[Breitbart] A YMCA in Indiana has removed CNN from the TVs in its wellness and exercise areas over complaints from members upset by the constant fake news the cable network airs.
Snicker...
The Valparaiso, Indiana, YMCA issued a statement to members that the cable news network was removed from facility TVs because too many members complained about the programing.
Debra Koeppen, the YMCA’s chief development officer, said that "Trying to please everyone" is the "No. 1 problem we have in the wellness area," according to Chicago Tribune reporter Jerry Davich, who claims to be a member of the YMCA in question.
Earlier this week, Robert Wanek, CEO of the Valparaiso YMCA, sent a message to members saying, "In order to eliminate perceived political bias associated with national news outlets, the Valparaiso Family YMCA will only be showing local news channels in the future."
Davich asked the CEO to reveal more details about the removal of CNN from the TVs, but Wanek replied, "I cannot pinpoint the change origins, only to add that we get dozens of requests to change channels every day from numerous interest groups."
"We just want the Y to be a haven for wellness where people come together and have a sense of belonging, gain new relationships and achieve their personal goals," Wanek added. "We will display local news moving forward."
Indeed, Wanek said that from this point forward only local news will be played on the TVs and all cable news networks will be banned.
[Feral Jundi] This is excellent and Erik Prince did a great job defending his former company in this interview with Becky Anderson. What I thought was very interesting was the discussion of Libya and the immigration crisis plaguing Europe right now.
I would agree with Erik that the EU does not have the political will to do what is necessary in Libya to actually lock down it’s borders.
But one point needs to be made when it comes to PMSC’s in Libya‐they are already there. Europe’s oil interests in Libya have required security in one form or another for years now. I wrote about all sorts of security related stories in Libya starting in 2011, so it should be no shock to any observer of that conflict that industry has provided services there, or has ’offered’ solutions to frustrated clients. Hell, the CEO of a major French PMSC, Secopex, was killed in Libya.
I would also argue that any security plan like this, should also be coupled with a grand strategic plan for Libya. The border might be squared away under a contract like this, but that will not remove the cause of why people are wanting to leave. The war needs to end there, and reconstruction along with the rule of law needs to be reestablished if they want to stop this migrant crisis. Security on the border is just one piece to a plan like that. But private industry can provide a solution for that.
The other thing that was interesting in this interview was the mention of Erik and the Trump administration.(he is a supporter) The question was posed wether the new administration will be good for the PMSC industry.
At 06:58, this is where the video get’s interesting. "Is Libya a quick win for a Trump administration?" the interviewer asks, and I will let the reader check out what Erik had to say....
So maybe Libya is a space to be watching in 2017? ‐Matt
In the first days of 2017, Washington D.C. was empty. It was a city holding its breath. Secret Service police officers in balaclavas waited at the White House as a black SUV carrying departing staffers passed. It had not been so long ago that they came into the city as if they owned it and the entire country. Now the same men and women who ran and ruined the lives of millions were scrolling through job postings on their smartphones. They watched Obama speak from faded screens at sports bars and they cried.
They knew it was coming. Day 1.
The parties and the protests are underway. Hundreds of thousands of Americans and anti-Americans have converged on the city: Tea Party housewives from Milwaukee suburbs and snarling Marxists from the ANSWER coalition, small businessmen from Houston and Berkeley J20ers outshouting the schizophrenic homeless panhandlers at Union Station.
While Trump and Pence are at St. John's Episcopal Church, Black Lives Matter will be howling abuse at D.C.’s black police officers at Metropolitan Police Headquarters. As Trump takes his oath of office, the Future is Feminist Counterinaugural Action will try to disrupt the event with their “bodies.” As Trump speaks to unify America, leftist protesters plan to smoke pot on the National Mall.
They can’t stop what’s coming. And they know it. The crying Obama staffers loading boxes into their cars and the Marxists biting their lips as they color in their signs on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial feel it. The pundits of the Post, the non-profit parasites and the entire cocktail party circuit can sense it.
Day 1 is more than just a day. It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of Obama.
