"For the UK’s nationalists, President Trump is a ‘role model’" by Liz Goodwin, Globe Staff November 10, 2018
LONDON — The scene had all the trappings of a Donald Trump rally: the virulent partisan collision, the bitter complaints about “fake news,” the fear that the country’s white population is under threat from immigrants, the sprinkling of Trump-themed hats and garb, but the hundreds of people gathered were English, not American, and they had traveled — many for hours by bus — not to see Trump but to cheer on a prominent nationalist and anti-Islam activist named Tommy Robinson, whose rise to right-wing stardom has been bolstered by official intervention by a Trump administration diplomat and unofficial support from former Trump aide Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr.
The Globe knows all about anger, bitterness, and sadness.
Dave Sumner, a protester at the rally wearing a rubber Trump mask and dark suit, and the other Trump-loving protesters rallying in London are part of a larger nationalistic movement in Europe and around the world that was born of domestic causes and predates Trump, but is being actively stoked by Bannon and others. Think of it as the global wing of Trump’s fervent base, an amplification and extension of his divisive but galvanizing message. Wherever it has risen up, it has stirred anxiety and a largely ineffectual reaction from the political establishment, much as with Trump in the United States.
Post-Brexit Britain contains a strain of nationalistic fervor that is especially connected to Trump because of a unique, trans-Atlantic feedback loop between the right wings of both countries. US pundits and politicians have poured moral and financial support into their cause.
British nationalists like Sumner have long been dismissed as lower-class rabble by the UK establishment and shut out from the party system entirely, but they now find their complaints about Muslims and immigrants validated across the pond, where the occupant of the Oval Office has regularly and enthusiastically vilified both groups. The Trump example has been enormously catalyzing for them, and the British party that pushed for Brexit, UKIP, has begun offering itself as a political home to the movement, raising fears in the country that the until-now fractured and weak far right could become a political force.
Spending time with Sumner and others in his movement helps explain why Trump’s allies see Europe as fertile ground for exporting Trump-style nationalism and identity politics, as nationalists abroad see themselves as part of a global movement attempting to safeguard Western culture from immigrants.
“I think Trump getting into power shows that we are the majority,” Sumner said. “And just believing that gives you a lot of hope.”
* * * * * *
Sumner is the first to admit he got a little too obsessed with Donald Trump during the 2016 election. During the day, he put on a hard hat and worked as a laborer on a building site in his hometown of Sheffield, but the second he got home, the 37-year-old fired up YouTube on his laptop. It was time for his favorite activity in the world: Watching Trump talk.
That's why I stopped watching cable and network news.
“When it came to Donald Trump, that’s all I did,” he said. “It became my life.”
YouTube’s “recommended” algorithm served up constant Trump content once it recognized that was his interest, feeding his obsession.
“Every time you put YouTube on, there’s your recommended: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” he said. “So that’s what I did.”
Debates. Speeches. Interviews. Evening bled into night, which sometimes became early morning. Consumed by the long-shot candidate, Sumner spent six hours a day, sometimes more, basking in the glow of his screen.
Meanwhile, his mother, whom he lives with in the outskirts of Sheffield, became concerned.
That he could be another Sayoc (talk about a fast fade psyop patsy, 'eh? Mission accomplished!)?
Most of his family members and friends are fairly apolitical and weren’t following the US elections closely from Sheffield, a steel manufacturing city more than three hours north of London that is home to a large university. Sumner’s mom’s main interest is her Jack the Ripper-themed book club, and until recently, Sumner himself was more interested in his amateur rapping hobby than politics. People began to suggest to him that he was taking the obsession too far.
Maybe the son should be concerned about her.
“Me mum thought I was mentally ill,” Sumner joked, but the US elections filled his life with a sense of purpose, as if by watching videos several hours a day he was affecting history.
So now he is an Oswald type.
On election night, Sumner couldn’t keep his eyes open late enough to hear the final call, falling asleep before the Midwest pivoted in the direction of his hero, changing the course of history. Sumner was shocked when he woke up on Nov. 9 to the news that Trump had been elected president of the United States.
