Bon Bons Instead of Answers. Number 5 Dead.

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This past Friday, instead of answering questions posed to her by the press, Nominee Clinton passed out bon bons. If you can't sweet talk them feed them.

Are we about to elect a president who, were  various departments of this Administration not covering up for her,  would be  indicted?  We already know the FBI did not investigate Hillary in a thorough manner.  We now know the State Department, she headed, has also been foot dragging in releasing documents and e mails that reveal she used her own  contrived system in order to cover tracks that would indicate the extent to which she and her paid lackeys engaged in pay for play.  We also know The Justice Department, under Attorney General Lynch, quickly embraced FBI Comey's pitiful excuse for not indicting Hillary and met with Bill prior to the orchestrated rush release of the FBI's questionable investigation.

This could become the first time Americans knowingly elected a crook and pathological liar to sit in The Oval Office.  If Hillary is elected will her seamy credentials become the new norm for what we are willing to accept as leadership?  If this is the case then one has every right to question whether this Republic will stand.

If the courts can't save us from ourselves perhaps the  FOIA will. (See 1 and 1a below.)

After eight years of a president whose accomplishments  are highly undistinguished and, in fact, pitiful one would hope we have learned something .

Using Trump as an excuse holds some water but voting for the Libertarian, Johnson, other than being a governor, seems an ineffective way to knock Hillary out of the box.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4351026/clinton-1995-immigration-sotu
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Glick on Trump. (See 2 below.)
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The consequence of when America fails to stand tall and allows rump nations to dictate policy.

Obama, nor any president, may not necessarily be able to stop wars, invasions, heinous acts on the part of dictators but rather than stand aside Obama could have remembered he was given the Nobel Peace Award, which, at the time,  was undeserved, and he could, at least, have tried to live up to its meaning.  He even failed that responsibility preferring, instead, to focus on golf, wedge issues and abdicate our role in the entire Middle East to Russia and Iran (See 3 and 3a below.)

I admit to having become more racially biased because of "affirmative action" which a dear black friend of mine helped me to accept but which I believe has outlived its purpose and, most particularly, because of  Obama and his use of wedge issues and divisive pronouncements.

Please click here to watch the video, and share it with a friend who needs to hear this message.

MoveOn has been working with Demos to present a series of videos by Heather McGhee and University of California, Berkeley Professor Ian Haney-López, discussing how to tackle economic inequality by confronting racial equality. The third video in the series is coming out soon and focuses on public education.

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Liberals believe anything that sounds good and signifies compassion makes sense.  All too often they fail to connect economic consequences of their emotional do good approach to governance and public policy.  Hell is paved with good intentions even in Chicago. (See 4 below.)
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Can you liken Hillary's reach to that of an octopus?  (See 5 below.)
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Now number five is dead. (See 6 below.)



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A little humor:

An elderly retired couple in Florida were going out to dinner. The woman comes out of the bedroom and says to her husband, "Darling, do you want me to wear this Chanel suit or this St. John?" "Whichever you want." he replied. The woman comes out of the bedroom again and says to her husband, "Darling shall I wear my Cartier watch or my Rolex?" "Whatever you think looks best," says the husband. The woman comes out of the bedroom yet again and says to her husband, "Darling, shall I wear my 5 carat pear or my 6 caret round diamond?" "Either one," he says, "...but if you don't finish soon, we're going to miss the early bird special."

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Dick
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1)

Hillary's Nightmare: FOIA Meets the Internet

By William F. Marshall

Perhaps the most interesting development in this most interesting of presidential election seasons has been the convergence of the power of the Freedom of Information Act with the power of the Internet. The impact of these conjoined forces may well determine the political fate of one of our presidential candidates.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into law, fittingly, on July 4, 1966. This piece of legislation, which has been amended and strengthened numerous times since its inception, is a testament to that unique "American exceptionalism" of which Barack Obama was so famously dismissive at a NATO summit meeting in February 2009. (Who can forget “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”?) FOIA truly embodies the spirit of Lincoln's immortal description of America representing "government of the people, by the people, for the people." It requires our government to be accountable to its citizens by allowing anyone to demand that the records of its operations be produced to those very citizens.

The Internet -- that other great product of American exceptionalism -- allows for the immediate dissemination of thousands of pages of raw documents to millions of people simultaneously. That immense set of eyes belongs to individuals with expertise in a wide array of fields, like medicine, national security, and forensic accounting (not to mention ethics).

Therein lies a problem for Hillary Clinton.

