Country music star Blake Shelton apparently had a lot on his mind earlier this week, as he took to Twitter and delivered a rather awesome message to young people about learning to think for yourself and watching out for media bias.With the entertainment industry stuffed to the gills with brain dead liberal wackos, it s super refreshing to hear this message coming from someone with this kind of cultural clout.To all you young people out there. Make up your own minds about this country and the rest of the world. Listen, read, watch and decide. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 201And remember that Hollywood celebrities opinions or mine for that matter are no better than yours.. In fact I d rather hear yours.. #truth Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Microphones only make a voice louder Not powerful. Remember that. https://t.co/k4ild1HLfI Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Oh and lastly.. When you watch the news channels, try to watch ALL of them. Every single one of them has an affiliation/agenda. Every one. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Ok sorry about the lecture Now back to my regularly scheduled drinking. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Nice.Shelton is absolutely right.Too many young people today are ready and willing to have their minds made up for them on important issues by going with popular opinion or being swayed by what celebrities think on a certain topic.Celebrities may have really cool jobs, tons of money, and large platforms with which to spread a message, but that doesn t mean their opinion is more important than anyone else s, nor does it mean their views are right.Young folks today aren t taught to engage the world with critical thinking anymore. They re taught to go along with the progressive program, and whenever a student dare think outside the box, teachers and cultural figures are there to shame them back into their proper place.The media today is absolutely biased, and paying attention to what all the networks are doing is a good way to stay on top of differing sides of an issue, although some outlets are so far to the left it s enough to turn off even the most objective, political centristLet s hope Shelton s message hit home and inspires some in the younger generation to start thinking more for themselves rather than just going with the flow of popular opinion.


Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has asked to meet with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Politico reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Politico said Rosenstein was seen in the vicinity of the panel, which was holding a separate meeting on security issues. Rosenstein's reported request comes days after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in a move that the White House has said followed a memo from Rosenstein.


The upper house of Spain s parliament on Friday authorized the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to rule Catalonia directly from Madrid, minutes after the restive region declared independence from Spain. Rajoy is now expected to convene his cabinet to adopt the first measures to govern Catalonia. This could include firing the Barcelona government and assuming direct supervision of Catalan police forces.


President Donald Trump will be presented with multiple options regarding the future of the Iran nuclear deal ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline to certify whether Tehran is complying with the pact, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday. Tillerson did not disclose details about the kinds of options he will present to Trump. He also declined to directly answer a question about whether he shared Defense Secretary Jim Mattis assessment to Congress on Tuesday that Iran was fundamentally in compliance with the accord. We ll have a recommendation for the president. We re going to give him a couple of options of how to move forward to advance the important policy toward Iran, Tillerson told reporters at the State Department. A collapse of the 2015 deal, which Trump has called an embarrassment, but which is supported by the other major powers that negotiated it with Iran, could trigger a regional arms race and stoke Middle East tensions. A senior U.S. official said last month that Trump was leaning toward not certifying that Iran is complying with the pact. Trump himself has said he already had made up his mind whether to keep the pact, but has declined to disclose his decision. If Trump declines to certify Iran s compliance, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the accord. Unlike Mattis, who publicly suggested Trump should consider sticking with the agreement, Tillerson has been highly critical of the accord and said it must be changed. He has taken aim at the deal s so-called sunset clauses, under which some of the restrictions on Iran s nuclear program expire over time. Tillerson on Wednesday suggested that whatever path the United States chooses on the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it would only represent one component of America s broader policy toward Iran. The JCPOA represents only a small part of the many issues that we need to deal with when it comes to the Iranian relationship, he said. So it is an important part of that, but is not the only part. And I ve said many times, we cannot let the Iranian relationship be defined solely by that nuclear agreement.


According to what White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, Trump requested the resignation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn due to the erosion of trust. Flynn lied to the administration regarding discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump literally fired Flynn but he s now calling the scandal fake news. The amateur president has been lashing out at networks reporting on the scandal, calling them fake news, too. Thursday morning, Trump went on quite a tweet-storm. FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast!, Trump tweeted.FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017In the following tweet, he wrote, The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017Trump is clearly unhinged. Trump has previously admitted that Russia engaged in cyber attacks during the U.S. presidential election. And again, he fired Flynn for lying to the administration about talks with the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Regardless, today he s calling it fake news.The Internet pounced after Trump unleashed his crazy-time tweets and fact-checked him.@realDonaldTrump And Russia was not INVENTED by the Dems, it s been confirmed by the FBI that your aides had contact w/ Russian intelligence Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/UvI5RGNyPl Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump Your PHONE RECORDS show your campaign had contact with Russian Intelligence. Who invented that? Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when three of your advisers are forced to resign because of exposed Russian ties. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when foreign banks such as Deutsche bank start to investigate your account for Russian links. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017 It can t be leaked information and fake news. @realDonaldTrump yesterday you were saying it was leaked information . It can t be leaked information and fake news. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You know what s not fake news? Your approval rating https://t.co/MOjPG26MIu Brandon Neely (@BrandonTXNeely) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You should release your taxes to prove to the Dems and failing/lying media you have ZERO financial entanglement with Russia Evan Dashevsky (@haldash) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump #TrumpLied? #FlynnGhazi #RiggedElection #WaterGate #maddow pic.twitter.com/k2NYaW8e3B Diva (@sammypolsen12) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump but the FBI isn t the democrats Brandon Keating (@BrandonTalks) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Russia, if you re listening, I hope you re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. https://t.co/3tMzMn2EN6 Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You have literally fired 3 advisors because of their ties to Russia. The only fake news is you being a legitimate president Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) February 16, 2017 You fuck nut. @realDonaldTrump you fuck nut nicholasstoller ?? (@nicholasstoller) February 16, 2017Trump won t even take questions about Flynnghazi from reporters. And by the way, there s a Russian spy ship patrolling off the coast of the U.S. Presently, it s near Virginia. So naturally, Trump is planning to hold a rally in Florida.Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images with added tweet.


Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday the situation on the Korean Peninsula is critical and that a peace agreement is the "only right choice" in the nuclear dispute with North Korea. "Peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and negotiations represents the only right choice that is practical and viable," Wang told reporters at the United Nations before a ministerial meeting of the 15-member Security Council.


A U.S. court struck down two Republican-drawn U.S. congressional districts in Texas on Tuesday, saying they were discriminatory and ordering a remedy ahead of elections in 2018, court papers showed. In the case that has been contested in federal courts for about six years, a three-judge panel at U.S. District Court in San Antonio ruled lawmakers drew up the districts to undermine the influence of racial minority voters, who plaintiffs argued typically show more support for Democrats than Republicans. The court also said that the maps laying them out must either be fixed by the state or the courts. The court said the 27th and 35th congressional districts were drawn in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act. Texas has 36 districts, with Republicans holding 25 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Democrats 11. The court also faulted the state's legislature for not heeding previous judicial plans and for making inadequate fixes to the maps drawn in 2011. "The discriminatory taint was not removed by the Legislature's enactment of the Court's interim plans," the judges said in their decision. Texas Democrats saw the decision as a victory. "Republicans initiated a deceitful legal strategy to deliberately silence Texans from having a voice in their own government. Today, the Court unanimously agreed," Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the court did rule in Texas' favor in finding that one contested district, District 23, was lawful. However, Paxton said in a statement the state has been abiding by the law and prior court guidance and he intended to ask the U.S. Supreme Court whether Texas "had discriminatory intent when relying on the district court." In court, lawyers for Texas argued that the boundaries were drawn for Republican partisan advantage, which they said is legal. They dismissed claims the districts were drawn illegally with the intention to disenfranchise racial and ethnic groups.


