You've probably heard that it's always best to focus on the average of polls. The poll results that often get the most attention are outliers — they get attention because they're shocking, not because they're representative. But we also know that people often ignore that advice. They want to know the details of the newest poll, and how and why it might be different from the last. And to tell you the truth, I do, too. I read the details and methodology of almost every survey that is released. The problem is that it's a lot harder than it looks. After a splashy poll is released, Twitter is often overflowing with but misguided analysis. It's true: You really are better off looking at the averages. But if you're going to assess individual polls this election, here's a guide on how to do it well. When a poll comes out, I start by looking at the topline results — Hillary Clinton is plus 3 percentage points, or Donald J. Trump is plus 1, for example. But it's also worth looking at vote share — whether Mrs. Clinton has 47 percent or 40 percent, for instance. In particular, I care about how close the leading candidate is to 50 percent. There's more uncertainty the further a candidate is from 50 percent and the larger the number of undecided voters. Until a candidate approaches 50 percent, it's hard to know whether the lead is because of party unity or because the candidate has won over the key voters needed for victory. This is especially true in a reliably red or blue state: A Democrat who has 40 percent of the vote in Arizona still has a lot to prove, even with a lead. He or she hasn't yet won the voters who decide the state's elections. There was a good example of this in the Arizona Senate race. A lot of polls showed John McCain narrowly ahead, or even behind. But once he won the G. O. P. primary, voters returned to his side. Usually, anything at 46 percent or above is a good indicator of real strength. Less than that, and you have to wonder about undecided voters. ■ It's also worth looking at whether there's a difference between registered and likely voters. In a presidential election year, I generally prefer looking at the registered voter numbers — with a caveat. That's because many methods that screen for likely voters are poor and yield noisy data. Registered voter samples are larger, and there aren't additional questions to add statistical noise. But here's the caveat: Registered voter polls tend to overrepresent Democrats, so I often focus on the registered voter number and mentally shift it a point or two toward the Republicans. ■ This year, there's also the question of whether to look at or polls. I'm not sold on which is best. This year's candidates don't have the strong bases of a Ross Perot or John Anderson. It's possible that the polls that name them will overestimate their support it's possible that the polls that do not name them will underestimate their support. For now, I'm inclined to split the difference. To get a sense of whether a poll is good or bad news for a certain candidate, I usually compare the results of the poll with the polling averages or the last poll conducted by the same pollster. ■ If the poll is very different from the polling average, there's a good chance it's an outlier. ■ If the poll shows a big shift from a prior survey, I also wonder whether the previous poll was an outlier. If so, a candidate might appear to rebound simply because he or she was unusually weak in a prior poll. So compare that prior poll with the average of the time, too. ■ It's also worth looking at whether the candidate has gained or lost vote share. When candidates fall without good reason, I often assume they're likelier than not to win back their former supporters. I definitely take note when candidates have won more supporters than they've won before. If that happens a lot, it's a real sign of strength. ■ I also look at the various measures of whether Mr. Trump has a ceiling: like a 50 percent "very unfavorable" rating, or 50 percent who say they would be scared of a Trump presidency. I'm not convinced that those measures actually represent a ceiling. But they very well might, and I am curious about whether he's making progress by those measures. I also care a lot about how the poll was conducted. Polling is hard. A lot of things can go wrong, from question wording to weighting a sample or selecting likely voters. These choices can make a big difference — even with the same data. Worse, there are very few pollsters that really provide enough information to know whether they're making reasonable choices — and what the consequences of those decisions might be. As a result, I strongly prefer experienced firms with solid track records. ■ I have serious problems with IVR polls (interactive voice response). These are sometimes called and they don't have any means to contact voters with a cellphone. This is a problem for even an experienced firm with a good record. It can be disastrous for firms without much . ■ I have reservations about online polls. It's harder to draw a representative sample online because you can't rely on traditional random sampling. There are skilled and experienced pollsters that do a good job, like YouGov and SurveyMonkey. But there's a somewhat higher burden for online pollsters to build solid track records, make good hires and publish a detailed methodology. ■ If the poll is from a less established firm, I'll give a closer look if it has been transparent — if the pollsters publish a detailed methodology that gives me a better sense of what I'm getting. You don't have to analyze every detail of a poll's methodology, but here are some rules of thumb: ■ A poll is often a bad poll. You usually need multiple days to call voters back and get a representative sample. ■ Well over half of adults ought to be reached on cellphones in a typical national survey about 40 percent of Americans do not have a landline at all. A poll of registered voters off the voter file can have a somewhat smaller number of voters, since the poll can typically be weighted by partisanship, and registered and likely voters are less likely to have only a cellphone (they're older, more affluent and often less mobile than the population as a whole). ■ Pay attention to sample size. If a poll has a small sample — less than 800 people or so — be aware that sampling error will play a bigger role than usual. The gains from big samples are smaller than you might think, so don't give a lot of extra credit for a poll that goes much higher than 1, 200. Often, the polls with huge samples are actually just using cheap and problematic sampling methods. If the sample is less than 400, the result should be considered no more than a ballpark estimate. ■ I don't usually pay much attention to the margin of error because it does not even come close to approximating the actual potential for error in a survey. And pollsters calculate margin of error somewhat differently. In particular, I see a lot of firms that don't adjust their margins of error to account for the effect of weighting — making their poll seem more confident than it is. The country is deeply divided along demographic lines, which makes it very important to check on the demographic composition of the sample. But this is not so simple to do. ■ Know the polling universe: adults, registered voters and likely voters. This is trickier than you might suppose. Often, a poll of registered or likely voters will report the demographic composition of the overall sample of adults — generally a much more diverse group. That doesn't tell you about the demographic makeup of registered or likely voters. ■ Know the targets. Almost all pollsters adjust their sample to match demographics, like age, race and gender. If a pollster isn't weighting for something fundamental like that, it's a big warning sign: See for yourself whether the poll is off by a wide margin on those measures (sometimes, they're fine). It's also worth looking at education or party registration. Not every poll weights by those measures, and sometimes that's a mistake. ■ The exit polls are not the word of God. There are legitimate debates about the electorate. Many of these debates center on differences between estimates based on the census, voter files or exit polls. Most polls are on the end of the spectrum showing a whiter sample, since most polls use voter file and census data. Many times, polls get slammed on social media for being "too white" in comparison with the exit polls, even though they're near the consensus of more reliable measures. ■ Wrong is wrong. In general, I wouldn't criticize a poll if the electorate fell somewhere in the debatable range around the exit polls, census and voter file. But if a pollster leaves the debatable range, it's probably just wrong. It may even indicate colossal failures in weighting or sampling. The poll can be dismissed out of hand on this basis alone. Examples of what I mean: a poll showing that more than 45 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania will be over age 65 (that's too high) or that 13 percent of the electorate will be black in North Carolina (that's too low). ■ I really don't look at party identification. We have no idea what the "right" partisan breakdown of the electorate really is: It's an attitude, not a nearly fixed characteristic. Depending on the news or the national political environment, or voters can switch in and out of the "unaffiliated" or "independent" column. It is very clear that there are more Democrats than Republicans in the country, which has been true for about a decade. But I will look at party registration, if it's available from the voter file. That's a pretty fixed characteristic: It doesn't swing with the mood. ■ When I look through the polling crosstabs for subgroups — like young people or black voters — I compare with old polls, not the exit polls. The two measures are irreconcilable, and a direct comparison introduces a lot of bias. It will generally show, for instance, Democrats doing better among white voters even as they're not doing better over all. ■ Subgroups are noisy, and that's fine. I often see a lot of people who dig into the polls and find a crosstab that doesn't make sense — maybe Hispanic voters give Hillary Clinton only 55 percent of the vote. Well, that's O. K. For one, it matters a lot less than you might think (giving Mrs. Clinton an additional shift among Hispanic voters will boost her national vote share by just two points). And subsamples are noisy by nature. It might be canceled out by noise elsewhere in the sample, either by chance or for a more structural reason. An underappreciated fact is that polls are usually adjusted for the right number of voters by race, age and gender, but subgroups don't each have the right demographic composition. There won't necessarily be the right number of young, female Hispanics, or old, less educated white men. So a Hispanic subsample could be too old and male, but in exchange, some other part of the electorate is too young and female. ■ A lot of polls conducted off voter registration files will select a certain set of past voters, like people who have voted in the last two elections in addition to those who are newly registered. These decisions can exclude less likely voters, who may vote differently. That's a problem. I get even more concerned when I see a screen on top of a sample that was already especially likely to vote. I could go on. But these are the basics of my mental checklist in judging whether an individual poll might maintain the status quo, move the needle or stand as an outlier. And then I go back to the poll averages.


