Saturday, April 29, 2017

Dow’s rally from election through Trump’s first 100 days is a postwar record

marketwatch.com ^ | April 29, 2017 | Mark DeCambre 

As President Donald Trump hits his 100th day in office Saturday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has booked the best performance in the postwar era under a first-term president when measured from Election Day through the 100th day in office, according to Dow Jones data.

The Dow DJIA, -0.19% has rallied 14.22% since Trump’s stunning Nov. 8 election victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton after a campaign promising a raft of Wall Street–friendly policies, including tax cuts, deregulation and a boost in infrastructure spending. (The S&P 500 index SPX, -0.19% has gained about 11.6% over that period, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.02% has climbed 16.5%.)
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...

Here's how tech companies are living up to their promises to create jobs in Trump's America

CNBC ^ | April 29, 2017 | Deirdre Bosa 

• IBM, Amazon, SoftBank, and Alibaba all made high-profile pledges to create U.S. jobs
• Progress has been mixed, with Amazon hiring the most so far.


The first few weeks of Donald Trump's presidency were flooded with jobs announcements with a common theme: bringing jobs back to America.
Now, 100 days into the Trump administration, where are those jobs? What positions have been filled and which companies have followed up with real hiring?
While some companies were eager to provide big, tweetable numbers a few months ago, progress has been a little slower. For example:
IBM. Shortly after the election and before Trump's inauguration, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the company would hire 25,000 "new collar" jobs in the next four years in the US (6,000 of them this year).
The company told CNBC this week that they've hired 120 people in their Columbia, Missouri Client Innovation Center and 200 veterans since the start of the year. To stay on track, IBM will have to fill more than 5,500 new employees in the U.S. in the remaining 8 months of the year.
Amazon. In January, Amazon touted plans to hire 100 thousand "new, full-time, full-benefit jobs" across the nation over the next 18 months....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...

President Trump's First 100 Days [Powerful Video from White House!]


Weekly Update: Grand Jury Investigated Hillary Clinton

Judicial Watch ^ | April 28, 2017 | Tom Fitton 

Hundreds Vote Illegally in North Carolina after Court Bans Election Integrity Law 
FBI Court Filing Reveals Grand Jury Targeted Hillary Clinton 
JW Goes To Federal Court Monday on Another Obama Administration Email Scandal


Hundreds Vote Illegally in North Carolina after Court Bans Election Integrity Law

