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. ” Borosage brought up a second point, that Hillary Clinton, who has campaigned on the theme that she will protect and enhance the Obama legacy, needs to jump an additional hurdle: “Her biggest challenge is to be different than Obama — bolder, challenging Wall Street, corporate trade and tax deals. ” Borosage’s argument — that the Trump campaign is based on attitudes and ingrained belief systems, not on a set of policies — points to the difficulty of addressing Trump’s rhetoric. Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton and the author of “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Age of Economic Integration” pointed out in an email, for example, that Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported in July 2015 that numerous studies These facts are unlikely to dissuade voters convinced that immigrants are taking jobs, committing crimes and undermining American values. From their point of view, any crime by an illegal immigrant is one crime too many. There are many Democrats who believe that taking on Trump does not require nuance or calculation. “When 60 percent of voters say they’ll never consider voting for you and you have a 29 percent approval rating, you’ve got a serious image problem,” Jim Jordan, who managed John Kerry’s presidential campaign and served as executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, wrote me in an email. “Trump is already gushing blood. This is just blocking and tackling for the Clinton folks. ” Jordan argues that “the two real imperatives” for Democrats are 1) “to deny Trump the ‘I’ ’ space,” and 2) “to keep hammering on how bizarre and dangerous he is to America and our interests around the world. His weird on Putin and his invitation this week to Russia to invade the Baltics seem like good places to start. ” Despite Jordan’s confidence in Democratic presidential prospects, at the moment Trump has moved ahead of Clinton by 1. 1 percent in the RealClearPolitics aggregation of recent polling. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N. Y. U. told me in an email that Democrats need to adopt a more subtle strategy in dealing with Trump. This, Haidt argues, is because the The elephant “really runs the show,” Haidt said, Translating this analytic approach to the 2016 election, in Haidt’s view, means that To counter Trump, Democrats have to get into the electorate’s automatic, intuitive and unconscious level of responding to events before attempting a critique based on reasoned argument, according to Haidt. To do this, he wrote, the goal should be to portray Trump in ways that conflict with “deep moral intuitions about fairness versus cheating and exploitation. ” And how do you do that? The next step is to present a vision of Trump that violates “moral intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity:” On Monday night in her speech, Michelle Obama tapped into this theme when she described “the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children. ” The first lady declared: Haidt put it another way: I could not have said it better myself. Despite the overt chaos, the competing narratives of the fall campaign — each side’s attempt to define the other as weak or crazy and itself as tough and dependable — are clearly emerging from the conventions. The question is whether the Democratic Party can get emotional enough or reach deep enough into our brains to counter the sheer id of Trump’s primeval appeal.

Activists Urging Obamacare Supporters to Mail Ashes of Dead People to Congress

Warner Todd Huston

Democrats working to oppose any changes to Obamacare have launched a morbid campaign to fight the GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) by urging supporters to send the ashes of dead relatives to Washington, DC. [“Millions of Americans rely on protections and coverage from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare,” the campaign website insists. “The Republicans [sic] new bill will gut these protections and many will die. ” The site then urges supporters to gather the ashes of dead people and send them along to any Republican member of Congress. The effort is the vision of college junior Zoey Jordan Salsbury, an employee of a Democrat strategy company called New Blue Interactive: @nsilverberg I made a website for sick people to send their ashes to a GOP member of congress because of this tweet: https: . — Zoey Jordan Salsbury (@zoeyjsalsbury) May 4, 2017, Despite the initial claim, however, Salsbury told the Washington Post that she does not really intend to send any ashes to D. C. “I have the feeling the Capitol building would actually stop” the packages, Salsbury told the paper. But she did say that instead of sending the ashes to Congress, supporters should send them to the district offices back home in any particular congressman’s state. Salsbury is worried that the GOP’s “repeal” of Obamacare will impact people with conditions, but the GOP’s AHCA does not roll back any of the protections for conditions, nor does it “repeal” Obamacare in any meaningful way. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.

WIKILEAKS WARNS IT IS LAUNCHING “PHASE THREE” OF ITS ELECTION COVERAGE

Iron Sheik

Home › POLITICS › WIKILEAKS WARNS IT IS LAUNCHING “PHASE THREE” OF ITS ELECTION COVERAGE WIKILEAKS WARNS IT IS LAUNCHING “PHASE THREE” OF ITS ELECTION COVERAGE 0 SHARES [10/31/16] On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “ phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations. “We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago. On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “ phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations. “We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago. As the Hill noted , Wiki did not provide information about what the third phase entails or if there are still more revelations to come. As a reminder, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange currently finds himself in the Ecuador embassy where his internet access has been revoked for the duration of the presidential campaign to avoid the appearance of intervention. Wikileaks supporters, now including a number of disgruntled GOP nominee Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, promptly replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. User “CorruptMedia” responded with a Photoshopped estimating what CNN coverage of Clinton being escorted to jail would look like. A new archive of Clinton-related documents would further irk a campaign still reeling from FBI director James Comey’s announcement on Friday that new emails related to the Clinton server probe had been discovered. Post navigation

