United States – Page 4

#Blacklives pepper-sprayed in Cleveland

Cleveland police had to use pepper spray against activists attending the national convention of the Movement for Black Lives. Scuffles and arrests were reported after the weekend conference wrapped-up and people poured onto the streets

Hundreds of activists from across the nation gathered at Cleveland State University this weekend for the first national conference to discuss escalating tensions between US police and black communities.

Following the closing session on Sunday, as most of the attendees left, dozens of people remained in the streets. Police, apparently concerned by the crowd potentially blocking traffic, moved in to disperse the gathering.

“Cleveland looks just like Ferguson, looks just like Baltimore, looks just like all of these places that have high [levels of] oppression,” said local organizer Malaya Davis, as cited by cleveland.com. “We wanted to highlight that and bring some attention to what’s going on in this city and the state of Ohio as well.”

Among notable speakers attending the conference was the father of Michael Brown, shot and killed in Ferguson. The mother of Eric Garner, who died after a police choke hold in New York City, also attended, in addition to the mother of Tamir Rice.

Trump’s top insults

2016 GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump has been hurling insult after insult on the campaign trail.

Trump has let loose on both Democrats and Republicans, rival candidates, lawmakers, journalists and even pop culture icons.

He blasted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), questioning the Vietnam veteran’s service and saying he was “not a war hero,” brought him wide criticism.

Trump held 24 percent support among likely Republican voters according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll earlier this week. But the poll also suggested his support dropped following the remarks about McCain.
Trump, though, is showing no sign he’ll tone down his attacks.

Cataloguing all of Trump’s insults over the years would be a herculean task. The real estate mogul and reality TV star has never pulled his punches, with many long and high-profile feuds, including with talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, NBA owner Mark Cuban and comedian Bill Maher.

Here are Trump’s most notable insults so far in the 2016 campaign:

Former President George W. Bush: — “You mean George Bush sends our soldiers into combat, they are severely wounded, and then he wants $120,000 to make a boring speech to them?” asked Trump on July 9, after reports the former president charged a vets group for a speech. “Bush didn’t have the IQ [to be president],” he added on June 16.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) — “I’m not a big fan. The last thing we need is another Bush,” Trump said on June 16. Trump’s account also retweeted an insult to Bush’s wife on July 4th: “@RObHeilbron: @realDonaldTrump #JebBush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.” It was later deleted.

Hillary Clinton — “Hillary Clinton was the worst secretary of State in the history of the United States,” Trump told Business Insider.

His account on April 16 also retweeted an attack on Clinton: “@mplefty67: If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” Trump said a campaign staffer was responsible and deleted the tweet.

Anderson Cooper — “What a waste of time being interviewed by@andersoncooper when he puts on really stupid talking heads like Tim O’Brien-dumb guy with no clue!” Trump tweeted on July 22 after his interview with the CNN anchor.

During his interview, Trump told Cooper: “The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media.”

Bill Cosby — Trump said he believed the sexual assault allegations against the comedian, calling him “guilty as hell.” “I’ve known him, and I’ve never liked him,” Trump said in a July radio interview. “I think he is a highly overrated guy, both in talent and in many other ways,”

Des Moines Register — After the paper called on Trump to drop out, he dismissed it as a “sophomoric editorial” and called their coverage “uneven and inconsistent, but far more importantly, very dishonest.”

Forbes Magazine — “Why does a failed magazine like @Forbes constantly seek out trivial nonsense? Their circulation way down. @Clare_OC,” Trump tweeted on July 9.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) —”What a stiff, what a stiff, Lindsey Graham. By the way he has registered zero in the polls,” Trump said, at a campaign speech in Bluffton, S.C. on July 21. “A total lightweight. In the private sector, he couldn’t get a job. Believe me. Couldn’t get a job. He couldn’t do what you people did. You’re retired as hell and rich. He wouldn’t be rich; he’d be poor.”

Trump also shared Graham’s personal cellphone number and said he had begged him to help get on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.”

