Many major cities saw snow on Thursday, including San Antonio, Austin and Houston. The snowfall came even before Northeast cities like New York and Boston have seen the white stuff this season. Missed Dallas completely - not even a flake.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/08/2017
18:48 ||
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[DallasNews] A mystery package arrived last week in my mailbox. The contents inside scare my family and friends who fear it's a threat to steal my identity.
The big envelope contains a 59-page dossier on my life built from public records. If a criminal got hold of these 59 pages, he or she could take over my life. Like in a movie.
The dossier shocks me in its detail. Every possible piece of information needed to steal my identity is included.
Fast forward:
I do not feel threatened. I feel relieved that someone in Data World has come forward ‐ at personal risk ‐ to leak this document to The Watchdog so I could share this with you.
The leaker is saying, I believe, "Watchdog, you are only skimming the surface in your Equifax breach reporting. Check this out."
I'm only guessing. There is no cover letter, no return address, no postmark on the envelope (as sometimes happens).
But don't for a moment believe that the same type of file doesn't exist on you, too. It does.
Fast forward:
Who created the dossier?
Thomson Reuters, headquartered in Toronto, calls itself "The Answer Company." It is the answer to my questions.
"The intelligence, technology and human expertise you need to find trusted answers."
I'll say.
I send the Thomson Reuters PR department a copy of the first seven pages. The company confirms this is one of their reports.
The company runs a program called CLEAR that it markets to law enforcement, government agencies and corporate security. The stuff is not supposed to leak out, like it does here.
After I contact the company, spokesman Scott Augustin tells me, "What has happened here is entirely unacceptable, and we are investigating the situation."
He continues: "Thomson Reuters is taking this situation very seriously, and takes the privacy and security of our data within its control just as seriously. It is unfortunate that a vetted user would choose to send a report to you in violation of their user agreement."
I hope they don't catch the leaker. Otherwise, we might never know about CLEAR and how easy it is to lose control of its information. You see how easy it is to leak? (If you're reading this, leaker, thank you.)
Everybody is crazed about the Equifax leakage. That's nothing compared with the potential damage caused by this product.
[FOX] By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal
The media echo chamber spent the week speculating about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller can or will nab President Trump on obstruction-of-justice charges. All the while it continues to ignore Washington’s most obvious obstruction‐the coordinated effort to thwart congressional probes of the role law enforcement played in the 2016 election.
The news that senior FBI agent Peter Strzok exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Hillary text messages with another FBI official matters‐though we’ve yet to see the content. The bigger scandal is that the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mr. Mueller have known about those texts for months and deliberately kept their existence from Congress. The House Intelligence Committee sent document subpoenas and demanded an interview with Mr. Strzok. The Justice Department dodged, and then leaked.
The department also withheld from Congress that another top official, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, was in contact with ex-spook Christopher Steele and the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. It has refused to say what role the Steele dossier‐Clinton-commissioned oppo research‐played in its Trump investigation. It won’t turn over files about its wiretapping.
And Mr. Mueller‐who is well aware the House is probing all this, and considered the Strzok texts relevant enough to earn the agent a demotion‐nonetheless did not inform Congress about the matter. Why? Perhaps Mr. Mueller feels he’s above being bothered with any other investigation. Or perhaps his team is covering for the FBI and the Justice Department.
When Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mr. Mueller, he stressed that he wanted a probe with "independence from the normal chain of command." Yet the Mueller team is made up of the same commanders who were previously running the Trump show at the Justice Department and the FBI, and hardly distant from their old office.
#1
The culture of the DOJ and FBI at the top has been to act as gatekeepers/protectors for the Obama admin. and Clinton crime syndicate. There were not enough pink slips and re-assignments in far away places by Trump initially.
OTH, Trump has managed to expose a great deal of corruption by allowing things to go on for a bit longer.
#2
It appears the FBI is overfunded, Cut their budget, fire the Clinton deadwood at the top, and tell the to get compensated for their pensions and salary by the Clinton Foundation. The taxpayers are done
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017 19:32
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#2
This proves Trump is literally Hitler because recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is totally something Hitler would do.
/me queues up "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on the grammophone. Let's all sing along: And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse"
You can't always get what you want
The onion is self-peeling at this point
Yet another key member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe appears to have deep ties to the Democratic Party.
Aaron Zebley served previously as Mueller's chief of staff at the FBI and in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division and as a senior counselor in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. He also was an assistant U.S. attorney in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Alexandria, Virginia.
He is often referred to in the media as Mueller's "right-hand man."
Also, in 2015 when he was a lawyer, he represented Justin Cooper, the IT staffer who personally set up set up Hillary Clinton's unsecure server in her Chappaqua home, Fox News' Tucker Carlson revealed on his show Thursday.
Cooper, it so happens, is also the aide who destroyed Clinton's old BlackBerries with a hammer.
Documents obtained by Fox News show that Senate investigators grew frustrated with Zebley after being repeatedly stonewalled when they were trying to set up a meeting with Cooper.
"Mr. Zebley telephoned Homeland Security [Committee] staff to inform them that Cooper had chosen to cancel the interview," the documents said.
In a letter to Cooper, congressional investigators complained: "We are troubled by your attorney's [referring to Zebley] complete refusal to engage the committee in a discussion about how to further assuage your concerns."
Let this sink in. The same attorney who played a defensive role for Hillary Clinton was tapped by Mueller in June to play an offensive role against Clinton's opponent President Trump.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017
11:46 ||
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#1
Yep. Totally non-partisan and impartial!
Even if they found something against Trump, it would be tainted politically.
I mean if I remember correctly there were a number of my fellow Rantburgers complaining about the large number of democratic operative type lawyers and investigators on the Mueller team.
Seems Mueller and the FBI underestimated Trump (or believed all of the phony news about Trump as a dim light bulb)
Memo to FBI, Mueller, Congress, and others, you don't get to Trump's station in life with his vast empire of holdings by being a dim light bulb.
Seems as I can remember the democrats are want to call all Republican Presidents dumb, I can remember they used that label on Eisenhower for goodness sakes!!!
#4
So, what was Mueller's purpose when he hired every major lawyer who he knew was in bed for Hillary? surely it was not done by accident, and it was not done without expecting it to have consequences, down the road.
Posted by: Si vis pacem ||
12/08/2017 20:52
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ZH. HT Insty
The case against former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn has taken a strange turn, as U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras abruptly recused himself Thursday night with no explanation. Contreras is an Obama appointee who also sat on the FISA court while the Trump team was under surveillance by the Obama administration. Judge Emmet Sullivan, an Bill Clinton appointee, was randomly assigned to take over the case after Contreras' recusal.
Of note, Contreras was appointed to the FISA court on May 19, 2016 - before the warrant to surveil one-time Trump advisor Carter Page was issued "in the summer" of 2016. It is unknown whether or not Contreras was involved in the decision, or whether he was involved in surveillance on Michael Flynn.
In fact every single FISA Court judge was appointed during the Obama administration:
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017
10:42 ||
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#1
In fact every single FISA Court judge was appointed during the Obama administration
Yeah... that wasn't set up to attack your enemies.
#2
Instapundit also posted the Zero Hedge link. In the comment thread was this:
WildernessLawyer
an hour ago
Judge Sullivan, to whom the Flynn case has been reassigned, presided over the Ted Stevens prosecution, so he has bitter first hand experience with DOJ misconduct. In the Stevens case, after he learned of government misconduct, he went so far as to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether the government lawyers who ran the Stevens case should themselves be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing. It makes you wonder if the reassignment of the case to Sullivan was truly random. If it was indeed random, Flynn may have caught a very lucky break -- and the Mueller gang may have caught about the worst break imaginable because, if Sullivan decides they have stepped over the line, their licenses to practice law could be in jeopardy. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel here.
#7
I don’t have an American Thinker account, so newc’s link only got me access to the comments, not the article. But this blogger posted the whole thing, which I share with others in my predicament.
Unexpectedly! Obama says you can thank him
*snort*
[Finance.Yahoo]The November jobs report is out and it's a beat.
In November, the U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs, more than expected by economists, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%.
Wall Street economists were forecasting nonfarm payroll gains of 195,000 in November, down from October's 261,000 jobs added to the economy; this figure was revised down slightly on Friday to show that 244,000 jobs were created in October. The unemployment rate, which fell to its lowest since December 2000 in October, was expected to remain unchanged at 4.1%.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017
09:20 ||
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#1
Given that most journalists are Progressive, including those who report on busines/finance, this one must have been grinding his teeth as he pulled the report together.
[CNBC] Leon Cooperman: If Hillary Clinton won, we'd be in a recession today
If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election, the U.S. would be experiencing a recession today, billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman told CNBC on Thursday.
The nation is better off with President Donald Trump in the White House than it would have been under Clinton or her 2016 rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, contended Cooperman.
The chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors said his thinking heading into the election was, "'I don't know what I'll get with Donald Trump, but I'll take my chances.'" Cooperman said he's a registered independent. "I think personally if Hillary Clinton had won, we'd be in a recession today," he said on "Fast Money Halftime Report."