2:00PM Water Cooler 10/26/2016

Lambert Strether

by Lambert Strether I will add my thanks to Yves’ for a highly successful fundraiser. But if you are able, you can still help us make next year the best one ever for Naked Capitalism! We still had donations coming in after the formal close of our fundraiser, and they most assuredly are still welcome. Please visit our fundraiser page to see how to contribute by check, credit or debit card, or PayPal. And thanks again for all your support! By Lambert Strether of Corrente . TTP, TTIP, TISA CETA: “‘I trust that an agreement will be reached in the course of today with Belgium, Wallonia and other parts of the country,’ Mr Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France” [ Business Times ]. “Some two hours of Belgium negotiations broke up without an apparent agreement early Wednesday, following six hours of similar talks the previous evening.” Reading all the Eurocrat statements, it looks to me like “an” agreement, to Juncker, means an agreement to sign the agreement, CETA, at some future date (so that Thursday’s summit with Justin Trudeau can proceed). CETA: “What’s Wallonia’s deal? A primer on its role in CETA’s crisis” [ Globe and Mail ]. ” [Walloon Premier Paul Magnette’s] Socialist Party is under growing political pressure within Wallonia, an economically depressed rust-belt region. The Marxist party has been steadily gaining ground in recent polls, pushing the Socialists further to the left on issues such as trade.” There needs to be a left equivalent for “Always Be Closing.” CETA: “CETA has bigger problems than not-so-‘tiny’-after-all Wallonia” [ Rabble. ca ]. “[B]y EU standards it is not all that small. Wallonia’s population is 3.5 million, almost a third of the Belgian total of somewhat more than 11 million. There are seven EU countries with smaller populations. Each of the EU’s 28 member states has veto power over CETA. That is how the EU works – on the Three Musketeers principle, one for all and all for one. If one or more of the smaller member states, such as Slovenia or Estonia, or one of the tiny island states with far fewer than a million people, Cyprus or Malta, vetoed the deal, would we be calling them tiny and insignificant?” CETA: “Corporate Sovereignty Helps To Bring EU-Canada Trade Deal To Brink Of Collapse” [ TechDirt ]. This looks like what’s on offer to Wallonia: The fact that CETA’s ISDS/ICS remains the most problematic area can be seen from a fascinating CETA document (pdf) that was recently leaked. It’s called the “Joint Interpretative Declaration on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union and its Member States,” and is an attempt to offer additional guarantees that are enough to convince Magnette and other CETA skeptics to allow its signing and ratification: This interpretative declaration aims to provide a clear and unambiguous statement of what Canada and the European Union and its Member States agreed in a number of CETA provisions that have been the object of public debate and concerns. This includes, in particular, the impact of CETA on the ability of governments to regulate in the public interest, as well as the provisions on investment protection and dispute resolution, and on sustainable development, labour rights and environmental protection. The section on Investment Protection is by far the longest, reflecting the seriousness of the problems there. Here’s a key paragraph: CETA clarifies that governments may change their laws, regardless of whether this may negatively affect an investment or investor’s expectations of profits. Furthermore, CETA clarifies that any compensation due to an investor will be based on an objective determination by the Tribunal and will not be greater than the loss suffered by the investor. As that demonstrates, there is nothing new in the declaration. Nobody is claiming that CETA will stop governments changing their laws, just that the massive fines that can be imposed by supra-national tribunals are likely to discourage them from doing so. Similarly, claiming that those fines will be “based on an objective determination by the Tribunal and will not be greater than the loss suffered by the investor” simply confirms the untrammelled power of the tribunal to impose whatever fine it thinks is appropriate. Lipstick on a pig. TPP: “If the trade deal comes up during the lame-duck session this fall, the two [Vice Presidents] could play leading roles on opposite sides of the debate: Kaine as a potentially significant “no” vote should the pact come up for a vote while he’s still in the Senate, and Biden as President Barack Obama’s go-to guy for shoring up Senate support and casting the tie-breaking vote if need be” [ Politico ]. TPP: “The TPP ‘provides no guarantee of equal rights and remedies to migrants for labor violations, no regional task force or other solution to address region-wide trafficking issue and no region-wide restrictions on abusive behaviors by recruiters who prey on desperate workers simply trying to feed their families,’ Celeste Drake, the AFL-CIO’s trade and globalization specialist, said during a call with reporters. While the broader deal does not contain migrant worker protections advocated by the labor group, Malaysia is obligated through a separate ‘consistency plan’ to undertake certain reforms for protecting migrant workers” [Politico]. Weak-ass framing from the AFL-CIO (no surprise here) and terrible reporting from Politico (ditto). The issue with Malaysia is not “certain reforms to protect migrant workers,” and not even “trafficking.” The issue is slavery , which Obama is enabling in order to get the deal passed. Use the word! TPP: “Australia could face a growing number of expensive legal claims from foreign corporations if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) comes into force, a new report has warned” [ Guardian ]. “Dr Kyla Tienhaara, from the Australian National University, said Australia ought to learn from Canada’s experience after it signed the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which came into force in 1994 and led to dozens of legal cases against Canada by US corporations [under ISDS].” “Selected Government Statements and Actions Against Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)” (PDF) [ Public Citizen ]. Lots of good quotes (the US is at the end) for you to use when you write your Congresscritter. 2016 Days until: 12. That’s less than two weeks! Corruption ” But Trump’s biggest local political donation [in Chicago] was the $50,000 he donated to Emanuel’s first mayoral campaign” [ Chicago Reader (DG)]. “That donation came on December 23, 2010, a couple months before Rahm was elected. In 2011, Emanuel’s administration approved the god-awful 20-foot-high “T-R-U-M-P” sign that the Donald felt compelled to plaster on his building overlooking the Chicago River. But Mayor Emanuel’s not Trump’s only Democratic pal in town. Trump also hired Alderman Burke’s law firm to handle his tax appeals to Assessor Berrios’s office. Burke then won Trump several million dollars worth of property tax breaks.” There don’t seem to be many degrees of separation between the elites. I suppose that’s why they’re elites… Policy ” A hotelier’s guide to the 2016 presidential election” [ Hotel News Now ]. “Many hotels in the U.S. rely on a flow of legal immigrants to fill a variety of positions. Hoteliers want that pipeline of potential employees to remain open, while avoiding additional red tape to verify their statuses.” “Battlegrounds: The Fight for Mosul and Election Day Disruptions” (podcast) [ Foreign Policy Editor’s Roundtable ]. If you want to get a good reading on the insanity that is The Blob , this is the podcast for you. The speakers spend a good twenty minutes discussing the details of Syria and Iraq, concluding that historians will look back on it as “a forty year’s war,” without ever once giving a reason for us to be there . Soothing NPR voices, no anger, a lot of laughter. Smart people. War Drums “Hillary Clinton Promises A More Muscular Foreign Policy As President” [ HuffPo ]. “As secretary of state, Clinton was an early supporter of arming and training members of the Syrian opposition to fight Assad, a plan that faced resistance out of concern that it would be difficult to appropriately vet fighters and ensure that weapons didn’t fall into the hands of extremists. Today, the program is off to a slow start, with only 54 graduates from the first class, several of whom scattered after coming under attack by an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. As commander-in-chief, Clinton would dramatically escalate the program, she said. ” Who was in charge of the training program? Ira Magaziner? The Voters “What Do Trump and Marx Have in Common?” [Jochen Bittner, New York Times ]. This is another piece along the lines of the article from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal that Yves linked to this morning, although it’s not a piece of outright hackery. For example: “When Hillary Clinton calls half of Mr. Trump’s voters a ‘basket of deplorables,’ she sounds as aloof as Marie Antoinette, telling French subjects who had no bread to ‘eat cake.'” But both articles deploy the “angry populists of left and right” vs. the “sensible center” trope (remember that in the Beltway you should never display anger; it’s a strong taboo). Bittner concludes: “Mrs. Clinton has the chance to change, by leading a political establishment that examines and processes anger instead of merely producing and dismissing it.” Obama destroyed hope by not delivering change. And now Clinton is holding the bag for the anger that caused. From the Department of Schadenfreude… Downballot = The Trail “But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman” [ Politico ]. “Donald Trump is a stunning outlier. His linguistic style is startlingly feminine, so much so that the chasm between Trump and the next most feminine speaker, Ben Carson, is about as great as the difference between Carson and the least feminine candidate, Jim Webb. And Trump earns his ranking not just because he talks a lot about himself or avoids big words (both of which are true); according to Jones, he also shows feminine patterns on the more subtle measures, such as his use of prepositions and articles. The key then is not what Trump talks about—making Mexico pay for the wall or bombing the hell out of ISIL—but rather how he says it.” Readers? Well, well: — Bugei Nyaosi (@bnyaosi) October 25, 2016 Realignment “This party was dead before Lincoln got here” [ USA Today ]. “Pity the poor Republican Party, which has been on its deathbed since the age of 2. Never mind that Republicans currently control both houses of Congress, 30 state legislatures and 31 governors’ mansions — this split between Establishment Republicans and Trump Republicans is a sure sign the party will be flatlining any day now. ny day now …” Democrat Email Hairball “Hillary’s 33,000 emails might not be ‘missing’ after all” Like a MacGuffin in a Hitchcock movie? [ New York Post ]. Important! “Richard Nixon could only wish he got Hillary’s FBI treatment” [ New York Post ]. True! Sadly, I have to quote the New York Post twice in a row. It is what it is. We are where we are. And then there’s this: LOL. If Neera thinks Hillary is going to forget about that one, she's fooling herself. https://t.co/ovVrqZJws6 — Billmon (@billmon1) October 25, 2016 Hopefully, Our Neena can kiss that chief of staff position goodbye. “New Research Blames Insiders, Not North Korea, for Sony Hack” [ Time ]. The obvious parallel being… Stats Watch New Home Sales, September 2016: “New home sales in September, up 3.1 percent to a 593,000 annualized rate, proved very solid though sharp downward revisions to both August (575,000 from 609,000) and also July (629,000 from 659,000) do lower the degree of what is still, however, solid strength in the new home market” [ Econoday ]. And: “Overall I view this as a good report, which was slightly below market expectations. Dispite the fact the data jumps around, the three month rolling averages are solidly improving” [ Econintersect ]. And: ” The glass is more than half full. This is very solid year-over-year growth” [ Calculated Risk ]. But: “Data from the monthly NAHB survey has continued to suggest that there are shortages of available lots and labour shortages have also been an increasingly important feature in recent surveys. The new home sales data will reinforce these concerns and there will also be concerns over affordability issues” [ Economic Calendar ]. “[L]abour shortages”… If only there were something… like an invisible hand… to solve this problem! MBA Mortgage Applications, week of October 21, 2016: “Purchase applications for home mortgages fell a seasonally adjusted 7 percent in the October 21 week to the lowest level since January” [ Econoday ]. International Trade in Goods, September 2016: “In a positive for Friday’s third-quarter GDP report, the nation’s trade gap in goods narrowed sharply in September” [ Econoday ]. “In a negative indication of retail expectations for the holidays, imports of consumer goods fell 1.8 percent following a 0.6 percent decline in August. And in a negative indication for domestic business investment, imports of capital goods fell 3.6 percent… [I]n a negative indication for domestic business investment, imports of capital goods fell 3.6 percent.” And we are a capitalist society… Purchasing Managers’ Index Services Flash, October 2016: “Markit Economics’ U.S. samples are reporting a sharp upturn in business this month, first with Monday’s manufacturing report and now with the service flash where the headline index is up nearly 3 points” [ Econoday ]. “The sharp gains for Markit’s samples are a surprise but are still only anecdotal indications. Definitive data on October will be posted next week with the month’s unit auto sales and of course the monthly employment report. ” However: “Even with the stronger than expected surge in business activity, cautious staff hiring continued this month” [ Economic Calendar ]. Globalization: “Sluggish global trade is taking its toll on one of the world’s biggest ports operators. DP World reported just 1% growth in container volumes over the first nine months of 2016 at ports it’s owned for at least a year. Modest increases in traffic in Europe were offset by a sharp decline in the United Arab Emirates, where the company is based” [ Wall Street Journal ]. “DP World operates marine terminals on six continents, insulating it from economic slowdowns in individual countries or whole regions. But the company’s geographic reach can’t protect it from weak economic growth around the world, plus the ongoing commodities bust.” Shipping: “The Suez Canal’s managers are opening a new front in their fight with the Panama Canal for a greater share of global shipping. Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority is negotiating with large shipping lines to secure payment of tolls three to five years in advance and with a break on pricing, the WSJ’s Costas Paris reports. Egypt has spent billions of dollars deepening the canal and opening it to two-way traffic, but the number of vessels passing through has barely grown amid a slowdown in global shipping” [ Wall Street Journal ]. Shipping: “Fundamentals of shipping are changing, warns Danish shipowners boss” [ Splash 247 ]. “Global trade will not double by 2030 as [ Anne Steffensen, director general of the Danish Shipowners’ Association’ and the other organisers of the [third annual Danish Maritime Forum] originally thought at the first forum back in 2014…. [T]he age old link between GDP growth and world trade has broken.” Retail: “More than 90% of ‘genuine’ Apple chargers & cables sold on Amazon are fake, says Apple” [ 9to5Mac ]. I bought some and they fried. I figured it was the house’s electrical system. What a relief! Retail: “How Amazon counterfeits put this man’s business on brink of collapse” [ CNBC (DK)]. “Once a thriving product for movers and contractors available at a dozen big-box retailers including Wal-Mart, Target and AutoZone, Forearm Forklift has been ravaged over the past half-decade by counterfeiters, mostly selling on Amazon. Scores of merchants have copied the patented product, using its name, images and labels and undercutting the real Forearm Forklift on price.” The Bezzle: “Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings Inc. are cutting companies slack on mergers and acquisitions, an analysis of credit-ratings data by Bloomberg News found” [ Bloomberg ]. “Over the past year and a half, both have bumped up their ratings by two, three or even six levels on a majority of the biggest deals, the analysis found…. Some investors warn the approach has encouraged an epic debt binge that could pose dangers as years of near-zero interest rates come to an end.” “In a clear nod to major market-makers’ concerns about the effect of more transparency on cash market liquidity and their own profit margins, Antonio Weiss, a counselor to U.S. Treasury Sec. Jack Lew, told an audience at a market structure conference on Monday that the Treasury market information transparency debate ‘should shift from whether to seek increased transparency to how, when, and on what basis'” [Francine McKenna, MarketWatch ]. “Information on activity in cash Treasury markets is not readily accessible, and regulators lack visibility into dealer-to-customer activity, which, according to some estimates, is over 50% of the cash market.” Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 55, Neutral) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 39 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 25 at 5:31pm. Police State Watch “AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal” [ Daily Beast ]. “The telecom giant is doing NSA-style work for law enforcement—without a warrant—and earning millions of dollars a year from taxpayers.” Not sure what’s new here…. “The day when police zap suspects from the sky with drones carrying stun guns may be nearing” [ Wall Street Journal ]. Black Injustice Tipping Point “The U.N. Caused Haiti’s Cholera Epidemic. Now the Obama Administration Is Fighting the Victims” [ The New Republic ]. 2014, still relevant today. Geographic Information Systems can be empowering: @BmoreDoc Anyhoo, this Bikeshare thing is only the tip of the bicycle iceberg. pic.twitter.com/zg43T3jkIb — Cham Green (@Cham10101) October 26, 2016 Water “A perfect storm of aging infrastructure, stretched municipal budgets, and changing climate conditions are putting even more of the country’s water systems under pressure. Faced with the steep cost of fixing their broken and ill-prepared infrastructure, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are turning to private money in their search for an answer to the country’s water woes. While the record of private companies handling water supplies has been mixed, this trend toward water privatization seems to be some kind of tacit acknowledgment that local governments can’t fix the problem on their own” [ Quartz ]. Ideal infrastructure projects, eh? Gaia “Far beyond the eight planets of the solar system, beyond even Pluto and the diminutive dwarf planets, may lurk a major new world called ‘Planet Nine.’ Few if any discoveries can be as sensational as finding another planet orbiting our sun, making the feat a Holy Grail for astronomers, who have managed to pull it off only a few times over the centuries. No one yet knows exactly where this ephemeral world might be—or even if it really exists at all” [ Scientific American ]. “Tilting, sinking San Francisco high-rise raises alarm” [ AP ]. Best quote ever: “What concerns me most is the tilting.” Class Warfare “Don’t Diss the Dark Ages” [ Of Two Minds ]. ” New modes of production and new social /political orders do not arise fully formed. They are pieced together by trial and error and numerous cycles of adaptation, innovation and failure.” Salutary reminder! “This issue brief explains how monopsony, or wage-setting power, in the labor market can reduce wages, employment, and overall welfare, and describes various sources of monopsony power. It then reviews evidence suggesting that firms may have wage-setting power in a broad range of settings and describes several trends in recent decades consistent with a growing role for monopsony power in wage determination. It concludes with a discussion of several policy actions taken by the Obama Administration to help promote labor-market competition and ensure a level playing field for all workers” [ Council of Economic Advisors ]. How I hate that dead “level playing field” metaphor. Generally, playing fields are level. It’s the refs and the crooked guys with their hands in the till in the front office that I worry about. “In late 2007, before the recession started, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio in the U.S. was about the same as in other Group of Seven developed nations (which also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.). The U.S., however, experienced a much larger decline during the recession, and remains much farther from undoing the damage. As of June, the G-7 as a whole had recovered almost completely, while the U.S. was only 60 percent back from its lowest point” [ Bloomberg ]. “Prime-age” like “prime beef”… News of the Wired “#WeAreTwitter” [ The Internet of Ownership ]. “Twitter is up for sale. Big companies are circling around looking to buy. But what about us, Twitter users? This proposal to turn one of the world’s most important platform utilities into a platform co-op has started spreading from a mere idea to an organizing campaign. Read, spread, and organize!” “Only governments can safeguard the openness of the internet” [ Aeon ]. “Opia, sonder, liberosis: The dictionary for all the emotions you feel but can’t express” [ Quartz ]. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows . ____. n. The despondency that steals over you when you’re committed to inventing an election drinking game but have just realized that no rules can possibly be adequate to the task. * * * Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (KR): KR writes: “A nice profile of bee on untidy flower.” Winter is coming… 0 0 0 0 0 0

