Clinton email reveals: Google sought overthrow of Syria's Assad

Washington Examiner | By RUDY TAKALA | March 19, 2016

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week.

Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region.

"Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool ... that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from," Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company's "Google Ideas" division, wrote in a July 2012 email to several top Clinton officials.

"Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition," Cohen said, adding that the plan was for Google to surreptitiously give the tool to Middle Eastern media.

"Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria," he said.

"Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything [else] you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact," Cohen concluded.

The message was addressed to deputy secretary of state Bill Burns; Alec Ross, a senior Clinton advisor; and Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan subsequently forwarded Cohen's proposal to Clinton, describing it as "a pretty cool idea."

Cohen worked as a low-level staffer at the State Department until 2010, when he was hired to lead Google Ideas, but was tied to the use of social media to incite social uprisings even before he left the department. He once reportedly asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to hold off of conducting system maintenance that officials believed could have impeded a brief 2009 uprising in Iran.

The unusual involvement by Google in foreign affairs highlights the difficulty of involvement in the internal politics of foreign states. While Cohen seemed to consider his company's effort as helpful to American interests, the effort to overthrow Assad helped spur the rise of the Islamic State, which eventually filled a vacuum resulting from Assad's loss of control over of Syria.

The exchange on Syria was highlighted by Wikileaks on Saturday. Earlier in the week, the secret-leaking website posted more than 30,000 emails that Clinton sent or received during her tenure leading the State Department.

BERNIE SANDERS A BUM WHO DIDN’T EARN HIS FIRST STEADY PAYCHECK UNTIL AGE 40 THEN WORMED HIS WAY INTO POLITICS

Jim Hoft | Gateway Pundit - FEBRUARY 16, 2016

Bernie Sanders was a bum who didn’t earn a steady paycheck until he was 40 years old. He was a slob who lived in a shack with a dirt floor. He later wrote about masturbation and rape for left-wing rags for $50 a story. The Socialist then wormed his way into politics.

Bernie had his electricity cut off a lot so he’d run an extension cord down to the basement. He couldn’t pay his bills.

And today he’s running for president so he can take your money and redistribute it.
Investor’s Business Daily reported:

Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. And yet now he thinks he deserves the power to run your life and your finances — “We will raise taxes;” he confirmed Monday, “yes, we will.” 

One of his first jobs was registering people for food stamps, and it was all downhill from there.

Sanders took his first bride to live in a maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, and she soon left him. Penniless, he went on unemployment. Then he had a child out of wedlock. Desperate, he tried carpentry but could barely sink a nail. “He was a shi**y carpenter,” a friend told Politico Magazine. “His carpentry was not going to support him, and didn’t.”

Then he tried his hand freelancing for leftist rags, writing about “masturbation and rape” and other crudities for $50 a story. He drove around in a rusted-out, Bondo-covered VW bug with no working windshield wipers. Friends said he was “always poor” and his “electricity was turned off a lot.” They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him.

The only thing he was good at was talking … non-stop … about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off. “The whole quality of life in America is based on greed,” the bitter layabout said. “I believe in the redistribution of wealth in this nation.”

So he tried politics, starting his own socialist party. Four times he ran for Vermont public office, and four times he lost — badly. He never attracted more than single-digit support — even in the People’s Republic of Vermont. In his 1971 bid for U.S. Senate, the local press said the 30-year-old “Sanders describes himself as a carpenter who has worked with ‘disturbed children.’ ” In other words, a real winner.

He finally wormed his way into the Senate in 2006, where he still ranks as one of the poorest members of Congress. Save for a municipal pension, Sanders lists no assets in his name. All the assets provided in his financial disclosure form are his second wife’s. He does, however, have as much as $65,000 in credit-card debt.

Sure, Sanders may not be a hypocrite, but this is nothing to brag about. His worthless background contrasts sharply with the successful careers of other “outsiders” in the race for the White House, including a billionaire developer, a world-renowned neurosurgeon and a Fortune 500 CEO.

The choice in this election is shaping up to be a very clear one. It will likely boil down to a battle between those who create and produce wealth, and those who take it and redistribute it.

BERNIE SANDERS IS THE 1%

Alex Jones | Infowars - FEBRUARY 4, 2016

Alex Jones breaks down and exposes the true superclass that is pulling the strings behind the world stage and uncovers the hellish nightmare that is socialism and communism.

Why Bernie Sanders Has to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class

Daniel Bier | The Foundation for Economic Education | FEBRUARY 3, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

Willie Sutton was one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history. Over three decades, the dashing criminal robbed a hundred banks, escaped three prisons, and made off with millions. Today, he is best known for Sutton’s Law: Asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, Sutton allegedly quipped, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Sutton’s Law explains something unusual about Bernie Sander’s tax plan: it calls for massive tax hikes across the board. Why raise taxes on the middle class? Because that’s where the money is.

The problem all politicians face is that voters love to get stuff, but they hate to pay for it. The traditional solution that center-left politicians pitch is the idea that the poor and middle class will get the benefits, and the rich will pay for it.

This is approximately how things work in the United States. The top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19 percent of total income and pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earn 12 percent and pay 3 percent. This chart from the Heritage Foundation shows net taxes paid and benefits received, per person, by household income group:

But Sanders’ proposals (free college, free health care, jobs programs, more Social Security, etc.) are way too heavy for the rich alone to carry, and he knows it. To his credit, his campaign has released a plan to pay for each of these myriad handouts. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has totaled up all the tax increases Sanders has proposed so far, and the picture is simply staggering.

