From the Trenches World Report

The New Yorker – by ANDY BOROWITZ [SATIRE]

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what he called “a provocative and defiant act,” President Obama charged on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has started letting his calls go directly to voice mail.

Speaking at the White House before this week’s NATO summit, a visibly furious Obama said that Putin’s new practice of letting his calls go straight to voice mail “hampers our ability to discuss the future of Ukraine and other important issues going forward.”   Continue reading “Furious Obama Says Calls To Putin Going Straight To Voice Mail”

It Ain’t Holy Water

Breitbart – by Merrill Hope

DALLAS, Texas — It is like a Texas sampler platter of the 2014-15 Common Core offerings served up around the state — Sadlier “Common Core Enriched Edition” Vocabulary, Springboard and Carnegie Math. There is even a kindergarten handout that defines the importance of the term “Common Core.” Parents are up in arms. More so, they are worried. They have heard endlessly that there is no Common Core in Texas. It is the law. Yet, this is what is coming home in the backpacks.   Continue reading “Texas Parents Stunned by Common Core Materials Coming Home From School”

Privacy SOS

On the weekend of September 5, 2014, the city of Oakland will play host to Alameda County’s 8th annual festival for paramilitary police, called Urban Shield. A private corporation called Cytel Group organizes the events with funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Thus far they’ve been held in the Bay Area, Boston, and Texas, but the CEO of the for-profit Cytel says he has plans to expand into the Middle East and Africa.   Continue reading “Militarized police can purchase “187” murder t-shirts at Urban Shield trainings”

The Newspaper

After two years of photo enforcement use in Clearwater, Florida, the data show that accidents increased where red light cameras were installed. At a work session on Tuesday, the city council celebrated the results.

Chief Dan Slaughter made a presentation to the council that painted the performance of the cameras in the most positive light possible. The city’s crash data covered a “before” period of July 2011 to June 2012 which he compared with two six-month “after” periods of July 2012 to June 2013 and July 2013 to June 2014.     Continue reading “Florida City Council Embraces Accident Causing Red Light Cameras, It’s All About The Money”

Sandusky Register

A special grand jury is expected to get underway later this month reviewing evidence in the shooting death of a 21-year-old black man inside a Walmart store Aug. 5.

But Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWIne still won’t release surveillance video from the store that family members say proves John Crawford III was innocent when police officers killed him.

Police in the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek said they shot Crawford after he waved an air rifle at customers and refused officers’ orders to drop it.   Continue reading “Ohio’s attorney general fights release of video from Walmart shooting: ‘Trust the system’”

Huffington Post – by JOSH CORNFIELD and GEOFF MULVIHILL

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Police officers on the George Washington Bridge last September during lane closures apparently ordered by Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s aides as political payback said they warned superiors about the hazardous conditions created and were told not to talk about it on their radios, according to a summary provided by their lawyer to a legislative panel investigating the scandal.

Attorney Dan Bibb, who works for the union representing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officers, relayed information from 11 officers, including at least three who said they were told about the traffic change by a lieutenant who ordered them not to move the traffic cones blocking the lanes. Bibb’s comments were included in a synopsis obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.   Continue reading “Port Authority Officer Told Not To Reopen George Washington Bridge Lanes”

Sipsey Street Irregulars – by Dutchman6

One of the frustrating (and sometimes dangerous) things about the liberty movement is that we seem to have little institutional memory. It is hard for me to believe, but it has been nine years since I was down on the border with Bob Wright and the Minutemen in the Hachita NM sector. This was documented at the time as part of the documentary Border.

Bob had one of the best lines in the movie when Chris Burgard asked him what he wanted George Bush to do about the illegal immigration wave at the time. He replied, and is memorialized on film, “Mr. President, get out from under Vincente Fox’s desk, wipe your mouth and do your job.”   Continue reading “The Magificent Minutemen, Nine Years On.”

Daily News – by Dareh Gregorian

A former top lawyer for Public Advocate Letitia James isn’t exactly advocating for the NYPD’s policing practices.

In a blistering lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court, Chaumtoli Huq, 42, says NYPD officers used “unreasonable and wholly unprovoked force” when they arrested her without cause while she was leaving a pro-Palestinian protest in July.

The bust was “characteristic of a pattern and practice of the NYPD in aggressive overpolicing of people of color and persons lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights,” the suit says.    Continue reading “Former top lawyer for city Public Advocate says NYPD cops roughed her up during unwarranted arrest: suit”

The Washington Examiner – by Paul Bedard

Former top government officials who have been warning Washington about the vulnerability of the nation’s largely unprotected electric grid are raising new fears that troops from the jihadist Islamic State are poised to attack the system, leading to a power crisis that could kill millions.

“Inadequate grid security, a porous U.S.-Mexico border, and fragile transmission systems make the electric grid a target for ISIS,” said Peter Pry, one of the nation’s leading experts on the grid.

Others joining Pry at a press conference later Wednesday to draw attention to the potential threat said that if just a handful of the nation’s high voltage transformers were knocked out, blackouts would occur across the country.   Continue reading “New ISIS threat: America’s electric grid; blackout could kill 9 of 10”

Wolf Street – by Wolf Richter

The four largest banks in China, the banks that have to officially show big profits and profit growth no matter what because they’re an integral part not only of the government but also of China’s miraculous debt-driven expansion, are showing officially tolerated signs of increasing stress. For perspective, in 2009, following the Lehman moment, as other banks were collapsing and were bailed out, the profits of these four banks grew even then, if only by a combined 2.9%.   Continue reading “The Sky Is Falling on Chinese Corporations”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

Alarmed at the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Washington, and the specter of a new Cold War, U.S. intelligence veterans one of whom is none other than William Binney, the former senior NSA crypto-mathematician who back in March 2012 blew the whistle on the NSA’s spying programs more than a year before Edward Snowden, took the unusual step of sending the following memo dated August 30 to German Chancellor Merkel challenging the reliability of Ukrainian and U.S. media claims about a Russian “invasion.”   Continue reading “Ex-NSA Director, US Intelligence Veterans Write Open Letter To Merkel To Avoid All-Out Ukraine War”

Zero Hedge – by Phoenix Capital Research

The Central Bank policies of the last five years have damaged the capital markets to the point that the single most important item is no longer developments in the real world, but how Central banks will respond to said developments.

Let us take a moment to digest that. Before 2008, for the most part, when something happened in the world, an investor would think about how that issue would affect the markets.    Continue reading “Central Bank Have Set the Stage For a Disaster That Will Make 2008 Look Like a Joke”

Wolf Street – by Wolf Richter

Consumer spending, the key to the American economy, and by extension the global economy, is one of the most watched activities in the world, but results may vary, as they say, depending on who is doing the counting and what they’re counting.

The Gallup Daily tracking survey is one of those measures. The poll, based on telephone interviews of over 15,000 adults aged 18 and older each month, asks consumers the total amount they spent “yesterday,” not counting normal monthly bills and the purchase of a home or a vehicle. It’s Gallup’s measure of discretionary spending. And the results for August weren’t exactly what everyone had hoped for.   Continue reading “Consumer Spending in August Drops below a Year Ago – Gallup”