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Winning: Trump Airstrikes Targeting Heroin Driving Taliban to Find Alternative Funding

The Trump administration’s unprecedented airstrike campaign against the Taliban’s top funding source, opium and heroin, may be driving the group to look for new ways to fund its terror operations in southern Afghanistan.

Voice of America (VOA) reports:

Taliban officials say they have established a new customs house in the Delaram district of southern Nimruz province in the southwestern part of Afghanistan.

The new effort to collect revenue follows joint Afghan-Coalition airstrikes on Taliban narcotics processing labs in the Helmand province last November. U.S-led coalition says such attacks will continue. A Taliban statement says it will begin collecting a transit tax in the southern Nimruz and southwestern Farah provinces on Jan. 13.

In a desperate move to fund its terror operations, the Taliban has resorted to various illegal means to make money, including kidnapping, extortion, as well as smuggling drugs, minerals, and precious stones, VOA learned from Afghan officials.

The Taliban is reportedly using the funds to buy weapons and intensify its offensive against the U.S.-backed Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), which include police and army units.

“They tax the transiting commercial vehicles and finance their insurgency in the southern Helmand and Farah provinces through this money,” Gul Bahar Mujahid, the police chief of Farah province, told Voice of America.

“[The Taliban] has repeatedly engaged in extortion and looting in the route of the Delaram and Khashrwod districts, and we are using military force to prevent their vicious actions,” added Khwaja Jelani Abu Bakr, the police chief of Nimruz.

In an apparent response to the pressure applied by the U.S.-backed efforts against the group’s opium operations, the terrorist group has reportedly set up its won checkpoints along major highways in southern Afghanistan.

“There is a Taliban checkpost after every Afghan security checkpost, you can see their white-color flag raised over the checkposts. … They tax commercial cars and trucks according to the sizes of the vehicle,” a local traveler identified only as “Ahmad” told VOA.

According to the U.S. military, the Taliban generates an estimated 60 percent of its funding from the illicit opium and heroin trade.

The United Nations has determined that Helmand is the top poppy-producing province in Afghanistan, the world’s top supplier of heroin’s main ingredient opium.

In a major departure from the previous administration, U.S. President Trump has authorized the American military to target the Taliban’s opium and heroin labs with airstrikes.

So far, the U.S. military has pulverized several labs used to process opium and its heroin derivative, dealing a multi-million dollar blow to the narco-jihadist group’s funding engine.

U.S.-backed ANDSF troops have also targeted other Taliban narcotic operations, including hashish trafficking.

“We believe that the Taliban, in some ways, have evolved into a criminal or narco-insurgency,” U.S. Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, declared in November. “They are fighting to defend their revenue streams. They have increasingly lost whatever ideological anchor they once had.”

“They fight to preserve and expand their sources of revenue. This includes narcotics trafficking, illegal mining, taxing people throughout Afghanistan, kidnapping, and murder-for-hire: all criminal endeavors,” he added, vowing to continue bombing the opium labs.

via Breitbart News

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Revised Obama presidential library looks like the stump of the Washington Monument

The Obama presidential library unveiled a new design proposal yesterday. Chicago Tribune columnist Blair Kamis says the new design is intended to satisfy critics of the previous design released last year.

Addressing criticism that their plans would undermine the serene landscape of historic Jackson Park, backers of the Obama Presidential Center on Tuesday revealed major revisions that include a sleeker version of the center’s controversial museum tower.

The new tower design calls for a high-rise that would be taller, thinner and more transparent than a version unveiled last May, which was widely panned as monolithic and pyramidlike. Portions of the revamped tower’s outside walls would consist of screens made of stone letters, making the tower airier while suggesting the importance of words in Barack Obama’s presidency.

I don’t recall the earlier design but my first impression of this one is that it looks like someone chopped down the Washington Monument. The shape is different at the bottom but you can’t see that part through the trees (in the image above). According to the website, the shape was inspired by four hands coming together:

The Museum building is a tower — representing ascension, hope, and what ordinary people have the power to do together. Its design was inspired by a photo of four hands coming together. Like these hands, each facade of the four-sided tower will be a little different from the next — enhanced with texture and detail, and offering a beautiful and unique experience from all angles.