Berlin, November, 1989. Moscow, August, 1991. Washington D.C., January, 2017. That’s the closest you can come to describing it. It’s the fall of an evil empire. There are breaths of fresh air as the cleansing rain washes away eight years of oppression, lies and corruption into the sewers of the city.
Day 1.
Trump has executive orders ready to go. While the ceremonies run their course, real change is already underway. The parade that matters is the slow march of Obama’s minions leaving and Trump’s people coming in. The transition began as a trickle, a few here and there, but is swiftly becoming a takeover.
The “landing team members” have moved in. And Obama’s people are moving out to be replaced by “beachhead teams”. What started with dozens and then hundreds will become thousands. These clashing armies wear uniforms of black suits and skirts. They wield smartphones and task lists. And they run the country.
That’s what the “peaceful transition of power” touted by Obama really means. A force of men and women the size of a small army will depart and another will arrive and take their place. They will do it without a shot being fired. The transition will not be entirely peaceful. The mobs of protesters will see to that. And the boycott of the inauguration by House Democrats is a rejection of that transition of power.
The roadblocks, barricades and fences are there to block the radical left’s plots to physically shut down the inauguration. Meanwhile their political allies in Congress are building roadblocks and barricades to jam up Trump’s nominees in endless committee sessions and hearings.
They can’t stop Day 1. But they are doing everything that they possibly can to slow it down.
Their battle plan is to confirm as few of Trump’s people as possible. The longer it takes to get new leaders into place, the longer it will take those leaders to bring in new people to make reforms. The endless hearings aren’t just political theater. They are an organized effort by the left to retain control of the government for as long as possible while tangling Trump’s agenda in red tape right from the start.
The protesters and the politicians have the same agenda. They want to stop reform from Day 1.
[Breitbart] Some federal government employees are considering leaving their jobs when President-elect Trump assumes office, according to a new survey.
"More than one in four federal workers, or 28 percent, will definitely or possibly consider leaving their jobs after Jan. 20 when Trump is sworn into office and becomes leader of the executive branch," according to the survey conducted by the Government Business Council and Government Executive, both groups that track trends in government.
Half of those surveyed said that Trump’s business experience would "hinder his management of the federal government" while two-thirds of people think Trump’s business relationships pose a conflict of interest.
Half of those who said they were leaving are retirement-eligible and have considered an early retirement, while 37 percent of people would look for a job outside federal government, the analysis said.
Only one percent of respondents said they would quit without having a plan for their next move, while an additional 12 percent of people said they were unsure of what they would do.
A survey by the same groups taken before the election showed that 35 percent of government workers would consider quitting their jobs if Trump won the election.
#4
Half of those who said they were leaving are retirement-eligible and have considered an early retirement
This (14% - could be higher) is very likely accurate and should be fully exploited via retirement incentives. The 'key' is not backfilling the vacancies through the implementation of hiring freezes.
#5
There are four times more people working for the public sector (relative to the size of the population at large) now as there were before the Great Society evil was foisted on America.
We need to return the size of the public "work" force to that level.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/20/2017 5:58 Comments ||
Top||
#6
So Cool it can't possibly be that wonderful. It sounds so good you HAVE to doubt it. Nothing could be that awesome.
#8
When I first started looking for a job the deal was that you went into Public Service for the security and you went into the Private Sector for the money.
#12
Anyone remember the outrage and throngs of disgruntled FBI agents who threatened resignation and early retirement following Director Comey's refusal to recommend an indictment against HRC ?
#14
while 37 percent of people would look for a job outside federal government
I left the Mass. Dept. of Revenue in 1992 after a four year stint. These people have no fucking idea whatsoever the world of hurt they are about to encounter if they think they can find comparable work in the Dreaded Private Sector at or near the same level of pay. It's far, far more likely they're about to become state hacks instead of Federal hacks.
#15
A survey by the same groups taken before the election showed that 35 percent of government workers would consider quitting their jobs if Trump won the election.
A key point, buried at the bottom of the article: the number considering leaving is dropping as the job market reality intrudes.
On Jan. 3, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency -- America’s 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus -- to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request. She did so, she claimed, for administrative convenience. Yet in doing this, she violated basic constitutional principles that were erected centuries ago to prevent just what she did.
Here is the back story.
