Donald Trump rips CNN, illegals, John Kerry, backs Tom Brady

Slamming Secretary of State John F. Kerry as “a joke,” Donald Trump whipped a crowd of supporters into a froth at a fundraiser at car czar Ernie Boch Jr.’s Norwood manson, where the fiery real estate mogul doubled down on his hardline anti-immigration stance and scorched a CNN reporter.

“John Kerry is a joke. No, he’s a bicyclist,” Trump said of the former Bay State senator. “He’s 73 years old and he’s got a very big (Iran nuclear) deal going on and he goes into a bike race and breaks a leg. The Iranians can’t believe what’s going on.”

Trump also laid into Kerry for not demanding the release of four Americans held hostage in Iran before agreeing to the nuke pact.

“John Kerry and Obama said the reason they didn’t ask for the hostages is because they didn’t want to complicate the deal,” Trump said. “By the way, I wrote ‘The Art of The Deal.’ ”

The event, held at Boch’s sprawling mansion, drew a lively crowd of more than 1,000 Trump supporters, many of whom packed into a small media tent while the Republican front-runner fielded questions from reporters.

“You know a lot of the gangs in St. Louis and Ferguson, a lot of the gangs in Chicago, the toughest and the meanest, the worst dudes ... they’re illegal immigrants,” Trump said to a loud round of applause. “And I tell you one thing, if I get in, they’re going to be gone so fast out of this country.”

Trump, who has made waves in the 2016 presidential race with his controversial comments about illegal immigrants, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, was greeted on the way in by about two dozen pro-choice and immigrants’ rights protesters, which prompted a CNN reporter to ask him for a response.

“I don’t see many protesters, I see thousands of people, and there’s a few protesters and I figured you’d ask that question,” Trump said before asking the woman if she was from CNN. “You people do not cover us accurately at all. We have a few protesters outside and we have thousands of people and the first question from CNN is about protesters.”

Trump also scored points with the locals by weighing in on Deflategate.

“Leave Tom Brady alone!” he said to a raucous ovation. “I know Tom Brady, Tom Brady is an honest guy, he’s a great guy, he’s a great champion and winner. Leave him alone!”

Among the protesters waving signs outside was Patricia Montes of Centro Presente, who said she felt Trump’s comments on immigration were directly responsible for the savage attack on a homeless Hispanic man in Boston earlier this month.

“He’s responsible because of the hate and sentiment he’s been spreading,” Montes said. “It’s because of him and his supporters — like the people attending this party.”

But the chants of the protesters didn’t put a damper on the festivities.

“This is such a great, incredible group of people,” Trump told the cheering, chanting, sign-wavers under a big-top-sized tent in Boch’s backyard. “Something is happening. There’s a movement going on. Call it the silent majority. Call it whatever you want, but there’s a movement going on ... I love you all!”

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading.....

Editorial: EPA’s double standard

Sure accidents happen — it’s why we call them accidents. But you can bet if some oil company had been responsible for filling a Colorado river with toxic sludge — rather than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the Obama White House would be all over it. The Justice Department would likely have already launched an investigation and company officials marched into federal court.

But the EPA — which in its zealotry to rid our air of pollutants wants to ride herd over every coal- and oil-fired plant in the nation — took 24 hours just to notify the residents of nearby Durango of their major-league screw up.

An EPA crew assigned to clean up the Gold King mine high in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado accidentally opened up a passage from an old tunnel in the mine, allowing millions of gallons of yellow toxic sludge to spill into a creek, and from there into the Animas River. As of Monday it had already traveled 100 miles south into New Mexico. And from there who the hell knows because it’s still flowing, heading toward Utah, including Lake Powell — an area along with Durango itself jammed with tourists this time of year.

Local officials are furious because it took the EPA 24 hours to warn anyone of the arsenic and lead-laden stew headed their way. And the earlier estimate of a 1 million gallon spill later measured at least 3 million gallons.

Yes EPA officials have apologized, but then so did those BP officials after the Gulf Coast oil spill — before they were given the boot. And there are a host of questions still not answered by EPA officials — such as why was the EPA using heavy machinery in an area known to be filled with toxins. Why was the community not notified in a timely fashion. And who will compensate businesses along the route.

Remember the latter was a key requirement in the wake of the BP oil spill.

So where do the victims of the EPA’s incompetence go to have their lives and businesses made whole in the wake of this environmental disaster?

