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Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Invasion: U.S. tracking three migrant caravans

The U.S. government is tracking three separate migrant caravans, one of them estimated to be more than 12,000 people in size, heading north toward the U.S., a top Pentagon official said Tuesday.

Defense Undersecretary for Policy John Rood told Congress that those caravans are one reason why the presence of active-duty troops is still needed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

He also said military medical personnel are helping with the latest border problem, dealing with an increase in sick migrants showing up at the border and in need of immediate attention.

Some 2,300 active-duty troops are still on the border, down from 5,900 who were initially ordered deployed in late October, ahead of previous caravans. That’s in addition to about 2,000 National Guard troops who have been on the border since earlier last year.

Mr. Rood said some of the active-duty troops will be on the border through Sept. 30.

New House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith questioned why the mission was expanded from guard to active-duty troops, calling that a “very rare” move.

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Pentagon: Several thousand more troops to the Mexico border

Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan says the U.S. will be sending “several thousand” more American troops to the southern border to provide additional support to Homeland Security.

He says the troops will mainly be used to install additional wire barriers and provide increased surveillance of the area. Plans call for about 150 more miles of concertina wire.

The Pentagon has approved an extended U.S. deployment to the border through the end of September.

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Antifa Leader Charged With ‘Ethnic Intimidation’ Related To Attack On Marines

Washington, D.C. Antifa leader Joseph “Jose” Alcoff, also known as “Chepe,” was arrested and charged with multiple felonies in Philadelphia on Jan. 10 in connection to the Antifa mob attack against two Marines in November.

Alcoff faces 17 charges, including multiple counts of aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, conspiracy and terroristic threats, and one count of robbery while inflicting serious bodily injury.

An affidavit filed in the case reveals that The Daily Caller News Foundation’s reporting on Alcoff’s connection to violent Antifa groups was an integral factor leading to his arrest.

The Marines, Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, testified in December that a group of 10 to 12 Antifa members called them “Nazis” and “white supremacists” and attacked them on the street despite their denials that they had no association with the right-wing group demonstrating nearby.

During the attack, Godinez said he shouted “I’m Mexican” at the mob, which allegedly led the attackers to call him a “spic” and “wetback.”

Thomas Keenan and Thomas Massey were arrested in November in connection to the beating. Keenan, who has been called a “leader” of the Antifa contingent in the Philadelphia area, was arrested and charged with rioting alongside Alcoff in New Jersey in 2011.

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Too Few Young Americans Signing Up to Serve, Commission Says

Young Americans have a desire to serve their nation in some way, but too few are signing up to do so, according to a report by the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.

“While service is encouraged by many families, schools, and communities, there is no widely held expectation of service in the United States. As a result, military, national, and public service is the exception rather than the rule,” commission Chairman Joe Heck, a Army Reserve brigadier general and former congressman for Nevada, wrote in the report.

“What we have found is that there is limited awareness of serving in the military. We are not getting enough young people who are inspired to join the military, to serve in national service programs, and what we want to do is increase that,” Commissioner Tom Kilgannon said in an interview on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Sunday.

The commission was set up by Congress in 2015, to look at whether the nation still needs the Selective Service System, and whether women should also be required to register for it. In addition, the commission is looking at how to educate more young Americans on opportunities in military, national, and public service.

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Hans von Spakovsky: Roger Stone FBI Raid Was Meant to ‘Intimidate’ Others

Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, told Breitbart News that special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to arrest Roger Stone in a “predawn raid” was a signal of intimidation to other possible defendants targeted by the special counsel’s office.

Von Spakovsky noted that none of the conduct Stone is alleged to have lied about is illegal.

“There’s nothing in the indictment that says anything about any kind of involvement by Stone with the hacking that got the DNC emails,” explained von Spakovsky. “There’s nothing in there about [Stone] supposedly being involved with any Russian official. The only thing he was doing was having communications [with] and calling Wikileaks saying, ‘Well, what have you guys got? What kind of information have you got? When are you going to release it?’

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Worcester County Schools delayed Thursday

Worcester County Public Schools MD

Please be advised that Worcester County Public Schools will be opening two-hours late tomorrow, Thursday, January 31, 2019, due to forecasted extreme cold temperatures. Due to the two-hour delay, there will be no AM Pre-Kindergarten classes. Buses will operate accordingly. Thank you.

Delmar and Somerset delayed

Somerset County Public Schools

Please share!!!!!!

As our concerns grow due to the forecasted conditions in the morning, Somerset County Public Schools will be on a two hour delay for tomorrow Thursday, January 31, 2019!!!!

