Jihad Report Nov 12, 2016 -Nov 18, 2016Attacks 52

Killed 462

Injured 552

Suicide Blasts 11

Countries 10

Thanksgiving

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native

American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

Check out the Thanksgiving by the Numbers infographic for more facts about how the first Thanksgiving compares to modern holiday traditions.

Thanksgiving Becomes an Official Holiday Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.

In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author, among countless other things, of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

Thanksgiving Traditions In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with

family and friends. Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621. Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less fortunate.

Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing an enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.

Beginning in the mid-20th century and perhaps even earlier, the president of the United States has “pardoned” one or two Thanksgiving turkeys each year, sparing the birds from slaughter and sending them to a farm for retirement. A number of U.S. governors also perform the annual turkey pardoning ritual.

Thanksgiving Controversies For some scholars, the jury is still out on whether the feast at Plymouth really constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States. Indeed, historians have recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration. In 1565, for instance, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. On December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, they read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Some Native Americans and others take issue with how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In their view, the traditional narrative paints a deceptively sunny portrait of relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, masking the long and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers that resulted in the deaths of millions. Since 1970, protesters have gathered on the day designated as Thanksgiving at the top of Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning.” Similar events are held in other parts of the country.

Thanksgiving’s Ancient Origins Although the American concept of Thanksgiving developed in the colonies of New England, its roots can be traced back to the other side of the Atlantic. Both the Separatists who came over on the Mayflower and the Puritans who arrived soon after brought with them a tradition of

providential holidays—days of fasting during difficult or pivotal moments and days of feasting and celebration to thank God in times of plenty.

As an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, moreover, Thanksgiving falls under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents and millennia. In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans feasted and paid tribute to their gods after the fall harvest. Thanksgiving also bears a resemblance to the ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. Finally, historians have noted that Native Americans had a rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with feasting and merrymaking long before Europeans set foot on their shores.

TFR has Made the Big Time

Recently Google and Facebook came under fire about helping to stop ‘fake news.’ Many believe this was brought on by angry people who were upset about Hillary losing the election and were looking for someone to blame. Sure enough, right along side Infowars, Drudge Report, Breitbart, and other well respected alternate American news sites was Truth Frequency Radio. We made the big time. We changed the world.

Immediately came the reports that ‘false news’ and ‘fake news’ about Hillary was to blame for why she lost. What really happened was independent media outlets did their due diligence in digging into information, found out what Hillary has been up to and reported on it. This included leaks from WikiLeaks and other whistleblowers.

Of course, the media came forward and began calling WikiLeaks a non-credible source. They stated that Russian hacks were at the helm of much of it so as to distract people from looking at the truth, but it didn’t work, because independent media was too powerful.

So now there is a mass effort to discredit, call out and shun independent media for supposedly reporting on fake news. Who defines it as fake news? That’s the question of the hour right now.

Let’s truly understand what’s going on with fake news first.

BuzzFeed did a great story on this showing how legitimately false stories gained a ton of attention. This is a problem for all of us because it’s legitimately false info that is spreading. However, the focus now gets turned on all independent outlets who are going against the mainstream narrative but who are reporting on factual news.

Let’s not get confused, fake news is fake news. And most of the websites doing their due diligence to call out fake news are doing so by only focusing on fake stories. The list that surfaced calling out ‘fake news’ contains a number fo websites that do not post any fake news at all.

This is the problem.

Why Independent News Is Necessary

Let’s put things into perspective for a moment. We are here at Standing Rock in North Dakota reporting on what’s happening down here with the Dakota Access Pipeline. There is absolutely no mainstream media down here. No one covering what’s going on at all. Why? Money, business, politics, it’s what drives mainstream media and its corruption.

It’s not hard to understand why independent news exists given these facts. With the majority of the mainstream media being owned by just five corporations, diverse viewpoints and interpretations of world events have become scarce. And when you understand that most outlets are serving some sort of corporate or political agenda, you start to notice how those biases play out in the representation of certain stories, and even in how frequently they’re covered. Showing certain stories over others, and showing them repeatedly, goes a long way towards shaping public opinion.

A great quote here that directly related to modern day mainstream media.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays (“the father of public relations”), Propaganda, 1928 (note that Bernays’ book, Propaganda, begins with the above quote).

Many are unaware of how often important stories are blacked out completely by all of mainstream media. The major pipeline spill that occurred during the Standing Rock protests or the revelation that the Pentagon paid a PR firm to create fake terrorist videos are just two recent examples. Are these not things the people should know about? Why aren’t they being reported on?

This leads us to wonder if there is in fact an agenda to hide this information. And how might that work? Sharyl Atkisson, a former CBS investigative journalist, explained that “astroturf,” or fake grassroots movements, funded by political, corporate, or other special interests, are very effectively manipulating and distorting mainstream media messages.

Further, here is a document declassified by the CIA that outlines their involvement in manipulating media, journalists, authors, films, and more to have “reporters postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods.” The ‘national security’ play has always been a way for these agencies to justify shady actions.

Given the shady dealings, agency manipulation, and ownership structure of most of mainstream media, the need for alternative voices is clear. But how should we view those alternative voices? Do we take their work at face value?

The Problems With Independent News & Mainstream News

I have seen a lot in the past seven years and I have seen the independent movement lose a lot of credibility — for GOOD reason. It’s easy to dismiss alternative news websites because so many of them so carelessly carry out their work. There are good ones out there, but they are vastly outnumbered by the bad. This is the actual problem with fake and false news. 

I decided to write this because, as someone working within this movement and who cares a lot about creating a better world, I want people to know the truth so they can make informed decisions. As much as I respect many people for what they do, there is an inherent danger in not raising awareness about this. If we expose mainstream media, we should expose alternative media too; it’s only fair.

One of the main issues is that people are not reading content these days. They are reading headlines and making complete decisions based on those headlines. While outlets have to stay vigilant with writing good and clear headlines, people also need to read articles to actually check for sources, legitimacy and what the mains points of the piece are. This isn’t happening!

The honest truth is that everyone is guilty of writing bad headlines sometimes. Huffpost, Buzzfeed, TYT, MSNBC, CNN, or any independent site. Everyone does it at some point, because no one is perfect and sometimes it’s necessary. This is why it’s important for readers to actually read content and to really learn to use discernment rather than just reading a title.

Connecting with how the information makes you feel at a deeper level than our belief systems is what will help us to really discern truth. We are being challenged to grow, to go within and to understand ourselves at a deeper level.

I wrote an entire piece of what to watch out for in independent media sites here.

Why It Has to Change But May Not For A While

People are starting to realize en mass that the mainstream media has its own agendas, and rarely, if ever, do they align with our well-being. They are starting to move away from this sponsored, biased content and looking for other sources. The question becomes, what will they find instead?

The elite controlled media is panicking right now. They are trying to figure out for the first time in their existence how independent media gained more power than they did during this election cycle and ultimately lost. This isn’t to say Trump isn’t able to be manipulated by the cabal, but that he clearly wasn’t their choice.

