Dow briefly up 300 points, out of correction; Nasdaq, S&P 500 up 2%

U.S. stocks attempted a bounce for a second consecutive day on Thursday, amid continued signs of strength in the U.S. economy, following the recent plunge in global markets that sent the major averages into correction territory.

The major averages traded nearly 2 percent higher or more. The Nasdaq Composite swung out of correction and into positive territory for 2015. The Dow Jones industrial average traded about 300 points higher in an attempt to rise out of correction mode.

The S&P 500 rose out of correction with Wednesday's stellar gains of about 4 percent. As of late-morning trade, no components of the index had set new 52-week highs or lows. 

Apple jumped more than 2 percent but remains in correction territory. The stock closed out of a bear market on Wednesday.

"Obviously the rally is continuing this morning. It's basically strength here after the good economic news we got," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. He said stocks have likely hit a bottom. "The China concerns are about to subside as the market concentrates on the (U.S.) economic data."

The second estimate of second-quarter GDP came in at 3.7 percent, topping the first read of an annualized 2.3 percent.

"I thought it was a very pretty number, particularly the revisions," said Marie Schofield, chief economist and senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. "The principle areas where we saw those revisions (such as final sales) were important, gives the underlying trend in demand and growth."

However, she said with the increased trade deficit and buildup in inventories she is "not as encouraged by the second half as the second quarter."

Weekly jobless claims came in slightly lower than expected at 271,000, marking the first decline in five weeks and indicating continued improvement in the labor market.

July pending home sales rose 0.5 percent, holding steady from an upwardly revised June reading of a 0.5 percent increase.

Bond yields trimmed gains, with the 10-year at 2.18 percent and the 2-year at 0.70 percent. Earlier, the 10-year yield hit 2.2 percent, its highest level since Aug. 19.

The U.S. dollar traded mixed, weaker against emerging market currencies and stronger against the euro and yen. The euro traded near $1.12 and the yen held around 120.5 yen against the greenback.

Crude oil is in focus after topping $40 a barrel in early trade. Crude oil futures for October delivery jumped $1.63 to $40.24 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 10:05 a.m.

Gold futures for December delivery fell $6.10 to $1,118.50 an ounce in morning trade.

"The combination of stronger economic data from both the U.S. and Europe and more stable China and EM, combined with a somewhat more dovish Fed postponing rate hikes is definitely good news for both the U.S. and Europe," said Ilya Feygin, senior strategist at WallachBeth Capital.

"The U.S. market has already partially reacted yesterday and will open about 0.8 percent higher this morning," he said. It faces overhead resistance less than 1 percent above here and buying on the elevated opening gap has not been a good tactical buy point in this more volatile market with lower liquidity."

The major averages had their best day in four years on Wednesday. After five consecutive days of triple-digit declines, the Dow surged 619 points into Wednesday's close, finishing the day at 16,285. The S&P 500 was up nearly 73 at 1,940.5. The Nasdaq surged more than 4 percent to 4,697.

The gains supported global markets on Thursday, with the DAX and STOXX Europe 600 both surging more than 3 percent in intraday trade and China's Shanghai Composite index closing up 5.4 percent to reclaim the critical 3,000 mark. The Nikkei and Hang Seng closed up 1.08 and 3.60 percent, respectively.

The positive close in China was the first in five trading sessions, after improved sentiment in the U.S. managed to outweigh the fears surrounding China's slowing economy, which has been partly responsible for the recent selloff seen in global stocks.

As of the U.S. close on Wednesday, losses on the S&P Global BMI totaled $3.45 trillion, according to Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Via: CNBC

Continue Reading...

Stealing from Walmart still stealing

In the new “legal relativism” and mob justice atmosphere that uses “social justice” as an excuse to loot and burn down stores in their neighborhoods, Everett Mitchell, the Director of Community Relations at the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus, stated during a discussion panel, “Best Policing Practices,” that prosecuting shoplifters from Walmart and Target is “aggressive police behavior.”