Hillary Clinton got back on the campaign trail on Thursday after taking three days off for pneumonia, and the Democratic presidential candidate faced a more challenging political landscape, with Republican rival Donald Trump rising in opinion polls. Senior Clinton aides said they always expected the race to the Nov. 8 election to be close. But it was clear from a raft of new polls that Trump had halted a summer swoon after taking steps to give a less freewheeling, more polished performance on the stump. Clinton, 68, appeared in good health on a visit to her campaign plane's press cabin while flying to Greensboro, North Carolina, for a rally where she sought to refocus her campaign on the plight of the working class - which has turned out to be a potent theme for Trump. Leaving the stage to the tune of James Brown's "I feel good," Clinton told reporters she kept her pneumonia diagnosis last Friday quiet, telling only senior staff, because she thought she would be able to "power through" the illness and keep campaigning. "From my perspective, I thought I was going to be fine and I thought that there was no reason to make a big fuss about it," she said. On Sunday, Clinton nearly collapsed while leaving a ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York. Her illness coincided with a mini-surge by Trump, who has drawn even or taken a slight lead in national polls. Polls in battleground states where the race is likely to be decided showed Trump now leading in Iowa, Ohio, Florida and Nevada, and tied in North Carolina. Following her appearance in North Carolina, Clinton was scheduled to appear at a Washington dinner. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, said the candidate and her aides expected the contest to be close. "We always expected the race to tighten up, we still feel like we're in a strong position with organizational advantage in Florida and Ohio," Podesta told reporters on Thursday. "They call these states battlegrounds for a reason." In a speech at the New York Economic Club, Trump stuck to his script, avoiding the more improvisational style that has produced a cornucopia of controversies. Trump pushed a package of tax cuts he said would help power the U.S. economy to an annual growth rate of 3.5 percent. The New York businessman said his goal would be 4 percent growth, a target originally championed by Republican primary rival Jeb Bush. Trump said the growth would generate 25 million new jobs. His economic package resurrected a decades-old debate on whether tax cuts can generate sustainable growth. But the overarching impression left by his speech was one of Trump talking about substantive issues and avoiding the frivolous. Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who managed 2004 candidate John Kerry's unsuccessful campaign, said Clinton remained the favorite to win the White House, with demographic changes favoring her over Trump, who is heavily reliant on white voters. What has hurt Clinton, Shrum said, is not the time taken off from the campaign trail but rather her decision to keep her diagnosis secret until forced to disclose it - which reinforced a perception among voters that she has a penchant for secrecy. "Fairly or unfairly, what this was taken as was more evidence that she was not transparent and that's what hurts her," Shrum said. "She been far more transparent than Trump but she hasn't gotten any credit for it." Democrats have sought to pressure Trump to release his tax returns, but the Republican has said he will not release them until a federal government audit has been completed. Clinton has released her tax records. With the candidates' health in the spotlight, Trump, 70, on Thursday released details of a recent physical examination, a day after Clinton released specifics on her medical condition. Trump's campaign said the results of his physical showed the fast-food fan has normal cholesterol with the help of a statin drug, weighs 236 pounds (107 kg) and has normal blood pressure. In a not-so-subtle slap at Clinton, the Trump campaign said his medical report showed he "has the stamina to endure — uninterrupted — the rigors of a punishing and unprecedented presidential campaign and, more importantly, the singularly demanding job of president of the United States." Trump also appeared on the "Dr. Oz Show" to discuss his health in an interview with host Mehmet Oz, a surgeon. Top Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri said "one upside" of Clinton's unplanned break was the chance to "sharpen the final argument Clinton will present to voters in these closing weeks." "Our campaign readily admits that running against a candidate as controversial as Donald Trump means it is harder to be heard on what you aspire for the country's future, and it is incumbent on us to work harder," Palmieri said in a statement. Trump backers on Capitol Hill said they were heartened by the tightening race after a call on Thursday morning with his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who mapped out what the campaign was doing. She promised a more policy-driven approach from Trump in the race's final stretch. "The poll numbers are just looking phenomenal as you move away from registered voters to likely voters," Republican U.S. Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas said.


October 28, 2016 Susan Rice: U.S. Must Integrate LGBT Rights into Gov't and Foreign Policy  National Security Advisor Susan Rice told students at American University in a speech on LGBT rights Wednesday that the "United States must continue to integrate LGBT rights into our government and foreign policy," including "creating a more diverse national security workforce."  "This is an issue that I'm particularly passionate about, and one that President Obama has prioritized," Rice said, "because without tapping America's full range of races, religions, ethnicities, social and economic experiences—without embracing people of every sexual orientation and gender identity—we're leading in a complex world with one hand tied behind our back."  Rice, who once served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that "whether we are talking about race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, this fight for equal rights is what our history and values demand."


U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that as the 2016 presidential campaign progressed, Russian government officials devoted increasing attention to assisting Trump's effort to win the election, the U.S. official familiar with the finding told Reuters on Friday night, speaking on condition of anonymity. The president-elect's transition office released a statement that exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence community that Trump will soon command, but did not address the analysts' conclusion. "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," the statement said. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'" Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are calling for a full investigation into Russia's election year activities. "Protecting the integrity of our elections is hindered when President-elect Trump and his transition team minimize or dismiss the intelligence assessments themselves," Representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement issued on Saturday. Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks. U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the White House said on Friday. Obama's homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters the report's results would be shared with lawmakers and others. "The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress," she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. As summer turned to fall, Russian hackers turned almost all their attention to the Democrats. Virtually all the emails they released publicly were potentially damaging to Clinton and the Democrats, not Republicans, the official told Reuters. "That was a major clue to their intent," the official said. "If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicize the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump?" A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts' conclusion about Russia's motives does not mean the intelligence community believes that Moscow's efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election. Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election. A Central Intelligence Agency spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the matter. The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency. U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed "with high confidence" that at some point in the extended presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin's government had decided to try to bolster Trump's chances of winning. The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said. Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said. In both cases, said the official, Putin's campaigns in both Europe and the United States are intended to disrupt and discredit the Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures. In October, the U.S. government publicly accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Obama has said he warned Putin about consequences for the attacks. "I don't believe they interfered," Trump told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. "That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, 'Oh, Russia interfered.'"


Hillary Clinton has said a lot of things that stick deep in the craw of honest, hardworking Americans before but this time she may have actually gone too far. In a seemingly innocent remark about how staying home and resting has brought her closer to the American people.Apparently laying in bed in one of many mansions with a staff to take care of her every need, and absolutely no worry of how she is going to pay her rent next month equals what it is like for a normal citizen to be suffering from illness in this day and age. I certainly feel lucky when I am under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off. Millions of Americans can t. They either go to work sick or they lose a paycheck. They toss back some Tylenols, chug some orange juice and hope the cough or the virus goes away on its own. I have met so many people living on a razor s edge, one illness away from losing their job, one paycheck away from losing their job. That goes against everything we stand for as Americans, because some things should not come down to luck. So while she was being pampered and waited on hand and foot we are supposed to believe that she was honestly contemplating that her situation in any way matched that of any hard working American going through being sick? All I heard was her throwing her wealth and status back into our faces.Maybe she realized that her diatribe wasn t working so she decided to quickly change focus and throw her own campaign staff under the but to deflect. You know, my campaign has said they could have been faster and I agree with that. I certainly expect them to be as focused and quick as possible, but I have to say from my perspective, I thought I was going to be fine and I thought that there wasn t really any reason to make a big fuss about it. So I should have taken time off earlier. I didn t, now I have, and I m back on the campaign trail. Hillary also dodged a question about whether she ever bothered to tell her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, that she was sick.Clinton responded by saying that her senior staff knew, and the information was provided to a number of people, but she did not say whether Kaine was one of those people. When a second reporter asked about why Kaine was not informed, and whether that has hurt their partnership, Clinton said she was not going to go into our personal conversations. Will this woman ever answer anything with a straight answer? Probably not, but we can all continue to be amused that she actually thinks any of us believe what she says.Keep powering through, Hillary.H/T [ Info Wars ]


(image credit: AP/Charlie Neibergall) Dallas elections officials say allegations "likely false or instances of user error" Over the past few weeks corporate news media have interpreted Donald Trump's repeated claims of a "rigged" election as exaggerated. The Republican presidential candidate's response in the third presidential debate of perhaps not accepting the election result was met with similar bluster by the major punditocracy. The experience of voters in Texas and other states may be bearing out Trump's warning as multiple reports are surfacing of electronic voting machines changing virtual ballots from Republican to Democratic presidential candidates. Because Texas law prohibits videos and photos in polling places many voters in that state explain the apparent polling shenanigans on social media. As The Economic Collapse Blog observes , [A] number of voters in Texas are reporting that the voting machines switched their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The odd thing is that none of the other choices were affected when these individuals attempted to vote for a straight Republican ticket. If Hillary Clinton is declared the winner of the state of Texas on election night, a full investigation of these voting machines should be conducted, because there is no way that Donald Trump should lose that state. I have said that it will be the greatest miracle in U.S. political history if Donald Trump wins this election, but without the state of Texas Donald Trump has exactly zero chance of winning. So those living down in Texas need to keep reporting anything unusual that they see or hear when they go to vote. Here are several social media posts from the Dallas Morning New s article at the I Am A Texan blog . The Dallas Morning News similarly reports : Early voters in Texas have claimed that voting machines in Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and other counties changed their presidential votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The allegations follow a similar pattern: Voters say they voted straight-ticket Republican, but when they reviewed their ballots, they reflected they had voted for Hillary Clinton for president, not Donald Trump. Their votes for Republicans in down-ballot races were not affected, according to the complaints. But elections officials say the allegations are more than likely false or instances of user error. Garland City Council member Stephen Stanley said he went to an early voting station at Nicholson Memorial South Branch Library on Tuesday morning while campaigning for candidates on the ballot. He said around noon a woman came out of the library and told him she had tried to vote straight ticket Republican but the machine said she had voted straight Democrat. The woman told him a poll worker apologized that the machine wasn't working and instructed her to use another one. Stanley said he was worried about people who didn't double-check their ballots. "My question is how many other people didn't know," Stanley said. Dallas County elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole encouraged all voters to double-check their ballots before submitting them. She said she's received second-hand reports of malfunctioning machines, but no one has logged an official complaint and she doesn't have any names to go with the claims. H/t Matrix Bob


Turkey must be present in Syria s Idlib province until the threat from there toward Turkey is over, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli was reported as saying by CNN Turk and other broadcasters on Tuesday. Turkey has said it will provide assistance to rebels it has long backed as it implements a de-escalation agreement to reduce fighting in Idlib. A Turkish army reconnaissance team scouted the region on Sunday before an expected military operation.


Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis & ACR contributor Randy J and Boiler Room Presidential Candidate select: Stewart Howe. In this broadcast listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a veritable feast of topics including Donald Trump steamrolling the GOP and gatecrashing Glenn Beck s Cruz Caucus event, some esoteric analysis with Jay Dyer in the realms of serial killers, Dune and more, the Clinton Epstein connections and the usual conversational holes the Boiler crew somehow seems to dig themselves in and out of. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE!


They laughed at us when we said @realDonaldTrump would win This morning they're too devastated to get out of bed.#MAGA #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/A0xApdid7K Harlan Z. Hill (@Harlan) November 9, 2016


Shock!!!! Hasn't this been in the news for years??? Businesses were finding that Chinese chips had built in vulnerabilities allowing Chinese intelligence easy access??? Why is there a big surprise?? Obama and the Libs have dropped the US's drawers and presented a willing posterior for the Chinese, (who Soros favors most, and Obama second after Shiia Theocracies).


Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, arrested in France earlier this week by tax fraud investigators, will be presented to a judge with a view to formally placing him under judicial investigation, a public prosecutor said on Wednesday. Under France s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often but not always leads to a person being sent to trial.


Email  Well, Donald Trump certainly has cause for celebration today.  Despite having a multi-billion-dollar net worth, an international real estate company, and a primetime television show, Donald Trump's ambitions were still set higher. The one trophy he'd spent his entire life trying to claim for his mantle of accomplishments had always evaded him—until today. By winning the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump is finally able to kick the nation's most powerful black family out of their house.  One can only imagine the immense joy Donald's wife and children feel for him today.  Trump has been preparing for this moment ever since the Trump Organization first started buying buildings throughout New York City and raising rent for African-Americans until he could toss them out for no longer being able to afford it. Now, after decades of practice and determination, the president-elect will see his magnum opus arrive in the form of booting the incredibly influential and powerful Obama family out of the home they've lived in for the past eight years.  Ejecting black people from their residences has been a lifelong passion for Donald. From practicing discriminatory housing policies that prevented black people from moving into Trump buildings to tagging black people's rental applications with a separate sheet of paper marked "C" for "colored," Donald has never lost focus on his goal. But that was all just warm-up for Trump, who clearly wanted to challenge himself by attempting to evict a wealthy black family of international renown. And when he sends President Obama, Michelle, Malia, Sasha, and all their boxed-up belongings packing from their house in January, Trump will have done just that.  What a truly stunning feat. With the biggest item on his bucket list now firmly checked off, Trump would be more than justified in resting on his laurels to soak in the consummation of all his dreams. It's hard to imagine an even more powerful and famous black family Donald could evict, but knowing Trump, he will continue to push himself. Whatever his plans are now, the world will be watching in anxious anticipation.


As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to prove that he s an all-around amazing person, he s become admired far beyond Canada s borders.Earlier this week, Trudeau was confronted by some very passionate Americans while stopping at a deli in New York City, which Trudeau was visiting to announce that Canada would seek a UN Security Council seat in 2021. Having spotted the Prime Minister and desperate to escape the horrifying U.S. presidential election, these Americans spoke for many of us when they approached Trudeau and asked, Could you run for president here? And why wouldn t they want him to help rescue us from the possibility of Republican front runner Donald Trump?! He s the exact opposite: he s already increased taxes on the wealthy, welcomed Syrian refugees into his country, become an outspoken feminist and is just as interested in climate change as President Barack Obama. The prospect of President Trump is such a threat, that another candidate in addition Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would be a tremendous relief.Trudeau gently explained to those two Americans why a presidential run wasn t a possibility for him: It s very simple, I m not American-born. But these Americans weren t ready to take no for an answer. One of them quickly countered, Ted Cruz can do it. Trudeau reminded them that Cruz was born as an American because although Cruz was born in Canada, his mother was an American citizen.Then Trudeau s admirers began to get desperate. One of the men said, All our guys are so bad, you ve gotta believe us. We ve met em all they re so terrible. Please. His companion added, They re boring, weird. We have to settle for them. Please. Trudeau stood firm and said, You know what, I have tremendous confidence in the American people. Then, both men literally dropped down to their knees and pleaded with Trudeau: We ll do anything. We re begging you. We re literally begging you. Trudeau simply responded, I don t know if you noticed, but I actually have a job, and it s a pretty good one. He then patted one of the kneeling men on the back and continued on his way.This just happened to @JustinTrudeau in a NYC cafe: @cnn @ABC @HuffingtonPost @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/BuceWMnGge Stephen Ward (@_stephenward) March 17, 2016Here s another view:Justin Trudeau dans un resto de Manhattan. Ces 2 Am ricains le supplient de se lancer dans la course pr sidentielle! pic.twitter.com/QgrrEdVaIj Marie-Jo lle Parent (@mariejoelle) March 17, 2016CBC News believe it s possible that the two men in the clips are actually pranksters that have shown up at other U.S. presidential campaign events (putting the statement We ve met em all into context). The duo resembles the two men who wore Nazi-like armbands to a Trump event (with a pro-Trump logo instead), a man who interrupted a Marco Rubio rally to accuse the Florida senator of stealing his girlfriend, and a man who sat behind Hillary Clinton with a Settle for Hillary. Whether or not this was a stunt, it very much reflects where America is at right now. Most of us are looking to anyone who could save this country from Donald Trump and judging from the amount of supporters Trump has gathered, we wish we had as much faith in our fellow Americans as Trudeau does.


Is Trump winning? The future of America depends on a few states 09.11.2016 | Source: AP photo Republican Donald Trump has 95 percent of chances to become the next US president, The New York Times wrote on the basis of preliminary voting results. Donald Trump has surprisingly managed to win the support of 168 electors, while his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has succeeded to the votes of only 109 electors. Trump is projected to win the election in a number of "wavering" states, such as Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. To win the election, a candidate needs to enlist the support of 270 electors. The procedure for their formal vote will be held on December 19, while on January 6, 2017 Congress will approve its results. The inauguration is scheduled for January 20, when the US president-elect takes office. Pravda.Ru