Obama Justice Department holdovers must be pleased with their work. In July 2016, they were successful in undoing North Carolina’s voter integrity laws in order to allow all manner of illegal voters the ability to cast ballots. Our Corruption Chronicles blog tells the story .
Less than a year after a federal appellate court sided with the Obama administration to strike down North Carolina’s election integrity reforms, a state audit reveals that hundreds of votes were illegally cast by felons and non-citizens in just one election.
Voter impersonation, double voting and irregularities in absentee ballots sent via mail also tainted the election, according to the investigation conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE). The probe analyzed records from the 2016 general election.
State auditors found that about 500 ineligible people voted in 2016, more than 440 of them felons. Dozens of non-citizens from 28 different countries also cast ballots, the probe found. “A number of non-citizens said they were not aware that they were prohibited from voting,” the report states. “Interviews and evidence show that some non-citizens were misinformed about the law by individuals conducting voter registration drives or, in at least one document case, by a local precinct official.”
North Carolina authorities are also investigating 24 substantiated cases of double voting in 2016. “Some violators appear to be ‘testers’ trying to find holes in the system,” according to the report. “Others claim property ownership in multiple jurisdictions should allow them to vote in each, and others brush past the law to support their candidate by any means necessary. Additionally, a case that initially appears to be a double voter—an individual who votes twice—may actually be a case of voter impersonation—an individual who casts a ballot using the identity of another person.”
The NCSBE concedes that there are probably many more cases of double voting but identifying them is difficult and there’s no reliable method to consistently find them and other types of election fraud. “While no audit exists to catch all possible cases of voter impersonation, double voter or deceased voter audits may detect such cases,” the report says. This brings up another alarming point; if duplicate registrations are voted, there’s no way to tell if that’s fraudulent voting by a single individual—which everyone assumes—or impersonation fraud. Even in the North Carolina probe, we’ll never know if that’s the whole number. “These kinds of stories are a feature of every election and that’s despite the fact that most states often don’t even track these crimes in a systematic way,” said Robert Popper, a former Deputy Chief of Justice Department Voting Section who heads Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity Project. “Some states admit they don’t track them at all,” Popper added.
Judicial Watch has been heavily involved in the North Carolina case and in 2015 filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in opposition to a lower court ruling preventing the state from implementing its election integrity reform law. Passed by the legislature in 2013 the measure requires voters to present a photo identification, eliminates same-day registration, shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days and requires voters to cast ballots in their own precinct. The Obama administration joined a group of leftist organizations to challenge the law in federal court, alleging that it disparately and adversely affects minority voting rights. A federal judge, Thomas D. Schroeder, rejected the claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled against North Carolina just prior to the November 2014 elections. State officials asked the Supreme Court for a temporary stay of the Fourth Circuit’s ruling and the high court granted it, allowing North Carolina’s election integrity rules to be used in 2014.
In its unanimous decision , the three-judge panel from the Fourth Circuit wrote that North Carolina’s voter integrity law harmed blacks, who overwhelmingly cast ballots for Democrats. “The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the appellate ruling states. “Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”
Under the racial “disparate impact” theory, which is at the heart of the controversial 2014 Fourth Circuit opinion, a law can be struck down if it statistically disadvantages a minority group, even if that negative impact was neither foreseen nor intended. This decision was temporarily stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to the 2014 mid-terms. The broader view of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) adopted by the most recent 2016 Fourth Circuit decision says that a violation occurs when voting practices are motivated by a discriminatory intent even without evidence of any racially disparate effects on the minority group. This decision is currently pending before the high court.
FBI Court Filing Reveals Grand Jury Targeted Hillary Clinton
Just when you think we’ve learned most of what there is to learn about Hillary Clinton’s emails a new mole pops up out of the hole.
This week Judicial Watch released State Department documents including a declaration from FBI Special Agent E.W. Priestap, the supervisor of the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email activities, stating that the former secretary of state was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.
The declaration was produced in response to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking to force Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take steps to “recover emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” and other U.S. Department of State employees ( Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Rex Tillerson (No. 1:15-cv-00785)). We originally filed the lawsuit against then-Secretary of State John Kerry. The Trump State Department filing includes details of the agency’s continuing and shameful refusal to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department, as the law requires.
In the filing, Priestap declares under penalty of perjury that the FBI “obtained Grand Jury subpoenas related to the Blackberry e-mail accounts, which produced no responsive materials, as the requested data was outside the retention time utilized by those providers.”
On April 30, 2015, Judicial Watch sued Kerry after the State Department failed to take action on a letter sent to Kerry “notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the [Federal Records Act],” including working through the Attorney General to recover the emails.
After initially being dismissed by the district court, Judicial Watch’s lawsuit was revived on appeal by a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on December 27, 2016.
While at the State Department, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conducted official government business using an unsecured email server and email accounts. Her top aides and advisors also used non-“state.gov” email accounts to conduct official business. Clinton left office February 1, 2013.
The FBI convened a grand jury to investigate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Why is this information being released only now?
It is disturbing that the State Department, Justice Department, and FBI are still trying to protect Hillary Clinton. President Trump needs to clean house at all these agencies.
JW Goes To Federal Court Monday on Another Obama Administration Email Scandal
Hillary Clinton’s wasn’t the only Obama administration email scandal. Another continuing email scandal centers on Jeh Johnson, Obama’s Homeland Security secretary. We have another court hearing on the issue Monday afternoon (May 1). We have a pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking emails “relating to official United States Government business sent to or from” former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and three other top Homeland Security officials who used “non-‘.gov’” email addresses ( Judicial Watch, Inc., v. United States Department of Homeland Security (No. l:l6-cv-00967)).
The hearing will focus on whether the Department of Homeland Security violated FOIA by not producing any records responsive to Judicial Watch’s original December 29, 2015, request from the agency officials’ non-government email accounts. The agency claims the emails are essentially inaccessible and it is too troublesome to recover them.
We previously obtained and made public 215 pages of documents containing official emails sent through the private, unsecure email accounts of Johnson, former Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, former Chief of Staff Christian Marrone, and former General Counsel Steven Bunnell. The documents include emails discussing high-level meetings Johnson was to have with the Kuwaiti ambassador and Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry officials, as well as a West African $4.5 million online consumer fraud scam using Johnson’s name.
Prior to the Obama administration’s leaving office, Judge Moss ordered the Department of Homeland Security to preserve email records sought by Judicial Watch “to minimize the risk of an inadvertent loss of potentially responsive emails.” In petitioning the court for the preservation order, Judicial Watch argued :
A court order requiring preservation of these emails is particularly necessary now as DHS has suggested that these officials may have been acting without authorization by sending emails from these accounts … As such, there is no assurance that these officials will abide by a “request” by the agency to preserve these emails, particularly after their employment ends.…
Jeh Johnson and other top Obama Homeland Security officials, like Hillary Clinton, seemed to think the rules are for the little people. We already uncovered documents revealing that Secretary Jeh Johnson and 28 other agency officials used government computers to access personal web-based email accounts despite an agency-wide ban due to heightened security concerns.
And yet another Obama government agency gamed Congress about emails. We found other documents that reveal Homeland Security officials misled Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) when Perry specifically asked whether personal accounts were being used for official government business.
I’ll keep you apprised of developments in this lawsuit as events warrant. 

