FIRE EPA EMPLOYEES, SAYS GEOLOGIST: ‘WHERE IS DONALD TRUMP WHEN YOU NEED HIM?’

Dave Taylor, the retired geologist who predicted the EPA project that caused the massive 3 million toxic spill in Colorado on August 5 would fail, says the EPA employees who caused the spill should be fired as soon as possible.

In a second letter to the editor published in the Silverton Standard on Thursday, Taylorwrote:

When I wrote my Letter to the Editor, published July 30, 2015, I warned of potential problems with the EPA’s Red and Bonita mine plugging scheme. At the time, I had no idea that the EPA could be so incredibly incompetent as to cause the failure of the Gold King Mine plug. Breaching the plug, August 5, 2015, resulted in a catastrophic deluge of 3 million gallons of contaminated water and mine waste that flowed down Cement Creek to the Animas River.

“In my opinion,” Taylor continued, “the EPA employees responsible for the breach should be held accountable and fired ASAP.”

“But of course, that probably won’t happen. Following the VA investigation, which took many months, only one employee was fired,” Taylor noted.

“Where is Donald Trump when you need him?” Taylor asked rhetorically.

“You’re fired!” Taylor added, indicating the message he wanted Trump to send to the EPA employees responsible for the breach.

“In the mining business, one must have the attitude that all accidents are preventable and prepare accordingly,” Taylor wrote.

“Obviously, the EPA was over confident and didn’t take the time to stand back, evaluate and think about how much water was upstream of the plug, what the hydrostatic pressure might be and what could happen if the plug was disturbed,” the retired geologist added.

“Over the years, I have worked on similar delicate projects. I always thought out my most effective Plan ‘A’ and subsequent additional back-up Plans ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D’ just in case ‘Murphy’s Law’ came into play,” he noted.

“I don’t think the EPA even thought about a back-up plan, afterall, they are geniuses and could never make a mistake!” Taylor commented.

“The EPA is going to be covered up with follow-up testing, lawsuits and clean-up efforts,” Taylor predicted.

Taylor just might see Trump follow his recommendation about the firing of EPA employees responsible for the August 5 spill.

On August 13, eight days after the spill, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump toldtalk radio host Hugh Hewitt, “[t]his is all the more example why EPA, we should do it locally. We shouldn’t be doing it from Washington.”

“Often times for a thing like this, you have to just get rid of them [the bureaucrats in charge],” Trump added. That would presumably include EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who visited Colorado earlier this month but didn’t go to see the site of the spill.

Via: Breitbart

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WaPo Writer: Black Votes Should Count For More Than White Votes

A writer over at The Washington Post has a bold new proposal he believes can heal the American racial divide: empower blacks by making their votes count more than those of other races.

“Racial reconciliation is impossible without some kind of broad-based, systemic reparations,” writes Theodore R. Johnson, a former White House fellow and current Ph.D candidate in law and policy at Northeastern University. “But if a pecuniary answer can’t fix the structural disadvantage — and it can’t — what can?”

The answer, Johnson argues, is simple: weighted voting, where black votes count for more than white ones. Specifically, Johnson suggests giving each black person five-thirds of a vote, to reverse the old three-fifths compromise written into the U.S. Constitution.

As Johnson gleefully notes, counting black votes more than others would significantly alter many elections in the U.S. In the 2012 election, several Southern states with high black populations, such as Mississippi and Georgia, would have swung over to Barack Obama’s column, and their recent Senate races would have been decided in Democrats’ favor as well.

Johnson justifies his argument by saying it’s the only way to solve the “structural disadvantages” faced by blacks.

“A five-thirds compromise would imbue African Americans with a larger political voice that could be used to fight the structural discrimination expressed in housing, education, criminal justice and employment,” he says. “Allowing black votes to count for 167 percent of everyone else’s would mean that 30 million African American votes would count as 50 million, substituting super-votes for the implausible idea of cash payments.” With black voters so massively empowered, politicians will have no choice to but to put black priorities first if they hope to remain in office.

Via: Daily Caller

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[VIDEO] Mika: Hillary’s ‘Condescending’ Email Defense Relies on ‘People Not Being Smart’

The panel of MSNBC’s Morning Joe tore into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she turned her private email sever over the government after two top secret emails were found to have been stored on her email.