“What’s this guy, a beggar? He’s like begging me to help him with [the show] ‘Fox and Friends.’” Trump said of Graham on “CBS This Morning,” on July 21.

Jonah Goldberg — “Jonah Goldberg @JonahNRO of the once great @NRO#National Review is truly dumb as a rock. Why does @BretBaier put this dummy on his show?” Trump tweeted, criticizing the conservative columnist on April 20.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — Trump said the Mexican drug lord would be no match for him. “Can you envision Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton negotiating with ‘El Chapo’, the Mexican drug lord who escaped from prison? …Trump, however, would kick his ass!” he tweeted on July 12. Trump later called in the FBI after a death threat from a Twitter account associated with Guzman.

Arianna Huffington — “The liberal clown @ariannahuff told her minions at the money losing @HuffingtonPost to cover me as entertainment. I am #1 in Huff Post Poll,” Trump tweeted on July 18.

Penn Jillette — After the magician and comedian criticized Trump, he responded on July 16, tweeting: “I hear @pennjillette show on Broadway is terrible. Not surprised, boring guy (Penn). Without The Apprentice, show would have died long ago.” He then followed up with, “I loved firing goofball atheist Penn @pennjillette on The Apprentice. He never had a chance. Wrote letter to me begging for forgiveness.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) — “What people don’t know about Kasich- he was a managing partner of the horrendous Lehman Brothers when it totally destroyed the economy!” Trump tweeted on May 20.

Charles Krauthammer — “One of the worst and most boring political pundits on television is @krauthammer. A totally overrated clown who speaks without knowing facts,” Trump tweeted about the conservative writer and Fox News contributor on June 4. A tweet a day later called him a “dumpy political pundit” and took issue with Krauthammer’s support for the Iraq war. Krauthammer brought on Trump’s ire by mocking his then-low standing in the polls.

Bill Kristol — When the Weekly Standard editor belittled Trump’s chances against Hillary, Trump responded on July 23, tweeting, “Bill, your small and slightly failing magazine will be a giant success when you finally back Trump. Country will soar!”

Mitt Romney — “Why would anybody listen to @MittRomney? He lost an election that should have easily been won against Obama. By the way,so did John McCain!” Trump tweeted of the 2012 Republican nominee on July 18.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at a rally on July 18. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” This followed a July 16 tweet saying, “@SenJohnMcCain should be defeated in the primaries. Graduated last in his class at Annapolis–dummy!” The insults came after McCain said Trump had “fired up the crazies” on immigration.

Macy’s — Trump called for a boycott after the department store dropped his men’s clothing line. “I hope the boycott of @Macys continues forever. So many people are cutting up their cards. Macy’s stores suck and they are bad for U.S.A.,” he tweeted on July 16. “Boycott @Macys, no guts, no glory. Besides, there are far better stores!” he tweeted later.

Mexico — Trump lambasted the southern neighbor. “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” he said on May 30 at his campaign launch. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The remarks led a number of businesses to cut their ties with him.

He doubled down after the escape of a top drug kingpin. “It’s a corrupt place,” Trump said on July 17. “It’s a terrible court system.” “Let’s put it this way,” he added, “I’m not going to Mexico.”

President Obama — Trump has long said he is not sure Obama was born in the U.S. and slammed his policies, calling him the “worst ever president.” Obama hit back at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, mocking Trump who was in attendance.

But Trump hasn’t let up. During the Baltimore riots in April this year he tweeted: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”

He also Obama to leave office early and golf on one of his many courses. “If he’d like to play, that’s fine. In fact, I’d love for him to leave early and play. That’d be a very good thing,” he said at his campaign launch in June.

After the Chattanooga shooting, Trump pressed Obama to lower the flag for the victims. “We have a president who just can’t say a few words: ‘Put the flags at half-mast for the five Marines that were just killed.’ Why? Why? Why?” Trump said at a South Carolina rally on July 21. “It’s almost like, does he read the papers? Does he watch television?”