So was I.
Saw them finally call Pennsylvania and said holy sh*t!
“It was the best day of my life when I found out he won,” he said. “Absolutely fantastic,” but his rapture at Trump’s victory didn’t rid Sumner of the anger he felt about his own country and life circumstances, an anger he focused on the UK’s Muslim community. If anything, it intensified it. Sumner found himself filled with rage on May 22, 2017, when Salman Abedi set off a bomb at a concert in the northern city of Manchester, where the son of Libyan refugees was born and raised, killing 22 people and himself in an ISIS-inspired terror attack.
I'm not going to go back to Manchester and what looked like another in a long, long line of staged and scripted crisis drills gone live which are then turned into allegedly live reports on the TV. I'm tired of hopping from one foot to the other.
Sumner also continued to believe that the UK government was not adequately addressing a spate of sex abuse scandals in northern cities featuring Muslim defendants.
I'm sure that is a problem; however, it pales in comparison to the burying of the Saville scandal and what goes on in Parliament.
He also didn’t like that more Muslim people lived on his block than before, and worried that Muslim people would, as he put it, “outbreed” people like him — a strain of the so-called white genocide theory pushed by white nationalists. He distrusts government statistics that show the Muslim population in the UK is 7 percent, and 6 percent in Sheffield as of 2011.
This is the problem I have with the far-right, and is thus why I see it as an extension of the far-left in that it is supremacist Zionist interests that supply the narrative on both extremes, thus funneling any debate and/or solution into the middle where they get a percentage of that they want before beginning the next round of debate, negotiation, and concessions.
This whole buy-in to the Jewi$h narrative that was supplied after the grandaddy of all false flags (and real event) of 9/11 is the reason I don't fall for the fake dichotomy of my pre$$.
He grew so angry that he worried he would do something “stupid” and hurt someone, not an idle threat from a person who, 10 years earlier, was sentenced to five years in prison for punching a man who then fell and was left brain-dead. His increasingly dark Facebook rants on Islam and other topics were met with one or two likes, usually from a blood relative. He quit his job, broke up with his girlfriend, and sank into a depression.
Yeah, that's it, incriminate yourself.
That’s when his alter ego — Davey Trump — was born.
Last June, Sheffield’s new mayor announced he was banning Trump from the city during his state visit to Britain, a rebuke for the president’sposition on Muslims and immigrants. An incensed Sumner purchased a Trump mask for 45 pounds on EBay, and when it arrived, stood outside Sheffield City Hall dressed as the president with a sign declaring: “Trump is welcome in Sheff.”
This, it turns out, was the beginning of his new identity. A few days later, he protested a large demonstration against Trump in the town square, videoing himself as he yelledat the hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators: “Your message is poison!” He sent the video to as many pro-Trump Facebook groups around the world as he could, and eventually began to attract the likes and followers he had so sorely been missing. In a uniquely 21st-century scenario, a purely symbolic protest of a purely symbolic protest attracted lots of eyeballs — and outrage — online.
“It felt great that all this I felt inside, other people agree as well,” he said. “It’s like a pat on the back, all these positive messages.”
That explains the $upremaci$t focus of my pre$$, too.
Sensing that Trump was the unifying force for people who shared his own disdain for liberals and Islam, Sumner began wearing the mask more and more to protest small goings on around his town, and made a separate Facebook page for his alter ego. In his profile photo, he’s wearing the mask and holding an air gun.
“Many people know me now as Davey Trump,” he said proudly.
One man in particular acts as a magnet and catalyst for Sumner and like-minded people, and rallies on this man’s behalf have brought them out of their online hideaways and into real life. He is Tommy Robinson, a British anti-Islam activist who founded a group that organized street protests against Islam. Robinson has become the focal point for a resurgence of nationalism and anti-Islam sentiment in Britain, drawing thousands of fans to London over the summer in protests on his behalf.
That will be the theme this morning.
I imagine it will be unsettling some underpants for the richers of Bo$ton crowd for whom the Globe is written.
