AE and Politics Today

The Nobel committee said it was a matter of timing and maybe that's all there was to it. María Corina Machado has been effusive in her praise of DT. Considering they gave it to Obama for absolutely nothing it's value has been diminished.

I have a hard time embracing DT because of the way he speaks but he is certainly interesting and frankly preferable to that criminal mess we witnessed. I also love watching Karoline Leavitt in action. Politics aside she's much better than that joke of a predecessor and does not have the nasty snark that Psaki had.
 
Dejan Corovic said:
Fact that D.T. didn't Nobel for Peace is proof that Nobel for Peace is highly politicised, and had been for many years.

By the way, I'm not pro-D.T. in any way. Just stating the obvious.
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The fact that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize before he even did anything is proof that it is politicized (Obama would go on to foment, and join, numerous wars and inflict many bombings around the world in his mission to promote peace).

However, in defence of the Nobel Peace Prize comittee, the deadline for the award was just before Trump's deal was finalized, and only the test of time will show whether Trump's deal leads to a lasting peace, which I would think is the real test of whether it merits the award.

When theoretical physicists are awarded the Physics prize for predicting some phenomenon that is later confirmed experimentally, they usually have to wait decades to be awarded. It is not awarded posthumously, and many die never to achieve such recognition from the Nobel comittee.
 
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AD1184 said:
However, in defence of the Nobel Peace Prize comittee, the deadline for the award was just before Trump's deal was finalized, and only the test of time will show whether Trump's deal leads to a lasting peace, which I would think is the real test of whether it merits the award.
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Not so much a lasting peace now that Hamas has broken the peace deal by attacking IDF forces, once again Israel is defending itself, the fighting continues...

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nivek said:
Not so much a lasting peace now that Hamas has broken the peace deal by attacking IDF forces, once again Israel is defending itself, the fighting continues...

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There is no peace, so it is entirely right that there is no Peace Prize.
 

Secret Service uncovers suspicious hunting stand nested in tree within direct line of sight to Trump's Air Force One​

The FBI is investigating another potential oversight in President Trump's security. A suspicious hunting stand was found nested in tree with a direct line of sight to Air Force One in Palm Beach on Thursday. Donald Trump landed at the airport in Florida the following day. FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital: 'Prior to the President's return to West Palm Beach, USSS discovered what appeared to be an elevated hunting stand within sight line of the Air Force One landing zone. 'No individuals were located at the scene.

The FBI has since taken the investigatory lead, flying in resources to collect all evidence from the scene, and deploying our cell phone analytics capabilities.' The stand has not been tied to any individual.

The Secret Service was 'working closely' with the FBI as well as law enforcement in Palm Beach County. Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi also told Fox that 'there was no impact to any movements and no individuals were present or involved at the location.' 'While we are not able to provide details about the specific items or their intent, this incident underscores the importance of our layered security measures,' Guglielmi also stated.

Secret Service uncovers suspicious hunting stand nested in tree with direct line of sight



(More on the link)

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The inconvenient truth about No Kings protests that swept the nation​

An inconvenient truth has emerged about the anti-Trump No Kings protests that swept the nation over the weekend - they were mainly attended by rich, old white people.

That demographic is traditionally associated with conservative politics, but it is increasingly synonymous - which some may argue is because of Joe Biden - with the Democratic Party.

In Atlanta, where the population is predominantly black, liberal attendees who took to the streets on Saturday were mostly white, even though they make up just 38 percent of the city.

At other protests across the country, including in Washington, DC, New York and Los Angeles, the diversity and inclusion crowd didn't appear to attract anyone outside their demographic.

The vast majority of activists - some of whom were seen holding signs likening Trump to Adolf Hitler and ICE to the Gestapo - appeared to be white, privileged and elderly suburbanites.

They included, predictably, Hollywood stars, including Pedro Pascal, 50, John Cusack, 59, Jamie Lee Curtis, 66, and Glenn Close, 78.