Every household earning below $250,000 will face a tax hike of nearly 9 percent. Past that, rates explode, up to a top rate of 77 percent on incomes over $10 million.

Paying for Free

Sanders argues that most people’s average income tax rate won’t change, but this is only true if you exclude the two major taxes meant to pay for his health care program: a 2.2 percent “premium” tax and 6.2 percent payroll tax, imposed on incomes across the board. These taxes account for majority of the new revenue Sanders is counting on.

But it gets worse: his single-payer health care plan will cost 80 percent more than he claims. Analysis by the left-leaning scholar Kenneth Thorpe (who supports single payer) concludes that Sanders’ proposal will cost $1.1 trillion more each year than he claims. The trillion dollar discrepancy results from some questionable assumptions in Sanders’ numbers. For instance:

Sanders assumes $324 billion more per year in prescription drug savings than Thorpe does. Thorpe argues that this is wildly implausible.
“In 2014 private health plans paid a TOTAL of $132 billion on prescription drugs and nationally we spent $305 billion,” he writes in an email. “With their savings drug spending nationally would be negative.”

So unless pharmaceutical companies start paying you to take their drugs, the Sanders administration will need to increase taxes even more.

Analysis by the Tax Foundation finds that his proposed tax hikes already total $13.6 trillion over the next ten years. However, “the plan would [only] end up collecting $9.8 trillion over the next decade when accounting for decreased economic output.”

And the consequences will be truly devastating. Because of the taxes on labor and capital, GDP will be reduced 9.5 percent. Six million jobs will be lost. On average, after-tax incomes will be reduced by more than 18 percent.

Incomes for the bottom 50 percent will be reduced by more than 14 percent, and incomes for the top 1 percent will be reduced nearly 25 percent. Inequality warriors might cheer, but if you want to actually raise revenue, crushing the incomes of the people who pay almost 40 percent of all taxes isn’t the way to go.

These are just the effects of the $1 trillion tax hike he has planned — and he probably needs to double that to pay for single payer. Where will he find it? He’ll go where European welfare states go.

Being Like Scandinavia

Sanders is a great admirer of Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and many of his proposals are modeled on their systems. But to pay for their generous welfare benefits, they tax, and tax, and tax.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all capture between 20-26 percent of GDP from income and payroll taxes. By contrast, the United States collects only 15 percent.

Scandinavia’s tax rates themselves are not that much higher than the United States’. Denmark’s top rate is 30 percent higher, Sweden’s is 18 percent higher, and Norway’s is actually 16 percent lower — and yet Norway’s income tax raises 30 percent more revenue than the United States.

The answer lies in how progressive the US tax system is, in the thresholds at which people are hit by the top tax rates. The Tax Foundation explains,

Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers.
The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent. …
Compare this to the United States. The top marginal tax rate of 46.8 percent (state average and federal combined rates) kicks in at 8.5 times the average U.S. income (around $400,000). Comparatively, few taxpayers in the United States face the top marginal rate.

The reason European states can pay for giant welfare programs is not because they just tax the rich more — it’s because they also scoop up a ton of middle class income. The reason why the United States can’t right now is its long-standing political arrangement to keep taxes high on the rich so they can be low on the poor and middle.

Where the Money Is – And Isn’t

As shown by the Laffer Curve, there is a point at which increasing tax rates actually reduces tax revenue, by discouraging work, hurting the economy, and encouraging tax avoidance.

Bernie’s plan already hammers the rich: households earning over $250,000 (the top 3 percent) would face marginal rates of 62-77 percent — meaning the IRS would take two-thirds to three-quarters of each additional dollar earned. His proposed capital gains taxes are so high that they are likely well past the point of positive returns. The US corporate tax rate of 40 percent is already the highest in the world, and even Sanders hasn’t proposed increasing it.

The only way to solve his revenue problem is to raise rates on the middle and upper-middle classes, or flatten the structure to make the top rates start kicking in much lower. You can see why a “progressive” isn’t keen on making more regressive taxes part of his platform, but the money has to come from somewhere.

The bottom fifty percent don’t pay much income tax now (only $34 billion), but they also don’t earn enough to fill the gap. Making their taxes proportionate to income would only raise $107 billion, without even considering how the higher rates would reduce employment and income.

The top 5 percent are pretty well wrung dry by Sanders’ plan, and their incomes are going to be reduced by 20-25 percent anyway. It’s hard to imagine that there’s much more blood to be had from that stone.

But households between the 50th and the 95th percentile (incomes between $37,000 to $180,000 a year) earn about 54 percent of total income — a share would likely go up, given the larger income reductions expected for top earners. Currently, this group pays only 38 percent of total income taxes, and, despite the 9 percent tax hike, they’re comparatively spared by the original tax plan. Their incomes are now the lowest hanging fruit on the tax tree.

As they go to the polls this year, the middle class should remember Sutton’s Law.

RETAIL APOCALYPSE: 2016 BRINGS EMPTY SHELVES AND STORE CLOSINGS ALL ACROSS AMERICA

Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream - FEBRUARY 1, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: TWITTER, EZLEEINFAMOUS.

Major retailers in the United States are shutting down hundreds of stores, and shoppers are reporting alarmingly bare shelves in many retail locations that are still open all over the country.

