1,400 ‘No-Go’ Zones For UK Ambulances, Attacks on EMTs Skyrocket
By Dan Lyman
Over 1,400 locations across England have been red-flagged as ‘no-go’ zones for ambulances without police escort, as the rate of violent attacks on paramedics has risen to a staggering eight per day, according to UK media.
More than 2,800 emergency medical personnel were attacked while on duty in 2017, up 36 percent in the last five years, latest data reveals.
“Paramedics are being stabbed, throttled, and sexually assaulted as shameful new figures show assaults on crew members have risen by a third,” the Mirror reports.
“About eight serious attacks a day take place on NHS ambulance crews and more than 1,400 homes in England are now red-flagged as ‘no-go’ areas without police protection.”
A list of injuries suffered by paramedics in London includes dislocations, fractures, asphyxiation, severe burns, concussions, and even spinal cord damage.
Union leaders are blaming politicians for cutbacks in funding, leading to a severe shortage of personnel, as well as police support.
“These terrifying figures underline that ambulance workers, along with all those who work in the emergency services, are forced to work under an increased threat of violence,” said GMB union national secretary Rehana Azam.
“Cuts in funding mean our ambulance workers are more likely to be working alone. Cuts to police services mean back-up isn’t always there.”
Incredibly, the vast majority of perpetrators reportedly do not face legal consequences for assaults upon EMTs.
The crisis facing British emergency services highlights the effects mass immigration can have upon safety, security, and infrastructure as crime continues to rise while the government’s capacity to properly enforce the law and tend to the needs of its citizens diminishes.
‘They’re just bad people’ – NYT columnist on Trump supporters
President Trump meets young black Republicans at an event in October © Reuters / Cathal MacNaughton
Why would anyone work for President Donald Trump? Aside from a shared ideological vision, advancing one’s own career, or chasing a sniff of political power, one New York Times columnist has a better explanation: They’re just bad people.
In a failed attempt to understand life outside the morally superior left coast, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argues that many Trump supporters are simply “bad people,” of two kinds: “the immoral and the amoral.”
Goldberg wasn’t writing about the MAGA-hat wearing middle-Americans who turn out in droves for Trump’s rallies, nor the conservative-leaning average Joe who would have voted for a kick in the head before Hillary Clinton. Instead, she was talking about the revolving cast of aides, officials, and lawmakers who’ve worked for the Trump administration or lent political support to his policies.
They’re the Steve Bannons (a “quasi-fascist with delusions of grandeur”), and the Anthony Scaramuccis ( a “political cipher who likes to be on TV”), the Ivanka Trumps and the Lindsey Grahams. Out of them all, Goldberg finds the apolitical figures, the ones only in it for the paycheck, the worst.
“Trump is unique as a magnet for grifters, climbers and self-promoters,” she wrote. “In part because decent people won’t associate with him.”
Of course, all of this is predicated on the belief that ‘Orange Man Bad,’ a belief that many of the New York Times’ readers likely share with Goldberg. The columnist ponders out loud how these people could work for Trump without feeling “shame or remorse” at his “belligerent nationalism and racist conspiracy theories.” What exactly these conspiracy theories are, however, Goldberg does not explain. Instead, we’re expected to know instinctively that Trump is, for whatever reason, bad.
The idea that anyone who works for Trump is “bad” by association is simplistic and no doubt appealing to many in the media and the #Resistance. However, reality is more complicated. Trump aides and officials have their own careers to advance, their own dreams and ambitions, and their own car payments to make. The institutions of Washington, DC will endure long after Trump leaves office, and many of these bureaucrats will still need work.
Take Mary Kissel, named this month as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s new foreign policy adviser. Kissel is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has been sharply critical of and even openly hostile to Trump’s policies before. Is Kissel’s move to the State Department a surrender of her anti-Trump media credentials, or simply a career upgrade?