Take on the Santa Blanca Cartel as elite special forces operators in the Wildlands of Bolivia in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. [Developed by Ubisoft Paris, Wildlands brings the tactical action of the Ghost Recon series into a massive open world, where players can either team up cooperatively or play solo as they fight to dismantle the created by a brutal cartel. "Journey through Ubisoft's largest open world and discover the diverse landscapes of the most beautiful (and dangerous) place on Earth, from the arid mountains to the lush jungles," Ubisoft declares. "Explore Bolivia on and off road, in the air, on land, and at sea with over 60 different vehicles. " Wildlands features a Faction Influence System, where the player's actions will impact the game world around them: "Turn each dangerous situation into an advantage by seizing control of the cartel's traffic patterns, patrols, and movements. " Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands is available now for Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC.


Oops! Hillary and her race-baiting campaign team are NOT going to want the Black community to see this video Donald Trump doesn t want to give the Black and minority communities a hand-out he wants to give them self-respecting JOBS. He wants to see every American reach their full potential regardless of the color of their skin. This is a concept so foreign to the Democrat Party that the only response they re able to come up with is falsely accusing Trump of being a racist and hoping it sticks. For decades, the Democrats have been able to get away with falsely labeling Republicans But Donald Trump is NOT your average Republican, and he s about to bring down the Democrats false narrative like a house of cards.Enjoy:https://youtu.be/7U6Pp5iflTs


I think that maybe I wouldn t be here if it wasn t for Twitter, Donald Trump told Fox News earlier this year. This possibility apparently has Twitter co-founder Evan Williams staying up at night, as he just apologized for any role Twitter played in putting Orange Mussolini in the White House. It s a very bad thing, Twitter s role in that, Williams told the New York Times in an article published Saturday. If it s true that he wouldn t be president if it weren t for Twitter, then yeah, I m sorry. This isn t the first time Williams has expressed dismay at the impact of social media on Trump s message of hate. What we tend to forget is that Zeus was so pissed at Prometheus that he chained him to a rock so eagles could peck out his guts for eternity, he said in a commencement speech at the University of Nebraska earlier this month. Some would say that s what we deserve for giving the power of tweets to Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Trump is correct that Twitter played a huge role in swinging his election his way especially with numerous paid Russian trolls on his side spreading lies about his opponent.Even more unfortunately, the lies and hate he continues to tweet as President* are continuing to have a deleterious impact on our nation.


Gawker founder Nick Denton read out a graphic account of the acts shown in a sex tape featuring wrestling celebrity Hulk Hogan in a Florida courtroom on Tuesday, saying his company's 2012 online publication "stands up to the test of time." Gawker was sued for $100 million by Hogan, who says the release violated his privacy. The New York-based media company could be forced out of business by an unfavorable verdict in a civil trial testing the limits of freedom of the press. Hogan's attorneys asked Denton, a high-profile figure in the world of Web publishing, to read aloud a very explicit article accompanying the video, which he did in an even tone. The lawsuit centers on the one-minute, 41-seconds of video that Gawker excerpted from the sex tape of unknown origin. It has not yet been shown to the jury in St. Petersburg, Florida, near Hogan's home. The clip shows Hogan's tryst with the wife of his then-best friend, radio "shock jock" personality Bubba the Love Sponge. Hogan says their consensual encounter was recorded without his knowledge five years before Gawker's posting. Denton said he had not watched the video, nor read the article before publication. He described his role as broadly overseeing the portfolio of websites under Gawker media. Still, he stood by the piece as in keeping with Gawker's mission to produce "true and interesting" journalism. "The piece had value. It was true. It was a story honestly told and it was interesting to millions of people," Denton said. The Hogan sex tape piece was one of more than 10,000 posts in 2012 on the Gawker website, a former company executive testified later on Tuesday. The video alone was viewed 2.5 million times, with 57 percent watching the entire clip. Denton's testimony, spread out over two days, highlighted his approach to websites run by the Gawker company, which include technology-oriented Gizmodo and women-focused Jezebel. Pressed on his views on privacy rights during cross-examination, Denton said celebrities have "a smaller zone." Jurors had questions for Denton, too. One of them asked if the sex in the video would be protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution if it was gratuitous. "No," he replied. He had previously said that he did not think the sexual content overreached. Hogan's attorney, David Houston, issued a statement suggesting the jury question "perhaps sets the tone for deliberations."


Donald Trump's presidential campaign is likely to launch a small donor fundraising effort akin to the grassroots one that powered another insurgent presidential contender, Democrat Bernie Sanders, according to two top donors who attended the first official meeting of Trump's national finance team. The Trump finance machine kickoff took place at New York City's Four Seasons Hotel amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate's lack of a campaign infrastructure heading into a Nov. 8 election battle against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "The pitch to this group in the room was a traditional pitch, but the backroom discussion was, because of this being a populist movement, there's going to be significant outreach to, you know, those who give $1, $2, $20," said Trump Texas fundraising co-chairman Gaylord Hughey. "There's a huge opportunity there." Sanders, who has effectively lost the 2016 presidential nomination to Clinton, broke fundraising records during his long-shot bid for the presidency, collecting more than $210 million through more than 7.4 million individual contributions, averaging $27 apiece. Trump could well find his supporters eager to pitch in $1, $5 or $20. For a story in May, Reuters found that nearly all three dozen Trump supporters it interviewed were not only unmoved by Trump's about-face to accept money from outside donors, they said they would also happily contribute. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about replicating the fundraising apparatus of Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont. Some donors were fearful of the late start of Thursday's gathering. Normally such a meeting would take place two years earlier in a candidate's campaign. But others in attendance said they left assured that Trump would be able to easily plug into the Republican National Committee's robust infrastructure. Trump, a wealthy businessman, became the presumptive Republican nominee last month after seeing off 16 rivals in a largely self-funded primary campaign. The gathering featured talks by Trump, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, chief strategist Paul Manafort, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, former rival-turned-ally Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Republican fundraisers Ray Washburne and Lew Eisenberg. Trump's late start on fundraising has raised questions about whether he can achieve his previously stated aim of raising $1 billion before November. On the Democratic side, Clinton's well-oiled operation is well ahead of schedule. Trump is also pulling back from his earlier statements on his fundraising goal. Campaign manager Lewandowski told Reuters on Wednesday that he sees no need for Trump to raise that sum and that Trump may be able to stick to his low-cost style of campaigning. That includes garnering free media, which is estimated will reach a value of $5 billion by November, according to media analytics firm mediaQuant. That is more than double what Clinton is likely to get, mediaQuant says. While Trump shot to the top of the Republican race with freewheeling rhetoric, insults of rivals and promises to get tough on issues such as illegal immigration, even his biggest donors say they are discouraged by the candidate's attacks in recent weeks on a Mexican-American judge. In comments that have been widely condemned, Trump has suggested that U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a case against Trump University, has an inherent bias because of his heritage. "He needs to stop the campaign infighting, shut up and stop calling an American who was born in Indiana a Mexican," said Texas billionaire Doug Deason.


Conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to add an amendment this week to spending legislation that would slash the number of staff at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The budget research office, known as the CBO, has drawn recent Republican criticism, including from the White House, after it concluded that Republican proposals to replace Obamacare would lead to 23 million more Americans being uninsured if they became law. Representative Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Monday his colleague Morgan Griffith has offered an amendment to an appropriations bill the House is expected to take up this week that would cut the CBO's staff of 235 by 89 employees, saving about $15 million. "They ought to be aggregators," Meadows said of the CBO at a National Press Club lunch. "There's plenty of think tanks that are out there. We ought to take a score from Heritage, from AEI (American Enterprise Institute), from Brookings, from the Urban Institute and bring them together for a composite score." The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, as is the American Enterprise Institute. The Brookings Institution and Urban Institute are liberal-leaning think tanks based in Washington. The CBO is one of a handful of analysis units of Congress whose employees strive for political impartiality, providing dependable and neutral information that lawmakers can use when making often complex budget, tax and other decisions. Its staff includes economists, public policy analysts, lawyers and editors. In May, after Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the CBO's healthcare analysis "absurd" and questioned its continued existence, Democrats defended the office, saying Republican attacks were irresponsible. "When Trump administration officials either disagree with or do not understand the impacts of their own policies, they prefer to attack the nonpartisan analysts who are doing their jobs with integrity and expertise," Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democratic House leader, said at the time. The CBO was created in 1974 during a spending dispute between the Democratic-controlled Congress and Republican President Richard Nixon after he withheld funds for government programs that did not support his political positions.