The Choose-Your-Own-News Adventure - The New York Times

Jim Rutenberg

AUSTIN, Tex. — A fascinating story emerged about Netflix last week. The Daily Mail reported that the streaming television service was developing new interactive technology allowing viewers to direct the plots of certain television shows, style. The company later told me that the experiment was focused on children’s programming, more as a developmental learning tool than as some new twist on the modern media sphere’s rush to give you exactly what you want when you want it. No matter how far the experiment goes, Netflix is again in step with the national zeitgeist. After all, there are algorithms for streaming music services like Spotify, for Facebook’s news feed and for Netflix’s own program menu, working to deliver just what you like while filtering out whatever might turn you off and send you away — the sorts of honey traps that are all the talk at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival going on here through this week. So why not extend the idea to the plots of your favorite shows? The Mail even went so far as to envision viewers of the British historical drama “The Crown” making it so that Princess Margaret gets to marry her sister’s equerry, Peter Townsend. Of course, as Princess Margaret knew all too painfully, history saw no such union. But that’s no big deal anymore — at least if you consider the way people are being primed to shape the arc of the narratives on their highly personalized electronic screens to suit their own tastes, even if it means banishing inconvenient facts. As Dan Wagner, the Obama campaign data wiz and current Civis Analytics chief executive, put it when I bumped into him here during the weekend, “You used to be a consumer of reality, and now you’re a designer of reality. ” Understanding how that is playing out more broadly will help explain why you and your aunt’s new boyfriend can see the same events unfold in Washington and have utterly different ideas about what just happened. Allow me to direct you to the news media misadventure of the past week, which I’ll call “POTUS45, Episode 6: The Presidential Wiretap That (A) Was, (B) Wasn’t, (C) Was Because He’s a Russian Agent and Oh, Sister, Is He in Trouble. ” It started with President Trump’s Twitter posts accusing former President Barack Obama of having wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. Game on. If you were inclined to believe that Mr. Obama did what Mr. Trump said he did — indeed, if you wanted to believe it — you probably would have tuned into “Fox Friends” that Sunday morning for Adventure A. There, you would have seen the radio host Mark Levin, whose show was credited with helping to spur Mr. Trump’s accusations, laying out the case for Mr. Trump, declaring, “This is about the Obama administration’s spying. ” The proof, you would have heard him say, was already out there in the mainstream media — what with a report on the website Heat Street saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had secured a warrant to investigate ties between people in Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, and articles in The New York Times, in The Washington Post and elsewhere about intelligence linking people in Mr. Trump’s campaign to Russia, some of it from wiretaps. “These are police state tactics!” Mr. Levin would tell you. The next day, perhaps your Twitter or Facebook feed turned up a post from the Gateway Pundit — recently granted a White House press credential — speculating that maybe, just maybe, the F. B. I. director “Let Hillary Off the Hook Because She Knew About F. B. I. Wiretapping. ” As the week unspooled, you would have seen commentary on why Mr. Trump’s charge was so believable (Breitbart) and, shockingly, how it’s even possible that the C. I. A. hacked Clinton campaign email but made it look as if Russia had done it (Bill Mitchell, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity). Sure, you would have picked up static from other sources that made some of this seem ridiculous. But that stuff is for the followers of Adventure B, relying on journalism from seasoned reporters with deep contacts and established (and, yes, sometimes imperfect) protocols for — all of which the Adventure A people view with deep suspicion that the president is only too happy to stir. If you were among the Adventure B folk, maybe you saw James Clapper Jr. the former national security director, tell Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that Sunday that the F. B. I. had not secured a FISA warrant to spy on Mr. Trump’s aides. You probably would have seen the news, first reported by The Times, that the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, had asked the Justice Department to deny Mr. Trump’s charge (to no avail) and the viral video of George Stephanopoulos of ABC News telling a presidential aide, “That’s false,” as she tried to reprise the Adventure A argument that mainstream news reports backed Mr. Trump’s wiretap accusation. You would have seen PolitiFact’s rebuttal of the same argument — and, finally, a week later, reports about how evidence for Mr. Trump’s charge still had yet to surface. Or, lastly, were you an Adventure C kind of person? If so, you couldn’t get enough about how Mr. Trump’s wiretap allegation and the Russian connections could lead to his impeachment (MSNBC, The Independent, Maxine Waters) and your Facebook feed probably included the learnprogress. org headline “The F. B. I. Is Now Officially CRIMINALLY Investigating Donald J. Trump. ” (Nothing in the posting it links to shows evidence for any such thing.) As Mr. Stephanopoulos told me when we spoke by phone over the weekend, the trend may have been heading this way for a while — you don’t need an algorithmic feed to turn on Fox News or to catch Rush Limbaugh. But in the era of the curated digital news stream, the phenomenon has “ended up in a whole new place,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said. It’s easy to overdo it, he noted, given that no specially tailored plotline can fully tune out the contradicting details of another one. “Filters do have to contend with each other in some way, too,” he said. Really, arguments between adherents of the different adventure plots are the stuff of cable news programming, with each narrative vying for supremacy in debates that too often become arguments over established facts that should be indisputable. Because, after all, one of the plots we’re talking about here is of the sort that democracy depends on — that would be Adventure B, the one based on established facts that exist in the real world — and the others are of the sort that threatens to undermine any shared sense of truth while driving us into our corners. At South by Southwest here, a lot of words have been spilled on what to do about it, and just how urgently this multidimensional view of reality needs to be addressed — and how to do so. At a Mediapost event on the “ era” I participated in on Saturday, the editor of PolitiFact, Angie Drobnic Holan, said the truth would always come out, eventually. “At some point, evidence and facts will win out over an idea that has no substance,” she said. Our Mediapost conversation wandered into whether the big platforms could inject individual information streams with more items that might run counter to a person’s baseless beliefs. Intriguing. But there’s not a ton of economic incentive for the platforms to give people what they don’t want. Late Sunday, I checked out a exhibit presented at the Austin Motel by the digital creative collective the Future of StoryTelling. You could throw on the goggles, become a bird and fly around. If virtual reality can allow a human to become a bird, why couldn’t it allow you to live more fully in your own political reality — don the goggles and go live full time in the adventure of your choosing: A, B or C. Just watch out for that wall you’re about to walk into IRL (in real life). Or, hey, don’t — knock yourself out.

For Anne Holton, Tim Kaine’s Wife, Elite Circles Are Old Turf - The New York Times