“I just don’t think they should be prosecuting cases for people who steal from Walmart. I don’t think that. I don’t think that Target, and all them other places – the big boxes that have insurance – they should be using the people that steal from there as justification to start engaging in aggressive police behavior.”

Perhaps it is why, for the first time in my life, I experienced yesterday at my local Walmart a person stationed at the exit, checking receipts carefully and scanning baskets of goods purchased. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to start checking purses, bags, and backpacks like they did under communism.

The social justice lefty crowd wants to engage in selective policing of their choosing, overlooking most crimes, drug offenses, shootings, traffic offenses, crossing our borders illegally, robbing and shooting innocent people, the knockout “game” against white people, breaking and entering, etc. 

I have personally seen judges give elderly individuals expensive court fines of $400 and community service for stealing a $4 bottle of Aspirin which they needed for pain. Yes, the law should apply equally to everyone and nobody should be shot for petty theft or for stealing food. But then ObamaCare and the current economy is causing some desperation among low income individuals.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading.....

ObamaCare's True Cost

We recently spoke with Dr. Claudette Lajam, NYU Hospitals for Joint Diseases, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, as well as Adult Reconstruction and Joint Replacement Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, NYU Langone Medical Center. She does pediatric, assisted in the lauded robot knee-replacement procedure, affiliates with Cornell Medical and the Alpha Award Club, and hosts Sirius Radio, Monday evenings. These will do for a start.

Lajam was speaking on “The Myth of Choice” to the NY County Republican Women’s Club. We stayed afterwards to schmooze and exchange views on reproductive topics and related hot-button topics. “Choice” means more than pregnancy termination.

Not inconsequentially, Dr. Lajam -- pert, personable, honey-blonde wife and mother -- is sole female surgeon specialist in her practice field in the city. The hospital in which she plies her skills is No.1 in safety.

To get where she is, she had to stay focused, tough, mindful of her colleagues, ahead of thousands of would-be’s. Not, as anyone knows who has tried to wrest an appointment with an in-demand pro, a breeze. 

Thoughtfully, Dr. Lajam referred to the fact that 26 August is the 95th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution -- after a long, bloody fight by incredibly doughty women who suffered jail, torture, humiliation and public shamings.

“There’s more to Choice than genitalia,” asserted the ‘orthopod.’

Because the Feds are so involved in care, micromanaging medicine and its practitioners, all independent hospitals in Queens, she notes, are gone.

Every surgeon generates seven or more support staff: aides, accounting, intensivists, resupply, nurses, and the like. When you cut a hospital, you cut all ancillary staff that keeps it humming -- and patients in standard ameliorative care.

Medicine is Big Biz.

Why aren’t we more aware of the irritating negatives and foreclosing of real ‘choices’? “There’s no meme for these things,” responds Dr. Lajam. “The abortion meme is there, and gets a constant workout,” shutting out other valid concerns. That narrows what some seem to be able to envision.

“The leading cause of doctor visits in the U.S.,” Lajam continues, “is musculo-skeletal problems.” As a consequence of President Obama’s signature, deeply meddling Affordable Care Act, unneeded workers in those hospitals -- mostly women -- were excessed. They lost what had been good jobs, benefits, decent pay.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading.....

Pollsters dumbfounded by Trump

Polling experts agree on one thing when it comes to Donald Trump’s presidential run: They’ve never seen anything like it.

The businessman’s dominance of the Republican presidential race is forcing experienced political hands to question whether everything they know about winning the White House is wrong.

The shocks have come in quick succession, with the businessman first rocketing to the top of national polls, and then taking double-digit leads in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In another act of political magic, Trump managed to flip his favorability rating from negative to positive in one poll during the span of a month — a feat that Monmouth University’s Patrick Murray called “astounding.”

