"Truth is What Serves the Party" is Right when it Comes to Sean Hannity

I have to agree with the Ex-CIA Director Hayden.

In response, Hayden told Brookings Institute senior fellow Benjamin Wittes in a statement: “Hannity has entered the pantheon of a true propagandist.” Additionally, he wrote, “Fox News has almost entirely jumped the shark. They have given up any semblance of conservatism and focused on an almost visceral hatred of all things Clinton and Obama.” The four-star general—who has served in positions under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama—concluded that Hannity reminds him a Bulgarian political official he met in the 1980s who, when asked what truth is, told Hayden, “Truth is what serves the party.”

Hannity says he isn't a journalist as some kind of mealy-mouthed defense but his show has become unwatchable. It is just one Trump hug after another with no real substance anymore. I guess Hannity has a job lined up as propaganda minister if Trump wins the Presidency. More likely he will jump ship to the Trump News Network and be his leading talking-head. 

Four Palestinian's Invited to Sukkot Festival were Arrested?

I have to agree that I don't think the Palestinian Authority actually wants peace when they pull this kind of stunt.

If you needed any more clues as to why a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement remains so elusive, consider the case of four Arabs who accepted an invitation for the holiday of Sukkot in the nearby Israeli settlement of Efrat on Thursday: The Palestinian Authority arrested them.
The invite from Oded Revivi, the Israeli mayor, was intended to promote peace — and the four men (Riyad Abu Hamad, Yakoub Mousa Abu Hamad, Farouk Mousa Abu Hamad and Mohammad Ahmed Abu Hamad) surely took it in that spirit. Can’t hurt to get to know the neighbors, can it?

Yeah the settlements are technically illegal according to the UN but 1967 is quite a long time ago. Maybe they can work something out or just have the Palestinians build a town next to Efrat and everyone could get along. In any case if you cannot even attend the other guys festival without being arrested then how are you going to get along with him?

Even Conservative Women are Fleeing Trump

I have to agree with this woman's view.

“To switch from actively anti-Hillary to supporting Hillary Clinton has been an interesting 360 and an interesting experiment in what it means to split from a party,” says Stuebe, who describes herself as a small-government libertarian. She’s still grappling with what her relationship to the GOP might be in the future. Does she feel betrayed by the men in her party who support Trump? “Absolutely. I think it’s embarrassing not only to the Republican Party but to the electoral system in America that we were unable to mount a candidate equally qualified to be president as Hillary is.”

Yeah I agree. There is something wrong when a sex abuser and the most crooked person to ever run for office are the only choices we have. There is something wrong with the GOP when they nominated him in the first place. Also a loss of people like this is going to be very bad for the GOP going forward.

Culturally, McAlpin seems about as Republican as they come. “I learned to shoot when I was 7,” she tells me proudly. She’d been in a sorority at Florida Southern College; in D.C., where she moved for graduate school, she’d interned for Republican congressmen and worked for a right-leaning digital strategy firm. But three months ago, in despair over the direction of the Trump-era GOP, McAlpin went to work for a flower-delivery startup. “I’m so tired of politics, and I felt totally abandoned by my party,” she says.

You might see quite a few young conservatives leave the party en-mass over Trump and his stupidity. If the GOP can find a decent center-right female candidate in the next election maybe they can right to ship. But until then its going to be a long 4 years and its only going to get worse.

Looks Like AT&T is Buying Time Warner for $85 Billion: Some Analysts Don't Like it But I Think They are Wrong

It seems that AT&T is buying content to go along with distribution. It seems like an interesting idea but I have to disagree with this guy.

Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz questioned the strategy of buying content instead of licensing it. 

"What does it get them that they can't get by licensing Time Warner content and at a much cheaper price than buying the whole company?" Creutz asked, noting it was unclear what savings could be gained "from stapling distribution and content together. It's been tried. It never works."  

Um, Mr. Creutz you get to hold onto that content forever because you own it. You don't have to worry about the content company charging you more for it in the future. Or having them restrict you in some way. if you own it you can then license said content out to others or simply revive the revenue stream like Disney did for Star Wars and Marvel. 

Think Game of Thrones movies or new TV shows set in that world. Maybe a political thriller set in Bravos or a prequel of some sort about Rhaegar Targaryen? Hell just take some of the HBO back-catalog and revive it for a new generation. Think a new Sorpanos told from Tony's 20-something son point of view that can be binged on Hulu. Or a new generation of the Wire or Deadwood with a whole new group and some of the old actors thrown in. I would sign up for Hulu in a minute if they made a new Rome or Band of Brothers with different actors. IP is one of the few things that is very hard to make more of. Netflix is good at it but HBO is probably the best of the best. 

