Susan Sarandon backs Bernie Sanders for president

(Click)

Actress and progressive activist Susan Sarandon lent her star power to Bernie Sanders at an Iowa rally this evening, passing over Hillary Clinton a second time for the nation's top job.

A decider for Sarandon, who has known Sanders for more than two decades, was Clinton's 2002 vote for the Iraq War as a New York senator, a military conflict that Sanders did not support.

'That's where Hillary Clinton lost me,' she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview, 'because there was plenty of information that even I had that said there was a real problem with the logic involved.'

Clinton went on to be secretary of state and has more experience in the foreign policy realm than Sanders, who has has focused his legislative career on fighting for economic justice.

'But what is experience without judgement,' Sarandon said tonight after a Sanders rally in northern Iowa. 'She's had a job but what has she done that we're bragging about. How has she led?'

Continuing the actress said of Clinton, once the nation's top diplomat, 'She's had that job, and he's had a job, too, and she went overseas, but what I'm saying is the biggest foreign decision that had to be made in terms of foreign policy was whether or not to go into Iraq and go into war, and she failed that test.'

'I'm sorry, but for me, you can't get a bigger decision than that and we've been paying the price ever since. And I think she has to be held accountable for that.' 

In 2008 Sarandon got behind Barack Obama at a critical time in the primary. Now, she's hitting the trail for Sanders a week before Iowans cast their ballots - the start of the 2016 election.

'I've come here because for me gender is not what's important. Issues are what's important,' she said as she introduced the U.S. senator at tonight's event in Music Man Square in Mason City Iowa.

'I want a candidate who has the courage to stand and do the right thing when it was not popular,' she said ahead of his speech.

During the rally she also made a not-so-thinly veiled jab at Clinton over gay marriage. 

'It's one thing to be for gay rights and gay marriage once everybody else is for it. That's not difficult,' Sarandon stated.

Clinton is a johnny-come-lately on a gay marriage, she suggested.

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If I remember rightly so was her hero Barry.

 Didn't he evolve?

Susan Sarandon backs Bernie Sanders for president

Another torpedo to the bow

Hat tip to Ed Kilbane

Clinton Chief Of Staff Lost Her Personal Blackberry, Which Contained Classified Emails

My iPhone holds no classified information and I take better care of it than they do! Let's see... how many people under her have been found with classified information on their cell phone? Cheryl Mills, Bryan Pagliano, Huma Abedin, Sidney Blumenthal, how many more are out there?

 Knowing they'll try to save Killary, with this latest derailment to her campaign,  I just don't see how the DOJ is going to wave its magic wand and make this go away. What plausible excuse could they possibly come up with not to indict? But I'm sure they'll think of something.

Socialist Sanders made an unannounced visit to the WH the other day. Think Barry told him he's now the standard-bearer for the party?

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The truth be told

While working as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills lost her personal Blackberry, on which she sent emails that the State Department has determined contain classified information.

Records obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show Mills revealed that she lost her Blackberry in a March 20, 2010 email she sent to Bryan Pagliano, the State Department IT staffer who managed Clinton’s private email server.

“Somewhere b/w my house and the plane to NYC yesterday my personal bb got misplaced; no on [sic] is answering it thought [sic] I have called,” Mills wrote from her personal email account to the address Pagliano used when he worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Other State Department records indicate that Mills’ personal Blackberry appears to have been synced with her Gmail account. Many of the emails she sent from the personal account include footers which show they were sent from a Blackberry powered by AT&T.

Some of the emails Mills sent and received on the account contain information that the State Department has retroactively determined to have classified information.

In one such email, from Dec. 24, 2009, Clinton forwarded Mills a message she had received from Johnnie Carson, then the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who provided details from a conversation he had with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner about a situation in Guinea.

“Pls review so we can discuss,” Clinton wrote to Mills and Jake Sullivan, her foreign policy aide.

In a Jan. 14, 2010 email, Rajiv Shah, who was in charge of U.S. Agency for International Development, emailed Clinton and Mills about Haiti. The email is heavily redacted because it contains now-classified information. The State Department has retroactively classified more than 1,300 emails housed on Clinton’s private server, though Clinton and the State Department maintain that the information was not considered classified when it was originated.