Because the media and cabal is frantic right now, they are going to do anything in their power to divert attention away from websites that aren’t actually reporting on fake news, but that are a threat to the mainstream narrative, a threat to the establishment. Fake news doesn’t seem to be the issue when you look at the list of websites who made the list of “false or fake news”.

As a media organization that spends a lot of time doing what we do, hiring the necessary people to make sure work is done right and articles researched properly, we have to stand up and continue to raise awareness about what is really happening here. This is an attack on websites that are helping to wake people up from the mainstream narrative. 

So now you know. You know what to look out for and what to do. My advice is, stop supporting and sharing content that isn’t sourced or well researched. Think twice, three times or even four times about what narrative mainstream media is pushing on you. Sharing content from certain outlets only further confuses this entire process.

Gold Star Family Booed on American Airlines

The father of a soldier who was killed last weekend in Afghanistan was disappointed and hurt after airline passengers booed him and his family as they flew to meet his son’s remains.

Stewart Perry, an ex-Marine who lives in Stockton, said the ordeal left him feeling disrespected.

“It was really disgusting on the passengers’ part,” he said Friday.

His son, Sgt. John Perry, was one of two killed in an explosion at a United States airbase on Nov. 12. He was honored at a memorial service in Lodi on Thursday and will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

John Perry, 30, and Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt of Tamaroa, Illinois, died from their injuries after the attack by an apparent suicide bomber at the Bagram Airfield at about 5:30 a.m. local time.

The Department of Defense said this week that the blast also took the lives of two U.S. contractors working on the base. Sixteen other U.S. service members and one Polish soldier participating in a NATO mission were wounded.

Perry was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. He was at the base supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.

An avid runner, he had been preparing to participate in a 5K run at the base in northeast Afghanistan as part of a post-Veterans Day activity to benefit disabled veterans.

Stewart Perry said he, his wife, Kathy, and daughter were flying on an American Airlines flight from Sacramento on Monday to Philadelphia, with a quick transfer in Phoenix. From Philadelphia, they traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to receive his son’s remains.

For unknown reasons, Perry said, the flight to Phoenix was 45 minutes late. The crew feared the delay might cause the Perrys miss their connecting flight.

So, when the plane landed in Phoenix, the captain made an announcement for all passengers to remain seated and to let a “special military family” exit the aircraft first, Perry said.

Several passengers in first class began to boo and complain, Perry said.

“Some people were saying ‘This is just baloney,’ and ‘I paid for first-class for this?’ ”

He said American Airlines “did everything they could” to accommodate his family.

Perry and his family made their connecting flight, and the pilot in Phoenix stayed at the gate for 40 minutes to make sure they made it on board.

Perry said he does not know if the passengers from Sacramento knew there was a Gold Star family on board, nor does he know if there was a similar reaction from people sitting in coach.

“It was just disgusting behavior from people in first class; it was terrible to see,” Perry said. “You could see the disappointment from the flight crew.”

The real focus, Perry said, should be on the heroics of his son. The husband and father of two young children died a hero.

“He made a decision that saved a lot of people,” Perry said. “I was told that he was found protecting a female soldier. … He didn’t get to live a full life, but he lived.”

The War Has Just Begun

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, drawing a line in the sand for the next administration, said he has the votes to stop President-elect Donald Trump from repealing the Dodd-Frank Act and “the rules we put in place to limit Wall Street.”

Schumer predicted that the Senate’s Democratic minority would get help from Republicans in any such fight. “We have 60 votes to block him,” Schumer said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

As a candidate, Trump said he would scrap Dodd-Frank, Congress’s attempt to legislate new rules that would prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Following Trump’s victory on Nov. 8, his transition team said it will be "working to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation.”

Read more: What Trump might mean for Wall Street reform law

Schumer, a Democrat from New York, similarly predicted Trump would face defeat if he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health-care measure. But he expressed support for “dramatic change” in trade laws and for closing loopholes in the tax code, ambitions that may align with Trump’s.

“When we oppose Trump on values or this presidency takes a dark, divisive turn, we’re going to do it tooth and nail,” Schumer said in another interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos," broadcast Sunday.

Democrats chose Schumer to serve as minority leader in the Congress that begins in January, succeeding Harry Reid of Nevada, who is retiring after five terms.

Schumer told "Fox News Sunday" in an interview taped on Friday that he and Trump had spoken twice since the election, including once about the possibility of "a major infrastructure bill."

Trump on Sunday morning tweeted “I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is far smarter than Harry R and has the ability to get things done."

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer says Senate Democrats have one big message for President-elect Donald Trump on his most controversial policies: Be ready to fight.

Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said Sunday he and his fellow Democrats will do everything they can to prevent President Trump’s Mexico wall, Obamacare obliteration and other divisive plans.

“On issues where our values are at stake, where the president goes in a divisive direction, where his campaign did before, we'll go against him with everything we've got,” Schumer, from Brooklyn, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“We're not going to repeal or help him repeal Obamacare. We are not going to roll back Dodd-Frank. I think they should forget about that. We have 60 votes to block them," he said.

Civil rights lovers won't like Trump's AG pick Jeff Sessions

Schumer noted that Democrats will not oppose all of Trump’s presidency on principle, and are hoping to find common ground where they can.

“We're not going to oppose him just because it's something that Trump sponsors,” Schumer said, noting that he considered some of Trump’s campaign promises — like rewriting trade deals and advancing infrastructure — to be progressive.

But Schumer is already clear on where Democrats will draw the line.

“We're not going to help him build his wall,” he said.

Donald Trump likely to target more N.Y. pols to fill cabinet post

“I hope that President Trump will rise to the occasion,” Schumer added later.

“And when he does, we'll try to be supportive. But when he doesn't, we'll use everything we've got to oppose him.”

Senate Democrats unanimously chose Schumer as the new minority leader, succeeding Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the same day he handily won a fourth term in the Senate. Upon his victory, he vowed a “strong and tough fight” against a Trump-controlled government — but also acknowledged Democrats need to retool after devastating Election Day losses.

“When you lose an election like this, you can't flinch. You can’t ignore it,” Schumer told reporters after his victory.

“You need to look it right in the eye and ask why, analyze it and learn from it. One thing we know is that we heard the American people loud and clear.”

Schumer once made a brief appearance on "The Apprentice," but insisted on "Meet the Press" he had no prior relationship with the incoming president.

That's not how Trump saw it last January.

"Hey look, I think I’ll be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer," Trump said in an interview with MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

"I was always very good with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways."

Trump was a generous donor to his home state senator, and t he New York Post has reported Schumer is likely banking on the friendly hometown connection when it comes to federal funds.

"He’ll be sensitive to New York’s needs because he’s from New York," the Post quoted an unidentified source "close to Schumer" saying.

Schumer also predicted that Republicans would run into trouble when it comes to promises to junk Obamacare.