It appears that the retail apocalypse that made so many headlines in 2015 has gone to an entirely new level as we enter 2016. As economic activityslows down and Internet retailers capture more of the market, brick and mortar retailers are cutting their losses. This is especially true in areas that are on the lower portion of the income scale. In impoverished urban centers all over the nation, it is not uncommon to find entire malls that have now been completely abandoned. It has been estimated that there is about a billion square feet of retail space sitting empty in this country, and this crisis is only going to get worse as the retail apocalypse accelerates.

We always get a wave of store closings after the holiday shopping season, but this year has been particularly active. The following are just a few of the big retailers that have already made major announcements…

-Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the United States.

-K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.

-J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more stores after closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.

-Macy’s has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay offapproximately 2,500 employees.

-The Gap is in the process of closing 175 stores in North America.

-Aeropostale is in the process of closing 84 stores all across America.

-Finish Line has announced that 150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.

-Sears has shut down about 600 stores over the past year or so, but sales at the stores that remain open continue to fall precipitously.

But these store closings are only part of the story.

All over the country, shoppers are noticing bare shelves and alarmingly low inventory levels. This is happening even at the largest and most prominent retailers.

I want to share with you an excerpt from a recent article by Jeremiah Johnson. The anecdotes that he shares definitely set off alarm bells with me. Read them for yourself and see what you think…

*****

I came across two excellent comments upon Steve Quayle’s website that bear reading, as these are two people with experience in retail marketing, inventory, ordering, and purchases. Take a look at these:

#1 (From DJ, January 24, 2016)

“Steve-
[Regarding the] alerts about the current state of the RR industry. This is in line with what I’ve been noticing as I visited our local/regional grocery store, Walmart, and Target this week in WI. I worked in big box retail for 20 years specializing in Inventory Management. These stores are all using computerized inventory management systems that monitor and automatically replenish inventory when levels/shelf stock get low. This prevents “out of stocks” and lost sales. These companies rely on the ability to replenish inventory quickly from regional warehouses.
As I shopped this week and looked at inventory levels I was shocked. There were numerous (above and beyond acceptable levels) out of stocks across category lines at all three retailers. And even where inventory was on the shelf, the overall levels were noticeably reduced. Based on my experience, working for two of these three organizations in store management, they have drastically/intentionally reduced their inventory levels. This is either due to financial stresses/poor sales effecting their ability to acquire new inventory, or it could be the result of what was mentioned earlier regarding the transporting of goods to these regional warehouses. Either way this doesn’t bode well for the what’s to come. Stock up now while you can!”

#2 (From a Commenter following up #1 who didn’t provide a name, January 26, 2016)

“I’d like to tailgate on the SQ Alert “based on my experience…” regarding stock levels in big box stores. This weekend we were in two such stores, each in fairly isolated communities which are easily the communities’ best source for acquiring grocery items in quantity.
I myself worked in retail (meat) for thirty years so I know exactly what a well-stocked store looks like, understand the key categories and category drivers, and how shelves are stocked and displays are built to drive sales and profits. I also understand supply chain and distribution methodologies quite well.
Each of the stores we were in were woefully under-stocked.This time of year-the few weeks following the holidays-is usually big business in groceries and low stock levels suggest either poor ordering at the store level, poor purchasing at the distribution level or a purposeful desire to be under-stocked.

Anyone familiar with the retail grocery industry is also familiar with how highly touted “the big box store’s” infrastructure is. They know exactly when demand is high and for what items and in what quantities. It is very unlikely that both stores somehow got “surprised” by unusually high demand. It is reasonable then to imagine that low stock levels in rural areas with few options is a purposed endeavor to assure that both the budget conscious and the folks in more remote areas are not fully able to load up their pantries.

Simply put I believe the major retailer in question is doing their part to limit the ability of rural America to be sufficiently prepared. Nevertheless, we are wise to do our best to keep ahead of the curve. God bless your efforts, Steve.”

*****

Yes, this is just anecdotal evidence, but it lines up perfectly with hard numbers that I have been discussing on The Economic Collapse Blog.

Exports are plummeting all over the globe, and the Baltic Dry Index just plunged to another new all-time record low. The amount of stuff being shipped around by air, truck and rail inside this country has been dropping significantly, and this tells us that real economic activity is really slowing down.

If you currently work in the retail industry, your job is not secure, and you may want to start evaluating your options.

We have entered the initial phases of a major economic downturn, and it is going to be especially cruel to those on the low end of the income spectrum. Do what you can to get prepared now, because the economy is not going to be getting better any time soon.

MYTH BUSTED: ACTUALLY, YES, HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST LIBERAL

Louder With Crowder | COURTNEY KIRCHOFF - JANUARY 29, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: FLICKR.

A favorite tactic employed by leftists is to describe the Nazis as “right wing,” with Adolf Hitler, their leader, as the grand leader of this “right wing” movement. Rewriting history is pretty common for leftists, as their history is littered with injustice (the KKK was founded by Democrats, did you know?). Injustices they claim to fight against today. Awkward.

But thanks to this nifty thing called “history” in combination with “the internet,” we can bust this myth once and for all. Thoroughly. Or until a leftist insists on ignoring it. Then we’ll hold them down and tape their eyes open. Just kidding, that’s only what a leftist would do.



Adolf Hitler wasn’t “right wing.” If you take nothing else from this post, just remember Hitler was a socialist. With terrible facial hair. There’s an easy way to remember it, too. NAZI stands for National Socialist GermanWorkers‘ Party. Associate it with blunt mustaches.

