Trump Cartoon

Taking on Trump: The elite media Are now trying to decipher the Donald

After a long summer of denial and disparagement, even the most elite precincts of the media establishment are trying to come to grips with Donald Trump.
First it was the cable news networks, which instantly realized that Trump was good box office, followed by the network morning shows. Then some of the columnists who had dismissed him as a sideshow began to grapple with his rising poll numbers, even those who continued to hammer him.
That was followed by a series of faulty predictions that Trump was about to implode because of this or that corrosive comment, to the point that some talking heads simply announced that they were getting out of the forecasting business.
Trump even scored a “60 Minutes” profile on Sunday for the season opener--drawing 15 million viewers--and later declared that CBS anchor Scott Pelley had been fair to him.
Now some other upscale outlets, rather late to the party, are joining in the dark arts of psychoanalysis: What makes Donald Trump tick, and how has he managed to completely upend the rituals and decorum of a presidential campaign and play by his own set of rules?
What does it say about the electorate that he has struck such a deep chord—and, I would add, what does it say about the media and political insiders who suddenly seemed so clueless?
The New York Times Magazine has just posted its profile by Mark Leibovich, the author of “This Town.” And he begins with an extensive mea culpa:
“Initially, I dismissed him as a nativist clown, a chief perpetrator of the false notion that President Obama was not born in the United States — the ‘birther’ movement. And I was, of course, way too incredibly serious and high-­minded to ever sully myself by getting so close to Donald Trump.
“I initially doubted that he would even run. I assumed that his serial and public flirtations with the idea over several election cycles were just another facet of his existential publicity sustenance. I figured that even if Trump did run, his conspiracy-­mongering, reality-­show orientations and garish tabloid sensibilities would make him unacceptable to the polite company of American politics and mainstream media. It would render him a fringe player. So I decided not to write about him, and I felt proud and honorable about my decision.”
A good confession by Leibovich, who seemed charmed by the generous access after negotiating with Hillary Clinton’s staff over, for example, whether any depiction of her campaign office itself would be off the record.
Unlike overly programmed politicians, he writes, “Trump understands and appreciates that reporters like to be given the time of day. It’s symbiotic in his case because he does in fact pay obsessive attention to what is said and written and tweeted about him. Trump is always saying that so-and-so TV pundit ‘spoke very nicely’ about him on some morning show and that some other writer ‘who used to kill me’ has now come around to ‘loving me.’’’
This is an important point: Journalists not only love that Trump is available, but that he knows how to stir the pot and make news—even at the risk that he will rip them afterward. There are few things more frustrating than landing an interview with a presidential candidate and getting the same canned sound bites we’ve all heard before.
So, a scene from the Trump jet:
“He kept flipping between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, sampling the commentary in tiny snippets. Whenever a new talking head came on screen, Trump offered a scouting report based on the overriding factor of how he or she had treated him. ‘This guy’s been great to me,’ he said when Bill O’Reilly of Fox appeared (less so O’Reilly’s guest, Brit Hume, also of Fox). Kevin Madden of CNN, a Republican strategist, was a ‘pure Romney guy,’ while Ana Navarro, a Republican media consultant and Jeb Bush supporter, was ‘so bad, so pathetic, awful — I don’t know why she’s on television.’ Click to Fox News. Jeb Bush was saying something in Spanish. Click to MSNBC. Hillary Clinton was saying she wished Trump would start ‘respecting women’ rather than ‘cherishing women.’ (‘She speaks so poorly, I think she’s in trouble,’ Trump said.) Click to CNN. It showed a graphic reporting that 70 percent of Latinos had a negative view of Trump. Click to Fox News. Trump asked for another plate of au gratin.”
The Donald, never unplugged.
Another major piece appears in New York Magazine by Frank Rich, the former Times columnist, unabashed liberal and consultant on “Veep” who doesn’t hide his disdain for Trump. He writes, for instance, of “the quest to explain” how “the billionaire’s runaway clown car went into overdrive.”
But Rich feels compelled to give Trump his due, even as a flawed messenger: “It’s possible that his buffoonery poses no lasting danger. Quite the contrary: His unexpected monopoly of center stage may well be the best thing to happen to our politics since the arrival of Barack Obama.”
Trump, he argues, “has performed a public service by exposing, however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of much of the political culture they share. He is, as many say, making a mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted, and ultimately a spur to reform…By calling attention to that sorry state of affairs 24/7, Trump’s impersonation of a crypto-fascist clown is delivering the most persuasively bipartisan message of 2016.”
While allowing that Trump commits heresy on such matters as taxing hedge-fund guys, Rich ultimately blames the Republican culture: “On the matters of race, women, and immigration that threaten the GOP’s future viability in nonwhite, non-male America, he is at one with his party’s base. What he does so rudely is call the GOP’s bluff by saying loudly, unambiguously, and repeatedly the ugly things that other Republican politicians try to camouflage in innuendo, focus-group-tested euphemisms, and consultantspeak.”
This is the last line of defense for the anti-Trump contingent: The problem is not The Donald, it’s the way he caters to the dark passions of conservative Republicans. But many Democrats are also fed up with politics as usual, which is why socialist Bernie Sanders has improbably pulled close to Hillary in the polls.
With his new tax-cut proposal, Trump has kicked off the second phase of his campaign, one in which he’s offering policy as well as persona. Asked by Matt Lauer yesterday what he would do if his poll numbers sink, Trump said: "If I think for some reason it's not going to work, then I'd go back to my business." But there's no indication he's going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
And if other candidates spoke as openly and frequently with the media as Trump does, we’d have a better campaign.

Planned Parenthood boss clashes with lawmakers over taxpayer $$, videos

The head of Planned Parenthood clashed with congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill Tuesday over the group's taxpayer funding, while using her appearance to attack the group behind a series of disturbing videos showing her organization's workers discussing fetal tissue harvesting. 
Cecile Richards, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claimed the videos were "deceptively edited" and "heavily doctored."
Yet just minutes before the hearing started, a forensic analysis said the videos "are authentic and show no evidence of manipulation or editing." The analysis was conducted for the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress.
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also seemed to brush off the claims of doctoring as he excoriated Planned Parenthood for its allegedly "insatiable" desire for taxpayer dollars. He pointedly cited the millions the group has spent on travel and parties and "fairly exorbitant salaries" even while cutting back, he said, on certain health care services.
"Their desire for more of taxpayer dollars is just insatiable," Chaffetz said.
Chaffetz argued that Planned Parenthood "doesn't need a federal subsidy." Chaffetz, in emotional opening remarks, recalled his late mother's fight with breast cancer, and said much of Planned Parenthood's budget is not going "to women's health care."

More on this...

