Corker Knows Better: Warns Trump Against Recognizing Crimea

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Bob Corker

One thing seems certain when it comes to retiring junior Senator Bob Corker, he intends to make himself as much of a pest for President Donald Trump as he can during his remaining time in the U.S. Senate. Now, he’s lecturing him on Crimea: Corker warns Trump against recognizing Crimea annexation “Recognizing Crimea as part of Russia would undermine the rules-based international order that was created with U.S. leadership and has caused democracy to thrive around the world and made America a safer home for our citizens,” Corker said in a tweet on Monday, without directly mentioning Trump. Corker added that in the “upcoming Helsinki summit, the U.S. must stand firmly with our NATO allies and affirm our transatlantic partnership. Doing otherwise strengthens Putin and undermines democratic values.” Additionally, Corker’s criticism comes as he’s abroad. He’s currently traveling in Northern Europe. As we look forward to the upcoming Helsinki summit, the U.S. must stand firmly with our NATO allies and affirm our transatlantic partnership. Doing otherwise strengthens Putin and undermines democratic values. — Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) July 2, 2018 Trump is expected  to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. Meanwhile, Putin has said there’s no expectation the issue…

Read the full story

Commentary: Don’t Allow Senators Like Schumer & Collins to Blow Up Trump’s Next Supreme Court Pick

Chuck Schumer, Susan Collins

by Jeffery Rendall   “Dang-it!” Chuck Schumer exclaimed to staff gathered in his senate Minority Leader’s office after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement last week. “I thought Steve Breyer already convinced Kennedy to stay another year and now this,” Schumer dribbled exasperatedly, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth like a rabid raccoon in its final death throes. “We’re gonna have a tough enough time of it as it is saving our people this November…and if we can’t stop Trump from plopping another one of his originalist Constitution-stooges onto the Supreme Court, why would anyone be motivated to vote for us?” Schumer’s underlings stood uneasily around the 67-year-old New Yorker as though he was on the verge of exploding into one of his legendary fits of rage or would merely experience a pathetic meltdown and cry on the floor in the fetal position as he’s prone to do in times of stress. It’s no secret the man affectionately known as “Chucky” (an allusion to the infamous animated movie doll serial murderer) has aged considerably since taking over for “dingy” Harry Reid as leader of the hapless minority senate Democrats last year. “Donald Trump was supposed to be an idiot that no one…

Read the full story

William Shatner Defended Laura Ingalls Wilder on Twitter and Now He’s Being Accused of Racism

William Shatner

by Jon Miltimore   On June 30, actor William Shatner tweeted his displeasure with the renaming of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. By Independence Day, all hell had broken loose. Wilder (1867-1957), a children’s author best known for her Little House on the Prairie series, had her name stripped from an award issued by the Association for Library Service to Children because some passages in her work expressed “stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness.” The decision didn’t sit well with Shatner. The former Star Trek actor tweeted that he found the trend of judging the past through a modern lens “disturbing.” Shatner’s tweet triggered criticism from diversity advocates. Instead of backing down, however, he engaged in a nearly week-long defense. The debate, like most communication on Twitter, has generated more heat than light. But from a cursory reading of a couple hundred tweets, here’s is my best description of what happened: Shatner tweets about the Wilder Award, saying he finds it “disturbing that some take modern opinion & obliterate the past.” Some people disagree. Shatner engages some, blocks others. Shatner is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer and a racist. A 2016 tweet is found, in which Shatner used the word…

Read the full story

Called Out: NPR Reporter Rips Apart AP’s Story On Immigrants In The Military

US Army

by Neetu Chandak   National Public Radio reporter Tim Mak took apart the Associated Press’s coverage of discharged immigrant military recruits in multiple tweets Friday. The AP’s article, “AP NewsBreak: US Army quietly discharging immigrant recruits,” framed the military as adopting policy changes that hurt immigrants, according to Mak. However, Mak criticized the AP for only providing “hints and anecdotes” instead of evidence that the Trump administration made such changes. “If I was the editor on this story I would have asked for more meat on the bones,” tweeted Mak. “Show me evidence of a change in policy.” Bottom line. Two things can be true: the Army needs immigrant recruits and they are proven to be above average troops Also Some of those who enlist as immigrants will not meet the background check standards and will have to be discharged — Tim Mak (@timkmak) July 6, 2018 While the AP framed immigrants as being unfairly and abruptly targeted by the military, Mak said discharges happen frequently for a variety of reasons. “I bet I could find 40 recruits discharged bf basic [sic] for being too fat,” he said. “Perhaps these immigrant recruits could not pass a background check (by the way, there are jobs in the…