Media Bias: A New Chart

Sharyl Attkisson.com ^ | April 23,2017 | Sharyl Attkisson 

Where’s your favorite information source stand on the political scale?
I’ve updated the following subjective chart based on information compiled from various sources and your feedback. Some sources have shifted left or right, others have been added including: ESPN, McClatchy, the Federalist, Conservative Review, Washington Monthly, Twitchy, Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse.
Please note that outlets on left and right sometimes publish material that’s on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or that has no political leaning at all. The placement is based on perceived overall tone and audience. Position on the chart doesn’t necessarily imply credibility or lack thereof. Sources on far right and far left have, in many instances, produced excellent, factually correct information at times.
I have loosely placed more traditional information sources in the top half of the chart working down toward aggregators, fact-checkers, opinion sites and less news-related sources. (This posed some position challenges since most of traditional information sources are left-leaning.) I did not attempt to place individual programs or broadcasts.
Compiling such a chart is obviously difficult for many reasons, some of them having to do with space. The spacing should be considered relative and not an indicator of absolute position. A number of the information sources technically belong on top of one another.
You have contributed terrific ideas, such as sizing boxes based on audience, and dividing into quadrants. This is a work in progress. Thanks for your input!
Chart below in posts
(Excerpt) Read more at sharylattkisson.com ...

 


Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, and the pornification of conservative media?

Life Site News ^ | April 28, 2017 | JOHN JALSEVAC 



April 28, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The dismissal of Bill O’Reilly from Fox News over allegations of sexual harassment doesn’t look good, especially coming as it does on the heels of the similarly dishonorable departure of former Fox CEO Roger Ailes.

Could O’Reilly be the innocent victim of an ideological witch hunt? Did his head fall under the guillotine merely to further plans to transform Fox into another globalist, left-leaning CNN, as some have suggested? Perhaps. But somehow that theory seems too convenient. If there is any such liberal conspiracy (and maybe there is), it’s more likely that its leaders are merely exploiting a pre-existing vulnerability at Fox.

Whether O’Reilly himself is guilty or not, the only thing surprising about the revelation that some of the male leadership at Fox may have sexually harassed female employees, is that so many people are surprised by it. In the past few days, discomfiting montages of male personalities at Fox making denigrating sexual remarks towards their female co-workers on the air have been making the rounds. And it sure didn’t help that days after O’Reilly’s departure Fox host Jesse Watters appeared to make a sexually explicit joke at the expense of Ivanka Trump.

Meanwhile, Fox has long earned itself a reputation for flaunting, beyond the bounds of decency, the physical features of its female staff. The network arguably pioneered - at the very least, enthusiastically embraced -  the sleeveless cocktail dress uniform that has become the norm for female TV anchors. As Diane Dimond, a former female reporter at Fox, alleged: “There is a good ol’ boys’ network thing there at Fox … It’s a boys’ shop. You do not complain. You’ve got to wear your skirts short and your heels high, and you’ve got to put lots of makeup on if you’re a woman.”

This isn’t a secret, or even controversial. There’s a reason that Youtube montages of Fox News women’s legs are a thing, or why country music singer Austin Cunningham recorded his satirical tribute to “The Girls on Fox News.” Over at TownHall, former Fox contributor Linda Chavez adds to the evidence, describing how, “The emphasis on glamor and a certain look at [Fox News] grew obsessively over time. And the standard applied exclusively to female on-air personalities.”

The sleazification of the media is something that affects both left and right. Ultimately it stems from the overall pornification of the culture. But while conservatives ought to be able to expect higher standards from their own media, at times it feels like what we get is the exact opposite – a conscious “frat boy” mentality disguised, or at least excused, as a form of conservative, blue collar populism. And Fox News certainly isn’t the only, or even the worst, offender.

A few years ago, an attempt was made to launch a conservative cable TV news network in Canada. So closely did the ill-fated Sun News Network hew to the Fox News model that it quickly earned itself the nickname (certainly not intended as a compliment) of “Fox News North.”

And while many of those involved in the project were well-intentioned conservatives who did excellent work, during its brief existence it also earned other, even less complimentary epithets. Luiza Savage, the Washington D.C. bureau chief of one of Canada’s top magazines, dubbed the station “Skank TV” on Twitter. While Savage quickly retracted the offending tweet, she wasn’t alone. One columnist at Canada’s conservative-leaning National Post newspaper said she wouldn’t watch the station, because as far as she could tell, “Sun TV really isn’t about Hard News and Straight Talk. It’s about Hot Chicks and Sexy Outfits.”

“For its women presenters, there seems to be a ban on sleeves,” wrote Tasha Kheiriddin. “Not a jacket in sight. Only cocktail dresses, as clingy and low-cut as possible.”

Sound familiar?

Interestingly, the Sun News Network was part-owned by Sun Media Corporation, the same company that runs the conservative-leaning (at least in terms of editorial policy) Sun tabloid newspaper chain, which prominently features a daily, scantily-clad "Sunshine Girl."

This is an almost impossible topic to discuss these days, since even commonsense observations that what a woman is wearing may be inappropriate is quickly seized upon as “slut-shaming.” But surely I wasn’t the only one to notice, for instance, that the most conspicuous thing about the recent appearance by The Blaze’s Tomi Lahren on The View - other than the incoherence of her position on abortion - was how provocatively dressed the heretofore “conservative” Internet star was, and how sensibly dressed the show's panel of liberal hostesses were. And who can forget Megyn Kelly’s shamelessly provocative GQ photo shoot?

Follow John Jalsevac on Facebook

Then there’s the widely-read Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s online conservative newspaper, conceived as a right-wing answer to Politico. There, alongside conservative red meat news articles promoting gun rights and critiquing Obama’s policies, one can find suggested articles like “Celebrate National Lingerie Day With The Victoria’s Secret Angels,” the equally subtle, “This Model Didn’t Get Millions Of Fans Because She Covers Up,” and the breathtakingly offensive, “13 Syrian Refugees We’d Take Immediately [PHOTOS].”

In an interview with Politico, Carlson, most recently making waves as a rising star at Fox News (where, to his credit he recently grilled a thoroughly uncomfortable Planned Parenthood executive), desperately attempted to put the proverbial lipstick on the pig. The borderline NSFW (Not Safe for Work) slideshows at The Daily Caller, he claimed, are about “celebrating pulchritude in a way that’s edifying and uplifting.” He added (much more convincingly), “We care about traffic.”

Then there’s The UK’s Daily Mail, one of that country’s few conservative-leaning newspapers, and also a den of iniquity. The “right rail” (as web designers call the right column where publishers typically put related stories and the like) of The Mail’s site is infamously packed with all manner of salacious gossip and pornographic sleaze.

Meanwhile, one of the stranger aspects of the “fake news” phenomenon is how many of the fake sites that were widely shared by a pro-Trump constituency were plastered with grossly offensive advertisements that seemed to bother those sharing the articles not a bit. Many of the leading conservative blogs display the same conspicuous lack of taste and decency.

So what exactly is going on here? That’s hard to say, really. One theory floated by The Hill is that because conservative media outlets are the new kids on the block, they’ve been forced broadly to embrace sensationalism as a way to attract eyeballs from the old school juggernauts like the New York Times. While The Hill wasn’t referring specifically to the salacious side of sensationalism, the theory fits. And up to a point, it makes sense. Eyeballs equals advertising contracts equals money, and without money the new brand of independent, conservative media outlets couldn’t even exist. Hence Carlson’s point that The Daily Caller “cares about traffic.”

But the theory also doesn’t comfort. For ultimately what good is a conservative media that is willing to sell out central conservative moral convictions for the sake of financial gain? That has always been the jarring contradiction when visiting sites like The Daily Caller or The Daily Mail. One might be reading an article convincingly defending the “sanctity of marriage” or lambasting liberal values or critiquing Planned Parenthood, and all the while be trying to avert one’s eyes from the flagrantly pornographic content on the side bar.

My fear, I suppose, is that the problem reflects a more fundamental crisis in American conservatism: a general slide away from key moral issues in favor of a purely political ideology built upon the eviscerated framework of authentic conservatism, often defined more in terms of what it is against, then what it is for. This, it seems, is what we find in the rise and increasing influence of the "alt right" movement: a movement that lionizes those who employ extreme crudity, so long as it is employed in merciless attacks on the politically correct left.

One might hesitantly point out here that conservative America’s current hero of choice is a man who made much of his fame in the seedy world of beauty pageants, and whose own recorded remarks about women surpass even the more egregious examples in the Fox News montages mentioned above. Granted, many of Trump's conservative supporters, particularly evangelicals, have expressed disgust at his past treatment of women. Others, however, particularly those formed in the model of the alt-right, were uncomfortably quick to dismiss those concerns, or seemed not to care at all, so long as political gains were made.

The crisis at Fox News provides an opportunity for some meaningful existential self-analysis about the nature and state of conservatism, and what we expect from our media. Let's not waste it.

Obama lied – and now the truth

israelnationalnews.com ^ | 4/27/17 | Jack Engelhard 

So how much of our money did Obama ship to the terrorist regime in Iran? We hear $150 billion. We are not sure. Could be a dollar less, a dollar more.

We’ll never know for sure. That’s because his entire administration operated in the dark.

That’s how he governed and that’s how he got himself elected, in lies and in stealth, and the news media did the rest. They covered for him.
They let him get away with murder – and in this case, that is not a cliché, it’s fact.

(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...

Report: Secretary T-Rex Begins Reducing State Dept. Bureaucrats…

The Conservative Treehouse ^ | April 28, 2017 | Sundance 

A report from Bloomberg highlights the anxiety within the professional state department apparatus as Secretary Tillerson begins substantive cuts in the number of pontificating elitist bureaucrats. It’s amazing how the ankle-biters never seem to recognize these consequential shifts in policy and approach toward dismantling the bureaucracy.

The State Department is the cornerstone of Deep State operations. It is a massively bloated institution filled with some of the most entrenched political globalists and ideologues.

Trump is no longer playing only with evil and cunning players who are still predictable, easily beatable dopes, like Hillary. He is playing against killers, with his own team of killers, and all the while he has scheming creeps like Hillary, BGI, SPLC, and the neocons gunning for him. Snake Ryan ready to bite when nobody is looking. “Warhead” McCain screaming for Russian blood. Psycho Kim and Samoa Obama plotting some kind of intrigue to take him down. And THOSE are the lightweights.
(Excerpt) Read more at theconservativetreehouse.com ...