Atlantic City, the distressed New Jersey gambling hub, should consider privatizing its fire-fighting services and convention center and find ways to make more money off its drinking water utility, the city's emergency manager said in an updated fiscal rescue plan. The report comes one year after Governor Chris Christie appointed Kevin Lavin as emergency manager. Lavin's report, which also calls for additional layoffs, follows an initial assessment last March. New Jersey taxpayers have so far spent $2.62 million on Lavin and his team of accountants, restructuring lawyers and a mediator, according to invoices obtained and reviewed by Reuters through public records requests. "I'm glad the emergency manager has, after spending millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and wasting months of time, concluded what we all know: that Atlantic City government is broken and needs to be fixed immediately," Senate President Steve Sweeney said in a statement. Sweeney is now pushing for a full state takeover of Atlantic City operations that would strip elected officials of nearly all power. Lavin said in a statement that over the past year his office and city stakeholders have "kept the city from falling into financial ruin" by tackling a $100 million budget deficit. "Unfortunately, our momentum has been stalled by parochial politics that continue to inhibit progress, all to the detriment of the taxpayers of Atlantic City," he said. "Many of the most critical and financially important issues need to be addressed urgently." He said the city should consider privatizing the entertainment and sports arena Boardwalk Hall and should regionalize municipal services, including police. The city is facing tough odds. Its school district is projecting a budget deficit of up to $55 million in fiscal 2017. Atlantic City also has at least $190 million of casino tax appeals and other unbonded debt. In part because of that, the city's "ability to raise public funds in order to repay the unbonded debt is highly unlikely," the report said The report found that the city does not qualify for "adequate" financing under the state's Qualified Bond Act, which it used in the past to issue bonds because its credit rating is at junk status. Mayor Don Guardian said in a statement he would review the report. "I fully recognize that much work still needs to be done to fix the problems that have accumulated over the past 30 years," he said.


A Socialists dream! Now you can check your privilege at the door. With the Equipay app, you ll never have to walk away from a restaurant with friends wondering if you paid your fair share It s a huge dilemma for progressives: on the one hand, it s terribly patriarchal for a man to pay for a woman s dinner. On the other hand, the gender pay gap of feminist mythology holds that women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. So isn t the failure to pay just another contribution to structural sexism?Equipay, a new app for Android and the iPhone has a solution. Developed by San Francisco-based comedian Luna Malbroux, the app divides bills between dinner guests according to their race and gender. For example, black women, who allegedly make just 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, would only pay 64 per cent of their share of the bill.According to the app s website, Equipay helps you avoid the entrenched discrimination that exists in our society. It doesn t split the bill equally it splits it equitably. You pay what you should to balance out the wage gap. The app is free to use unless you re a member of a high-privilege group. Then there s a surcharge. As the site explains: When dining out with a high privilege group, Equipay automatically adds an EquipayItBack Surcharge. This fee subsidizes meals for others and funds Equipay s charitable arm. Thanks! Last but not least, the app allows users to let their followers know whenever they ve used the app to smash the patriarchy at the dinner table. In a live presentation of the app, Melbroux described how a user, Graham shares his Equipay-powered purchase on social media to show that he is a social justice ally. Of course, having informed the world of his use of Equipay, it remains to be seen if Graham will ever be invited out for a meal again.The app won first prize at San Francisco s Comedy Hack Day, which brings comedians, developers, and designers together. However, Melbroux insists that the app isn t a joke. In an interview with Care2, she expressed hopes that the app would start a serious conversation: I hope that this, more than anything, starts a discussion and helps people to start thinking a little bit differently about how we can use more technology and more innovation to address inequality and wage inequality. For the rest of us, the app s social media sharing function will give us a useful list of people to never invite out for dinner.


Hint: It s not because of Jane Fonda (although that would make more sense than the actual reason for their apology).If the people who re up for an award happen to be white then why is that such a huge deal? Well, it s a huge deal in Hollywood and demands a mea culpa Is Hollywood going to now be forced to give a lead role NOT to the best person for the role but the most racially diverse actress? Someone needs to slap some sense into Hollywood!On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a group discussion with a panel of potential female award contenders as part of its annual Actress Roundtable cover story. An hour later, the publication issued a preemptive mea culpa for the fact that all the actresses on their panel happened to be white.THR executive editor Stephen Galloway sat down with actresses Carey Mulligan, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Jane Fonda, Brie Larson, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Rampling, and Kate Winslet all of whom have projects contending for an Academy Award or an Emmy in the coming year.The interview was everything you would expect from a group of actresses speaking off the cuff to a publication that s been covering the entertainment industry since the 1930s.However, due to the current politically correct climate in Hollywood and the country at large, Galloway felt the need to immediately clarify why there were no minority women in a roundtable discussion with award contenders a pool which includes few minorities in 2016.


The lyrics seem to have been inspired by Donald s Trumpisms. These are not your typical little beauty pageant girls. These girls are rockin liberty and Trump s fans can t get enough of them!Watch, and you ll see why this video has already received over 2 million hits in 2 days:


A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a U.S. Department of Justice request to place on hold an appeal over President Donald Trump's travel ban on people from seven majority-Muslim countries. The order from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could increase pressure on the Trump administration to clarify its intentions regarding the controversial executive order. The 9th Circuit suspended Trump's travel ban earlier this month while litigation over the measure proceeds. Trump has said he will soon issue a new executive order that addresses concerns raised by the appeals court judges. The president's Jan. 27 order caused chaos at airports around the world as visa holders heading to the United States were pulled off planes or turned around upon arrival at U.S. airports. Trump has said travel limitations are necessary to protect the United States from attacks by Islamist militants. His original order barred people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days. Refugees were banned for 120 days, except those from Syria, who were banned indefinitely. Americans were deeply divided over the measure, which was condemned by prominent U.S. companies and allies and challenged in court by the state of Washington. The 9th Circuit had directed the Justice Department to file a legal brief defending the travel ban later this week. Given Trump's intention to issue a new order, however, the Justice Department asked last week for the appeal to be placed on hold. In a response, the state of Washington said the Trump administration has said both that it would pursue an appeal, and that it would issue a new order. "Throughout these proceedings, there appears to have been a lack of communication between the Department of Justice and the White House," the Washington attorney general's office said in a court filing arguing that the 9th Circuit move forward now. Representatives for the Justice Department declined to comment. After stating that a new travel ban would be issued last week, a White House official said on Wednesday that a new order would come sometime this week.


U.S. President Donald Trump dictated a statement, later shown to be misleading, in which his son Donald Trump Jr. said a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was not related to his father's presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Trump Jr. released emails earlier in July that showed he eagerly agreed last year to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow's official support for his father. The New York Times was first to report the meeting. The Washington Post said Trump advisers discussed the new disclosure and agreed that Trump Jr. should issue a truthful account of the episode so that it "couldn't be repudiated later if the full details emerged." The president, who was flying home from Germany on July 8, changed the plan and "personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said he and the Russian lawyer had 'primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children,'" the Post said, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the deliberations. It said the statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared to publish the story, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was "not a campaign issue at the time." An attorney for Trump, Jay Sekulow, issued a statement in response to the Post report: "Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent." The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Post story, nor did Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas. U.S. investigators are probing whether there was collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's Republican presidential campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow sought to hurt Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia.The president applauded his son's "transparency" after he released the email exchanges on July 11. "It remains unclear exactly how much the president knew at the time of the flight about Trump Jr.'s meeting," the Washington Post said. David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School, said that if Trump, as reported by the Post, helped craft a misleading public statement about the meeting, he may have bolstered a potential obstruction of justice case against himself. To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with "corrupt" intent. A misleading public statement could be used as evidence of corrupt intent, Sklansky said. "Lying usually isn't a crime," he said. But "it could be relevant in determining whether something else the president did, like firing (former FBI Director James) Comey, was done corruptly."


RT October 27, 2016  Britain is deploying troops, aircraft and armor in the biggest military buildup in Eastern Europe since the Cold War.  The deployment, which was first floated in the press by UK defense chiefs on Wednesday, appears to have been prepared well in advance.  It will see up to 800 armored infantry troops deployed to Estonia and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets deployed to Romania in what appears to be a reiteration of the strategy of containment employed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  France and Denmark will also commit more troops.  On Wednesday, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon struck a belligerent tone in the Wall Street Journal when he warned that Europe " is our continent " and, as such, would be defended.  While he claimed the force would be " defensive in nature " he pledged it would be " fully combat-capable. " A d v e r t i s e m e n t  He denied the placement of small formations around the Baltic area are merely a " trip-wire " in case of the much-heralded, but hypothetical, clash with Russia.  " This is a serious military presence, " he said.  Tensions have only just begun to subside after a fleet of Russian naval vessels bound for the Mediterranean Sea passed through the North Sea and English Channel.  The passage caused a press frenzy in the UK, framed as though Russia was launching an invasion of the British Isles. The Royal Navy deployed destroyers to, in Fallon's words, " man-mark " the vessels while the RAF overflew the ships with fighter jets.  According to the Russian military, the naval group's task was to " ensure a naval presence in operationally significant areas of the world's oceans, " as well as " the safety of maritime navigation and other maritime economic activities " of Russia.  Britain's deployment of troops, drones and aircraft is expected to begin in May 2018. This article was posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 6:45 am Share this article


