Posts on Wednesday, December 25, 2019

President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom traded barbs over the growing homeless population in the state.Following the Democratic debate last week, Newsom blamed the president’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, led by Secretary Ben Carson, for the rise in homelessness in his state. “Shelters solve sleep. Housing and supportive services solve homelessness. Housing first. You have a new director on the Interagency Council on Homelessness in the United States appointed by Donald Trump that says housing [comes] fourth,” said Newsom.

An Oregon woman is facing hate crime charges for allegedly dumping soda on a Mexican food cart worker and telling her to “go back to Mexico,” police said. The beef began when Sierra McDonald, 30, who was recently indicted on bias crime and other charges, ordered food from the Portland cart and refused to pay for it, saying it was too expensive, The Oregonian reported. The Sept. 21 confrontation escalated as McDonald, who is black, told the woman to “go back to Mexico” and poured soda on her head. She also doused the woman’s grill and chicken with the beverage, the victim told police.

On "BBC Breakfast", 78-year-old Terrence admitted, it's not easy celebrating the holidays alone. "Since my mother passed 20 years ago, I've had every Christmas on my own. And you do feel it very much," he said with his voice breaking. "You'd make yourself a sandwich, and you'd just, well, watch TV," Terrence said. "If you're out there and you can help Terrence get a Christmas tree, decorate your house - would you like that?" the BBC's Dan Walker asked. After Terrence said yes, Walker said "we'll sort that for you to make sure this Christmas is a great one." The response came quickly.

Arlington, Virginia — All Marines train hard. But few are tougher and none are stronger than an elite unit of 10 Marines stationed in Washington, D.C. (Snip) The mission of these mightiest of Marines is to shoulder the burden of American grief. They are the Body Bearers and every day at Arlington National Cemetery, in teams of six, they carry the caskets. Other branches of the service use eight men and carry lower. But Marines pride themselves on doing more with less and they take that pride to the grave. To do this, and to make it look so effortless, they practice with a weighted coffin day and night,

Baltimore - Baltimore could wrap up 2019 with its highest per-capita homicide rate on record as killings of adults and minors alike for drugs, retribution, money or no clear reason continue to add up and city officials appear unable to stop the violence. Police recorded 338 homicides as of Tuesday, following a week of relentless gunfire that saw eight people shot — three of them fatally — in one day and nine others — one fatally — another day. That total is up from 309 in 2018 (Snip) By contrast, New York City, with more than 8 million residents, had 306 homicides through Dec. 15.

President Trump’s election victory in 2016 panicked the adult film industry because it expected the biggest crackdown on pornography since the Reagan administration. Mr. Trump was the only presidential candidate to sign a pledge from an anti-pornography group vowing to enforce existing laws against adult materials. The Republican platform branded pornography “a public health crisis” and conservative culture warriors filled the administration. (Snip) Although pornography is easily accessible on the internet, the sale or distribution of hard-core materials online or by mail is a violation of federal law. It is also illegal to transport obscene materials across state lines.

A stunning panorama of Mars shows the final resting place of NASA’s Opportunity. The image is a series of 354 individual pictures snapped by the rover over a 29-day period before it shutdown completely and declared 'dead' by the American space agency earlier this year. The desolate Martian landscape known as Perseverance Valley was the last thing the rover saw and now serves as its graveyard. (Snip) NASA explained that Opportunity was not expected to last 15 years, but noted it had contributed greatly to their understanding of the planet’s geology and environment, ‘laying groundwork for future robotic and human missions on the Red Planet’,

A state-of-the-art Russian fighter jet has crashed on a training mission just days before the first of the aircraft was due to be delivered to Putin's air force. The Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter crashed in a ball of flames in the far east of Russia and was 'fully destroyed', officials said. (Snip) Russia's air force has ordered 76 of the $155 million (£120million) planes, which are intended to rival America's F-22 Raptor stealth fighters - to which they are similar. The Su-57 is also similar to the Chinese J-20 jet, which is alleged to have been built using stolen US plans obtained by Chinese hackers.

Jews are celebrating Chanukah this week, and Christians are celebrating Christmas. Atheists, including any number of G-dless Soros/Sanders Jews, also are celebrating Christmas, but not in a way that a faithful Christian would. For the G-dless, it is a national holiday that they make so secular that I, as an Orthodox Jew, am deeply offended. Chanukah needs to be Chanukah. Christmas needs to be Christmas. It is a strange time. Christians watch Democrats — including Nancy “As a Catholic” Pelosi — make a sacrilege of “peace on earth and good will to all” by infusing the nation with division and hate. Jews watch our JINOs make a mockery of Chanukah

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.” (Snip) Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health. But some professors and education advocates argue

North Korea’s vague threats of a potential year-end provocation – what the regime has dubbed a “Christmas gift” – have analysts and ex-officials urging the Trump administration to consider tougher options toward Pyongyang in 2020. Kim Jong Un’s regime wants sanctions eased by the end of the year, and its warnings have prompted speculation they could be planning a new missile test, possibly of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. (Snip) "We'll see what happens. Let's see. Maybe it's a nice present, maybe it's a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test ... you never know," he said.