(More on the link)

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New York survived 9/11... it won't survive Zohran Mamdani. He celebrates jihadis and wants to punish white people - but that's just the start​

New Yorkers like to think their city is indestructible. The imminent mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani is about to disabuse them. And Mamdani's rise is a harbinger for America itself. Make no mistake: The all-but-assured victory of this inexperienced, rich-kid, soft-on-crime anti-Semitic socialist spells doom for this once-great metropolis.

The most important city in the world, struggling since well before the pandemic, will be no more. Quality of life is down, crime is up, the homeless and mentally ill have run of the place, and office towers struggle to reach pre-pandemic tenancy levels. Like so many cities killed by woke progressivism, politicians prefer to lock up toothpaste in drugstores rather than the criminals who steal and loot with impunity. Mamdani's no different. Scratch that — he's worse.

But so much of the left-leaning media depicts him as a hero.

This is a candidate who, at 34 years old, has never held a real job, who grew up wealthy yet lives in a rent-controlled apartment, and who, just last week, was photographed with his arm around the homophobic accused-terrorist Siraj Wahhaj, who has championed 'jihad' against America. How far the left has come. You would think they'd at least have a problem with the homophobia. 'Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation's foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,' Mamdani wrote on X. A pillar of the community! Wahhaj is a Muslim cleric who was a character witness, in federal court, for the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The city that survived 9/11 may not survive this. What's come to be known as 'The Mamdani Effect' has taken hold — the correlation of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing the city along with Mamdani's rise. 'I have never seen this type of reaction to a mayor,' Corcoran Group broker Alexandra Carter told Fortune magazine. 'It's been pretty drastic. After he won the primary, we had a company-wide call on implications for business because of [Mamdani's proposed] rent freezes.'

The city has already lost more than $14 billion in income after hemorrhaging 125,000 residents — many decamping to Florida, where there is no income tax — in recent years. The bulk of those fleeing are high earners. You know, the ones Mamdani promises to tax even more punitively to pay for his promised free day care and free bus rides (regardless of means), rent freezes, and government-owned, price-controlled grocery stores. Ideas that recall Fidel Castro and Stalin. History's real winners.

The city that survived 9/11 may not survive this. What's come to be known as 'The Mamdani Effect' has taken hold - the correlation of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing the city along with Mamdani's rise. Of course, The New York Times and its ilk champion Mamdani all the way. It's sick, perverse and a total reframing of the facts. 'Mamdani Faces Vitriolic Attacks After Comments About Hamas,' reads one headline from October 16. Comments are turned off. Repeatedly refusing to condemn 'globalize the intifada' will do that. But Mamdani, the Times posits, is the real victim here. Another howler: 'How Mamdani Proposes to make the City Safer' — September 15.

This is a mayoral candidate who wants social workers, not police, to respond to domestic violence calls; who wants higher taxes for white neighborhoods; who is pro-prostitution and wants to abolish all misdemeanor crimes; and who has questioned whether prisons serve a purpose or should even exist. 'Violence is an artificial construction,' he said in 2021. Tell that to the subway car full of terrified passengers as Jordan Neely, a deranged homeless man, threatened to start killing people. Tell that to Marine veteran Daniel Penny — who subdued Neely in a headlock. Neely died from multiple complications, but Penny nonetheless stood trial for second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. A jury of Penny's peers — 12 New Yorkers — acquitted him. I guess they don't see violence as a 'construct'.

Mamdani also refuses to denounce Hamas, October 7, or those calls to 'globalize the intifada' — the call to end Jews and the state of Israel. Yet New York City — home to more Jews than anywhere outside Israel — is poised to make this guy their leader. How much self-hatred do New Yorkers have? If there's one thing they pride themselves on, it's being able to see right through a charlatan, a con artist, a hustler. And trust me: Mamdani is a hustler.