Cooperman said he'd vote for Trump again over Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is speculated to run in the 2020 election.
We haven’t heard much from her since some Native Americans accused her of cultural appropriation.
Trump deserves "a lot" of the credit for the stock market run since the November election, he added. "The intelligent people who voted for Donald Trump a year ago, 'said I know what I'll get when I get Hillary. I don't want it.'"
Cooperman also on commented Barack Obama, saying the 44th president had a "foot on the throat of the economy."
The biggest risk to Trump and the Republican Party is not passing a tax bill before the 2018 midterm elections, he said. Trump and the GOP leaders in the House and Senate hope to have the tax cuts package signed into law by Christmas.
Most likely. People love to say Trump's vindictive & crazy, but anyone who follows politics would realize Hillary! is 100 times worse in the behavior department. There's also the Alinsky angle, so the only question would be whether she'd be as bad or worse than Obama.
[Reuters] With a worrying number of children who play contact sports in the US reporting having had concussion, doctors and researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle are developing an app to make diagnosing such brain injuries simpler. Stuart McDill reports.
[Reuters] Japan is to acquire medium-range, air-launched cruise missiles, capable of striking North Korea, a controversial purchase of what will become the longest-range munitions of a country that has renounced the right to wage war.
Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera did not refer to North Korea when announcing the planned acquisition and said the new missiles would be for defence, with Japan still relying on the United States to strike any enemy bases.
"We are planning to introduce the JSM (Joint Strike Missile) that will be mounted on the F-35A (stealth fighter) as ’stand-off’ missiles that can be fired beyond the range of enemy threats," Onodera told a news conference.
Japan is also looking to mount Lockheed Martin Corp’s extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER) on its F-15 fighters, he said.
The JSM, designed by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace , has a range of 500 km (310 miles). The JASSM-ER can hit targets 1,000 km away.
#4
#2 Yes, DV, that is the unanswered question here: Will these missiles carry nuke warheads?
Posted by: Abu Uluque 2017-12-08 13:11
The Japanese are nothing if not polite and subtle. The purchase of the JSMs and JASSM-ERs is the two minute warning. If the Chinese and the Norks don't get the message now, they have only themselves to blame for what comes next.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/08/2017 19:14
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[Reuters] The top U.S. intelligence official has ordered tighter restrictions on how the names of Americans kept secret in intelligence reports can be revealed during presidential transitions, according to documents seen by Reuters.
The move follows unsubstantiated charges by President Donald Trump and his allies that his predecessor’s administration spied on Trump and improperly "unmasked" the identities of his associates during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition.
Current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials who have reviewed the documentation dispute those claims by the president.
In September, the U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing that it had no evidence to support the president’s claim that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance of his Trump Tower campaign headquarters.
In a Nov. 30 letter sent to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other top lawmakers, the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said the new unmasking policy is due by Jan. 15.
Nunes was among the first to charge that U.S. intelligence agencies collected information on Americans involved in Trump’s transition team. A Nunes spokesman declined comment.
Coats wrote that the new policy will reinforce existing procedures that "make clear that IC (intelligence community) elements may not engage in political activity, including dissemination of U.S. person identities to the White House, for the purpose of affecting the political process of the United States."
#2
This needs Congress to pass a law. Short of that, anything one “top official” orders, his successor can order differently — as, indeed, happened in this case.
#3
Just prior to leaving office the Obama administration allowed the NSA to share information from its vast international surveillance apparatus with the 16 other agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. Couple that with ginned up, bought fake dossiers to take to the FISA court to obtain warrants and "Unmasking" is blessed with the aura of legality and the info can be shared across all intelligence agencies. That seems to me to be a problem that skirts the 4th Amendment. Thank you Obama for your diabolical and scurrilous "fundamental transformation" (sarc on).
#4
BTW, how many terrorists have been rounded up because of this snooping? Didn't do any good to prevent Las Vega, Boston bombing, San Bernadino, Orlando, or Ft. Hood.
#5
It was a targeted snooping, JohnQC, and terrorists were not the targets.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2017 12:11
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#6
BTW, how many terrorists have been rounded up because of this snooping? Didn't do any good to prevent Las Vega, Boston bombing, San Bernadino, Orlando, or Ft. Hood ?
A question that should be asked at the highest levels of gov't, and often.
[GunsAmerica] National concealed-carry reciprocity moves forward today as the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 cleared the House floor. If the act becomes law, people with concealed-carry permits will be able to carry concealed firearms in every state where permitted.
"You’re not going to see mobs of people carrying concealed [weapons] into Times Square," said North Carolina Republican Richard Hudson, who sponsored the law. "But law-abiding citizens who may be passing through one state to get to grandma’s house in the next state aren’t automatically going to become a criminal."
"There are more than 16 million concealed carry permit holders in America," explained Gahanna, Ohio Police Chief Dennis Murphy. "That number has surged in the last decade, and at the same time, violent crime has declined nearly in half. Law-abiding gun owners are not to be feared or mistrusted. We should focus our attentions on those who commit offenses against others, not those who simply wish to protect themselves."
The act passed largely on party lines although there were outliers on both sides of the aisle. The version was passed as-is without a motion to recommit with instructions.
#3
How is this different than how things are now? A person can carry in every state that his/her state has reciprocity with now. You still won't be able to carry in states such as NY or NJ if you are out-of-state?
[Gateway Pundit] Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) grilled FBI director Christopher Wray Thursday morning. The conservative firebrand demanded Wray confirm whether or not Trump-hating FBI agent Peter Strzok applied for the FISA warrant to spy on Trump officials.
Jordan kicked off his line of questioning with the following, "Director, did Peter Strozk help produce and present the application to the FISA court to secure a warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign?"
#1
Knowing he'd get nothing from Wray, Congressman Jordan uses his allotted time wisely to 'connect the dots' and provide a very excellent synopsis of at least a portion of FBI Agent Peter Strozk's chain of involvement.
I would not be at all surprised to soon learn that a tragic motorway accident in the north of Scotland has claimed the life of former M16 officer Christopher Steele. After the Nidal Hasan cock-up, the other end of that operation (US Citizen terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki) did not last long either. Operational termination does bring closure. The conduit for funneling US taxpayer dollars to Russian intelligence operatives simply cannot be fully revealed.
FBI director Christopher Wray needs to find new employment, and in my opinion, very soon. Later this morning would be excellent.
#2
Besoeke agreed with a loud applause. One nagging problem with Jordan and Trey for that matter, is all indinate talk. Just talk.
When is the last time there were any demands for firing or better yet prison for the swampers?
All bark and zero bite. Making them almost as bad. That being said it was fascinating dare I say refreshing to see such a clear dot line laid out. If he would have topped it off with, "Wray what are you going to do to prosecute these criminals?" A public dance that has yet to come. And I fear we will never see. A question that should have been asked at his confirmation hearing...
In the meantime I fear the FBI 7th floor is laughing there arses off. Which begs another question. Has anyone interviewed the FBI agents that quit over the massive Clinton Foundation bribery scam?
#3
One nagging problem with Jordan and Trey for that matter, is all indinate talk. Just talk.
I agree! The politically appointed "leadership" of these agencies appears to be notional at best, our current Attorney General being a prime example. These people, these beltway denizens, report to an entirely different chain of command. We used to refer to it as 'B Company.'
B Company - Be there when you get there, Be there when you leave.
#4
Interesting how the Director said that they (the FBI) will fully investigate their (the FBI's) own wrongdoing and they won't release anything until that is done. (I suspect maybe in the year 2040).
The fact that the FISA court can be used by the FBI to do just about anything they want - without any oversight or accountability seems pretty scary to me.
#9
Mrs. JohnQC says to me, let me know when someone goes to jail. She tends to a bit of a skeptic. Trump might need a new team in DOJ to push the ball over the line.
#10
Jordan's request was modest. He was only asking for a copy of the FBI FISA warrant application which would have on it the justification for the warrant to unmask. Congress, as charged with oversight has a right to such documents.
[WND] Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s sin was lying to liars, not colluding with Russians.
When he spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, following Donald Trump’s 2016 election, former National Security Adviser Flynn was discharging a perfectly legal and patriotic duty to the electorate.
In a fit of pique, then-President Barack Obama had expelled Russian diplomats from the United States. K.T. McFarland, Flynn’s deputy in the Trump transition team, worried that Obama’s expulsion of the diplomats was aimed at "boxing Trump in diplomatically," making it impossible for the president to "improve relations with Russia," a promise he ran on. For her perspicacity, McFarland has since been forced to lawyer-up in fear for her freedom.
To defuse President Obama’s spiteful maneuver, Flynn spoke to Ambassador Kislyak, the upshot of which was that Russia "retaliated" by ... inviting U.S. diplomats and their families to the Kremlin for a New Year’s bash.
A jolly good diplomatic success, wouldn’t you say?