Jason Horowitz

This weekend, Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, are expected to step off the campaign trail for a beach vacation with their extended family at the Virginia shore. It is an annual tradition, as is Ms. Holton’s practice of making the adults hand over all their grocery store receipts. She ensures that every household, factoring in the number of children, has paid not a dollar more or less than its fair share. “She is not the accountant, she’s the judge,” said her brother Dwight Holton, a former United States attorney in Oregon. “No one has ever questioned her Solomonic wisdom. ” The daughter of a governor who grew up to marry a man who became governor, senator and now nominee, Ms. Holton has lived since childhood in a world of politics and power. But relatives and friends describe her as being uncommonly unimpressed by the trappings of privilege and instead driven by an almost religious sense of fairness, an aversion to idleness and a commitment to service that has helped elevate her into of Virginia’s most famous power couple. As a child, Ms. Holton, 58, had a symbolic role in helping integrate Virginia’s public schools before graduating from Princeton and meeting Mr. Kaine at Harvard Law School. As he rose up Virginia’s political ladder, she achieved renown in her own right as a legal aid lawyer, family court judge and Virginia’s secretary of education, a job she resigned once her husband was chosen as Hillary Clinton’s running mate. In some ways, Ms. Holton, who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for her husband in the Senate, represents Mrs. Clinton’s road not taken, continuing to pursue her career throughout her husband’s ascent rather than waiting her turn. But now those roads have converged on the presidential campaign trail, with Ms. Holton sharing stages with the Clintons and amplifying her husband’s high school teacher vibe with her Everywoman appeal. In a backstage holding room after Mrs. Clinton’s acceptance speech last Thursday, Mr. Kaine broke out his harmonica, one of his hobbies, and goaded his wife into one of hers, clog dancing. On the trail, Ms. Holton is a staple at her husband’s side, monitoring his speeches, giving him encouraging smiles and offering remarks in her lilting accent. “She has been around politics a looong time,” said Tom Wolf, Mr. Kaine’s former law partner and a friend of the family. “And she knows what it’s about and knows what needs to be done. ” Ms. Holton, who declined to be interviewed, first moved into the Virginia executive mansion in 1970 as the daughter of Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr. a Republican, and his wife, Virginia, known as Jinks. She enrolled at a prestigious grade school recommended to her parents by their friends. Many children at school wanted to attach themselves to her because of who her father was. “She called them ‘Buggy Friends,’” recalled her brother Woody, because they were constantly bugging her to visit the mansion. Status seeking, he said, was not a value instilled by their father. Instead, the children were roused from their comfortable beds every morning with refrains of “It’s opportunity time! Let’s go get ’em. ” A Presbyterian, he gave each of his four children Bibles with underlined passages about the good Samaritan. The lessons stuck. When a lightning strike in 1968 killed the daughter of the sitting governor, Ms. Holton started the Becky Godwin Club in the girl’s honor. The club specialized in good Samaritan deeds, like playing with and raising money for a developmentally disabled girl down the block. When a federal judge ordered the desegregation of Virginia schools, Governor Holton sent his children to Mosby Middle, an public school. He also made sure to alert the news media. “Dad is like Tim in this way,” said Woody Holton, a historian at the University of South Carolina and the author of an acclaimed biography of the first lady Abigail Adams. “They both are really good social justice people, but they also understand that you better call reporters. ” A photograph of Anne’s older sister, Tayloe, being escorted into the school by her father became an iconic image, though Woody Holton said she “was mad because Tayloe was becoming famous wearing Anne’s dress. ” At Mosby, Ms. Holton, then 12, showed a middle child’s talent for getting along with people, starting a cheerleading squad and making friends. She also gave a tour of the mansion to Slaughter, another who would go on to be a foreign policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and whose best friend was the daughter of the Democrat that Linwood Holton beat in the governor’s race. “She was very gracious,” Ms. Slaughter said. The Holton children entertained themselves by roller skating in the basement, and while Donald J. Trump has criticized “Corrupt Kaine,” as he calls him, for accepting gifts as governor — it was legal — the Holton children were themselves awash in presents. “When Dad was governor, the gifts just flowed,” Woody Holton said. “This is all before Watergate. Nobody thought how it might be corrupting. So one of the gifts we got was a golf cart, and we drove it all around the Capitol grounds. ” Ms. Holton later enrolled in Open High School, which allowed students to create their own curriculum and did not give grades. When asked to pick an activity for physical education, she took up clogging. When assigned to research her family’s ancestry, she presented not the names of distant gentry, but the names of slaves owned by her . At Harvard Law, she met Mr. Kaine in a legal assistance program that focused on civil rights protections for inmates, and she worked for the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, interviewing the criminally insane about the conditions of their imprisonment. “She handled the case of a serial killer,” Woody Holton said. As the couple decided where to live, Mr. Kaine’s family, who lived in the Kansas City area, wooed her by taking her to barbecue meccas. But for ambitious young lawyers, Richmond had its advantages. “He told us that Anne’s dad was the former governor of Virginia,” said Pat Kaine, Tim’s younger brother. Ms. Holton came home first, looking for a church to marry in. She was attending services at a Quaker meeting house at the time, but she knocked on the door of St. Elizabeth’s, a predominantly black Roman Catholic church (her husband is Catholic). She gave her name to the priest. “I tried to play it a little cool — we all deal with hierarchy all the time,” recalled the Rev. Michael Schmied, who said they had talked about wedding details for an hour. Then he looked up and remarked: “‘Wow. You are the real Anne Holton. ’” Ms. Holton began clerking for Robert R. Merhige Jr. the federal judge who had issued the desegregation order. As Mr. Kaine became a successful lawyer, a City Council member and mayor, Ms. Holton made a name for herself as a lawyer for families and foster children, and then as chief judge on Richmond’s juvenile court. Ms. Holton was sometimes so busy that she dropped her three children off at day care in their pajamas. In 2002, she conducted the ceremony when her husband became lieutenant governor. But before he ran for the office, she had to assuage his concerns about whether they could give a normal life to their three children: Nat, now a Marine Woody, an artist and Annella, who is studying to be an actress. “You’d see Anne tacking up posters to advertise the elementary school and middle school plays,” said Pierce Homer, a former secretary of transportation under Mr. Kaine and a neighbor. The couple live in a modest house and drive sensible cars. Their friends talk about the autoharp Ms. Holton bought Mr. Kaine for his birthday (she plays the violin) and their unapologetic public displays of affection: kissing on stages, holding hands in the park. When Mr. Kaine was elected governor in 2005, Ms. Holton resigned from the bench and returned to her childhood home, where as first lady she concentrated on foster care programs that helped keep older children with permanent families and extend their education. Mr. Kaine won his Senate seat in 2012. When Terry McAuliffe was elected governor a year later, he surprised many people by appointing Ms. Holton as secretary of education, a position she at first declined because of her lack of education background, according to Mr. Wolf, the family friend. “She knew everybody and had a real opportunity to bring people together,” Mr. McAuliffe explained. As for filling Mr. Kaine’s seat in the Senate should he and Mrs. Clinton win, Mr. McAuliffe said, “It will be a little hard since he presides over the Senate. ” (The vice president serves as president of the Senate.) Ms. Holton is clearly at ease among the most exclusive club in Washington. At a retreat at his Virginia farm last month, Senator Mark Warner said, senators were singing along to Mr. Kaine’s harmonica playing when Ms. Holton jumped into the middle of the room and started clog dancing. “Our jaws dropped,” Mr. Warner said. Mr. Kaine told Virginia delegates at a Democratic National Convention breakfast last week that his wife was “my political partner, my most astute critic, my most energetic enthusiast, my lover, my girlfriend, my wife of 32 years, the great mother of our great three children. ” He then kissed her on the lips and relayed to the crowd what the Clinton campaign told him about his wife: “We want every last minute that she can give us. ”

Trump Appears to Side With Assange Over Intelligence Agencies’ Conclusions - The New York Times

Scott Shane, Maggie Haberman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis

■ Donald J. Trump appears to side with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over United States intelligence agencies, with Vice Mike Pence backing him up. ■ She’s hired: Omarosa Manigault gets a White House post, as do some notable Trump loyalists. But Mr. Trump is leaning on Republican veterans in the Oval Office’s top slots. ■ The finds something “very strange” about his intelligence briefing on Friday — even though the White House says it was always planned for Friday. For the Republican Party, Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, was once purely a villain. He found little sympathy with conservatives after he leaked American military secrets from Iraq, published purloined diplomatic cables that could have gotten American sources killed and sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, fleeing charges of rape. But now, Mr. Trump appears to be siding with Mr. Assange over the conclusions of America’s intelligence services. Mr. Assange appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night with Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest news media boosters, to declare once again that the Russians were not the source of the purloined emails that WikiLeaks released from the Democratic National Committee and the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Mr. Trump followed that appearance with a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday that appeared to be preparing his followers for battle once more information on intelligence findings was released, most likely by Thursday. There were actually two separate hackings that the Obama administration has said came from Russian intelligence — with “100 percent” certainty. As he has previously, Mr. Assange said: “Our source is not the Russian government. It is not state parties. ” But Mr. Assange has often said that the organization does not always know the identity of its sources. It is highly unlikely that anyone approaching WikiLeaks with the emails obtained by Russian government hacking would acknowledge the source, so it is likely that Mr. Assange cannot be sure of the origin of the emails. Mr. Assange and Mr. Hannity did not address that, in addition to WikiLeaks, the leaked Democratic material was published by two mysterious websites, DCLeaks. com and a blog written by someone called Guccifer 2. 0. American intelligence agencies say they believe both were created by Russian agents. In addition to American intelligence agencies, most private researchers also say they believe that the D. N. C. and Podesta hackings were carried out on orders of Russian government officials, though a few skeptics say they believe the case is unproven by the evidence made public. Mr. Assange’s statement is unlikely to change that conclusion. Intelligence officials will brief Congress on their Russia inquiry on Thursday, ahead of a briefing for Mr. Trump in New York on Friday. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will hold the first hearing on the matter on Thursday as well. As for that “terrible” information mentioned by Mr. Trump, the CNN commentator Donna Brazile did send Mr. Podesta an email ahead of a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich. tipping him off that a woman in the audience would ask why the government was not doing more to help clean the city’s water supply. That was, in fact, reported widely and often, here and here and here and here, among other places. And that was hardly an unexpected query — for Mrs. Clinton or for her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It did cause Ms. Brazile to lose her CNN post. The appears to be getting a jump on the news. Vice Mike Pence defended Mr. Trump’s Assange posts at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, effectively doubling down on the incoming administration’s icy blasts toward United States intelligence. Mr. Trump “expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions,” Mr. Pence said, with House Republican leaders by his side. Mr. Trump’s remarks have again placed fellow Republicans in an uncomfortable position. Asked on Wednesday morning about the Twitter post, Speaker Paul D. Ryan steered clear of criticizing the saying he would not be commenting on “every little tweet or Facebook post. ” But he called Mr. Assange “a sycophant for Russia,” who “leaks, steals data and compromises national security. ” Mr. Ryan noted that Mr. Trump had not yet received his latest briefing on Russia. “Hopefully, he’ll get up to speed on what’s been happening and what Russia has or has not done,” he said. Ms. Manigault, the villain and diva from Mr. Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” was officially named assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, one of a slate of Wednesday appointments that went to ardent Trump loyalists. The appointments include Bill Stepien, a confidant of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a figure in the “Bridgegate” scandal, who will be White House political director. Keith Schiller, who was head of private security at Mr. Trump’s real estate company, will be director of Oval Office operations. John DeStefano, a longtime aide to former House Speaker John A. Boehner, will direct presidential personnel. And George Gigicos, who organized those giant campaign rallies, will be director of advance, a further indicator that Mr. Trump plans to continue that sort of thing as president. But for star power, no one is going to beat Ms. Manigault. Ms. Manigault aside, Mr. Trump is turning to some seasoned veterans to run key operations in his White House. Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday that he had selected Joe Hagin, who served for 14 years in the White House under Roanld Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, as his deputy chief of staff for operations, a key post in which he will be responsible for organizing presidential trips and security, among other things. He named Rick Dearborn, who has 25 years of experience on Capitol Hill, as his chief liaison to Congress, heading the Office of Legislative Affairs as well as the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Cabinet Affairs. Katie Walsh, who was chief of staff at the Republican National Committee under Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, will become his deputy at the White House, overseeing senior staff, scheduling and the Office of Public Liaison. In a statement, Mr. Priebus called the three a “team of doers” who would fill critical roles. Kellyanne Conway, who served as counselor to Mr. Trump, said she was thrilled to have “another strong female leader” on the team in Ms. Walsh. First, Mr. Trump said that the nation should move beyond talk of Russian interference in the presidential election, but that he would listen to what American intelligence experts had to say. Then, on New Year’s Eve, the promised that by Tuesday or Wednesday, he would reveal information on the hacking that Americans do not know. And now, he seems to think the intelligence community has not quite gotten its story straight. The Obama administration quickly let it be known that, in fact, intelligence leaders always intended to brief Mr. Trump on Friday in New York. And intelligence officials were not amused. Nor were some Republican political consultants. But this is not the first time the has taken a swipe at the intelligence community, which has concluded that Russia tried to help get him elected president. President Obama is on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to plot a strategy to save his signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Vice Mike Pence countered with his own visit to congressional Republicans. “The first order of business is to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Mr. Pence said. “It needs to be done. ” And Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter, trying to stiffen Republican spines as Democrats press their point that a fast gutting of the law will endanger the health care of 20 million people covered under the law and put at risk tens of millions more with health problems. “Schumer clowns” may not be an olive branch to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new minority leader, but it is a signal that the incoming president is ready for war over health care. “Republicans should stop clowning around with Americans’ Medicare, Medicaid and health care,” Mr. Schumer responded after meeting with the president. He warned that Republicans would “throw the entire health care system into chaos. ” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, tried to coin a phrase: “Make America sick again? Is that what Republicans want?” The Trump transition office named the lawyer Jay Clayton to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The last time Mr. Trump held a real news conference was on July 27, when he said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had called him a genius and wrongly insisted that “many people” saw bombs strewn all over the floor of the San Bernardino, Calif. attackers’ home and failed to report it. That long stretch without a real news media grilling did not do him much harm. He did, after all, win the election. But he says he will hold a true, open news conference next Wednesday. No word yet whether this session will take the place of the one he scheduled for last month, then canceled, to specifically reveal his plans for the future of his corporation.

