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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff claimed that a quid pro quo agreement between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not necessary for Trump's request that the foreign government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden to be an impeachable offense. Schiff, 59, has been one of the driving forces behind the impeachment inquiry that began last month after an unnamed CIA official filed a whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing by the president during his phone call with Zelensky. However, Schiff's ties to the whisteblower have given political opponents, including Trump, ammunition to question his...

Portland ice cream company Salt & Straw today pulled its products from Provenance Hotels, the Portland-based chain founded by embattled U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland. "After much consideration, we have made a decision to end our wholesale business with Provenance Hotels," Salt & Straw said in a statement provided to WW. "We are very thoughtful with our relationships and, after seven years, have determined it is best to go in a different direction." Oregon Public Broadcasting first reported Salt & Straw's decision. OPB noted that Salt & Straw provided products to Provenance hotels like the Dossier, where guests could order...

Often described as one of the largest national communities in the world without their own state, the Kurds, numbering somewhere between 25 and 30 million, are a very distinct community, with its own language, history and traditions. Nonetheless, their ethnic identity has been for a long time denied by their major neighbors, the Arabs, the Turks and the Persians. Without their own state, the Kurds have seen the Kurdistan, “the land of the Kurds”, divided mainly between these neighbors (the present-day states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran). The Kurdish nation originated from the ancient communities indigenous to the Mesopotamia...

Several TV networks have agreed to air an underwear commercial portraying a surreal world where men and boys menstruate. The ad opens with an anguished young teenage boy sheepishly telling his dad, “I think I got my period.” Dad later hugs him and tells him, “It’s just part of growing up.” Many of the nine rapid-fire vignettes in the one-minute, 20-second ad are jarring: a man rolls over in bed, revealing blood-stained sheets; in a public bathroom, a man passes a tampon to another beneath a toilet stall partition; and a man walks through a locker room with a tampon...

Similarly, today, it is surprising to hear with what composure, and how glibly, members of the public, and even politicians, talk of a second American civil war. Some conservatives assume that they, having more arms and more training and practice in using them, would quickly prevail over the soy-boy Left. Proficiency with firearms will be no match for nuclear bombs, which Democrat Eric Swalwell has already suggested deploying domestically. The Democrats are busy even now destroying the institutions of government, the institutions for the peaceful adjustment of differing interests. They are doing this through the Mueller witch hunt, bureaucratic and...

Schiff: 'Republicans would like nothing better' than for impeachment inquiry witnesses to coordinate testimony House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) defending conducting closed interviews as part of the House impeachment inquiry, suggesting House Republicans wanted public hearings so witnesses could coordinate their testimony. “The Republicans would like nothing better if witnesses could tailor their testimony to other witnesses,” Schiff told Margaret Brennan during an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation." He was responding to a question about GOP contentions that Democrats are selectively leaking information on their interviews. “We may very well call some of the same witnesses in...

As it is becoming obvious that political responses to global warming such as the Paris treaty are not working... **SNIP** Solving climate change, in fact, requires getting China, India and all the other developing countries on board to cut emissions. But of course, their goal is to lift their populations out of poverty with cheap and reliable energy. How do we square that? A carbon tax can play a limited but important role in factoring the costs of climate change into fossil-fuel use. Nobel laureate climate economist William Nordhaus has shown that implementing a small but rising global carbon tax...

'FIRING LINE' WITH MARGARET HOOVER: Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) joins Firing Line to discuss the Trump impeachment inquiry. Hogan addresses reports that he was considering a primary run against the President, discusses the state of the Republican party, and talks about his record as a Republican governor leading a blue state. (snip) Hogan on Trump alienating groups of people: "We're getting to the people where we're losing suburban women, we're losing all minorities. We're alienating every group we possibly can and we're down to a smaller, shrinking base. Now the president seems to be doubling down on that, that kind...

A Middle School Student On A Trip To DC Spat On A Black Person At The African American History Museum * The principal of the Connecticut middle school said she did not believe the incident was racially motivated * A white student on a middle school trip to Washington, DC, spat on a black patron at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture on Friday, prompting his class to be ejected from the museum. The unnamed male student at Shelton Intermediate School in Connecticut spat off a balcony and hit the person below, according to principal Dina...