* * * * * *
Just two years ago, Robinson would have had a tough time drawing thousands of people like Sumner to London, but over the past year the 35-year-old has been transformed from an obscure regional fringe player into a symbol of free speech and resistance to the international far right, thanks in part to powerful supporters in the United States, including Bannon and Trump’s eldest son, Donald.
When did he join Antifa?
Robinson founded the English Defense League in 2009, a far-right group, in his hometown of Luton. He was involved there with a group of rowdy and sometimes violent fans of the Hatters, the soccer team named after the town’s original hat-making industry.
Luton’s hatting days are long past, and Robinson grew up in a place that was rapidly changing economically and demographically. The city’s white population fell from 72 percent to 55 percent from 2001 to 2011, as thousands of white people left and new nonwhite residents moved into the commuter town an hour north of London. The Vauxhall car factory, the town’s main employer, closed in the early 2000s. Now the company’s van factory employs fewer than 1,000 people, a steep decline from its heyday.
Robinson grew up resenting the new demographics of Luton. In his early 20s, he briefly belonged to the British National Party, a racist fringe group whose leaders have condemned inter-marriage between people of different races and support an end to all nonwhite immigration. He left the party and has since disavowed racism. In 2013, Robinson began styling himself as a journalist and distancing himself from his football hooligan roots. More recently, he has focused on bringing attention to sexual abuse trials featuring Muslim defendants after an independent report in 2014 found that 1,400 girls and women had been abused over 15 years in the town of Rotherham by a group of people who were mainly of Pakistani descent. The scandal has rocked the country, and led to a wide-ranging inquiry on sex abuse in Britain. While the judge found no religious motive for the crimes, Robinson and his supporters insist there was one, and Robinson has made it his main goal to draw attention to similar crimes.
This is, ultimately, what got him arrested. In May, Robinson was jailed for filming outside a courthouse in Leeds to draw attention to another sexual abuse trial featuring Muslim defendants. He heckled men on cameraas they walked into the court, broadcasting the spectacle on Facebook live.
You guys really have problems with them over there, doncha'?
A judge ruled he was violating a court order restricting reporting on the trial until after the verdict. He was also charged with violating the terms of a previous suspended sentence for recording another trial at a courthouse in Canterbury. Robinson was swiftly sentenced to 13 months in prison. The judge sternly admonished him, saying he could have caused a mistrial with his actions, endangering the stiff sentences he claimed he wanted for the abusers. Robinson found himself back in jail.
This, it turned out, was his big break.
* * * * * *
Such is the nature of the global right in 2018. For all of Trumpworld’s disdain for lefty “globalists,” the movement surrounding the president is more international than ever before.
“President Trump should offer Tommy Robinson asylum,” tweeted Jack Posobiec, an alt-right figure who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, accusing, without evidence, Hillary Clinton and others of child abuse in a DC restaurant. (Posobiec has been retweeted by President Trump.) Alex Jones of the conspiracy website InfoWars asked if Robinson was still alive, implying that Muslim men in the prison would kill him. “This will wind up being a death sentence,” wrote Mike Cernovich, another alt-right social media personality. Roseanne Barr, the comedian who was fired for racist tweets about Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, echoed that sentiment, calling Robinson’s jailing a “death sentence.”
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson hosted a segment on Robinson three days later, probably introducing the former football hooligan to Carlson’s conservative audience for the first time.
As noted yesterday, not one word from the Globe regarding the leftist goons that went to his house.
* * * * * *
Perhaps no one represents the internationalization of the right and its nationalist goals better than former White House adviser and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon. Booted from the White House, Bannon’s ambitions are now global. He recently started an organization called “The Movement,” based in Brussels, to help elect populist, anti-EU politicians to the European Parliament, with the hope of breaking up the organization. After the midterms, he has vowed to spend the majority of his time overseas working to elevate far-right nationalist parties in Poland, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and France.