• Planned Parenthood: The Hidden Harvest

Under questioning from Chaffetz, Richards acknowledged her annual compensation is $520,000. (Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., later criticized Chaffetz for the line of questioning, accusing him of "beating up on a woman ... for making a good salary.")
Richards, meanwhile, adamantly defended Planned Parenthood, saying she's "proud to be here" and stressing that their clinics largely provide birth control, cancer screenings and other health care services.
The videos showing conversations on fetal tissue harvesting, she said, were part of a "smear campaign" to "entrap" doctors into breaking the law.
"Once again, our opponents failed," she said.
She said less than 1 percent of their clinics facilitate donations for fetal tissue research, and they do so legally.
Richards won some support from Democrats on the committee. Top Democrat, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, blasted CMP for having "misled and essentially conned Planned Parenthood employees."
But Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, called the scenes in the videos "barbaric and repulsive."
A question looming over the hearing was whether any of the footage was in fact altered. Democrats repeatedly suggested that important passages were missing.
But the Alliance Defending Freedom engaged cybersecurity and forensic analysis company Coalfire Systems to examine the 10 "full-footage videos" put out by CMP.
According to their review, the videos were not manipulated. The report said any missing footage was of "non-pertinent" events like meals and bathroom breaks.
"The Coalfire forensic analysis removes any doubt that the full length undercover videos released by Center for Medical Progress are authentic and have not been manipulated," ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox said in a statement.
"Analysts scrutinized every second of video recorded during the investigation and released by CMP to date and found only bathroom breaks and other non-pertinent footage had been removed. Planned Parenthood can no longer hide behind a smokescreen of false accusations and should now answer for what appear to be the very real crimes revealed by the CMP investigation."
The 10 videos released so far capture Planned Parenthood officials casually describing how they sometimes obtain tissue from aborted fetuses for researchers. In one video, a doctor for a Planned Parenthood tissue harvesting partner appears to admit a baby's "heart actually is still beating" at times following abortions and an ex-procurement tech gives a first-person account of watching a baby's heart beat before she dissects its brain.
Planned Parenthood foes say the videos show the group breaks federal laws barring for-profit fetal tissue sales and altering abortion procedures to obtain usable organs. Planned Parenthood and its defenders say it's done nothing illegal and says that CMP Project Lead David Daleiden dishonestly edited the videos to distort what was said.
In written testimony, Richards fired back at Daleiden, calling for him to be investigated after she says he "tried unsuccessfully to entrap Planned Parenthood physicians and staff for nearly three years." Daleiden obtained the videos after posing as an executive of a nonexistent firm that buys fetal tissue for scientists.
So far, the most damage inflicted on Planned Parenthood by the videos is the insensitive way some of its officials discuss the procedures. That has drawn apologies from Planned Parenthood and bitter criticism from Republicans.
Most Democrats have rallied behind the group, and President Obama has threatened to veto GOP legislation cutting its federal money. Public opinion polls show majorities oppose blocking Planned Parenthood's taxpayer dollars. Departing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., fearing voter anger, have rebuffed conservatives who would shut down the government if Obama doesn't agree to halt Planned Parenthood's money.
The organization receives about a third of its $1.3 billion annual budget, around $450 million, from federal coffers, chiefly reimbursements for treating Medicaid's low-income patients.
Democrats have used a Senate filibuster to block GOP legislation halting Planned Parenthood's federal payments. So two House committees plan to approve filibuster-proof legislation shifting Planned Parenthood's Medicaid funds -- about $350 million -- to community health centers.
The bill would also keep a promise made during this spring's budget debate to repeal key elements of Obama's signature health care law. Panel votes are expected Tuesday and Wednesday.
In addition to the four congressional committee investigations of Planned Parenthood, Boehner has said he will also appoint a special committee to probe the group.

Clinton fundraises with oil magnates despite opposition to Keystone XL

Despite Hillary Clinton's coming out against the Keystone XL pipeline, the Democratic presidential candidate appeared at a fundraiser Friday with major Democratic donors who are heavily invested in the oil and gas industry. 
The event for Hillary was held at the $8.2 million home of hedge fund manager Cliff Robbins in Greenwich, Connecticut. Robbins is the founder and CEO of the Blue Harbour Group, a company that has invested a significant amount of money in the oil and gas sectors. Robbins and his wife Debbie have contributed nearly $200,000 to Democratic candidates over the past decade.
Between April 2013 and September 2013, Robbins' Blue Harbour Group bought six million shares in an oil-field services company called Nabors Industries. The purchase resulted in a 2 percent stake in the company and a gain of about $80 million for the group.
After BHG purchased the shares, the group was said to play a significant behind-the-scenes role in a shift at Nabors Industries that resulted in a "transformation from a broad ranging oil-service company to a pure-play driller, which owns and leases out the world's largest fleet of rigs." The CEO of Nabors said that "Cliff personally participated in the strategic evaluation" of their options and plans.
The evaluation and change of direction involved Nabors agreeing to merge its fracking unit with C&J Energy Services, a move that resulted in a $940 million profit for Nabors and a 53 percent share in the newly combined company. Nabors reported revenues and earnings from unconsolidated affiliates totaling $1.78 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013 alone.

Russians tell US to remove warplanes from Syria, senior official says

Russian officials have demanded that American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, a senior U.S. official told Fox News early Wednesday. 
The official told Fox News that Russian diplomats sent an official demarche ordering U.S. planes out of Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory.
The move by Moscow marks a major escalation in ongoing tensions between the two countries over military action in the war-torn country and comes moments after Russian lawmakers formally approved a request from the country's president, Vladimir Putin, to authorize the use of troops in Syria.
The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, discussed Putin's request for the authorization behind the closed doors. Sergei Ivanov, chief of Putin's administration, said in televised remarks that the parliament voted unanimously to approve the request.
Ivanov said the authorization is necessary "not in order to achieve some foreign policy goals" but "in order to defend Russia's national interests."
Putin is obligated to request parliamentary approval for any use of Russian troops abroad, according to the Russian constitution. The last time he did so was before Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

More on this...

• Can Putin succeed where White House has not in ISIS fight?

• Warm-water port key to Putin's interest in Syria?