It just boils down to owning the building instead of paying rent on your offices. It is way cheaper to pay rent but if you own the building you get money from every office in the place for as long as you own the building. Or if you want you can take another floor to expand R&D or whatever. But think of this office building as one that is nearly unique and it will cost billions to make another one. I think AT&T is getting a steal and I know why Apple also came after Time Warner a few months ago. AT&T is following the Disney model. 

250,000 Year Old UFO Part Found in Romania: No It has to be from Die Glocke!

Hmm people are saying that this item is from a UFO.

Gheorghe Cohal, the Deputy Director of the Romanian Ufologists Association, told local media: "Lab tests concluded it is an old UFO fragment given that the substances it comprises cannot be combined with technology available on Earth."

Builders working on the shores of the Mures River not far from the central Romanian town of Aiud found the objects about 33 feet under the ground, where it was buried alongside two bones.

However, this part caught my eye:

However, local historian Mihai Wittenberger said the object is actually a metal piece from a World War II German aircraft, although this does not explain the age of the artifact.

How can that aircraft part be 250,000 years old? My explanation it is from Die Glocke which was a Nazi experiment to warp space-time that resulted in the device being sent back in time. This must be a part of that device. Now what became of the Nazi scientists sent back 250,000 years ago?

Philippines' President Duterte Moves Toward Red China and Away from US: Might be a Big Mistake

I guess the Red Chinese have moved the Philippines into their sphere of influence.

Duterte is in China for a four-day trip seen as confirming his tilt away from Washington and towards Beijing's sphere of influence -- and its deep pockets.

"I announce my separation from the United States," he said to applause at a meeting in the Chinese capital.

"America does not control our lives. Enough bullshit," he added in a rambling speech that flipped between languages.

"How can you be the most powerful industrial country when you owe China and you are not paying it?"

Yeah we are paying China for buying our bonds. Its called interest and we are paying the Red Chinese billions in those payments. The problem is that Duterte is cleaving to a power that really doesn't care very much about the Philippines. The Red Chinese are masters at taking what they want are an extremely canny player of the Great Game. Just watch how they will exploit that South China Sea area between their two countries.

In any case here is the sweetener the Chinese provided. It seems that $15 million will be more than enough to kill off the rest of the drug problem in the Philippines.

They oversaw the signing of 13 bilateral cooperation documents on business, infrastructure, and agriculture, among other fields, he added.

Beijing also has offered the Philippines a $9 billion soft loan for development projects, a statement from the Philippine presidential press office said.

About $15 million of the promised loans will be earmarked for drug rehabilitation programmes amid Duterte's anti-drug campaign, which has killed thousands of people and raised concern abroad of human rights violations.

China will also lift bans on 27 Philippine tropical fruit export companies. Previous sanctions on fruit were intended to punish Manila for its South China Sea stance.

Here is Something New: Shinrin-Yoku AKA Forest Bathing Might Fight Stess,Cancer, and Boost Brain Function

Hmm might be worth a try.

For the Japanese, of course, communing with nature is a major element of their culture and belief system--think Cherry Blossom Festival. So it's not surprising that they've devoted the time and funding to thoroughly study the effects of nature on the human system, resulting in their practice of shinrin-yoku, which translates roughly as "forest bathing."

First popularized in Japan in 1982, forest bathing is now a widespread pastime in Japan and is growing in popularity here too. Some American certified forest therapy guides (yup, that's a thing) believe shinrin-yoku is poised to become as big an element of American wellness as yoga and meditation are--two other Eastern practices scientifically proven to promote brain function and health.

It is supposed to improve brain function, reduce stress, and create cancer causing Killer T cells. Not sure about that last one but being in nature certainly relaxes me.

NFL Viewership Down: People Citing Krapernick Protests

I guess the Star-Spangled Kneel is hurting the shield.

Response to the protests continues to break down along age lines. More than half, 53 percent, of respondents 55 and over who said they are watching fewer games cited Kaepernick as the reason, while only 13 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 pointed to the protests as their reason for watching less football.

I too am watching fewer games but it is a combination of the 49ers being awful and not playing fantasy football this year. I used to watch meaningless games because my running back was playing but now there really isn't any reason to watch.

