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Second Amendment Updated?


New (tongue in cheek) Look at The second Amendment which almost no one quotes or reads correctly

Andy McDonald Comedy Writer / Editor, The Huffington Post

Now that news of King George III’s defeat has finally reached you, it’s time to update our U.S. Constitution to reflect our modern world. Let’s start with what is literally the most dangerous amendment: the Second Amendment, the right to “bear arms.”
It’s outdated. When was the last time you said, “Do you even bear weight, bro?” or “Here, bear my beer while I go pee”?
So, after a few hundred years, it’s time for an update. If we had waited this long for a new iPhone, people would have used their own children to beat down the doors of Apple’s headquarters.

A well regulated militia (should probably get around to actually regulating, since we no longer live in a lawless land filled with marauders and bears and marauding bears) being necessary to the security of a free state (OK, not as necessary in present day sans marauding bears) the right of the people to keep and bear arms (bet if we had taken the bears’ arms they wouldn’t have been so much trouble), shall not be infringed. – 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1791, when bears terrorized the land.

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NRA Revolt-At Last?


There are 2 parts to this post, first part is generic statement by Top man at the NRA and second part from the rank and file. First part highlighted in yellow.

VICE PRESIDENT & CEO WAYNE LAPIERRE

(FAIRFAX, VA) – The following statement was issued this morning by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association of America.

“On behalf of the more than five million members of the National Rifle Association, and especially on behalf of our members from the law enforcement community, I want to express the deep anguish all of us feel for the heroic Dallas law enforcement officers who were killed and wounded, as well as to those who so bravely ran toward danger to defend the city and the people of Dallas.

With heavy hearts, NRA members honor their heroism and offer our deepest condolences to all of their families.”

The NRA’s internal revolt over Philando Castile
2 / 27
The Washington Post
Brian Fung 15 hrs. ago
© Eric Miller/Reuters

Diamond Reynolds weeps after she recounts the incidents that led to the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, by Minneapolis area police during a traffic stop on July 6 at a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration…
After a fatal shooting in Minnesota, it wasn’t just gun control advocates criticizing the National Rifle Association.
Some blowback, surprisingly, was coming from within the organization.
People claiming to be lifelong members of the NRA challenged the group’s stance on gun rights after the organization appeared to drag its feet in addressing the police-involved shooting in Falcon Heights, Minn., of Philando Castile, a law-abiding gun owner, which had already garnered national attention.
The organization released a statement on the shooting following the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead. Although the NRA obliquely referenced Castile’s death by referring to “reports from Minnesota,” it neither named Castile directly nor took a position on the matter.
“It is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing,” the organization said. “Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
From the organization’s Facebook page:
“As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.
“The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing.
“Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
The NRA statement does not mention the officers killed in the line of duty, emphasizing instead the “right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others.”
In tone, the NRA’s approach bore a close resemblance to its statement in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Orlando. Two days after the massacre, a lobbyist for the gun rights group wrote an op-ed in USA Today going on the offensive against stricter firearms regulation.
“Destroy radical Islam, not the right of law-abiding Americans to protect themselves,” wrote Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
Cox’s broadside against greater restrictions was viewed as tone-deaf by many gun-control advocates, while gun proponents lined up on the other side.
This time, however, the NRA faces an internal division as its members argue that the group did not do enough to defend gun owners’ rights by speaking out on behalf of Castile.
Castile had a valid permit to carry a gun. He also reportedly informed the officer who shot him that he was armed, in an attempt to head off a misunderstanding.
Still, Castile was killed by police — prompting outrage among some Americans that following the rules was not enough to save Castile from a violent death.
The delay in addressing Castile’s death, as well as the promptness with which the NRA spoke out after the Dallas shooting, has prompted complaints of a double standard in the way the organization defends gun owners.
“Your lack of message concerning the Castile case disappoints me and makes me question my membership,” wrote one user, Marco Gallologic, on the NRA’s Facebook page. “…What do I pay fees for if you do not represent gun owners and our rights?”
“Your silence is causing NRA members such as myself to question/wonder what exactly you do and don’t stand for,” another user, Bruce Johnston, wrote.
© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
That sentiment was reflected across social media this week, with members and non-members alike demanding that the NRA voice its support for Castile.