Never before in the history of American politics have the American people, with all their varied talent and knowledge, had the ability they now wield to scrutinize a presidential candidate with a long history in the political system and government employment by reviewing reams of their daily communications, calendars and other records generated in their careers. This capability exposes Mrs. Clinton's vulnerabilities on three fronts: her health, her reckless attitude toward national security information, and her degree of corruption arguably on a scale unprecedented for an American political figure.

To take one example in the first category, consider the new information that is coming to light about Hillary Clinton's health. While her ardent supporters and campaign flacks try to dismiss concerns being raised about this topic as the fevered imaginings of right-wing haters, newly released emails obtained through FOIA are adding pieces to a puzzle forming a very troubling picture. An email obtained through FOIA by Judicial Watch, for instance, revealed top Clinton aide Huma Abedin instructing a subordinate to be sure to repeat to Secretary Clinton the names of foreign dignitaries with whom she was to speak the next day because, Ms. Abedin explained, Mrs. Clinton is "often confused." This is a very disconcerting revelation by Hillary's "body woman" -- the person most intimately knowledgeable of Mrs. Clinton among her courtiers. As Dr. Jane Orient, the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told Breitbart News, that observation along with other evidence, such as reports of falls taken by Mrs. Clinton, photos of Mrs. Clinton being physically supported by aides, and her use of prism eyeglasses, typically used to correct double vision, during her Benghazi testimony all potentially point to a very serious medical issue which should compel her to release all of her medical records to American voters before Election Day.

Considering Mrs. Clinton's second vulnerability, her treatment of national security information, records obtained by Judicial Watch through FOIA requests and litigation revealed an extraordinarily blasé attitude on the part of both Mrs. Clinton and her senior aides toward their oaths to protect highly sensitive, often classified, material. Examples of this cavalier attitude abound in the records Judicial Watch obtained. To cite just a few among many, Mrs. Clinton received classified documents on her unsecured email server containing information revealing the identities of U.S. personnel operating in intelligence capacities in foreign countries. Other records obtained through FOIA by Judicial Watch revealed Huma Abedin leaving Secretary Clinton’s presumably sensitive daily planning book on top of her bed in Ms. Abedin’s unlocked hotel room in a Caribbean country while she was off attending meetings. Ultimately, of course, the FBI investigated the egregiously lax operational security of Mrs. Clinton and her aides, and chose not to recommend prosecution, but that investigation itself would not have been initiated had Judicial Watch not obtained, again through FOIA, the infamous Ben Rhodes “talking points email,” which forced Congress into forming the Benghazi select committee, ultimately leading to the discovery of Mrs. Clinton’s secret email network.

Finally, the Freedom of Information Act has been decidedly critical in exposing for the American people the breathtaking pay-for-play schemes of the Clinton Foundation, working in concert with the State Department while Mrs. Clinton was at its helm. Revelations of the special access granted to the secretary of state for large donors to the Clinton Foundation are coming fast and furious (to coin a phrase). Large contributors such as Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain, Slimfast founder S. Daniel Abraham, and sports entertainment mogul Casey Wasserman were all granted expedited attention of one sort or another, which we know, again, from records obtained by Judicial Watch. Thankfully others, such as the Associated Press, are now doing their own fine reporting through the use of FOIA on the Clintons’ massive corruption, revealing the remarkable number of donors to the Clinton Foundation who had unrivalled access to the secretary of state. Similarly, excellent investigative work by Citizens United revealed top State Department official Cheryl Mills, whose phone logs Citizens United obtained through FOIA, essentially moonlighting for the Clinton Foundation.

The beauty of FOIA in enabling ordinary American citizens to obtain records from the government while being able to share those records with countless other individuals seamlessly via the Internet has opened up a new dimension in representative democracy. Medical doctors can glean insights from observations by aides of presidential candidates. Could John F. Kennedy’s drug addiction or Woodrow Wilson’s near-infirmity following his strokes while in office been concealed had FOIA and the Internet been existent in those eras? Those of us familiar with government classification systems can now see up close how blatantly our most senior foreign diplomat and her aides routinely violated the most basic regulations and laws relating to the protection of national security information. Financial analysts (and everyone else) can connect the dots between donations made to the secretary of state’s family foundation and privileges granted to those very same donors by the powerful government department she led, based on casual conversations in email exchanges, which are government records.

In short, the combination of FOIA and the Internet allows for the unprecedented, virtually instantaneous, scrutiny of huge numbers of government records in a way never envisioned just a few short years ago. It has resulted in the crowd-sourcing of intelligence analysis.