Bannon sees Robinson as part of this larger global movement toward nationalism, and has said the West is in a war against Islamic fascism. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was the Tommy Robinsons of the world who stormed the beaches at Normandy. They were the guys at Dunkirk,” Bannon said in a recent interview with British YouTuber Carl Benjamin. “Throw a stick and you hit a hundred Tommy Robinsons in the Bannon family. Hammerheads. The salt of the earth.”
That's where he loses me, although he is right about the good old southern boys dying in all the wars based on lies with no complaints until now.
Bannon’s right-hand man in the Movement is Raheem Kassam, formerly the editor of Breitbart London and an adviser to former UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
Who drew in US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback.
* * * * * *
Trump’s rise to power has inspired nationalists worldwide, but the Internet is what has brought them together, creating a sense of consensus around ideas that have been considered beyond the bounds of acceptable debate in Britain. Through the glow of their screens, people filled with rage about immigration or Muslims or liberals in the UK find and validate each other, and Trump is often a common bond between them.
I was waiting to see what agenda they were angling for here, and that's it. Gotta shut down the web because of those pesky right-wingers, blah, blah, and leave the field open to only the Jewi$h $upremaci$t media and their narrative.
Sumner was able to tap into that online community and build up a following online.
Sumner, meanwhile, feels like he’s a soldier on an international battlefield, with Trump as one of his generals.
“It’s a war. It’s a real war,” he said.....
For your mind.
--more--"
Gotta house the troops:
"At UMass Boston, dorms not yet a home away from home" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff November 11, 2018
It was promoted as a dream dorm!
The freshmen who moved into UMass Boston’s first-ever dormitory on Labor Day made history, helping to turn the campus into something more than a commuter school, but two months into the school year, the dorm — two gleaming structures by the waterfront on Columbia Point, housing 1,077 students — is turning out to be more like the Tower of Tribulations than the Taj Mahal.
In the first weeks of school, dorm elevators abruptly fell several floors with students inside. Water shot out of one toilet when you flushed another, students reported. The rooms are often stifling hot, but the showers are frigid. The hamburgers in the dining hall are sometimes raw.
It’s safe to say there are growing pains at the residence hall. Students love living so close to class, but the dorm living, which costs between $9,000 and $12,000 per year, not including meals, is not as advertised.
The new dorm was years in the planning. UMass officials have said allowing students the opportunity to live where they study will improve their academic performance. However, they encountered resistance from neighbors, and from politicians on Beacon Hill, who were lobbied by private schools that feared the competition.
There will be a lot to investigate. Complaints range from the ordinary — limited dining hall hours on the weekend — to downright concerning, such as strangers spending the night in the common rooms. Problems that might otherwise be a big deal — construction drilling that begins at 6 a.m. — seem minor compared with other concerns.
Perhaps most alarming, students say they feel unsafe because practically anyone can get into the dormitory thanks to lax supervision at security turnstiles. They report unauthorized overnight guests and older students coming in on weekends to sell alcohol to minors.
“It feels very unsafe,” said Mikell Mahan, a freshman from Fairfax, Va.
On a recent day, a reporter watched groups of students push through the turnstiles while only one swiped an ID card as required. An alarm sounded, but no one responded. A piece of paper taped to the gate that read “Please do not push through the barriers” was ignored.
The bathrooms are another issue. One student said she was asked to stop taking a shower because water leaked onto the floor below. Another said that for two days, water shot out of one toilet when another one was flushed. Not to mention that the bathrooms aren’t well cleaned on the weekends, according to students.
That's what happens when it's a modular building.
“There is always blood, vomit, or pee everywhere,” said Mahan, who lives in the east building.
The walls are so thin, students say, that it’s easy to know a little too much about what’s going on in nearby rooms. Also, students were instructed to use sticky strips instead of nails or tacks to hang posters on their walls, but the adhesive quickly rips off paint and drywall. They worry about being fined for damaging their rooms. One said she used white nail polish to cover one up.
“I’m worried about all of the costs that are going to come because the walls are literally like cardboard,” Mahan said.
The list goes on: Laundry machines are often broken, mail is delivered late, pool cues and TV remotes are missing, and the shuttle to the JFK/UMass MBTA station often skips its stop at the dorm. Students said some classmates have already moved out, opting for the headache of commuting over the indignities of dorm life.