Dallas Shooting


Sportscaster Dale Hansen: Dallas shooting was an ‘attack on our basic humanity’

Michael Walsh

Reporter
July 9, 2016

 

 

Texas sports anchor Dale Hansen gave a blistering speech about the state of violence in the United States as the nation mourns the loss of five cops who were killed in an ambush Thursday night.

The WFAA sportscaster told his viewers that he was almost embarrassed that he knows the Texas Rangers lost to the Minnesota Twins 10 to 1 that night — because news of the tragedy should have drawn his attention away from the game.

“It was another shooting in America. It was in our city this time and police officers were being killed, but it was a couple of blocks away and the Rangers were being shut out. This is what I have become. This is what too many of us have been for a long time now,” he said in a segment called “Hansen Unplugged.”

Hansen said that people will fly their flags at half-mast, say the rights things and make promises they won’t keep. In the end, he said, nothing will change.

“Our lives will go on, while the lives of so many others won’t, because we expect it now and we accept it. It wasn’t this way when I was a boy, but it is life in America now,” he said.

Hansen said police officers are great people because they run into buildings we run from and look for people we hide from, but they cannot make mistakes because they have the power of God in their hands in the form of guns. For this reason, he said, we cannot and should not defend all police officers.

“A white man in America doesn’t die for selling cigarettes on a street corner, he gets a ticket,” he said. “A white man in America doesn’t die for driving with a broken tail light, he gets a ticket, too. And the officers who abuse the badge and the power they have should be punished, but too many times they are not.”

But, he said, opening fire on the city streets of Dallas does not do anything to right the wrongs that people deal with every day and that the shooter might have killed good cops in the process.

Hansen said that minority communities hate to suffer the indignity of stereotypes but that the killer did the same exact thing by shooting at any cops “because don’t we all really know, they’re all the same.”

“It was not just an attack on the Dallas police; it was an attack on our basic humanity and the common decency we used to cherish in America,” he said. “But that’s all gone now —we lost that a long time ago.”

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‘What Evidence Do You Have?’


By Eugene Kiely

It’s a simple question, one that we ask candidates, campaigns and political committees all the time: “What evidence do you have?” We almost always get an answer. But that has not been the case with Donald Trump’s campaign, which typically does not respond to fact-checkers or provides scant information when it does.

That’s why we were heartened to see NBC’s Lester Holt ask Trump “what evidence do you have” to support two of Trump’s claims in a June 22 speech that we and other fact-checkers found contained numerous false claims.

Holt asked Trump about his claim that Clinton’s private email “server was easily hacked by foreign governments.” Trump went on to say “our enemies” probably even have the emails Clinton deleted, meaning they have a “blackmail file” on her. “This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency,” Trump said.

But it is not a fact. As we wrote, there is no evidence that Clinton’s server was hacked — let alone by hostile foreign governments. We have written that the private server was not approved by the State Department, and it was the subject of security concerns within the department and a target of attacks outside the department. But there’s no evidence at this point that any of the attempts were successful.

Holt asked Trump, “What evidence do you have?” that her server was successfully hacked. When that didn’t elicit a response, Holt asked again, “But is there any evidence that it was hacked other than routine phishing?” Trump finally said that he heard or read about Clinton’s email being successfully hacked. Asked where he got that information, Trump said, “I will report back to you. I’ll give it to you.”

Holt asked Trump how he could make his claim “with such certainty” without evidence. Trump replied, “I don’t know if certainty. Probably she was hacked.”

Similarly, Holt pressed Trump on his claim that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens “was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed.” As we wrote, there is no evidence for that, either. We know that Clinton was involved in the government’s response to the attacks, which began at about 3:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, and we know that she sent the last of two emails about Stevens’ death at 11:38 p.m. EDT.

We also know that she went home at some point during the attacks. She testified that she stayed up all night, but as we wrote, we cannot independently verify whether Clinton did sleep that night — but neither can Trump, and he admitted as much to Holt. Trump said “who knows if she was sleeping … she might have been sleeping.”