The Delmar School District


Due to the predicted wind chill advisory, the Delmar School District & Delmar Elementary School will have a 2-hour delay Thursday, January 31st. Please bundle up and travel safely.

2 Hour School Delay In Wicomico County

Important school status announcement for Thursday, January 31st: Due to the extreme weather conditions, Wicomico Schools will open 2 hours late on Thursday, Jan. 31st. There will be no AM Prekindergarten. Families will receive a SchoolMessenger call/email with this information soon.

Scarborough: I've never heard Trump 'say anything close to being' racist behind closed doors

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough declared Tuesday morning that he never heard President Trump utter a racist word in the 12 years that they were friends.

Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican and former personal friend of Mr. Trump who now identifies as an independent and routinely criticizes the president, said on “Morning Joe” that he never knew the president to be racist or to use racially charged rhetoric.

“We saw him for 12 years behind closed doors,” Mr. Scarborough said, gesturing to his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski, according to a clip flagged by Newsbusters.

“Never, ever, once — I’ll say it under oath, I’ll put it into an affidavit — never once heard him say anything close to being racially insensitive,” he told former Trump White House aide Cliff Sims, who was on the show to promote his new tell-all book “Team of Vipers.”

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Harris: ‘Inhumane’ to Maybe Protect DACA Kids But Not Parents

During a town hall on CNN on Monday, Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) vowed that she won’t vote for a border wall and criticized the Trump administration for offering to possibly protect DACA children, but not their parents as “inhumane and contrary to who we are and the values we hold as Americans.”

Harris began by criticizing the Trump administration for breaking the promise the government made on DACA.

She added, “[I]t is wrong…for this administration to then trade the idea that, okay, well, maybe we’ll let the kids stay, but not their parents..."

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Kamala Harris gambles that kicking 177 million people off of their private insurance is good politics

When a few million people stood to lose insurance that they liked under former President Barack Obama's healthcare law, it created one of the biggest political crises of his presidency. Now five years later, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a leading presidential candidate, is openly calling for getting rid of private insurance, which currently covers 177 million people. Have politics changed that drastically in just a half of a decade?

Harris made the comments during a CNN town hall style interview in response to a question from Jake Tapper, who pressed her on what her support for national healthcare, which she describes as "Medicare for all," would mean for those who had private insurance that they liked.

"Listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care and you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through all the paperwork, all of the delay that may require," Harris said. "Who of all us have not had that situation where you have to wait for approval and the doctor says, 'I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this?'"

She continued, "Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

But an effort to "move on" from private insurance would be tremendously disruptive.

New York’s War on Religious Education

New York State has opened the door to a war on religious education. New guidelines from the state’s Department of Education are framed as applying to all “religious and independent schools” in New York, but no one is fooled. The changes are aimed right at New York City’s freewheeling Orthodox Jewish seminaries, known as yeshivas. More than 100,000 students attend yeshivas in New York City.

The new guidelines revisit the “substantial equivalency” statute that has kept the peace in New York schools since 1897. Non-public schools can educate their students as they see fit, provided the education is “substantially equivalent” to public schools. The new guidelines change the equation. Math must be taught every day. English, science, and social studies must be taught. Schools must provide samples of teaching schedules, textbooks, and lesson plans. Non-compliant schools risk withdrawal of funding for things like textbooks and transportation, and students ultimately could be forced to go to another school. Students that resist transfer risk being declared “truant” and legal steps to challenge parental competency could follow. The new mandates will be enforced by inspections from local school district officials.

The guidelines, wrote two Orthodox educators in the Wall Street Journal, are a shocking power grab by secular forces. They “empower local school boards to evaluate private schools and to vote on our right to continue educating our students.” The new curriculum requirements demand “so much time that it crowds out Torah study, our sacred mission.”

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Salvini’s Border Control Migrant Policy Reduces Arrivals by 95 Percent

Italy has seen a radical drop in migrant arrivals in January under the migration policy of populist interior minister Matteo Salvini, down around 95 percent compared to January 2018.

The interior minister compared the approach of the previous government under the left-wing Democratic Party of January 2018 with the populist coalition of the Five Star Movement and the League with Salvini saying, “the data shows that the Democratic Party had not blocked arrivals,” Il Giornale reports.

The official data showed that 3,176 illegal immigrants arrived in Italy in January 2018 under the leadership of the Democratic Party which had told Italians they were actively working to reduce the number of landings and had reduced the number somewhat compared to 2017.

Much of the credit for the reduction of illegal migrant arrivals rests on the policy of Salvini who, last year, told migrant transport NGOs that they would not be welcome to dock in Italian ports and drop off migrants in what many referred to a “taxi service.”