In the aftermath of former President Richard Nixon’s abusive utilization of the FBI and CIA to spy on his domestic political opponents in the 1960s and '70s -- and after Nixon had resigned from office in the wake of all that -- Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a secret court that was charged with being the sole authority in America that can authorize domestic spying for non-law enforcement purposes.
The standard for a FISA court authorization was that the subject of the spying needed to be a foreign person in the United States who was an agent of a foreign power. It could be a foreign janitor in a foreign embassy, a foreign spy masquerading as a diplomat, even a foreign journalist working for a media outlet owned by a foreign government.
The American spies needed a search warrant from the FISA court. Contrary to the Constitution, the search warrant was given based not on probable cause of crime but rather on probable cause of the status of the person as an agent of a foreign power. This slight change from "probable cause of crime" to "probable cause of foreign agency" began the slippery slope that brought us to Lynch’s terrible order of Jan. 3.
After the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, numerous other statutes were enacted that made spying easier and that continued to erode the right to be left alone guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
The Patriot Act permitted FBI agents to write their own search warrants for business records (including medical, legal, postal and banking records), and amendments to FISA itself changed the wording from probable cause "of foreign agency" to probable cause of being "a foreign person" to all Americans who may "communicate with a foreign person."
As if Americans were children, Congress made those sleight-of-hand changes with no hoopla and little serious debate. Our very elected representatives -- who took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution -- instead perverted it.
It gets worse.
The recent USA Freedom Act permits the NSA to ask the FISA court for a search warrant for any person -- named or unnamed -- based on the standard of "governmental need." One FISA court-issued warrant I saw authorized the surveillance of all 115 million domestic customers of Verizon. The governmental need standard is no standard at all, as the government will always claim that what it wants, it needs.
All these statutes and unauthorized spying practices have brought us to where we were on Jan. 2 -- namely, with the NSA having a standard operating procedure of capturing every keystroke on every computer and mobile device, every telephone conversation on every landline and cellphone, and all domestic electronic traffic -- including medical, legal and banking records -- of every person in America 24/7, without knowing of or showing any wrongdoing on the part of those spied upon.
The NSA can use data from your cellphone to learn where you are, and it can utilize your cellphone as a listening device to hear your in-person conversations, even if you have turned it off -- that is, if you still have one of the older phones that can be turned off.
Notwithstanding all of the above gross violations of personal liberty and constitutional norms, the NSA traditionally kept its data -- if printed, enough to fill the Library of Congress every year -- to itself. So if an agency such as the FBI or the DEA or the New Jersey State Police, for example, wanted any of the data acquired by the NSA for law enforcement purposes, it needed to get a search warrant from a federal judge based on the constitutional standard of "probable cause of crime."
Until now.
Now, because of the Lynch secret order, revealed by The New York Times late last week, the NSA may share any of its data with any other intelligence agency or law enforcement agency that has an intelligence arm based on -- you guessed it -- the non-standard of governmental need.
So President Barack Obama, in the death throes of his time in the White House, has delivered perhaps his harshest blow to constitutional freedom by permitting his attorney general to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, thereby enabling people in law enforcement to get whatever they want about whomever they wish without a showing of probable cause of crime as the Fourth Amendment requires. That amendment expressly forbids the use of general warrants -- search where you wish and seize what you find -- and they had never been a lawful tool of law enforcement until Lynch's order.
Down the slope we have come, with the destruction of liberty in the name of safety by elected and appointed government officials. At a time when the constitutionally recognized right to privacy was in its infancy, Justice Louis Brandeis warned all who love freedom about its slow demise. He wrote: "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Someday we will learn why Obama did this. I hope that when we do, it is at a time when we still have personal liberty in a free society.
#1
Someday we will learn why Obama did this. I hope that when we do, it is at a time when we still have personal liberty in a free society.
EO 12333 was written to protect US Citizens (USCIT) from intelligence collection against them. If information on a USCIT was needed, due process was followed and a warrant was issued.
This is just another step in the destruction of sovereignty and freedom.
So the Trump presidency begins Friday at noon, and though plenty of people have been happy to offer predictions, nobody really knows how it will go. (If it’s like pretty much every other presidency in my lifetime, the answer is "disappointingly.") But Trump’s transition -- his "pre-presidency" -- is just about over now, so let’s see how that’s gone, and if that offers us any guidance on how things might go in the future.