Holt isn’t the only one who has demanded evidence from a presidential candidate.

CNN’s Jake Tapper did the same earlier this month when he asked Trump to provide evidence to support the claim that Trump was opposed to the Iraq war before it started. There is no evidence of that, either, as we have written. Trump responded to Tapper by saying, “I think there is evidence. I will see if I can get it.”

And CBS’ Charlie Rose, reading from one of our articles, asked Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in April about his claim that Clinton relies heavily on campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Sanders’ response to Rose was misleading, so we wrote about that, too.

But these are exceptions rather than the rule. As Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler has written, “astonishingly, television hosts rarely challenge Trump when he makes a claim that already has been found to be false,” adding that Trump’s campaign “does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries.”

We, too, would like to see more TV news anchors challenge the presidential candidates on statements that fact-checkers universally agree are false and misleading, especially those that are made without any evidence. It just takes a simple question, “What evidence do you have?”

Categories:
The Wire

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Veterans Add Voices to the Gun Control Debate after Orlando Attacks


This article points out again that the most vocal voices are in a minority regarding firearms.

Stars and Stripes | Jun 22, 2016 | by Alex Horton

SAN ANTONIO — Veterans are becoming more vocal in the nation’s gun control debate, using their service and experience with weapons as a platform in the wake of the Orlando nightclub killings.

Veterans have blitzed the media in recent days to make their arguments. Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal highlighted one side of the debate in the New York Times, writing that veterans should amplify lawmaker efforts to pass legislation aimed at more stringent background checks, including restrictions on felons, domestic abusers and individuals who have been subject to terror investigations by the FBI.

Roughly 2.5 million troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, with many earning experience and perspective on the utility of firearms at war and home.

Much of the domestic gun control debate centers on the AR-15 family of rifles, first introduced in the late 1950s and later adopted by the U.S. military in the 1960s during the war in Vietnam, when it was designated as the M-16.

The M-4, a carbine variant of the M-16 with a collapsible stock and shortened barrel, has become the standard service weapon for military and tactical police units.

“We are trained in the use of firearms, and many of us have served in combat. And we all think our country must do more to save lives from being cut short by gun violence,” McChrystal wrote Thursday. “As this national crisis continues to rage, I ask my fellow veterans — patriots who have worn the uniform, who took an oath to protect our Constitution and the Second Amendment, who served this great country — to add your voice to this growing call for change. America needs you.”

McChrystal, senior commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2010, resigned after critical comments about President Barack Obama’s war policies were made public in Rolling Stone magazine.

On June 10, McChrystal joined a group of former military officials and veterans called Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to lobby lawmakers for tighter gun laws.

The group launched their initiative two days before Omar Mateen, 29, killed 49 and wounded more than 50 in a gay nightclub in Orlando. The attack killed an Army reservist and an Army veteran.

Former infantry officer Nate Bethea went a step further in his New York Times Magazine commentary piece also published Thursday. Bethea wrote variants of the weapon he carried in Afghanistan — the standard issue M-4 semi-automatic carbine rifle — have little practical use outside a war zone.

“I don’t want an assault rifle, because I don’t want to think of my home country as a battlefield. I don’t want civilians to own assault rifles, because I think the risks outweigh the rewards,” he wrote.

On Monday, Bethea told Stars and Stripes that he’s not a gun expert, but he knows a lot about shooting a M-4.

“The notion of someone needing a rifle like that for home defense or any other purpose seems like a retroactive justification,” he said.

Bethea, who has been familiar with firearms since a young age, said he is not against all gun ownership. His parents use a Winchester .22 rifle to defend livestock in rural Indiana from predators. But military-grade rifles are a step too far for practical defense, he said.

“It’s fun shooting. I’d like to go shoot a MP-5,” he said, describing a sub-machine gun. “But I don’t need one in my home.”

Former Navy SEAL Dom Raso took the opposite viewpoint on the AR-15 rifle in a video released Wednesday by the National Rifle Association.