Yesterday the library put out a video (narrated by President Obama) which says this is the photo that produced the current design:

I guess I can see that but I would never have guessed it looking at the building. The video also describes Obama’s personal involvement in the design. “You should know that when I was younger I went through a phase where I wanted to be an architect,” Obama says. He adds, “So, as you can imagine, I’ve been pretty hands-on in the process.”

This reminds me of a quote attributed to Obama back in 2008, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” I guess you can now add, ‘And I’m a better architect than my architects’ to that list.

Bottom line, if you like this look then I guess that’s one more amazing thing Obama can do. If not, well, you know who to blame.

The post Revised Obama presidential library looks like the stump of the Washington Monument appeared first on Hot Air.

via Hot Air

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‘No. No. No.’ — Donald Trump Says He Won’t Sign DACA Deal Without Wall Funding

‘No. No. No.’ — Donald Trump Says He Won’t Sign DACA Deal Without Wall Funding

Eigth prototypes of US President Donald Trump's border wall being built near San Diego are seen from across the border in Mexico

AFP

by Charlie Spiering10 Jan 20180



President Donald Trump insisted that he would not sign a DACA deal from Congress unless it included wall funding.

“No. No. No.” he replied after a reporter asked him if he would sign a DACA bill even if it did not include funding for building the wall on the Southern border.

“We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety,” he said. “We need the wall from stopping drugs from pouring in.”

Trump appeared confident that the bipartisan congressional group could come up with a solution to the DACA problem but stated that any solution to immigration had to include the wall.

“Without the wall, it all doesn’t work … we need the wall, we have to have the wall for security purposes,” he said. “Security is number one and so the answer is — have to have the wall.”

Trump’s response seemed to contradict what he told members of Congress during the meeting: that he would sign a bill, even if it did not have everything that he wanted.

“I have great confidence … if they come to me with things I’m not in love with, I’m going to do it because I respect them,” he said.

via Breitbart News

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NYC Mayor De Blasio Sues Oil Companies for Global Warming – The Week After NYC Records All-Time Record Cold

NYC Mayor De Blasio Sues Oil Companies for Global Warming – NYC Just Recorded All-Time Record Cold Temps Last Week

January 10, 2018
by Jim Hoft

New York City commie Mayor Bill de Blasio sued the five major oil companies for global warming today.

De Blasio says the city will be seeking billions in the lawsuit to recoup money spent by the city for resiliency efforts related to climate change.

New York City just came off its coldest holiday season in the city’s history.

But why let facts get in the way of a good headline?

New York City set a RECORD COLD record on January 1st.
The temperature reached 19 degrees a record cold high for that date.

Dec. 23, 2017 through Jan. 5, 2018 temperature rankings, relative to other such periods. Cities in purple boxes denote those that had at least a top five coldest Dec. 23 through Jan. 5 period on record in 2017-2018. (Weather.com)

The record cold last week caused New York families to set a record in natural gas use.

De Blasio wants to punish these companies with a junk science lawsuit.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

New York City is suing five major oil companies, claiming they have contributed to global warming.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says the city will be seeking billions in the lawsuit to recoup money spent by the city for resiliency efforts related to climate change.

The defendants in the city’s federal lawsuit are BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

A BP spokesman declined comment. A Shell spokesman said climate change is a complex issue that should not be addressed by the courts. The other three did not immediately comment.

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His liberal family was ‘overjoyed’ when he came out as gay — but not when he came out for Trump

Adam Paul Levine insisted he’s not a sex offender. No, he’s something “even worse than that.”

“I am a Donald Trump supporter,” he wrote.

Levine, in an op-ed for The Federalist, explained that his support for the Republican president became such an offense to many of those around him that he’s been essentially ostracized.