• President Obama attempts to save face on Syrian conflict

Putin's request comes after his bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, where the two were discussing Russia's recent military buildup in Syria.
A U.S. official told Fox News Monday the two leaders agreed to discuss political transition in Syria but were at odds over the role that Assad should play in resolving the civil conflict. The official said Obama reiterated to Putin that he does not believe there is a path to stability in Syria with Assad in power. Putin has said the world needs to support Assad because his military has the best chance to defeat ISIS militants.
Putin said the meeting, which lasted a little over 90 minutes, was “very constructive, business-like and frank".
“We are thinking about it, and we don’t exclude anything.” Putin told reporters at the time
The Kremlin reported that Putin hosted a meeting of the Russian security council at his residence Tuesday night outside of Moscow, saying that they were discussing terrorism and extremism.
Russia has been a staunch supporter of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad during Syria's bloody civil war, and multiple reports have previously indicated that Russian troops are aiding Assad's forces. Israel's defense minister also said earlier this month that Russian troops are in Syria to help Assad fight the ISIS terror group.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Russia's Foreign Ministry told the news agency Interfax that a recently established operations center in Baghdad would help coordinate air strikes and ground troops in Syria. Fox News first reported last week that the center had been set up by Russian, Syrian and Iranian military commanders with the goal of working with Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting ISIS.
Over the weekend, the Iraqi government announced that it would begin sharing "security and intelligence" information with Russia, Syria and Iran to help combat ISIS.
Meanwhile, intelligence sources told Fox News Friday that Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani met with Russian military commanders in Baghdad September 22. Fox News reported earlier this month that Soleimani met Putin in Moscow over the summer to discuss a joint military plan in Syria.
"The Russians are no longer advising, but co-leading the war in Syria," one intelligence official said at the time.

Planned Parenthood Cartoon

Trump tax plan met with mixed reviews

Donald Trump's long-awaited tax plan -- which would eliminate federal taxes for millions -- was met with mixed reviews Monday, with one anti-tax group calling it a jobs engine but others questioning its impact on the debt and deficit. 
The plan unveiled Monday would eliminate federal income taxes on individuals earning less than $25,000 and married couples earning less than $50,000.
It also would benefit businesses and top earners. It would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and lower the highest income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent.
"We have an amazing code," Trump said of his tax system. "It will be simple. It will be easy. It will be fair."
Out of the gate, the plan won an endorsement from Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who hailed the proposed corporate tax cut.
"This makes us competitive worldwide. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs," he tweeted.

 

• But the Trump campaign also claimed the plan "doesn't add to our debt and deficit," and is "revenue neutral." This was met with skepticism by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, which is analyzing the proposal. 

"It's hard to see how the plan would reach revenue neutrality," Kyle Pomerleau, a foundation economist, told FoxNews.com, citing the array of rate cuts and other measures.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former Congressional Budget Office director, noted tax reform plans typically involve lowering rates and broadening the base. "He's lowering the rate and narrowing the base," he said.
Asked about Trump's claim that the plan is revenue-neutral, Holtz-Eakin quipped: "He claims his hair is real, too."
The billionaire real estate mogul says the country would pay for the tax cuts through a combination of eliminating deductions and loopholes. Trump wants to eliminate the so-called "carried interest loophole" that allows managers of hedge funds and private equity firms to pay a lower tax rate than most individuals. He also wants to allow corporations to bring money held in overseas accounts back to the United States after paying a one-time tax of 10 percent.
Trump said the plan would impact the wealthy by reducing or eliminating most deductions and loopholes.
"In other words, it's going to cost me a fortune," he said at a news conference at his Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan.
Pomerleau, though, said Trump's plan likely would cut taxes for low- and high-income filers alike. And the most expensive provision -- for the federal budget -- would likely be the lowering of the top income tax rate, he said.
"That's a big swing from nearly 40 to 25 percent," he said.
Still, the plan would significantly impact the other end of the income spectrum.
While millions of low-income Americans already do not pay federal income taxes, Trump's plan would significantly expand that group -- his campaign says it would remove "nearly 75 million households" from the federal income tax rolls.
According to the Tax Foundation, under current law a single filer with no children would not pay taxes on income under $10,300. Under Trump's plan, that threshold rises to roughly $25,000.
Further, instead of having to file taxes and wait for a refund for any tax dollars that were withheld, lower-income Americans would simply send in a one-page form to the IRS saying, "I win," according to the Trump campaign.
The Trump plan also reduces the number of tax brackets from seven to four.
Pomerleau said, overall, "simplification is better."
Trump estimated that his plan would lead the economy to grow at least 3 percent a year, and as much as 5 or 6 percent.
The tax plan is the third major policy proposal from Trump, who has also outlined plans for immigration and guns. He has been criticized for failing to unveil specific policy proposals as he's risen in early polling.
Club for Growth Action, whose parent group has been feuding with Trump in recent weeks, put out a statement contrasting Monday's plan with Trump's "long history of calling for the largest tax increase in U.S. history."
"His tax plan begs the question: Does this mean you were completely wrong about all your liberal policies on taxes, trade, health care, bailouts, and eminent domain?" the group said in a statement.

Obama, Putin sharply disagree over chaos in Syria

President Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin wrapped up their first face-to-face meeting in nearly a year late Monday at the United Nations summit where they fundamentally disagreed over the chaos in Syria.
A U.S. official said the pair have agreed to discuss political transition in Syria but were at odds over the role that Syrian President Bahar al-Assad should play in resolving the civil conflict.
The official said Obama reiterated to Putin that he does not believe there is a path to stability in Syria with Assad in power. Putin has said the world needs to support Assad because his military has the best chance to defeat Islamic State militants.
Putin said the meeting, which lasted a little over 90 minutes, was “very constructive, business-like and frank” and the two world leaders discussed Russia’s potential involvement in a military campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria.
“We are thinking about it, and we don’t exclude anything.” Putin told reporters.
The Kremlin chief said that any Russian action would be in accordance with the international law.

More on this...

• Obama to meet with Putin at the United Nations

Putin said he and Obama discussed the U.S.-led coalition's action against ISIS. He did not mention Russia's behavior in backing rebels in Ukraine or its takeover of Crimea, which was at the top of the Obama agenda.
A senior administration official described the meeting as “business-like back and forth” and productive.
The two met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Syria and Ukraine were expected to top the agenda for the sit-down.
Earlier, the two clashed sharply in separate addresses to the General Assembly in New York City, with Obama urging a political transition to replace the Syrian president but Putin warning it would be a mistake to abandon the current government.
Obama said the U.S. is "prepared to work" with Russia and Iran to resolve the bloody Syrian civil war.
But, in a clear reference to Putin's support for the regime in Damascus, Obama said the world cannot see a "return to the pre-war status quo" in Syria.
"Let's remember how this started," Obama said. "[Bashar] Assad reacted to peaceful protests by escalating repression and killing."
Without elaborating, Obama said "compromise" will be required to end the fighting in Syria and stomp out the Islamic State. But he said there must be a "transition" away from Assad.
Putin, though, used his own address to voice support for the Syrian government and argue that its military is the only viable option for defeating the Islamic State.
"We believe it's a huge mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities, with the government forces, those who are bravely fighting terror face-to-face," Putin said during his first appearance at the U.N. gathering in a decade.
Obama and Putin's disparate views of the grim situation in Syria left little indication of how the two countries might work together to end a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and resulted in a flood of refugees.
The Syria crisis largely overshadowed the summit's other discussions on peacekeeping, climate change and global poverty.
The Obama-Putin meeting comes as Moscow builds up its military presence in Syria, for reasons that U.S. officials have said remain unclear.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Planned Parenthood president says she's 'proud' of organization's actions amid controversy

Planned Parenthood's president will tell a House committee Tuesday that she is "proud" of the work her organization does, even as the organization is embroiled in a controversy over videos depicting the sale of fetal tissue.
Cecile Richards will testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee Tuesday morning. It will be her first appearance since the scandal erupted this past July.
The ten videos released so far by a group called the Center for Medical Progress capture Planned Parenthood officials casually describing how they sometimes obtain tissue from aborted fetuses for researchers. In one video, a doctor for a Planned Parenthood tissue harvesting partner appears to admit a baby’s “heart actually is still beating” at times following abortions and an ex-procurement tech gives a first-person account of watching a baby’s heart beat before she dissects its brain.
Planned Parenthood foes say the videos show the group breaks federal laws barring for-profit fetal tissue sales and altering abortion procedures to obtain usable organs. Planned Parenthood and its defenders say it's done nothing illegal and says that Daleiden dishonestly edited the videos to distort what was said.
In prepared testimony for her appearance Thursday obtained by Fox News, Richards said Planned Parenthood "is proud of its limited role in supporting fetal tissue research." She said just 1 percent of Planned Parenthood's nearly 700 clinics obtain fetal tissue for researchers seeking disease cures
She also fires back at Center for Medical Progress Project Lead David Daleiden, calling for him to be investigated after she says he "tried unsuccessfully to entrap Planned Parenthood physicians and staff for nearly three years." Daleiden obtained the videos after posing as an executive of a nonexistent firm that buys fetal tissue for scientists.

More on this...

• Will GOP push shutdown showdown over Planned Parenthood?

"It is clear they acted fraudulently and unethically—and perhaps illegally," Richards says. "Yet it is Planned Parenthood, not Mr. Daleiden, that is currently subject to four separate congressional investigations."
So far, the most damage inflicted on Planned Parenthood by the videos is the insensitive way some of its officials discuss the procedures. That has drawn apologies from Planned Parenthood and bitter criticism from Republicans.
Most Democrats have rallied behind the group, and President Barack Obama has threatened to veto GOP legislation cutting its federal money. Public opinion polls show majorities oppose blocking Planned Parenthood's taxpayer dollars. Departing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., fearing voter anger, have rebuffed conservatives who would shut down the government if Obama doesn't agree to halt Planned Parenthood's money.
The organization receives about a third of its $1.3 billion annual budget, around $450 million, from federal coffers, chiefly reimbursements for treating Medicaid's low-income patients.
Democrats have used a Senate filibuster -- a virtually endless procedural delay -- to block GOP legislation halting Planned Parenthood's federal payments. So two House committees plan to approve filibuster-proof legislation shifting Planned Parenthood's Medicaid funds -- about $350 million -- to community health centers.
The bill would also keep a promise made during this spring's budget debate to repeal key elements of Obama's signature health care law. Panel votes are expected Tuesday and Wednesday.
In addition to the four congressional committee investigations of Planned Parenthood, Boehner has said he will also appoint a special committee to probe the group.
Planned Parenthood has defended itself with newspaper ads, petition campaigns and lawsuits against state efforts to curb its funding. On Tuesday, volunteers and supporters scheduled events in nearly 90 cities and planned to give lawmakers more than 2 million signatures on "I Stand With Planned Parenthood" petitions.

State Dept: Clinton email storage safe not secure for some messages

WASHINGTON –  The State Department has told Senate investigators that it didn't provide Hillary Rodham Clinton's lawyer with a secure-enough method to read now-highly classified material from her homebrew email server because it didn't anticipate that the messages would be deemed so secret.
In July, State Department officials installed a safe at the office of attorney David Kendall after the government determined some of Clinton's emails may have contained classified information. But it said last week the safe wasn't suitable for so-called top secret, sensitive compartmented information, known as TS/SCI, which the government has said was found in some messages.
Assistant Secretary of State Julia Frifield wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley on Sept. 22 that "while the safe was suitable for up to (top secret) information, it was not approved for TS/SCI material" because the material wasn't held in a facility set up for discussing highly secret information, known as a SCIF, or sensitive compartmented information facility.
Those questions were not an issue at the time the safe was installed because "there was no indication that the emails might contain TS or TS/SCI material," Frifield wrote in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. Kendall has a top secret security clearance.
The State Department's letter underscores how even the nation's diplomatic apparatus didn't anticipate Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, would have sent or received such highly sensitive information on her private email server while secretary of state. Questions about her use of such a server have at times dominated her White House run.
Kendall and a Clinton spokesman did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.
"It shows how badly the wires were crossed" between the State Department, which didn't anticipate any of the emails would be top secret, and the intelligence community, which decided they were classified, said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists.
The State Department also said it was unaware of whether anyone's security clearances were suspended pending an investigation into possible improper handling of classified information, one of several questions posed by Grassley, R-Iowa. Such an action is not uncommon amid such classification reviews, said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who deals regularly with security clearance matters.
The AP in March first discovered that Clinton ran her server off an Internet connection traced to her Chappaqua, New York, home. Clinton later confirmed she operated the server for convenience but did not provide details on how well the basement server was backed up or how adequately it was protected from hackers.
Since then, the State Department has indicated through Freedom of Information Act releases of Clinton's emails that dozens of messages that passed through her private server were later deemed classified. Most messages released so far have been marked "confidential," the lowest level of U.S. government classification.
But two emails, although not marked classified at the time they were sent, have since been slapped with a "TK" marking, for the "talent keyhole" compartment, suggesting material obtained by spy satellites, according to the inspector general for the intelligence community. They also were marked "NOFORN," meaning information that can only be shared with Americans with security clearances.
One email included a discussion of a U.S. drone strike, part of a covert program that is nevertheless widely known. A second conversation could have improperly referred to highly classified material, but it also could have reflected information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told the AP.
Clinton has since apologized for using a private server and said she's provided copies of all the messages she was required to turn over. She reiterated in a recent interview that she didn't "send or receive any material marked 'classified.' We dealt with classified material on a totally different system. I dealt with it in person."
Since earlier this year, government investigators — and her political adversaries in particular — have focused on Clinton's email practices that effectively bypassed government-run systems. Also potentially at issue is whether Clinton withheld any work-related emails from the roughly 30,000 messages she provided to the State Department.
The AP is one of several organizations that have sued the State Department for records during her tenure, including emails to and from Clinton and her former top aides.

UN Cartoon

Downsize UN role in refugee crises, US relief agency suggests

One of America’s largest non-profit relief organizations is warning that the practice of shoveling mountains of money at major humanitarian emergencies like Syria is being overwhelmed by the scale of disasters the world faces, and that rich countries  need to try something drastically new—starting with less reliance on bureaucracy-bound United Nations relief agencies.
“Our humanitarian communities are maxed out,” warns Andrea Koppel, vice-president of global engagement and strategy for Mercy Corps, a Portland, Oregon-based disaster relief agency that operates in more than 40 countries, often alongside such agencies as UNICEF and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.  “There has to be recognition from all donor governments that the status quo is not working. We are using humanitarian assistance as a band aid.”
Her warning came two days after the Obama Administration announced it would sent $419 million more in aid for Syria, which has been engulfed in civil war for nearly five years.
“We are really at a crossroads with the traditional aid system,” Koppel added. The relatively small group of countries that put up the bulk of relief funding “are now waking up to the fact that the status quo is not cutting it.”
Instead, Mercy Corps is calling for a “new normal” in international disaster relief that bypasses U.N. agencies as necessary, especially as international relief coordinators,  and puts more authority in the hands of private relief agencies.
“The existing humanitarian system is too centralized, top down and U.N. focused,” Mercy says in a 58-page analysis that takes stock of the current global crisis environment. “In fragile states in particular, the existing system is unsustainable—both overstretched and underfunded.”
“We need a system that is more cost-effective, less bureaucratic and more nimble if the challenges of the new normal are to be met.”
If not, the mega-disasters that now are sending refugees across Europe’s borders are only likely to multiply and grow.
Mercy Corps’ analysis underlines a grim reality that wealthier nations acknowledge but have not fully confronted. Some of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, such as civil wars, now last for years if not decades, often involve local governments as aggressors or passive actors—which adds to U.N. ineffectiveness--are made worse by other natural disasters like drought, and collectively involve human displacement on a scale not seen since World War II.
They also are often centered in some of the world’s poorest countries, where “fragile state” status is increasingly endemic, internal and external refugee movements are massive, and the black hole of under-funding looms largest.
The under-funding and over-stretching are getting harder and harder to ignore. Last week’s State Department announcement of $419 million in aid for Syria and surrounding countries came only three months after a previous $360 million aid bump—and brought the U.S. total to some $1.6 billion just in fiscal 2016.
All told, the U.S. has given more than $4.5 billion in relief to Syria and surrounding countries since the start of the Assad onslaught against Syrian rebels began in late 2010, making the U.S. far and away the largest single aid donor to the Syrian emergency.
Yet despite that largesse, the overall $8.4 billion United Nations appeal for the regional crisis this year—the U.N. remains the overall aid coordinator—is only 40 percent funded.  As millions of refugees have spilled over into neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq—and now Europe itself—Koppel noted “the human needs have been growing exponentially. There are not enough dollars to meet them.”
“We have never had to operate on so many fronts before,” said a senior official of an international relief organization, who requested anonymity.  “The disasters are more complex, more numerous, and place extreme stress on human resources.” And “they are definitely not going to get better.”
The problem is not only the magnitude of challenges in Syria, the surrounding Middle East, and long-festering disasters like the Democratic Republic of Congo, , the Mercy report says. The difficult also lies with the origins of “international aid architecture” in the development of the U.N. itself.
The analysis cites among other things a numbing array of U.N. bureaucratic institutions—“the humanitarian coordinator system, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, interagency needs assessments, the consolidated appeals process”-- that were created in 1991  and have only updated slightly since. These were “not designed for the challenges of the modern 21^st-Century world,” the report says. Subsequent U.N. attempts to jerry-rig improvements “remain unrealized.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT 
The better idea, Mercy argues, would be to sweep away the old institutions where they are not likely to be effective and place greater reliance on new combinations of private-sector organizations, civil society groups and different levels of government. This, the report says, would allow humanitarian organizations to take bigger risks to support local victims regardless of government response, and work faster and more easily with local communities when national governments are virtually non-existent.
It would also help move relief efforts more quickly toward blending longer-term—and cheaper—solutions with short term aid that can merely leave refugees as a dependent community in place, and  reduce some of the underlying accelerators of violence, or at least make it easier for refugees to return when violence or other calamities abate.
Not surprisingly, Mercy’s argument is based on some of its own achievements—which the relief  organization, founded in 1979, also feels deserve more attention.
In Syria, for example, Mercy, along with other private-sector organizations, has for several years been doing what U.N. agencies were unable to do—operate in areas outside  Assad government control to bring food, medical supplies and emergency relief to millions of Syrians under assault by their Russian-backed government.
The decision to go where the vast majority of Syrians were suffering first involved creation of a separate relief organization on Syria’s borders while Mercy still operated another relief arm under Assad supervision, then a decision to break with the Assad government entirely. Funding continued to come from USAID, British government agencies and the European Commission.
With the cooperation of thousands of Syrian volunteers, community organizations and aid workers Mercy is still bringing those supplies across neighboring borders to some 500,000 Syrians per month, in one of the most dangerous civil war zones in the world, including besieged communities under ferocious assault by Assad with chlorine bombs and other weapons of mass devastation.
That situation has been further compounded by the aggressive savagery of the Islamic Front, which has pushed even more Syrians and neighboring Iraqis into flight. There, the risks are so great, Koppel says, that “we made a decision a year or two ago not to operate in areas where the Islamic State is also operating.”
U.N. agencies, on the other hand, were largely constrained for years by their ties with the Assad regime and were largely blocked from sending aid to areas not under Assad’s control, even after a 2014 U.N. Security Council resolution—nearly four years after the ugly conflict began—finally allowed the U.N. to start up similar cross-border relief.
“When it came to the massive needs in the rest of the country,” says a senior official with an international relief agency, “ the international side”—the U.N.—“was completely paralyzed.”
In the vacuum, however, non-government organizations such as Mercy learned that they too could provide relief services at U.N.-scale.
The question is whether major donor nations will agree.
For its part, the U.S. government says it is not tilting one way or the other, even though more than half of its latest $419 million infusion of Syria aid--$236.5 million—goes to unspecified NGOs, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees getting less than a third of that amount.
A senior State Department official told Fox News that the disparity had more to do with State Department funding cycles than with a tilt toward non-government relief agencies.
“That’s why we have so many different organizations to support,” the official said. “they each have different strengths.”
The issue of how best to rebuild the world humanitarian order will get a U.N.-sponsored look in May 2016, at a first-ever World Humanitarian Summit slated to take place in Istanbul.
In customary U.N. fashion, a year-long series of  regional U.N. summit meetings on the humanitarian topic began in  June 2014 and ground on through July 2015. They will be followed by an Internet-based “Global Consultation” in Geneva in October.
One thing the U.N. has already made clear, however, is that the “fundamental principles” enshrined in its 1991 reworking of the ungainly international relief system, will “guide our work,” even as the U.N. explores “how to create a more global, inclusive and effective humanitarian system.”

Bill Clinton blames Republicans, media for extending wife Hillary's email controversy

Former President Bill Clinton is blaming Republicans and the media for the controversy related to wife and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email controversy, saying the GOP has led a “full-scale frontal assault” on her campaign.
Clinton entered the race as the clear party front-runner. But her poll and favorability numbers have dropped since news broke in March that she used a private server and email accounts for official business while serving as secretary of state.
“I have never seen so much expended on so little,” the former president said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN. “The other party doesn’t want to run against her. And if they do, they’d like her as mangled up as possible.”
Clinton maintains that she didn’t break any rules or laws by using the private system, including those on sending and receiving confidential emails. But she has admitted to making a mistake in judgment and has said she is sorry, in an effort to bury the controversy.
She has turned over thousands of official emails that the government is releasing in batches. And federal officials reportedly will be able to recover those she deemed private and deleted, which is prolonging the controversy.
Bill Clinton likened the email controversy to questions over the Whitewater land deal that he faced during his 1992 presidential campaign. Saying the furor was more politics than substance, Clinton argued that his wife has been open in answering questions and will bounce back from a decline in the polls.
“She said she was sorry that her personal email caused all this confusion,” he said. “And she’d like to give the election back to the American people. And I trust the people. I think it will be all right.”
Clinton added that the news media also played an inappropriate role in his wife’s troubles.
“You know, at the beginning of the year, she was the most admired person in public life,” he said. “What happened? The presidential campaign happened. And the nature of the coverage shifted from issue-based to political.”
In addition, the Obama administration on Friday reportedly discovered a chain of emails that his wife failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of her work-related correspondence as the country’s top diplomat
Their existence challenges her claim that she has handed over the entirety of her work emails from the account.
"I think that there are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons,” Bill Clinton said. “And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her. And so this email thing became the biggest story in the world.

Boehner says he would have survived recall vote, vows no government shutdown

House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday struck a defiant tone after announcing his resignation two days earlier, saying he would have had enough votes to survive a potential recall effort and that House conservatives won’t get a government shutdown.
“Winning that vote was never an issue,” Boehner told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I was going to get the overwhelming numbers of [votes]. I would have gotten 400 votes probably.”
Had Boehner submitted to such a vote, he would have needed at least 218 of them from the House’s 435 members.
However, the Ohio lawmaker said he didn’t want fellow House Republicans to “walk a plank” to keep him in charge of the GOP-controlled chamber.
“They're going to get criticized at home by some who think that we ought to be more aggressive,” Boehner said.
The vote to replace Boehner could come as early as this week. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, No. 2 in Boehner's leadership team, reportedly has enough votes to become speaker. However, it's unclear whether the chamber's conservative caucus will field a candidate or even have enough votes to challenge a more moderate candidate or force multiple rounds of balloting.
Boehner also said Sunday “no” to the possibility that the federal government will partially shut down Wednesday because Congress will indeed pass a stop-gap spending bill without funding for Planned Parenthood -- a measure President Obama has vowed to veto.
The effort to defund Planned Parenthood was essentially led by the same small-but-powerful group on conservative House members who were trying to ouster Boehner.
Boehner said Sunday that the GOP-led Senate is expected next week to pass a continuing resolution, or temporary spending measure, and that the House will take up the Senate bill.
Boehner will now almost certainly have enough votes, with support from Democrats, to pass the legislation without fear of retaliation from conservatives.
“I expect my Democrat colleagues want to keep the government open as much as I do,” he said.
Still, Boehner, who became speaker in the 2010 Tea Party wave election, said House leaders will form a special select committee to address recently released videos featuring Planned Parenthood executives that have resulted in the defund effort.
The secretly recorded videos show group executives at times callously discussing the legal sale of fetal tissue.
Boehner said he will vacate his leadership post and House seat by October 30 and that he plans until then to try to pass “conservative legislation.”
However, he was not specific about such key, looming issues as passing a comprehensive transportation bill and a measure to keep open the government’s Import-Export bank.
“I expect that might have a little more cooperation from some around town to try to get as much finished as possible,” Boehner said. “I don't want to leave my successor a dirty barn. I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there.”

Bush not concerned about weekly polls, but says he needs to be better candidate

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Sunday downplayed polls showing he has yet to recapture his early, front-runner status but acknowledged that he needs to be a better candidate.
“Candidates have to get better, and that’s what I intend to do,” the former Florida governor told “Fox News Sunday.” "These polls really don't matter. ... I know it's an obsession because it kind of frames the debate for people for that week. But I'm in it for the long haul."
Bush is in sixth place among likely Republican voters, according to a Fox News poll released Sunday. He received 7 percent of the vote, and billionaire businessman Donald Trump finished first with 26 percent.
"It is a marathon, and we just started advertising," he also said. "We've got a great ground game in these early states. I'm confident I can win New Hampshire."
Bush also defended his remarks last week about Democratic and Republican candidates competing for the black vote, comments that have been compared to those made in 2012 by GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney after his loss.
"Our message is one of hope and aspiration,” Bush, a favorite among the Republican establishment, said Thursday in early-voting state South Carolina. “It isn't one of division and 'Get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff.’ ”
On Sunday, he said his remarks are, in fact, the opposite of what Romney said.
“To the contrary,” Bush said. “I think we need to make our case to African-American voters and all voters that an aspirational message, fixing a few big complex things, will allow people to rise up. That's what people want. They don't want free stuff. That was my whole point.”
He argued that the average American family’s disposable income has declined by thousands of dollars and that 6 million more Americans are in poverty since President Obama was elected in 2007, while the federal government continues to spend trillions of dollars annually on poverty programs.
“We should try something different, which is to give people the capacity to achieve earned success, fix our schools, fix our economy, lessen the crime rates in the big urban areas and I think people in poverty could be lifted up,” Bush told Fox.
He also said he disagrees with some congressional Republicans’ idea of shutting down the government this week by not agreeing to a spending bill that includes funding for Planned Parenthood.
“That's not the way democracy works,” he said. “It’s better to elect a conservative president who pledges to do it and work with Congress.”
He also backed the efforts of House Speaker John Boehner, who resigned last week, saying he “admired” him and that he will be missed “in the long run.” 

Trump 2016 Cartoon

Donald Trump swears off Fox News after ‘unfair’ treatment

Donald Trump’s disgust for Fox News has reached the point that he has decided not to give the conservative-leaning channel any more interviews for the time being.

The Republican presidential frontrunner has been known to make noise when he feels Fox News has given him the shaft — this week is no exception.

“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” he tweeted Wednesday afternoon.

Mere hours later, the Trump campaign released a statement saying that he stands by his comments.

“As a candidate for president of the United States and the definitive frontrunner in every poll, both nationally and statewide, including the just released poll in the state of Florida, Mr. Trump expects to be treated fairly,” the statement reads. “All you have to do is look at the tremendous ratings last night from ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,’ where Mr. Trump was the guest, or the ratings from both debates, to fully understand the facts.”

Shortly after, a Fox News spokesperson said that Trump’s “boycott” was a direct response to the channel canceling his scheduled appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” Thursday.

“When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome,” the spokesperson said. “He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”

The on-again, off-again feud started when Trump took issue with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s line of questioning at the first GOP primetime debate in early August.

Trump’s disgust with the network sprang back to life Monday night as he live-tweeted throughout Bill O'Reilly’s and Kelly’s programs at 8 and 9 respectively.

Trump, who said he was “having a really hard time” watching Fox News, accused “The O'Reilly Factor” of being “very negative” to him and refusing to publish polls that show him dominating the GOP primary.

In a tweet to the show, Trump wrote, “why don’t you have some knowledgeable talking heads on your show for a change, instead of the same old Trump-haters. The real estate magnate also suggested that Kelly should take another 11-day “unscheduled” vacation.

“Do you ever notice that lightweight @megynkelly constantly goes after me but when I hit back it is totally sexist. She is highly overrated!” Trump said.

Trump retweeted dozens of his supporters who called O'Reilly’s guests “spoon- fed morons” and pro-Bush RINOs (Republican in Name Only), and attacked Kelly for criticizing the Republican frontrunner.  

But the businessman’s anger is not reserved exclusively for Fox News. He also took issue with CNN’s handling of the second primetime GOP debate, held earlier this month.

“I wasn’t treated fairly by CNN,” Trump said to New York Magazine. “And it shouldn’t have been three hours long. It was too long. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying watching three hours of a debate.”

But plenty of people tuned in, largely because of Trump’s Midas touch when it comes to ratings.

For all of our Trump fans, a sweet little morsel left over from yesterday’s Gabriel Sherman post about the latest eruption of the Trump/Fox war.
Are there any Fox News hosts so obsequious towards Trump that they might dial him up and beg him to come back, like Johnny Fontane pleading with the Godfather to help him get that part he always wanted? Seems hard to imagine for most of them. Emphasis on “most.”

One reason there likely won’t be peace in our time is that Trump still has not gotten over Kelly’s questioning of him during the opening Republican primary debate. “She caused me a lot of damage, didn’t she?” Trump recently vented to a friend. “He’s really angry,” a source explained…
Both sides are posturing to save face. Yesterday a Fox statement called Trump’s boycott “stale and tiresome.” But a source close to the Trump campaign told me that Trump thinks he has the leverage. Trump has been hearing from Fox hosts who are worried that his boycott will hurt ratings. The calculus seems to be that by shunning Fox, Trump is hoping to drive a wedge between Fox hosts, Kelly, and Ailes. That may be wishful thinking. As an Ailes friend told me today: “Roger can’t turn back. The entire credibility of Fox as powerbroker rests on Trump being destroyed.”

That theory about Trump’s strategy would be more plausible if he hadn’t attacked Kelly with that nasty bit about bleeding out of her whatever, which was bound to create sympathy for her among her colleagues. I think the real strategy here is straightforward: Boycott Fox and cast them in the role of Republican establishment villain, a bad place to be for a network that presumes to cater to the Republican man on the street. Even if Fox’s ratings don’t begin to dive right now, the seeds will have been planted among pro-Trump viewers that Fox can’t be trusted. Eroding their populist credibility among their viewer base is a process and he’s trying to move that process along.
This bit from Breitbart seems plausible too:

An individual with knowledge of these matters told Breitbart News that Ailes is “furious” at Lowry for saying on Megyn Kelly’s program The Kelly File on Wednesday that former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina “cut [Trump’s] balls off with the precision of a surgeon, and he knows it, he knows it.”
Ailes is mad at Lowry because this move means, in the ongoing war between Fox News and Trump, Fox News has now “given up the moral high ground.” Essentially, Ailes understands, that means his network looks like the unfair aggressor that Trump has accused it of being—rather than a neutral arbiter of the news—all while Trump continues soaring in the 2016 GOP primary polls.

On the one hand, that lends a bit of credence to Sherman’s theory about the wedge that Trump is supposedly trying to drive between Kelly and the rest of the Fox universe. Colleagues who sympathized with her over the “bleeding” remark might not be as sympathetic now that her show was used by Lowry to throw a scatological insult back at Trump. It’s one thing for Fox to cover him unsparingly, it’s another thing to deliberately antagonize him. On the other hand, that supports my theory too that Trump’s true aim mainly is to hurt Fox’s credibility with its populist viewers. The litmus test for whether a media outlet is “establishment” is whether it’s treating him “unfairly,” whatever that means. Lowry’s comment about Fiorina cutting his balls off is something that a viewer who’s not sure about his critique of Fox could point to as proof that Trump’s right and that they really are out to get him. It’s unimaginable that the same sort of “balls” taunt would be aimed by a guest at, say, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. So now Ailes needs to make a big show about entertaining Trump’s grievances in order to show his fans among the Fox viewership that he’s taking their concerns seriously.

Bill Clinton blasts media for overblowing Hillary email scandal: 'Never seen so much expended on so little'

President Clinton isn't buying into the scandal swirling around his wife's use of personal emails during her time as Secretary of State.
In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, the 42nd President of the United States said the controversy is merely "catnip" that the Republican Party is tossing at his wife in order to distract voters from the real issues like student loan debt, income inequality, mental health care and more.
"I actually am amazed she's borne up under it as well as she has; I've never seen so much expended on so little," Clinton said.He also pointed blame at the media, which the former president suggested has a knack for picking a candidate to target.
"The press has to have somebody every election — we're going to give them you. You better not run," he said, recounting a phone call he received from the George H. W. Bush administration in 1992, warning him not to run for president.
Clinton credited some in the media: "There have been a shocking number of really reputable press people who have explained how you can't receive or transmit classified information, how the government has no central authority for classification and that Defense, State and the intelligence agencies have their own."
He concluded: "I mean, there have been a lot of really fine things. It's just that they don't seem to show up on television very much. And it is what it is."