The president-elect has said that he wants to keep certain parts of the health law, but Schumer and other Democrats say they will fight trying to carve up the healthcare law.

"They’re stuck,” Schumer told Politico. "The only way to keep the good things is to keep the bill. The reason they haven’t had an alternative is ’cause there isn’t an alternative if you want to keep all the things it does."

Schumer also criticized Trump for his appointments of Steve Bannon and Gen. Mike Flynn to his inner circle, but wouldn't say if he'll vote against confirmation.

"There’s a lot of troubling things coming down the pike," he told the outlet.

Take your thirty pieces of silver, Schumer.

Republicans are saying Bring it on

Republicans are vowing that President Trump’s appointment of a Supreme Court Justice to replace the late Justice Scalia will be confirmed no matter what Democrats do. Politico reports the unspoken threat underlying the GOP’s confidence is that, if necessary, they can end the Senate filibuster for confirmation:

Republicans won’t come out and say it, but there’s an implicit threat in their confidence: If Democrats play things the wrong way, they might find themselves on the wrong end of a legacy-defining change to Senate rules that scraps the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to confirm Supreme Court nominees.

“We’re going to confirm the president’s nominee one way or the other. And there’s an easy way and there’s a hard way,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). “They just need to accept that reality.”

“The Democrats will not succeed in filibustering a Supreme Court nominee,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, Cornyn’s Texas colleague. “We are going to confirm President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court justices.”

Democrats are now in a quandary. Do they come out guns blazing against Trump’s nominee, as some have suggested, or do they hold their fire for future battles. Even apart from the risk of the GOP activating the nuclear option, there’s a danger to Democrats in going all-out against Trump’s nominee. Several of the Democratic Senators who would need to vote no in order to block the nominee will be up for reelection in red states in 2018. Any effort to block Trump’s selection will almost certainly become a campaign issue and could lead to further Democratic losses in the Senate making future confirmation battles that much harder.

Democrats are well aware that Trump has a good chance of filling another seat before his first term is out. Fighting a futile battle now might satisfy some of the progressive base but, when it fails, it will make it harder to ramp up the outrage machine later on. And it’s the next pick that has Democrats really worried because that’s the one with the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade. Whatever happens, it’s clear that Democrats have only themselves to blame that the nuclear option is even on the table:

“I mean, [Democrats] set the standard,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the most senior Republican senator and a former Judiciary chairman. “They really screwed up the rules. Frankly, they did it for pure political purposes. The Republicans are not limited now.”

Hatch is referring to Sen. Harry Reid’s decision to use the “nuclear option” in 2013. After that change, Reid had a “victory party” with liberal activists. From a 2013 Washington Post account:

Previous majorities had threatened to upend filibuster rules in this manner, but relying on a simple majority vote had been used only for relatively minor procedural changes to how amendments were handled, never to eliminate the supermajority requirement altogether. Before Thursday, the standard precedent was that major rule changes needed a two-thirds majority. The change was so significant that Reid and his leadership team held a victory party with liberal activists afterward in a room just off the Senate floor.

It’s worth noting that just last month, when Democrats expected to win the Senate and the White House, Harry Reid was once again threatening to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. “It’s clear to me that if the Republicans try to filibuster another circuit court judge, but especially a Supreme Court justice, I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it. I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again,” Reid told Talking Points Memo.

Dems in for Rude Awakening. The War is on like Donky Kong

Democratic attorneys general in at least five U.S. states have vowed to fight President-elect Donald Trump in the courts if he rolls back Obama-era regulations or adopts policies they view as infringing upon civil liberties.

With Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Democratic Party looks set to rely more heavily on top law officials in states they run to help keep a check on Trump's exercise of power.

Any efforts by a Trump administration to weaken consumer protection or climate change policies, for example, could lead to conflict between the states and the federal government, attorney general offices in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts, and New York told Reuters. In some instances, that could see them asking a federal judge to block federal action nationwide.

"I view my role as being on the first line of defense against a Trump administration if it chooses to act in an unconstitutional fashion," said Bob Ferguson, the Democratic attorney general of Washington state.

When George W. Bush was president, Democratic states forced his administration to take the first step toward regulating carbon emissions for the first time.

Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Virginia's attorney general, Mark Herring, said that if a Trump administration "crosses the line and pursues actions that are illegal or violate the Constitution, Attorney General Herring will be ready to stand up and defend the rights of Virginians."     

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request seeking comment.

Attorneys general are the top legal officials in the 50 states and are typically elected. After this year’s elections, 21 will be Democrats, in addition to the attorney general for the District of Columbia.

Acting on behalf of their states, they generally have legal standing to bring lawsuits challenging federal regulations or executive actions, including those that may infringe upon civil rights.

"The President-elect has made a number of promises that, if implemented, would violate the Constitution or Massachusetts law," Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement.

"If the incoming administration chooses to try to act in ways that are unconstitutional, my office will take action to protect the rights and liberties of our residents and our state," she said.

    

SYMPATHETIC HEARING

A dozen attorney general offices contacted by Reuters declined to discuss potential legal strategies before Trump takes office.

Democratic states that sue might initially get a sympathetic hearing, as many federal courts are staffed with judges appointed by President Barack Obama during his eight years in office.

But challengers face one major obstacle, a Supreme Court likely soon to regain its conservative majority once Trump makes an appointment to fill a vacant seat. The court is currently divided 4-4 between conservatives and liberals.

Republican-controlled Texas, which took a leading role in challenging Obama's executive actions, provides a model for the Democratic attorneys general.

Climate change is likely to be area of friction between Trump, who has vowed to roll back regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, and Democratic states, which have supported such efforts at the federal level or enacted their own measures.

The top target for Trump is Obama's Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit carbon emissions from power plants.

Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office "will continue to fight to protect New Yorkers’ public health, property, and environment, and to lead the coalition of states defending the Clean Power Plan."

Immigration policy is another potential flashpoint. Trump has said he will rescind an Obama executive order giving deportation relief to up to 4 million people and end federal funding for cities like New York and Los Angeles that give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.   

A federal court blocked the Obama executive order in February 2015 after Texas and 25 other Republican states challenged it. The Supreme Court split 4-4 on the issue in June, leaving the lower court's ruling in place.

On consumer protection, states can both challenge any Trump efforts to loosen regulations and ramp up their own enforcement efforts, said Doug Gansler, a Democrat who served as Maryland's attorney general from 2007 to 2015.

"If the federal government abdicates that responsibility, the more aggressive and progressive state attorneys general will fill that vacuum," he said.

The Immigration game: Sanctuary Cities

Donald Trump built his presidential campaign around tough talk of securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants already in the United States. But mayors and police chiefs from around the country are promising to defy the new president by continuing to provide “sanctuary,” an exemption from federal law for lawbreakers.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, affirmed his city will continue to prohibit government workers and police from asking locals about their immigration status.

“Chicago will always be a sanctuary city,” he boasted.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray sounded a similar note, saying, “Seattle has always been a welcoming city. The last thing I want is for us to start turning on our neighbors.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told Muslim residents concerned about deportation, “We have your back.”

Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review, finds great irony in the sanctuary city phenomenon. He noted the federal government “crushes” states on issues such as religious liberty and election laws when states try to exercise rightful control.

“Yet when it comes to the one area that is clearly within the purview of the federal government, an enumerated power given to Congress to regulate immigration for the sovereignty of an entire union, somehow the states and localities are able to get away with thwarting federal law,” Horowitz mused to WND.

Horowitz, author of “Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America,” sees a horribly backwards double standard regarding immigration laws.

He pointed out Arizona passed a law in 2010 to help augment and enforce federal immigration law, but the courts struck down several provisions of the law. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, San Francisco and many other cities are undermining federal immigration law with their sanctuary policies, without ramifications.

“They’re getting away with it,” Horowitz groused. “They’re getting away with stealing the sovereignty of the people. So we have it exactly backwards.”

But Trump promises to not let them get away with it any longer. The president-elect has previously stated he will cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities after he takes office.

Cheryl Chumley, an award-winning freelance journalist, enthusiastically supports Trump’s proposal.

“Cut the purse strings off until these sanctuary cities recognize the dangers of their foolish policies and quit advertising to the world of illegals: Come on in,” she told WND.

Chumley, author of “The Devil in DC: Winning Back the Country From the Beast in Washington,” encouraged Americans to remember Kate Steinle, the San Francisco woman who was gunned down in broad daylight while walking on a pier with her father.

Her killer was an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported several times for felonies. But San Francisco’s sanctuary policies allowed him to roam free, and while roaming free, he killed.

“If police chiefs, city officials and liberal-leaning bureaucrats fail to uphold the safety of American citizens and regard that job description as the number one priority, and instead insist on forcing a personal political open-border agenda down the throats of the communities they’re supposed to serve and protect, they should lose taxpayer support,” Chumley said.

Mayor Jorge Eloza of Providence, Rhode Island, said his city would keep on refusing to hold people charged with civil infractions for federal immigration officials, and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka expressed the same sentiment.

Los Angeles Police Department chief Charlie Beck promised to maintain his city’s decades-long tradition of sanctuary policies, saying, “If the federal government takes a more aggressive role on deportation, then they’ll have to do that on their own.”

Beck added it is not his department’s job to “work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts,” a notion Horowitz finds ridiculous.

“There are so many crimes that cross state lines and affect the nation in general, and it is within the federal purview to deal with immigration,” Horowitz said. “They can’t do it without the cooperation of local police. If local police are downright protecting them, the federal government cannot exercise one of its core enumerated powers.”

It’s never been tougher to be one of the men in blue than it is right now. Get “The War On Police: How the Ferguson Effect Is Making America Unsafe” now at the WND Superstore

However, Jeff Roorda, a retired St. Louis-area police chief, takes a more nuanced view on this matter.

“This is a bit of a double-edged sword in that when we ask local jurisdictions to enforce federal law when they have no authority to do so, or when we ask them not to enforce it, it really is putting the burden where it doesn’t belong,” Roorda told WND. “ICE is the one that should be enforcing this. With that said, the law is the law and these police chiefs don’t have the right to ignore federal law. They do have the argument that they don’t have the authority to enforce it.”

Roorda, author of “The War on Police: How the Ferguson Effect is Making America Unsafe,” said he would favor a federal law explicitly allowing local jurisdictions to enforce federal

immigration laws. But he confessed most officers don’t care for the political side of law enforcement.

“I can tell you that police officers don’t like it when politics are infused into the job of law enforcement,” he revealed. “They see it as the role of politicians to decide what’s legal and what’s not by passing laws and then the cops enforce them without any judgment about what’s a good law or what’s a bad law.”

Chumley, for her part, suggested if an illegal alien taking shelter in a sanctuary city commits an additional crime, Trump should use the full force of his Justice Department to prosecute the leaders responsible for the continuing sanctuary status – including going after punitive damages that could be awarded to the victims and families of victims.

“Hit these sanctuary cities in the pocketbooks hard, open the doors to accountability for officials who turn a blind eye when their sanctuary policies result in real crimes to real citizens, and suddenly, these policies will go away, if not by the officials’ own doings, then at the pressure of a community tired of the financial losses,” Chumley proclaimed.

Horowitz sees an easy way Trump could turn back the tide of illegal immigration.

“The good news is that a lot of what Obama did was through executive action,” he noted. “The statutes remain the same; in fact, Congress never changed the immigration statutes during his entire eight-year tenure. So this is garbage in, garbage out: whatever he was able to implement through executive order, Trump could reverse.”

Horowitz suggested Trump could restore the Secure Communities program, which Obama gutted, or roll back DACA and DAPA. He also shared one tip on federal immigration law.

“It’s very important for people to realize that the immigration statutes were written for the most part one directionally,” Horowitz advised. “They gave broad latitude to the executive to ratchet down immigration as needed for the security of the nation, but did not give discretion for a president to broadly expand immigration.

“Certainly if Obama was able to get away with all his expansive immigration executive orders, Trump could definitely follow the statutes by ratcheting down some of this immigration.”

Unions Make Themselves Rich at Worker’s Expense

The United Mine Workers of America—a roughly 100,000-member coal mining union—is lobbying hard for a taxpayer bailout of its underfunded pension plan before the end of the year. And it’s already well on its way.

The Senate Finance Committee passed S.1714, the Miners Protection Act, out of committee on Sept. 22.

The UMWA’s pension plan for coal miners is vastly underfunded. It has less than half the money it needs to pay promised benefits and is projected to run dry by 2025. Despite this mismanagement, the UMWA has also managed to provide its officers and non-coal worker employees with a pension that is 100 percent funded.

If the UMWA was able to secure a healthy pension fund for itself, how did it end up pushing the pensions of nearly a 100,000 coal miners to the point of no return?

The UMWA’s first and fatal mistake was fighting vehemently to pay pension benefits to workers who did not earn them. Almost immediately after the plan was launched, it started paying benefits to retired workers who had never accumulated pension contributions. This put the pension plan off kilter from the start.

The UMWA’s second failure was consistently promising significantly larger benefits than could be supported by employers’ contributions. The UMWA’s plan did this by assuming unrealistic investment returns.

While non-union private pension plans must use a government-prescribed and realistic interest rate, unions enjoy regulatory favoritism that allows them to use whatever interest rate assumptions they want when running their pension plans.

By exploiting unreasonably high interest rate assumptions, the UMWA plan trustees (made up of equal representation from the UMWA and coal industry representatives) created a win-win for themselves: The UMWA delivered significant pension benefit promises for its members, and coal industry employers did not have to contribute enough to actually fund those promises.

The losers will be UMWA members and the taxpayers who could end up supplying the bailout.

The UMWA puts most of the blame for its pension failure on the massive decline of the coal industry. But if a plan is properly funded from the start and appropriately managed along the way, it wouldn’t matter if the entire coal industry were wiped out—the benefits workers had already earned would still be there.