Lawrence O’Donnell — “Dopey @Lawrence O’Donnell, whose unwatchable show is dying in the ratings, said that my Apprentice $ numbers were wrong. He is a fool!” Trump tweeted on July 16 of the MSNBC host.

Former Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) — Perry has been a tough critic of Trump’s rhetoric on immigration. “Rick Perry failed at the border. Now he is critical of me. He needs a new pair of glasses to see the crimes committed by illegal immigrants,” Trump tweeted on July 5th.

On July 16, he added, “@GovernorPerry failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate.”

“He’s doing very poorly in the polls. He put on glasses so people will think he’s smart. And it just doesn’t work! You know people can see through the glasses,” Trump said at a rally on July 21.

Former Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.) — Trump tweeted that Pataki “couldn’t be elected dog catcher if he ran again—so he didn’t!” Trump tweeted July 1. He followed up with: “.@GovernorPataki was a terrible governor of NY, one of the worst — would’ve been swamped if he ran again!”

Karl Rove — Trump went off on the Republican strategist’s record in 2012 record. “@KarlRove wasted $400 million + and didn’t win one race—a total loser.@FoxNews,” he tweeted on July 16, followed by “Irrelevant clown @KarlRove sweats and shakes nervously on @FoxNews as he talks ‘bull’ about me. Has zero cred. Made fool of himself in ’12.” Trump even called out the network: “@FoxNewsYou shouldn’t have @KarlRove on the air—he’s a clown with zero credibility—a Bushy!”

Kristen Stewart — “Robert [Pattinson] I’m getting a lot of heat for saying you should dump Kristen- but I’m right. If you saw the Miss Universe girls you would reconsider.” Trump tweeted of the stars of the “Twilight” series on July 16.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — “[Sanders] knows the country is ripped off. And I know the country is being ripped off,” Trump told The Hill on July 23. “The difference is that I can do something about it and he can’t. He’ll never be able to negotiate with China.”

Republican National Committee — “The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” Trump toldThe Hill on July 23. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”

Chuck Todd —“I hear that sleepy eyes @chucktodd will be fired like a dog from ratings starved Meet The Press? I can’t imagine what is taking so long!” Trump tweeted on July 12 about the “Meet the Press” host.

Univision — “@Univision cares far more about Mexico than it does about the U.S. Are they controlled by the Mexican government?” Trump tweeted on June 26 after the network cut ties with him over his immigration remarks. “Has anyone seen the financials of @Univision. They are doing really badly. Too much debt and not enough viewers. Need money fast. Funny!” he followed up on July 11.

The Wall Street Journal — Trump has had a long feud with owner Rupert Murdoch. After the paper questioned his candidacy, Trump tweeted on July 20: “The ever dwindling @WSJ which is worth about 1/10 of what it was purchased for, is always hitting me politically. Who cares!”

George Will — “Shouldn’t George Will have to give a disclaimer every time he is on Fox that his wife works for Scott Walker?” Trump tweeted, taking on the Washington Post columnist on July 22.

Juan Williams — “@TheJuanWilliams you never speak well of me & yet when I saw you at Fox you ran over like a child and wanted a picture,” tweeted Trump on July 3 of the Fox personality.

Source: The Hill

Trump: ‘People don’t trust the media’

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that was broadcasted tonight Republican candidate for president Donald Trump berated the reporter for continuing to address polls that shed him in a negative light instead of polls showing his upper-tier status.

“I am leading across the board,” Trump said in the interview. “And then you hit me with this poll that I didn’t see before, where oh, gee, it’s not even that kind of a poll. All i know is I have a very big group of support. And I think one of the reasons.”

“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why,” Trump lectured Cooper.

Trump also said the American dream is “dead,” but he will revive it and “make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before.

“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why. You know, I have always been covered, fairly, accurately because it was usually a financial press. And you know numbers are numbers and my numbers happen to be great. So, I was always sort of treated fair.

“With the media it’s, not all cases, some, some of the political media is great. And really honest. Even if they’ve don’t want to want to be, they’re really honest. But I find that 60%, 70% of the political media is really, really dishonest.”