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Cali Board Of Trustees Scraps 'Pledge Of Allegiance' Over "White Nationalism" History

The Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees President says the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag is “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”

In emails obtained exclusively by Campus Reform, the president of the SBCC Board of Trustees, Robert Miller, stated that he decided to “discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance” at board meetings because of its history.

Live stream videos of the board's past several meetings show that the last time members recited the Pledge of Allegiance during a board meeting was Dec. 13. During the Jan. 10 live-streamed meeting, Miller noted at the beginning that it was his first meeting as president of the board. It was also the first meeting since a similar circumstance in summer 2018 that members did not recite the pledge.

“I decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” Miller said in an email to Celeste Barber, a former adjunct instructor at SBCC. “I have discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism."

In addition to these reasons, Miller stated that he’d rather pledge his allegiance to the Constitution “instead of a physical object."

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Angel Mom: Kamala Harris' Staff Threatened to Call Police When Angel Families Visited Her Office

Angel Mom Maureen Maloney, the vice president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC), says Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)’s staff threatened to call Capitol Police when Angel Families visited her Senate office in Washington, DC, this month.

Maloney — whose 23 years-old son, Matthew Denice, was killed in August 2011 by an illegal alien who ran over him while drunk driving without a license — told SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight that the staff of Democrat 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris threatened to call Capitol Police when Angel Families visited the offices of prominent House and Senate Democrats to discuss illegal alien crime.

Meanwhile, Maloney told Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak that Harris makes it known that illegal aliens are welcome in her office.

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Second fuel pipeline explodes in Mexico

A pipeline in Mexico exploded while people were stealing fuel from it, near where a similar blast this month left 115 dead, an official said.

The new blast struck Monday in the central state of Hidalgo, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the site of the explosion 10 days ago.

State governor Omar Fayad said there were no initial reports of anyone being injured in the latest explosion, in the town of San Agustin Tlaxiaca.

Fayad said people had been “milking” the pipeline.

Media broadcast footage of large flames billowing out of a punctured section of the line.

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barry, barry, barry!

CA Fairground That Banned Gun Shows Now Faces Lawsuit

There’s been a lot of recent unpleasantness regarding gun shows in California. The state has a universal background check law in place, so it can’t reasonably expect the “gun show loophole” crap to fly in its arguments, but it still has done plenty to try and make gun shows a thing of the past.

Now, one site that banned gun shows is finding out the hard way that gun people don’t just roll over.

A group of firearm dealers and Second Amendment advocates is suing a California county fair board, alleging that its decision last year to ban gun shows restricts the Constitutional rights of gun owners.

The lawsuit against the Del Mar Fairgrounds of San Diego County was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

The primary plaintiff is B & L Productions, which claims to be the largest vendor of gun show events in California. It has hosted gun shows at Del Mar Fairgrounds for more than 30 years.

Other plaintiffs include a number of gun show attendees and vendors, who alleged the closure would force them to travel hundreds of miles to attend a similar events. Several Second Amendment advocacy groups, including the California Rifle and Pistol Association, also joined the lawsuit.

“Gun shows have been held at the Del Mar venue for more than 30 years, with no safety issues raised by local law enforcement or the fair board,” the rifle and pistol association said in a statement. “Nonetheless, the Del Mar Fair Board bowed to the political pressure of anti-gun activists and gave in to those board members with particularly strong bias against the tens of thousands of individuals who attend these shows.”

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Rep. Maxine Waters facing new legal questions over campaign mailers

Rep. Maxine Waters took the helm of the Financial Services Committee this month after easily winning re-election as part of the Democrats’ House takeover. But according to the CaliforniaDemocrat’s post-election filing – which has prompted fresh calls for a full audit – her campaign may have some financial issues of its own to sort out.

The Citizens for Waters report to the Federal Election Commission from Dec. 11 lists $183,022 in debt to her daughter Karen Waters, who is in charge of distributing “slate mailers.”

The mailers have faced scrutiny since 2010 because the campaign, beginning in 2004, has paid Waters’ daughter or her public relations firm Progressive Connections to produce, print and mail the sample ballots. Watchdog groups have raised questions about the propriety of campaign funds financially supporting a family member, as well as Waters raising contributions in excess of federal limits through an unusual process. Since 2004, the campaign has paid the younger Waters almost $1 million, based on previous news reports.

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rep-maxine-waters-facing-new-legal-questions-over-campaign-mailers

How Exactly Did CNN Get Footage Of Roger Stone’s Arrest?