The real problem is that the UMWA did not properly fund its plan from the start or adjust it along the way. Many other union-run pension plans have also failed in this regard, and now hundreds of billions of dollars in promised benefits are not there.

Those unfunded promises are not the taxpayers’ fault, and they should not be forced to pick up the tab for private unions’ unfunded promises.

The fault lies with those who manage these union pension plans. The comparatively well-funded pension plan of the UMWA’s own officers and employees suggests that unions actually do know how to run well-funded plans, but have often chosen not to do so unless it’s their own pension on the line.

If the government bails out the UMWA’s $5.6 billion in unfunded pension promises, it will only be the start. More than a thousand other private union pensions, which have over $600 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, will soon be lining up for their own bailouts.

While it is a tragedy that UMWA and other union workers will end up receiving significantly less than they were promised, a bailout would only encourage other plans to break their pension promises.

Moreover, Congress cannot be on the hook to keep promises it did not make—especially when it can’t even keep the Social Security and Medicare promises it did make

Fall Weather Kills Zika Carrier

Zika is still spreading, but the World Health Organization (WHO) no longer views it as a public health emergency. It is hoped the downgrade will benefit long term plans to fight the disease.

The mosquito-borne virus Zika is no longer considered to be an international public health emergency. Before anyone runs to play in a swamp without bug spray, the virus is still a chronic problem. "It is really important that we communicate this very clearly: We are not downgrading the importance of Zika," the WHO's Dr. Pete Salama told NPR.

Instead, Salama hopes that by categorizing Zika as a chronic problem, the WHO will be able to provide resources to fighting the spread of the virus in a long-term manner.

The virus still poses a grave risk to pregnant women due to a connection between the disease and microcephaly, a birth defect that causes an infant’s head to be smaller than normal and often leads to lifelong disabilities.

"That's why it's important that pregnant women not travel to places where Zika is spreading,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told NPR.

The disease was originally considered an emergency last February in order to establish the link between Zika and microcephaly after 2,300 babies in Brazil were confirmed to have been born with the defect.

The disease has since been reported across South America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and areas in Miami. No other country has reported microcephaly clusters with numbers similar to Brazil’s, but some experts believe that the cases could increase as more children are born.

The CDC and WHO have stressed that reclassifying Zika is not meant to signal a downgrade in fighting its spread. However, some experts warn that that is exactly what could happen. Global health and law expert at Georgetown University Lawrence Gostin told the Washington Post the move was “quite worrying” and could cause governments to “pull back even more” from their response.

The WHO believes that the reclassification will send a message that Zika is not a flash in the pan emergency, but a chronic issue that is here to stay.

Student Kicked out of Class for not Admitting Trump Election as bad as 9/11

The disease has since been reported across South America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and areas in Miami. No other country has reported microcephaly clusters with numbers similar to Brazil’s, but some experts believe that the cases could increase as more children are born.

The CDC and WHO have stressed that reclassifying Zika is not meant to signal a downgrade in fighting its spread. However, some experts warn that that is exactly what could happen. Global health and law expert at Georgetown University Lawrence Gostin told the Washington Post the move was “quite worrying” and could cause governments to “pull back even more” from their response.

The WHO believes that the reclassification will send a message that Zika is not a flash in the pan emergency, but a chronic issue that is here to stay.

“I went to her class and got kicked out for expressing my opinion,” the student said. She asked to meet with the dean of the department, who told her the issue would be “rectified in a professional and acceptable manner,” according to the student.

“I have never been so disgusted in my life,” the student told The Fix.

‘All I ask is as I respect them they also respect me’

The principles that Converse stands by are Voice. Value. Vision. With fewer than 1,400 students, the school emphasizes community involvement and sisterhood.

In the wake of Trump’s election, civility and sisterhood were thrown out the window.

“I am sad that once again our young girls and women have failed to see the shattering of that glass ceiling and the first female president of the United States,” President Newkirk wrote to the student body. She said it wasn’t a “partisan statement.”

Kathleen Price didn’t like either major-party candidate, “but for me, Trump seemed the better of the two” because his “policies lined up with my beliefs and that’s why I voted for him.”

She told The Fix she’s afraid of sharing her views on campus or even online.

“I have been quiet about my views for fear of being bashed and not wanted at Converse like some of my friends have been, and many of my fellow sisters have been bashed because of what they believe in or who they voted for,” Price said. “All I ask is as I respect them they also respect me.”

“I think there has been a change on campus, if only a slight one,” another student who requested anonymity told The Fix. “The emotions this election has drudged up are entirely valid and it’s hard pressed to compare the level of fear and disdain in our nation today as just another presidential election.”

‘We do not tolerate intimidation’

The tension and unrest in the student body was not lost on Converse administrators.

“The election has caused a lot of stress on our student body over the past 48 hours,” the Division of Student Development and Success wrote in a letter to the student body.

It organized an “Election Aftermath Program” that divided “each school of thought into different rooms to talk about fears, hopes, and where to go from here.”

The division also warned students: “We do not tolerate intimidation or bullying for a difference of opinions – regardless of your partisanship.” It did not specify what it considers intimidation or bullying.

It also sent out worksheets instructing students on “ways to cope with election stress,” which included tips like “Limit political debate and argument” and “Unplug from social media.”

Erdogan warns NATO against asylum to ‘terrorist soldiers’ after Turkish officers file requests

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned NATO countries against granting asylum to the military suspected of having links to the plotters of the failed July 15 coup after dozens of Turkish NATO officers sought asylum in Europe.

“How can a terrorist, a terrorist soldier, a soldier who has been involved in plotting a coup, be employed in NATO?” Erdogan said, as cited by the Milliyet newspaper.

“NATO cannot entertain accepting asylum requests of this kind. Those in question are accused of terror,” he added, stressing that the Turkish government demanded extradition of these military personnel and said that giving them shelter is inexcusable.

On Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that a number of Turkish officers serving in NATO structures in Europe had recently filed asylum requests, citing personal safety concerns in the view of the crackdown launched by the Turkish authorities following the foiled coup.

Stoltenberg added that the officers’ asylum requests would be processed by the concerned NATO members independently and the alliance would not interfere into this process. “We would be wrong if we started to go into that kind of legal issue; that’s for the judicial system” of the countries concerned, he said, as quoted by AFP.

Neither Stoltenberg, nor Erdogan revealed the exact number of Turkish officers, who sought asylum in European countries, although the Turkish president said this number was “not high.”

At the same time, German media reported on Thursday that almost 60 Turkish nationals holding diplomatic passports filed asylum requests only in Germany after receiving orders to return to Turkey. According to Deutsche Welle, most asylum applicants were Turkish military personnel employed at NATO bases in Europe.

Some Turkish government officials and the military personnel family members, including reportedly also the family of the defense attaché of the Turkish Embassy in Berlin, were also among those, who applied for asylum in Germany following the July 15 failed coup.

Only three Turkish diplomats returned to Turkey from Germany since July after being ordered to do so, Deutsche Welle reports, citing diplomatic sources and adding that all three diplomats were then removed from office following “extensive interrogation.”

Read more

‘Germany thinks Turkey is 2nd class’: Ankara lashes out at Berlin for supporting Kurdish groups

Turkish authorities still continue to crack down on those they suspect of having links with the ‘Fethullahist Terror Organization.’ Turkey accuses US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen ofhaving been behind the coup attempt on July 15 that ultimately failed to oust Erdogan from power.

On Friday, Turkish police detained more than 70 academics at an Istanbul university and replaced 34 heads of municipalities previously run by the members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions' Party (DBP), Reuters reports.

At least 37,000 people have been arrested and more than 100,000 were sacked or suspended since July for allegedly having links to the movement led by the US-based cleric.

The crackdown has become a source of tension between Turkey and Europe. Earlier, Erdogan already accused Germany of “aiding terror” in a speech in the Turkish capital of Ankara on November 3.

Two days earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim dismissed the latest round of criticism from EU countries by maintaining that European standards do not apply to Turkey, while promising that Ankara will not be intimidated by EU threats.

On November 4, US and EU leaders, including German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, EU foreign policy chief Federica

Mogherini and Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, criticized Turkey’s actions and voiced concerns over the arrests of two co-leaders and at least 12 MPs of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey.

An annual report by the European Commission on Turkey's candidacy for European Union accession also slammed it for press freedom repression and post-coup attacks on the judiciary sphere, German media reported on November 7.

Can You Spare a Zeptosecond?

A millisecond is a thousandth of a second, and a nanosecond is a billionth of a second, but there’s another measurement of time that makes both of them look slow. 

Scientists have for the first time been able to measure something in a zeptosecond, or a trillionth of a billionth of a second.

Laser physicists in Munich fired an extreme ultraviolet light pulse onto a helium atom to excite the electrons, causing one to break free ― a process called photoemission. At the same time, they shot an infrared laser pulse to detect the electron as it left the atom.

That’s when it happened. 

“Depending on the exact electromagnetic field of this pulse at the time of detection, the electron was accelerated or decelerated,” the Technical University of Munich stated in a news release. “Through this change in speed, the physicists were able to measure photoemission with zeptosecond precision.”

The experiments also allowed scientists to see how energy from the photon was distributed between the two electrons in a helium atom in the moments before one of the electrons jumped out. That snapshot of a tiny moment in time will allow scientists a greater understanding of the quantum behavior of atoms. 

“Many things are rooted in the interactions of individual electrons, but we handle them as a collective thing,” laser physicist Martin Schultze of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who led the experiments at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, told New Scientist. “If you really want to develop a microscopic understanding of atoms, on the most basic level, you need to understand how electrons deal with each other.”

The New Milk Carton

A new study has found law enforcement agencies spent $4.75 million on social media monitoring tools between 2013 and 2016 to surveil the public and investigate possible crimes, although this sum is “massively understated,” according to researchers.

The Brennan Center for Justice published an analysis of 151 US cities, counties and law enforcement departments that have spent more than $10,000 on software to monitor social media, using public records to compile the list.

The study found the City of Los Angeles, the County of Sacramento, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Macomb County in Michigan and Texas Department of Public Safety were the biggest users of surveillance, spending about $70,000 each over the past three years.

As the list was compiled using publicly available information, “the numbers we have are massively understated,” Brennan Center for Justice’s Faiza Patel said. “But it gives an indication of a phenomenon that is growing rapidly and flying under the radar.”

The companies identified in the analysis are, Geofeedia, Media Sonar, Snaptrends, Dataminr, DigitalStakeout, PATHAR, Meltwater, and Babel Street.

Companies such as Dataminr, Geofeedia and Snaptrends analyze social media data with corporations and law enforcement buying licenses to access the data.

The companies use algorithms to sift and sort through millions of social media posts in real time, allowing customers to track, monitor and discover relationships between social media users. It can also be utilized to track protests and political movements, posing a potential threat to citizens’ First Amendment rights.

“Today the main way protesters organize is online,” Patel told the Washington Post. “This is a new administration that has been frankly threatening to the act of political protest.”

The analysis doesn’t include details on the FBI, CIA or other intelligence agencies and their use of social media monitoring software

Hillary Clinton Suffers Monsanto Bombshell

The latest in the on-going Clinton email scandal now sets in concrete the connection between John Podesta and biotech monstrosity Monsanto. 

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign Chairman, John Podesta, who is at the center of the Wikileaks e-mail storm, has now been linked to lobbying payments by the U.S. biotech giant Monsanto of $150,000 in 2015.

It was also revealed Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign Treasurer Jose H. Villarreal has been linked to Monsanto lobbying payments of $150,000 so far in 2016.

This new Monsanto bombshell for the Clinton campaign was released by Brasil sem Monsanto and Sustainable Pulse following a search of publicly available lobbying records.

Podesta Group

The lobbying disclosure records from the U.S. House of Representatives records show that Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP “on behalf of Monsanto” made payments of $90,000 and $60,000 to the Podesta Group in 2015.

The Podesta Group is a lobbying and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1988 by John Podesta and his brother Tony Podesta. Tony Podesta is the current Chairman of the company and it was recently revealed in the Washington Examiner that he has been given special access to the White House by his brother John, who is no longer part of the family firm.

John Podesta himself was White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, an official Counselor to President Barack Obama and is now campaign Chairman to Hillary Clinton.

The Podesta Group has also received $90,000 so far in 2016 from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), which is the world’s largest biotech trade association.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

The Hillary Clinton campaign Monsanto lobbying revelations do not stop with the Podesta Group.

Clinton campaign Treasurer Jose H. Villarreal is a consultant with the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, which has received $150,000 from Monsanto and $60,000 from BIO so far in 2016. Prior to becoming a consultant for Akin Gump, Villarreal was a longtime partner of the company.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP also receive a regular annual payment of around $200,000 from Monsanto. This lobbying firm also provides lobbying services for Monsanto in India.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is an American international law firm and the most profitable lobbying firm in the United States.

This latest Monsanto bombshell for the Clinton campaign follows the news from February this year that the global GMO promoters Cornell Alliance for Science, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are giving Hillary Clinton as an example of one of the ‘powerful people‘ who supports GMOs and the Biotech industry worldwide.

The Emporess has no Clothes

Melania Trump may be keeping relatively quiet since her husband became the president-elect of the United States, but that doesn’t mean she’s not feeling the heat of his frequent controversies. Jeremy Scott pondered the First-Lady-to-be, a former model.

“I’m going to give Melania the benefit of the doubt,” he told Vanity Fair. “She looks good in clothes. She wears them well, she’s got a good figure. I don’t know if it will have the same meaning for people. What I love about Michelle [Obama] is her personality. Her beauty is so much more about who she is and what she does. Obviously [Melania] looks great, but I can’t divorce it from who she is. I don’t know Melania. We don’t know Melania.”

