End of Show Mixes: - UKPMX - Gx2 -Oh My Bosh - Danny Loos-Secret Agent Paul-Stepford Wives-PlaceBoing- Dave Courbanou - Able Kirby - Jungle Jones - Chris Wilson - Tom Starkweather - Conan Salada - Future Trash - Phantomville Billy Bon3s
A SUPER typhoon that has dwarfed Hurricane Florence is set to break records as it tears towards the Philippines with millions of people at risk. It is called Mangkhut and has the power of 500,000 Hiroshima nukes. OMG!
Hurricane Florence (USA) is tiny compared to Super Typhoon Mangkhut (Philippines).Super-typhoon ''Manghut'' has already engulfed the province of Cagayan, Luzon Island, Philippines. The wind speed in the epicenter reaches 265 km/h (74 m/s), with gusts up to 322 km/h (89 m/s).
Mangkhut is currently sweeping across the island of Luzon.Here a video captured by Allan Gatus in the city of Tughegarao (see map above for location):
Again, like for a few hurricanes that destroyed and killed last year, you can see a kind of monster head, when watching at the dangerous storm:
mangkhut, the beast, has already engulfed parts of the Philippines.Before hitting the Philippines, Super-typhoon ''Mangkhut'' also swept across Guam in the Pacific Ocean (11 September 2018). Here another very impressive video:
Deadly 25 foot high STORM SURGES with the power of a major tsunami will pose a massive threat to thousands of people when Typhoon Mangkhut hits Hong Kong and the rest of the Philippines. Take shelter, take care and be patient!
Follow us: Facebook and TwitterExpress '' TYPHOON TERROR as Mangkhut with power of 500,000 NUKES hits Philippines in hoursNews.au.com '' 'Super typhoon' far more powerful than Florence hurtling towards millions
Austin Water Crisis
Producer with Standing
Dear Adam and John,
I am a Missouri State licensed water and wastewater
treatment professional. I'm one test away from being certified to operate any
drinking water plant in the United States. I also operate a freelance water
regulation compliance consulting business for small local systems overwhelmed
by regulations.
With my standing established, and after a review of local news reports of your
water woes, and looking at the treatment system Austin has in place as
described on their website, here is my theory of what is happening.
Austin's source water is a surface lake which is subject to the risks of all
Asher Price @asherprice Thursday Oct 25, 2018 at 12:01 PM Oct 25, 2018 at 1:24 PM
Austin officials told the American-Statesman Thursday that the city's boil-water order could be lifted as soon as Sunday.
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros said that Sunday is the "operating target" to lift the boil-water order, issued early Monday after debris and sediment that washed into the Highland Lakes from Hill Country flooding strained operations at the utility's water treatment plants. Bacteria, parasites and viruses could attach to those particles, experts said, though tests haven't revealed any such bacteria so far.
Meszaros and Austin Mayor Steve Adler first mentioned the Sunday goal at a news conference on Tuesday, though officials have been careful to couch that target by detailing the variables at play and the work required.
After the city's tap water failed state standards in tests late Tuesday because too many particles were found in the water, the city utility must follow state protocols to lift the notice.
Meszaros said the utility also must ensure the plant capacity is adequate '-- output remains about 1/3 of normal he said, but is slowly ratcheting up.
''We want to see the river water quality continue to improve,'' he said, adding that Wednesday's rains didn't seem to downgrade river water quality.
The utility also is working to refill its tanks and reservoirs: The utility normally stores one day's worth of drinking water to maintain pressure and keep up firefighting reserves.
''We drained down the bulk of that water and we're at 50 percent storage now,'' he said. ''We want to get to at least 75 percent storage '-- and really closer to 100 percent. As we do that the system will continue to strengthen.''
He said the utility is in contact with Texas Commission on Environmental Quality officials about what the state needs to see before allowing the utility to lift its boil-water notice.
''We do bacteriological testing throughout the system every day, but they'll want us do that in an enhanced way,'' he said. He said he expects the state agency to tell the water utility today about its testing expectations.
''They'll want us to demonstrate adequate chlorine residuals'' '-- the amount of chlorine in the drinking water '-- ''to be protective. I don't anticipate that to be an issue.''
He said TCEQ officials also will require the water meets state turbidity standards '-- and perhaps even more stringent standards.
''We're moving ahead gingerly,'' said Meszaros. ''The system is still fragile and we don't want to push it too hard.''
TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said TCEQ officials are providing technical and operational assistance at the city's Emergency Operations Center.
Agency rules require a water utility that has run afoul of state standards must correct the underlying problem and show that the water "does not pose an acute health risk"; flush and disinfect the affected area or entire distribution system; return to normal operating parameters (power restored, required pressure, no excessive turbidity, and at the required minimum disinfectant residual levels at all parts of the distribution system); collect bacteriological samples and obtain negative coliform results '-- coliform bacteria are a standard indicator for the sanitary quality of water and food.
Only then can the boil-water notice be lifted.
Water crisis dredges up battle over treatment plant - News - Austin American-Statesman - Austin, TX
Elizabeth Findell @efindellPhilip Jankowski @PhilJankowski Thursday Oct 25, 2018 at 6:47 PM Oct 25, 2018 at 6:49 PM
Years before the term CodeNext graced the lips of city officials, Austin's biggest political fight reached an end. Council members approved the construction of Water Treatment Plant 4.
For more than three decades, urban planners and environmentalists battled about the need for another water treatment plant, with its intake on Lake Travis. Advocates said it was crucial for projected population growth. Opponents feared it would spur growth in the western part of the city and dissuade water conservation efforts.
Good thing the plant advocates won, many of them said this week, as flood-driven silt overwhelmed the city's three water treatment plants, greatly reducing their production capacity and resulting in a boil-water notice for Austinites.
Water Treatment Plant 4, which serves northwestern Travis County and opened in 2014, has not fared as well as the Davis plant in recent days, but has done better than the Ullrich Plant, which failed a water quality test and has been powered down at times this week.
Plant 4 typically treats 30 to 40 million gallons a day, but since turbid water compromised the city's three plants, it has been producing 15 to 20 MGD, according to Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros. Davis has been producing 50 to 60 MGD, and Ullrich's output has been erratic. Together, the plants have treated a third to half of the city's typical daily use, which can run from 120 to 175 million gallons this time of year.
Without Plant 4?
''Oh, my gosh,'' Meszaros said. ''We wouldn't have had that solid 15 MGD over the last few days. I don't think we could have kept the north system in water.''
He pointed to a graph of hourly water usage and production to show that, even though Plant 4 has produced the least amount of treated water in recent days, every drop counts in a crisis.
''You can see on (Sunday), we were only producing 50 MGD; Plant 4 was probably 15 MGD of that,'' Meszaros said. ''It's part of the puzzle, but I don't want it to appear like I'm exploiting this to make Plant 4 the hero, because it was very controversial.''
A bitter political fight
Indeed, advocates of the plant were quick to recall the debate over the plant this week, criticizing some of their opponents at the time, including former City Council Member Laura Morrison, who is running for mayor, and Council Member Kathie Tovo, who is running for re-election. Early voting began Monday.
''As an engineer, building that plant was always about redundancy,'' said Danielle Skidmore, a civil engineer running against Tovo in Central Austin's District 9. ''This was about making sure we had enough supply and a backup in case of an emergency, quite frankly, like this.''
Morrison remained firm in her stance that Plant 4 was not needed.
''There is some interesting Monday morning quarterbacking going on,'' she said Thursday.
Morrison voted against building the new plant while she was on the council in 2009, calling it a case of ''building the treatment plant so we can water our lawns twice a week instead of once a week.'' This week, she noted that Austin's per capita water use has continued to decline over the years and said there are more cost-effective ways to address the city's water resiliency than the new plant.
''In times of crisis, it is not the time for pointing fingers and throwing political punches,'' she said.
Tovo was elected in 2011 after making the water plant the central pillar of her campaign against former Council Member Randi Shade. Shade was the deciding vote in the 4-3 decision to build the $500 million plant. Shade this week called the vote ''political suicide'' for herself but said she didn't regret it.
''It turns out we needed it by 2018,'' Shade said. ''When you make a hard decision, you don't often get to know if it is right. This might be one where I get to know.''
After her election, Tovo ultimately voted to continue construction of the plant, after projections found that halting the work would waste upwards of $100 million. She said Thursday that she didn't want to second-guess the decisions from that time but hopes to learn from what's happening now.
''One of the messages I hope we take from (this crisis) is the need to really diversify our water sources,'' she said. ''What we're seeing with this extraordinary event is that all three water treatment plants are drawing from the same lake.''
Bobby Levinski, an environmental lawyer running for City Council in southwestern Austin's District 8, was a Morrison staffer during the Plant 4 debate and also opposed its construction. He said he still thinks the plant was a mistake and, like Tovo, pointed to its location on Lake Travis, which is supplied by the same river as the treatment plants on Lake Austin.
Plant 4 replaced the former Green Water Treatment Plant in downtown Austin, which drew water from the Edwards Aquifer via Barton Creek. Aerial photographs taken this week showed the clear, opal green water of Barton Creek flowing into a chocolate-colored Lady Bird Lake.
Then and now
Various people have referred to the political fight over Plant 4 as the CodeNext of its time. It was a tussle that lasted longer than the battle regarding the Save Our Springs ordinance, but it also pitted environmentalists, who lobbied the council not to build the plant but instead encourage conservation, versus the Chamber of Commerce and real estate groups, who argued that the plant was needed because of the city's expanding population.
The issue dates back to at least 1975, when a consultant's study recommended constructing a water treatment plant to draw water from Lake Travis. The lake is deeper than other local water sources, making it a preferable option during droughts. Construction bids were issued in 1986, but the project was stymied by an economic downturn.
Opposition first centered around the plant's proposed location along Bull Creek, an environmentally sensitive area near Lake Travis. When the city discovered the presence of the endangered Jollyville Plateau Salamander at the site, the future of the proposed project became uncertain. In 2007, city staffers located what became the final site, absent the salamander.
The 2009 vote was the first of many divisive votes as the council rolled out contracts for the plant. Then-Mayor Lee Leffingwell said completing the plant was ''the major event'' of his elected career because of how bitter the fight was.
As Austin now looks to its water future, ideas are being formed about how to increase the reuse of water and possibly create ''aquifer storage'' '-- a system of underground reservoirs that could be tapped when needed. The drafting of a city plan called "Water Forward" has been underway for years.
The City Council was supposed to receive its first briefing about the plan next week. Ironically, the briefing likely will be postponed because of the water crisis, Tovo said.
David Foster, Texas Director of Clean Water Action, pointed to lessons Austin can draw from its current situation. Hotter, drier periods punctuated by heavier rainfall will become more common with climate change, making events like those of the past week more common, he said. Different methods of storing water and finding more sources for it will be critical.
Foster, like many other environmentalists, opposed building Plant 4. Asked if he was now second-guessing his stance, he was thoughtful.
''It's a fair question, but expanding our existing treatment plants instead of building a new one might have solved the problem,'' he said. ''There were viable options to building an entirely new water treatment plant, so I'm not ready yet to say 'They were right, we were wrong.' ''
PandaAuthority comments on /r/Austin Water Megathread - Discussion and Rule Updates
An important measure in water treatment is turbidity. This measures water clarity. The higher the number, the ''dirtier'' the water. The typical NTU (turbidity units) of the water we pull from the lakes is <1. The plants are designed to treat water up to 100 NTU. We have seen sustained NTU over 200, as high as 500, since Thursday. This is completely unprecedented. While the city has, of course, dealt with flood waters in the past, historically NTU has been this high for a maximum of a few hours, never a full day, much less several. Understanding this is step one. But why does it matter?
Well the goal for the end product is <0.1 NTU. Austin is typically around .02-.06, which wins awards from the Partnership for Safe Water. In order to filter out particles, first ferric sulfate/lime are added to the water, then it's sent through clarifiers where larger particles settle out, then the water is sent through filters. This all occurs before disinfection can happen, because high turbidity affects chlorination. The problem right now is the massive amount of silt in the water, combined with the particle size (extremely small), means the typical combination of ferric/lime is not working. Consultants with PhDs have been trying to sort out the right combo & haven't been successful.
If the clarifiers can't remove the silt, more of it moves to the filters... Think of these filters like a Brita filter. They can only remove so much before they fill up and aren't as effective. They can backwash these filters, but that means shutting that filter down, and using water to clean it. Now that water has to be moved into a waste stream. These filters are having to be washed over and over again. That water has to go into a holding tank, where it's eventually hauled off to a wastewater plant. But while these holding tanks are designed to hold 3x the water used for filter washing in normal ops, it's not enough for this. So not only do they have to slow down ops to clean the filters, they have to slow it down when there's no more room in the holding tank. There are only so many trucks that can haul the water away.
Because it's taking so long to filter the water because of these issues, there are two options. Continue to filter the water to the typical highest standards and risk a water shortage (where the system would lose pressure necessary for emergency services) or release water at a lower standard to maintain minimum supply, while issuing the boil notice IN CASE the higher turbidity prevented the chlorination from being fully effective against contaminants.
If anyone has questions, feel free to ask. I'll answer to the best of my ability. I can assure you, however, that employees are working around the clock to meet demand. There's just nothing that they can do to control the conditions in the lake.
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Why showering in Austin water is OK but drinking it isn't
By Maria Mendez mmendez@statesman.comFriday Oct 26, 2018 at 5:03 PM Oct 26, 2018 at 7:41 PM
Austin's water may be considered too dirty to drink right now, but experts say Austinites can still safely shower.
City and state officials issued Austin's boil notice because the city's treated water is less clear than usual and that could indicate some possibility of pathogens.
Medical doctor Philip Huang, who serves as the city's medical authority, said people cannot consume the water but can continue showering with it because the city is primarily concerned about the pathogens giardia and cryptosporidium, which are parasites that enter through the mouth.
''For the organisms that we're concerned about, the route of exposure is through oral ingestion,'' Huang said.
Giardia and cryptosporidium can lead to stomach illness, fever, and occasionally death '-- in the cases of older or younger people '-- if swallowed by drinking dirty water or touching your mouth with contaminated hands.
This is why residents should also only use boiled or bottled water to brush their teeth, wash dishes or cook, Huang said.
''Even if you're just washing vegetables, if you're not going to cook them, you should use boiled water because water can get into them,'' Huang said.
Bringing water to a rolling boil for three minutes kills harmful pathogens by damaging the structure of bacteria and protozoa like giardia and cryptosporidium.
Huang said skin protects people and animals from most pathogens, so, unless the water is consumed while showering or people have large wounds, there should be no problem.
Desmond Lawler, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Texas, said people should always have precaution with the water they drink, but most water is generally safe for external uses unless it has high levels of feces.
''We swim in natural water without worrying,'' Lawler said. ''Unless the water was tremendously polluted with human or animal waste, it's generally safe to bathe in.''
Despite rumors of foul-smelling tap water on Twitter on Thursday, Giardia and cryptosporidium cannot be identified through smell or taste.
Lynn Katz, the director of UT's Center for Water and the Environment, said tests for these pathogens can take time and because such tests can only sample a small volume of water, scientists test instead for turbidity, which examines the clarity caused by the amount of particles in water.
With increased dirt and silt from recent flooding, the city recently found higher turbidity in its water and failed the state's minimum turbidity standards.
''While there is no direct evidence that the finished water includes pathogens, the higher turbidity in the finished water makes it possible that the water could contain pathogens,'' Lawler said. ''To ensure the protection of public health, the boil water notice was issued.''
Other treatment plants in Central Texas are not be facing the same issues because they may have different water sources or treatment processes, but the Austin Water utility has had to deal with murkier water after the floods in Central Texas, Katz said.
''When the particle concentration goes up as it did, it becomes a challenge,'' Katz said.
City Council's Troxclair begins push for reasons behind water crisis - News - Austin American-Statesman - Austin, TX
Elizabeth Findell @efindellMark D. Wilson @MDWilsonSA Friday Oct 26, 2018 at 6:33 PM Oct 26, 2018 at 7:12 PM
As Austin residents wait for water from their taps to become drinkable, three City Council members tried and failed Friday to begin a push for information about what exactly happened to lead to a mandatory boil water notice and how a repeat can be avoided in the future.
Austin Water officials have said that weeks of rain, particularly upstream of Austin along the Llano River, caused an unprecedented natural disaster '-- water that was full of more silt than it had ever been and too difficult to treat quickly enough to keep pace with city usage. The city issued a precautionary boil order Monday, followed by a mandatory one Wednesday after water at one plant failed a test.
City officials said Friday they're aiming to lift the boil notice on Sunday afternoon or evening. Austin Water leaders said Friday that the utility has restored most of its water supply.
BACKGROUND: Austin water fails state standards, making recovery time uncertain
Council Member Ellen Troxclair posted a draft resolution on the council's message board Thursday afternoon that asked city staffers to provide a briefing about the crisis to elected officials and the public within a month of whenever the boil order is lifted. Council Members Alison Alter and Leslie Pool quickly said they would co-sponsor the resolution.
However, the resolution failed to gain the fourth co-sponsor needed to add it to the agenda for next week's council meeting.
Troxclair said she had questions about whether the problem could have been foreseen or if communications about it could have been better. She noted that city officials opted not to use a reverse-911 system to alert residents and pointed out that some restaurants reported being unaware the boil water order was in place until after they already had served water to customers.
''I'm sure there were reasons for those decisions, and hindsight is 20/20, but unless we take a minute and think about how we can improve, then we won't be able to learn things,'' Troxclair said. ''It is completely appropriate for the City Council to be asking for that transparency and accountability.''
Council Members Ann Kitchen and Sabino ''Pio'' Renteria said in message board posts that they would prefer to wait a few weeks to ask city staffers to begin the process of looking back, noting that they may still be working on fallout from the crisis itself. The responses disappointed Troxclair, who said she thought a month was ample time to compile a briefing.
RELATED: Austin mayor signs disaster declaration, opens door for more aid
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros said during a news conference Friday that treatment plants are pumping out clean water at higher rates, but that it could still be another week before the facilities are running at 100 percent.
''We're feeling really, really positive about being able to lift the boil water notice on Sunday,'' Meszaros said, noting that water quality has been good within the system. ''We're in the process of gathering water samples across our system and tanks.''
After the notice is lifted, residents probably won't have to flush their pipes before drinking, but water-use restrictions are expected to remain in effect at least through the beginning of next week. Meszaros implored residents not to ''go crazy'' when the notice is lifted.
''We just want to ask people to be as cautious as they reasonably can before they start stepping on the gas again,'' he said.
EuroLand
Defaming Prophet Muhammed not free expression: ECHR
Defaming the Prophet Muhammed ''goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate" and "could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace'' and thus exceeds the permissible limits of freedom of expression, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, upholding a lower court decision.
The decision by a seven-judge panel came after an Austrian national identified as Mrs. S. held two seminars in 2009, entitled ''Basic Information on Islam,'' in which she defamed the Prophet Muhammad's marriage.
According to a statement released by the court on Thursday, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court found that these statements implied that Muhammad had pedophilic tendencies, and in February 2011 convicted Mrs. S. for disparaging religious doctrines.
She was fined '¬480 (aprox. $547) and the costs of the proceedings.
''Mrs. S. appealed but the Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011, confirming, in essence, the lower court's findings. A request for the renewal of the proceedings was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 11 December 2013,'' it said.
''Relying on Article 10 (freedom of expression), Mrs. S. complained that the domestic courts failed to address the substance of the impugned statements in the light of her right to freedom of expression.''
On today's ruling, the ECHR said it ''found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant's statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.''
The court held ''that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.''
The statement also added that there had been no violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, covering freedom of expression.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights - Wikipedia
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides the right to freedom of expression and information, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". This right includes the freedom to hold opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas.
Text [ edit ] Article 10 '' Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
The licensing exception [ edit ] The provision about "licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises", i.e. the state's right to license themedia companies, was included because of the limited number of available frequencies and the fact that, at that time, most European states had a monopoly of broadcasting and television. Later Court decision held that due to "the technical progress in the last decades, the justification of these restrictions cannot be made by reference to the number of available frequencies and channels." The public monopolies within the audiovisual media were seen by the Court as contrary to Article 10, primarily because they cannot provide a plurality of sources of information.[1]
The Court also held that devices for receiving broadcasting information, such as satellite dishes, do not fall under the restriction provided for in the last sentence of the first paragraph.[1]
Case law [ edit ] Handyside v United Kingdom (1976)Lingens v Austria (1986) 8 EHRR 407Mueller and Others v Switzerland (1988), application number 10737/84The Observer and The Guardian v United Kingdom (1991) 14 EHRR 153, the "Spycatcher" case.Otto-Preminger-Institut v Austria, see Liebeskonzil (1994)Jersild v. Denmark (1994)Bowman v United Kingdom [1998] ECHR 4, (1998) 26 EHRR 1Appleby v United Kingdom (2003) 37 EHRR 38Steel and Morris v United Kingdom (2005), see McLibel caseDelfi AS v. Estonia (2015).See also [ edit ] Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen - Article XI states: "The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."First Amendment to the United States Constitution - government "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Article 19 is nearly identical to Article 10 of the ECHRNotes [ edit ] References [ edit ] C Gearty, Civil Liberties (Clarendon 2007)External links [ edit ]
Macron: European countries will be punished financially if they do not accept migrants
French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that European countries would not be allowed to pick and choose only policies that they like, but rather must share the burden of mass immigration.
This speech was largely aimed at the Eastern European countries who have consistently refused to take in Middle-Eastern and African migrants after seeing the damage done to Western countries, with Hungary, Poland and Slovakia putting up the biggest fights with the EU.
''We have a collective need for coherence and solidarity: we cannot benefit from the European budget without demonstrating solidarity on migration,'' Macron said.
According to the French President ''Europe is not a supermarket'', meaning that member states can't choose fundamental European values and ignore others.
Talking about EU states that want to reduce their payments into the common budget could he said:
''We cannot try to reduce our contribution to the European budget without understanding what the single market brings. If we want to kill Europe, we should continue like this,'' Macron said. ''Europe isn't a one-way street: it is a reciprocal commitment,'' he added.
Despite Macron's words though, the majority of Eastern Europeans have no appetite for mass immigration and will continue to defy the EU on this matter.
Khashoggi
Serbia could join TurkStream pipeline: Energy minister
Serbia is ready to join the TurkStream pipeline project, Serbia's minister of mines and energy said on Friday.
"The possibility of 10 to 15 billion cubic meters of Russian gas from Turkey going on to Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Austria is a serious chance to improve energy security,'' Aleksandar Antic told a two-day Eurasian Energy Security Forum in Serbia's capital Belgrade.
''This will open up the possibility of developing gas and gas industries."
Antic said construction of the pipeline will soon be completed, and Serbia joining the project would be a great opportunity for improving energy security for both the nation and the region.
Serbia is ready for this opportunity, but it will need its "neighbors of Bulgaria and Hungary" to do so, he added.
Separately, Peter Sijarto, Hungary's foreign and trade minister, said he sees no reason why the TurkStream could not continue towards Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary, also asking why the European Union has criticized the project.
The TurkStream project is an export gas pipeline set to cross beneath the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey and also further extend to Turkey's borders with neighboring countries.
TurkStream's first line is set to carry 15.75 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas to Turkey. The project will have a capacity of 31.5 bcm with a second line that will go to Europe.
It is mind-boggling why the state whose policy is informed by undermining Lebanon's Hezbollah, has -- twice in a decade -- thrown Hezbollah's patron and main supporter, Syrian President Bashar Assad, a lifeline.
Nothing makes sense in the Israeli policy toward Assad. Starting in 2005, the Syrian president suffered international isolation resulting from the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In 2006, Hezbollah started a war against Israel, a war that lasted for 33 days and caused Lebanon horrible destruction. During that war, the party threw thousands of rockets on Israel, some of which had the imprint of Assad's Syrian Army on them. That is to say, Assad not only facilitated arms shipments to Hezbollah but also provisioned the party with missiles from his own depots.
And yet, by 2008, Israel started conducting indirect peace talks with the Syrian president, presumably believing that peace with Syria would substantially weaken Iran and its prot(C)g(C) in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Assad exploited these talks to improve his international position. Jeffrey Feltman, the then U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East and Asia, said at a panel at the Hudson Institute that it was Israel that opened the door for Assad to get out of his international isolation.
Ten years later and after 106 chemical attacks against his own people, Assad is again isolated thanks to his brutal suppression of an uprising against over 45 years of the rule of the Assad dynasty. But with assistance from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, the Syrian dictator has managed to win back control over most of the Syrian land he had previously lost to his opponents.
In the middle of his indebtedness to Iran, which spent billions of dollars to shore Assad up by giving him military assistance, including instructing Hezbollah to fight alongside Assad's forces, Israel thinks it can extract the Syrian autocrat from the claws of Iran and throw him in Russia's lap. By doing so, Tel Aviv thinks it can divide and conquer the alliance between Iran, Assad and Hezbollah.
In an article posted on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, Reservist Israeli Colonel Uri Halprin argued that there is no way U.S. Congress will normalize relations with Assad, which will starve his regime and prevent its access to the international aid it desperately needs to manage a razed-down Syria.
Without international assistance, Halprin sees a window of opportunity. He believes Israel should be involved in negotiations with the autocrat ''in order to achieve a larger geostrategic goal.'' Assad desperately needs money. America and Europe will never give it to him. Instead, Assad can sell parts of the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel occupies since 1967, to Israel. The Syrian president will get parts of these heights, but will relinquish the rest and ratify a peace treaty with Israel.
Such treaty, according to Halprin, will also resolve Israel's dispute with Lebanon over the Shebaa Farms, adjacent to the Golan.
The Israeli officer argues that such a plan helps everyone win, except for Iran and Hezbollah, whose fighters Assad will expel from Syria. By undermining Iranian influence in Syria, Israel will benefit, and so will anti-Iranian Arab countries, first and foremost, Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon will benefit because fixing Syria, under Assad, will allow refugees to go back home, and hence lessen the social and economic burdens on these three countries. Europe, too, will benefit from a decrease in the number of applications from Syrian asylum seekers.
All nations benefiting from the Israeli plan, as spelled out by Halprin, will have to pitch in to pay for the land Israel intends to purchase from Assad, to the tunes of ''tens of billions of dollars''. Perhaps the richer governments, such as in America, Europe and the Gulf, will have to cough up more than the rest, but the end result is clear: For agreeing to the Israeli blueprint, Assad will get to stay in power and will reap a windfall in the tens of billions of dollars that should allow him to stabilize and rule post-war Syria.
That Assad will show readiness to sit at the table and listen to the Israeli offer is certain. The embattled Syrian autocrat is bloodied, exhausted and broke. He lives in international isolation, and any Israeli effort at peace talks will, like in 2009, recast him as the sole ruler of Syria whom the world should deal with.
But whether Assad would accept the Israeli offer is the most uncertain part of the plan. Judging by Assad's performance in the past, the Syrian dictator always used such settings to break his isolation. Once done, Assad exited whatever talks and rejoined his best allies, the Iranians and Hezbollah, in stirring trouble in the region and around the world. Why Israel believes that Assad will act differently, this time around, is mind-boggling.
Israel has come to the rescue of Assad, time and again. Maybe there is something the Israelis see in Assad that the rest of the Middle Easterners do not see. One thing is for sure: despite all the lifelines that Israel has thrown Assad before, Tel Aviv's efforts have yet to bear fruit. Assad has always pocketed Israeli help, and persisted in his troubling behavior, which raises the question: How incompetent and misinformed are Israel's foreign policy makers?
* Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.
ANALYSIS - Tashkent pursues partnership with Putin on power plants
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev (R) attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Uzbekistan's first nuclear power plant in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on October 19, 2018
Dr. Najam Abbas is a Senior Fellow focusing on Central and South Asia at the EastWest Institute, an international NGO
By Najam Abbas
LONDON
Tashkent has embarked on an approach to open up the country for wider cooperation with its immediate neighbors, countries in the region, and in its wider surroundings. Departing from the self-imposed isolation practiced by late President Islam Karimov between 1991 and 2016, the country's current President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is probing a new paradigm of partnership through which he seeks to capitalize his outreach gestures to be preferably matched by Moscow by an outpouring of investment as well as a steady transfer of technologies and know-how.
Agreements reached between Russia and Uzbekistan over the past two years aim to create a legal basis for bilateral cooperation for the peacetime use of atomic energy which envisages: (1) the creation and development of infrastructure and training for Uzbekistan's domestic nuclear power industry; (2) the construction of nuclear power plants and research reactors, as well as extending support throughout the operational period, (3) the exploration and development of Uzbekistan's uranium deposits following the survey of its mineral raw material base; (4) recycling of uranium by-products; and (5) production of radioisotopes and their use in industry, medicine and agriculture, scientific and basic research.
As a country with a dynamically growing population, the demand for electricity is rising every year for 33 million people in Uzbekistan. Taking into account the energy challenges the country faces in the long term, the nuclear power plant will create ''an opportunity to diversify the energy balance'', according to the Uzbek sources, citing the Russian Ambassador to Uzbekistan Vladimir Tyurdenev in Tashkent. The nuclear power plant is expected to meet up to 20 percent of the energy needs and will free up to an equivalent of 4 billion cubic meters of gas spent for producing electricity for domestic and regional markets to allow substantial earnings annually.
In this way, Uzbekistan, a Uranium-producing country, is seeking Russian cooperation to move further in technology, assure the transfer of know-how, build scientific capacity, and prepare the required personnel for the future. Under the agreement, Russia will help train the Uzbek personnel, who are needed to support the future demands of the evolving nuclear industry. As a first step, the first 15 Uzbek students -- out of 326 applicants -- have started their education at Moscow's Russia's National Nuclear Studies University. Later, a branch of the Moscow Institute for Engineering and Physics will open in Uzbekistan to train personnel in the nuclear field. By holding the First Bilateral Academic Forum, the two countries are taking steps to expand academic cooperation at a more institutional level. The Russian heads of 80 institutions of higher education arrived in Tashkent to explore partnership possibilities with the heads of 80 counterpart institutions in Uzbekistan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Tashkent for an official visit to Uzbekistan, will be announcing a go-ahead agreement for building a nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan by the Russian Atomic Corporation Rosatom. The technical plans are being finalized to allow Russia and Uzbekistan to formally sign a detailed contract for the actual construction of the nuclear power plants in spring 2019, the Russian Agency of International Information cited Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom's head, as saying. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's advisor, told reporters in Moscow that the plant will consist of VVER-1200 power unit reactors with increased power output -- about 1200 MWe (gross) -- meeting all the additional safety requirements of generation III + technology as per the intergovernmental agreement. ''The first power unit will be put into operation in 2028,'' he added. The estimated amount of the contract is reported to be about $11 billion.