in: War Propaganda , World News If it's not Islamophobia, it's Russophobia. Tired of Western propaganda? Get Vladimir Putin's perspective with words straight from the horse's mouth. Vladimir Putin in particular, and Russia in general, have been the focus of an intensive high-drama propaganda campaign of late. Are you buying it? For the time being, Russophobia has replaced Islamophobia as the driving force behind the lies. Various US officials have been frantically warning Americans that the Russians are behind everything: hacking the DNC, controlling Trump, influencing the election and breaking the Syrian ceasefire agreement. They might as well add making your girlfriend break up with you, making your toast get burnt and making your car run out of fuel for all the evidence they have presented. Many of these totally unfounded allegations stem from (naturally) the Clinton campaign, home to career criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton , who are desperately seeking to find something to gain some sort of shred of popularity or advantage over Trump, who fills up arenas with 1000s of people more easily than Clinton can fill a high school gym with 50. Many US officials and war hawks are trying to get in on the action; CIA man Mike Morell indicated it would be a good idea to covertly kill Russians to make them "pay a price" ; Hillary Clinton called Vladimir Putin the "grand godfather of extreme nationalism" and blamed him for the rising popularity of right-wing leaders; and even standing VP Joe Biden came out and said that, "We're sending a message to Putin … it will be at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact" . It seems there is no depth to which some US leaders won't stoop in order to gain some political advantage, even it means lying, demonizing and destroying geopolitical partnerships in order to garner a few brownie points. Russophobia is in full swing before the US Presidential Election to distract American voters. Vladimir Putin: It's All About Distraction During Election Season You would think Russian President Vladimir President would be agitated by all of this mud-slinging. At times he has been, for instance when he issued a warning a few months ago about an impending WW3 due to NATO's constant aggression and advancement towards Russian borders. However, judging by his own words and mostly calm demeanor, he has seen through the agenda and understands what is going on. Putin spells out how it's all inflamed rhetoric before an election season, an old trick used by politicians to distract when they have no meaningful solutions for internal and domestic problems. Here is Vladimir Putin in his own words : "You can expect anything from our American friends … the only novelty is that for the first time, on the highest level, the United States has admitted involvement in these activities, and to some extent threatened [us] – which of course does not meet the standards of international communication. As if we didn't know that US Government bodies snoop on and wiretap anyone? Everyone knows this … Apparently, they are nervous. The question is why. I think there is a reason. You know, in an election campaign, the current government carefully crafts a pre-election strategy, and any government, especially when seeking re-election, always has unresolved issues. They need to show, to explain to the voters why they remain unresolved. In the US, there are many such problems … for example, the massive public debt is a time bomb for the US economy and global financial system … more examples can be cited in foreign policy … in these conditions, many choose to resort to the usual tactics of distracting voters from their problems … try to create an enemy and rally the nation against that enemy … Iran and the Iranian threat did not work well for that. Russia is a more interesting story." And that's exactly what this whole thing is: a giant story. However, as Voltaire once said, if you can make someone believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. Let's see what else Vladimir Putin has to say on other topics of interest. Russian Hacking: A Laughable Claim so the Clintons and DNC Can Try to Avoid Culpability Let's face it: the whole Russophobia affair is about avoiding blame, dodging responsibility and evading liability. Thanks to WikiLeaks, Project Veritas and many other sources, we know the entire Hillary Clinton campaign has been rigged beyond belief. Fake primaries, fake speeches, fake images, fake videos, fake crowds, fake supporters and fake debates. There is seemingly no depth of criminality to which that woman won't sink. She's selling out the presidency before she even gets there, such as the stunt of trying to promise future presidential executive orders to mega donors. There is not a shred of evidence that Russia is affiliated with WikiLeaks or behind any of the DNC hacks. As this Zero Hedge article NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia states: "On "Judge Napolitano Chambers," the Judge said that while the DNC, government officials, and the Clinton campaign all accuse the Russians of hacking into the DNC servers, "the Russians had nothing to do with it." Napolitano then mentioned Binney, arguing the NSA veteran and whistleblower who "developed the software that the NSA now uses, which allows it to capture not just metadata but content of every telephone call, text message, email in the United States of every person in [the country]" knew the NSA had hacked the DNC — not the Russians. If Judge Napolitano and Binney are right and the NSA did hack the DNC, what was the motive? According to the Judge, "members of the intelligence community simply do not want [Clinton] to be president of the United States." "She doesn't know how to handle state secrets," Napolitano continued. And since "some of the state secrets that she revealed used the proper true names of American intelligence agents operating undercover in the Middle East," some of these agents were allegedly captured and killed, prompting NSA agents to feel compelled to act. Whether NSA agents hacked the DNC or not, one thing is clear: there's no real evidence linking the DNC and Arizona and Illinois voting system hacks to the Russian government." The Mythical "Russian Threat" Vladimir Putin directly addressed another mythical story, that of the so-called Russian threat and Russian aggression , at the recent Valdai forum in Sochi from October 24-27, 2016: "There is another mechanism to ensure the transatlantic security, European security, the OC security and their attempt at turning this organization (NATO) into an instrument of someone's political interests. So what the OC is doing is simply void. Mythical threats are devised like the so-called Russian military threat. Certainly this can be (used to) gain some advantage, get new budgets, make your allies comply with your demands, make NATO deploy the equipment and troops closer to our border … Russia is not trying to attack anyone. That would be ridiculous … The population of Europe is 300 million … and the population of the US is 300 million, while the population of Russia is 140 million, yet such menaces are served as a pretext. Hysteria has been fueled in the US with regard to Russia's alleged influence with the current presidential election. Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Russia can influence the choice of the American people? Is the US a banana republic? The US is a great power. If I'm wrong please correct me." Here's what he had to say about who the real aggressor is when it comes to the US and Russia: "Is it known to you that Russia, in the 90s, completely halted (as did the USSR) any strategic aviation in the further afield regions of patrol, i.e. not in the closer abroad. We halted such activity completely. US geostrategic aviation however, with nuclear weapons on board. They continued to encircle us! What for? Who are you concerned about? Or why are you threatening us? We continued with the non-patrol year after year. It is only since about 3 years ago that we restarted aviation patrol further abroad. Which party is the provocateur here? Is it us? We have only 2 military bases abroad. They are known areas of terrorism dangers … US bases on the other hand are all over the world. And you are telling me that I am the aggressor? Have you any common sense? What are US forces doing in Europe, including nuclear weaponry? What business have they got there? Listen to me. Our military budget, while increased slightly from last year, in the dollar equivalent, is about US$50 billion. The military budget of the Pentagon is almost 10 times that amount. $575 billion, I think Congress singed off on. And you're telling me I'm the aggressor here? Have you no common sense at all? Is it us putting our forces on the border of the US? Or other states? Is it NATo, or who, that is moving their bases closer to us? Military infrastructure! It's not us. Does anyone even listen to us? Or try to have some kind of dialogue with us? The repeated answer we get is 'mind your own business' and 'each country can choose its own security measures'. Very well, so will we … And finally, on the antiballistic missile defense system, who was it that exited from the treaty which was vital to the entire system of international security? Was it us? No. It was the States. In a one-sided way, they simply withdrew from the treaty. Now they are threatening us, turning their missiles towards us, not only from Alaska, but also from Europe too … We want to develop normal relations in the sphere of security, in the fight against terrorism, in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. We want to work together with you … so long as you want that too." US Repeatedly Broke Its Promises to Russia and Destroyed Trust The Western MSM is so one-sided in its coverage of geopolitical events like Ukraine and Syria. Anyone not toeing the line with US-UK-NATO interests is painted in a bad light. In point of fact, it has actually been the US who has been breaking agreements with Russia since the end of the Cold War. US leaders lied to Russian leaders at the time, by promising that NATO would not extend any further eastward, and possibly even hinting that Russia could join NATO. As Eric Zuesse explains in his article America Trashes NATO Founding Act; Rushes Weapons to Russia's Borders : "The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the US and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia's leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn't invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of US President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn't move «one inch to the east» (toward Russia), but as soon as Gorbachev committed himself to end the Cold War, Bush told his agents, regarding what they had all promised to Gorbachev (Bush's promise which had been conveyed through them), «To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn't». In other words: Bush's prior instructions to them were merely his lies to Gorbachev, his lies to say that the US wouldn't try to conquer Russia (move its forces eastward to Russia's borders); but, now, since Gorbachev was committed and had already agreed that East Germany was to be reunited with and an extension of West Germany (and the process for doing that had begun), Bush pulled that rug of lies out from under the end of the Cold War …" Bill Clinton carried on the great American legacy of exceptionalism (that is, excepting themselves from obeying international law) spearheaded by Daddy Bush of surrounding and dominating Russia by allowing NATO into the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Russia got shafted by trusting the US numerous times after the fall of the Soviet Union. Here's Vladimir Putin once again on America's broken promises (in April 2016): "In the early 2000s, we agreed with the Americans to destroy weapons-grade plutonium, on both sides. We were talking about the excessive amounts that were manufactured by both the US and Russia. This is the enriched uranium from which nuclear weapons are made. 34000 tonnes, from both sides. We signed an agreement, and decided that this material would be destroyed in a specific manner. It would be destroyed in an industrial way – for which special plants needed to be built. We fulfilled our obligations – we built the necessary plant. Our American partners did not. Moreover, recently they announced that rather than destroy the enriched material in the manner that we agreed, and signed an international agreement on, that they would dilute it and store it in a holding capacity. This means they retain the potential to bring it back … Surely our American partners must understand that, jokes are one thing, such as creating smear campaigns against Russia, but questions of nuclear security are another thing entirely … they must learn to fulfill their promises. They once said they would close down Guantanamo. And? Is it closed? No." Incidentally, this is the exact same plutonium agreement which made the news last month, when as reported on October 3rd, 216, Russia suspended their deal with the US on disposal of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads. A decree signed by Vladimir Putin lists " the radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties, as well as the need to take swift action to defend Russian security" as the reasons for why Russia chose to suspend the deal. Conclusion: Wake up and Smell the Russophobia Expect Vladimir Putin and Russia to keep being demonized by the Clintons – and more importantly the NWO manipulators who so desperately want them in power. Although the Clintons are a powerful modern American mafia family, replete with a long body count behind them, it's important to remember they are lackeys for far greater and more pervasive powers (check out some of Hillary's lovey-dovey letters to Lynn Forester de Rothschild here ). There's a lot at stake here. Right now, Vladimir Putin and Russia are being used with the sole purpose of getting Clinton elected. Although Putin is not perfect and has his own dark side, he deserves respect for standing his ground and refusing to become another US puppet. If we are to believe his own words, he has no qualm with Americans or even America itself, but rather the selfish, imperialistic and murderous agenda of the NWO agents running the USA: "We have a great deal of respect and love for the United States, and especially for the American people … [however] the expansion of jurisdiction by one nation beyond the territory of its borders, to the rest of the world, is unacceptable and destructive for international relations." It's up to the American public to switch off CNN (Clinton News Network) and all the other duplicitous MSM channels and get truly informed. Vladimir Putin is reaching out his hand to America, in the hope that enough Americans can reclaim their country and work together with other nations in peace. On the issue of Vladimir Putin and Russia, the MSM is not just one-sided, it's outright lying.