Democrats are consoling themselves by claiming Donald Trump's election is illegitimate, but they'll do themselves and the nation a favor if they consider their own faults — including the corruption in their own party and political strategy. [1. The Democrats' rigged primary: Democrats should begin by accepting the obvious truth of a rigged primary revealed by WikiLeaks. The party's key leaders — not the party's voters — picked and promoted Hillary Clinton, meaning she was secretly coronated before the primary ever began. Her rival Bernie Sanders never had a chance. The "nomination" contest was theater designed to make Sanders voters accept Clinton. His voters ought to be furious at Sanders for playing along with this farce, which he most certainly did. When Party elders shriek about nefarious Russian interference in the election process, they're trying to distract from what the leaked DNC emails actually said, and the fact that we now know those emails are 100 percent genuine, despite early Democrat statements to the contrary. One of those shrieking claims came from Donna Brazile, who was directly involved in doctoring a primary debate by leaking questions to Clinton, not to Sanders. 2. The Democrat superdelegate system: Then there's the openly rigged element of the Democratic primary, the superdelegate system. It is a political instrument specifically designed to shut down insurgencies and make the interests of Democrat voters secondary to the judgment of party elites, and the powerful lobbyists who manipulate them. Hillary Clinton was chosen by donors who had already spent a fortune currying favor with her, as demonstrated by the instantaneous collapse of the Clinton "charities" the instant the Clintons had no more favors to sell. 3. The Democrat money machine: Building a titanic campaign war chest was the paramount concern of the Democrats in 2016, because they thought it — and their media allies — would give them an unbreakable headlock over the public debate. So Joe Biden was told he could not afford to get into the race. Same for Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who barely raised enough cash to pay for a Philly cheese sandwich. Their financial kneecapping allowed Clinton to suck up hundreds of millions in campaign cash, sometimes in legally questionable ways, even as she railed against the influence of money in politics. 4. The media was part of Clinton's campaign: It's fun to watch Democrats wail about Russian spies using WikiLeaks to influence the election, when it's clear the mainstream media was able to downplay the actual contents of those emails enough to keep most voters in the dark. Sure, outfits like Breitbart News did everything we could to report those revelations, but that's nothing compared to the influence wielded by the establishment media when it gets a "narrative" avalanche rolling. Of course the establishment media was an active participant in the rigged primary scandal. Those leaked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta reflected very, very poorly on the press. That's something Democrats could fix — there's no reason for illegitimate coordination between their candidates and the media. Democrat voters also should demand an end to the incestuous relationship between the media and Democratic politics because it has become as much a liability. Sure, it's helpful to have the media in your hip pocket, but the value of that advantage is severely degraded when the public knows about it, and has lost faith in the establishment press as a result. Worse, the media enabled a weak, candidates like Clinton to capture the Party nomination. 5. The law was bent and broken to keep Clinton in the game: Democrat voters also should be questioning the legitimacy of Clinton's nomination because the rule of law was corrupted to preserve her political viability. Her candidacy should have ended when the email server story broke. (Really, it should have ended with the publication of Clinton Cash, but the Democrats incorrectly believed their controlled media could insulate her from the fallout of those astounding revelations.) The politicized Obama Justice Department did Democrats no favors by staving off indictments that would have taken Clinton out of the game, or by the email investigation until her replacement became prohibitively difficult. The Obama administration perfected tactics for dragging scandal investigations out until they became "old news," but they miscalculated and prolonged Clinton's email scandal until it blew up like a string of demolition charges throughout the 2016 election. Before they began howling about Russian espionage, Democrats were pushing the narrative that FBI Director James Comey sabotaged Clinton's election hopes by speaking at length about her "extremely careless" actions when he announced no charges would be recommended, and then kneecapped her again by reviving the Clinton investigation briefly during the last days of the presidential campaign. As with their narrative about WikiLeaks, Democrats are complaining that Clinton was "sabotaged" because people revealed the truth about her. They're saying their presidential candidate could only win if damaging facts were concealed, false media narratives were perpetuated, and special exemptions from the law were granted to her. That sounds like the very definition of an illegitimate candidacy. 6. Democrats try to hack the electorate: We might also challenge the legitimacy of a political strategy that relies so heavily upon using immigration to hack the demographics of the American electorate. Before Clinton's defeat shocked them into silence, liberal analysts were beginning to churn out a fresh wave of "Emerging Democratic Majority" pieces about how GOP voters would never win a national election again. One of the reasons Democrats subjected the Electoral College to one of their tantrums is that the EC makes it harder for them to hack the presidential vote with mass immigration. That's the true significance of the observation that Clinton's "victory" came entirely from California. Before the 2016 election went down, it was commonly observed that Republicans might have won the previous two presidential contests if they were still running with Ronald Reagan's electorate this observation was used to mock Trump as foolish for pursuing an obsolete electoral strategy that could never work in the new, America. That observation also lies behind the Democrats' decision to downplay the economic concerns of struggling Americans, and to largely ignore the distastefully electorates of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in favor of outreach to immigrants, racial subgroups, gays, professionals, unmarried women, and other element of the 'Emerging Democratic Majority.' If Democrats didn't believe they had a reserve army of immigrant voters for Clinton, they might have nominated Biden or Sanders to instead win ordinary Americans to their side. Amusingly, if those immigrants didn't exist, American voters' incomes would be higher — and fewer would have been angry enough to shift their votes to the GOP's candidate. To sum it all up, everything about Clinton's nomination and campaign stinks to high heaven. That's why Democrats should try to reform their own corrupt party before they lose again in 2020, if only because they can't overthrow the Constitution or persuade the military to install their next candidate. As President Barack Obama would say if the shoe was on the other foot, reform of the Democratic Party is the legitimate thing to do. As for Republicans, they know that there are many other techniques that Democrats use to hack the electorate, including the Democrats' control over the media and education systems. That's why Republicans should work hard and fast to disable all of them, permanently, because they have a sworn duty to protect the legitimacy of our voting system.


President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he thought Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was "excellent" but declined to say who was his pick to lead the U.S. central bank ahead of a planned announcement on Thursday afternoon. "I think Janet Yellen is excellent," Trump told reporters during a meeting with cabinet officials. Asked if Yellen was his choice to keep leading the Fed, Trump said: "I didn't say that. I think she's excellent."


Rose Evansky, a British hairdresser who liberated women from the prison of the domed dryer when she invented styling at her London salon in the early 1960s, died on Nov. 21. She was 94. Her death was reported only recently by the British news media. There was no information on where she died. Mrs. Evansky, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, set up as a hairstylist soon after World War II. She and her hairdresser husband, Albert, opened a small shop in Hendon, a London suburb, and did so well that, in 1954, they moved to Mayfair, where the city's elite paid top money for styling. One day in 1962, as she faced a tedious morning of chemical and tight curling, tasks she disliked, inspiration struck. "I'd been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man's hair with a brush and a dryer," she told W magazine in 2012. "And this image — of the barber with the dryer — flashed through my mind and I thought, 'Why not for women? '" She experimented on one of her clients, a Mrs. Hay. "I picked up a spiky plastic hairbrush and a hand dryer and started rolling a wet section of her hair around the brush, followed by warm air from the hand dryer held in my left hand," she wrote in a memoir, "In Paris We Sang" (2013). "The more sections of wet hair I rolled over the brush, the easier it became, and soon part of Mrs. Hay's curly hair looked smooth, as if it had been brushed through from a set. Exciting!" One day by chance, Lady Clare Rendlesham, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, dropped by the salon and, witnessing a in progress, stopped dead in her tracks. "What are you doing, Rose?" Mrs. Evansky recalled her shouting. Lady Clare immediately tipped off her friend Barbara Griggs, the fashion editor of The Evening Standard, who came in to behold the soft and flowing style. That afternoon, the newspaper trumpeted the news of "the blow wave" to its readers. "This instantly earned her a reputation as one of the top hairdressers in London and went on to become the norm in hair drying," Hairdressers Journal International wrote in 2012, celebrating the industry's pioneers. Mrs. Evansky took quiet pride in getting women out from under the sizzling heat of the dome, and in the durability of her invention. "I always look at the prices of hairdressers now, and I say, my God, it's still there: ''" she told an interviewer for the beauty brand Space NK in 2013. "How wonderful, 50 years later. " She was born Rosel Lerner on May 30, 1922, in Worms, south of Frankfurt. Her parents were immigrants from Poland. In 1938, when the family was living in Ludwigshafen, her father was arrested and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Speaking only German and Yiddish, she was sent to Britain on one of the last Kindertransport trains that carried Jewish children out of Germany. She lived briefly with a family in Dudley, in the West Midlands, before moving to London, just in time for the Blitz. There, she apprenticed for a barber in Whitechapel, and distinguished herself with her zeal. "I worked and practiced till late at night on anyone who'd let me get at their hair," she wrote in her memoir. As World War II raged, she embarked on her career, finding work at a salon near Regent Street. In 1943, she married Albert Evansky. When their marriage ended in divorce, her husband bought her share of the business. He sold it in the early 1980s. What Florence was to painting and sculpture during the Renaissance, Mayfair was to the art of hairstyling in the 1950s and '60s. Mrs. Evansky sat atop the heap, the lone woman in a field monopolized by men. In "Vidal: The Autobiography," Vidal Sassoon called her "without question the top female stylist in the country and the equal of any man. " Her protégés included Leonard Lewis, known professionally as Leonard of Mayfair, who died on Nov. 30. Mrs. Evansky was in the forefront of the Mayfair style, which emphasized "freedom and movement, rather than contrived waves and curls," Kim Smith of the University of East London wrote in her doctoral dissertation on West London hair salons. The Mayfair look led directly to the internationally celebrated styles associated with Swinging London and the likes of Jean Shrimpton, Julie Christie and Twiggy, who was a client of Mr. Lewis. In 1965, soon after leaving her husband, Mrs. Evansky married the playwright Denis Cannan, took his last name and moved with him to the countryside in East Sussex. He died in 2011. She is survived by two stepsons, Alexander and Nicholas Cannan a stepdaughter, Crescy Cannan and two . Her own hair was naturally . "My hair is best described as 'windswept,' as I live near the sea," she told W magazine. "I've never colored it, and I cut it myself. Why would I let anyone else when I can do it myself?"


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U.S. President Donald Trump expects by the end of the year "real progress" among NATO allies to step up their defense spending toward the minimum criteria of two percent of their economic output, Vice President Mike Pence said on Monday. Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Pence said: "America will do our part but European defense requires European commitment as much as ours... The president expects real progress by the end of 2017."