However, I am watching more college because the matchups are compelling. Like this weekend is Texas A&M vs Alabama which should be a great game but there really aren't any NFL games I am looking forward to. Maybe Seattle vs Arizona but its just because I don't like Seattle. The rest of the games looks pretty ho-hum.

In any case college football just seems like more fun and you get the pageantry, bands and such thrown in. There is still some Star-Spangled Kneeling but it seems fairly rare and there seems to be actual pushback and consequences.

Kind of a Sad Sentiment by a College Student on Trump Support on a College Campus

I have to agree with this unfortunate person.

Kristiana Kershaw, a student at Loyola University in Chicago, plans to vote for Trump because she likes his business expertise and his conservative policies. But she keeps quiet about it. "My only concern is that as an 18-year-old supporting Trump, I can't say that I support him because it's not safe for me to say that," she says. "On a college campus, people feel very strongly and social-media bias says Hillary is the only candidate."

So this young woman cannot even voice support for a candidate for fear of social media attacks. Whenever the left preach tolerance and understanding it is just empty words. It is just tolerance and understanding if you see things exactly as they do. 

My Conspiracy Theory is True: Trump has the Son-In-Law Shopping for Trump News Network After he Loses Election

Well it seems that we have an understanding of a what a post election landslide loss by Trump will look like.

Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, informally approached LionTree Advisors Chief Executive Aryeh Bourkoff about setting up a Trump TV network after the U.S. presidential election, but the investment bank does not want to be involved, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Kushner contacted Bourkoff, one of the media industry's top dealmakers, in the past few months, but there have been no further conversations, the source said on Monday. The source asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

I think the entire Trump candidacy has been an elaborate con-job on the GOP and the American people. That is why he didn't prepare for the debate or hasn't been ready for the Access Hollywood tape or the aftermath. 

There is more money to be made in losing an election than winning one. The Trump News Network will allow him to create a media empire and make billions more. He will be able to monetize the 30% of the populace that are die-hard Trumpites. If he wants he can have a nightly TV show and interview people to spout-off or whatever. It would be fairly highly rated and would pull in good ad revenue. Kind of the angry white guy version of the O-Network  

Singer Refuses to Sing National Anthem: Says "We Need a New Song"

Now this is really getting out of hand.

There are still plenty of singers singing the national anthem at major events. But Hamilton is among those who are reconsidering whether they'd do so.

"I'm gonna take a little time away from the anthem until it starts feeling like it's for me," said Hamilton, who is black. "We need a new song, one that really speaks for all of us, or bring some new life to the one that we have."

Now that really has to be a low ebb to this entire affair. Whoever this singer is he can move to some other country and he can sing their anthem. Or I guess in not doing anything at all he will cause lots of "change" or something. 

The Boomers Have Wrecked the Economy and they Have no Solutions to Fix It

I have to agree with this sentiment.

That’s the whole problem. Clinton relates to the middle class of the past, not the middle class or middle-class aspirants of today. No wonder her entire economic plan comes straight from a stale 20th-century playbook: raise taxes, spend more building roads and bridges, provide more government subsidies for college students and a bunch of other worthies. Completely missing from her plan: any ideas about how to more broadly spread the massive wealth being created by digital innovation. Clinton is a candidate who probably doesn’t know how most of the apps on her smartphone work.

Yeah the Clinton plan is to tax more and build some roads and bridges and hope for the best. Then you rope more kids into the college assembly line that starts them off deep in debt without the skills to compete with the Red Chinese and the Indians. The so-called college industrial complex. Then we have Trump:

Those jobs Trump wants to bring back are for lower-skilled workers once able to earn a decent living from manual labor alone. The economy doesn’t work like that anymore. Instead of “bringing back” jobs that are at the bottom of the economic food chain, what we need is a whole new training paradigm that prepares high school grads for advanced manufacturing, skilled trades and technical jobs likely to require specialized knowledge. Kids need to learn math from the first day they step into a classroom instead of taking remedial courses in community college because they suddenly realize it might be important. By promising that new unskilled manufacturing jobs will somehow materialize and help rebuild the middle class, Trump is basically saying he can return American to some kind of pre-digital paradise that must be the way he imagines the old manufacturing economy of the 1980s. It will never happen. Trump obviously knows how to use Twitter, but his understanding of the broader economy is analog, not digital.

The problem with the manufacturing economy is robots will eventually do almost all of it. Those low-skilled jobs will come back to America and Siri and Alexa and the robots will be ready to do them. The idea that we can go back to a bunch of blue collar workers on an assembly-line by raising tariffs is idiotic. The only jobs available will be the guy that programs the robots and repairs them when they break. Both are very high skill jobs that the present paradigm is unable to train properly. Then we have this fact.

