Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hillary Fundraises Off Fumbling Sanders Interview

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Presidential populist Bernie Sanders came under blistering fire Tuesday for opposing efforts by families of Sandy Hook shooting victims to sue gun manufacturers. Sanders, in an exclusive interview with the New York Daily News last week, said, “No, I don’t,” when asked if victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer. His Democratic rival and her Connecticut supporters took aim at the upstart, saying the Vermont senator was out of touch on the issue. “I was against it, and he was for it, to give immunity from liability to gunmakers and sellers,” front-runner Hillary Clinton told supporters at a campaign event at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. “We can reverse this, and 92% of Americans and 85% of gun owners agree that we should.”

 

CNN reports, “The Vermont senator’s April 1 sit down with the paper’s editorial board, a transcript of which was published Monday, showed him having difficulty clearly answering some questions about both foreign and domestic policy, including the implementation of his much-touted plan to reform Wall Street. … In one exchange, Sanders acknowledged that he wasn’t sure exactly how he intended to break up the big banks, a proposal that has been a centerpiece of his Wall Street reform agenda.”

MSNBC and Bloomberg host Mark Halperin tweeted, “If Hillary gave answers like this to [an editorial] board, she would be crucified.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/conn-sen-murphy-burns-bernie-sanders-gun-lawsuit-stand-article-1.2589519?cid=bitly&utm_content=bufferbecf3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw

Model Rocket Explosion Kills Teen, Injures Friend 

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An 18-year old is dead and his 17-year old friend hospitalized when their propane-propelled model rocket exploded at an elementary school Monday evening. The two high school students from Thousand Oaks, California, were working to test launch the model rocket as a school project Monday evening on the handball courts of Madrona Elementary School when it exploded. Witnesses nearby heard the explosion and were quoted saying that it sounded like a sonic boom.

Congressman Spent $1K in Campaign Funds on Steam 

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Congressman Duncan Hunter spent $1,302 in campaign funds on videogames from the Steam download platform over a two-month period, FEC records show. the California Republican blamed the purchases on his son making unauthorized use of his campaign credit card and listed them each as “personal expense — to be paid back” on the FEC filing. Though the purchases occurred in 2015, there’s no indication he’s paid it back to the campaign, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Merle Haggard Dies

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Country music legend Merle Haggard, best known for such patriotic hits as “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” died Wednesday at his home in Northern California of complications from pneumonia. He turned 79 today. Haggard recorded more than three dozen No. 1 country hits in a musical career that spanned six decades. Before his music career, he served a prison term in San Quentin after attempting to rob a Bakersfield roadhouse in 1957. He played in the prison’s country music band and took as inspiration a performance at the prison by Johnny Cash in 1958. Despite his advancing age Haggard maintained a robust touring schedule in recent years, only recently cancelling for health reasons some performances scheduled for this April.
 

Start of the Trump Building Empire not in America

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A First Nations band is planning to start luring tourists this summer to the northern B.C. ghost town where Donald Drumpf’s pioneering grandfather once ran a brothel.

The Carcross Tagish First Nation, whose territory straddles the B.C.-Yukon border, is building a luxury wilderness camp south of that border, in the town of Bennett, which was briefly a hub for prospectors and others seeking their gold-rush fortunes, including one Frederich Drumpf, who established the Arctic Hotel there in 1899.

The Arctic Hotel was open 24 hours a day and boasted “private boxes” for ladies, which included a bed and a gold scale so customers could pay in nuggets, according to a multigenerational biography of the Drumpfs by U.S. author and journalist Gwenda Blair.

“The bulk of the (hotel’s) cash flow came from the sale of liquor and sex,” Blair wrote in her book The Drumpfs: Three Generations That Built An Empire.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/first-nation-hopes-to-lure-toursists-to-b-c-ghost-town-where-donald-trumps-grandpa-ran-a-brothel

Blow: Democrats Pick Nominee in 2 Undemocratic Ways

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Charles Blow, New York Times: There are two prominent features of the Democratic Party’s presidential selection process that are thoroughly undemocratic and undermine faith in the party: superdelegates (which favor Hillary Clinton) and caucuses (which favor Bernie Sanders). … For a Democratic Party that prides itself on the grand ideals of inclusion and fairness, the nominating process is anything but.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/opinion/the-un-democratic-party.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

McDonald’s: Wage Hikes Are Improving Our Service

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Last year, McDonald’s joined a chorus of struggling U.S. companies offering workers pay hikes to help spur a turnaround. And it looks like the move is paying off for the fast-food giant. “It has done what we expected it to — 90 day turnover rates are down, our survey scores are up — we have more staff in restaurants,” McDonald’s U.S. president Mike Andres told analysts at a UBS conference on Wednesday. “So far we’re pleased with it — it was a significant investment obviously but it’s working well.” In October, McDonald’s reported its first quarter of comparable sales gains in two years. The company built on that growth with a huge 5.7% increase in the following quarter.

http://fortune.com/2016/03/09/mcdonalds-wages/ 

Trump: I’ll Extort Mexico By Blocking Money Transfers

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Donald Trump says he will force Mexico to pay for a border wall as president by threatening to cut off the flow of billions of dollars in payments that immigrants send home to the country, an idea that could decimate the Mexican economy and set up an unprecedented showdown between the United States and a key regional ally. In a two-page memo to the Washington Post, Trump outlined for the first time how he would seek to force Mexico to pay for his 1,000-mile border fence, which Trump has made a cornerstone of his presidential campaign and which has been repeatedly scoffed at by current and former Mexican leaders. The proposal would jeopardize a stream of cash that many economists say is vital for Mexico’s struggling economy. But the feasibility of Trump’s plan is unclear both legally and politically, and also would test the bounds of a president’s executive powers in seeking to pressure another country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-would-seek-to-block-money-transfers-to-force-mexico-to-fund-border-wall/2016/04/05/c0196314-fa7c-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html

 

Armed Hate Group at Mosque Met by Armed Locals

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An anti-Muslim hate group planned an armed protest at an African-American mosque in Texas on Saturday — but it didn’t go as planned.

The group, the Bureau of American Islamic Relations, or BAIR, has made it a habit in the past to show up at mosques with firearms and intimidate worshipers. In November, armed protesters stalked Muslims in Irving. In December, they again stalked Muslims at the Islamic Association of North Texas.

The group that makes a show of carrying guns while they surround places of worship was met in-kind at a Nation of Islam mosque in South Dallas.

“This is an armed defense maneuver, making sure that our communities are safe and secure from any insurgents coming in,” Krystal Muhammad of the New Black Panther Party said. “We will not allow them to come to South Dallas with arms and intimidate our people,” Yafeuh Balogun, spokesman for the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, said last week. “We’re taking a defensive posture, but we’re not threatening anyone.”

According to news reports, BAIR last week backed out of the protest and was a no-show, but BAIR spokesman John Usener said an agreement had been made with the Nation of Islam leadership and Dallas police to postpone the protest

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/armed-hate-group-backs-out-of-texas-mosque-protest-when-faced-with-gun-toting-worshipers/

20 Years to Life for Stealing a Snickers Bar

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A Louisiana man accused of stuffing candy bars into his pockets faces a possible sentence of 20 years to life in prison, prompting a judge to question whether the sentence was “over the top.” Prosecutors charged Jacobia Grimes, 34, under a law makes the alleged candy theft a felony because Grimes was previously convicted more than once of theft of goods. “They’re spending their time to lock someone up for years over $31 worth of candy,” his attorney Miles Swanson said. Judge Franz Zibilich said during Grimes’ arraignment, “Isn’t this a little over the top?”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/candy-theft-could-mean-king-size-sentence-20-years-to-life/ar-BBrkaCI?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=spartanntp

Tim Robbins: Hillary Followers Are ‘Sheep’

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At a rally for Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin, the liberal actor and activist Tim Robbins to Democrats who “feel Bernie in their hearts but are supporting Hillary with their pragmatic brains,” saying that “these are not bad people.” He said, “We’ve all been fed a steady stream of simplistic propaganda that furthers the establishment’s narrative that Hillary’s the presumptive nominee. And if we were sheep, if we had gotten in line, there’d be no problem now.” He continued that “establishment figures would get elected” and figures like Sanders would be “marginalized.”

Tim Robbins rallies for Sanders in Wisconsin

Why Hasn’t Sanders Released His Tax Returns?

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David Cay Johnston: Bernie Sanders holds himself out to huge and adoring crowds as a model of personal, political and financial integrity. But when it comes to revealing his income tax returns, Sanders is as tricky a politician as Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich. … The Sanders, Cruz and Kasich campaigns have all distributed what they claim are tax returns; Kasich for seven years, Cruz for four, and Sanders for just one year, 2014. But those proclaimed disclosures were neither accurate nor honest. None of those candidates has released even a single tax return. What they made public instead was merely a summary known as IRS Form 1040.

As for Sanders, the single Form 1040 he released raises more questions than it answers, especially since the junior senator from Vermont has a history of making incomplete and misleading financial disclosures.

In 2014, he reported an adjusted gross income of $205,271, most of it from his Senate salary.

What appears unusual are his itemized deductions, totaling $56,377, a whopping 27.4 percent of his income. People in his income class of $200,000 to $500,000 on average take 15.6 percent of their income as deductions, while those in the $100,000 to $200,000 range averaged 18.8 percent. Both averages are far below the Sanders itemization rate.

Sanders and his wife paid $27,653 in federal income tax, or 13.4 percent of their adjusted gross income.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/why-hasnt-bernie-sanders-released-his-tax-returns/#comments

Meet Donald Trump’s USA Freedom Kids

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VICE traveled to Fort Myers, Florida, to spend the day with the USA Freedom Kids, a group of girls singing to spread liberty and working to get Donald Trump elected. The effort is the brainchild of manager Jeff Popick, who created the group to spend more time with his daughter and “find a positive way to spread freedom and American pride to combat the last seven years in this country.” The girls range in age from 8 to 13 and belt out politically charged lyrics with phrases like “Ameri-tude” and lyrics about Trump “making things great again.” They performed at a Jan. 13 Pensacola rally for the candidate.

http://www.drudge.com/news/197447/vice-donald-trumps-usa-freedom-kids

Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Found

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Combine one part Fiery Dragon, some Doves of Diana, and at least seven Eagles of mercury, and what do you get? A key precursor to the Philosopher’s stone, according to a rediscovered manuscript handwritten by legendary physicist Isaac Newton. Held in a private collection for decades, the 17th-century document is now in the hands of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, a non-profit based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The group bought the manuscript in February and is currently working on uploading digital images and transcriptions to an online database so more people can study Newton’s take on the alchemical text.

The recipe cryptically details how to make “sophick mercury,” a substance seen as a main ingredient for the Philosopher’s stone. The stone in turn could supposedly change base metals like lead into precious ones like gold.

The document also underscores the fact that Newton — a father of modern physics and co-discoverer of calculus — was greatly influenced by alchemy and his collaborations with alchemists.

The newly uncovered recipe is no exception: Newton copied the strange text from manuscripts by the American-born George Starkey, a 17th-century alchemist better known under his romantic pen name Eireanus Philalethes (“the peaceful lover of truth”).

As translated by modern scholars, Starkey’s recipe for sophick mercury involves repeatedly distilling mercury and then heating it with gold. This process eventually produces an alloy with delicate, branch-like growths.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science/?google_editors_picks=true

Fact Checking Sanders on Hillary’s Contributors

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Senator Bernie Sanders said Hillary Clinton has received significant contributions from the fossil fuel industry … Not so much. We took a look at the numbers. First of all, Clinton’s campaign has not received money from oil, gas or coal companies, because corporations cannot donate to candidates’ campaigns. … [The] amount raised by Clinton represents less than one-half of 1 percent of her total fund-raising that the Center for Responsive Politics was able to track to specific industries, and the oil and gas industry is not among the top 20 industries that have helped finance her campaign.

When it comes to people who work in the oil and gas industry, Clinton has indeed raised more money than Sanders. She has collected about $308,000, compared to about $54,000 for Sanders, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks contributions by industry.

But that amount raised by Clinton represents less than one-half of 1 percent of her total fund-raising that the Center for Responsive Politics was able to track to specific industries, and the oil and gas industry is not among the top 20 industries that have helped finance her campaign.

Nearly $9 of every $10 donated to presidential candidates in this election cycle from the oil and gas industry has gone to Republicans.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/fact-check.html#/factcheck-142

David Plouffe Forecasts the Rest of the Dem Primary

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David Plouffe: How can Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner and close to presumptive nominee lose five of the six last contests? Doesn’t that suggest the race could somehow be changing and Bernie Sanders now has a shot? Negative. … I believe Hillary Clinton has zero chance of not being the Democratic nominee. But she still is going to lose a bunch of states to Bernie Sanders the rest of the way into the clubhouse.

The Clinton lead is almost 300 in pledged delegates. And over 700 in total delegates. Clinton will end the primary, even if she underperforms the rest of the way, with a pledged delegate lead greater than Barack Obama’s in 2008. …

So as we follow each primary breathlessly and pundits assign outsized value to each of them and want to suggest momentum has changed this way or that, the reality is far less interesting. We for the most part this deep into the race already know what’s going to happen.

https://medium.com/@davidplouffe/how-can-hillary-clinton-the-democratic-frontrunner-and-close-to-presumptive-nominee-lose-five-of-47a8875c1a87#.w0cvx31jh

Ben Stein: Trump’s Economic Views ‘Sheer Idiocy’

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If Donald Trump hopes to win Ben Stein’s vote it won’t be for his economic prognostications. Stein, an economist and political commentator and actor, said Monday on CNN that Trump’s recent prediction of a “very massive recession” coming soon in the United States was “nonsense” and that Trump’s views on the economy are “sheer idiocy.” “It breaks my heart, it makes me want to cry because I’m Republican, I’ve never voted for a Democrat,” Stein said. “And to think the guy who’s our likely standard bearer has such nonsensical ideas of every single aspect of the economy is just breathtakingly horrible.”

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/ben-stein-donald-trump-economy/2016/04/04/id/722235/

Keystone Pipeline Springs a Leak

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A key section of the Keystone pipeline has been shut down due to an oil spill in South Dakota, TransCanada said on Monday. TransCanada, which operates the pipeline, reported a spill of about 187 gallons of crude oil to the Coast Guard’s National Response Center on Saturday afternoon. The company said in a statement it is removing the oil and investigating the source. TransCanada said “no significant impact to the environment has been observed.” The incident along the controversial pipeline is located about four miles away from the Freeman pump station in Hutchinson County, South Dakota. A portion of the Keystone pipeline that transports oil from Alberta, Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma will be shut down until at least Friday. The section that connects Cushing to Texas remains in operation.

In 2008 TransCanada proposed a controversial expansion of the pipeline known as the Keystone XL that would have brought oil down from Canada directly into Nebraska. While TransCanada touted the project’s employment and national security benefits, environmentalists strongly opposed the expansion.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/news/keystone-pipeline-oil-spill-south-dakota/index.html

 

Sanders: Shut Down New York Nuclear Plant

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Highlighting his opposition to nuclear power ahead of the New York primary later this month, Bernie Sanders called for the shutdown of a nuclear power plant outside New York City that has leaked radioactive material into groundwater supplies. The Indian Point plant has long been a source of controversy, thanks to numerous leaks and safety concerns, but the plant would be extremely difficult to replace — it produces about a quarter of the electricity used by New York City and neighboring Westchester County. Sanders is the only candidate in either party who wants to end nuclear energy production, which currently accounts for 20% of U.S. electrical generation.

“I am very concerned that the Indian Power nuclear power reactor is more than ever before a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Sanders said Monday.

Hillary Clinton, whose Chappaqua home is about 15 miles from the plant, was one of the most vocal critics of Indian Point while she served in the Senate. “Just about every week we pick up the local newspaper and find some other problem at Indian Point,” Clinton said in 2007 as the plant faced a relicensing battle. But Clinton called for improving operations at the plant rather than shutting it down entirely.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-calls-shutting-down-new-york-nuke-plant-n550331

Hillary, Sanders Will Debate in Brooklyn

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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have agreed to meet for a Democratic debate on CNN and NY1 on April 14, five days before the primary in New York state. The debate will take place in Brooklyn and will be moderated by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. Both CNN and NY1 will carry the debate live from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern. Sanders especially wanted the debate in Brooklyn, the borough where he was born. It’s also the site of the campaign headquarters for Clinton, a former U.S. senator from the state.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/04/politics/democratic-debate-brooklyn/