The Non-Existent Trump Mandate November 14, 2016  Republicans are claiming a mandate to speak for the "silent majority," but the actual numbers show that not only did Donald Trump fail to win a plurality, his vote total largely matched other recent GOP candidates, notes Nicolas J S Davies.  By Nicolas J S Davies  Within days of the U.S. general election, central elements of the result have already entered into American mythology: the revenge of the "white working class voter"; the unprecedented anti-establishment character of the President-elect; the populist revolution that led to Trump's victory; and the years in the wilderness now facing Democrats and progressives in America.  But the endless repetition of these themes by the corporate media deserves a great deal more skepticism and scrutiny before they worm their way into all our heads to form the established and accepted narrative of this election. Let's first review some basic facts about what happened on Nov. 8: Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. (Photo credit: Grant Miller/RNC)  Who Voted Republican?  Though Donald Trump prevailed in the Electoral College, he failed to secure a plurality of the total ballots cast, getting a bit over 60 million votes to Hillary Clinton's 61 million votes, according to The Associated Press tally . Meanwhile, only 55.6 percent of 219 million eligible voters, or 50.4 percent of the voting-age population , actually voted, placing the U.S. 33rd out of 35 advanced (OECD) countries in national voter turnout , above only Chile and Switzerland.  Only 27 percent of eligible voters or 24 percent of the voting-age population voted for Trump. Roughly the same number, about 60 million, voted for both John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The result was different because Barack Obama received 69 million votes in 2008 and 66 million in 2012, while Hillary Clinton could only muster only a shade more than Trump, Romney and McCain.  As Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated in every stump speech during the Democratic primaries, "Let us never forget, Democrats and progressives win when voter turnout is high. Republicans win when people are demoralized and voter turnout is low."  So, Trump deserves credit for finding a few new Republican voters to replace those who have died in the past fou4 years, and for a successful strategy to gain votes in the right states to win the Electoral College. But the more decisive difference with 2008 and 2012 was the dramatic failure of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, to turn out the vote. This was despite, or maybe even because of, unprecedented SuperPAC money and overwhelming support from political, business and media elites.  Democratic Hopes  If the Democrats hope to do better in future elections, they must confront this reality. Grassroots Democrats should insist that party leaders finally abandon the long obsolete Reagan/Thatcher-lite Democratic Leadership Council model of politics based on fund-raising, propaganda, corporate welfare and militarism, and welcome the kind of new, progressive leadership that inspired 47 percent of Democratic primary voters to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking to one of his large crowds of supporters. (Photo credit: Sanders campaign)  This was all the more significant and impressive in the context of party leaders' monolithic support for Clinton and their shameful campaign to stage a coronation instead of organizing a free and fair primary election.  We will find out more about who actually voted for Trump, but the pollster Nate Silver already exposed "The Myth of Trump's 'Working Class' Support" in a fivethirtyeight .com article on May 3. Silver's article analyzed a survey of the average household income of people who voted in the 23 primaries up to that point. The average Clinton or Sanders primary voter had a household income of $61,000, while the average Trump voter earned $72,000, about the same as Cruz's supporters but less than Kasich's.  The 70 percent of eligible voters who did not vote in either primary had an average household income of $52,000. In broad terms, this tracks the traditional pattern of U.S. politics, with wealthier Americans leaning Republican, the middle-class favoring Democrats and few of the poor African-Americans and immigrants who make up much of the real U.S. working-class voting at all.  These figures were for primary voters, but they suggest that Trump's supporters were, well, Republicans, like Romney's, McCain's, Bush's and so on. The Republican Party has continually rebranded itself over the past 50 years, generating great fanfares from deferential or captive corporate media for the Silent Majority, the Reagan Revolution, the Moral Majority, the Christian Right, the Contract With America, the Tea Party and now Trump's Deplorables, but behind these well-funded P.R. campaigns, Republican voters remain roughly the same people or class of people. Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda and advertising, would approve their ever-changing public message!  What is Trump's agenda?  Despite contradictory pronouncements on many issues, Donald Trump's published plan for his first 100 days in office contained more policy details than Hillary Clinton's campaign web site, which followed the DLC model of appealing to principles most Americans believe in without pinning the candidate down to anything detailed enough for most voters to disagree with.  In Clinton's case, this includes voluminous treatises on a wide array of subjects, but the blizzard of words was short on actual policy details, leaving the formerly presumptive president plenty of room to do whatever she and her corporate and military-industrial colleagues really planned to do after the coronation. As Wikileaks revealed, one of the few things Clinton's staff and financiers were clear on was the necessarily wide gap between her public and private positions .  Warmed-Over GOP Fare  On the other hand, Donald Trump's plan for his first 100 days in office includes more specifics and is, for the most part, a pretty standard wish-list of policies the Republican Party has backed for decades. That still leaves plenty of room for smoke and mirrors: President Obama in the Oval Office.  –On Trump's first day in office, he plans to cancel every "unconstitutional" action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama; to cancel federal funding to cities that provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants; to begin deporting 2 million undocumented immigrants "with criminal records" (somehow expanding that group from the 178,000 counted in a 2010 Congressional report before Obama's mass deportations reduced it still further); to stop issuing U.S. visas to people in countries that won't accept unlimited numbers of U.S. deportees; to suspend immigration from "terror-prone" regions; and to begin work on selecting a new Supreme Court justice.  –The legislative portion of Trump's agenda starts with "massive tax reduction," including an across-the-board 15 percent corporate tax rate, which drops to 10 percent for repatriated offshore earnings to reward the outsourcing he condemned on the campaign trail. This is balanced politically by a vague promise of unspecified new tariffs to penalize future outsourcing.  –"The American Energy and Infrastructure Act" will declare open season on the environment and the climate, stimulating "energy infrastructure" projects like the Keystone XL pipeline with tax cuts and corporate welfare, and ending U.S. payments to the U.N. climate fund.  –A national school voucher program will expand the privatization of public education, while Trump also pays lip service to local control, reducing college tuition and ending common core.  –Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a new program based on health savings accounts, along with similar programs for childcare and elder care; states will be allowed to make unprecedented cuts in Medicaid; and he wants the Food and Drug Administration to speed up approvals for 4,000 new drugs.  –As well as funding Trump's wall on the Mexican border, new draconian immigration laws will impose mandatory 2- and 5-year federal prison sentences on previously deported immigrants who try to reenter the U.S.  –New "national security" and "community safety" laws will blast military spending past Obama's post-World War II record , and throw more money at local police to combat imaginary increases in "crime, drugs and violence" at home. Liberal state marijuana laws may be "trumped" by this new national "stop and frisk" program.  –Trump wants term limits in Congress to get rid of popular progressive legislators like John Conyers and Patrick Leahy. He also wants a federal civilian hiring freeze and sweeping deregulation under which any new federal regulation must be offset by canceling two existing regulations.  Controlling the Levers  The most critical factor in the Republicans' new-found power is that they now control the White House and both houses of Congress, as they did from 2003 to 2006 and for a shorter spell in 1953-54. This does not usually end well for them. The last time the Republicans held full control of the U.S. government for more than 4 years was in the 1920s, and that ended even worse. President George W. Bush speaks on the phone in the Oval Office, Oct. 7, 2008, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, discussing efforts to solve the spreading global financial crisis. (White House photo by Eric Draper)  If the Republicans exploit the support of 24 percent of Americans – not even a plurality of those who voted – to ram through their extreme right-wing agenda, they will deserve to be slung out on their ears in 2018 and 2020, as they were in 2006 and 2008.  If rank-and-file Democrats can force their party's corrupt leaders to quickly hand over power to new progressive leadership who will represent the other 76 percent of Americans, this should not be a tall order.  In the meantime, progressives can contain the damage by countering every part of the Republicans' (and corrupt Democrats') agenda with clear, intelligent progressive proposals for real solutions to the serious problems facing our country and the world and building a popular movement around them.  This will all be a real test for the Democrats, but it is one they have brought on themselves, and the radical clean-up required is what progressives have been demanding of the Democratic Party for a long time.  Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on Obama at War in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader . He has also served as a local chapter leader and national team leader on war and peace issues for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) .


Cher has certainly used her power, money, and influence to help the people who are suffering from their water being poisoned by Michigan s Republican Governor Rick Snyder. She has already gifted water to the residents of Flint, and now she is using her influence on social media to remind the whole world just what a travesty the whole situation is.First, the superstar singer-turned-activist reminded everyone of her own humble beginnings. You see, Cher wasn t always rich and famous. She was, in fact, quite poor, as she reveals in one tweet. However, she also says that no matter how destitute they were, her mother was never afraid to let her drink or bathe in the water flowing from their taps:I remember my mom crying because she couldn't make ends meet,I was sick & she couldn't afford Dr BUT..SHE WAS NEVER AFRAID OF OUR WATER Cher (@cher) January 23, 2016She also posted picture of the water that the residents of Flint had been assured was safe until this scandal broke, and they are nothing short of absolutely horrifying. It looks more like mud than water, and is clearly unsafe. However, considering that Flint s residents are mostly destitute African Americans, we can be assured that their situation didn t matter to the right, white GOP governor Rick Snyder and his emergency management people who made this nightmare a reality.How would U like 2 wake up Tomm & have nothing but water 2 give your kids 2 DRINK,BATHE IN WASH CLOTHES IN pic.twitter.com/lxhkhSAB72 Cher (@cher) January 23, 2016Cher then tweeted a photo of the water running into a washing machine to wash a family s clothing. It is nothing short of deadly, and that is why people are dying and children who have been drinking and bathing in that water have elevated lead levels in their young bloodstreams, which will likely affect them for the rest of their lives.Cher, Flint s own native son Michael Moore, and many other people in positions of power and influence are just as outraged by this as the rest of us. Luckily, they have the money, power, know-how, and resources to actually do something about it. And they are.Hopefully, the next step will be to get this disgusting excuse for a human being and a governor, Rick Snyder, out of office, and into the dustbins of history with other rightfully disgraced politicians.