Political Media Earns Poor Marks From Americans (WH More Trusted Than National Media)

morningconsult.com ^ | APRIL 28, 2017 

As political journalists prepare to gather at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday to celebrate their work, a new Morning Consult poll is likely to make many of them cringe.

In the new poll, roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media “is out of touch with everyday Americans,” compared with 28 percent who said it “understand the issues everyday Americans are facing.”

President Donald Trump, a frequent public antagonist of the press and the first president in 36 years to skip the confab, is also slightly more trusted than the national political media. Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they trusted Trump’s White House to tell the truth, while 29 percent opted for the media.
(Excerpt) Read more at morningconsult.com ...

You can thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for North Korea's Nukes

http://nypost.com ^ | January 6, 2016 | Post Editorial Board 

Old article from last year.

"North Korea’s boast that it just detonated its first hydrogen bomb met instant doubts from the White House and arms experts. If they’re right, Pyongyang “only” has plain-old atomic bombs. What a . . . relief?
But, as one Chinese expert told The Wall Street Journal, the H-bomb claim still shows that tyrant Kim Jong-un is “marching in that direction.”
For all this, thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. North Korea couldn’t have done it without their gullibility.
Back in 1994, President Clinton prepared to confront North Korea over CIA reports it had built nuclear warheads and its subsequent threats to engulf Japan and South Korea in “a sea of fire.”"
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

Gobaloney: Extreme weather at all-time lows as ‘climate change’ hoax continues to unravel

National Sentinel ^ | April 28, 2017 | National Sentinel 

We will continue to counter the false narrative of human-caused “global warming” as long as we have to.
(NationalSentinel) Environment: The Church of Global Warming has many followers and, because it’s a cult-like religious belief to them, no amount of hard data will ever convince them they adhere to the teachings of a false god.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon the non-establishment, honest alternative media to report what is and what isn’t: And what isn’t is the supposed increase in “extreme weather” due to “global warming/climate change” caused by humans.
Climate Depot points this out in a new report that is replete with examples, data and other proof. Here’s a sample:
The federal government has just released yet another key piece of scientific data that counters the man-made global warming narrative. The federal U.S. Drought Monitor report shows that droughts in the U.S. are at record lows in 2017. See: Feds: U.S. drought reaches record low in 2017 as rain reigns – Sees lowest levels of drought ever monitored
“Drought in the U.S. fell to a record low this week, with just 6.1% of the lower 48 states currently experiencing such dry conditions, federal officials announced Thursday. That’s the lowest percentage in the 17-year history of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report,” USA Today reported on April 27.
More:
But it is not just droughts that are at or near record levels. On almost every measure of extreme weather, the data is not cooperating with the claims of the climate change campaigners. Tornadoes, floods, droughts, and hurricanes are failing to fit in with the global warming narrative.
The complete report is here and you should take the time to peruse it. It’s full of links to vital data, research and evidence-based studies. You know, facts.
But the point is, once again, the global warming hoaxers have been exposed as frauds and charlatans pushing an agenda of no-economic-growth and population control, period.
As long as the hoaxers continue to push their false narratives that cattle farts, SUVs and computer chip makers are responsible for destroying the planetary environment, we’ll continue to point out the truth.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Obama Turns Out To Be A Greedy One-Percenter

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 4/27/2017 | Staff 

Money in Politics: President Obama's devotees no doubt had hoped he would come out swinging against President Trump. Instead, the only thing he's done so far is cash in on his presidency with a massive book deal and a six-figure speech gig.

Earlier this month, Obama reportedly signed a book deal with Penguin Random House for more than $65 million for one book written by him and another written by Michelle. (The exact amount wasn't made public.) Assuming that figure is correct and they both write 500 page books, that amounts to roughly $144 per word for each of them.

After writing 370 words — less than two manuscript pages — the Obamas will have made as much as the typical American family earns in an entire year.

Even though the Obamas are clearing roughly four times what Bill Clinton made on his post-presidential memoir and more than six times what George W. Bush got, the eye-popping advance generated no real controversy.

Not so Obama's decision to accept a $400,000 speaking gig at a health care conference sponsored by Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...

A socialist

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Muslim talking to a Liberal

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100 days later!

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The Democrat Explanation

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HATE!

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Enough is never enough!

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You wonder!

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Poverty Pimp

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The Difference

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Democrats

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Allow!

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Tax reform

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Where are the children?

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Democratic Party

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Who supports Socialism?

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His Title!

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Democrats

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Thursday, April 27, 2017

Sorry MSM: Leftists Confirm that Protesters Are Paid

NewsBusters ^ | April 27, 2017 | P.J. Gladnick 

Have you noticed how the mainstream media has recently mocked the notion that leftwing protesters are being paid?

The idea is ridiculous they claim and only Trump and his supporters are making that silly charge. Well, guess what? A pair of leftwingers have confirmed in the April 26 Washington Post that protesters are indeed paid.

(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...

Texas Poised To Pass 'Sanctuary City' Ban With Jail Penalty...Don't Mess With Texas!

