849: Short Circuit

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 23:31

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 12:45

Did Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton vow to raise taxes on the middle class?

Not really.

Hillary Clinton accepts the nomination on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia July 28. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

During remarks at a rally in Nebraska Tuesday, Clinton criticized her rival Donald Trump for wanting to ''cut taxes for the super-rich.''

''Well we're not going there, my friends,'' she said. ''I'm telling you right now, we're going to write fairer rules for the middle class, and we aren't going to raise taxes on the middle class!''

However, Clinton poorly annunciated the word ''aren't'' and an online debate ensued, with some social media users arguing that she said ''are.''

If Clinton had indeed stated ''we are going to raise taxes on the middle class,'' it would have likely been a slip of tongue. According to her campaign website, Clinton has promised ''tax relief'' for the middle class, while she has repeatedly vowed to ensure ''the wealthiest Americans and large corporations pay their fair share.''

Some media outlets quoted Clinton as saying ''are'' and speculated that the moment was a ''Freudian slip.''

Watch below:

A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign did not immediately return TheBlaze's request for comment.

'--

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 21:11

Hillary Clinton comes up $2.2 trillion short in paying for her policy agenda, despite hiking taxes by $1.3 trillion, according to a new analysis of the Democratic nominee's campaign platform.

The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute, released a report Thursday finding Clinton's domestic agenda would ''have a dramatic effect on the federal budget.''

Gordon Gray, American Action Forum's director of fiscal policy, based the report on estimates of policy proposals from the Clinton campaign itself, as well as independent analyses from the Tax Policy Center and the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Gray found Clinton's policies for expanding government's role in family leave and student loans would contribute significantly to the deficit, and in turn a growing national debt that stands at $19.358 trillion.

In fact, the amount of debt held by the public alone would reach $25.825 trillion in 2026 under Clinton's plan. The amount of debt held by the public today is $13.968 trillion.

Click for more at The Washington Free Beacon.

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 13:03

During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties '-- three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush's side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.

No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.

Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president '-- keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.

I also saw the secretary's commitment to our nation's security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision of all '-- whether to put young American women and men in harm's way.

Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.

I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, ''Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.''

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.

Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests '-- endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

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Mr. Trump has also undermined security with his call for barring Muslims from entering the country. This position, which so clearly contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions.

In fact, many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country, including the man, whom I cannot identify, who ran the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center for nearly a decade and who I believe is most responsible for keeping America safe since the Sept. 11 attacks.

My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 04:44

Michael Morell explained that Clinton is "highly qualified" for the job and "will deliver on the most important duty of a president '-- keeping our nation safe." | AP Photo

For former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, Donald Trump does not have what it takes to be commander in chief.

In a New York Times op-ed published Friday, the 33-year agency veteran notes that he has been heretofore private with his political preferences and is registered as neither a Democrat nor a Republican.

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"No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president," wrote Morell.

Morell also suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin has successfully co-opted Trump's message in complimenting the political neophyte and getting exactly what he wanted in return with more praise even in light of his strongman tendencies toward journalists and dissidents.

"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation," Morell wrote.

Morell laid out "two strongly held beliefs" that led him to the conclusion that Clinton should be president. The first of those, Morell explained, is that Clinton is "highly qualified" for the job and "will deliver on the most important duty of a president '-- keeping our nation safe."

"Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security," he continued, noting his work with Clinton in her capacity of secretary of state and her resolute advocacy of the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Trump "has no experience on national security," Morell wrote.

"Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief," Morell said, naming Trump's "obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law. The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security."

Trump's evolving proposal to ban Muslim immigrants from the U.S. has also undermined national security, playing "into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions," he continued.

"My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now," Morell concluded. "Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president."

The forceful words from the former top official represent only the latest denouncement of Trump from within the intelligence community. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, for example, has expressed strong reservations about Trump leading the nation's armed forces.

Clinton's campaign featured Hayden and other conservative voices criticizing Trump's temperament and preparedness in a new 30-second ad out Friday titled "Unfit."

Trump responded to the latest attack on his foreign policy chops with a statement directly blaming both Clinton and President Barack Obama for "destabilizing the Middle East, having let ISIS take firm hold in Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention their allowing Americans to be slaughtered at Benghazi."

"Clinton's home email server that she lied to the American people about was a profound national security risk, and it should come as no surprise that her campaign would push out another Obama-Clinton pawn (who is not independent) to try to change the subject in a week when Clinton's role in putting Iran on the path to nuclear weapons and this Administration being called out for sending $400 million in cash to the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism is on every front page in the country," Trump said in a statement, in reference to the amount of money paid in cash to Iran earlier this year on the same day four American prisoners were freed. "Hillary Clinton has bad judgment and is unfit to serve as President,' he added.

A slew of Republicans have either said they will not support Trump or outright defected to supporting Clinton, including Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, New York Rep. Richard Hanna, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Frank Lavin, who served as director of the Office of Political Affairs under Ronald Reagan and ambassador to Singapore under George W. Bush, also endorsed Clinton in a statement provided to POLITICO.

''Having served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, I've seen what it takes to be commander-in-chief, and to make split second decisions under extreme pressure '' Donald Trump doesn't have that," Lavin said, calling Trump ''temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States, and just the thought of him having access to nuclear codes is unnerving.

"I simply can't support someone as erratic as Donald Trump," Lavin continued. ''That's why for the first time in my life, I am voting for a Democrat for president, I'm voting for Hillary Clinton because she has what it takes to keep our country safe from threats here at home and abroad."

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 21:08

Donald Trump is dangerous for our country. His impulsiveness and lack of control over his own emotions are of concern. It is our patriotic duty to raise the question of his mental stability to be the commander in chief and leader of the free world. Mr. Trump appears to exhibit all the symptoms of the mental disorder Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Mental health professionals need to come forward and urge the Republican party to insist that their nominee has an evaluation to determine his mental fitness for the job. It is entirely possible that some individuals with NPD can successfully function in many careers, but not the Presidency of the United States. We deserve to have the greatest understanding of Mr. Trump's mental health status before we head to the polls on November 8th, 2016. #DiagnoseTrump

So far in his campaign for President of the United States, Donald Trump has unabashedly exploited fears for political gain. His trolling-tweets alone have helped damage our country's relationship with foreign allies - threatening our national security. His divisiveness has only served to make us less safe. 6,000 lawsuit and one failed Trump University later, we have seen his ruthless business practices on full display, ripping off thousands of hard working Americans - without remorse - to put an extra dollar in his pocket. #DiagnoseTrump

The American Psychiatrist Association has declared it unethical for psychiatrists and psychologists to ''comment on an individual's mental state without examining him personally and having the patient's consent to make such comments.'' I call on mental health professionals to publicly urge the Republican party to conduct an evaluation of Mr. Trump and officially determine if he is mentally fit to lead the free world. #DiagnoseTrump

Mr. Trump appears unable to control his compulsion and displays characteristics of all nine criteria to officially diagnose an individual with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. #DiagnoseTrump

If you believe Trump has publicly displayed characteristics of the nine criterion below, please sign this petition as a call to action to #DiagnoseTrump.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder DSM IV Criteria:

Definition: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements);

(2) Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;

(3) Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);

(4) Requires excessive admiration;

(5) Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations;

(6) Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends;

(7) Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others;

(8) Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her;

(9) Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

For more information, click here:www.emedicine.medscape.com/

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 00:08

If there was any evidence Donald Trump was capable of thinking beyond the next moment, it would be easy to suspect that 90 percent of what's bubbled from his lips over the last three days is a diversion. Attacking the Khans. Hints that he won't accept the results of the election. Complaints that the polls are fishy. Saying that women should run away from sexual harassment. Even kicking a baby out of a rally. All of it.

Because as bad as all this is, if it serves to fend off media attention from the thing Trump's campaign has suddenly gone quiet about, it could be worth it. Because the thing they're not talking about is Russia.

While Donald Trump may now claim that his request for Russia to interfere in the election was just an example of sarcasm, it certainly didn't seem that way to those listening on that day. And even if you wave that away'--including the calls for a Senate hearing on the topic'--other aspects of this story simply can't be passed off as a joke.

In particular this is one place where both Donald Trump and campaign manager Paul Manafort are deliberately, publicly, and obviously lying. And that should be setting off major alarms.

Donald Trump campaign Chair Paul Manafort denied Sunday a two-week-old report that the campaign pushed for changes in the Republican platform that softened the party's stance on helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. '...

When asked once more if anyone on the campaign was involved, Manafort said, "No one, zero.''

The problem with Manafort's claim is that there are hundreds of witnesses to the contrary.

Inside the meeting, Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and ''providing lethal defensive weapons'' to the Ukrainian military. '...

Trump staffers in the room, who are not delegates but are there to oversee the process, intervened. By working with pro-Trump delegates, they were able to get the issue tabled while they devised a method to roll back the language.

It wasn't just Trump delegates who objected. It was members of Trump's campaign staff. And those Trump staff made it clear they weren't working on their own.

The two Trump staffers claimed to a delegate that they had to call and talk to ''Mr. Trump'''--perhaps name-dropping as obnoxious staffers, or perhaps Trump really was involved at the highest level with this particular amendment. The Trump staffers told the delegate that they had discussed Ukraine policy directly with Trump.

One of the two staffers has been identified as J. D. Gordon, who is not only a Trump campaign official but a former spokesman for the Pentagon who supervised transfers to Guantanamo Bay for Donald Rumsfeld.

And while Trump is eager to talk about Hillary Clinton's ''missing'' personal emails, there are some actual missing documents he isn't anxious to talk about.

Meanwhile, records for the meeting seem to have disappeared. A co-chair for the national security platform subcommittee told The Daily Beast that the minutes for the meeting have been discarded. The Republican National Committee had no comment when asked whether this was standard procedure for all the subcommittees.

Why would Donald Trump care about the platform's position on the Ukraine? Why would he care enough about it to change it? Why would he care enough about it to lie about it? Why would someone make sure that the notes from the meeting were nowhere to be found?

Well, Trump has expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign.

US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has said it is a ''great honour'' to receive a compliment from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The property tycoon hailed Mr. Putin as a man ''highly respected within his own country and beyond''.

'... he said, as plain as day, that he has ''always felt fine about Putin''; he called him ''strong'' and a ''powerful leader''; and he suggested that he should be respected for his ''popularity within his country.''

Trump has also been very casual in slinging around the idea that he would weaken the NATO alliance.

America's NATO allies may be on their own after November if Russia attacks them.

Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, appeared to make U.S. military support for NATO member states conditional on whether those states have met their financial obligations to the bloc, which has served as the cornerstone of global security after World War II.

And Trump has waffled on the idea of whether the US would intervene to stop an invasion of the Baltic states.

When Donald J. Trump was asked on Wednesday whether, if elected president, he would defend the Baltic nations against a hypothetical Russian attack, his answer was, essentially: It depends.

But why would Trump'--whose frequent bungling of foreign policy questions, including those about the Ukraine, suggests that he'd have a hard time finding anything in Eastern Europe other than supermodels'--be so quick to address what is, after all, a relatively minor plank in the Republican platform? Why would he care?

He might not. But Paul Manafort would. Trump's campaign manager worked long and hard for pro-Russian forces inside the Ukraine that were trying to destroy the pro-western government.

President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who owed his election to, as an American diplomat put it, an ''extreme makeover'' Mr. Manafort oversaw, bolted the country in the face of violent street protests. He found sanctuary in Russia and never returned, as his patron, President Vladimir V. Putin, proceeded to dismember Ukraine, annexing Crimea and fomenting a war in two other provinces that continues. ...

Within months of his client's political demise, [Manafort] went to work seeking to bring his disgraced party back to power, much as he had Mr. Yanukovych himself nearly a decade earlier. Mr. Manafort has already had some success, with former Yanukovych loyalists '-- and some Communists '-- forming a new bloc opposing Ukraine's struggling pro-Western government.

In doing this work, Manafort has been working directly against the interests of the United States. And directly for the interests of Vladimir Putin.

And he may still be on the payroll.

Until he joined Mr. Trump's presidential campaign this year, Mr. Manafort's work in Ukraine had been his most significant political campaign in recent years. He began his career in Republican politics in the 1970s and extended it overseas to advising authoritarian leaders, including Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Mr. Yanukovych. '...

It is not clear that Mr. Manafort's work in Ukraine ended with his work with Mr. Trump's campaign. A communications aide for Mr. Lyovochkin, who financed Mr. Manafort's work, declined to say whether he was still on retainer or how much he had been paid.

That's who Donald Trump hired to run his campaign: A man whose most significant work was helping foreign dictators destroy democratic opposition.

Following the hiring of Paul Manafort, Trump's own position on the Ukraine changed.

Donald Trump sounded like a supporter of Ukraine's territorial integrity last September, when he spoke by video feed to a gathering of political and business elites in Kiev. '...

In recent days, however, Trump has struck a far milder tone. He now says he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift punitive U.S. sanctions against Russia. The alternative, he warned on Monday, could be World War III.