Via: The Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

[EDITORIAL] : Decision-making stalls

On the same day this past week that The New York Times devoted much space to exploring a debate among counterterrorism officials as to which poses the greater danger to the American homeland, the Islamic State or al-Qaeda, and The Washington Post ran a long article about how foreign policy decision-making has slowed to a crawl under a swollen National Security Council staff in the White House.

Gee, is there a relationship between the two topics, d’ya think? Well, decision-making is a mess on subjects that don’t have the president’s personal attention.

Carping about White House dominance and interagency conflict is nothing new. President Kennedy often dealt directly with third-echelon and fourth-echelon officers at the State Department. The never-settled struggle for control between the State and Defense departments greatly harmed U.S. policies in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The NSC staff was 25 under President Carter but 200 under President George W. Bush. President Obama added even more. White House micro-management, said former Defense Secretary Bob Gates after leaving office in 2011, “drove me crazy.”

Now White House meetings are said to march over old ground again and again. Example: Aside from nonlethal aid like food and tents, Obama has not decided yes or no after a year of discussion whether to send arms to Ukraine.

As for terrorism, military officials are said to emphasize al-Qaeda’s ability to mount massive long-distance attacks anywhere in the world; civilians see a greater threat in fanaticism the Islamic State inspires in young men. Conclusions — if there are any — help determine how funds and staff are allocated.

Are such decisions necessary? Both organizations are highly dangerous; trying to decide which is worse seems almost a time-wasting theological exercise.

Presidents can’t steer bureaucracies, but they need subordinates who can. Gates was good at it. We’re unlikely to see his like in the Obama crowd again, 

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

MASSACHUSETTS: Baker may need to speed up approach on DCF reform

On the campaign trail, Gov. Charlie Baker once slammed then-Gov. Deval Patrick for being “slow, if not resistant” to acknowledge widespread dysfunction inside the Department of Children and Families.

Following the disappearance of Jeremiah Oliver, Patrick ordered an in-house review — but also backed his embattled commissioner and agency.

“If there is a systemic issue in this or any other case, I’m the first one who’s interested in it because it’s my job to deal with systemic issues,” Patrick said weeks after DCF launched a review of 40,000-plus cases. “But I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.”

Within a week, public pressure pushed Patrick to order an outside probe, which eventually found those “systemic issues.”

Now in the Corner Office, Baker appears to be handling his first DCF crisis the same way he did other headline-grabbing problems: Review first, take a stand later.

Baker has called for commissions, ordered reports and postponed taking action until the problem was too big to ignore — the winter transit collapse — or gone before he had to say where he stood — the 2024 Summer Games.

But DCF, like the T, is Baker’s problem now, especially after a Herald report detailed how school officials alerted­ the child welfare agency to concerns about a 7-year-old Hardwick boy who was later­ found beaten and starved.

Caught in a media scrum yesterday, Baker said he didn’t want to address the case’s developments “piecemeal.” He said he wants a report first, this one expected by Sept. 24. “I want to see the facts.”

It remains to be seen if this DCF firestorm reaches the same level as the one that engulfed Patrick’s final years. But if questions continue to swirl without answers, Baker — once on the outside calling for quicker action — could be facing a test of his more measured approach.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

[OPINION] Carr: You might be a liberal if ... you’re delusional

MOONBAT-MANIA: Secretary of State John F. Kerry attempted to avoid Massachusetts taxes on his yacht by mooring it in Rhode Island.

You may be a liberal if you believe that allowing working people to keep a few more of the dollars they earned themselves is a “boondoggle” and a “gimmick.”

You may be a Massachusetts liberal if you think that the annual sales tax holiday weekend “diverts” money from “education,” by which you mean teachers unions, and from “the MBTA,” by which you mean handouts for T hacks who retired with full pensions at age 41.

By this definition of diversion, every time you drive past a bank and don’t rob it, you have “diverted” the money inside by not stealing it from its rightful owners.

The annual sales tax weekend in Massachusetts was approved by the Legislature last week, but not without some more absurd rhetoric from the hackerama. The solons’ gripe is that not grabbing that extra $25 million from taxpayers to give to non-taxpayers is “throwing it out the window.”

Remember, this is the state that two years ago admitted to annually handing out at least $1.8 billion in welfare to illegal aliens. That of course is money well spent, because it’s for non-working, non-English-speaking non-citizens. What could possibly be fairer than that?

The website American Thinker recently ran a piece headlined, “You May Be a Liberal if….” The point was that moonbat rhetoric is increasingly diverging from reality. I think after this week I can make a few additions to their list.