Rebecca Engel, a freshman from Auburn, has a particular problem with the dorm water, which she said comes out of the tap white and fizzy. She is pretty sure it killed her goldfish, King Boo. Engel, who has had many pet fish, said King Boo died within days of using dorm water in the bowl, even after she filtered it.
And you kids are at least brushing your teeth and bathing in it, right?
The cafeteria is run by Sodexo, an outside contractor that also services the Campus Center. Students said the food started out good but went quickly downhill. They want to eat healthily, but the main offerings are pizza, pasta, and burgers. There aren’t many vegetables besides salad, they say.
“They definitely don’t have healthy options,” said Counos, who lives in the east building.
The dining hall has been using disposable plates and utensils for days, they said, with no explanation. The soft serve ice cream machine is often broken, they said, but that seems minor compared with undercooked hamburgers and chicken. Meal plans cost $5,390 per year.
That's an overcharge.
On a recent visit to the east building, where the ground floor is open to the public, these problems were all too easy to spot. The ceiling just inside the entrance had sprung a long, steady leak (it was not raining), and maintenance men rushed over with a trash can and a ladder to investigate.
The dining hall was filled with smoke, while a cook and dorm employee argued about the exhaust hood. Another cook ran out a back door, saying, “We are all going to suffocate!”
You can't help but laugh at that one!
A hamburger was pink and uncooked inside. The water from a sparkling water faucet was flat. (One bit of good news: While a paper sign apologized for disposable plates, real ones were available.)
That not funny at all.
The dorm was built, and is operated, by a private, for-profit company that leases land from UMass. Students make their housing payments directly to the company, Capstone Development, which will own the building for 40 years. After that, ownership will revert to UMass.
When the thing is a dilapidated PoS!
Capstone Development spent $119.4 million building the dorm, while UMass Boston contributed $18 million for staff, the dining hall, and other services, according to a university spokesman.
A Capstone spokeswoman, Nicole Ivanovich, said the company has been working with its contractor and subcontractors to respond quickly to “residual construction-related issues.”
“Most have been able to be repaired or resolved in short order,” Ivanovich said in a statement. She said the number of issues has been “relatively modest — particularly given the size and complexity of this community.”
“We regret any inconvenience to student residents in addressing these items. We will continue to provide prompt and professional attention to any construction related repairs that are needed,” the Capstone statement said.
Sodexo declined to comment.
Building problems, unfortunately, are not new to UMass Boston. The original campus construction in the 1970s was the subject of a corruption scandal that sent two state senators to jail.
Those were the days, huh?
They were on shaky ground from the start!
The poor quality of that work almost immediately saddled the campus with millions in needed repairs, and UMass Boston has struggled to address those problems ever since. The biggest challenge is the massive underground parking garage that forms the foundation for many campus buildings. It is in danger of collapse and has still not been made fully secure. UMass Boston has addressed some of its the major construction challenges, but the problems at the dorm could add more.
Good thing it was kept secret.
There are no immediate plans for more dorms at UMass Boston, though long-term planning documents show the possibility of a second residence hall across the street.
Though students are fed up with the problems, some are sympathetic to the staff who work in the dorm. They acknowledge that it’s a lot of work to open a new dormitory. Evan McGinness, the student whose toilet sprayed water for two days, said most students don’t want to move; they just want the problems repaired.
Now the kids are making excuse for the slum?
“I hope they are able to fix the problems so that it doesn’t happen again when they build the next dorms,” he said.....
OMG!
Yeah, let's hope they get it right next time.
--more--"
You either need to get a space of your own or move back home, kids.
100 years after he fought in World War I, a family heirloom preserves his words
I'm tired of looking to the past in my paper, sorry.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Trump and Macron seek to defuse tension over security and trade" by Peter Baker and Adam Nossiter November 10, 2018
PARIS — Simmering tension over security and trade Saturday underscored how much the once-budding relationship between the two men has soured in recent months. President Emmanuel Macron of France welcomed President Trump to the presidential palace on a drizzly, dreary day that matched the mood of the moment.