Zeppelins, the rigid airships most famously epitomized by the Hindenburg, now seem kind of retro, rather than the image of futurity they represented in the 1930s. But they could be about to make a comeback in a big way — courtesy of a new aluminum-shelled, solar-powered airship that’s being built by the U.K.-based company Varialift Airships. According to the company’s CEO Alan Handley, the airship will be capable of making a transatlantic flight from the United Kingdom to the United States, consuming just 8% of the fuel of a regular airplane. It will be powered by a pair of solar-powered...

Posted on October 12, 2019October 11, 2019 by Msgr. Charles Pope How to Give God Perfect Thanks – A Homily for the 28th Sunday of the Year One of the great human inadequacies is our inability to give proper and adequate thanks to God. Perhaps the biggest problem is that we don’t even realize the vast majority of what He does for us; it is hidden from our eyes.A further problem is that in our fallen condition we seem to be wired to magnify our problems and minimize or discount the enormous blessings of each moment. God sustains every...

The pitched battle over impeachment is the last-gasp struggle of a generation that has dominated American politics, media and culture for more than half a century — the Baby Boomers. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people. I say this as a member of that tribe (although one on the, ahem, younger end of the timeline), someone who’s lived through the endless political and cultural wars painted in stark black-and-white by a group that only sees life in terms of Us-vs.-Them. It’s a generation, convinced of its own importance, that refuses to leave the public stage: The president,...

Most members of America’s foreign-policy establishment see Turkey as an ungrateful ally, perhaps even a Trojan horse inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s walls. On Capitol Hill and in many Washington think tanks, a call for concessions to Tehran will get a more sympathetic hearing than a call to compromise with Ankara, a treaty ally for 67 years. Turkey’s determination to secure its southern border against the YPG is a wanton impulse, in the prevailing view. But the YPG has substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, as then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified before Congress in April 2016....

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The Republican Party is set to win a large majority of all future close presidential elections, even contests in which they lose the popular vote, according to a recent study. GOP candidates for president can expect to be victorious in 65 percent of future presidential elections and University of Texas at Austin researchers analyzed why "inversions" — where the popular vote winner loses the overall election — has happened twice since 2000. The study authors found that the Electoral College's winner-take-all approach favors Republicans and has pushed them to victories in 2000 and 2016. The researchers concluded that inversions will...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Sunday that any attempt to divide China will be crushed, as Beijing faces political challenges in months-long protests in Hong Kong and U.S. criticism over its treatment of Muslim minority groups. FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations in Beijing, China May 15, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter “Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,” he told Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in a meeting on Sunday, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV....

https://www.newsbreakapp.com/n/0N5AZ9gb?s=a99&pd=03595v0G

Over at PJ Media, my friend Roger L. Simon makes some sage observations about the proper conduct of foreign policy among great powers in general and, in particular, about the behavior of President Trump with respect to this important arena of human endeavor. Roger’s first point has two parts, a strophe, as it were, and an antistrophe. The strophe involves a patent moral dimension. We should not conceal—from others or from ourselves—the moral caliber of the leaders with whom we deal. Besides the United States, the world’s only other colossus is China. Not only does it preside over the second...

Portland Police say a prominent anti-fascist activist was killed early Saturday outside Cider Riot, a Northeast Portland club and a popular gathering spot for left-wing protestors. Sean D. Kealiher, 23, was hit by an SUV a little after midnight. He had been at the club earlier in the evening. Friends drove him to the hospital, where he died. Someone fired shots at the SUV after it hit Kealiher, and the vehicle crashed into the headquarters of the Oregon Democratic Party. The hit and run is being investigated as a possible homicide

Lately, there has been much attention paid to the topic of climate change, and what we are doing about it. We can start by taking a stand to save Jackson Park. **SNIP** There are locations directly across the street on Stony Island. There are properties owned by the University of Chicago near Washington Park. These properties are outside of the parks themselves, and would both enlarge as well as bring businesses into the community. Parks like Jackson and Washington provide much-needed contact with nature and many benefits to the public, including trees, which are the lungs of a city.