FAIR BLUFF, N. C. — Under a clear twilight sky, well after Hurricane Matthew broke up and moved offshore, this tiny town was drowning. Homes were submerged and deserted after officials evacuated about 400 people by boat and by truck, and Main Street was a canal of water. Frank Horne, 79, drove a large tractor slowly through the water inundating the lovingly maintained main drag. Most of the awnings and street lamps were eerily intact, even as merchandise and storm debris floated through businesses like the Ellis Meares Son hardware store and community pillars like the town hall. At the Ford dealership, every vehicle was partly underwater. "My granddaughter has a beauty shop right up on the right," Mr. Horne said grimly on Monday, pointing toward Carolina Class Salon. "If that hardware store goes, the town's gone. That's the only thing holding us. " Hurricane Matthew's disastrous turn over North Carolina lashed some areas with more than a foot of rain and left behind swelling rivers and streets like rivers throughout much of the region south and east of Raleigh. By Tuesday, emergency crews in trucks, boats and helicopters had rescued more than 2, 000 people from houses, porches and rooftops. Here in Fair Bluff, they included James Thomas, 57, who cannot walk because of a spinal cord injury, but was hoisted into a boat by firefighters on Sunday. The upheaval had a special sting here in a town that has tried, with no shortage of grit and heart, to remake itself in the face of economic shifts that have sucked the life out of so many other small towns. Now, Fair Bluff's future looks even more challenging. The extent of the damage here and in places like Lumberton, Fayetteville, Goldsboro and Pinetops sank in like a recurring bad dream on Tuesday after a storm that killed 17 people in the state and left commerce and daily life in some areas grinding to a halt. "Certain parts of the state, we're going through recovery at this point in time," Gov. Pat McCrory said on Tuesday morning. "Certain parts of the state, we're still going through ongoing floods. And now, we have other parts of the state that are about to deal with some very serious circumstances, especially along two of our major rivers. " Mr. McCrory said that a state trooper had shot and killed a man on Monday after a "confrontation" — the authorities later said he had become "hostile" and displayed a handgun — in Lumberton, a site of major flooding north of here. He added that state officials were especially worried about residents farther northeast, in and near Goldsboro, Greenville and Rocky Mount. With flooding expected in the state throughout the week, he urged drivers to use caution. "There are going to be conditions during the next 72 hours which will be extremely dangerous," Mr. McCrory said. As residents evacuated and the authorities imposed curfews, officials issued advisories to boil tap water for drinking and school districts canceled days of classes. The airport in Greenville, a city of about 91, 000, will be closed until Oct. 20. "A lot of communities are dealing with terrible flooding," President Obama said on Tuesday night in Greensboro, where he addressed a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton. "Lives have been lost, and so the entire country has been thinking about North Carolina. " The flooding this month has evoked memories of Hurricane Floyd, which devastated parts of the state 17 years ago. "The scars of the memories of 1999 are still there, and they're fresh," said Tony Sears, the city manager in Kinston, where the Neuse River is expected to approach a record height by Saturday. "And people are thinking back to how difficult of a time that was, and they're anticipating that this time. " In Fair Bluff, with a population of about 900, officials said the water rose further on Tuesday, to levels no one here had seen. The town has a poverty rate of 33 percent, and its population has decreased over time, with older residents dying off and the young moving away. Some in the area wondered if all of the flooded businesses, most operated by longtime residents, would reopen. "Because it's so small, income levels are so low here, it's going to be hard for them to justify putting the money back in to reopen their businesses," said Brenden Jones, a candidate for state representative from nearby Tabor City and an owner of a funeral home in Fair Bluff that was spared from flood damage. Fair Bluff was incorporated in 1873, with the Lumber River — currently inundating the town — and a railroad as its lifeblood, supporting logging and trade. By the 1970s, it was small but thriving, sustained by tobacco farms and warehouses, said Ken Elliot, 48, who like many people here grew up in a tobacco farming family. When those tobacco farms began to go under, people found new work. Mr. Elliot became a firefighter and paramedic, and he spent last weekend rescuing his friends and neighbors from the encroaching floodwaters. Others found work in a new plant that makes vinyl building materials. The town, which has a museum, built a visitors' center and a new river walk, earnestly seeking tourists. And locals fought tooth and nail to sustain a vital Main Street as the town's heart despite pressure from stores like Walmart and Family Dollar. "That's what keeps this area above water," Mr. Elliot said, adding that the town would pull together once again. Would everything reopen? "I'm not going to lie," Mr. Elliot said. "That's always a worry. " Others were confident the town would prevail. Kathy Ashley, 55, the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr. Horne's daughter, said that Fair Bluff was a trading post and had shown a penchant for reinvention ever since. "We got history," Ms. Ashley said. "When the water goes away, we're going to sweep it out and we're going to make our town better. " Critical to the floods' devastation was how surprising they were: Many people did not expect Hurricane Matthew to drop nearly as much rain as it did, and they prepared only for a small storm. "This is a river town," said Rodney Singletary, 47, a behavior specialist at the county school who took a boat back to his house on Monday to pick up medication for a relative. "We're used to the river. We just don't think that it's going to look like that. " His family had evacuated on foot over the weekend, walking along the railroad tracks as water rose on both sides. "We had to get out of here," he said. "I have to say, I was a little frightened. " At a shelter at West Columbus High School in a neighboring town, Cerro Gordo, Fair Bluff residents described harrowing rescues and domestic crises. Twyla Denise King, 44, worried about the five dogs she had left at home in the evacuation. And Simon Stephens, 33, who called for a rescue of himself, his wife and his two children when the waters rose because he cannot swim, wondered what had become of his house and two cars. "Words cannot describe it," said Mr. Stephens, a fabricator. "House paid for, cars, one car paid for, only $800 left on the truck. " So when it was time for a shelterwide meeting, Tom Guilliams of the Salvation Army opened with a prayer. "We thank you for getting us out of the waters and onto the land," he said. "Be with us through the storm. "


Kurdish-led authorities held local elections on Friday in areas they control in northern Syria, pushing ahead with autonomy plans opposed by both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and by Turkey. Kurdish forces and their political allies now hold the largest part of Syria outside the grip of Assad s government. They have captured vast territory from Islamic State with the support of U.S. arms, jets and ground advisers, although Washington opposes their autonomy drive. Kurdish leaders say their goal is to establish self-rule within Syria, not secession. But their influence has infuriated Ankara, which considers the Kurdish YPG militia to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has run a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. Assad has vowed to recover every inch of the country, as his territorial grip expanded rapidly over the past two years with help from Russia and Iran. Damascus has more forcefully asserted its claim to territory held by Kurdish-led forces in recent months. The head of Syria s delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva, Bashar al-Ja afari, rejected the election, repudiating any unilateral act that happens without coordination with Damascus. Since Syria s conflict began more than six years ago, the dominant Kurdish parties have been left out of international diplomacy in line with Turkish wishes. They were excluded again from U.N.-led peace talks which reconvened in Geneva this week. Hadiya Yousef, a senior Kurdish politician, said the Kurdish-led administration would not be bound by decisions taken in its absence. We are not present in these meetings, and therefore we are developing the solution on the ground, Yousef told Reuters. Peace talks would not arrive at solutions so long as they do not involve those running 30 percent of the country, she added. Voters are picking from close to 6,000 candidates for town and city councils on Friday, the second part of a three-stage process that will culminate in electing a parliament early next year. They chose representatives for smaller-scale district councils in September. Everyone should take part (in the election) because this is the fate of the entire region, said Sheikhmous Qamishlo, a 65-year-old Syrian Kurd at a polling station in Qamishli. This is a new experience, we wish it success, he said, and described casting his vote as a national duty . The election was being monitored by a small group of politicians from other countries in the Middle East, Yousef said, including a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party which runs the autonomous Kurdish region in neighboring Iraq. Yousef said the Iraqi Kurdish official s presence was a kind of recognition of the Syrian Kurdish political project. The Iraqi Kurdish authorities, whose own plans for independence were met with a swift backlash from states in the region in the past two months, have previously been hostile to the Syrian Kurdish parties.