The two countries have expressed interest in taking institutional measures to expand economic cooperation. For its part, Moscow is interested in reviving and reactivating the currently dormant defense cooperation to an active level. The two sides resumed joint military exercises in 2017 -- following a 12-year break -- as Tashkent took a step to reestablish military cooperation with Russia. However, Uzbekistan may still prefer to form the partnership with caution, but only if minimal obligations and liabilities remains for them. Tashkent tends to be calculating what it can gain the most within the ongoing circumstances to help advance its interest in the most optimal way.
Russia is encouraging Uzbekistan -- a state with the largest population and army in Central Asia -- to assume an active role to help stabilize Afghanistan to keep the region secure. ''With regard to international issues, building up cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will figure in the meeting as the presidents of Russia and Uzbekistan will discuss steps to help stabilize the situation in Afghanistan,'' said Ushakov. Russia has previously hinted about facilitating negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Tashkent is being considered as a possible platform for future negotiations. Ahmed Rakhmanov, a researcher at the Tashkent-based Center for Regional Security Studies, said: ''The role of Uzbekistan in Afghanistan's relations with Russia is very significant. Therefore, Uzbekistan's cooperation is being sought for future.'' Such an initiative is expected to allow Russia to increase its leverage as a peacebroker in the region.
Maxim Vilisov from Moscow's Lomonosov University claims that ''only Russia is best positioned to realistically provide security guarantees in the region. Only it is able to offer ground support there, as it has existing bases and required infrastructure.'' Speaking to Russian English-language network RT, Vilisov added that ''the United States today has no comparative facilities in Central Asia. While in theory, China could become an alternative defense ally, but so far it has not positioned itself as a security guarantor for other countries.''
This approach reflects a desire among some Russians to lure Uzbekistan back into regional economic and defense alliances steered by Moscow. For its part, Tashkent may prefer to respond with a balanced approach, maintaining its relations with China and the U.S. too.
* Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.
Some lie and some die: Saudi media and Khashoggi affair
The writer is Manager at TRT World Research Centre and the author of ''The News Media at War: The Clash of Western and Arab Networks in the Middle East.'' Cherkaoui is an expert in the field of strategic communications.
ISTANBUL
After almost three weeks of denials and blame deflection, the Saudi authorities finally backtracked on Oct. 19, 2018, announcing that Khashoggi died during a ''brawl'' inside the consulate on Oct. 2 and that 18 Saudis have been arrested in connection with this case. Moreover, two top aides of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), as well as three other intelligence agents, have been sacked.
Regardless of the Saudi version's dubious veracity, the gruesome murder and likely dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which took place on Oct. 2 inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, convey not only a sinister picture of the Saudi regime but also an extraordinarily poor impression of their media.
It should be noted that the Saudi regime has a long history of kidnapping opponents. Luring dissidents to meetings and kidnapping them appears to be a regularly used tactic. For instance, Naser al-Sa'id, one of the first opposition leaders against the Saudi royal family, disappeared in Beirut in 1979. Similarly, Prince Sultan bin Turki was abducted in Geneva and put on a plane destined to Saudi Arabia in 2003 after calling for reforms in Saudi Arabia. Likewise, Prince Turki bin Bandar Al-Saud, a former police chief, was also snatched overseas in 2015 and rendered against his will to Saudi Arabia.
The tendency to use heavy-handed repressive manoeuvres against Saudi intellectuals and journalists seems to have accelerated since Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) became Crown Prince. According to The Independent, Saudi authorities planned a similar kidnapping plot against Khaled bin Farhan al-Saud, a Saudi prince living in exile in Germany, just ten days before Khashoggi went missing.
The aforementioned vicious campaign was accompanied by an upsurge in propaganda levels to promote the Saudi regime's totalitarian line, smear the forces of change, and denigrate their narratives. Ranging from Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel to the Rotana Group conglomerate and the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), to transnational newspapers, such as the dailies Al Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat, and the online news portal Elaph, the Saudis have put their media empire at the service of this strategy.
However, despite having built such a massive transnational media empire, media values, journalistic ethics, and press professionalism are not on offer in Saudi Arabia. Suffice to say that Al Arabiya News Channel, which is supposed to be the Saudi flagship media outlet, lost in February 2018 its broadcasting licence with regulator Ofcom in the United Kingdom (UK) after receiving complains that the broadcaster was ''violating impartiality code and accuracy in news sourcing''. This is particularly telling, as Ofcom enjoys international respectability for its high standards in maintaining broadcasting codes for programming, with which all broadcasters in the UK must comply.
The Jamal Khashoggi affair is a case in point. The mountain of evidence linking Riyadh to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was so big that the Saudi media's fact-free denials for almost three weeks not only turned these media into a laughing stock but also became indictments, as it were, for the Saudi regime in and of themselves.
Instead of providing meaningful information about the disappearance of Khashoggi or even offering substantial counter-evidence that challenges the facts surrounding this affair, the Saudi media's reaction ranged from total denial and obfuscation to the construction of baseless conspiracy theories.
For example, Jamil Al-Dhiabi, the editor of Saudi newspaper Okaz, stated in an article published on Oct. 9, 2018 that ''all those circulating the information about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi are tweeting in unison almost identical slogans, which indicate that they are involved and accomplices in this crime.'' Another columnist for Okaz, Hammoud Abu Talib, tried in the same edition (9 October) to deflect the blame to foreign entities, affirming that the Jamal Khashoggi case ''strongly indicates an intelligence operation prepared by intelligence operatives and journalists handled by the Muslim Brotherhood.'' In a similar vein, Al-Arabiya.net quoted the charg(C) d'affaires of the Saudi Embassy in Lebanon as saying that ''the Khashoggi theatrical show is a conspiracy and a plot from an intelligence agency that was designed to undermine Saudi Arabia's reputation.''
In parallel, the Saudi media also attacked American and international press for their reporting on Khashoggi. For example, Al-Arabiya website downplayed the reporting from Reuters as ''full of contradictions''. Similarly, in an editorial entitled ''Black propaganda'' and published on Oct. 8, state-owned newspaper Al-Riyadh attacked the Washington Post, lamenting that ''the latter turned overnight into a platform for vilifying the Saudi kingdom and denigrating its leadership''. According to this editorial, this media flak indicates ''the collapse of the credibility of this media institution and its transformation into a paid space to attack the Kingdom''. For this Saudi newspaper, the only explanation for singling out Riyadh in this affair is ''the rising hostility between the Washington Post and U.S. President Donald Trump''.
The bizarre editorial line adopted by the Saudi media vis- -vis the Khashoggi case has brought ridicule to some of the most passionate advocates of MBS, like Thomas Friedman, the columnist of the New York Times. Hosted by CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour on her show on Oct. 18, 2018, Friedman could not but hide his face in disbelief after hearing some of the ridiculous comments by Saudi media outlets.
When Riyadh began admitting at last some part of responsibility in an agonizingly slow process, the Saudi media, despite having blatantly lied to their public and vehemently accused virtually anybody ranging from the Washington Post and Turkey to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, barefacedly made a 180-degree turn and offered no apology to their audience or acknowledgement about their pathetic coverage.
All things considered, after spending millions of dollars over lobbying firms and public relations companies, the grisly murder of Khashoggi has tarnished the image of MBS and the Saudi regime for a long time to come. In short, Riyadh has plunged into an international crisis. However, in the battle to shape the international public opinion, the Saudi media, which had little journalistic reputation -- if any -- before the Khashoggi affair, has been at best a worthless fig leaf, and at worst an additional source of embarrassment for Riyadh in this case.
* Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.
Sultan Knish: The Ugly Terror Truth About Jamal Khashoggi
In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.”The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting. The media calls Khashoggi a journalist, but his writings from 80s Afghanistan read as Jihadist propaganda with titles like, "Arab Mujahadeen in Afghanistan II: Exemplifies the Unity of Islamic Ummah".And when Osama bin Laden set up Al Qaeda, he called Khashoggi with the details.After Afghanistan, Jamal Khashoggi went to work as a media adviser for former Saudi intel boss, Prince Turki bin Faisal, alleged to have links to Al Qaeda. Those allegations came from, among others, Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth hijacker.When the other 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks of September 11, Khashoggi wrote that the Saudis would not “give in” to American “demands” for “unconditional condemnation” and “total cooperation”."Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy," he declared."A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century."That’s the real Khashoggi, a cynical and manipulative apologist for Islamic terrorism, not the mythical martyred dissident whose disappearance the media has spent the worst part of a week raving about.Jamal Khashoggi was not a moderate. Some describe him as the leader of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist network admires Hitler and seeks to impose Islamic law around the world. Nor was he a supporter of freedom of the press. In one of his Al Jazeera appearances, he complained that the Saudi government was allowing some journalists to report positively on Israel.His final project, DAWN or Democracy for the Arab World Now was meant to aid Islamists. According to Azzam Al-Tamimi, an old Muslim Brotherhood ally aiding Jamal, "The Muslim Brothers and Islamists were the biggest victims of the foiled Arab spring." Al-Tamimi has endorsed suicide bombings.But unlike Osama bin Laden, Khashoggi did not use the Muslim Brotherhood as a gateway drug to the pure and uncut violence of Al Qaeda or ISIS. He was still betting on a political takeover.As he recently put it, “Democracy and political Islam go together.”Khashoggi went on making the case for the Islamic state of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went on making that case even as the Saudis decided that the Brotherhood had become too dangerous.Like his old friend, Jamal Khashoggi went into exile in a friendly Islamist country. Osama bin Laden found refuge in Pakistan and Khashoggi ended up in Turkey. The Khashoggi family had originated from Turkey. And Turkey was swiftly becoming the leading Sunni Islamist power in the region. Living in Turkey put Khashoggi at the intersection of the Turkish-Qatari backers of the Brotherhood and the Western media.His disappearance has touched off fury and anger from the Islamist regime that harbored him. And it has also set off an unprecedented firestorm of rage and grief by the American media which adored him.Media spin describes Khashoggi as a dissident. And he certainly was that. But so was Osama bin Laden.What Khashoggi wasn’t, was a moderate. No more so than the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t a proponent of human rights, but of Islamic rule. He could be found on Al Jazeera, Qatar’s Jihadist propaganda network, bemoaning Saudi opposition to the Brotherhood and its friendliness to Israel."Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood and stop treating them as the enemy or a threat to Saudi Arabia," he complained, and urged the Saudis to fight Israel instead.Jamal Khashoggi’s career of spouting Muslim Brotherhood propaganda for his new Turkish and Qatari masters came to an end in a curious way. Before Khashoggi allegedly entered the Saudi embassy, from which Turkey claims that he disappeared, he told his Turkish fiancé to call Yasin Aktay if he didn’t return.Before the summer coup of 2016, Turkey was said to have 50,000 political prisoners. Many of them were members of the country’s oppressed Kurdish minority which is deprived of its most basic civil rights. These include even the use of their own language. Doing so can carry a prison sentence.In that terrible summer, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s Islamic tyrant, finished securing his absolute hold on power with the coup as his Reichstag fire. The alleged coup became a blank check for the mass arrest and torture of countless thousands of political prisoners. Amnesty International estimated that 50,000 had been detained. The UN listed a figure as high as 180,000. They included 300 journalists.Lawyers described clients being brought to them covered in blood.Erdogan went after professors, judges, law enforcement, the military and the last remnants of a free press. A Human Rights Watch report documented electric shocks, beatings with truncheons and rubber hoses, and rape by Erdogan’s Islamic thugs. Heads were banged against walls. Men were forced to kneel on burning hot asphalt. Medical reports showed skull fractures, damage to testicles and dehydration.The media didn’t show any of the hysterical outrage at these crimes that it has over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The media cares more about Khashoggi, a former media mouthpiece of the Saudi regime before it turned on his Muslim Brotherhood brothers, than about 300 Turkish reporters.It’s not hypocrisy, it’s consistency.Erdogan and Khashoggi are both militant Islamic activists. And their opponents, the victims of Erdogan’s Reichstag fire and the new Saudi king, had fallen afoul of them for being insufficiently militantly Islamist.The media will always take the side of Islamists over non-Islamists. That’s why it bleeds for Khashoggi.There was a reason why Jamal Khashoggi felt so comfortable in Turkey, while actual journalists in the country were terrified of being locked up, tortured and disappeared. If that was the fate that befell Khashoggi, it was a commonplace one in Turkey. And it may have been carried out by his own Turkish allies who decided that their Saudi subversive had more value as a false flag martyr than a house guest.The media’s disproportionate outrage over Khashoggi has nothing to do with human rights. If it did, the media would have been just as outraged at the arrests and torture of tens of thousands in Turkey.It’s not. And it won’t be.And the politicians shrilly urging that we punish the Saudis never thought about curtailing arms sales to Turkey. Many of the same politicians were unhappy when President Trump used economic pressure on Erdogan in an effort to free American hostages, like Pastor Andrew Brunson, being held by Turkey.This is about Islam.The struggle between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand, and Turkey, Qatar and Iran on the other, is the next stage of the Arab Spring. And, from Yemen to Turkey, the media has made no secret of being on the Islamist side. Its outrage over Khashoggi, like its claims of a human rights crisis over the Saudi bombings in Yemen, are not journalism, they’re the political spin of the Islamist axis.The media has reported every claim of victimhood by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s Al Jazeera propaganda arm, while giving as little attention as possible to the victims of Muslim Brotherhood church bombings. Its coverage of Israel has been little more than terrorist propaganda since Osama was in diapers. Its coverage of the Khashoggi case is every bit as dishonest as its slanted attacks on the Saudi embargo of Qatar, as its propaganda about the wars in Yemen and Libya, and just as devoid of context.The Khashoggi case demands context.Before the media and the politicians who listen to it drag the United States into a conflict with Saudi Arabia over a Muslim Brotherhood activist based on the word of an enemy country still holding Americans hostage, we deserve the context.And we deserve the truth.The media wants the Saudis to answer questions about Jamal Khashoggi. But maybe the media should be forced to answer why the Washington Post was working with a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist?The real mystery isn’t Khashoggi’s disappearance. It’s why Republicans aren’t asking those questions.The media’s relationship with Khashoggi is far more damning than anything the Saudis might have done to him. And the media should be held accountable for its relationship with Osama bin Laden’s old friend.Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.Thank you for reading.
Squirrel Hill Shooter
Robby Starbuck on Twitter: "Another post from Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers. His profile clearly illustrates that he's a Nazi, admired Hitler, hates Trump, believes Trump is controlled by Jews, he did not vote for Trump. That's all I was
The FBI has taken custody of Cesar Altieri Sayoc in connection with the attempted mailing of 13 pipe bombs to prominent former government officials, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other public figures. The Department of Justice has brought five charges against Sayoc in the Southern District of New York. Sayoc is charged with interstate transportation of an explosive, the illegal mailing of explosives, making threats against former presidents and certain other persons, making threatening interstate communications, and assaulting federal officers. The charging document is below.
Gab.comð on Twitter: "Today https://t.co/J3Rfto6fi3 spent all day working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served. For this, we have been no-platformed from: @stripe @paypal @joyent In a matter of hours. This is direct collusion between b
Image A package addressed to James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, was meant to be delivered to the New York offices of CNN, but was intercepted at a mail facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday, police officials said.
Credit Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times Federal authorities made an arrest on Friday in connection with the nationwide bombing campaign against outspoken critics of President Trump, a significant breakthrough in a case that has gripped the country in the days leading up to the midterm elections.
A law enforcement official identified the suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Fla. The official said Mr. Sayoc had a criminal history and ties to the New York area.
We can confirm one person is in custody. We will hold a press conference at the Department of Justice at 2:30pm ET.
'-- Sarah Isgur Flores (@whignewtons) October 26, 2018Also Friday morning, Florida news organizations reported that the authorities had surrounded a white van with Trump stickers on it.
The arrest came only hours after the mysterious spate of pipe bombs spread further as federal authorities said on Friday morning that they had found two more of the explosive devices: one addressed to Senator Cory Booker and the other to James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence.
Although no formal charges have been filed yet, two of the law enforcement officials said there was a high likelihood that Mr. Sayoc would be prosecuted at least in part in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The F.B.I.'s New York office has been leading the investigation and five of the bombs sent this week fall under the jurisdiction of the United States attorney's office in Manhattan.
The package addressed to Mr. Clapper was meant to be delivered to the New York offices of CNN, where he works as an analyst, but was intercepted at a mail facility in Midtown Manhattan, police officials in New York City said. The package addressed to Mr. Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, was found in Florida, which two people briefed on the matter have said has become a focus of the intense, nationwide investigation into the bombs.
At a news conference on Friday morning, John Miller, the New York Police Department's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said a postal worker at the mail facility on 52nd Street recognized the package addressed to Mr. Clapper as similar to other suspicious packages discovered this week and ''froze it in the system.''
Monday
Wednesday
Hillary Clinton
John O. Brennan
George Soros
Barack Obama
Maxine Waters
Maxine Waters
Eric H. Holder Jr.
Thursday
Friday
Robert De Niro
James R. Clapper Jr.
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Cory Booker
Monday
Wednesday
Hillary Clinton
John O. Brennan
Barack Obama
Maxine Waters
George Soros
Maxine Waters
Eric H. Holder Jr.
Thursday
Friday
Robert De Niro
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
James R. Clapper Jr.
Cory Booker
Wednesday
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
Eric H. Holder Jr.
Maxine Waters
John O. Brennan
Thursday
Robert De Niro
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Friday
Cory Booker
James R. Clapper Jr.
The department's bomb squad responded to the facility and secured the package for delivery to an F.B.I. lab in Quantico, Va., Mr. Miller said.
Speaking on CNN on Friday, Mr. Clapper said he was not surprised that a device had been sent to him. He has been a frequent critic of President Trump, a similarity shared with everyone whose names have appeared on the packages discovered so far.
''This is definitely domestic terrorism,'' Mr. Clapper said. ''Anyone who has in any way been a critic, publicly been a critic of President Trump, needs to be on an extra alert.''
Mr. Clapper also said that on Wednesday night he had taken precautions after the first packages were discovered. While he and his wife were away from their home this week, he added, he told his neighbor not to collect their mail.
All together, 12 crude explosive devices have been found since Monday, sent through the mail to a host of Democrats and other prominent figures who have been among Mr. Trump's most vocal detractors. The packages '-- virtually identical in plain manila envelopes '-- have been addressed to former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Representative Maxine Waters of California; former Attorney General Eric Holder; John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, the actor Robert De Niro; and George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor.
All of the envelopes had return address labels bearing the misspelled name of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat whose district is in southern Florida. None of the devices inside have exploded on their own so far, and investigators are still seeking to determine whether they were even capable of detonating. But the authorities in New York and elsewhere have warned that the devices should be considered dangerous.
[Read our columnist on how the 'False Flag' theory on pipe bombs zooms from the right-wing fringe to the mainstream.]
The first package was discovered on Monday afternoon at the suburban New York home of Mr. Soros. While investigators initially thought that some devices were hand delivered, they now believe it is likely all of them were sent in the mail. Using information collected by the United States Postal Service, investigators have focused their attention on certain Florida postal centers, including one in Opa-locka near Miami.
Broward County!!!!!!-Cesar Sayoc Politics: Voter Records Say He's a Republican | Heavy.com
Cesar Sayoc has been named as the suspect who is under arrest in the series of suspicious packages that were sent to former presidents and top Democratic officials. The U.S. Justice Department has confirmed there was an arrest without naming him, however Pix11 News reporter Myles Miller wrote on Twitter, ''BREAKING: Senior law-enforcement sources have confirmed this suspect is Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Fort Lauderdale, Fl.''
The male suspect was arrested at a business in Plantation, Florida, according to multiple media reports. However, what is known about his politics so far? Is he a Republican or Democrat? After all, there were twin theories that emerged after the packages were sent: Some people called him #magabomber because the packages were sent to critics of President Donald Trump. Others alleged it was a false flag attack by a liberal designed to blame Trump.
The major clues to emerge so far about Cesar Sayoc's politics are a sticker and decal-laden van that authorities towed away from an Auto Zone as part of the investigation. ''The van is covered with President Trump pictures and stickers,'' reported Dan Krauth, of NBC.
In addition, Florida voter records say the following:
Full Name:CESAR A SAYOC
City:AVENTURA
County Name:MIAMI-DADE
Date Of Registration:3/4/2016
Party:Republican Party of Florida
Voter Status:Active*
News outlets reported that it was his van, and it appeared filled with political stickers:
On LinkedIn, Cesar Sayoc identified himself as ''Promoter, booking agent Live entertainment, owner, choreographer.'' He wrote that he was a veterinary medicine graduate, saying, ''Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone. And respect all living things. My family very sound Sayoc name in Medical field Grandfather Col. Baltazar Zook Sayoc that perfect the conversion oriental eye to Americanize. The first plastic surgeon to be observed by 8 million people in NY city Hospital. He over through Communist Philippines liberated island. He built all hospitals in Philippines islands and sets standards highest level. Most surgeon use his instruments which are patented. And a lot surgeon use today. Also Sayoc intl. schools marshals arts Kali that used to over throw communist party . Also one 5 Hero's disciplinary my mother Madeline Sayoc Giardiello First president Pharmacy Cosmetic Association, Who Who Business Women of Year, Soul buyer consultant for Home Shopping Network, head number 1 marketing consul in World Aventura Marketing consul, up for city counsel women Aventura.''
CNN is reporting that authorities have arrested the man and were towing a vehicle, a white van, from the business. The van was outside an Auto Zone, according to video from the scene. The news of the suspect's arrest came after a 12th package was discovered. It was addressed to James Clapper. The suspect lives in Southern Florida, according to CNN.
His home address is in Aventura, Florida, according to CNN, and he has a criminal history and ties to New York. Fox News reported that he lives in north Miami Beach, is about 56, and is a white male. The prior arrests were for terrorist threats, Fox added.
We can confirm one person is in custody. We will hold a press conference at the Department of Justice at 2:30pm ET.
'-- Sarah Isgur Flores (@whignewtons) October 26, 2018
The suspect is believed to be a man in his 50s. The man has been known to make prior threats, including against judges, Fox News reports. Fox News reported that authorities had been watching the man for the past 24 hours. Cameras at a self-service kiosk helped authorities identify the man, Fox News reported.
The name of the suspect has also not yet been released. CNN reported that the network heard late on October 25, 2018 that authorities had made significant progress in the investigation. A 2:30 p.m. press conference will be held on Friday with the Attorney General of the United States at which more details are expected to be provided. NYPD officials were also spotted at the scene in Plantation, Florida. The white van appeared to be covered with stickers and decals. Here's a closer look at the stickers:
This is the van of the bomb suspect, which is being towed from an Autozone in Plantation Florida. What does everyone make of the decals on these windows? pic.twitter.com/Zu85c4dDjW
'-- Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) October 26, 2018
Plantation is located about 37 minutes from Miami and is in Broward County.
According to the network, there may be forensic evidence and images linked to the suspect. The network added that it's believed federal authorities got their break in the case when authorities traced the packages' path to a sorting facility in Florida. CNN later reported that they think forensic evidence does exist in the case.
Here's what you need to know:
Authorities Traced the Packages to a Mail Sorting Facility in Opa-Locka, FloridaNBC News reported that the sorting facility in question was an U.S. Postal Service facility in South Florida. The mail sorting facility was located in Opa-locka, Florida, and the Miami-Dade Police Department had indicated it was assisting federal agents who had zeroed in on that facility.
Among others, the packages, with crude explosive devices that did not explode, were sent to former Presidents Barack Obama and the residence of Bill and Hillary Clinton. One package turned up in the CNN mail room. Other critics of President Donald Trump, from George Soros to John Brennan to Robert De Niro, had packages sent to them. No one has been injured.