“That defies any rule in presidential politics that I’ve ever seen,” Murray, the director Monmouth’s Polling Institute, told The Hill.

Trump’s favorability rose from 20 percent to 52 percent among Republican voters between July and August, Monmouth found.

While a later CNN/ORC poll did not find a similar shift in Trump’s favorability, the Monmouth data was yet another sign that he is a candidate to be reckoned with.

“Throw out the rulebook when it comes to Trump, that’s not even in the parameters of what we see as unusual,” Murray said.

Trump’s dominance of the race has flustered the Republican field, with many of the candidates trying their best to bring him back to earth.

But as the attacks on Trump have intensified, so has his level of support.

Polls released Tuesday show Trump lapping the field in New Hampshire, where he leads his nearest Republican rival by 24 percentage points. The story is the same in South Carolina, where the latest poll gave him a 15-point edge.

While political scientists and other experts continue to insist Trump will not win the Republican nomination, he’s converted at least one high-profile skeptic.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz had dismissed Trump from the start, and declared after the first presidential debate that his campaign was doomed.

But after convening a focus group Monday evening where Trump supporters showed an unflappable allegiance, Luntz changed his tune.

“This is real. I’m having trouble processing,” he said, according to Time.

“I want to put the Republican leadership behind this mirror and let them see. They need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them,” he added.

Polling experts, including Marist’s Lee Miringoff, say Trump is weathering political storms that would doom other candidates because his appeal is more about attitude than ideology.

While many of Trump’s supporters identify as strong conservatives, some of the policies he’s proposed — including increased spending on the border and higher taxes on the wealthy — have prompted accusations from rivals like former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush that he isn’t a true conservative.

Miringoff said doesn’t expect those attacks to stick.

“This is the next step of the Tea Party — someone who can tap into the sentiment that people have about all the frustration and turn it into ‘We are going to make America great again,’ ” he said. 

“This is not a policy paper.”

But even if Trump is rewriting the political playbook, can he go the distance?

Via: The Hill

Continue Reading....

Kelly File Exclusive: Alison Parker's Father, Boyfriend Honor Her Memory

Alison Parker's father and boyfriend spoke exclusively with Megyn Kelly hours after the tragic on-air shooting Wednesday.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

[OPINION] Obama pressed to reverse legal opinion on religious freedom

(Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — More than a dozen Jewish organizations signed on to a letter urging President Barack Obama to instruct the Justice Department to reverse a legal opinion that allows religious organizations to avoid religious nondiscrimination laws in hiring.

The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, Hadassah and B’nai B’rith International were among the 130 signatories of the letter sent Aug. 20 by civil rights, education and secular advocacy groups.

In the letter, the groups ask the president to instruct the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to “review and reconsider” a 2007 memorandum that has been used to promote “taxpayer-funded discrimination plain and simple,” as the American Civil Liberties Union put it.

The memorandum concludes that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, religious organizations seeking federal grants could not be compelled to follow religious nondiscrimination laws pertaining to hiring.

“The OLC Memo reaches the erroneous and dangerous conclusion that the religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) provides a blanket override of a statutory non-discrimination provision,” the letter reads in its opening.

Under the RFRA, which was introduced in the House by now-Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and in the Senate by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the government cannot “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” except when the government can demonstrate that the burden is a “furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

The signatories contend that the Office of Legal Counsel memo has been applied without any regard for the “government’s compelling interest in prohibiting [hiring] discrimination.”

Other Jewish groups that signed the letter are Bend the Arc, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Keshet, Jewish Women International, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism, Women of Reform Judaism and Nehirim.

Reminding Obama that he had pledged to end federally funded hiring discrimination, the signers warned that leaving the opinion in place would tarnish his legacy.