And, actually, Trump has accomplished some stuff. So far, in his pre-presidency, Trump has:
(1) Killed off dynastic politics, at least for now.
(2) Kept Hillary out of the White House.
Frankly, those two things alone were perfectly decent reasons for backing Trump, and he’s already delivered on them. But what else has he done, for good and ill?
(3) Bringing jobs back.
(4) The appointments.
(5) The process. Right after the election, we heard that the Trump transition was chaotic, conflicted, a mess. Then the actual transition came and it was . . . pretty smooth.
(6) The press ... under Trump, the press will be making investigative journalism great again!
Whether Trump can match these accomplishments once he’s actually in office, I don’t know. It may be that he’s peaked already. But he’s already outperformed my (admittedly modest) expectations. I hope he’ll keep doing that in the four (or eight) years to come.
#3
In truth, Trump's election was provided by an overlapping 'coalition' , kind of like a venn diagram composed of three groups:
(1) voted for Trump
(2) voted against Hillary
(3) flipped the finger at the establishment.
None are mutually exclusive, but they aren't necessarily congruent.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/20/2017 21:40 Comments ||
Top||
When Barack Obama leaves the White House tomorrow, he leaves with his worst dreams unrealized. Still, what he leaves behind is awful. Thank goodness he’ll be gone.
The total list of bad faith, bad (lack of) integrity, bad policies, bad law, and bad results is almost too long to compile. (Its legal arguments were so laughable that it lost far more cases before a unanimous Supreme Court, including its own appointees, than any other president.)
All of those outrages above, though, will in the long run be little remembered in comparison with the three major self-inflicted disasters of the Obama presidency: The near-doubling of the national debt, the near-ruin of our health-insurance system, and the extreme diminution of American prestige and power worldwide combined with the rise of the Islamic State (henceforth ISIS).
As for ISIS, it is unclear whether the Obamites actually encouraged its early growth (by mistake), or merely were surprised by its virulence and dangerous effectiveness — which is bad enough, and undeniable. Either way, ISIS grew and committed almost unimaginable atrocities on Obama’s watch.
While we should never blame anybody for terrorist atrocities but the terrorists themselves, and while no sensible person would ever accuse Obama of secretly intending ISIS to thrive as it has, it is fair to observe that his policies against it — just like Clinton’s and the early Bush-43’s policies against Al Qaida — failed to adequately stem its rise.
The world is a much more parlous place because of Obama’s legacy. He entered office on an Alinskyite power trip, wanting to completely transform America. He failed at that, thank goodness, but he did succeed in weakening this great nation.
#3
Obama's legacy: the Caliphate reappeared to terrorise the world complete with head-choppings, crucifixions and stonings for the first time in a century.
[DAWN] ZEENAT Rafiq was one of around a thousand women murdered in the name of honour in Pakistain last year. In the vast majority of such cases, the wheels of justice do not merely turn slowly; they do not turn at all. In Zeenat’s case however, there has been a reckoning. An anti-terrorism court in Lahore on Monday sentenced her mother, Parveen Rafiq, to death and her brother to life imprisonment for murdering the 18-year-old on the pretext of honour. The young woman’s killing in June last year had repulsed the nation, not only for the gruesome manner in which it was carried out -- Zeenat being doused with kerosene and set alight -- but also because it was her own mother who had torched her and then reportedly exulted over her actions. Even for Pakistain, inured to the slaying of women by fathers, brothers, husbands and the occasional uncle or brother-in-law, maternal filicide is a bridge too far.