“Politically, it’s a no-win situation for her,” Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin said. “If they recover the information from the emails, the 30,000 personal ones, I think it’s almost certainly the case that someone will find something that should have been turned over, and that would be a problem for her.”

“If it’s been fully deleted and permanently erased… I think people will say, ‘Wow, why did Hillary Clinton go to such length to permanently delete the e-mails?’” he continued. “And the question will linger forever, what was on there?”

Republican strategist Nicole Wallace agreed, and slammed Clinton’s “cumulative string of dishonesty” and desperate excuses. “I just think they’re down the rabbit hole of now squandering of whatever is left of the general public’s trust.”

Contributor Mike Barncile said the emails were indeed a problem, but the larger problem was the scandal “regurgitates” all the public’s worries about the Clintons. “Hillary Clinton, it’s quite obvious thus far her candidacy, too much of it has been about the past.”

The panel also ripped Clinton for framing the inquiry into her emails as a partisan issue, even though she was being investigated by Obama appointees.“I have to say, that feels condescending” host Mika Brzezinski said.

Via: Mediaite

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Why We Have More Than 40 Million Functional Illiterates

Hundreds of websites still casually assert what is probably the most destructive sophistry in the history of education:

The Dolch Sight Words [created in the 1940s] are a list of the 220 most frequently used words in the English language. These sight words make up 50 to 70 percent of any general text….Dolch found that children who can identify a certain core group of words by sight could learn to read and comprehend better. Dolch's sight word lists are still widely used today and highly respected by both teachers and parents. These sight words were designed to be learned and mastered by the third grade.

Even at a glance, you may see several problems.  Just because they were “designed to be learned and mastered” by the third grade doesn’t mean they will be.  The majority of children cannot master these words by any grade, if by master you mean name them with automaticity at reading speed. 

“Respected by both teachers and parents” is a slippery construction that conspicuously omits mention of “reading experts who conduct research.” 

Furthermore, even if these words make up two thirds of a text, that means a child cannot read every third word.  Nothing resembling reading can take place. 

Note that phonics instruction would allow the student to read every word by the second grade.  But the sight-word method promises that by third grade, the children will know a small subset of English words but still remain largely illiterate.  What sort of promise is that?

Even all that is not the full indictment.  Trying to memorize many graphic designs – and that’s what learning to read with sight-words entails – is virtually impossible.  The brain becomes cluttered with hundreds of partly memorized designs, all of which look quite similar.  There are children with photographic memories who can survive.  But let’s focus on the average student.  This child might not be able to memorize even 100 sight-words each year, or ever.  But the real flaw is that few children achieve automaticity.  Most are always wandering slowly in the forest, so to speak.  If parents understood how hopeless and painful this process is, they would never allow their children near sight-words.

So we need a way for parents to grasp viscerally that sight-words are a mission impossible for almost all children.  Consider:

Dolch words for first grade include think.  Fluent readers of English see the phonics in this word; they see the logic of this word.  As a result, such readers do not realize how utterly bizarre and difficult this word looks to first-graders told to memorize the design as a sight-word.

It’s important that everyone see this word as the first-grader sees it.  In fact, there is a simple way to do this.  Here are the same letters arranged in other ways: hinkt, inthk, nihkt, htnik, khtni, tkhin.

From the point of view of visual memorization, they are all equally difficult.  For experimental purposes, pick one of them and memorize it (as a shape, not a series of letters).

One site actually prints the official dogma: “Many students do not need extra practice with the Dolch words, as they learn them by reading them repeatedly in context.”

This nonsense is repeated to parents, who then expect their kids to acquire these words the same way a dog picks up burrs in the woods.  It’s not so easy.  If schools were serious about memorizing word-shapes, children would draw them over and over.  Flashcards would be used relentlessly.  But keep in mind that our schools constantly campaign against rote memorization, which is said to be a great evil.  Meanwhile, they’re asking children to commit rote memorization on hundreds (and in Whole Word’s heyday, thousands) of English words.  So you know they are hypocrites.  But let’s stick to the task at hand.  Consider the words again.  I bet you can’t pick out the one you memorized:

itkni, itikn, hkitn, kinht, nktni, ntikn.