What about the officials who served in past administrations? Surely the New York Times fretted over the 29 Google employees who took up jobs in the Obama White House? After all, Obama presided over the largest expansion of mass surveillance in history, and defended the National Security Agency even after it emerged that it gathered vast amounts of call, email and internet data from millions of Americans.
Some moves through the revolving door that existed between Google and the Obama White House were reported, but the morals of the employees themselves were never questioned. Because, while these moves raised questions about the cosy relationship between Washington, DC and the tech industry, they were at an individual level, career moves. Besides, they were working for Obama, who came with a tacit seal of approval from much of the mainstream media.
Things are different in 2018, however. Trump (who Goldberg actually called “the orange emperor” in her previous column) is bad, and anyone who works for him is bad and should feel bad. Life sure is black and white on the pages of the Gray Lady.
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WAIT TILL YOU HEAR WHAT BILL CLINTON DID TO AMERICAN CHILDREN!
REMEMBER WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT DID TO ELIAN GONZALEZ? ALSO A BILL CLINTON GEM.
“TEAR GAS (at border) used MONTHLY during OBAMA Admin” – Iron Man Sarah Sanders Schools Reporter
“TEAR GAS (at border) used MONTHLY during OBAMA Admin” – Iron Man Sarah Sanders Schools Reporter and destroys his arguments about tear gas being used under the Trump administration.
Trump, Mnuchin Call For GM To Pay Back Federal Bailout
By Tyler Durden
Update: Apparently, Mnuchin is regretting giving his twitter username and password to his aides at Treasury and/or his wife.
After retweeting a tweet from a Trump fan account Wednesday morning, Mnuchin has deleted the retweet and would like the world to know that this wasn’t an “authorized” tweeting.
The tweet was retweeted from Mnuchin’s account this morning, but the original was sent last night, which probably accounts for the incorrect timing given in the Treasury Secretary’s follow up.
* * *
President Trump made his frustration with GM abundantly clear on Tuesday when he threatened to cut all EV subsidies to the Detroit carmaker. But on Wednesday both the president, this time joined by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, took the administration’s attacks on GM to their next logical endpoint: Demanding that the federal bailout recipient return the $11.2 billion loss eaten by taxpayers from the federal bailout that the company received during the depths of the financial crisis.
“If GM doesn’t want to keep their jobs in the United States, they should pay back the $11.2 billion bailout that was funded by the American taxpayer,” read a tweet from a Trump fan account that the president and Mnuchin retweeted. Trump also retweeted two tweets about illegal immigration.
GM shares slid after Trump’s tweets Tuesday afternoon, but GM stock futures showed little immediate reaction to Trump’s threat. GM received billions in bailout money to shore up its troubled financial arm GMAC in 2008. After spinning off the subsidiary (which now trades as Ally Financial), GM saddled the Treasury with a more than $11 billion loss.
After meeting with GM CEO Mary Barra, Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that he had conveyed the president’s anger to Barra, and explained that Trump feels betrayed by GM, and that he believes the carmaker “turned their back on him” by announcing the layoffs and plant closures, particularly after the Trump tax cuts handed billions of dollars back to corporations and allowed them to repatriate overseas cash.
Politicians on both sides of the US-Canada border were outraged by GM’s Monday announcement that it would close 5 North American plants (and two foreign plants) and fire nearly 15,000 workers in the US alone. Trump blasted the company for opting for layoffs and closures in the US while plants in Mexico and China remained open.
While we await a response from GM management, shareholders are a little nervous:
Illinois Democrat says she wanted to pump a ‘broth of Legionella’ bacteria into Republican colleague’s water supply
Democratic Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, shown earlier this year during a committee hearing about deadly Legionnaires’ outbreaks at a state-run veterans home, criticized a Republican colleage Nov. 27, 2018, over his stance on a bill aimed at helping the victims’ families. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)
By Mike Riopell and Rick Pearson
A Democratic state lawmaker said she wanted to pump a lethal “broth of Legionella” bacteria into the water system of a Republican colleague’s family, during heated remarks on the Illinois House floor over a bill aimed at helping families of more than a dozen residents at the Downstate Quincy veterans home who died of Legionnaires’.