Man charged in mail-bomb plot is a Florida Trump supporter | Where Orlando Turns First For Breaking News, Weather, and Traffic
Authorities arrested a man on Friday in connection to at least 13 apparent pipe bombs sent this week to public figures, including politicians and vocal critics of President Donald Trump. >> Read more trending news The suspect, identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56, was arrested in Florida after authorities confirmed that they had found a pair of devices earlier in the day, one addressed to Sen. Cory Booker and the other to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Two other packages, one addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, and another addressed to philanthropist Tom Steyer, are also being investigated. >> What we know about the man arrested for sending package bombs The packages in question were mailed in manila envelopes affixed with ''Forever'' stamps and had Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz's office in Florida listed as the return address, according to the FBI. >> Suspicious packages: Who were the targets, when were they discovered, who intercepted them? Update 3:55 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: Police in Burlingame, California, confirmed Friday that a package found at a mail facility in the city 'is consistent with the mailings throughout the nation.' The package, which was addressed to philanthropist Tom Steyer, 'has been removed from that facility and the area has been rendered safe,' police said. Update 3:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: FBI Director Christopher Wray warned at a news conference Friday that more mailed explosives could be discovered as authorities continue to investigate packages sent to Democrats and Trump critics this week. ''(They) may be in transit now,'' Wray said. Reports surfaced Thursday that authorities were investigating whether the packages, which Wray described as ''IEDs,'' were meant to explode or if they were meant to sow fear. Wray said FBI investigators continue to analyze the devices, but he added, ''These are not hoax devices.'' ''We're still trying to determine if the devices were functional,'' Wray said. 'They did contain energetic material, which, if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction could be dangerous to the public.' Wray said investigators determined Sayoc was a suspect connected with the package bombs after one of his fingerprints was found on an IED mailed to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California. Authorities also found DNA that appeared to link two different packages, he said. Update 3 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday that authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc on five federal charges, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of an explosive and making threats against former presidents and others. Sessions said Sayoc could face as many as 58 years if he's convicted of the charges. ''This is utterly unacceptable,'' Sessions said. ''We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence.'' Additional charges could be filed as authorities continue to investigate. Update 2:45 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: Philanthropist Tom Steyer released a statement Friday amid reports that authorities in California have intercepted a suspicious package mailed to him. Authorities did not immediately confirm that the package was connected to a series of suspected pipe bombs sent to Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump in recent days. 'We're thankful that everyone we work with at Next Gen America and Need to Impeach is safe -- that's always our first priority, and will continue to be our first priority,' Steyer said. 'It's time for the Republican Party to denounce any attacks on the rights and dignity of any American and begin to work on building the broadest and most comprehensive democracy possible for each and every American.' Update 2:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: An arrest affidavit obtained by WFTV shows Sayoc was arrested in 2002 after called an office of Florida Power & Light in southern Florida and threatened to blow it up. According to the affidavit, Sayoc said, 'It would be worse than September 11th.' Sayoc pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to probation, The Washington Post reported. >> From Cox Media Group's Jamie Dupree: Trump hails arrest of mail bomb suspect as more packages surface Update 1:50 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: Authorities in California are investigating a suspicious package addressed to philanthropist Tom Steyer, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, CNN reported. Authorities continue to investigate a separate suspicious package found Friday in Sacramento and addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, according to the Sacramento Bee. If the packages are connected to others sent to high-profile Democrats and Trump critics in recent days, they would bring the total number of packages discovered since Monday to 14. Update 1:05 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: Unidentified law enforcement sources told the Miami Herald that Sayoc was connected to a series of apparent mail bombs sent in recent days through ''a trail of DNA evidence on either the packages or the devices.'' The newspaper reported that he has been undergoing questioning by FBI agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force since about 10 a.m, when he was arrested at an AutoZone in Plantation. Update 12:40 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: President Donald Trump praised law enforcement officials Friday after authorities arrested a man suspected of sending apparent mail bombs to several public figures this week. ''I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehended the suspect and taken him into custody,' Trump said while addressing the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit in Washington. 'It's an incredible job done by law enforcement.' Since Monday, officials have found at least 12 suspected explosive devices bound for Democrats or public figures who have been critical of Trump. Two of the suspicious packages were sent to CNN's New York bureau, addressed to former Obama administration officials. 'These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country, no place,'' the president said. ''We must never allow political violence to take root in America -- cannot let it happen. And I am committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it, and to stop it now.'' >> From Cox Media Group's Jamie Dupree: More suspected mail bombs surface as Trump blasts media The president has frequently faced criticism for his attacks on the media, including his support of a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter in 2017. Update 12:25 p.m. EDT Oct. 26: An unnamed law enforcement official told the New York Times that the man arrested Friday in connection to a string of suspected mail bombs sent in recent days has been identified as Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Florida. According to the Times, Sayoc is a registered Republican who has a criminal history in Florida dating back to 1991, including an arrest for allegedly threatening to use a bomb. He was born in New York, the newspaper reported. Update 11:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: President Donald Trump said he plans to address the investigation into suspected mail bombs sent to public figures in recent days at an appearance Friday at the Young Black Leadership Summit. Update 11:40 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: Authorities are investigating what might be a 13th suspicious package in Sacramento, California, CNN reported. The package was addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, according to the news network. Update 11:35 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: Officials with the FBI confirmed a person was in custody Friday. Update 11:25 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: A Florida man taken into custody for questioning Friday in connection to a series of suspect mail bombs discovered this week was arrested at an auto part store in Plantation, the Miami Herald reported. The newspaper described the suspect as a man in his 50s from Aventura. Update 11:05 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: A spokeswoman for the Justice Department confirmed that authorities had a person in custody Friday in connection with a series of suspected mail bombs sent in recent days. Update 11 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: A man was taken into custody Friday in Florida for questioning in connection with a series of suspected mail bombs sent in recent days to Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump, NBC News and CBS News reported. CNN reported that the man was arrested in connection with the packages. Update 10:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York City Police Department, confirmed at a news conference Friday that the suspicious package found at a Manhattan mail facility Friday appeared similar to other suspicious packages mailed in recent days. Miller said an X-ray done of the package showed ''what appears to be a pipe bomb consistent with other devices we've seen this week contained in a package consistent with other devices we've seen this week.'' The package was addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, care of CNN, CBS New York reported. Update 10:35 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: President Donald Trump said coverage of a series of suspected explosive devices sent in recent days to Democrats and critics of the president has greatly slowed the momentum of Republicans ahead of the mid-term elections. ''Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the pools, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics,'' the president wrote in a tweet Friday. ''Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republican, go out and vote!'' The president posted his tweet amid reports that a pair of new suspicious packages have been found, bringing the total number of suspected explosive devices sent to 12. The House Oversight Committee issued a statement Friday condemning the incidents. Update 10:20 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: Police in New York City confirmed that a suspicious package found Friday morning at a mail facility in Manhattan has been safely removed. The package was addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, care of CNN, CBS New York reported. Update 10:15 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: The suspicious package addressed to Sen. Cory Booker and found Friday in Florida was recovered during an overnight search at a mail facility in Opa-locka, Florida, The Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified law enforcement source. The official told the AP that the package was similar to others sent to Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump since Monday, with the return address listed as the Sunrise, Florida, office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. ''The official did not know if the package was outgoing or a return-to-sender mailing,'' according to the AP. Update 9:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: In a statement released Friday by his publicist, actor Robert De Niro called on people to vote as authorities investigate a series of apparent mail bombs sent to Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump in recent days. Authorities on Thursday recovered a suspicious package containing what authorities described as a crude pipe bomb at De Niro's office in New York City. 'There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote,'' De Niro said Friday. ''People must vote!' The actor said he was thankful no one was hurt and thanked 'the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us.' Update 9:25 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: CBS New York shared an image of a package that was reportedly recovered from a mail facility in New York City on Friday, addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The package, which was addressed to Clapper care of CNN's New York bureau, appeared similar to other packages sent in recent days to public figures that contained what the FBI described as 'potentially destructive devices.'' Clapper told CNN that he and his wife have been concerned about their neighbors since the packages surfaced because the couple is out of town and the neighbors have been picking up their mail. ''In one sense, it's kind of a relief, but it's not a surprise,' he told CNN. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism. No question about it in my mind.' Update 9:10 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: CNN reported that a suspicious package discovered at a Manhattan mail facility on Friday morning and addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was bound for the news network's New York bureau. The package would be the second sent to CNN's offices at the Time Warner Center after authorities recovered a suspected explosive device Wednesday addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN. Brennan and Clapper are regular guests on CNN. Update 9 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: A suspicious package found at a New York City mail facility on Friday morning was addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CNN and NBC News reported. Update 8:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: Authorities in New York City have closed some streets to traffic as they investigate a report of a new suspicious package. Update 8:50 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: Officials with the FBI confirmed Friday that an 11th suspicious package, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, appeared similar to 10 others sent in recent days. Authorities said the package was recovered in Florida. Update 8:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: An 11th package, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, has been discovered in Florida, NBC News. and WABC reported. Update 5:06 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: In an early morning tweet Friday, President Donald Trump implied that several media outlets were blaming him for the packages of apparent pipe bombs sent since Monday to public figures. ''Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing,'' Trump wrote. ''Yyet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!''' Update 3:30 a.m. EDT Oct. 26: After reports that some of the packages were mailed from a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, the Miami-Dade County Police Department sent a bomb squad and K-9 to sweep the place late Thursday, the Miami Herald reported. No explosive devices were found, the newspaper reported. Update 5:30 p.m. EDT Oct. 25: A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that investigators suspect that some of the parcels were mailed from Florida. Authorities say that those packages went through the Opa-locka, Florida mail processing and distribution facility, according to CNN. Update 4 p.m. EDT Oct. 25: Experts at the FBI's lab in Quantico, Virginia, are examining 10 apparent package bombs sent in recent days to several public figures. At a news conference Thursday, FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney declined to go into detail about the investigation which he said was ''still in its early stages.'' ''It does remain possible that further packages have been or will be mailed,'' he said. Authorities confirmed that powder found Wednesday in an envelope sent with a suspected explosive device to CNN's New York bureau did not appear in initial tests to be a biological agent. They declined to address reports that the devices might not have been rigged for detonation. ''This is something that should be taken seriously,'' New York City police Commissioner James O'Neill said. ''We are treating them as live devices.'' Authorities also declined to confirm reports that some of the packages appeared to have been sent from Florida. Update 3:25 p.m. EDT Oct. 25: A pair of unidentified law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that authorities are investigating whether the pipe bombs sent to several prominent Democrats in recent days were intended to detonate. ''The devices were not rigged like traditional booby trap package (bombs) that would explode upon opening,'' the AP reported, adding that the devices lacked an ignition or trip wire. Update 3:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 25: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thanked the U.S. Secret Service on Thursday, one day after agency officials said they intercepted a device bound for Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York, that authorities described as a ''potential explosive device.'' ''I'm grateful for the hard work and commitment of the Secret Service every day, and never more than this week,'' Clinton wrote in a tweet. Update 2:45 p.m. EDT Oct. 25: Initial tests of a white powder found in an envelope addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan and sent Wednesday to CNN's New York bureau have determined that the powder is not anthrax or any known agents, the news network reported Thursday. Additional tests will be performed on the powder, CNN reported, citing an unidentified law enforcement official. Speculation grew on social media Wednesday after images of the device surfaced with what appeared to be an Islamic State flag on it. However, CNN reported that the image appeared to be a widely circulated spoof of the flag. NBC News reported that the spoof image, in which the flag's text is replaced by the silhouettes of three women and the words ''Get 'Er Done,'' has been seen on right-wing websites and forums since at least 2014. Update 10:40 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: The FBI confirmed Thursday that a trio of packages discovered earlier in the day are ''similar in appearance'' to others sent in recent days containing ''potentially destructive devices.'' Two of the packages found Thursday were addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and recovered in Delaware. A third package, found in New York, was addressed to actor Robert De Niro. Two officials told The Associated Press that the device sent to De Niro might have been sitting in the mail room of his Tribeca Film Center building for days before its discovery. A person affiliated with the center saw pictures circulating Wednesday of a mail bomb addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan and sent to the Time Warner Center, care of CNN. The person recalled seeing a similar package in the Tribeca Film Center mail room and called police, the AP reported. Officials believe the package was delivered earlier this week, according to the AP. Update 9:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: Robert De Niro's spokesman, Stan Rosenfield, called a mail bomb addressed to the actor and sent to the building for his Tribeca Productions company ''extremely disturbing and frightening,'' in an interview with CNN. ''It seems that all the people that were targeted have one thing in common, and that is their political beliefs,'' Rosenfield said. ''That is the only thing I can conclude at this point.'' Update 9:35 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: Authorities are investigating a second package bomb addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and found at a mail facility in Delaware, according to multiple reports. NBC News reported that a package was found at a facility in Wilmington. Earlier Thursday, officials intercepted a mail bomb addressed to Biden at a facility in New Castle. Postal supervisor Sherina Dawson told WPVI that an employee noticed the package in Wilmington, which appeared similar to others sent to public figures since Monday. Update 9:15 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: As of Thursday morning, officials are investigating nine mail bombs addressed to public figures and intercepted by authorities in recent days. The packages were addressed to: The Clintons The Obamas Former Vice President Joe Biden Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California (two packages -- one sent to California and another to Washington) Philanthropist George Soros Actor Robert De Niro ''All shared the same kind of manila envelope, with a return address of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the former head of the Democratic National Committee,'' Cox Media Group's Jamie Dupree reported. ''Six 'Forever' flag stamps were affixed in the upper right hand corner, even if the package had not been sent through the U.S. Postal Service.'' The package addressed to Holder was sent Wednesday to Wasserman Schultz's office because it had a bad address on it, officials said, and the Florida lawmaker's office was listed as the return address. Update 8:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of the people targeted by a package bomb sent Wednesday to CNN's New York bureau, on Thursday criticized President Donald Trump's response to the packages. ''Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror,'' he wrote in a Twitter post. ''Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful.'' Earlier Thursday, the president accused the media of playing ''a very big part of the Anger we see today in our society.'' Update 8:16 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: WTXF in Philadelphia has shared photos of the suspicious package addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden. >> See the images here Update 7:59 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: NBC News is reporting that a suspicious package addressed to Vice President Joe Biden has been located at a Delaware postal facility. Update 7:51 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: The FBI ''is responding with our law enforcement partners to a US Postal facility in Delaware,'' CNN's Jim Sciutto tweeted Thursday morning. WPVI is reporting a ''large police presence'' at the facility in New Castle County. The station said it was ''not clear'' whether the presence was related to reports that a suspicious package may have been sent to former Vice President Joe Biden. Update 7:36 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: Several news outlets have shared the following photo of the package sent to Robert De Niro. >> See the image here Update 7:24 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: The suspicious package found early Thursday in New York's Tribeca neighborhood was addressed to actor Robert De Niro, CNN and ABC News are reporting. A New York police bomb squad has removed the package from a Greenwich Street building that is home to the Tribeca Grill and Tribeca Films, The Associated Press reported. De Niro owns the restaurant and founded the Tribeca Film Festival, according to CNN. Sources told WNBC that the package looked similar to the other ones sent to prominent public figures. One source told the station that the package also had a return address for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to blame the media for the ''anger we see today in our society.'' >> See the tweet here Update 6:21 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: A suspicious package is under investigation in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, multiple news outlets are reporting. WINS and WNBC are reporting that a device similar to those sent to several politicians yesterday was found at actor Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill. Update 5:39 a.m. EDT Oct. 25: Investigators are searching for a suspicious package that may have been addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden, CNN and Reuters are reporting, citing unnamed sources. ''The package, now considered suspicious because of similarities to others, was misaddressed and returned to sender,'' CNN reported. Update 9:45 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: President Donald Trump opened his rally in Moisinee, Wisconsin, Wednesday night by addressing the suspicious devices that were sent to his political rivals and CNN, after his constant political targets became real targets. >> From Cox Media Group's Jamie Dupree: Lawmakers in Congress condemn attempted mail attacks 'Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy itself,' Trump told the crowd at his rally. At least seven suspicious devices were sent to seven different locations over the past couple days, leading some experts to question whether there's a possible serial bomber on the loose ''There is one way to settle our disagreements. It's called peacefully at the ballot box,'' the president said. Then he pledged to find the suspect or suspects. 'We will find those responsible and we will bring those to justice.' While he seemed to tone down his rhetoric against news outlets at one point by calling for more civility in politics, he slipped back into familiar territory with his near constant criticism of the media. ''Media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories.'' Meantime The Associated Press is reporting the suspicious devices contained shards of glass and a sulphur-like substance. Update 8:10 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: The Los Angeles Police Department evacuated the South Los Angeles postal facility after an employee found what was described as a ''suspicious package'' addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters, according to the LA Times. The package appeared to be similar to the New York and DC bombs according to The Associated Press. Update 5:50 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has increased security at critical transportation locations after explosive devices were found in three places over the past two days. ''Public safety is our number one priority, and we are taking all necessary precautions to ensure the safety and security of New Yorkers,'' Cuomo said in a statement posted on social media. ''Out of an abundance of caution, I am deploying 100 additional National Guard soldiers and directing state law enforcement to double security at vital assets across New York, including LaGuardia and JFK, mass transit systems and bridges and tunnels,'' he said. Cuomo said New Yorkers have never given into fear and won't start now. ''As New Yorkers, we understand the dangers of our times -- just as we have done since the first bombing of the World Trade Center 25 years ago -- we will stand up and stand together against them.'' ''We are tough, we are resilient and we will not allow terrorist thugs to change the way we lead our lives. We will not let terrorism win -- not today, not ever,'' he said. Update 4:45 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz, whose Florida address was used as a return address on a suspicious package addressed to former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, called the incident ''an appalling attack on our democracy,'' in a statement Wednesday afternoon, according to NBC News. ''We will not be intimidated by this attempted act of violence,'' she said. Wasserman Schultz also said the attack ''must be vigorously prosecuted.'' Update 3:55 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: Waters confirmed in a statement that authorities seized a suspicious package Wednesday that was bound for her Washington office. 'I am appreciative of the law enforcement entitites who intercepted the package and are investigating the matter,' she said. 'I unequivocally condemn any and all acts of violence and terror.' Update 3:50 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker criticized President Donald Trump and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday for what he called 'a total and complete lack of understanding ... about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.' Zucker's statement came after an explosive was sent to the Time Warner Center, where CNN's New York bureau is housed, addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan. Update 3:25 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: The Time Warner Center has reopened hours after a suspicious package sent to Brennan, care of CNN, closed the center, Spectrum News NY1 reported. Update 3:05 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: Former President Bill Clinton thanked the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement officers for their responses to several packages containing explosive devices that were sent this week. ''They work tirelessly to keep our country and communities safe,'' Bill Clinton wrote Wednesday in a tweet. ''I am forever grateful for their efforts.'' One of the packages, intercepted Tuesday night by the Secret Service, was addressed to the former president's wife, Hillary Clinton, and bound for the couple's home in Chappaqua, New York, officials said. Update 2:30 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: President Donald Trump pledged to use the ''full weight of our government'' resources to investigate a series of packages sent to public figures Wednesday with apparent explosives inside. ''The safety of the American people is my highest priority,'' the president said. ''In these times we have to unify, we have to come together and send one very clear, strong message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.' The president has frequently faced criticism for his attacks on the media, including his support of a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter in 2017. Update 2:20 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: First lady Melania Trump thanked law enforcement Wednesday as authorities investigated a series of explosive devices sent to public figures earlier in the day. ''We cannot tolerate those cowardly attacks and I strongly condemn all who use violence,'' she said. Update 2:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: A senior law enforcement official told WNBC that a suspicious package mailed Wednesday to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was not linked to other packages sent Wednesday to public figures that contained apparent explosive devices. Authorities told CNN that the package mailed to Cuomo contained literature. It was deemed safe Wednesday afternoon. Update 1:55 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: Another suspicious package, intercepted Wednesday by U.S. Capitol Police, was addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, according to ABC. Update 1:40 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: A suspicious package sent to Wasserman Schultz's office in Florida on Wednesday was originally meant for former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, CNN reported, citing a pair of unidentified law enforcement sources. The package failed to reach its original target because it had the wrong address on it, according to CNN. Wasserman Schultz's office address was listed as on the package's return label, the news station reported. Update 1:20 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: CNN has released an image of the package sent to former CIA Director John Brennan, care of the news network's New York bureau, on Wednesday. Update 1:10 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a suspicious device was sent to his office in Manhattan. The governor said that a device ''has been identified and is being handled as we speak,'' during a news conference Wednesday. 'We would not be surprised if more devices show up,'' he said. Update 12:55 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: New York police said a package addressed to CNN and seized Wednesday morning included a live explosive and an envelope that contained white powder. Mayor Bill de Blasio said there were no credible and specific threats outstanding in the city. Update 12:35 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: Addressing a crowd in Florida on Wednesday, Clinton thanked the U.S. Secret Service for intercepting a suspected explosive addressed to her one day earlier. ''We are fine thanks to the men and women of the Secret Service who intercepted the package addressed to us long before it made its way to our home,'' Clinton said. ''Every day we are grateful for their service and commitment and obviously never more than today, but it is a troubling time, isn't it?'' Update 12:15 p.m. EDT Oct. 24: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump and other officials continue to monitor reports of possible explosive devices found by authorities on Tuesday and Wednesday. Huckabee Sanders had earlier condemned reports of suspected explosives sent to Clinton and Obama. Later, CNN reported that a possible explosive was sent to the news network's New York bureau, at the Time Warner Center. ''This is an ongoing situation,'' Huckabee Sanders said. ''Our condemnation of these (despicable) acts certainly includes threats made to CNN as well as current or former public servants. These cowardly acts are unacceptable and (won't) be tolerated.'' Update 11:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: Police have removed a suspected pipe bomb found Wednesday morning in the Time Warner Center mail room. Police told CNN that the device would likely be taken to Rodman's Neck in the Bronx, where it will be detonated. Update 11:45 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: Authorities in Florida are investigating another suspicious package sent to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office in Sunrise, WFOR reported. Wasserman Schultz previously served as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Update 11:35 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: A suspicious package sent Wednesday morning to CNN's New York bureau at the Time Warner Center was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, the news network reported, citing unidentified city and law enforcement officials. Brennan is a regular guest on CNN. A law enforcement official told the news network that the device found Wednesday in the Time Warner Center mail room 'is similar to the ones addressed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros.' Update 11:20 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, thanked the U.S. Secret Service after officials announced they had intercepted on Tuesday a possible explosive device addressed to Hillary Clinton. ''Every day, I am grateful to the women and men of the United States Secret Service,'' Chelsea Clinton wrote in a tweet. ''Thank you.'' Update 11:15 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: Officials with the U.S. Secret Service said reports of a suspicious package intercepted en route to the White House on Wednesday were erroneous. CNN had reported earlier Wednesday that a package containing a pipe bomb and addressed to the White House was intercepted at Joint Base Bolling in Washington. Update 11 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: The Time Warner Center in New York City was evacuated Wednesday morning after a suspicious package was found in the building's mail room, according to CNN. Anchors were on the air when the evacuation was ordered. It was not immediately clear whether the suspicious package was addressed to CNN. Update 10:35 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: White House officials on Wednesday condemned reports of explosive packages sent in recent days to Clinton, Obama and others. ''These terrorizing acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,'' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. Officials did not immediately confirm a report from CNN that a package containing a pipe bomb and addressed to the White House was intercepted at Joint Base Bolling in Washington. Update 10:20 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: New York City's Time Warner Center was evacuated Wednesday morning after a suspicious package was sent to the building, which houses CNN. Update 10:15 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: An unidentified law enforcement official told CNN that a fourth suspicious package was intercepted in Washington en route to the White House. >>Update 10 a.m. EDT Oct. 24: President Donald Trump has been briefed on a pair of possible explosive devices addressed in recent days to Clinton and Obama, NBC News reported. An unidentified White House official told the news network that White House officials are taking the situation ''extremely seriously.'' Original report: Officials with the U.S. Secret Service said in a statement Wednesday that a package addressed to Clinton was recovered late Tuesday night. Officials with the FBI said they were investigating a suspicious package ''found in the vicinity of the Clinton residence in Chappaqua, NY.'' The package was found around 1 a.m., Spectrum News NY 1 reported. An unidentified official described the device to The Associated Press as a 'functional explosive device.' An unidentified senior law enforcement official told WNBC that the package was similar to the bomb found earlier this week at philanthropist George Soros's home in Bedford, New York. Officials also confirmed that authorities intercepted a package Wednesday addressed to Obama. ''The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,'' Secret Service officials said in a statement. ''The protectees did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them.'' The AP reported that the device sent to Clinton had all the components of a bomb, including explosive powder. The device, which resembled a pipe bomb, was found in a mailbox, according to the AP. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
'He was off': Before bomb allegations, Cesar Sayoc was a strip club manager, wannabe wrestler and criminal with an anti-Democratic streak - Los Angeles Times
The Florida man accused of sending bombs to top Democrats across the U.S. is a registered Republican with a criminal record who angrily criticized liberals on social media and who has a flamboyant history as a strip club manager and aspiring wrestler.
At the scene, federal officials also towed away Sayoc's white van, which was covered with pro-Trump, anti-Democratic and anti-CNN stickers '-- like a physical version of the hostile posts and political memes posted on a Twitter account under Sayoc's first and middle name over the last two years.
The van in this Nov. 1, 2017, photo is believed to be the one owned by Cesar Sayoc. (Associated Press)
Many of the sometimes-incoherent posts criticized the billionaire liberal donors George Soros and Tom Steyer; Democratic politicians such as former President Obama and Tallahassee Mayor and Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum; and liberal celebrities such as George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey.
The Twitter account, which was taken down Friday, also called Trump the ''greatest gift from God.'' An FBI affidavit said that some of the misspellings in the social media posts were consistent with misspellings on bomb packages sent to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
As you can imagine, we want no affiliation with this nut job.
Michael Caprio, a spokesman for Chippendale's
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A typical post tweeted Oct. 13 read: ''We Unconquered Seminole Tribe, HardRock,Millions of our customers, Vets, Current, Say absolutely No to Andrew Gillum Liberal,Left,Democrat George Soros,Cal.Tom Steyer Socialist High Taxes, High Crime.''
''He was off, man,'' said Robert Fautz, the landlord of a Hollywood, Fla., grocery store where Sayoc once worked in the early 2010s. ''He was kind of like a loner-type guy, like a guy in high school who wore black lipstick.''
Fautz, who said he hadn't seen Sayoc in at least six years, said that Sayoc was very opinionated, but that his political views had apparently shifted over the last decade. ''I would have called him like a Democrat, if I had to pick him,'' Fautz said. ''He was pretty liberal.'' Sayoc is now a registered Republican.
It's only one of several shifting identities that Sayoc '-- who has claimed Filipino, Italian and Native American heritage '-- has held in his life, which has been marked by abrupt changes in direction and a smattering of criminal convictions.
A graduate of North Miami Beach High School, Sayoc went on to play soccer at the collegiate level at Brevard College in North Carolina between 1980 and 1981 and then at the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 1983 and 1984. He didn't graduate.
Years later, in a bombastic and wide-ranging 2014 deposition in a civil lawsuit, Sayoc said that he played soccer professionally for A.C. Milan, one of the highest-profile soccer clubs in Europe. (There is no apparent record of Sayoc being on the team's professional roster.) He also said he joined a professional wrestling training camp with the hopes of doing WWE-style wrestling.
Sayoc also claimed to have played professional arena football in the U.S. in Arizona and Charlotte before going on to various business ventures, where he hyped his success '-- especially as a booker and road manager for a Chippendales-style men's strip show, which he said he had done since 1982. ''I'm the best at this business,'' he said of his work at strip clubs and shows.
Even when being grilled by lawyers, Sayoc had a flair for unapologetic promotion that was positively Trumpian.
''Chippendales '... We're the number one name in entertainment,'' Sayoc said in a deposition involving a strip club where he later worked. ''Put them on any stage and we'll blow them out of the water, because there ain't nobody that stands with us on any entertainment stage. I'll put a hundred thousand dollars against anybody that says so, let them put all their clubs together and we'll embarrass them.''
But the real Chippendales has a much dimmer view of Sayoc's stories.
''This man never worked for us,'' said Michael Caprio, a spokesman for the revue, who added that it appeared that Sayoc actually worked for a company that Chippendales has sued for infringing on the group's name. ''As you can imagine, we want no affiliation with this nut job.''
One of the lawyers who took Sayoc's deposition had a similarly skeptical perspective.
''He gave a biography of himself that seemed delusional and almost comical in how farfetched it had to be,'' the attorney, David McDonald, wrote in an email to The Times. ''He seemed to want to place himself as a key figure in a number of wildly divergent business ventures, when it was obvious he could not have played the role he described.''
In a 2012 bankruptcy filing, Sayoc said he was unmarried, living with his mother, and earning $13,000 a year as a grocery store manager after collecting unemployment in 2009 and 2010. He said he owned a 2001 Chevy Tahoe with 285,000 miles on it.
Even in the bankruptcy filing, Sayoc didn't list the grocery store as his employer '-- rather, he said he worked for the investment company that owned the property.
''He was definitely very sure of himself. He was confident, but he was a bust-out. He didn't have any money,'' said Fautz, who owned the investment company. ''He was working at a grocery store in a low-income, moderate neighborhood.''
Fautz, who is of Italian heritage, said Sayoc also made a big deal about being Italian, but there was ''nothing authentic Italian about him.''
In Sayoc's Twitter profile, he seemed to more recently identify himself as a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida '-- and in 2016 created an LLC called ''Native American Catering & Vending'' '-- but in a statement, the tribe said it could find ''no evidence'' that Sayoc was a member.
His life has also been pocked by a variety of criminal arrests, including convictions for petty theft, grand theft, possession of an unlawful driver's license, illegal possession of steroids, and battery.
In 2014 '-- the same year Sayoc was bragging in a deposition about his prowess as a club promoter who could command $4,500 a week '-- he was accused of stealing copper piping off a shelf at Home Depot.
The criminal case drawing the most curiosity this week was Sayoc's 2002 arrest for threatening to bomb an electric utility ''worse than September 11th'' if it shut off his electricity, according to a police report.
In Sayoc's deposition more than a decade later, he blamed his own ''stupidity'' and said, ''I got on the phone and I said, 'What do I have to do, blow up a building to talk to somebody?''' He said it was all a misunderstanding over a joke.
Except in Sayoc's version of the story, he was a dry-cleaning business owner who had been overcharged for some sort of deposits. (He didn't actually own the shop.)
''Even though what he was saying was fantastical,'' McDonald said, ''he said it with conviction and seemed to believe it.''
And by 2018, Sayoc's social media feeds seemed to be singularly focused on his assertion that Democrats were deceiving the world about their true, manipulative natures.
''They can lie all they want now,'' reads one of the memes posted by the Twitter account under Sayoc's name, ''but the truth is the truth!''
Times staff writers Richard Winton and Melissa Etehad contributed to this report.
All About Man Arrested in Connection to Bombs, Cesar Sayoc
The van reportedly owned by suspect Caesar Sayoc Jr. Photo: Uncredited/AP/REX/Shutterstock
On Friday, authorities announced that they had arrested a man in Plantation, Florida, in connection with the slew of bombs sent to prominent figures '-- including former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama '-- as well as to CNN's New York headquarters. NBC reports that the man in custody is Cesar Sayoc Jr., a 56-year-old Florida resident.
NBC News reports that DNA evidence played a role in the arrest of Sayoc, and that his white van, which had pictures of President Donald Trump and the presidential seal on its window, has been seized. According to the New York Times, Sayoc is a registered Republican with an extensive criminal history '-- including one instance where he was arrested and accused of threatening to use a bomb. He was reportedly born in New York.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice tweeted on Friday morning that a suspect was in custody; on Friday afternoon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Sayoc would be charged with five crimes, including illegally mailing explosives, the AP reports.
Here's what we know so far.
On Friday, Cesar Sayoc Jr. was arrested in connection with the mail bombs sent to prominent politicians and CNN. He is a 56-year-old resident of Aventura, Florida, and is a registered Republican. Sayoc also has an extensive criminal record that dates back to 1991.
Photo of suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. pic.twitter.com/dvjEApfhAL
'-- Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) October 26, 2018He has been arrested in the past on drug and felony theft charges, as well as making a previous bomb threat, the Times reports. He was sentenced to one year of probation in 2004 over the bomb threat. He was last arrested in 2015. As has been the case with other terrorism suspects, a domestic-violence complaint was filed against Sayoc by a woman named Viola Altieri in 1994, though the Miami Herald reports that she later asked that the complaint be dismissed. Altieri appeared to be his grandmother, according to the Herald.
Three years after bailing him out, Viola accused Sayoc of domestic violence in Broward County. pic.twitter.com/yogh8UZi3R
'-- Trevor Aaronson (@trevoraaronson) October 26, 2018Per the Times, Sayoc filed for bankruptcy in 2012 in Miami. The Herald also notes that a two-bedroom home he owned in Fort Lauderdale went into foreclosure in 2009.
Following Sayoc's address, several social-media accounts appearing to belong to him have come to light. According to HuffPost, one Twitter account created in 2016 '-- under the handle @hardrock2016 '-- that appears to belong to him has over 1,000 images, with many relating to baseless conspiracy theories. For instance, the account includes a post claiming Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor David Hogg was paid by George Soros, while others touted theories about Democratic congresswomen Maxine Waters and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of whom were targeted by the pipe bombs. BuzzFeed News notes that a Facebook account appearing to belong to Sayoc include pictures of him at pro-Trump events, wearing a MAGA hat, posting MAGA memes, and otherwise showing his support for Trump.
CNN, MSNBC, and other networks shared live video on Friday morning of the white van allegedly owned by the suspect, which was later covered by a blue tarp by authorities. The van had pro-Donald Trump and other right-wing stickers on it. A complaint filed by federal prosecutors stated, ''The windows of Sayoc's van were covered with images including images critical of CNN.''
A closer look at the stickers that are on the van at the scene in Plantation, Florida. pic.twitter.com/Qml9tmEKMy
'-- MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 26, 2018The Washington Post reports that authorities were able to trace the suspect from a fingerprint found on an envelope that contained a bomb mailed to Rep. Maxine Waters. Authorities also found DNA matching a sample taken during one of Sayoc's other previous arrests on two of the other bombs.
According to CBS News, Sayoc's arrest took place near an AutoZone store. A witness told CBS News that, while across the street from the AutoZone, he heard a ''flash bang'' device, saw smoke, then saw a man on the ground surrounded by police officers. The Herald reports the arrest was made at the AutoZone instead of Sayoc's home to avoid a dangerous confrontation.
The arrest follows the discovery of several bombs this week that were sent to high-profile politicians, public figures, and CNN. The first pipe bomb was discovered on Monday in the suburban New York mailbox of billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor George Soros; by early Wednesday, similar bombs were found in mail sent to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Shortly after, a bomb addressed to former CIA director John Brennan was discovered in the mailroom of CNN in New York City.
Additional bombs were also discovered in mail sent to former vice-president Joe Biden, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former attorney general Eric Holder (but the mail was rerouted to its return address, the office of congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz), actor Robert De Niro, Senator Cory Booker, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper (also addressed to CNN). Another suspicious package addressed to Senator Kamala Harris is also being investigated, per CNN.
The Washington Post reports that a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York shows that inside at least three packages sent to the targets, including Obama, Brennan, and Waters, were pictures of each individual with red ''X'' marks over their faces.
During a Friday afternoon press conference, Sessions announced that Sayoc would be charged with five federal crimes, and that he faces up to 58 years in prison. He was charged with illegally mailing explosives, transporting explosives across state lines, assaulting federal officials, threatening former presidents and others, and threatening interstate communications.
The Post notes that FBI director Christopher Wray referred to the 13 bombs recovered as ''IEDs,'' which is an acronym for improvised explosive devices. Wray also said during he press conference that the agency is trying to determine whether the devices ''were functional,'' but he stressed that they did contain materials that could potentially explode. ''These are not hoax devices.''
When asked why Sayoc was targeting Democrats, Sessions said during the press conference that Sayoc appeared to be ''partisan.''
REPORTER: Attorney General Sessions, can you tell us plainly why Sayoc was targeting Democrats?SESSIONS: "I don't know. Other than what you might normally expect. He appears to be a partisan." pic.twitter.com/dKbKyTJZcv
'-- Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 26, 2018This post has been updated, and will continually be updated as more information becomes available.
What to Know About Man Arrested in Connection With the Bombs
Of Course Donald Trump Inspired Cesar Sayoc's Alleged Terrorism
For three long days this week, the Republican Party held its breath as a serial bomber sent a dozen devices to CNN's New York headquarters, two former Democratic presidents, a former Democratic vice president, two former CIA directors, several elected Democrats, and Democratic activists George Soros and Tom Steyer. After months of rabid attacks on his opponents as enemies of the people, Donald Trump's crop of crazy came to fruition this week and was almost ready for harvest. By either incompetence, luck, design flaws, or providence, none of the bombs in this campaign of political terror cost life or limb.
This hasn't been an easy week for Trump loyalists. They spent the last 72 hours praying that the MAGA Bomber would turn out to be a false flag attack, the product of some dastardly Democratic cabal. The idea, which bubbled up from the fever swamps of Breitbart, Infowars, and the rest of the Trump-right ecosystem like a fart in a bathtub, was as illogical as it was pathetic. It couldn't be this president's penchant for daily political arson, right?