Present at the Kislyak meeting was Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. Kushner likely instructed Flynn to ask Russia to disrupt or delay one of the U.N. Security Council’s favorite pastimes: passing resolutions denouncing Israeli settlements. Kushner, however, is protected by Daddy and the first daughter, so getting anything on Jared will be like frisking a seal.
One clue as to the extent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s violations, here, is that Flynn had committed no crime. Laying the cornerstone for the president-elect’s promised foreign policy ‐ diplomacy with Russia ‐ is not illegal.
Perversely, however, lying to the U.S. federal government’s KGB (the FBI), a liar in its own right, is illegal.
[Daily Caller] WASHINGTON ‐ "Throw’em into prison for five years" is what New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez wants for any out-of-state concealed carry permit holder who enter his state with a firearm.
"People violate our law ‐ we are a state that has decided that we are against concealed carry weapons. We have stronger gun laws. We believe we have made the states safer as that," Menendez told The Daily Caller Thursday. "They violate our laws, then whatever is the law, and they are found guilty of it, they should pay the consequence."
When pressed about travelers with concealed carry permits who may be detoured into his state by accident, he replied: "They know what our state’s law is. They should know what our state law is if they want to carry a concealed weapon. I don’t think that they just simply get detoured and they should think in advance when they are traveling."
He continued, "I find it amazing that Republicans who believe in state rights all of a sudden have a problem observing the state rights of those states that think that stronger gun laws is the way to protect citizens and that’s what I have to say about it."
New Jersey has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. Its state troopers are known to pull over drivers and question them on whether they are carrying concealed firearms.
Posted by: Chris ||
12/08/2017 9:27
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#6
Texas should offer to try anyone from New Jersey for treason against the state and put them on the fast track for the death penalty. Then offer rewards for anyone presenting the gov of NJ to any Texas judge.
#7
Most people who live in NJ that I know are moving out for tax reasons. Denying a person their Constitution rights is just another good reason not to be there. BTW, shouldn't Menendez be in jail? What was that story about corruption and under-age girls in the Caribbean?
[Daily Caller] Like a headless turkey running around in circles, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s anti-Trump investigation is dead, even if he does not yet realize it. While his investigation stumbles onward, with life support provided by the biased media, from a legal perspective the viability of any criminal case that Mueller could possibly bring has been effectively gutted thanks to the news (suppressed for months by Mueller’s team) that the FBI’s "key agent" in both the Russia investigation and the Clinton email probe was an ardent Hillary supporter with an anti-Trump bias.
Under federal law, a prosecutor is required "to disclose exculpatory and impeachment information to criminal defendants and to seek a just result in every case." Specifically, pursuant to Giglio v. United States, prosecutors are obligated to provide defendants with impeachment evidence, which includes, according to the DOJ’s guidelines, evidence of a witness’s biases, "[a]nimosity toward defendant," or "[a]nimosity toward a group of which the defendant is a member or with which the defendant is affiliated."
As a result, in any prosecution brought by Mueller against a Republican target, defense counsel would be entitled under the Constitution to all evidence in the government’s possession relevant to exploring the apparent biases of FBI agent Peter Strzok and his animosity toward Trump and the Republican Party. This, in and of itself, could be a case-killer because it is very unlikely that Mueller or the DOJ would want defense counsel poring through all the records and documents, emails, and texts in the DOJ’s and Strzok’s possession revealing the agent’s biases since this could fatally undermine any other cases or investigations the agent has worked on‐such as the FBI’s decision to recommend charging General Flynn with lying to federal agents even though Hillary Clinton’s besties, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, were given a free pass despite apparently doing the same thing. Emphasis added.
#1
it is very unlikely that Mueller or the DOJ would want defense counsel poring through all the records and documents, emails, and texts
Or (as the onion continues to be peeled) examining electronic monitoring... or discovering how electronic monitoring was authorized.
I doubt FBI's Peter Strzok or his recently discovered accomplice, associate attorney general Bruce Ohr were involved in too many other cases. I suspect their (and possibly many others) primary area of interest was the Trump Campaign.
#3
Why does Mueller's team keep protecting that worthless former candidate and corrupt scumbag. The Clinton Foundation has effectively been shut down hasn't it? Hasn't the money dried up (or are they still living on the pilfered $12Bil from Haiti)? She's not going to be president.
[SmokeRoom] The first trailer was released Thursday for the upcoming movie "7 Days in Entebbe."
The plot of the film, according to the YouTube description, is, "A gripping thriller inspired by the true events of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, the film depicts the most daring rescue mission ever attempted."
The Entebbe raid is one of the most famous moments in military history in the past 100 years. It was also the place that current Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan was killed as part of the rescue team.
Judging from the trailer, this movie is going to be awesome. Of course, it shouldn’t be hard to write an awesome movie script for this story. The details of the Entebbe Raid are almost to unbelievable for real life. Israeli commandos invaded Uganda, bang it out at an airport and rescue dozens of hostages. It doesn’t get much crazier than that.
The movie is currently scheduled to be released March 16.
I thought there was an understanding to not re-do Charles Bronson movies, and I have been known to sing along with the raiders when they break out in song. The Idi Amin character (Yafet Kotto) was awesome. The tension build is great, action scene fantastic.
[Free Beacon] The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) had done nothing wrong after being accused of leaking classified information.
Nunes was accused of disclosing intelligence improperly in connection with the probe of the Trump campaign and collusion with Russia.
In a letter released by the bipartisan committee, it was announced that classification experts from the intelligence community were brought in to provide their expertise as to what Nunes had mentioned during an improptu press conference after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
"In the course of this investigation, the Committee sought the analysis of Representative Nunes's statements by classification experts in the intelligence community,"the letter said. "Based solely on the conclusion of these classification experts that the information that Representative Nunes disclosed was not classified, the Committee will take no further action and considers this matters closed."
The committee had announced in early April 2017 that it was investigating Nunes over the matter. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has stepped aside in the committee's investigations of Russian involvement in the 2016 elections.
[France24] The European Commission said it "recommends sufficient progress" had been made by Britain on separation issues including the Irish border, Britain's divorce bill, and citizens rights.
The agreement paves the way for EU leaders at a summit on December 14-15 to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations, covering trade talks and a transition period.
Britain voted in June 2016 to become the first state to leave the EU, after more than four decades of membership, but the talks have been slow moving and often acrimonious so far.
"The Commission is satisfied that sufficient progress has been achieved in each of the three priority areas," the European Commission said in a statement.
Negotiators worked through the night to seal an agreement on the terms of Britain's departure from the bloc.
The EU had set a deadline of Sunday after the last talks on Monday broke down when May's Northern Irish allies objected to terms for future arrangements for the Irish border.
[AyPeeNews] The historian carried secrets too heavy for one man to bear.
He packed his bag with his most treasured possessions before going to bed: the 1 terabyte hard drive with his evidence against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group, an orange notebook half-filled with notes on Ottoman history, and, a keepsake, the first book from Amazon delivered to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... He passed the night in despair, imagining all the ways he could die, and the moment he would leave his mother and his city.
He had spent nearly his entire life in this home, with his five brothers and five sisters. He woke his mother in her bedroom on the ground floor.
"I am leaving," he said. "Where?" she asked. "I am leaving," was all he could say. He couldn’t endanger her by telling her anything more. In truth, since the IS had invaded his city, he’d lived a life about which she was totally unaware.
He felt her eyes on the back of his neck, and headed to the waiting Chevrolet. He didn’t look back.
For nearly two years, he’d wandered the streets of occupied Mosul, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information. He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by IS. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and deaths by stoning, so he could hear the killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes.
He wasn’t a spy. He was an undercover historian and blogger . As IS turned the Iraqi city he loved into a fundamentalist bastion, he decided he would show the world how the faceless myrmidons had distorted its true nature, how they were trying to rewrite the past and forge a brutal Sunni-only future for a city that had once welcomed many faiths.
He knew that if he was caught he too would be killed.
"I am writing this for the history , because I know this will end. People will return, life will go back to normal," is how he explained the blog that was his conduit to the citizens of Mosul and the world beyond. "After many years, there will be people who will study what happened. The city deserves to have something written to defend the city and tell the truth, because they say that when the war begins, the first victim is the truth."
He called himself Mosul Eye. He made a promise to himself in those first few days: Trust no one, document everything.
On Nov. 15, 2017, Mosul Eye made his decision.
"I can’t be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now."
He is 31 years old.
His name is Omar Mohammed.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2017
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[Jpost] There was some violence already on Thursday, when forces of Evil in the Gazoo Strip fired three rockets at Israel.
Security personnel were preparing for riots on Friday in Jerusalem and the West Bank, amid predictions that Paleostinians and Israeli Arabs will escalate their protests against US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Ynet’s article on the subject talks of dozens and thousands, and quotes a young Jerusalemite:
A schoolgirl from east Jerusalem expressed disappointment of the lack of response among the Israeli Arab sector. "I won't be calm unless we fight against Trump's decision. After reading the condemnations on Facebook yesterday, I thought there was going to be war today, but unfortunately there is almost no response here," she said. "Me and many other students just want to be on the ground. If it's too difficult for the men, then us women have the strength to do a lot of things that would lead us to a right and just struggle, and not just talk."