Read the full story

Mexico Begins Its Own Road to Perdition with the Election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador

ALMO

by Victor Mata   All Latin-Americans at some point ask themselves: Why is no Latin American country as well-developed as the United States? The answer is probably not related to our weather or a lesser disposition to work, as many have tried to claim. The answer is probably simpler: A socialist culture and a strong attachment to the left. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina are all countries that suffered or are suffering devastating economic, political, and social crises. They are all examples of countries that built their own road to the hell through socialism. This past Sunday was a chance for Mexico to change that trend. Mexico is a country where many people don’t have access to school, where the public health system is extremely deficient, and where it is not safe to walk in the street after 10 p.m. because drug cartels have taken control of some cities. It seems that their citizens took the worst option available to change that reality; they decided to have as a president for the next six years a socialist with damaging populist appeal. His name is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and is known as AMLO. He is usually described as a nationalist and revolutionary linked with the Party…

Read the full story

Wisconsin Supreme Court Sides With Conservative Prof Suspended For Blog Post He Wrote In 2014

John McAdams

by Evie Fordham   The Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered Marquette University to “immediately reinstate” political science professor John McAdams on Friday after a four-year legal battle over McAdams’ criticism of a graduate student teacher on his conservative blog. McAdams refused to apologize for the blog post and was suspended from teaching at the Jesuit university without pay. He will be awarded damages and back pay by the Milwaukee County Circuit Court according to the state supreme court’s ruling, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The undisputed facts show that the University breached its contract with Dr. McAdams when it suspended him for engaging in activity protected by the contract’s guarantee of academic freedom,” stated Justice Daniel Kelly in the majority opinion. McAdams wrote a blog post criticizing former grad student instructor Cheryl Abbate on his self-described “independent” and “skeptical” campus news blog The Marquette Warrior in November 2014. The professor wrote the post after student complained to him that Abbate had told a him to drop her philosophy class after refusing to let him discuss his views on gay marriage in class. McAdams linked Abbate’s contact information in the post, and she received “dozens” of emails that she said made her feel unsafe, reported the Journal Sentinel. To examine whether…

Read the full story

Chick-Fil-A Gets Ranked As Number One Fast-Food Restaurant In Customer Satisfaction

Chick-Fil-A Restaurant

by Henry Rodgers   Chick-Fil-A was ranked as the number one fast food restaurant in customer service for its third year in a row, easily beating all of its competitors in the multi-billion dollar industry. The American Customer Satisfaction Index’s (ASCI) released an annual report Thursday that ranked Chick-Fil-A first out of more than 280 fast-food chains, basing its rating on order accuracy, food quality, cleanliness and variety, according to Fox Business. ASCI asked 250,000 customers about their opinions on fast-food restaurants and beat out the rest of the competition by a long run receiving an 87 out of 100 for the third year in a row. In second place was Panera Bread ranked second with an 81 rating. Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Subway placed third, all with the score of 80. “The chicken specialist dominates the rankings with the highest score across both restaurant categories, and its food quality continues to rate higher than the competition,” the ACSI’s report said. Although closed on Sundays, Chick-Fil-A, earned nearly $8 billion in revenue in 2016, QSR Magazine reported. – – – Henry Rodgers is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.                        Content created…

Read the full story

Big Business and GOP Fighting Trump on Tariffs, But Will it Work, Or Is It All Just Talk?