Let's review:

Donald Trump has frequently expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, viewing him as a ''strong'' leader who Trump ''admires.'' Trump has also given wildly differing statements on his personal relationship with Putin.Trump has, on multiple occasions, suggested a weakening of the NATO alliance.Despite this, Trump previously expressed support for the Ukraine.After Trump hired Paul Manafort, a man who had worked for'--and may still be working for'--pro-Russian forces seeking to destroy the democratic government of the Ukraine, Trump's position on the Ukraine changed to one that is far more friendly to Russia.Trump campaign staff, including former Rumsfeld assistant J. D. Gordon, halted the implementation of pro-Ukraine language in the GOP platform, and insisted on language that was much more supportive of Russia after saying they had to speak directly to Trump about the policy.One week after the change was written into the GOP platform, emails hacked from the DNC were released through Wikileaks. Both government and independent investigators have identified the hackers as being associated with the Russian government.Donald Trump suggested that Russia might also hack Hillary Clinton's email server and recover 30,000 emails (which are not ''missing,'' but were personal emails deleted by a team of lawyers who reviewed the server). Trump later claimed he was being sarcastic, but within a week of his request, further hacks took place at the DCCC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. These hacks have also been identified as coming from Russian sources.Both Manafort and Trump issued denials that they had anything to do with the changes to the Republican platform, despite the many witnesses and despite having made no objection to the news as it was reported at the time.Trump, in an interview, seemed not only confused about the two-year-old invasion of the Ukraine, but gave apparently contradictory indications that, were he elected, he would cede the occupied Crimea to Russia, and that the Russians would withdraw from the Ukraine.None of that is speculation. Not one word of it is theory.

Campaign ActionRight now, there's no proof that Trump and Manafort have been involved in a quid-pro-quo arrangement with Vladimir Putin. However, this whole thing stinks to high heaven. This isn't just a hint of smoke on the horizon, this is a raging forest fire of connections between a United States presidential candidate and a foreign power.

As much as you may be offended over how Trump has treated the Kahns, as incensed as you may be over Trump's misogynistic response to questions about sexual harassment, as bad as you may feel for that embarrassed woman holding a crying child '... this is the story Donald Trump hopes you forget.

Donald Trump is suddenly pretending that he never met or talked with Vladimir Putin, when he previously said he did. Donald Trump is suddenly pretending that he had nothing to do with pro-Russian language in the Republican platform when we know his campaign put it there. Manafort is denying any involvement from the campaign. We know that's not true.

There's a great big why that needs to be answered by Manafort and Trump. Because it's very easy to think of an answer.

Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West'--and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump. Over the past decade, Russia has boosted right-wing populists across Europe. It loaned money to Marine Le Pen in France, well-documented transfusions of cash to keep her presidential campaign alive. Such largesse also wended its way to the former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, who profited ''personally and handsomely'' from Russian energy deals, as an American ambassador to Rome once put it. (Berlusconi also shared a 240-year-old bottle of Crimean wine with Putin and apparently makes ample use of a bed gifted to him by the Russian president.)

There's a clear pattern: Putin runs stealth efforts on behalf of politicians who rail against the European Union and want to push away from NATO.

Oh, yeah, and Donald Trump still refuses to release his taxes. Which is a very convenient position for someone who may have some '... external sources of funds.

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 12:57

In a turn of events that shocked the political world and threw the presidential race into unprecedented turmoil, Donald J. Trump announced yesterday that he is quitting the race and endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Trump said the only point of his campaign was to show how stupid and gullible many Republican voters are.

''I've been a Democrat all of my adult life,'' Trump told a packed and boisterous news conference. ''But I knew if I ran as a Republican and said increasingly ridiculous, idiotic, racist and sexist things that I would get a lot of votes.''

But he said he had no idea he would be able to win the Republican nomination and poll 40 percent or better in a national race against Clinton.

''Did people really believe that I could build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and get the Mexicans to pay for it?'' Trump asked, ''and that we could deport 11 million illegal aliens? That's ridiculous. How could we possibly do that?''

Trump said he wanted to show just how gullible the far-right wing was and how weak-kneed Republican leaders were.

''Even after I made racist statements about that judge and attacked a Gold Star family, the Republican leadership continued to endorse me,'' Trump said. ''Man, what does it take to get tossed out of the Republican Party?''

He also pointed out that he had offered no real solutions to any of the country's problems and nobody, even the news media, took much notice that ''there was no there there in my campaign,'' he said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, while expressing shock at Trump's announcement, said, ''After I thought about it a bit, I realized this made a lot more sense then the campaign he was running. The joke's on us.''

Fifty-one Republicans immediately announced their candidacy to replace Trump on the ballot.

Asked if he felt any remorse about fooling so many people, Trump answered in typical Trumpian style: ''No. They're all losers.''

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 20:16

Hitler Reacts to Maetenloch Stepping Down from the ONT | Main | Hardcore Social Justice Warrior Advocacy Channel With Occasional Highlight Reels of Home Runs Hemmorhaging Subscribers, For Some Reason >>August 05, 2016

Mike Morrell, Former Deputy Director of CIA, Endorses Hillary;Media Forgets to Note He Was Central Pillar of Hilary's Benghazi Cover-Up, Who Then Went to Work For Hillary-Aligned Private Intelligence FirmMike Morell: Hillary's snarling, lying guard-dog at the CIA.

So charge Congressmen.

Two leading Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say that Michael Morell, former deputy director and twice acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, provided an account of his role on Benghazi that was often highly misleading and at times deliberately false.

''I went back and reviewed some of his testimony the other day and he's gotten himself in a real box,'' says Senator Saxby Chambliss, the highest-ranking Republican on the committee. ''It's really strange. I've always thought Mike was a straight-up guy, gave us good briefings'--factual, straightforward. I mean, this has really been strange the last few weeks'--all this now being uncovered.''

At issue is the central role Morell played in producing the Obama administration's flawed talking points about the fatal attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, and the misleading answers he provided to lawmakers who investigated them.

The allegations of misconduct are serious. In the ''additional views'' portion of the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, six Republican members accuse Morell of lying in sworn testimony to Congress. Several Republican senators tell The Weekly Standard that Morell misled them in one-on-one or small-group meetings about the talking points. Morell'--now counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consultancy close to Hillary Clinton'--did not respond to a request for comment.

Three aspects of the controversy are drawing particular interest: (1) Morell's obfuscation of his central role in rewriting the [Benghazi] talking points, (2) Morell's contention that the FBI rewrote the talking points, and (3) Morell's false claim that the talking points were provided to the White House merely as a heads-up and not for coordination.

What is indisputable is that when Clapper was asked who was responsible for editing the talking points, and Clapper said he had no idea, Morrell said nothing, despite sitting next to Clapper -- and Morrell knew it was he himself who had edited them.

He tried to blame particularly blameworthy parts of his own Hillary-friendly handiwork on the FBI:

Under questioning from the senators about the talking-points editing process, Morell tried to blame the FBI for cutting the reference to al-Qa'eda terrorism; he said the FBI didn't want to compromise an ongoing criminal investigation. When Graham called the FBI and told them what Morell had said, 'they went ballistic,' Graham said in an interview with Fox News. 'Confronted with this, Morell changed his statement and admitted that he, and the CIA, had been responsible after all.'

When Hillary claims "Oh, even our intelligence community thought the attack in Benghazi was spontaneous, and Al Qaeda wasn't involved," she seems to be backed up on that point only by... Mike Morrell, who is still spinning Bengahzi to conform with Hillary's politically-inspired fantasy version of the events:

Although Morell has made statements undermining Hillary Clinton and President Obama on other intelligence issues, he is actively assisting both the mainstream media and the Obama administration in an effort to ignore and revise the 2012 events in Benghazi with his new book The Great War of Our Time.

''One of the most striking aspects of Morell's chapters on Benghazi is his dogged insistence that the attacks were simply the result of a mob spinning out of control,'' writes Steven Hayes for The Weekly Standard. ''But Morell maintains that the attacks were not planned and claims, repeatedly and bizarrely, that the attackers did not necessarily want to harm Americans.''

This, Hayes notes, does not match the Abu Khatallah indictment, which contends that the objective of the attackers in Benghazi was to ''kill United States citizens at the Mission and the Annex.''

As far as I can tell, Hillary's only real support for the idea that the "intelligence community" endorsed her version of events is that her very loyal pet CIA Deputy Director agreed wit her.

It's almost as if Hillary Clinton said, "I need one person in intelligence to back up my fiction or else I'm a goner," and Mike Morrell said, "Madame, let me fall upon my sword for you."

And then she said, "Oh, by-the-by, I just happen to have some friends looking to take on a well-compensated employee at my pet private intelligence firm, the Beacon Group..."

And then he, of course, said: "Wow! What a coincidence! Seeing as I'm gonna be out of a job and all soon!"

And does the media mention this curious backstory, his very intimate connection with the Benghazi deception at the heart of the 2016 election?

That Mike Morrell appears to have been endorsing Hillary with each deceptive answers he gave Congress about Benghazi since 2012?

Nah. All they have to say is "CIA Director Says Trump Can't be Trusted with National Security."

Yeah. CIA Deputy Director. The guy whose ignominious exit from the CIA was followed up with -- get this -- a high-paying gig at yet another Clinton-aligned super-wealthy organization with shadowy purpose.

Funny how all of Hillary's cronies are always either on the payroll of the government, at her behest, or else have their nests feathered by Hillary's huge-dollar shadow government organizations, huh?

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 01:42

Best known for his investigative research work about Bill and Hillary Clinton, well-respected writer and author Victor Thorn was reportedly found dead Monday, August 1st, on his 54th birthday.Thorne was found at the top of a mountain near his home, with a bullet wound to his head, and his death has been ruled a suicide, according to police reports.

Thorn, whose birth name was Scott Robert Makufka, was a contributor for the American Free Press, a political activist, and the author of over 20 books.

He was best known his Clinton trilogy, Hillary (And Bill): The Sex Volume, Hillary (And Bill): The Drugs Volume, and Hillary (And Bill): The Murder Volume, as well as his latest book, Crowning Clinton: Why Hillary Shouldn't Be in the White House.

American Free Press released an announcement of Thorn's death, and said his latest book had been ''selling off the shelves'' at AFP recently.

Co-authors Roger Stone and Robert Morrow dedicated their new book, ''The Clintons' War on Women'' to Thorn in late 2015.

Talk show host Russell Scott said on August 3 that Thorn had been a guest on his show twice and was scheduled to be back on the show in September. Scott claimed that Thorne told him once, ''Russell, if I'm ever found dead, it was murder. I would never kill myself.''

Warning: Audio contains strong language.

AFP summarized Thorn's work as follows:

At the peak of his writing career, the author of some 20 books and 30 chapbooks, Thorn had reported for this newspaper for over a decade, writing thousands of articles on myriad subjects from conspiracy to health-related topics. Best known for his investigate research on the Clintons, Thorn wrote the Clinton trilogy'--three definitive works that delved into the history of the power couple including their sordid scandals, Bill Clinton's sexual assaults of multiple women, and the drug running out of Mena, Arkansas while Clinton was governor of the state.

Besides writing for AFP, Thorn published the works of numerous writers in the alternative media such as Michael Collins Piper, Adam Gorightly, Mark Glenn, John Kaminski and Joan d'Arc, while also producing five CDs and DVDs, one of which is a five-disc collection that covers the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Thorn also served as the editor of five anthologies, and his political articles have appeared in various newspapers around the country.

In February 2001, Thorn founded Babel magazine, an online publication that ran until early 2004 and featured some of the first articles devoted to the 9-11 conspiracy.

One of his books, The New World Order Exposed, was translated and published in Japan in 2006, while 9-11 on Trial has been republished by Progressive Press, and was also released in France to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 9-11.

After co-hosting ''The Victor Thorn Show'' on the Reality Radio Network from 2002-2003, in February 2004, Thorn co-founded WING TV (World Independent News Group), a daily Internet television and radio talk show viewed in over 100 countries worldwide.

Thorn has also made hundreds of different radio appearances (including ''Coast-to-Coast AM'' and ''The Lionel Show'' on WOR 710 in New York City) and has done weekly one-hour news updates on Alex Merklinger's ''Mysteries of the Mind,'' while also appearing weekly on Vyzygoth's ''From the Grassy Knoll'' and Frank Whalen's ''Frankly Speaking Radio.''

Thorn has been an avid political activist who spoke at the OKC Bombing 10th anniversary, as well as before the America First Party.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 01:41

Shawn Lucas, the attorney that served the DNC with legal papers in a lawsuit alleging fraud for actively working against the Bernie Sanders campaign, has been found dead. Lucas' death is the third suspicious death in the past two months that can be linked to the DNC and Hillary Clinton. DNC worker Seth Conrad Rich was shot to death while allegedly on his way to meet with FBI agents. Former UN official John Ashe also died one day before he was scheduled to testify against Hillary Clinton. Ashe's death was originally misreported as a heart attack, further investigations reveal he died by accidentally crushing his larynx while bench pressing at home.

The situations surrounding the men's deaths have caused an increasing number of theories to be spawned. Lucas, a reportedly healthy young man, was found dead on his bathroom floor by his girlfriend on the evening of August 2, 2016. Authorities have listed his cause of death as ''unknown.'' The video below shows Lucas and independent filmmaker Ricardo Villalba serving DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz with the official papers for the class action fraud suit.

Rich was also killed under suspicious circumstances. He was shot multiple times, however, the killers took nothing from Rich, indicating the death wasn't a robbery gone wrong. Rich was a 27-year-old Democratic staffer. The timing of his death has fed into theories that named Rich as a whistle blower secretly working to expose the election fraud within the DNC and bias against Bernie Sanders. None of these allegations of Rich working to ''blow open'' the DNC have been confirmed by a reputable source.