The last two boomer presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, contributed to the current malaise by adding roughly $14 trillion to the national debt ($6.1 trillion under Bush and $8.3 trillion under Obama). Bush tried to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, an old supply-side scheme popularized under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Bush left office in 2009 amid the worst recession since the 1930s. Obama dealt with that recession through traditional stimulus spending first prescribed by economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. Many of Obama’s other ideas are similar to those of Clinton’s—spend taxpayer money on new programs to help the disenfranchised. Hey, it worked in the 1960s.

Then we have trillions in unfunded liabilities that will only go higher as more and more Boomers start to get on the Social Security and Medicare rolls. So they stuck future generations with $14 trillion in extra debt (who knows what Hillary will add to this number) and we get to pay like crazy for all of this. I am counting the days until calf raises, collagen injections, and face lifts are covered by Medicare.   


  

Imperial College London Might have Found a Gene that Prevents Alzheimer’s disease

Hmm it looks like one group after another is advancing the ball down the field.

Early-stage clinical trials have shown that the antibody aducanumab is effective in destroying the beta amyloid deposits that serve as the gathering place for the defective tau proteins. The new research carried out by a team at Imperial College London describes a gene therapy treatment that prevents the beta amyloid deposits from being formed.
The researchers identified a gene called PGC-1α that interferes with the production of beta amyloid peptides. They directly tested the effect of PGC-1α on the development of Alzheimer’s disease with transgenic mice that are genetically engineered to produce elevated levels of amyloid beta peptides.

I wonder if this can be moved to humans or not? The idea that there is a gene that interferes with the creation of these beta amyloid plaques is quite a breakthrough though.

Terrible News for Financial Literacy in America: Only 20% of Teachers feel competent to even teach it

Now these are some scary statistics.

Financial education has not been a priority in the U.S. Only 17 states require students to take a high school course in personal finance, and fewer than 20 percent of teachers feel competent to even teach personal finance topics, according to the Council for Economic Education's Survey of the States.

The Council for Economic Education study also found that 72 percent of parents experience at least some reluctance to talk to their kids about financial matters.

All of this is a boon to pay-day lenders, banksters, fraud artists, Congress-critters and other people who make their living on the fact that people don't know crap about money management. 

Player Trolls the NFL with his Robot Touchdown Celebration

He will probably get fined anyway.

I just caught up on the anti-celebration by Andrew Hawkins. I hope the NFL’s TD dance crackdown leads to more avant-garde stuff. pic.twitter.com/4M4XZIW1fI

— Dan McQuade (@dhm) October 9, 2016

Russia Leaps to Trumps Defence in Row with UN

I think the Russians have a man in this race.

Three diplomats familiar with the conversation said the complaint occurred in a private meeting Sept. 13. Churkin angrily protested a pair of speeches by Zeid that denounced "demagogues" and specifically targeted Trump and several populist leaders in Europe, even likening their tactics to Islamic State propaganda.

"Prince Zeid is overstepping his limits from time to time and we're unhappy about it," Churkin said Friday. "He criticized a number of heads of state, government. He should stick to his file, which is important enough."

I wonder when the Russians are going to drop the Hillary's emails? My guess is after the 2nd debate but before the 3rd on a slow news day so everyone can go wall-to-wall. Then Hillary would have to wade through a 100 questions in the 3rd debate from Fox News's Chris Wallace on the dirt those emails contain. Maybe we would get a resignation from the FBI director thrown in as well.

Mylan Agrees to Pay $465 Million in BlutGelt to the Feds over EpiPen

Well the Feds got their pound of flesh out of Mylan over the EpiPen price hikes.

Mylan, the embattled maker of allergy treatment EpiPen, lowered its 2016 earnings guidance Friday after it agreed to pay $465 million in a settlement with federal regulators over its pricing practices.
“The terms of the settlement do not provide for any finding of wrongdoing on the part of Mylan Inc. or any of its affiliated entities or personnel,” the Canonsburg, Pa.-based company said.

This should be a warning to the drug industry. Hike prices at your own peril. Or do it slowly over a period of months so the FEDs won't catch wind of it. Be subtle going forward.

Cooperman's View of Automation in the Next Generation is Chilling: 45% of Jobs Lost?

If this is true we will be looking at huge disruptions in the coming decade.