It is unclear if Mills recovered her Blackberry after first losing it. Her attorney did not return a request for comment. It is also unclear what other sensitive, government-related information Mills sent on her Blackberry and personal email account to other federal officials.

Blackberry usage by Clinton and her inner circle has been a growing area of focus in the ongoing scandal involving the Democratic presidential candidate’s use of a personal email account and a private server.

The Daily Caller reported earlier this month that in Aug. 2011, a top State Department official offered to provide Clinton with a government-issued Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email account after her personal Blackberry went on the blink. But Clinton aide Huma Abedin rejected the offer, claiming that the idea “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

And on Monday, Fox News reported a video from 2013 in which Wendy Sherman, who served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Clinton, admitted that Clinton and other State Department officials frequently used their Blackberries to send information that “would never be on an unclassified system.”

Clinton used only a personal Blackberry throughout her tenure at the State Department. Mills and Abedin used both personal and government-issued Blackberries.

There is some evidence that the State Department was concerned with the use of personal Blackberries separate and apart from the risk posed by losing them.

“I cannot stress too strongly… that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails, and exploring calendars,” wrote Eric Boswell, then the head of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, in a March 2009 memo.

Boswell also warned that the bureau had intelligence concerning “vulnerability” to Clinton’s Blackberry during her Feb. 9, 2009 trip to China. He also issued a warning about using Blackberries on “Mahogany Row,” the floor that houses the offices of top State Department officials at headquarters in Foggy Bottom.

In Feb. 2014, well before the Clinton email scandal broke, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki spoke to the issue using personal digital assistants (PDA) — such as Blackberries — that were not government issued.

“Classified processing and classified conversation on a personal digital assisted device is prohibited,” she told reporters.

Another torpedo to the bow

Sweden to deport 80,000 asylum seekers

Like the terminology the Swedes use. In an attempt to be politically correct they refer to the invaders as  "asylum seekers", "immigrants", "refugees", when everybody knows they're Muslims who lied to get into the country. This is what you get going in half-cocked and now realizing the enormity of your mistake and the resulting cost.  

Another example...again with nothing to indicate he's a Muslim. 

First picture of '15-year-old' Somali [asylum seeker] who 'stabbed to death' Swedish social worker as he appears in court charged with her murder

And Barry wants to bring this to our shores.

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Sweden is to reject up to 80,000 people who applied for asylum in the country last year, as many as half of whom will be forced to leave against their will, according to official estimates.

The interior ministry has called on police and migration authorities to prepare for a sharp increase in deportations, and to arrange charter flights to expel refused asylum seekers to their country of origin. Sweden is also approaching other EU countries, including Germany, to discuss cooperation to increase efficiency and make sure flights are filled to capacity, it said.

The country received more than 160,000 asylum applications last year – by far the biggest influx in the EU as a proportion of the population. Between 60,000 and 80,000 of them will be rejected, the interior minister, Anders Ygeman, told Swedish media on Thursday.

The revelation that a large proportion of asylum seekers will be turned down, and as many as half of failed applications will be forcibly ejected, sends another signal to refugees that Sweden is no longer extending the warm welcome it offered to them just a few months ago.

"Of course it is a way of saying that if you come here and don't have a case for asylum, then you won't be able to stay," said Victor Harju, spokesperson for Ygeman. "You can seek asylum in Europe but there are a lot of safe countries where you won't be troubled by war and persecution, so you don't necessarily have to end up in Sweden."

Other Scandinavian countries are stepping up their attempts to broadcast to the war-torn regions of the world that they are no longer an attractive destination for refugees. Norway last week began deporting asylum seekers to Russia through the Arctic, while Denmark's new law enabling police to confiscate cash and valuables from refugees has drawn sharp international criticism. 

Sweden started to introduce border controls in November to stem the number of asylum seekers arriving there, which was running at 10,000 each week. In January it made it impossible for refugees to cross the bridge linking Sweden with Denmark unless they could show a passport or driving licence, since when the numbers are down to about 800 a week.

"If it stays at these levels we expect 45,000 applications in 2016 – still a very high number, but manageable," Harju said.