Yahoo News - AP ^ | 4-27-2017 | JIM VERTUNO 

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans were poised Wednesday to take a big step toward banning "sanctuary cities" in their state, debating a bill through which police chiefs and sheriffs could even be jailed for not cooperating fully with federal immigration authorities.
Although Democrats don't have the votes in the Republican-controlled Legislature to stop the bill from going to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who made such a ban a priority, they vowed to fight it at every step, promising hours of emotionally charged debate on Wednesday before the Texas House votes.
Under the bill, the state could withhold funding from local governments for acting as sanctuary cities, even as the Trump administration's efforts to do so nationally have hit roadblocks. Other Republican-controlled states have pushed for similar polices in recent years, just as more liberal ones have done the opposite. But Texas would be the first in which police chiefs and sheriffs could be jailed for not helping enforce immigration law. They could also lose their jobs.
The bill is needed to "keep the public safe and remove bad people from the street," said Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth.
"The bill does not target or discriminate against illegal immigrants. This bill specifically targets criminals who happen to be here illegally," Geren said.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...

Climate science: Dishonest for decades!

WND ^ | 04/26/2017 | Jack Cashill 

Former Obama Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin made news on Monday when he told the Wall Street Journal that the administration spun climate data to shape public opinion.

“What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said. What is most shocking about the mini-Koonin flap is that anyone was shocked. Scientific showmen have been manipulating climate data as a way of shaping policy for decades.

In 1983, for instance, a veritable supergroup of scientific rock stars, including the self-promoting pothead Carl Sagan, published a paper in Science called “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...

I Am a Victim of Your Hateful Hate Crimes, You Hate-Criminals!

TownHall ^ | 27 April 2017 12:01am | Kurt Schlichter 

As a person of absolutely no color who embodies an intersectional reality that includes my utter lack of genderfluidity and my unemployment-questioning, differently-veteraned, and non-pagan experiences, I am totally oppressed by progressivism’s hegemonic power structure.
I am also the victim of a systemic system of hostile paradigms that denies my truth regarding my phallo-possessory identity.

My struggle is real, and my male-identifying genitalia will no longer be silent!

I bear a heavy burden in the form of my pasty, easily-sunburned skin. For too long, the fact that a previous Schlichter was booted out of Stuttgart in 1750 has meant that I have been subject to the hateful discourse of unabashed Fritzophobes.

And that’s when society hasn’t stolen my Teutonic legacy outright. You are culturally appropriating my cold, emotionless people’s heritage every time you are punctual and efficient.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...

Hey Kids...

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Free Speech

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The Girls

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Nearly!

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BOYCOTT

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WHY?

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Earth Day Trash

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Switching

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WTF, over?

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Wednesday, April 26, 2017

In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered ‘Low Income’

San Jose Mercury News ^ | April 22, 2017 | ANNIE SCIACCABLISHED: April 22, 2017 at 11: 

In the high-priced Bay Area, even some households that bring in six figures a year can now be considered “low income.”
That’s according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which recently released its 2017 income limits — a threshold that determines who can qualify for affordable and subsidized housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers.
San Francisco and San Mateo counties have the highest limits in the Bay Area — and among the highest such numbers in the country. A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered “low income.” A $65,800 annual income is considered “very low” for a family the same size, and $39,500 is “extremely low.” The median income for those areas is $115,300.
Other Bay Area counties are not far behind. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, $80,400 for a family of four is considered low income, while in Santa Clara County, $84,750 is the low-income threshold for a family of four.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...

