Category: US Politics

Kanye West has delivered a Yuletide present for all mankind in the form of a new album, Jesus Is Born, which the hip-hop megastar and fashion brand mogul dropped on Christmas Day.

The new gospel album is the latest installment in what has turned out to be a prolific stretch of religious works for the born-again West. Performed by his Sunday Service choir, the new release features 19 tracks and serves as a follow-up to his October album Jesus is King.

https://t.co/S6LFIK5KDv pic.twitter.com/siQxZHOXSs

— ye (@kanyewest) December 25, 2019

Kanye West recently produced his operas Mary at Lincoln Center in New York and Nebuchadnezzar at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. At Coachella in April, the artist known as Ye brought his Sunday Service choir for an outdoor performance that featured distinct echoes of the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount.

Initial reaction to Jesus Is Born has been positive. A review for Forbes concluded that the album is an improvement over the underbaked elements of Jesus Is King, describing it as “a moving proclamation of faith and a reminder of what its creator can do when he gives his ideas time to incubate.”

West is reportedly already planning his next Christian project. The star is expected to appear alongside Pastor Joel Osteen at Yankee Stadium in May for an event that will likely feature a sermon by Osteen and a performance by the Sunday Service choir.

The hip-hop artist previously appeared alongside Osteen at the pastor’s Lakewood Church in November, performing gospel renditions of his latest songs with his choir.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

The Islamic State group is dead.

That is the position Western military and political leaders have been communicating for nearly a year now. And by traditional metrics, the claim could hardly be more accurate.

The radical Islamic terrorist group’s territorial caliphate has almost entirely disintegrated. Thousands of the group’s fighters across both Syria and Iraq have been killed, with most of the remainder captured or forced into hiding.

And on Oct. 26, Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. Special Forces in a raid on his underground compound in the Northwestern Syrian governate of Idlib.

Reporters on the ground in Syria, however, suggest that, despite major losses, the motto among those fighters and family members captured by American and Kurish forces in the region remains clear.

TRENDING: Gold Star Mom Teaches Kaepernick a Lesson on Sacrifice: ‘My Son Died for $14,000 a Year’

It’s still, “Long live the Islamic State” — or however one might say so in Arabic.

“We’re going to kill you by slaughtering you. We will slaughter you.”@Stone_SkyNews reports from Syrian Al Hol camp which is home to 70,000 IS women and children. 10,000 of them are foreigners.

Read the full report here: https://t.co/DcfGTxWy9C pic.twitter.com/0lSmssFTgl

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 11, 2019

In fact, in the Syrian Al Hol camp — where Kurdish rebels now hold the approximately 70,000 Islamic State wives and children who emerged from the rubble when the caliphate fell — the group’s ideology may now be stronger than ever, according to a November report from Sky News.

With the international community entirely undecided on what to do with these prisoners following months of deliberation, journalist Mark Stone suggests the are in the “perfect incubator for the reformation of [the Islamic State group]” as children are reportedly fed fundamentalist Islamic doctrine and anti-Western rhetoric night and day by the so-called “ISIS wives.”

“Radicalised mothers are with children who’ve seen no other life,” Stone wrote. “Clad head-to-toe in their black niqabs, the IS wives claim to represent the purest form of Islam.”

Many reportedly told the outlet they felt no remorse for the things they had done and seen while living in the terrorist pseudo-state.

And from these conditions comes the more “unsettling” discovery: a child so deeply indoctrinated he unfeelingly told the journalist, “We will slaughter you.”

“In Arabic, he first quoted a verse from the Koran: ‘God says, “Turn to Allah with sincere repentance in the hope that your Lord will remove you from your ills,”‘” Stone wrote.

RELATED: CNN Writer Carries Out Unhinged Attack on Conan the War Dog’s Ceremony with Trump, Melania

“We’re going to kill you by slaughtering you,” the boy said in video later provided by Sky News “We will slaughter you.”

Today I went to Al Hol camp where kids don’t smile and generally look scared or miserable. The women complain about their situation but again, don’t acknowledge the massacre and kidnapping of the yazidis. Not much has changed since my last visit. pic.twitter.com/k2OgjUr7i3

— Norma Costello (@normcos) December 25, 2019

And unfortunately, according to the outlet, there is no shortage of such children within the camps walls, brainwashed and stripped of their innocence by the sick, twisted ideology of their parents and local elders.