Twitter Javerts like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Frank Gaffney, John Cardillo, Laura Loomer, Jacob Wohl, and alt-right thought leader and Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec all jumped to sell the idea that Trump's gushing sewer of inflammatory rhetoric could never inspire a serial bomber. Their mirror-world version of Occam's Razor was that this must be a fiendishly clever leftist plot to disrupt the November elections. Just hours before the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, the president reinforced their fevered belief.
Introspection isn't exactly one of this president's strong suits, and the discovery that the MAGA Bomber was one of the millions of creatures he created, inspired, and motivated to wage war against those he describes as Enemies of the People will never trouble the placid waters of his stunningly shallow intellect. Worry about his responsibility will never penetrate the vacuum of his moral landscape. Trump made an enemies list, and then he weaponized his social media power to push that enemies list into the minds of the furious and febrile who slavishly lap up his every utterance. What, precisely, did he think would happen?
Before Republicans sputter themselves into a tu quoque seizure, calling out Trump's inflammatory political rhetoric isn't an excuse for political violence against Republicans. It doesn't trivialize or ignore the acts of violence committed against members of Congress, or anyone else.
''There is no mechanism to stop Trump's division, radicalization, and calls to arms against his enemies.''
All political violence is unacceptable in a functioning republic.
All of it.
All the time.
From anyone, left, right, or otherwise.
This is why we need to look objectively at Trump's role in this affair. No one in American political life has even a fraction of his power to inspire behavior and action. No one. It's time we recognize that Trump's unique social media presence is a weapon of radicalization. No one else in the American political landscape stokes the resentments, fears, and prejudices of his base with equal power.
Trump always misses the chance to be bigger and better. He never fails to close the door on opportunities to be a consequential leader and not a winking, simpering buffoon who holds the title but never wears the mantle of the presidency. As we saw after Charlottesville, his defiance of every American norm and his eagerness to ''both sides'' every argument is an extended middle finger to our republic.
''This is the future of the GOP under Trump: not a party but a backwater sub-Reddit chasing conspiracies to paper over the Dear Leader's raging inconsistencies.''
What's shocking about what we've seen from Sayoc's social media feeds is just how ordinary they are in the Trump online ecosystem. The slurry of conspiracy theories (particularly all things Soros), birtherism, xenophobia, boomer memes, and MAGA spank-bank material in his Twitter and Facebook feeds is the raw distillate from Infowars, Breitbart, and Fox.
I could find dozens of similar feeds just by scanning my latest crop of trolls. Sayoc isn't a one-off loner radicalized by a few edge-case media outlets; he's the inevitable product of an alternative-reality media silo that increasingly defines the intellectual landscape of the Trump right.
By now we've all seen Sayoc's van. The vehicle, covered with a thick layer of pro-Trump, anti-media bumper stickers, signs, and memes, is a perfect symbol of this moment and his movement. This material isn't an outlier; it's definitional to Trump Republicanism. The era of Trump ended the GOP branding as the party of limited government, fiscal discipline, constitutional loyalty, and moral probity. Trump's base defines the GOP as a party of ranty Facebook groups, garishly overwrought conspiracy theories (hello, QAnon!), and raging oppositional defiant disorder.
This is the future of the GOP under Trump; it's not a party; it's a backwater sub-Reddit careening from crisis to crisis, chasing an increasingly elaborate set of conspiracies to paper over the raging inconsistencies of the Dear Leader's message and conduct.
Cesar Sayoc isn't just some loner gone wrong. He isn't merely a one-in-a-million Unabomber with a cabin in the woods, a crazed manifesto, and too much black powder. Sayoc is the future. Donald Trump's famously loyal base has been radicalized, and while only the tiniest fraction will resort to political violence, neither the president nor the hollow shell of the GOP will do anything to stop it.
This is a president with obvious mental and moral deficits who will say and do anything to retain power. He's backed by a runaway ''conservative'' media feeding his rabid base a daily dose of conspiratorial lunacy. There is no mechanism to stop Trump's division, radicalization, and calls to arms against his enemies.
America was lucky this week; none of the weapons exploded, and the FBI and state law enforcement moved with amazing speed to apprehend the bomber. We might not always be so lucky, particularly if this president continues to give what future Sayocs see as their marching orders.
.
Obama rips Trump, GOP in fiery speeches for Midwest Dems
DETROIT (AP) '-- Former President Barack Obama criticized President Donald Trump's tenure in office Friday in fiery speeches in Milwaukee and Detroit that took aim at him and other Republicans for ''making stuff up.''
The speeches were among Obama's sharpest and most direct takedowns of Trump's presidency, although the former president was careful to not mention Trump by name. He said the ''character of our country is on the ballot'' in the first midterm election since Trump took office.
Obama cited a recent Trump comment that he would pass a tax cut before the November election. Obama then told the crowds in high school gymnasiums that ''Congress isn't even in session before the election! He just makes it up!''
At one point Obama said in Wisconsin: ''Here's the thing. Everything I say you can look up.''
Obama's visits were to urge people to vote for Michigan and Wisconsin's Democratic candidates. While Trump was frequently the target of his criticism, he did not spare Republicans generally and said they are lying when they say they want to protect people with pre-existing conditions while trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
''What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff up,'' Obama said. ''Calling up, down. Calling black, white. That's what your governor is doing with these ads, just making stuff up,'' he said, referring to Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his assertions that he wants to protect health care for those with pre-existing conditions. Walker is being challenged by Democrat Tony Evers.
In Michigan, Obama credited Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer for helping to expand Medicaid and said ''few people fought against it harder'' than her Republican opponent, state Attorney General Bill Schuette. He said voters can trust Sen. Debbie Stabenow to protect people with pre-existing conditions because ''she was there'' to help pass his health law. She is facing a challenge from Republican John James, whom Obama criticized for saying he backs Trump's agenda ''2,000 percent.''
Obama used the subject of Hillary Clinton's private email server to accuse Republicans of trying to ''scare the heck out of people before every election'' and also to mock Trump about the Chinese spying on his cellphone.
''In the last election, it was Hillary's emails. 'This is terrible' ... 'This is a national security crisis.' They didn't care about emails and you know how you know? Because if they did, they'd be up in arms right now that the Chinese are listening to the president's iPhone that he leaves in his golf cart.''
Obama spoke about the slow-moving migrant caravan from Central American bound for the United States as another example of a Republican scare tactic.
''Now the latest, they're trying to convince everybody to be afraid of a bunch of impoverished, malnourished refugees a thousand miles away,'' he said. ''That's the thing that is the most important thing in this election,'' he said. ''Not health care, not whether or not folks are able to retire, doing something about higher wages, rebuilding our roads and bridges and putting people back to work.''
''Suddenly,'' he continued, changing his voice to a high-pitch to strike a mocking tone, ''it's these group of folks. We don't even know where they are. They're right down there.''
Referring to Trump's promise to ''drain the swamp,'' Obama said that instead ''they have gone to Washington and just plundered away.''
''In Washington they have racked up enough indictments to field a football team,'' he said. ''Nobody in my administration got indicted.''
Obama's visit to Milwaukee was the first time he was in the city for a political event since March 2016, when he came to celebrate enrollment numbers in the Affordable Care Act. He did not campaign for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, a state she narrowly lost that proved crucial to Trump becoming president.
Michigan is another battleground state in the Midwest that Democrats lost in 2016, despite Obama's visit the day before the election.
''I'm hopeful Michigan,'' he said. ''I'm hopeful that despite all the noise, despite all the lies, we're going to come through all that. We're going to remember who we are, who we're called to be. I'm hopeful because out of this political darkness, I'm seeing a great awakening.''
___
Moreno reported from Milwaukee.
In a week of domestic terrorism, a commander in chief mostly missing in action - Los Angeles Times
As President Trump on Friday celebrated the FBI's arrest of a suspect in a spate of attempted mail bombings, he read from a teleprompter to promise ''swift justice,'' denounce ''despicable'' political violence and call for national unity.
Yet just two hours earlier '-- and less than an hour before the arrest '-- the president had tweeted his frustration that the media's coverage of ''this 'Bomb' stuff,'' instead of politics, was hurting Republicans' momentum headed into the Nov. 6 midterm election. By his quotation marks, he even seemed to subscribe to some conservatives' ''false flag'' conspiracy theories that the threats were a liberal hoax.
Even after the arrest, Trump turned from his scripted statement at the White House to address supporters there, reverting to his usual attacks on ''fake polls,'' the media and ''globalists.'' That last mention prompted chants against George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who was a target of a pipe bomb, and ''Lock him up!,'' which a smiling Trump indulged.
It was yet another moment of mixed messages and missed opportunities for leadership from a president who, in times of national crisis, has repeatedly delivered the expected ''presidential'' performance only briefly and from a script, before returning to his familiar political attacks. In this case, moreover, the attacks were the very sort that had critics charging that his provocative rhetoric '-- including the harsh jibes at Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others '-- were what goaded the would-be bomber to target them.
''You want and expect presidential leadership in times like these to be strong, empathetic and consistent. And it's really the consistency bit where President Trump falls short,'' said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who was a spokesman for former House Speaker John A. Boehner.
''He'll make the teleprompter speech, say the right thing, and then there's a 3 a.m. tweet or an aside that goes right back to viewing these events through a partisan or self-centered lens,'' Steel added. ''It undercuts his sincerity.''
The White House declined to comment on this line of criticism. Aides also refused to say whether Trump had been briefed on the arrest before or after his 10:19 a.m. tweet in which he suggested doubts about the attempted bombs. The suspect, 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc Jr., was arrested at his white van, which was plastered with tributes to Trump and hate messages against Democrats and CNN, which was the intended recipient of at least two pipe-bomb devices.
''Whatever he does, there are followers who model their behavior on his,'' said Charlie Sykes, a conservative author who has broken with his party over Trump. ''In a country of 350 million people, there are going to be more than a few unbalanced individuals who will take him both literally and seriously.''
Yet, Sykes said, ''The president will read the right statement and then he immediately reverts to form.''
Trump's inability to sustain a unifying message in the midst of national trauma '-- in this case potential assassinations of two former presidents, former Cabinet officials and several members of Congress '-- sets him apart from all predecessors, according to Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.
''All our presidents are very political and partisan, but there is this check where in these moments, they have to be unifying,'' he said. ''It's low-hanging fruit for a president to respond in a consistent, somber way to something like this. Trump can do it a little bit but it's almost as if the temptation is too strong to go back to his campaign rhetoric.''
An early, memorable example of what's become Trump's familiar behavior pattern was his response to the violence incited in August 2017 by white supremacists and neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Va. He vacillated between words of unity and then statements condemning both the racists and the mostly peaceful counter-protesters equally.
On Wednesday, after authorities intercepted suspected bombs mailed to Hillary Clinton, former President Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, Trump made his first remarks to the country from the White House, reading from a teleprompter to decry violence and disunity.
But he stepped on that message almost as soon as he stepped off Air Force One that evening in Wisconsin for a political rally. There, he joked repeatedly that he was behaving and ''being nice'' by eschewing some of his usual attack lines, against Clinton and Waters, for example.
It was the closest thing to an acknowledgement that his incendiary rhetoric might contribute to the charged political climate. Yet he attacked the media, as usual, for ''fake news'' that caused the anger.
The next morning, Trump made that point with a tweet:
''A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!''
Trump did not call any of the Democrats who were the intended targets, as past presidents likely would have.
Leon E. Panetta, a former White House chief of staff and Cabinet official in Democratic administrations, said presidents typically have had a ''sense of their obligation as president to try to comfort people that are being threatened,'' regardless of party.
''Everything for him is placed in a political context that he interprets as not requiring the president to kind of play the role of leader of the country,'' Panetta said. ''He's in the middle of an election campaign. He's been doing all of these rallies. I think in many ways there was a sense that whether or not this threat was real or not, that this was just kind of the political volatility that we're all a part of.''
Trump did use his phone to tweet '-- about 50 times since the news broke on Monday afternoon of the first suspected bomb at Soros' New York estate. Six were against the so-called caravan of refugees from Central America walking toward the U.S. border, which Trump has tried to make an anti-immigration campaign issue. Four related to the bomb scare, though just one '-- a retweet of a post by Vice President Mike Pence '-- expressed concern for the intended targets while the others criticized the media.
Most memorably, on Friday morning as the FBI closed in on Sayoc, Trump tweeted his complaint against the media for reporting on ''this 'Bomb' stuff'' to the detriment of Republicans. He also tweeted his complaints that Twitter had removed followers from his account, about the cost of illegal immigration and, pre-dawn, against CNN.
''There are certain baseline things that a president should do to unify the country, to step away from partisan politics for at least a few days, to reach out to his political opponents, and he's done none of these things,'' Sykes said.
Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for President George W. Bush, said Trump is ''driven by political approval.''
Fleischer said he would have preferred that Trump display a more traditional style but believes ''a sufficient number of Americans shrug their shoulders and say, 'That's Trump.'''
As he left the White House on Friday evening for another rally, Trump spoke briefly with reporters and was asked whether the terrorism scare would cause him to further temper his political remarks.
''I think I've been toned down, if you want to know the truth,'' he said.
He went back to casting blame elsewhere. ''The media has been unbelievably unfair to Republicans, conservatives and certainly to me,'' he said, and walked away. At the rally in Charlotte, N.C., he repeated the message, to cheers and chants from supporters.
There, after restraining himself at an earlier rally this week amid the attention to the pipe bombs, the president was back to slamming both ''Crooked Hillary'' '-- encouraging the usual ''Lock her up!'' chants '-- and Waters, though he omitted his usual nickname for her, ''Low IQ Maxine.''
''I won't say it,'' Trump told the crowd. Pointing toward reporters, he added, ''I want them to say I was so nice tonight.''
Cesar Sayoc Wasn't First. A List of Trump-Inspired Attackers.
Supporters hold up their hats during a rally held by President Trump on March 15, 2017 in Nashville, Tenn.
Photo: Andrea Morales/Getty Images
Update: October 27, 2018, 4:30 p.m. EDTMinutes after this story was published, news reports confirmed that multiple people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh had been killed by a gunman. The gunman taken into custody has been linked to anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant posts on social media. At least 11 people were killed and six injured at the Tree of Life synagogue.President Donald Trump is a threat to national security.
He preaches hate. He incites violence. He inspires attacks.
We knew this before Friday's arrest of Cesar Sayoc, who has been charged with a number of crimes in connection with more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to the nation's most prominent Democrats, among others. As my colleague Trevor Aaronson has written, Sayoc is ''a fervent Trump supporter.'' Check out his van; his posts on social media; the testimony of his colleagues.
I have no doubt that Trump helped radicalize Sayoc. Yet Trump apologists are keen to distance their hero from this particular villain. So too, of course, is the president himself. ''We have seen an effort by the media in recent hours to use the sinister actions of one individual to score political points against me,'' Trump said at a campaign rally on Friday evening.
''One individual''? Who is he kidding? Sayoc may be the latest individual to have combined his love for Trump with a love for violence against Trump's opponents, but he is far from the first to do so. In fact, there have been a number of violent threats, attacks and killings linked to Trump supporters in recent years '-- few of which have dominated the headlines in the same way as Sayoc's alleged attempt to assassinate top Democrats, including two former U.S. presidents.
Since the summer of 2015, a bevy of Trump supporters, fans and sympathizers have beaten, shot, stabbed, run over and bombed their fellow Americans. They have taken innocent lives while aping the president's violent rhetoric, echoing his racist conspiracy theories and, as in the case of Sayoc, targeting the exact same people and organizations that Trump loudly and repeatedly targets at his rallies and on Twitter: Muslims, refugees, immigrants, the Clintons, CNN, and left-wing protesters, among others.
We cannot allow Trump's apologists on Fox News and in Congress to pretend that this was a one-off; that the charges against Sayoc aren't part of a growing and disturbing trend of violent crimes against minorities and the media perpetrated by far-right, pro-Trump individuals and militias.
So here is a (partial) list of Trump supporters who are alleged to have carried out horrific attacks in recent years '-- some of them seemingly inspired by the president himself.
Scott Leader and Steve Leader, August 2015
On 19 August 2015, Scott Leader, 38, and his brother, Steve Leader, 30, attacked a homeless man in Boston who they wrongly believed to be an undocumented immigrant.
''Donald Trump was right,'' they told police, after beating the man with a metal pipe and then urinating on him. ''All these illegals need to be deported.''
Trump's response? He eventually called it a ''terrible'' incident but only after an earlier statement to reporters in which the then-Republican candidate referred to his supporters as ''very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.''
Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright, and Patrick Eugene Stein, October 2016
On October 14, 2016, the FBI arrested three men '-- Patrick Eugene Stein, Curtis Allen, and Gavin Wright '-- for plotting a series of bomb attacks against the Somali-American community of Garden City, Kansas. Calling themselves ''the Crusaders,'' they had planned to launch what the Guardian said ''could have been the deadliest domestic terror attack since the Oklahoma bombing in 1995,'' the day after the November 2016 presidential election.
Two of these three men were open supporters of Trump, and obsessed with anti-Muslim, anti-refugee conspiracy theories. For Stein, according to a profile in New York magazine, Trump was ''the Man.'' Allen wrote on Facebook: ''I personally back Donald Trump.'' The trio even asked a federal judge to boost the number of pro-Trump jurors at their trial (at which they were found guilty of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and and of conspiring against rights).
Trump's response? The president, who once suggested that Americans had ''suffered enough'' from an influx of Somali refugees, has never been asked about these three militiamen and has never condemned their plot.
Alexandre Bissonnette, January 2017
On the evening of January 29, 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire on worshippers at the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City, Canada, killing six of them and wounding 19.
Bisonnette, 27, was obsessed with Trump '-- he searched for the president on Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube more than 800 times between January 1, 2017 and the day of the shooting. A former university classmate told the Toronto Globe and Mail that he ''frequently argued'' with Bissonette over the latter's support for Trump.
In his police interrogation video, Bissonnette can be heard telling officers that he decided to attack the mosque after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted a message of welcome to refugees in the wake of the U.S. president's travel ban '-- which was issued two days before the mosque attack.
Trump's response? The president may have expressed his condolences to the Canadian premier in private, but he has never publicly mentioned the shooting, the killer or the six dead Muslims.
Michael Hari, Michael McWhorter, and Joe Morris, August 2017
In March 2018, three alleged members of a far-right militia '-- Michael Hari, Michael McWhorter, and Joe Morris '-- were charged in connection with the bombing of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, on August 5, 2017. McWhorter is alleged to have told an FBI agent that the attack was an attempt ''to scare'' Muslims ''out of the country.''
Back in 2017, Hari, who owns a security company, submitted a $10 billion proposal to build Trump's wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. ''We would look at the wall as not just a physical barrier to immigration but also as a symbol of the American determination to defend our culture, our language, our heritage, from any outsiders,'' Hari said. Sound familiar?
Hari is also alleged to be the ringleader of the ''White Rabbit Militia '-- Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters, Three Percent,'' which has posted online messages about ''Deep State activities'' and ''the attempt of the FBI to wiretap the Trump campaign and interfere in the election.''
Trump's response? To date, the president has never publicly referenced, let alone condemned, the bomb attack on the Minnesota mosque. His then-adviser Sebastian Gorka suggested the incident might ''have been propagated by the left.''
James Alex Fields, Jr., August 2017
On August 12, 2017, a car crashed into a crowd of people protesting a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. The alleged driver of the car, James Alex Fields Jr., has been charged with, among other crimes, hit and run and first-degree murder.
Fields, according to a former middle school classmate, enjoyed drawing swastikas and talked about ''loving Hitler.'' The registered Republican, according to a former high school teacher, also adored Trump. In an interview with the Associated Press, the former teacher ''said Fields was a big Trump supporter because of what he believed to be Trump's views on race. Trump's proposal to build a border wall with Mexico was particularly appealing to Fields.''
Trump's response? The president called the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville ''very fine people'' just three days after Fields allegedly killed Heyer.
Brandon Griesemer, January 2018
On January 9-10, 2018, 19-year-old Brandon Griesemer allegedly made 22 calls to CNN. In four of those calls, the part-time grocery clerk from Novi, Michigan, threatened to kill employees at the network's Atlanta, Georgia, headquarters, according to a federal affidavit.
''Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down,'' he told a CNN operator. Again, sound familiar? Trump has spent his entire presidency slamming CNN as ''fake news,'' singling out the network for criticism and abuse. According to the Washington Post, a high school classmate of Griesemer described him as a Trump supporter who ''came in after the election and was very happy.'' The classmate, reported the Post, ''compared Griesemer's reaction to that of a fan whose team had won a big game.''
Trump's reaction? On the morning of January 23, the day after the news broke of Griesemer's threats against CNN, the president took to Twitter to mock'...yep, you guessed it'... ''Fake News CNN.''
Nikolas Cruz, February 2018
On the afternoon of February 14, 2018, 19-year-old gunman Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
According to an investigation by CNN, Cruz was part of a private Instagram group in which he ''repeatedly espoused racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views'' and ''bragged about writing a letter to President Donald Trump '-- and receiving a response.''
Cruz also posted a photo of himself on Instagram wearing one of Trump's signature red MAGA hats, with an American-flag-colored bandana covering the bottom half of his face. Former classmates have confirmed that he also wore the red Trump hat to school.
Trump's response? The White House has never confirmed or denied whether they received, or responded to, a letter from Cruz.
I could go on and on. I could tell you about Jeremy Christian, who allegedly stabbed two people to death on a train in Portland, Oregon, and said ''if Donald Trump is the Next Hitler then I am joining his SS''; or James Jackson, who confessed to fatally stabbing a homeless black man in New York, and subscribed to far-right YouTube channels that support Trump; or Sean Urbanski, who allegedly stabbed a black U.S. army lieutenant to death, and ''liked memes about Donald Trump''; or Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who allegedly killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Texas, and who followed only 13 Instagram accounts, including the official accounts for the White House, Trump, Ivanka and Melania.
The truth is that the sooner we all recognize that the president of the United States is helping to radicalize a new generation of angry far-right men, the better.
It would be wrong, of course, to blame Trump and Trump alone for these attacks. Many of these alleged attackers have mental health issues; quite a few of them were also men of violence, intolerance and bigotry long before Trump launched his political career.
To pretend, however, that the president has nothing to do with these violent criminals or their violent crimes is absurd. To compare the sheer number of Trump supporters who have been charged or convicted for attacks and attempted attacks on Muslims or Latinos or journalists with the single supporter of Bernie Sanders who shot Republican congressman Steve Scalise in June 2017 is disingenuous. To ignore the way in which Trump has set the vicious tone and created the toxic climate is shameful.
''It's time we recognize that Trump's unique social media presence is a weapon of radicalization,'' wrote Republican strategist and Trump critic Rick Wilson on Friday. ''No one else in the American political landscape stokes the resentments, fears, and prejudices of his base with equal power.''
The president may not be pulling the trigger or planting the bomb but he is enabling much of the hatred behind those acts. He is giving aid and comfort to angry white men by offering them clear targets '-- and then failing to fully denounce their violence. Is it any wonder then that hate crimes are on the rise? Or that, as one study found, ''one in five perpetrators of hate violence incidents referenced President Trump, a Trump policy, or a Trump campaign slogan'' between November 2016 and November 2017?
Cesar Sayoc was not the first Trump supporter to allegedly try and kill and maim those on the receiving end of Trump's demonizing rhetoric. And, sadly, he won't be the last.
Active shooter drill planned for Thursday night in Squirrel Hill, Darlington Road to close | TribLIVE
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SCOTUS
New questions raised about Avenatti claims regarding Kavanaugh
(C) J. Scott Applewhite Image: Chuck Grassley When Sen. Chuck Grassley referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for criminal investigation Thursday, he cited Swetnick's interview with NBC News as evidence the two were trying to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the NBC News interview that aired on Oct. 1, Swetnick back-tracked on or contradicted parts of her sworn statement where she alleged she witnessed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh "cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be 'gang raped' in a side room or bedroom by a 'train' of boys."
NBC News also found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick's claims.
In the second statement, the unidentified woman said she witnessed Kavanaugh "spike" the punch at high school parties in order to sexually take advantage of girls. But less than 48 hours before Avenatti released her sworn statement on Twitter, the same woman told NBC News a different story.
Referring to Kavanaugh spiking the punch, "I didn't ever think it was Brett," the woman said to reporters in a phone interview arranged by Avenatti on Sept. 30 after repeated requests to speak with other witnesses who might corroborate Swetnick's claims. As soon as the call began, the woman said she never met Swetnick in high school and never saw her at parties and had only become friends with her when they were both in their 30s.
When asked in the phone interview if she ever witnessed Kavanaugh act inappropriately towards girls, the woman replied, "no." She did describe a culture of heavy drinking in high school that she took part in, and said Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were part of that group.
In a statement Thursday about his referral of Swetnick and Avenatti for a criminal investigation, Grassley said, "When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committee's work, I take it seriously'....But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. That's unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth."
Avenatti responded in a statement to NBC News saying, "Senator Grassley has just made a major mistake. Let the investigation into Kavanaugh and his lies begin."
Kavanaugh and Judge denied the allegations leveled by Swetnick and other women. Avenatti, asked about the inconsistencies within the second woman's account, said: "It is a sworn declaration that she read and signed and repeatedly stood behind."
According to the second woman's declaration that Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, she said: "During the years 1981-82, I witnessed firsthand Brett Kavanaugh, together with others, 'spike' the 'punch' at house parties I attended with Quaaludes and/or grain alcohol. I understood this was being done for the purpose of making girls more likely to engage in sexual acts and less likely to say 'No.'"
The statement also said that Kavanaugh was "overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature."
But reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only "skimmed" the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: "It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn't see anyone spike the punch...I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one."
When pressed about abusive behavior towards girls, she wrote in a text: "I would not ever allow anyone to be abusive in my presence. Male or female."
(C) Michael Avenatti Julie Swetnick Shortly after tweeting out the woman's allegations on Oct. 2, Avenatti confirmed to NBC News that it was the same woman interviewed by phone on Sept. 30. But when questioned on Oct. 3 about the discrepancies between what she said in the phone interview and the serious allegations in the sworn declaration, Avenatti said he was "disgusted" with NBC News. At one point, in an apparent effort to thwart the reporting process, he added in the phone call, "How about this, on background, it's not the same woman. What are you going to do with that?"
After NBC News received text messages from the woman refuting some of the claims in the declaration, NBC reached out again to Avenatti, who defended the declaration.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," he said in a text. "I have a signed declaration that states otherwise together with multiple audio recordings where she stated exactly what is in the declaration. There were also multiple witnesses to our discussions."
He sent a follow-up message moments later: "I just confirmed with her yet again that everything in the declaration is true and correct," Avenatti said. "She must have been confused by your question."
Roughly five minutes later, the woman sent a formally-worded text backing Avenatti. "Please understand that everything in the declaration is true and you should not contact me anymore regarding this issue," the text read.
But when reached by phone minutes later, the woman again insisted that she never saw Kavanaugh spike punch or act inappropriately toward women. She said she's "been consistent in what she's told Michael."
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, "I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words."
Nolte: NBC News Hid Information that Would've Helped Clear Kavanaugh
NBC News deliberately hid vital information that would have helped clear Brett Kavanaugh of the serial rape allegations Julie Swetnick and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, leveled against him.On September 16, Kavanaugh and his loved ones were dropped into a pit of hell due to allegations of sexual assault from Christine Blasey Ford. Although her story quickly fell apart during public testimony, for the three-plus weeks that would follow, in an effort to derail his confirmation, Democrats and their allies in the establishment media did everything in their power to personally destroy this man as a drunken serial rapist.
NBC News and Avenatti played a huge role in this obscene smear campaign. One notable example was NBC breathlessly publishing and airing an assault allegation against Kavanaugh that was quickly exposed as a hoax. NBC did not even bother to independently corroborate this allegation prior to airing it. A Democrat handed NBC the smear, and NBC ran with it.
To make matters worse, we now know NBC News withheld crucial information that undermined the allegations made by Swetnick, the Avenatti client who accused a high school-aged Kavanaugh of spiking punch bowls at house parties so he and his buddies could engage in serial rapes.
And we know NBC deliberately withheld this crucial information because NBC is now admitting it had this information all the way back on September 30.
On September 30, a week prior to Kavanaugh's confirmation, during the most intense days of this scandal, when Kavanaugh's confirmation was still very much in doubt, here is what NBC did not want the public to know'...
If you recall, although he withheld the name, Avenatti tweeted out a sworn statement from a woman who backed up Swetnick's outrageous rape allegations. In her statement, this second woman swore that she, too, had witnessed Kavanaugh spike punch bowls and take sexual advantage of girls.
Well, unbeknownst to us, NBC interviewed this anonymous witness on September 30, and she recanted!
But only now is NBC News bothering to report this bombshell:
Referring to Kavanaugh spiking the punch, ''I didn't ever think it was Brett,'' the woman said to reporters in a phone interview arranged by Avenatti on Sept. 30 after repeated requests to speak with other witnesses who might corroborate Swetnick's claims.
'...
When asked in the phone interview if she ever witnessed Kavanaugh act inappropriately towards girls, the woman replied, ''no.''
Wait, it gets worse'...
On October 3, NBC News again spoke to this woman, and this time, she all but accused Avenatti of fabricating her statement:
[R]eached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only ''skimmed'' the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: ''It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn't see anyone spike the punch'...I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.''
When pressed about abusive behavior towards girls, she wrote in a text: ''I would not ever allow anyone to be abusive in my presence. Male or female.''
And now, we come to the grand conclusion'...
When asked about the total contradiction between his client's sworn statement and what she told NBC, after it no longer matters, NBC now informs us, ''At one point, in an apparent effort to thwart the reporting process, [Avenatti] added in the phone call, ''How about this, on background, it's not the same woman. What are you going to do with that?''
So Avenatti's witness, the woman he brought forward to bolster Swetnick's serial rape claim, totally recanted to NBC News, and NBC News hid this news until now.
Moreover, NBC News believed Kavanaugh's chief tormentor '-- Avenatti '-- was attempting to ''thwart the reporting process,'' and NBC also chose to hide this information until long after it mattered.
So what we have here is an NBC News eager to publish completely unfounded allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh while at the same time hiding vitally important information that would have helped to clear Kavanaugh at the most crucial time of this scandal.
In other words, in a partisan effort to derail Kavanaugh's confirmation, to do its part to keep Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court, NBC News published uncorroborated smears against him and then engaged in a deliberate cover up of a legitimate story that backed up Kavanaugh's claim of his innocence and his claim that there was a coordinated campaign at work to personally destroy him.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
Caravan
DOD Statement on Support to DHS > U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > News Release View
After receiving a request for assistance from the secretary of homeland security, the secretary of defense has approved providing mission-enhancing capabilities to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southwest border. This assistance is in addition to the previously authorized support to CBP's Operation Guardian Support mission.