Malaysian police thwarted a plan by a member of the Islamic-State linked Abu Sayyaf militant group to attack the closing ceremony of the Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur last week, the top police official said on Tuesday. The suspected attacker, a 25-year-old Philippine national, had been involved in fighting, kidnapping and beheading of foreign hostages in the Philippines, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement. The arrest will raise concern about increasing cooperation among militants within Southeast Asia and what governments fear is the spreading influence of Islamic State as it loses ground in the Middle East.. Mohamad Fuzi did not identify the suspect but said he had planned to attack the closing ceremony of the games at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium, as well as an Independence Day parade the next day. He gave no detail of the plans. The man was arrested in a raid on Aug. 30, the day of the ceremony, along with seven other suspected members of the hardline Abu Sayyaf, including another Philippine national. Authorities said earlier they had detained Philippine Abu Sayyaf leader Hajar Abdul Mubin, 25, also known as Abu Asrie, in the Aug. 30 raid. Abu Asrie was arrested with six Malaysians and another Philippine national, aged between 20 and 52, police said earlier. Eleven other suspected militants, including nine foreigners, were picked up in a two-month security operation before the games. The arrests were the latest in a crackdown on militancy by Muslim-majority Malaysia. Since 2013, Malaysia has arrested more than 250 people on suspicion of links to Islamic State. Among those picked up were two Iraqi brothers, aged 41 and 63, who were suspected to have served as commanders for Islamic State, Mohamad Fuzi said. They were working as technicians and were arrested in a Kuala Lumpur suburb on Aug. 11. The Iraqis had arrived in Malaysia separately and were detained on information from foreign intelligence agencies, a Malaysian police source told Reuters. One arrived last year, while the other came in early August. We re still investigating what their activities were in Malaysia, said the source, who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to media. Others picked up in the sweep included suspects from Bangladesh, the Maldives, Indonesia and the Palestinian territories. Police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told Reuters the number of foreigners showed the growing Islamic State threat in the region.


Draft-dodger Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is at war with a military expert who had the audacity to point out Trump's obvious ignorance about the military operation against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq.  Today, in an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump sounded off about Mosul. "So you can tell your military expert that I'll sit down and I'll teach him a couple of things."  In Trump's experience-free opinion, Mosul is a "total disaster" because we gave too much notice of the attack. The attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2016  Trump made similar comments during the last presidential debate . "The element of surprise. Douglas MacArthur, George Patton spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country."  Unfortunately for Trump, real military experts disagree. The next day, the New York Times reported that such warnings reduce civilian casualties and instill fear within the enemy, among other benefits. Then there was this quote: "'What this shows is Trump doesn't know a damn thing about military strategy,' said Jeff McCausland, a retired Army colonel and former dean at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa."  Today, Stephanopoulos asked Trump about his tweet and McCausland's comment. Trump doubled down . Oh, and check out how he first referred to General George Patton: "The Army War College – let me tell you, the element of surprise. I've been hearing about Mosul now for three months, 'We're going to attack. We're going to attack.' Meaning Iraq's going to attack but with us, OK? We're going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it? Don't talk about it. Element of surprise. General George Patent [sic]."  Trump subsequently correctly referred to Patton. But his later comments probably did nothing to reassure anyone about his suitability as commander in chief. Besides his desire to lecture McCausland, Trump brushed aside a challenge to his dire assessment of the Mosul operation.  When Stephanopoulos noted that Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said 35 ISIS leaders have been killed, Trump insisted : "Excuse me: The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can't they win first and talk later? Why do they have to say, three months before the attack, we're going in?"  Of course, Trump provided no evidence to support his argument that a surprise attack would have worked better. But why would he? In Trump's mind, he knows better than anyone about fighting ISIS, as he said last year that: "I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me."  Fortunately, it looks like most Americans don't believe him.  Video via ABC News on YouTube . About Ellen Brodsky  Ellen Brodsky is a long time blogger for NewsHounds.us and a contributor to Crooks and Liars. She has also worked as a researcher for Brave New Films' landmark documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "Iraq for Sale." Connect


Indian journalists and rights activists protested on Wednesday against the murder of an outspoken publisher of a weekly tabloid amid growing concerns about freedom of the press at a time of rising nationalism and intolerance of dissent. Gauri Lankesh, 55, the editor and publisher of the Kannada-language Gauri Lankesh Patrike newspaper, was shot dead on Tuesday by unidentified assailants near her home in the southern city of Bengaluru. She had parked her car outside her gate and was walking to the main entrance of her home when the attackers fired at least seven rounds, killing her, police said. The motive was not known. Lankesh was a fierce advocate of secularism and opposed hardline Hindu groups associated with Prime Narendra Modi s right-wing, nationalist ruling party. Her weekly, with a circulation of more than 5,000, is regarded as influential in the state, read by policy makers and politicians. Lankesh spent decades with various media outlets before taking over the newspaper started by her father. Several journalist groups, including the Editors Guild, Press Club of India and Press Association, held protests in cities across India, calling her murder a brutal assault on the freedom of the press . They said she was a critical, secular voice at a time when the country was being swept by a wave of right-wing, Hindu nationalism. She was an idealist and would take on the right-wing forces on several controversial issues, said Y.P. Rajesh, an executive editor at the news website The Print and a long-time friend of Lankesh. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi also condemned the killing. The murder is a new low in India s recent record of protecting journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists has said that there have been no convictions in any of the 27 cases of journalists murdered in India because of their work since 1992. This year, the country of 1.3 billion people slipped three places to 136th in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders. The group said Hindu nationalists, on the rise since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014, were trying to purge all manifestations of anti-national thought . Journalists seen to be critical of Hindu nationalists are often insulted on social media, and some women reporters have been threatened with assault. People, including BJP members, have also openly insulted journalists, using terms like presstitute - a combination press and prostitute - to berate them. In recent weeks, Lankesh had posted videos on her Facebook page that were critical of Modi s economic policies and the rise of hardline Hindu groups since he came to power. Last year, she was sentenced to six months in jail after a defamation case was filed by a BJP member. She was released on bail. Ananth Kumar, a federal minister in the Modi government, said the state government must arrest those behind the killing. The state government in Karnataka, run by the Congress party, said it had set up a special investigations team to investigate and police were examining CCTV footage. M.N. Anucheth, a senior police official investigating the case, said Lankesh was shot in the head, neck and chest. This is an attempt to silence all of us all of those who believe in democracy and decency, Ramchandra Guha, a historian told the Indian Express newspaper. (This story has been refiled to fix spellng in paragraph 22)