The bill would raise limits on damages in some state Court of Claims cases from $100,000 to $2 million, which could affect the victims’ families, who allege the state was negligent in the deaths that resulted from outbreaks at the veterans home over the past three years. Gov. Bruce Rauner rewrote the proposal over the summer to reduce such caps on damage awards to $300,000, but lawmakers voted Tuesday to override him.
During the House floor debate over the proposal, Republican state Rep. Peter Breen of Lombard questioned some of the plan’s details, contending the state doesn’t know how much it will cost. Breen, the outgoing House GOP floor leader, noted that multiple tort claims could be paid out for the same incident.
“And, yes, we know the personal injury lawyers are going to make out like bandits, which they tend to do anytime they come to the General Assembly,” Breen said.
Minutes later, Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Kifowit of Oswego, a co-sponsor of the legislation, stood up to attack Breen.
“I would like to make him a broth of Legionella and pump it into the water system of his loved one, so that they can be infected, they can be mistreated, they can sit and suffer by getting aspirin instead of being properly treated and ultimately die. And we are talking about our nation’s heroes,” said Kifowit, a Marine veteran.
Kifowit recounted questions over the Rauner administration’s handling of repeated outbreaks at the home, which are the subject of a grand jury investigation by Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and, in closing, said, “I respectfully ask for you to support this bill.”
Lawmakers voted 71-36 to raise the cap on lawsuit damages, the bare minimum number of votes they needed to override Rauner. The bill passed in May with 79 House votes. The Senate voted two weeks ago to override Rauner.
Breen yelled off microphone after Kifowit’s speech and Republican state Rep. Keith Wheeler of Oswego urged the chamber to reflect on the scale of the rhetoric.
“We lost our way today. I cannot fathom the idea that any one of us would ever publicly make a statement that is effectively a wish for a family member of one of our colleagues to die. That is what was said today. I think that’s despicable,” Wheeler said. “We shouldn’t stand for that.”
Later, after the vote, Kifowit said her words were misheard, misrepresented, misinterpreted and mischaracterized.
“Quite clearly what I said was ‘imagine if it was your family,’ ” she said, though she didn’t use those words. “So if it was misheard, I’ll apologize for the misheard, but my words were clearly, ‘Imagine if it was your family.’ ” Kifowitz acknowledged that her remarks “are all transcribed, and my words will be clear.”
On Twitter, she later said, “My words were twisted and misrepresented.” She added in another tweet, “I never stated anything to wish his family death.”
The deaths at the Quincy veterans home dogged Rauner’s re-election campaign. The post-Civil War-era facility is where 14 people have died and nearly 70 others have been sickened by Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks since 2015. At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed since the initial outbreak, claiming negligence by the state.
In its legal filings, the state has denied any negligence and Rauner has said the state has followed all recommendations of federal experts at the Quincy home. In April, Rauner’s veterans affairs director resigned.
Rauner’s veterans affairs director resigns in wake of 13 Legionnaires’ deaths at Quincy home »
In his amendatory veto, Rauner wrote that raising the $100,000 cap on damages to $2 million through the state Court of Claims was “effectively ignoring the impact of vastly expanded future litigation on the fiscal position of the state and its taxpayers.”
“I recognize that the current law is outdated and in need of adjustment,” he wrote. “However, this adjustment should reflect regional and national averages in order to properly compensate those who, once properly adjudicated, were found harmed by the state of Illinois.”
The $100,000 cap was established in 1972.
The vote to override Rauner’s veto on Tuesday came as lawmakers returned to Springfield for what could be their last clash with him, as they consider overriding dozens of the governor’s vetoes less than two months before he leaves office.