More unfortunate still is the fact that this is the not-so-shocking reality of radical Islam. The not-so-shocking reality of war in the Middle East.

The disregard for innocence and human life are almost unbelievable in the 21st century.

Terrorist prisoners are humiliated, enslaved or murdered.

If children must be indoctrinated, sent into combat or strapped with explosives to forward the cause, it is of little consequence to our terrorist enemies.

Nothing is beyond the pale. Nothing is out of bounds. Nothing is unthinkable.

And unwilling to establish effective rules of engagement or defined end goals — unable even to secure meaningful support from America’s left-wing, multi-culturalist European allies — we have locked ourselves in a quagmire with an ideological enemy who will stop at nothing in its efforts to undermine and destroy the West.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

President Donald Trump issued a pair of scathing Christmas tweets on Thursday attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the “scam impeachment” conducted by the House of Representatives.

“Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the call with Ukraine was perfect, with ‘no pressure.’ She said it must be ‘bipartisan & overwhelming,’ but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!” Trump tweeted.

…& overwhelming,” but this Scam Impeachment was neither. Also, very unfair with no Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses. Now Pelosi is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House. Dems want to run majority Republican Senate. Hypocrites!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2019

On Christmas Eve, Trump participated in a video teleconference with members of the military. When the conference ended, he took some questions from the media and was asked about Pelosi’s comments that she would hold up the articles of impeachment from getting to the Senate.

TRENDING: Gold Star Mom Teaches Kaepernick a Lesson on Sacrifice: ‘My Son Died for $14,000 a Year’

Pelosi had said she wanted to know more about how the Senate would conduct its trial on the charges the House passed last week before she would formally move the two articles out of House control and over to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Trump initially responded by citing the strength of his popularity, according to a White House media pool report.

“Well, all I know is my poll numbers are the highest they’ve ever been. Our fundraising in the Republican Party is the highest it’s ever been,” Trump said.

Trump then said Pelosi was motived by partisan antagonism.

“She hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party. And she’s desperate to do — look, she got thrown out of Speaker once before. She lost like 63 seats — 61 or 63 — a tremendous, a record-setting number of seats. I think it’s going to happen again,” the president continued.

Trump said Pelosi is harming the nation.

“She’s doing a tremendous disservice to the country. She’s not doing a good job. And some people think that she’s — she doesn’t know what she’s doing. A lot of people think that. A lot of people have said it,” he said.

Trump went on to say the impeachment process had been rigged against him from the start.

“People remember: They treated us very unfairly. They didn’t give us due process. They didn’t give us a lawyer. They didn’t give us anything. Now they come to the Senate and they want everything,” he said. “If you look back just two weeks — just look back at what they did. But over a long period of time, look at what they did. We weren’t entitled to witnesses. We weren’t entitled to lawyers. We sat in a basement. They would leak everything. They would leak it. We weren’t entitled to do anything. They would leak selectively, with a sick, corrupt politician named Schiff. He’s a corrupt politician.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson Slams Cuomo, Buttigieg in Defense of Christian Trump Supporters

“No, they treated us worse than anybody has been treated, from a legal standpoint, in the history of the United States. That’s never happened before, where you can’t have a lawyer, you can’t have a witness, you can’t have time.

“You didn’t have — even recently, when they had the constitutional lawyers, they got three lawyers; we got one. Fortunately, our one lawyer was better than their three. And we also had a much better case. We had — we have a perfect case. I say it again: We have a perfect case. They had no case.

The president expressed his optimism that the Senate trial would contrast starkly with the partisan process in the House.

“So now they get to the Senate. And now we have the majority, and it’s up to Mitch McConnell. And we have the majority, and now they want McConnell to do wonderful things for them. I mean, he’s going to do what he wants to do. Very smart guy, very good guy, and a very fair guy. But they treated us very unfairly and now they want fair — fairness in the Senate. They ought to look back at the last year to see how they’ve hurt this country,” he said.

Trump also addressed the beginnings of the FBI’s investigation of his campaign in 2016.