Muddy Maxine Waters: What a Riot

Townhall.com ^ | April 26, 2017 | Michelle Malkin 


Are you freaking kidding me? Thirteen-term Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Beltway barnacle permanently affixed to USS Government, is now the fresh-faced "rock star" of the Democratic Party.
"Auntie Maxine" is stoking the resistance, inspiring millenials, combating hate, crusading against corruption and invoking the counterinsurgent cry to "stay woke!"
I do not have enough guffaws to give.
This new spokesmodel for civility and clean government has stoked division and exploited taxpayers for decades.
Change agent? She has served on the Democratic National Committee since 1980 -- when the Atari 2600 was cutting-edge, Kim Kardashian was a newborn, and Al Franken was hamming it up on "Saturday Night Live."
Waters has spent 37 years in office -- many of those years as head of the Congressional Black Caucus -- promising to make life better for constituents in economically ravaged South Central Los Angeles.
What do the denizens of her district have to show for it? Staggering levels of persistent unemployment, poverty and gang violence as the 25th anniversary of the L.A. riots looms this coming weekend.
What does Rep. Waters have to show for it?
She's earned a lifetime of left-wing adoration for whitewashing the deadly riots as a "rebellion," excusing the week-long shooting, looting and arson orgy as "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration," and coddling Crips and Bloods gang members -- with whom she performed the Electric Slide as part of her "fearless support and understanding of young people and their efforts at self-expression."
I covered Waters in the early 1990s as an editorial writer and columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. Her federally funded Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center was a gang-infested boondoggle.
She embraced Damian Williams, the infamous thug who hurled a chunk of concrete at white truck driver Reginald Denny and performed a victory dance over the bloodied innocent bystander.
And she and her family personally profited from her rise to racially demagogic power.
She owns a tony mansion in predominantly white Hancock Park, several miles outside her congressional district.
She secured an ambassadorship to the Bahamas for her husband, a former pro football player and car salesman whose main qualification was having traveled to the island for a vacation.
Her daughter, Karen, has scooped up nearly $650,000 in payments from Mama Waters' slate mailer operation for her federal campaign committee since 2006, the Washington Free Beacon reported this week. And Mama Waters owes her well-heeled daughter an additional $108,000.
Waters also mau-maued the House Veterans Committee into hiring two black staffers.
And she walked away with a slap on the wrist from the toothless House Ethics Committee in 2012 after being charged with multiple ethics violations related to her meddling in minority-owned OneUnited Bank.
Reminder for all the new fangirls and fanboys suffering from Maxi-mnesia: Her husband, Sidney, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. As stockholders, they profited handsomely from their relationship with the bank.
It was a mutually beneficial relationship. After Waters' office personally intervened and lobbied the Treasury Department in 2008, OneUnited received $12 million in federal TARP bailout money -- despite another government agency concluding that the bank operated "without effective underwriting standards" and engaged "in speculative investment practices." After the federal bailout of Fannie/Freddie, OneUnited's stock in the government-sponsored enterprises plunged to a value estimated at less than $5 million. Only through Waters' intervention was OneUnited able to secure an emergency meeting with the Treasury and then-Secretary Henry Paulson.
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, reported that Waters' friend and fellow California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren helped delay her scheduled 2010 House ethics trial on the matter by stalling subpoenas and improperly firing two attorneys working on the investigation. Six of 10 House Ethics panel members quit the case in 2012 over questions about their partiality. An outside investigator absolved Waters of any wrongdoing.
The newfound Maxine Waters Fan Club might want to know that Waters' government cronyism and self-dealing earned her a "Most Corrupt member of Congress" designation from the left-wing Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington five times -- in 2005, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2017.
Now, Muddy Maxine is leading the charge to drain the swamp that sustains her. What a riot.

Herpes

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Liars Club

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It's Over!

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EPIPHANY!

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Liberals

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Stupid!

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SOON!

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ZERO!

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BETTER?

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In his sights!

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MONEY

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LIARS!

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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Gen. Jack Keane: Obama "Doomed Afghanistan to Protracted War"; Chose Not to Win - Video

Freedom's Lighthouse ^ | April 25, 2017 | Brian 

Here is Gen. Jack Keane on Fox News yesterday where he told the honest truth about the situation of the War in Afghanistan.

Keane bluntly said that after 16 years of the United States being at war in Afghanistan, “The war is not winnable given current U.S. policies.” Keane called that reality “outrageous.” Keane said Barack Obama was given a strategy to win by his generals, a strategy that needed 40,000 U.S.

Troops for victory. Obama rejected their plan and only gave them 15,000 Troops and then pulled those forces out 15 months later. “That doomed Afghanistan to this protracted war that we have right now.” . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at freedomslighthouse.net ...

The Cowards of Academia

Townhall.com ^ | April 25, 2017 | Dennis Prager 


Now that student mobs at universities around America (and elsewhere in the West) have silenced conservative speaker after conservative speaker, it has dawned on a small number of left-wing professors that the public is beginning to have contempt for the universities. As a result, a handful of academics at a handful of universities have signed statements on behalf of allowing "diverse" views to be heard at the university.
These statements are worthless.
While some of the professors who have signed them may sincerely believe that the university should honor the value of non-left free speech, one should keep in mind the following caveats.
First, the number of professors, deans and administrators who have signed these statements is very small.
Second, while no one can know what animates anyone else, it's a little hard to believe that many of those who did sign are sincere. If they are, why haven't we heard from them for decades? Shutting out conservatives and conservative ideas is not new. Plus, it's easy to sign a letter. You look righteous ("Of course, I support free speech.") and pay no price.
Third, these statements accomplish nothing of practical value. They are basically feel-good gestures.
If any of the rioting students read these statements -- a highly unlikely occurrence -- it is hard to imagine any of them thinking: "Wow, I really have been acting like a fascist, rioting and shutting down non-left-wing speakers, but now my eyes have been opened and I'm going to stop. Even though my professors have taught me that every conservative is a sexist racist xenophobic Islamophobic hatemonger, next time one of these despicable human beings comes to campus, I will silently wait for them to finish talking and then civilly ask challenging questions."
Thanks to left-wing indoctrination that begins in elementary school, most American students do not enter college as supporters of free speech. As reported in The New York Times on Feb. 7, 2017, a Knight Foundation survey found that only 45 percent of students "support that right when the speech in question is offensive to others and made in public."
If any professors want to do something truly effective, they should form a circle around a hall in which a conservative is scheduled to speak, with each of them holding up a sign identifying themselves as a professor: "I am (name), professor of (department)."
If just 1 percent of the professors on campus -- that would mean just 43 faculty members at a place like UCLA -- were to stand in front of the building in which a conservative was to speak, that might actually have an impact. If they were then attacked by left-wing thugs, other faculty members would be forced to take a position.
But it won't happen. It won't because the university is a particularly cowardly place. And it has been so for many decades. In the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at Columbia University, left-wing students took over classrooms and administration offices. But I recall no faculty members objecting; and the college presidents and deans, were, if possible, even more craven.
Ann Coulter was scheduled to speak this week at the University of California, Berkeley. Last week, the university announced it was canceling her speech, providing the usual excuse that it couldn't guarantee her safety, or others'. This excuse is as phony as it is cowardly. Berkeley and other universities know well that there is a way to ensure safety. They can do so in precisely the same way every other institution in a civilized society ensures citizens' safety: by calling in sufficient police to protect the innocent and arrest the violent. But college presidents don't do that sort of thing -- not at Berkeley, or Yale University, or Middlebury College, or just about anywhere else. They don't want to tick off their clients (students), their faculty, leftist activist groups or the liberal media.
Under pressure, Berkeley's cowardly administration rescinded its cancellation and rescheduled Coulter's speech during the daytime during pre-finals week, when there are no classes and many students are not on campus. Coulter has rejected these changes and vowed to speak on the originally scheduled date.
So, next time you read a statement by some professors -- virtually all of whom, remember, have been silent for decades -- on behalf of allowing opinions other than their own to be expressed on their campuses, take it with a large grain of salt. It's primarily because some alumni are finally withholding funds from their closed-minded alma maters, or because the students they have produced have become so violent even the mainstream media can't ignore it.
Until they line up to safeguard people like Ann Coulter and stop teaching their students that conservatives are deplorable human beings, their open letters aren't worth the printer toner that prints them.