The video, titled “The AR-15: Americans’ Best Defense Against Terror and Crime,” opens with President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hilary Clinton making remarks about “assault weapons” and “weapons of war,” terms commonly associated with the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

AR-15-style rifles are the most popular rifles in the country, according to the NRA.

“This firearm gives average people the advantage they so desperately need and deserve to protect their life, liberty and happiness,” Raso said in the video, connecting the utility of the rifle for citizens to defend against attacks like the ones in San Bernardino and Orlando.

The video has generated more than 300,000 views in less than a week and landed Raso on a Fox News segment Thursday morning. Raso did not reply to an interview request from Stars and Stripes.

Online military communities have also joined the gun debate.

After New York Daily News reporter Gersh Kuntzman penned an essay Wednesday in which he described firing an AR-15 “sounded like a cannon” and gave him “temporary (post-traumatic stress disorder),” the military satire website Duffel Blog said he would receive the National Defense Service Medal and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The article has more than 36,000 shares on social media—soaring far above other recent articles.

Kuntzman was also the subject of memes on military-themed Facebook pages this week. One community page for infantry combat veterans has used Kuntzman’s photo to generate dozens of memes critical of his perceived lack of knowledge about firearms.

The high-profile discussion on gun control policy continued as four gun-focused bills introduced by the Senate were voted down Monday, which included measures to bolster background checks and restrict people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms.

“I don’t see why we make these things so readily available when they’re designed specifically to kill the enemy,” Bethea said, speaking about AR-15-style rifles.

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Jesse Williams’ Full Speech From the 2016 BET Awards


Exceptional speech covers the still innate Racism in America. This in its tone does not demean the ordinary folks who suffer as much in many cases as the non white Americans .

Jesse Williams accepts the Humanitarian Award onstage during the 2016 BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater on June 26, 2016 in Los Angeles.

Kevin Winter/BET/Getty Images for BET

It’s safe to say that 34-year-old Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams stole the BET Awards on Sunday night with a wildly inspirational, confrontational speech that is bound to become a cornerstone of the Black Lives Matter movement. Later in the show, Samuel L. Jackson said he hadn’t heard a speech like it since the 1960s.

Williams has appeared in multiple films, but he was honored with BET’s Humanitarian Award for his activism. In October 2014, he joined protests in Ferguson, Missouri to protest the shooting of Michael Brown. He was also an actor and executive producer of Stay Woke, a documentary about the movement that premiered in May. He has written extensively on Black Lives Matter and met with President Obama earlier this year to discuss his humanitarian work.

BET CEO Debra Lee presented his award “for his continued efforts and steadfast commitment to furthering social change.”

He began by thanking BET and all involved in the video that preceded his appearance, his wife and his parents “for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, they made sure I learned what the schools are afraid to teach us.

“This award is not for me,” he continued. “This is for the real organizers all over the country, the activist, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It’s kinda basic mathematics: the more we learn about who we are and how we got here the more we will mobilize.

“This award is also for the black women in particular who have spent their lives nurturing everyone before themselves — we can and will do better for you.

“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours. [Standing ovation.]

“I got more, y’all. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday so I don’t want to hear any more about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television, and then going home to make a sandwich.

“Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner, Sandra Bland.

“The thing is though, all of us here are getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. Dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back to put someone’s brand on our body — when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies?

“There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There is no job we haven’t done, there is no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we have paid all of them.

“But freedom is always conditional here. ‘You’re free!’ they keeping telling us. ‘But she would be alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.’ Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but the hereafter is a hustle: We want it now.

“Let’s get a couple of things straight. The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander — that’s not our job so let’s stop with all that. If you have a critique for our resistance then you’d better have an established record, a critique of our oppression.

“If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do: sit down.

“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil — black gold! — ghettoizing and demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.

“Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real. Thank you.”

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Working Hard On A Poor Cause.


The Dupublican leadership who have done nothing to help the “American People” they always cite (without our consent) are struggling to tone down their (unwanted) candidate have closed ranks only because some are worried about their own re-election chances. The old saying about “chickens coming home to roost” applies here. Read carefully and you will get the distinct sense of opting out or throwing their candidate to the wolves which will cause a national fallout (if we are lucky).

