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Celebrity chef and self-described “privileged Eastern liberal” Anthony Bourdain slammed his fellow leftist elites this week, arguing that their disdain for working-class Americans helped create “the upswell of rage and contempt” that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now,” Bourdain said in an interview with Reason magazine. “I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America,” Bourdain...

What contracting Zika taught one traveler about traveling fearlessly I remember looking down at my polka-dotted legs as I lay by the pool of a small hostel in El Tunco, El Salvador. As I fought the urge to scratch, I counted the number of mosquito bites. Thirty-seven. I had thirty-seven bites on my legs, not to mention a few on my arms and the one driving me crazy on my back. I shrugged, sprayed my legs with more 99.9 percent DEET spray, and continued basking in the sun. A week after I tallied up my bites, on the last day...

A staff member at Ohio State University allegedly pleaded with Facebook friends to show a little sympathy for Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Somali-born terrorist behind Monday's attack that left nine people hospitalized. The since-deleted post attributed to Stephanie Clemons Thompson, Ohio State University Assistant Director of Residence Life, urged people to "find compassion for his life" and to "come together." The message also warned readers "DO NOT SHARE THIS POST."

Gannett publication - Title and link only. http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/28/elections-staff-layout-recount-timeline/94539210/

Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was involved in an international custody battle 16 years ago in Miami, is mourning the death of Fidel Castro, a man he compared to a "father." Elian was a photogenic five-year-old in 1999 when he was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast. Sixteen years later, he is recalling Fidel Castro as a man he likened to a father. In an interview on Cuban State TV Saturday, he said he wanted Fidel to be proud of him. Speaking in Spanish, he said, "He is a father who like my father, I...

Congresswoman Barbara Lee expressed her sympathies with those mourning Cuban president Fidel Castro. He died Friday at age 90.

We are all still reeling from the shock of the election results. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote yet we now must brace ourselves for a Trump Administration. The more I think about it and see the reactions from all sides, the more this feels like the aftermath of an attack ― a literal attack ― on our communities. The groups that those “deplorables” love to hate and feel threatened by are now under attack: LGBT people, people of color, women, Muslims, the disabled and many others. This election was a hate crime. Not physical but psychological, and one that...

Osi Imeokparia, the Clinton campaign's chief product officer (don't ask), was interviewed on NPR yesterday and asked how she would feel if Donald Trump won the election. If you listen at about the 12-minute mark, you can hear her start to sob hysterically. "If Donald Trump is the victor, how devastating will that be to you?" she is asked. "Fairly. As you can see, I am a woman of color. I also am a recent naturalized citizen of the United States. On all dimensions this campaign is very personal (sob!) ... (sob! sob! sob!) ... So to work on behalf...

Appearing on MSNBC’s MTP Daily today, NBC News’ justice correspondent Pete Williams refuted much of the reporting from Wall Street Journal and Fox News regarding a likely indictment regarding an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Fox’s Bret Baier later backed off slightly, saying the indictment comment was “inartfully answered.” Speaking to host Chuck Todd, Williams claimed that via his own law enforcement sources, there doesn’t actually appear to be much of an investigation, let alone one that will result in indictments. “There really isn’t one,” Williams answered Todd regarding the status of the investigation. “Few want to call it...

Actor Bryan Cranston says he will “definitely move” out of the United States if Republican Donald Trump wins the presidential election. “Absolutely,” Cranston told The Bestseller Experiment podcast when asked if he’d take an extended vacation to Vancouver if Trump wins. “I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t.” A constant critic of the GOP White House hopeful, Cranston has called Trump a “narcissist” who lacks the “qualities we want in a president.” In a promo for an upcoming appearance on BBC’s Newsnight, Cranston predicted Trump will lose the...

When you think about it, the world is full of unexplained phenomena. Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? Why do I continue to eat ice-cream when I have a lactose intolerance? We may never know. Here’s another mystery I’ve been grappling with for a few years: what did we, the human race, do to deserve the excellence of Beyoncé? ..Here’s why: raw talent and an unstinting work ethic. It’s that simple. Nobody works harder than Bey. The muscular voice, the obvious care when it comes to choosing her collaborators, the fashion and the thighs: they’re all...

The refugees are arriving on a continent that since World War II has become home to a third of the world’s immigrants. Europe’s major countries, which once sent their huddled masses to the United States, now have foreign-born populations comparable to that of the United States. But only some European minds and fewer European hearts have adjusted to that reality. Even in the U.S., which John F. Kennedy called “a nation of immigrants,” immigration is a divisive issue—and always has been. In the 1750s Benjamin Franklin worried that too many Germans were coming to Pennsylvania. He said they had a...

Project Veritas’ latest series of videos captured a Hillary campaign operative admitting to inciting violence at Trump rallies. “It doesn’t matter what the friggin’ legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker,” said Scott Foval, National Field Director at Americans United for Change. “One of the things we do is we stage very authentic grassroots protests right in their faces at their own events. Like, we infiltrate.” **** Shortly after the video’s release, Foval was canned.

In a recent speech to a group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial point about the commonalities between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter activists. I thought this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate and sharp: How dare I try to understand the “other side”? But as people, wouldn’t we all benefit from trying to empathize with people we disagree with?

Secretary of State John Kerry wants to keep the American people in the dark regarding the global jihadist terrorist threat we are facing. Referring to terrorism in remarks he made at the Edward M. Kennedy Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a country that has recently experienced its own encounter with Islamist terrorists, Kerry said, “Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.” Kerry was just reflecting his boss’s bizarro worldview. In an interview with Vox, for example, Obama agreed “absolutely” with the proposition posed by the...

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has become the second and most-senior Republican senator to say she will not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump for president. In an op-ed published online Monday night in The Washington Post, Ms. Collins said it was “not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican.” The column outlined a series of common criticisms of Mr. Trump’s conduct and temperament — mocking a reporter with disabilities, feuding wioth a Muslim Gold Star family, suggesting a Mexican-American judge might not be impartial.

Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq, kept up his attacks on Donald Trump on Sunday, saying the world is seeing the "blackness" of the Republican presidential nominee's soul. The world is receiving us like we’ve never seen,” Khan said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” "They have seen the blackness of his character, of his soul.”

Apparently this never got posted here because of the limitations of probation, so here you go: So...here we are...18 years. Mostly good. Clintons a Liar, Dr Raouls costumes, AppyPappy's daughter singing the National Anthem, Kristinns wonderful reporting. The repugnant lies of Classy Green Eyed Blonde and DeepInTheHurtgenForest. The surreal cryptic posts of quidam. The lib trolls like Eschoir. The March for Justice? Heady times. They really were. Fighting against a President who had the gall to look us in the eye and lie to us. But the last 9 months? Absolutely unrecognizable. A lot of great FReepers run off. And...

Before he died May 4 from complications stemming from pancreatic cancer and a stroke, former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah asked his wife, Joyce, and son, Jim, if there were any Muslims in his hospital. If so, he wanted to "go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump." Joyce and Jim Bennett shared this story with The Daily Beast, as well as other tales involving his disgust with "Donald Trump's xenophobia" and proposal to ban Muslims from...

I’ve always thought highly of General David Petraeus. He’s a smart man who was an extremely competent US Army general officer; perhaps even a mini MacArthur without the gigantic ego and the propensity for hunkering down in dugouts. Petraeus was the man who led the surge, who took command of US forces in Afghanistan, who later became the Director of the CIA. In an era searching for real military leadership, Petraeus seemed just what the doctor ordered. Or, was he? His reputation was tarnished by an affair with his biographer and his carelessness which allowed her access to his Top...