Via: Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] On CNN, Grandmother Rips 'Black Lives Matter;' Marc Lamont Hill Blasts Back

On Monday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon spotlighted the online "rant" of a grandmother who attacked the "Black Lives Matter" movement. In her video, Peggy Hubbard criticized the lack of outrage in her community over Jamyla Bolden, a nine year old child who was killed near Ferguson, Missouri: "Her life mattered; her dreams mattered; her vision mattered. She could have been the next secretary of state. She could have been the next attorney general. She never got a chance." Lemon interviewed Hubbard, who later later blasted the left-wing concept of "white privilege." 

[video below] Minutes later, liberal CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill went after the grandmother for her anti-"Black Lives Matter" rant: "We don't have to attack one movement to support another. We don't have to destroy the fine work that activists have been doing for the last year." Hill asserted that "some of us get so caught up in our pain and the, sort of, narratives that get put out by mainstream media, that we start rejecting our own, instead of accepting our own and being ourselves. That's the problem for me with this woman." He later ripped Bolden's contention about white supremacy as not being "grounded in reality." 

Lemon noted how "Black Lives Matter" decried the recent shooting of "Mansur Ball-Bey, a young black man who was killed by two white St. Louis police officers," and wondered, "Where is the outrage over another death – the death of...nine-year-old Jamyla Bolden – killed by a stray bullet in her home as she did her homework. At least one woman is very angry." He continued with two extended clips from Hubbard's online video.

The CNN anchor then turned to the grandmother, who first decried the lack of media coverage of Bolden's death, as well as the rioting in her home neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri over the police shooting of a suspect who shot at the law enforcement officers:

PEGGY HUBBARD, MADE VIDEO RANT ABOUT BLACK LIVES MATTER: Jamyla died the day before. I didn't hear anything on it on the news – and I'm an avid news watcher. Nothing was about – nothing was reported. It was just a blip. This guy dies – this bad guy dies – and all of a sudden, there's a full-blown riot in the neighborhood I grew up in. And there's nothing for her. And we're hollering, 'black lives matter.' He had his chance to matter. He chose his path. He chose his destiny. Jamyla never got her destiny. She never got her promises. Her life mattered; her dreams mattered; her vision mattered. She could have been the next secretary of state. She could have been the next attorney general. She never got a chance.

Via: Newsbusters

Continue Reading.....

[GUEST EDITORIAL] China, show your math

From The Chicago Tribune

In the first frightening minutes of Wall Street trading Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted more than 1,000 points in reaction to another overnight stock sell-off in China. Then came a remarkable recovery — up about 500 points in one hour, 300 another — followed by a second collapse before the Dow finished down 588 points, or 3.6 percent.

Insane day, but at least you knew the numbers were real. In New York, anyway.

Questions about the future strength of the Chinese economy are at the center of the market’s extreme volatility, but China’s actual performance is as mystifying. No one observing China completely trusts the accuracy of the country’s official economic statistics or fully understands Beijing’s decision-making process. This adds to the risk of assessing what’s happening over there. On Monday, American investors paid the price, in portfolio values and stomach pain.

Going forward, the China question could affect the U.S. Federal Reserve’s anticipated decision to raise interest rates, potentially delaying the U.S. economy’s return to more normal footing. Oil prices are in retreat because China’s a major buyer. In other words, a lot rides on Beijing getting its house in order.

Big-picture wise, China is well understood. It is factory to the world and an incredible growing market for consumer goods like cars and iPhones because of its rising middle class. Whatever uncertainties China presents as a competing political and military power, we know China already has staked a claim in the global economy. Consider China to be the world’s fourth table leg, supporting world growth alongside the U.S., Europe and Japan. Which, to reiterate, means everything the Chinese government does to manage its economy matters.

Yet, as we were reminded again Monday, China plays by different rules. Among global economic powers, it is the only nondemocratic country, run by the collective leadership of the Communist Party, whose boss, President Xi Jinping, may be the most powerful figure in Chinese politics since Deng Xiaoping. But who knows? Maybe he isn’t. There is no free press or speech in China, no political opposition, and no way to double-check the government’s math. The place is hard to analyze. There is only what we observe: the slow, steady embrace of free market principles, contradicted by the practice of secret decision-making and the tradition of ruling through official propaganda rather than truth-telling.