Amazon boss Jeff Bezos wants to apply the same principles used in Amazon's developing delivery services to bring supplies to the future population of the moon. [After The Washington Post obtained a copy of the confidential "white paper" that Bezos' space company Blue Origin is passing on to Trump's transition team, the company verified its authenticity. And while Elon Musk's SpaceX rushes to beat Trump's own lunar ambitions, Bezos is focused on the logistics of something a little more permanent than private sightseeing excursions. Blue Origin want to deliver cargo to the moon, paving the way for sustained human colonization of our natural satellite. They've even picked a spot for this potential real estate — a cheery little crater near the moon's south pole, with access to water via ice hidden in the crater's shadows, and enough consistent sunlight to make use of solar energy. The thought of lunar expansion has managed to whet the appetites of several companies, who are already offering their own ideas for involvement. One such example is Bigelow Aerospace. Its founder, Robert Bigelow, wants to adapt the design of their BEAM habitat, currently docked with the International Space Station. He wants to create an orbital depot to house supplies and medical facilities. According to Bigelow, venturing toward Mars is "premature. " As for the moon? Bigelow asserts that "We have the technology. We have the ability, and the potential for a terrific business case. " For his part, Bezos believes that "if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily. " Bezos says that this project "only be done in partnership with NASA," and believes that "[Blue Origin's] liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission. " He is personally "excited about this," to the point of investing his own money "alongside NASA," to make sure they get there. "Blue Moon is all about delivery of mass to the surface of the Moon," according to the Amazon boss. "Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability" But all of this is just the beginning of Blue Origin's ambitions. Their first proposed mission hopes to be just the first in "a series of increasingly capable missions. " We'll have to wait to see whether President Trump and his advisors are as excited about the possibilities as Bezos himself. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.


You think those people are anti-love Bahahaha! The left can t handle the truth! This is epic!


U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed a Chinese diplomatic effort to rein in North Korea s weapons program as a failure on Thursday, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing was doing a lot, but could do more to limit oil supplies to Pyongyang. In a tweet, Trump delivered another insulting barb against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who he called Little Rocket Man and a sick puppy after North Korea test-fired its most advanced missile to date on Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington s approach was dangerously provocative. Trump s tweets further inflamed tensions reignited this week after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth s atmosphere. The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man, Trump said on Twitter, a day after speaking with Chinese President Chinese President Xi Jinping and reiterating his call for Beijing to use its leverage against North Korea. Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts on North Korea, but said Beijing could do more to limit its oil exports to the country. The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely, Tillerson said at the State Department. China is North Korea s neighbor and its sole major trading partner. While Trump has been bellicose at times in rhetoric toward North Korea, Tillerson has persistently held out hopes for a return to dialogue if North Korea shows it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program. However, Tillerson may not remain in his job long, with disagreements with Trump over North Korea being one factor. On Thursday, senior Trump administration officials said the White House was considering a plan to replace Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and that the United States would be unrelenting in working through the United Nations. In spite of Trump s rhetoric and warnings that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea, his administration has stressed it favors a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Trump has pledged more sanctions in response to the latest test and, at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States warned North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. This administration is focused on one big thing when it comes to North Korea, and that s denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular White House briefing. Anything beyond that is not the priority at this point, she said, responding to a question on whether regime change was on the administration s agenda after Trump s recent tweets and a speech by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Lavrov pointed to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December and accused the United States of trying to provoke Kim into flying off the handle over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country. He also flatly rejected a U.S. call for Russia to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program, calling U.S. policy toward North Korea deeply flawed. In a call with Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile launched this week was North Korea s most advanced so far, but it was unclear whether Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology. A White House statement said Trump and Moon reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and added: Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost. North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim s leadership and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September. It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention. Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile program. Trump, who has previously said the United States would totally destroy North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since taking office in January.


Conservatives have suggested repeatedly that if former President Barack Obama clicked his heels together three times while saying the words radical Islamic terrorism then terror attacks would never happen again. Ever. During former reality show star Donald Trump s speech in Saudi Arabia, he failed to use those words, but it helped to elect him while on the campaign trail by criticizing his opponents for not saying the magical phrase.While Trump is visiting the Middle East, a bomb tore through an entrance hall of the Manchester Arena at about 10:30 p.m. as American pop star Ariana Grande s concert was ending. In total, 22 people died and 59 concert-goers were hospitalized, marking this as the deadliest terrorist assault in Britain since 2005.On Tuesday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing.During President Curtsy s press conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Trump branded terrorist groups as evil losers. I extend my deepest condolences to those so terribly injured and to the so many families of the victims. We stand in absolute solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom, Trump said Tuesday. So many young beautiful and innocent people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life, he said. I won t call them monsters because they would like that term, he continued. They would think that s a great name. I will call them from now on losers because that s what they are, they re losers. And we ll have more of them. But they re losers, just remember that. The terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society forever, he added, then called on the international community to protect human life. Watch Trump deliver a real sick burn to terrorists everywhere by calling them evil losers. You know, as opposed to evil winners.On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said he would present a plan to defeat the Islamic State to his generals within 30 days after taking office, but that hasn t happened.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.


Iraq s Kurdish security forces said Baghdad would pay a heavy price for launching an advance on the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk. In a statement, the Peshmerga also accused a faction from one of the two main Iraqi Kurdish political parties of treason for assisting Baghdad with the advance.


The Democrats are in full panic-mode over Crooked Hillary as she continues to plummet in the polls. Liberal CA Congresswoman, Maxine Waters is hilarious in this interview with and MSNBC host Tamron Hall, as she attempts to blame Hillary s media cheerleaders because Americans don t trust Hillary! LOL There s a reason why people from all over the world will be tuning in tonight to watch what is certain to be an epic presidential debate. The match up between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is so popular because it reminds us of an age-old formula that has been selling movies and books for years, the underdog vs. the evil villain. There s something very satisfying about watching the underdog take down an evil villainess who s managed to escape the law for decades.There s something equally as satisfying watching lying liberals attempt to circle the wagons around the most corrupt candidate to ever run for office and blame of all people wait for it the media!


Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday that voting machines in the U.S. state of Texas have been 'flipping' his registered votes to rival Hillary Clinton.  Sputnik reports:  The Republican nominee has warned for weeks that the election could be rigged against him.  "A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas," Trump said via Twitter. "People are not happy."  Trump also noted in his Twitter message that the lines at the polling places are very long. "What is going on?" he asked. A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 27 October 2016  On Tuesday, Chambers County in east Texas officially announced that it was switching over at least temporarily to the old-fashioned, low-tech system of voting with emergency paper ballots after electronic voting machines in the region suffered technical glitches.  Electronic voting using the usual machines would be suspended until the problems with them could be fixed, Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne said in a press release.


Theresa May looked despondent , with deep rings under her eyes, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker told aides after dining with the British prime minister last week, a German newspaper said on Sunday. The report by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent whose leaked account of a Juncker-May dinner in April caused upset in London, said Juncker thought her marked by battles over Brexit with her own Conservative ministers as she asked for EU help to create more room for maneuver at home. No immediate comment was available from Juncker s office, which has a policy of not commenting on reports of meetings. The FAZ said May, who flew in for a hastily announced dinner in Brussels with the European Commission president last Monday ahead of an EU summit, seemed to Juncker anxious, despondent and disheartened , a woman who trusts hardly anyone but is also not ready for a clear-out to free herself . As she later did over dinner on Thursday with fellow EU leaders, May asked for help to overcome British divisions. She indicated that back home friend and foe are at her back plotting to bring her down, the paper said. May said she had no room left to maneuver. The Europeans have to create it for her. May s face and appearance spoke volumes, Juncker later told his colleagues, the FAZ added. She has deep rings under her eyes. She looks like someone who can t sleep a wink. She smiles for the cameras, it went on, but it looks forced , unlike in the past, when she could shake with laughter. Now she needs all her strength not to lose her poise. As with the April dinner at 10 Downing Street, when the FAZ reported that Juncker thought May in another galaxy in terms of Brexit expectations, both sides issued statements after last week s meeting saying talks were constructive and friendly . They said they agreed negotiations should be accelerated . May dismissed the dinner leak six months ago as Brussels gossip , though officials on both sides said the report in the FAZ did little to foster an atmosphere of trust which they agree will be important to reach a deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also reported to have been irritated by that leak. Although the summit on Thursday and Friday rejected May s call for an immediate start to talks on the future relationship, leaders made a gesture to speed up the process and voiced hopes of opening a new phase in December. Some said they understood May s difficulties in forging consensus in London.


"Health officials are recommending that 240 people at Renton's Hazen High School get tested for tuberculosis (TB) after someone at the school was diagnosed with the infectious disease," the Seattle Times reported on January 12. [Hazen High School is part of the Renton School District, located in a King County, Washington city about 18 miles south of Seattle. "Health officials recommended the tests at Hazen High School as a precaution after someone at the school was diagnosed with the infectious disease," the Times noted. According to the Renton School District's website: Renton School District offers an English Language Learner (ELL) program to students who need to develop English proficiency. We offer instruction from ELL teachers in collaboration with mainstream teachers to effectively teach ELL students listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. • 15% of students in the Renton School District are enrolled in the ELL program. • The number of ELL students served in the Renton School District has increased by 67% in the last 10 years. • At least 85 home languages or dialects are spoken by Renton School District students. As Breitbart News reported, 66 percent of all cases of active TB in the United States in 2015, or 6, 350 out of 9, 563, were diagnosed in residents of the country. At 76 percent, the percentage of active TB cases was significantly higher in the state of Washington than in the rest of the United States in 2015. Though the Hazen High School School Nurse's webpage makes no mention of TB, it does mention pertussis, another disease associated with residents of the United States: King County received 100 reports of confirmed pertussis between more than the 98 reports received in all of 2011. Vaccinating eligible children and adults is the best way to prevent this disease. News of the diagnosis of active TB in a Washington State high school follows several reports of similar diagnoses in two high schools in Minnesota, one high school in Nebraska, and one middle school in South Carolina. All four of these high schools had significant populations of students participating in English Language Learner programs. "Calling it a precaution, health officials are offering testing Jan. 18 at the school to determine if anyone has symptoms of active TB. Blood tests will also be offered to check if people are infected but without the symptoms, a condition known as latent TB," the Times reported: They've estimated about 240 people from the school community are at risk based on the amount of time they were exposed to the person with TB in indoor spaces. Officials are not saying whether the person with TB is a student or employee to protect the person's privacy, said James Apa, spokesman for Public Health — Seattle King County. "The person at Hazen with active TB is receiving treatment and is not a risk for infecting others, Apa said," the Times reported: In 2015, 208 new cases were reported in Washington state, including 98 in King County.