The back story was a familiar one: a woman marrying of her own free will and a family determined to mete out the ultimate punishment to her for having ’shamed’ them. While this paper continues to oppose the death penalty, one must note that there has been accountability in Zeenat’s case. Most ’honour’ killers go scot-free courtesy the legal loophole whereby families of victims can forgive the perpetrator, a particularly grotesque provision in the context of honour killings where the victim’s family and the perpetrator are often one and the same. However, a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... that the accused in this instance have been punished owes more to the fact they were charged under the Anti Terrorism Act rather than the legal landscape for this terrible crime having changed significantly. Although parliament in October 2016 enacted amendments to ostensibly strengthen the law against such murders, the legislation falls short on an important front by not making honour killings non-compoundable, that is, one in which a compromise cannot be effected. Instead, it does little more than prescribe imprisonment for life, ie 25 years, for those found guilty of the crime -- and that too is subject to judicial discretion. That is not enough to serve the ends of justice, particularly given the problem has its roots in the society’s cultural mindset. These legal shortcomings should be addressed and police, prosecutors and judges trained to appreciate that so-called honour is never a mitigating factor in murder.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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[GP] Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat trashed Barack Obama today on his way out the door. Barkat accused Obama of surrendering to radical Islam.
The mayor of the city holy to three world religions delivered a message Thursday to outgoing President Obama: good riddance.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat released a video that disparages Obama and welcomes President-elect Donald Trump.
The mayor’s video launches an online campaign to encourage Israelis to sign a letter, which Barkat promises to deliver to Trump officials, urging the new president to make good on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy, from its current location in Tel Aviv, up the hill 50 miles to Jerusalem.
Barkat’s video pitch begins (in Hebrew, with subtitles):
"My fellow citizens, during the last eight years, the Obama administration has pushed for a settlement-building freeze, has surrendered to the Iranians and radical Islam and abandoned Israel to a hostile U.N. resolution."
[UK's Bureau of Investigative Journalism] Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy is often discussed in terms of things he didn’t do: intervene in Syria, reset with Russia, get out of Afghanistan.
In one area however, Obama developed and expanded a defining policy architecture which his successor Donald Trump now inherits: the ability to kill suspected terrorists anywhere without US personnel having to leave their bases.
"Order up some more lawn chairs!"
While his administration lauded the drone programme for being so "surgical and precise" it could take out the enemy without putting "innocent men, women and children in danger", human rights groups lambasted it for doing just that ‐ hundreds of civilians were reported killed outside active battlefields during Obama’s eight years in power.
As his presidency progressed, Obama put restraints in place aimed at reducing civilian casualties ‐ but experts are now worried those limitations will be swept away by Trump in favour of an "anything goes to get the bad guys" approach.
Armed drones were first used under George W Bush. But it was Obama who dramatically increased their use. Responding to evolving militant threats and the greater availability of remote piloting technology, Obama ordered ten times more counter-terror strikes than his predecessor over the course of his term. Lengthy, bitchy, and arrives at no conclusions, recommendations, or solutions. Proceed at your own risk.
#3
If you haven't already, watch some of the drone strike videos on YouTube. The victims are all buildings and bad guys. You just don't see any 'family picnic' strikes MSM popularizes.
#4
As his presidency progressed, Obama put restraints in place aimed at reducing civilian casualties ‐ but experts are now worried those limitations will be swept away by Trump in favour of an "anything goes to get the bad guys" approach.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] Some federal government employees are considering leaving their jobs when President-elect Trump assumes office, according to a new survey.
On Jan. 3, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency -- America’s 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus -- to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request. She did so, she claimed, for administrative convenience. Yet in doing this, she violated basic constitutional principles that were erected centuries ago to prevent just what she did.
[DAWN] ZEENAT Rafiq was one of around a thousand women murdered in the name of honour in Pakistain last year. In the vast majority of such cases, the wheels of justice do not merely turn slowly; they do not turn at all. In Zeenat’s case however, there has been a reckoning. An anti-terrorism court in Lahore on Monday sentenced her mother, Parveen Rafiq, to death and her brother to life imprisonment for murdering the 18-year-old on the pretext of honour. The young woman’s killing in June last year had repulsed the nation, not only for the gruesome manner in which it was carried out -- Zeenat being doused with kerosene and set alight -- but also because it was her own mother who had torched her and then reportedly exulted over her actions. Even for Pakistain, inured to the slaying of women by fathers, brothers, husbands and the occasional uncle or brother-in-law, maternal filicide is a bridge too far.
[UK's Bureau of Investigative Journalism] Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy is often discussed in terms of things he didn’t do: intervene in Syria, reset with Russia, get out of Afghanistan.