For centuries, societies have erected walls and fences to separate themselves from their neighbors, from the Great Wall of China through the Berlin Wall right up to the barrier that today divides Israel from the Palestinians on the West Bank. The United States has debated putting up security barriers of its own along the Southwest border and has spent billions of dollars in recent years fencing one-third of it. Now, Donald Trump is proposing to go even further, vowing to build a massive, impenetrable wall along the U.S.-Mexico frontier to keep out illegal Mexican migrants.  "Building a wall is easy, and it can be done inexpensively," the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview. "It's not even a difficult project if you know what you're doing.'' The wall has become the signature proposal of Trump's campaign, which has stirred widespread controversy over its focus on illegal immigration and his comments about immigrants. Any wall-building effort would cost billions of dollars and encounter a variety of obstacles, according to experts, documents and federal officials, including some of the same difficulties that bedeviled the federal government as it spent more than $7 billion on border fencing. The hurdles include environmental and engineering problems; fights with ranchers and others who don't want to give up their land; and the huge topographical challenges of the border, which runs through remote desert in Arizona to rugged mountains in New Mexico and, for two-thirds of its length, along rivers. "It's extremely challenging to put a brick-and-mortar wall along the Southwest border for any number of reasons," said Richard Stana, who wrote multiple reports on border security for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office before retiring in 2011. "It seems very simplistic." If such a barrier could be erected, experts and government officials agreed that making it impenetrable would be virtually impossible, as is completely securing the entire 1,954-mile border. The Department of Homeland Security is already spending millions of dollars a year to maintain existing fences and to repair breaches, according to government reports and officials, while drug traffickers and smugglers are increasingly using tunnels to pass underneath. While a wall along much of the border might theoretically be possible, said Thad Bingel, a former senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, "is it desirable? At what cost, and what do you give up to pay for that?'' Bingel — who was involved in border fence-building during the George W. Bush administration and is now a partner at Command Consulting Group in Washington — added: "Every wall can be circumvented. People can go under it, they can go over it. . . . No one should go into this with the idea that if you just build the right kind of wall, no one will get through.'' Trump disputed that, saying that a wall "would be very effective" in deterring illegal migrants and that seismic and other equipment could detect and stop any underground tunnels. "A wall is better than fencing, and it's much more powerful," he said. "It's more secure. It's taller." The veteran builder acknowledged that environmental impact studies would be difficult but said he is the one person who can rise to the challenge. "I'm considered a great builder, by everybody," he said, adding that cost is irrelevant because he would force Mexico to pay for the structure. Asked whether that was realistic, Trump said: "It's realistic if you know something about the art of negotiating. If you have a bunch of clowns negotiating, it's not realistic." Trump has emerged as a leading GOP candidate partly because of his strong statements about immigration, which have included describing Mexicans entering the country illegally as "rapists" and "murderers." He has suggested at times that his proposed wall would be extensive and would cover nearly the entire border, but said in the interview: "You don't have to build it in every location. There would be some locations where you would have guards, where you don't need it because the topography acts as its own wall, whether that's water or very rough terrain." [Univision cuts ties with Trump over comments about Mexican immigrants] The concept of a wall or fence along virtually the entire border has bubbled up occasionally in the nation's immigration debate, with some Republicans supporting the idea. Today, there are more than 45 such walls and border fences worldwide, perhaps most prominently Israel's West Bank barrier. While Israeli officials say it has reduced attacks, security specialists say that barrier, slated to be more than 400 miles long when finished, is not comparable to what would be required along the far more extensive U.S. Southwest border. The Israelis, they add, supplement the physical concrete barrier with a mix of border police and technology, much as the Department of Homeland Security does in the United States. The U.S. government began building border fencing near San Diego in 1990. As DHS cracked down on illegal immigration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush dramatically expanded the effort. Spending on border fencing and related infrastructure such as lighting shot up from $298 million in 2006 to $1.5 billion the following year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Overall, more than $7 billion has been spent to build what is now almost 653 miles of Southwest border fencing — costing nearly $5 million per mile in some spots — nearly half in Arizona. The costs could rise substantially if extensive new fencing was built, since it would be in increasingly remote regions without roads and in mountainous terrain, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. Adding even more to the expense, he said, would be acquiring private land near the border and maintaining existing fencing. Trump's wall would probably cost far more than fencing, Stana said, given the greater needs for construction materials and labor. While current and former DHS officials say the fencing has been effective in deterring illegal immigration, they say it is only one part of a broader border strategy that includes expanded sensors, drones and other technology, along with growing numbers of Border Patrol officers. "Our southern border is a mixture of winding river, desert and mountains. Simply building more fences is not the answer," DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an October speech. The government's difficulties in erecting fences highlight the challenges of building a wall, experts said. The fencing mandated by Congress in 2006 was beset by delays, surging construction costs and disputes with private property owners, mostly in Texas, DHS officials have said. The biggest failure was the virtual fence, a Bush administration effort to cover the border with a high-tech surveillance system. "It's a huge effort to construct anything at the border," said one DHS official, who has worked in Republican and Democratic administrations and spoke on the condition of anonymity because Trump's plan is part of a political campaign. "You have lots of requirements to do construction: the environmental piece, engineering assessments. And a private landowner might not want fencing." Wayne Cornelius, director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego, called Trump's proposal "ludicrous. . . . Any physical barrier can be tunneled under or climbed over or gotten around. There will always be gaps, and smugglers and migrants will seek out those gaps and go through." Robert Costa and Alice Crites contributed to this story.


Ben Rhodes, who ran foreign policy errands for President Barack Obama as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Speechwriting, created an infamous "echo chamber" of fake news to sell the Iran deal. [Now, Rhodes is part of a new echo, repeating and retweeting smears aimed at one of his successors, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and a key media spokesman for the White House. Rhodes first took aim at Gorka in response to a tweet by Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman under President Obama who infamously attempted to dismiss the Benghazi scandal by telling Fox News' Bret Baier: "Dude, this was like two years ago. " Vietor was, in turn, quoting a Newsweek article criticizing Gorka for criticizing a critic for criticizing his credentials. Rhodes piled on, mocking the "Breitbart credentialed Gorka" for his sensitivity. Rhodes and Vietor ought to be the last to question anyone's credentials. Rhodes had no national security experience before being plucked from a struggling career as a fiction writer and promoted up the ladder. Vietor was literally the "dude" who drove the press van for Obama on the campaign trail. Both symbolize the callow nature and culture of the Obama West Wing. (Rhodes still claims today that Syria gave up "all" of its chemical weapons in 2013.) Since that first swipe in February, Rhodes has joined the latest round of smears aimed at Gorka, tweeting an article from the Forward that attempted — and failed — to prove that Gorka supported an antisemitic Hungarian militia. This person works in the WH: "Gorka … publicly supported a violent racist and militia" https: . via @jdforward, — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) April 3, 2017, (Be warned before clicking on the link to the Forward article itself: readers are hit with a popup request for donations to continue funding the smear campaign against Gorka. They are literally fundraising off this character assassination.) The article included an old video interview in Hungarian with Gorka, with English subtitles — but the video was obviously spliced together. The raw video was also provided, but without subtitles. David Reboi of RedState undertook a full translation. As David P. Goldman of PJ Media noted, "the Forward's clip edits out Gorka's denunciation of the parties for exploiting popular fears in order to advance their own agenda" (original emphasis). A lie good enough, as the joke goes, for government work — or work, in Rhodes's case. He tweeted later: "Picture if Gorka was a Muslim who supported an militia and had associations with Nazi groups. Would he be in the White House?" Here Rhodes did more than repeat the false accusations in the Forward: he also took aim at Gorka's notable criticism of radical Islam, a threat Rhodes and his former boss refused even to pronounce. The culmination of this new "echo chamber" came last weekend, with an NBC News piece that tried, and failed, to prove Gorka's associations with Hungarian extremists but smeared him anyway, citing a fraudulent organization. And so a smear that started with a discredited report on an blog has been promoted, via the Forward — which has an actual problem with antisemitism, having linked Zionists absurdly and outragously with Nazis — into the front ranks of the mainstream media and finally to the big network news stage, but remains essentially empty. It is the "echo chamber," reborn — or, rather, undead, a sort of zombie, totally impervious to truth. Note that none of Gorka's detractors actually question his support for Israel, or even his links with Jews, because they do not care. The echo chamber depends on a factual void, and repetition by false authorities. Just ask the man who invented it. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the "most influential" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.