Georgia Congressman John Lewis is a living legend. At 76 years old, and as someone who was beaten nearly to death fighting for civil rights, he has the right to say anything he likes. Therefore, the idea of attacking him, as Donald Trump has been doing all through his Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend, is nothing short of repulsive.Those attacks have led to a massive boycott of Trump s inauguration, especially among Democratic lawmakers. The latest to announce that he will skip Trump s party is Rep. Keith Ellison, who is also in the running to become the head of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison says of the decision:I will not celebrate a man who preaches a politics of division and hate. I won't be attending Donald Trump's inauguration. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison also made it clear that he is on the side of John Lewis, and is just as appalled as all decent people at Trump s attacks on the civil rights icon. Prior to tweeting his decision regarding Trump s inauguration, Ellison also tweeted:No question I am #StandingwithJohnLewis and the millions of people around the country who have been targeted by @realDonaldTrump. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017The time is always right to do what is right. And in the face of so much hate, the right thing to do is reject it. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Medical price-gouger Martin Shkreli is headed to DC for President-elect Trump s inauguration. Another reason to #StandWithJohnLewis Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison is clearly ready to battle Donald Trump, along with other Democrats on Capitol Hill. Trump really crossed the line with his attacks on John Lewis, and he did the biggest favor ever for progressives by showing his true colors. Some people and events are untouchable, and attacking a living civil rights legend on Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend is at the top of that list.Godspeed, Rep. Ellison. Thank you for standing up for what is right.Featured image by Joe Raedle via Getty Images


President Donald Trump opened the door on Tuesday to a broad overhaul of the U.S. immigration system and vowed to pursue massive tax relief for the middle class in a speech to Congress as he sought to rebound from a chaotic start to his presidency. Trump said he was open to a broad overhaul of the U.S. immigration system, a shift from his hardline campaign rhetoric. He emphasized his desire to focus on problems at home by boosting the U.S. economy with tax reform, a $1 trillion infrastructure effort and an overhaul of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare. BRIAN REYNOLDS, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, NEW ALBION PARTNERS, NEW YORK "The speech showed the softer side of the President, but I think the media had let investors know this would be the case, so no surprise for markets on that front. "The speech lacked specifics as it related to financial markets. Again I don't think that is a surprise. "With no surprises and few financial specifics, it is likely that equity investors will focus on how many of his themes can be passed by Congress given how late it is getting in the legislative calendar. Skepticism over the likelihood of policy enactment may create a brief pullback in stocks at some point. "There was nothing in the speech, or in the President's agenda, that is likely to alter the behavior of corporate bond investors, who have been driving this equity bull market for eight years via debt-fueled buybacks. They bought a strong $18 billion of new corporate bonds on Tuesday in advance of the speech, and they will likely be back at work on Wednesday, putting their cash flows to work. I believe that these flows are likely to keep any stock market pullback brief and shallow." BUCKY HELLWIG, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BB&T WEALTH MANAGEMENT, BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA: "The speech was a summary of Trump's policies. Stocks could move higher tomorrow as nothing has changed and stock investors are still expecting infrastructure build out, tax and regulatory relief, and changes in Affordable Care, but the timetable has not been clarified for these. Republican constituents may pressure Congress to step up the pace in moving the Trump agenda forward. "Some specifics: pressure on drug margins, completion across state lines for healthcare organizations, military expenditures increasing – but nothing new here. "Fed policy will get more attention this week and next. Manufacturing PMI tomorrow and employment report next Friday (March 10) will be watched. Yellen will be speaking this Friday. Fed funds futures showing a higher probability of an increase at the FOMC March 15 meeting." J.J. FELDMAN, PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT MIRACLE MILE ADVISORS IN LA: "There was nothing really new," he said. "It was a good speech in that it was more uniting than divisive but from the market perspective it was status quo," "This probably wasn't the venue but if new details on tax reform are not coming soon there's going to be disappointment for sure." JUAN PEREZ, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, TEMPUS CONSULTING, WASHINGTON: "Trump said a lot of things that are positive for financial markets such as spending a huge amount for infrastructure. Overall there were no real surprises as these are pronouncements that we have heard before. However, I expect that market gains from his speech would be subdued by the continued tone of protectionism in his statements. Anytime, you attack trade deals as Trump did, the market gets nervous." PAUL CHRISTOPHER, HEAD GLOBAL MARKET STRATEGIST AT WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT INSTITUTE IN ST. LOUIS, MO. "I was impressed though, or at least relieved, that it wasn't like his inauguration speech, it wasn't a challenge or a gauntlet thrown down to the opposition or to other countries. It was a speech that was more balanced and more presidential-sounding. "But even as a state of the union address, which it sounded a lot like, it wasn't very specific. It especially and could have and didn't prioritize all of these different things he was talking about. Some of the policies are going to be very expensive - a trillion dollars for infrastructure, $100 billion a year, extra defense spending - the budget may not have room for all of that. "He didn't talk at all about how they were going to fund any of that. He also didn't talk about tax reform, which I expected he would give Congress some marching orders in terms of what he wants - he hardly said anything about tax reform. "He talked about the Affordable Care Act but again he didn't talk about any of the directives of are we going to repeal and replace now or repeal and replace later. He did say he wanted continuity but moderate Republicans are not convinced the conservative Republicans have that as a priority. So it may be even difficult to pass the ACA repeal in this budget bill. "He was effective at reaching out to the other side, he was effective at times in being able to connect items. For example, connecting education as the way to break the cycle of poverty and then morphing or transitioning into violent crime and cutting down on that. Those were effective points and effective transitions. But again not enough detail for investors and certainly the markets were chopping around while he was speaking. It wasn't a big market mover and we still have to wait for the details. I don't think we are going to see much change. "There is no reason to sell, he didn't throw water on any of the agenda, he simply didn't clarify it any." "I think the market is going to be positive. The market continues to see him as a good-for-business president. He's very pragmatic when it comes to business. In terms of getting these grand visions done, I don't think the market gives so much importance to that. When he spoke about cost cutting, that immediately resonates with everyone on Wall Street. That's easy stuff. That's low hanging fruit. It's really hard to grow revenues. But it's really easy to cut costs. There is so much fat. It's so over regulated. This is easy stuff. He said enough of that during the speech that he will resonate well. "I think some people were probably looking for some meat on the bones. He definitely covered everything. It was more of a laundry list. There wasn't a lot of details. "To me, the tax reform is something everybody wants. Repatriation of money abroad is something that ever wants. Why not take care of those and then take care of the dicey things? Like Obamacare and immigration." OMER ESINER, CHIEF MARKET ANALYST AT COMMONWEALTH FOREIGN EXCHANGE IN WASHINGTON DC "(Trump's) mention of historic treaties and NATO specifically was reassuring for our allies globally, and in that sense it was probably reassuring for global financial markets as well." "(The speech) was still probably light on actual details on the fiscal side of things. We got mention of a trillion dollar infrastructure spending package. I think it's very early so I wouldn't necessarily hang my hat on that number. It was largely absent of any major focus on the tax side of things. In terms of overall details, on the fiscal side of the equation, it was probably pretty light. But I think despite that on some level the market might be reassured by the more or less balanced tone of the speech. It was much more presidential than some of the previous speeches and commentary we've gotten from the president." PAUL NOLTE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT KINGSVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT IN CHICAGO "The devil is going to be in the details and I think that's why you didn't see the futures move too terribly much. The markets are still, show me what you are going to do, how is this all going to work and how are we paying for it. That's going to take probably a couple weeks to a couple months to get laid out." "Everybody is looking for more details and we're still waiting." "I think expectations right now are really high all the way around and it's going to be a process. We're going to have to wait to see some of this develop." STEVE MASSOCCA, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AT WEDBUSH SECURITIES IN SAN FRANCISCO "I thought it went pretty well, certainly no land mines or explosions." "From an investor's perspective there was no new information, no surprises good or bad. From the perspective of where money goes tomorrow, I don't see what we have learned that's new or different. ... But he burnished his image, so there's a positive there. He's a pro business president so that's a good thing." RANDY FREDERICK, VICE PRESIDENT OF TRADING AND DERIVATIVES FOR CHARLES SCHWAB IN AUSTIN, TEXAS "He pretty much didn't say anything he hadn't said before so markets have no reason to react overly positively or overly negatively ... Would the market have liked details sure, but I don't think it was expecting them." "If anything the market might move moderately higher tomorrow. It pulled back moderately today. The uptick in volatility today was a preparation for the potential for a downside move ... It was a little bit of hedging going on before an event that could move the market." A key focus for Wednesday will be Personal Consumption Expenditures, a key inflationary measure that the U.S. Federal Reserve watches, Frederick said. BRIAN JACOBSEN, CHIEF PORTFOLIO STRATEGIST AT WELLS FARGO FUNDS MANAGEMENT IN MENOMONEE FALLS, WISCONSIN: "He was surprisingly detailed about what to replace Obamacare with. It's likely Congress will be able to take that up shortly as part of the 2017 budget and then quickly pivot to the 2018 budget which will deal with tax reform. That plan is much less developed, but he has time." On taxes, Jacobsen said: "Every deduction and credit that would need to be eliminated to lower tax rates in a budget-neutral way has strong defenders. That's how those deductions and credits got there. So, we'll just have to watch and wait to see which special interests President Trump will take on." TIM GHRISKEY, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER OF SOLARIS GROUP IN BEDFORD HILLS, NEW YORK. "It seemed to be a somewhat kinder and gentler Trump. He wasn't attacking individuals like he often does." "This remains a very pro-growth agenda and the markets like that, but I didn't hear anything new that would make it necessarily move ahead, except that he stuck to his guns to make his agenda items happen." STOCKS: U.S. stock futures were stronger at the start of Trump's address, with major indices 0.3 percent higher. They eased those gains as he spoke, with the S&P 500 E-mini futures last up 0.2 percent. BONDS: U.S. Treasury futures TYv1 dipped slightly ahead of his speech, and were last down 0.4 percent. FOREX: The dollar erased its earlier gains in Asia, with the market jittery as Trump's speech was short on details on his economic stimulus. The dollar/yen eased to around 112.80 yen JPY= from the day's high of 113.375 yen hit earlier, on hopes the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates this month.