That’s a bit of a trick, because these are six new configurations made from the same group of letters.  The point is, English letters and words look a lot alike.  There is not much to work with.  And imagine the nightmare of longer words.

In the process of trying to memorize these look-alike designs, the brain is soon overwhelmed by complexity and clutter. Furthermore, our eyes scan a face or visual design from all directions.  But English must be read left-to-right, letter by letter, then by syllables and words, but always left to right.  The instant our eyes start darting around, which they always do with graphic designs, reading is finished.  Sight-word readers report the most amazing cognitive problems.  Words slide around on the page.  Words reverse themselves.  This doesn’t seem to make sense until you consider that the eyes are jumping around on the page in random jerks, thus inducing complementary side-effects. 

For many children, the next step is to be told they have dyslexia, which simply means they don’t read well.  They are told they have ADHD.  They need an appointment with a shrink.  They need to take Ritalin.  Pretty soon these children are a mess inside and out, all because their school gave them an impossible task.

Even if you do memorize the 220 sight-words perfectly, you have been set up for a lifetime of cognitive schizophrenia.  You will read some words phonetically and some as designs, back and forth in no predictable order.  You won’t know which kind of word is coming next.  There will be anxiety as your eyes go from left to right.  What is this next thing coming at you?  Is it in your sight-word inventory?  No, apparently not, which means you have to read it phonetically.  Your brain has to make a lot of extra decisions, which cripples reading speed.  You become one of those millions of people who never reads for pleasure because it is, for you, hard work.

Experience suggests that girls are more patient with bad pedagogical methods.  Many boys become angry and sullen.  They pull back and refuse to participate.  If you want to know why American college students are 57% female, think first of the phrase “sight-words.”

When Rudolf Flesch published Why Johnny Can’t Read in 1955, he thought he had made the case so compellingly that no one would dare promote sight-words in the future.  He was wrong.  Our Education Establishment spun off the International Reading Association in 1956.  Their dozens of celebrated experts continued to promote sight-words up until the present day.  First-graders still come home with lists of sight-words that they must commit to memory.  So we have a surreal situation: sixty years later, many a Johnny still can’t read.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say that Balanced Literacy and Whole Language are the contemporary repositories of all the bad reading theories from the last 85 years, perpetuated to the degree that each separate community will tolerate them.  Now, Common Core seems comfortable with locking in all of this baggage.  That should tell us from the start that Common Core is not serious about improving education.  Common Core Math loves elaborate and elusive word problems – not a good idea anyway, but just imagine these semi-illiterate kids struggling with “Juanita, Charlotte, and Darcy walked to the mall to buy seven bags of stickers, but they had only $22.45 between them and…”  Even the parents are getting ulcers from trying to help their kids.

Via: American Thinker

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[VIDEO] Newly Released Video Shows Planned Parenthood Partner Laughing About Shipping Whole Dead Babies

There’s one word to describe the upcoming video exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted babies: demonic. The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a trailer on August 21 advertising its eighth investigative video. In the two-minute clip, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admitted that her company receives “intact” (whole) aborted baby bodies from the abortion clinics they work with – and laughed at the thought of shipping baby heads.

Via: Fox News

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Denver City Council halts Chick-fil-A’s airport operation because its owners believe the Bible

Forcing you to bake a gay wedding cake is just the start. The gay marriage fascists are pretty resourceful when it comes to using the power of government to enforce their orthodoxy. And by the way, this is one of the less-discussed problems with the perpetual expansion of government into everything. If you can’t do business without government contracts, or without tax exemptions, you inevitably empower someone in the political realm to judge your worthiness to be in business at all.

When the Denver City Council chooses a concessionaire for the Denver International Airport, the decision is supposed to be based on the applicant’s operational prowess, its quality, its track record and, of course, its ability to make the arrangement profitable for both parties while pleasing airport patrons with products and service.

But it’s not about that for what appears to be a majority of the Denver City Council. It’s about gay marriage, and the now airtight requirement that anyone doing business with the government must not agree with 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. It makes no difference if all you do is sell chicken sandwiches, which has nothing to do with homosexuality. If you’re like Chick-fil-A, and your owners have made it clear they believe the Bible, you’re not running concessions at the DIA:

Chick-fil-A’s reputation as an opponent of same-sex marriage has imperiled the fast-food chain’s potential return to Denver International Airport, with several City Council members this week passionately questioning a proposed concession agreement.

