Oh, what do you know about Jackie Robinson? Who in his family asked you to speak on their behalf?

Hey, you brought up WW2 vets. I shared a story about my grandfather, a WW2 vet. Do you appreciate that? Or are you going to insult him because he was a Democrat, and literally went to his grave with a cap that had an anti-Bush slogan? Do you really care what WW2 vets would think, or are you just seeking confirmation for your political views?

Adam Powell Jr had his wife on taxpayers payroll even though she did nothing but screw him and live in Puerto Rico. Great example.

Hi yates.

My post notes that the autobiography was published in 1972. I included a photo of Jackie Robinson in uniform and his Army rank.

You made a post expressing your opinion that Kap's views about the anthem and flag were a slap in face of Vets, especially Black vets.

I posted a quote from Army vet, Jackie Robinson, that expressed the same view on the flag/anthem in 1972, NOT before the civil rights movement and desegregation.

I'm not sure that you followed the link to the quote or examined the other comments that Robinson made in the book.Not sure if you even read my full post because I noted that the auto-bio was published in 1972,well after Robinson's military and baseball career. I think your post was a kneejerk reaction to someone poking a hole in your argument about Kap's comments being across the board offensive to Black vets.

I think your kneejerk reactions continued when you, again apparently not having read my posts on this board or in this thread, assume things about my views that frankly you've not seen me write. "Hate to hit me with facts"? What facts are you hitting me with, and how are they challenging anything that I've written?

And please, don't insult my intelligence by googling bits and pieces of ACP's life story and "hitting me with facts" about him.In fact, don't insult your own intelligence by doing so. I brought him up to challenge Rodney Harrison's laughable comments about Kap not being Black.I won't give you a history lesson about the "one drop rule" because I doubt that you would care. Second, I own book(s) about Powell.His faults, personal shortcomings, and flaws are well documented as are his legislative and political accomplishments.

Fact check: 2014 stats.

Fox News Will Pay Gretchen Carlson $20 Million To Settle Sexual Harassment Suit


Two months after former Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson accused Fox News' then-Chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, the network has agreed to pay Carlson $20 million and make a "highly unusual public apology," NPR's David Folkenflik reports.

News of the settlement was first reported Tuesday morning by Vanity Fair; a source with knowledge of the settlement then confirmed the deal to David, and the company later issued a statement about it.

"We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve," 21st Century Fox says in part of that statement.

In another development at Fox News, longtime anchor Greta Van Susteren is leaving the network. The departure is immediate — she will not host tonight's edition of her 7 p.m. ET show. As David notes, Van Susteren "had initially dismissed" the seriousness of Carlson's allegations.


http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2...harassment-suit

Combine Greta's leaving with the possibility of Kelly leaving and you have one heck of a revolution going on at Fox. Remember that Greta started off at CNN and may return there. I also imagine that CNN is aggressively courting Kelly.

And the good thing about them going to CNN is that the very slight shift to the center in ideology would be an easy transition.

CNN is at the center politically?

Seriously, do you just come on the board each day and say "How many stupid things can I post?"

Helen,

thanks for the update. Do you think that one of the conditions of the settlement was the firing of Van Susteren?

Sounds like a stretch, but the timing of her departure makes me wonder.

I wonder what kinds of things were on the tapes. I think Oli posted about the existence of the tapes last week, and not 7 days later there's a settlement.

I read two conflicting stories on this. One is Van Susteren was renegotiating her salary, which deadlocked but she had a clause in her contract that allowed her to leave if Ailes was gone, so she invoked it.The other was she was troubled by the culture at the network.

My best guess is the truth is a likely a little from column A and a little from column B.


The tape Carlson made had to be a motivation for Fox to settle fast and for this much. If they had a leg to stand on they'd have fought, it would have cost much less than $20 million and the bad publicity. I'd love to see/hear it.

Helen,

You right. Though it would be funny for her to be troubled by
"the culture at Fox" when she publicly questioned Gretchen's allegations of harassment.
I'm just going by what the article pointed out, as I hadn't really followed the story.

Odd that on air talent speaks out one way or the other about allegations about what was then an on going investigation/case.

I'm guessing that pressure was put on Van Susteren to counter the p.r. hit Fox was taking.

Absolutely.


As a woman, I will say it's often women that treat victims of stuff like this the worst. Its as if they think behaving that way will protect them from being a victim in turn, so they side with their oppressors. It's crazy. Tantaros is a good example.