CNN was the only news outlet to capture footage of Trump-confidant Roger Stone’s arrest Friday morning, raising allegations that they were tipped off to the impending raid by the FBI or the grand jury handling the case.

Stone was arrested early Friday morning at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after beingindicted by a grand jury on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Dramaticfootage captured by a lucky CNN producer shows the FBI surrounding Stone’s home in an armed raid and pounding on Stone’s front door.

WATCH:

Michael Barone: Does the Media Deserve to Be Respected and Believed?

Is it true that Donald Trump’s bad habits are contagious? Is it true that his Democratic opponents and, even more, his critics in the press are increasingly given to terminological inexactitudes, if not downright lies?

Sure looks like it. Last week, large parts of the press — we’re looking at you, CNN and MSNBC — were gleefully reporting and commenting on the BuzzFeed story about President Trump having allegedly ordered his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to members of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s staff.

There were lots of smiles and (if we can use the word to describe liberals) smirks on their faces as they contemplated the ramifications. Some did note perfunctorily that the story was only noteworthy “if true.” Others pointed out, accurately, that several conservative commentators opined that the charge would justify Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.

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Coming Soon...


Shifting Stories Cloud Claims of Alleged Hate Crime Attack Against Actor

The incendiary story of an alleged hate crime attack targeting Empire actor Jussie Smollett immediately went viral yesterday, with media reporting the attackers made racial and anti-gay comments while using President Trump's "MAGA" slogan during the 2 a.m. assault in downtown Chicago.

But conflicting versions of the incident from Smollett himself, and details reported by the media being outright contradicted by Chicago Police have raised questions about what actually happened.

Debra Heine noted on the PJ Media Live Blog last night that police had found surveillance video of Smollett, but had not been able to find video of the alleged assailants.

The explosive details of the incident were initially broadcast by TMZ:

"Empire" star Jussie Smollett was brutally attacked by 2 men who beat him up, put his head in a noose and screamed, "This is MAGA country."

The Chicago Police issued subsequent statements denying TMZ's claim that Smollett reported the suspects yelling "this is MAGA country."

The Daily Beast later reported that a Chicago Police spokesperson refuted TMZ's claim of the defendants being male and white.

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Partnership Adds Air Monitoring Stations to Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc. (DPI) and The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment are partnering on a first-of-its-kind project to monitor ambient air quality, including levels of ammonia and particulate matter, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and in central Maryland. Working with the Maryland Department of the Environment, DPI and the Campbell Foundation have jointly committed more than $500,000 to this effort. Because of it, residents of Maryland’s Eastern Shore will know more about the quality of the air we all breathe.

Why is DPI doing this? Chicken growers and chicken companies take seriously our responsibility to be responsible stewards of the air, water and land around us. Farm families raising chickens care deeply about air quality on and near their farms; after all, farmers and their neighbors all breathe the same air. Advances in chicken nutrition, the composition of litter in chicken houses, and the increased use of vegetative environmental buffers on family farms where chickens are raised have all made farmers better neighbors when it comes to how their farms affect the air. This monitoring will add to what we know about ambient air quality in the areas of Maryland where chickens are raised.

“We in the chicken community have a shared interest with all Marylanders in better understanding what air quality is truly like on the Eastern Shore,” said Holly Porter, DPI’s executive director. “Because we will never neglect our commitment to environmental responsibility, we believe gathering more data about air quality here helps everyone.”

“This is a new kind of collaboration between government, industry and philanthropy that I hope ultimately will improve the health of families and our environment in the region,” said Samantha Campbell, president of the Campbell Foundation.

DPI and the Campbell Foundation are providing most of the funding for this new effort. The data measuring continuous ammonia, fine particulate matter and coarse particulate matter from two new ambient air monitoring stations on the Eastern Shore will be collected and tabulated by the Maryland Department of the Environment, not by the chicken industry. In addition to installing and operating two new stations, this partnership will support retrofitting two existing MDE air monitoring stations – one of them in central Maryland – to monitor continuous ammonia, fine particulates and coarse particulates.

“We firmly believe the air our farmers and their neighbors breathe is healthy and safe, but we also understand why there’s skepticism about that from beyond the chicken community,” said Holly Porter, DPI’s executive director. “Instead of simply asking for the public’s trust that the chicken community’s best practices are doing what’s right for the environment, we want our families, friends and neighbors to be able to see for themselves what ammonia and particulate matter levels are on the Eastern Shore.”

Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc. is the Delmarva chicken industry’s voice as the premier membership association focusing on advocacy, education and member relations. For more information, visit dpichicken.org; like DPI on Facebook; and follow us on Twitter.