Ashe's death has also aroused suspicion among people following the situation. He was found dead in his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, after suffering from traumatic asphyxia when he crushed his larynx with a barbell.

The internet has become a whirl-wind of theories all trying to connect the three deaths to the corruption and class action fraud case against the DNC.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 04:55

VIA| An attorney who supported Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) named Sean Lucas filed papers at the DNC Services Corp. against then-Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the Washington, D.C. headquarters for the DNC.

The lawsuit was a fraud class action against the Democrat Party for how they treated Bernie Sanders supporters.

As we've learned from the WikiLeaks emails, everything Sanders supporters said about the DNC is true, and Sanders had the election stolen from him.

Now, attorney Lucas has been found dead:

Snopes reports that he was found dead on the bathroom floor:

We contacted Lucas' employer on 4 August 2016 to ask whether there was any truth to the rumor. According to an individual with whom we spoke at that company, Shawn Lucas died on 2 August 2016. The audibly and understandably shaken employee stated that interest in the circumstances of Lucas' death had prompted a number of phone calls and other queries, but the company had not yet ascertained any details about Lucas' cause of death and were unable to confirm anything more than the fact he had passed away.An unconfirmed report holds that Lucas was found lying on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend when she returned home on the evening of 2 August 2016. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life.

This leaves many questions to answer. Let us pray for Lucas' family during this difficult time. RIP.

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 14:16

Graham BeckelBorn(1949-12-22) December 22, 1949 (age 66)Old Lyme, Connecticut, U.S.OccupationActorYears active1973''presentRelativesBob Beckel, brotherGraham S. Beckel (born December 22, 1949) is an Americancharacter actor. He is known for his prolific guest appearances on television but has had prominent roles in several major films as well. He played Jack Fisk on Battlestar Galactica and Hal Sanders on Heroes.

Beckel portrayed oil tycoon Ellis Wyatt in Atlas Shrugged (2011). He has a recurring role on the AMC TV show Halt & Catch Fire as Nathan Cardiff, owner of the show's fictional company "Cardiff Electric".

Graham Beckel is the brother of Bob Beckel, a Democratic political adviser and former senior analyst at CNN.

Filmography[edit]External links[edit]

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 16:44

What's This?

U.S. gymnast McKayla Maroney poses with her silver medal on the podium of the women's vault final of the artistic gymnastics event of the London Olympic Games on August 5, 2012 at the 02 North Greenwich Arena in London.Image: THOMAS COEX/AFP/GettyImages

It only took McKayla Maroney a few seconds to generate one of the most memorable Olympic highlights of all time.

Her vault makes for one beautiful GIF. But don't expect to see many of those during the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee has issued its rules for news agencies covering the upcoming Summer games, and they're calling out all GIF makers.

The rules state that "Olympic Material must not be broadcast on interactive services" because doing so could "allow the viewer to make a viewing choice within a channel and thereby view Olympic Material at times and programs other than when broadcast as part of a News Program..."

In other words, if a news outlet show you footage from the Olympics, that could mean you won't watch it from the rights holder, who for U.S. residents is NBC.

That rule extends to Gifs.

"Additionally, the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited," the rules state.

News agencies that shirk the rule could find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit.

The internet is understandably upset about this development.

The creation and distribution of GIFs of major events that include media rights owners has become a bigger issue recently, particularly due to the popularity of the format on social media.

In October 2015, Twitter suspended a Deadspin account and a GIF-centric account from SBnation for tweeting out NFL plays in GIF form. The complaints to Twitter reportedly cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which covers copyrighted material.

That move drew plenty of criticism for what some viewed as an unnecessarily broad application of copyright. The idea of "fair use" was bandied about, even though it does not necessarily apply to this kind of situation.

As for the Olympics, it seems this is the first time GIFs have been called out in particular.

Topics: Business, Media, Olympics 2016, Sports

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 00:06

Image copyrightReutersImage caption Fethullah Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania in the US A court in Istanbul has issued an arrest warrant for US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen over Turkey's recent failed coup, media reports say.

The warrant accuses Mr Gulen of "ordering the 15 July coup attempt", the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkey has repeatedly urged the US to extradite Mr Gulen. He denies any role.

Turkey has cracked down heavily on those it believes responsible for the coup attempt, with much of the emphasis on perceived supporters of the cleric.

Tens of thousands of public sector workers have been suspended or dismissed, with many having their passports cancelled. There has also been a massive reshuffle of the military.

About 18,000 people have been detained or arrested.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also pledged to tackle businesses linked to Mr Gulen.

He told heads of the chambers of commerce in Ankara on Thursday: "This organisation has an extension in the business world. Maybe it is what they are most powerful at. Because it is a rule: no project can be successful without financing.

Media captionThe women regarded as heroes after Turkey's failed coup attempt"We are determined to totally cut off all business links of this organisation, which has blood on its hands."

More than 270 people died in events surrounding the coup attempt.

Mr Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in the US state of Pennsylvania.

Turkey has yet to make a formal request for his extradition. The US has said its judiciary will consider a request when filed. It also asked for evidence of the cleric's involvement, which Turkey says it has supplied.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 16:34

U.S. officials don't expect to extradite an imam Turkey blames for masterminding a failed coup because they aren't convinced by the evidence Ankara has presented so far and are troubled by threatening public statements from Turkish officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

U.S. and Turkish officials have privately discussed scenarios under which Fethullah Gulen might be extradited, but American authorities have yet to be persuaded there is a valid case for extradition, these people said. Mr. Gulen, who...

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 13:06

Hague Tribunal confirms Western allegations about former Serb President Milosevic's role in the Bosnian war were untrue. What about the identical observations made about Putin's role in the Ukrainian war?

Those of us with memories that extend back to the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s will remember the way Western governments and the Western media cast Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic as the villain of the piece.

Milosevic was made out to be a fascistic ultra nationalist presiding over a corrupt and authoritarian regime in Serbia who regularly murdered his opponents, tyrannised the people of Kosovo, and who orchestrated wars in Bosnia and Croatia as part of a megalomaniac ethnicist project to create a Greater Serbia. He was made out to be the puppet master behind the Serbs in the long Bosnian war, and was accused of committing genocide both in Bosnia and in Kosovo.

When Milosevic eventually fell from power following Western backed protests against him, he was put on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague on all these charges. Though he died whilst the trial was underway, the Western media from time to time continues to repeat these charges as if they had been proved to be true. Anyone who has ever questioned these charges, or who has suggested that there might be more to the wars in Yugoslavia than an evil plot by Milosevic and his associates, is regularly denounced as an apologist for ''ethnic cleansing'' and genocide, and as a stooge of Milosevic or at best a ''useful idiot''.

It is therefore very interesting to see how over a succession of trials the international tribunal in The Hague, as well as other investigations and tribunals, have comprehensively rejected the entire case against Milosevic as Western governments and the Western media have told it.

The process actually began in Kosovo where investigators quickly discovered that claims made during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 that hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered there on Milosevic's orders were simply untrue. It continued with Milosevic's trial when '' as discussed brilliantly by the British writer John Laughland in his book Travesty '' despite the prosecution using every conceivable dodge to convict him, the case against Milosevic essentially unravelled. There was then a Judgment in the International Court of Justice made shortly after Milosevic's death, which confirmed that neither he nor Serbia had any role in the Srebrenica affair. And it has now concluded with a lengthy discussion of Milosevic's role in the Bosnian war in the international tribunal's Judgment against the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Rather than discuss this Judgment in detail I will confine myself to reproducing Andy Wilcoxson's excellent summary of it:

''The March 24th Karadzic judgment states that ''the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan'' to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory.

The Karadzic trial chamber found that ''the relationship between Milosevic and the Accused had deteriorated beginning in 1992; by 1994, they no longer agreed on a course of action to be taken. Furthermore, beginning as early as March 1992, there was apparent discord between the Accused and Milosevic in meetings with international representatives, during which Milosevic and other Serbian leaders openly criticised Bosnian Serb leaders of committing 'crimes against humanity' and 'ethnic cleansing' and the war for their own purposes.''

The judges noted that Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic both favored the preservation of Yugoslavia and that Milosevic was initially supportive, but that their views diverged over time. The judgment states that ''from 1990 and into mid-1991, the political objective of the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership was to preserve Yugoslavia and to prevent the separation or independence of BiH, which would result in a separation of Bosnian Serbs from Serbia; the Chamber notes that Slobodan Milosevic endorsed this objective and spoke against the independence of BiH.''

The Chamber found that ''the declaration of sovereignty by the SRBiH Assembly in the absence of the Bosnian Serb delegates on 15 October 1991, escalated the situation,'' but that Milosevic was not on board with the establishment of Republika Srpska in response. The judgment says that ''Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to take a more cautious approach''

The judgment states that in intercepted communications with Radovan Karadzic, ''Milosevic questioned whether it was wise to use 'an illegitimate act in response to another illegitimate act' and questioned the legality of forming a Bosnian Serb Assembly.'' The judges also found that ''Slobodan Milosevic expressed his reservations about how a Bosnian Serb Assembly could exclude the Muslims who were 'for Yugoslavia'.''

The judgment notes that in meetings with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials ''Slobodan Milosevic stated that '[a]ll members of other nations and ethnicities must be protected' and that '[t]he national interest of the Serbs is not discrimination'.'' Also that ''Milosevic further declared that crime needed to be fought decisively.''

The trial chamber notes that ''In private meetings, Milosevic was extremely angry at the Bosnian Serb leadership for rejecting the Vance-Owen Plan and he cursed the Accused.'' They also found that ''Milosevic tried to reason with the Bosnian Serbs saying that he understood their concerns, but that it was most important to end the war.''

The judgment states that ''Milosevic also questioned whether the world would accept that the Bosnian Serbs who represented only one third of the population of BiH would get more than 50% of the territory and he encouraged a political agreement.''

At a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council the judgment says that ''Milosevic told the Bosnian Serb leadership that they were not entitled to have more than half the territory in BiH, stating that: 'there is no way that more than that could belong to us! Because, we represent one third of the population. ['...] We are not entitled to in excess of half of the territory '' you must not snatch away something that belongs to someone else! ['...] How can you imagine two thirds of the population being crammed into 30% of the territory, while 50% is too little for you?! Is it humane, is it fair?!'''

In other meetings with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials, the judgment notes that Milosevic ''declared that the war must end and that the Bosnian Serbs' biggest mistake was to want a complete defeat of the Bosnian Muslims.'' Because of the rift between Milosevic and the Bosnian-Serbs, the judges note that ''the FRY reduced its support for the RS and encouraged the Bosnian Serbs to accept peace proposals.''''

In other words there was no Greater Serbia project on the part of Milosevic, Karadzic or anyone else, Milosevic (and Karadzic) wanted to hold Yugoslavia together (as Western leaders at the time also professed they wanted to do), Milosevic was not the puppet master of the Bosnian war and had only limited influence over the Bosnian Serb leadership led by Karadzic with whom he was on increasingly bad terms, and so far from being committed to violent solutions, war crimes or ethnic cleansing Milosevic always spoke out against them and at all times strove for peace.

Needless to say the Western media has failed to report this Judgment. Nor have any of the Western politicians or journalists who monstered Milosevic during the 1990s come forward to admit that what they said about him '' which was used to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 '' was untrue. On the contrary I expect them to ignore this Judgment and go on saying what they said about Milosevic before, just as the media in the West ignores or fails to report other court Judgments or investigations that contradict its chosen narrative, such as the succession of Judgments confirming that the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a fraudster that the European Court of Human Rights has made, or the Tagliavini report which has established that it was Georgia not Russia that began the war in South Ossetia in 2008.

To those of us however who pay more attention to such things, it is impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between the West's treatment of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s and the West's treatment of Vladimir Putin today. Almost identical claims about Putin's role in the wars in Ukraine are being made today as were made in the 1990s about Milosevic's role in the wars in Yugoslavia. Those of us who question these claims find ourselves called ''Putin apologists'' or ''useful idiots'', just as those who question the claims made about Milosevic's role in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s find themselves called ''Milosevic apologists'' or ''useful idiots''. Hopefully this time it will not take 20 years before these claims, like those once made against Milosevic, are properly examined and found to be untrue.

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 14:24

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, among its other functions, decides ''hostile work environment'' harassment claims brought against federal agencies. In doing so, it applies the same legal rules that courts apply to private employers, and that the EEOC follows in deciding whether to sue private employers. The EEOC has already ruled that coworkers' wearing Confederate flag T-shirts can be punishable harassment (a decision that I think is incorrect); and, unsurprisingly, this is extending to other political speech as well. Here's an excerpt from Shelton D. [pseudonym] v. Brennan, 2016 WL 3361228, decided by the EEOC two months ago:

On January 8, 2014, Complainant filed a formal complaint in which he alleged that the Agency subjected him to discrimination on the basis of race (African American) and in reprisal for prior EEO activity when, starting in the fall of 2013, a coworker (C1) repeatedly wore a cap to work with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag, which depicts a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase ''Don't Tread on Me.''

Complainant stated that he found the cap to be racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, a ''slave trader & owner of slaves.'' Complainant also alleged that he complained about the cap to management; however, although management assured him C1 would be told not to wear the cap, C1 continued to come to work wearing the offensive cap. Additionally, Complainant alleged that on September 2, 2013, a coworker took a picture of him on the work room floor without his consent. In a decision dated January 29, 2014, the Agency dismissed Complainant's complaint on the basis it failed to state a claim . . . .