It's one thing to resign. It's another to resign and leave on the same day. Something's not right.

Hey olivant- do you think its possible she was pushed out?

Entirely possible.

And the plot thickens....


Greta Van Susteren’s Husband Hints at Possible Legal Action At Fox News


After 14 years at Fox News, host Greta Van Susteren is leaving the network immediately, and according to her husband, she might take legal action against the channel in the future.

In a Facebook post about the decision, the former “On the Record” host wrote that Fox “has not felt like home for a few years.” On Friday, Van Susteren invoked the “key man clause,” which allowed the anchor to terminate her contract if and when former network chairman and CEO Roger Ailes was not in control.


Van Susteren said that she “could not wait” because of a time limit on the exit clause.

The broadcaster’s husband, John P. Coale, backed up his spouse in a phone interview with The New York Times Tuesday, telling the newspaper, “There’s so much chaos, it’s very hard to work [at Fox].” News of Van Susteren’s decision comes the same day Fox announced it settled with ex-anchor Gretchen Carlson for $20 million over sexual harassment allegations against Ailes.

Coale said the timing of the announcements was simply a “coincidence.”

The Times pressed Coale on why his wife chose to invoke the “key man clause.” In response, he said there is more going on at the network “than meets the eye,” adding he didn’t want to go into too much detail because there “might be litigation in the future” on the matter.

Well, at least it appears that what is going on at the network is fair and balanced.

The long-time Fox News host reportedly expected to leave the network after a few weeks according to CNN Money, but her husband is claiming that the end came a bit more sudden than previously alluded to:

A courier arrived at Van Susteren’s Washington, D.C. home at 9 a.m. Tuesday, hand-delivering two letters that said that Van Susteren “was being taken off the air” immediately, according to her husband, John Coale, who is a high-profile Washington lawyer. Van Susteren was already planning to leave, but she thought she would be hosting her 7 p.m. program “On the Record” for a few more weeks. Yanking her off the air without a chance to say goodbye was “a bit immature,” Coale remarked.

Coale also says that there could be possible litigation in the future stemming from this decision, claiming this was a message from Rupert Murdoch allegedly stemming from tense contract negotiations. And the courier reportedly wasn’t the end of it according to CNN Money:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/s...is-syria-turkey

It has been a bad few months for Islamic State (Isis). For the first time since the terror group laid claim to much of Iraq and Syria, it no longer has a direct path to Europe. Black flags are no longer flying over towns and villages near the Turkish border and the militants of the so-called caliphate are on the run. If the decay continues, Isis will soon lose much of its remaining foothold in Syria. Its last bastion will be Raqqa and the north-eastern deserts, where it all began for the group’s latest incarnation in April 2013, and from where much of its subsequent rampage was plotted.

Since mid-July, Isis has been methodically pushed from towns and villages it controlled near the Turkish frontier by the most concerted ground advance of the past two years. The jihadist group now looks to be far less of a threat to the regional order than when its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed his rule over a swath of eastern Syria and western Iraq in mid-2014.

But little about what comes next is clear. The group’s loss of territory has shifted geopolitical ground in ways that could not easily have been predicted. And, in the eyes of many European governments, its danger has metastasised into a global threat that a loss of land won’t mitigate. A military victory over one of modern history’s most savage band of marauders may yet prove pyrrhic.

Isis fighters parade through Raqqa after its capture in June 2014.
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Isis fighters parade through Raqqa after its capture in June 2014. Photograph: Reuters
Isis once controlled a stretch from the town of al-Bab in the Aleppo hinterland to Mosul in northern Iraq. It regularly moved men between the two points, using Turkey, not far north, as a supply line for fighters, money and food. From this arc of influence, it created a bulwark against threats from the outside, and a self-sustaining society built on oil revenues, taxes and loot seized from vanquished Iraqi and Syrian forces.

Within months of seizing Iraq’s second biggest city, Mosul, in June 2014, Isis had splintered the authority of embattled leaders on both sides of the now-irrelevant border between Iraq and Syria and created a terrifying new form of governance, rooted in an uncompromising reading of Islamic tenets and unchecked savagery. Isis leaders lorded over their gateways such as Manbij and Jarabulus, along the Turkish frontier. Foreign fighters, including some who have since returned to Europe, used the towns as waypoints when they entered the “caliphate” and when they travelled back to Turkey.