Rant shows how diversity is celebrated in NY

A American woman in the US hurls a stream of abuse at a parking attendant for a few minutes over a $15 garage fine – and there are so many swear words it would make even the most hard-boiled men wince.

The woman and her girlfriend arrived at the garage on Broadway in New York seven minutes late to collect their car and were slapped a $15 fine.

Instead of coughing up, one of them went berserk and turned the air blue. In the three-minute clip, the woman keeps humiliating the man who is not shown.

She lashes out at the attendant accusing him of poor English skills, being a looser and mocking his place of birth and job.

“Why don’t you learn to speak English? You f**king idiot! You’re garbage! You’re a piece of s**t!” she keeps on shouting for several minutes.

No one present at the scene tried to bring the woman to reason and curtail her ethnocentric rant.

Liberal South Africans are ‘good-hearted racists’

White liberal South Africans may have expressed a desire to see justice done, but as “good-hearted racists” they did not want to give up any of their wealth and privileges, says Micheal Hiltzik, columnist for the LA Times.

Hiltzik admitted earlier to posting under false names on multiple sites, using pseudonyms to smear people, but he is nevertheless still writing for the newspaper.

During the waning days of apartheid, I had dinner with a group of liberal South Africans.

And they were liberals in relative terms: Cape Town residents of Anglo descent, they had lived and done business in the closest thing to a multicultural community South Africa offered, geographically and socially remote from the Afrikaner traditions prevailing in Johannesburg and Pretoria, some 900 miles to the north.

They were optimistic about the future of their country and about building a multiracial nation, and free of evident resentment about the political ambitions of their black fellow citizens. They agreed that the blacks deserved equal opportunity and a representative voice in government.

And yet, listening to them talk, I couldn’t avoid reflecting that the tenor of their discussion would have been treated as profoundly objectionable in any but the most reactionary, racist precincts of the United States.

It’s not that they sounded like Bull Connor or members of the Klan. It was more their well-meaning and unapologetic condescension. They wholeheartedly endorsed black majority rule — in principle. But they were also convinced that it would take years, even generations, for black South Africans to gain the education and experience necessary to lead their country in the modern world — to grow up, in other words. In the interim, of course, the blacks would continue to be dependent on the knowledge and support of my dining companions’ own tribe of white Africans.

My hosts were hopeful and uneasy, confident in the rationality of a black community they didn’t really know but which, they were certain, shared their desire for a peaceful transition of power.

The root of their uneasiness was economic. South Africa, which for so long had considered itself a rich, economically thriving country, was just then coming to grips with the fact that it was a small economy that only seemed big because its wealth had been concentrated in a very few white hands. There was simply not enough money in the country to bring black educational standards up to the level of white schools after decades of systematic impoverishment; the only path to equivalence involved diminishing the resources provided to white pupils while improving those for black kids, meeting somewhere in the middle. Would either race be happy with the consequences?

Obama’s secret racial database

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.

So civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to exploit them to show patterns of “racial disparities” and “segregation,” even if no other evidence of discrimination exists.

The granddaddy of them all is the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out earlier this month to racially balance the nation, ZIP code by ZIP code. It will map every US neighborhood by four racial groups — white, Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic/Latino — and publish “geospatial data” pinpointing racial imbalances.

The agency proposes using nonwhite populations of 50% or higher as the threshold for classifying segregated areas.

CFPB is separately amassing a database to monitor ordinary citizens’ credit-card transactions. It hopes to vacuum up some 900 million credit-card accounts — all sorted by race — representing roughly 85% of the US credit-card market. Why? To sniff out “disparities” in interest rates, charge-offs and collections.

Through its mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project, the Education Department is gathering information on student suspensions and expulsions, by race, from every public school district in the country. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be targeted for reform.

Those that don’t comply will be punished. Several already have been forced to revise their discipline policies, which has led to violent disruptions in classrooms.

Obama’s educrats want to know how many blacks versus whites are enrolled in gifted-and-talented and advanced placement classes.