President Trump, himself a native New Yorker, weighed in at a White House presser on Tuesday. 'I love New York,' he said. 'I've always loved New York. I just can't believe a thing like this is happening. With a communist in charge… it's been done many times, [for] a thousand years. It's never worked once. So it's not going to work now.' Trump is dead-on. So how could this be happening? How is it that the greatest city in the world (for now) — home to the wealthiest, most highly-educated, successful, sophisticated population — is about to pull the lever for a danger like Mamdani?

In a Sophie's Choice election — Mamdani's closest rival is disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who forcibly sent the elderly to their certain deaths in nursing homes at the height of Covid and ultimately stepped down over sex pest claims — it seems liberal New Yorkers want revenge for the election of Trump. And Mamdani — a communist, defund-the-police, Hamas-sympathizing, hypocritical rules-for-thee, not-for-me wealth distributor — arrives to meet the moment. That old saw — 'don't cut off your nose to spite your face' — has never felt more apt.

At that same White House presser on Tuesday, Trump was asked if the Democratic Party was Mamdani's now. 'It probably is, yeah,' Trump said. With the election of Zohran Mamdani, New York City will join other once-great metropolises — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago — undone by woke progressivism.

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The West is tolerating Third World behaviour. No wonder it’s in trouble​

I was on a panel recently talking about work visas and immigration policy. Despite some disagreement about tactics, we agreed more than I expected on policy. Something else struck me, too. We didn’t interrupt each other. We spoke in turn, deferred to each other, and otherwise behaved civilly.

These days, that seems rare. The Left-wing broadcast media is increasingly intolerant of particular views. A recent report from the Media Research Centre, for example, found that the supercilious CNN host Abby Phillip interrupted liberal guests three times but conservative guests 127 times during a “random sample of 10 episodes” of her news show. In that, she was perhaps just mirroring the West more broadly, in which supposedly “offensive” speech on subjects like gender or race is ever-more heavily policed.

At the same time, however, we are overly tolerant of behaviour that is unravelling our society.

We tolerate crime. Woke theories like “abolishing carceral society” (not just prisons but every “institution of oppression”, including deportation centres), and “restorative justice” lead to policies that put dangerous recidivist criminals back on the street. Several US states are developing a system of two-tier justice, where some defendants are treated more lightly because of their perceived racial oppression. The UK and Canada are accused of doing much the same.

We tolerate vulgarity from our media and elected officials that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Some of our fringe politicians have discovered the joys of swearing like the middle schoolers I once taught, but without the opprobrium.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic member of Congress from Michigan, said in 2019 that “we’re going to impeach this motherf—er”, referring to President Trump. At the People’s Conference for Palestine, she recently told a “genocide enabling Congress” to “look at this room, motherf—ers – we ain’t going anywhere.” She said the country she lives in was “built on slavery and rape and genocide and oppression”. Bleak, as well as vulgar.

Late-night host Stephen Colbert said “f— you” to Trump on his (soon to be cancelled) show. A few weeks ago, Senator Adam Schiff, famous for making “Russiagate” claims without evidence, told Trump to “p— off” on Colbert’s show.

We tolerate plagiarism. The likes of former president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, have been convincingly accused of using the work of others without credit. She denied the allegations, only then to step down amid a wider controversy over Harvard’s handling of anti-Semitism on campus. A limited review of Gay’s work, instigated by Harvard, seemed to broadly exonerate her, while expressing concern about a pattern of repeated language.

But others, instead of resigning in disgrace, have blamed the accusations on racism or sexism. Often, their institutions have supported them. Universities have to claim they hire on the basis of merit, even when hiring academics who demonstrably have less illustrious careers, publications, and research records than their peers. To concede that some of their diversity hires built their careers on plagiarism would belie that pretence.