France launches first airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria

PARIS –  France has fired its first airstrikes in Syria as it expands military operations against Islamic State extremists, President Francois Hollande's office announced Sunday.
The office said that "France has hit Syria" based on information from French reconnaissance flights sent earlier this month. It didn't provide any further details.
France has been firing airstrikes on IS extremists in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition since last year, but had resisted airstrikes in Syria because it didn't want to strengthen President Bashar Assad. Hollande announced a change in strategy earlier this month because of growing concern about the Syrian refugee crisis.
The president's office argued Sunday that it was a question of national defense, as France has been attacked and threatened by extremists claiming ties to IS.
Hollande, heading to the U.N. General Assembly, also stressed the importance of seeking a political solution for Syria.
"More than ever the urgency is putting in place a political transition," including elements of the opposition and Assad's regime, Hollande said.
France has remained opposed however to recent diplomatic suggestions of allowing Assad to stay in power for a limited time.
While no specifics were provided about the location or timing of the airstrikes, French military officials have said they would target IS training and logistical sites, according to French media reports.
The French government has insisted that while it is part of the U.S.-led coalition, France is deciding who and what to hit independently.
Hollande announced Sept. 7 that France would start airstrikes, days after the photo of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy galvanized public concern about Syrian refugees.
In his statement Sunday, Hollande said: "Civilian populations must be protected from all forms of violence, that of IS and other terrorist groups but also the murderous bombardments of Bashar Assad."

In GOP White House races, candidates cast Boehner's departure as like-minded, anti-establishment victory

Candidates in the Republican presidential primary, which is largely a competition to prove one’s conservative credentials, are mostly applauding the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, which was influenced by the chamber’s far-right members.
On Saturday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suggested voters are unhappy with how Congress is being run and called for a “reset,” though like the other candidates didn’t mention Boehner by name.
“The American people are disappointed,” Christie told Fox News. “They gave our party the majority in both houses and we have not delivered some of the things we need to deliver.”
At the Values Voter Conference, Real estate mogul and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump said Friday that Republican congressional leaders like Boehner are "babies."
He also suggested that Boehner was personally likable but said, "We want people who are going to get it done."
The annual event, this weekend in Washington, has become something of a victory lap for conservative activists, as the 2016 candidates celebrate Boehner's departure by lashing out at congressional Republicans for not fighting hard enough for conservative priorities.
In the 2016 White House race, anti-establishment candidates such as Trump and Democratic candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have done well tapping into voters' frustration with the Washington establishment.
Fellow top-tier candidate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Friday said, "I'm not here to bash anyone, but the time has come to turn the page."
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another GOP candidate, suggested that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also should resign.
Jindal said it's time for "a clean slate" of Republican leaders in Congress.
The Louisiana governor has struggled to stand out in the crowded Republican presidential field. He's been increasingly critical of the GOP establishment in recent weeks.
Jindal called congressional Republicans "the surrender caucus." He said Boehner and McConnell "need to surrender their gavels" to make room for "someone who is willing to fight to protect our conservative ideals."

Trump stays on top in first post-debate Fox News poll

Businessman Donald Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination following his last debate performance, a new poll says.

 

Trump remains 8 points above his nearest competition following last week’s contest in Simi Valley, Calif., according to a Fox News survey.

 

 

Trump commands 26 percent support. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, meanwhile, ranks second, with 18 percent.

 

Trump led an August version of the poll with 25 percent, followed by Carson at 12 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 10 percent.

 

Fox News’s latest results follow Trump’s boycott against the media outlet earlier Wednesday following repeated spats with its various personalities.

 

“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly and I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” Trump tweeted.

 

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tied for third place in Fox's poll with 9 percent apiece.

 

Cruz took fifth place with 8 percent, and former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) took sixth with 7 percent.

 

Trump, Carson, Fiorina and Rubio have all gone up in polling since the August version of the poll. Trump had 25 percent then, while Carson had 12 percent, Fiorina had 5 percent and Rubio 4 percent.

 

Bush and Cruz, meanwhile, have slid since August. Bush had 15 percent in that survey, and Cruz 10 percent.

 

The media outlet’s new samplings come as Republicans gravitate toward political outsiders during the 2016 election cycle.

 

Carson, Fiorina and Trump are all receiving significant interest for their campaigns despite the fact they each lack public service experience.

 

Fox News’s latest sampling said its results stem from a deep dissatisfaction among Republican voters with their party’s political establishment.

 

It found 62 percent of GOP primary voters feel “betrayed” by members of their political party serving in public office. Another 66 percent said the Republican-led Congress had not done enough to counter President Obama’s agenda.

 

Fox News conducted its sampling with 1,013 random cellphone and landline interviews conducted by Shaw & Co. Research Sept. 20-22 nationwide. It has a 4.5 percent margin of error among GOP primary voters.

Welfare Queen Cartoon

Maine mayor pushing bill to post welfare recipients’ addresses online

What's New?  Half the people in America sucks off of Welfare.

A Maine mayor is proposing a controversial name-and-shame strategy for welfare recipients, saying he plans to push a bill requiring the state to publish the names and addresses and other details for “every individual on the dole.”
Robert Macdonald, mayor of Lewiston, Maine, pitched the plan in his regular column for the Twin City Times. He noted that a website already lists information on state pensioners, and complained that “liberal, progressive legislators” think similar information on welfare recipients should be private.
“Well, the days of being quiet are gone,” he wrote. “We will be submitting a bill to the next legislative session asking that a website be created containing the names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected by every individual on the dole.
“After all, the public has a right to know how its money is being spent,” Macdonald said.
As Macdonald is a local official, he would need to get a state lawmaker to introduce the plan in the legislature. He told the Portland Press Herald he has discussed the plan with two state lawmakers.
The idea, though, quickly drew criticism in the state and beyond – including from his opponent in November’s election.
"Mayor MacDonald is wasting everyone's time,” Democratic candidate Ben Chin told FoxNews.com in an email. “He's never passed a single policy at the local level, let alone in the state legislature. Resorting to publicly shaming poor people is a sad, desperate act.”
Maine, though, is no stranger to controversial restrictions on welfare. Though the program commonly known as “welfare” uses federal dollars, states have the authority to set conditions on the funding, and Maine Gov. Paul LePage has pursued such reforms including drug-testing some recipients.
Macdonald defended his plan in an interview with the Press Herald.
“Go into a grocery store. They flaunt it,” he said of welfare recipients. “I’m not sorry. I hope this makes people think twice about applying for welfare.”
In his column, Macdonald also said he’d introduce a bill limiting assistance to 60 months total.