You may be a liberal if you want to string up the dentist who shot Cecil the Lion, but you think the ghouls at Planned Parenthood all deserve Profiles in Courage awards.

You may be a liberal if you feel you have to apologize for saying “All Lives Matter.”

You may be a liberal if you oppose funding charter schools for inner-city kids even as you send your own children to private schools.

You may be a liberal if you support higher taxes but have directed the trustees of your own trust fund to buy only municipal bonds — tax-free munis, that is.

You may be a liberal if you want to ban Christmas trees from the public square as you simultaneously demand prayer rooms for the new Muslim “refugees” in public schools.

You may be a liberal if you dismiss the coldest, snowiest winter on record as “weather,” but truly believe that two days with temperatures over 90 degrees represent “climate change.”

You may be a liberal if you believe that felons and illegal aliens should be allowed to vote, but not the military.

You may be a liberal if you believe in confiscating legally registered guns from law-abiding citizens, but agree with Barack Obama and Eric Holder that existing federal firearms laws should never, ever be used against inner-city gang-bangers who are actually committing crimes with illegal weapons.

You may be a liberal if you support Obamacare for everyone else, but are outraged when it’s suggested that you yourself might have to eventually give up your own gold-plated health insurance.

You may be a liberal if you believe that George Stephanopoulos and Brian Williams are “journalists.”

You may be a liberal if you support open borders, but live in a gated community.

You may be a liberal if you didn’t care when John Kerry’s second wife’s first husband’s trust fund bought him a $7.5-million yacht, after which he evaded paying Mass. sales taxes or town excise taxes on it, but when Sen. Marco Rubio spent $80,000 on a fishing boat, that was an “extravagant purchase” of a “luxury speedboat,” as the New York Times fulminated.

You may be a liberal if whenever some nut shoots up a movie theater, you automatically believe some lying liberal media outlet like ABC News or the Daily Beast when they falsely report that the perp was a member of the Tea Party.

You may be a liberal if you haven’t attended a candlelight vigil against war and those genocidal CIA drones of George W. Bush since Jan. 20, 2009.

You may be a liberal if you think it’s a front-page hate crime for a cop to defend himself against a charging thug, but when an unemployed drug-dealing Mexican burglar guns down three Native Americans in cold blood on an Indian reservation in Montana — nothing to see here folks, move along.

You may be a liberal if you think John Kerry deserves a Nobel Peace Prize of his own, just like Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, for giving the mullahs $150 billion to develop their own nuclear weapons.

You most assuredly are a Massachusetts liberal if, after bloviating about how unfair it is to give bitter clingers a sales-tax holiday, you now plan to spend the weekend of Aug. 15-16 shopping till you drop, instead of driving to New Hampshire to beat the sales tax the way you do the other 51 weekends of the year.

Listen to Howie 3-7 p.m. every weekday on AM 680 WRKO.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

ICE Failed To Deport 2 Illegals, Now Suspected Killers Of Massachusetts Grandmother

Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to deport two illegal immigrants who are now being investigated for a July 4th shooting that resulted in the death of a Massachusetts grandmother.

Illegal immigrants Wilton Lara-Calmona and Jose M. Lara-Mejia lived above Mirta Rivera, a 41-year-old grandmother, in Lawrence, Mass. The Boston Herald reports they were arrested on July 4, 2015 for murder and drug charges after a 4:26 AM 911 call summoned Lawrence Police Officer Frank Bradley to their Exchange Street apartment.

Bradley entered the grandmother’s apartment to a gruesome scene and found the victim “lying supine on the bed, pulseless, not breathing, eyes fixed front, staring straight at the ceiling,” according to his record.

He then saw a clearly marked bullet hole had ruptured the ceiling. The officer rushed upstairs where “the smell of fresh burnt gun powder was strong and evident.”

The two suspects were arrested along with 22-year-old Christopher Paganmoux. Officers searched outside and found a Sears and Roebuck .270 bolt action rifle which matched the bullet hole found in Mirta Rivera’s bed. The 3 men also had cocaine and heroin in the apartment.

Authorities have dealt with the suspects in the past, but failed to properly deport them. Lara-Meija was arrested for crossing the Mexican-American border illegally in August 2013. Despite ICE issuing a deportation order, he stayed in the country. He was considered an ICE fugitive after failing to appear before the immigration court in April 2014.

His accomplice, Lara-Calmona, was deported 3 years ago, but arrested again in November 2014. It is unclear why authorities failed to deport the man a second time.