(King World News) Paul Brodsky, Macro Allocation Inc. — Gold  To "take a flier" against consensus with long duration treasuries also suggests taking a flier with gold. Treasuries and gold are normally inversely correlated. In a typical economic cycle, declining treasury yields imply dollar strength, which in turn, suggests gold weakness. We argue that current conditions do not imply a normal economic cycle and that, in the current environment, long treasury positions may be best hedged – and potentially enhanced – with a long gold position. (For fixed income investors, this is reminiscent of hedging long MBS positions with long Treasury positions.)… IMPORTANT: To hear which legend just spoke with KWN about $8,000 gold and the coming mania in the gold, silver, and mining shares markets CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.  In the current environment (imminent balance sheet recession), gold is the most convex asset we know. Gold hedges financial asset values by hedging the currency in which they are denominated. An increase in goods and service inflation reduces the purchasing power value of the currency while an increase in goods and service deflation reduces the supply of goods and services. The former is better understood than the latter because the frequency of inflation is so much greater. At the end of the day, gold is a hedge against balance sheet de-leveraging, whether it comes from a significant increase in the quantity of money or a significant decrease in the value of liabilities. A decrease in the value of treasury bonds, from either debt deflation or currency inflation would send the price of gold in the underlying currency higher.  King World News note: It is very important to understand what Brodsky is saying in the paragraph below about the problem of higher interest rates in relation to investor portfolios and overall consumption. The Real Problem With Higher Interest Rates It is true that higher treasury yields would provide investors with positive carry that gold would not (unless investors choose to lend out gold in return for interest). Lost on investors that succumb to this thinking, however, is that with almost $20 trillion of treasury and agency debt outstanding, rising treasury yields would produce more debt deflation on existing portfolios than higher income from newly issued treasuries would stimulate consumption.  You may find the discussion above dense, in large part because gold's characteristics are unfamiliar to most financial asset investors. After all, it is a shiny rock with no utility or income, a monetary relic of pre- digital generations. The way to think about gold is as a necessary monetary anchor if/when leveraged fiat currencies can no longer be supported by global banking systems and the global productive economy. In extremis, there would be no fiat currency winners, even the dollar.  Simply, gold is the one item against which all currencies, and the assets and liabilities they value, can be re-valued by political and monetary authorities regardless of whether or not authorities coordinate a synchronized revaluation. It is the only politically-unsanctioned potential monetary asset banking systems cannot create and authorities cannot directly control. (Official gold holdings amount to about 22% of above-ground gold.) It is also the only asset on most central bank balance sheets that is not debt. The world's largest central banks and the IMF continue to store and add to their gold reserves, we surmise, because it might come in handy one day.  The daily price of gold today, in dollars, euros, yen, etc., 1) handicaps the likelihood of the global monetary system failing; and 2) implicitly speculates an exchange rate against which fiat currencies would be converted if necessary.  A Global Monetary Reset With QE Used To Purchase Gold? Were gold to again become a sanctioned monetary asset, the transformation would likely be executed by the political dimension through their banking systems, as it always has been. We would speculate that such a transformation, if necessary, would be coordinated by the G10, agreed upon through a treaty, and overseen by the IMF and BIS. It would be a one-time monetary reset, rather than a reversion of the global monetary system to a fixed-exchange rate system.  Devaluing currencies to gold would be an expedient political solution to a global balance sheet recession. The reset would be similar in nature to debt jubilees periodically necessary since ancient times. The only difference here would be legal debt covenants would not have to be destroyed. Rather, the burden of servicing and repaying outstanding debt would be greatly reduced through inflation. The inflation would come from extreme central bank money creation used to purchase gold at higher prices – QE for gold. The new money would add a couple zeros to assets while keeping the principal value of liabilities constant.  A monetary reset that ties currencies to gold would not alter commerce. Consumers would not need gold in their pockets. Producers and merchants would be ostensibly satisfied that the debit cards consumers carry are backed by currency tied, even temporarily, to something finite.  Owning Gold Is Not Just About A Monetary Reset Investors should not necessarily own gold today in anticipation of a global monetary reset. Circling back to a contemporary discussion of whether to own gold in concert with long duration treasuries and other financial assets, the increasing potential for fiscal stimulation through deficit spending increases the odds that already indebted currencies will be rejected by goods and service suppliers. Gold priced in fiat currencies could rise if those currencies do not produce an equal amount of revenue and income. In short, gold should re-price higher if/when global GDP falls and global liabilities don't.  *** KWN has just released one of legendary Art Cashin's greatest audio interviews ever discussing the gold market at length, including the recent takedown in gold, what to surprises to expect in key markets as Trump becomes president, and what impact massive public works projects will have on the United States, inflation, gold, bonds, and much more. and you can listen to this extraordinary interview by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.  ***KWN has now released the extraordinary KWN audio interview with whistleblower Andrew Maguire, where he discusses the gold and silver smash, at what price the large sovereign wholesale bids are located, and much more, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.   As The Monetary Madness Continues, What Is Happening Is Stunning… CLICK


Wow! This is really epic! Paris Dennard nails Paul Begala on Begala s trash talking of Trump. You won t believe the response from David Gergen! How can Trump let someone down when they never believed in his policies to begin with? We love Paris Dennard s effort to call out the liberal pundits this is not just good it s great that he said what every American is thinking about CNN and MSNBC:Strategist @David_Gergen clashes w/ @PARISDENNARD: "You respect the office not the man but he is letting me down"https://t.co/PWncWEoyzx CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) April 30, 2017PRIOR TO THE DENNARD COMMENTS, BEGALA CALLED THE PRESIDENT A MENTAL MIDGET AND A NEEDY LITTLE BABY :More GREAT TAKEDOWNS from Paris Dennard:THE EXCHANGE BETWEEN THESE TWO PUNDITS IS SO CLASSIC BECAUSE THE LIBERAL IS SUCH AN ELITIST Charles Blow didn t want to listen to the truth and had a major hissy fit when confronted with facts. It s pretty epic On CNN s New Day Friday morning, Chris Cuomo interviewed two black guests from opposing parties about Donald Trump s outreach to minorities. The anti-Trump guest, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow grew visibly irritated with Cuomo and the pro-Trump guest, GOP commentator Paris Dennard, when Dennard said things Blow didn t agree with. After a heated back and forth discussion, Blow finally exploded at Cuomo, saying CNN was committing media malpractice for letting Dennard come on the show.


The entire community of Fort McMurray, the heart of Alberta's oil sands region, was ordered to evacuate on Tuesday night as a wildfire advanced on the city and cut off its only highway link to the south. The fire destroyed a number of homes in one neighborhood and some trailers in a trailer park, said Robin Smith, a spokesman for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. According to television news reports, commercial buildings downtown were also ablaze. There were no reports of injuries by early evening. A video showed flames and smoke rising hundreds of feet into the sky, prompting the largest fire evacuation in Alberta's history, The Edmonton Journal reported. The fire was expected to get worse on Wednesday, when winds were forecast to switch direction and increase in speed. Mr. Smith said early Tuesday that Highway 63, which connects Fort McMurray to Edmonton, Alberta, to the south and the main oil sands production areas to the north, was heavily congested with cars fleeing the fire, which began over the weekend. Late in the afternoon, however, the fire jumped over the highway, making evacuation to the south impossible, Mr. Smith said. He added that there was no immediate danger in areas north of Fort McMurray. The highway was later reopened. As of early Tuesday evening, the city's airport was open, but some airlines were canceling flights, said Jillian Philipp, an airport spokeswoman. After leaving the airport earlier in the day, Ms. Philipp said she was unable to return because of the fire. But employees still there told her that it did not appear to be in the immediate path of the flames. The provincial government had ordered residents out of six neighborhoods and a trailer park by late in the afternoon after declaring the fire "out of control. " The fire had consumed about 6, 500 acres of forest by late Monday night and increased substantially in size by Tuesday, said Laura Stewart, a spokeswoman for the provincial government. Ms. Stewart said that strong, changing winds were shifting the fire's direction, making it unsafe for firefighters on the ground. As a result, their efforts had been limited to aerial water bombing. A photograph posted by the government showed only a relatively small line of trees and a hill separating a commercial district from a tower of flame. Until last year, the oil sands had made Fort McMurray Canada's boomtown, where the biggest concern was dealing with frenetic growth and the housing shortages and social problems it created. The collapse of oil prices, however, has hit the city particularly hard. Oil sands companies have been laying off workers as projects are completed, but no major oil sands projects have shut down. Last year, the regional municipality had a population of about 125, 000, excluding thousands of workers who officially claimed residency elsewhere but who commuted by air to Fort McMurray and lived in work camps.