We tolerate corruption. In the 18th century, bribery, peculation, and nepotism were the norm in the British Empire and United States. It took two centuries of progress before we expected probity from civil servants and ethical conduct from businessmen. We don’t always get it from native-born Americans, and I could cite many recent examples. But to assimilate recent arrivals to our norms, we need to be especially vigilant about corruption and punish it swiftly and fairly. We’re failing on many levels.

First, immigrants have been implicated in cases of fraud of a type more common in their home countries. In 2025 so far, dozens of people, many of them Somali immigrants, have been convicted in a massive scam that stole $250m from a federal child nutrition programme in Minnesota from 2020 to 2022. A couple of months ago, the Department of Justice filed charges against a ring, comprised of both immigrants and native-born, who had defrauded the federal “food stamp” programme.

One could see immigrants acting according to the mores of their native lands rather than their new home as a sign of failed assimilation. Or worse, it could show that American standards are slipping.

There is evidence for the latter. Lisa Cook, a governor of the US Federal Reserve Board, has been accused of mortgage fraud. She is alleged to have falsely named two houses as her primary residence to secure better mortgage terms, but denies wrongdoing. The Left-wing national media has rallied to her cause; even if she had done what she is accused of, they argue, it’s no big deal. Everyone does it. But so-called occupancy fraud “allows riskier borrowers to obtain credit at lower interest rates”, and “these fraudulent borrowers perform substantially worse than similar declared investors, defaulting at a 75 per cent higher rate,” according to a Federal Reserve report.

So even if it’s true that many mortgage applicants lie about their primary residence, shouldn’t we stop it? And why not start at the top? Cook is one of the few people setting interest rates for the entire country. If she knowingly cheated on her mortgage applications to get a lower rate of interest, she has no business policing others. The strong appearance of malfeasance alone should make her resign. But her allies seem to object even to the idea of her being investigated.

Also accused of mortgage fraud is New York Attorney General Letitia James. As she foretold in her election campaign, James used her office to prosecute Trump. The perplexing case she brought was that Trump committed civil fraud by over-valuing his properties when obtaining loans from commercial banks. Even though the banks did due diligence, and were happy to lend the money, Trump was fined nearly half a billion dollars in what many see as an unprecedented, purely political prosecution. That award was overturned, but James is now spending precious time and money appealing to get the penalty enforced.

Ironically, James has now been indicted for mortgage fraud, with prosecutors alleging she misrepresented a property as a secondary residence instead of a rental property in order to secure lower interest rates (James denies any wrongdoing). When announcing a win in a case involving real estate title theft, James had previously vowed “to use the law as both a sword and a shield to stop these despicable crimes”. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

With the bulk of our national media obsessed with finding any splinter in his eye, Trump doesn’t get a pass on anything. The same needs to apply to all public officials. Americans need to be tolerant of free speech, but intolerant of conduct that is illegal, immoral, or unethical in our public life. That’s what separates the First from the Third World – for now.

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Democrats can’t keep the Schumer shutdown going much longer​

The government shutdown will end soon. How do I know? Because whatever political advantage Democrats had a few weeks ago by “standing strong!” and “confronting Trump!” is quickly evaporating. When the polls flip, so will the party that has lost its way.

Voters have a way of sniffing out the truth. They are beginning to understand that Democrats are rudderless, and are voting to keep the government closed out of confusion, not conviction.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and their colleagues claim they desperately want Obamacare premium subsidies extended, but they have not been holding talks with Republicans, the majority party, to make that happen. They have no proposal on the table that would incorporate a subsidy extension into next year’s budget.

They have, in short, no plan.

Meanwhile, although it was smart to target health care as the battleground for their resistance efforts — Democrats traditionally poll better than Republicans on that issue — the conversation has gone awry. Americans have read, maybe for the first time, just how heavily taxpayers have been subsidizing Obamacare premiums. The numbers are shocking and sow doubt about the program’s viability.

The Affordable Care Act was meant to make health insurance more affordable; it turns out that, without the huge subsidies tacked on during the pandemic, it is not affordable for many people. Should they expire, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports, premiums would more than double next year.