A U.S. congressional panel next month will hold a hearing on violent extremism, including threats from domestic militants, following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly. The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Republican Michael McCaul, announced the Sept. 12 hearing in a letter to the panel's top Democrat, Bennie Thompson. The committee holds a hearing once a year, around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to discuss worldwide threats. A committee aide said the Charlottesville protests had prompted the decision to broaden the hearing to include threats from domestic militants. But Thompson said the move was "not adequate or appropriate" to address his request for a hearing on threats from white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups. "The September 12 hearing to cover worldwide threats is an annual hearing that was already scheduled prior to the domestic attacks this weekend," Thompson said. "It will not allow us to go into the depth necessary to address the far-ranging and multifaceted aspects of the threat posed by domestic terrorist threats from white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups." The Homeland Security Committee will invite leaders of the Homeland Security Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Counterterrorism Center, McCaul said. "We must stand together and reject racism, bigotry, and prejudice, including the hateful ideologies promoted by neo-Nazis, the KKK, and all other white supremacy groups," McCaul wrote in his response to Democrats' request for a hearing. A 32-year-old woman was killed on Saturday in Charlottesville when a car plowed into a rival protest to white supremacist demonstrators. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies has been charged with murder. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said both sides were to blame for the violence, drawing condemnation from both fellow Republicans and Democrats for failing to single out the white nationalists.


A senior Texas health official who co-authored a report that criticized the state's funding cuts to Planned Parenthood for reducing access to reproductive healthcare will retire from his post next month, a Texas commission said on Friday. Rick Allgeyer, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission's director of research, faced criticism from the state's Republican leaders over the report published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine this month. The report said state funding cuts to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates had an adverse effect on family planning for lower-income people. Allgeyer is eligible to retire and decided to do so effective on March 31, the commission said. Allgeyer, who has been at the commission for 16 years and was one of the study's five listed authors, declined to comment. In 2011, the Texas state legislature cut Planned Parenthood out of one family-planning program and revamped the way another program hands out funds, placing it and other private clinics at the bottom of the list. Top Texas political leaders have said after cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood that the state has been able to rebuild its safety net. Independent health experts dispute the claim, saying Texas still has a long way to go before it can provide the level of service it did when Planned Parenthood was an integral part of its family planning efforts. The Texas plan has garnered attention among Republicans in the U.S. Congress who are looking to defund the nation's largest family-planning provider at the national level. The study said the cuts appeared to lead to an increase of unintended pregnancies among lower-income residents and a decrease in access to long-acting reversible contraception. It also said the cuts appeared to increase the rate of childbirths covered by Medicaid. Some Texas Republicans said it was inappropriate for a state employee to be involved in such a study and that its results were flawed, putting political pressure on Allgeyer.


What hyperbole did you see in my post? Please be specific. I will wait for the list. You can't think of anything? Nothing? I didn't think so. You should go back to AlterNet and MotherJones. You will have more Hillarybots there to console you.


When Bernie Sanders launched his long-shot bid for the presidency 10 months ago, there were two words that rarely crossed his lips: Hillary Clinton. Now he can't seem to stop talking about her — and not much of what he has to say is very nice. During a boisterous rally here, the senator from Vermont dinged Clinton for supporting a series of "disastrous" trade deals. He mocked her for refusing to release transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Wall Street firms. He said she was wrong to vote for the Iraq War in 2002. The transformation has been stark. What's less clear is whether Sanders's rhetoric helps explain his lasting power in a nominating contest that appears likely to drag on for weeks, considering the mounting number of victories he has scored in key states. So far, the evidence is mixed. In Michigan last week, Sanders won a surprising though narrow victory after closing a gap of more than 20 percentage points in the polls. He was relentless in the days before the election in criticizing Clinton on trade. But Sanders also got trounced the same day in Mississippi — albeit a state where he didn't mount much of a campaign. Tuesday — a day when five states hold primaries — should give a better indication of whether Sanders's tough talk is paying off. One of those contests is in Illinois, and Sanders isn't holding back as he campaigns here. In Chicago on Friday, Sanders even took aim at Clinton for her close association with Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), whose approval ratings are in the tank, particularly among black Chicagoans. "I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don't want his endorsement!" Sanders screamed, to the delight of a crowd estimated at 9,000 people. "I don't want the endorsement of a mayor who is shutting down school after school and firing teachers." To drive home his point, Sanders held a news conference the next day devoted entirely to Emanuel. He told reporters that if he were Clinton, he would have refused the mayor's support. Compared with the Republican presidential race and other elections in past years, the Democratic contest remains relatively tame. But the Bernie Sanders who is fighting to remain relevant in the delegate chase against Clinton sounds quite different from the Sanders whose chief antagonist was the "billionaire class" when he debuted on the campaign trail last spring. Analysts say Sanders's decision to attack Clinton more aggressively is understandable: It's what candidates who are behind tend to do. But in Sanders's case, he risks damaging his brand as an anti-establishment politician who has boasted about never running negative television ads and pledged to stay positive in his bid for the Democratic nomination. "When you're promising to run a different kind of campaign, it's never good to look like you're running the same kind of campaign that other politicians do," said Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University. "It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk, and one they seem willing to take." In an interview, Sanders acknowledged that he's adopted a tougher tone but said he has tried to stick to the issues and not engage in character attacks. To the extent that the race has turned more negative, Sanders said, Clinton is to blame. "We're responding," Sanders said. "I find it disappointing when the secretary mischaracterizes my record." Sanders was particularly galled, he said, by Clinton's assertion during their recent debate in Flint, Mich., that he had opposed releasing funds to bail out the automobile industry — an issue of keen interest to voters in Michigan, given Detroit's long history as the capital of the auto industry. Most fact checkers who looked into Clinton's statement concluded she wasn't telling the whole story. In 2008, Sanders voted for an unsuccessful stand-alone bill to provide aid to the auto industry. The bill Clinton referenced came later, and its primary purpose was to bail out Wall Street, something Sanders staunchly opposed. Some money authorized in the bill wound up flowing to major U.S. automakers, though. "To say that Bernie Sanders, who has perhaps the strongest pro-worker voting record in the United States Congress, does not support automobile workers in their time of need . . . is totally absurd," Sanders said. "It's unfortunate that she made that statement." Sanders and his aides have tried to argue that none of his TV ads mention Clinton by name. But some leave little to the imagination. On Friday, Sanders debuted a pair of ads in Illinois and North Carolina, another state that votes Tuesday, that say that "while his opponent has flip-flopped on trade deals, Bernie has fought them and stood with American workers." Clinton's positions on some trade deals, including the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, have, in fact, evolved. As secretary of state, she called the TPP "the gold standard" of trade deals. Last fall, she announced her opposition, which she stated even more strongly over the weekend. She has said she now has a fuller picture of what's being proposed. In the interview, Sanders said voters have a right to know where he and his opponent diverge. "The differences are becoming fairly clear to the American people, and the more the differences between her views and my views get out there, the better we'll be," he said. Clinton doesn't see it that way. During an appearance Saturday in St. Louis, she said Sanders "has decided to close this election by attacking me and misrepresenting my record and his." Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said Clinton's campaign thinks Sanders has "broken his word" about running a positive race. During a rally Saturday in Springfield, Mo., Sanders continued to hammer Clinton on trade, saying their views diverged on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was approved when her husband was in the White House in the 1990s. "I understood at the end of about three seconds that what this trade deal was about was forcing American workers to compete against very, very poor people in Mexico," Sanders told his audience. "I have voted against every one of these disastrous trade agreements," he said. "Secretary Clinton's position has been different. She has supported virtually every one of these trade agreements." Boos filled the arena at the mention of Clinton's position. Sanders has also raised questions about Clinton's judgment, zeroing in on her decision to deliver a series of paid speeches to corporate interests in the run-up to her presidential bid. That included some addresses to the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, which paid her $225,000 for one speech. On that subject, Sanders hasn't hesitated to take a snide tone. "The way I see it, if you're going to give a speech and get $225,000, it must be a really brilliant speech," Sanders told a crowd at the University of Illinois on Saturday. "It must be opening new vistas of human thought." He also knocked Clinton for refusing to release transcripts of those speeches to the public. She has said she would do so when other candidates are held to the same standard. "Let me make a dramatic announcement to all of you here today," Sanders sarcastically told his crowd. Saying he was ready to release transcripts of his Wall Street speeches, he swung open his arms to reveal nothing. "Here they are!" he said. The danger for Sanders, Elleithee said, is not that he will lose die-hard supporters with his tougher tone but that it could be harder to attract new ones — including some who like Clinton and are still weighing whether to vote for her. Some Sanders fans, including Samuel Nebinger, who turned out Saturday night to see the candidate in Springfield, say they're not bothered by the more pointed rhetoric. Nebinger said he welcomes it. Nebinger, 21, recently dropped out of Missouri State University, he said, because it was too expensive, and he now works at a local call center. He was wearing a shirt that said "Help Us, Bernie, You're Our Only Hope." "He wanted to run it clean at first," Nebinger said. "But he needed to go on the offensive, because she's been doing so many corrupt things. She did that to herself."