Complainant maintains that the Gadsden Flag is a ''historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.'' He notes that the Vice President of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters cited the Gadsden Flag as the equivalent of the Confederate Battle Flag when he successfully had it removed from a New Haven, Connecticut fire department flagpole.

After a thorough review of the record, it is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context. Moreover, it is clear that the flag and its slogan have been used to express various non-racial sentiments, such as when it is used in the modern Tea Party political movement, guns rights activism, patriotic displays, and by the military.

However, whatever the historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts. For example, in June 2014, assailants with connections to white supremacist groups draped the bodies of two murdered police officers with the Gadsden flag during their Las Vegas, Nevada shooting spree. [Footnote: Shooters in Metro ambush that left five dead spoke of white supremacy and a desire to kill police, Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 8, 2014, available online at: http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/shooters-metro-ambush-left-five-dead-spoke-white-supremacy-and-desire-kill-police.] Additionally, in 2014, African-American New Haven firefighters complained about the presence of the Gadsden flag in the workplace on the basis that the symbol was racially insensitive. [Paul Bass, Flag Sparks Fire Department Complaint, New Haven Independent, Feb. 25, 2014, available online at:http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/tea_party_fire_department/.] Certainly, Complainant ascribes racial connotations to the symbol based on observations that it is sometimes displayed in racially-tinged situations.

In light of the ambiguity in the current meaning of this symbol, we find that Complainant's claim must be investigated to determine the specific context in which C1 displayed the symbol in the workplace. In so finding, we are not prejudging the merits of Complainant's complaint. Instead, we are precluding a procedural dismissal that would deprive us of evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by C1's display of the symbol.

A few thoughts:

1. Recall that this is not a case about when private employers may restrict what their employees wear on the job, or even about when government employers may do so. Private employers have very broad power on this, because they aren't bound by the First Amendment (though statutes in some states may constrain employers' power to some extent). Government employers also have fairly broad power to restrict their employees' on-the-job speech and behavior.

Instead, this is a case about the rules that all employers, public or private, must follow, on pain of massive legal liability. The harassment law rules (which, as I noted, are the same for private employers as for the federal government) are imposed by the government acting as sovereign '-- the area where the First Amendment should provide the most protection '-- not just the government acting as employer.

2. Nothing in the opinion suggests that the cap wearer said anything racist to Shelton D.; I've read many such EEOC decisions, and they generally list all the significant allegations of harassment. (I can't access the specific complaint in the case, because all that information is kept secret in EEOC proceedings.) Shelton D.'s objection was apparently just to the wearing of the flag, and the ideology that he thinks has become associated with the flag. And the claim that the EEOC is allowing to go forward is simply that the cap, in some social or workplace ''context'' would be reasonably seen as conveying a racially offensive message.

3. Let's think about how this plays out in the workplace. Imagine that you are a reasonable employer. You don't want to restrict employee speech any more than is necessary, but you also don't want to face the risk of legal liability for allowing speech that the government might label ''harassing.'' An employee comes to you, complaining that a coworker's wearing a ''Don't Tread on Me'' cap '-- or having an ''All Lives Matter'' bumper sticker on a car parked in the employee lot, or ''Stop Illegal Immigration'' sign on the coworker's cubicle wall '-- constitutes legally actionable ''hostile environment harassment,'' in violation of federal employment law. The employee claims that in ''the specific context'' (perhaps based on what has been in the news, or based on what other employees have been saying in lunchroom conversations), this speech is ''racially tinged'' or ''racially insensitive.''

Would you feel pressured, by the risk of a lawsuit and of liability, into suppressing speech that expresses such viewpoints? Or would you say, ''Nope, I'm not worried about the possibility of liability, I'll let my employees keep talking''? (Again, the question isn't what you may do as a matter of your own judgment about how you would control a private workplace; the question is whether the government is pressuring you to suppress speech that conveys certain viewpoints.)

4. Now let's get to the 2016 election campaign. Say someone wears ''Trump/Pence 2016'' gear in the workplace, or displays a bumper sticker on his car in the work parking lot, or displays such a sign on his cubicle wall, or just says on some occasions that he's voting for Trump. He doesn't say any racial or religious slurs about Hispanics or Muslims, and doesn't even express any anti-Hispanic or anti-Muslim views (though even such views, I think, should be protected by the First Amendment against the threat of government-imposed liability).

But in ''context,'' a coworker complains, such speech conveys a message ''tinged'' with racial or religious hostility, or is racially or religiously ''insensitive.'' The coworker threatens to sue. Again, say you are an employer facing such a threat. Would you feel pressured by the risk of liability to restrict the pro-Trump speech? (As before, the question isn't whether you'd be inclined to do that yourself, whether from opposition to Trump, or a desire to avoid controversy that might harm morale; because the First Amendment doesn't apply to private employers, private Internet service providers, private churches, private universities, private landlords, or others, they are not constitutionally constrained from restricting speech. The question is whether you would feel pressured by the government to impose such restrictions, through the threat of being forced to pay money in a civil lawsuit if you don't impose them '-- and whether the government should be able to pressure such private organizations or individuals to restrict speech this way.)

''There is a place for political discussion in our country, but it shouldn't be the workplace. Accordingly, you may want to consider adopting policies that prohibit political discussions and expression in your workplace, consistent with the applicable state and federal requirements.'' So writes one employment lawyer, in the Virginia Employment Law Letter. Other employment law experts have likewise urged employers to broadly restrict speech, including speech about presidential politics (that happened with regard to talk about the Clinton/Lewinsky matter).

And while the Virginia Employment Letter proposal would at least be a viewpoint-neutral restriction (though a very broad one), employers are in practice more likely to come down on speech that expresses viewpoints that might trigger harassment claims '-- such as calls to elect candidates who want to build a wall on the Mexican border, or limit immigration from Muslim countries '-- than on speech that expresses contrary viewpoints. Workplace harassment law has become a content-based, viewpoint-based speech restriction, including on core political speech. A pretty serious First Amendment problem, I think, for reasons I discuss in more detail here.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 05:26

By and large, Dale Kleber had a pretty straightforward trip up the economic ladder. He went to law school and worked his way up to general counsel of a major food distributor in Chicago and then chief executive of a dairy trade organization. He is putting his third and fourth kids through private college.

''Our generation was pretty spoiled,'' says Kleber, 60. ''We had it good. The economy was in a huge growth spurt. Some dips here and there, but nothing severe.''

But a couple of years ago, Kleber hit a roadblock. He'd left the dairy group and started looking for another job; he and his wife didn't have quite enough saved to retire comfortably. He didn't think he'd have trouble finding work.

Scores of applications later, with few callbacks and no offers, Kleber is close to admitting defeat '-- and admitting that age discrimination might be one of the biggest challenges his generation has faced.

One job posting, from a medical device company called CareFusion, seemed to suggest Kleber's lack of success wasn't just due to a toughjob market: The ad called for a maximum of seven years of legal experience. He applied anywayand, after being passed over, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionalleging age discrimination. The case is in the discovery phase infederal court in Illinois.

''They expressed concerns with an older person being less likely to take supervision from someone that's younger than they are,'' Kleber says, paraphrasing the company's response to his suit. ''If I felt like I was going to be dissatisfied in the position, I wouldn't be pursuing it.''

That disagreement goes to the heart of the awkwardness that baby boomers are now feeling as they enter the last years of their working lives. Oftenneeding to stay in jobs longer than they anticipated to shore up savings depleted during the Great Recession, or simply wanting to remain active further into their lengthening life spans, they're coming up against a strong preference in America for youthful ''energy'' and ''innovation.''

That bias is so common we frequently don't recognize it. Todd Nelson, a psychology professor at California State University at Stanislaus, has singled out birthday cards for portraying advancing age as something to be ashamed of, with a tone that would never be used with race or religion. ('' 'Ha-ha-ha, too bad you're Jewish' ... wouldn't go over so well,'' he noted.)

Internet memes like the ''Scumbag Baby Boomer'' and ''Old Economy Steve,'' which lambast boomers for transgressions from failing to adopt technology to causing the wars and recessions that millennials have weathered, channel resentment against an entire category of people in ways that might not be tolerated if they were members of another protected class.

The whiteness and maleness of Silicon Valley and the tech industry have been the subject of numerous magazine cover stories, but with rare exceptions such as Dan Lyons's hilarious 2016 memoir about being a 50-something at a Cambridge, Mass., start-up, its youth passes without comment.

This cultural backdrop has horrifyingly real consequences for many on the wrong side of 40. Formal age discrimination cases like Kleber's spiked during the most recent recession and haven't fully subsided. Long-term unemployment, defined as being jobless for 27 weeks or longer , is markedly worse for workers over age 55 than for the general population.

In contrast to the respect often accorded to the generation that fought World War II, their progeny are facing relative hostility in their senescence.

At a time when conditions have vastly improved for women, gay people, disabled people and minorities in the workplace, prejudice against older workers remains among the most acceptable and pervasive ''isms.'' And it's not clear that the next generations '-- ascendant Gen Xers and millennials '-- will be treated any better.

Ageism, of course, is as old as age itself. Even while venerating elders for their wisdom, cultures across the world have disparaged the weakness and unattractiveness of those past the bloom of youth. ''Senectus morbidus est,'' wrote Roman philosopher Seneca in the 1st century A.D.: ''Old age is a disease.''

In modern times, there are more formal protections: The advent of Social Security in the 1930s ensured older people wouldn't be entirely penniless when they could no longer work. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ended some of the most egregious forms of prejudice, such as age limits for flight attendants and mandatory retirement ages for factory and mine workers.

At the same time, structural, economic and demographic changes have created new types of ageism that are more subtle and widespread.

One change is the presence of two large, culturally distinct generations '-- millennials and boomers, both about 75 million strong '-- that have found themselves in the workforce with less and less formal authority.

Older workers have the misfortune of wanting to work longer just as a new generation is trying to get an economic foothold. In a weak economy, companies are sometimes all too happy to dump veteran employees, with their higher health-care costs and legacy pensions, for younger ones who expect neither.

(And this isn't just an American thing: Faster-aging societies with low birthrates in Asia and Europe face an even larger demographic ''bulge'' of older citizens who will have to be supported by fewer wage earners, feeding into an image of the elderly as a drain on society. A 2013 meta-analysis found East Asian countries had even more negative attitudes toward their older populations than some Western ones '-- grimly punctuated by climbing suicide rates in China, South Korea and Taiwan.)

All of that underpins tensions in the workplace and has spawned a cottage industry of consultants who specialize in intergenerational relations.

In a 2015 survey by the Harris Poll, for example, 65 percent of boomers rated themselves as being the ''best problem-solvers/troubleshooters,'' and only 5 percent of millennials agreed. Fifty-four percent of millennials thought boomers were the ''biggest roadblocks.'' Sometimes these perceptions come straight from the top: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once said ''young people are just smarter.''

Those attitudes apply not just to perceptions of ''old'' people, but also to expectations: A 2013 experiment found that young people looked more favorably upon older adults who ''act their age'' by listening to Frank Sinatra over the Black Eyed Peas, or by being more generous with their money. One of the researchers, Michael North, an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, says younger people tend to resent it when older workers don't ''get out of the way'' and retire.

Yet human resource consultants and the media have often placed the onus on older workers to overcome these biases, which surface in job postings for ''recent college graduates,'' applicants who ''enjoy the pressures of the job'' and those who can ''fit in with a young team.'' Over-50 job seekers are advised to update their wardrobes and hairstyles, purge their r(C)sum(C)s of positions held during the Reagan administration and, above all, ''show enthusiasm.'' Projecting ''energy'' is another common tip , as if lethargy kicks in only after 40.

And what of the legal protections for older workers? Federal anti-age-discrimination laws haven't proved to be an effective deterrent, says University of Houston professor emeritus Andrew Achenbaum. Proving you were passed over because of your age is devilishly difficult, and the EEOC has a large backlog of complaints that it hasn't had the resources to deal with.

''I wouldn't mess around with [gender bias] if I were a university,'' Achenbaum says. ''But I'm willing to take my chances on age discrimination, because there are so many [cases] that are unsolved.''

Efforts to battle ageism have cropped up now and then, but they can be stymied by the sheer force and fluidity of culture.

Margery Leveen Sher, 68, a former corporate consultant and nonprofit executive in the District, says she internalized the unspoken code of ageism long ago and was for many years a ''closeted old person.'' ''I thought, Nobody is going to want to work with me to start up a nonprofit because they will think I will want to retire shortly,'' she says. She never lied about her age; she just didn't mention it. And ''thanks to good genes, good health and a wad of money thrown regularly at my hair salon,'' she could easily pass for a decade younger. Sher says only since she retired and started her own business, the Did Ya Notice? Project, writing and speaking about the importance of mindfulness, has she felt ready to ''come out.'' ''I am not a trailblazing anti-ageism fighter. I have been a closeted coward,'' she says. ''But here goes: I am 68. I am full of energy and ideas, and I ain't done yet.''

Multiply that sentiment by 74.9 million and maybe something will finally give. Ashton Applewhite, creator of the blog Yo, Is This Ageist? , says the size of the boomer generation should be an advantage when shifting the discourse around aging.