REPORT: Leakers Found Inside White House, Trump Will Be Firing - Breitbart

Ian Mason

Trey Yingst, chief White House correspondent for the One America News Network, is reporting Monday that three sources of the leaks liberally flowing from President Donald Trump’s White House have been found. [SCOOP: Three White House staffers have been identified for leaking classified info. POTUS will fire ’multiple people’ when he returns to DC. — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) May 22, 2017, According to Yingst, three staffers have been identified and referred to the Office of Government Ethics for their role in leaking information from within the White House. Leaks to the mainstream press have constantly plagued the Trump administration in its early days, with opportunely time leaks undermining key administration efforts. Yingst claims his source informed him President Trump will fire “multiple people” on his return to Washington from his landmark foreign tour through the Middle East. It was implied criminal prosecution may also be on the table for those responsible. SCOOP INFO: I’m told the names of the leakers are being run by the Office of Government Ethics, which is why they aren’t immediately fired, — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) May 22, 2017, Disclosing classified information without authorization is a crime. The Office of Government Ethics is not itself a prosecutorial body but may, if it is determined criminal acts have been committed, recommend the staffers’ referral to law enforcement or other disciplinary sanction. Breitbart News could not immediately independently confirm the OANN report.

Harry Reid and Koch Brothers Wage Proxy War for a Nevada Senate Seat - The New York Times

Carl Hulse

LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s Senate race could not get much bigger. It is the only real chance Republicans have to flip a Democratic seat. The outcome could seal control of the Senate. For those who have followed the intrigue of recent campaign cycles, it is riveting for another reason. The battle to choose a successor to Senator Harry Reid, the retiring Democratic leader, is pitting Mr. Reid and his political operation against his archenemies, Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire industrialist brothers whom Mr. Reid has spent the past few years denouncing as the avatars of politics. This is an epic proxy war, with Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat and a former Nevada attorney general, and Representative Joe Heck, a Republican, serving as surrogates in a clash to see who gets the last word in this brutal rivalry. Both sides, as they say around the Texas Hold ’Em tables here in America’s gambling capital, are all in. “I am going to do everything I can do to prevail, to help her prevail,” a determined Mr. Reid said in an interview at his home in nearby Henderson, Nev. as he takes on a more visible role in the Senate fight. For their part, leaders of the Koch network, which has at least four groups working to defeat Ms. Cortez Masto, do not disguise the fact that they would sorely like to knock off Mr. Reid’s chosen successor to exact a bit of revenge and to help Republicans hold the Senate. “It would certainly be poetic justice to see Harry Reid, who for so long has waged an unhinged personal vendetta against people we care a lot about, to see his seat go to someone who supports limited government, free speech,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, the group mounting an extensive ground game against Ms. Cortez Masto. With polls showing the Nevada race close, Mr. Reid has become pretty caustic with his own speech when it comes to the Kochs and their preferred candidate, Mr. Heck, a House member and a former state lawmaker. The Senate minority leader, who for years has taken to the Senate floor to assail the Kochs for taking advantage of campaign finance laws to covertly funnel money into defeating Democrats, seems more than willing to go on the attack for Ms. Cortez Masto, who chooses her own words very carefully. While receiving an award on Thursday from a progressive group whose leadership praised him for “holding the Koch brothers accountable,” Mr. Reid declared that the goal of the Kochs and their allies was to turn the United States into an oligarchy with a chosen few running the nation for their personal benefit. “They want to make sure that they pick the next Supreme Court justices,” said Mr. Reid, who regularly refers to Mr. Heck as a fraud and a phony. And he lashed out at Mr. Heck for being behind an advertising campaign that blamed Ms. Cortez Masto for a rise in violent crime even though the state attorney general in Nevada has little to do with local law enforcement. “Heck is an absolute stooge for these nut cases,” Mr. Reid said. The Heck camp dismisses Mr. Reid’s comments as criticism that will backfire with Nevada voters already familiar with the congressman. They say the combative tone reflects Mr. Reid’s rising fear about losing the seat, which could be interpreted as a rejection of his career in the Senate. “It is clear that in terms of both outside help and that Harry Reid is calling in every favor and connection he has and that this is about continuing his legacy,” said Brian Baluta, a spokesman for Mr. Heck. The Heck campaign is eager to link Ms. Cortez Masto to Mr. Reid, and at times it can be hard to tell from its Twitter feeds whether it is running against her or Mr. Reid. Mr. Baluta is correct that outside groups are supporting Ms. Cortez Masto, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Senate Majority PAC, a group run by Democrats with connections to Mr. Reid that has spent nearly $2. 5 million on ads against Mr. Heck. But Mr. Heck is receiving help from outside the state as well. Freedom Partners Action Fund, which relies on considerable Koch funding, reports that it has spent more than $4. 5 million against Ms. Cortez Masto. Concerned Veterans for America, another part of the Koch network, earlier ran more than $700, 000 in ads on behalf of Mr. Heck, a military veteran. Mark Holden, the chairman of Freedom Partners and general counsel to Koch Industries, said the Koch network was backing Mr. Heck because he supported policies that would “help drive a free and open society. ” “This will be a welcome change from the petty bitterness of Senator Reid, and the divisive and harmful policies that he favored, which Ms. Masto also supports,” Mr. Holden said. As for the ground game, Americans for Prosperity has three offices in the state, plans on opening a fourth and intends to marshal hundreds of volunteers to go door to door to reach out to voters identified as being open to opposing Ms. Cortez Masto. “Our No. 1 goal is to educate voters on her record,” said Adam Jones, the state director of the group, as young volunteers bustled around the organization’s headquarters in a strip mall. The Libre Initiative, another group partly funded by Freedom Partners, is for the first time actively opposing a candidate and hopes to mobilize Hispanic voters against Ms. Cortez Masto in a race where the Latino vote will be crucial. The stance means the organization, formed to promote economic opportunity for Latinos, will be trying to defeat the woman who would be the first Latina elected to the Senate. “A Latina is still a liberal,” said Dan Garza, the executive director of the group. Mr. Heck is generally seen as having a slight edge in the race at the moment and is being helped by the fact that Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who was endorsed by Mr. Heck, has not fallen as far in Nevada as he has in other swing states. Reflecting Democratic concern, some Reid staff members, including Kristen Orthman, his communications director, are being dispatched to the state party to bolster the final Democratic push. Mr. Reid, who concedes he can sometimes be “harsh” in his comments, remains confident that Democrats will hold his seat. And he takes pride in the fact that it is such a target of the Kochs. “I think people are not only identified by their friends, but also their enemies,” said Mr. Reid, who promised to stay as aggressive in protecting his seat as he has been in his feud with the Kochs. “Say what you want about me — and people do — but as my dad said, ‘If you do something, don’t do it ’” Mr. Reid said. “Just do it. ”

Michael Moore’s ‘Morning After To-Do List’ Is Going Viral – Maybe This Time We Will Listen

Blanche Benson

He called it. Many times. Michael Moore, the controversial documentary filmmaker, is a staunch Democrat and Clinton supporter, but has been saying all along that Trump was going to win. On Real Time with Bill Maher in July, Moore cried out, “Get out of your bubble, people!” He listed five reasons why Trump was going to be the next president and he was creepy correct. For example, his first reason ‘The Rust Belt/Brexit Strategy’ played out before our eyes last night: “Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. The total votes of [Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania ]… 64. All he (Trump) has to do is win those four states.” You can check out the whole list, explained in detail, here . And during a talk posted on Youtube on October 24 th , Moore also explained why Trump was gonna win. But the ever-optimistic Moore is not wasting his time saying, “I told you so.” Instead, he has put out a call for action. On his Facebook page, he posted a to-do list and it looks like this time people are listening. The posting has gone viral, with 218K reactions, 10K comments and almost 100K shares on Facebook alone. So, without further ado… Michael Moore’s Morning After To-Do List: Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above). Let’s try to get this all done by noon today. — Michael Moore You can read the original post on Michael Moore’s Facebook page . Featured image via YouTube screengrab Share this Article!