And our 401(k)s are dependent on this?

China clearly is in a growth slowdown. All the signs, from industrial production to real estate values, indicate that.

Chinese leaders, eager to encourage their consumers to keep spending, made a series of critical mistakes this year, starting with a veiled promise through the party mouthpiece People’s Daily to keep frothy stock prices rising.

That upswing didn’t materialize, leading to another opaque decision: devaluing the currency, ostensibly to allow the yuan to trade more freely as part of the transition to a free market economy.

But few people believe that explanation. To outsiders, devaluation looks like a panicked effort to goose growth, because a weaker currency would help exports. There’s been no better explanation posited by the government, leading outsiders to hope policymakers there have a better handle on things than appears. The Wall Street Journal threw up its hands at analyzing the fiasco: “One reason markets have been so unnerved is that China’s economy remains something of a black box,” its Beijing correspondents wrote Monday. “For starters, analysts have long wondered about the accuracy of government economic statistics. And levers pulled by Chinese policy makers can be unconventional.”

Hence the collapse of stocks globally, China’s included. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.5 percent Monday.

The levers of government don’t, and shouldn’t, control markets. Government’s job is to set conditions for markets to operate efficiently. Most of the time in the West, though, policymakers find a way, through steady leadership, to manage expectations. It starts with providing trustworthy data.

The pace of transition in China is breathtaking. China has quickly matured into a world economic power. But its travails no longer represent an interesting, distant experiment. China owes its partners a transparent accounting of its economy’s performance, and a thorough explanation of its decision-making. It’s time for China to commit to the next steps in its evolution from communism to capitalism, and be clear about it.

Via: Northwest Georgia News

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] Curt Schilling Compares Muslim Extremism to Nazi Germany, Gets Thrown from Little League Broadcast

ESPN baseball analyst and former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling has been thrown from a Little League World Series broadcast for an “unacceptable” message posted to social media Tuesday.

According to the New York Times, the former Red Sox star likened Muslim extremism to Nazi Germany in a message on Twitter, prompting ESPN to pull him from the broadcast.

Schilling posted a photo of Adolph Hitler on Twitter with the writing, “It’s said only 5-10 percent of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?”

He accompanied the meme with his own text, “The math is staggering when you get to true #’s.” Schilling deleted the tweet shortly after posting it.

In a statement Tuesday, ESPN labeled the tweet “completely unacceptable,” pulling Schilling from the broadcast and leaving the door ajar for further punishment.

“Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration,” ESPN said.

Schilling, who is a member of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, immediately took responsibility for the tweet and accepted the punishment.

“I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part,” Schilling wrote on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

[COMMENTARY] It's presidential improv as Trump surges on

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – It's what we've always wanted, isn't it? A totally unscripted White House race? No more predictable politics as usual?

If nothing else, Donald Trump has at least given us that.

He may not be the best person for the job, but Trump has saved us from the play-it-safe, poll-driven, stage-managed, social media-drenched tedium that passes for presidential politics. And in an era where White House campaign cycles have gotten longer and longer, and ever more vacuous, we can be thankful for that.

Even better: The political ruling elite can't stand it.

Trump, of course, was supposed to have been long gone by now. If you listened to the pundits, the Trump for President effort wasn't supposed to have gotten off the ground at all. Trump was a buffoon, a cartoon. A blowhard. A TV huckster. A soulless 1-percenter.

And that hair.

He wasn't even qualified to get in the ring.

But Trump not only ran, he became the favorite on the GOP side, and is gaining on Hillary in head-to-head polls. He has owned this presidential summer.

Along the way, he's had more lives than Rasputin.

Trump was supposed to be dead when he snarled about illegal Mexican immigrant rapists and thieves. But his poll numbers continued to rise.