''Silicon Valley is finally getting some attention, and you know why? Educated, skilled, non-disabled white guys faced discrimination for the first time in their lives,'' Applewhite says. ''Baby boomers are starting to realize that we are actually going to have to get old. So there is this sudden awareness '-- we have an unusual sense of demographic weight.''

Nobody knows this better than AARP, which has appropriated the language of Silicon Valley in its ''Disrupt Aging'' campaign. It takes aim at common stereotypes and features stories about older people living unconventional lives, like a 55-year-old YouTube entrepreneur and a 64-year-old record-breaking long-distance swimmer.

But Applewhite thinks it's more important to examine the source of ageist attitudes. ''They come from corporate interests that want to medicalize aging so they can sell you s--- to cure it, or they want to treat it as a problem so they can sell you s--- to fix it,'' she says. ''Capitalism is a problem.''

Capitalism has to be part of the solution too, says North, of the Stern School of Business. He contends successful companies will find ways to accommodate the needs of people nearing the end of their working lives, such as part-time schedules to help them transition rather than drop out. ''Companies really should be taking stock of these demographic trends,'' North says. ''There's tremendous value to be had there, and most companies aren't doing that.''

For his part, Dale Kleber thinks he's a better hire than he was 20 years ago, when he was in the middle of raising kids and climbing the corporate ladder. He's had time to keep up on professional reading and stay in better shape. ''I think the stereotypes [about older workers] are a little misleading, because the reverse might be true,'' Kleber says. ''I've got a good 15 years in me at least.''

Lydia DePillis is a reporter for the Houston Chronicle and a former Post staff writer.

E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com.

For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine.

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 00:17

It's no secret that the alcohol industry is one of the sleaziest opponents to the legalization of marijuana, but the latest WikiLeaks exposure of the Democratic National Committee's email transmissions, which showed the party's conspiracy to prevent Senator Bernie Sanders from becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, also revealed that Big Booze is scratching the backs of Congress in an effort to apply pressure to the issue of stoned driving.

A recent dig into the DNC's leaked emails by Tom Angell, chairman of the national cannabis reform organization Marijuana Majority, discovered that the alcohol industry has been pouring marketing dollars into a campaign aimed at getting federal lawmakers tosupport legislation designed to combat drugged driving.

The scheme was revealed in a May 2016 issue of POLITICO Huddle, a newsletter for industry insiders, where a paid advertisement from the folks at Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, a national trade organization charged with protecting the interests of the wine and spirits industry, shows the organization is extremely interested in persuading Congress to put a leash on legal marijuana.

The sponsorship reads:

A message from Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America: While neutral on the issue of legalization, WSWA believes states that legalize marijuana need to ensure appropriate and effective regulations are enacted to protect the public from the dangers associated with the abuse and misuse of marijuana.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized medicinal marijuana while Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and D.C. have legalized possession and recreational use. In the years since the state legalized medicinal use, Colorado law enforcement officials have documented a significant increase in traffic fatalities in which drivers tested positive for marijuana.

Congress should fully fund Section 4008 of the FAST Act (PL 114-94) in the FY 2017 Appropriations process to document the prevalence of marijuana impaired driving, outline impairment standards and determine driving impairment detection methods.

As Angell points out in his analysis, the message is not quite as sneaky as the DNC's railroading of Bernie Sanders, but it does provide evidence that the alcohol trade feels threatened enough by the progress of marijuana legalization to sink money into fighting it every step of the way'--this despite reports suggesting that many loyal drinkers willnot likely substitute booze for marijuana when it becomes legal at the national level.

What is most interesting about the WSWA is that the group, which considers marijuana a''key issue,'' has dedicated a significant amount of noise to the herb on its website. The organization, while claiming not to have a position on marijuana, is undoubtedly concerned about how legalization could impact the alcohol trade. In fact, the WSWA even ran an hour-long panel last year during its 72nd annual convention and exposition called ''Everything You Need to Know About Marijuana,'' which was intended to provide attendees with information on ''how marijuana legalization could impact another socially sensitive product: beverage alcohol.''

The WSMA's advertisement in the POLITICO Huddle is meant to get Congressional figures to side with a portion of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which would require the Department of Transportation to research cannabis impairment testing methods, in addition to ways to ''differentiate the cause of a driving impairment between alcohol and marijuana,'' according to Angell's report.

And while it is true there needs to be an effective tool on the streets for accurately determining marijuana impairment, it does not settle well in the guts of cannabis advocates that an organization ''dedicated to advancing the interests and independence of wholesalers, distributors and brokers of wine and spirits'' is on the front line of the debate.

''Given that driving under the influence of marijuana is already illegal and that the existing research shows marijuana's effect on driving ability is significantly less than alcohol, it is difficult to see a legitimate reason for the alcohol industry to be taking up this issue,'' Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Projecttold Marijuana.com. ''They would do better to fund research on how to decrease drunk driving.''

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 21:32

Image copyrightABCImage caption Malcolm Roberts believes the United Nations is attempting to create an unelected global government One of Australia's new senators has said climate change is a global conspiracy created by bankers seeking to establish a worldwide government.

Malcolm Roberts won a Queensland Senate seat as member of the anti-immigration One Nation party in recent elections.

He says the United Nations is using climate change to lay the foundations for an unelected global government.

His previous writing indicates that he believes a shadowy cabal of bankers is controlling world affairs.

One Nation is led by Pauline Hanson, who during the 1990s was a controversial figure in Australian politics for her views on immigration and Indigenous Australians.

The party won four seats in Australia's Senate during the election, making it the fourth-largest voting bloc in the upper house.

The BBC has asked Mr Roberts for an interview and submitted questions to him by email, but has not received a reply.

Image copyrightSBSImage caption One Nation leader Pauline Hanson will wield considerable power in Australia's Senate But in recent interviews with the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC), Mr Roberts stood by his previous positions.

He called for an investigation into Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) over its handling of climate change science.

When asked if he still believed the UN was trying to impose a worldwide government through climate change policy, Mr Roberts answered: "Definitely".

'Notice of non-acceptance'In 2011, Mr Roberts wrote a letter to then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard demanding to be exempted from the country's carbon tax.

The letter, addressed to "The Woman, Julia-Eileen:Gillard", contained a 28-point affidavit that sought to establish Mr Roberts' exemption from the need to obey the Australian government.

He referred to himself as "Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul", and identified himself as the "beneficiary, administrator" for a corporate entity called MALCOLM IEUAN ROBERTS.

The punctuation and language is consistent with a style of language used by the so-called sovereign citizen movement, which sees governments as illegitimate and attempts to assert the rights of individuals to ignore laws and taxes.

The use of unusual grammar and punctuation by sovereign citizens is intended to establish independence from the government's legal system.

Image copyrightSuppliedImage caption A screen grab of the letter Mr Roberts sent to Ms Gillard, expressing a view that Australia may be a US corporation However, in a radio interview with the ABC, Mr Roberts denied that he was affiliated with the movement.

'Unfounded claims'Mr Roberts also wrote a report in 2013 entitled CSRIOh!: Climate of Deception, Or First Step to Freedom? that detailed his rejection of man-made global warming.

"The UN IPCC's unfounded core claim about human CO2 is part of UN Agenda 21 campaign for global governance," the report said.

In a 135-page appendix to the report, Mr Roberts wrote in detail about his belief that an international cabal of bankers is exercising enormous influence on world affairs.

The report says the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England are privately controlled corporations, and that their owners are seeking to introduce carbon trading into the world economy as a way to generate money and extend their control.

It also lists Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins as a primary reference.

Mr Roberts has been criticised in the past by prominent Australian climate sceptic Andrew Bolt, who said his theories on banking families "smacks too much of the Jewish world conspiracy theorising I've always loathed".

But in the report Mr Roberts writes that those who "falsely smear or imply those raising the topic [of the international banking scam] as anti-Jewish '... is an unfounded furphy [an untruth] designed to distract. The reality is that international bankers come from a variety of religions."

Mr Roberts told the ABC that his top priorities as a senator were "accountability" for the government and "restoring the constitution", relieving cost-of-living pressures, economic security and security from terrorism.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 14:19

Hurricanes, large and small, have eluded U.S. shores for record lengths of time. As population and wealth along parts of the U.S. coast have exploded since the last stormy period, experts dread the potential damage and harm once the drought ends.

Three historically unprecedented droughts in landfalling U.S. hurricanes are presently active.

A major hurricane hasn't hit the U.S. Gulf or East Coast in more than a decade. A major hurricane is one containing maximum sustained winds of at least 111 mph and classified as Category 3 or higher on the 1-5 Saffir-Simpson wind scale. (Hurricane Sandy had transitioned to a post tropical storm when it struck New Jersey in 2012, and was no longer classified as a hurricane at landfall, though it had winds equivalent to a Category 1 storm.) The streak has reached 3,937 days, longer than any previous drought by nearly two years.

Twenty-seven major hurricanes have occurred in the Atlantic Ocean basin since the last one, Wilma, struck Florida in 2005. The odds of this are 1 in 2,300, according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher from Colorado State University.

Florida hasn't seen a hurricane of any intensity since 2005's Wilma, which is shocking considering it averages about seven hurricane landfalls per decade. The current drought in the Sunshine State, nearing 11 years, is almost twice as long as the previous longest drought of six years (from 1979-1985).

Sixty-seven hurricanes have tracked through the Atlantic since Florida's last hurricane impact. The odds of this are about 1 in 550, Klotzbach said.

Even the entire Gulf of Mexico, and its sprawling coast from Florida to Texas, have been hurricane-free for almost three full years, the longest period since record-keeping began 165 years ago (in 1851). The last hurricane to traverse the Gulf waters was Ingrid, which made landfall in Mexico as a tropical storm, in September 2013.

Scientists have no solid explanation for the lack of hurricane landfalls. The number of storms forming in the Atlantic over the past decade or so has been close to normal, but many have remained over the ocean or hit other countries rather than the United States.

A study published by the American Geophysical Union in 2015 said the lack of major hurricane landfalls boiled down to dumb luck rather than a particular weather pattern. ''I don't believe there is a major regime shift that's protecting the U.S.,'' said study lead author Timothy Hall from NASA.

[What's driving our major hurricane landfall drought? Study says it's just dumb luck.]

A ''recurring'' area of low pressure near the U.S. East Coast in recent years may have repelled some storms, argue Klotzbach and Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. But McNoldy still says ''luck is really 99 percent of it [the drought].''

[Recurring East Coast low pressure may be saving U.S. from major hurricanes]

Adam Sobel, a climate scientist at Columbia University, cautions that the drought in no way invalidates global warming predictions or the expectation that storms will grow more intense in future decades. The ''notion that the hurricane drought in the Atlantic has somehow disproved the consensus projections of climate science is wrong, because the drought is still a relatively short-term fluctuation in a single basin, while the projections are for long-term global trends,'' he writes on his blog.

And as impressively long as the various droughts are, McNoldy said there have been numerous storms that have almost ended each of them in recent years.

So the drought is hanging on by a thread. A single major hurricane striking Florida's Gulf Coast, McNoldy said, would break all three standing droughts simultaneously.

Concerns about preparedness and increasing coastal population

It's only a matter of time before the luck reverses and storms start bombarding the U.S. coast again.

Growing coastal populations and lack of recent hurricane activity, from Florida to Texas, raise concerns about the nation's readiness.

''Hurricanes are going to hit the U.S. again and people are going to be shocked by the magnitude of the disaster,'' said Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

[U.S. coastline vulnerability to hurricanes is growing to unprecedented levels]

The Associated Press reports Florida's coastal communities have added 1.5 million people and almost a half-million new homes since 2005, the last time there was an onslaught of storms.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that by 2020, the U.S. coastal population will have reached 134 million people, 11 million more than in 2010.

''Hurricane damage and destruction is a direct function of how much accumulated wealth there is,'' Pielke said. ''We've put a lot of stuff along the coast. If we're in this 10-year drought, loss potentials in some places may now be two times higher than it was a decade ago.''

Experts are conflicted as to whether residents '-- after a long break from dealing with hurricanes '-- will be well-prepared when the next storm threatens.

Kim Klockow, a visiting scientist with NOAA who studies meteorology and social behavior, said one major concern ''is that communities might not be as practiced in getting prepared simply because they haven't had to do it in a while.''

But she said she doesn't think residents will tune the storm threat out. ''I'm not sure if the long period of calm will make them less concerned,'' Klockow added.

Gina Eosco, a social scientist who works with National Weather Service through the consulting firm Eastern Research Group, agrees with Klockow. ''Coastal residents are savvy,'' she said. ''They understand that by living on the coast they are taking some risk. An individual does not necessarily need direct experience to decide to evacuate or prepare for a hurricane.''

Still, Pielke said consequences are inevitable for out-of-practice communities. ''You can do all the talking and planning you want, but until you go through a hurricane, you don't know what you're up against,'' he said. ''The lessons of inexperience are pretty costly.''

[Why Florida's record-setting hurricane drought portends danger]

Eosco offered this advice: ''I cannot overstate the importance of preparing before a storm happens. This starts with a conversation. Each resident with experience should share it with their new neighbors.''

Brian McNoldy and Phil Klotzbach contributed to this post.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 16:29

In another blow to ObamaCare, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that the company was abandoning plans to expand into more ObamaCare markets and considering whether to stay in its existing markets. (AP)

Aetna's decision to abandon its ObamaCare expansion plans and rethink its participation altogether came as a surprise to many. It shouldn't have. Everything that's happened now was predicted by the law's critics years ago.