After Drug Tests, Is Anyone Left in the Weight-Lifting Room? - The New York Times

Jeré Longman

RIO DE JANEIRO — The brothers Dan and Anthony Rigney of Australia attended the Olympic weight lifting competition on Sunday and were not exactly mortified that the sport is more polluted than Guanabara Bay. Sure, they want athletes to be but they also want to be entertained by raw human power. So yes, they would have preferred to see the Russian and Bulgarian teams, which were barred for doping. Likewise with Ilya Ilyin, a suspended Olympic champion from Kazakhstan, who is the Barry Bonds of the clean and jerk. “You like to see world records,” said Dan Rigney, 28, a physiotherapist and competitive lifter from Sydney. “It’s like baseball. People just want to see home runs. ” There has long been a pragmatism about weight lifting. Drugs have been a hushed but vital part of doing business. If there is an argument to be made that any sport should permit doping, or even make it mandatory, that sport is weight lifting. “Maybe it already is,” Dan Rigney said with a laugh, adding that, in his view, doping “is what’s keeping the Olympics going. ” Let’s be honest. We don’t want to see anybody lift a keg. We want to see someone hoist a Buick. We are nostalgic for champions like Vasily Alekseyev, the great Soviet superheavyweight who won gold medals in 1972 and 1976. He set 80 world records and was the first person to lift 500 pounds in the clean and jerk. He was so massive that his uniform fit like a chin strap on a bowling ball. And those sideburns — great thickets wide and deep enough to plant potatoes. Oh, sure, we say we are against doping in sports. But we don’t care enough to stop buying tickets or watching on television. And let’s ask ourselves this: Would anyone stay tuned if the Olympic champion ran the 100 meters in 15 seconds instead of nine? Who would watch the N. F. L. if linemen were built more like Gilligan than the Skipper? Most fans seem to view doping in the same way they view special effects in “Star Wars” movies, said Charles Yesalis, a retired Penn State professor and an expert on drugs. “It enhances the enjoyment of viewing because you see people doing things,” Dr. Yesalis said in a recent interview. “If everybody looked like normal people, chances are the N. C. A. A. the N. F. L. and the Olympics would not be entities. ” Before the Games, international sports officials tossed out assorted male and female lifters from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, North Korea, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, a Fodor’s guide through the world of banned substances. Olympic weight lifting without Russia and Bulgaria is like Harry Potter without Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange (if those villains wore spandex and had necks the size of Easter hams). The competition will go on, but it won’t be the same. Until recently, weight lifting officials had mostly turned the other way, keenly understanding that the final word of the Olympic motto, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” is not easily achieved over the counter. Of course, with the Rio Games upon us, the International Weightlifting Federation is suddenly affronted. It has called revelations of widespread doping in Russia “shocking and disappointing” and has said that the “integrity of the weight lifting sport has been seriously damaged. ” Integrity? Now they worry about integrity? There were 24 positive tests at the world weight lifting championships last year, and retesting of urine samples from the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2012 London Games revealed at least 20 additional positives, including four from Olympic champions, according to the news agency Agence . Essentially, comedy has become reality. Remember that “Saturday Night Live” sketch, with Phil Hartman playing a Soviet weight lifter named Sergei Akmudov at the All Drug Olympics? “His trainer has told me that he’s taken anabolic steroids, Novocain, NyQuil, Darvon and some sort of fish paralyzer,” the announcer, played by Kevin Nealon, says earnestly. “Also, I believe he’s had several cocktails within the last hour or so,” the announcer says. “All this, of course, is perfectly legal at the All Drug Olympics. In fact, it’s encouraged. ” Akmudov tries to lift more than 1, 500 pounds, triple the world record in the clean and jerk, except for one small problem. “Oh, he’s pulled his arms off!” the witless announcer yells. “He’s pulled his arms off! That’s got to be disappointing to the big Russian. ” With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the Olympics lost a gripping appeal for many Americans — the rivalry between East and West. With Russia now absent from Rio in weight lifting and track and field, that enthralling tension erodes further still. “There was no one to root against,” Matt Futterman wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal, lamenting the parting of the Iron Curtain for international sport. “It was like watching a Bond film in which everyone was working for MI6. ” One wonders whether medals won in Rio will be devalued in particular sports, as they were when the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union reciprocated at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. “Weight lifting is so riddled with doping problems, it’s hard to call any medal devalued,” said Bill Mallon, an Olympic historian. And to be sure, many people in weight lifting have applauded the mass suspensions. “Rules are rules,” said Mika Tiainen, Finland’s Olympic coach. “Lifting makes the competition, not the country. ” Still, it would surprise no one if the retesting of urine samples from Rio led to the stripping of medals in coming years. Anthony Rigney, 33, a teacher, said he had seen a meme online: “I can’t wait until 2024 to see who won the gold in Rio. ”

Übrige Wrestler überlegen, wann sie Tim Wiese endlich sagen sollen, dass alles abgesprochen ist

noreply@blogger.com (Der Postillon)

Freitag, 4. November 2016 Übrige Wrestler überlegen, wann sie Tim Wiese endlich sagen sollen, dass alles abgesprochen ist München (dpo) - Früher oder später wird Tim Wiese die Wahrheit erfahren müssen. Doch noch rätseln seine Wrestler-Kollegen, wann sie den Ex-Nationaltorwart am besten wissen lassen sollen, dass sein Sieg bei seinem Debüt als Profi-Wrestler in der Münchner Olympiahalle von vornherein abgesprochen war . "Tim hat sich so ins Zeug gelegt für seinen ersten Kampf, da will ich echt nicht der sein, der ihm jetzt erklären muss, dass unsere Gegner absichtlich verloren haben und alle außer ihm vorher Bescheid wussten", erklärt WWE-Superstar Cesaro, der gemeinsam mit Wiese ("The Machine") und Profi-Wrestler Sheamus gegen das Duo The Shining Stars und Bo Dallas antrat. Zaghafte Versuche, Tim Wiese darüber aufzuklären, dass beim Wrestling alles abgesprochen ist, seien in der Vergangenheit fehlgeschlagen. Cesaro: "Ich habe Tim letztens erst gefragt, ob ihm klar ist, dass das alles Show ist." Daraufhin habe Wiese genickt und geantwortet: "Jaja, geile Show. Ich muss jetzt noch trainieren, damit ich nicht verliere." Dann sei Wiese im Fitnessstudio verschwunden. Cesaro und seine Kollegen hätten schließlich der Einfachheit halber beschlossen, den kompletten ersten Kampf um Tim Wiese herum zu choreografieren, damit er weiter seinen Traum leben kann. Auf Dauer sei das aber zu gefährlich. "Auch wenn es nicht schwierig ist, so zu tun, als wären seine plumpen Angriffe gefährlich: Irgendwann trifft er doch mal einen von uns wirklich. Deshalb müssen wir bald Tacheles mit ihm reden", so Cesaro. "Aber eine schöne Aufgabe ist das natürlich nicht – gerade jetzt, wo er so froh ist, eine Sportart gefunden zu haben, in der er der Größte ist." Damit Tim Wiese diesmal auch wirklich zuhört, wollen seine Wrestling-Kollegen "The Machine" beim nächsten Kampf innerhalb der ersten zehn Sekunden überwältigen, ihn auf dem Boden fixieren und ihm dann in aller Ruhe darlegen, wie Wrestling tatsächlich funktioniert. ssi, dan; Foto oben: dpa Artikel teilen:

Al Gore Made Nearly $200 Million from the Global Warming Scam — Likely to Become the World's First 'Carbon Billionaire'

noreply@blogger.com (Alexander Light)

Documentaries . Al Gore Made Nearly $200 Million from the Global Warming Scam — Likely to Become the World's First 'Carbon Billionaire' Ten years after the release of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, none of the film's dire climate... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/al-gore-made-nearly-200-million-from.html Ten years after the release of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, none of the film's dire climate change predictions have come to pass. However, in the decade since the documentary was produced, its creator has raked in millions of dollars from the entire "global warming" scam, and is now poised to become " our first carbon billionaire ."In the 2006 film, Gore made a number of wild claims regarding what we could expect to see happening over the next few years due to global warming, but virtually all of his alarmist prognostications have turned out to be false. Arctic didn't melt, polar bears are thriving For instance, the film predicted that that the Arctic could become ice-free within the next decades, and that polar bears would begin drowning. Both claims were untrue.As reported by Investor's Business Daily:"In the mid- to late-2000s, Gore repeatedly predicted that an ice-free Arctic Ocean was coming soon."But as usual, his fortune-telling was wrong. By 2014, Arctic ice had grown thicker and covered a greater area than it did when he made his prediction."And the polar bears?The Daily Caller reports:"A new study by Canadian scientists once again debunks the notion polar bears are currently being harmed by global warming. Researchers with Canada's Lakehead University found 'no evidence' polar bears are currently threatened by warming ." Kilimanjaro's snow hasn't disappeared Another prediction made in the film was that Mt. Kilimanjaro would be snow-free "within the decade." But in fact:"In 2014, ecologists actually monitoring Kilimanjaro's snowpack found it was not even close to being gone. It may have shrunk a little, but ecologists were confident it would be around for the foreseeable future." Extreme weather has failed to materialize In Inconvenient Truth, Gore also forecasted that storms would begin occurring more often and at higher intensities.Wrong again, Al:"Gore's claim is more hype than actual science, since storms aren't more extreme since 2006. In fact, not even findings from the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) support Gore's claim."The IPCC found in 2013 there 'is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century.' "The IPCC also found 'no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century' and '[n]o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.'"Gore should probably take these findings seriously since he shared the Nobel Prize in 2007 with the IPCC for its work on global warming." Despite false claims, Gore grows richer from climate change myth Although Gore's claims have been thoroughly debunked by a number of experts, he has been quietly amassing a huge fortune based on the climate change scam.Mad World News reports:"Gore's wealth went from $700,000 in 2000 to an estimated net worth of $172.5 million by 2015 thanks to his environmentalist activism. Gore and the former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management made nearly $218 million in profits between 2008 and 2011 from a carbon trading company they co-founded. By 2008, Gore was able to put a whopping $35 million into hedge funds and other investments." Science Fights Back:

Survival of Sears and Kmart Is in Doubt, Owner Warns - The New York Times

Carlos Tejada

The corporate owner of Sears and Kmart said on Tuesday that there was “substantial doubt” that it could continue operating, as stores continue to face challenges in an world. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the corporate owner, Sears Holdings Corporation, cited its efforts to cut costs, sell property, tap new funding sources and make other moves to stanch the flow of red ink. Still, it reported a $2. 2 billion loss for last year and said it had to use money from its investments and financing activities to fund operations. “Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” it said in the filing, its annual report. The disclosure is a setback for the company and for Edward S. Lampert, the hedge fund manager who engineered the combination of the two legends of American retail 13 years ago. Mr. Lampert has shut down stores, reshuffled the company’s organization and pushed to have a greater online presence. Still, Sears Holdings has lost more than $5 billion over the last three years as sales have declined. On Wednesday morning, in the first day of trading after the disclosure, shares in the company tumbled more than 13 percent. Sears, through its catalog, has been a fixture of American homes for more than a century. Kmart, which has its own lengthy history beginning as a store in Detroit, became a major national presence in the 1960s as a department store, with Blue Light Special discounts geared toward Americans. But both brands were squeezed by Walmart Stores, with its heavy discounts, and Target, which sold affordable goods but with more design and flair. Both Sears and Kmart also suffered because they were in older shopping malls and neighborhoods. Online retailing, with the rise of the likes of Amazon, presented a more recent challenge. To cope, Sears Holdings has been shrinking. This month, it sold its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black Decker in a deal valued at more than $775 million. Still, its debt as of January totaled nearly $4. 2 billion, almost double from the same period the previous year, according to the filing. In February, Sears Holdings said it had started a restructuring program that it said would save $1 billion annually. The plan focuses on streamlining corporate and support functions, tweaking product offerings and supply chain and looking for ways to reshuffle real estate. As of January, Sears Holdings said, it had 1, 430 Sears and Kmart stores in the United States. By contrast, a decade ago it had about 3, 800 stores in the United States and Canada.