“I have been unfriended en masse on social media and excoriated by friends who deign to remain,” he added. “And I have been singly excluded from social gatherings when the rest of my family was invited.”

Did Levine always lean right politically?

Nope. In fact, he was “raised in a liberal Jewish family in Washington D.C., where my dad served as a Democratic congressman for Los Angeles. Accordingly, I was indoctrinated with all of the correct values and views.”

With that came Quaker elementary school education that included learning the black national anthem before “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Levine recalled.

And when he was 20, Levine said he came out as gay to his family — and “they were duly overjoyed.”

More from his op-ed:

It was always a given that Republicans are bad people, representative of that shameful sliver of our flawed society that values money above the planet and think the world would be better off if everyone were a straight, white male. At a minimum they are racist, misogynistic and homophobic. Left to their own devices, they would exclude ethnic minorities from everything, kick sinful gay offspring onto the streets, and pave our parks over with oil derricks.

Of course, there are the less malicious Republicans, the ones who have fallen victim to their gun-toting, Bible-thumping families and sadly do not know any better than what they have been told. This type is not entirely to blame for their ignorance; they just deserve our pity. These truths are held by my family and our extended social and political networks to be self-evident.

But things changed for Levine as he grew older and “the liberal policy agenda became problematic” for him.

“I began to raise questions with my family and friends, and met resistance,” he wrote. “It was not because my concerns were particularly inappropriate; I was just not supposed to be questioning at all.”

Levine noted that as time went on, he had few friends with whom he could hold a civil political discussion. And then he said one of them “stopped all communication with me for two weeks because Trump won the presidency.”

More from his op-ed:

If Republicans are bad, Trump is nothing less than Satan embodied. Post-election family gatherings devolved into group Trump-bashing, which intensified as more rumors of my dubious views wafted across town. I did not even bother going to gay pride because it was fused with a Resist march. If you do not want to impeach our president, you have no place in gay life.

I was labeled a white supremacist by a friend I’ve known my entire life, and completely dropped with no explanation by another dear friend and self-anointed giant of the gay civil rights movement to whom my father had introduced me 15 years ago.

Why has Levine grown more conservative politically?

Levine, who lives in Los Angeles, noted that he’s a small business owner, and that liberal platitudes don’t amount to much when he’s “regularly assaulted with financially crushing, nonsensical red tape and bureaucracy, much implemented as lip service to environmental protection.”

The Affordable Care Act? He explained that it’s “made medical treatment of my bipolar disorder more expensive than ever.”

“With few exceptions,” Levine wrote, “every one of my good friends feels more economically hopeless after the ‘recovery’ than before, and abject homelessness on the streets of my beloved city has swelled to egregious levels.”

More from his op-ed:

In desperation, like a closeted teenager sneaking into a porn theater, I surreptitiously began to explore the forbidden territories of Fox News and other conservative outlets. Incredibly, I found myself agreeing more often than not.

Fine, I thought, but that is where I had to draw the line. A couple of conservative encounters does not a conservative make, right? Until more liberals began to recognize the disingenuousness and destructiveness of my party’s stances, I just resolved to stick it out. I did everything in my power to avoid that one last unspeakable, fatal option: turning Republican.

Then came the Harvey Weinstein scandal

After movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations surfaced this fall, Levine said he realized that “the media outlets that had enabled and covered up his indiscretions for years were the same major public voices for the Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed party of worker’s and women’s rights.”

And that was that.

“I reached my threshold where no amount of hypothetical Republican bigotry or greed could approach the magnitude of hypocrisy, corruption, or criminality I saw rotting the Democrats to the core,” Levine wrote. “I jumped ship.”

You can read  his entire op-ed from the Federalist here.

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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SCOTUS Hears Case on Purged Ohio Voter Rolls

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BY:

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in an Ohio voting law case which pits supporters, who see the law as vital to preserving honest elections, against critics, who have attacked it as illegally disenfranchising thousands of Ohioans.