Turkish tanks on the road to Jarabulus in August
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Turkish tanks and armoured vehicles on the road to Jarabulus in August. Photograph: Reuters
Isis lost both in recent weeks. After a month-long push, Manbij fell to Kurdish groups whom the US had raised as a proxy infantry. Jarabulus, however, was taken in less than 24 hours by the Turkish military, which had made its first full-scale incursion into Syria since the start of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad five years ago. But even more important than Ankara’s stated goal of stopping Isis is preventing the US-backed Kurds from advancing into areas that would secure them their historical ambitions to control territory held by Arabs in north-eastern Syria.

By crossing the border, Turkey has changed the face of the war against Isis. A bit player for much of the campaign, it now has a lead stake on how the rest of the military offensive is fought and, more essentially, who does the fighting.

Arab rebel groups made up of reconfigured units of the anti-Assad Free Syria Army rode in on Turkish tanks to take 680 sq km (420 sq m) of Syria, and are now aiming to consolidate a buffer zone 60km south of the border. Al-Bab, where Isis extremists planned much of the carnage they have wreaked in Paris, Brussels and Istanbul, is now squarely in the invaders’ sights. The US-backed Kurds, meanwhile, have stopped advancing, their ranks thinned by the defection of dozens of Arab fighters who had reluctantly allied with them.


How Isis has lost territory in Syria over the past year
The march of the new alliance through Jarabulus has laid bare more of the workings of Isis, a group that has been exposed by a string of defeats, and an estimated 35,000-50,000 battle deaths. “They created institutions to brainwash the minds of the children, and they have been widely successful,” says Mohammed Hamdan, a local councillor from Jarabulus. “All the elements of economic life are gone. They forced people to work with them.”

In Manbij, as soon as the jihadists fled, local women stripped off full-face coverings and black gowns that had been mandatory under Isis. Schools that had been shuttered were soon being swept out and reopened. People started to smoke again. Men cut off their beards. To do so while the jihadists were there would have led to a flogging – or worse. In Jarabulus, the ubiquitous black banner that had been painted over government buildings was whitewashed. Markets opened and people again mingled.

“Isis used Jarabulus as a starting point for its operations in Turkey,” says Hamdan. “They used the mosques to advocate brutal killings, which became the dominant theme in recent months. They used mosques to tell people that they were still under control.

A Manbij man having his beard cut off, August 2016
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A man celebrates his liberation from the hands of Isis in Manbij by having his beard cut off, August 2016. Photograph: Rodi Said/Reuters
“But tension and worry was obvious. It spread after Isis realised it was going to lose a significant part of strategic territory. Most of the people, whether pro-Isis or not, withdrew from the city towards Maskanah and al-Tabqa and then to Raqqa.”

These areas amount to the last redoubt of Isis in Syria and will be the targets of a push later this year. Who gets to do the fighting is, as yet, unclear. The link to the Iraqi strongholds of al-Bukamal, Ba’ej, Tal Afar and Mosul remains viable for now, but in Iraq, as in Syria, the self-styled caliphate is rapidly contracting.

In Iraq, an assault on Mosul, which has previously been deemed too difficult, is now being seen as a reality for early next year. Iraqi forces that fled as the jihadists advanced have been reconfigured and galvanised. “Confidence has emerged from battlefield gains,” says a Baghdad-based US diplomat. “And while the Iraqis are feeling better about themselves, Isis is feeling worse. Everywhere they have tried to make a stand in recent times, they have been hosed out. They know it’s near the end.”

Members of Free Syrian Army stand in front of an Isis mural in Jarabulus.
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Members of the Free Syrian Army stand in front of an Isis mural in Jarabulus. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
For all its blind dogma, the Isis leadership has shown a pragmatism. Control of territory, so vital in the heady early days, is no longer as important to Baghdadi and his senior leaders as controlling populations beyond the caliphate’s fast-shrinking boundaries. “They have highly intelligent leaders calling the shots, being prepared to sacrifice thousands of lessers who are far less disciplined about how they get around and communicate,” says one western diplomat.

Another Isis observer, a security official, says: “It’s very clear that they have sent people to Europe. We know that they expect some to be caught and they accept that. They have others on the way, or already in place.”

The Paris and Brussels plotters returned to Europe after being trained between al-Bab and Raqqa by an Isis cell that had been tasked with causing chaos in the west. Both cells were sent across the border into Turkey and then on a painstaking journey through the continent, tailored to avoid detection.