[IsraelTimes] No injuries in incident described by Jewish community as terror attack, hours after Trump Jerusalem move.
Police are investigating the smashing of the windows of a kosher restaurant in a heavily Jewish part of the Dutch capital by a man wearing a Paleostinian flag.
The incident at HaCarmel restaurant occurred Thursday morning, hours after US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The AT5 television station showed a video of the incident, in which a man holding a Paleostinian flag and wearing a Paleostinian keffiyah on his head smashes the window and kicks down the restaurant’s doors as passersby and two coppers look on. The officers wait until he breaks into the restaurant. They pause as he returns to the street from the restaurant’s interior holding an Israeli flag that he took from there. He throws it at their feet. They then overpower the man and arrest him.
Contacted by JTA, an employee at HaCarmel declined to comment on the circumstances of the incident, which the Federative Jewish Netherlands group reported online with a pictures of a Dutch police officer kneeling in front of a shattered glass window, with a Star of David hanging on the restaurant’s wall in the background.
Herman Loonstein, who heads Federative Jewish Netherlands, said the incident at HaCarmel happened when no patrons were inside the restaurant and ended without injury. "But it is nonetheless an attack, a terrorist attack, carried out by a man whose behavior was that of a terrorist," he told JTA.
"Jerusalem is recognized as the capital by the United States of America, so the windows of an Israeli restaurant in Amsterdam are smashed. Only logical. The Paleostinian [keffiyah] completes the story," Federative Jewish Netherlands wrote on Twitter.
Loonstein said that the incident at HaCarmel for many Dutch Jews compounds a growing fear about frequenting kosher restaurants following the Grand Café Rimon stabbing. "I know this to be the reality, and there was also a dip in the revenues of the café where the stabbing occurred. It has improved but I expect the new attack will only increase community members’ fear," he said.
Police beefed up their presence around the restaurant and other Jewish institutions in the capital following the incident, according to the Federative Jewish Netherlands report.
Police said the perpetrator, whom a spokesperson described as a "pro-Paleostinian activist," was a 29-year-old foreigner with a temporary residence permit.
Student? Asylum seeker? Expat on a fixed assignment?
Police would not indicate his nationality, the WNL television channel reported. The suspect is scheduled to be released Thursday as per the maximum detainment period afforded by the law for suspects locked away You have the right to remain silent... for alleged vandalism, WNL reported.
The Organization of Jewish Communities in The Netherlands, or NIK, said in a statement the incident was "nothing less than an act of terror."
Witnesses of the attack, which occurred as passersby and two coppers looked on, said the perpetrator shouted "holy shit! Allahu akbar," Arabic for "Allah is the greatest," and "Paleostine" as he smashed the restaurant’s windows, kicked down its door and took out an Israeli flag from the interior, which he then threw on the sidewalk. The officers arrested him after he returned with the flag.
The restaurant’s employees were inside the restaurant during the attack but no patrons were present as it had not yet opened. No one was injured in the incident, which resulted in hundreds of dollars worth of damage.
[Stars and Stripes] RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany ‐ Capt. Sharior Rahman, an imam at Ramstein Air Base and one of only a handful of Muslim clerics in the Air Force, was convicted by a military judge Tuesday of larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny in a shoplifting incident last year.
The judge, Col. Mark Milam, ordered the chaplain to forfeit $3,000 of his pay for one month but did not dismiss him from the service.
Whether Rahman will remain in the chaplaincy with a general court-martial conviction still needs to be determined by the organization that endorsed him as a military chaplain, officials said.
The charges stem from a shopping trip last year at an Edeka store in Homburg, where Rahman and his wife, Sanam, a civilian, shoplifted about 70 euros worth of groceries, according to court testimony. A second shoplifting involving the couple occurred two weeks later at the Exchange on Ramstein, though no criminal charges were filed in the latter incident.
Sharior Rahman pleaded not guilty to the larceny charges in the Edeka case, which occurred on Nov. 11, 2016, and requested a trial before a military judge alone. Milam announced his verdict Tuesday afternoon, after about a day and a half of testimony.
Rahman, a former Navy medic who has nearly 20 years of military service, could have faced a possible maximum punishment of dismissal from the Air Force, up to a year in prison, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a fine.
#2
A second shoplifting involving the couple occurred two weeks later at the Exchange on Ramstein, though no criminal charges were filed in the latter incident.
Yes, that's the same BX where visiting US military retirees are prohibited from shopping. And yes, it's only a few minutes drive from the US Landstuhl Regional Medical Center where US military retirees cannot be provided medical treatment.
[AlAhram] A criminal court in Egypt's Giza has sentenced 13 members of the terrorist group Ajnad Misr to death after the country's top Moslem legal authority consented to the punishment, following their conviction for attacking security forces.
The court issued preliminary death sentences against the defendants in October and referred them the grand mufti, whose opinion is legally required in death penalty cases but is not binding.
The court on Thursday issued a final verdict after the mufti endorsed the sentencing recommendation, which can still be appealed within 60 days.
Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, emerged in early 2014,
... after breaking off from Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, which was then still linked to Al Qaeda. Possibly they allied with the Muslim Brotherhood after the Egyptian army evicted the MB from the government, but at any rate they ranked #12 on the UAE terror blacklist. They mostly blew up Cairo policemen with IEDs they made themselves...
claiming responsibility for a number of attacks on security forces mainly in the Egyptian capital. The group was designated a terrorist organization by the Egyptian government in the same year.
Its leader was killed by security forces in 2015,
... that would be Hammam Mohammed Attia the bomb maker, who died in his beloved Giza at the age of 33. At the time of his death he was in possession of an automatic firearm, a pistol, four bombs including one with a magnet so that it could be attached to a car, 18 incomplete bombs, materials used to make bombs and over EGP 76,000...
and many of its members are in jail.
The defendants were convicted between 2013 and mid-2015 of charges including murder of security forces, attempted murder, joining an outlawed group, and possessing firearms.
Seventeen others of a total of 44 defendants in the same case have been sentenced to life imprisonment, while five were acquitted. The rest received between 5-15 years in jail.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2017
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[SeattleTimes] A new federal report on homelessness shows King County behind only Los Angeles and New York City in the number of people living without permanent shelter.
King County has the third-largest concentration of homeless people in the country, a new federal report shows.
National homelessness figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development show that with an estimated count of 11,643 in 2017, King County trails behind only Los Angeles County and New York City in overall homeless population. That overall number includes people living in shelters and other facilities, as well as outdoors.
The department requires communities from around the country that receive federal dollars to conduct annual snapshot counts to track homeless numbers. A local point-in-time count was conducted in King County earlier this year.
King County also ranks third in the number of unsheltered homeless ‐ people living in vehicles, tents and on local streets. The 5,485 unsheltered people counted in the county in 2017 represent a 21 percent increase over last year’s tally.
The numbers underscore the severity of a problem that stretches from Seattle to San Diego. As rents soar and access to affordable housing shrinks, the number of people living in states along the West Coast is trending in the wrong direction.
In California, the number of people living without permanent shelter rose by nearly 14 percent, the report shows. Oregon saw a 5 percent increase this year, while in Washington the homeless population rose to 21,112 ‐ an increase of 1 percent over the previous year.
The crisis has prompted several local governments, including those in the city of Seattle and King County, to declare a civil state of emergency.
In hopes of reducing the numbers, local authorities have begun a series of reforms. Earlier this month, officials announced $34 million in new contracts for homeless service providers, and they’ll hold the providers to new performance bench marks.
Combined with federal funding, officials are projecting a dramatic increase in the number of people moved off the streets. With its new funding plan, the city believes it can help move 7,399 people from homelessness into stable housing in 2018. That’s up from the 3,026 "exits from homelessness" projected for 2017.
#3
As rents soar and access to affordable housing shrinks, the number of people living in states along the West Coast is trending in the wrong direction.
I've said it before: If you really want affordable try Detroit or Albuquerque or Houston. The coastal areas of California, Oregon and Washington are what you call prime real estate so it's no surprise that a lot of people can't afford to live here.
It's a shame that we all can't afford to live in mansions on the beach in La Jolla or Malibu but some of us have to settle for something a bit more modest and a bit further inland. We have to work for it too.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2017 12:37
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#4
What about the ones that choose to be homeless, or "outdoors"?
We have vagrancy laws for those folks. I'd put them in encampments out in the desert surrounded by concertina wire. Let them pitch their tents there.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2017 12:43
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#6
I posted this in order to Highlight the growing trend in Socialist Cities and their Skyrocketing homeless issues. the trend seems to be that when the rich urbanites move in, who ever was there and doesnt conform to much higher living expenitures ( taxes, and fee's) , well they must move away or go broke.
#8
Raj, you only hear about the "homeless problem " during R administrations. It magically clears up as soon as a D takes over. Then appears again in the next R administration.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/08/2017 14:49
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#9
Funny there doesnt seem to be all that much homelessness in "red" dominated areas.