The case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, focuses on Ohio’s process for routinely clearing no-longer-eligible voters from its official lists. Every state does so, in order to ensure that would-be fraudulent voters cannot use the identities of people who have died or moved.

Ineligible voters in Ohio are identified by one of two ways: using the National Change of Address database, or through the “supplementary process.”

It is the supplementary process that now faces legal scrutiny. Under current law, the Ohio Board of Elections compiles a list of registered voters who haven’t voted in the past two years. It sends a notice to those individuals, informing them of their inactivity. If notified Ohioans then either send their notices back, or vote at any point in the subsequent four years, they are kept on the roles. Otherwise, they are purged.

The question at stake is whether or not the supplementary process violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), federal laws that govern voting rights and registration. The NVRA is designed to balance competing interests, intended as it is to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote” and, simultaneously, to “ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.” The supplementary process arguably supports the second goal, at the expense of the first.

Counsel for the challengers of the law—disenfranchised Ohio citizen Larry Harmon; the Ohio Coalition for the Homeless; and the Randolph Institute—contended that Ohio’s notification process violates a portion of the NVRA preserved and clarified by a HAVA amendment that stipulates individual voters cannot be removed “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” Harmon and co. claim that the supplementary process, which filters Ohioans by their voter inactivity, violates this section and is therefore illegal.

However, lawyers representing Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted argued that the supplementary process did not constitute disenfranchisement by reason of failure to vote. Rather, they argued, the critical factor was whether or not voters responded to the notice sent to them, the absence of a response constituting “the sole proximate cause of removal.”

The proper interpretation of the law could have large consequences. A Reuters analysis found that 144,000 Ohioans had been removed across the state’s three largest counties. Some 30,000 were removed between 2012 and 2016, a number larger than President Barack Obama’s Buckeye state margin of victory in 2012.

There are also concerns about the disparate impact of disenfranchisement, an issue that Justice Sonia Sotomayor spent several minutes on during the state of Ohio’s oral arguments. Sotomayor voiced concerns about the effect the law had on poor and minority communities, whom she said were substantially less likely to vote and therefore more likely to be disenfranchised.

Justice Sotomayor, along with her colleagues Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, were the most vocal forces during Ohio’s arguments, which may signal a general support of the court’s left wing for the Randolph Institute et. al. Justice Stephen Breyer, also left-leaning, was quiet during the first half, although in the second half he asked several questions about the process of mailing and returning letters, pushing during the Randolph Institute’s counsel to note that estimates suggest 70 percent of notices go unreturned.

Justice Samuel Alito was the most vocal of the court’s conservative justices, asking several questions about the “sole proximate cause” claim by Ohio that seemed designed to press his colleagues on the court into agreeing that the notification process did not violate the NVRA. Justice Clarence Thomas was characteristically silent, as was Justice Neil Gorsuch, who asked no questions.

Not quiet, but not clearly leaning one way or the other, was Justice Anthony Kennedy. The court’s consistent swing vote, Kennedy’s vote may, as it has in many cases over the years, end up being decisive in Husted.

via Washington Free Beacon

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CNN shocked that President Trump looks presidential, sane, and in-control during immigration meeting

CNN shocked that President Trump looks presidential, sane, and in-control during immigration meeting,
As you know, President Trump is completely insane.  He spends all day watching TV, has never heard of John Boehner, eats fried chicken in bed, rants, raves, screams, and berates everyone around him, and he’s basically a functional illiterate. Everyone at the White House despises him, they think he’s a bizarre man-child, and they spend their days plotting his destruction via the 25th Amendment.  Also, he’s watching a fictional “gorilla channel” and talking to the gorillas as he encourages them to fight.

via CanadaFreePress.Com

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Feds raid California apartment complexes doubling as ‘maternity hotels’ for Chinese birth tourists

Homeland Security agents this week raided apartment complexes that double as “maternity hotels” for Chinese women in Southern California.

It was part of a major sting that targeted s0-called “birth tourism” in Los Angeles, San Bernadino, and Orange counties on Tuesday, according to NBC News, which was on the scene for one of the raids.