He was supposed to be toast when he bashed Vietnam War hero John McCain. Nope. Trump went right on surging.

It was going to be a Waterloo when Trump took part in the first GOP presidential debate on Fox News. He would surely fold in the company of all those experienced pols and debaters.

But Trump was the star that night, the reason why many people tuned in. His ongoing battle with Fox host Megyn Kelly has done him no harm. And why should it? It's just one rich, well-coiffed TV celebrity going up against another.

The funnest part of all this has been watching Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and the rest trying to appropriate little pieces of Trump's damn-the-torpedoes, "straight talk" shtick while not tipping all the way over into Crazyland.

Hillary pokes fun at her email foibles by cracking wise about self-vaporizing messages on Snapchat. And Jeb has been out there shaking his finger at "anchor babies."

But they can't do it, because they've got too much to lose, they want the job too badly. Their whole lives have led up to this moment. They can't take too many chances.

Trump, meanwhile, has already won and has nothing to lose. If he's not elected president, he'll go back to his billions, however many he actually has. His presidential run will make for a great reality series. His brand will be more valuable than ever. New business opportunities are no doubt already raining down on him.

American culture and politics are all about money and celebrity, and Trump's got both.

Trump has also been a Great Unifier. He has the professional pundits and the career pols, on both sides of the aisle, making palaver with each other as they try to figure out how to stop Trump in his tracks while at the same time trying to divine the secrets of his political success.

Suddenly, the Beltway pols and the pundits have a lot in common: We can't let Trumpwin, can we? If nothing else, it's proven that they're all part of the same hypocrisy, Michael Corleone would say. They have been exposed. It's been particularly entertaining to watch.

There is no playbook here. Nobody planned on the Trump Factor, so there's no way to counter it. This isn't how Jeb and Hillary drew it up. The TV talking heads spent months telling each other that the Trump Surge wasn't happening, and now that Trump has legs, they have no Plan B, except to try and goad Joe Biden into the race.

Welcome to presidential improv.

Via: SI Live

Continue Reading....

Amid Security Failures DHS Spends $20.3 Mil on Conferences

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

While it let Islamic terrorists enter the country, wasted huge sums on faulty equipment and failed miserably to remove criminal illegal aliens, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was busy blowing $20.3 million to host 1,883 conferences last year.

It’s the inconceivable tale of the colossal agency—with practically unlimited funds—created after 9/11 to prevent another terrorist attack. The agency’s various components include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the scandal-plagued Secret Service and the famously inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to name a few. In 2015, DHS asked Congress for an astounding $38.2 billion to continue its “commitment to the security of our homeland and the American public,” according to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The agency must be agile and vigilant in continually adapting to evolving threats and hazards, Johnson writes in the budget request, adding that “we must stay one step ahead of the next attack, the next cyberattack, and the next natural disaster.” Preventing terrorism, securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws are among the agency’s “basic missions,” Johnson states, even though we all know DHS has fallen short in all these areas. The failures involving the southern border have been especially well documented. In fact, just last month Judicial Watch reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling Islamic terrorists into the U.S. through the rural Texas border region.

While this is going on DHS and its various components polish up on a variety of skills at conferences that cost American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, afederal audit reveals. This includes a dozen events that each exceeded $100,000. For those wondering what publicly-financed, extracurricular event could possibly merit such a large sum, here are a few examples: DHS paid $196,308 for a San Francisco forum aimed at preventing terrorism as well as “securing and managing our borders” and an additional $130,941 for a separate San Francisco shindig so 39 senior agency officials could engage with “key influencers and decision makers” in the cybersecurity industry.

The agency responsible for protecting the nation from terrorist threats also blew $179,053 on the International Oil Spill Conference in Savannah, Georgia, which focused on environmental impacts of oil spills and $125,348 on a Washington D.C. event aimed at “maximizing the benefits of gender diversity.” The idea behind that conference was to promote gender equity through a group known as Women in Federal Law Enforcement (WIFLE), a nonprofit created by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Treasury to address why women remain underrepresented in federal law enforcement.