Critics are scrutinizing ICE for their insufficient deportation policy. The Center For Immigration Studies argues the federal agency is putting legal citizens at risk.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

Battenfeld: Deval Patrick was flying high on taxpayers’ dime

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and his wife put taxpayers on the hook for nearly $17,000 in airfare on a single trade mission to Israel, part of an often lavish worldwide tour funded by a tucked-away trust the Patrick administration never revealed to the public, 
new records obtained by the Herald reveal.

State records tracking the trade mission costs also showed Deval and Diane Patrick took a three-day trip to Colombia in 2013 on the taxpayer dime, ringing up a $8,342 bill for flights that far exceeded what other state officials paid.

Patrick’s airfare on other overseas junkets sometimes tripled that of his traveling contingent, such as a round-trip flight to Ireland reported in state records as costing $5,751. The former governor also racked up a $2,400 tab for a three-day stay at the five-star Merrion Hotel, which bills itself as the most “luxurious” hotel in the city, according to records.

Patrick saved the most expensive flight bill for his last trade mission — $12,356 for just a five-day trade mission to France, Denmark and England, according to records compiled by the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, which oversaw the travel trust fund.

The records also list a one-way flight from Hong Kong to Singapore under Patrick’s name costing a hefty $1,640.

One of Patrick’s traveling companions on several trips was Richard Davey, former Department of Transportation chief and current CEO of the Boston 2024 Olympic bid.

Records show Davey’s airfare totaled $6,962 on a 2013 trip to Asia, while his hotel tab in Singapore and Hong Kong came to $2,829.

The former governor’s 10 international trade missions have come under new scrutiny by government watchdogs and lawmakers since the Herald first reported that the Patrick administration funneled $27 million from state quasi-public government agencies into trust funds kept separate from budgetary constraints and hidden from public scrutiny.

The Herald first reported that one of the trusts, funded by Massport and the Mass Tech Collaborative, paid for the $1.4 million trade mission costs from 2009 to 2014.

A former Patrick administration aide, Alec Loftus, said the trips were well worth the cost, citing new international flights that the former governor pushed for in the countries he visited.

“Massachusetts greatly benefitted from the trade missions,” Loftus said, adding that one report showed the state got an “over 1,000 times return-on-investment in economic activity.”

The travel expenditures provided to the Herald under a public records request reflect a “tracking system” kept by the trust and do not show receipts or invoices for flights or hotels. Patrick aides say the governor flew business class and not 
first class.

Patrick was accompanied on trade missions by advance staff and in several cases press aides, including former Department of Transportation flack Cyndi Roy Gonzalez. The records kept by the Patrick administration were not detailed for several trade missions and didn’t list what the governor or other state officials were charged. Sometimes the hotel and flight costs are bundled together.

The $21,141 hotel bill for the Colombia trip was simply charged to a “state credit card,” according to records.

But it’s clear that the former governor and his aides traveled in style. In Tel Aviv, Patrick bedded down at the InterContinental and was charged $1,005, while the room for Richard Elam, the former executive director of the international trade office, cost $1,550, according to 
records.

Even a quick trip across the border to Toronto and Montreal ended up with steep traveling costs, with round trip flights for some in Patrick’s traveling party costing nearly $2,500 each. Elam was charged $1,133 for a one-way trip from Montreal to Boston, according to records.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading.....

[OPINION] Carr: Pesky facts confirm Donald Trump right on illegals

Every time somebody watches a cable TV newscast, or reads a newspaper, it’s more votes for Donald Trump.

Even the moonbat media can’t ignore the tsunami of violent crime being committed by welfare-collecting illegal aliens. And now we have reports that Donald Trump was threatened by an escaped billionaire Mexican drug dealer, one of those criminals that all Democrats from Obama on down now want to pretend don’t exist.

Illegals are running amok, and the media are angry — at Donald Trump! Odd, though, isn’t it, how the Beautiful People still won’t acknowledge what open borders hath wrought? God forbid the media should ever say that any perp is an illegal. That’s “hate speech.” If you must mention a criminal’s immigration status at all, use Juan Ellis Bush’s preferred euphemism — valedictorian.

Take what happened in Waltham this weekend, at a DCR pool. One Victor Lopez was arrested and charged with groping an 11-year-old girl.

After his arrest, Lopez needed an interpreter to speak to the state police. He had a “Guatemalan passport.” Needless to say, he was identified as a “Waltham man.”

I asked the state police about Lopez’s immigration status. “He’s not a permanent U.S. citizen,” the flack said. What is a “permanent U.S. citizen?”