President Donald Trump delivered his presidential Christmas message from the White House on Wednesday, calling for the country to foster a greater sense of “understanding and respect.” (Tweet/Video) The president said in a statement, “While the challenges that face our country are great, the bonds that unite us as Americans are much stronger.”“Together, we must strive to foster a culture of deeper understanding and respect — traits that exemplify the teachings of Christ,” Trump added.President Trump’s comments follow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democrats voting to impeach him,

As if honey bees didn’t have enough to contend with, from pesticides to bacterial pathogens, another nemesis has emerged in the Pacific Northwest, one capable of freaking out humans, too. It’s called the Asian giant hornet — and is also known as the yak-killer hornet, the commander wasp in Korea and the tiger head bee in Taiwan, according to experts. As the names indicate, the hornets are indigenous to Asia, but some appeared for the first time this month in Washington State, where agricultural officials have issued a pest alert and warned that the hornets pose a threat to honeybees. They showed up in British Columbia in August,

The call came into the Coryell County sheriff’s department on the afternoon of June 4. A young man had been seen walking aimlessly up and down a stretch of U.S. 84, a couple miles east of the central Texas town of Gatesville. He had been there for at least two days, the caller said. He looked to be on the verge of collapse. A deputy named Billy Holder headed that way. He soon spotted the young man, who was standing so close to the road that a tractor-trailer had to abruptly change lanes to avoid swiping him. Holder flipped on his squad car’s emergency lights

I can tell my youngest child almost anything and she’ll believe it. I’ve tried to inculcate a well-attenuated sense for bovine excrement in all my children, but that didn’t prevent her from believing me when I told her that I have a seasonal job being a giant inflatable gorilla outside of a fireworks stand. When I tried to come clean, she said, incredulously, “You got fired?” Not that there’s anything wrong with childlike wonder and suspension of disbelief from time to time, even if it does involve thinking I get paid to be a giant inflatable gorilla or believing in Santa Claus.

Iran’s armed forces will hold a joint, four-day naval exercise with Russia and China in the northern part of the Indian Ocean, a spokesman said Wednesday. The drill, which is to start on Saturday, will be the first such trilateral exercise as Tehran seeks to boost military cooperation with Beijing and Moscow amid unprecedented economic sanctions from Washington. Visits to Iran by Russian and Chinese naval representatives have also stepped up in recent years. (Snip) The drill is seen as a response to recent US maneuvers with its regional ally Saudi Arabia, in which China also participated. In the wake of recent escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf,

In his first Christmas message to the country, Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the global persecution of Christians. Johnson promised those persecuted Christians that Great Britain under his leadership will defend their right to practice their faith.It’s great to have a real UK leader in charge again.Prime Minister Boris Johnson: Today of all days, I want us to remember those Christians around the world who are facing persecution. For them Christmas day will be marked in private, in secret, perhaps even in a prison cell. As Prime Minister, that is something I want to change. We stand with Christians everywhere,

Preparations are underway in the United States and the nations of Europe to celebrate Christmas as first and foremost a tribute to materialism. These increasingly agnostic and secular societies are choosing to ignore the existence of God as well as disdain for the moral and behavioral guidelines as established by Judea-Christian teachings. They are, as a substitute, placing more and more trust in man. The ultimate consequence for a society that chooses this misguided reliance and the reality of God's outstretched helping hand is embodied in the story of a young boy from the streets of a nameless city in an unknown country.

American troops in eastern Syria may be far from home, but they are still getting to enjoy the spirit of Christmas thanks to U.S. led coalition forces in Iraq. Soldiers received various gifts via helicopter this week as part of a project dubbed ‘Operation Holiday Express.’ Gifts, including candies and toiletries, were donated by military support groups, churches and charity organizations in the U.S. A military band was even flown in, all the way from Kansas, to play Christmas songs for service members. (Tweet/Video) “We’re here in eastern Syria visiting troops at several bases, and these troops are here to defeat the remnants of ISIS,”

After several years of deadly occuption by ISIS and Al-Qaeda the Christians in Aleppo, Syria were free to celebrate Christmas this year. Thousands of Christians flooded the city center to celebrate Christ’s birth today in Aleppo. (Photo/Tweet) Thousands of Syrians peacefully enjoying Christmas celebrations and festivities in the streets of #Aleppo, #Syria, free from Obama and Hillary’s Al-Qaeda “rebels”.(Tweets/Photos)