John Williams: "The Fed Will Crash Markets & The Dollar"

Economist John Williams warns the Federal Reserve has painted itself into a very tight no-win corner.

No matter what the Fed does with rates it’s going to be a disaster. Williams explains, “You had some very heavy selling towards the end of the year and when you saw the big declines in the stock market you also saw that accompanied by a falling dollar and rising gold prices."

"That was foreign capital which was significant fleeing our markets. So if the Fed continues to raise interest rates, and they want to do and they still don’t have rates where they want them, it’s going to intensify the economic downturn. That’s going to hit the stock market. If they stop raising rates . . . and they have to go back to some sort of quantitative easing, that’s going to hit the dollar hard. Foreign investors are going to say the dollar is going to get weaker and let’s get out of the dollar. Then, you are going to see heavy selling in the stock market.

So either way they go, they created a conundrum for themselves because of the way they bailed out the banking system (in 2008-2009). At this point they don’t have an easy way out of this.”

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Hundreds of migrants cross Arizona border after 'several busloads' dropped off

In the early morning hours Thursday, several busloads of migrants were dropped off on Highway 2 in Mexico, just south of the Arizona border.

"They walked about 100 yards, climbed under and over the vehicle barrier that is the only infrastructure in that area and agents were called in to make the arrest," said acting Tucson Border Patrol Chief Jeffrey Self.

In total, 242 people -- mostly families from Guatemala -- were arrested when Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene after the migrants were detected by a mobile surveillance system.

This was one of the largest single groups crossing the Arizona border over the last year, according to Border Patrol, and comes on the heels of other large groups illegally crossing at other parts of the border.

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EXCLUSIVE: Mike Rowe Exposes The ‘Dirty’ Truth About America’s Skills Gap And Flatlining Workforce

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Townhall.com.

Mike Rowe is known for going where no man (or woman for that matter) wants to go, which is how his hit TV show “Dirty Jobs” came about. He has traveled across the United States and explored a wide range of blue collar jobs, from crabbing in Alaska to pig farming in Las Vegas. Part of seeing the various blue collar jobs that exist in our country has made Rowe realize one thing: there’s a serious skills gap. Kids are being taught from a young age that they have to go to college and take out student loans in order to be successful for life.

Here’s the problem: America’s landscape has changed over the years. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s America was built on blue collar jobs. There was a desperate need for people to attend college in order to obtain white collar jobs. There was a shortage of educated individuals. But the public relations campaign used to push people into pursing college degrees had the opposite impact and actually tipped the scale the opposite direction. Instead of having a lack of people in vocations that require a college education, we now see a huge vacancy in so-called “dirty jobs,” the jobs that are absolutely vital to our economy, and quite frankly, our way of life.

We need plumbers, electricians, mechanics and a wide range of manufacturing jobs in order to thrive. There’s job vacancies yet our future generations are being told they need to pursue college or else they’re doomed to fail. While we’re building up every single person to believe college is the only way to be successful, our country has more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe more than $1.5 trillion.

“We have lent over $1.5 trillion to kids who can’t pay it back so they can spend four years trying to get jobs that don’t exist,” Rowe said during his address to those attending SHOT Show’s State of the Industry Reception.

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Roger Stone: Let CNN Say ‘They Weren’t Tipped Off’ Under Oath

Roger Stone told Breitbart News that CNN coordinated with the “Mueller investigation” in producing “great footage” depicting him as “some sort of criminal” in order to “taint the jury pool.” He offered his remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Stone recalled last Friday’s events when he was arrested by FBI agents at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with a CNN production team in tow.

Stone said, “[FBI agents] walked me out in the middle of the street to make sure the CNN camera could get great footage of the whole thing. The street was sealed off, so how CNN had a camera right outside the door; that’s very hard to understand, because nobody else was allowed on the street.”

Stone went on, “So this was meant to do two things. One, to taint the jury pool, to paint a picture for the American people that I’m some sort of criminal, even though I’m charged with non-violent process crimes, and also to send a message to others.”

More here

UPDATE: Mueller and FBI Arrest Roger Stone Because Major FBI Scandal Out Today - FBI Agent Pientka Linked to Major FISA Abuse Scandal and General Flynn Setup!

Every time the corrupt Mueller gang, FBI and DOJ come out with a major news story it is strategically synchronized to cover up another scandal involving their corrupt actions. Today’s arrest of Roger Stone is no exception.