Much like the Republican front runner himself, Donald Trump s supporters also have a tendency to invoke violence any chance they get, as we ve seen proven time after time.On Tuesday, Ohio pastor and Trump fan Darrell Scott went on CNN to discuss Trump s plan for the U.S. border wall, and in no time caused the segment to completely derail. In speaking to fellow panelists Ben Ferguson and Margaret Hoover, Scott started by giving an absurd example of how Trump would force Mexico to pay for the wall (even though Mexico s president has flat-out refused and basically told Trump to f*ck off). Scott said: Mexico is going to pay directly, or Mexico is going to pay indirectly. It reminds me of a friend that I had years ago, OK? Let me say this for the record. He said, You re going to give me my money or I m going to break your legs and you re going to give me my money. Mexico will pay for the wall or Trump will break them down. Ferguson was quick to point out just how ridiculous Scott s example was as he fired back, We re not 12 years old. This is not your lunch money. Scott completely missed the valid point and continued on: I m tired of that 12-year-old stuff. They re gonna pay it directly, or they re gonna pay it indirectly. And putting a tax on Western Union transfers is not unreasonable. These comments came just shortly after Trump s campaign stated that if the business mogul wins the election, the candidate would ban money transfers from the United States into Mexico unless Mexico contributed $5-10 billion for his precious wall.Scott and Ferguson got into a heated back-and forth, and Ferguson told the ignorant pastor, You have no idea what you re talking about. You can watch the chaotic segment below, in which all the panelists get themselves all worked up over Trump:


A look at the university's new mission. October 28, 2016 Jack Kerwick  Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, argued in a recently published essay that while its traditional "telos" (end or goal) has been truth, within the last few decades the university has assumed another: Social Justice.  The university, however, can only have one telos.  The conflict between these two goals has raged for decades, Haidt claims. Last year, though, it became unmanageable when student groups at 86 universities and colleges around the country issued " demands " to administrators, demands for Social Justice that, by and large, were met.  The following statement is posted at BlackLiberationCollective.org :  "We demand at the minimum, Black students and Black faculty to be reflected by the national percentage of Black folk in the state and the country.  We demand free intuition for Black and indigenous students.  We demand a divestment from prisons and an investment in communities."  A statement of "principles" follows. The Black Liberation Collective (BLC) opposes "anti-Blackness;" "sexism;" "ableism;" "capitalism;" "White privilege;" "inequality;" and "heteronormativity." It rejects as well non-violence considered as a principle in contradistinction to a tactic .  "Anti-Black racism is woven in the fabric of our global society," says the BLC. "When social systems are racialized by white supremacy, whiteness becomes the default of humanity and Blackness is stripped of its humanity, becoming a commodity, becoming disposable."  The BLC is "anti-sexist" insofar as it affirms "the value of all Black women's lives whether cisgender, transgender, or genderqueer." In addition to rejecting "Eurocentric beauty standards that are made to lessen the beauty of Black women and Black women's features," being "anti-sexist" also means realizing that "police brutality, the prison industrial system, school to prison pipeline" and the like are aspects of "structural racism" that affect black women as much as they impact black men.  Black liberation entails "queer liberation" and "trans liberation." "We also seek to destroy the heteronormative norms that dehumanize Black queer people," the BLC asserts. The "homophobia" within "the Black community" comes by way of "the same hands responsible for white supremacy."  Presumably, "transphobia" within the black community is also a legacy of white supremacy. In cooperation with "cissexism" and "the gender binary," "transphobia" has "been used as a means of invalidating and erasing our trans+ family members." The BLC pledges to "eliminate" such systemic biases.  These Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) are staunch opponents of "the capitalist notions of infinite profit, homogenized markets, and a privatized means of production." Capitalism, they insist, "is the economic system" that's been "used to justify" the "oppression," "marginalization," and "exploitation" of blacks.  Nor is the solution to this "oppression" to be found in supporting black-owned businesses. The BLC explains that "we cannot adopt the patriarchal, exploitative tools of our oppressors as we seek liberation." Rather, the solution is to "dismantle anti-Black capitalist corporations that benefit from our oppression."  It isn't only the "capitalist corporations" that these students want destroyed. They demand as well "the eradication of all institutional practices and policies that discriminate against the black community" and "the removal of all federal, state, and local government officials who do not abide by our principles."  "The State and all its institutions that deny Black humanity and Black agency must be dismantled and replaced with those that produce Black liberty."  Concerning its attitude toward America, the BLC is clear: "This country was built to systematically oppress groups of people, and the Black Liberation Collective will not stand for it."  Haidt misspeaks in characterizing 2015 as the year when the university experienced a crisis of identity, an unmanageable conflict of goals. To judge from the vast majority of liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences departments, Social Justice long ago eclipsed truth as the raison d'etre of the academy. Interestingly, it is these SJW demands from last year that bear this out.  Perhaps it is because I've spent the last couple of decades in the academy in the capacity of both student and faculty that I may be more privy to this than are some others, but it's painfully obvious that these student activists did not come up with these demands on their own. If they didn't have their professors actually write the demands for them, then the Black Liberation Collective unquestionably derived the concepts and language of their statement of demands from their mentors.  To put it bluntly, one must attend college, major in the liberal arts and humanities, and study under far left professors in order to think in the terms that are characteristic of Social Justice Warriors.  Leftist ideologues are training their students to bend the university to their will. This is the first point. There is, though, another, a rich irony that is lost upon these self-styled radicals.  For all of their bluster over "systemic racism" and "structural white supremacy," i.e. phenomena that are omnipresent and, hence, largely unconscious, these black students, their white collaborators, and their professors fail to realize that their thinking (for lack of a better term) on these issues is about as Eurocentric as one can get. The " critical race theory " to which the BLC subscribe is a version of Marxism, the philosophical vision of a 19 th century German-Jewish man. The Marxist tradition within which they are enmeshed was fleshed out over a span of generations by mostly white heterosexual men.  But there's more to it than this.  The idea that "racism," "sexism," "homophobia," "transphobia," "ableism," and the like against which SJWs rail are evils to be defeated is itself peculiar to the moral traditions of European civilization. If these "isms" and "phobias" are immoral it can only be because those who are guilty of them fail to judge the individual as an individual. Color, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and so forth are neither constitutive of nor essential to the moral identity of the individual—but only if the framework of the doctrine of individualism is accepted.  Yet this conception of the sacrosanct individual is as Eurocentric as the proverbial "apple pie" is American.  The Social Justice Warriors' intellectual landscape is as much a European "colony" as was any West African country in the 19 th or early 20 th centuries. Those in the Black Liberation Collective have most definitely internalized the modes of thought of their "oppressor."  Now, they would have been well aware of all this had they received a genuine education in college rather than a training in Social Justice.