Economists Are Losing Their Minds At Trump’s Plan To Get 3% Economic Growth Again - Breitbart

John Carney

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal forecasts that the administration’s policies will accelerate the American economy into an era of 3 percent growth for as far as the eye can see. That’s unleashed a torrent of criticism from mainstream economists who can’t stand the idea that Trump could grow the economy at such as fast pace. [According to the budget documents released by the White House Tuesday, the U. S. gross domestic product will reach an annual growth rate of 3% by 2021 and then cotinue growing at that pace. This economic acceleration is the key to the Trump administration’s plans to cut taxes while also reducing the budget deficit. “Everything is keyed to getting us back to 3 percent,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters this week. Even though the average growth rate since the War II era has been 3. 2 percent, the administration’s critics are skeptical or even mocking of its GDP forecast. They point out that last time the economy grew at 3 percent in a year was 2005 and ever since the Great Recession the economy appears to be on a permanently slower track. Official estimates from the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Reserve, as well as those by many private forecasters, see growth closer to 2 percent or even lower. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said it was only possible to believe in the Trump administration’s growth forecast “if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous economics. ” Former OMB head Jim Nussle said 3 percent is “unrealistic. ” Alice Rivlin, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, was more polite, saying that “more responsible” projections would forecast growth around 2 percent. The backlash against Trump’s growth forecast stands in marked contrast to the reaction to the assumptions in Barack Obama’s first budget. The Obama administration’s economic projections were constructed by economist Christina Romer, the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Romer assumed GDP would grow by 3. 2 percent in the second year of the administration, followed by 4. 0 percent and then 4. 6 percent. As it turned out, growth never rose above 3 percent during the administration. This failure may explain why so many mainstream economists think 3 percent growth is out of reach. In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, at the Federal Reserve launched a series of interventions intended to stimulate more vigorous economic growth. Even when combined with a rising federal budget deficit, however, these monetary policy moves had much less effect than expected. Many economists concluded that we had entered an era of slower growth. Larry Summers famously described it as an era of “secular stagnation. ” There always was a hint of rationalization in this view. When the mainstream economists saw that the economy was not responding to monetary policy and as strongly as their theory said it should, they decided that something was wrong with the economy rather than their theory. It was the American economy that was broken rather than American economics. Trump’s budget once again provides a challenge to their views. If it turns out that a combination of tax cuts, better trade policies, a revival of manufacturing and regulatory reform can spur faster economic growth, mainstream economists will appear to be the court of a naked emperor. Not only will their policies have been proven ineffective, their diagnosis of our economic malaise will have been shown to be wrong. No wonder they are so mad.

The USA Era (1945 - 2008) in Retrospect

Anonymous Coward (UID 67204360)

The USA Era (1945 - 2008) in Retrospect It worked for some but not for all.Winners and losers of the US American era:.5. South East Asia (partly). Re: The USA Era (1945 - 2008) in Retrospect It worked for some but not for all.Winners and losers of the US American era:.5. South East Asia (partly). Quoting: Anonymous Coward 67204360 There is a simple economic explanation for this development.USA and Whites are now losing influence at an alarming rate. White companies are increasingly complaining about losing access to non-white markets while China's influence is growing there fast, leading, among others, to bank and financial crises like Deutsche Bank. Also, more and more countries are banning white culture and languages.The last 500 years whites controlled all manufacturing, arms production and finance and needed only resources from others. Now whites are losing all that, and are about to become irrelevant when non-whites soon control resources, manufacturing, markets and finance..

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature - The New York Times

Ben Sisario, Alexandra Alter and Sewell Chan

Half a century ago, Bob Dylan shocked the music world by plugging in an electric guitar and alienating folk purists. For decades he continued to confound expectations, selling millions of records with dense, enigmatic songwriting. Now, Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that elevates him into the company of T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett. Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels. [ Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician | Our book critic on Dylan, the writer ] Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice. ” But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether songwriting, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature. “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” the novelist Rabih Alameddine wrote on Twitter. “This is almost as silly as Winston Churchill. ” Jodi Picoult, a novelist, snarkily asked, “I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?” Many musicians praised the choice with a kind of awe. On Twitter, Rosanne Cash, the songwriter and daughter of Johnny Cash, wrote simply: “Holy mother of god. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize. ” But some commentators bristled. Two websites, Pitchfork and Vice, both ran columns questioning whether Mr. Dylan was an appropriate choice for the Nobel. As the writer of classic folk and protest songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are ’,” as well as Top 10 hits including “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mr. Dylan is an unusual Nobel winner. The first American to win the prize since Ms. Morrison in 1993, he is studied by Oxford dons and beloved by presidents. Yet instead of appearing at the standard staid news conference arranged by a publisher, Mr. Dylan was in Las Vegas on Thursday for a performance at a theater there. By late afternoon, Mr. Dylan had not commented on the honor. Mr. Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound. He has also published poetry and prose, including his 1971 collection, “Tarantula,” and “Chronicles: Volume One,” a memoir published in 2004. His collected lyrics from are due out on Nov. 1 from Simon Schuster. Literary scholars have long debated whether Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist. Billy Collins, the former United States poet laureate, argued that Mr. Dylan deserved to be recognized not merely as a songwriter, but as a poet. “Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to,” Mr. Collins said in an interview. “Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry. ” In giving the literature prize to Mr. Dylan, the academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms. “It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official. ” In previous years, writers and publishers have grumbled that the prize often goes to obscure writers with clear political messages over more popular figures. But in choosing someone so well known, and so far outside of established literary traditions, the academy seems to have swung far into the other direction, bestowing prestige on a popular artist who already had plenty of it. It’s not the first time it has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history. In its citation, the Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. ” Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the academy, which called Mr. Dylan “a great poet in the tradition” and compared him to Homer and Sappho, whose work was delivered orally. Asked if the decision to award the prize to a musician signaled a broadening in the definition of literature, Ms. Danius responded, “The times they are perhaps. ” Mr. Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. But from the start, Mr. Dylan stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique songwriting style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes. Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out. After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N. Y. Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives, showing his working process through thousands of pages of songwriting drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla. His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra. Since 1988, Mr. Dylan has toured almost constantly, inspiring an unofficial name for his itinerary, the Never Ending Tour. Last weekend, he played the first of two performances at Desert Trip, a festival in Indio, Calif. that also featured the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and other stars of the 1960s. He is scheduled to return on Friday for the festival’s second weekend. “As the ’60s wore on,” Giles Harvey wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2010, “Dylan grew increasingly frustrated with what he came to regard as the pious sloganeering and doctrinaire leftist politics of the folk milieu. ” He “began writing a kind of visionary nonsense verse, in which the rough, ribald, lawless America of the country’s traditional folk music collided with a surreal ensemble of characters from history, literature, legend, the Bible, and many other places besides. ” Mr. Dylan’s many albums, which the Swedish Academy described as having “a tremendous impact on popular music,” include “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965) “Blonde on Blonde” (1966) “Blood on the Tracks” (1975) “Oh Mercy” (1989) “Time Out Of Mind” (1997) “‘Love and Theft’” (2001) and “Modern Times” (2006). His 38 studio albums have sold 125 million copies around the world. The academy added: “Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature. ” Mr. Dylan’s many honors include Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, won a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. The Nobel comes with a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or just over $900, 000. The literature prize is given for a lifetime of writing rather than for a single work. “Today, everybody from Bruce Springsteen to U2 owes Bob a debt of gratitude,” President Obama said at the medal ceremony. “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. All these years later, he’s still chasing that sound, still searching for a little bit of truth. And I have to say that I am a really big fan. ” ■ Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 3 for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “ . ” ■ David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics on Oct. 4 for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states. ■ Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Oct. 5 for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices. ■ President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the war in the Americas. ■ Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on improving the design of contracts, the deals that bind together employers and their workers, or companies and their customers.

That Old Phone Trump Uses for Twitter Could Be an Opening to Security Threats - The New York Times

Cecilia Kang

President Trump has carried his Twitter habit into his presidency. He has also brought with him another tech habit that is causing concern. Mr. Trump has been using his old, unsecured Android phone to post on Twitter since moving to Washington late last week. The president’s desire to use his old, personal smartphone raises concerns that its use could be exposing him and the nation to security threats. He is using the Android smartphone mainly to post on Twitter, not to make calls. But it’s unclear what security measures have been put in place on the device and how vulnerable he could be to someone stealing data or breaking into his Twitter account. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter requires a connection to the internet, which exposes the device to security vulnerabilities if proper measures like authentication — a password and a code texted to a phone, for example — are not in place. If he uses the smartphone on an unsecure network, he could be exposing his location and other personal information on the device. “The absolutely minimum Trump could do to protect our nation is to use a secure device to protect him from foreign spies and other threats,” said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon on the Intelligence Committee. “It would be irresponsible in the extreme for the commander in chief to use an unsecure device that could be easily hacked or intercepted. ” Among the concerns by security experts: ■ It is unclear if the device and its functions like texting are encrypted to thwart hacking. ■ The device could be more vulnerable to hacking if used on unsecured and cellular networks, such as when Mr. Trump travels between meetings or anywhere outside the White House. ■ Hackers could access the device to turn on the camera and microphone. ■ Stingray devices, a type of surveillance tool often used by law enforcement, can track a device’s location and other information. “There are a lot of questions, but it is clear there are often vulnerabilities in our phones and internet systems — and it is critical that people take precautions to ensure their sensitive information is protected from hackers and other malicious actors,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. The president’s use of the personal device is particularly notable given his criticism of Hillary Clinton for using a personal email address and server when she was secretary of state. In 2009, President Barack Obama fought to become the first president with a smartphone though he won, the use of a White secure device came with many rules. “As president, he is the biggest sitting target in the world,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of New America’s Open Technology Institute.