Schools that show blacks and Latinos under-enrolled in such curricula, to an undefined “statistically significant degree,” could open themselves up to investigation and lawsuits by the department’s Civil Rights Office.

Count on a flood of private lawsuits to piggyback federal discrimination claims, as civil-rights lawyers use the new federal discipline data in their legal strategies against the supposedly racist US school system.

Even if no one has complained about discrimination, even if there is no other evidence of racism, the numbers themselves will “prove” that things are unfair.

Such databases have never before existed. Obama is presiding over the largest consolidation of personal data in US history. He is creating a diversity police state where government race cops and civil-rights lawyers will micromanage demographic outcomes in virtually every aspect of society.

The first black president, quite brilliantly, has built a quasi-reparations infrastructure perpetually fed by racial data that will outlast his administration.

Source:NY Post

Carthage must be destroyed

The Pentagon has released its “National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015,” June 2015.

The document announces a shift in focus from terrorists to “state actors” that “are challenging international norms.” It is important to understand what these words mean. Governments that challenge international norms are sovereign countries that pursue policies independently of Washington’s policies. These “revisionist states” are threats, not because they plan to attack the US, which the Pentagon admits neither Russia nor China intend, but because they are independent. In other words, the norm is dependence on Washington.

Be sure to grasp the point: The threat is the existence of sovereign states, whose independence of action makes them “revisionist states.” In other words, their independence is out of step with the neoconservative Uni-power doctrine that declares independence to be the right of Washington alone. Washington’s History-given hegemony precludes any other country being independent in its actions.

The Pentagon’s report defines the foremost “revisionist states” as Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The focus is primarily on Russia.Washington hopes to co-op China, despite the “tension to the Asia-Pacific region” that China’s defense of its sphere of influence, a defense “inconsistent with international law” (this from Washington, the great violator of international law), by turning over what remains of the American consumer market to China. It is not yet certain that Iran has escaped the fate that Washington imposed on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Ukraine, and by complicity Palestine.

The Pentagon report is sufficiently audacious in its hypocrisy, as all statements from Washington are, to declare that Washington and its vassals “support the established institutions and processes dedicated to preventing conflict, respecting sovereignty, and furthering human rights.” This from the military of a government that has invaded, bombed, and overthrown 11 governments since the Clinton regime and is currently working to overthrow governments in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina.

In the Pentagon document, Russia is under fire for not acting “in accordance with international norms,” which means Russia is not following Washington’s leadership.

In other words, this is a bullshit report written by neocons in order to foment war with Russia.

Nothing else can be said about the Pentagon report, which justifies war and more war. Without war and conquests, Americans are not safe.

Washington’s view toward Russia is the same as Cato the Elder’s view toward Carthage. Cato the Elder finished his every speech on any subject in the Roman Senate with the statement “Carthage must be destroyed.”

This report tells us that war with Russia is our future unless Russia agrees to become a vassal state like every country in Europe, and Canada, Australia, Ukraine, and Japan. Otherwise, the neoconservatives have decided that it is impossible for Americans to tolerate living with a country that makes decisions independently of Washington. If American cannot be The Uni-Power dictating to the world, better that we are all dead. At least that will show the Russians.

AFFH a lever to racially re-engineer America

HUD Secretary Julian Castro has announced the finalization of the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. A front-page article preemptively defending the move appears in today’s Washington Post.

The final rule is 377 pages, vastly longer than the preliminary version of the rule promulgated in 2013. AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential.

In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education.

Not only the policy but the political implications are immense — at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.

It is a scandal that the mainstream press has largely refused to report on AFFH until the day of its final release. The rule has been out in preliminary form for two years, and well before that the Obama administration’s transformative aims in urban/suburban policy were evident.

Three years ago, when I wrote about Obama’s policy blueprint in Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, the administration’s efforts to keep this issue under the radar were evident.

Only last month, an admission of the stealth relied on by advocates to advance this initiative was caught on video.

Obama has downplayed his policy goals in this area and delayed the finalization of AFFH for years, because he understands how politically explosive this rule is. Once the true implications of AFFH are understood, Americans will rebel.