Their encounter seemed decidedly chillier than their warm session in Washington in April when they smiled broadly, hugged, kissed each other on the cheeks, and lavished praise on each other.
On Saturday morning, the two patted each other’s arms politely and flashed perfunctory thumbs up for cameras, but the tight-lipped smiles appeared strained and forced. During their short, subsequent appearance before reporters, Trump remained formal and distant. When he avoided sharp language during the five minutes that cameras were present, Macron appeared relieved and patted Trump’s leg appreciatively.
He's probably exhausted not only from the jet lag, but the recent expending on energy on the midterms.
The flap may have resulted from misleading accounts of Macron’s comments, who was critical in the interview of Trump’s move to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.....
So the MEDIA GOT IT WRONG, huh?
--more--"
"Can Europe’s liberal order survive as the memory of war fades?" by Katrin Bennhold November 10, 2018
The anniversary comes amid a feeling of gloom and insecurity as the old demons of chauvinism and ethnic division are again spreading across the Continent, and as memory turns into history, one question looms large: Can we learn from history without having lived it ourselves?
In the aftermath of their cataclysmic wars, Europeans banded together in shared determination to subdue the forces of nationalism and ethnic hatred with a vision of a European Union. It is no coincidence that the bloc placed part of its institutional headquarters in Alsace’s capital, Strasbourg, but today, its younger generations have no memory of industrialized slaughter.
Instead, their consciousness has been shaped by a decade-long financial crisis, an influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and a sense that the promise of a united Europe is not delivering. To some it feels that Europe’s bloody last century might as well be the Stone Age.
Yet World War I killed more than 16 million soldiers and civilians, and its legacies continue to shape Europe.
“The war to end all wars” set the scene for an even more devastating conflict and the barbarism of genocide.
No, that will be the next one.
There will be no one left to wage any.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose decision to welcome more than 1 million migrants to Germany in 2015 first became a symbol of a liberal European order, then a rallying cry for a resurgent far-right, said the jury is still out on whether Europe will heed the lessons of its past.
“We now live in a time in which the eyewitnesses of this terrible period of German history are dying,” she said of World War II.
Indeed, the last World War I veteran died in 2012, and the number of those who experienced World War II and the Holocaust is rapidly shrinking, too.
What will the Jews do now that their extortion racket is dying?
Politicians are apt to use history selectively when it suits them, but the history in this case is ominous.
Related: Professor on leaving for giving Nazi salute at meeting
Now as then, Europe’s political center is weak and the fringes are radicalizing. Nationalism, laced with ethnic hatred, has been gaining momentum. Populists sit in several European governments.
Apparently leftist hate is okay.
In Italy, a founding member of the EU, Matteo Salvini, the nationalist deputy prime minister, has turned away migrant boats and called for the expulsion of Roma. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary speaks of a “Muslim takeover” and unapologetically flaunts his version of “illiberal democracy.”
“In 1990, Europe was our future,” he said earlier this year. “Now, we are Europe’s future.”
After World War II, the EU sought to prevent anything like it from happening again by gradually creating a common market, a common currency, and a passport-free travel zone, but on Sunday, standing next to Merkel and her host, the fiercely pro-European French president, Emmanuel Macron, will be a number of nationalist leaders who would like nothing more than to pull the EU apart — among them President Trump, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
I wonder if they will discuss the killing of Khashoggi or the war in Yemen.
Historians guard against drawing direct parallels between the fragile aftermath of World War I and the present, pointing to a number of notable differences.
Before World War I, a Europe of empires had just become a Europe of nation states; there was no tried and tested tradition of liberal democracy. Economic hardship was on another level altogether; children were dying of malnutrition in Berlin.
Above all, there is not now the kind of militaristic culture that was utterly mainstream in Europe at the time. France and Germany, archenemies for centuries, are closely allied.