The explosion of violence against conservatives across the country is being intentionally ginned up by Democrats, reporters, TV hosts, comedians and celebrities, who compete with one another to come up with the most vile epithets for Trump and his supporters. [They go right up to the line, trying not to cross it, by, for example, vamping with a realistic photo of a decapitated Trump or calling the president a "piece of s — " while hosting a show on CNN. The media are orchestrating a bloodless coup, but they're perfectly content to have their shock troops pursue a bloody coup. This week, one of the left's foot soldiers gunned down Republican members of Congress and their staff while they were playing baseball in Virginia. Democratic Socialist James Hodgkinson was prevented from committing a mass murder only by the happenstance of a member of the Republican leadership being there, along with his Capitol Police protection. Remember when it was frightening for the losing party not to accept the results of an election? During the third debate, Trump refused to agree to the election results, saying he'd "look at it at the time. " The media responded in their usual style: A 'HORRIFYING' REPUDIATION OF DEMOCRACY — The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2016, DENIAL OF DEMOCRACY — Daily News (New York) Oct. 20, 2016 DANGER TO DEMOCRACY — The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 20, 2016, ONE SCARY MOMENT IT ALL BOILED DOWN TO … DEMOCRACY — Pittsburgh Oct. 21, 2016, "(Shock) spiked down the nation's spinal column last night and today when the Republican nominee threatened that this little election thing you got there, this little democratic process you've got here, it's nice, it's fine, but he doesn't necessarily plan on abiding by its decision when it comes to the presidency. " — Rachel Maddow, Oct. 20, "Trump's answer on accepting the outcome of the vote is the most disgraceful statement by a presidential candidate in 160 years. " — Bret Stephens, editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal, "I guess we're all going to have to wait until Nov. 9 to find out if we still have a country — if Donald Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power. Or if he's going to wipe his fat a — with the Constitution. " — CBS's Stephen Colbert, Oct. 19, 2016, "It's unprecedented for a nominee of a major party to themselves signal that they would not accept — you know, respect the results of an election. We've never had that happen before. … This really presents a potentially difficult problem for governing … " — MSNBC'S Joy Reid, Oct. 22, 2016, "This is very dangerous stuff … would seriously impair our functioning as a democracy. … This is about as serious as it gets in the United States. " — CNN's Peter Beinart, Oct. 20, 2016, "Obviously, it's despicable for him to pretend that there's any chance that he would not accept the results of this election it would be — in 240 years you've never had anybody do it. … " — CNN's Van Jones, Oct. 20, 2016, Then Trump won, and these very same hysterics refused to accept the results of the election. Recently, Hillary announced her steadfast opposition to the winning candidate using a military term, saying she'd joined the "Resistance. " Imagine if Trump lost and then announced that he'd joined the "RESISTANCE. " He'd be accused of trying to activate militias. Every dyspeptic glance at an immigrant would be reported as fascistic violence. But the media seem blithely unaware that the "Resistance" has been accompanied by nonstop militaristic violence from liberals. When Trump ripped up our Constitution and jumped all over it by failing to concede the election three weeks in advance, CNN ran a segment on a single tweet from a random Trump supporter that mentioned the Second Amendment. Carol Costello: "Still to come in the 'Newsroom,' some Trump supporters say they will refuse to accept a loss on Election Day, with one offering a threat of violence. We'll talk about that next. " In CNN's most fevered dreams about a violent uprising of Trump supporters, they never could have conceived of the level of actual violence being perpetrated by Americans who refuse to accept Trump's win. (See Hate Map.) It began with Trump's inauguration, when a leftist group plotted to pump a debilitating gas into one Trump inaugural ball, military families were assaulted upon leaving the Veterans' Inaugural Ball, and attendees of other balls had water thrown on them. Since then, masked, armed liberals around the country have formed organizations to beat up conservatives. In liberal towns, the police are regularly ordered to stand down to allow the assaults to proceed unimpeded. The media only declared a crisis when conservatives fought back, smashing the beta males. ("Battle for Berkeley! ") There is more media coverage for conservatives' "microaggressions" toward powerful minorities — such as using the wrong pronoun — than there is for liberals' physical attacks on conservatives, including macings, concussions, and hospitalizations. And now some nut Bernie confirms that it's Republicans standing on a baseball field, before opening fire. In the media's strategic reporting of the attempted slaughter, we were quickly told that the mass shooter was white, male and had used a gun. We were even told his name. (Because it was not "Mohammed. ") But the fact that Hodgkinson's Facebook page featured a banner of Sanders and the words "Democratic Socialism explained in 3 words: 'We the People' Since 1776" apparently called for hours of meticulous by our media. Did reporters think they could keep that information from us forever? The fake news insists that Trump's White House is in "chaos. " No, the country is in chaos. But just like Kathy Griffin and her Trump decapitation performance art — the perpetrators turn around in innocence and blame Trump.


Myanmar on Tuesday launched its first bid to improve relations between Buddhists and Muslims since an eruption of deadly violence in August inflamed communal tension and triggered an exodus of some 520,000 Muslims to Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims are still fleeing, more than six weeks after Rohingya insurgents attacked security forces in western Myanmar s Rakhine state. The United Nations has denounced a ferocious military crackdown in response to the attacks as ethnic cleansing aimed at driving out Rohingya. A new surge of refugees has entered Bangladesh in recent days, including about 11,000 on Monday. Some have told of increasing hunger in Rakhine as well as of more mob attacks on Muslim villagers. Despite growing international condemnation of the refugee crisis, the military campaign is popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya, and for Muslims in general, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged in recent years. The party of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi took the first step toward trying to ease animosity with inter-faith prayers at a stadium in the biggest city of Yangon, with Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others. Thousands of people packed the stands of the stadium, with Buddhist monks, Hindus, Christian nuns and Muslim men with beards and caps listening to religious leaders who took turns to appeal for friendship. Be free from killing one another, be free from torturing one another, be free from destroying or demolishing one another, the chief Buddhist monk of Yangon, Iddhibala, told the crowd. Stepping off the podium, he shook hands with Muslim leader Hafiz Mufti Ali. Citizens should collaborate in friendship and work for the country, Ali said, adding: Freedom of life, freedom of education, freedom of religion, it is absolutely necessary for the country to fulfill all these rights. The Rohingya had pinned hopes for change on Suu Kyi s party but it has been wary of Buddhist nationalist pressure. Her party did not field a single Muslim candidate in the 2015 election that it swept. Rohingya are not classified as an indigenous minority in Myanmar and so are denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity. Regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, they face restrictions and discrimination and are derided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine, and by much of the wider population. The militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who launched the Aug. 25 attacks that triggered the latest spasm of violence are demanding full citizenship rights and recognition as an indigenous community. A one-month ceasefire the insurgents called in September in order, they said, to ease aid deliveries to Rakhine, expired at midnight on Monday, but authorities said there was no sign of any new attacks. The government rebuffed the ceasefire, saying it did not negotiate with terrorists. Myanmar denies ethnic cleansing. It says more than 500 people have been killed in the violence since late August, most of them ARSA terrorists . Even before the government offensive, the small, lightly armed ARSA appeared only capable of hit-and-run raids and unable to mount any sort of sustained challenge to the army. The insurgents said on Saturday they were ready to respond to any peace move by the government, even though their ceasefire was ending. Reports of food shortages in Rakhine will add to the urgency of calls by aid agencies and the international community for unfettered humanitarian access to the conflict zone. Villagers said food was running out because rice crops were not ready for harvest and authorities had shut village markets and limited food transport, apparently to cut supplies to the militants. The government has cited worry about food as a main reason people have cited for leaving, but a senior state government official dismissed any suggestion of starvation. Among those fleeing were more than 30 people on a boat that capsized off Bangladesh on Sunday. Twenty-five people drowned, 13 of them children, police said.


Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage visited Donald Trump at his home on Saturday, after suggesting he could act as a go-between to help smooth British relations with the U.S. president-elect. British Prime Minister Theresa May is not expected to meet the incoming leader until early next year and Farage has suggested her criticisms of Trump in the early days of the campaign could damage ties with Washington. "We're just tourists!" Farage, head of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), told reporters as he waited for an elevator to take him up to the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City. He later tweeted a photograph of himself with Trump standing in front of a pair of golden doors and smiling broadly, the president-elect giving the camera a thumbs-up. "It was a great honor to spend time with @realDonaldTrump," Farage tweeted. "He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President." Trump's election campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said: "I think they enjoy each other's company, and they actually had a chance to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world." In a separate photograph posted on Twitter, UKIP donor Arron Banks, Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam, and Gerry Gunster, an American whose advocacy firm worked on the Brexit campaign, were also pictured with Trump and Farage. May - who spoke to Trump by phone on Thursday - and her predecessor David Cameron last year described Trump as "divisive" and "wrong" over his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. At that time he was not considered likely to win the presidency. In a leaked diplomatic telegram, sent on Nov. 9 and printed in the Sunday Times newspaper, Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, said he believed Britain had built better relationships with Trump's team than other foreign diplomats. "(Trump) is above all an outsider and an unknown quantity, whose campaign pronouncements may reveal his instincts, but will surely evolve and, particularly, be open to outside influence if pitched right," he said. "We should be well placed to do this." While the British government has congratulated Trump on his election, the head of the opposition, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said he should "grow up" on the immigration issue and recognize that the U.S. economy depends on migrant workers. "The treatment of Mexico by the United States, just as much as its absurd and abusive language towards Muslims, is something that has to be challenged and should be challenged," Corbyn, whose wife is Mexican, told the BBC on Sunday. UKIP, which has only one member of parliament in London, said Farage and Trump spent more than an hour discussing Trump's victory, global politics and Brexit. A UKIP official has suggested Farage could even be the next ambassador to the United States, but British media reported that May's office rejected the idea of any role for Farage, citing unnamed sources who described him as an "irrelevance". A day after Trump's election victory, Farage called on the real estate mogul to reverse "loathsome" Barack Obama's policy by making Britain his top priority. Farage said he had been pleased at Trump's "very positive reaction" to the idea that a bust of former British prime minister Winston Churchill be put back in the Oval Office. He has also joked about sexual assault allegations against Trump, urging him to "schmooze" May but not touch her. He proposed that in any meetings between the British and American leaders, he could attend to be the "responsible adult to make sure everything is OK." Farage, who spoke at a Trump rally during the election campaign, had predicted the former reality TV host would tap into the same dissatisfaction among voters that led to Britain deciding on June 23 to leave the European Union. Trump made repeated references to Brexit during his campaign, saying it had highlighted the desire for change among voters frustrated with traditional politics. (Story refiles to add dropped word "the" in first paragraph.)


Lauren McGaughy of The Dallas Morning News did a disgusting hit job on a top Texas lawyer and former judge. As a mother of 3 girls, I m offended by journalists like Lauren McGaughy, who wrote about a lawyer who was fired from his law firm for posting an article written by a rape survivor about her views on the now hijacked feminazi #metoo movement. It s sad to see the left grabbing onto the serious issue of sexual assault and doing the exact same thing they did to racism, using it as a political football, and trying to make it a Republican or conservative thing. If everyone s a racist, then no one is a racist. Lauren McGaughy, a reporter for Dallas Morning News didn t stop at exposing the firing of a top Texas lawyer over an article he shared on his personal Facebook page about the #MeToo movement (that was written by a rape survivor), she went after him with a bizarre vengeance, as though she had been personally harmed by his words. McGaughy didn t stop after pointing out that his law firm fired Andrew D. Leonie in a shameful case of censorship, she went on to tie him to conservatives and prove that he s actually (gasp) supported Republican candidates in the past. McGaughy took it a step further, and provided evidence that this horrible human being was also involved in litigating a case against are you ready? Muslim students praying in public schools!McGaughy wrote: Leonie was behind an AG s office letter that blasted a Frisco-area high school for allowing Muslim students to use an empty classroom to pray. The letter, which alleged the school might be infringing on the constitutional rights of its non-Muslim students, was called a political stunt by district staff who said the room was open to all students.From the Dallas Morning News article:A top lawyer in the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton resigned Thursday after reports he wrote a Facebook post that called women s sexual misconduct allegations pathetic. The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday morning Associate Deputy Attorney General Andrew D. Leonie posted on Facebook this week: Aren t you also tired of all the pathetic me too victim claims? If every woman is a victim , so is every man. If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore. The post went up at 2:40 a.m. on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, Leonie had resigned. In a press release, Paxton s office said Leonie s exit was effective immediately. The views he expressed on social media do not reflect our values, Paxton s Director of Communications Marc Rylander wrote. The OAG is committed to promoting and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment. Leonie s post was removed late Thursday afternoon. His bio was changed from Associate Deputy Attorney General to Retired. The Dallas Morning News was fortunately, able to get a screen shot of the offensive post for everyone to see:His Facebook post linked to an article from the conservative website The Federalist titled, Can we be honest about women? The teaser to the article, which was written by a woman, states: Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty. He previously worked for Paxton s predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, as a regional chief for consumer protection and special litigator, according to Leonie s LinkedIn. His salary was listed as $150,984 in April on the Texas Tribune s salary explorer.Leonie s post comes as some conservatives question the increasing number of sexual harassment and assault claims against the nation s most powerful men in media, politics and business. While the stories have led to a number of high-profile resignations and apologies in the private sector, change is slower in the political realm, where it s usually up to voters to oust elected officials accused of sexual misconduct.In Texas, for example, Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold on Thursday decided not to run for reelection after allegations he made lewd comments and unleashed profanity-laced tirades on staffers. The decision was made after Farenthold declined to resign for weeks after news broke he once used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settlement a harassment claim. Accusations against state lawmakers as well as concerns over the ability of elected officials to harass with impunity have also led to new training requirements in the Legislature.OOPS! It looks likeThe Federalist-reported that Leonie s Facebook post linked to an article entitled Can We Be Honest About Women? authored by McAllister, who is a survivor of sexual assault. Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty, McAllister writes. Why? Because it is part of their nature. As a society, we need to encourage both sexes to become comfortable with who they are naturally and all the messy, uncomfortable, stumbling, tantalizing, and glorious twists and turns that come with it, she continues. Men and women need to show each other grace and respect as they engage as sexual beings in whatever sphere they interact. The article explicitly condemns sexual assault but argues that what some call sexual assault doesn t deserve that label and expanding its definition into innocent behavior hurts both men and women. In the past, McAllister has written about how our society has emboldened men in positions of power to think they can get away with sexually harassing or assaulting women.In a post entitled It s Not Up To Women To End Sexual Harassment, she explains why men need to step up their efforts to protect women from such evils. She has also criticized aspects of the #MeToo movement, writing recently that it is destroying trust between men and women because the social media movement denies human nature.The sexual tension between men and women will always exist, and if women assume a man s sexuality is a threat instead of a powerful complement to their own sexuality, they will always be on guard. In this environment of suspicion, there can be no privacy between a man and a woman. If there is any kind of interaction or discourse, even if it s not sexual, the man can t trust that the woman won t use it against him so communication is silenced. Fear is generated on both sides, and fear is the death of trust. It is also the death of love.Throughout McAllister s critiques of the #MeToo movement and discussions of sexual topics, she has repeatedly stated that women ought to be respected and that sexual assault and sexual harassment are wrong a fact left out of the numerous media accounts of Leonie s resignation and her article.


Barack Obama has to be the world s biggest hypocrite. Here he is in 2005 adamantly defending our borders: We simply cannot allow for people to pour in, undocumented and unchecked. @PressSec Obama 2005: "We simply cannot allow for people to pour in, undocumented, unchecked". OUCH! pic.twitter.com/1ibXXaNeeU Leahann (@Leaha_Luv) February 1, 2017Isn t it funny that only 9 years later, we all watched our PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES tell an illegal alien on TV that it s okay for illegal aliens to vote in the upcoming election. So in 2005, it was against the law to enter our country illegally, but in 2016 they should not only flood into our country and overwhelm our nation, but they should also vote. But yeah Trump is a racist for trying to clean up the mess Obama started.