The only prospect for successful imposition is a frog-boiling strategy of gradual intensification. The last day the frog will be able to jump is Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

Fundamentally, AFFH is an attempt to achieve economic integration. Race and ethnicity are being used as proxies for class, since these are the only hooks for social engineering provided by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Like AFFH itself, today’s Washington Post piece blurs the distinction between race and class, conflating the persistence of “concentrated poverty” with housing discrimination by race. Not being able to afford a freestanding house in a bedroom suburb is no proof of racial discrimination.

Erstwhile urbanites have been moving to rustic and spacious suburbs since Cicero built his villa outside Rome. Even in a monoracial and mono-ethnic world, suburbanites would zone to set limits on dense development.

As noted, AFFH is a largely unacknowledged attempt to force economic integration on every neighborhood in America.

Yet in a recent Rasmussen poll, 83 percent of respondents said it was not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods by income level, while only 8 percent say that this is an appropriate task for government.

Now you know why the Obama administration and a compliant press corps have kept this initiative quiet.

US military to consider transgender soldiers

The US military will consider opening its doors to transgender people who are currently banned from service and can be booted out if discovered, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Monday.

The secretary of defense made the revelation as he unveiled a working group that will be studying the issue during the next six months.

“The Defense Department’s current regulations regarding transgender service members are outdated and are causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions” he said in a statement.

As a result, the Pentagon “will create a working group to study over the next six months the policy and readiness implications of welcoming transgender persons to serve openly,” he said.

In the United States, despite the 2011 repeal of the divisive “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, which banned gays from serving openly, transgender people have remained banned.

“At my direction, the working group will start with the presumption that transgender persons can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified,” Carter said.

“We have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — real patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach,” he added.

Source: AFP

Trump leads the pack in NC

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is the leading choice among North Carolina Republican primary voters in a recent US Public Policy Poll. Trump received 16 percent, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush received 12 percent.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came in tied for second with Bush at 12 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was third with 11 percent. Dr. Ben Carson got 9 percent with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) got 7 percent while Se. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got six percent. Gov. Chris Christie received five percent. Carly Fiorina followed with four percent and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry had two percent.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had one percent, as did Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Sen. Rick Santorum. Gov. John Kasich and George Pataki were under one percent.

President Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, but Republican nominee Mitt Romney took it back in 2012.

“Trump’s favorability rating in North Carolina is 55/32, much higher than we were finding in national polls prior to his entry into the race. Trump’s really caught fire with voters on the far right- 66% of ‘very conservative’ voters see him favorably to only 24% with a negative view of him. Trump is polling particularly well with younger voters (29%) and men (20%),” Public Policy Poll (PPP) reported.

Bush had been the leader in the North Carolina polls, but is struggling to get the conservative vote.

Clinton saw a ten-point drop in support from last month’s standing.

“Clinton’s polling over 70% with African Americans, 60% with liberals and women, and 50% with moderates and voters in every age group,” PPP reported, adding she is weaker with white voters and men.

“All of the general election match ups in North Carolina are close with Clinton trailing 5 of the Republican hopefuls, leading 4 of them, and tied with one,” PPP noted.

Source: Breitbart

Black man rips Confederate flag off moving truck

Some black people are so whipped up over the Confederate flag — and eager to silence the free speech of others — they’re willing to be run over by moving vehicles to do it.

Video captures a black man running up to a semi in slow-moving traffic on the highway to rip off a Confederate flag from the truck’s tailgate.

The Grio, a black news website, grabbed the video from Twitter and posted it, with James Brown’s “The Payback.”

The video shows the unidentified man trotting behind the truck, struggling to remove the flag. After several moments, he rips it off and gets out of the road.

The site reports the truck “appears to be a part of ‘TRIBE Transportation, Inc.,’ a company ironically owned by a Native American woman.”

For whatever reason, Grio called the company to tell on the driver and get reaction.