AP Laurie Kellman
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are sprinting to shape up Donald Trump’s presidential campaign before the party’s national convention in three weeks, even as leading members of the party carry a deep antipathy or outright opposition to his claim on the GOP nomination.
His campaign chairman said Sunday there’s a hiring spree in 16 states and the campaign is working with the Republican National Committee to solidify other matters. Paul Manafort said Trump is not all that involved in the race to organize an offensive against Democrat Hillary Clinton and catch up to her massive fundraising advantage.
“The good thing is we have a candidate who doesn’t need to figure out what’s going on (inside the campaign) in order to say what he wants to do,” Manafort said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”We have our campaign plans in place. We have our budgets in place.”
What Manafort described as a “new phase” for the campaign — a shift from the primaries to the general election — was a forced reshuffling of an effort hobbled for weeks by infighting, Trump’s statements about a judge’s ethnicity and a massive fund raising deficit to Clinton’s cash-raising Goliath. Trump began June with $1.3 million in the bank, less campaign cash than many congressional candidates. The $3 million he collected in May donations is about one-tenth what Clinton raised.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that Trump can’t win the presidency unless he can compete with Clinton on the financial front.
“He needs to catch up, and catch up fast,” the Kentucky Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”
McConnell refused to say whether Trump is qualified to be president. And he suggested that the GOP platform would not reflect Trump’s ideas, including restrictions on Muslim immigration to the U.S.
“It’s my expectation that the platform will be a traditional Republican platform, not all that different from the one we had four years ago,” McConnell replied.
A few hundred delegates to the Republican National Convention are pushing to change the rules and make it possible for them to vote for someone other than Trump. The Cleveland gathering begins in three weeks.
Some rebel delegates and other anti-Trump party operatives held a 40-minute conference call Sunday night that was monitored by The Associated Press in what was a combination pep talk and strategy review. A leader of the effort, Colorado convention delegate Regina Thomson, said around 2,000 people were on the call.
Besides their uphill fight to win enough delegate support to change the rules, the coalition of anti-Trump groups are raising money to hire parliamentarians and lawyers to attend the convention, run TV ads and protect recalcitrant supporters they say face threats of retaliation.
One participant in Sunday’s call was James Lamb, a fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Lamb said that he’d been with Rubio Sunday, and while the two men didn’t discuss the anti-Trump efforts, “Marco does have some concerns about the way that we’re going” in the presidential race.
Another speaker, former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., supported the presidential effort of Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Humphrey called Trump “just about the worst candidate you could think of, for the country first and for the party second.”
The Trump campaign and many top GOP officials are working to defeat the anti-Trump forces, including lobbying delegates and making sure that establishment party supporters dominate the convention’s crucial rules committee.
Ed Brookover, Trump campaign liaison to the GOP, said Sunday the defiant delegates’ chances of winning are “almost zero.” He said so far, “approaching 75 percent” of the rules committee’s 112 members oppose changing the rules — nearly enough to prevent a convention vote on the rebels’ proposal to let delegates support any candidate they want.
The Trump campaign and the RNC are still laboring to set up staff in what Manafort said were 16 states in which the campaign aims to compete heavily. He said the campaign will announce more about staffing this week, an effort to reassure people that Trump’s unorthodox campaign is viable.
On Sunday, Manafort sought to calm the angst, describing a partnership between Trump’s campaign operation and the Republican National Committee that goes beyond the RNC’s traditional role of raising money for the GOP nominee. He said the transition to the general election is complete — but the details have not necessarily been made public.
“We are fully now integrated with the Republican National Committee,” Manafort said. He said this week the campaign will announce “people who are taking over in major positions in our national campaign, as well as in our state campaigns.”
McConnell and other Republicans said they got the first glimmers of reassurance this week when Trump fired former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in what Trump described as a change of direction from the GOP primaries to the general election.
___
Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
___
Follow Laurie Kellman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman

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Brexit Regret


This article from the Washington Post shows what panic rhetoric and unfounded fears and semi facts can cause. Looking at our current elections along with the rhetoric coming out of that should make us think hard about who is running for the Presidency and who we have and will elect to the Congress. Our vote is our only way to manage our Government.