A $110,993 “outreach” summit in Washington D.C. brought Customs and Border Patrol senior managers, transportation executives and foreign government partners together to discuss “securing and managing our borders” and a $108,617 Ft. Worth Texas conference provided a “platform for conveying information regarding relevant issues in immigration enforcement.” DHS also doled out $131,868 on the Afghanistan Pakistan Illicit Procurement Network Symposium in Tampa, Florida where discussions focused on preventing hostile nations and illicit procurement networks from illegally obtaining U.S. military products or sensitive technology that could be used against the U.S.

While all this costly nonsense is going on at taxpayer expense, the southern border remains dangerously porous, airport security is a huge joke and DHS gets exposed for spending $360 million on drones that have failed miserably after nearly a decade. The agency promised Congress that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAC) would help effectively guard the Mexican border and, even after the experiment failed repeatedly, DHS asked Congress for another $443 million to keep it alive.

Via: Judicial Watch

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] THIS NEW AD ON HILLARY CLINTON IS AWESOME

Keep the Promise, a SuperPAC said to be supporting Ted Cruz, has come out with a new ad on Hillary Clinton and it’s awesome. I don’t want to spoil it so I’ll just let you watch it and comment:

Via: The Red StateContinue Reading....

Ambassador Kennedy used private email, watchdog says

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and senior staff at the U.S. embassy in Japan used personal email accounts for official business, an internal watchdog report said Tuesday -- making Kennedy the latest Obama administration official to run afoul of email security guidelines.

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report said it received reports concerning the use of private email accounts for official business, and identified instances where emails labeled "sensitive but unclassified" were sent from or received by personal email accounts. 

“On the basis of these reports, OIG’s Office of Evaluations and Special Projects conducted a review and confirmed that senior embassy staff, including the Ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business. In addition, OIG identified instances where emails labeled Sensitive but Unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts," the report said.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT.

The OIG stressed that department policy says employees generally should not use private accounts for official business, citing the risk of hacking and data loss. 

"Employees are also expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit sensitive but unclassified information when available and practical," the report says.

The report, conducted between January and March, comes as the same OIG office reviews email use and policies across the department amid the controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email and server. The FBI is reviewing the security of that server, with questions mounting over whether classified material was improperly shared or stored on the Clintons' private account. 

Email issues aren't confined to the State Department. The IRS admitted Monday to a federal court there was a second personal email account -- set up under the name "Toby Miles" -- that Lois Lerner, the official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal, used to conduct agency business.

But State Department messages can cover a range of sensitive and classified material involving America's allies and enemies. The OIG report does not appear to suggest a serious information breach. Sensitive but unclassified information can be shared outside of the government, though officials are required to use discretion. However, it puts further spotlight on the department's struggle to keep its information secure.

Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy, has been ambassador to Japan since November 2013.

The report also noted the economic section of the embassy – which works closely with the United States Trade Representative on the Trans-Pacific Partnership – was not maintaining centralized files, and the embassy has not enforced department or federal regulations on managing records.

“Officers have individual files based on their own filing systems, located in personal folders on a shared drive and in Microsoft Outlook email personal folders. These files are not accessible to anyone else and are not archived, retired, or retrievable,” the report said.

Asked about the report, a State Department official told The Associated Press that the embassy in Japan requires the use of official email accounts to conduct official business whenever possible, and indicated that Kennedy and other staff are acting on the inspector's recommendations.

"Ambassador Kennedy uses an official email address for official business. As the report reflects, in the past, like others at the mission, Ambassador Kennedy infrequently used her personal email account for official business," said the department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record and requested anonymity.