Today the corrupt Mueller gang arrested long time Trump friend Roger Stone. He was arrested early in the morning as the FBI always does. Another American attacked by the mobsters in the Deep State due to his relationship with this President. But there is something more than coincidental about this arrest this morning. Not only was CNN there to film the arrest, proving again that the Mueller mobsters are colluding with members of the deep state and corrupt media, but there is something more.

There always is a something that is breaking related to the corrupt Deep State whenever they attempt to change the news cycle. Today is no exception.

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Facebook Ripped Off Game-Playing Kids And Their Parents In Multi-Year "Friendly Fraud" Scheme

Facebook engaged in a multi-year effort to trick kids and their parents into racking up massive charges based on deceptive in-game purchases - then refused to give the money back, according to unsealed records in a class action lawsuit.

The in-game charges which added up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars were part of a system of "friendly fraud," according to Reveal News' Nathan Halverson, citing over 135 pages of unsealed documents which include employee emails, Facebook memos and secret strategies

When parents found out how much their children had spent – one 15-year-old racked up $6,500 in charges in about two weeks playing games on Facebook – the company denied requests for refunds.Facebook employees referred to these children as “whales” – a term borrowed from the casino industry to describe profligate spenders. A child could spend hundreds of dollars a day on in-game features such as arming their character with a flaming sword or a new magic spell to defeat an enemy – even if they didn’t realize it until the credit card bill arrived. -Reveal News

According to an internal document which reveals Facebook's strategy, the "friendly fraud" by game developers was encouraged in order to maximize revenues. Another internal Facebook report shows that the company knew that in-game purchase options defaulted to "the highest-cost setting," and that it "doesn't necessarily look like "real" money to a minor - nor that their parents' credit cards were linked to their Facebook account in order to spend real money in the games.

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ICE arrests 118 during Operation Cross Check in New York

NEW YORK – Officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested 118 during a 5-day period, from January 14-18th, in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley.

During the operation, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested 118 individuals for violating U.S. immigration laws. Of those arrested, more than 107 were convicted criminals or had criminal charges pending, more than 55 had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed from the United States and returned illegally. Several had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges, and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors.

“The success of this operation is a direct result of the full commitment of the dedicated men and women of ICE.” said Thomas R. Decker, field office director for ERO New York. "In spite of the significant obstacles that ICE faces due to the dangerous policies created by local jurisdictions, which hinders the cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement, ICE will continue to devote the full efforts of our agency to protecting citizens and enforcing federal immigration law despite challenges being pursued by politically motivated individuals.”

Marc A. Thiessen: If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Were a Conservative

If Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., were a conservative, all anyone would be talking about is how uninformed she is. She would be facing trick questions from reporters designed to expose her lack of knowledge, and brutal sketches on “Saturday Night Live” mocking her intelligence and fitness for office. Instead, SNL fawns over her, while CBS’s “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert — far from making jokes at her expense — eats ice cream with her and asks how many “f—s” she gives about her critics.

Boy, it’s good to be a socialist.

It’s not that there is a lack of material. This week, for example, Ocasio-Cortez declared that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” She has said that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could pay for most of her massive $32 trillion Medicare-for-all plan — as if there were $21 trillion in unspent tax dollars sitting around in a Pentagon vault. She opined that “just last year we gave the military a $700 billion dollar budget increase, which they didn’t even ask for” — unaware, apparently, that the entire Pentagon budget is $716 billion. She wrongly claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is required to fill 34,000 beds with detainees every single night and that number has only been increasing since 2009” — when ICE is required only to have that number of beds available and that number has remained flat. She has declared that “unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs” — which is flat untrue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only 6 million to 7 million Americans with two jobs and 148 million with just one.

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Close Roger Stone Associate: "FBI Raid Would Make Gestapo Proud"!

Jacob Engels, a Gateway Pundit contributor and longtime friend of Roger Stone took to Twitter Friday morning to slam Robert Mueller’s early morning SWAT fueled arrest of Trump loyalist Roger Stone.

This political hit-squad run by the FBI and their allies in the mainstream media would earn praise from Adolf Hitler. Americans should fight this political persecution with every fiber of their beings, now more than ever.”

Engels urged Americans shocked by this disgusting use of government force to visit stonedefensefund.com and donate whatever they can to help Roger Stone fight back.

“You can now be arrested for having supported Donald Trump for President of the United States. The enemies of freedom have successfully weaponized the FBI into a roaming gestapo-style political persecution hit-squad. They started with Roger Stone, but they will end with us. Infowars, Gateway Pundit, and independent journalists who have stood up to Robert Mueller’s criminal enterprise will not be spared if we don’t stand and fight.”