Another Isis figure, a petty criminal from the south-west London suburb of Hammersmith, was also sent on his way to Europe around the same time. His name was Aine Lesley Davis, and he was one of a trio of British nationals who brutalised western hostages in Syria in 2013 and 2014. The group was dubbed “the Beatles”. Their leader, Mohammed Emwazi, was the black-clad executioner who beheaded seven hostages on camera in some of the most horrific images of the extremists’ era. Alexander Kotey, another west London convert, was the third member of the sadistic trio, intelligence officials believe.

Mohammed Emwazi, AKA Jihadi John.
Mohammed Emwazi, AKA Jihadi John. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Davis, 32, got as far as Istanbul before being caught on 7 November 2015 by Turkish intelligence officers, who had been alerted by neighbours to a group of Arab men who had moved into the area. This week, a Turkish prosecutor released an indictment on Davis, which accused him of crossing the border near Jarabulus and linking with two senior Turkish members of Isis. “To cross into Turkey, he communicated with Ilhami Bali (code name Abu Baker) and Necip Süleyman (Abu Sham Al Ansari), Isis Turkey border ‘emirs’,” the indictment read. “Bali’s name is linked to the Ankara attack in October 2015, which killed more than 100 people.”

Emwazi was killed by a CIA drone strike in Raqqa five days after Davis was arrested in Istanbul. Kotey’s whereabouts remain unknown. And while security officials in Europe believe that much of Isis’s original foreign fighter corps has been killed – they were seen as dispensable by their leaders – several hundred have returned to Europe, where they are awaiting instructions from inside Syria and Iraq.

“That, in a sense, is the reason why it doesn’t really matter if they lose this land right now,” says the western diplomat. “They are an even more potent threat than they were a year ago.”

Armed police in Paris during terrorist attack
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Could the west be a renewed target after a refocus on terrorist atrocities by Isis? Photograph: Malte Christians/EPA
The calculation by Isis leaders is that acolytes, fired by some sense of divine purpose, will launch their own attacks, without direct instruction or organisation. Such strikes are increasingly valuable, and damaging to the caliphate’s foes. They are relatively easy to commit, and very difficult to detect.

Though fast losing ground, and with morale low in many of their embattled communities, Isis leaders continue to believe that the organisation which first rose out of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 derives considerable potency from Sunni Muslim resentment. The Isis narrative is that Sunnis, the majority Islamic sect, have been stripped of power and influence by western powers who have handed the reins to the minority Shias. They anchor their very contemporary political gripes in an ancient creed, which says that much of this was preordained.

An essential sell for Isis leaders to would-be jihadists such as Davis, Kotey and Emwazi is that their generation has the privilege to not only correct recent indignities, but to restore the lost glories of Islam. The withering caliphate is becoming the latest casus belli – a divine mission to replace the “falsehood” of the nation state with Islamic rule being stripped away by yet more western aggression.

Turkish workers with some of the modular blocks that will form the wall along the Syrian border
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Turkish workers with some of the modular blocks that will form the wall along the Syrian border. Photograph: AP
How that aggression takes shape in the coming months will be pivotal to the direction of the war against the jihadists – and the overall course of the Syrian war. The campaign against Isis had been fought mostly as a subset of the broader war, but has been increasingly drawn into the main conflict.

For now, Turkey’s role will continue to be instrumental, its aim – to keep two Kurdish cantons separated by a 140km (90-mile) gap, in which Arab groups call the shots – now within reach. Accused of being too slow to react to the threat from Isis, whose ranks were reinforced largely through the then-porous Turkish border, Ankara is now building a wall along much of it.

In Iraq, Isis now has just as much trouble securing supply lines outside its strongholds. The border with Syria remains a free-for-all, but offers little to increasingly desperate fighters seeking refuge or escape. The desert frontiers of Saudi Arabia and Jordan are better policed and even more foreboding.

“Morale is desperate,” one Isis official tells the Guardian. “Even in Raqqa. But they are very smart. They have made plans for all of this. They are investing a lot in sending their people to Europe, and it won’t be over soon. You’ve seen them throughout their history. Whenever they are being beaten, they lay low. They will come back later. They still have their ideology.”