The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday for just the second time since the 2008 financial crisis. Economists talk a lot about the impact this will have on markets, but what about everyday consumers? The Fed's decision can affect the cost of housing, cars, student loans and even the interest on your credit card — though not all necessarily right away. And when the Fed raises rates, all sorts of other expenses eventually tick up. The move is part of what will be a slow, upward climb for what's known as the federal funds rate. Banks are ordered by law to have a certain amount of money in reserve, so they typically make overnight loans to each other to keep those balances up. The federal funds rate is the level of interest that applies to those loans. Because the rate has been close to zero since 2008, as part of the Fed's strategy to bring the nation out of a recession, there's hardly anywhere for it to go but up. As the economy improves and Donald J. Trump unveils his stimulus package, economists expect rates to rise steadily over a period of years. "The bottom line, ostensibly, is that the economy is getting stronger," said Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "Nobody in their right mind would say, 'I'd rather have higher unemployment and lower interest rates.' Nobody wants to pay a higher interest rate, but I think that's an easy choice for most people. " If you're going to buy a home, chances are that you will opt for a mortgage. Most home buyers do. Those loans have become remarkably affordable, especially since the financial crisis, with their interest rates bottoming out at around 3. 5 percent. In general, movement of the Fed's rate does not have a large, direct impact on mortgage rates. But when the Fed's rate goes up, banks find ways to pass their higher borrowing costs along to consumers. And because mortgage rates are set in stone, they also factor in the anticipation of future rate increases. That's part of why mortgage rates have been shooting up in recent months: The Fed has suggested that interest rates are likely to continue rising for years. The average interest rate on a mortgage this month is 4. 3 percent, according to LendingTree, and the average loan on a mortgage is worth about $237, 000. If the borrowing rate were to rise by, say, another percentage point in the coming year, this would mean an additional $138 a month on the average mortgage — leading to nearly $50, 000 in added interest over the duration of the loan. As mortgage rates go up, people are a little less likely to buy a house, and those with mortgages are less likely to refinance (because they probably will not end up with a better deal). An interesting wrinkle is that as a result, volume — that is, the amount of new mortgage contracts being issued — goes down. So brokers could also start loosening their requirements for new mortgages. The annual percentage rate on your credit card can be anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent — much higher than the interest rate on a mortgage or a car loan. An uptick in the Fed's interest rate might cause your credit card's A. P. R. if it's variable as opposed to fixed at a specific rate, to bounce by one or two percentage points. The effects of that can be larger than they may initially seem, in part because the interest compounds. That is, you begin to pay interest on what you owe and the interest that you have been accumulating on that. "If you're accumulating credit card debt for a year," said Markus K. Brunnermeier, a Princeton economist, "moving from 13 percent interest to 15 percent is a much bigger deal than moving something from 1 percent to 3 percent. " Rates for student loans, like other forms of borrowing, are at a relative low. But as the Fed's rate rises, that will change for those just starting to think about paying for college. Federal loans are tied to the Treasury rate, which factors in the Fed's anticipated interest rates over the coming decade. Because these rates are projected to tick up steadily by the Fed's own forecasts, students planning to take out loans in the next few years can expect the government's student loan rates to rise. "Students taking out new debt will be looking at higher payments," Dr. Baker said, adding that he expected rates could rise by one or two percentage points in the next few years. Rates for car loans, too, are already climbing in response to the Fed's expected move. Auto loans tend to last only a few years, so there is still time for car buyers to get ahead of the curve. That's because the Fed, in its most recent economic projection, predicted that interest rates will continue climbing into the next decade. A few years from now, a car loan issued in 2017 could be fully paid off, and interest rates may still be on the rise. "If you're thinking of buying it now or in two years' time, you should buy it now," Dr. Brunnermeier said. What about renters? An increase may also affect them — just not as directly. Higher rates mean that landlords must pay more to purchase and renovate their properties, so in the long run, those are costs they could easily pass on to renters — though it's not necessarily a given that it will happen. And with the labor market improving, workers' wages could rise at about the same time as rent prices, said Stephen D. Oliner, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former member of the Federal Reserve Board. "It's possible that with their wages rising, people will be able to keep up with the higher payments on their rents," he said.


Mick Mulvaney, White House budget chief and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said on Monday he has no intention of firing Leandra English, who had attempted to block him from taking control of the agency. Former CFPB head Richard Cordray had named English to lead the bureau following his resignation last month, but that appointment had been mired in turmoil after U.S. President Donald Trump had assigned Mulvaney to the same role. A U.S. District Court judge last week sided with Trump, saying the law gave Mulvaney the right to lead the consumer finance watchdog, but English is challenging the decision. During a news briefing at the CFPB on Monday, Mulvaney told reporters he would "absolutely not" consider firing English and that he would like her to continue to serve as deputy director but had not had any direct contact with her. English could not immediately be reached for comment through her lawyer, Deepak Gupta. Since arriving at the CFPB, Mulvaney has implemented a hiring freeze and suspended all new regulations for 30 days. On Monday, he said he was also reviewing more than 100 pending enforcement actions, including litigation as well as private settlement talks and investigations. He declined to comment on specific cases, but said there were two litigation actions he has asked to delay and separately cited the CFPB's case against mortgage company PHH Corp (PHH.N) as one that "has issues" without elaborating. The budget chief said data security was also a top priority and that he had instructed the bureau to stop collecting personally identifiable information until data security problems highlighted by the bureau's independent audit office had been addressed. Mulvaney this week brought in Republican congressional lawyer Brian Johnson as a senior adviser and plans to quickly bring on board more political hires to help him review the bureau's existing and pending regulations, the budget chief said. "Then I'm going to get down to the weeds of something I enjoy which is the budget, and how the agency ... is funded, how it's structured, personnel, those types of things," he added. Trump "wants to move expeditiously" on naming a permanent replacement but the Senate confirmation process is likely to take some time and Mulvaney expects to be in the interim role for up to seven months, he said in an interview Reuters. English is expected to formally file a preliminary injunction against Mulvaney and Trump this week, according to court filings.


After becoming one of the Columbia Fireflies best fan draws, former NFL quarterback and now baseball player Tim Tebow may be in line for a promotion, according to sources. [Tebow's playing stats have been quite respectable, especially considers he is almost a decade older than many of his teammates. The former Denver Bronco was signed to a minor league contract by the New York Mets this year and has been playing in South Carolina, achieving a 849 OPS over his last 16 games. Tebow has a . . . 370 slash line with two homers and 11 RBIs in 28 games for Columbia, the New York Post reports. His work on the diamond puts him in a solid position and the Mets have taken notice. According to sources, there is talk of bumping the player up to the next level in AA ball. But, there is undoubtedly another reason for this consideration. After all, Tebow has become a major for the Fireflies. Tebow is helping the Fireflies break team attendance records this year as fans scramble to see their new favorite player. In fact, by some estimates, Tebow has booted attendance for the Fireflies by a whopping 92 percent. Tim Tebow is boosting attendance by 92% in Columbia Fireflies road games according to @BaseballAmerica. — Michael Mayer (@mikemayerMMO) May 12, 2017, And, Tebow hasn't just helped the team he plays for bring fans to the stadium. He is a draw everywhere he goes. "We had 4, 500 people in the stands," Hickory Crawdads season ticket holder Christopher Pack told the Associated Press this month, "and 4, 300 were there to see Tim Tebow. " The AP continued, saying, "People show up in Tebow's NFL jerseys, and Florida Gator outfits, lining up around the rails in this intimate ballparks trying to get autograph or a selfie with Tebow. " Tebow has been such a draw, even for other teams, that the Augusta, Georgia, GreenJackets found themselves scrambling to find enough concession workers to handle the crowd when Tebow came to town. On that day, 5, 830 fans turned out to see Tebow play, well above the GreenJackets' average of 3, 190 fans. Clearly the Mets want to bring that excitement to AA ball and thence to New York itself and the Majors if Tebow can continue playing at level. This is all a far cry from the doubters who insisted that Tebow's ideas of becoming a pro baseball player were the silly dreams of a silly man. Now, it appears that the Mets feel his capabilities are sustainable and that he is bringing fans to the stands in droves is a plus. It's a punch that can't be denied. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.


The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the U.S. Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans' biggest blow yet to former President Barack Obama's healthcare law, repealing the requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance. The individual mandate is meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. It helps uphold the most popular provision of the law, which requires insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. Removing it while keeping the rest of Obama's Affordable Care Act intact is expected to cause insurance premiums to rise and lead to millions of people losing coverage, policy experts say. "It's going to take a bunch of healthy people out of the insurance market," said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Obamacare "is going to collapse even more now," he said. Republican lawmakers failed several times this year to scrap the mandate as part of a broader repeal of Obamacare, blocked by opposition from a few of the party's senators, including Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, still opposed to removing the mandate, said she voted for the tax bill on Saturday after being assured by Republican leaders that they will support legislation to prop up U.S. health insurance markets. The tax bill is not yet final. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate must now reconcile the differences in their respective versions of the legislation. "Repealing the individual mandate simply restores to people the freedom to choose," Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has opposed previous Obamacare repeal efforts, wrote in an opinion piece in Alaska's Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "Instead of taxing people for not being able to afford coverage, we should be working to reduce costs and provide options." One of the Obamacare stabilization bills, co-authored by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, would restore billions of dollars in subsidies that health insurers use to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low income Americans. A second, co-authored by Collins and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, would create an additional $4.5 billion fund to compensate insurers for covering health care for the sickest patients. Still, health policy experts said both of those measures would be needed without a mandate repeal and would not make up for expected premium increases and the rise in the numbers of uninsured Americans. "Neither of these bills would do anything to offset the increase in uninsured resulting from a mandate repeal," said Larry Levitt, health economist at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "The marketplaces would limp along without a mandate but it's probably not a stable place." Without the mandate, health insurance premiums would rise 10 percent in most years over the next decade on the individual market and 13 million people would lose coverage by 2027, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report last month. Levitt said that insurers would need around $10 billion per year to offset the lost revenue from the individual mandate rather than raise premiums. Republicans, who control the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, failed for months to make good on a top campaign pledge of President Donald Trump. Trump has said Congress will return to repeal-and-replace efforts next year and over the past several months has taken regulatory and executive actions to steadily undermine the Obamacare law. Insurers and leading medical groups have already urged Congress to preserve the individual mandate and warned of "serious consequences" such as rising premiums and a rise in the number of uninsured if it were repealed.


Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) knocked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday for backing away from his push for comprehensive immigration reform, saying on ABC's "This Week" that he had "folded like a cheap shotgun." Rubio, who announced his bid for president last week, has gotten heat from some conservatives for co-authoring an immigration reform bill that would allow some undocumented immigrants to eventually become citizens, along with ramping up border security and enforcement measures. He then said in February that he'd since learned a comprehensive approach was the wrong one, and that border security should be done separately and before other reform. McCaskill said, "He took a principled, courageous stand on immigration reform" while helping to draft the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate in 2013 -- but then dropped those principles. "Then the minute his party's base starting chewing on about it, the minute Rush Limbaugh criticized him, he folded like a cheap shotgun," she said. "That's old politics. That's not what we need right now. That is the stalest trick in the book. That is shirking on your principles because of the political necessities of your party." Rubio said on CBS's "Face the Nation" in an interview that aired on Sunday that it was wrong to say he "walked away from" immigration reform. "Well that's not an accurate assessment," he said. "What I'm saying to people is we can't do it in a massive piece of legislation, and I know because I tried. We understand that we have to deal with 12 million human beings that are in this country, that have been here longer than a decade. We know we have to deal with this. We are not prepared to deal with it until first you can prove to us that this will never happen again." "Well that's a hypothetical that will never happen," Rubio said, reiterating he would first ask for border security and enforcement bills. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is considering a run for president and is another author of the 2013 immigration bill, also referred to Rubio's shift on immigration Sunday in an interview with "Fox News Sunday." When he was asked to give his thoughts on Rubio, he threw in a slight dig while praising the senator. "He embraced immigration reform," he said. "He seems to have backed off -- I'll let him explain why. I think comprehensive immigration reform, securing our border and dealing rationally with the 11 million [undocumented immigrants], is the only way you're going to solve this problem."


This is a pretty ironic statement for someone who s in big trouble with the FBI! In fact, it s been reported today that the FBI is getting closer to a devastating decision fro Clinton. If you ask me, Hillary has no business bring president!


President Donald Trump is increasingly unlikely to nominate Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen next year for a second term, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn is the leading candidate to succeed her, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing four people close to the process. Politico said sources in the White House, the Treasury Department and on Capitol Hill said that if Cohn decides he wants the job, he is likely to get it. "It's Gary's if he wants it, and I think he wants it," Politico quoted one Republican whom it said was close to the selection process as saying. A few Senate Republicans may express reservations about Cohn but he would probably receive widespread support, a senior congressional Republican aide said, according to Politico. In response to a query from Reuters, White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom said: "Gary is focused on his responsibilities at the NEC." Cohn, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs president, did not work on Trump's campaign and only got to know him after the November election. Yellen took over from Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in February 2014 with the U.S. economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis still on shaky ground. She has made no secret she puts a priority on growth in jobs and wages and a broad recovery in U.S. household wealth. Yellen begins two days of congressional testimony on Wednesday on the Fed's semi-annual report on the state of the U.S. economy. Under her leadership the Fed has pared the massive stimulus it put in place to counteract the 2007-2009 financial crisis and begun raising interest rates. Later this year Yellen expects to begin trimming the Fed's $4.5 trillion balance sheet in a gradual and predictable manner. "I do think the Fed's trying to set a course toward normalization that won't be knocked out by a new Fed chair," said Eric Stein, co-director of global income at Eaton Vance. Still, Cohn would be a very different kind of leader than Yellen or her immediate predecessor, Ben Bernanke, both of whom hold doctorates in economics. Cohn began his career at Goldman as a commodities trader in 1990. "He has more knowledge of financial markets than almost any Fed chair would have and less of a monetary policy background," Stein said. During last year's election campaign, Trump accused Yellen of accepting orders from then-President Barack Obama to keep interest rates low for political reasons, and he said he would replace her as Fed chair because she is not a Republican Party member. But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in April, Trump said Yellen was "not toast" and that he respected her. A Fed spokeswoman had no comment on the Politico story. Yellen has said she plans to serve out her full four-year term as chair, which runs through Feb. 3. Cohn would join several other Goldman alumni around the Fed policymaking table, including New York Fed President William Dudley, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan.


Russian and Syrian jets killed at least 150 civilians and injured dozens in over a week of heavy bombing that shattered a six-month halt in intensive aerial raids in opposition-held northwestern parts of Syria, opposition rescue workers said on Wednesday. The renewed bombing campaign came after an array of jihadist rebels led by the former Qaeda offshoot in Syria last week waged a wide-scale offensive against government-controlled areas in northern Hama. We have pulled 152 bodies and we have rescued 279 civilians since the Russian and regime bombing campaign, said Salem Abu al Azem, a senior rescue worker from the opposition-run Civil Defence in Idlib, adding bodies were still being pulled out of the wreckage of buildings flattened by air raids. Russia s defense ministry says it is attacking hard-line Islamist militants. It denies accusations it has targeted infrastructure and medical centers to force rebels into local truces that effectively restore President Bashar al Assad s grip on the country. Civil defense officials and other humanitarian aid workers have documented the destruction of six hospitals, five defense centers, and power stations in the first few days of the bombing campaign alongside hitting camps where displaced civilians have been sheltering. Rebels and witnesses differentiate easily Russian jets from Syrian planes with the former flying in sorties at high altitudes making drops with devastating impact. The strikes began with intensive bombing of towns and cities in southern Idlib where the jihadists have a large presence but in recent days have spread to most towns across the province that borders Turkey. Thousands of families have fled from towns such as Jisr al Shqour and Jabal al Zawya to rural areas less exposed to daily bombing and shelling, aid workers said. The bombing campaign however comes shortly after a tripartite deal struck by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran to deploy an observer force in Idlib, a province where the former al Qaeda Syrian offshoot has cemented its control after it crushed opponents. The Kremlin said earlier this week Russia s president Vladimir Putin was expected to meet his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on a visit to Ankara on Thursday. Syrian rebel officials says Turkey wants to get the approval of Moscow, the power with the dominant role in Syria, to press ahead with its widely anticipated plan to deploy troops in Idlib.


After an awful campaign filled with hateful rhetoric, American voters elected a man to lead the most powerful country on earth even after he was accused of raping a 13-year-old. The year was 2016 and the accused was an alleged billionaire, former reality show star and an admitted sexual predator. Still, even after the revelations, conservatives saw nothing wrong with Donald Trump s behavior. The plaintiff described the horrifying incident in which Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein allegedly raped a child. A lawsuit was filed which claims that threats were made in order for the victim to keep her mouth shut about what had just happened.Both Defendants let Plaintiff know that each was a very wealthy, powerful man and indicated that they had the power, ability, and means to carry out their threats. Indeed, Defendant Trump stated that Plaintiff shouldn t ever say anything if she didn t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that Plaintiff had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.There was a witness who backed up Jane Doe s claims. According to the lawsuit, Trump and Epstein sexually and physically abused the then 13-year-old plaintiff and forced her to engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts including being forced to manually stimulate Defendant Trump with the use of her hand upon Defendant Trump s erect penis until he reached sexual orgasm, and being forced to engage in an unnatural lesbian sex act with her fellow minor and sex slave, Maria Doe, age 12, for the sexual enjoyment of Defendant Trump after luring her to a series of underage sex parties by promising her money and a modeling career, according to Snopes.Trump has admitted knowing Epstein for 15 years. Epstein was named in multiple similar lawsuits, served 13 months in jail, and is registered as a sex offender for life.The lawsuit which was filed in California on April 26, 2016, was dismissed over technical filing errors and it was refiled in June of the same year, then dropped again in November after the plaintiff received death threats.Last year, Trump was also accused by 16 women of sexually harassing or assaulting them. Conservatives went on to elect him knowing full well that he is a sexual predator because he said so in the Access Hollywood tape.History will not be kind as it remembers November of 2016.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.