Our Founders, if their spirits are still observing us, must be overjoyed at this convergence of technology and the legally codified requirement for the government to furnish the records it generates to the people it represents. It is the quintessential tool of informed self-government.

William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government and private sector for 30 years. He is presently a Senior Investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.) 

1a)The bribery standard

Huma Abedin goes over notes with Hillary Clinton during a June 2011 visit to Lusaka, Zambia, while Clinton was secretary of state. (Susan Walsh/Pool/Reuters)

By Charles Krauthammer 

 

Bernie Sanders never understood the epic quality of the Clinton scandals. In his first debate, he famously dismissed the email issue, it being beneath the dignity of a great revolutionary to deal in things so tawdry and straightforward.

Sanders failed to understand that Clinton scandals are sprawling, multi-layered, complex things. They defy time and space. They grow and burrow.

The central problem with Hillary Clinton’s emails was not the classified material. It wasn’t the headline-making charge by the FBI director of her extreme carelessness in handling it.

That’s a serious offense, to be sure, and could very well have been grounds for indictment. And it did damage her politically, exposing her sense of above-the-law entitlement and — in her dodges and prevarications, her parsing and evasions — demonstrating her arm’s-length relationship with the truth.

But it was always something of a sideshow. The real question wasn’t classification but: Why did she have a private server in the first place? She obviously lied about the purpose. It wasn’t convenience. It was concealment. What exactly was she hiding?

Was this merely the prudent paranoia of someone who habitually walks the line of legality? After all, if she controls the server, she controls the evidence, and can destroy it — as she did 30,000 emails — at will.

But destroy what? Remember: She set up the system before even taking office. It’s clear what she wanted to protect from scrutiny: Clinton Foundation business.

The foundation is a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity, an opaque and elaborate mechanism for sucking money from the rich and the tyrannous to be channeled to Clinton Inc. Its purpose is to maintain the Clintons’ lifestyle (offices, travel, accommodations, etc.), secure profitable connections, produce favorable publicity and reliably employ a vast entourage of retainers, ready to serve today and at the coming Clinton Restoration.

Now we learn how the whole machine operated. Two weeks ago, emails began dribbling out showing foundation officials contacting State Department counterparts to ask favors for foundation “friends.” Say, a meeting with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon for one particularly generous Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire.

Big deal, said the Clinton defenders. Low-level stuff. No involvement of the secretary herself. Until — drip, drip — the next batch revealed foundation requests for face time with the secretary herself. Such as one from the crown prince of Bahrain.

To be sure, Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, is an important Persian Gulf ally. Its crown prince shouldn’t have to go through a foundation — to which his government donated at least $50,000 — to get to the secretary. The fact that he did is telling.

 Now, a further drip: The Associated Press found that more than half the private interests who were granted phone or personal contact with Secretary Clinton — 85 of 154 — were donors to the foundation. Total contributions? As much as $156 million.

Current Clinton response? There was no quid pro quo.

What a long way we’ve come. This is the very last line of defense. Yes, it’s obvious that access and influence were sold. But no one has demonstrated definitively that the donors received something tangible of value — a pipeline, a permit, a waiver, a favorable regulatory ruling — in exchange.

It’s hard to believe the Clinton folks would be stupid enough to commit something so blatant to writing. Nonetheless, there might be an email allusion to some such conversation. With thousands more emails to come, who knows what lies beneath.

On the face of it, it’s rather odd that a visible quid pro quo is the bright line for malfeasance. Anything short of that — the country is awash with political money that buys access — is deemed acceptable. As Donald Trump says of his own donation-giving days, “when I need something from them . . . I call them, they are there for me.” This is considered routine and unremarkable.

It’s not until a Rolex shows up on your wrist that you get indicted. Or you are found to have dangled a Senate appointment for cash. Then, like Rod Blagojevich, you go to jail. (He got 14 years.)

 Yet we are hardly bothered by the routine practice of presidents rewarding big donors with cushy ambassadorships, appointments to portentous boards and invitations to state dinners.

The bright line seems to be outright bribery. Anything short of that is considered — not just for the Clintons, for everyone — acceptable corruption.

It’s a sorry standard. And right now it is Hillary Clinton’s saving grace.

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2)

Trump and the American Dream

By Caroline B. Glick

 According to most polls taken since last month’s party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. Clinton, they say, has won.

There are several problems with this conclusion.