Last year Sweden turned down some 20,000 asylum applicants, or 45% of those who had previously arrived and made claims. About 3,000 were deported with a further 7,000 who were handed over to police disappearing from the immigration system and avoiding expulsion.

The remaining 10,000 people whose applications were rejected left the country of their own accord, the justice ministry said.

The overall approval rate may increase in 2016, the immigration ministry said, as the record 160,000 who put in asylum requests in 2015 included more citizens of Afghanistan and Syria, for whom it is easier to obtain refugee status than for other groups.

Syrians used to receive an automatic right to permanent residency, but this was removed late last year, to be replaced by temporary residence of up to three years. However, it does not affect the way asylum applications are treated, according to the ministry.

The backlog of asylum applications in the system means it will take up to two years for all the cases to be decided among 2015 applicants, the ministry said. The migration board is still dealing with applications from 2014, with the average processing time at more than eight months.

The border police said it was "vigorously expanding" its activities and aiming to double police numbers in the next few years to cope with the task of returning refused asylum seekers, and to deal with the "significant risk" of people going underground to escape deportation. 

"What the government has done is acknowledge that the issue of returning nationals to their country of origin is going to be a big task because of the high numbers," according to Jonatan Holst, a spokesperson for the immigration ministry.

Sanna Vestin, chair of FARR, the Swedish Network of Refugee Support Groups, said: "We are very concerned that in this situation the government will play down proper procedure and rights just to get rid of them. We have already had a suggestion to end the right to appeal – the courts uphold the appeals in around 10% of cases."

She added: "It would be better if the government saw refugees as an investment in society's future, rather than a burden. We have a very good economy, in part because of having many immigrants."

Sweden to deport 80,000 asylum seekers

Ad against GOP candidate Kasich funded by mystery donors

Even though Kasich is down in the polls I've been feeling for a while now he may be the "dark horse" in the GOP field. Evidently his enemies in the article below feel the same way. Kasich has his downside. Not as conservative as I would like. But to me, he comes across as likable, honest, and most importantly sincere. He certainly turned Ohio around. Speaking of Ohio, no Republican has ever won without taking Ohio. So having him one or two on the ticket should make Ohio a lock.

The piece below is trying to pin this on a Republican. Would they be investing  big money to destroy an opponent who is behind them in the polls? What's the upside in that? Starting to wonder if Bill made another million dollar withdraw from the Clinton Foundation. 

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WASHINGTON — “Who is he?” a new attack advertisement ominously wonders about Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, before trashing him as “an Obama Republican.”

But the commercial raises another question: Who’s asking?

A group called the American Future Fund is paying $1 million to air the anti-Kasich ad in New Hampshire, where the Ohio governor is trying for a strong finish in the Feb. 9 primary that could propel him into the top tier of the dozen GOP presidential contenders.

The 30-second commercial shows Kasich smiling at an appearance with President Barack Obama, noting that the Ohio governor welcomed the expansion of Medicaid, something many Republicans bitterly oppose. The ad calls Kasich “Not a conservative. Not even a moderate.”

As a nonprofit, the conservative policy group does not have to disclose its donors. That sets it apart from the usual advertisers — candidates and super political action committees — which must regularly make public the names of their donors.

Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols accused the ad’s producers of “shadowy, desperate, misleading attacks.”

“This is a perfect example of dark-money political spending,” said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for more campaign finance disclosure. “It’s an ad vetted by clever lawyers who know what they’re doing.”

That means that even though Kasich allies have complained to the Federal Election Commission about the “shady donors with concealed identities,” they’re likely to remain secret.

Nick Ryan, an Iowa-based GOP strategist who founded American Future Fund in 2007, said he never reveals his contributors. The Kasich spot is the group’s first of the 2016 presidential race, and he said he deployed the ad because “until now, John Kasich has pretty much gotten a free pass.”

With no information, something of a parlor game developed as to who might be behind the ads — and whether it could be another candidate.

Kasich’s campaign is pointing to recent endorsement by almost all of New Hampshire’s daily newspapers, as well as one of the country’s largest — the Boston Globe — as evidence of growing momentum in support of the Ohio governor.