Councilman Paul Lopez called opposition to the chain at DIA “really, truly a moral issue on the city.”

His position comes despite ardent assurances from the concessionaires — who have operated other DIA restaurants — that strict nondiscrimination policies will include protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Robin Kniech, the council’s first openly gay member, said she was most worried about a local franchise generating “corporate profits used to fund and fuel discrimination.” She was first to raise Chick-fil-A leaders’ politics during a Tuesday committee hearing.

The normally routine process of approving an airport concession deal has taken a rare political turn. The Business Development Committee on Tuesday stalled the seven-year deal with a new franchisee of the popular chain for two weeks. 

This is where we’ve gotten with gay marriage politics in the United States. It used to be that if a politician had it in for a business for some reason that had nothing the legitimate terms of a proposed contract, the politician would at least invent some phony pretext for stalling the deal. Not anymore. Now they come right out and admit that they’re only doing it because the business doens’t agree with them on a social issue. Even the editors of the Denver Post, which backs gay marriage, is warning the City Council to be careful about the precedent it’s setting here:

Think this one through, Denver City Council. If you block Chick-fil-A from returning as a vendor at Denver International Airport, how far might you then go in imposing political litmus tests on corporations seeking to do business there — or elsewhere in the city?

And what are the implications for free speech in America if such political vetoes by cities were to become the norm?

At a committee meeting this week, Councilman Paul Lopez described opposition to the chain at DIAbecause of its CEO’s hostility toward same-sex marriage as “really, truly a moral issue on the city.” Some other council members clearly agreed.

Via: Canada Free Press

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The man building Barack Obama’s future

CHICAGO — President Barack Obama’s post-presidential center will return full circle to his community organizing days, making an outreach program to help the historically underprivileged South Side a focus. Obama is expected to pick a community engagement director to lead the effort before leaving the White House.

The search is already underway.

Story Continued Below.

Details of the Obama Foundation’s mission and organization were shared with POLITICO in an exclusive interview with Marty Nesbitt, Obama’s best friend and the chairman of the foundation. Nesbitt said the planning includes a concerted effort to learn from the experiences of past presidents, including avoiding the financial tangles stemming from Bill Clinton’s decision to separate his presidential library in Little Rock and his family foundation in New York.

As much as the Obama team admires the work of the Clinton Foundation, Nesbitt said, “his [Clinton’s] physical presence is separate from his library. We will be all in one place. Everything that the president does will be from one central entity.”

When Obama leaves office in January 2017 at age 55, he will begin what could become the longest post-presidency in U.S. history. He is unlikely to be drawn back into politics, as Clinton was through his wife, already a senator and prospective presidential candidate by the time he left office.

Nesbitt sketched out a vision of an actively changing agenda that’ll keep Obama moving around the country and the world.

“I don’t see this being one thing forever,” Nesbitt said.

Nesbitt said that in contrast to other former presidents, Obama’s Chicago-based library will be an all-in-one institution — a presidential library, museum, archive, foundation and center — and it will serve as the primary platform for both Barack and Michelle Obama, who has ruled out any future in politics.

Fundraising isn’t expected to begin in earnest until after Obama’s left office, limiting the leverage and access he can use to woo donors, potentially putting him far behind on fundraising for a project that’s yet to land on a final price tag.

The center will also incorporate an academic component, potentially through partnered professors either at the University of Chicago a few blocks away, or with Obama’s alma mater Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and another satellite location still very much under discussion in Hawaii.

“We want to be able to have that academic perspective, to add to the social perspective,” Nesbitt said.

Obama’s mentoring program for black youth, My Brother’s Keeper, and the scaled-down version of his grass-roots campaign network, Organizing for Action, are both expected to become part of the institution as well.

“I know, just from our conversations, that in whatever idle time he has, he’s been thinking through what comes next,” said Obama’s former adviser, David Axelrod, saying those conversations date back years.

Via: Politico

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[VIDEO] LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER SHOT IN THE HEAD, MOTORISTS TACKLE AND CAPTURE GUNMAN!