What does National Socialist German Worker’s Party mean? Glad you asked. Is it different from “Democratic socialism”? Only in semantics. A Democracy is mob rule, which is why America is actually a constitutional, representative republic, NOT a democracy. A representative republic protects the minority from the majority, whereas a democracy is the rule of the majority. Leftists get caught up in words, getting tripped up over “National Socialism” as opposed to “Democrat Socialism.” But it’s just that. Semantics. So when Hitler ginned up hatred for the Jews, he could get the mob to agree with him. He could get the mob to believe him. There were no representatives to stop Hitler. He was one man helming the desperation of a majority of people. Spot the difference?

When we examine Hitler’s Nazi Germany through the lens of history, most, if not all of us, think of the Holocaust. In fact the holocaust might be the only thing we associate with Hitler’s Nazis. We’ve all been told of the Jews being marched off to death camps where they were worked, tortured, then gassed. We’ve also heard of the experiments conducted by Hitler’s Dr. Mengele. All terrible practices which we rightly find horrifying. Unless you’re one of those people who think Planned Parenthood is great.



What we don’t often hear or learn about is how Hitler ruled the rest of Germany, what his domestic policies were for the German people he didn’t march off to death camps. Hitler’s domestic, socialist policies will be the focus of this post. Trigger warning: they’re eerily similar to what American Democrats tout today. Double trigger warning? He initially had the support of the mob of people. So replace many of Hitler’s policies with something you hear from Bernie Sanders…

Brief Historical Background on Hitler…

Germany lost World War I. As such, Germany was in a state of economic and national depression. Not totally unusual for losing a giant war. But the depression was a long, drawn out one (15 years) leaving the German people poor, hungry, desperate, lacking any confidence. Then along came a young man named Adolf Hitler…

Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).

Human beings may advance technologically, but spiritually? Not so much. In fact I’d contest we rarely learn our lessons when choosing our leaders. Especially charismatic ones. If a man (or woman) can speak eloquently, with confidence, we cannot help but be enthralled. We often follow along, like the town’s children following the pied piper.

Employment for All

After that depression, Hitler made a huge promise to his people: employment for all. How did he do it? Roads and infrastructure:

As Fuhrer, Hitler’s first priority was jobs, or the lack of them. German unemployment had peaked at 6 million due to the Depression devastating the economy. With innovative public works schemes such as the building of autobahns, Hitler put every German back to work. He also advocated schemes such as KdF – Strength Through Joy – which gave workers increased benefits for increased levels of production. This policy was popular and increasingly with the proletariat who had seen their country decimated by the depression…

By putting people back to work and making huge public spending, inflation was bound to happen. However, Hitler kept this under control by not allowing wages to rise with prices. This may have been one unpopular aspect of Hitler’s economic policy but there were many that the people supported.

So Hitler created jobs…through government. While at the same time, he criticized certain segments of the population, demeaning them, blaming the countries woes upon them. The rich, they just ruin everything. Sound familiar?

Big Education

If you haven’t seen it yet, go watch WW2 Surivor’s Account Draws Chilling Similarities between Nazism and Liberalism.

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

Public education, where children are at school all day long, with state-funded and state-sponsored curriculum… convinced yet?

Nationalized Healthcare

Also from the WW2 Surivor’s accounting of Nazism:

After Hitler’s health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

Do I really need to write commentary on this one? Really?

Gun Control

Yes, Germany had gun control. It started before Hitler with a national gun registry:

…in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.

Here’s what happened as a result:

In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.
Finally, Hitler just took the guns from Jews. An armed citizenry is a dangerous one, after all. Hitler even said this about guns in the hands of the people: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.”

In Breslau in 1933, Jews were ordered to “surrender [their] weapons forthwith to the police authorities” on the basis that “Jewish citizens have allegedly used their weapons for unlawful attacks on members of the Nazi organization and the police.” This was a regular occurrence all over Germany until the Waffengesetz of 1938, which effectively banned Jewish firearm ownership in all of Germany (though this had been something of a reality for a while, as in 1935 the Gestapo had ordered no weapons permits to be issued to Jews without the approval of the Gestapo itself).

So excuse us Second Amendment supporters when we here Obama, Sanders and Clinton talking about regulating guns more than they’re regulated today. Call us paranoid. We’ll keep our guns.

Abortion

The great sacrament of the left, abortion. You’ll be pleased to know that Hitler was pro-choice:


Dr. Tessa Chelouche goes on to quote Hitler’s 1942 policy statement on the application of abortion to Slavic people, which is chillingly similar to modern Planned Parenthood propaganda:

“In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman’s health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.”

Compare the Nazi’s application of abortion to how Planned Parenthood (a government-funded organization) operates. Also read up on Margaret Sanger, who echoed much of Hitler’s sentiment.

Blaming the One Percent Jews

Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for everything, including economic hardship, even though the Jewish population in Germany was less than one percent…

Jews in Germany made up less than one percent of the German population. But held According to the census of June 1933, the Jewish population of Germany consisted of about 500,000 people. Jews represented less than one percent of the total German population of about 67 million people.

Despite that, Hitler insisted on taking their money…

Nearly 120 billion Reich marks – over £12 billion at the time – was plundered from German Jews by laws and looting.

The official study commissioned by the ministry examined the years from 1933 to 1945. Hans-Peter Ullmann, a Cologne history professor, said the tax authorities under the Nazis actively worked to “destroy Jews financially” and to loot wealth in the nations the Germans occupied.