It's what we have in America, and the greatest example was on the town common yesterday. Two old guys, one holding a No War With Iran sign and the other a Peace sign on a stick. As I drove by I though to myself, why not just hold up a white flag? We've lost.
Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European history at the University of Oxford, sees 1918 as a warning that democracy and peace can never be taken for granted.
I left peace in plain print because we don't have that and I'm tired of the buzzword for fraudulent elections being the standard for war.
“It’s a really sobering reminder that what seems like some sort of eternal order can very rapidly collapse,” he said.
In that sense, if Europe’s motto after World War II was “never again,” the lesson of World War I is “it could happen again.”
Whatever the future of Europe’s institutions, one big difference from 100 years ago is that the Continent is no longer at the heart of geopolitics.
“A century ago, Europe was the center of the world — even if it was the dark tragic center of the world,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French author and thinker. “Today, history is moving elsewhere,” he said.....
He must mean Asia.
--more--"
Related: Trump visit to US cemetery in France canceled due to rain
He awarded some medals anyway:
"President Trump will bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, this coming week on an eclectic mix of conservative political figures and cultural and athletic luminaries, including Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth. Among those to be recognized at a ceremony Friday are Miriam Adelson, the Las Vegas physician and prominent Republican donor; Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Senate Republican; and Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative pillar of the Supreme Court who died in 2016. Alan C. Page, a Hall of Fame defensive tackle who became the first black judge on Minnesota’s Supreme Court, and Roger Staubach, a Hall of Fame quarterback and Vietnam veteran, will also be honored. The medal is one of the few presidential designations that reflects the commander in chief’s personal interests (New York Times)."
He watched the election returns with her and Bob Kraft.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Ruthless Calif. wildfires leave trail of despair
Bus drivers evacuated students amid California fire
At least they are tough on guns (but is it enough?).
"Police say a man has died after being struck by a police cruiser that was pursuing a speeding car in upstate New York. Cobleskill Police Chief Richard Bialkowski says two police cars on routine patrol spotted a speeding car in the Schoharie County village around 10 p.m. Friday and pursued it. During the chase on slick, rainy roads, a man walked into the path of the lead patrol car, which struck him. (AP)."
FDA takes aim at menthol cigarettes
It is part of an aggressive campaign against flavored e-cigarettes and some tobacco products, agency officials said, and you could smell it coming.
Studies give clarity on fish oil, vitamin D
Clarity is also provided by the [FULL PAGE TOTAL WINE AD] on page A3.
I'm going to need a drink for what comes next:
Recounts ordered in Florida Senate, governor races
If the Democrats are allowed to steal those elections, then the democracy that can never be taken for granted is already dead.
Related:
"Democrat slips into lead in roller coaster Ariz. Senate race" by Simon Romero New York Times November 10, 2018
PHOENIX — The chairman of the Arizona Republican Party is accusing the top election official in Phoenix of voter fraud, prompting angry rebuttals from Democrats who seem to be clawing back in a Republican bastion.
In a state that is home to conservative icons like Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer, the power struggle is revealing one potential path forward for Democrats fighting to win elections in a state where they haven’t won an open Senate seat since 1976: embrace the center.
That's the lesson they learned from Trump’s undertow.
Kyrsten Sinema, 42, the Democrat in the race, started out as a liberal but moved hard to the middle after winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 2012. She drew attention for staking out relatively conservative positions on various issues, sometimes siding with President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
So either she is lying or is a Republican.
Some liberal Democrats were left aghast by such positioning, but it seems to be working for Sinema, who is ahead of her rival by about 20,000 votes. About 150,000 voters who cast ballots for Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican who sailed to reelection last week, also voted for Sinema, tallies show, suggesting that her strategy of appealing to moderate Republicans and independent voters may be working.
HMMMMMMMMM!
At the same time, her Republican opponent, Martha McSally, 52, a congresswoman and former US Air Force pilot, drifted away during the campaign from centrist positions to a more energetic embrace of Trump on issues like building a wall on the border with Mexico.
Related: Migrant caravan departs Mexico City and heads north
They will arrive too late for McSally, huh?