The program was also expected to lead to universal coverage; Obamacare was going to be so great, Dems thought, that everyone in the country could finally be covered. The fact that only 24 million people, or about 7 percent of the country, are covered by ACA plans stuns those who remember that original premise. Even worse, 27 million people — 8 percent of the population — remain uninsured, eclipsing the number insured on the ACA exchanges.

What went wrong? Obamacare was flawed from the start. The idea was that, if everyone who didn’t have insurance was forced to buy into the government-provided program, the risk pool would be broad and costs low. But it turned out that it is not constitutional to require citizens to buy a commercial product. The so-called individual mandate was therefore dropped, and a great many healthy young people failed to sign up.

The result was an older, sicker pool and higher coverage costs. Some insurance companies dropped out as mandates to cover pre-existing conditions and other requirements made the program unprofitable.

Promised changes, such as tort reform and allowing insurers to compete across state lines, never materialized. And problems with America’s health care system — like too few people having “skin in the game” — have persisted. In fact, the Obamacare subsidies make that issue worse, by cutting the required contribution percentages across the board, thereby reducing enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

The real costs of Obamacare insurance have been masked by escalating subsidies, which were inflated during the pandemic but are set to expire at the end of this year. Democrats want those subsidies extended, even though the expected cost is nearly half a trillion dollars over the coming decade — and even though much of the benefit would go to higher-income Americans.

(More on the link)

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I suspect the Republicans see him as a gift which might explain the tepid support Sliwa got from them. Even Bill DeBlasio said that Mamdani's plans are not practical and he didn't know where the funding would come from. Quite the statement from someone who disappeared a b-b-b-billion dollars of taxpayer money to ..... nobody seems to know or be able to do anything about it.

Mamadani has Governor Hochul's support and even that soulless unblinking nitwit Jeffries. Mamdani is a tar baby, I suspect they'll come to regret involvement. This offers a real chance to flip New York, at least the governor's race next year. Schumer is a career politician with an acute sense of survival, he was smart enough to make nice noises but not offer full support.

Personally I don't give a rat's hairy ass about NYC but my wife travels there a couple times a month, my sister in law lives there and I have friends who still work in Manhattan. I don't want to see them hurt. Beyond that Billy Joel was right -they can blow the Bronx away (with AOC in it) and sink Manhattan out at sea.
 

Syracuse University chancellor confirms darkest fears about Iran's involvement in pro Palestinian campus unrest across the US​

The chancellor of Syracuse University has revealed he believes Iran was behind the pro-Palestine protests that swept across US campuses. 'When things happened - that I really believe were encouraged from Iran - it did not have the involvement of very many if any of our own students,' Chancellor Kent Syverud said on Tuesday. He revealed his hypothesis on a panel with other chancellors from Washington and Vanderbilt Universities.

It has not been confirmed that there was outside influence on the chaotic protests which overwhelmed campuses across the country. Syracuse students were among those who staged a sit in on campus to protest the war in Gaza. They set up an encampment on the quad, lasting 16 days, according to CNY Central. The university had to designate negotiators to handle the problem. The encampment eventually disbanded voluntarily.

Syverud said it was hard to discipline students for the demonstrations on campus because many were wearing face masks to 'avoid accountability'. He also said it was hard to determine who were students and were not due to protesters wearing facial coverings.

(More on the link)

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This attorney is after Clinton. He explains why she kept email server in bathroom, basically she was a chief fundraiser for Democratic party and when you see the list of donors one wants to vomit, like some Arab king who was financing Hamas. Essentially she was collecting bribes from that server, so she was hiding this activity from State Department. State Department gave her an official email, but she didn't want her "dirty" stuff to go through it. Actually her staff was destroying usb sticks and hard disks for days to hide this dirty stuff.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClbOp7HFfJU
 
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