Even Jews who managed to escape from Germany before the Holocaust had to leave part of their wealth behind in the form of an “exit tax”. Tax laws discriminated against Jews from 1934 onwards.

And boycotting their businesses…

APRIL 1, 1933 NATIONWIDE BOYCOTT OF JEWISH-OWNED BUSINESSES
At 10:00 a.m., members of the Storm Troopers (SA) and SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) stand in front of Jewish-owned businesses throughout Germany to inform the public that the proprietors of these establishments are Jewish. The word “Jude,” German for “Jew,” is often smeared on store display windows, with a Star of David painted in yellow and black across the doors. Anti-Jewish signs accompany these slogans. In some towns, the SA march through the streets singing anti-Jewish slogans and party songs.

Review: Hitler demeaned the Jews. He blamed the economic and national depression on them. He instituted national boycotts of their business. He then took their money through taxes and outright looting. Hey, maybe they weren’t paying their “fair share.”

The Police State

If you dared oppose the Nazis or Hitler politically, especially with yourwords, you better watch out. The Gestapo was on the hunt for political dissidents, many of whom would simply vanish.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler also turned the regular (nonparty) police forces into an instrument of terror. He helped forge the powerful Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei), or Gestapo; these non-uniformed police used ruthless and cruel methods throughout Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and others who refused to obey laws and policies of the Nazi regime.

Compare the Gestapo with how leftists want to jail people who do not believe in man-made climate change. Compare the Gestapo to the Gaystapo, who fines people who do not agree with gay marriage or the gay lifestyle. Compare the Gestapo to liberal New York, which fines you for not using the right gender pronouns.

In Conclusion

Hitler was a horrible human being. But aside from how he treated the Jews, aside from his monsterous ways, his polcies were anything but “conservative.” He wanted big government, he wanted big eductation, he wanted thought control. He hated political dissidents. He loathed free-speech. He feared an armed citizenry.

So stop saying “Hitler was right-wing.” No, he wasn’t. If anything, he was a full-fledged left-winger. With a horrible mustache.

Obama administration is starting in L.A. to help immigrants become citizens

LA Times | Sarah D. Wire | January 29, 2016

Obama administration officials are scheduled to meet in Los Angeles on Friday with Mayor Eric Garcetti, local nonprofits and business owners to discuss ways to encourage immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

The meeting is part of a multi-city tour by the White House’s Task Force on New Americans, which the administration previewed in a call with reporters Thursday.

Senior Deputy Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Friday’s meeting will allow federal officials and members of Garcetti’s staff to coordinate with local leaders in business, nonprofit and community organizations.
Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective.- Julie Chavez Rodriguez, White House Office of Public Engagement

“Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective,” she said.

In recent years California has moved repeatedly to provide rights, benefits and protections to immigrants in the country illegally, including in-state tuition, driver's licenses, rules to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children.

Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose have signed on to participate in the task force, as have cities in 25 other states.

Rodriguez praised several California efforts, including the partnership between U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Los Angeles Public Library system to create “citizenship corners” at every branch and hold citizenship classes, increased funding for citizenship and naturalization services by the Napa Valley Community Foundation, and targeting of individuals eligible for naturalization and connecting them with resources in San Francisco.

Garcetti said Step Forward LA, a program created in 2015 that helps people determine whether they are eligible to become citizens and prepares them for the citizenship test, has helped 45,000 people.

He said there are an estimated 350,000 legal permanent residents in Los Angeles alone who are eligible to apply for citizenship but haven’t. In the greater area, the number soars to 750,000.

“This isn’t an abstraction for us. It isn’t an abstraction for me,” Garcetti said.

Joining the White House’s effort is former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who became a U.S. citizen in July. He said he wants people to know there are resources available to assist people starting the process and to help integrate new citizens.

“I am excited to vote in my first presidential election,” he said.

According to Garcetti’s office, attendees of the closed-door meeting will include the mayor, Special Assistant to the President for Immigration Policy Felicia Escobar, Chief of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Linda Lopez, and USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration Director Manuel Pastor.

Speakers include members of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Refugee Forum of Los Angeles, California Endowment, Univision, Asian Americans Advancing Justice of Los Angeles, and the Youth Policy Institute.

Campaigning in style: How Jeb Bush blew through his warchest

Yahoo | By Michelle Conlin and Grant Smith | January 26, 2016

IMAGE SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - There were stays at boutique hotels featuring rooftop pools, private soirees at members-only, jacket-and-tie clubs and fundraisers at the Four Seasons, the St. Regis and the Mandarin Oriental.

In the world of Jeb Bush, the campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has at times been a whirl of private planes and high-end affairs, according to the federal filings of Bush’s campaign and his Super PAC, Right to Rise, which can raise unlimited funds for Bush as long as it does not coordinate directly with him.

It is not unusual for U.S. presidential candidates to fly private or even sometimes stay in luxury hotels. But some disgruntled donors say they are unhappy with Bush's large outlays, which also include big spending on staff and tens of millions of dollars in ad buys.

Eleven of 16 major donors contacted by Reuters questioned whether it was money well spent, especially given how the one-time frontrunner has stumbled badly in the polls and is now facing questions about whether he should withdraw from the race.

(Graphic on Bush spending vs performance in polls http://tmsnrt.rs/1SKC4O1)

In contrast to Bush, Senator Ted Cruz, who is running second in national polls of Republican voters, favors cheaper accommodation options like Holiday Inn and often flies on budget carriers, campaign finance filings through the third quarter show.