The United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday the big question regarding the up to 800,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh was whether they would be allowed to return to their homeland. Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said he hoped to discuss the statelessness of Rohingya with Myanmar officials in Geneva next week but recognized it was a very complex issue . It is very clear that the cause of this crisis is in Myanmar, but that the solution of this crisis also lies in Myanmar, Grandi told a news conference in Geneva on his return from Bangladesh. He called on the Myanmar authorities to end the violence in northern Rakhine state so that solutions to the situation could then be discussed. Some 480,000 Rohingya have fled northern Rakhine since Aug. 25 and accused the army of a campaign of violence that the U.N. has called ethnic cleansing , following attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts. About 300,000 Rohingya had previously crossed into neighboring Bangladesh. A Myanmar minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the Yangon government will manage the redevelopment of villages torched during the violence in Rakhine state. Since it is most likely that return will take time, if it happens, if violence stops, it will be important also to find in the medium term suitable solutions for the people that are in Bangladesh, Grandi said. He called for the Myanmar government to implement the recommendations of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The lack of citizenship for the Rohingya, this needs to be addressed and resolved, he said. Clearly if only the people with papers can go back, that will be a very small number if at all, he said. So I think that the exercise should go beyond that and should really determine, if that s what is needed, who is a national, and those people should be allowed to go back and be given that citizenship. Grandi condemned violence by Rohingya insurgents, warning: It was also very obvious to me when I visited northern Rakhine that it is only a matter of time before terrorists would spring up from the situation of discrimination, of poverty, that prevailed in that area, he said. If the situation is not resolved, the risk of the spread of terrorist violence in the whole region - and this is a particularly fragile region - is very, very high.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that Turkey was fast abandoning the rule of law and vowed to push her EU partners to consider suspending or ending its accession talks at a meeting in October. Less than three weeks before a German national election, she spelled out her intentions clearly to the Bundestag lower house of parliament after sharpening her rhetoric on Sunday and saying Turkey should not become an EU member. Those comments, made in a televised debate with her Social Democrat (SPD) election rival, drew charges of populism from Ankara. It was the latest of a series of spats between Merkel and President Tayyip Erdogan over the last two years which has led to a serious deterioration in relations. Turkey is moving away from the path of the rule of law at a very fast speed, Merkel said, adding her government would do everything it could to secure the release of Germans detained in Turkey, who Berlin says are innocent. The Foreign Ministry said last week 12 German citizens, four of them with dual citizenship, had been detained in Turkey on political charges. One has since been released. The ministry updated its travel advice on Tuesday and said that incomprehensible arrests were taking place all over Turkey, including regions frequented by tourists. Venting her growing frustration, Merkel said a rethink of Germany s and the EU s relations with Turkey was needed. We will also - and I will suggest this takes place at the EU meeting in October - discuss future relations with Turkey, including the question of suspending or ending talks on accession, she said. I will push for a decisive stand ... But we need to coordinate and work with our partners, she said, adding that it would damage the EU if Erdogan saw member states embroiled in an argument. That would dramatically weaken Europe s position. Although Turkey s foreign minister has said EU membership remains a strategic goal, the EU has turned very skeptical - especially since Erdogan s crackdown on opponents after a failed coup in July 2016. A European Commission spokesman said on Monday Turkey was taking giant strides away from Europe. Although her conservative party has long opposed Turkish membership of the bloc, Merkel has staked a good deal on maintaining relations with its NATO ally. She has repeatedly defended an EU-Turkey migrant deal she championed last year because it helped to stem the flow of refugees fleeing war in the Middle East to western Europe. Merkel said despite her own reservations, she had gone along with EU accession talks agreed by her SPD predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, mainly to ensure continuity in foreign policy. Erdogan accuses Germany of harboring plotters behind the 2016 coup attempt. Turkey has arrested about 50,000 people in its purges of state institutions and the armed forces. Ankara says the crackdown is necessary to ensure national security but many Western countries and human rights groups say it is an attempt by Erdogan to stifle all dissent. Erdogan also won sweeping new powers in a referendum in April. In the runup to the German election little divides the main parties, who currently share power in a grand coalition, on Turkey. SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in July said Germans should be careful if they traveled to Turkey and threatened steps that could hurt investment there.


President Trump was still upbeat Wednesday night, as he settled into dinner in the White House residence with his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, some 24 hours after giving the most consequential speech of his brief presidency. But not long afterward, the glow from Mr. Trump's best day in office began to fade with the breaking news that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had met with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Sessions failed to mention those conversations in his Senate confirmation hearing, or, according to presidential advisers, to tell Mr. Trump at all. The story overshadowed Mr. Trump's visit the next day to the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, a classic presidential opportunity to highlight his role as commander in chief. And by the time he got back to the White House on Thursday night, the president let his frustration show. In a statement repeating a familiar critique that Democrats were on a "witch hunt" over the administration's ties with Russia, Mr. Trump offered a passing but pointed public jab at how Mr. Sessions had handled the matter. "He could have stated his response more accurately," Mr. Trump said. For Mr. Trump, it was the latest unforeseen obstacle preventing him from gaining traction after a historically bumpy first month in office that has been marked by massive national protests, the dismissal of his national security adviser, and historically low approval ratings. The president was irritated that Mr. Sessions did not more carefully answer the questions he was asked under oath, according to people who spoke with him. His larger frustration, however, was not with Mr. Sessions, but with whoever revealed the meetings to reporters for The Washington Post. Mr. Trump, according to his advisers inside and outside of the White House, has felt besieged by what he regards as a mostly hostile bureaucracy, consisting in part of Democrats and people who opposed his election who are now undermining his presidency with leaks. He believes that they are behind the stories about confusion and dysfunction in his administration and, most of all, that they have made his relationship with Russia a recurring issue. "That is the real story," said Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, when asked for comment on how the White House views the constant string of stories based on what they have called leaks. Several of those stories have raised questions about ties between the president's 2016 campaign and Russian officials. Allies of Mr. Trump say his sense of being surrounded by hostile forces will be relieved once his own appointments fill the thousands of political jobs that have not yet been filled. But people close to Mr. Trump concede that the White House's sluggish hiring process, in which insufficient work was done to tap people for key deputy roles at major agencies during the transition process, is a large part of the problem. "Any new administration takes a while to get their sea legs," said Charlie Black, a veteran Republican lobbyist. But he added that for Mr. Trump's administration, "a big part of it is the lack of personnel political appointees around the government. " In the meantime, Mr. Black and other Republicans said that Mr. Trump had to avoid the trap of fighting all fights, no matter how small. "The Trump team needs to better stay on the offense with their reform agenda, take out the trash, and get on with governing," said Scott Reed, the top political strategist for the United States Chamber of Commerce, in a typical critique. Mr. Trump's aides were heartened by his relative calm even amid the flap around Mr. Sessions. And he stayed on message during his appearance on the Gerald R. Ford and on Friday in an appearance in Florida, declining to weigh in then as new reports emerged about previously undisclosed meetings between additional advisers and the Russian ambassador. Mr. Trump is not one to spare the blame when he has hit difficult patches in the past, and his rebuke of Mr. Sessions reflected that. So did his public jab at his press secretary, Sean Spicer, for his attempt to trace leaks from his communications staff members by examining their cellphones. Mr. Trump told Fox News that he personally would have done that type of search "differently. " But the stories related to Russia are of a different order of magnitude. During the transition he publicly called out the intelligence community for being behind the leaks and at one point, he compared them to smears conducted by the Nazis in the 1940s. More recently, he has blamed Democrats bitter over the defeat of Hillary Clinton. But while Mr. Trump puts the blame on leakers for his administration's rough start, it has not helped that the White House has been distracted by internecine skirmishes, partly dictated by lingering tensions between advisers and aides to the Republican National Committee, who came to work for the president after he tapped the committee's chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff. In the midst of it, Mr. Trump, who has a famously short attention span, has at times had trouble staying on course. He is pondering a broader response to the Russia issue, people close to him say, but he is so far stymied by opponents he can't see, but who have clearly knocked him off track. On Friday, Mr. Trump tried to go back on the offensive with two Twitter messages, one about Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and the other about Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and their meetings with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Instead of the intemperate messages that Mr. Trump has often deployed, he had help from the White House social media team in crafting the Twitter posts. But in doing it, he ended the week by breathing more oxygen into the Russia issue. Such daily skirmishes might satisfy the need to fight back, but Republicans who want him to succeed caution that Mr. Trump's fate as president will lie in his actual accomplishments. "If they get some legislative successes, they'll be fine," said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, "and if they don't, that's when the real trouble begins. "


U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday the United States believed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline involving Russia and several European energy companies was a "bad deal" for Europe. Russia's Gazprom and its European partners agreed the project, which will run across the Baltic Sea to Germany, last year. But many eastern European countries and the United States have said the pipeline could limit supply routes and the energy security of the European Union, which gets a third of its gas from Russia. Biden made his comments during a news conference in Sweden.