Among the 20 properties raided was the high-end Carlyle building in Irvine where pregnant women and new moms were reportedly paying up to $80,000 to make sure their babies were born as American citizens.

One of the women told NBC News  that she came to the U.S. to give birth “for the education of the next generation.”

Agents did not arrest any of the mothers. Police treated the moms as material witnesses and had first-responders on standby in case any of them went into labor.

What is birth tourism?

The controversial practice of “birth tourism” is when a pregnant woman travels to the U.S. with the purpose of giving birth here. Any child born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a U.S. citizen. The child is often called an “anchor baby.”

Later, when they turn 21, the children can sponsor their parents for a visa.

“It’s not necessarily illegal to come here to have the baby, but if you lie about your reasons for coming here, that’s visa fraud,” Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Los Angeles, told NBC News.

How do they do it?

The suspects who ran the Carlyle “maternity hotel” are Chao Chen and Dong Li, according to NBC News.

They reportedly used a website to attract clients. The site promoted the benefits of having a child with U.S. citizenship, including 13 years of free education, less pollution, low-cost financial aid for college, and a path for the family to citizenship, NBC News reported.

Clients reportedly paid the organizers $40,000 to $80,000 for housing and medical expenses.

Some of the pregnant and new moms were housed in two-bedroom apartments at the Carlyle, the outlet reported. The apartments, which run about $3,000 per month, provide clients with private balconies, a resort-style pool, and other amenities.

Handlers reportedly took the women to their medical appointments and various county hospitals for delivery.

The women didn’t pay the full price of approximately $25,000 for their medical services. Most got reduced rates from nothing to $4,000, according to NBC News.

More than 400 babies born at one hospital were linked to the scheme, investigators told NBC News.

The investigation also uncovered possible tax evasion. The suspects could face charges of high-level fraud and tax evasion.

How long have the feds been investigating the Carlyle?

Irvine Police received an anonymous tip in June 2014, NBC News reported. The police turned it over to Homeland Security. U.S. Customs and Immigration Services received a separate, but similar tip.

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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Twitter Responds to O’Keefe’s Undercover Video

The undercover Project Veritas video shows Twitter engineer Clay Haynes Saying “We’re more than happy to help the DOJ with their little investigation”

James O’Keefe even put a disguise on and had dinner at Morton’s steakhouse with the Twitter employee, Clay Haynes.

The statement from Twitter spox is as follows:

“The individual depicted in this video was speaking in a personal capacity and does not represent or speak for Twitter. Twitter only responds to valid legal requests, and does not share any user information with law enforcement without such a request.

“We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative. Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”

James O’Keefe responded by blasting Twitter, “UPDATE: Notice how the official Twitter statement does not address the subpoena/investigation at all. , your users ought to know- would you give private information to DOJ w/out letting them know?”

O’Keefe went after Jack Dorsey again, “What’s interesting about statement is that he Doesn’t deny his what his Senior Networking engineer said into our hidden cameras. in fact, he seems to confirm he said what he said.”

Twitter employee caught in O’Keefe’s undercover video, Clay Haynes tweeted out, “Well. This is no fun.”

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WATCH: Congressman Gives Trump A Big Warning About Working With Democrats

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned President Donald Trump on Wednesday that he is making a fatal mistake if he gives in on immigration and does not first secure funding for the border wall.

Appearing on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company,” Gohmert said that if Congress passes any kind of deal on DACA and does not secure funds for the border wall that the wall will never get built.

“The same thing Ronald Reagan said was his biggest mistake and it was,” Gohmert said. “The chance if we do DACA of getting a wall and secure border later are about the same as Chuck Schumer saying that black conservatives are the most brave people in America. It’s just not going to happen.”

“It’s not going to happen and we will have the next Congress to keep coming back again and again in doing more and more amnesties until there are so many people voting here that have no clue about what it takes to keep liberty in a representative government it will be lost,” Gohmert added.

WATCH:

via Daily Wire

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