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that this was supposed to be a break-even year for its ObamaCare business. Instead, the company has already lost $200 million, which it expect that to hit $320 million before the year it out. He said the company was abandoning plans to expand into five other states and is reviewing whether to stay in the 15 states where Aetna (AET) current sells ObamaCare plans.

Aetna's announcement follows UnitedHealth Group's (UNH) decision to leave most ObamaCare markets, Humana's (HUM) decision to drop out of some, Blue Cross Blue Shield's announcement that it was quitting the individual market in Minnesota, and the failure of most of the 23 government-created insurance co-ops. And it follows news that insurance companies are putting in for double-digit rate hikes that in some cases top 60%, and news that the Congressional Budget Office has sharply downgraded its long-term enrollment forecast for the exchanges.

Who could have envisioned such problems? Not ObamaCare backers. They were endlessly promising that the law would create vibrant, highly competitive markets that would lower the cost of insurance.

Critics, however, were spot on. They said that, despite the individual mandate, ObamaCare wouldn't attract enough young and healthy people to keep premiums down.

The Heritage Foundation, for example, said that under ObamaCare, "many under age 35 will opt out of buying insurance altogether, choosing to pay the penalty instead." That's just what has happened.

Critics predicted sharp hikes in premiums and big increases in medical claims. That's what's happened.

Critics said people would game the system, waiting until they got sick to buy insurance, then canceling it once the bills were paid, because of the law's "guaranteed issue" mandate. That's happening, too. In fact, administration officials are trying to tighten the rules to mitigate this problem.

Critics said insurers would abandon ObamaCare amid substantial losses. Anyone want to dispute that this is happening?

These dire predictions weren't pulled out of thin air. Several states had already tried ObamaCare-style market reforms in the 1990s, only to see their individual insurance markets collapse. A 2007 report by Milliman Inc. looked at eight states that had adopted the "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" reforms at the heart of ObamaCare.

Like Obama, these states wanted to create insurance markets where no one could be denied coverage, or charged more, just because they were sick. But Milliman found that these regulations resulted in fast-rising premiums, a drop in enrollment in the individual market, and an exodus of health insurers.

Sound familiar?

By the time ObamaCare came around, most of those states either abandoned or overhauled this regulatory scheme, only to have it reimposed on them.

ObamaCare architects figured they could avoid the fate of those state experiments by including the individual mandate and subsidies for lower income families.

However, consulting firm Oliver Wyman correctly predicted in 2009 that these wouldn't work, either. "The subsidies and mandates," it concluded, "are not sufficient to drive high participation of younger, healthier members."

Aetna's Bertolini says that what's needed now to keep ObamaCare functioning are bigger and more generous taxpayer financed insurance subsidies '-- i.e., bailouts. Democrats say what's needed is a "public option" so that consumers in states abandoned by private insurers will be able to get coverage.

How about instead policymakers listen to the original ObamaCare critics? For decades, they've been calling for reforms that lift myriad anti-competitive government regulations, as well as fixes to the tax code so that it no longer massively distorts the insurance market.

The resulting free market competition in health care would do what it does everywhere it's allowed to function '-- improve quality while improving affordability. In other words, it would achieve the things ObamaCare promised but miserably failed to deliver.

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 00:10

FireEye is planning to lay off up to 400 employees in a restructuring effort as revenue declines throughout its services division.

The cuts were announced along with the cybersecurity firm's second quarter earnings report Thursday, in which FireEye also lowered its full-year fiscal outlook and warned of the impact a shifting threat landscape could have on its profitability.

FireEye sells security software that helps businesses prevent and respond to cyber attacks. But according to FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, changes in the threat environment have resulted in lower sales of its security subscriptions and products.

"While our services personnel are responding to more attacks this year than prior years, the scope and scale of these attacks is simply different," Mandia said on a call with analysts. "The average duration and size of each incident response engagement was smaller than in years past and as a result, we saw lower services growth than expected."

More specifically, Mandia said attackers are attempting fewer large-scale breaches on business networks and instead are opting for more ransom ware attacks that are "simply easier to remediate at times".

As a result, FireEye reported a net loss of $139.3 million, or 86 cents a share. Non-GAAP losses narrowed to 33 cents a share on revenue of $175 million.

Wall Street was looking for earnings of 39 cents a share with at least $181.6 million in revenue.

FireEye also came up short in billings with $196.4 million, as analysts were expecting somewhere closer to $209 million.

Additionally, FireEye reduced its 2016 revenue forecast from $780 million to $810 million down to a range of $716 million to $728 million. Analysts are expecting annual revenue of $793.5 million. By late Thursday afternoon, FireEye's shares had fallen nearly 15 percent in extended trading.

FireEye says it's now pursuing a bevy of internal and product changes aimed helping the company balance growth and profitability. These changes include the hiring of a new head of worldwide sales (Mandia said sales execution was also a factor in FireEye's revenue miss) and a new leader in the EMEA region.

FireEye is also expanding its SaaS service with third-party vendor alerts. Until now, the service has been tightly coupled with FireEye's own technology stack and focused mainly on advanced attacks. Other initiatives include lower cost alternatives within its security portfolio and a greater focus on real-time threat detection products.

It remains to be seen whether FireEye can successfully implement its turnaround strategy, but so far analysts remain skeptical. In a research note, JMP Securities said it was particularly disappointed with the revenue shortfall given the recent appointment of Mandia as CEO, who replaced former CEO David DeWalt in May.

In addition, our checks suggest that turnover at FireEye has increased significantly over the last year and we believe the planned workforce reduction will further hamper morale. While we believe market demand issues may have impacted FireEye, we believe the magnitude of the miss reflects company specific challenges, such as sales execution issues, competitive pressures,and maturation in its core market.

In a similarly harsh research note, Stifel Financial expects that FireEye will likely pursue a sale should the firm fail to recover:

We continue to see FireEye at or near the top of the list of public companies that are likely to be acquired in the near to mid-term, with Cisco and IBM most often mentioned as potential acquirers. We think another quarter of missteps could be a key driver in pushing the board to take a more flexible approach to potential valuation.

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Source: The Last Refuge

Sat, 06 Aug 2016 00:37

This is a great example of the current state, and competence, of American Journalism. Worse yet, this example shows the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, didn't even know what's going on, and Vice-Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine also joins the crew of the clueless.

CNN and The Washington Post are both making an absurd attack Donald Trump story out of the most simple and easy to prove claim.

Donald Trump said there was video(yes, that's a screen grab of the video above), put out by Iran, showing the United States sending pallets of cash in exchange for U.S. hostages.

Trump stated the Iranian's were using the video to ''embarrass the President''. The Washington Post and CNN jumped on the Trump statement and immediately decried it as ridiculous and set out to prove the claim false:

(Via Washington Post) ['...] Trump first mentioned this footage from the Iranian government during a rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Several senior U.S. officials involved in the Iran negotiations told the Associated Press they weren't aware of any such video, and there was speculation that perhaps Trump saw it during one of the classified security briefings provided to presidential nominees, although those briefings have not yet begun. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who was traveling in Argentina on Thursday, told reporters that he was unaware of any such video, according to the Associated Press. (read more)

Here's the presentation from Brian Stelter of CNN:

>> Today's WashPost headline: ''Trump continues to claim, with no evidence, that Iran released a video of a cash transfer from the U.S.''>> Tomorrow morning's news tonight, via CBS: Hillary Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine tells Norah O'Donnell, ''I have no idea what he's talking about'... It doesn't exist.''>> Now the pressure is on Trump's running mate Mike Pence. He's live on the ''Today'' show with Savannah Guthrie tomorrow morning. What will he say about this?

Here's the video, and you can see the pallets of cash at 11:00 (prompted):

You really should read the Jenna Johnson and Tom Bell article to see the scope of their shark jumping, and also fathom the insufferable inanity of our own government not to know immediately that Iran had indeed produced a full length feature documentary, airing on state run tv, showing exactly what Donald Trump said the Iranian's aired:

(Read the WaPo Story Here)

Now, we don't know where Donald Trump might have caught the clip of the video, but we do know it was widely discussed several months ago when the hostages were released. The Iranian TV ran it with a title ''The Rules of The Game'' etc. We saw it on BBC TV during a segment discussing the release of the prisoners.

Good Grief '' It's on You-Tube. AND, if we remember correctly, it was also hosted and discussed by MEMRI tv at one point. Any reasonable journalist search for data would have found it easily, or at least the discussions of it.

The Video is also in a BBC Journalist twitter feed. The short and the full version of the Iranian Documentary.

Here's another version:

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 14:53

Wandelend langs de grachten van Amsterdam, met de boten van de Gay Pride uitbundig voorbij paraderend, mannen hand in hand aan de kade, vrouwen zoenend of in elkaars armen geklemd, dacht ik, ondanks mijn natuurlijke weerzin tegen dit soort festijnen (ik ga ook iedere Koninginnedag de stad uit): wat goed dat dit in Nederland kan.

Natuurlijk, de Canal Parade is voor een groot deel nog steeds de bevestiging van zo ongeveer ieder stereotype over homo's dat je maar kunt bedenken - Gordon en Gerard Joling zijn niet bepaald de doorsnee homoseksueel, terwijl ze in de botenparade niet eens opvallen, wat zeg ik, tot de categorie ingetogen behoren. Maar soit, laat het een feestje zijn.

Redenen genoeg namelijk voor een feestje: de homorechtenbeweging - of preciezer: de beweging voor gelijke rechten van homo's, lesbiennes, bi's en transgenders -, is ontegenzeggelijk een van de meest succesvolle emancipatoire bewegingen uit de recente geschiedenis. Je zou het haast vergeten, maar in 2001 (!) was Nederland pas het eerste land ter wereld dat het homohuwelijk legaliseerde. Inmiddels hebben vijftien andere landen (en een handjevol staten in Amerika) al het Hollandse voorbeeld gevolgd.

Natuurlijk, de strijd voor de gelijkwaardigheid van homo's staat wereldwijd nog steeds in de kinderschoenen, of eigenlijk is het nog erger dan dat: in maar liefst negen landen staat nog de doodstraf op homoseksualiteit, in nog eens enkele tientallen landen een gevangenisstraf oplopend tot levenslang. Maar toch: we zijn al van ver, h(C)(C)l ver gekomen. Het lijkt vanzelfsprekend dat zo'n parade zonder noemenswaardige incidenten kan plaatsvinden, maar het is, hoe je het wendt of keert, ongekende vooruitgang.

Dulden wij homo's?En toch stoort mij iedere jaar weer iets tijdens de Gay Pride: het woord tolerantie dat er altijd boven hangt. 'Het feest van de tolerantie', noemde de Amsterdamse burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan de optocht door de grachten van zijn stad. 'Een goed middel om te laten zien dat Nederland voor tolerantie staat,' vond Elsevier -commentator Gerry van der List. De 'Tolerant Love Channel' doopte tv-zender TLC zich een weekend lang, normaal gesproken de afkorting van The Learning Channel.

Allemaal goed bedoeld natuurlijk. Maar 'tolerantie' is ook de ongelukkigste - ik zou zelfs willen beweren: volstrekt verkeerde - term om je steun aan de homobeweging kracht mee bij te zetten.

Tolereren betekent in essentie zoveel als: dulden, verdragen. Nagenoeg alle synoniemen hebben die betekenis: gedogen, toelaten, toestaan, uitstaan, verduren. Ook de Van Dale spreekt van 'verdraagzaamheid jegens.' Kortom, tolereren is in de meest basale betekenis van het woord: iets afwijzen, afkeuren, verwerpen - en t"ch accepteren. Een last die je weliswaar 'verdraagt', maar een last niettemin.

Door homorechten voortdurend in (C)(C)n adem te noemen met tolerantie, communiceren voorstanders van homorechten eigenlijk impliciet het tegendeel: homoseksualiteit, luidt de onbedoelde subtekst, is iets wat we 'te verdragen hebben.' De grondhouding van tolerantie is immers die van afkeuring: je kan niet iets tolereren wat je niet eerst afwijst. Het Latijnse tolerare betekent dan ook: verduren, torsen, zwaar dragen.

Door homorechten in (C)(C)n adem te noemen met tolerantie, communiceren voorstanders van homorechten impliciet het tegendeel: homoseksualiteit is iets wat we maar 'te verdragen' hebben

Begrijp me niet verkeerd: ik zeg niet dat burgemeester Van der Laan, Elsevier-commentator Van der List of tv-zender TLC stiekem homoseksualiteit afkeuren. Maar door homoseksualiteit en tolerantie zo nadrukkelijk aan elkaar te verbinden, rechtvaardigen ze onbewust en onbedoeld die houding wel: iets tolereren bekrachtigt het uitgangspunt van de afwijzer dat homoseksualiteit 'niet normaal' is. Het verzoek is alleen: of hij het niettemin toch wil tolereren.

Dit klinkt misschien als futiel taalkundig geneuzel, maar zeker in een strijd voor de gelijkwaardigheid van een eeuwenlang en nog altijd hevig gediscrimineerde groep, doet taal er bovengemiddeld veel toe. De Amerikaanse lingu¯st George Lakoff benadrukte in zijn klassieker Don't think of an elephant al hoe fundamenteel het is voor progressieve bewegingen om in de woorden die je kiest niet impliciet de aannames van je vijand te bekrachtigen.