While current First Lady Michelle Obama has been a beloved personality for the White House and the Obama administration—with vibrant clothing to match—Melania Trump has been considerably more reserved during her husband’s campaign. She stuck to monochrome outfits that tended to make headlines only for their price points or coincidental style names (the great pussy-bow blouse incident).

Scott’s friends include some of the most high-profile and passionate supporters of the Clinton campaign, including Katy Perry, who spent the better part of 2016 traveling to encourage young people to vote. “We’ve all just been crying. My tear ducts went on strike. They’re like, ‘No more.’ I cried all during SoulCycle; I cried after SoulCycle,” he said about their immediate post-election reaction.

But as a designer, Scott’s work as the creative director of Moschino and his own eponymous line relies on humor, nostalgia, and being unapologetically loud, things Scott understands are even more necessary for people to see after the divisive election. “I’m just trying to get back to what is my job in this world, which is more important now than ever. To bring joy, to bring happiness, to bring color, to bring light to this world.”

Since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton at the polls last week, the fashion industry has been forced to consider whether it wants a role in the new administration at all. On Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton stood in the New Yorker Hotel for her farewell speech, she did so in one of her signature Ralph Lauren pantsuits. Dark gray, with purple lapels and a matching purple shirt (and a matching purple tie for Bill Clinton), it underscored, as so many of her fashion choices did in the run-up to the election, a point: the way two colors/factions — red and blue — can unite to make something new.

But it also symbolized, perhaps, the end of what might have been an extraordinary relationship. And possibly the end of fashion’s seat at the power table.

More than any other industry, fashion had pledged its troth to Mrs. Clinton. Vogue magazine formally endorsed her, the first time it had taken a public stand in a presidential election. The W magazine editor, Stefano Tonchi, declared his allegiance in an editor’s letter.

Diane von Furstenberg, the designer and chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and artistic director of Condé Nast, had aggressively raised funds for her, during fashion weeks and beyond: The week before Election Day, they chaired a fund-raiser in Washington at the Georgetown home of Connie Milstein, a major Democratic donor

Designers including Tory Burch, Marc Jacobs and Prabal Gurung created “Made for History” merchandise for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign store, and contributed to a runway show/benefit during September’s New York Fashion Week. Elie Tahari ran an ad campaign featuring a female president for his fall collection.

At the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards last Monday night, the traditional potpies were dusted with paprika letters urging “vote” and festooned with little paper “Hillary for America” flags (in case anyone was wondering for whom). Ralph Lauren became Mrs. Clinton’s de facto sartorial consiglieri, helping her shape her image from the Democratic National Convention to the debate floor.

It was to be the culmination of a relationship that began with Mrs. Clinton’s appearance on the cover of Vogue in December 1998, the first time that a first lady had done so.

The relationship gained momentum through the Obama administration, with Michelle Obama’s embrace of the fashion world writ large, from accessible brands such as J. Crew to young designers such as Jason Wu and Christian Siriano and established names like Michael Kors and Vera Wang. (Mrs. Obama also appeared on the cover of Vogue, in March 2009 and April 2013, and she will also appear, for the third time, in the December 2016 issue.)

Current First Lady Michelle Obama has been styled and dressed by designers since she stepped into the White House eight years ago—and has frequented the covers of magazines like Vogue and Essence—but whether Melania Trump will encounter the same treatment has become an ongoing debate due to her husband’s alienating and alarming rhetoric. On Thursday, designer Sophie Theallet, who has dressed Obama in the past, posted an open letter to her Twitter account saying she will not dress Trump and urged other designers to follow suit. It was striking that on election night, for example, while Melania Trump also wore Ralph Lauren (a white jumpsuit), the outfit was, according to the brand, one she had bought off the rack, as opposed to one that she had worked with the designer to create.

Indeed, all the clothes she wore on the campaign trail seem to have been part of a shopping spree, as opposed to a strategic plan. There’s nothing wrong with that. Arguably it is part of what makes a woman who lives in a gilded penthouse seem more normal (she buys, just like everyone else!) But it reflects her distance from the industry.

And it is striking that while Ralph Lauren is an American brand, which may indicate a decision to support homegrown talent and promote local industry, Mrs. Trump has also worn Fendi (Italian), Roksanda Ilincic (British) and Emilia Wickstead (British) on the campaign trail. When she went to cast her vote, Mrs. Trump threw a gold-buttoned camel Balmain military coat (French) over her shoulders.

Neither her wardrobe nor that of the rest of the family has been used in the traditional way (see: Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan), to telegraph the virtues of Made in America — though that has been one of Mr. Trump’s most vociferously promoted platforms.

Mr. Trump himself has stuck closely to his uniform of Brioni suits and made-in-China fire engine red ties from his own brand. His daughter and public surrogate, Ivanka, has worn an assortment of styles and high-fashion names, including her own label, the Roland Mouret asymmetric top she wore to the third debate, and the Alexander McQueen dress she sported at her father’s acceptance speech, though they can all be pretty broadly categorized as “power sheath.”

Frankly, I think it is opulently insulting to the American people. I think it says, “Let them eat cake,” to the working families of America. I think Brooks Brothers, or DKNY, or one of the other major chains would be humbled to the dust to clothe the First Lady. Besides, Melania could make a flour sac look first class. She is gorgeous and is not going to kiss the ring of some fashion designer. Bravo, Melania. Show us how it is done. I suppose it’s a little like having Martha Stewart as the White House fashion manager.

Trump is Asked to Shut Down the Fed

If Donald Trump truly wants to fix the economy, he must shut down the Federal Reserve.   If he just tries to patch up our current system, he will fail, because it has been fundamentally flawed from the very beginning.  A little over a century ago, very powerful forces on Wall Street convinced Congress to completely restructure our financial system.  An immensely powerful central bank known as the Federal Reserve was created, and the goal was to transform the U.S. dollar into a debt-based currency that would continuously be inflated and to create an endless debt spiral from which the federal government could never possibly escape.  Sadly, they were successful on both counts.  Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by approximately 98 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

Americans tend to give most of the credit or most of the blame for the performance of the U.S. economy to our presidents, but the truth is that an unelected, unaccountable group of central bankers has far more power over our economy than anyone else does.  The Federal Reserve has become known as “the fourth branch of government“, but unlike the other branches of government we are told that the Fed’s decisions are “above politics” because they are “too important”.  Fed officials fiercely guard their “independence”, and they fiercely resist any “interference” from Congress, the President, or the American people.

Donald Trump can try to lower taxes and reduce regulations, but what he will be able to do to influence the economy pales in comparison to the immensely powerful tools that the Fed wields.  The Fed controls interest rates, the Fed controls the money supply, and the Fed regulates the banks.

To give you an idea of how enormously powerful the Fed is, I want you to pull out a dollar bill.

As you look at that dollar bill, I want you to notice that it says “Federal Reserve Note” right at the top.