White House ‘confident’ of averting shutdown as Trump shows flexibility on wall

Washington ComPost ^ | 04-24-17 | Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and David Weigel 

The White House sought Monday to calm a jittery Washington ahead of a showdown with Congress over spending, and President Trump softened his demand that a deal to keep the federal government open include money to begin construction on his long-promised border wall. Despite one-party control at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the brinkmanship that came to define spending battles in the Obama years has tumbled into the Trump era, as have the factional divisions over strategy and priorities that have gripped the GOP for a decade. But with a Friday deadline looming to pass a new spending bill, the Trump administration projected confidence that a shutdown would be avoided. In the face of fierce Democratic opposition to funding the wall’s construction, White House officials signaled Monday that the president may be open to an agreement that includes money for border security if not specifically for a wall, with an emphasis on technology and border agents rather than a structure. Trump showed even more flexibility Monday afternoon, telling conservative journalists in a private meeting that he was open to delaying funding for wall construction until September, a White House official confirmed. “The president is working hard to keep the government open,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Monday. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said he was “very confident” that an agreement would be reached by Friday, but he pointedly said he could not “guarantee” that a government closure would be averted.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Media can have their dinner; Donald Trump will eat their lunch!

The Boston Herald ^ | April 25, 2017 | Jaclyn Cashman 

President Trump is once again trolling the media — and looking to turn tables on the big mockfest they had planned for him — by skipping the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday.
Instead of spending the evening getting skewered by a hostile Fourth Estate and a politicized comedian, Trump has opted to throw a party of his own with thousands of his supporters in Pennsylvania.
He tweeted, “Next Saturday night I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania. Look forward to it!”
That means much of the elite media will have to hang up their tuxes and stilettos and head to the Keystone State.
Trump is again sticking it to the professionals who get paid to cover him, this time by denying them the opportunity to get dressed up and hobnob with their colleagues, and yuk it up at his expense. He’s fed up with their one-sided coverage, and he knows exactly how to hit them where it hurts.
“Over the years you make a mistake, I fully understand when they hit you, but when they make stories up, when they create sources — ’cause I believe that sometimes they don’t have sources, you know, the sources don’t exist,” Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” which came as he continued his verbal assault on the left-leaning press, calling news organizations like The New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS, “fake news.”
Normally, the Sunday shows would focus on highlights from the dinner. Now Trump will own the news cycle. He’s kneecapped the event known as “nerd prom.”
At first glance it may have seemed thin-skinned of Trump to announce in February that he wouldn’t attend the dinner. But when he can’t even host the Easter egg roll without ridiculous coverage comparing his crowds to Obama’s, it’s hard to argue the point.
He’ll be the first president since Ronald Reagan to be a no-show — and Reagan bailed because he was recovering from a gunshot wound from a failed assassination attempt.
Saturday marks Trump’s 100th day in office — a key benchmark on the effectiveness of a new president.
But Trump will be able to command that narrative.
It would have been incredibly entertaining to watch Trump interact with many reporters and news outlets that he calls fake news. But it will be more fun watching him toy with them in Pennsylvania while they play to an empty seat.

She does the job right!

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Hilarious!

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The Democrat Message

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The Reason!

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Cannot pay!

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Gun Control

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Socialism

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Poverty

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The Religion of...

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Now I lay me...

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