“Tremendous amounts of information are being written about, even by the fake news, concerning FISA, concerning dirty cops — the people that started this whole thing. What they’ve done to this country is incredible. And hopefully, it’s going to be taken care of. The Attorney General is working and everybody is working. But if you just go — because I like to stay out of it, and I do stay out of it — if you just go by what you see in the papers, it’s incredible what’s going on. We had dirty cops. We had people spying on my campaign,” Trump said.

“They did terrible things, the likes of which have never been done in the history of our country. It’s very sad.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

You’re on a late-night errand to pick up some food. Your tired kids are in the car, and you just need to pop in really quickly. Instead of hauling them all out of the car, you leave the car running and hop out yourself.

It’s a quick run. Your kids are old enough to mind themselves. The hassle of bringing them all along will probably take longer than the actual pick-up itself.

Should be harmless, right?

In most cases, it turns out OK. But when there’s a carjacker on the prowl, not so much.

Imama, 16, Hasnain, 9, and their younger sister, 5, were sleepily waiting in their dad’s Toyota Highlander in Chicago while he popped into Domino’s on Monday night.

TRENDING: Patriots Player Shuts Down Buttigieg’s Christmas Message About Jesus Being a ‘Refugee’

It was nearly midnight, and while the two younger kids were asleep in the back seat, Imama nodded off. A man got into the car, and as she looked up, expecting to see her father, she was surprised by an unfamiliar young man.

“The dude just hopped in, and he looks back, and I realize it’s not my dad,” Imama said, according to WBBM-TV.

“I started shouting at him, ‘Who are you? Get out of the car!’ and he starts driving really fast down the road,” she told WGN-TV.

The carjacker, whom Imama described as being “no more than 17 years old” to WGN, threatened her.

“He’s like, ‘Get out, or I’m going to shoot you,’ and he starts speeding down the road,” Imama explained. “He’s going in, like, a zig-zag pattern.”

While she said she didn’t see a weapon, there was a major reason she was unwilling to get out: her siblings.

“I was like, ‘I can’t. There’s a baby,’” she said.

Thankfully, her 9-year-old brother woke up and realized what was happening.

RELATED: Husband Donates Kidney To Save Wife’s Life on Christmas Eve

“They woke up, and started helping me to harm him so he would get out of the car,” Imama said.

According to WGN, she began to choke the carjacker and Hasnain smacked him over the head with his iPad. They yelled at the would-be thief, and Imama spotted and reached for her dad’s phone that was sitting on the passenger’s seat.

“I see my dad’s phone,” she said. “I started calling 911. Thirty seconds into the call, the dude just jumps out.”

A Camry had been following the SUV as it was driven away from Domino’s, and it picked up the carjacker after he fled from the family’s car.

Police later found the Camry, which — surprise, surprise — had also been stolen.

Though the driver of the Camry got away, four others were arrested: Ralphy Enriquez, 22; Kaily Lagunas, 19; Steffy Lagunas, 19; and an unnamed 16-year-old boy. They were each charged with a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass to vehicle.

Though Imama said “it all feels like a dream,” the reality is that she and her siblings are quite brave, and because of their actions, they’re unharmed — and their family still has a car.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

In a display of unapologetic defiance, Silicon Valley giants including Facebook and Uber are planning to ignore new California laws scheduled to take effect in 2020, laying the groundwork for a collision course between the tech giants and state lawmakers.

Facebook recently told advertisers it won’t make changes to its web-tracking services to comply with California’s new consumer-privacy law, which starts Jan. 1 and is expected to impact numerous social media companies, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.

The law will require companies to alert consumers if their personal information is being collected and sold, and to give consumers the ability to opt out of the sale of their data.

Facebook is claiming that routine data transfers may not fit the state’s definition of “selling” data, according to the report.

Internet companies — including the major social networks and search engines — routinely gather user information and share them, usually without disclosing these actions to consumers.

The non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation recently released a new study showing that many popular sites share the user data they collect with third-party businesses, including data brokers, advertisers, and government bodies.

Uber is planning to flout a different California law that would reclassify its army of drivers from contractors to employees, potentially entitling them to benefits and perks. The ridesharing company is joining forces with Lyft and Doordash to mount a $90 million counteroffensive against the new law, which also takes effect January.

Lawyers for Uber are arguing that the law doesn’t apply to the company because drivers’ work falls  “outside the usual course of Uber’s business,” which they define as providing a technology platform.