Baby with Down syndrome lands modeling gig

Howard Portnoy

[Ed. – Way to go, Asher! Way to go, Asher’s parents!] Asher Nash may only be 15-months old, but he’s got the face of an angel. His mother knew of her son’s potential, despite his disability, and wanted an opportunity for him to be represented in the modeling world. But Meagan Nash ran into some issues: A talent agency wouldn’t even send out Asher’s photos — they wouldn’t even give him a shot. Her story was picked up by a few local organizations, all fighting for Asher. “The second reason, which is very near and dear to my heart, is acceptance. Without truly accepting my son and others with special needs, there can be no inclusion for them in the future,” Meagan said. Soon, her story went viral, and the children’s line OshKosh B’gosh responded, offering little Asher a spot in their 2017 campaign. “I don’t want [OshKosh] to use him because of this fuss we are making on the Internet. I want them to use him because they value him and see how much he could contribute to their advertisement,” Nash said .

Obama White House legacy at stake, a President Trump could nullify all of Obama’s executive orders

Shepard Ambellas

Pete Souza/WhiteHouse.gov Will the Establishment elite allow Trump to take the presidency on Jan. 20, 2017? WASHINGTON D.C. ( INTELLIHUB ) — The Establishment elite are in panic mode after their rigged elections backfired in their face when vast seas of patriotic Americans took to the polls in favor of Donald J. Trump, giving America’s new President-elect the electoral votes needed to win. Last Thursday, during a meeting held at the White House, between Donald Trump and President Barack Obama, you could just see how irked Obama was knowing that he was sitting beside a truly patriotic soul; a man with a raging fire burning inside him; a man with the spirit to facilitate making America great again. Not to mention Trump was the man that brought Obama’s birth certificate issue to the forefront. The look on @POTUS face when he met @realDonaldTrump #priceless — Shepard Ambellas (@ShepardAmbellas) November 12, 2016 In fact, during the meeting Obama was so threatened by Trump’s presence that his 8-year-long legacy likely flashed before his very eyes as the President of the United States realized that on day number one of Donald Trump’s presidency, a president Trump, at that point, could simply nullify any and all executive orders signed by the then would-be former president Barack Obama during his tenure as POTUS . What will happen if Trump nullifies all of Obama’s executive orders once POTUS? Ted Eytan/Flickr Does this mean no more ‘transgender bathrooms?’ Absolutely. Imagine that; a normal world, how it always was for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Naval History & Heritage Command/Flickr Does that mean Americans can keep their guns? Sure does. America would not be America if we did not have the right to bear arms and work to undo what anti-gunners have done in Washington D.C. over the past two decades and what Obama has done over the past 8-years against the U.S. Constitution . Fibonacci Blue/Flickr Does that mean the repeal of Obamacare or major failed portions of it? Yes it does. Does that mean the preservation of our civil rights and liberties per the Constitution? Sure does. Does that mean implementing a sensible immigration policy; possibly building a wall? Yes it does. After all, the Russians are now using advanced killer robots at their border, ones that can engage and kill humans from over 6 miles away. Nancy <I’m gonna SNAP!/Flickr Does that mean putting an end to dangerous geoengineering programs that our affecting all living things on the planet and our weather? One can only hope. But you can see where I am going with this. The Establishment elite simply do not want to lose their power and in my opinion will likely do anything to keep it. Remember, they have built a legacy and plan to protect it at all costs. So in other words; will Donald Trump actually take office against all odds? Please comment below and share your opinion on this highly important issue. Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, filmmaker , radio talk show host and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics. Established in 2013, Intellihub.com is ranked in the upper 1% traffic tier on the World Wide Web. Read more from Shep’s World . Get the Podcast . Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter . ©2016. INTELLLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

Syrian War Report – November 4, 2016: Govt Forces Repel Fierce Militant Advance in Aleppo

South Front

Israeli official secretly visits Dubai: Report ‹ › South Front Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises. They focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world: Ukraine, the war in Middle East, Central Asia issues, protest movements in the Balkans, migration crises, and others. In addition, they provide military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by governments and mainstream media. Syrian War Report – November 4, 2016: Govt Forces Repel Fierce Militant Advance in Aleppo By South Front on November 4, 2016 …from SouthFront The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) advanced along the Aleppo-Hama highway and seized the two hills – Tell Bazam and Tell Masin – north of the recently liberated town of Souran. Strategically, this offensive may allow the army and the NDF to flank the militant-controlled areas with the center in Latamanah. This strategy could lead to a success if the government forces are able to advance further to the north and to take control of Morek. The government forces continued military operations in Western Ghouta, targeting Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda branch) and its allies in the town of Khan al-Sheih. Earlier this week, the government forces made an attempt to make an agreement with the militants to allow them to withdraw from the city to the province of Idlib. However, this idea resulted in a falure and lead to further escalation in the area. Yesterday, the army and the NDF seized a key farms northeast of Khan al-Sheih and deployed in a striking distance from the militant stronghold. The army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade and Hezbollah successfully repelled a fiercest attack by the al-Nusra-led militant alliance, Jaish al-Fatah, in western Aleppo on November 3. Both sides suffered some casualties and Jaish al-Fatah used at least 2 car bombs in an attepmt to break the government forces’ defenses. Pro-militant sources report that the ‘opposition’ has destroyed some 4 units of military equipment belonging to the army. At least 1 infantry fighting vehicle and 1 battle tank belonging to Jaish al-Fatah were destroyed. On November 4, the humanitarian took place in the city. However, firefights are ongoing. The ISIS-linked media outlet Amaq released a footage of an explosion of Russian Mi-35 multi-role combat helicopter near the village of Huwaysis, northwest of Palmyra. the Mi-35 was delivering a humanitarian aid in the area when it was downed because of a technical failure. ISIS militants targeted the landing site with an anti-tank guided missile. The incident took place on November 3. The Mi-35’s crew (2 men) survived the incident and returned safely to the Russian Khmeimim Airbase in the province of Latakia. Russia’s state-of-the-art frigate Admiral Grigorovich, armed with Caliber missiles, set off to the Mediterranean Sea from the port of Sevastopol on November 3. The frigate will join the Russian naval task force off the coast of Syria. Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians, or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. LEGAL NOTICE - COMMENT POLICY Posted by South Front on November 4, 2016, With 2007 Reads Filed under WarZone . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. FaceBook Comments You must be logged in to post a comment Login WHAT'S HOT

One in Every 137 Teenagers Would Identify as Transgender, Report Says - The New York Times

Niraj Chokshi

Nearly 150, 000 American teenagers from 13 to 17 years old — or one out of every 137 — would identify as transgender if survey takers asked, according to an analysis of state and federal data that offers an answer to a question that has long eluded researchers. The figure stands to inform the fierce debate over the rights of transgender youth, reignited on Wednesday by President Trump’s decision to rescind an Obama administration policy that protected the rights of students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The estimate may also help lawmakers and advocates across the country better understand the populations they serve. “We want to make sure that policy debates are informed by actual figures,” said Jody L. Herman, a scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute at the U. C. L. A. School of Law, where she and several published the estimate in a report last month. That report, the latest in a series on transgender populations, included estimates of the transgender population in each state and in different age groups. In addition to an estimated 149, 750 transgender teenagers nationwide, accounting for 0. 7 percent of the population ages 13 to 17, Dr. Herman and her estimated that there are 1. 4 million transgender adults in the United States. In the younger age group, transgender identification is probably more common among the older teenagers than the younger ones, they said. The Williams Institute, well regarded for its research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, was frequently cited during the marriage debate for its findings on the positive economic impact of allowing the practice. It also published a widely accepted estimate of the national L. G. B. T. population six years ago. In the January report, the researchers estimated that 22, 200 teenagers in California, 13, 800 in Texas and 9, 750 in New York would identify as transgender if asked. North Dakota and Wyoming were home to the smallest populations of transgender teenagers, estimated at just 200 each. Proportionally, however, Hawaii and West Virginia took the lead, with about 1 in 100 teenagers from 13 to 17 estimated to be transgender. In Connecticut and Iowa, the transgender share of that age group was projected to be much smaller, about 1 in 250. The analysis, an extrapolation based on adult responses to a federal survey, represents an indirect way of arriving at a figure that many advocates consider to be of crucial importance. ”It’s not about what your gut tells you, it’s not about what the news last night told you, it’s not about what you think you might have gathered from looking at a couple of internet websites,” said Kellan Baker, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress who specializes in L. G. B. T. and health issues. “It’s about what do the data actually say, so that we can target resources where they will do the most good. ” While the federal government collects a wide variety of detailed demographic information about the population, good, consistent data on sexual orientation and gender identity is lacking. “We just don’t have that same level of information readily accessible,” said Sandy James, survey project manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality. The Williams Institute estimates are based on a large Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In addition to a core set of questions asked nationally, the C. D. C. allows states to choose from several optional questions to ask their residents. One such option, selected by about half the states in 2015 and slightly fewer in 2014, inquired about transgender identity. More than 150, 000 people answered the question each year. With that in hand, the researchers applied an advanced statistical technique regarded by some academics as an emerging gold standard for making state estimates using national data, based on demographic and geographic patterns. The researchers extended the findings of the survey to all 50 states, after accounting for differences in race, age, education, income and religion. The C. D. C. surveys only adults, but the authors used trends among older age groups to estimate the number of teenagers who would identify as transgender if asked. There has been no authoritative, questioning of teenagers about transgender identity. While the C. D. C. surveys children about gender identity, it asks only how they express gender in terms of masculinity and femininity, and the question is posed in a limited number of places, Dr. Herman said. Large, national surveys are also typically slow to change, in order to maintain consistent, comparable data over long periods of time. “This series of reports is our best attempt to use the best available data and the best methodology,” Dr. Herman said.