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Democrats' America: The Heart of Darkness

If it was the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that black and white would come together in friendship and peace to do justice, his acolytes in today's Democratic Party appear to have missed that part of his message.

Here is Hakeem Jeffries, fourth-ranked Democrat in Nancy Pelosi's House, speaking Monday, on the holiday set aside to honor King:

"We have a hater in the White House. The birther in chief. The grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. ... While Jim Crow may be dead, he's still got some nieces and nephews that are alive and well."

At the headquarters of Al Sharpton's National Action Network, wrote The New York Times, Jeffries' remarks were "met with ... much cheering."

At a Boston breakfast that same day, Sen. Elizabeth Warren chose to honor King's memory in her way: "Our government is shut down for one reason ... So the president of the United States can fund a monument to hate and division along our southern border."

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Smith: Feminism Is A Disease - And Masculinity Is The Cure

It seems these days like everyone and their gender-fluid grandma has some “profound” insight into the minds and world of men. Men and masculinity are spoken of in the media with sharp tones of fear mixed with disdain, as if we are a dangerous aberrant genetic anomaly that needs to be studied under a special microscope that will protect the observer from being influenced by our vitriolic pheromones. The problem is, most of these “experts” on manhood are not men at all, or, their observations of male behavior are tainted with deep-seated resentments. That is to say, they are hardly objective.

I recently came across an article by The Atlantic titled 'Psychology Has A Healthier Approach To Building Healthier Men'. Written around the same time as the embarrassing failure of Gillette's “Toxic Masculinity” ad campaign, I assume The Atlantic like many other mainstream media outlets was privy to this coming propaganda push and is attempting to rally the leftist troops to defend an ideological partner in crime. YouTube itself has even been aiding Gillette by removing dislikes from the video's vote count, which just goes to show that YouTube (owned by Google) is not a business but a propaganda machine, pure and simple.

As I've noted in past articles on the psychology not only of globalists, but the useful idiots on the political left they like to exploit, these kinds of people often exhibit many of the traits of narcissistic sociopaths. It has been my observation that narcissistic sociopaths tend to come to the aid of other narcissistic sociopaths when they are facing discovery or prosecution. They are not as isolated from each other as many assume. They do in fact "organize", and act to help each other as long as there is mutual benefit. If one vampire is hunted down by the villagers with their pitchforks, they know that ALL vampires might eventually be hunted down.

There is nothing particularly special about The Atlantic's analysis of men; it merely regurgitates all the typical feminist misconceptions and fallacies, but more subtly and in a way that might appear "rational" to the unschooled.

I do ask readers to study the article, because it is a perfect all around example of the kind of advanced propaganda men are facing:The dangerous mixture of pseudoscience and cultism. It presents itself as scientific while lacking any scientific foundation. It presents itself as fair while being ideologically biased in the extreme. It acts as if it wants to "help" men while treating men as if we are suffering from a mental illness called "traditional masculinity".

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Anti-Israel Bill in Ireland Close to Becoming Law

An anti-Israel bill in Ireland's parliament took another step Thursday to becoming law. If enacted, the bill would prohibit companies with business in Ireland from doing business in parts of Israel.

On Thursday, the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament, approved the measure by a 78-45 vote.

The Irish Times described the law as "ban[ning] the sale of imported Israeli goods from the occupied territories in Palestine." Ireland's upper house, the Seanad Éireann, passed the law in May 2018.

The bill raises a number of issues for the Irish government.

First, the Israeli government has reacted with outrage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the bill was "indicative of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism." Rather than attending to the "slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians" in Syria, the "occupation of northern Cyprus" by Turkey, and "the terrorist organizations" attacking Israel, the bill targets Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East. What a disgrace." Netanyahu delivered an "angry rebuke" to the Irish ambassador Friday. Former Defense Minister and political leader Avigdor Lieberman called on Israel to shutter its Dublin embassy in response to the law.

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Freight train slams into school bus in Athens, Texas killing 13-year-old student and injuring two

One student has been killed and two other individuals were injured after a freight train hit a school bus in East Texas, authorities said.

The collision took place around 4pm on Friday when the train struck the bus at a crossing and pushed it about 1,000 feet down the tracks in Athens, Texas, located about 70 miles southeast of Dallas.

A 13-year-old male middle school student was killed in the crash, Athens Police Chief Buddy Hill said at a news conference on Friday evening.

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'Defamation Dream Team' of Five Law Firms Assembling to Take on Journalists, Media Outlets, and Celebrities Who Attacked Covington Kids!