US and Russia are now working together in the fight against terriorsm. This is literally the first time they are working together since world war two will be interesting to see if this works

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...16.html#gallery

The US and Russia have agreed a peace deal for Syria, with a nationwide ceasefire between government forces and rebel groups set to begin early next week. Speaking in Geneva in the early hours of Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the agreement would be a “turning point” for the war-torn country if implemented, and suggested it could also lead at last to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr Kerry said the plan was intended "to reduce violence, ease suffering and resume movement towards a negotiated peace and a political transition in Syria."


READ MORE
Boris Johnson welcomes US and Russia agreement over Syria
The arrangement is set to go into effect with a cessation of hostilities from sunset next Monday, 12 September, between the Syrian government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Russia, and US-backed opposition rebels. The deal requires both the rebels and the regime in Damascus “to meet their obligations,” Mr Kerry said.

Despite simmering tensions between Washington and Moscow, the US and Russian militaries will then work together to target Islamic State forces and the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate that is operating in Syria. Mr Kerry insisted the terror groups would have to be pursued “not indiscriminately, but in a systematic way.”

The agreement calls for Assad to ground his air force over opposition areas and halt combat missions against specified rebel forces. Following a period of calm and attempts to gather intelligence on the two terror groups, the US and Russia then plan to launch joint air strikes against Isis and the al-Nusra Front.

READ MORE
Fake antiquities flood out of Syria as smugglers fail to steal masterpieces amid the chaos of war
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'What is Aleppo?': Libertarian Party presidential candidate sets a new bar for ignorance on the US campaign trail
Aleppo 'chlorine' attack: Disturbing video of child injured in strikes emerges
Friday’s negotiations at a hotel in Geneva had stretched long into the night. Mr Kerry announced the agreement shortly after Saturday at a joint press conference with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who confirmed the deal and emphasised that Assad’s government was prepared to comply with its terms.

“This is not the end of the journey, this is the very start of our new relations,” Mr Lavrov said. “We hope that all those who sincerely value peace, who cherish a Syrian, multinational, multi-confessional state, will support our agreement."

The marathon meeting was the fourth such encounter between US and Russian diplomats in the past fortnight, as the world strained to see whether there might at last be a formula for ending the five-year civil war in Syria, which has already claimed 500,000 lives and triggered the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

In pictures: Aleppo bombing
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Fighting between rebels and Assad’s forces has recently reached new levels of ferociousness in and around the divided northern city of Aleppo, where human rights groups report the conflict has claimed more than 700 civilian lives in the last 40 days, including 165 children. The deal calls for unimpeded humanitarian access to all of Syria’s worst afflicted areas, including Aleppo.

"The suffering that we have witnessed in Syria over the course of five years now is really beyond inhumane," Mr Kerry said. "If this arrangement holds, then we will see a significant reduction in violence across Syria. We’ll see humanitarian aid deliveries go forward in Aleppo, wherever the need is the greatest. And after a period of reduced violence, then we will see the US and Russia taking coordinated steps to isolate and defeat the terrorist groups that have added immeasurably to Syria’s suffering and misery. And we will facilitate a political transition, which is the only way to bring about a durable end to this war."

Social Justice is now a college major America is now an even bigger joke. No wonder why millennials are the least skilled generation.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/ed...-degree-program

Are millennials the least skilled generation? Are you factoring tech skills into this statement?

Misspoke on generation

http://fortune.com/2015/03/10/american-millennials-are-among-the-worlds-least-skilled/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americas-millennials-well-educated-but-unskilled/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/12/american-millennials-least-skilled-study_n_6852650.html

The study: http://www.ets.org/s/research/30079/overview.html

Thanks, Dude. Found it hard to believe. They're the generation that grew up around tech. Guess that doesn't necessarily equate to marketable skills.

Maybe if the little fucking drones put down their iphones they might learn something useful....pick up a book, learn how to do things that don't happen on a touch screen.


I don't get the use of social justice as a snarl word. I don't see anything wrong with seeking equal rights and justice for all people.

Reading? That's for old people.

Wiseass

They can sit and look at Instagram, dreaming of their non-existant middle class futures. I work with some young kids, 23,24, while they know what they majored in fairly well, outside of that their knowledge can be quite -shall we say- lacking.

They think they're going to be rich and famous. That's their game plan for the whole shrinking middle class thing.

I don't know anyone personally who doesn't want equal rights and justice for all people. Nothing wrong with "social justice," in theory, it is just the emotion driven fact neglecting craziness it brings.