Lakoff gebruikt graag het voorbeeld van de term 'belastingdruk' (tax burden), waar Democraten in de VS zich vaak aan bezondigen als ze de belastingen willen verhogen, ook al doen ze dat in ontkennende zin: door bijvoorbeeld te stellen dat de 'tax burden' al best wel laag is, bevestigen ze juist onbedoeld het uitgangspunt van de Republikeinen dat belasting betalen - hoe veel of weinig ook - een 'last' is.

De Gay Pride 'het feest van de tolerantie' noemen lijdt aan een vergelijkbaar euvel: alsof je homo's moet 'dulden,' zoals je drugs ook 'gedoogt.' In het geval van drugs is die woordkeus begrijpelijk: aan drugs zitten immers genoeg nadelen - verslaving, criminaliteit - die je zou kunnen 'dulden' omdat de voordelen van gedogen ertegen opwegen. Maar bij homoseksualiteit valt er niks te dulden: het is een volstrekt normale en natuurlijke seksuele voorkeur. Van meer vrouwen in de top van het bedrijfsleven zeggen we ook niet: laten we dat 'tolereren.'

Laten we erkennen in plaats van tolererenWillen we, net als dertien jaar geleden, voorloper zijn in de strijd voor gelijke rechten, dan is misschien nu de tijd gekomen de volgende stap te zetten in onze bewoording van deze strijd: door homorechten uit de sfeer te halen van iets dat 'anders' en 'afwijkend' is dat 'geaccepteerd' moet worden, en in de sfeer te trekken van het volstrekt normale. Of misschien zelfs wel: het volstrekt irrelevante.

Dat is moeilijker gezegd dan gedaan, want hoe voer je een emancipatiestrijd zonder het anders-zijn te benadrukken? Maar vermijding van het woord 'tolerantie' zou een eerste stap kunnen zijn. Voor goede alternatieven houd ik me zeer aanbevolen, tot die tijd is mijn beste suggestie homo-erkenning: een term die in zich draagt dat homoseksualiteit er altijd is geweest en altijd zal zijn, die uitstraalt dat er meer nodig is dan 'tolereren' alleen en die bovendien de connotatie heeft van 'inclusiviteit' in plaats van 'de Ander verduren.'

De Gay Pride, een feest van erkenning, van de rechten die de homoseksuele medemens altijd al toekwam - dat klinkt mij als weer een stapje vooruit in de oren.

Opdat de optocht over tien jaar nog steeds kan, maar niet meer nodig is.

Ge¯nteresseerd in hoe woorden onze wereld be¯nvloeden?Lees dan vooral de stukken van correspondent Lynn Berger. Zij schrijft veel grotere en kortere essays over clich(C)s waar weinigen bij stilstaan, maar die het publieke debat wel sterk be¯nvloeden.

Waar hebben we het over, vraagt Lynn zich in haar journalistieke mission statement af

De paradox van de permanente crisisVolgens politici is het al vijf jaar "crisis." Maar kan dat wel: vijf jaar lang in crisis verkeren? De term is verworden tot een manier om politieke verantwoordelijkheid af te schuiven, terwijl aan de wortels van de problemen niets wordt gedaan.

Lees hier Lynns analyse van de term 'crisis' terug

Vinden jullie ook dat 'tolerantie' het verkeerde woord is om de gelijkwaardigheid van homo's mee te propageren? Zo ja, welke alternatieven zouden jullie suggereren?

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 15:49

NEW YORK '-- In response to a court order in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Obama administration has released a redacted version of the White House document that sets out the government's policy framework for drone strikes ''outside the United States and areas of actual hostilities.''

The Presidential Policy Guidance, once known as ''the Playbook,'' was issued by President Obama in May 2013 following promises of more transparency and stricter controls for the drone program. But while the administration released a short ''fact sheet'' describing the document, it did not release the PPG itself, or any part of it.

In February, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who is presiding over a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year by the ACLU,expressed skepticismthat the document could be withheld in its entirety and ordered the government to submit the PPG for the court's review. Rather than continue to defend its withholding of the entire document, the governmenttold the courtthat it would prepare a redacted version of the PPG for public release. Justice Department lawyers turned the PPG and several other documents over to the ACLU on Friday evening.

''We welcome the release of these documents, and particularly the release of the Presidential Policy Guidance that has supplied the policy framework for the drone campaign since May 2013,'' said ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer. ''The PPG provides crucial information about policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatants, and about the bureaucracy that the Obama administration has constructed to oversee and implement those policies. The PPG should have been released three years ago, but its release now will inform an ongoing debate about the lawfulness and wisdom of the government's counterterrorism policies. The release of the PPG and related documents is also a timely reminder of the breadth of the powers that will soon be in the hands of another president.''

The document released today provides many new details about the policy standards that govern drone strikes. It also provides a window into the administration's ''nominations'' process for targeting individuals with lethal force or for capture, and it describes the government's procedures for conducting ''after action reports'' to assess the consequences of its lethal and capture operations. But questions remain about where the PPG applies, whether the president has waived its requirements in particular instances, and how the PPG's relatively stringent standards can be reconciled with the accounts of eye witnesses, journalists, and human rights researches who have documented large numbers of bystander casualties.

Together with the PPG, the government also released four Defense Department documents, two of which it had previously released to the ACLU with more redactions:

· A March 2014 document titled ''Report on Process for Determining Targets of Lethal or Capture Operations,'' which discusses the legal and policy standards in the PPG.

· A July 2014 document titled ''Report on Associated Forces,'' which separately lists groups the government considers to be ''associated'' or ''affiliated'' with al-Qaida. (The difference between the two categories of groups is important because the government has relied on the 2011 Authorization for Use of Military Force to justify attacks against ''associated'' forces.

· A December 2013 document titled ''Department of Defense Implementation of the Presidential Policy Guidance,'' which is a heavily redacted memorandum shared with Congress.

· A March 2014 document titled ''Report on Congressional Notification of Sensitive Military Operations and Counterterrorism Operational Briefings,'' which summarizes the PPG's congressional reporting requirements.

The documents released today come inoneof three ACLU FOIA lawsuits seeking records on targeted killing. In the other cases, two appellate courts have held that some of the secrecy surrounding the drone campaign is unlawful.In 2014, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ordered the release of a July 2010 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorizing the killing of a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi. That case is again before the Second Circuit.In 2013, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the CIA could not lawfully refuse to confirm or deny that it had an ''intelligence interest'' in the drone program. That case was dismissed in April 2016.

The Presidential Policy Guidance is at:https://www.aclu.org/other/presidential-policy-guidance

DOD Implementation of Presidential Policy Guidance is at:https://www.aclu.org/dod-implementation-presidential-policy-guidance

DOD Report on Associated Forces is at:https://www.aclu.org/report-associated-forces-2014

DOD Report on Process of Determining Targets of Lethal or Capture Operations is at:https://www.aclu.org/dod-report-process-determining-targets-lethal-or-capture-operations

Report on Congressional Notification of Sensitive Military Operations is at:https://www.aclu.org/dod-report-congressional-notification-sensitive-military-operation

More information on the case is at:'‹https://www.aclu.org/cases/aclu-v-doj-foia-case-records-relating-targete...

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 15:58

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 14:17

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 13:52

In a rather candid report on CBS Evening News Wednesday evening, reporter Nancy Cordes admitted that Donald Trump gives the media every excuse not to report on the controversies of Hillary Clinton. ''Charlie, ordinarily this would have been a challenging week for the Clinton campaign,'' she started off saying, ''You had several DNC officials resign, more fallout from the hacking controversy, and Clinton's honesty over her e-mails was called into question yet again after an interview she did with Fox.''

''But the sheer number of unorthodox comments made by Trump just this week has really been a boon to the Clinton campaign,'' Cordes continued. And numerous studies conducted by the Media Research Center give credence to her claim.

For instance, MRC's Matthew Balan recently found that CNN's New Day spent 84 minutes and 18 seconds on Trump's many controversies, as opposed to the 27 seconds they spent on the US seemingly paying Iran $400 million for hostages. Similarly, the MRC found that network evening broadcasts, that same day, gave Trump more than double the time given to the Iran payment. And Cordes was the only reporter on network news to report on Clinton's false statements on Fox News Sunday the following Monday.

And it has been like this for months, as research by MRC's Rich Noyes shows. Back in March, a scandal involving a Trump aide got 8 times the coverage compared to a scandal involving a Clinton aide. The media was all over the misdemeanor charge against then Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski. But they paid no mind to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin when she was facing possible charges for mishandling classified E-Mails.

Cordes seems to spell it out for Trump, that if he stopped swinging from controversy to controversy the media would be forced to analyze Hillary Clinton a little more. But Democrats would be happy for it to stay as it is, because as Cordes also reported:

What's most heartening to Democrats I talk to, Charlie, is the fact that Trump isn't just starting damaging new feuds, he is revisiting old ones. Just today, for example, he brought up his issues with Megyn Kelly of Fox even those his advisers have urged him time and time again to let it lie.

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 13:48

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

After hyping ''campaign chaos'' for Donald Trump on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie turned to Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and freely admitted the glaring media double standard in covering the presidential race: ''And what irritates so many Republicans is that if it were any other candidate running against Hillary Clinton, this would be a pretty rough patch for Hillary Clinton given some of the items in the news.''

Todd agreed: ''An incredibly rough patch.'' He proceeded to list all of the Clinton controversies and scandals that the press have ignored: ''Whether it's the current state of the economy, anemic growth. Whether it is her insistence again that somehow [FBI] Director Comey let her off the hook on e-mails when '' and she sort of reinterpreted what Comey said in a way that was misleading. Throw in the discomfort for many on this Iran deal.... never mind we just started air strikes in Libya because ISIS is there.''

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 13:46

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

On her MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell bemoaned the Obama administration's ''unforced error'' in sending Iran $400 million at the exact same time American hostages were released from Tehran in January. She was puzzled by the decision: ''...they never explained that this other money was going '' the $400 million. It's unrelated to the nuclear deal. Why do it on the same day?''

Washington Post political correspondent Anne Gearan was equally baffled: ''It's a mystery why, exactly. They didn't need to do it that day, there was nothing in particular forcing their hand that we know of to do it that day.'' She avoided the possibility of the White House paying the money as ransom for the hostages.

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 13:25

[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]

Kristen Welker stood out on the 5 August 2016 edition of NBC Nightly News as the only Big Three journalist that spotlighted how Hillary Clinton returned to using one of her discredited statements about her e-mail scandal. Welker reported that Clinton attempted to "clarify" her "debunked" spin on what FBI Director James Comey disclosed about the issue. She added that the Democrat "then [brought] back one of her previous explanations" '-- that she "never sent or received anything that was marked classified." The journalist countered this by playing a clip of Comey himself retorting, "That's not true."

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Sun, 07 Aug 2016 12:59

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 17:55

The head of WikiLeaks opened up to the comedian about how he hacked the DNC and why the organization hasn't targeted Trump yet.

Julian Assange has some 'splainin' to do.

The head of WikiLeaks, still banished to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, has come under fire by U.S. intelligence officials'--and even NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who criticized the organization's ''hostility to even modest curation'''--for not just his troubling anti-Semitic streak or lingering rape accusation, but also that they are probably doing the work of Russia in releasing thousands upon thousands of Democratic National Committee emails, thereby tilting the U.S. presidential election towards former reality star Donald Trump, whose campaign has very deep ties to Vladimir Putin.

On Friday night, Assange beamed into HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss the #DNCLeak, which revealed emails between operatives expressing bias against newly minted Democrat Bernie Sanders. You see, even though Sanders is essentially a Democratic Party interloper'--his own website sells him as ''the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history,'' and he's run against Democrats in the past'--the emails revealed an overarching feeling of favoritism towards his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

When Maher alleged to Assange that, while there was plenty of chatter in the emails pointing to the Democratic primary being tilted in Hillary's favor, there was no ''smoking gun,'' the Aussie hacker pushed back.

''I know that it's true,'' said Assange. ''[DNC] Communications Director Luis Miranda, who has resigned just three days ago, instructed his staff'--an instruction, not a discussion, an instruction'--to pump out, in 'an unattributable matter,' statements in an article saying that Bernie Sanders supporters were engaged in acts of violence. So, this is the DNC demonizing in a covert manner, through its chain of command'... a Democrat, saying that a Democrat was conducting violence when you have the same allegations against the Trump campaign, thereby watering down the critique against the Trump campaign.''

The political satirist then got tougher with Assange, claiming that the stolen info WikiLeaks published from the DNC ''came from Russia,'' and that, since he does not like Hillary Clinton and Putin doesn't either, the Aussie ''looks like you're working with a bad actor'--Russia'--and putting your thumb on the scale to basically fuck with the one person who stands in the way of us being ruled by Donald Trump.''

''Our materials, the materials that we release, are pristine,'' answered Assange, avoiding the question of whether or not the organization is doing Vladimir Putin's bidding. ''We're really good at this. We have a ten-year perfect record of never having got it wrong in relation to the integrity of what we release. There's no allegation, even from Debbie Wasserman Schultz or any of these people, that any of the material is not completely valid and true. What there is, is a conflation between our publications'--the DNC leaks'--and an extensive variety of hacks of the DNC, and frankly other organizations over the last two years, possibly by state actors, that wasn't at all surprising.''