A team of very high profile lawyers are joining together to fight for justice for the Covington Catholic High School students who were ruthlessly attacked by the media following a school trip to DC for the March for Life.

According to lawyer Robert Barnes, who is representing several of the families, the team will include at least five lawyers from five different law firms — all with a record of high profile civil cases.

We cannot yet report the names of the lawyers who are joining forces — but we can assure you that you have heard of their cases.

When asked about who exactly they are planning to sue out of the hundreds of celebrities and journalists who defamed these boys, Barnes confirmed that former CNN host Reza Aslan, actor Michael Rapaport and ABC News senior political analyst anchor Matthew Dowd are on the list, “for starters.”

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Champion For Women?


Listen Up...


Those Who Can't Do, Demand

The Unprofitably Incompetent

Profit propels civilization. When a producer can make an item or provide a service at a cost lower than a customer values that item or service, and the customer has the means and the freedom to buy, the difference between what’s paid over cost is profit. That profit is the producer’s incentive to produce, and in turn funds the producer’s consumption, savings, and investment, which creates other producers’ profits. Profit is the necessary prerequisite for consumption, savings, investment, and consequently, progress.

Many of us profit every day. We offer services and provide goods, supporting ourselves at a cost that is lower than what we’re paid. We’re profitably competent, engaging in honest production and peaceful, voluntary exchange. The only alternatives to profitable competence are living off of someone else’s profitable competency via inheritance or charity, or criminality—theft via fraud or violence.

Criminals cloak their thefts in all sorts of justifications, some of which, like socialism, become full-blown political doctrines. Ironically, a larcenous litany of demands and rationalizations are efflorescing at a time when whatever is left of the overall profit pool has been drained. It has been mortgaged multiple times, just as hordes of the unprofitably incompetent, who had no hand in producing it, clamor for their “fair share.” They’ll insist the profitably competent figure out how to pay for it, but the fair share of nothing is nothing, political promises to the contrary notwithstanding.

“Your means, my ends; I wish, you fulfill,” is the foundational fantasy of modern governance. The favored groups shelter in their safe spaces—government and its rackets, crony corporations, academia, the media, and Hollywood—living on the delusion that there will always be someone who will produce, without question or protest, for their benefit. Upon that foundation they’ve constructed a phantasmagorical edifice of illusory constructs and passages to nowhere.

As the foundational fantasy totters, the fantasies it supports become more fantastical. The profit pool exhausted, you would think everything possible would be done to succor the profitably competent who are supposed to replenish it. Instead, that illustrious group is demonized at every turn, and the demands on them become ever more absurd. They are guilty because they’re productive, and must expiate their guilt by producing for the unproductive, whose incompetence makes them morally superior.

The most “toxic” trait often associated with masculinity may be competence. It’s not exclusively masculine, but whether its possessors are male or female it has certainly become toxic, depriving them of any right to what they produce and any right to criticize those who steal it from them. Twits who can’t replace a light bulb demand free schooling and medical care, guaranteed jobs and incomes, trips to Mars, and who knows what else. Those who are to fund it all are to cheerfully regard doing so as a privilege.

The notion of reparations won’t die. Anyone with money (the only people who can pay) supposedly owe the descendants of various victim classes reparations for the supposed sins of their ancestors. To hold individuals guilty of crimes they couldn’t have committed is a moral obscenity. The demands for retribution are simply another naked money grab.

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OPINION: Bill Barr Needs To Answer For His Role In Ruby Ridge

The Second Amendment community has tried very hard to get members of the Judiciary Committee to persuade attorney general nominee William Barr to renounce his long-standing support for gun control. Opposing his nomination is not a position we relish. But if members of the Senate choose to ignore his record on guns, they should not ignore his role in the Ruby Ridge scandal.

Consider these facts.

Barr was in charge of the Justice Department during Ruby Ridge, and he knew what was going on.

Barr stated, under oath, that his chief gun priority would be the Ruby Ridge-like gun confiscation orders (sugar-coated as “red flag laws”).

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If you have a 'stomach flu,' chances are it's actually norovirus: What you should know

If you’ve ever gotten sick from eating something “bad,” you may have had an encounter with norovirus.

Sometimes called a “stomach bug” or “stomach flu” — though it’s not related to the flu — norovirus is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States, causing between 19 million and 21 million cases of infectious vomiting and diarrhea each year.

Norovirus outbreaks can affect anyone, anywhere. Earlier this month, for example, acruise trip was cut short after 475 passengers became ill with the infection, which spread more easily due to the confines of the ship.

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Do You Remember [MEMES ON STANDBY] All My Life

Genius


Makes You Think...