Kasich, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are trying to gain steam as the favorite candidate among traditional Republican Party voters, potentially enabling them to compete with frequent poll leaders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Matt David, a Kasich supporter, said on Twitter that “multiple sources” said the ad is linked to Right to Rise, a super PAC backing Bush. Right to Rise leader Mike Murphy responded on Twitter: “Nope. Not us. I think it is somebody else who likes dark money ads and needs more votes in NH fast.”

Murphy appeared to be pointing toward Marco Rubio, who has benefited from $11.6 million in supportive commercials paid for by the advocacy group Conservative Solutions Project — which, like American Future Fund, does not disclose its donors.

Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for Conservative Solutions Project, said his group had nothing to do with the American Future Fund ad.

One reason to suspect a Bush tie is that American Future Fund and Right to Rise have a common ad maker, Larry McCarthy. The Bush super PAC also has recently begun using similar messages about Kasich in mailings to New Hampshire voters.

“I’m happy to see that we have other allies in the effort to educate voters about Kasich, but this wasn’t us,” McCarthy said about the American Future Fund ad. He said he has not done any work this year with American Future Fund.

American Future Fund overlaps with yet another presidential candidate: Mike Huckabee.

Nick Ryan leads a super PAC helping the former Arkansas governor, who has staked his candidacy on the Iowa caucuses next week and has done almost no politicking in New Hampshire. Ryan also works with several Iowa nonprofits that oppose Ted Cruz over his desire to end federal ethanol subsidies — an economy driver in the farming-heavy state.

Ryan said no candidate allies approached him about doing the ad.

Ad against GOP candidate Kasich funded by mystery donors

The 50 most dangerous cities in the world - by homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015

So what can we derive from this? 

1. Sealing the border will be a top priority for the next president.

 2. Keep your guns and your bibles.

3. No surprise St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and New Orleans is on the list... kind of a letdown Chiraq didn't make the grade. 

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1. Caracas, Venezuela – 119.87


2. San Pedro Sula, Honduras – 111.03


3. San Salvador, El Salvador – 108.54


4. Acapulco, Mexico – 104.73


5. Maturin, Venezuela – 86.45


6. Distrito Central, Honduras – 73.51


7. Valencia, Venezuela – 72.31


8. Palmira, Colombia – 70.88


9. Cape Town, South Africa – 65.53


10. Cali, Colombia – 64.27


11. Cuidad Guayana, Venezuela – 62.33


12. Fortaleza, Brazil – 60.77


13. Natal, Brazil – 60.66


14. Salvador, Brazil – 60.63


15. St Louis, Missouri, U.S. – 59.23


16. Joao Pessoa, Brazil – 58.40


17. Culiacan, Mexico – 56.09


18. Maceio, Brazil – 55.63


19. Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. – 54.98


20. Barquisimeto, Venezuela – 54.96


21. Sao Luis, Brazil – 53.05


22. Cuiaba, Brazil – 48.52


23. Manaus, Brazil – 47.87


24. Cumana, Venezuela – 47.77


25. Guatemala City, Guatemala – 47.17


26. Belem, Brazil – 45.83


27. Feira de Santana, Brazil – 45.5


28. Detroit, Michigan, U.S. – 43.89


29. Goiania, Brazil – 43.38


30. Teresina, Brazil – 42.64


31. Vitoria, Brazil – 41.99


32. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. – 41.44


33. Kingston, Jamaica – 41.14


34. Gran Barcelona, Venezuela – 40.08


35. Tijuana, Mexico – 39.09


36. Vitoria da Conquista, Brazil – 38.46


37. Recife, Brazil – 38.12


38. Aracaju. Brazil – 37.7


39. Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil – 36.16


40. Campina Grande, Brazil – 36.04


41. Durban, South Africa – 35.93


42. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa – 35.85


43. Porto Alegre, Brazil – 34.73


44. Curitiba, Brazil – 34.71


45. Pereira, Colombia – 32.58


46. Victoria, Mexico – 30.50


47. Johannesburg, South Africa – 30.31


48. Macapa, Brazil – 30.25


49. Maracaibo, Venezuela – 28.85


50. Obregon, Mexico – 28.29

The 50 most dangerous cities in the world - by homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015