The public should not be forced to pay to walk on Germany s beaches or swim in the sea, a federal court ruled, calling into question private beaches along the North and Baltic Sea coasts. The coastal town of Wangerland, 170 km (100 miles) west of Hamburg, was sued by two residents of neighboring towns who demanded it provide free access to its two North Sea beaches. Wangerland s tourist office has largely fenced in the beaches, added facilities, playgrounds and lifeguards, and has been charging visitors a 3-euro ($3.57) entry fee during the summer season, with the exception of residents and tourists of the town itself. Under German law, anyone is allowed to enter unused tracts of land, a provision meant to give the public access to the country s natural beauty and create opportunities for fresh-air recreation free of charge. But a court in the state of Lower Saxony last year ruled in favor of Wangerland, saying the beaches in question were not unused but had been leased by the town for commercial purposes. The federal administrative court said in its ruling published on Thursday the town could not charge visitors to go for walks on the beach or to swim in the sea, but could for using the facilities set up there. Claims to nearly the entire beach, and not only the areas needed to operate the business, put excessive limits on general liberty, the court said in a statement, partly overturning the lower court s ruling.


Charles Koch, the billionaire CEO of Koch Industries has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political campaigns because of Citizen s United, but he still thinks he should have even more influence.During an interview with the Financial Times, Charles Koch whined that even as he spends tons of money trying to shape the political landscape to his will he still doesn t have as much influence as he expected to have in 2016.Koch says he presented of list of his wishes to Republican candidates, who basically ignored them, which is why he is pouting now. (It) doesn t seem to faze them much, Koch said. You d think we could have more influence. It is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm because the things I m passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren t being addressed. In other words, Koch has the sads because he hoped Republicans would automatically be his puppets and support and enact all of his demands.The billionaire polluter actually gave the candidates a freaking LIST of things he wants them to do if they win the presidency and now he thinks he needs even more influence because the candidates didn t seem to give two shits about it.According to Politico, the Koch brothers are poised to spend nearly $1 billion on the 2016 election, in what should be seen as a blatant effort to buy the White House and Congress.Among the many aims on their agenda is the destruction of labor unions, abolishing the minimum wage, dismantling environmental protection laws, and repealing Obamacare while opposing any effort to bring affordable healthcare to the American people. And those are just a few things that the Koch brothers want to do to this country.Charles Koch attempted a run for president in the 1980s, but he failed miserably. Instead, he decided to focus on buying the government instead.But despite his massive influence on Republican politics, Koch is complaining that he still doesn t have enough power over the candidates. In reality, the American people are the ones who should be complaining about not having enough influence over elections, which the Kochs believe they are entitled to buy.If the Koch brothers are wondering why most of the American people see them as villains, this is why.Featured Image: Flickr


The "Fearless Girl" statue which stands opposite of the iconic charging bull on Wall Street is racking up awards this week at Cannes Lions, the largest annual gathering of marketing executives. [The statue was commissioned on behalf of asset manager State Street and advertising agency McCann New York as a way of encouraging firms to hire more female executives. "Its simplicity in the use of symbolism transcends geography, it transcends language, it transcends culture," Wendy Clark, CEO of DDB North America, told Adweek. "For us, while it is a girl, it elegantly captures women's journeys and our path to empowerment. And it also encapsulates our hopes and our ambitions for every little girl in the world. " Clark also serves as the jury president of the Cannes Lions awards week, which was inspired by the Cannes Film Festival and takes place at the same conference center in Cannes, France. The "Fearless Girl" statue took home the Grand Prix in the Glass, PR and Outdoor Lions categories on the festival's first day. The statue was sculpted by artist Kristen Visbal in an effort to encourage gender diversity amongst corporate executives. "The girl is standing there like this in front the bull, saying, 'Now, what are you going to do?' Arturo Di Modica said, who sculpted the Charging Bull statue. Di Modica argues that the "Fearless Girl" statue violates his artistic rights as it changes the meaning of the bull statue. "Remove her and place her somewhere else in the city," Di Modica's attorney said. "We've got lots of ideas. And damages must be awarded to Arturo for violation of his legal, statutory rights. " Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com


EXCLUSIVE: A senior Hillary Clinton aide has maintained her top secret security clearance despite sending information now deemed classified to the Clinton Foundation and to then-Secretary of State Clinton's private unsecured email account, according to congressional letters obtained by Fox News. Current and former intelligence officials say it is standard practice to suspend a clearance pending the outcome of an investigation. Yet in the case of Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff at the State Department, two letters indicate this practice is not being followed -- even as the Clinton email system remains the subject of an FBI investigation. In an Oct. 30, 2015, letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa -- who has been aggressively investigating the Clinton email case -- Mills' lawyer Beth A. Wilkinson confirmed that her client "has an active Top Secret clearance." The letter said previous reporting from the State Department that the clearance was no longer active was wrong and due to "an administrative error." A second letter dated Feb. 18, 2016, from the State Department's assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Julia Frifield, provided additional details to Grassley about the "administrative error." It, too, confirmed Mills maintained the top secret clearance. The letters come amid multiple congressional investigations, as well as an FBI probe focused on the possible gross mishandling of classified information and Clinton's use of an unsecured personal account exclusively for government business. The State Department is conducting its own administrative review. Under normal circumstances, Mills would have had her clearance terminated when she left the department. But in January 2014, according to the State Department letter, Clinton designated Mills "to assist in her research." Mills was the one who reviewed Clinton's emails before select documents were handed over to the State Department, and others were deleted. Dan Maguire, a former strategic planner with Africom who has 46 years combined service, told Fox News his current and former colleagues are deeply concerned a double standard is at play. "Had this happened to someone serving in the government, their clearance would have already been pulled, and certainly they would be under investigation. And depending on the level of disclosure, it's entirely possible they would be under pretrial confinement for that matter," Maguire explained. "There is a feeling the administration may want to sweep this under the rug." On Monday, the State Department was scheduled to release the final batch of Clinton emails as part of a federal court-mandated timetable. So far, more than 1,800 have been deemed to contain classified information, and another 22 "top secret" emails have been considered too damaging to national security to release even with heavy redactions. As Clinton's chief of staff, Mills was a gatekeeper and routinely forwarded emails to Clinton's personal account. As one example, a Jan. 23, 2011 email forwarded from Mills to Clinton, called "Update on DR meeting," contained classified information, as well as foreign government information which is "born classified." The 2011 email can be declassified 15 years after it was sent -- indicating it contained classified information when it was sent. Fox News was first to report that sworn declarations from the CIA notified the intelligence community inspector general and Congress there were "several dozen emails" containing classified information up to the most closely guarded government programs known as "Special Access Programs." Clinton has maintained all along that she did not knowingly transmit information considered classified at the time. The U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual lays out the penalties for taking classified information out of secure government channels – such as an unsecured email system. While the incidents are handled on a "case by case" basis, the manual suggests the suspension of a clearance is routine while "derogatory information" is reviewed. The manual says the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, "based on a recommendation from the Senior Coordinator for Security Infrastructure (DS/SI), will determine whether, considering all facts available upon receipt of the initial information, it is in the interests of the national security to suspend the employee's access to classified information on an interim basis. A suspension is an independent administrative procedure that does not represent a final determination …" Fox News has asked the State Department to explain why Mills maintains her clearance while multiple federal and congressional investigations are ongoing. Fox News also asked whether the department was instructed by the FBI or another entity to keep the clearance in place. Fox News has not yet received a response. Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent. Pamela K. Browne is Senior Executive Producer at the FOX News Channel (FNC) and is Director of Long-Form Series and Specials. Her journalism has been recognized with several awards. Browne first joined FOX in 1997 to launch the news magazine "Fox Files" and later, "War Stories."


After winning the Iowa caucus, Ted Cruz is following the pattern of the last two Republicans who won that contest and fading out of the presidential top tier, losing both the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. This is very sad for self-described rodeo clown and conservative radio host Glenn Beck.Beck endorsed Cruz and has been on the trail with the candidate, touting him as the direct heir to George Washington. But now that Cruz s path to the presidency is getting bumpy, Beck is starting to sound somewhat detached from reality.Beck has called for Cruz supporters to join him in a fast in honor of the candidate. If that sounds like a strange thing to do you aren t alone. Even among conservatives, some have pushed back on Beck s suggestion.In response, Beck is now saying that the backlash proves that the church is dead. He wrote a message to his followers on Facebook as part of his push back:Since when has a fast and prayer been crazy?It was standard practice to beseech the powers of heaven for not just your country but personal guidance and revelation at one time.Have we really become a nation that mocks those who pray and fast?The sad answer is yes.I am not telling you who to vote for. I am asking people to pray and humble themselves before the Lord. If you wish to do that for your candidate please do so. God will not answer you or me. With prayer and fasting, approached with humility and a broken heart, we may fall closer into alignment with His will.Beck goes on to say that we are closer to losing our nation and Liberty than we were on September 11th. In his view, candidates like Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are not pure of heart enough to save America the way that Ted Cruz would.Beck is prone to dramatics and oddball announcements which are part of the reason he was eventually let go from Fox News.Having a freak out over Ted Cruz s lackluster performance is just the latest episode of Beck having a tantrum when he doesn t get his own way.