Leave it to Obama to take to fear mongering to try and convince voters to vote for socialism What a putz!President Obama would much rather critique the Republican presidential race than the Democratic contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, arguing that the GOP is headed way beyond the political mainstream. To me, the relevant contrast is not between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but (the) relevant contrast is between Bernie and Hillary and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the vision that they re portraying for the country, Obama told Politico in an interview.Voters need to pay attention to the degree to which the Republican rhetoric and Republican vision has moved not just to the right but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable, Obama said.Obama told Politico the gap between Democrats and Republicans on everything from tax policy to immigration to foreign policy is as wide as he has seen.There were real differences with GOP nominee John McCain during the 2008 election, Obama said, but John McCain didn t deny climate science. John McCain didn t call for banning Muslims from the United States. You know, John McCain was a conservative, but he was well within, you know, the mainstream of not just the Republican Party but within our political dialogue.


SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's Constitutional Court, which will decide whether President Park is permanently removed from office, on Thursday ordered Ms. Park to respond to one of the most contentious accusations against her: that she neglected her duties on the day in 2014 when hundreds died in the sinking of a ferry. Ms. Park's presidential powers have been suspended since Dec. 9, when the National Assembly voted to impeach her. The Constitutional Court has until June to decide whether her impeachment is justified, either reinstating her or formally ending her presidency. Thursday's hearing, which Ms. Park did not attend, was the start of that process. The legislature accused Ms. Park of a wide range of violations of law and the Constitution, including taking bribes from businesses. But for South Koreans, perhaps the most emotional accusation is that Ms. Park failed to protect citizens' lives on April 16, 2014, the day the Sewol ferry sank off the country's southwestern coast. More than 300 people drowned, most of them teenagers on a school trip, and the country was scarred by the catastrophe, perhaps the worst in its peacetime history. Ms. Park has been dogged by questions about what she was doing during the first seven hours of the Sewol disaster. She did not emerge from her official residence during that time, and her office has not explained what she was doing, though it has said she received updates and gave orders. In its impeachment bill, the National Assembly said Ms. Park's reticence undermined the people's right to know about the government's activities. On Thursday, the court appeared to agree. "That was such a day for the country that most people will remember what they were doing that day," Justice Lee said. "I am sure she has such memories. We ask her to give us a thorough account of where in the Blue House she was in those seven hours, an account of what official and private work she was doing then, and what reports and instructions she received and gave. " A variety of government failures contributed to the Sewol disaster, and it deepened distrust of Ms. Park's leadership. Lurid rumors have since spread about what she was doing during those hours one such story says she was having a romantic liaison, another that she was undergoing plastic surgery. No evidence has emerged to support either allegation, both of which her office has denied. Her government has sued and even arrested people who have been accused of spreading such rumors. Though Ms. Park's office said she was kept up to date about the disaster, her visit to an emergency management center later that day led some to conclude that she was not fully informed. At one point, she asked why it was difficult to find missing passengers when they had life jackets an official had to remind her that the passengers were trapped inside the ship, which had overturned and all but disappeared below the water. The hearing on Thursday was brief and largely procedural, attended by only three of the court's nine justices, as well as lawyers representing Ms. Park and those appointed by the National Assembly to act as prosecutors. Two lone protesters stood outside the court, one supporting Ms. Park and the other calling for her impeachment, with a sign reading, "The 304 who died in the Sewol ferry are watching you!" The next hearing was set for Tuesday. The move to impeach Ms. Park stemmed originally from allegations that she conspired with a longtime friend and confidante, Choi to force big businesses to donate tens of millions of dollars to two foundations that Ms. Choi controlled. Ms. Park was also accused of letting Ms. Choi interfere with government affairs, despite having no official post. Ms. Park's approval ratings dropped to record lows in the weeks before her impeachment, and huge crowds filled central Seoul calling on her to resign or be removed from office. Prosecutors have indicted Ms. Choi on extortion and other charges and identified Ms. Park as an accomplice, though as a sitting president she cannot be indicted. The National Assembly is conducting its own investigation of the scandal, as is a special prosecutor. Both Ms. Park and Ms. Choi have denied breaking the law. Prime Minister Hwang is serving as acting president while Ms. Park is suspended. If the court removes her from office, a presidential election would be held 60 days later. On Thursday, the special prosecutor's office said it was asking the authorities in Germany to detain and extradite Ms. Choi's daughter, Chung who is believed to be there. The Foreign Ministry said Ms. Chung's passport would be invalidated if she did not return to South Korea. The special prosecutor is looking into allegations that Ms. Choi used millions of dollars from Samsung, South Korea's largest conglomerate, to finance her daughter's equestrian career and a luxurious lifestyle in Germany. A special prosecutor in South Korea has obtained a warrant to detain Ms. Chung for questioning. She is accused of illegally enrolling in Ewha Womans University in Seoul.


Emma Watson has been in the news lately and it s not because of her acting. She s a staunch feminist and a human rights activist, taking a strong position on the rights of refugees. She recently made news when she gave an extraordinary speech at the United Nations, advocating for the rights of women around the world. She also recently tweeted in solidarity with the refugees coming to Europe in search for safety after years of war and torment in Syria.That was more than enough for anti-feminist and anti-refugee trolls to attack Thomson by using her humanitarianism against her. There is a petition circulating that challenges Watson to live in a camp in Calais, France. Entitled Spend one week in a Calais migrant camp for feminism (without bodyguards), the petition states: In order to show how safe current migration is to Europe, particularly regarding the cause of feminism (I reject wholeheartedly the notion that North African and Middle Eastern migrants are unsafe, and rapists), Emma Watson should spend a week s holiday in a Calais migrant camp, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro feminism these migrants are. It all started with one simple humanitarian tweet:#refugeeswelcome Emma Watson (@EmWatson) September 7, 2015The tweet has since garnered plenty of responses for and against Watson s stance. Some ignorant people have chosen to lump all the refugees into a single category by citing the attacks on France:Remember this @EmWatson? #RefugeesWelcome They killed innocent people in #Paris, Emma. How do you sleep at night? pic.twitter.com/LYqfoWuh4i JEB DELENDA EST (@rsmccain) November 15, 2015Others however, have shown support:@rsmccain @EmWatson if we abandon the innocent refugees we abandon compassion and create more extremists Chris France (@france_chris) November 15, 2015Since the petition was created a week ago, over 12,000 people have signed it with 15,000 being the goal. Here s what a troll had to say about Watson: Ever since she was invited to give a widely praised speech at the UN on the topic, she has become a poster girl of modern feminism. Her simultaneous embrace of female equality, mass migration and the misogynistic non-western cultures brought with it, is widely seen as typical of left wing activists today. In this context, the petition can be interpreted as an expression of frustration with the contradictions of modern liberal feminism, rather than merely a personal attack on Ms. Watson. Watson, who is best known for her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter films, was made a Goodwill Women s Ambassador by the United Nations in 2014 and has been passionately using her platform to advocate for the betterment of humanity. At only 24 years old, she s already making a difference. We need more people like Emma Watson and we need to support her.Featured Image Via Wikimedia Commons.


For anyone who thinks Trump s comments have crossed over the line, perhaps they ve forgotten about the Obama supported Arab Spring in Egypt that resulted in the violent overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak who was replaced by the radical Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi. And that s just one example Donald Trump accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of founding the Islamic State group that is wreaking havoc from the Middle East to European cities. A moment later, on another topic, he referred to the president by his full legal name: Barack Hussein Obama. In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama, Trump said during a raucous campaign rally outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is the founder of ISIS. He repeated the allegation three more times for emphasis.The Republican presidential nominee in the past has accused his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, of founding the militant group. As he shifted the blame to Obama on Wednesday, he said crooked Hillary Clinton was actually the group s co-founder.Trump has long blamed Obama and his former secretary of state Clinton for pursuing Mideast policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by IS, another acronym for the group. He s sharply criticized Obama for announcing he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, a decision that many Obama critics say created the kind of instability in which extremist groups like IS thrive.The White House declined to comment on Trump s accusation.The Islamic State group began as Iraq s local affiliate of al-Qaida, the group that attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. The group carried out massive attacks against Iraq s Shiite Muslim majority, fueling tensions with al-Qaida s central leadership. The local group s then-leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in 2006 in a U.S. airstrike but is still seen as the Islamic State group s founder.Trump s accusation and his use of the president s middle name, Hussein echoed previous instances where he s questioned Obama s loyalties.In June, when a shooter who claimed allegiance to IS killed 49 people in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, Trump seemed to suggest Obama was sympathetic to the group when he said Obama doesn t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. In the past, Trump has also falsely suggested Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya, where Obama s father was from.


Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China will be thwarted and the principle of peaceful reunification must be upheld, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the start of a Communist Party Congress. China regards self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as a wayward territory, to be brought under Beijing s rule by force if necessary.