Trump, Sanders Clash on Twitter Over New Tax Law

It was a holiday weekend, but President Donald Trump and rival Bernie Sanders didn’t exactly exchange greeting cards.

Instead, the political foes clashed via Twitter over the nation’s new tax legislation, which Trump signed into law Friday.

“Today, it was my great honor to sign the largest TAX CUTS and reform in the history of our country,” the president tweeted, soon after signing the $1.5 trillion bill . . .

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, prefaced his weekend tweets by posing a question Thursday.

“Doesn’t it tell us a lot about Republican priorities,” Sanders asked, “when the tax breaks for corporations are permanent, while the tax cuts for working families expire at the end of 8 years?”

(Read more from “Trump, Sanders Clash on Twitter Over New Tax Law” HERE)

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New Film Sheds Fresh Light on Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick Scandal

A trailer released Wednesday has people across the country talking once again about the 1969 scandal involving the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.

On July 18 of that year, Kennedy drove back from a party on Chappaquiddick Island — near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts — with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. But Kennedy accidentally drove off a bridge into a pond and was unable to get Kopechne, who died in the car, out of the water.

After the accident, it took him about 10 hours to report the crash to police. In the aftermath of the incident, many believed that the married Kennedy was having an affair with Kopechne and attempted to cover up his involvement in the accident before telling police what had happened.

There has also been controversy over whether Kopechne’s life could have been saved if Kennedy had immediately reported the incident. Kennedy claimed that he and several friends attempted to save Kopechne’s life, though some have wondered why he did not simply go to the police.

Moreover, though Kennedy said he was driving Kopechne back to where she was staying, it was later revealed that she left her purse and room key at the party, according to the History Channel.

Almost five decades later, a new movie, titled “Chappaquiddick,” is set to tell the story of what happened on that night and how the scandal transpired in the days that followed.

The John Curran-directed film stars Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as Kopechne. Bruce Dern, meanwhile, plays Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the famous family and Ted’s father.

“Chappaquiddick” is set to be released on April 6 of 2018, according to People magazine. But the trailer, released Wednesday, gives potential viewers an idea of what to expect.

“Oh my God, what have I done,” Kennedy can be heard saying in the trailer, while adding in another scene, “It was an accident.”

The full trailer can be seen below:

As noted by Townhall, “if the trailer is any indication, the filmmakers did not go easy on Ted Kennedy at all, and it appears to brutally skewer the members of the Kennedy family.”

Kennedy eventually pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. His driver’s license was suspended for a year and he also got a two-month suspended prison sentence.

But though he did not receive any serious legal punishment for the incident, questions remained regarding what really happened that night.

As a result, Kennedy, who had once been considered a future contender for the presidency, spent the remainder of his career in the Senate.

“Chappaquiddick” has received mixed reviews from those who have seen it, as the film currently holds a 64 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the movie “meticulous docudrama” that “achieves what too few American political dramas do: a reckoning.”

But Hollywood Reporter reviewer Todd McCarthy was less impressed, noting that the film is “a detailed but less than gripping account of a dicey Kennedy family incident.” (For more from the author of “New Film Sheds Fresh Light on Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick Scandal” please click HERE)

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Trump: ‘People Are Proud to Be Saying Merry Christmas Again’

By Fox News. When he ran for the White House in 2016, Donald Trump promised to make America great again.

Late Sunday night, on what appeared to be a busy Christmas Eve at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the president took a bow for what he views as his successful role in making Christmas merry again.

“People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again,” the president tweeted shortly before 10 p.m. EST. “I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

Sunday’s tweet seemed as if the president were claiming “mission accomplished” following some comments he made in October at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington.

“We’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word Christmas because it’s not politically correct,” the president said to cheers. “You go to department stores and they’ll say ‘Happy New Year,’ or they’ll say other things and it’ll be red, they’ll have it painted.”

(Read more from “Trump: ‘People Are Proud to Be Saying Merry Christmas Again'” HERE)

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Franklin Graham: ‘I’m Excited’ That Trump Knows ‘Christmas Is All About Christ’

By Fox News Insider. Rev. Franklin Graham reacted to President Trump’s emphasis on the importance of mentioning Christmas during the holiday season.