First of all, the “official campaign,” won’t begin until September 26, when Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer, excels in these formats.

Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.

Third, it is quite possible that Clinton’s problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning exposé of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of Clinton and her closest advisers. This week’s AP report that half of Clinton’s non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.

The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on Clinton’s support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on Clinton’s candidacy may be fatal.

In light of Clinton’s weaknesses, Trump’s main hurdle to winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion-shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated hurts his ability to build support among swing voters.

As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party.

The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.

In an interview with CNN in late May, Wall Street Journal columnist (and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief) Bret Stephens spoke for many in the Never Trump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be “the biggest loser in presidential history.”

Stephens explained, “It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote ‘conservatism’ or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form.”

In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a Clinton presidency would be “a survivable event” he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.

He explained, “The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don’t think the Republican Party... as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.”

This week, The Washington Times published a list of 50 senior Republicans who not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting Clinton.

The problem with Stephens’s view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump’s primaries victory.

On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally transform,” America.

He kept his word.

And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership’s failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment’s failure to block it, that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.

Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.

Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to Obama’s decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.

Turkey’s ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America’s regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US’s primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.

Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion, openly threatened the Kurds. Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey’s demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.

Biden’s move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US Navy destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran’s act of war “unprofessional.”

And the worst part about the US’s strategic crackup is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.

Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can’t afford to sell their homes.

Obamacare has made healthcare unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-payments have risen so steeply that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.

In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed its factories, shipped its operations out of the US or went bankrupt in the face of foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.

The economic crisis has caused deeper crises.First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven-year period. A significant number of nonobservant Americans no longer believe in God.

Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that fewer than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don’t attend.

In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to nonattendance.

Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.

Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county in Ohio. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.

This is the American transformation that Obama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.

Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn’t a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country’s ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again, adore him for it.

This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect

If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party’s intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether. If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.

If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.

More important, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before Obama fundamentally transformed it.

Clinton, who like Obama and the Never Trumpsters scoffs at Trump’s dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what’s left of the coal industry.

So if Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade and foreign policy will be irrelevant. America’s fundamental transformation will become irreversible.

In that event, America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the Never Trumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November’s election.
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 This picture is wormore than a 1,000 words ......

Above, is a photo showing some refugees

walking to reach their final objective, in a European country.

In the photo, are 7 men and 1 woman.

Up to this point – nothing special.

But in observing a bit closer, you will notice the woman has bare feet,

accompanied by 3 children, and of the 3, she is carrying 2. 

Perversely, none of the men are helping her,

because, in their culture, women  have little standing.

Can these  individuals integrate

into Western Societies? 

                                       What is The West's/our moral responsibility, if any?

3a)So far President Obama has pardoned 600 federal inmates, more than all the presidents before him going back to Kennedy combined!  And the White House says they will continue with this until Obama leaves office.

The White House says they were Drug dealers who had done enough time.  

But of the 600 pardoned so far 107 were convicted for gun crimes.  Quote from the Washington Examiner "107 federal inmates who have had gun crimes convictions pardoned or commuted during this administration, including a number who used firearms while dealing drugs or who carried them despite having felonies on their records.  Still others were caught lying to gun dealers or carrying weapons with the registration numbers filed off -- suggesting an even deeper level of gun crime."

The White House's response "Our focus really has been on people who we think were overcharged and people who we do not feel have a propensity towards violence"

This from the President who never misses an opportunity to lecture us about "common sense" gun laws to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens!! 

source: Washington Examiner 8/15/16

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4)

Facing High Labor Costs From Minimum Wage Hikes, Chicago Restaurant Closes 

By Leah Jessen

A Chicago restaurant abruptly closed this week, with ownership blaming the “rapidly changing labor market” and a 27 percent increase in base minimum wage costs over the last two years as culprits for the collapse.

Cantina 1910, a farm-to-table Mexican restaurant located in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, opened in September 2015.

Former Cantina 1910 employees said they were shocked to find out late Sunday evening of the closing, DNAinfo reported.

“We are unable to further raise prices in this competitive restaurant market in order to sustain the labor costs necessary to operate Cantina 1910,” Mark Robertson and Mike Sullivan, Cantina 1910’s owners, said in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal.

In December 2014, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance to raise the city’s minimum wage from $8.25 an hour to $13 an hour by 2019. The minimum wage for nontipped employees went up to $10.50 an hour on July 1.