The department will provide Defense Support to Civil Authorities with planning assistance, engineering support (temporary barriers, barricades, and fencing), fixed and rotary wing aviation support to move CBP personnel, medical teams to triage, treat and prepare for commercial transport of patients, command and control facilities, temporary housing for CBP personnel, and personal protective equipment for CBP personnel. U.S. Northern Command will be in the lead for the duration of the operation and is in support of Custom and Border Protection.
When I uploaded my first video onto YouTube one year ago, I entitled it ''Mom, Dad, I'm a Conservative.''It was a two-minute satirical stab at the social exiling that many Americans face when they announce their conservatism to friends and family.
Soon thereafter I would discover that for black Americans, the punishment that awaits is far worse than any social exile: it is a full-court social lynching.
Search the name of any prominent black conservative and peruse the words written by liberal journalists:
Dr. Ben Carson is a ''porch monkey''
Larry Elder is but an ''Uncle Tom''
Kanye West is ''in the sunken place''
Clarence Thomas is ''a womanizer''
I have been branded a self-hating black, Nazi-sympathizer and rather astonishingly '-- a white supremacist.
The underlying sentiments are clear; black people are meant to think and act within the confines of what white liberals deem acceptable.
But while in the past the threat of slander has worked to lag the spreading of black conservatism, over this last year, I have observed something of the opposite effect.
In fact, what many have misdiagnosed as political tension between two ideologically disparate groups is actually something far greater, far more deep-rooted, and much more likely to alter the trajectory of this country as we know it.
Across America, black people are beginning to question political orthodoxy. We have been quietly building an ecosystem of free thinkers and at long last, the intellectual dam is breaking.
This unique moment will come to be known as BLEXIT: the black exit from the Democrat party.
For decades, the black community has been in an emotionally abusive relationship with the Democrat Party. Our fidelity to leftist politicians coupled with our false belief that a larger government might facilitate solutions, has led to the overall collapse of our families, neighborhoods, and incidentally, our futures.
BLEXIT is a national movement of minorities that have awakened to the truth. It is for those who have taken an objective look at our decades-long allegiance to the left and asked ourselves ''what do we have to show for it?''
The media has betrayed our focus. They have learned the value of our untethered emotionality and have chosen to emphasize certain topics in an effort to suspend our rational thinking. This is why in 2016, the 16 unarmed black men shot and killed by police officers took headline-precedent over the approximate 330,000 black babies aborted each year.
This is why the topic of illegal alien children being separated at the border earned excessive coverage, while the 70% black single motherhood rate '-- a tragedy encouraged by our government welfare programs '-- is ignored.
The investment into our permanent state of outrage is opportune; it inspires a predictable outcome at the polls.
Until now.
Beyond anything else, BLEXIT is a chant of freedom. It is a chorus of voices from across the country whose hearts are exploding with the realization that we are more than the color of our skin.
We are also more than a voting bloc.
We are Americans first and foremost and we will work to piece back together our broken communities '-- absent overreaching government structures, absent hand-outs, and alongside our American brothers and sisters.
The tides are shifting. New leaders are emerging to help steer open minds into the uncharted possibilities of our futures.
We need all of America to join us in this fight. No matter your skin color, we need you to take up metaphorical arms against the Democrat party. First, visit our website, BLEXIT.com, where you will find the hard truths about the bigoted racism within the Democrat party. Second, spread the word. Your voice matters to those who are looking to make an ''exit'' from the bondage of the Democrat party. Finally, stand for truth. This battle will be one of the most consequential culture wars in American history. Your support is needed to allow us to arm the next generation with the facts they need to be free.
BLEXIT is our long-overdue renaissance '-- and there isn't an article written from the depths of the hell that can stop it. VISIT BLEXIT
Rick Perry and John Sharp serving together as Democrats in the Texas Legislature in 1987.Texas State Library and Archives Commission
''White Democrats will desert their party in droves the minute it becomes a black party.''
Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969
Thirty years ago, archconservative Rick Perry was a Democrat and liberal icon Elizabeth Warren was a Republican. Back then there were a few Republican Congressmen and Senators from Southern states, but state and local politics in the South was still dominated by Democrats. By 2014 that had changed entirely as the last of the Deep South states completed their transition from single-party Democratic rule to single party rule under Republicans. The flight of the Dixiecrats was complete.
Reasons for the switch are not so hard to understand. Legend has it that President Johnson, after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, mourned ''we've lost the South for a generation.'' That quote might be apocryphal, but it accurately reflects contemporary opinion. Fiery segregationist George Wallace would carry five Southern states in his third party run for President in 1968. Southern anger over the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights reforms was no secret and no surprise.
While the ''why'' behind the flight of the Dixiecrats is obvious, the ''how'' is more difficult to establish, shrouded in myths and half-truths. Analysts often explain the great exodus of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party by referencing the Southern Strategy, a cynical campaign ploy supposedly executed by Richard Nixon in his '68 and '72 Presidential campaigns, but that explanation falls flat. Though the Southern backlash against the Civil Rights Acts showed up immediately at the top of the ticket, Republicans farther down the ballot gained very little ground in the South between '68 and '84. Democrats there occasionally chose Republican candidates for positions in Washington, but they stuck with Democrats for local offices.
Crediting the Nixon campaign with the flight of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party dismisses the role Southerners themselves played in that transformation. In fact, Republicans had very little organizational infrastructure on the ground in the South before 1980, and never quite figured out how to build a persuasive appeal to voters there. Every cynical strategy cooked up in a Washington boardroom withered under local conditions. The flight of the Dixiecrats was ultimately conceived, planned, and executed by Southerners themselves, largely independent of, and sometimes at odds with, existing Republican leadership. It was a move that had less to do with politicos than with pastors.
Southern churches, warped by generations of theological evolution necessary to accommodate slavery and segregation, were all too willing to offer their political assistance to a white nationalist program. Southern religious institutions would lead a wave of political activism that helped keep white nationalism alive inside an increasingly unfriendly national climate. Forget about Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan. No one played as much of a role in turning the South red as the leaders of the Southern Baptist Church.
Jesus and Segregation
There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America's largest denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery.
Spirituality may be personal, but organized religion, like race, is a cultural construct. When you've lost the ability to mobilize supporters based on race, religion will serve as a capable proxy. What was lost under the banner of ''segregation forever'' has been tenuously preserved through a continuing ''culture war.'' A fight for white nationalism and white cultural supremacy has in some ways been more successful after its transformation into an expressly religious, rather than merely racist crusade.
Religion is endlessly pliable. So long as pastors or priests (or in this case, televangelists) are willing to apply their theological creativity to serve political demands, religious institutions can be bent to advance any policy goal. With remarkably little prodding, Christian churches in Germany fanned the flames for Hitler. Liberation theology thrived alongside Communist activism in Latin America. The Southern Baptist Church was organized specifically to protect slavery and white supremacy from the influence of their brethren in the North, a role that has never ceased to distort its identity, beliefs and practices.
In 1956, the Supreme Court had recently struck down school segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education case. President Eisenhower had sponsored sweeping civil rights legislation. Dr. Martin Luther King was organizing bus boycotts in Montgomery. Pressure was building against segregation across the South. At that time, there may have been no more influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention than W.A. Criswell, the pastor of the enormous First Baptist Church in Dallas.
At a convention in South Carolina, Criswell turned his popular fire and brimstone style on the ''blasphemous and unbiblical'' agitators who threatened the Southern way of life. Beyond all the boilerplate racist invective, Criswell outlined an eerily prescient rhetorical stance, a framework capable of outlasting Jim Crow. In a passage that managed to avoid explicit racism, he described what would become the primary political weapon of the culture wars:
Don't force me by law, by statute, by Supreme Court decision'...to cross over in those intimate things where I don't want to go. Let me build my life. Let me have my church. Let me have my school. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my family. And what you give to me, give to every man in America and keep it like our glorious forefathers made '' a land of the free and the home of the brave.
Long after the battle over whites' only bathrooms had been lost, evangelical communities in Houston or Charlotte can continue the war over a ''bathroom bill'' using a rhetorical structure Criswell and others built. He had constructed a strangely circular, quasi-libertarian argument in which a right to oppress others becomes a fundamental right born of a religious imperative, protected by the First Amendment. Criswell's bizarre formula, as it metastasized and took hold elsewhere, could allow white nationalists to continue their campaign as a ''culture war'' long after the battle to protect segregated institutions had been lost.
Southern Baptist minister W.A. Criswell speaking in South Carolina in 1956The State newspaper, 1956
Southern Baptists remained at the vanguard of the fight to preserve Jim Crow until the fight was lost. A generation later you might hear Southern Baptists mention that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist minister. They are less likely to explain that King was not permitted to worship in a Southern Baptist Church. African-American Baptists had their own parallel institutions, a structure that continues today.
Evangelical resistance to the civil rights movement was not uniform, but dissent was rare and muted. Southern Baptist superstar Billy Graham was cautiously sympathetic to King. Early in King's career, in 1957, Graham once allowed King to lead a prayer from the pulpit in one of his campaigns in faraway New York City. Graham advised King and other civil rights leaders on organizational matters and offered considerable back-channel support to the movement. However, in public Graham was careful to keep a safe distance and avoided the kind of open displays of sympathy for civil rights that might have complicated his career.
King was once invited to speak at a Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville in 1961. Churches responded with a powerful backlash, slashing the seminary's donations so steeply that it was forced to apologize for the move. Henlee Barnette, the Baptist professor responsible for King's invitation at the seminary, nearly lost his job and became something of an outcast, a status he would retain until he was finally pressured to retire from teaching in 1977.
In 1965, after President Johnson's second landmark Civil Rights Act was passed, the Southern Baptists formally abandoned the fight against segregation with a bland statement urging members to obey the law. In 1968, the Southern Baptist Convention formally endorsed desegregation. That same year, in a remarkably passive-aggressive counter to their apparent concession on civil rights, they elected W.A. Criswell to lead the denomination.
Onward, Christian Soldiers
Defeated and demoralized, segregationists in the 1970's faced a frustrating problem '' how to rebuild a white nationalist political program without using the discredited rhetoric of race. Religion would provide them their answer. Armed with the superficially race-neutral rhetorical formula Criswell had described, prominent Southern Baptist ministers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would emerge to take up the fight. All they needed was a spark to light a new wave of political activism.
In 1967, Mississippi began offering tuition grants to white students allowing them to attend private segregated schools. A federal court struck down the move two years later, but the tax-exempt status of these private, segregated schools remained a matter of contention for many years. Under that rubric, evangelical churches across the South led an explosion of new private schools, many of them explicitly segregated. Battles over the status of these institutions reached a climax when the Carter Administration in 1978 signaled its intention to press for their desegregation.
It was the status of these schools, a growing source of church recruitment and revenue, that finally stirred the grassroots to action. Televangelist Jerry Falwell would unite with a broader group of politically connected conservatives to form the Moral Majority in 1979. His partner in the effort, Paul Weyrich, made clear that it was the schools issue that launched the organization, an emphasis reflected in chain events across the 1980 Presidential campaign.
The rise of the religious right is usually credited to abortion activism, but few evangelicals cared about the subject in the 70's. The Southern Baptist Convention expressed support for laws liberalizing abortion access in 1971. Criswell himself expressed support for the Supreme Court's decision in Roe, taking the traditional theological position that life began at birth, not conception. The denomination did not adopt a firm pro-life stance until 1980.
In August of 1980, Criswell and other Southern Baptist leaders hosted Republican Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a rally in Dallas. Reagan in his speech never used the word ''abortion,'' but he enthusiastically and explicitly supported the ministers' position on protecting private religious schools. That was what they needed to hear.
Evangelical ministers, previously reluctant to lend their pulpits to political activists, launched a massive wave of activism in Southern pews in support of the Reagan campaign. The new President would not forget their support. Less than a year into his Administration, Reagan officials pressed the IRS to drop its campaign to desegregate private schools.
In a casually triumphant moment in 1981, Reagan advisor Lee Atwater let down his guard, laying bare the racial logic behind the Republican campaigns in the South:
You start out in 1954 by saying, ''N...r, n...r, n...r.'' By 1968 you can't say ''n...r'''--that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.'... ''We want to cut this,'' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ''N...r, n...r.''
For decades, men like Atwater had been searching for the perfect ''abstract'' phrasing, a magic political dog whistle that could communicate that ''N'...r, n'...r'' message behind a veneer of respectable language. Though quick to take credit for Reagan's win, the truth was that Atwater and others like him had mostly failed. Their efforts to construct their dog whistle out of taxes and other traditional Republican talking points never quite connected on a deep enough emotional plane to turn the tide at the local level.
It was religious leaders in the South who solved the puzzle on Republicans' behalf, converting white angst over lost cultural supremacy into a fresh language of piety and ''religious liberty.'' Southern conservatives discovered that they could preserve white nationalism through a proxy fight for Christian Nationalism. They came to recognize that a weak, largely empty Republican grassroots structure in the South was ripe for takeover and colonization.
Fired by the success of their efforts at the top of the ballot in 1980, newly activated congregations pressed further, launching organized efforts to move their members from pew to precinct, filling the largely empty Republican infrastructure in the South. By the late 80's religious activists like Stephen Hotze in Houston were beginning to cut out the middleman, going around pastors to recruit political warriors in the pews. Hotze circulated a professionally rendered video in 1990, called ''Restoring America,'' that included step-by-step instructions for taking control of Republican precinct and county organizations. Religious nationalists began to purge traditional Republicans from the region's few GOP institutions.
The Southern Strategy was not a successful Republican initiative. It was a delayed reaction by Republican operatives to events they neither precipitated nor fully understood. Republicans did not trigger the flight of the Dixiecrats, they were buried by it.
A young Texas legislator, Rick Perry, spent much of 1988 campaigning for his fellow Southern Democrat, Al Gore. In the crowded landscape of Texas Democratic politics, Perry showed little breakout potential, but he was aware of the activism that was sweeping Democratic Southern conservatives into empty Republican precincts all over the state. The next year Perry made a bold move, switching to the GOP and rising immediately to the front ranks as a potential statewide candidate.
It was in the 90's, not the 70's, that Southern conservatives at the local level finally took flight into the GOP. Armed with the strange, apparently race-neutral logic Reverend Criswell had laid out in the fight for Jim Crow, and organized by a new generation of religious leaders, an enormous wave of party-switching transformed grassroots politics in the South. Republicans seized control of the Texas state legislature in 2002 for the first time ever apart from Reconstruction. When Republicans took control of the Arkansas legislature in 2014, the flight of the Dixiecrats was over and Republicans controlled state government across all of the former Confederacy.
The Past Is Never Dead
In the 2016 presidential election, Re. Russell Moore, an early and frequent critic of Donald Trump, says, "I understand those who are lining up with Trump with great reservations. I'm not persuaded by it. But that's different than the people who have been telling us that we need this kind of strongman to save Christianity." (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Russell Moore became the President of the Southern Baptist Convention's social outreach arm in 2013. In that capacity, he began to challenge many of the darker elements of the church's history. From a post in the church traditionally dedicated to hand-wringing over gay rights and dirty movies, Moore criticized those who stirred up hatred against refugees and ignored matters of racial justice. He drew sharp criticism when he denounced the Confederate Flag, explaining, ''The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.''
The real fury came when Moore applied to Donald Trump the same standard of conduct Baptists had demanded of Bill Clinton. Southern Baptist leaders in the 90's savaged President Clinton as the details of the Lewinski Affair began to surface. Moore drew the obvious comparison last year between Trump and Bill Clinton, urging voters to reject the 2016 Republican nominee. As religious leaders lined up solidly behind Trump last fall, Moore commented, "The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us about."
In the end, evangelical voters backed Donald Trump by a steeper margin than their support for Romney in '12.
Today, W.A. Criswell's Dallas megachurch is pastored by Robert Jeffress, who has remained faithful to the most bigoted strains of the olde tyme religion. He has led an effort to withdraw funding for Russell Moore's organization. Jeffress has called the Catholic Church ''a Babylonian mystery religion.'' He explained that Obama was sent to pave the way for the Antichrist. He has demogogued relentlessly on gay marriage. And naturally, he endorsed Donald Trump.
Pastor Robert Jeffress, heir to Criswell's pulpit at Dallas' First Baptist, tweets a photo with Donald TrumpDr. Robert Jeffress, Twitter
Billy Graham's son, Franklin, retooled the ministry he inherited, turning it into something a civil rights era segregationist could love without reservation. Graham, who earns more than $800,000 a year as the head of his inherited charity, has made anti-Muslim rhetoric a centerpiece of his public profile and ministry. While his father quietly befriended Martin Luther King, the younger Graham has chosen a different path. In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Graham explained that black people can solve the problem of police violence if they teach their children ''respect for authority and obedience.'' Franklin Graham enthusiastically supports Donald Trump.
Jerry Falwell's son also inherited the family business, serving now as president of his father's university. His support for Trump is less surprising than Graham's, and far less of a departure from his father's work. Falwell spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention.
Russell Moore may envision an evangelical movement unhindered by racism and bigotry, but just like Henlee Barnette, the Baptist professor who invited King to speak at a Southern Baptist seminary, Moore is wrestling with a powerful heritage. For Jeffress, the heir to W.A. Criswell's pulpit, to champion an effort to silence Moore, reflects the powerful persistence of an unacknowledged past. After being pressed into an apology for his ''unnecessarily harsh'' criticisms, Moore has been allowed to keep his job '' for now.
Falwell appears with Donald Trump at a campaign event in Iowa. Do not try to cash this oversized, under-funded, replica check (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Public perception that a ''Southern strategy'' conceived and initiated by clever Republicans turned the South red is worse than false. By deflecting responsibility onto some shadowy ''other'' it blocks us from reckoning with the past or changing our future. History is a powerful tide, especially when it runs unseen and concealed. A refusal to honestly confront our past leaves us to repeat our mistakes over and over again.
Texas House member Rick Perry was taking a chance in 1989, when he decided to leave the Democratic Party to become a Republican. He leaned heavily on the emerging religious right and their campaign to convert the state's Democratic majority. His efforts were richly rewarded. Baptist mega-pastor Robert Jeffress was a major supporter along with other evangelical leaders. Now Perry, after becoming the longest-serving governor in Texas history, sits in Donald Trump's cabinet as the Secretary of Energy.
No one needs to say ''N..r, n..r'' anymore. With help from evangelical pastors, this new generation of politicians has found a new political party and a fresh language with which to stir old grievances and feed their power. By merely refining their rhetoric and activating evangelical congregations, a new generation of Southern conservatives grow ever closer to winning a fight their forebears once thought was lost.
Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans? - The San Diego Union Tribune Forums
The MYTH or LIB lie(?) about how the Dixiecrats were conservatives and became members of the Republican Party........forever linking the GOP as the party of hate, racism....anti-civil rights.
So, if ONLY 3 (that I have found) Dixiecrats jumped to the GOP.....and the rest were DEMs 4 LIFE.......exactly when did the Left begin believing All Americans were equal? As opposed to their old motto(?) of Equal but separate?
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The idiot doubled down on the lie! 03-19-2013, 11:05 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
***It was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Democrat, who founded the Ku Klux Klan.***Woodrow Wilson segregated Federal Buildings and jobs after 50 years of integration under largely Republican administrations.***It was the Democrat Party in the South that instituted Jim Crow Laws.***It was the Democrat Party in the South that instituted "separate but equal".***It was the Democrat Party in the South that supported the Ku Klux Klan.***It was George Wallace and the Democrat Party in the South that said "Segregation Forever".***It was Orval Faubus and the Democrat Party that wanted the Arkansas National Guard to enforce segregation, and Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican President, that sent the 101st Airborne to integrate the schools.***It was Bull Connor, a member of the Democrat National Committee, who turned the hoses on the marchers in Birmingham, and it was the Republicans who made up the majority that passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, over the filibuster of such Democrat paragons as William Fulbright and Al Gore Sr. - and Grand Kleagle Byrd.(And no, the Dixiecrats didn't join the Republican Party - most of them remained Democrats.)***It was the Democrats who kept Grand Kleagle Byrd in the party.***It was Democrats who called General Colin Powell a "house nigger".***It was Democrats who called Condi Rice - who grew up with and knew the little girls in Birmingham who were blown up, by Democrats - an "Aunt Jemima" and ran cartoons of her with fat lips doing Hattie McDaniel riffs.***It was Democrats, or at least Obama supporters, who called Stacy Dash a hundred different racist names for daring to leave the Democrat plantaion. (sic) ***It's the Democrats who hold annual dinners honoring Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves and who orchestrated the Removal, the Trail of Tears, the near genocide of several of the Indian Nations.__________________
The idiot doubled down on the lie! 03-19-2013, 11:16 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
*There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery.*There were six from 1840 through 1860.
*There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves.
*There were seven from 1800 through 1861
*There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.
*There is no reference to "Jim Crow" as in "Jim Crow laws," nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the "whites only" front section of a bus, the "whites only" designation the direct result of Democrats.
*There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."
*There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.
*There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln's ticket in 1864. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.
*There is no reference to the Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.
*There is no reference to the Democrats' 1904 platform, which devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP's protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."
*There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."
*There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the "Klanbake." The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.
*There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There \is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.
*There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson's New Freedom and FDR's New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
*There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House came from Democrats, or that 80% of the "nay" vote in the Senate came from Democrats. Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore.
Last but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact--yes indeed--a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.__________________
The idiot doubled down on the lie! 03-19-2013, 11:26 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
The idiot doubled down on the lie! 03-19-2013, 11:55 PM
Trying to keep my resolutions.
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Can some kindly mod please move this to the politics subforum since the OP wasn't bright enough to post it in the correct forum? Thanks.
03-20-2013, 12:06 AM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Yes, Democrats of old were racists. They got phased out of the party as the years went along and the Democrats became the party that embraced tolerance (moreso, anyway). Then the people in those formerly Democratic states began electing Republicans instead.
Del chooses to ignore this, though, out of choice or incredibly stupidity. It hasn't occurred to him that it was the South that was intolerant, and now they largely vote Republican. The North was more tolerant, and now they largely vote Democrat.
And why is there the emphasized word? When in doubt, bold the single least important word in a thought?
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03-20-2013, 12:55 AM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheFreakKingdomYes, Democrats of old were racists. They got phased out of the party as the years went along and the Democrats became the party that embraced tolerance (moreso, anyway). Then the people in those formerly Democratic states began electing Republicans instead.
Yeah. Try and do some research. Look at the "NEW" Democrat Party. You have the same crew...different names. Try and spin it all you want. The stories are there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TFK
Del chooses to ignore this, though, out of choice or incredibly stupidity. It hasn't occurred to him that it was the South that was intolerant, and now they largely vote Republican. The North was more tolerant, and now they largely vote Democrat.
*A Minnesota-based publishing house has dropped one of its authors for calling a black conservative woman an ''Aunt Tom'' and ''ignorant c''t'' on Twitter.
*Black conservative politicians, like Dash, are often the target of racial slurs. Prominent conservatives such as Justice Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice have endured this scorn for years. Mia Love is the latest black conservative to be targeted using vile, racial slurs. There is no justification for these politically motivated slurs and the language is indefensible. A black American should be able to choose to identify with conservative ideology without being called a "house n*gger", "Uncle Tom" or sell-out.
*AFP hired Clint Tarver, a black hot dog vendor, to provide food for their participants inside their tent set up outside of the state capitol building.
Despite the peaceful nature of AFP's counter-protest, several union members cut down their large tent with knives and box cutters. Mr. Tarver was inside the tent when it collapsed and approximately $400 worth of his hot dog stand equipment was damaged. The union protesters who cut the tent down further damaged Mr. Tarver's remaining hot dog stand equipment while hurling racial epithets at him, calling him an ''Uncle Tom'' and a ''n*****.''
*If you're black and you committed the blasphemous sin of not voting for ''our Lord and Savior'' Barack Obama, then, according to black liberals, you are a self-loathing, Oreo, Uncle Tom, skin-bleaching, house n***** sell-out. Vitriolic racist rhetoric is okay as long as it is directed towards black conservatives.
*
Quote:
Originally Posted by TFK
And why is there the emphasized word? When in doubt, bold the single least important word in a thought?
Why was "there" emphasized?
Gee, let me look at the first word of each * (point of fact)....oh wait, "THERE" is found....No wait, the LIBs want to suggest it was the least important word....must be a conspiracy, right TFK....
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The idiot doubled down on the lie! Last edited by DEL061; 03-20-2013 at 12:57 AM .Reason: NOTE: Did not emphasize any word for fear of confusing TFK....AGAIN!
03-20-2013, 09:41 AM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DEL061Dixiecrat list:
Orval FabusBenjamin Travis LaneyJohn StennisJames EastlandAllen EllenderRussell LongJohn SparkmanJohn McClellanRichard RussellHerman TalmadgeGeorge WallaceLester MaddoxJohn RarickRobert ByrdAl Gore, Sr.Bull ConnorStrom ThurmonJesse HelmsMills GodwinI will give you a hint...
The MYTH or LIB lie(?) about how the Dixiecrats were conservatives and became members of the Republican Party........forever linking the GOP as the party of hate, racism....anti-civil rights.
So, if ONLY 3 (that I have found) Dixiecrats jumped to the GOP.....and the rest were DEMs 4 LIFE.......exactly when did the Left begin believing All Americans were equal? As opposed to their old motto(?) of Equal but separate?
Once again DEL, you place too much emphasis on the "(R)" and "(D)". It's a simple matter of
conservative, versus
liberal.
Case closed.
OM
__________________'Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.-- -Arthur Schopenhauer
03-20-2013, 09:52 AM
"ObamaCare Fee is not a new tax"
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OmegaManOnce again DEL, you place too much emphasis on the "(R)" and "(D)". It's a simple matter of
conservative, versus
liberal.Case closed.
OM
Hmm...So, I take it you believe the myth/lie that the Democrats that were racist to the core.......the Dixiecrats.....all became today's GOP?
That the Racist to the CORE (no pun intended for it to rhyme with little Global Warming Gore's and his father) Dixicrats were from early in the history of the US....and the modern day DEMs are not the Dixiecrats of old.......as in how far back did you suggest.....1860's? Yeah, it wasn't those with the BIG "D" behind their name that tried to shoot down the CRA 1965.......it wasn't the those with the "R" behind their name(S) that successfully passed it....oh that's right...history tells us it was LBJ....the LIBs that pushed that threw......
Case Closed indeed my friend. Carry on with the myth.........lie....what ever you have to tell yourself.
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The idiot doubled down on the lie! 03-20-2013, 10:16 AM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DEL061Hmm...So, I take it you believe the myth/lie that the Democrats that were racist to the core.......the Dixiecrats.....all became today's GOP?
That the Racist to the CORE (no pun intended for it to rhyme with little Global Warming Gore's and his father) Dixicrats were from early in the history of the US....and the modern day DEMs are not the Dixiecrats of old.......as in how far back did you suggest.....1860's? Yeah, it wasn't those with the BIG "D" behind their name that tried to shoot down the CRA 1965.......it wasn't the those with the "R" behind their name(S) that successfully passed it....oh that's right...history tells us it was LBJ....the LIBs that pushed that threw......
Case Closed indeed my friend. Carry on with the myth.........lie....what ever you have to tell yourself.
Again DEL (pardon the repetition), you are placing too much emphasis on "(R)" and "(D)".
Try simply contemplating conservative and liberal instead.
OM
__________________'Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.-- -Arthur Schopenhauer
03-20-2013, 10:19 AM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheFreakKingdomThen the people in those formerly Democratic states began electing Republicans instead.
Meaning of course, they are a
conservative base.
OM
__________________'Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.-- -Arthur Schopenhauer
03-20-2013, 12:03 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DEL061Dixiecrat list:
Orval FabusBenjamin Travis LaneyJohn StennisJames EastlandAllen EllenderRussell LongJohn SparkmanJohn McClellanRichard RussellHerman TalmadgeGeorge WallaceLester MaddoxJohn RarickRobert ByrdAl Gore, Sr.Bull ConnorStrom ThurmonJesse HelmsMills GodwinSometimes a faction in a political party spins off and is given a name. Most recently a conservative faction formed the Tea Party. In 1948, it was the States' Rights Democrat Party, commonly called the Dixiecrats. They were politicians from the South who left the Democratic Party because of a civil rights plank in the Democrats' platform. The Dixiecrats ran Strom Thurmond as their candidate for president in 1948 against Harry Truman (Democrat) and Tom Dewey (Republican).
Truman and Dewey both received 40+% of the vote. Thurmond carried only four states, all in the Deep South, and received 2.4% of the popular vote. The Dixiecrats folded their tent and many of the Southern conservative politicians returned to the Democratic Party.
Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed for passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which caused conservative Southern Democrats to support Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater carried the four states that voted for Thurmond in 1948 (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina), plus Georgia and his home state of Arizona.
Starting in that era of the 1964 election, the Republican Party started picking up conservative politicians and voters from the South. Senator Strom Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964 to support the Goldwater candidacy. Senator Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina was probably the most conservative senator in the 1960s. He was a segregationist who opposed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. He switched to the Republican Party and was instrumental in Ronald Reagan winning the North Carolina Republican primary in 1976. Helms and Thurmond pushed for Ronald Reagan to select a conservative running mate in 1976.
Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott switched to the Republican Party when he decided to run for Congress in 1972. Georgia Governor Lester Maddox left the Democratic Party to run as a candidate of the American Independent Party, as did Alabama Governor George Wallace. In the '90s, Lester Maddox endorsed the candidacy of Republican Pat Buchanan.
Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, a prominent segregationist who was in office during the time of the murder of Medgar Evers and three civil rights workers, considered a run against Lyndon Johnson. But he remained a Democrat and lost in his next election bid.
In 1964 John McKeithen won the Democratic primary in Louisiana. The general election was evidence that Southern voters were starting to shift their allegiance. It was the first election since Reconstruction in which a Republican candidate got more than a token vote. Charlton Lyons, a former Dem turned Republican, received 38% of the popular vote. McKeithen did not endorse Goldwater or Johnson in the '64 election.
Other Democrats who switched to the GOP starting in the '60s included David Treen (Louisiana), Jesse Helms (NC), Howard Callaway (Georgia), Floyd Spence (SC), Albert Watson (SC), Rod Miller (Louisiana), Henry Grover (Texas), John Connally (Texas), Tillie Fowler (Florida), Bob Barr (Georgia), Mills Godwin (Virginia), Elizabeth Dole (NC), Daniel French Slaughter, Jr (VA) and more.
David Duke of Louisiana, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, switched to the Republican Party in 1988. He was elected as a Republican to the Louisiana House of Representatives.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas left the Democratic Party in 1989 and Governor Buddy Roemer of Louisiana did it two years later.
Senator Harry Byrd left the Democratic Party in 1970 to become an independent. Governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace left the Democratic Party to run as candidates of the American Independent Party.
03-20-2013, 12:22 PM
Where's the collusion, Bob?
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KDeuceSometimes a faction in a political party spins off and is given a name. Most recently a conservative faction formed the Tea Party. In 1948, it was the States' Rights Democrat Party, commonly called the Dixiecrats. They were politicians from the South who left the Democratic Party because of a civil rights plank in the Democrats' platform. The Dixiecrats ran Strom Thurmond as their candidate for president in 1948 against Harry Truman (Democrat) and Tom Dewey (Republican).
Truman and Dewey both received 40+% of the vote. Thurmond carried only four states, all in the Deep South, and received 2.4% of the popular vote. The Dixiecrats folded their tent and many of the Southern conservative politicians returned to the Democratic Party.
Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed for passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which caused conservative Southern Democrats to support Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater carried the four states that voted for Thurmond in 1948 (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina), plus Georgia and his home state of Arizona.
Starting in that era of the 1964 election, the Republican Party started picking up conservative politicians and voters from the South. Senator Strom Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964 to support the Goldwater candidacy.
Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott switched to the Republican Party when he decided to run for Congress in 1972. Georgia Governor Lester Maddox left the Democratic Party to run as a candidate of the American Independent Party, as did Alabama Governor George Wallace. In the '90s, Lester Maddox endorsed the candidacy of Republican Pat Buchanan.
Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, a prominent segregationist who was in office during the time of the murder of Medgar Evers and three civil rights workers, considered a run against Lyndon Johnson. But he remained a Democrat and lost in his next election bid.
In 1964 John McKeithen won the Democratic primary in Louisiana. The general election was evidence that Southern voters were starting to shift their allegiance. It was the first election since Reconstruction in which a Republican candidate got more than a token vote. Charlton Lyons, a former Dem turned Republican, received 38% of the popular vote. McKeithen did not endorse Goldwater or Johnson in the '64 election.
Other Democrats who switched to the GOP starting in the '60s included David Treen (Louisiana), Jesse Helms (NC), Howard Callaway (Georgia), Floyd Spence (SC), Albert Watson (SC), Rod Miller (Louisiana), Henry Grover (Texas), John Connally (Texas), Tillie Fowler (Florida), Bob Barr (Georgia), Mills Godwin (Virginia), Elizabeth Dole (NC), Daniel French Slaughter, Jr (VA) and more.
David Duke of Louisiana, Grand Wizard of the KKK, switched to the Republican Party in 1988. Governor Rick Perry of Texas left the Democratic Party in 1989 and Governor Buddy Roemer of Louisiana did it two years later.
Harry Byrd left the Democratic Party in 1970 to become an independent. Governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace left the Democratic Party to run as candidates of the American Independent Party.
Except comparing tea party and Dixiecrats is like comparing apples to cinderblocks.
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A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise for to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. - Thomas Jefferson. The view through the Bull's Eye
03-20-2013, 12:50 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OmegaManAgain DEL (pardon the repetition), you are placing too much emphasis on "(R)" and "(D)".
Try simply contemplating conservative and liberal instead.
OM
There was a time when the Republican Party was almost non-existent in the South. So Southern conservatives were typically members of the Democratic Party. It was the civil rights issue that caused the rise of the Republican Party in the South. A Democrat in the White House, President Lyndon Johnson, pushed for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That enabled a Republican conservative, Senator Barry Goldwater, to carry several states in the Deep South during an election when he lost badly elsewhere.
President Nixon's campaign then developed a Southern Strategy for the 1968 election.
In 1980, President Ronald Reagan opened his presidential campaign with a speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the area that had been a hotbed of KKK activity, including the murder of three civil rights workers by the Klan in 1963.
Most Southern conservatives were Democrats until the Civil Rights era was the catalyst for a shift to the Republican Party.
03-20-2013, 12:54 PM
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Re: Dixiecrats....how many of em turned Republicans?
Before the civil rights act was passed, the south voted nearly exclusively democrat. When LBJ signed the act he famously and correctly predicted that the democrats would lose the south for at least a generation. The civil rights act was the catalyst that flipped southern states from solidly democrat to solidly republican. Republican politicians took advantage. Google Nixons "southern strategy".
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A review of The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South, by Joseph A.Aistrup;
The Rise of Southern Republicans, by Earl Black and Merle Black;
From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994, by Dan T. Carter;
A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell;
and The Emerging Republican Majority , by Kevin Phillips.
myth about conservatism is circulating in academia and journalism and has spread to the 2004 presidential campaign. It goes something like this: the Republican Party assembled a national majority by winning over Southern white voters; Southern white voters are racist; therefore, the GOP is racist. Sometimes the conclusion is softened, and Republicans are convicted merely of base opportunism: the GOP is the party that became willing to pander to racists. Either way, today's Republican Party'--and by extension the conservative movement at its heart'--supposedly has revealed something terrible about itself. This myth is not the only viewpoint in scholarly debates on the subject. But it is testimony to its growing influence that it is taken aboard by writers like Dan Carter, a prize-winning biographer of George Wallace, and to a lesser extent by the respected students of the South, Earl and Merle Black. It is so pervasive in mass media reporting on racial issues that an NBC news anchor can casually speak of "a new era for the Republican Party, one in which racial intolerance really won't be tolerated." It has become a staple of Democratic politicians like Howard Dean, who accuses Republicans of "dividing Americans against each other, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people" through the use of so-called racist "codewords." All this matters because people use such putative connections to form judgments, and "racist" is as toxic a reputation as one can have in U.S. politics. Certainly the 2000 Bush campaign went to a lot of trouble to combat the GOP's reputation as racially exclusionary. I even know young Republicans who fear that behind their party's victories lies a dirty, not-so-little Southern secret. Now to be sure, the GOP had a Southern strategy. Willing to work with, rather than against, the grain of Southern opinion, local Republicans ran some segregationist candidates in the 1960s. And from the 1950s on, virtually all national and local GOP candidates tried to craft policies and messages that could compete for the votes of some pretty unsavory characters. This record is incontestable. It is also not much of a story'--that a party acted expediently in an often nasty political context. The new myth is much bolder than this. It insists that these events should decisively shape our understanding of conservatism and the modern Republican Party. Dan Carter writes that today's conservatism must be traced directly back to the "politics of rage" that George Wallace blended from "racial fear, anticommunism, cultural nostalgia, and traditional right-wing economics." Another scholar, Joseph Aistrup, claims that Reagan's 1980 Southern coalition was "the reincarnation of the Wallace movement of 1968." For the Black brothers, the GOP had once been the "party of Abraham Lincoln," but it became the "party of Barry Goldwater," opposed to civil rights and black interests. It is only a short step to the Democrats' insinuation that the GOP is the latest exploiter of the tragic, race-based thread of U.S. history. In short, the GOP did not merely seek votes expediently; it made a pact with America's devil. The mythmakers typically draw on two types of evidence. First, they argue that the GOP deliberately crafted its core messages to accommodate Southern racists. Second, they find proof in the electoral pudding: the GOP captured the core of the Southern white backlash vote. But neither type of evidence is very persuasive. It is not at all clear that the GOP's policy positions are sugar-coated racist appeals. And election results show that the GOP became the South's dominant party in the least racist phase of the region's history, and got'--and stays'--that way as the party of the upwardly mobile, more socially conservative, openly patriotic middle-class, not of white solidarity. Let's start with policies. Like many others, Carter and the Black brothers argue that the GOP appealed to Southern racism not explicitly but through "coded" racial appeals. Carter is representative of many when he says that Wallace's racialism can be seen, varying in style but not substance, in "Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, in Richard Nixon's subtle manipulation of the busing issue, in Ronald Reagan's genial demolition of affirmative action, in George Bush's use of the Willie Horton ads, and in Newt Gingrich's demonization of welfare mothers." The problem here is that Wallace's segregationism was obviously racist, but these other positions are not obviously racist. This creates an analytic challenge that these authors do not meet. If an illegitimate viewpoint (racism) is hidden inside another viewpoint, that second view'--to be a useful hiding place'--must be one that can be held for entirely legitimate (non-racist) reasons. Conservative intellectuals might not always linger long enough on the fact that opposition to busing and affirmative action can be disguised racism. On the other hand, these are also positions that principled non-racists can hold. To be persuasive, claims of coding must establish how to tell which is which. Racial coding is often said to occur when voters are highly prone to understanding a non-racist message as a proxy for something else that is racist. This may have happened in 1964, when Goldwater, who neither supported segregation nor called for it, employed the term "states' rights," which to many whites in the Deep South implied the continuation of Jim Crow. The problem comes when we try to extend this forward. Black and Black try to do this by showing that Nixon and Reagan crafted positions on busing, affirmative action, and welfare reform in a political climate in which many white voters doubted the virtues of preferential hiring, valued individual responsibility, and opposed busing as intrusive. To be condemned as racist "code," the GOP's positions would have to come across as proxies for these views -and in turn these views would have to be racist. The problem is that these views are not self-evidently racist. Many scholars simply treat them as if they were. Adding insult to injury, usually they don't even pause to identify when views like opposition to affirmative action would not be racist. In effect, these critics want to have it both ways: they acknowledge that these views could in principle be non-racist (otherwise they wouldn't be a "code" for racism) but suggest they never are in practice (and so can be reliably treated as proxies for racism). The result is that their claims are non-falsifiable because they are tautological: these views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. This amounts to saying that opposition to the policies favored by today's civil rights establishment is a valid indicator of racism. One suspects these theorists would, quite correctly, insist that people can disagree with the Israeli government without being in any way anti-Semitic. But they do not extend the same distinction to this issue. This is partisanship posturing as social science.
The Southern Strategy
This bias is evident also in how differently they treat the long Democratic dominance of the South. Carter and the Black brothers suggest that the accommodation of white racism penetrates to the very soul of modern conservatism. But earlier generations of openly segregationist Southerners voted overwhelmingly for Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party, which relaxed its civil rights stances accordingly. This coalition passed much of the New Deal legislation that remains the basis of modern liberalism. So what does the segregationist presence imply for the character of liberalism at its electoral and legislative apogee? These scholars sidestep the question by simply not discussing it. This silence implies that racism and liberalism were simply strange political bedfellows, without any common values. But the commonality, the philosophical link, is swiftly identified once the Democrats leave the stage. In study after study, authors say that "racial and economic conservatism" married white Southerners to the GOP after 1964. So whereas historically accidental events must have led racists to vote for good men like FDR, after 1964 racists voted their conscience. How convenient. And how easy it would be for, say, a libertarian conservative like Walter Williams to generate a counter-narrative that exposes statism as the philosophical link between segregation and liberalism's economic populism. Yet liberal commentators commit a further, even more obvious, analytic error. They assume that if many former Wallace voters ended up voting Republican in the 1970s and beyond, it had to be because Republicans went to the segregationist mountain, rather than the mountain coming to them. There are two reasons to question this assumption. The first is the logic of electoral competition. Extremist voters usually have little choice but to vote for a major party which they consider at best the lesser of two evils, one that offers them little of what they truly desire. Segregationists were in this position after 1968, when Wallace won less than 9% of the electoral college and Nixon became president anyway, without their votes. Segregationists simply had very limited national bargaining power. In the end, not the Deep South but the GOP was the mountain. Second, this was borne out in how little the GOP had to "offer," so to speak, segregationists for their support after 1968, even according to the myth's own terms. Segregationists wanted policies that privileged whites. In the GOP, they had to settle for relatively race-neutral policies: opposition to forced busing and reluctant coexistence with affirmative action. The reason these policies aren't plausible codes for real racism is that they aren't the equivalents of discrimination, much less of segregation. Why did segregationists settle for these policies rather than continue to vote Democratic? The GOP's appeal was mightily aided by none other than the Democratic Party itself, which was lurching leftward in the 1970s, becoming, as the contemporary phrase had it, the party of "acid, amnesty, and abortion." Among other things, the Democrats absorbed a civil rights movement that was itself expanding, and thus diluting, its agenda to include economic redistributionism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and Black Power. The many enthusiasms of the new Democratic Party drove away suburban middle-class voters almost everywhere in the country, not least the South. Given that trend, the GOP did not need to become the party of white solidarity in order to attract more voters. The fact that many former Wallace supporters ended up voting Republican says a lot less about the GOP than it does about segregationists' collapsing political alternatives. Kevin Phillips was hardly coy about this in his Emerging Republican Majority . He wrote in 1969 that Nixon did not "have to bid much ideologically" to get Wallace's electorate, given its limited power, and that moderation was far more promising for the GOP than anything even approaching a racialist strategy. While "the Republican Party cannot go to the Deep South"'--meaning the GOP simply would not offer the policies that whites there seemed to desire most'--"the Deep South must soon go to the national GOP," regardless.
Electoral Patterns
In all these ways, the gop appears as the national party of the middle-class, not of white solidarity. And it is this interpretation, and not the myth, that is supported by the voting results. The myth's proponents highlight, and distort, a few key electoral facts: Southern white backlash was most heated in the 1960s, especially in the Deep South. It was then and there that the GOP finally broke through in the South, on the strength of Goldwater's appeals to states' rights. Democrats never again won the votes of most Southern whites. So Goldwater is said to have provided the electoral model for the GOP. But hidden within these aggregate results are patterns that make no sense if white solidarity really was the basis for the GOP's advance. These patterns concern which Southern votes the GOP attracted, and when. How did the GOP's Southern advance actually unfold? We can distinguish between two sub-regions. The Peripheral South'--Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas'--contained many growing, urbanizing "New South" areas and much smaller black populations. Race loomed less large in its politics. In the more rural, and poorer, Deep South'--Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana '--black communities were much larger, and racial conflict was much more acute in the 1950s and '60s. Tellingly, the presidential campaigns of Strom Thurmond, Goldwater, and Wallace all won a majority of white votes in the Deep South but lost the white vote in the Peripheral South. The myth that links the GOP with racism leads us to expect that the GOP should have advanced first and most strongly where and when the politics of white solidarity were most intense. The GOP should have entrenched itself first among Deep South whites and only later in the Periphery. The GOP should have appealed at least as much, if not more, therefore, to the less educated, working-class whites who were not its natural voters elsewhere in the country but who were George Wallace's base. The GOP should have received more support from native white Southerners raised on the region's traditional racism than from white immigrants to the region from the Midwest and elsewhere. And as the Southern electorate aged over the ensuing decades, older voters should have identified as Republicans at higher rates than younger ones raised in a less racist era. Each prediction is wrong. The evidence suggests that the GOP advanced in the South because it attracted much the same upwardly mobile (and non-union) economic and religious conservatives that it did elsewhere in the country. Take presidential voting. Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting. From 1952 to the Clinton years, Virginia reverted to the Democrats only once, Florida and Tennessee twice, and Texas'--except when native-son LBJ was on the ballot'--only twice, narrowly. Additionally, since 1952, North Carolina has consistently either gone Republican or come within a few percentage points of doing so. In other words, states representing over half the South's electoral votes at the time have been consistently in play from 1952 on'--since before Brown v. Board of Education, before Goldwater, before busing, and when the Republicans were the mainstay of civil rights bills. It was this which dramatically changed the GOP's presidential prospects. The GOP's breakthrough came in the least racially polarized part of the South. And its strongest supporters most years were "New South" urban and suburban middle- and upper-income voters. In 1964, as we've seen, Goldwater did the opposite: winning in the Deep South but losing the Peripheral South. But the pre-Goldwater pattern re-emerged soon afterward. When given the option in 1968, Deep South whites strongly preferred Wallace, and Nixon became president by winning most of the Peripheral South instead. From 1972 on, GOP presidential candidates won white voters at roughly even rates in the two sub-regions, sometimes slightly more in the Deep South, sometimes not. But by then, the Deep South had only about one-third of the South's total electoral votes; so it has been the Periphery, throughout, that provided the bulk of the GOP's Southern presidential support.
* * *
The GOP's congressional gains followed the same pattern. Of course, it was harder for Republicans to win in Deep South states where Democratic-leaning black electorates were larger. But even when we account for that, the GOP became the dominant party of white voters much earlier in the Periphery than it did in the Deep South. Before Goldwater, the GOP's few Southern House seats were almost all in the Periphery (as was its sole Senator'--John Tower of Texas). Several Deep South House members were elected with Goldwater but proved ephemeral, as Black and Black note: "Republicans lost ground and stalled in the Deep South for the rest of the decade," while in the Periphery they "continued to make incremental gains." In the 1960s and '70s, nearly three-quarters of GOP House victories were in the Peripheral rather than the Deep South, with the GOP winning twice as often in urban as rural districts. And six of the eight different Southern Republican Senators elected from 1961 to 1980 were from the Peripheral South. GOP candidates tended consistently to draw their strongest support from the more educated, middle- and upper-income white voters in small cities and suburbs. In fact, Goldwater in 1964'--at least his Deep South performance, which is all that was controversial in this regard'--was an aberration, not a model for the GOP. Writers who vilify the GOP's Southern strategy might be surprised to find that all of this was evident, at least in broad brush-strokes, to the strategy's early proponents. In his well-known book, Kevin Phillips drew the lesson that a strong appeal in the Deep South, on the model of 1964, had already entailed and would entail defeat for the GOP everywhere else, including in what he termed the Outer South. He therefore rejected such an approach. He emphasized that Ike and Nixon did far better in the Peripheral South. He saw huge opportunities in the "youthful middle-class" of Texas, Florida, and other rapidly growing and changing Sun Belt states, where what he called "acutely Negrophobe politics" was weakest, not strongest. He thus endorsed "evolutionary success in the Outer South" as the basis of the GOP's "principal party strategy" for the region, concluding that this would bring the Deep South along in time, but emphatically on the national GOP's terms, not the segregationists'. The tension between the myth and voting data escalates if we consider change across time. Starting in the 1950s, the South attracted millions of Midwesterners, Northeasterners, and other transplants. These "immigrants" identified themselves as Republicans at higher rates than native whites. In the 1980s, up to a quarter of self-declared Republicans in Texas appear to have been such immigrants. Furthermore, research consistently shows that identification with the GOP is stronger among the South's younger rather than older white voters, and that each cohort has also became more Republican with time. Do we really believe immigrants (like George H.W. Bush, who moved with his family to Texas) were more racist than native Southerners, and that younger Southerners identified more with white solidarity than did their elders, and that all cohorts did so more by the 1980s and '90s than they had earlier? In sum, the GOP's Southern electorate was not rural, nativist, less educated, afraid of change, or concentrated in the most stagnant parts of the Deep South. It was disproportionately suburban, middle-class, educated, younger, non-native-Southern, and concentrated in the growth-points that were, so to speak, the least "Southern" parts of the South. This is a very strange way to reincarnate George Wallace's movement.
The Decline of Racism
Timing may provide the greatest gap between the myth and the actual unfolding of events. Only in the 1980s did more white Southerners self-identify as Republicans than as Democrats, and only in the mid-1990s did Republicans win most Southern House seats and become competitive in most state legislatures. So if the GOP's strength in the South only recently reached its zenith, and if its appeal were primarily racial in nature, then the white Southern electorate (or at least most of it) would have to be as racist as ever. But surely one of the most important events in Southern political history is the long-term decline of racism among whites. The fact that these (and many other) books suggest otherwise shows that the myth is ultimately based on a demonization not of the GOP but of Southerners, who are indeed assumed to have Confederate flags in their hearts if not on their pickups. This view lends The Rise of Southern Republicans a schizophrenic nature: it charts numerous changes in the South, but its organizing categories are predicated on the unsustainable assumption that racial views remain intact. What's more, the trend away from confident beliefs in white supremacy may have begun earlier than we often think. David Chappell, a historian of religion, argues that during the height of the civil rights struggle, segregationists were denied the crucial prop of religious legitimacy. Large numbers of pastors of diverse denominations concluded that there was no Biblical foundation for either segregation or white superiority. Although many pastors remained segregationist anyway, the official shift was startling: "Before the Supreme Court's [ Brown v. Board ] decision of 1954, the southern Presbyterians. . . and, shortly after the decision, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) overwhelmingly passed resolutions supporting desegregation and calling on all to comply with it peacefully. . . . By 1958 all SBC seminaries accepted black applicants." With considerable understatement, Chappell notes that "people'--even historians'--are surprised to hear this." Billy Graham, the most prominent Southern preacher, was openly integrationist. The point of all this is not to deny that Richard Nixon may have invited some nasty fellows into his political bed. The point is that the GOP finally became the region's dominant party in the least racist phase of the South's entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region's growing and confident communities'--not its declining and fearful ones. The myth's shrillest proponents are as reluctant to admit this as they are to concede that most Republicans genuinely believe that a color-blind society lies down the road of individual choice and dynamic change, not down the road of state regulation and unequal treatment before the law. The truly tenacious prejudices here are the mythmakers'.
The Myth of the Republican-Democrat 'Switch' | Dan O'Donnell | News/Talk 1130 WISN
When faced with the sobering reality that Democrats supported slavery, started the Civil War when the abolitionist Republican Party won the Presidency, established the Ku Klux Klan to brutalize newly freed slaves and keep them from voting, opposed the Civil Rights Movement, modern-day liberals reflexively perpetuate rather pernicious myth--that the racist southern Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s became Republicans, leading to the so-called "switch" of the parties.
This is as ridiculous as it is easily debunked.
The Republican Party, of course, was founded in 1848 with the abolition of slavery as its core mission. Almost immediately after its second presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 election, Democrat-controlled southern states seceded on the assumption that Lincoln would destroy their slave-based economies.
Once the Civil War ended, the newly freed slaves as expected flocked to the Republican Party, but Democrat control of the South from Reconstruction until the Civil Rights Era was near total. In 1960, Democrats held every Senate seat south of the Mason-Dixon line. In the 13 states that made up the Confederacy a century earlier, Democrats held a staggering 117-8 advantage in the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party was so strong in the south that those 117 House members made up a full 41% of Democrats' 283-153 advantage in the Chamber.
Likewise, throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Democratic governors and overwhelmingly Democratic State Legislatures controlled the South, which steadfastly opposed the push for civil rights. In contrast, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, openly praised school desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education decision and sent federalized Arkansas National Guard troops to Little Rock to protect nine black students after Democratic Governor Orval Faubus threatened to keep them out of a previously all-white high school.
Eisenhower was a phenomenally popular war hero when he was elected in 1952, and even though only one Republican had ever before won any southern states in the Electoral College (Herbert Hoover in 1928), Eisenhower began to make inroads for the Republican Party; winning Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee. In his landslide victory four years later, Eisenhower picked up Louisiana and Kentucky.
His personal appeal, though, didn't transcend the Democratic Party's hold on the South, and when he left office in 1961, that hold was arguably stronger than it had been in decades. As Southern Democrats clung to traditional segregation, though, the rest of the country was changing, and the push for civil rights had begun.
After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy--a strong proponent of civil rights--in late 1963, Southern Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson saw it as his mission to pass the Civil Rights Act as a tribute to Kennedy, who had first proposed the bill five months before he was killed. Democrats in the Senate, however, filibustered it.
In June of 1964, though, the bill came up again, and it passed...over the strenuous objections of Southern Democrats. 80% of House Republicans voted for the measure, compared with just 61% of Democrats, while 82% of Republicans in the Senate supported it, compared with 69% of Democrats.
Nearly all of the opposition was, naturally, in the South, which was still nearly unanimously Democratic and nearly unanimously resistant to the changing country. One thing that most assuredly didn't change, though, was party affiliation. A total of 21 Democrats in the Senate opposed the Civil Rights Act. Only one of them, "Dixiecrat" Strom Thurmond, ever became a Republican. The rest, including Al Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd--a former Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan--remained Democrats until the day they died.
Moreover, as those 20 lifelong Democrats retired, their Senate seats remained in Democrat hands for several decades afterwards. So too did the overwhelming majority of the House seats in the South until 1994, when a Republican wave election swept the GOP into control of the House for the first time since 1952. 1994 was also the first time Republicans ever held a majority of House seats in the South--a full 30 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
From there, Republicans gradually built their support in the South until two more wave elections in 2010 and 2014 gave them the overwhelming majorities they enjoy today.
If this was a sudden "switch" to the Republican Party for the old Democrat segregationists, it sure took a long time to happen.
The reality is that it didn't. After the 1964 election--the first after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the opportune time for racist Democrat voters to abandon the party in favor of Republicans--Democrats still held a 102-20 House majority in states that had once been part of the Confederacy. In 1960, remember, that advantage was 117-8. A pickup of 12 seats (half of them in Alabama) is hardly the massive shift one would expect if racist voters suddenly abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the GOP.
In fact, voting patterns in the South didn't really change all that much after the Civil Rights era. Democrats still dominated Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections for decades afterward. Alabama, for example, didn't elect a Republican governor until 1986. Mississippi didn't elect one until 1991. Georgia didn't elect one until 2002.
In the Senate, Republicans picked up four southern Senate seats in the 1960s and 1970s, while Democrats also picked up four. Democratic incumbents won routinely. If anything, those racist southern voters kept voting Democrat.
So how did this myth of a sudden "switch" get started?
It's rooted in an equally pernicious myth of the supposedly racist "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, which was accused of surreptitiously exploiting the innate racism of white southern voters.
Even before that, though, modern-day Democrats point to the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, who refused to back the 1964 Civil Rights Act as proof that the GOP was actively courting racist southern voters. After all, they argue, Goldwater only won six states--his home state of Arizona and five states in the deep south. His "States' Rights" platform had to be code for a racist return to a segregated society, right?
Hardly. Goldwater was actually very supportive of civil rights for black Americans, voting for the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and even helping to found Arizona's chapter of the NAACP. His opposition to the 1964 Act was not at all rooted in racism, but rather in a belief that it allowed the federal government to infringe on state sovereignty.
The Lyndon B. Johnson campaign pounced on Goldwater's position and, during the height of the 1964 campaign, ran an ad titled "Confessions of a Republican," which rather nonsensically tied Goldwater to the Ku Klux Klan (which, remember, was a Democratic organization).
The ad helped Johnson win the biggest landslide since 1920 and for the first time showed Democrats that accusing Republicans of being racist (even with absolutely no evidence to back this up) was a potent political weapon.
It would not be the last time they used it.
Four years later, facing declining popularity ratings and strong primary challenges from Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, Johnson decided not to run for re-election. As protests over the Vietnam War and race riots following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. raged in America's streets, Republican Richard Nixon, the former Vice President, launched a campaign based on promises of "restoring law and order."
With the southerner Johnson out of the race and Minnesota native Hubert Humphrey as his opponent, Nixon saw an opportunity to win southern states that Goldwater had, not through racism, but through aggressive campaigning in an area of the country Republicans had previously written off.
Yet it didn't work. For all of Nixon's supposed appeals to southern racists (who still voted for Democrats in Senate and House races that same year), he lost almost all of the south to a Democrat--George Wallace, who ran on the American Independent ticket and won five states and 46 electoral votes.
It shouldn't have been surprising that Nixon ran competitively in the South, though. He carried 32 states and won 301 electoral votes. Four years later, he won every state except Massachusetts. Was it because of his racism? Had he laid the groundwork for racist appeals by Republicans for generations to come?
Of course not. The supposedly racist southern Republicans who voted for Nixon in 1972 also voted to re-elect Democrat Senators in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Republicans gained only eight southern seats in the House even though their presidential candidate won a record 520 electoral votes.
After Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, Democrat Jimmy Carter swept the South en route to the presidency in 1976. Did Carter similarly run on racist themes? Or was he simply a stronger candidate? After Ronald Reagan carried the south in two landslides (including the biggest in U.S. history in 1984) and George H.W. Bush ran similarly strongly in 1988 while promising to be a "third Reagan term," Democrat Bill Clinton split the southern states with Bush in 1992 and with Bob Dole in 1996.
All the while, Democrats kept winning House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections. Only in 2000 did southern voters return to unanimous Electoral College support for a Republican presidential candidate.
Since then, the south has voted reliably Republican (with the exception of Florida and North Carolina) in every presidential election as it has consistently voted for Republicans in Senate, House, and Governor's races.
Yet this shift was a gradual, decades-long transition and not a sudden "shift" in response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Racism didn't turn the South Republican--if it did, then why did it take 30 years for those racist voters to finally give the GOP a majority of southern House seats? Why did it take racist voters in Georgia 38 years to finally vote for a Republican governor? And why did only one southern Democrat ever switch to the Republican Party?
The myth of the great Republican-Democrat "switch" summarily falters under the weight of actual historical analysis, and it becomes clear that prolonged electoral shifts combined with the phenomenal nationwide popularity of Republicans Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 were the real reason for the Republican strength in the south.
Reagan in particular introduced the entire nation to conservative policies that it found that it loved, sparking a new generation of Republican voters and politicians who still have tremendous influence today.
Racism had nothing to do with it. That is simply a Democratic myth.
Shut Up Slave!
TSA Confirms Biometrics, Facial Recognition To Be Condition For All Air Travelers | Zero Hedge
Authored by Edward Hasbrouck via Papers, Please! blog,
Today the US Transportation Security Administration released a detailed TSA Biometric Roadmap for Aviation Security & the Passenger Experience, making explicit the goal of requiring mug shots (to be used for automated facial recognition and image-based surveillance and control) as a condition of all domestic or international air travel.
This makes explicit the goal that has been apparent, but only implicit, in the activities and statements of both government agencies and airline and airport trade associations.
It's a terrifyingly totalitarian vision of pervasive surveillance of air travelers at, quite literally and deliberately, every step of their journey, enabled by automated facial recognition and by the seamless collaboration of airlines and airport operators that will help the government surveil their customers in exchange for free use of facial images for their own business purposes and profits.
The closest contemporary counterpart to what the TSA envisions for the USA is the pervasive surveillance and control of travelers in China through automated facial recognition by the Public Security Bureau.
Automated surveillance of air travelers by the TSA will begin with people who have ''voluntarily'' provided photos for other purposes such as background checks:
In the near term, TSA will deploy Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) to authenticate the security features of passengers' ID credentials and allow Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to retrieve passenger pre-screening status in near-real time'.... In the future, TSA will be able to use TSA Pre'''® enrolled facial images for matching'.... Moving forward, TSA Pre'''® will increase its access to and utilization of voluntarily-provided biometric data, including facial images, to modernize the trusted traveler experience for TSA Pre'''® travelers.
In a press release announcing its roadmap, the TSA says that:
TSA has already begun testing biometrics for TSA Pre'''® travelers'.... As of September 2018, passengers who enroll in TSA Pre'''® or renew their membership in person are required to provide their photograph. Using applicants' photographs, TSA will test facial biometric technology in TSA Pre'''® lanes at select airports once enrollment numbers support this testing.
The roadmap released today is dated September 2018. We've already begun to receive reports suggesting that the TSA may already be using automated facial recognition '-- without explicit notice or any obvious way to opt out '-- in ''TSA Pre-Check'' lanes at checkpoints at some airports. If you see something, say something: Ask whether facial images are being collected, by whom, for what purposes, and subject to what if any option to opt out.
In its next stage, the TSA Biometrics Roadmap envisions expanding automated facial image surveillance to include photos from drivers licenses and state ID cards:
Additionally, TSA will work with DHS and other stakeholders to ensure mobile drivers' licenses (mDL) are REAL ID compliant and explore their acceptance at aviation security touchpoints across the passenger experience. Several state issuance authorities have started to securely provision mDL onto driver's mobile devices in addition to issuing a physical license. These solutions may include biometric data that TSA could leverage for identity verification'.... TSA will explore opportunities to more effectively use existing information within DHS systems including DHS databases (e.g., IDENT/HART), State Department passport photos, and solutions that may broker verification touchpoints between federal and state systems.
The obvious ''touchpoint'' between federal and state ID databases would be DHS access to the SPEXS database of information from drivers licenses and state IDs. SPEXS is operated by a contractor of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), and already includes personal information about more than 50 millionUS residents.
Participation in SPEXS is a de facto condition of state compliance with the Federal REAL-ID Act. SPEXS records sourced from drivers license and state ID databases don't yet include facial images. But if AAMVA decides to add facial images to the SPEXS dataset, states won't be able to say no without immediately becoming noncompliant with the REAL-ID Act.
AAMVA is listed among the ''stakeholders'' collaborating with the TSA. But AAMVA is identified as a ''government'' stakeholder, even though AAMVA itself claims to be a nongovernmental organization and is not subject to any of the transparency or accountability rules that would apply to a government agency.
''Various'' technology vendors were consulted by the TAA and are, presumably, building this infrastructure of enhanced surveillance and control of travel, but are unnamed.
The TSA claims that:
TSA will adopt a ''privacy by design'' mindset that incorporates privacy considerations into each phase of biometric solution development (design, build, implement). Privacy protections will include restrictions to prevent the use of biometrics for purposes other than transportation security unless individuals have opted into other uses.
But that claim is belied by the fact that none of the stakeholders consulted by the TSA in designing its roadmap for automated facial recognition of travelers were travelers or privacy, civil liberties, or human rights experts or advocates. Other than the conclusionary claim quoted above, there is no actual consideration in the TSA roadmap of its privacy, civil liberties, or human rights implications.
Two other issues beside privacy are are also notably absent from the TSA roadmap:
First, there is no mention of the procedural due process required by the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. The DHS has been sitting on a formal petition for rulemaking regarding its secret non-rules for biometric identification of travelers. But that petition is not mentioned in the TSA Biometric Roadmap. As usual, the TSA and DHS appear to be substituting administrative fiat for public notice and comment.
Second, there is no mention of the substantive legal basis, if any, for TSA authority to conduct this surveillance or of its compatibility with the First Amendment, the Privacy Act (which prohibits the collection of information about how individuals exercise rights protected by the First Amendment, such as the right to assemble, without explicit statutory authority), or the obligations of common carriers. What '-- if any '-- personal information an airline can demand of a passenger as a condition of travel, consistent with its obligations as a common carrier, under US law recognizing a public right of tranit by air, and under international aviation and human rights treaties, is likely to be a key issue in future litigation.
Travel is a right, not a privilege subject to arbitrarily imposed government conditions. Travelers should continue to ''Just Say No'' to demands for mug shots or ID papers.
WASHINGTON '' The Transportation Security Administration today released its plan to expand the use of biometrics technology as part of its continued effort to enhance security and the traveler experience. The TSA Biometrics Roadmap for Aviation Security and the Passenger Experience will guide the agency's biometric efforts to modernize aviation passenger identity verification in the coming years.
''With the threat to aviation evolving every day, developing the next generation of security technology with our industry partners is critically important,'' said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. ''By expanding our use of biometrics, TSA secures its position as a global leader in aviation security and advances global transportation security standards.''
Currently, TSA and airline partners verify traveler identity primarily by processing biographic data and inspecting physical identity and travel documents. The use of biometric technology will simplify the passenger experience and increase efficiency and security effectiveness.
The roadmap focuses on four main goals: 1) partnering with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on biometrics for international travelers; 2) using biometrics provided by TSA Pre'''® members to enhance the travel experience; 3) expanding biometrics to additional domestic travelers; and 4) developing the infrastructure for biometric technology. TSA is already carrying out these objectives through smart investments and collaborative partnerships.
Early this year, TSA began testing facial recognition technology for international travelers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). TSA began collaborating with CBP in 2017 at John F. Kennedy International Airport and expanded testing to LAX in August. CBP's technology matches facial images to photos in government databases, such as photos obtained from passports or visa applications, to verify identity and reduce reliance on physical documents.
Additionally, TSA has already begun testing biometrics for TSA Pre'''® travelers. In June 2017, TSA tested fingerprint technology at a TSA Pre'''® lane at Hartsfield''Jackson Atlanta International Airport and at Denver International Airport. The technology matches passenger fingerprints provided at the checkpoint to those provided to TSA by travelers who have enrolled in TSA Pre'''®. As of September 2018, passengers who enroll in TSA Pre'''® or renew their membership in person are required to provide their photograph. Using applicants' photographs, TSA will test facial biometric technology in TSA Pre'''® lanes at select airports once enrollment numbers support this testing. By expanding the use of biometrics to TSA Pre'''® members, TSA will continue enhancing the experience for trusted travelers.
Later this month, TSA is partnering with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta Air Lines and CBP to launch the first biometric terminal that uses facial recognition to automate many processes in the travel experience, from self-service bag drop, to ID verification, to boarding a flight.
''By testing biometrics technology in the airport environment, TSA hopes to increase security effectiveness and stay ahead of the threat,'' said Pekoske. ''We will continue to leverage our partnerships to deliver enhanced capabilities to checkpoint lanes throughout the country.''
As technology continues to advance, TSA hopes to reduce the need for physical forms of identification by developing systems that use facial images and fingerprints to verify passengers' identity. For more information about TSA's use of the technology, visit the biometrics technology page.
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Hate Trumps Love
Utah Man Arrested for Sending Ricin Letter to Trump | Time
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) '-- A U.S. Navy veteran in Utah was arrested Wednesday in connection with suspicious envelopes that were sent to President Donald Trump and top military chiefs.
William Clyde Allen III, 39, was taken into custody in in the small northern Utah city of Logan, said Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for the state's U.S. attorney's office.
The arrest comes after authorities confirmed an investigation into two envelopes once thought to contain ricin and later found to be castor seeds, the substance from which the poison is derived. They can cause injury if swallowed.
The FBI said there were potentially hazardous chemicals involved with their operation in Utah on Wednesday, but they declined to give additional details. No attorney was immediately listed for Allen.
The envelopes addressed to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Navy's top officer, Adm. John Richardson, were isolated at a mail screening facility and sent to the FBI. No one was injured, and neither envelope entered the Pentagon. Mattis is traveling in Europe this week.
An envelope also was sent to the president Monday with unknown contents. The Secret Service says it didn't reach the White House.
Allen served in the Navy from 1998 to 2002, according to Navy records. He worked as a damage control fireman apprentice.
Two years after his Navy tenure ended, he was charged in a child sex-abuse case involving two girls he had an unspecified ''relationship of trust'' with, court documents state. He later pleaded guilty to lesser neglect and abuse charges and did not have to register as a sex offender.
That same year, a woman filed a protective order against him in a separate case. He disputed her allegations, the details of which are not public, but agreed to the protective order.
In 2008, he pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated assault and served about 2 ½ years in prison, authorities said. He was released in 2011.
New charges are expected to be filed later this week.
New York Times Publishes Trump Assassination Fantasy After Asking Fiction Writers To Imagine End To Mueller Investigation | The Daily Caller
9:13 AM 10/25/2018 | MediaEvie Fordham | Politics and Health Care Reporter
The New York Times published a short story about assassinating President Donald Trump Tuesday just one day before ''potential explosive devices'' showed up at the addresses of multiple political figures including former President Barack Obama.
The New York Times asked novelists ''to conjure possible outcomes'' to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election for a Tuesday piece.
English thriller novelist Zo Sharp wrote the short story, titled ''How It Ends,'' about a Russian assassin on a suicide mission who receives help from a Secret Service agent to kill Trump. A character who is working with the Russians in the story implies that Trump ''was handpicked at the highest possible level'' and must be silenced.
US President Donald Trump walks with his wife Melania surrounded by Secret Service officers outside the White House as the presidential inaugural parade winds through the nation's capital on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
In the story, the Russian assassin's gun misfires when he rushes the president, but Secret Service agents do not shoot him.
''The Secret Service agent stood before him, presenting his Glock, butt first,'' Sharp wrote. '''Here,' the agent said politely. 'Use mine. '...'''
Sharp's story is set after Mueller's investigation indicts, subpoenas and even places under house arrest ''the president's campaign manager, then his lawyer, a Republican congressman, former aides, family members.''
The story also contains what appears to be an allusion to Fox News.
''The channel once snidely referred to as 'state TV' now delighted in showing long shots through the White House railings of men in uniforms removing boxes of incriminating paperwork,'' Sharp wrote. ''The president himself was not in residence. He was holed up on home ground.''
Sharp said she was honored that her story was one of five chosen by The New York Times in a Tweet Wednesday. (RELATED: Unidentified 'Device' Sent To Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Office Was A Letter And Flash Drive)
Honoured to be in @nytimesbooks this week alongside @ScottTurow @JoeFinder @LauraMLippman Jason Matthews. We were asked to write short fiction on what happens next on the US/Russia scene. https://t.co/tW8UVvNn8S
'-- Zoe Sharp (@authorzoesharp) October 24, 2018
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to The New York Times but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham.
Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
The Purge
Paul "The Book Guy" Alves on Twitter: "No. I'm not full of shit. Social media is a public square and privately owned. Established law says they should NOT be able to silence you. 1st Amendment (USA). Marsh v. Alabama is the precedent setting case: https:/
Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment.
Background [ edit ] The town of Chickasaw, Alabama, was predominately a company town near Mobile, Alabama, that was owned and operated by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation ("Gulf"). The town exhibited the general characteristics of a more traditional settlement. The town's policeman was a deputy from the Mobile County Sheriff's Department who was paid by Gulf. The town was surrounded by a number of adjacent neighborhoods which were not located on Gulf property. The Court noted that the residents of these non-Gulf neighborhoods were freely allowed to use the company-owned streets and sidewalks to access the town's businesses and facilities.
The appellant, Marsh, a Jehovah's Witness, stood near the post office one day, where she began distributing religious literature. Marsh was warned that she needed a permit to do so, and that none would be issued to her. When she was asked to leave, she refused on the grounds that the company rules against distribution of such materials could not be constitutionally applied to her. The deputy sheriff arrested her and she was charged with the Alabama criminal code's trespassing equivalent.
During her trial, Marsh contended that the statute could not be constitutionally applied to her, as it would necessarily violate her rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments. This contention was rejected and Marsh was convicted. The Alabama Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, holding that the statute as applied was constitutional because the title to the sidewalk was in the corporation's name. It held that the public use of the sidewalk had not been such as to give rise to a presumption under Alabama law of its irrevocable dedication to the public. The Alabama Supreme Court denied certiorari, and Marsh appealed her case directly to the United States Supreme Court.
Decision [ edit ] In a 5-3 decision, the court ruled in favor of Marsh. The opinion, joined by three justices, was authored by Justice Hugo Black, with Justice Felix Frankfurter writing a concurrence, and Justice Stanley Forman Reed writing a dissent.
The Court initially noted that it would be an easy case if the town were a more traditional, publicly administered, municipality. Then, there would be a clear violation of the right to free speech for the government to bar the sidewalk distribution of such material. The question became, therefore, whether or not constitutional freedom of speech protections could be denied simply because a single company held title to the town.
The State attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
In its conclusion, the Court stated that it was essentially weighing the rights of property owners against the rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of press and religion. The Court noted that the rights of citizens under the Bill of Rights occupy a preferred position. Accordingly, the Court held that the property rights of a private entity are not sufficient to justify the restriction of a community of citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.
Frankfurter's concurring opinion [ edit ] Justice Frankfurter concurred in the Court's opinion with one exception. The majority opinion briefly mentioned the Commerce Clause as possibly being analogous to the case's circumstances. In his concurrence, Justice Frankfurter expressed his opinion that it was unnecessary to look to the Commerce Clause for guidance on a First Amendment issue.
Reed's dissenting opinion [ edit ] Justice Reed introduced his dissent by noting that the Constitutional protections for religion, speech, and press are not absolute or unlimited in respect to the manner or place of their exercise. Furthermore, Reed asserted that property rights, which are also protected by the Constitution, "are not outweighed by the interests of the trespasser, even though he trespasses in behalf of religion or free speech."
Subsequent history [ edit ] While the Marsh holding at first appears somewhat narrow and inapplicable to the present day due to the disappearance of company towns from the United States, it was raised in the somewhat high-profile 1996 cyberlaw case, Cyber Promotions v. America Online, 948 F. Supp. 436, 442 (E.D. Pa. 1996).[1] Cyber Promotions wished to send out "mass email advertisements" to AOL customers. AOL installed software to block those emails. Cyber Promotions sued on free speech grounds and cited the Marsh case as authority for the proposition that even though AOL's servers were private property, AOL had opened them to the public to a degree sufficient that constitutional free speech protections could be applied.
The federal district court disagreed, thereby paving the way for spam filters at the Internet service provider level.
In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.
Recently the case has been highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online communication media like Facebook as a public space to prevent it from censoring free speech.[2][3]
See also [ edit ] List of United States Supreme Court cases involving the First AmendmentList of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 326References [ edit ] ^ Link to Cyber Promotions opinion (.pdf download) ^ "Facebook Is Censoring Science and Journalism". nationalreview.com. 31 August 2016. Laws in California and New Jersey appear to agree. According to the First Amendment Center, both states consider shopping malls as the equivalent of public spaces when it comes to free-speech rights. The legal reasoning is ultimately rooted in the Supreme Court's decision in 1946 in Marsh v. Alabama, which essentially held that a private space that is open to the public must uphold public rights. We believe that this is an apt and appropriate description of Facebook. With roughly 1.6 billion users, Facebook is the largest public space on earth. ^ Coy, Peter (29 November 2017). "How to Tame Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple". bloomberg.com. Facebook considers itself a marketplace of ideas and rails against the notion that it's a media company. Some critics are asserting a First Amendment right to free speech on Facebook, saying that it has become, in effect, a public space. They cite a 1946 Supreme Court decision, Marsh v. Alabama
Rep. Jim Jordan: Congress should examine free speech restrictions by social media companies and others | Fox News
In a House Oversight Committee hearing earlier this year, I asked Dr. Bret Weinstein, a professor at Evergreen State College in Washington state, a question: ''In a 'safe space' (on a college campus) could you say this sentence? 'Donald Trump is president.'''
His response '' unbelievable as it sounds '' began with ''well, it depends.''
I stopped him. ''It's a fact,'' I said.
There's no ''it depends'' about it. Donald Trump was elected as president of the United States on Nov. 8, 2016 and sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. No amount of ''safe space'' pretending can change that fact.
The exchange with Weinstein highlights the level of absurdity we have now reached in America. Simply stating a fact on a university campus '' where students go to learn facts '' could land you in trouble and result in disciplinary action.
And unfortunately, the attack on free speech is not limited to colleges and universities. The federal government has also attacked the free speech rights of Americans.
For example, over a period of many years the Internal Revenue Service systematically targeted people for their political beliefs.
Under the First Amendment we have several fundamental rights. But the most vital is our right to free speech. And when our nation's founders wrote the First Amendment, they were particularly concerned about our right to speak in a political fashion.
In America we have the right to criticize the government and not be harassed for doing so, yet that is exactly what the Internal Revenue Service did when it targeted conservative speech.
But while government and academia have attacked free speech, the biggest threat may be large social media companies.
In 2012 former Twitter U.K. General Manager Tony Wang stated: ''We are the free speech wing of the free speech party.''
Obviously Wang was marketing Twitter as a platform where all ideas are welcome. Oh, how times have changed. Earlier this month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Wang's 2012 pronouncement ''was a joke.''
We shouldn't be surprised by Dorsey's statement. In July Vice News reported that four Republican House members '' Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Rep. Devin Nunes and California and me '' were shadow banned by Twitter.
Shadow banning does not affect a person's ability to go on Twitter and read tweets or post tweets. But it prevents others from reading the person's tweets.
Twitter claimed the problem was just a glitch in the company's algorithm, calling it a ''search auto-suggest issue.'' And of course, the response from Dorsey was predictable. ''We do not shadow ban according to political ideology or viewpoint or content,'' he said.
Really?
Congress should also look to appoint a task force to examine all restrictions placed on the First Amendment, with a specific focus on social media companies.
There are 535 members in the U.S. Congress. But only four conservative Republicans were shadow banned. What was the ''glitch'' in the algorithm? The names Gaetz, Meadows, Nunes and Jordan?
Twitter is not alone in limiting free speech. Other high-tech companies are also restricting speech, and most often it is conservative speech that is targeted. For example:
Facebook's algorithm changes harmed conservative news outlets ''significantly more than liberal-leaning outlets,'' according to an analysis by the Western Journal.Facebook blocked California Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng's video ad outlining her parents' story of suffering in Cambodia in the early 1980s under the brutal communist regime that committed genocide against its own people because the ad accurately depicted ''violence or threats of violence.'' Twitter censored the pro-life ad of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., because it said: ''I fought Planned Parenthood and we stopped the sale of baby body parts, thank God.''Google attempted to influence the 2016 election in ''key states'' with a ''silent donation,'' Tucker Carlson reported on his Fox News show. Any attack on free speech is troubling, but big tech's assault is the most troubling. Social media are now part of every American's life, and big social media companies have unbelievable control over the type and flow of information. If they can restrict certain types of speech, then their ability to impact elections and public policy is virtually unlimited.
The First Amendment was written to protect speech '' and not just speech that we agree with. Congress needs to have more hearings and more oversight, which would mean more information for the American people.
Congress should also look to appoint a task force to examine all restrictions placed on the First Amendment, with a specific focus on social media companies. This is not a partisan issue. Free speech is fundamental to the health of our great country, and Congress should treat it with the respect it deserves.
Alphabet replaces Google's 'don't be evil' slogan with 'do the right thing' '' BGR
As part of Google's transformation into Alphabet Inc., the company on Friday released a new code of conduct that does away with the iconic ''Don't be evil'' slogan that was first revealed when the company went public back in 2004.
DON'T MISS: iPhone 6s Plus vs. Nexus 6P vs. Galaxy Note 5: Battle of the 2015 phablets
Indeed, Google's S-1 filing ahead of its 2004 IPO famously included the following blurb:
Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served '-- as shareholders and in all other ways '-- by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.
While the ''don't be evil'' moniker is obviously well-intentioned, the slogan provided easy fodder for critics to call out the search giant as hypocritical anytime it took actions that were deemed to be even partially controversial or not in the best interst of users.
Most famously, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs called the slogan ''bullshit'' back in 2010 during a heated talk about Apple's ongoing rivalry with the search giant.
So with ''don't be evil'' not making the transition over to Alphabet, what's in its place? Well, Alphabet's new code of conduct simply requests that employees ''should do the right thing.''
The change was originally spotted by The Wall Street Journal which posted the following screenshots comparing the two different codes.
Of course, we shoult point out that Google's own code of conduct remains unchanged. While perhaps confusing, recall that Google is now a wholly owned subsidiary under the Alphabet umbrella. In other words, these are technically two different companies now.
As a few folks on Twitter have pointed out, the general nature of Alphabet's code of conduct leaves the door open for the company's many subsidiaries to come up with more tailored codes of conduct of their own.
As a final point of interest, Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land put together the following list of Alphabet subsidiaries a few months back.
Calico (the folks who want you to live forever)Fiber (high-speed internet)Google (Search, Maps, YouTube, Android, Ads, Apps)Google Ventures (venture capital business)Google Capital (investment fund)Google X (auto-driving cars, Google Glass, internet by balloon, moonshots)Life Sciences (the glucose-sensing contact lens people)Nest (smoke alarms, home cameras, thermostats & connected home devices)
Obama Care
90.000 patinten, waar laat je die? - Het Parool - Blendle
Faillissement: Crisisteams zoeken plek in andere ziekenhuizen
MALIKA SEVIL
AMSTERDAM
Na de emotionele dag waarop MC Slotervaart omviel, komt met de kater ook een logistieke operatie. 'Het is als bij een ramp: eerst de acute patinten, dan de rest.'
Patinten en personeel in de rats om behandelingen en salaris - De Telegraaf - Blendle
Patinten en personeel in de rats om behandelingen en salaris
In het Amsterdamse Slotervaartziekenhuis en de IJsselmeerziekenhuizen geldt een noodplan. De ziekenhuizen zijn failliet. Medewerkers maken zich zorgen over hun salaris en patinten zijn somber over hun toekomstige zorg. 'Een half jaar geleden werd er gerend en gevlogen door de artsen. Nu is de zorg mondjesmaat en langzaam. Iedereen maakt zich zorgen.''
Rayciss
Megyn Kelly Prepares for Aggressive NBC Legal Fight Amid Blackface Controversy
Megyn Kelly has beefed up her team by hiring a top Hollywood litigator amidst her blackface controversy, signaling that the anchor is ready to put up an aggressive fight as she sorts out her likely exit plan with NBC.
Kelly is now represented by Bryan Freedman, one of the founding partners of the Los Angeles-based law firm Freedman & Taitelman, Variety has confirmed. Kelly's new attorney is set to meet with NBC executives as early as Friday to ''determine next steps,'' insiders say.
Neither Kelly's personal representative nor attorney were immediately available for comment on the anchor's current status at NBC.
The appointment of Kelly's attorney comes as the anchor has parted ways with her agency, CAA. A person familiar with the matter tells Variety that Kelly departed CAA because the agency also represents NBC News president Noah Oppenheim.
In recent months, prior to the recent controversy, tensions have been growing between Kelly and NBC News management. Sources with knowledge of the situation say that NBC News chairman Andy Lack disapproved of Kelly aggressively covering stories about sexual harassment on her show, particularly related to NBC and disgraced anchor Matt Lauer, who was fired last November.
(C) Provided by Variety ''After Andy Lack turned on her yesterday, she decided she needed a non-conflicting agency because of Noah,'' says an insider with knowledge of Kelly's thinking, referring to NBC News dispatching their anchors to extensively cover Kelly's blackface remarks across their broadcasts.
NBC News declined to comment.
Following Kelly's controversial comments about dressing up in blackface on Halloween, the broadcaster apologized to her staff and on-air the next day, but her apology did not settle down the intense backlash online. NBC covered the controversy at length on ''Today'' and ''NBC Nightly News.''
Kelly hired Freedman late Wednesday night. However, the change in her team was in effect before her blackface comments on Tuesday's ''Megyn Kelly Today,'' signaling that Kelly was eyeing a change in her role at NBC News before the scandal erupted. After she made the decision not to be represented by CAA, an insider explained that Kelly had been in talks with UTA prior to the blackface controversy. After the backlash, UTA decided not to represent her. Another insider says UTA suggested Kelly should be represented by Freedman, as a lawyer would better fit her needs rather than an agent.
Freedman is a talent-side litigator, who previously represented UTA in the dispute over the controversial move of 13 CAA agents to the firm. While she was at Fox News, Kelly was repped by the UTA-owned N.S. Bienstock agency before signing with CAA ahead of her multi-million dollar NBC News deal in 2017.
At press time, NBC News declined to comment on the status of Kelly's employment at the company.
War on Weed
Liverwort produces a chemical almost identical to THC '-- Quartz
Liverwort isn't much to look at. These low-to-the-ground plant species creep along unobtrusively enough, spanning their hand-like fronds over rocks and logs alike. But there's a secret side to some of these mossy weeds. In a report published yesterday (Oct. 24) in Science Advances, researchers revealed that certain members of the Radula genus of liverwort'--there are about 9,000 species of liverwort; Radula comprises some 200-300 species'--contains a chemical compound that relieves pain, much like the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) found in marijuana. Unlike THC, however, perrotetinene, as the compound is known, doesn't give you a psychoactive high.
Perrotetinene has a molecular structure similar to THC, which enables both compounds to easily attach to the brain's cannabinoid receptors. Once they're there, the compounds stem the flood of pain signals to the brain and dampen their effects, providing relief from pain and inflammation. That's assuming perrotetinene will work the same way on human brains as it does on mice, the primary focus of this recent study.
In the past, it's been easy for scientists to overlook liverwort'--literally. ''Nobody really notices [liverworts] because they're so small,'' Ohio State University- Columbus phytochemist Douglas Kinghorn told ScienceNews. ''Sometimes you find important medicinal compounds in plants from unexpected sources.'' But that doesn't mean that you should start scouring your garden for any promising-looking moss. The study only identified three species of liverwort'--Radula perrottetii, Radula marginata, and Radula laxiramea'--known to produce the compound, and even then only in tiny quantities. (R. marginata, which is endemic to New Zealand and Tasmania, is sometimes sold online as a ''legal high'''--though, as the study notes, ''the online community reporting about legal highs both affirms and refutes the anecdotes regarding the cannabis-like effects of smoked R. marginata.'' In short, it might not work.)
Still, scientists say they're optimistic about the synthetic version of the chemical, produced by replicating its molecular structure in a lab setting'--though it's a long, long way off being commercially available.
#MeToo
Sir Philip Green named as man at heart of 'UK #MeToo scandal' | World news | The Guardian
Sir Philip Green has been named as the businessman at the centre of an injunction linked to allegations known as the ''British #MeToo scandal'', after a Labour peer used an ancient parliamentary right to name him in the House of Lords.
The Topshop retail tycoon was named in a dramatic intervention by the former cabinet minister Peter Hain, after days of speculation over a mystery businessman described by the Daily Telegraph as the subject of multiple sexual harassment and bullying allegations.
Green said he ''categorically and wholly denies'' any suggestion he was guilty of unlawful behaviour.
Court of appeal judges had granted a temporary injunction blocking the Daily Telegraph from publishing allegations of misconduct made by five employees about a figure the newspaper described as a ''leading businessman''. The staff had signed non-disclosure agreements.
The court of appeal decision overturned an earlier finding by the high court that to identify the man would be in the public interest. It is thought the legal case cost Green around £500,000. The Telegraph said it would ''reignite the #MeToo movement against the mistreatment of women, minorities and others by powerful employers''.
On Thursday, Lord Hain told the Lords he had decided to name Green, saying: ''Having been contacted by somebody intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying which is compulsively continuing, I feel it's my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question, given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of a story which is clearly in the public interest.''
Green said he would not comment on any court proceedings or anything that was said in parliament, but issued a robust statement denying any wrongdoing.
''To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations,'' he said. ''[Topshop parent group] Arcadia and I take accusations and grievances from employees very seriously and in the event that one is raised, it is thoroughly investigated.
''Arcadia employs more than 20,000 people and in common with many large businesses sometimes receives formal complaints from employees. In some cases these are settled with the agreement of all parties and their legal advisers. These settlements are confidential so I cannot comment further on them.''
Parliamentary privilege is an ancient right allowing MPs to say what they wish in the parliamentary chambers without being sued for libel. That privilege has traditionally been used by the media to report on what was said. In 2011, the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming named the footballer Ryan Giggs as the star who had taken out an injunction over an alleged affair with a reality TV star.
Members of the Lords did not react to Hain's intervention and business proceeded to a routine statement on immigration by the Home Office minister Susan Williams.
Theresa May's spokeswoman declined to comment on the naming of Green but said it was up to individual MPs or peers how they chose to exercise parliamentary privilege.
Speaking during prime minister's questions on Wednesday, May said the government was already committed to reforming the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
''Non-disclosure agreements cannot stop people from whistleblowing, but it is clear that some employers are using them unethically,'' May said.
She said the government was going to bring forward its consultation ''to seek to improve the regulation around non-disclosure agreements and make it absolutely explicit to employees when a non-disclosure agreement does not apply and when it cannot be enforced''.
A report from the women and equalities committee in July recommended that NDAs ''must be better controlled and regulated'' and that lawyers must be held to account if they used them unethically. Earlier this year the Solicitors Regulation Authority warned its members against inappropriate use of the agreements.
The shadow women and equalities secretary, Dawn Butler, said Labour would reform the use of NDAs unless the government did so first, saying: ''If the current law doesn't protect the voices of survivors, the next Labour government will legislate to do so.''
It is felt there will be calls for Green's knighthood to be revoked if the allegations are proved, a decision that rests with the honours forfeiture committee which can consider a case when it is referred by the prime minister.
Frank Field, the chair of the work and pensions select committee who has clashed with Green on multiple occasions over BHS pensions, said: ''The charge sheet against the knighthood is growing. Parliament and the country have made our views clear on this matter.''
The Labour MP Jess Phillips, who has been outspoken against the use of NDAs, said Green should have already been stripped of his knighthood. ''If he isn't now, a knighthood becomes meaningless. I'm glad that the rich and powerful do not get to buy impunity and today will be a shot across their bow.''
The Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, also called for Green's knighthood to be revoked. ''He narrowly and luckily escaped losing his knighthood over the pensions scandal. If these allegations are correct, he should certainly be stripped of his knighthood.''
Field said he hoped to bring forward a mechanism in parliament where voices of bullying in the workplace could be heard via MPs, so they would not face the risk of being sued.
''I have been talking this evening with somebody who witnessed grotesque bullying at work,'' he said. ''They would like for what they witnessed to be shared, through the House of Commons, with the nation.''
He said a mechanism allowing MPs to speak on behalf of victims would ''develop the role of the House of Commons in a way which stands up for people who have little money, against those who have much.''
Hain defended his decision to speak out on Thursday night telling the BBC's Newsnight programme: ''What concerned me about this case was wealth, and power that comes with it, and abuse. And that was what led me to act in the way that I did. It's for others to judge whether I've been right or wrong.
''But there's no point in being in Westminster - which is the sovereign centre of the British constitution, has sovereignty and with it the parliamentary privilege that is a privilege ... if you never discharge that; if you never deploy the precious rights of parliamentary privilege.''