“Any issue like that we’d handle internally,” TRIBE Executive Vice-Preisdent Matt Handte said. “Regardless of what happened, that’s something we’d handle internally.”

Source: The American Mirror

Police deny brutal beating of white man was racist

New video out of Cincinnati shows a black mob viciously beating and choking a white man, but police have distanced themselves from an initial explanation that the incident was an “anti-white” attack.

The altercation began in Fountain Square on Saturday night at around 11pm shortly after a music concert and 4th of July fireworks.

The video shows several black teens punching and choking 27-year-old Christopher McKnight, while another individual wearing a red t-shirt appears to be attempting to deter the attackers.

McKnight suffered serious internal injuries and was taken to hospital. Riot police later arrived on the scene and arrested seven young men. Two officers and a bystander were injured during the unrest.

A police report initially stated that the incident was being treated as an “anti-white” racial attack, but Capt. Mike Neville subsequently backed off that explanation, asserting that the beating was not a racial attack.

Another video of the incident appears to show bystanders laughing at and taunting the victim as he lay on the ground unconscious and bleeding.

21-year-old Jy Quynn Britten was also arrested for punching a police officer, despite claims of mistaken identity by his defense attorney.

An eyewitness called Louis asserted that Britten was responsible for attacking the officer, stating, “The guy hit the police officer, his lip busted. Everybody started running, there were fireworks thrown toward the police officers. It was really wild. I don’t know why it was like this, but it was crazy.”

Many are citing the incident as another example of black on white violent crime that has largely been ignored by the mass media, arguing that if the roles were reversed and it was a white mob beating up a black man, the story would be a national issue.

Source: Infowars

New poll shows majority of Americans are proud of Confederate flag

As debate rages in South Carolina over the Confederate flag on its statehouse property, a majority of Americans see the rebel flag as a symbol of Southern pride, not a reminder of racism, according to a new CNN/ORC poll out Thursday. Public opinion is about where it stood 15 years ago, when the Palmetto State removed the rebel St. Andrew’s cross from the Capitol dome.

But there is a stark racial divide on how the banner is perceived and what should be done about references to the Confederacy.

Among all 1,017 adults participating, 57 percent said it’s a symbol of Southern pride, 33 percent called it more a symbol of racism and 5 percent said it’s both equally. Among whites, 66 percent said it symbolizes pride, while just 17 percent of African-Americans responded that way. In May 2000, 59 percent of Americans in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll called the flag a point of regional and historical pride.

A majority of both blacks and whites said they would oppose renaming streets and highways named after Confederate leaders, with 68 percent overall in opposition.

Americans appear to be more split on whether they support private companies like Amazon, Wal-Mart, eBay and others’ decision not to sell or manufacture items featuring the flag. Just 50 percent support those measures, compared to 47 percent overall. The margin is wide among African-Americans (65 percent to 33 percent), but much smaller when it comes to whites (49 percent to 47 percent).

There is also a lack of overall support for redesigning state flags that feature Confederate emblems or symbols, like the official banners of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. Just 40 percent said they would back that, with 57 percent opposed.

At the same time, another majority (55 percent) supported removing Confederate flags from government property that is not a museum, but the racial divide grew more pronounced when respondents were asked if state flags should be redesigned (59 percent of non-Hispanic blacks support, compared to 35 percent of whites), and if tributes honoring Confederate soldiers should be removed from public places (49 percent of non-Hispanic blacks to 21 percent of whites).

The latest poll comes on the heels of another this week, by USA Today and Suffolk University, which found a more even split between those who found the flag racist and those who found it symbolic of Southern heritage. It should be noted that the question was framed slightly differently, as the 1,000 respondents were asked in that poll whether: “The confederate flag is a racist symbol and should be removed from state flags and other official locations” or “The Confederate flag is representative of Southern heritage and is not racist.” The poll found a split of 42 percent each responding either way.

The CNN/ORC poll was conducted June 26-28, surveying 1,017 Americans by telephone, carrying an overall margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points. The overall sample includes 303 African-Americans with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 5.5 percentage points. – politico.com