Voters in one fading port town wonder whether  they were misled on Brexit

The Washington Post

Rick Noack 7 hrs. ago

TILBURY, England — After mass layoffs in the 1970s and ’80s, this once-vibrant port town in southeastern England lost much of its glory. Many stores are closed, and windows are broken. A shuttered guesthouse in the town’s center is plastered with advertisements for instant cash loans. “Money matters,” one reads.

Tilbury is one of England’s poorest places — and one of its most Euroskeptic. More than 72 percent of voters here and in surrounding Thurrock voted for Britain to leave the European Union in Thursday’s referendum. Few places voted more decisively.

But by Sunday, the initial excitement among some pro-Brexit voters had already started to disappear, making room for worries about what’s next for an increasingly divided Britain.

Some in this town of 12,000 have also begun to wonder whether they had been misled by politicians advocating to leave the E.U. amid a campaign marked by negativity on both sides.

“I was swayed by the rhetorics, but if I had thought this through, I would have voted to stay in. I would certainly do so now,” said Antony Kerin, 38, who was watching his daughter at a newly refurbished but empty playground.

Concerns about the economic fallout from the vote were on the minds of many here. Many who voted in favor of Brexit work in professions and for companies that could suffer under uncertainty over trade deals, such as car manufacturers. And they predominantly live in poorer regions — those that have received significant subsidies from the E.U.

Tilbury was hoping to receive an E.U. grant worth more than $6 million, but those dreams were shattered by the referendum results.

Kerin, who moved to Tilbury 10 years ago and is unemployed, said he had been trying to move to public housing in a different city. But he will probably have to remain patient: Out of Thurrock’s 165,000 residents, 6,500 are on a waiting or transfer list for public housing.

“They’re making us stay here to rot,” said Kerin, referring to county officials and the British government.

For others in Tilbury, the referendum has had deeply personal implications. The news that Britain had voted to leave the E.U. shocked Kate Clarke, 38, but not her husband.

Antony, 38, said of the referrendum “If I had thought this through, I would have voted to stay in.”

“He voted for a Brexit and told me I was blind. He was shortsighted, but many others were, too,” she said Sunday morning.

“I know people who’ve fallen out with their friends over this,” Clarke said while preparing for a bike tour at the World’s End — one of the last pubs in Tilbury.

Clarke said she understands what might have motivated her self-employed husband to vote to leave the E.U. Over the past years, migrants had increasingly competed with locals in the town and had brought down prices for services — driving some entrepreneurs out of business, she said.

“There is a lot boiling beneath the surface here,” said Steve Liddiard, 65, the local councillor who is a member of the opposition Labour Party. “People’s anger is understandable, but they blame the European Union for what is actually the British government’s fault.”

But not everyone agrees. “I’m so happy we voted out,” Nigel Foster, 45, said as he stood outside a pub next to Liddiard.

A supporter of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), Foster works at Tilbury’s port. “I’ve seen migrants arrive here illegally in containers. Now, we can finally send them back to where they came from,” he said.

“But that has nothing to do with the E.U.,” Liddiard said.

Liddiard later said he would have continued to specify that it was not immigrants who are driving up housing prices in Tilbury, but rather Londoners moving to the outskirts. But before he could continue, he was interrupted by Foster’s 24-year old daughter, Jay.

“I have had a full-time job for years, but I still have to live with my parents because I cannot afford my own home,” she said, adding that she had voted against E.U. membership.

But she insisted the referendum had already made things worse. “We should not have been able to make this decision. There was so much scaremongering on television. And now it’s madness, absolute madness. Nobody knows what will happen.”

Standing inside his laundry shop, Nigeria-born Izuchukwu Eze, 37, smiled when he said people in Tilbury had treated him well over the past eight years. But neither he nor his Polish wife understand the political views of their neighbors.

“They don’t have a clue,” Eze said. “When they hear people like UKIP politician Nigel Farage say on television that we should leave, then they will vote ‘leave.’ ”

Eze said he thinks Tilbury will regret voting to exit the E.U. “Some of my customers have come here over the last two days, loudly asking themselves: ‘Have we done the right thing?’