“The only thing missing are the words ‘Merry Christmas’,” Trump said in a speech on December 8. “They’re using those words again.”

Graham said it is important that Trump and others spread the word that “Christmas is really about the birth of Jesus Christ, and that’s what we’re all celebrating.”

“Christmas is all about Christ,” Graham said. “I’m so excited that the president isn’t afraid to mention the name of Jesus Christ.” (Read more from “Franklin Graham: ‘I’m Excited’ That Trump Knows ‘Christmas Is All About Christ’ HERE)

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Huckabee Reveals His Christmas ‘Naughty and Nice’ Lists

To get into the Christmas spirit, Mike Huckabee offered his “naughty and nice” list for 2017.

The former Arkansas governor said 2017 has been quite eventful.

Huckabee said his “naughty list” is led by several federal agents who have come under scrutiny for their alleged actions in regard to the Clinton email probe and special investigation into President Trump.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Agent Peter Strzok and Department of Justice employee Bruce Ohr led Huckabee’s naughty list.

McCabe is suspected of being the “Andy” mentioned among the thousands of texts between Strzok and his mistress – also a federal employee – in which the two discuss an “insurance policy” against Trump being elected. (Read more from “Huckabee Reveals His Christmas ‘Naughty and Nice’ Lists” HERE)

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Dinosaur-Like Creature With Flesh on Bones Found in India

By Michael Havis. Scientists have been left mystified after the body of a creature resembling a dinosaur was discovered with flesh still on its bones.

The partially-preserved corpse was discovered by an electrician cleaning out a sub-station that had been left untouched for 35 years in Jaspur, a small city in Uttarakhand, India.

It resembles a small dinosaur, but since flightless dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, scientists have struggled to identify it.

The creature has now been sent for analysis, including carbon dating, which will reveal its age.

Dr Parag Madhukar Dhakate, a Conservator with the Indian Forest Service, said that the creature would remain an enigma until scientific analysis had been completed. (Read more from “Dinosaur-Like Creature With Flesh on Bones Found in India” HERE)

(Editor’s note: Our guess is “fake.” And not because we don’t believe that dinosaurs could currently exist, because they do. For example, the komodo dragon, crocodile, alligator, rhinoceros, elephant, etc., are alive and well and are definitely dinosaurian. Moreover, there are many other animals that evolutionists have said should have been dead millions of years ago, like the coelacanth fish, that are still being observed today. No, we think “fake” because of (1) its appearance (looks like a decayed rat with a bend in its back, something you’d expect to find in an abandoned electrical substation in India); and (2) where it was found and the third-world hucksters pushing the story on gullible westerners who click on their video. Perhaps we’ll be proven wrong in the next few weeks, but this looks like scam-city to us.)
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Scientists Baffled Over Half-Preserved Dinosaur-Like Corpse Found in India

By Outer Places. An interesting discovery has been made in an abandoned subway station in Uttarakhand, India, which may well change what we know about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

According to reports, an electrician was cleaning the station, which had remained empty for over thirty years, when he came across a partially preserved skeleton which strongly resembles a raptor-like dinosaur. While the creature’s passing clearly wasn’t recent, its corpse still held some flesh, which by all rights should be impossible considering the length of time since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The corpse has now been sent for testing and carbon dating, although it’s already very clear that this creature couldn’t possibly actually date back to the Late Cretaceous period during which raptors existed and thrived . . .

There are a few possible reasons for the creature’s uncanny dinosaur appearance. The easiest answer to reach for is that this is a fake, planted by some enterprising prankster in the hopes of garnering some attention from the scientific community. (Read more from “Scientists Baffled Over Half-Preserved Dinosaur-Like Corpse Found in India” HERE)

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Raw Footage: Unconscious Man Passed out on Train Tracks, Pulled to Safety Moments Before Disaster

Cell phone footage captured the dramatic rescue of a man who was unconscious on the train tracks last week.

Linda Vicente, who shot the video, was waiting for a Q train at the Avenue H station in Flatbush, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, when she spotted the man lying on the tracks.

“It was the most scariest thing,” one of the witnesses told News 12 Brooklyn. “This man, slipped down on the platform and he passed out.”