A gunman who critically wounded a Louisiana State trooper Sunday afternoon was tackled by passing motorists who stopped to help, according to authorities.

The trooper pulled over a suspected impaired driver in southwest Louisiana near Lake Charles only to be shot during an ensuing confrontation, Col. Michael Edmonson said in a statement.

The trooper’s health and identity will be elaborated by state police at some point Sunday, he said. The suspect is in custody, but has not been identified.

A Louisiana State Trooper was shot in the head Sunday during an altercation with someone near Bell City.

Troop D spokesman Sgt. James Anderson described the trooper’s wound as serious.

Anderson says the suspect is in custody.

The incident happened  just before 2:45 p.m. on Highway 14 East and Fruge Road.  Anderson said the trooper was responding to a report of a vehicle driving in an unsafe manner. The vehicle was found in a ditch.

The trooper was transported to a Lake Charles hospital.

The accused shooter was also taken to a hospital, according to Anderson, but it wasn’t clear why.

Pray for the injured trooper and his family.

Via: The Right Scoop

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Trump's Deportation Rhetoric Crushing to GOP

It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. 

To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government's size and coercive powers. 

Most of Donald Trump's normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin, but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit of, the police measures necessary for, and the cruelties that would accompany, his policy. The policy is: "They've got to go."

"They," the approximately 11.3 million illegal immigrants (down from 12.2 million in 2007), have these attributes: 88 percent have been here at least five years. Of the 62 percent who have been here at least 10 years, about 45 percent own their own homes. 

About half have children who were born here and hence are citizens. Dara Lind of Vox reports that at least 4.5 million children who are citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.

Trump evidently plans to deport almost 10 percent of California's workers, and 13 percent of that state's K-12 students. He is, however, at his most Republican when he honors family values: He proposes to deport intact families, including children who are citizens. 

"We have to keep the families together," he says, "but they have to go." Trump would deport everyone, then "have an expedited way of getting them ["the good ones"; "when somebody is terrific"] back." Big Brother government will identify the "good" and "terrific" from among the wretched refuse of other teeming shores.

Trump proposes seizing money that illegal immigrants from Mexico try to send home. This might involve sacrificing mail privacy, but desperate times require desperate measures. 

He would vastly enlarge the federal government's enforcement apparatus, but he who praises single-payer health care systems and favors vast eminent domain powers has never made a fetish of small government.

Via: Newsmax

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Actually, it’s ‘All lives matter’ that resonates.

Imagine for a moment that you broke your left wrist. In excruciating pain, you rush to the emergency room for treatment only to run into a doctor who insists on examining not just your mangled left wrist, but your uninjured right wrist, rib cage, femur, fibula, sacrum, humerus, phalanges, the whole bag of bones that is you. You say, “Doc, it’s just my left wrist that hurts.” And she says, “Hey, all bones matter.”

If you understand why that remark would be factual, yet also, fatuous, silly, patronizing and off point, then you should understand why “All lives matter” is the same.

…or you’re not a doctor who knows pretty darn well that when somebody shows up in your emergency room with a ‘mangled right wrist’ then you had better make sure that the patient doesn’t, you know, have other broken bones. Or a concussion. Or internal bleeding. Or… you get the point, right? Because, yes, in case all bones do matter, including the ones that you didn’t check because somebody was screaming in your face about how you have to concentrate on cracked wrists until the end of time*.

Yes, I understand: it’s just a stupid metaphor. Indeed. It is a stupid metaphor, which is why Leonard Pitts, Jr. should have used a different one. It’s also being used to support an argument that isn’t nearly as popular as its adherents pretend it is:

Two out of three black people prefer the term “all lives matter” to “black lives matter,” according to aRasmussen poll released Thursday.

Only 31 percent of black people surveyed said that the statement “black lives matter” most closely comports to their own beliefs, compared to 64 percent who chose “all lives matter.”