According to Cooperman, the futurist was “very provocative” and said the biggest problem the economy faces in the next decade is automation.

“He said the biggest problem in his opinion the economy was facing in the next decade was 45% of all jobs being performed in the economy will be replaced by automation. And there’s no alternative employment for displaced workers.”

Cooperman drew the parallel to the fund industry where auto-investing in index funds and ETFs is taking the place of hedge fund managers. 

But think about that 45% number for a minute. That would be a Great Depression style disruption to the work force. Many of these jobs killed by automation will probably be the ones where you don't need tons of schooling at first. Driver-less cars will get rid of the taxi as well as the Uber and Lyft industries and drain most of the jobs from the Rental Car industry as well. Automatic chefs and payment kiosks will get rid of many fast food workers. Drones or automated trucks would take care of many deliveries. Even smart home sensors of the Internet of Things might be able to get rid of many handyman style jobs. Imagine if your dishwasher phoned home and ordered the part you need to fix it and it was designed for you to do it yourself.

Also some robots or algorithms could do the job of many white color workers as well. Cooperman talks about hedge fund managers being replaced but I can see much of middle management going as well. You don't need so many layers of people between a "CEO dashboard" and widget sales and production that is being run by algorithms in the cloud. If you think about it, many customer service jobs will come back from India and go to Siri-like AI instead. Instead of paying peanuts to Indians you pay nothing to Siri. 

If you get down to it, AI would even disrupt the sciences. Imagine an AI that combs through 1000s of research papers gleaning information from each of them. It if was smart enough it could even reach conclusions from these papers and publish its work. Also image this AI being connected to reams of data coming out of telescopes or sensors around the world and also making conclusions and writing papers from this as well. Skynet aside but you can replace quite a few scientists and their funding with very smart AIs. The IBM commercial with Watson writ large.

Academia might be greatly affected because much of the knowledge needed for automation, AI, and smart devices will need code to be written and maintained. So Khan Academy style code boot camps could take the place of 4 year college degrees in many cases. Why do you need to go into debt for tens of thousands learning a job that an algorithm could do for free? Even K-12 would be disrupted as many of the skills you need to get a job in this new economy can be taught online. Teachers Unions would be on the warpath as kids stay home and learn how to maintain and write for AIs.

Finally, content creation for TV, movies, and video games could get disrupted as well. Imagine an AI taking in reams of viewer data fed by Amazon, Google or Netflix and cross referencing it with your preferences. Imagine if that AI could then write a document on demand using a language algorithm. You go to Amazon and a book will be generated to your preferences and you would love it because it was basically written by a machine for you. 

Imagine if that AI could also write a script and have it produced for you using amazingly lifelike CGI actors. Suddenly you could pay x-dollars and you have a 22 episode action series set in the Forgotten Realms starring Natalie Dormer and Tom Hanks as elves fighting in the Crown Wars. Revenue streams would be generated to use Dormer and Hanks likenesses and for the IP for the Forgotten Realms and no one would have to physically do anything. Hell, you could throw in the estates of deceased persons and you can replace Tom Hanks with Jimmy Stewart with a few clicks. The time it would take to recast your Crown Wars epic would be the time it would take to respawn the movie on the Amazon Content Creation Server.

One of the only things I can think of that won't be automated is the Government Industrial Complex which would fight to stay backward for job security purposes. Senators and Congressmen and their courtiers would still have jobs. Even though a Siri-like interface for government would save tons of money and be light-years more efficient. But if an AI can write a script or a book it can certainly be made to lobby Congress.

The Womens Soccer National Team Dumps the "Anthem Kneeler" Rapinoe

It seems to be a new sheriff in town  at the USWNT headquarters.

But at the outset of that process, that has meant excising several stars and stalwarts, not least of them striker Alex Morgan and attacking midfielder Megan Rapinoe. Also left out of the team were defenders Ali Krieger, Julie Johnston and Megan Klingenberg and 18-year old prodigy forward Mallory Pugh. Goalkeeper Hope Solo, of course, remains suspended and is unlikely to ever return to the fold.

I guess Rapinoe will need to kneel on her own time.

Wow Obamacare is a Worse Rip-Off then Even I Thought: Up to $9Gs for Deductible Plus Premium for a Bronze Plan!

The funny part is the Bronze Plan is actually supposed to be "affordable."