“I don’t think so,” Eze said.

But despite uncertainty over his future residence status, Russian-Estonian migrant Vladislaw viewed the referendum outcome more positively. He declined to give his full name because of concerns about employment.

The 22-year old chef, who moved to Britain a year ago with an E.U. passport, does not believe Britain’s decision to leave the E.U. will have a significant impact on his own future.

“I’m not an idiot, he said. “This country needs us.”

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Charlie Rangel: Trump has ‘pulled the sheet off the Republican Party’


The full article also appeared on Yahoo news and was written by Alex Bregman.

Alexis Christoforous

June 24, 2016

By Alex Bregman

Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York spoke to Yahoo Finance Anchor Alexis Christoforous on “Yahoo News Now” about Sen. Bernie Sanders saying for the first time that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November and the parallels between the Brexit vote and the U.S. general election.

Rangel, a Clinton supporter, told Christoforous that Sanders’ support was a very important step for party unity. “As his makeup guy would say, it’s very, very, very, very important,” Rangel said. “But the problem we’re having in our party is like a pimple on an elephant’s behind compared to what the Republicans have. We have a different way as Democrats to talk about our unity. We just don’t sit down and say, ‘Can we do it?’ We fight like hell for those things that we believe in. And while I had no idea that Bernie Sanders was so popular when he was in the House and Senate, I really believe he’s made my candidate even a better candidate, because there’s no question in my mind that her qualifications are outstanding.”

The congressman isn’t worried about Sanders’ supporters backing Trump. “There is no problem in my mind of any of Bernie Sanders’ people supporting Trump. None. Because they’re rational-thinking people,” he said.

Rep. Charlie Rangel: Trump has ‘pulled the sheet off the Republican party’

On June 24, 2016, Rep. Charlie Rangel discussed the Brexit saying, “being disgruntled and frustrated doesn’t mean you build a wall; it means you try to tear down a wall.” He also discussed Donald Trump saying, “now that he’s completely destroyed the party of Lincoln, I want a decent two party system when this election is over.”

On whether he sees any parallels between those who voted for Britain to leave the European Union and those who support Donald Trump for president, Rangel said, “You bet your life.” He continued, “It strengthens the fact that being disgruntled and frustrated doesn’t mean you build a wall. It means that you try to tear down a wall. That’s what international trade agreements are for. That’s what the European Union was all about.”

Rangel then got into who Trump is appealing to in the U.S. “He’s tapped into those people who don’t like immigrants, who don’t like Muslims, who don’t like blacks, who hate Latinos, who don’t like Asians,” he said. “You bet your life he’s tapped into it.”

Rangel continued, “If you want to force me to say something good about Trump, I would say, yes, I am so glad he’s pulled the sheet off the Republican Party, because now that he’s completely destroyed the party of Lincoln, I want a decent two-party system when this election’s over.”

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Huff Post Article


Short article about Rush Limbaugh makes the point of ” who is the bigger fool , the fool or the people who follow them”. There is a short audio clip which is not linked here but is available on the Huff post website.

Rush Limbaugh Has Quite A Conspiracy Theory About Obama And The Internet

“It’s total control.”

06/20/2016 07:13 am ET

Rush Limbaugh has attacked President Barack Obama before, but the conservative chat host took a particularly, er, creative route on his June 17 radio show.

MediaMatters.org caught this gem in which Limbaugh accused Obama of exclusively blaming the internet for homegrown terror during a speech to the families of Orlando massacre victims, and claimed the president and fellow Democrats would use that rationale to “control the internet.”

“Obama’s takeover of the internet will not be to prevent these kinds of things from happening,” Limbaugh said. “He’s got an entirely different agenda. All the Democrats do. It’s total control. It’s limiting access to information. It’s about shutting down opposition. That’s why they want control of the internet.”

Limbaugh, host of Premier Radio Networks’ “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” has previously claimed that Obama was jealous of Donald Trump and compared the commander-in-chief to Adolf Hitler.

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