Several members of the Bush camp vigorously rejected the donor critiques. Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said, “We are running a national campaign that is competing everywhere and we have made investments that have allowed us to do what serious campaigns must do to be competitive in the primary and general elections."

Ad-tracking firm SMG Delta says Bush's campaign and Right to Rise have spent $82 million on ads, significantly more than the three leading candidates in the Republican race: Donald Trump ($5 million); Senator Ted Cruz ($11 million) and Senator Marco Rubio ($49 million). The tracking firm’s data is more up to date than what has been reported so far in the federal filings.

"There is no return on investment on the Bush ad buys, zero,” said one high-dollar donor who asked not to be named, pointing to how the ads have done little, at least so far, to lift Bush in the polls or dent his opponents.

On Sunday, donors will learn just how much Bush has spent from his $100 million-plus warchest. That's when Republican and Democratic candidates and their Super PACs release their latest campaign finance reports. What is known so far is that Bush and Right to Rise spent at least $82 million, both in operating expenditures through the third quarter of 2015 and on ad spending through this month.

The campaign finance reports also show that between June 2015, when Bush formally announced his candidacy, and September, the Bush campaign spent $1.2 million on private planes versus the roughly $700,000 spent during the same period by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Cruz spent $158,000 on private planes, and Rubio $293,300. Trump flies around the country in his own Boeing 757.

MONEY DOES NOT EQUAL SUCCESS

The former Florida governor's spending pattern illustrates the limits of campaign donations: Even in an era when candidates can receive unlimited sums from wealthy donors, money doesn't guarantee success.

“They are burning money,” said a second major donor, who, like all the other high-dollar donors interviewed, asked not be named for fear of displeasing the Bush family.

“Look, this is not the election cycle to be spending like a silver-spoon Establishment candidate," said a third donor. "It just doesn’t look right,” the donor said, referring to the way income inequality has emerged as a key theme in the 2016 election.

Ambassador Jeanne Phillips, a member of the Right to Rise governance committee, laughed off the criticism.

“I’ve known Jeb for 30 years, so the idea that Jeb would allow anyone around him to be frivolous with money is hilarious, it’s ridiculous. The man is the most conservative, fiscally responsible person I’ve ever worked with.”

Bush’s campaign committee paid for all lodging on the campaign trail and the vast majority of private air charter, while Right To Rise paid for nearly all the known ad spending.

Money donated by both large and small donors kept the Bush camp traveling in style. There were stays at luxury hotels including the Wilshire in Beverly Hills, the Viceroy in Florida, the St. Regis in Dana Point, California, and the W in Stamford, Connecticut, the campaign finance filings show.

The filings do not offer a complete picture. It is not clear for example, how many nights were spent at each of the hotels or indeed whether it was Bush himself who stayed or staff members.

Bush isn’t the only candidate spending at high-end hotels, but it’s a high proportion of his overall hotel spending. He spent $125,000,or 70 percent of his total hotel spending between June and September on hotels defined as luxury or "upper upscale" luxury hotels by STR Global, which tracks supply and demand data in the hotel industry.

Cruz and Rubio each spent less on luxury hotels and a smaller proportion of their overall lodging expenses on them, at roughly 56 percent and 61 percent, respectively, federal filings through the third quarter show. Trump flies home nearly every night so he can sleep in his own bed.

POSH VENUES

Bush also spent more than $400,000 on renting facilities and catering at posh venues, including the Union League Club and the upscale beachfront 1 Hotel South Beach in Miami, where the campaign spent $60,000 last year. Rubio and Cruz spent roughly $265,000 and $185,000 respectively.

Bush defenders said the spending on high-end venues was simply how the donor world operated.

"If you can hold an event at a fancy hotel and raise millions, then it's well worth holding it at a swanky hotel” said Charlie Spies, counsel for Right to Rise.

Spies said Right to Rise had negotiated "below market" rates with vendors and consultants, including an overall compensation cap for staff.

Nevertheless the Bush camp has spent more on staff and consultants than any of the leading candidates. Starting roughly in the spring, Bush paid out about $8 million. Cruz spent just $2 million; Rubio, just under $2 million; and Trump, $1.7 million.

Overall, Trump, Cruz, and Rubio have spent a small fraction of the $82 million Bush has reported paying out. Cruz spent $18.5 million and Rubio outlayed $32 million, according to the filings made so far.

Bush is certainly not the only candidate to spend big on the trail. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for instance, ran an expensive campaign and burned through nearly $10 million before quitting after three months.

Bush's prospects were far brighter last summer. Trump had yet to join the race and Bush was making headlines for the size of his warchest. His Super PAC had just cracked its goal of raising more than $100 million in just six months — an unprecedented haul in American politics.

To celebrate, Jeb’s parents and family welcomed their large network of well-heeled donors to their oceanside compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, where attendees were treated to rides in private trolley cars, lobster rolls and group photos with the sprawling Bush clan.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Ross Colvin)

DEMOCRATIC DEBATE TOTALLY STAGED: CNN HAS AUDIENCE PRACTICE APPLAUSE, PRE-SUBMITTED QUESTIONS PLANTED

Steve Watson | Infowars | JANUARY 26, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: MOHAMED NANABHAY / FLICKR.

In order to fit in with the sterile, pre-packaged scripted fake media driven world we live in today, CNN staged every aspect of last night’s Democratic debate, planting prepared questions in the audience, and even having them practice clapping the candidates before the “show” began.