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) A holy warrior was killed, while another was tossed in the calaboose You have the right to remain silent... in west of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... a commander announced on Thursday.
"Troops of the Kirkuk Operations Command managed on Thursday evening to kill a holy warrior and arrest another of those involved in a terrorist operation that targeted civilians in al-Khuzeifi village, east of Riyad town, west of Kirkuk," Maj. Gen. Ali Fadel Umran said in a statement.
"During the campaign, a rest house for the holy warriors, at which they were hiding, was destroyed," Umran added.
On Tuesday, IS armed Lions of Islam attacked, in the evening, al-Khuzeifi village leaving five civilians including the mayor of the village, killed.
Four others were kidnapped from villages of al-Nasr, al-Sharifiya and al-Khuzeifi.
Officials in the province of Kirkuk has urged reinforcing military troops in the south and west, as the region still have IS members who escaped during liberation offensives of Hawija and mainly in houses and tunnels at remote areas in Riyad, al-Rashad and between al-Abbassi and Dibis.
The Joint Operations Command announced in October the liberation of each of Hawija, Riyad and al-Rashad. Over 1,300 members were killed during offensives to free Hawija, while over 800 members were killed during the second phase of operations.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2017
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[ALMASDARNEWS] In an effort to remove the remaining cult of personality around former Yemei president former President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... , who was killed in a shootout on Monday, authorities in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a have decided to rename the capital’s main mosque.
The so-called Saleh Mosque, which is the largest mosque in Sana’a, has been officially renamed the People’s Mosque, reflecting not only a break with the past but also a restoration of the original function of the mosque, according to local authorities.
A statement by local authorities, which are mainly loyal to the Ansarullah movement, also known as the Houthis, reads: "Mosques are not private property for a single person or political party, it is the property of the people."
According to local sources, the People’s Mosque, which had reportedly previously been used almost exclusively for members of Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) party, has now been opened for all to visit.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2017
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#1
People’s Armory Mosque
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017 10:00
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[Khaama Press] A senior Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... leader who was in charge of the group’s prisons in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan has been killed in an operation of the Afghan Special Forces.
The provincial government media office in a statement said the Taliban leader identified as Nabi who was also famous as Ghorzang was killed during an operation in Hesarak district.
The statement further added that Nabi was among at least fourteen holy warriors killed during the operation which was conducted on Wednesday night.
According to the provincial government, the Taliban shadow district chief for Hesarak Abdul Hasan who was also famous as Hajiz was also killed during the operation along with the shadow education director of the group who was identified as Yar Mohammad.
A compound of the group which was used as a customs house by the holy warriors was also destroyed during the operation, the statement added.
The local officials are saying that the security forces and the civilians did not suffer any casualties during the operation.
The anti-government armed Lion of Islam groups including the Taliban hard boyz have not commented regarding the report so far.
[ArsTechnica] On Wednesday, a US District judge in Detroit sentenced Oliver Schmidt, a former Volkswagen executive, to seven years in prison for his role in the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal of 2015. Schmidt was also ordered to pay a criminal penalty of $400,000, according to a US Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. The prison term and the fine together represent the maximum sentence that Schmidt could have received under the plea deal he signed in August.
Schmidt, a German citizen who lived in Detroit as an emissions compliance executive for VW, was arrested in Miami on vacation last January. In August, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to making a false statement under the Clean Air Act. Schmidt’s plea deal stated that the former executive could face up to seven years in prison and between $40,000 and $400,000 in fines.
Last week, Schmidt’s attorneys made a last-minute bid requesting a lighter sentence for Schmidt: 40 months of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. Schmidt also wrote a letter to the judge, which surfaced over the weekend, in which the executive said he felt “misused” by his own company and claimed that higher-ranked VW executives coached him on a script to help him lie to a California Air Resources Board (CARB) official.
Instead, Schmidt was sentenced to the maximum penalties outlined in the plea deal. Only one other VW employee has been sentenced in connection with the emissions scandal: former engineer James Liang, who received 40 months in prison and two years of supervised release as the result of his plea deal. Although six other VW Group executives have been indicted, none is in US custody.
Volkswagen Group, the umbrella company that owns VW, Audi, and Porsche, has paid about $30 billion in fines and buyback costs since regulators discovered it was including emissions-cheating software on its diesel vehicles. The software allowed the cars to pass emissions tests under lab conditions, while disabling the emissions-control software under real-world driving conditions so the cars would have better performance. As VW Group rolled out its massive “clean diesel” marketing campaign appealing to environmentally conscious car buyers, those same cars were actually emitting nitrogen oxide (NOx) many times in excess of the legal limit.
#1
Why is he going to jail? I didn't think we still had the rule of law here. Thought we were operating on Zimbabwe rules. Conspiracy and lying? I see that in Congressional hearings all the time and no one goes to jail.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) One Iraqi was killed and another one was maimed Thursday when armed button men shot at them in northern Baghdad, according to security source.
Alghad Press quoted a security source saying that unknown button menrubbed out a foodstuff store owner and maimed two others in Husseiniya, north of the capital.
The motivation behind the shooting was not known yet.
[DW] The European Commission is suing eastern member states for failing to fulfill their legal obligations in accepting a share of asylum seekers. The defendants claim that the EU is interfering with their illusory sovereignty.
“We’re the EU and we’re here to help. Now shut up and obey, you stupid peasants!”
#1
Somebody once said that to predict the course of any large organization, one needs only to imagine it is being run by a secret cabal of enemies determined to destroy it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the European Union!
[WashingtonTimes] And the legend goes on, or something like that. Now on sale, it’s the Hillary Clinton Tree Topper, which features a very life-like plaster figurine of Mrs. Clinton with feathery angel wings and pristine white pantsuit, meant to go on the top of the Christmas tree. Actually, the Hillary Topper is ideal for the "Resistmas" tree. Yes, the Democratic holiday lexicon now includes the handy term "Resistmas" for those who still have not come to terms with the 2016 election.
But back to the plaster(ed?) Hillary.
"She is most presidential of tree toppers, 3D sculpted in her iconic power suit with angelic wings, 3D printed to order with pinpoint accuracy, with a simple wire tie threaded through holes on her back to safely secure to your tree," notes the description from Women to Look Up To, a British nonprofit promoting "female equality" and offering the decoration, along with versions based on Beyonc, Serena Williams, Angelina Jolie and other famous women.
"She’s the First Lady of Christmas tree decorations. Christmas tree topper, angel, or fierce fairy ‐ now she’s a woman to look up to," the organization promises, though the prices for the pricey Hillary ornament start around $107 for a version suited for a typical tree.
"There’s no word yet, however, on whether it smells of sorrow and corruption instead of the traditional fir tree scent," writes Emily Zanotti, a writer for The Daily Wire.
Incidentally, those who attended the big Women’s March on the nation’s capital and other cities back on Jan. 21 have not forgotten the event, famous for pink knitted "pussy hats" and feminist slogans. Plans for the anniversary of the event are already in motion, and they include an official commemorative book titled "Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World," complete with essays by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Rep. Maxine Waters and many more. The hardcover book weighs in at 320 pages and showcases organizers now "sustaining and building on the widespread outrage, passion, and determination" of the event. Do the eyes seem to follow you around the room?
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
12/08/2017
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[Free Beacon] Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez (Ill.), who announced last week that he will not seek reelection after spending 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, will no longer be able to pay his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars from campaign funds once he officially departs from Congress.
Soraida Gutierrez, his wife, has collected more than $430,000 from Gutierrez for Congress, Luis's campaign committee, since 2010. Soraida is the top recipient of expenditures this year.
Soraida, who was a registered lobbyist in Illinois prior to appearing on the campaign's payroll, has been listed as the campaign's office manager, fundraiser, and treasurer for the past seven years.
Gutierrez's campaign committee has reported $77,838.69 in operating expenditures from the beginning of January to the end of September. Soraida has received seven checks for $6,000 each‐or $42,000 total‐during this time, meaning that she has collected more than half of his campaign's disbursements.
The second largest expenditure from Gutierrez's campaign this year is a $22,000 donation to the Puerto Rican Relief Fund, which is not included in the committee's operating expenditures total, but is rather marked under other disbursements.
Gutierrez has said he is leaving Washington to focus on the rebuilding efforts in Puerto Rico, although some have speculated that the abrupt retirement raises questions about his motives and that he has made a "grand inside play," Politico reported.
#7
Imagine my surprise that a woman married this pendejo chihuahua
It's an old saw that women are attracted to fame, money and power, whereas men are attracted to looks. Weinstein merely went overboard with his attempt to bed a new woman every night. No question he could have attracted plenty of good-looking women without coercion. The problem is that nobody (including good-looking A-list stars like Charlie Sheen and Ashton Kutcher) can get a different attractive woman to do one-nighters with him every night of the week. Women want, if possible, a lifetime supply of that fame, money and power. One-nighters don't do the trick.
#9
Fat & hairy with a face that looks like a frying pan? Where do I sign up?
Kissinger wasn't particularly photogenic, but apparently quite a success with the ladies. Of course, unlike Weinstein, he was single, charming and presumably not a presumptuous flasher and groper who counted on his money and power to land a one-night stand every night of the week:
Even in his youth Kissinger didn’t quite fit the bill of a matinee idol, but he’s always been a hit with the ladies. A 1972 poll of Playboy bunnies selected Kissinger as the man with whom Hef’s ladies would most like to go out on a date. He also had a string of celebrity girlfriends in his younger days, including Diane Sawyer, Candice Bergen, Jill St. John, Shirley Maclaine, and Liv Ullman, who called Kissinger, “the most interesting man I have ever met.”
Kissinger’s swinging bachelor days are long gone, though. In 1974 he married philanthropist Nancy Maginnes, a union that seemed at one point seemed so improbable that just a year earlier Nancy had called speculation that she and Kissinger would marry “outrageous.”
[IsraelTimes] An Israel Defense Forces tank and aircraft carried out strikes on two Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, positions in the Gazoo Strip on Thursday evening in retaliation for Paleostinian rocket attacks.
The strikes came as a terrorist group in the Strip launched a rocket that hit an open field in the south of the country, after two previous attacks that failed to reach Israeli territory, the army said.
The retaliatory strikes targeted Hamas positions even though a different group, the salafist ...also known as Wahhabis, salafists are against innovation in religion or in anything else. They eat the same things every meal of every day and all their children are named Abdullah or Mohammed. Not all salafists are takfiris, but all takfiris are salafists. They are fond of praying five times a day and killing infidels... Tawhid al-Jihad, took responsibility for the launches.
"The IDF holds Hamas responsible for the hostile activity perpetrated against Israel from the Gazoo Strip," the army said in a statement.
A military spokesperson said the incoming rocket alert siren was not activated by the third launch ‐ as it was by the first two ‐ because the system detected that the projectile was not heading toward a populated area.
"When it’s going to an open field, we try not to scare the public," the spokesperson said.
The first two launches set off the alarm shortly after 6 p.m., in the Hof Ashkelon and Sha’ar Hanegev regions, northeast of the Gazoo Strip.
The IDF sent soldiers to inspect the area for signs of impact, but, finding none, determined that the two rockets had not reached Israeli territory, a spokesperson said.
In the hours afterward, the Tawhid al-Jihad group grabbed credit for the attack on social media. The small, radical group is affiliated with al-Qaeda.
[DAWN] Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa has called for widening the scope of education at madressahs (religious seminaries) to enable the students to play a more positive and productive role in society.
Speaking at a seminar on ’Human resource development ‐ opportunities and challenges’ here on Thursday, he categorically stated that he was not against religious seminaries.
The army chief said more religious seminaries were established in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... compared to modern and quality schools for local students during the past four decades. "Only religious education is being imparted to the students at all these seminaries and thus the students are left behind in the race for development."
Posted by: Fred ||
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[AlAhram] Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said its mission to oust Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... jihadists from Syria has been "accomplished" and the country is "completely liberated" from the group.
"The Russian armed forces' goal to defeat gangs of ISIS terrorist organization in Syria has been accomplished," senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi told a briefing, using an alternative acronym for the group.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2017
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#4
This is a big day...anticlimactic...but, a big day nonetheless.
This Caliphate version of AQ, ISIL, ISIS...whatever...is finished. And thus, bin Laden's and Zarqawi's dreams and dreamers corpses rot in the crumbled towns and dusty desert of Syria, Iraq and the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
Obama's massive blunder (giving Maliki the green light for the Shia to suppress the Sunnis...who turned en masse to ISIS) that allowed this cancer to metastasize will be ignored. Thousands of innocents murdered, Christian persecution and genocide in Iraq ignored. Words in a mere post can not do this disaster justice.
In a way I guess Obama achieved what appears to have been his goal... a Shia crescent from the Persian Gulf.. Iran, through Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Four Islamic State members were arrested during a security campaign in west of Anbar, a security source from Anbar Operations Command said.
“Security services managed to arrest for suspects while being on their way back to the liberated town of Annah, western Anbar. They were arrested during a security campaign to check identities of the suspects,” the source told BasNews website.
“Security services transferred the suspects to the detention cells in Ramadi for investigations,” the source, who preferred anonymity, added.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi security forces on Thursday discovered underground tunnels and hundreds of rockets belonging to Islamic State militants as they combed areas recaptured from the militant group in Nineveh and Anbar.
Interior Ministry spokesman, Saad Maan, said in a press conference that troops found 500 rockets in the town of Tal Afar, west of Nineveh. He said most of those were prepared for drones.
Iraqi troops seized Tal Afar back from Islamic State militants in August.
Meanwhile, the army’s Anbar Operations Command said it uncovered three underground tunnels and a pickup truck belonging to the group south of the city of Haditha, Anbar.
The command’s chief, Mahmoud al-Falahi, was quoted by Alsumaria News saying that army and police forces also detonated 15 explosive devices in the city of Ramadi.
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[Ynet] The French far-right group Generation Identity and five snuffies have been convicted of organizing and taking part in a 2012 anti-Moslem demonstration on the roof of a mosque in Poitiers‐where Arab invaders were stopped in the 8th century.
During the October 2012 demonstration, dozens of people climbed atop a mosque under construction and unfurled banners, one reading "Remember Charles Martel," who led the battle in 732.
The court clerk's office said Thursday that four of the five received suspended one-year prison sentences and lost their civic rights for five years, including the right to vote. The fifth received a suspended sentence and lost the right to run in elections.
All must help pay nearly 24,500 euros (nearly $28,900) in damages. Generation Identity must pay an additional 10,000 euros ($11,800).
[SeattleTimes] Every presidential election is routinely called "the most important election" in history, producing sighs and eye rolls from political-science types. But if you’re fond of democracy in America, the 2018 midterm election makes a stronger case for a superlative label than most presidential elections.
It appears increasingly clear that the Republican majorities in Congress would pose no serious obstacle to presidential lawlessness. True, committees in the House and Senate are looking into Russian sabotage, in the form of support for candidate Donald Trump, during the 2016 campaign. But it’s unclear if Republicans on those committees are willing to blame Russia for wrongdoing, let alone Trump.
As political scientist Jacob T. Levy pointed out at the Niskanen Center blog, in his brief presidential tenure Trump has already "defied, ignored, or shredded the whole previous system of norms about avoiding financial conflicts of interest and the use of public office for private enrichment."
Continued on Page 49
#1
where he doubled the fee to $200,000 after his election, thereby putting an explicit dollar value on presidential access
He's still running those? I thought he had to relinquish control to a trustee or something? And wouldn't a $100,000 upcharge fee for major political access be a bagain price these days?
#4
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Who needs law? Its all about power to impose your will.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Dozens of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) murderous Moslems were ambushed as they were headed to confrontation areas with the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... terrorist group in al-Huwayis village in Aleppo’s eastern countryside.
The likely perpetrator of this ambush are ISIS loyalists according to opposition sources. Some 31 jihadists from HTS were reportedly killed after ISIS cells killed them from the back lines; dozens were maimed.
Rebels suspect that those cells are the remnants of Jund al-Aqsa which did not evacuate to Raqqa. Their ambush was launched from Sinjar village located in the southeastern countryside of Idlib. Soon after the ambush, they dispersed to the realm east of the Hama- Aleppo Highway around the villages of Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, Sinjar, and Abu al-Duhour.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/08/2017
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#1
What could be sweeter than this - "scores killed"
The view from the Iran-oriented part of the Arab world.
[ALMASDARNEWS] More than 100 Paleostinians have been maimed in festivities that have erupted throughout various locations within the West Bank, Gazoo and Jerusalem.
400,000 plus protestors
...an impressive number. But how many orders of magnitude is that from reality?
filled the streets in Gazoo today, as Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", reportedly fired two rockets at Israeli settlements. Israel, soon after Hamas attacked ‐ to no avail, the rockets hitting open fields ‐ bombed targets in the North-East of Gazoo. The night prior to the Hamas rocket fire, Israel had fired sound bombs and intimidating flares, filling the skies in Gazoo.
In the West Bank, large protests took place in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin and in various other villages/refugee camps.
Israeli occupation forces violently met the protestors using internationally banned tear gas, live ammunition, sound grenades, rubber coated steel bullets, as well as other life threatening military equipment.
Hamas have now called for a day of rage of the 8th of December, encouraging the youth of Paleostine to rise up against their oppressors "through any means necessary".
Posted by: Fred ||
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#3
internationally banned tear gas, live ammunition, sound grenades, rubber coated steel bullets, as well as other life threatening military equipment.
Ummm....NO, and what military equipment isn't life threatening? Idiots
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017 9:27
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Yeah. Kids nowadays...
Should probably be on that list of Common Rantburg Expressions.
Many many moons ago, during one of the many intifadas, I totaled up the cumulative body count on each side. Don't remember the exact numbers, but the ratio was something like 10-15 to 1 against the Paleos, which didn't seem like a cost-effective way to exterminate the Juices.
[CBSSports] Lindsey Vonn hopes to win more Olympic medals at February's Winter Games in Pyeongchang, but she said she won't be attending the White House to meet Donald Trump afterward if she's invited. Vonn, the most successful female alpine skier of all time and one of the stars of the U.S. contingent set to compete in South Korea, took aim at the president with pointed remarks in an interview with CNN. Go figure.
“Well, I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president," Vonn told CNN. "I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremony. I want to represent our country well. I don't think that there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.” Click on the vid for the meat of the interview. Nice Red Bull stocking cap, who may be contacted HERE, if you would like to comment on the Loverly Ms. Vonn's interview.
The fit young lady clearly keeps her brains in her feet. Half of the Americans who are not President Trump that she wants to represent voted for him.
#1
How about just skiing for yourself lady?
The country jacket is just your sponsor. You are building your brand. If some positive branding accrues to your sponsor or fans that is nice but the bottom line is it's about you. Think about that.
#6
Bonn is virtually guaranteeing that she will ski into a tree, just like her hero did in 2016.
Posted by: Regular joe ||
12/08/2017 7:37
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#7
From Forbes. Nov 30, 2017 - 20: Age Vonn – then known as Lindsey Kildow -- was when she was her first World Cup race in, you guessed it, Lake Louise in 2004. She has reached the podium there 25 times. 6: Sponsors: Under Armour, Head, Oakley, Vail Resorts, GoPro and Red Bull. 1: Clothing collection in her name.
She's come a long way from $4 "gifts" in Vail's back alleys. But not that far.
But that's a wish for good luck, right? Vaudeville?
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/08/2017 17:32
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#12
Lindsey, you don't need to go out of your way for this person. Along with the NFL, I'll be sure to put you on my list of people/teams/Hollywood wierdos to boycott. FYVM.
[AnNahar] The Philippines said Friday it had suspended use of a landmark vaccine for the potentially deadly dengue virus after its manufacturer warned it could worsen the disease in some cases.
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi announced Wednesday that its world-first dengue vaccine could lead to more severe symptoms for people who had not previously been infected.
The Philippines has vaccinated more than 700,000 children with Dengvaxia since 2016 when it became the first country to start using it on a mass scale.
But it said Friday the programme had been suspended.
"In the light of this new analysis, the DOH (Department of Health) will place the dengue vaccination programme on hold while review and consultation is ongoing with experts, key stakeholders, and the WHO (World Health Organization)," a government statement said.
Sanofi had initially said its Dengvaxia vaccine was "critical" in the fight against dengue, the world's most common mosquito-borne virus.
It said Wednesday that a new study has confirmed Dengvaxia's benefits for "those who had prior infection".
The Pentagon’s newest anti-ship missile uses technology from the B-2 stealth bomber to home in on and sink enemy ships. The Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), the U.S. Military’s first new anti-ship missile in more than thirty years, homes in on the very radar signals an enemy ship broadcasts to defend itself. The result is a missile that can work in so-called "denied" environments when navigational assets such as the Global Positioning System are unavailable.
The Navy’s main anti-ship missile, the Harpoon, first entered service in 1977. Called an "anti-ship cruise missile," the Harpoon launched from a ship, aircraft, or submarine, and uses an active radar system to detect enemy ships and home in on them. Although progressively updated over the years, Harpoon has grown pretty long in the tooth and is due for a replacement.
The active radar guidance system on many older anti-ship missiles has always been problematic. Anti-ship missiles are launched in the enemy’s direction and fly close to the surface to the water‐in the case of Harpoon just thirty feet above the wavetops‐in order to stay off the enemy’s radar screens for as long as possible.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
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#1
Ok so I’m assuming the Chinese have already stolen the design and are now capable of the same thing?
#2
After we laugh, consider exactly how any US forces can be supplied in Afghanistan. How any airplane flies there. If we should need to do a Saigon-style evacuation where would it go.
Then it gets less and less amusing.
#6
perhaps we need to hit the "off switch" on their jets once in a while to remind them of who's a superpower and who's a failed state with pretensions
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2017 9:49
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#7
As if it is so easy to figure out "U.S." drone from "Somebody else's" drone.
[ConservativeDailyPost] Tuesday, December 12, 2017 the House of Representative will hold a vote on the Taylor Force Act. The bill has achieved bipartisan support and will likely clear the house with ease. It is backed by the Trump administration, and received approval in August by the Foreign Relations Committee.
The Taylor Force Act is aimed at cutting off American aid to Palestine, in an effort to pressure the country into ceasing abhorrent "pay for slay" practices. Currently, the Palestinian government uses half of the foreign aid it receives, to fiscally incentivize terrorism against Israelis.
The Palestinian government pays each convicted terrorist in Israel’s prisons monthly, some receiving thousands each month. Terrorists also receive a $25,000 bonus from the Palestinian government for their crimes. Terrorists are even given preferential treatment when applying for civil service jobs that come with exorbitant wages.
The families of Palestinian terrorists receive lifelong payments and a slew of other free lifetime benefits from the Palestinian government as well, including healthcare, and college tuition. The benefits and payouts scale according to the amount of damage inflicted on Israel and its inhabitants. The Palestinian government uses terrorists as pawns, in its age-old conflict with Israel over territory.
Israel is a relatively new country, even when compared to the United States. In 1947 the United Nations voted in favor of a resolution that appropriated land from Palestine, to form a new Jewish nation. Israel declared independence in May of 1948.
Palestine has acted aggressively toward Israel since hours after they declared their independence. Palestine, and the four other countries that joined them in an attack on Israel, in 1948, were soundly defeated. Subsequent attempts at war with Israel from neighboring Arab nations would all be failures as well.
Palestine suffered major casualties and territorial losses during the Six Day War in 1967. East Jerusalem was absorbed by Israel after these nations tried to push them "into the sea." Most people think that such minuscule areas surrounded by massive amounts of Arab controlled countries is justified by right of defense. Palestine considers Israel to be illegally occupying the territory.
A lack of ability to engage in conventional warfare led them to employ the distasteful practice of terrorist attacks against women and children, and then paying welfare to terrorists and their families.
The bill is named after a United States Army veteran who was stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist while deployed in Tel Aviv, where the United States Embassy is located. The March 2016 attack left 10 others dead at the hands a Palestinian terrorist.
The Trump administration knows that Israel is one of our country’s greatest allies in a region controlled by Muslims. Trump recently announced he would move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This has sparked outrage from the Palestinian government.
Trump anticipated the announcement would draw aggression from Palestinian sympathizers, and issued a warning to United States Embassies beforehand so they could adequately prepare. The move to halt United States Foreign aid to Palestine if they continue funding terrorists may mitigate some of the threats however.
If Palestine complies with the United States and ceases to fund terrorists, it will continue to receive U.S. financial support.Palestine has always said it would seek a one state solution. The one state solution eliminates Israel.
The Taylor Force Act is widely popular, and Americans don’t want to fund terrorism with their taxes.
#1
I think the last President had strong sympathies for community activists (being that he was a community organizer himself) and sought every means to contribute US government funds in support of their activities both here and abroad.
George Soros supplemented these government funds with his own money from investment profits to buy "pay to play" protesters.
#2
the current Taylor Force Act has a lot of loopholes unfortunately
the US can continue to fund Paleo Health and Welfare
as we know money is fungible
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/08/2017 9:43
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Yeah, but if we can wring it down to a trickle, they will either have to choose between lining their own pockets or bribing people to blow up Israelis.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Even with the Syrian Arab Army’s recent victory over ISIS along the western shore of the Euphrates River, it is believed that the terrorist group still maintains a small army that can be used for future surprise attacks against Syrian pro-government forces in eastern Homs and western Deir Ezzor provinces.
According to some sources, there may still be up to two hundred Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... forces of Evil embedded throughout the vast desert spaces of southwestern Deir Ezzor province. Furthermore, ISIS murderous Moslems in this area may very well possess fire support assets such as tanks, artillery and boom-mobiles.
ISIS proved its ability to still target Syrian pro-government forces at the strategic town of As-Sukhnah which commands the road between Palmyra and Deir Ezzor about two weeks ago.
Here ISIS mustered an assault on the government-held town with several dozen fighters whose operation was spearheaded by a car kaboom.
This occurred despite the fact that the main battles between Syrian Army-led forces and ISIS were raging around the city of Abu Kamal and town of al-Asharah on the western shore of the Euphrates.
This remaining ISIS pocket within what is now being called the Sukhnah-Deir Ezzzor-Abu Kamal triangle encompasses an area of about 7,000 square kilometers.
Although bland desert terrain at face value, pro-government forces can be expected to encounter mazes of underground tunnels and colonies of foxholes and other positions when they eventually do undertake their operation to clear this territorial space sometime in the near future.
Posted by: Fred ||
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By Silentbrick
I looked around at a variety of websites today, including many conservative ones and found nothing on Pearl Harbor. It seems even they are caught up in the endless 2 minute news cycle. So few today remember any of America's history, much less anything more than a decade ago. Now it's far more important that Al Franken groped more people and may or may not resign or end up in Fort Marcy Park. Or that a porn star killed herself after being bullied for not want to have sex with a male gay porn actor given he might have aids or other diseases.
To many people today, they believe their lives are just so difficult and so important that they think little of those who came before them and how this nation became great. To them sacrifice is bothering to text someone that the plans you made to have dinner with them are off cause you changed your mind. Most of these kids today can't be bothered to have such courtesy. Their idea of charity is paying for whoever is behind them in line at Starbucks as opposed to actually having to do something for others.
Now not everyone is so bad. Harvey proved that in Texas. I saw many of my neighbors donate time and goods to the emergency shelter set up at a local school because it was all that many of the flooded could reach. I recognize this but I also see how that selfishness creeps back in on the road when I turn on my blinker which is apparently a sign saying "Hurry up and dart into the space I was trying to move into. Or they blow past me in heavy rains and doing at least 85+ mph.
But most importantly, I see that tweeting or posting something has become the norm. If they see someone being attacked on the street, they record video and post it rather than rushing forward to help. They leave injured people lying on the street or take a 'selfie' with them, rather than getting them help or at the very least calling 911. I have to wonder sometimes, if this country was invaded, would they even notice until someone sank a bayonet in their stomach?
There are many dates and names and events in our history that people used to remember and be inspired by. "Give me Liberty or Death!" has been replaced by kneeling during our national anthem and standing for the country to our south that has effectively invaded us. Few of them even seem to understand what a nation is. Days like today I despair that we can avoid a long slow slide into destruction. Days like today I cringe at the prevailing attitude of morals being equated to bigotry. You have do wonder, do they even understand what morality is? Or how it forms the basis of civilized humans interacting with each other? You cannot have laws without morality, because as we see with the Clintons, they aren't really laws if they're not enforced.
Despite all these moments of quiet despair, I will not change. I hold firm belief in our constitution being the basis of the greatest nation on Earth. Just because others will flaunt the law or the rules, I will not. Just because others stand aside and video, I will not. I will be the best citizen I can be, not for them, but for those who came before me and set the standard to follow. I hope I can raise my son to be the same, though it is a daunting task I fear. But I will try. I can do nothing else but try, because I refuse to become one of them.
[Spokesman] OLYMPIA – Washington birth certificates could soon have three options to represent a person's sex: M, F, or X.
The state Department of Health is considering a change in its rules that allow transgender individuals born in the state to petition to change the sex listed on a birth certificate to represent their gender identity. It would also allow those who don't identify as either strictly male or female to choose a third option, X.
The proposal met with strong support from groups supporting and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities at a hearing Tuesday.
Continued on Page 49
#7
Why not just pick your own gender designation, e.g. any letter or combination of letters of the alphabet, or all or none? I could have gender "JohnQC" short for John Q. Citizen.
#11
"It's stressful for men being besties
With folks who were born without testes,
Right down from Orestes
To Henry Hill's Westies."
- non-missing X chromosome lefties
[AnNahar] The co-leader of The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's pro-Kurdish opposition party went on trial in Ankara Thursday on charges of links to outlawed Kurdish myrmidons, after over a year behind bars in a case supporters say is politically motivated, his party said.
Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the second largest opposition bloc the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was detained in November 2016 and is charged with "managing a terror organization" and "making propaganda for a terror group".
He faces up to 142 years in prison if convicted of links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organization outlawed by Turkey and its Western allies. The party says the accusations are politically motivated.
His trial got under way at Sincan prison complex in Ankara province, an HDP official told AFP, adding Demirtas was not present for the hearing.
The MP is being held in prison in the northwestern region of Edirne. The party has previously accused the justice ministry of preventing any court appearances by Demirtas.
Prior to his arrest, Demirtas was considered one of President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... 's major rivals, with oratory skills matching the firebrand ...firebrands are noted more for audio volume and the quantity of spittle generated than for any actual logic in their arguments... Ottoman Turkish head of state.
He led his party to success in June 2015 polls and surpassed the 10 percent threshold needed to enter parliament through winning not just support from Kurds but also liberals and the Ottoman Turkish left. He repeated the success in snap polls of November of that year but with fewer MPs.
A dozen HDP MPs were detained at the same time as him but now nine remain in prison including Demirtas and former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2017
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[Wash Times] The House Intelligence Committee plans to compel testimony from a career Justice Department attorney who met during the election campaign with the writer of the infamous unverified Trump-Russia dossier. Writer-author, none other than 'former' MI6 operator Mr. Christopher Steele, a man conveniently disappeared somewhere amidst the boggy moors.
The committee has learned that Bruce Ohr, an associate attorney general, not only spoke with dossier writer Christopher Steele but also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, whose Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele with Democratic Party money. Bruce, the envelopes please.
"Pursuant to the House Intelligence Committee’s prior subpoenas and information requests, the Department of Justice should have provided the committee with information on contacts that DOJ official Bruce Ohr had with Fusion GPS representatives and Christopher Steele.," said committee chairman Devin Nunes, California Republican. "The Committee will issue a subpoena to Bruce Ohr for information on this matter." Soon to exercise his 5th Amendment rights no doubt.
The committee is investigating Fusion’s financial arrangements, including the reasons for paying three journalists. It was Mr. Nunes’ first subpoena for Fusion bank records that forced Democrats to admit that the party and Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the dossier beginning in June 2016. Houston, we have a very significant problem aboard the Bureau orbiter. How your copy over ?
The dossier has taken on immense importance. The FBI relied on it in July 2016 to begin an investigation into the Trump campaign and any collusion with Russia over the hacking of Democratic Party computers. It relied on the dossier to obtain at least one eavesdropping warrant on a Trump associate. If the Steele dossier was NOT used to support the FISA surveillance effort then why not end the tiring obfuscation and permit someone to simply say it was not used? Oh, I see. No one wants to be that someone.
[IsraelTimes] Head of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... -aligned, Iran-backed al-Nojaba says it is now 'legitimate to strike the American forces in Iraq'
An Iranian-backed militia in Iraq threatened on Thursday to attack US forces in the country in retaliation for US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
"The decision by Trump on al-Quds (Jerusalem) makes it legitimate to strike the American forces in Iraq," al-Nojaba militia chief Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement.
The group, established in 2013 and supported by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, numbers around 1,500 fighters and is part of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) auxiliary force that has fought alongside the army against the Islamic State terror group.
Trump’s move to end decades of US policy has sparked a storm of condemnation around the globe, both from Washington’s traditional allies and its international foes.
Trump said the move was long overdue, and was simply acknowledging the reality that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government.
The US has thousands of troops stationed in Iraq to help in the fight against IS. Officially, the Pentagon says it has 5,262 personnel in Iraq, but other figures released by the US military have put the number at almost 9,000.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DallasNews] A mystery package arrived last week in my mailbox. The contents inside scare my family and friends who fear it's a threat to steal my identity.
[FOX] By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal
[CNBC] 
[Daily Caller] Like a headless turkey running around in circles, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s anti-Trump investigation is dead, even if he does not yet realize it. While his investigation stumbles onward, with life support provided by the biased media, from a legal perspective the viability of any criminal case that Mueller could possibly bring has been effectively gutted thanks to the news (suppressed for months by Mueller’s team) that the FBI’s "key agent" in both the Russia investigation and the Clinton email probe was an ardent Hillary supporter with an anti-Trump bias.
[SmokeRoom] The first trailer was released Thursday for the upcoming movie "7 Days in Entebbe."
[Free Beacon] The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) had done nothing wrong after being accused of leaking classified information.
[IsraelTimes] No injuries in incident described by Jewish community as terror attack, hours after Trump Jerusalem move.
[Stars and Stripes] RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany ‐ Capt. Sharior Rahman, an imam at Ramstein Air Base and one of only a handful of Muslim clerics in the Air Force, was convicted by a military judge Tuesday of larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny in a shoplifting incident last year.
A wild one. Boeing CEO just challenged Musk on who gets people to Mars first and Musk said "Do It!" Boeing "Game On!”
[Khaama Press] A senior 
[ArsTechnica] On Wednesday, a US District judge in Detroit sentenced Oliver Schmidt, a former Volkswagen executive, to seven years in prison for his role in the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal of 2015. Schmidt was also ordered to pay a criminal penalty of $400,000, according to a US Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. The prison term and the fine together represent the maximum sentence that Schmidt could have received under the plea deal he signed in August.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) One Iraqi was killed and another one was 
[DW] The European Commission is suing eastern member states for failing to fulfill their legal obligations in accepting a share of asylum seekers. The defendants claim that the EU is interfering with their 
You forgot to select a bit of text to attach the link to, Abu Uluque, so I did.
[AnNahar] The Philippines said Friday it had suspended use of a landmark vaccine for the potentially deadly dengue virus after its manufacturer warned it could worsen the disease in some cases.![]("https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsheville.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FPetard-1.jpg")
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
[IsraelTimes] Head of 