Maher then posed a question: ''Why don't you hack into Donald Trump's tax returns?'' since the real estate heir has refused to release his taxes, thereby becoming the first U.S. presidential candidate in decades to do so.

''Well, we're working on it,'' a smirking Assange replied.

Later on during their semi-heated exchange, Maher brought up Snowden's recent criticism of WikiLeaks'--and their ''hostility to even modest curation.'' Instead of brushing aside the question, Assange took aim at Snowden, minimizing his contribution to society and condemning him for ''trying to get a pardon'' from President Obama before he exists office.

''I have to make a little bit of a complaint here, although I shouldn't really go there. You know, Edward Snowden hasn't published anything in three years,'' said Assange. ''He did one thing'--it was a very important thing. And it was in fact so important that I, and this organization, saved his ass by rescuing him from Hong Kong, getting him asylum, making 23 asylum applications, and setting up his defense fund of the Courage Foundation, which I am a trustee of today. So, OK, I know Edward is trying to get a pardon at the end of the Obama presidency so he's playing that game. I understand. He's in a very serious situation.''

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 14:27

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Sat, 06 Aug 2016 04:47

WASHINGTON '-- Hillary Clinton nearly called rival Donald Trump her ''husband'' on Friday in an embarrassing slip-up that drew laughs from the crowd and Twitterverse.

The flub came as she addressed the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington, DC.

''I hope you will compare what I'm proposing to what my husb'-- .'‰.'‰. my opponent is talking about,'' Clinton said, urging the reporters to scrutinize Trump more closely.

The correction, swift as it was, didn't go unnoticed.

Audible laughs could be heard in the auditorium as Clinton came close to calling Trump her spouse.

In a rare Q&As with reporters after the speech, Clinton said she may have not told the whole truth in response to questions about the FBI investigation of her e-mails and Director James Comey's comments afterward.

''I was pointing out in both of those instances, that the Director Comey had said that my answers in my FBI interview were truthful,'' Clinton said, referring to two interviews in which she insisted she hadn't lied about her private e-mail server.

''I may have short-circuited it, and for that I will try to clarify,'' Clinton said Friday.

Critics quickly jumped on the ''short-circuit'' remark as further proof of her evasiveness.

While no charges were brought by the feds, Comey publicly stated that Clinton shared classified information in her ­private e-mails when she was secretary of state.

The Democratic presidential candidate also used her speech to promise immigration reform if she wins in November.

''We will be prepared to introduce legislation as quickly as we can do so,'' she said, claiming that a big victory for Democrats in the election would ''send a clear message to our Republican friends that it's time for them to quit standing in the way of immigration reform.''

''There's nothing like winning to change minds,'' she added.

Trump has made his opposition to immigration reform a key issue in his candidacy.

One reporter used his question to urge Clinton '-- who hasn't held a formal press conference since 2015 '-- to take questions more frequently.

''On behalf of all of us, we encourage you to do this more often with reporters across the country '-- especially those news organizations that travel the country with you everywhere you go,'' said Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post.

Clinton drew chuckles responding to a question asking her to detail a ''meaningful conversation'' she has had with an African-American friend.

Citing two black former chiefs of staff and others, Clinton ­responded: ''I can't compress into one conversation. They've supported me, they've chastised me, they've raised issues with me, they've tried to expand my musical tastes.''

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Source: The Last Refuge

Sat, 06 Aug 2016 00:26

Late last night we posted the Iranian video the U.S. State Department, President Obama, CNN, and The Washington Post said ''did not exist''. It is from an Iranian documentary video titled ''Rules of the Game''.

Since posting the video, which validated an assertion made by Presidential candidate Donald Trump, we have also discovered the english version -LINK- of the same video, as produced by Basirat News:

The controversial exchange, ''pallet of $400,000,000 cash for hostages'', can be identified at 11:28 of the english version of the Iranian documentary (video above).

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 20:12

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 15:32

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Team CrowderThursday August 4 2016

Bill Burr is a favorite here at LwC (see Bill Burr Takes Jab at Hillary. Then Berates The 'Offended' PC Audience. and Bill Burr Nails it on Why People Like Donald Trump), and on his podcast he tapped in to what a lot of people are feeling about this upcoming election. Mostly that it's a sh!t show. Pretty sure he uses those exact words.

While not a Trump supporter, he says it would be worth voting Trump just to see what his election would do to Hollywood. Spoiler alert: they'd lose their effing minds.

Language warning. Use headphones if you're listening at work. Or your daughter's tea party.

''The human being in me, I don't want to see Trump win. But I've got to tell you something, just living in Hollywood, how f*cking terrified they are he's going to win, it's worth it.If Trump wins, there's no place in the world you'd rather be than in Hollywood. Just listen to them f*cking lose their minds.''

Before anyone starts, not liking Trump does not mean a vote for Hillary Clinton, who Burr thinks, at the very least, is equally bad if not worse. Which is what I'd call ''common ground'' for many people in this election. Heck, even Bernie Sanders supporters may believe Hillary is worse than a box of gravel in a wood-chipper. And that's just her voice.

''There's no f**king way I'm voting for Trump, but there's no way I'm voting for someone with 15 felonies either'...They're like 'dude, you cannot have that guy be the leader of the Free World!' and I'm like, 'And then what? We're supposed to have the convicted felon as President?'''

Rock meet hard place. But in this case the rock is an orange-haired tycoon with a flip-flopping record, and the hard place is a pantsuit-wearing, broomstick-riding, felonious she devil.

Who's excited to vote in November?

This is not what we'd call an ''ideal'' election. Hillary Clinton? An actual candidate in the race? She should be behind bars, wiping things with a cloth or something, not running for the highest office in the land, for the most powerful position in the world.

As for Trump, we have our own take'...

NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST? FIX THAT! IT'S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH ITUNES HERE AND SOUNDCLOUD HERE.

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 15:12

Mark Toner, the deputy spokesman for the US State Department, literally burst out laughing at the idea of transparency and democracy during an official press briefing on Thursday.

''Welcome to the State Department,'' began Toner. ''I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome.

''Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy,'' said the spokesperson, before he and the whole room erupted into a fit of laughter.

''Is that what it is?'' asked one reporter. ''I thought it was an exercise in spin and obfuscation.''

READ MORE: State Dept. dodges RT questions about US-backed 'moderates' implicated in Syria chemical attack

''Sorry, I didn't mean to break out in laughter,'' added Toner after he eventually regained his composure.

Read more

Later in the briefing, Toner deflected questions about the recently reported transfer of $400 million from the US government to Iran on the same day in January this year that four Americans were released from Tehran.

''[The] bottom line is that we generally make a practice of not commenting publicly on the details of these kinds of transactions such as settlement payments,'' Toner responded. ''We don't normally even identify the parties involved, and that's just due to the confidential nature of these transactions.''

The spokesperson refused to confirm any of the reported details surrounding the alleged transaction, prompting one reporter to quip, ''Well, let me just make the point that that doesn't seem very transparent.''

''And your point is well taken,'' replied Toner.

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 13:15

August 3, 2016Christian Science Monitor Breakfast with Jeh Johnson Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson spoke at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Topics included homegrown terrorism, border security, airport screenings, and cybersecurity.

Javascript must be enabled in order to access C-SPAN videos.

*This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

People in this videoDavid T. CookSenior Editor and Bureau ChiefChristian Science Monitor->Washington BureauJeh JohnsonSecretaryDepartment of Homeland SecurityHosting OrganizationRelated VideoUser Created Clips from This VideoView all clips from this video

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 13:01

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 12:47

A Gold Star mother told CNN Thursday that President Barack Obama ignored a request made by fallen soldiers' families when their loved ones' bodies were returned to the United States.

President Barack Obama salutes as he arrives at Dover Air Force Base Aug. 9, 2011. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

During in interview on ''Legal View,'' Karen Vaughn, mother of Aaron Vaughn, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan, was discussing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's feud with another Gold Star family, the Khans.

Vaughn said that ''Mrs. Khan probably had a right to be offended'' by Trump's remarks, but ''there's just a lot more important things going on.''

''Words don't mean as much to me as actions,'' she said in defense of Trump. ''That's just me.''

Then she shared her experience:

When my son was killed, he was killed in the largest loss of life in the history of Naval Special Warfare, and we had 30 families at Dover Air Base waiting for our sons' bodies to be returned from Afghanistan.

What we experienced there was '... the families unanimously asked Barack Obama to not bring any media, to not make this a media event, that he was welcome to be with us but no media. And you know, he showed up with cameras, and the next day our pictures or his picture saluting the caskets of our boys was plastered over every outlet in America.

I guess I'm just saying if you're going to just be outraged that one person says something that could be construed as a flippant remark without a lot of thought put behind it '-- you know, what about the outrage over things people do, the outrage over Hillary Clinton still to date insinuating those grieving parents who say she said one thing must be mistaken. You know, it's just actions mean a lot more to me than words. That's just kind of the angle I come from on it.

A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately return TheBlaze's request for comment on Vaughn's claim.

Watch below:

'--

Follow the author of this story on Twitter and Facebook:

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Fri, 05 Aug 2016 12:42

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 21:12

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 21:11

New York Democratic Debate

2:11Democracy Now: Robert Scheer Attacks Hillary

28:36Dr. Paul Song: Corporate Democratic Whores

34:09Hillary's Big Money Backers

39:30Pelosi: Obama Has Done a Great Job

44:34Cruz's Jokes Fall Flat at New York Dinner

46:52Arbitrary and Biased Delegate and Party Rules

49:24No Trial in Breitbart Reporter Assault Case

1:04:10[Executive Producer Segment]

1:06:46Bill to Fund Zika Virus Countermeasures

1:19:14Obama: The Cable TV Industry is Ripe for Change

1:36:15State Dept on Russian Planes Buzzing US Ships

1:43:29Cognitive Dissonance Created by the Media

1:48:02Zika Virus and Women's Reproductive Health

1:56:50PrEP Anti-HIV Medication

1:58:26Bill Nye: Put Climate Deniers in Jail

2:00:48Barbara Boxer Talks Climate with the Acton Institute

2:03:20[Donation Segment]

2:12:12Adam's Compulsive Behavior and the Failure of Big Data

2:23:20Saudi Arabia's Role in 9/11 and the 28 Pages

2:30:31Bill to Allow Federal Cyber Workers to Move Between Jobs

2:37:17CBS Piece on Phone Hacking

2:39:08Newtown Lawsuit Against Gun Manufacturers Approved

2:44:49Cameron: No Brexit But Reformed EU

2:46:36Clip Blitz

2:50:19

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 21:09

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NEW YORK '-- The FBI arrested more than 40 alleged members of New York City mobs Thursday on suspicion of arson, health care fraud and illegal gambling, among other charges, officials said.

Those arrested include members of four of the five major Italian mafia families that allegedly dominate organized crime in the New York City area: the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese and Bonanno families. Also arrested were suspected members of the Philadelphia Organized Crime Family.

Most of the criminal activities were based in New York City, federal officials said. Arrests were carried out in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida.

The 46 defendants are suspected of being part of the East Coast LCN Enterprise, defined in a federal indictment as an "organized criminal enterprise."

They're accused of committing a slew of crimes dating back to at least 2011, including racketeering, extortion, arson, making extortionate extensions of credit, operating illegal gambling businesses, health care fraud, credit card fraud, selling untaxed cigarettes, firearms trafficking and assault, according to the indictment.

Among those charged was Joseph "Joey" Merlino, the flamboyant alleged head of the Philadelphia mob who is known for beating murder charges in past cases. Also named in the indictment was Pasquale "Patsy" Parrello, identified as a longtime member of the Genovese organized crime family in New York City.

Prosecutors said 39 of those charged were arrested on Thursday. During the arrests, agents recovered three handguns, a shotgun, gambling paraphernalia and more than $30,000 in cash.

The indictment "reads like an old school Mafia novel, where extortion, illegal gambling, arson and threats to 'whack' someone are carried out along with some modern-day crimes," such as credit card skimming, said Diego Rodriguez, head of the FBI's New York office.

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VIDEO: How John Gotti rose to godfather after whacking Paul Castellano

Assault charges in the indictment tell a story of intimidation and threats against those who owe the families money or who crossed them.

In one case, a panhandler was attacked with glass jars, sharp objects and steel-tipped boots after he allegedly harassed customers outside a Bronx restaurant owned by Pasqualle Parrello, the FBI said. Parrello is accused of ordering his crew to ''break (the panhandler's) legs'' for bothering the customers.

In another instance, Parrello and Israel Torres are accused of conspiring to retaliate against a man who allegedly stabbed Anthony Vazzano in the neck.

Mark Maiuzzo is accused of setting fire to a car parked outside a gambling club near the Yonkers Club, federal officials said. He was allegedly ordered to do so by Anthony Zinzi in a move to intimate the gambling club's booker, whose business was in direct competition with the Yonkers Club, the FBI said.

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VIDEO: From 1992: Residents of Howard Beach react to Gotti verdict

Also among the charges is health care fraud.

Investigators said the defendants convinced doctors to write ''unnecessary and excessive'' prescriptions for expensive compound cream then bill the suspects' insurance companies to receive a reimbursement for the medication in addition to kickbacks from the suspects, the FBI said.

All defendants pleaded not guilty. Most were released on $300,000 bail but some were retained without bail, including alleged ringleader Parrello.

The Associated Press contributed this report.

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VIDEO: GUILTY! John Gotti convicted of all charges on April 2, 1992

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