Politicians, and particularly Presidents, are supposed to be able to react on the fly to the most unexpected of events and situations, but it seems that we’re now firmly in the age of the teleprompter President.

Rarely anything you see anymore is spontaneous or improvised. Everything HAS to go off exactly as planned and without a hitch. Everything is one giant PR program designed to hook mainstream America in and deliver exactly what the powers that be think it wants.

Which is exactly what happened during another snorefest of a Democratic debate presented by CNN.

Before the candidates even took to the stage, CNN had the audience practice applauding, as Anderson Cooper alluded to during the monotonous hours long “build up,” now a mind numbing aspect of every major vacuous TV presentation of the modern day.

Because, obviously, were they not told to clap beforehand, this brain dead mass of blubber and skin would just sit there in utter confusion and boredom, wondering why it had been over five minutes since they got their last fix of fake sincerity to lose their shit to.

Then there were the candidates themselves.

Bernie Sanders said he was going to raise taxes in order to give away some free shit for the 18 billionth time:

Hillary Clinton waddled on stage and denied for the 800 billionth time that her home made email server constituted misconduct, and once again claimed “nothing that I did was wrong.”

The viewers at home in an alpha wave induced stupor also would not have noticed that the questions the candidates were “asked” constituted bigger softer balls than those owned by the Stay Puft marshmallow man.

Sanders was asked if he was “surprised” by his support and the hashtag associated with the “Feel the Bern” slogan.

Getting down to the nitty gritty there.

He was then asked if he supported “women’s issues”.

OOOO, tough one for Bernie.

Hillary was asked by the CNN hosts if she found it surprising that Obama thinks she is “wicked smart,” “knows every policy inside and out,” and gets “undue criticism”.

WOW, get out of that one if you can Hillary.

An Audience member also asked her exactly how she would go about the EXTREMELY DIFFICULT task of “protecting the constitutional rights of all groups of people”.

A muslim woman asked Clinton what she thought about… muslims and Trump… or something, to which she responded by nearly crying.

Nothing about taking money from mega banks and giant oil companies, multiple rape allegations against her husband, or knowing that Americans were killed in a terrorist attack and lying about it though, unsurprisingly.

Then came the kicker at the end of the night when what appeared to be a 11 year old stammering boy stood up and declared that “I can see why they gave you this” before asking Hillary which former President she admired the most.

It wasn’t Bill Clinton.

Staged, sterile, scripted and completely lifeless. Which is exactly what you’d expect from CNN and every Democratic candidate in this Presidential race. Everyone went home happy and slept soundly like babies.

Next up, Anderson Cooper presents the build up to the 2024 Presidential election and asks will another Obama be running, and especially with that hair cut.

Go to commercial.

WHITE HOUSE SUGGESTS ALGORITHM TO FIND “TERRORISTS” ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com - JANUARY 21, 2016

IMAGE CREDIT: INFOWARS.COM

On January 8 we reported on a summit between top federal officials and the giants of social media in San Jose, California.

The talks between the government and Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft centered on the use of social media to recruit terrorists and, according to CNN, “find potential agents, inspire them to become violent, and coordinate attacks.”

On Wednesday The Intercept posted a White House briefing document on the January 12 meeting.

According to the briefing the feds want to “explore ways to more quickly and comprehensively identify terrorist content online so that online service providers can remove it if it violates their terms of service.”

The government suggested developing an algorithm similar to one used by Facebook to detect and prevent possible suicides.

“Are there other areas where online providers have used technology to identify harmful content and remove it? … Something like Facebook’s suicide process flow?” the document states.

The Intercept notes developing effective software for such an effort would be virtually impossible.

“Many believe that data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn’t tenable for that purpose,” the cryptologist Bruce Schneier writes.

“Something as unique and rare as terrorism—that’s what makes this different from credit card fraud,” Schneier told The Intercept.

Schneier said false-positives resulting from an effort to detect terrorists online would be enormous.
It’s Not Just Muslims the Feds Want to Target

If implemented the effort to find precrime terrorists online would not be limited to Muslims. The federal government is also interested in denying internet access and possibly entrapping “right-wing sovereign citizen extremists” and others it considers more dangerous than Islamic fanatics.

In 2014 the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a University of Maryland project funded by the Department of Homeland Security, designated the so-called sovereign citizen movement as the number one domestic terrorist threat in America.

Sovereign citizens do not constitute a cohesive movement, although the government characterizes them as such. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates around 100,000 Americans were “hard-core sovereign believers” in 2010 and an additional 200,000 were “just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges.”

The SPLC works with the DHS to formulate the terrorist threat posed by citizens allegedly belonging to the sovereign citizen movement.

In addition to so-called sovereign citizens the government has categorized constitutionalists as potential terrorists.

In 2010 a Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups listed “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside organizations like al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.

The Department of Homeland Security funded a study in 2012 that characterized Americans “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

“While largely omitting Islamic terrorism—the report fails completely to mention the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—the study focuses on Americans who hold beliefs shared by the vast majority of conservatives and libertarians and puts them in the context of radical extremism,” writesPaul Joseph Watson.

In 2009 the DHS came under criticism when an internal document on the supposed threat of rightwing extremism came to light. The “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” document produced during the Bush administration portrays anti-government groups as dangerous and potentially violent terrorists.