In the financial world, a “note” is an instrument of debt, and the truth is that our system was designed to create as much debt as possible.

So why are we using debt-based “Federal Reserve Notes” in the first place?  Shouldn’t Congress have control over our currency?

According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, it is Congress that has the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So how did the Fed get involved?

Well, it is a very long and convoluted story, and if you are interested in the history behind it I would commend to you an excellent book by C. Edward Griffin entitled “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve“.  Basically, big money interests on Wall Street got their hooks into the White House and Congress, and they rushed through legislation right before Christmas in 1913 that created this insidious central banking system that was designed to slowly but surely take wealth from the American people and put it into their hands.

Sadly, most Americans don’t even realize that we have a debt-based currency, nor do they understand where our money comes from.  In a previous article, I discussed how money is normally created by the Federal Reserve under our current system…

When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.

Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

The Federal Reserve takes the U.S. Treasury bonds that it receives in exchange for the “Federal Reserve Notes” that it gave to the government and it auctions off those bonds to the highest bidder.  But of course this process always creates more debt than it does money…

The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.

There is a problem.

Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.

So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?

Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.

But that never actually happens, does it?

And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

So our debt just keeps going up and up and up.  While Barack Obama has been in the White House our national debt has risen by more than 9 trillion dollars, and at this moment it is sitting just under the 20 trillion dollar mark.

But we shouldn’t be surprised by this, because this is precisely what the Federal Reserve system was designed to do to us.

Many conservatives still hold to the mistaken illusion that we could somehow pay all of this debt back someday, but as I have shown in a previous article, this is mathematically impossible to do.

If the government went out today and grabbed every single dollar in existence we could not pay back the national debt, and of course we have trillions of dollars of household debt, trillions of dollars of corporate debt and trillions of dollars of state and local government debt that we need to pay back as well.

Under the current system our only hope is to keep the wheel spinning by continuing to devalue the dollar and by continuing to go into even greater amounts of debt.

And of course it isn’t just the United States that is in this predicament.  At this point, almost every single nation on the entire planet has a central bank.

Even though there are extremely sharp disagreements among nations on virtually everything else, somehow central banking has achieved nearly universal adoption.

As you read this article, well over 99.9% of the population of the globe lives in a country that has a central bank.

Do you think that is just a coincidence?

Of course there are still a few very small countries such as the Federated States of Micronesia that do not have a central bank, but the only big nation not to have one is North Korea.

And you would literally have to be insane to want to live in North Korea.

But now we have an opportunity to get free from this insidious system.  The truth is that we don’t have to have a central bank.  In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when there was no central bank.

We don’t need central planners to set our interest rates and to manipulate our money supply.  They will never admit this, but the reality of the matter is that their interference in the economy often creates tremendous economic busts.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

Considering their track record, isn’t it time for a change?

And we don’t have to have a debt-based currency.  In fact, not too long ago we had a president that decided to start issuing debt-free “United States Notes”.

Back in 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue debt-free “United States Notes” which were directly created by the U.S. government.

He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but many of the debt-free United States Notes that were issued under President Kennedy are still in circulation today, and President Trump could do something similar.

But will he?

It has been said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and the Federal Reserve system has turned all of us into debt slaves.

Debt is a form of social control, and the global elite use all of this debt to dominate the planet.  The total amount of debt in the world just hit a brand new record high of 152 trillion dollars, and the longer we allow the central banks to control the system the bigger this debt bubble will become.

There is a way out, and here in the United States that starts with shutting down the Federal Reserve and issuing debt-free currency.  It would take someone very bold to make a move like this, and so let us hope that the man that we just elected is up to the task.

The Last Time the Republicans Controlled Government

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29),[1] the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects.[2] The crash, that had followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries.

Despite the dangers of speculation, many believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a mini crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation.[7] Two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced his company the National City Bank would provide $25 million in credit to stop the market's slide.[7] Mitchell's move brought a temporary halt to the financial crisis and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent.[7] However, the American economy showed ominous signs of trouble:[7] steel production declined, construction was sluggish, automobile sales went down, and consumers were building up high debts because of easy credit.[7] Despite all these economic trouble signs and the market breaks in March and May 1929, stocks resumed their advance in June and the gains continued almost unabated until early September 1929 (the Dow Jones average gained more than 20% between June and September). The market had been on a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking at 381.17 on September 3, 1929.[7] Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."[8] Then, just they always do, the alert signal came to warn the public. The optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shaken after a well publicized early September prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that "a crash was coming".

In 1932, the Pecora Commission was established by the U.S. Senate to study the causes of the crash. Good harvests had built up a mass of 250 million bushels of wheat to be "carried over" when 1929 opened. By May there was also a winter-wheat crop of 560 million bushels ready for harvest in the Mississippi Valley. This oversupply caused a drop in wheat prices so heavy that the net incomes of the farming population from wheat were threatened with extinction. Stock markets are always sensitive to the future state of commodity markets,

The following year, the U.S. Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks, which take deposits and extend loans, and investment banks, which underwrite, issue, and distribute stocks, bonds, and other securities.

But in 1993, Bill Clinton repealed this law, allowing Banks to engage in the same risky activity that caused the crash on 1929. By 2008, they were primed for any sort of distrust in a system that is founded on trust.

In 2016, it is not wheat, but oil that has crashed. It’s little secret that oil markets have seen better days – much better days. The current global oil market is one of the worst in a generation, causing angst for major oil producing countries and pain and even bankruptcy for a myriad of oil companies – particularly in the U.S.

Some analysts contend that the ongoing downturn could even rival the iconic price crash of 1986, before most of us were following oil markets.

From $114 per barrel in the summer of 2014, prices are now hovering in the mid $40s range, and have been unable to find a floor, trend upward and find a “new normal,” due to oversupply, first from U.S. shale oil production, followed by increased production from Russia and Saudi Arabia, the world’s top two oil producers.

The crash in crude oil prices caused a troubling $67 billion in combined losses for 40 publicly-traded U.S. oil producers last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Mounting debt accumulated by struggling, cash-strapped oil companies is also a problem. As low oil prices breached companies’ break even points (the point at which they can produce and make a profit) many of these drillers, mostly in unconventional oil and gas plays, had to take on more debt to keep operations going, creating a downward spiral for both banks that lend the funds and companies that borrow – creating more bankruptcies and industry wide layoffs.

Massive lay-offs

As of July, more than 350,000 oil industry workers and personnel have been laid off globally. Anemic oil prices have also effected companies in ways you might not consider. In more cost cutting efforts, oil and gas companies have dramatically slashed the amount of money they allocate for Washington lobbying efforts, spending just $6.2 million on lobbying during the first quarter of 2016, 17.5% less than they did the same time period two years ago

And there was just an announcement of the biggest shale oil discovery in history in Texas. There is just one problem. Oil must sell for $65 in order for shale oil to be profitable. Markets, however, only hear the word GLUT.

My question is, “Would the globalists crash the world to stop the Republicans again?”