Going to be deported to Cuba upon arrival.
Arizona is just one state where voting has been marked by confusion, rancor, and undecided races in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Races in Florida and Georgia also remain extremely close.
In a state where Republicans have exerted near hegemonic control in some levels, Sinema’s strategy of appealing to voters on both sides of the fence comes with obvious risks.
For instance, in the closing days of the race, the Republican Party sent out mailers to some Democratic voters in the state.
The leaflets didn’t mention the Republican or Democrat in the race but the Green Party candidate, Angela Green, and her support for policies like legalizing marijuana and robustly expanding public health care.
“It was a classic reverse psychology tactic,” said Tyler Montague, a Republican campaign strategist in Arizona, emphasizing how the mailers may have had the effect of peeling away liberal support for Sinema, while bolstering Green.
Never mind that Green dropped out of the race and endorsed Sinema. Green, 48, who works in the mortgage industry and is an avowed progressive, still received about 47,000 votes — far more than the 20,200-vote lead currently held by Sinema over McSally.
I don't think you can be both, can you?
So she is a spoiler?
Third candidates are how machines get rigged.
Just ask Bev Harris.
The small Green Party’s role in the race has elicited recriminations from Democrats over the possibility that their candidate could end up losing to a Republican closely aligned with Trump if the final vote count shifts in McSally’s favor.
“That underestimates the intelligence of the tens of thousands of people who voted for me,” said Green. “Obviously there are a lot of people out there who are very frustrated with both sides.”
Underestimating my intelligence reminds me that we have not seen one word regarding fraud or hacking since election day.
I only note it because of its absence after two years of Russia stole our elections.
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God help us all if there is a Senator Sinema, sorry.
Meanwhile, the devil went down to Georgia looking for an election to steal:
"Kemp pushes Abrams to concede in Georgia gubernatorial race" by Jay Reeves Associated Press November 10, 2018
ATLANTA (AP) — Ahead by more than 60,000 votes days after Georgia’s gubernatorial election, Republican Brian Kemp pushed for Democrat Stacey Abrams to concede Saturday as civil rights groups urged her to stay in the fight.
Kemp’s campaign issued a statement that said it was mathematically impossible for Abrams to even force a runoff, much less win outright. It called Abrams’ refusals to concede ‘‘a disgrace to democracy’’ that ‘‘completely ignore the will of the people,’’ but members of civil rights groups including the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held a small rally urging Abrams to keep fighting until every vote is counted.....
They are still counting votes?
WTF?
More like filling out ballots as fast as they can as they are ‘‘fighting to make sure our democracy works.’’
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to go into orbit:
Grace Corrigan, mother of Christa McAuliffe and education advocate, dies at 94
As nation prepares to honor veterans, former service members recall sacrifice, trauma at town halls
"A Natick man was arrested and charged Friday with possessing child pornography in Boston federal court, according to the US attorney’s office. Joshua Bemis, 28, is being held pending a detention hearing after a tip from British officials linked Bemis with pornographic material posted online, prosecutors said in a statement. Authorities in the United Kingdom traced an IP address of posts to a photo-sharing website to Bemis’s Natick home, according to the statement. A warrant search of the residence turned up a laptop and a hard drive, “both of which contained hundreds of videos of children, including some that depict the rape of children as young as seven-years-old,” prosecutors said. Bemis was charged with one count of possessing child pornography and faces up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a lifetime of supervision if convicted, according to the statement. No date was given for the detention hearing."
Kind of gets us back to the top, doesn't it?
Bemis, huh?
Protestors reenact slave auction to demand name change for Faneuil Hall
So what did the history professor have to say?
Related:
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
Jewish Involvement in Black Slave Trade to the Americas
The odd thing is, the place is now owned by the Ashkenazy.
Lawrence residents demand answers at Columbia Gas open house
They are also having problems with water leaks -- which could lead to the outbreak of disease.
Well, I'm going to stop punching, screaming, and grabbing like Acosta and Schneiderman and get you home.
I have no idea how, but I'm sure the Globe has plenty of opinions.