Rauner hasn’t made many appearances since losing his re-election bid to Democratic Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker and hasn’t been publicly defending his vetoes. That’s in contrast to his high-profile four years fighting Democrats who control the General Assembly.
Wait–Did Twitter’s CEO Just Share A Post Calling For ‘Civil War,’ Wiping Out The GOP, And How We Should Be Like CA?
By Matt Vespa
Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter’s perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night. Apparently, a “good read” is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for “civil war,” the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea. Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what’s needed.
Now, to be fair, the “civil war” will be won at the ballot box and demographic shifts, namely through the so-called emerging Democratic majority, but the overall theme is quite explicit: conservative Republicans are not welcome until they reform. In other words, until they break to the power of progressivism. First, if California’s politics is the future of the country, I’d rather chug bleach.
Second, the whole post, which was written by Ruy Teixeira and Peter Leyden on Medium, is what you’d expect from the coastal elite. They say the tax bill is not popular; it is. Even BET’s founder said the bill has helped bring black workers back into the work force. Over 250 companies have doled out bonuses to their workers. Over three million workers have benefitted from this legislation. It’s a tax cut for the middle/working classes of America that Democrats universally opposed.
In all, the post notes the similarities between our first civil war and this one. We had two separate Americas. Two separate economic models in each sphere. Trump is apparently the harbinger of the GOP’s doom. How many times have people said this only to be proven incorrect? Remember when (now) two-time presidential loser Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to win 2016 in a landslide? Also the post cites California as the basis for this GOP collapse argument. California Republicans are a different breed; they’re not really conservative. It’s a deep-blue state. Are we shocked that the GOP doesn’t do well in such environments. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is hardly a prime example of those leading the conservative movement, though Terminator and Predator are some of my favorite movies of all time.
Nothing alarming about social media mogul advocating to eliminate an entire side https://t.co/kULzaAr8CT
— Amy (@AmyOtto8) April 7, 2018
In California, the GOP is pretty much a lighter version of the Democratic Party. So, if there is a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat on the ballot, or a conservative Democrat and a Republican in a red state scenario, the latter in both cases will usually win. Why should a GOP voter entertain voting for a Democrat when there is a solid conservative running in an election?
Just look at Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. He was a very liberal Republican Senator; so liberal that he’s now a Democrat. Yet, in 2006, Sheldon Whitehouse booted him because Democrats had a hard-core liberal on the ballot (and RI is a blue state), despite both Chaffee and Whitehouse being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and strongly against the Bush tax cuts. Yet, beyond this—there are many ways to skin the electoral cat. The Democratic base was not enthused by Clinton. I don’t think they will be enthused by their 2020 choices, many of which are no-names and have rigid regional appeal. And the so-called emerging permanent Democratic majority (because public opinion doesn’t change *eye roll*) was turned off by Trump—and he still won.
Well, here are parts of the post. Debate amongst yourselves:
Trump is doing exactly what America needs him to do right now. He’s becoming increasingly conservative and outrageous by the day. Trump could have come into office with a genuinely new agenda that could have helped working people. Instead, he has spent the past year becoming a caricature of all things conservative?—?and in the meantime has alienated most of America and certainly all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century. He is turning the Republican brand toxic for millennials, women, Latinos, people of color, college-educated people, urban centers, the tech industry, and the economic powerhouses of the coasts, to name a few.
The Republican Party is playing their part perfectly, too. They completely fell for the Trump trap?—?and that’s exactly what America needed them to do.
[…]
Now the entire Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement that has controlled it for the past four decades, is fully positioned for the final takedown that will cast them out for a long period of time in the political wilderness. They deserve it.
[…]
America is desperate for a functioning political supermajority that can break out of our political stasis and boldly move ahead and take on our many 21st-century challenges. The nation can’t take much more of our one step forward, one step back politics that gets little done despite the need for massive changes.