There are hundreds of thousands of groups and individuals on Facebook and Twitter that would be characterized by the feds as terrorist for opposing various government policies.

It is unclear if the algorithm suggested at the San Jose summit will be limited to Muslims or if it will used against all groups and individuals the federal government considers terrorists, including constitutionalists, antiwar activists, crypto-anarchists and dozens of other political classifications.

Judicial Watch: Obama Family’s October Weekend Fundraising Getaway to San Diego Cost Taxpayers $2,001,468.90 in Travel Expenses Alone

http://www.judicialwatch.org/ | JANUARY 21, 2016

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the October 2015 Columbus Day getaway enjoyed by President Barack Obama and his family cost taxpayers $969,783.90 in flight expenses alone. The documents regarding the Obama travel expenses came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request first filed on October 13, 2015.

According to the newly released records obtained by Judicial Watch, the Obama family’s October 11 flight from Los Angeles, where he had attended three high-dollar fundraisers, to San Diego, and then from San Diego back to Washington on October 12, required a total of 4.7 hours of flying time at $206,337 per hour. That brought the total flight cost to taxpayers to $969,783.90. The records do not include the flight time to travel from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles (through Oregon, Seattle, and San Francisco), nor the Secret Service costs or other expenses. Previously released documentsshow the flight time from Washington to Los Angeles to be five hours, which safely adds $1,031,685 and brings the known total to expense to $2,001,468.90.

According to press reports, Obama and his family spent their getaway weekend in San Diego at the luxurious Rancho Santa Fe resort community. With an estimated median income of $188, 859, Rancho Santa Fe is one of the highest income communities in the United States. According to the Rancho Santa Fewebsite, it boasts “one of the storied private golf courses in California,” with “one of the finest walkable designs in the world” where “you and your friends will cherish the memorable times.” Sure enough, President Obama reportedly spent several hours golfing.

The White House touted Obama’s trip to the West Coast as an opportunity for the president to push his gun control agenda in Eugene, Oregon, the site of the Umpqua Community College shooting the previous week. According to the White House schedule for Friday, October 9, however, Obama spent just two hours with the victims’ families before flying off to Seattle, Washington, for a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser. He then left Seattle to participate in a DNC fundraiser in San Francisco later that evening.

In San Francisco, Obama joined Kanye West for a high-dollar fundraiser at The Warfield Theater, which, according to its website, features “the hottest rock shows in the Bay Area.” There, he attacked the Republican Party for having “gone off the deep end.”

On Saturday, October 10, Obama extended his fundraising agenda with three additional high-dollar events, all in the Los Angeles area. According toDeadline.com, “In a whirlwind 6 1/2-hour visit to Los Angeles on Saturday, the fundraiser-in-chief will hit a trio of deep-pocket events…beginning with the home of the Star Wars director and wife Katie McGrath for a $33,400-per-person.”

The $2,001,468.90 Obama spent for his flights between DC and Los Angeles to vacation in San Diego brings his known total expense to the American taxpayers thus far for all Obama travel to $72,881,504.68. That comes to more than $10 million per year for each year he has been in office.

Political candidates, campaigns, and parties reimburse the federal government for only a small portion of the costs of presidential political travel. The Obama White House keeps the formula for such cost-sharing secret.

A 2014 report by a special panel for the Department of Homeland Security found that the Secret Service “is stretched to and, in many cases, beyond its limits.”

“Barack Obama is now the 10-million-dollar man when it comes to wasteful presidential travel,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It looks like that visit with grieving families was an excuse to get out to sunny California for some fundraising with celebrities such as Kanye West – and golfing.”

###

UNIVERSITY COLUMNIST CALLS FREE SPEECH ‘EXPRESSION OF WHITE SUPREMACY’

Mikael Thalen | Infowars.com - JANUARY 20, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

A columnist with Duke University’s student newspaper has labeled Americans’ “obsession” with freedom of speech as nothing more than “an expression of white supremacy.”

The article, entitled “Free speech, Black lives and white fragility,” argues that the country’s devotion to the First Amendment has thwarted “an urgent and overdue conversation about racism” both on and off campus.


“I am thinking about how an urgent and overdue conversation about racism—on our campus and across our country — has been derailed by a diversionary and duplicitous obsession with the First Amendment,” writes Bennett Carpenter, a graduate student in the literature department, for The Duke Chronicle newspaper. “I am thinking about how quickly the conversation has shifted from white supremacy to white fragility — and how this shift is itself an expression of white supremacy.”


Carpenter states that although offensive and hateful speech is equally comparable to physical acts of violence, no “student activists” have ever attempted to stifle the First Amendment of other students.


“The first point to make is that, despite the hand-wringing, I have yet to see a single example of student activists violating the First Amendment,” Carpenter claims despite numerous accounts showing otherwise.


The author also claims that both murdering a human being and engaging in offensive speech are nearly identical “within the context of white supremacy.”


“Within the context of white supremacy, any distinction between a defaced poster, a racist pamphlet and legal or extralegal murder can be only of degree,” Carpenter writes.


The answer to combating the issue, Carpenter says, is to bypass the state while creating more safe spaces and “shouting down” anyone expressing an opinion they disagree with.


“Rather than relying on the state to censure hate speech, anti-racists can assume that task—calling out and shouting down every expression of white supremacy as we work to build a genuinely free society,” he says. “In the meantime, we can construct safe spaces for ourselves where hatred is barred at the door. In other words, the exact work that campus activists are already doing.”