“Unfortunately, the rapidly changing labor market for the hospitality industry has resulted in immediate, substantial increases in payroll expenses that we could not absorb through price increases,” the restaurant’s owners said. “In the last two years, we have seen a 27 percent increase in the base minimum wage, a 60 percent increase in kitchen wages, and a national shortage of skilled culinary workers.”

The owners say they “do not see a path forward” with mandatory paid sick leave and minimum wage set to increase in 2017. They stated:

As we look down the road, we are facing a Dec. 1 change in federal labor regulations that will nearly double required salaries for managers to qualify as exempt, a 2017 mandatory sick leave requirement and another minimum wage increase. Coupled with increasing Chicago and Cook County taxes and fees that disproportionately impact commercial properties and businesses, we are operating in an environment in which we do not see a path forward.

Raising the minimum wage was a “much needed” and “an essential step in making sure that hard work pays off for all of our residents,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat and President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, said in a July 2015 statement.

Employment in the Chicago area’s leisure and hospitality sector sunk to a five-year low, according to government data, after a $1.75 an hour minimum wage hike went into effect in July 2015, Investor’s Business Daily’s Jed Graham wrote this past January.

“Chicago raised mandatory starting wages in the city, but the restaurant could not afford to stay in business at those prices. So it closed and all its employees lost their jobs. Heritage Foundation analysis finds that if Illinois mandated $15/hour starting wages this would cost over 300,000 jobs statewide.”“The law of demand states that when prices rise, customers buy fewer goods or services,” James Sherk, a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, says. “Cantina 1910’s closing is another demonstration that this economic law applies to businesses too.

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5)  BREAKING: Doctor Who Questioned Hillary Health Just Got Taken Out by Clinton Thugs

CNN spin-off HLN announced this week the cancellation of Dr. Drew Pinsky’s eponymous program, and some suspected that Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had orchestrated this sudden removal of the board-certified medicine specialist and TV personality from the public sphere.

“Dr. Drew and I have mutually agreed to air the final episode his show on September 22,” CNN vice president Ken Jautz, who managed HLN, explained in a statement.

The network vice president went on to praise Pinsky for his “creative shows,” “hard work” and “distinctive programming,” but stopped short of revealing the exact reason for the show’s cancellation.

This in turn set off a flurry of conspiracy theories, the most popular one being that Jautz purposefully cancelled Pinsky’s program to punish him for having spoken out about Democrat presidential candidate and career criminal Hillary Clinton’s health last week.

During an interview with a Los Angeles radio news station on Aug. 16, Pinsky said that after after he and friend Dr. Robert Huizenga evaluated Clinton’s available medical records, they became “gravely concerned not just about her health, but her health care.”

“Both of us concluded that if we were providing the care that she was receiving, we’d be ashamed to show up in a doctor’s lounge,” he claimed.

And now, all of a sudden, Pinsky is without his longtime TV show … and the reason for this sudden loss remained as elusive as President Barack Obama’s college transcripts.

Many wondered whether CNN’s unconcealed support for the Democrat candidate — there was a reason many referred to it as the “Clinton News Network” — played a role in the show’s cancellation. Some even thought that perhaps Clinton had herself orchestrated the cancellation.

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6) JULIAN ASSANGE'S LAWYER FOUND DEAD AFTER BEING STRUCK BY TRAIN

MLORDANDGOD

By Alexandra Bruce

Here's more news you don't get in the US' mainstream media: John Jones 48, one of Britain’s top human rights lawyers, who represented Julian Assange was killed last Monday, when he was run over by a commuter train. The death is being called a suicide.

British Transport Police were called to the West Hampstead train station in North London at 7:07 AM on Monday April 18, 2016  after a man was struck by a train. He was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene and his death is not being treated as suspicious. The event occurred almost one month to the day that the first batch of Clinton emails were released by his client from WikiLeaks.

Jones worked on the same team as actor, George Clooney’s wife Amal. He specialized in extradition, war crimes and counter-terrorism; taking cases from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Lebanon and Cambodia.

Jones lived in an expensive home in North London, with wife Misa Zgonec-Rozej, 40 a director of an international law consultancy, and his two children.

The news is particularly disturbing, as Democratic Strategist and CNN host, Bob Beckel appeared in a FOXTV interview and called for the assassination of Julian Assange (or more accurately, "Just kill the sonofabitch!")

Assange is believed to be planning a strategic "October Surprise" leak of a Hillary Clinton email, just prior the US Presidential Election. It purportedly contains information that will definitively put her behind bars.

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