All through the coming new year, an election year, the American people should remember the Christmas “gift” the Washington establishment has carefully wrapped and dumped under the tree as we gather with family. Thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the increasingly radical left to whose tune she must dance, and the permanent bureaucratic apparatus devoted to resisting most of what the Trump administration is doing, we find an illegitimate impeachment in our stocking. Millions in this country will sit at their Christmas dinners, or take flame to their menorah, and instead of experiencing the peace of the Child in the manger, or a welcome respite from the travails

Almost every Democrat running for president supports so-called “gun buybacks.” Too bad they don't work. Proposals range from Joe Biden's voluntary gun buybacks to the more radical mandatory confiscation proposed by Cory Booker. (He still misleadingly calls it a “buyback.”) So it’s worth examining how such buybacks played out recently in New Zealand, which passed a ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons and a mandatory gun buyback program after a tragic shooting in April. The deadline for the mandatory gun buyback program was Friday. The New Zealand program successfully led to the compensated confiscation of 51,000 of the targeted firearms.

The FBI is investigating former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin who controversially issued more than 400 pardons in the weeks after he lost his reelection bid. Among those who were granted clemency after Bevin lost his seat on November 5 was murderer Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for killing a man during a home invasion. Bevin also pardoned Micah Schoettle who was sentenced in 2018 to 23 years in prison for multiple sexual offences involving children. State Rep. Chris Harris said a criminal investigator contacted him last week seeking more information on Bevin's pardons.

The New Yorker Editor David Remnick said Sunday that it’s “a source of great frustration for the press” that Americans still continue to support President Trump despite last week’s impeachment drama. During an appearance on CNN, Mr. Remnick was asked by “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter whether anything was going change now that Mr. Trump had been impeached by the Democrat-controlled House. Mr. Remnick, who took the helm at The New Yorker in 1998, the same year former President Bill Clinton was impeached, lamented that Republicans’ “illusions about Trump remain.”

The Wall Street Journal sends a daily email to subscribers with highlights from the news. Today’s email begins: Stocks and bonds are staging an extraordinary run. They are on track for their biggest simultaneous gains in more than two decades. The S&P 500 has soared 28.6% this year, while a bond rally has pushed the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note down by three quarters of a percentage point. Yields move inversely to prices. Behind this year’s gains: An improving economic outlook, progress on trade and the Fed’s interest-rate cuts. The progress on trade includes, most recently, China’s announcement that it will lower tariffs

What a disappointment. After the two House Get Trump Committees came up with (if you’ll pardon the expression) trumped-up charges against our current president, and the Democrats in that degraded body rose to the bait and voted for two articles of impeachment, we thought we would at least get a holiday break. A little time to enjoy our friends and family and the joy of the Christmas season without the ambient noise of the Trump impeachment rodeo and masa-cree on continuous loop. We could celebrate, secure in the knowledge that the charges, so flimsy and stitched-up they would make a kangaroo blush, would quickly fetch up in the Senate.

When I was a boy growing up in Ballwin, Missouri, one of my family’s Advent and Christmas traditions was to decorate our house by placing artificial candles in all of the windows, giving our home a warm, welcoming glow. But one window, the main one in our living room, didn’t have a candle until Christmas Eve, when we would put a real, lit candle by it. That was a candle, Mom and Dad explained, for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, looking for a place to stay that holy night more than 2,000 years ago. Mary and Joseph — the Mother of God and her spouse most chaste —

Super Saturday (Dec. 21) was expected to be a bigger sales day this year than Black Friday and it did not disappoint. Bloomberg reports it was the biggest single day in US retail history: Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners. “Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm… While foot traffic was down at most malls, the conversion rate, or the percentage

A New York-based online sports media company is asking a federal court to prevent Ohio State University from trying to stop the company from using the letter "O" in its logo as part of a university effort to protect its brand. Overtime Sports Inc., which focuses on high school football and basketball, has a pending application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its capital "O" logo that features sloping, rounded corners. The university, home to the Ohio State Buckeyes, asked the company in July to stop using the letter, saying it resembled its own trademarked octagonal "block O" letter it has used since 1898.

Earlier this month, the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered the FBI to re-verify all previous warrant applications involving the FBI attorney who falsified evidence against the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. However, Fox News has learned the court did not order the FBI to double-check warrant applications involving other officials who made key omissions and errors in warrant applications as the bureau sought to surveil Page. The FISC's failure to request a comprehensive evaluation of previous submissions has stunned court-watchers who have questioned whether enough is being done to deter future misconduct by the FBI. In the past, the FISC

WILMINGTON, Delaware—Joe Biden, 77, projected modesty and his “middle-class Joe” persona during the dedication of an Amtrak rail station in Wilmington that bears his name."The truth is, I don't deserve this — unless you reward longevity," the then-vice president said at the 2011 ceremony.In Delaware, Biden isn't associated with being middle class. He's better known as “Uncle Joe." And sites that bear the former vice president’s name reinforce that lore, reflecting the homeboy, regular guy bona fides that the top-tier Democratic presidential candidate has worked hard to maintain through his near half-century in public life.The Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station