This does not necessarily make the entire Black Lives Matter movement invalid: as my RedState colleague and friend Leon Wolf noted a few days ago, there are serious questions that can be and should be asked about police behavior, as well as our current criminal justice system. What it does suggest, however, is that – as usual – the Usual Suspects are busily trying to turn the whole thing into yet another way to squeeze a few more votes out for Democrats. We’ve seen this tactic before, and we’ll probably see it again.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Go ask an emergency room physician or nurse just how good the average patient is at describing how and where he or she hurts. Seriously. Go ahead. If you don’t already know the answer, you’ll probably find it rather enlightening.

Via: Red State

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A Brutal Week in Markets, But What Comes Next?

Investors around the world will be looking to next week with some anxiety as they lick their wounds. A brutal week of losses was accentuated by an unpleasant close for the U.S. stock markets that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge more than 500 points (3 percent) for the day and taking it into correction territory, or down more than 10 percent from its last high. The losses for the week were accompanied by even larger ones elsewhere, including emerging-market currencies and oil. 

In assessing what lies ahead, investors would be well advised to consider six major factors that have brought markets to this uncomfortable point. 

​1. Unlike some previous episodes -- including the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2013 "taper tantrum," as well as those associated with euro-zone concerns -- the catalyst for this market retreat came from outside the developed world. It largely reflected concerns about slowing growth in emerging economies (China in particular, but also Brazil, Russia and Turkey), compounding the entrenched economic sluggishness in Europe and Japan. 

​2. Global growth concerns were intensified by the struggles policy makers in emerging markets are having in stabilizing their domestic finances and limiting further damage to their economies. Again, China is under the spotlight given questions about whether government interventions have stabilized its domestic stock market.

​3. The impact of lower global growth was particularly painful for other markets that already were under pressure from developments on the supply side. As such, the plunge in oil prices highlighted the extent to which the market's new de facto swing producer -- the U.S. -- doesn't play the same role that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries did at the height of its power. 

​4. Exports from emerging economies, particularly raw materials producers, are most at risk from the combination of slowing growth and lower worldwide commodity prices. Accordingly, the market carnage was greatest in emerging-market currencies, pushing losses to levels beyond what was experienced during the global financial crisis in 2008. And these markets are technically the most prone to overshoot, with significant and adverse spillover effects on other markets. 

​5. Because some portfolios are designed to unwind during turmoil and heightened volatility, financial markets slipped into the destabilizing grip of contagion -- with the risk of overshooting. The VIX, commonly referred to as the fear index, soared. Richly valued stocks, particularly in the tech industry, were battered. This inevitably undermines the buy-on-dips mentality, leading investors with dry investing powder to wait on the sidelines for now. 

​6. There is less confidence that central banks -- repeatedly the markets’ best friends -- can act as immediate and effective stabilizers. Moreover, the Federal Reserve’s minutes released on Wednesday -- in which the central bank had no choice but to seem wishy-washy --highlights the policy challenges in a world that has come to over-rely on central banks. Indeed, the cult of central banks has driven a wedge between asset prices and  economic fundamentals. 

Yes, the People’s Bank of China could loosen monetary policy; and, yes, the Fed could hold off hiking rates in September. But the impact on global growth would likely be limited unless these steps are accompanied by a more comprehensive policy response. Otherwise, prices need to fall a lot more before wary investors get off the sidelines.

Via: Bloomberg View

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Joe Biden Is Leaning Toward a 2016 Run

Vice President Joe Biden, who has long been considering a presidential bid, is increasingly leaning toward entering the race if it is still possible he can knit together a competitive campaign at this late date, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Biden still could opt to sit out the 2016 race, and he is weighing multiple political, financial and family considerations before making a final decision. But conversations about the possibility were a prominent feature of an August stay in South Carolina and his home in Delaware last week, these people said. A surprise weekend trip to Washington to meet with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a darling of the party’s liberal wing, represented a pivot from potential to likely candidate, one Biden supporter said.

“The vice president has not made a decision about his political future,” Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said. “Anyone speculating that he has made a decision is wrong.”

Mr. Biden would enter as a clear underdog. Polling shows Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton running far ahead of the vice president, who would be building a campaign team largely from scratch. Mrs. Clinton, who declared her candidacy four months ago, has a robust campaign operation and an outside super PAC raising money on her behalf.