"This is allowed, so long as measures are taken to ensure that official records sent or received on personal email are preserved and other requirements are observed. The ambassador and embassy staff are implementing the OIG recommendations, including those regarding emails," the official said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

The Democrats: Too Old and Too White?

Leftwingers’ taunts in 2008 and 2012 have come back to haunt them. 

In the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now “too old, too white, too male — and too few.” Columnists between 2008 and 2012 ad nauseam berated Republicans on the grounds that their national candidates “no longer looked like America.” The New York Times stable crowed that the Republicans of 2008 were “all white and nearly all male” — not too long before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. In reaction to the defeats of McCain and Romney, Salon and Harper’s ran stories on the “Grand Old White Party” and “Angry White Men.”

For Democratic progressives, Hawaiian Barack Obama could not be of mixed ancestry and decidedly middle class, but simply “black” or “African American” — as if he had shared the Jim Crow experience of Clarence Thomas. Nor was there any allowance that race itself had become hard to sort into neat categories in a nation of immigration, intermarriage, and assimilation, in which millions of Americans were one-half this and one-quarter that. Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King proved that well enough by successfully constructing themselves as white for quite a long time. 

Liberals had reversed the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.: The color of our skin, not the content of our character, is what matters. Superficial appearance, the ossified politics of the tribe — the curse of the world outside the United States, where corpses have piled up in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq — alone mattered. Identity politics dictated that a shrinking white insular conservative party lacked the Democrats’ “inclusiveness” and “commitment to diversity.” Icons like Barack Obama were what mattered.

Via: National Review

Continue Reading....

Univision’s Jorge Ramos: Trump Calling Illegal Immigrants “Illegals” Is “Spreading Hate”…

rBut he really isn’t.

Via: Weasel Zippers

[FOOTBALL] War of words continues among Deflategate attorneys

The heated rhetoric between attorneys involved in the ongoing Deflategate saga continues to flood the federal docket, less than a week before both sides will meet before the judge who has been asking them to settle.

Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney representing Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, attacked NFL lawyers today, who yesterday dismissed 19 cases his team gave to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman to review last week.

“(T)he NFL’s submission ignores how the denial of fundamental fairness in the arbitration at issue here so closely resembles the denials of fair process in the decisions we presented to the Court,” Kessler wrote in a two-page letter filed today in New York federal court.

Kessler and other union attorneys are working to overturn Brady’s four-game suspension, which was handed down by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. They have argued that Goodell should not have been the arbitrator to decide whether Brady was guilty of being generally aware that footballs may have been partially deflated during the 2015 AFC Championship.

On Aug. 19, attorneys for both sides argued their case to Berman. The judge spent considerable time poking holes in the NFL’s case, while allowing Kessler to argue with very little interruption. After finishing his argument, Kessler had one of his associates give Berman a list of cases that he said bolstered Brady’s case.

The NFL said the cases didn’t apply to Brady’s arbitration.

“These cases confirm that courts vacate arbitration awards only in extraordinary circumstances, none of which are present here,” NFL attorney Daniel Nash wrote yesterday.

That is the essence of the argument the NFL has made from the beginning: Judges very rarely overturn arbitration awards, and Berman should follow that rule in Brady’s case.

Brady’s attorneys, meanwhile, have argued that there are four reasons to overturn what they call an unprecedented suspension: that Brady had no notice; that no standards were set for testing the PSI of the footballs; that Goodell was biased; and that the arbitration was unfair.

Last week, Berman said if settlement talks in the case continue to be fruitless, he wants Brady and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in his court on Aug. 31. Berman indicated that his "current plan" is to try and have this case resolved before the start of the NFL season. Brady’s suspension would begin on Sept. 4 as of now.

On July 30, Berman implored both sides to “tone down their rhetoric” and “pursue a mutually acceptable resolution of this case.” With less than two weeks until kickoff, rhetoric is still heated, and no settlement agreement has been reached.

Via: Boston Herald

Continue Reading.....