America today has many parallels to America in the 1850s or America in the 1930s. Both of those decades ended with one side definitively winning, forming a political supermajority that restructured systems going forward to solve our problems once and for all. In the 1850s, we fought the Civil War, and the Republican Party won and then dominated American politics for 50 years. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party won and dominated American politics for roughly the same amount of time.
America today is in a similar position. Our technologies, our economy, our geopolitics are going through fundamental changes. We are facing new challenges, like climate change and massive economic inequality, that must be addressed with fundamental reforms.
America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two world views that must be resolved in short order.
California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost. The conservative way forward lost; the progressive way forward began. As we’ve laid out in this series, California is the future, always about 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. That means that America, starting in 2018, is going to resolve it, too.
Whatever the case, the conclusion to all of these posts about the end of conservatism/GOP should always be wait and see. We don’t know—and frankly for the people who thought the Obama years realigned the country, brought about a high mark for liberal politics, and the marked the end of conservatism were dead wrong. In 2010, the GOP retook the House. In 2014, they recaptured the Senate—all while expanding their power at the state and local level.
Enthusiasm is surely with the Democrats—and they could do well in 2018. But Democrats have tons of candidates and division among the Left. Civil wars erupting during primaries can happen. In Texas, it already has, showing the gulf between the establishment and progressive (i.e. Bernie-ite) wings of the party is wide and the wounds are still raw. It’s quite possible the Left fumbles the ball at the goal line come Election Day. We’re over 200 days way from the midterms. I’d take this with a grain of salt, but say you do read the whole piece and blood pressures go through the roof—I redirect you to Mr. Kurt Schlichter.
TRUMP WAS RIGHT: CHILDREN SMUGGLED, TRAFFICKED FROM MIGRANT CARAVAN
Watch disturbing reports on global child smuggling rings
Infowars.com – NOVEMBER 27, 2018
Multiple mainstream outlets have reported that caravan members – including children – are being exploited by sex traffickers, which confirms President Trump was right when he warned this would happen.
In a tweet from Nov. 21, the president said there were “a lot of criminals in the caravan:”
Correspondingly, local cartels are responsible for kidnapping at least 100 members of the caravan, including children, according to British media outlet The Independent.
“Around 100 members of a refugee and migrant caravan traveling towards the U.S. have reportedly fallen victim to organized crime as they moved through Mexico,” reads the report. “The Los Zetas cartel was likely to be behind the disappearances.”
Additionally, kidnappers have offered rides on fruit trucks to the traveling migrants, according to HuffPost Mexico.
“There we began to see that fruit trucks were coming to us, of those that carry 16 to 23 tons of food, they offered us transport, charging up to 150 pesos per person, we started to document plates to images of the drivers, alert the migrants that they did not do it, but in despair people took it in.”
“All I could do was try to open the boxes of the trucks, which were locked with padlocks.”
This also sheds light on how, over the past several years, international media has reported on the sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers:
However, the U.N. reportedly “cannot” punish peacekeepers from other countries, meaning that only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators have served jail time.
Want a German visa? Just buy it in the Middle East and become a legal migrant
By Laura Cat
Human traffickers collaborate with corrupt German officials at German consulates in Middle Eastern states selling forged visas.
German Der Spiegel revealed the scheme selling forged visas to migrants seeking to go to Germany as refugees. The German authorities are reluctant to investigate these cases.
The corrupt schemes “have been run smoothly [by employees]in the visa centres of many German diplomatic missions abroad,” especially in the Middle East.
Der Spiegel reported naming the consulates as an “Achilles heel” in the battle against people smuggling, also calling the local employees a “weak spot” as they are working with people smugglers.
The local human traffickers offered the visas to their clients via corrupt consulate officials without need for approval by the visa and registration department in Germany.
The false document costs between £2,350 and £10,200 and allow the asylum seeker to ‘legally’ enter Germany through its refugee reception programme.
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