Donald Trump

Per Vox, Big Business and the GOP establishment are  teaming up to undermine President Trump’s America First agenda. Unsurprisingly, the effort is being led by The US Chamber of Commerce and is supported by many Senate Republicans. The largest business lobbying group in America is declaring war on President Donald Trump’s trade agenda. The US Chamber of Commerce, an advocacy group that represents more than t3 million American businesses, launched a new campaign on Monday designed to persuade policymakers and the public that the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive trade policies represent a huge threat to the American economy. The Chamber released an interactive graphic that maps out how Trump’s trade conflicts with China, Europe, Canada, and Mexico could affect each state in the country in the coming months. It details how many of each state’s exports to foreign countries are vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs against Trump’s tariffs — and warns that they could cause millions of job losses. “Tariffs are beginning to take a toll on American businesses, workers, farmers, and consumers as overseas markets close to American-made products and prices increase here at home,” US Chamber President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. “The administration is threatening to undermine the…

Read the full story

Insecticide Ban, Not Global Warming, Is More Likely the Cause of Disease-Carrying Insect Outbreaks

exterminator

by James D. Agresti and Rachel McCutcheon   Politico claims that deadly insect-borne diseases are “on the rise” in the U.S. due to “warming global temperatures.” Although disease-carrying insect populations have increased greatly over the past several decades, there is no reliable evidence that climate change is the reason. Instead, the surge of these insects corresponds to the banning of a highly effective insecticide. Misrepresenting Its Source For a special issue of Politico about “planetary health,” reporter Christina Animashaun created a graphic on “climate change and human disease” that states: Warming global temperatures are changing the range and behavior of disease-carrying insects like mosquitos and ticks and extending the seasons in which they are active. As a result, incidence of the diseases they carry—including Lyme, spotted fever, West Nile and malaria—are all on the rise, despite yearly fluctuations. To support that statement, she cites the “U.S. Global Change Resource Program’s Climate Health Assessment” but fails to provide a link to it. This is convenient given that the actual assessment does not support her claim. First, with regard to ticks, it states: Though there are links between climate and tick distribution, studies that look for links between weather and geographical differences in human infection rates do not show a…

Read the full story

Research Indicates Spiders Use Electric Fields to Take Flight

small jumping spider

by Sadie Witkowski   Since the 1800s, scientists have marveled at how spiders can take flight using their webbing. Charles Darwin remarked on the behavior when tiny spiders landed on the HMS Beagle, trailing lines of silk. He thought the arachnids might be using heat-generated updrafts to take to the sky, but new research shows a totally different cause may be at play. Erica Morley and Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol in England were interested in exploring a second explanation for the spiders’ ability. They thought spiders might sense and use electrostatic fields in the air. “There have been several studies looking at how air movement and wind can get spiders airborne, but the electrostatic hypothesis was never tested,” Morley told VOA. Some observers suggested electrostatic fields might be the reason the multiple draglines some spiders use to float don’t get tangled with each other. Biologist Kimberley Sheldon from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who was not involved in the new research, pointed out that “though these spiders will have five or six draglines, those strands of silk do not get entangled. So we’ve known for a while that electrostatics probably [are] at least interacting with the spider, with…

Read the full story

Black Blasts Boyd on Taxes in New Ad

Black blasts Boyd on Taxes

The gloves are definitely off in the Tennessee Republican Primary for Governor. Diane Black has unleashed a vicious television hit on Randy Boyd based upon a Tennessean story claiming that Boyd has used the location of his company’s foreign operations in order to avoid U.S. taxes. “From 2014 to 2016, the company sheltered millions of dollars in European profits from any taxes because of this corporate structure, according to two experts who analyzed Radio System’s Irish tax records obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee,” The Tennessean reported on Monday. One of two “experts” quoted by the Tennessean was a California-Irvine School of Law Professor. “Analyzing the company’s tax records, University of California-Irvine School of Law professor Omri Marian estimated the company paid an effective tax rate of a little more than 1 percent,” The Tennessean said. However, as The Tennessee Star has reported, whatever documents were provided by the Tennessean for review by the professor could not have been obtained from public records, raising questions about the legality of the means by which The Tennessean procured them.  The Tennessean has refused to make the “tax records” they obtained available for review by the public or other news media outlets, nor…

Read the full story