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Matthew Shepard Is the World's Most Famous Gay Hate Crime Victim. But Was He Really Killed for Being Gay? - Slog - The Stranger
An urn containing Matthew Shepard's remains at the National Cathedral. Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
Matthew Shepard was interred Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. His ashes, along with a few keepsakes from his childhood'--report cards, a Superman cape'--will be kept alongside other notables like President Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, and her teacher Anne Sullivan. The Right Reverend Gene Bishop, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, will lead a public service honoring Shepard life, as well as his death.
The interment comes 20 years after Shepard was found beaten and hanging on a wooden fence in Laramie, Wyoming. His assailants had pistol whipped him over a dozen times and set his body of fire. He'd been there, barely alive in the cold Wyoming October, for almost a full day before he was discovered. Just 21 years old and a student at the University of Wyoming, Shepard would die five days after his body was found, in a hospital. Two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were soon arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for Shepard's murder, which received widespread international attention. Why? Because Shepard, we were told, was killed simply for being gay.
Matthew Shepard's death was the kind of event that took on outsized importance. All the national press covered it, repeating the story that soon we'd all come to know: Shepard had gone to a bar and talked with the wrong guys'--guys who would soon trick him into their truck, rob him, and drive him to a remote stretch of Wyoming land and beat him beyond recognition. Matthew Shepard's only mistake was running into some homophobic Wyoming rednecks and, for that, he was now dead. That's the story America, and the world, believed.
The murder became a rallying cry for the gay community. Gay rights groups organized around Shepard's death and the public began talking about hate crime legislation. In the following years, film, novels, plays (including the Laramie Project) and many other works of art would be inspired by Shepard's story, and the Matthew Shepard Foundation has become a powerful force in the queer community. Eventually, Congress would pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, which expanded federal hate-crime laws to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Today, Matthew Shepard is perhaps the most famous hate crime victim of the last half-century. He's certainly the most famous gay murder victim.
But was Matthew Shepard actually the victim of hate crime? Twenty years after Shepard's death, I was completely unaware that there was any question about why Shepherd was killed until just a few weeks ago, when I came across a 2014 article in the Guardian about The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, by investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez. Jimenez, who himself is gay, spent 13 years investigating Shepard's death, and his conclusion came as the kind of shock that makes you question if anything you believe is really true: Matthew Shepard was not killed because he was gay; he was killed over a large amount of crystal meth.
Julie Bindel, the author of the Guardian article, writes:
Jimenez found that Matthew was addicted to and dealing crystal meth and had dabbled in heroin. He also took significant sexual risks and was being pimped alongside Aaron McKinney, one of his killers, with whom he'd had occasional sexual encounters. He was HIV positive at the time of his death. ...
Matthew's drug abuse, and the fact that he knew one of his killers prior to the attack, was never explored in court. Neither was the rumour that the killers knew that he had access to a shipment of crystal meth with a street value of $10,000 which they wanted to steal.
On the evening of October 6, 1998, according to Jimenez, Shepard went to a gay-friendly Laramie bar called the Fireside, where it was karaoke night. At the Fireside, Shepard ran into his eventual killers, Henderson and McKinney. The three talked for a bit before leaving the bar in McKinney's father's truck. It was in the truck that the men robbed Shepard of his wallet and keys (as well as his shoes) and began to beat him without mercy.
After the two men left Shepard hanging on a fence, where he was discovered the next day by a student out riding his bike, McKinney and Henderson headed towards Shepard's home, but on the way there they ran into two other young men who were out slashing tires and got in a fight. Soon after McKinney hit one of them, Emiliano Morales, on the head with the same gun he'd used to beat Shepard, police officer Flint Waters arrived on the scene and arrested them.
Bindel spoke to Waters, who told her, ''I believe to this day that McKinney and Henderson were trying to find Matthew's house so they could steal his drugs. It was fairly well known in the Laramie community that McKinney wouldn't be one that was striking out of a sense of homophobia. Some of the officers I worked with had caught him in a sexual act with another man, so it didn't fit. None of that made any sense.''
That's right: One of Shepard's killers was queer. Jimenez found through his reporting that McKinney had been Shepard's lover. Sure, it's possible that he had some internalized homophobia, but the narrative that Shepard was killed by bigot rednecks who targeted him for being gay is not, according to Jimenez, actually true. They killed him over meth.
What's more, Jimenez argues that Laramie wasn't a hotbed of idiocy and homophobia either. It was a college town, home to the University of Wyoming. And like most college towns, it was, and is, quite liberal and even gay-friendly. That truth got lost as the story spread, and Laramie became a parody of white trash ignorance and bigotry.
After Shepard's body was found, a couple of men in the local gay community contacted the press as well as gay rights groups, who connected the murder to the state legislature's recent failure to pass hate crime legislation. The story that this was a hate crime began to spread, and in the days immediately following his death, a vigil was held for Shepard on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Ted Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, and Madonna all got involved, and his funeral was attended by over 1,000 people, with many of Shepard's friends dressed as angels.
Stephen Jimenez's book was not universally well-received by the gay community or the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which maintain that his murder was fueled by anti-gay bias. ThinkProgress said it "Doesn't prove anything, other than the size of Stephen Jimenez's ego," although, as Julie Bindel notes, Ted Henson, Shepard's longtime friend and lover, told her that The Book of Matt is ''nothing more than the truth." Still, the reasons for the blacklash seem fairly obvious: Matthew Shepard has become more than a 21-year-old Wyoming college kid; he's become a martyr. What's more, plenty of people, especially gay people, thought this book would hurt the cause, and they blamed Stephen Jimenez.
So why write this book, especially when it upended a narrative nearly everyone had accepted as fact? "As a gay man who came out in the 1970s, marched in the first National Gay March on Washington, and then survived the plague years of the AIDS epidemic, I felt a moral obligation to not let Matthew's tragedy be in vain," Jimenez told me in an email. "Yes, the popular narrative served a purpose, but it's only ONE thread of a bigger, richer, more challenging story whose lessons we have barely learned. To avoid topics of addiction, including how crystal meth ravaged the queer community (and Matt's life), is not helpful to anyone."
Ultimately, however, neither Jimenez's book nor, perhaps, the truth would change Shepard's place in the national imagination. He's still largely thought of as the young man who was killed just for being gay. And maybe that's a good thing. Things did, in fact, change for the gay community after Matthew Shepard's murder, and today, most gay people aren't just protected by hate crime legislation, we have most (but not all) of the same rights as everyone else. It seems fair to connect those victories, at least in part, with the story of Matthew Shepard. And so even if he was more the victim of a drug robbery than a hate crime, his death still helped push forward the fight for gay rights. Whatever the truth, the National Cathedral seems like a fitting resting place.
Still, finding out that Matthew Shepard was likely not the victim of a hate crime is, of course, a shock. I felt similarly when I found out that the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando wasn't motivated by homophobia either, but by U.S. foreign policy. The shooter didn't know Pulse was a gay club. He even asked where all the women were. Those facts, of course, don't make these deaths any less tragic, but understanding motivation does matter if we want to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening in the future. It's enough to make you wonder, what else are we just assuming to be true? And does this willingness to blindly believe really serve us?
"The narrative about Matt is not static or fixed in time," Stephen Jimenez said. "Stories change and evolve, and hopefully, most of us can remain open to new information and ways of thinking. A more complete understanding of Matt's tragedy is not going to turn back the clock on our rights. Such thinking stems from fear-based, orthodox thinking. I don't buy it. Truth is always liberating'--not just when it suits our beliefs or agenda."
5G companies play on the ignorance of local politicians to get what they want, and when that doesn't work, slander, bullying, smearing and label-lynching become the strategy du jour. However, 5G can only be dealt with on a local basis. ' TN Editor
Mark Steele, a 5G campaigner, has been highlighting the dangers of a secret 5G rollout by Gateshead Council where residents are complaining of increased illness and Cancer in the affected area. There's enough evidence to conclude the new smart 5G arrays on the top of new LED lampposts emit Class 1 Radiation frequencies and should be treated as a danger to the Public. Gateshead Council ignorantly rebutted clear evidence and created false allegations on social media posts and printed leaflets stating that Mark Steele is spreading Pseudo Science and that the arrays are not dangerous or 5G:
''Please be assured that there is no scientific basis or credible evidence for any of these scare stories about street lights causing cancer and other illnesses.''
They misused Police Powers to gag Mark Steele and yesterday he left a free man and Gateshead Council to fork out £11k of taxpayers money to cover the court cost amounting to woeful ignorance. In Court, none of the Council Officers could explain what 5G is; and their leading Government expert refused to attend the Court hearing. In conclusion, the Judge refused to gag Mark, stating:
''The public have a right to know.''
The secret 5G rollout issue in Gateshead is now officially of public interest and will be treated as a landmark case for other people to start using this Court's ruling to challenge their Councils. We know Surrey, Westminster and Luton all have these toxic Microwave EMF arrays installed on their new LED streetlights. We now know even if these arrays are currently 2G, 3G or 4G they can be 5G enabled by fitting a 'lens' that 'focuses' the frequency.
T he Judge declared Mark Steele as a credible expert and engineer on EMF and GSM technologies, which proves Gateshead Council are liable for corruption, misleading the public, making people ill and attempting to discredit Mark Steele and all others such as Smombie Gate fighting 5G rollouts.
Councils are struggling at the moment, over 50% are almost bankrupt because over half of their resources are being spent on the increase of Adult Social Care, so any supplier proposal with the promise of more revenue is irresistible.
Smart City companies are going into Councils with amazing futuristic presentations detailing the first step, which is to install the 5G infrastructure, i.e. the lampposts on streets and motorways.
The benefits will be 24/7 Police surveillance that sees through walls; smart road signs; 4k live streaming on the move; driverless vehicles and public transport; mobile virtual reality; mobile augmented reality; and a fast connection for Elon Musk's new brain implant called the Neuralink giving people the Internet inside their mind. All these features are all a wet dream for Councils who will be the first ones to become Smart Counties because they will be able to increase taxes and the local economy in theory will thrive.
n reality, scientific evidence is mounting across the planet that EMF, RF, 3G, 4G, 5G, WiFI and WiGIG is causing Cancer, killing bees, driving out wildlife and lowering peoples quality of life. All because big business says it's good for the people, and they're continuing to mislead us all of the dangers of continuous use in close proximity and on the skin, let alone what 5G really is, which is an effective battlefield weapon.
We know that Gateshead isn't the only Council who is misleading the public on the 5G rollout and it's seemingly been going on for a few years. Luton, Surrey and Westminster are next along with all Councils that have installed these arrays that are being installed by particular companies (we'll leave you to do your own work on how you think these companies are!).
Who is paying for these 5G rollouts? Who's given consent on behalf of the People? Who has done research to prove the new infrastructure's safety?
As usual, these important issues are being rubbished by the media and beneficiaries to big business. But they'll soon see our wrath, as we now this ruling. All Hell is going to break loose in Great Britain and we're going to take the fight to them. We will NOT be silenced, and you will not wilfully poison our bodies and our families bodies with Class 1 radiation '' WE DO NOT CONSENT.
Read full story here'...
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VIDEO - Ogechiðð on Twitter: "RayJ said here that @kanyewest meeting with Prez Trump was a big opportunity to make change happen which is also a huge responsibility for him to live up to.. Me:I'm not down with fake rage like so many people!Don't
The epicenter of the Tehuantepec quake was deeper in the tectonic plate than expected.Quakes in that location usually only happen in much older and cooler subduction plates.It's possible the U.S. West Coast is susceptible to similar quakes.A magnitude 8.2 earthquake that struck southern Mexico on Sept. 7, 2017, not only occurred where existing earthquake modeling said it shouldn't happen, it also broke a tectonic plate, according to scientists.
The Tehuantepec quake struck off the Pacific coast of Mexico's Chiapas state, which borders Guatemala. Nearly 100 people were killed and hundreds more were injured.
Geologists initially thought the earthquake occurred where the Cocos ocean plate is being overridden by a continental plate. Megaquakes generally occur near the top of where plates converge, an area called the subduction zone.
The epicenter of the Tehuantepec quake, however, was much deeper '' about 28 miles deep in the Cocos plate '' than earthquake models said it should be, according to a report in the journal Nature Geoscience.
(MORE: Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake Strikes Greece; Felt in Italy and Albania)
The study also showed that the Cocos plate completely split apart, National Geographic writes. A tremendous amount of energy was released in seconds.
''If you think of it as a huge slab of glass, this rupture made a big, gaping crack,'' Diego Melgar, lead author of the study, told the magazine. ''All indications are that it has broken through the entire width of the thing.''
Earthquakes can occur far from a plate's boundary, but they usually only happen in older and cooler subduction zones, according to a news release about the study. An example of one of these tension quakes was the 1933 Sanriku, Japan, tremor. It generated a 94-foot tsunami that killed 1,522 people and destroyed more than 7,000 homes.
"This subducting plate is still very young and warm, geologically speaking. It really shouldn't be breaking," said Melgar, who is also an assistant professor of earthquake seismology at the University of Oregon.
(MORE: 18 U.S. Volcanoes Listed as 'Very High Threat' by Government Scientists)
Melgar's team suspects seawater got into the Cocos plate and possibly sped up the cooling, making it susceptible to tension earthquakes.
If that's possible, Melgar said, other areas '' including the U.S. West Coast and from Guatemala southward in Central America '' are susceptible to tension-zone earthquakes.
''Our knowledge of these places where large earthquakes happen is still imperfect,'' Melgar said. ''We can still be surprised. We need to think more carefully when we make hazard and warning maps. We still need to do a lot of work to be able to provide people with very accurate information about what they can expect in terms of shaking and in terms of tsunami hazard.''
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Starting at about 20:56 of this YouTube video from Louder with Crowder Dinesh D'Souza describes the real history of the supposed ''Big Switch.'' Transcript below the video.
ADDENDUM, 11/10/16: Also see an abbreviated list of pertinent facts, here, or the full list here, that I culled from D'Souza's book Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. In my opinion the title of the book is unfortunate. The book is actually the story of American history than it is a polemic about Hillary.
Crowder (20:56) : A lot of people my age that's what they do, they believe in the switch. Well you know before it was in the civil rights act and then they all switched. Then all the Democrats became not racist and Republicans became racist. I want you to take the ball and go with that because obviously it's your realm of expertise. One thing I never hear them say, and I've brought this up on the show, well what about FDR then? Is he claimed by your people or is he claimed by Republicans since he wasn't a racist. How does that work? And they go hummina hummina hummina hummina well not all of them. Maybe explain it for our audience who has bought into that lie.
D'Souza (21:27): Well all the three progressive heroes of the twentieth century, and I'm thinking here of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Johnson, are very bad on the race issue. All of 'em. Now generally the left concedes on Wilson, they can't deny that he expanded , uh, expanded segregation in the federal government. They know he screened the pro Ku Klux Klan movie in the white house. They don't stress this but they know that led to a Ku Klux Klan revival. Now FDR, ah, they've been pretty clever in camouflaging FDRs dirty deeds. And FDR's dirty deeds were two. This is the deal he made with the Democratic racists to get the New Deal through. Ah number one, ah, they said to him FDR you have to agree to block all anti-lynching laws. Block all anti-lynching laws. And FDR agreed. And the second thing was they said blacks mainly work in domestic service and agricultural labor. We want you to exclude those from most new deal programs. And FDR agreed again. So this is the way in which FDR was in bed with some of the worst guys.
Crowder (22:28): Let me ask you a quick question for devil's advocate sake. Um, would they say well he blocked lynching laws because there were already laws on the book, or did they just gloss over it entirely?
D'Souza (22:36): No there were laws on the books but the Republicans were proposing anti-lynching legislation that would override, if you will, these state laws on lynching; that there would be a federal prohibition, ah, on state lynching laws. FDR had no states rights issue with any of this of course but what it was is that it was a prudential pact that he made, ah, with the racists in the Democratic Party. Um, so that's FDR. Lyndon Johnson , ah, cynical, ah, wanted to keep blacks, by his own words, ''on the plantation.'' Uh, and he figured out that, ah, that the civil rights act was the way to go. Now interestingly more Republicans proportionally voted for that civil rights act in '64, and the voting rights act in '65, and the fair housing bill in '68, than Democrats did. This is not well known, and this has allowed Democrats to say ''Well Lyndon Johnson'...'' and then they hijack the whole civil rights movement as if they did it. But in fact the opposition to the civil rights movement came from the Democrat Party. The infamous sheriff , Bull Conner, Democrat. Ah, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus who stood in the schoolhouse door blocked black kids from getting into school, Democrat. Um, and so the, ah, if the democrats had been the only party in America, no Republicans, none of those laws would have passed.
Crowder (23:48): Yeah. Well and also they would have been much more effective at blocking if they'd have hired a good guard back then, but they were all black so it was a problem. Um, so we're moving down, I know the Strom Thurmond case, right, people always bring that up. That is their, boom, trump card. Outside of him, could they argue a swap took place? Whether it be directly, you know, political affiliation, or e, or even culturally, sort of in the political ah divide lines in the south?
D'Souza (24:12): Now, there was, the swap that they talk about did not take place. But there was a different swap that did take place that has nothing to do with race. So for example the swap that did not take place, if you look at the Dixiecrats, we make a list of them, it's a pretty big list, Strom Thurmond is the only one who moved over to the Republican Party. So this is a case hinging on one guy. Uh, the rest of the Dixiecrats, they were happy to be Democrats. They went right back into the Democratic party. They were lionized by the Democrats 'till the day they died. A good example of this is Robert Byrd, former member of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean Obama went to his funeral, Bill Clinton was there. Clinton by the way made a very interesting statement. He goes You can't blame good ole' Robert Byrd for being in the Klan because, and now I open quotes, ''You had to be in the Klan to advance in the Democratic Party.'' Kind of a very interesting admission. You had to be..
Crowder (23:48): It's, it's also important to note context. I saw this. Robert Byrd didn't dabble in the Klan. He didn't do it as a necessity. He was high up there. He practically had Klan dental and a company car. Let's not kid ourselves.
D'Souza (23:48): Well and ah and ah and the Grand Wizard I believe is the one who said to him, you know, young Bob, you got a lot a talent you need to go into politics. This was from Byrd's own account of how he first went into politics. So, you know
Crowder (25:22): He said the N word on national television, was it 2001 or 2004, repeatedly , in a racist context. You got a lot of white n-words, you know you have white N-words out there, and he said it twice, like he didn't even realize you don't say this any more. So it's not like he left it in the past in the seventies, this was still seepin' through in the two thousands.
D'Souza (25:41): Well you got a guy like David Duke, and you know, and he's, the Republican Party repudiates him, denounces him, doesn't want anything to do with him, ah and yet people say ''Well he's a Republican.'' Byrd was a member in full standing of the Democratic Party, never repudiated. Hillary calls him, when he dies, her mentor. So this is the difference. The Democratic Party loves these guys. It makes them, feels at home with them. Whereas the Republican Party always tried to hit the eject button.
Crowder (26:07): Gosh you got a, yeah Robert Byrd, big influence but I've got hot sauce black voters! Doesn't that make up for'... The worst pandering. It's like the aunt who shows up at the barbeque who's like I got a funny story. You're like no, no stop
D'Souza (26:23): Now, now, coming back to the switch the the it is true that the re that the blacks who used to be Republicans, ah the party of Lincoln, did move over to the Democratic Party, but they didn't do it because of race. They did it in the thirties because of the promises and actual economic benefits of the New Deal. So you may almost say that blacks were bribed into it. They they knew that they were leaving the party of Lincoln and emancipation and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment and they were joining the party of segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. Now, white Republicans, white Democrats did move over to the Republican but that was between the seventies and the nineties; basically in the Reagan era. Again this has nothing to do with bigotry, uh Reagan was appealing to patriotism, free markets, traditional values, Christianity, and that's, those are the issues that caused the non-racist south to swivel over to the Republican Party.
Crowder (27:17): Which makes it even more interesting if it occurred before what they need to be the timeline for their swap because it would only reiterate the idea that racists found ah solace in the Democratic Party.
D'Souza (27:27): Right so the big switch is really a big scam. I mean it's ah it's a last ditch defense of the of the Democrats. See the first thing is they kinda have to admit they were involved in slavery so they go Dinesh why are we talking about the anti-bellum crimes of the Democratic Party. And I go well I'm I'm also talking about the post-bellum climbs crimes of the Democratic Party. Ah who who invented segregation? Who passed all the segregation laws in the south? Who started the Ku Klux Klan? Who revived the Ku Klux Klan? Who used the Klan as the domestic terrorist arm of a political party for thirty years? Who was in bed with Fascism in the thirties? Who interned the Japanese Americans in World War Two? So then they go , because they now realize this is getting uncomfortably close to the present, that they then go well, big switch! Big switch! So the big switch is like the lawyer who said that initially my client was not on the scene. Then yes he was on the scene but you know he didn't , he wasn't the one who fired the fatal shot. And then finally well yeah he did but it was in self defense. So we have this kind of migrating leftist attempt to exonerate the Democratic Party which in fact has been not only implicated has been the perpetrator of the vilest deeds of American history.
Crowder (28:33): Gosh that is a that is a great a put it in a nutshell. So let me bring it to the final point and because they'll say well let's get past what happened in the twenties thirties forties fifties sixties seventies let's go past that. Today racism is owned by the Republican Party. I maintain that listen no party owns racism. I don't say the Democratic Party today is a party of racism. I don't believe that. Nor do I believe that the Republican Party is a party of racism. But they argue the opposite. Racism only exists in the Republican Party today.
D'Souza (29:00): Neither you know neither party is involved in racism in the old sense. And so for example a good metaphor of this would be the Klan. The Klan today is essentially defunct. There's no real effective organization called the Klan. I mean the Klan used to have two to five million members. They could march tens of thousands of people down fifth avenue in the twenties, burning crosses and shouting racist slogans. That Klan does not exist. But I would argue, I was actually reading a book by the historian Kenneth Stampp, and it's on the old slave plantation. It's called The Peculiar Institution. And he describes the five features of the slave plantation. I think this is really interesting because all the five features he mentions are present today. But they're present on the urban plantations that the democrats are running in the inner cities. And so Kenneth Stampp says number one on the typical old slave plantation you have ramshackle dwellings. Houses but they're in disarray. Second you have the family structure is all broken down, a lot if illegitimacy, whose kids are whose, you don't really know, that's the nature of slavery. Third, a lot of the violence that's necessary to hold the, to keep the place together because slavery is based on coercion, you have to force people, you have to whip them, beat them, etc. Fourth, everybody has a minimum provision. You get food, you get health care, but nobody gets ahead. Nobody gets a good education. No ladders of opportunity. Nihilism, hopelessness, and despair. So you take all these elements and ask, ''How's it really different today in inner city Oakland, or Detroit, or Chicago? I think the main difference is that in the old days the Democrats who ran those slave plantations too, wanted to steal people's labor. They wanted labor, and they wanted labor for free. Now what they want is votes. They want votes, and they don't care about these people. And that's why they remain in misery and the Democrats are perfectly happy to keep 'em there as long as they keep voting eighty to ninety percent for the party that's running the plantation.
Crowder (30:46): Well it's a good point. I mean you can look at Milwaukee. I said well Milwaukee's been run entirely by leftist Democrats for over half a century and someone said Nuh Uh and they pointed out there was a socialist there. An actual socialist. A socialist, I'm ''alright, I'll give you that one,'' about sixty something years. And these are the results, and I don't think anyone could argue with the results as far as leftist cities versus certainly more, I guess, conservative right wing limited government petri dishes like Texas or Dallas. But ah they argue culturally that ah you know racism is more alive on the right, and I, you know I just don't see it. I see it across all spectrums and ah I try and be even handed with that.
D'Souza (31:21): Well let's probe this for a moment Stephen though because it's an important issue. Take something like people say well who's the party of state's rights today? Well, the Republican Party. But that proves nothing because there's nothing wrong with defending state's rights as long as the principle is not being used to uphold slavery. State's rights is an honorable principle that's right in the Constitution. It was used for bad cause in 1860. And that's put the idea in somewhat of a bad odor. But it doesn't mean some guy who wants state's rights because he wants , wants local governments to pass laws on abortion or on gun rights is therefore some kind of a closet um you know ah a confederate.
Crowder (32:01): Right. Well the problem is that is was the whole confederate uproar a while ago where people were defending confederacy and the confederacy under state's rights, and I'm going no because that does supercede natural rights and people being free. I think it's a good thing that they lost. You know and I have to agree. But that kinda hurts , you know, an intellectual argument that that you or I would make. And that was a little bit of a set back.
D'Souza (35:23): Yeah part of what we do here is we show the importance of Lincoln to the Republican tradition and to establishing the principles of modern American conservatism. Uh the Democratic Party was the party of the segregationist south, and to be honest the Democrats if you will, yeah well you have to ask well, how did the south become so monolithically racist in the early part of the twentieth century. And the reason was the Democrats had political strategies to make it that way. They found ways to capitalize on white supremacy in order to suppress the black vote in order to weaken the Republican Party.
Crowder (32:53): Right and the theme isn't all that different from today, right? It was divide and conquer and black lives matter. They are seeking to create more racial divide. I've talked about this. I know you have a, you know you have nephews and nieces I believe, who are about my age. Our generation of black Americans, my generation of black Americans, will be worse off than the two previous. If you look at Korryn Gaines. If you look at the way a lot of these these kids are being raised because a lot of people my age are raising children at this point, right? Um, it is it is scary. And it's very different from even the eighties or nineties where I was raised as a kid, where we had black friends and we didn't even think about it. Now there is so much more racial divide. Um, you have white content you have white entertainment, you have black entertainment. And if one crosses that line, if you just see it on twitter, they are excoriated by the black community. There have been some steps taken back, and I recon that's by design. Um you see it by big leftists who they have a vested interest in us being divided and and stoking the fires for racial war.
D'Souza (33:47): And well this is why we've seen no race progress and a good deal of regress under Obama. One might have expected or hoped for something different. Ah, with Hillary I think she's a different bird than Obama is by the way. And even though the two of them have common threads and they both were tutored by Alinsky or by Alinskyites. Ah I think the difference is that Obama at the end of the day is an ideologue. And ah his ideology to my way of thinking is pathetic, it's twisted, it's deformed, it reflects Obama's own miserable childhood. Ah but nevertheless he believes it for a man. He believes he's making America and the world better. Um and ah Hillary on the other hand I think the Clintons are not that way. Ah they're more like Bonnie and Clyde. These are two grifters, they're two ripoff artists. They belong right out of Mark Twain. They were running rackets in the Arkansas days stealing fifty cents here making a buck over there. When they got to the White House they were renting the Lincoln Bedroom there, lifting pictures off the walls and taking curious out of the cabinets. I mean they're selling pardons to big time racketeers and felons. So this is how they operate, and this is what I think we're up for. Not so much an ideological America but a gangsterized America, and that's what the Clintons represent.
VIDEO - Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican? - YouTube
VIDEO - Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter: "''Black lives never mattered to the Democratic Party, black votes always have.'' '--@RealCandaceO https://t.co/ZGUbvg2Za7"
VIDEO - OutFrontCNN on Twitter: ""He was anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jewish, you name it." Debra Gureghian was Cesar Sayoc's boss at the restaurant where he was a delivery driver, and tells @KateBolduan the suspected bomber had "political views that scared
President Trump tweeted a stern warning Thursday to the migrant caravan heading toward the United States'' telling the thousands of people currently making their way through Mexico to turn around as U.S. troops are set to move to the southern border.
''To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally,'' the president tweeted. ''Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!''
Trump's tweet comes only hours after a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that hundreds of U.S. troops are set to make their way to the southern border to help Homeland Security and National Guard troops deal with the migrant caravan.
The official said that roughly 800 active duty soldiers will be sent to the area to offer ''logistical support," including providing tents and vehicles, to the 2,100 National Guard troops on the southern border assisting Homeland Security.
It is unclear which units will be deployed to the border or why they are being deployed - since National Guard troops can perform the same functions - but Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could sign the deployment orders as early as Thursday. Federal law, however, prohibits the use of active duty service members for law enforcement inside the U.S. unless specifically authorized by Congress.
Trump tweeted earlier Thursday that "Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the border" and that he was using the military for what he called a "National Emergency." He vowed, "They will be stopped!" in apparent reference to the caravan, which was still about 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and starting to dwindle. Previous migrant marches have largely dissipated before reaching the United States.
The sprawling caravan of migrants '--once estimated by the United Nations to be more than 7,000 strong '-- is hoping to make it to the United States. Most are Hondurans, seeking to escape the poverty and violence that plagues the region.
The caravan swelled dramatically soon after crossing the Mexican border on Oct. 19, but sickness, fear and police harassment have whittled down its numbers. Since entering Mexico at its southernmost tip, the group has advanced roughly 95 miles.
Some of the migrants told Fox News they fear getting attacked if they hop on a cargo train or getting deported if they take a bus.
''They are going to walk as long as they can,'' said caravan member Brian Colindres, ''or as far as they can.''
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson, William La Jeunesse and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
VIDEO - Guest Reminds Katy Tur About Democrats' Violent Rhetoric. She Freaks Out. | Daily Wire
MSNBC's Katy Tur exploded at conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson on Thursday after Erickson suggested that people on both ends of the political spectrum needed to tone down the inflammatory political rhetoric.
"Erick, in the past you've been pretty critical of the president," Tur said. "You've condemned him for saying certain things. Why not push him for forcefully right now to be a unifier instead of a divider?"
After mentioning that President Donald Trump should not go after the media as much as he does, Erickson reminded Tur about the violent political rhetoric coming from the political Left.
"I also think there are folks on the other side who need to tamp down on the rhetoric as well," Erickson said. We had ricin attacks against Susan Collins and Ted Cruz last week and protesters chasing people out of restaurants. I think both sides need to calm down, which is one reason I think it's not really helpful right now is who started it."
Tur exploded, going into a finger-pointing rant about how she thinks Trump is largely responsible for today's political climate.
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VIDEO - Inside the Fukushima reactor | 60 Minutes Australia - YouTube
"I have this fear that it could be some Russian operation too, in designed to do what's happening now," Todd said.
NBC's Chuck Todd said he fears the Russians could be responsible for the mail-bomb scare that has targeted top officials in the Democratic Party, as well as CNN and actor Robert De Niro on Thursday.
''I have this fear that it could be some Russian operation too, in designed to do what's happening now,'' Todd said.
Todd added that we shouldn't rule out that possibility and that the mail-bomb scare is dividing the country before going to break.
Todd made the comments during a segment on MSNBC's ''Meet The Press Daily,'' about how the extreme political rhetoric in American politics has divided the nation, and how it could be responsible for this mail-bomb scare.
VIDEO - Jahmai on Twitter: "@adamcurry In a similar vein to that egg commercial https://t.co/sGbJZSp6kZ"