I asked the same question of the Middlesex DA — is Lopez an illegal alien?

The email response was: “Please note that our office has a Waltham residency for Victor Lopez.”

I didn’t ask about his residency, I asked whether he was a valedictorian. By the way, his bail was initially set at $300 — for groping a little girl in a pool. Do you suppose he paid with his EBT card?

Donald Trump tells the truth about this crime wave, and he’s shunned by the Beautiful People.

Last week in Lawrence the cops stopped a guy who first gave them a false name and then couldn’t produce a driver’s license. A valedictorian, perhaps?

The cops searched his car, then tossed his apartment. The haul was 9 kilos of heroin, two handguns and $340,000 in cash. Now we were definitely in valedictorian territory. I called the Lawrence PD to confirm my suspicions. Nobody called back. I called the Essex County DA’s office. Ditto.

They think we’re so dumb that we can’t figure out who’s committing all these crimes. Anyone who tells the truth must be destroyed.

Two weeks ago, the N.H. State Police grabbed two valedictorians at the DMV in Manchester. In their press release, the staties to their credit identified the perps (who’d given phony names — notice a pattern here?) as Dominicans.

But the next morning, the lead in the Union Leader was “Two men were arrested …”

Last month a sportscaster in Oklahoma City was run over by a valedictorian who’d been deported three times. In his wallet, he had no driver’s license, but he did have cocaine.

The headline: “Man charged in accident … ”

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading....

'AMERICAN SNIPER' WIDOW SLAMS HILLARY ON BENGHAZI

5d35e4431471441c950c4370b6ff5359.jpg

A fired-up "American Sniper" widow Taya Kyle slammed Hillary Clinton's shortcomings as a presidential candidate today, specifically in her responses to the Benghazi attack.

On a Herald Radio interview, Kyle said she was appalled that Clinton had “the audacity to sit there and say, ‘Look people die in America every day, what’s the big deal.'

“It’s almost like the real world doesn’t apply to her anymore, it doesn’t affect her, she doesn’t care,” Kyle said.

She added it is “horrifying” that the government failed to send in help during the Benghazi attack, but for Kyle, the worst offense is Clinton’s handling of the situation.

“Maybe (Clinton) has been in the system so long that she’s lost sight of it,” Kyle said.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading.....

Massachusetts House Launches Investigation Into Deval Patrick’s Hidden Accounts

Massachusetts House investigators are looking into whether former Gov. Deval Patrick diverted state money to secret funds for travel, advertising and other off-the-books expenses.

The Boston Herald first broke the story of the money transfers earlier this week.

Democratic state Rep. David Linsky is the chairman of the House Post Audit Committee and announced the investigation Thursday.

“As is my practice in all investigations, we will always go where the evidence takes us,” Linsky said, according to the Herald.

The Boston Herald reports that the former Democratic governor’s administration steered close to $27 million in state funds to various clandestine accounts.

These “trusts” allowed the governor to avoid the budget cut-backs due to the recession and did not bind the money to the oversight of the state legislature or the public.

Records show Patrick used a chunk of the funds for his world trips where he promoted Massachusetts as a global destination.

Between 2011 and 2014, the governor and his staff spent $535,558 in hotel costs, $332,193 in airfare, $305,976 for limousines and ground transportation, and $175,000 in miscellaneous travel expenses. The total bill for the trips in that three-year span came to $1.35 million.

One of the shady trusts was headed by a Patrick confidant, Betsy Wall. She had previously served as the head of tourism for the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Herald found that her “trust” sent $17 million to the advertising firm Connelly Partners, which is also employed by the state’s tourism office.

Apparently this under-the-radar $17 million was meant to bolster the state’s tourism industry through further marketing efforts than what the legislature had authorized.

The reason why government entities transferred millions into the secret accounts: “The (Patrick) administration asked us to,” said the spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. The MCCA threw the most money to the slush funds totaling $23.5 million.

The Herald story says that Massport and the Mass Tech Collaborative, also gave money to the accounts. The MTC receives federal dollars, and received Obama stimulus funds.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

SHE IS STILL DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today called the Obamacare website malfunctions “incidental” in the big picture and predicted that they would have no effect on the mid-term elections next year.

“The glitches technologically are incidental to the value of what the Affordable Care Act represents,” she said. “We will get through them. The Affordable Care Act is a great thing for our country and I think it’s going to work just fine … We find the glitches unacceptable, we want to get over it, but it’s not going to have any impact on the election.”

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading.....