The so-called “gig worker” law, formerly known as AB5, has already impacted Vox Media, which recently laid off hundreds of freelance journalists who would have been reclassified as employees under the new law.

While companies can challenge these California laws, Margita Thompson, who served as press secretary for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, told Capital Public Radio that the courts may end up enforcing them.

In the end, she said, “it’s not gonna be something that companies can ignore.”

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

Automakers are reportedly spying on car owners by recording their every move, according to an experiment by a professional hacker and the Washington Post.

Tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler recently asked Jim Mason to hack into a car’s computer. Fowler has a Ph.D. in engineering and reconstructs car accidents via hacking, The Daily Wire reported.

The article stated:

The Post used a 2017 Chevy Volt for its experiment and learned that the car collected a wide range of highly precise data ranging from the vehicles location to information about the driver’s cell phone, including call records — noting that many vehicles copy over personal data the moment that a smart phone is plugged into the vehicle.

The Post noted that the Chevy Volt did not inform drivers what information it was recording and did not make mention of it in the owner’s manual since there are no federal regulations protecting consumer’s privacy and data from automakers.

First, Mason hacked into the car’s infotainment center, as it was the easiest computer to use to gain physical access inside the vehicle. The experiment yielded interesting results once the computer was removed and connected to his laptop, Fowler wrote.

He continued:

It was worth the trouble when Mason showed me my data. There on a map was the precise location where I’d driven to take apart the Chevy. There were my other destinations, like the hardware store I’d stopped at to buy some tape. Among the trove of data points were unique identifiers for my and Doug’s phones, and a detailed log of phone calls from the previous week. There was a long list of contacts, right down to people’s address, emails and even photos.

“As information privacy becomes increasingly scarce in the world of social media, even car companies have begun collecting massive amounts of data on their drivers,” wrote Breitbart News’s Lucas Nolan in January 2018.

“According to ABI research, there are currently 78 million cars on the road with an embedded cyber connection feature. Research firm Gartner expects that by 2021, 98 percent of cars sold in the U.S. and Europe will be data connected,” he stated.

In his recent column, Fowler urged potential car buyers to ask their dealership about the vehicle’s connected services and if it is possible to turn them off.

“Few offer an Internet ‘kill switch,’ but they may at least allow you turn off location tracking,” he concluded.

Global stock markets gained by a total of $17 trillion in 2019, according to a report from CNBC based on calculations from Deutsche Bank.

CNBC reported that that global equities were valued at $70 trillion at the start of the year but are now valued at $85 trillion.

Global political developments and easier monetary policies have fostered an environment for this banner year for equities around the world.

CNBC noted that the global trade outlook was in a state of turmoil with the election of Donald Trump and with the Brexit proposal in the United Kingdom, but it became more clear as time progressed.

The House of Representatives passed the Trump administration’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), and the U.S. appeared to start the process of making a trade deal with China.

In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson won the election for the Conservatives, and he is expected to have enough power to negotiate his country’s exit from the European Union.

The surge in world markets has largely been because of the dominating force of U.S. markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Russell 2000 all rose by more than 20 percent this year.

Individual stocks such as Apple and Facebook also made significant gains, with Apple rising by 80 percent and Facebook rising by 57 percent.

On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “American Newsroom,” Job Creators Network president Alfredo Ortiz weighed in on U.S. holiday sales records.

Shoppers spent more online during this holiday season, hitting a record high by rising 3.4%.

Ortiz said. “Today is actually the third busiest shopping day. So we’ll see what the final numbers are when they come in.”

He continued, “The numbers since Thanksgiving have been unbelievable. Despite all the fear-mongering that happened early on in the year from the Democrats frankly about really talking the economy into recession, consumers knew better. They saw the now hiring signs and knew jobs were up and paychecks up because of wage growth and tax cuts. They were feeling great.”

He added, “Average disposable income for the average household up $6,000 and the doubling of the child tax credit, the elimination of the 15% rate. Those two things combined alone are huge booms for the consumer. That’s why I do believe — remember, 70% of this economy is consumer-driven and why the fear-mongering the Democrats were trying to do to throttle back the economy, which is really unpatriotic from my perspective failed on them.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN