The Demon makes the Hellcat look like a church mouse.More.
The wide-body Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is a barely street-legal drag racer with a V8 that can produce up to 840 HP and 770 pound-feet of torque, making it the most powerful American car ever. It’s also the quickest car in the world, with an NHRA certified 0-60 mph time of 2.3 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 9.65 seconds at 140 mph...
What does it take to be "truly" American? Some say assimilation and shared values. Immigrants say that's complex. https://t.co/81r8oOPK4b— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) April 11, 2017
The foreign-born share of the U.S. population has quadrupled in the five decades since the establishment of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended a quota system based on national origin that favored white European immigrants. In 1960, 9.7 million foreign-born residents were living in the U.S. In 2014, there were 42.2 million, according to census data and the Pew Research Center.We obviously need to scale back immigration, and drastically. It shouldn't even be controversial to have to assimilate into the dominate culture. The fact that these people are even questioning it, suggesting that they shouldn't be judged because they're illegal, is reprehensible.
Kevin Solis, who works for the immigration advocacy group Dream Team LA, said politicians’ statements about assimilation just add fuel to an already sensitive subject.
“When you say, ‘They need to assimilate,’ you’re already beginning with the false notion that they don’t want to, that they’re coming here as an invading force,” he said. “It’s coded in the sense that these are ‘other’ people, foreigners who want to do harm to our nation, and that’s not the case.”
Jim Chang, an information systems specialist from Irvine, recalled meeting with one of his son’s teacher; she kept repeating what he was saying.
“I know he was repeating, you know, saying it more than once because she was worried I didn’t understand,” Chang, 53, said.
Though he spoke English fairly well and understood it even better, Chang said his Korean accent meant he would always stick out.
“It doesn’t matter if you have 12 years or 20 years in the U.S. If they hear us sound a little different, they judge,” he said.
That’s something he said he believes his son, a fifth-grader, shouldn’t have to face. Chang speaks Korean to him, but his son, Jimmy, responds in English.
“I realize that we don’t plan to return to live in Korea. We belong in California now,” Chang said.
But Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College, said that everyone has an accent regardless of how well they speak English. Whether it’s the Cajun or so-called “Minnesota nice” or “Bronx” or other accent not quite on the radar of American pop culture, everyone in the U.S. speaks with an accent, she said.
Not all accents, however, are perceived as equally American.
“A way of speaking that’s associated with a group that’s stigmatized is also going to be stigmatized,” Fought said. “There’s also going to be racism and prejudice against that way of speaking.”
Karen, a 24-year-old honor student at Cal State Fullerton, is an aspiring certified public accountant. She volunteers for the IRS — where her ability to speak Spanish is a major asset — helping low-income people fill out their taxes.
The night Trump was elected, Karen — a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient who asked that her last name not be used because she fears deportation — suddenly felt as if she stood out even though she was an infant sleeping in the back seat of a car when she was brought to the U.S. illegally from Mexico.
Karen hasn't been back to Mexico since then but grew up in the overwhelmingly Latino community of Huntington Park, watching Spanish-language television with her grandmother and working in a Mexican restaurant.
Moving to Orange County for college was like moving to a different world, Karen said. At least until Trump’s election, she felt that she was safer as a college student than her parents, who have labor-oriented jobs.
Her younger brother is a DACA recipient also, and she had him move in with her so they could remove their parents’ address from their federal forms.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong anywhere,” she said. “In Mexico, I would be seen very differently because of my accent. It’s like, god, what do I do? If I were to go back, I wouldn’t have anything back there.”
“On the one side, the Hispanics tell you, ‘You’re way too American.’ On the other, you’ll have the Americans telling you you’re too Hispanic. It’s hard to be in the middle.”
“What makes me American? It’s not only the 24 years of my life,” she said. “It’s that this is all I know.”
In this lively account of Arizona’s Rim Country War of the 1880s—what others have called "The Pleasant Valley War"—historian Daniel Justin Herman explores a web of conflict involving Mormons, Texas cowboys, New Mexican sheepherders, Jewish merchants, and mixed-blood ranchers. Their story, contends Herman, offers a fresh perspective on Western violence, Western identity, and American cultural history.
At the heart of Arizona’s range war, argues Herman, was a conflict between cowboys’ code of honor and Mormons’ code of conscience. He investigates the sources of these attitudes, tracks them into the early twentieth century, and offers rich insights into the roots of American violence and peace.
.Where are the faculty? American college students are increasingly resorting to brute force, and sometimes criminal violence, to shut down ideas they don’t like. Yet when such travesties occur, the faculty are, with few exceptions, missing in action, though they have themselves been given the extraordinary privilege of tenure to protect their own liberty of thought and speech. It is time for them to take their heads out of the sand.Sounds like a freakin' war zone. Sheesh.
I was the target of such silencing tactics two days in a row last week, the more serious incident at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and a less virulent one at UCLA.
The Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna had invited me to meet with students and to give a talk about my book, The War on Cops, on April 6. Several calls went out on Facebook to “shut down” this “notorious white supremacist fascist Heather Mac Donald.” A Facebook post from “we, students of color at the Claremont Colleges” announced grandiosely that “as a community, we CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform. We stand against all forms of oppression and we refuse to have Mac Donald speak.” A Facebook event titled “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascist Heather Mac Donald” and hosted by “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascists” encouraged students to protest the event because Mac Donald “condemns [the] Black Lives Matter movement,” “supports racist police officers,” and “supports increasing fascist ‘law and order.’” (My supposed fascism consists in trying to give voice to the thousands of law-abiding minority residents of high-crime areas who support the police and are desperate for more law-enforcement protection.)
The event organizers notified me a day before the speech that a protest was planned and that they were considering changing the venue from CMC’s Athenaeum to one with fewer glass windows and easier egress. When I arrived on campus, I was shuttled to what was in effect a safe house: a guest suite for campus visitors, with blinds drawn. I could hear the growing crowds chanting and drumming, but I could not see the auditorium that the protesters were surrounding. One female voice rose above the chants with particularly shrill hysteria. From the balcony, I saw a petite blonde female walk by, her face covered by a Palestinian head scarf and carrying an amplifier on her back for her bullhorn. A lookout was stationed about 40 yards away and students were seated on the stairway under my balcony, plotting strategy.
Since I never saw the events outside the Athenaeum, which remained the chosen venue, an excellent report from the student newspaper, the Student Life, provides details of the scene...
Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court https://t.co/wTgfrLLZvx pic.twitter.com/9PDgzlKlwN— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2017
Black Lives Matter activists had planned the protest ahead of time, posting on Facebook that they intended to shut down the “anti-black” “fascist” Mac Donald. Their event called Mac Donald’s work “fascist ideologies and blatant anti-Blackness and white supremacy,” and claimed that “together, we can hold CMC accountable and prevent Mac Donald from spewing her racist, anti-Black, capitalist, imperialist, fascist agenda.”And on Fox & Friends this morning.
.@TerriGreenUSA Thank goodness: #Gorsuch's impact on divided Supreme Court will begin immediately: https://t.co/qRifPCQRDI
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 10, 2017
Photos show president calling commanding officers of Navy ships that launched missiles on Syria to thank them, crew. https://t.co/wdpUBeXBSA pic.twitter.com/9HLKNKpuE1
— ABC News (@ABC) April 10, 2017
California may never secede, or divide into different states, but it has effectively split into entities that could not be more different. On one side is the much-celebrated, post-industrial, coastal California, beneficiary of both the Tech Boom 2.0 and a relentlessly inflating property market. The other California, located in the state’s interior, is still tied to basic industries like homebuilding, manufacturing, energy and agriculture. It is populated largely by working- and middle-class people who, overall, earn roughly half that of those on the coast.Keep reading.
Over the past decade or two, interior California has lost virtually all influence, as Silicon Valley and Bay Area progressives have come to dominate both state politics and state policy. “We don’t have seats at the table,” laments Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corporation. “We are a flyover state within a state.”
Virtually all the polices now embraced by Sacramento — from water and energy regulations to the embrace of sanctuary status and a $15-an-hour minimum wage — come right out of San Francisco central casting. Little consideration is given to the needs of the interior, and little respect is given to their economies.
San Francisco, for example, recently decided to not pump oil from land owned by the city in Kern County, although one wonders what the new rich in that region use to fill the tanks of their BMWs. California’s “enlightened” green policies help boost energy prices 50 percent above those of neighboring states, which makes a bigger difference in the less temperate interior, where many face longer commutes than workers in more compact coastal areas...
.@PujolsFive's journey on the #RoadTo600 continues with #️⃣5️⃣9️⃣2️⃣! pic.twitter.com/8hMqAiDMGf
— Angels (@Angels) April 9, 2017
Nice, but not going to be enough for the win. #Shoemaker #Angels #Mariners #MLB https://t.co/dlLYMzBPBp
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 9, 2017
Well, that was surprising. #Angels https://t.co/tVmeiixntz
— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) April 9, 2017
Angels score 7 in the 9th to win! Entering today, teams had lost 346 straight games when trailing by 6+ runs entering the 9th. pic.twitter.com/SrlMA4mP5A
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) April 9, 2017
Teams leading by 6+ runs entering 9th were 2,529-1 since 2011. The only loss was the Royals defeating the White Sox on May 28 last season. https://t.co/N87POMcA84
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) April 9, 2017
#MustFollow @vipgirls4free @saby292 @elisomed5 @vill_ha_dig @TMBbyCiccio @talktomeanytm @goodenough03 pic.twitter.com/ksa33ZjSbB— ✨Lourdes Dean® 41K✨ (@LourdesDean88) March 22, 2017
These crew members managed to jump ship just seconds before their sailboat crashed into a California pier https://t.co/LUVVGVySgZ pic.twitter.com/v9MCgwziGi
— CNN (@CNN) April 9, 2017
Hope @realDonaldTrump reads this buried in @nytimes. pic.twitter.com/bXi2QIVnNV
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 9, 2017
That the missiles are callled tomahawks must enrage a lot of Native Americans
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) April 8, 2017
In 1972, when I was 10 years old, my father’s job was transferred from Buffalo, New York, to California. After endless cold Buffalo winters, the golden state seemed like a golden place, a land of golden opportunity. My parents built a house, my father built a successful career, and my brothers and I thrived.Keep reading.
That was then, this is now. California is going off the deep end. The gold has turned to brass. It has become the land of fruits and nuts, a caricature of its former glory, a place people seek to leave in droves before they run afoul of the latest insanity.
Consider just a few examples of recent lunacy:
* Public university to host talk on animal-based sex fetishesPerhaps unsurprisingly, middle class Californians are leaving the state in droves. Take a look at these words from a frustrated inhabitant:
* Claim: Trump ‘threatens mental health of young Californians’
* They’ll have a ‘gay’ old time: ‘Bordellos’ now in nursing homes?
* California just passed a law regulating cow farts
* New bill would criminalize pronoun usage in nursing homes
* California bans students from traveling to ‘anti-LGBT’ states
Came to SoCal as a kid in 1969 … got married and had kids who now are in college (out of state). I worked my *** off to get where I am today, but my house goes on the market this spring. I’ve watched this state sink into the abyss of liberal insanity inch by inch, drop by drop.
There is no hope for the state of Kalifornia. The Dems and their insane view of this world have a super majority in the Senate and Assembly. Combined with a Dem governor, there is nothing they cannot get passed. Even the Republicans who end up getting into the minority party are squishy and put up little resistance.
This past summer the legislative branch passed a bunch of bills that finally broke my desire to stay here with my salary. Gov. Moonbeam signed into law a bill that forces the cattle industry (dairy and meat) into providing flatulent catching backpacks for all cows to wear, for their precious global warming efforts. He also signed a bill that permits early release of felons out of jail and has them live amongst the citizenry. Combine that with the draconian laws further limiting my Second Amendment rights by making ammunition costly and more difficult to obtain, making some of my firearms illegal to own, he has put more rights into criminals and made my family less safe to live here.
I am DONE. Good riddance. I am moving to a state that will appreciate my conservative, constitutional values.
This person’s lament echoes that of over a million (mostly middle-class) people who have departed California in recent decades. We were among them. My husband and I shook the California dust off our feet in 1992 and never looked back at that once-beautiful state.
But it’s not just California. Recent articles show a massive exodus from both New York City and Chicago as well.
What do these three locations (California, New York, Chicago) have in common? They are bastions of liberalism, cauldrons of experimental progressive policies, vanguards of whatever feel-good fiscally irresponsible nonsense disturbed minds can think up.
So when we read about populations draining out of certain locations, the conclusion is obvious. People aren’t fleeing New York or Chicago or California; people are fleeing liberalism. The festering cauldron of progressive thought ultimately makes places unlivable.
I’m honestly sorry for those freedom-loving conservatives who are unable (due to work or family commitments) to beat feet and flee the gold-plated state. And I welcome those honestly looking to escape the insidious poison. I do, however, bear a grudge with those who bring their poison with them and enthusiastically spread it to a new location, dragging everything down with them.
K. T. McFarland has been asked to step down as deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump after less than three months and is expected to be nominated as ambassador to Singapore, according to a person familiar with White House personnel moves.More (via Memeorandum).
The departure of the 65-year-old former Fox News commentator comes as Trump’s second National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, puts his own stamp on the National Security Council after taking over in February from retired General Michael Flynn.
McFarland proved not to be a good fit at the NSC, the person said, adding that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was involved in the decision as well.
Her removal follows a reorganization of the NSC in the past week that removed Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, from the principals committee, the Cabinet-level interagency forum that advises the president on pressing security matters.
Other officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were brought back onto the committee as “regular attendees,” reversing a move made in January. The changes were outlined in a presidential memorandum dated April 4.
Former Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell stays on as another deputy national security adviser, and a second person is expected to be named to a similar role to replace McFarland...
President Trump faced his first serious foreign-policy test this week. To the surprise and perhaps frustration of his critics, he passed with flying colors.Keep reading.
In the first place, the president read the situation correctly. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s horrific and illegal use of chemical weapons against civilians was not merely an affront to international norms. It was a probe by Mr. Assad and his patrons to test the mettle of the new White House.
This must have looked like a good week to challenge Washington. The Trump administration is beset by critics. Most senior national-security posts remain unfilled. The White House is torn by infighting. The Republican Party is divided by the bitter primary campaign and its recent health-care fiasco.
President Trump concluded, correctly, that failing to respond effectively to Mr. Assad’s challenge would invite more probes and more tests. He moved quickly and decisively against the provocation, demonstrating that the days of strategic dithering are gone.
Second, Mr. Trump chose the right response: a limited missile strike against the Syrian air base that, according to American intelligence, had launched the vicious gas attack. This resonated well nearly everywhere. At home, it won approval from Jacksonians and others who want a strong president. The strikes vindicated America’s prestige and dealt a clear setback to those who seek to humiliate or marginalize the U.S. But no ground troops were involved and Mr. Trump made no move toward long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building, the type of campaign that many Americans, his base in particular, have learned to view skeptically.
Internationally, the strike was also popular. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, putting awkward phone calls behind him, spoke up forthrightly in Mr. Trump’s support. So did Canada’s Justin Trudeau, not usually considered a member of the Trump Fan Club, and Germany’s foreign minister, a Social Democrat whose party has been among the most critical of past American military action.
The strike reassured nervous allies, hungry for leadership but concerned about Mr. Trump’s temperament, that he is capable of a measured response intended to support a vital principle of international law. Friends of the U.S. will sweat less, and opponents will sweat more. That is a good thing.
Third, Mr. Trump handled the process well. Congress was briefed but not asked for approval, a decision inside the long-established norms that govern military action by American commanders in chief. Engaging in a war to overthrow Mr. Assad would be another matter, but so far Mr. Trump has stayed well within the mainstream of American presidents dating back to the 18th century.
The Trump administration notified Russia before the U.S. bombed the Syrian airfield. This is a process of its own. If this were the start of a long war, we wouldn’t give our adversaries advance warning about the opening salvo. However, by telling Moscow we were about to strike, the administration was signaling that the engagement would be limited, and the Russians could therefore temper their response. By using cruise missiles, the administration also guaranteed that the action would be impossible to prevent.
Finally, Mr. Trump gets extra points for deftness...
Harvard is writing "the Puritans" out of its alma mater, seeking to make it more inclusive https://t.co/DnjVcJN6aV— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 8, 2017
For decades, Harvard students and alumni have sung an alma mater that calls on them to be heralds of light and bearers of love “till the stock of the Puritans die.”More.
University officials teach the refrain to freshmen on arrival and sing it again when the students graduate years later.
But this week, a university steeped in tradition said the time had come for a change.
To affirm Harvard’s commitment to inclusion in a time when college campuses are routinely finding themselves at the center of national debates on race and identity, university officials said they are seeking suggested rewrites of that disquieting final line. The contest is open only to members of the Harvard community.
The line about Puritans concludes a sentence that is “an exhortation to pursue the truth until a certain endpoint,” said Danielle S. Allen, a professor and political philosopher on the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which launched the competition.
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas,” Latin for “truth,” she noted, adding, “there shouldn’t be any endpoint to the pursuit of truth, nor should we imply that the pursuit of truth is for any particular ethnic group.”
Today, minority admittees and presiding administrations eagerly lobby for fundamentally changing the composition, constituency, and even the complexion of those schools. Matters have reached a point at which the non-traditional groups feel entitled to rename buildings and to purge references and memorials to illustrious alumni and benefactors on the basis of their own amour propre. Now, at Harvard, they are sending the founders and original constituency of the college into exile from the school’s alma mater. All this causes me to wonder: had the people who initiated the effort at diversity admissions been able to foresee this occurring, would they ever have admitted any of these minorities at all in the first place?RTWT.
In the time you spend on social media each year, you could read 200 books https://t.co/ClGlaPiWr2
— Quartz (@qz) April 6, 2017
I guess Trump wasn't "Putin's puppet" after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017
I'm officially OFF the Trump train.
“What Trump did was nothing less than a betrayal" https://t.co/gQWa3dA3om
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) April 7, 2017
Alt-right turns on "neo-con puppet" Trump after bombing Syria https://t.co/FhhfcUJQUC pic.twitter.com/OHzmtjwFd3
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 7, 2017
"I'm officially OFF the Trump train." Trump's far-right supporters turn on him after the Syria missile strike. https://t.co/CRIDWz4PgB
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2017
Eli Lake from Bloomberg set off a firestorm in the US this week with his revelation on Monday that in the last six months of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser, requested that the US intelligence community enable her to use foreign intelligence collection as a means of gathering information about Donald Trump’s advisers.Still more.
According to Lake’s story, during the course of the US presidential campaign, and with steadily rising intensity after President Donald Trump won the November 2016 election, Rice used her access to intercepted communications of foreign intelligence targets to gather information on Trump’s advisers. Some of those reports were then leaked, injuriously, to the media in violation of US criminal statute.
Whereas in the normal course of events, the identities of American citizens whose conversations with foreigners are intercepted by the US intelligence community are shielded, in the final months of the Obama administration, Rice repeatedly – on “dozens of occasions” – asked that the identities of Americans who conversed with foreigners be exposed.
The Americans in question were Trump’s advisers.
Lake’s scoop both confirmed and expanded House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s charges from two weeks ago against the Obama White House. Nunes said that he had seen evidence that the Obama administration collected information on incoming Trump administration officials that had no intelligence value. In other words, Nunes alleged that the data gathering was not for national security purposes.
This week’s discovery that Rice played a central role in the intelligence collection regarding Trump’s advisers brings Nunes’s allegations that the outgoing Obama administration conducted surveillance of the Trump team to the highest reaches of the administration. Now that Rice has been exposed, it is impossible to claim that in the event such surveillance occurred, it did not reflect the Obama administration’s concerted policy.
With the exceptions of Obama and his top adviser and confidante Valerie Jarrett, Rice was the top official in the White House.
Lake’s story and subsequent stories have obvious implications for the public’s assessment of Trump’s March 4 allegation on Twitter that Obama spied on him. But the Rice story is equally, if not more, important for what it teaches us about Obama’s mode of governing.
The Rice story strengthens the assessment that for eight years, Obama and his associates weaponized the federal government to wage a political war against their domestic political opponents in a manner that is simply unprecedented...
Je Suis Ivanka's Petty Neighbor pic.twitter.com/u3ymnvW31F
— Mitchell Sunderland (@mitchsunderland) April 3, 2017
WASHINGTON — "No child of God should ever suffer" the horror of the chemical weapons attack Syria launched on its own people, President Trump said Thursday, as he announced a cruise missile strike against Syria.More.
Trump ordered the strike against Syria early Friday local time in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack that killed 86 people on Tuesday, he said.
The attack, the first conventional assault on another country ordered by Trump, comes a day after he declared that the chemical weapons assault had “crossed many, many lines,” including the deaths of 27 children.
From his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said Syrian President Bashar Assad "launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered at this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.
"Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said.
Years of previous attempts to change Assad's behavior had failed, Trump said.
The 59 missiles, fired from the destroyers USS Porter and Ross in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, struck the airfield where the Syria based the warplanes used in the chemical attack, according to Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. The missiles destroyed aircraft, hardened hangars, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radar at the Shayrat Airfield.
The chemicals used in the attack on April 4 were also stored at the base, Davis said. The missile strike was designed to deter Syria from mounting another chemical attack...
Devin Nunes takes himself out of Russia investigation, at least temporarily. A look at his two worlds: https://t.co/tJKGYsOFj7
— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) April 6, 2017
At home, Devin Nunes remains what he has always been, an auspiciously successful man who rose swiftly to unexpected heights, a man high school teachers point to when they tell kids in this often-overlooked place what is possible in this world.More.
Outside the farming community southeast of Fresno that has sustained him and his family for generations, though, many see the 14-year Republican congressman very differently — as a national symbol of political bungling or worse.
The House investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which he heads, has stalemated. A senator from his party has acidly compared him to Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling French detective from the “Pink Panther” movies. Democratic leaders have accused him of working with the White House to divert attention from the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to derail Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. In much of official Washington, the mention of Nunes’ name prompts dismissive shakes of the head.
The two views of Nunes are impossible to reconcile, not that many in his district are trying to. In a region where troubles often take the form of drought or pestilence, his longtime constituents greet Nunes’ difficulties with a shrug, their faith in him undiminished...
The first world war helped shape modern America. Why is it so forgotten? https://t.co/ThfuJB4xwT— The Guardian (@guardian) April 6, 2017
— WW1 Centennial (@WW1CC) April 6, 2017
The 100th anniversary of U.S. involvement in WWI will be officially commemorated in Kansas City, Mo. #WorldWarOne https://t.co/soBsoavR8V pic.twitter.com/XsFd9Rh7qn— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 6, 2017
A chemical attack in Syria that killed scores of civilians, including children, “crossed a lot of lines for me,” President Trump said Wednesday, adding that he is now responsible for trying to end a grinding conflict he blamed his predecessor for prolonging.More.
Unlike his U.N. envoy, Trump did not mention Russia and its culpability for backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose government blamed the chemical release on rebel forces.
“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies! — little babies,” Trump said, “that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines.”
He suggested that the attack Tuesday had changed his mind about his approach to the conflict and confronting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but he did not give any specifics.
“I like to think of myself as a very flexible person,” Trump said during a Rose Garden news conference with visiting Jordanian King Abdullah II.
“And I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me, big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said. “I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.”
Trump said the grinding Syrian conflict, in its seventh year, “is now my responsibility,” but repeated campaign-trail criticism of the Obama administration for threatening military action and then backing off.
“We have a big problem. We have somebody that is not doing the right thing. And that’s going to be my responsibility,” Trump said. “But I’ll tell you, that responsibility could’ve made, been made, a lot easier if it was handled years ago.”
Earlier Wednesday, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley assailed Russia in blunt terms for protecting the Syrian government, saying that Moscow is callously ignoring civilian deaths...
"Pepsi also apologized on Wednesday to Ms. Jenner" Ridiculous. No one forced her to be in the ad https://t.co/4S2H2b7ZSf— Emily Parker (@emilydparker) April 5, 2017
Kate Hudson shows off natural beauty as she goes make-up free in string bikini and takes a dip on holiday with her… https://t.co/GnNosA9A2R— The Sun Showbiz (@TheSunShowbiz) April 5, 2017
The latest by @DaveMajumdar: https://t.co/XbKO2MQ948— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) April 5, 2017
ADDED: Here's a long video with Ms. Habib, "Why I cancelled a trip to the Côte d'Azur-- BIG opportunity on Good Day LA!!"Good Day LA!! Hello Good Morning pic.twitter.com/IwQeVVb7Zm— Liz Habib (@LizHabib) April 5, 2017
The Sovietization of Washington politics is nearly complete. Strong arm rule, political surveillance and the show trial threatens to replace the orderly alternation at power which characterized elective government. Watching the Beltway is now disturbingly like watching an unfolding power struggle at the Kremlin. Richard Arenberg writing in the Hill asks: "is there any hope of pulling out of the "nuclear option" death spiral before the Senate inflicts permanent damage upon itself and the Supreme Court?" There's growing concern the acrimony will permanently poison the atmosphere by locking both parties into a cycle of retaliation...Everything is polarized. There's no giving in. There's no compromise. Fuck your partisan enemies. And who can blame Trump and the Republicans? Frankly, fighting back is why people voted for Trump.
Mel B claims her estranged husband Stephen Belafonte got the nanny PREGNANT https://t.co/vA7AEnmXxq pic.twitter.com/obatuwYyIv— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) April 5, 2017
Former President Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice asked for the names of Trump transition officials to be unmasked and made public in raw intelligence files, according to media reports, a move apparently carried out to harm the incoming Trump administration.Keep reading.
As recently as March 22, Rice denied knowing anything about the intelligence reports. In an appearance on “PBS Newshour,” she said pretty definitely, “I know nothing about this.” The new news reports paint Rice as a liar.
The evidence we know about in the Trump-Russia saga so far seems to be pointing at Obama.
Adam Housley of Fox News reports:
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.The spreading of the unmasked names was carried out for “political purposes that have nothing to do with national security” or foreign intelligence, Housley said. "It had everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team," he said, citing his sources.
The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.
What is incidental collection, by the way?
Incidental collection “happens when an individual is in contact with the target of surveillance,” or is communicating “about” the target, according to Robyn Greene. “So if Bob were being targeted for surveillance and Alice called or emailed Bob, Alice’s communications with him would be collected incidentally.”
In this example, “if Bob is targeted for surveillance and Alice contacts him during that surveillance, resulting in the incidental collection of her communications with him, her name should be redacted or ‘masked’ unless leaving it unredacted provides foreign intelligence value.” Masking is done to protect U.S. persons (i.e. U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, etc.) who get inadvertently caught up in the electronic dragnet from being falsely accused of crimes or otherwise improper behavior.
If a National Security Agency analyst “believes Alice’s communications may contain evidence of any crime, the NSA can share those communications with law enforcement or other relevant agencies … even if the crimes are completely unrelated to the purpose for surveilling Bob’s communications, or to foreign intelligence or national security investigations.”
According to former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, “if the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests,”
Assuming these news reports about data that supposedly was incidentally collected are accurate, they raise a multitude of new questions about the ongoing scandal concerning alleged collaboration between the Trump team and Russia.
We still don’t know who asked then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice to unmask those names – or if she acted on her own initiative. But the most likely culprit has to be President Obama himself, along with those in his inner circle such as his Islamist CIA director John Brennan and his slimy national-security aide Ben Rhodes.
But whoever did the deed, it appears someone used America’s taxpayer-funded national security apparatus to engage in likely unlawful espionage against an opposition presidential campaign, an incoming administration, and that administration’s transition team. It’s the stuff of banana republics, which makes sense, because Obama spent eight long, lawless years trying to turn the United States into precisely that...
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