Still, the vice president’s deliberations illustrate how, with just six months before the first presidential nominating contests, both major parties’ campaigns are in a state of flux. Democrats are increasingly insecure about Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy, given her dipping approval ratings and continuing questions about her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Republicans, meanwhile, are struggling to find the proper tone in reacting to Donald Trump, whose no-holds-barred campaign style is dominating coverage of the GOP contest and nudging top contenders into uncomfortable sound bites.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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Post-holiday blues? The Obamas look glum as they return home from Martha's Vineyard

President Barack and the first lady looked glum as they stepped off Marine One in Cape Cod as their annual summer vacation drew to a close.

The pair, who have been on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, then managed to overcome their disappointment and put on a smile as they greeted a crowd at the Air Force base before they flew back to Washington.

Their two-week break on the Massachusetts island has become an annual tradition for the first family - and this year they enjoyed bike rides.

The President squeezed in one more round of golf at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs before the journey home as he prepares to meet the daunting fall period on Capitol Hill.  

As the first family disembarked Air Force One in the capital, Obama took the hand of his 17-year-old daughter Malia, while his wife and Sasha, 14, followed behind. 

Via: Daily Mail

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Reid to support Iran nuke deal, fight to get it past Senate

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will endorse the Iran nuclear deal, according to a statement the Nevada Democrat released Sunday.

"I strongly support this historic agreement and will do everything in my power to ensure that it stands," Reid said in the statement.

He called stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon "one of the most important national security challenges of our generation."

"This nuclear agreement is consistent with the greatest traditions of American leadership. I will do everything in my power to support this agreement and ensure that America holds up our end of the commitment we have made to our allies and the world to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.  I will vote no on the resolution of disapproval and urge my colleagues to do the same," the statement continued.

The Nevada Democrat’s decision provides much needed support as President Obama tries to win approval for the plan.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure the deal stands,” Reid told the Washington Post, which first published reports of Reid's approval.

The multi-national deal would lift billions in crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for the rogue country curtailing its nuclear-development program.

Congress must approve the deal before it can be completed and is scheduled to vote promptly after returning from summer recess on Sept. 8 -- near the end of the members’ 60-day review period.

The House and Senate are expected to have enough votes to initially disapprove of the plan.

However, the plan is ultimately expected to go through because Obama will almost surely veto the disapproval measure. The Senate is not expected to have the two-thirds vote to override the veto, and the House override vote is also expected to be close.

Republicans who control both chambers largely disapprove of the plan and would need support from at least 13 Senate Democrats to override the veto.

Reid’s support follows New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer recently saying that he will not support the deal. Schumer is expected to replace Reid upon his retirement.

“We don’t disagree on much, but we disagree on this,” Reid said about Schumer's decision.

And last week, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would vote against the deal.

Via: Fox News

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Two arrested as police probe threats to Boston Pokemon event

Boston police arrested two Iowa men and confiscated a rifle, shotgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition after they learned through social media the two had allegedly threatened attendees at this weekend's Pokemon World Championships at the Hynes Convention Center.

Eighteen-year-old Kevin Norton and 27-year-old James Stumbo were arrested Friday on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and other firearm related charges, Boston police said. They are expected to be arraigned at Boston Municipal Court tomorrow, cops said.

Boston police personnel with its Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, received information from security at the Hynes Convention Center Thursday of threats on social media. Stumbo and Norton were stopped trying to enter the event on Thursday, police said. They had driven from Iowa. They were released while investigators waited for approval of a search warrant on the vehicle they were in, officials said. 

On Friday, upon execution of the warrant, detectives recovered one 12-gauge Remington shotgun, one DPM5 Model AR-15 rifle, several hundred rounds of ammunition, and a hunting knife. An arrest warrant was issued for the two suspects who were nabbed at the Saugus Hotel with the help of Saugus police.

BRIC Commander Superintendent Paul Fitzgerald said, "The relationship between police and private sector security is important in both our community policing philosophy, as well as our counter-terrorism strategy. This incident is a good example of private security reaching out to their local Boston police district and relaying information to detectives and BRIC analysts in order to identify the very real threat. The BPD detectives did a great job in the stop and prevention of a potential tragedy."

According to the tournament website, the Pokemon Championships is a invitation-only even that began Friday and runs through today. The website says it's giving away $2 million in scholarships and thousands of dollars worth of prizes.

Via: Boston Herald

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