For a 40-year-old individual in 2016, the cost of this care would be $3,479 in premiums plus the deductible before the first benefit could be covered – a total of $9,210 out of pocket. Even if subsidies pared premiums all the way down to Barack Obama’s promised $75 per month, it would still require the consumer to spend over $6600 for anything but a basic wellness check, a service that would cost a few hundred dollars at most, before having the first benefit covered. And that situation will only get worse in 2017, as insurers use increases in deductibles to buffer the premium hikes that have already been signaled.

The Bronze Plan is a strait rip-off because almost no person that has to buy that plan can afford it. It is $200 a month (which is a car payment) and then they have drop up to another $6Gs for doing anything other than a wellness check. Most people do not even have nearly that amount saved up if you go by nationwide statistics. I guess that is why young people are choosing a kind of insurance I have never heard of called fixed-benefit indemnity plans. Although the White House wants to kill even that dead.

The White House hasn’t quite gotten that memo. HHS has floated a new attempt to drive fixed-benefit plans out of the market, this time by forcing insurers to pay the exact same dollar amount for any payable event. In other words, whatever payment the insurer provides for a day in the hospital would have to equal what they pay for a doctor visit, and vice-versa.

In other words they want to turn these plans into the equivalent of that crappy Bronze Plan mentioned above. I agree with Bill Clinton that this really is the "craziest system."

Therenos Fires 340 Employees and Will Actually Try to Make Their MiniLab Work

I think they should have done this from the very start.

"We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform," Holmes wrote. "Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care."
The layoffs affect Theranos personnel at its centers in Arizona, Pennsylvania and California.
Holmes' open letter also notes that Theranos has a "new executive team leading our work toward obtaining FDA clearances, building commercial partnerships, and pursuing publications in scientific journals."

If they got that machine right years ago and worked with the FDA from the start they might have had something revolutionary by now. Instead they tried to sell the sizzle with no steak in sight. However, if any venture capitalists give her another dime they are crazy. 

Can't Believe I'm Agreeing with Rachel Maddow: I Avoided this Debate After I Hearing it Was Crosstalk-Fest

I was planning to watch the debate later on but I'm glad I missed it after hearing this kind of thing.

“A lot of the time, I think those of us watching on television had no idea what was being said because not only were both men speaking over one another, the moderator was speaking over both of the candidates, and nobody was yielding to anybody else,” the MSNBC host said after the debate. “So there were long stretches of time when there were three voices at once and I don’t think you could pick out any intelligible words from any of them.”

That sounds like hell on earth and I have to give credit to the pundits who had to endure this kind of thing. Whenever I hear cross-talk on Fox News or any other thing I immediately change the channel. I just can't stand the incivility that comes from that kind of behavior. Listening politely seems to be a lost art nowadays. Hopefully Sunday's debate will not be like this.

ECU Radio Affiliate Blacks Out Game in Response to Band "Taking the National Anthem Knee"

Well I guess people are finally drawing the line at this form of protest.

“Several members of the band refused to play the national anthem and others ‘took a knee’ during the performance, with the result that roughly a dozen band members disgraced themselves on the football field this past weekend, Colonial Media and Entertainment CEO Jeff Andrulonis said in a statement. “I’m proud of our country and I’m proud of our soldiers — especially our soldiers from Fort Bragg — fighting for our country so I’ve decided that ESPN Fayetteville will ‘protest the protest.’ I talked with some of our East Carolina football sponsors yesterday and will be talking with more of them today. So far, it has been unanimous. Every sponsor I’ve talked to agrees that last weekend’s spectacle at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium was shameful and a message needs to be sent.”

The station owner is perfectly within his rights to stop broadcast of the ECU football team but it seems to be punishing others for the sins of protestors. In any case it is interesting to see some push back on the whole National Anthem knee/fist thing.

Someone Poisoned the Leader of ISIS: My Money is on Iranian Guild of Assassins

Maybe the Guild of Assassins is up and running again.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is at death’s door after being poisoned by a mystery assassin in Iraq, it has been reported.
Three other senior jihadis were also afflicted by the toxin in Al-Ba’aj, southwest of Mosul – Islamic State’s biggest city in Iraq. The four have reportedly been rushed for treatment at a secret location.
FARS, an Iranian news agency, say that ISIS is now arresting several suspects to find out who has struck a blow at the terror group’s self-proclaimed ‘Caliph’.

The original Guild of Assassins was headquartered in Alamut Castle in Iran. After all the Assassins were an offshoot of Shia Islam. Maybe they were waiting in the wings until Iran got their cash and oil reserves back online and now they are being employed against ISIS. I know Iran is heavily involved in the Syrian Civil War so anything is technically possible.