“Sir? Sir, please wake up,” Vicente yelled in the video. “Sir! Please wake up! Sir, wake up!”

The other people on the Avenue H platform ran down toward the oncoming train, yelling for it to stop.

“I thought the train was going over him, I started crying,” Vicente told ABC News. “I had never seen that.”

The train stopped short of the station, and Vicente and two others, with the help of the people on the platform, pulled the man to safety.

“You hear stories, but when you’re there it’s so different, the feeling,” she told News 12.

After being pulled to safety, the man regained consciousness and asked to go home. He is still in the hospital in serious condition, but is expected to survive, News 12 reported.

Twitter users shared the story of these good Samaritans.

Vicente told ABC that seeing people pitch in to save a stranger’s life was rewarding.

“I think there are still kind people here in this world,” she said.

Vicente shrugs off the notion that people are calling her a hero. She told News 12 she was just doing the right thing. (For more from the author of “Raw Footage: Unconscious Man Passed out on Train Tracks, Pulled to Safety Moments Before Disaster” please click HERE)

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Amtrak Train Derails, Dangles Over Interstate in Washington

At least six people died when an Amtrak train with 78 passengers and five crew members on its inaugural trip on a new line from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, derailed and fell onto traffic from an overpass of Interstate 5 just north of the Washington state capital, Olympia.

All of the surviving passengers were taken to hospitals in Pierce and Thurston Counties, including at least four who sustained severe injuries.

Pierce County sheriff’s Det. Ed Troyer said the train struck several vehicles on Interstate 5, but nobody in the vehicles died.

A U.S. official told the Associated Press preliminary signs indicate the train may have struck something before going off the tracks.

The Washington state Department of Transportation said the train was running on a new bypass that was created to avoid slow curves and single track tunnels on the BNSF Railway main line tracks near Point Defiance and along southern Puget Sound, the Seattle Times reported. (Read more from “Amtrak Train Derails, Dangles Over Interstate in Washington” HERE)

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Now ‘Jingle Bells’ Is Being Called Racist

According to one college professor, the age-old Christmas carol “Jingle Bells” is actually steeped in white supremacy.

Writing in her “Theatre Survey” research paper, Boston University theater professor Kyna Hamill explained the racist background of the beloved Christmas song.

“The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,” Hamill said, claiming the song has a “problematic history.”

She believes “Jingle Bells” was first performed to make fun of African-Americans.

Hamill went on to cite specific parts of the song that allegedly had racist origins.

“Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States,” she wrote.

The in-depth analysis didn’t end there.

The BU theater historian began researching the history of the longtime Christmas carol after a so-called “Jingle Bells War” – a conflict between two cities: Savannah, Georgia and Medford, Massachusetts – that is purportedly the birthplace of the song created by James Pierpont.

“Its origins emerged from the economic needs of a perpetually unsuccessful man, the racial politics of antebellum Boston, the city’s climate, and the intertheatrical repertoire of commercial blackface performers moving between Boston and New York,” Hamill wrote, using sophisticated language for an otherwise ridiculous subject matter.

The professor contended that the song’s lyrics “display no real originality,” and believes lines such as “dashing through the snow” and “Miss Fanny Bright” connect the song to blackface dandy.

“Words such as ‘thro,’ ‘tho’t,’ and ‘upsot’ suggest a racialized performance that attempted to sound ‘southern’ to a northern audience,” Hamill continued.

“As I mentioned in my article, the first documented performance of the song is in a blackface minstrel hall in Boston in 1857, the same year it was copyrighted,” Hamill told Fox News.

“Much research has been done on the problematic history of this nineteenth-century entertainment.”

The research paper, which has been public for two years, was widely lampooned across social media.

According to her university biography, Hamill is currently working on a collection of essays regarding the “intersections of Theater and War.” (For more from the author of “Now ‘Jingle Bells’ Is Being Called Racist” please click HERE)

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Airline Passenger Caught Smoking, Threatens to Kill

A Southwest Airlines pilot was forced to declare an emergency on Saturday after a passenger repeatedly told a flight attendant she would “kill everybody” on the plane.

The trouble started after the female passenger disabled a smoke detector aboard Southwest Flight 2943 from Portland, Ore., to Sacramento, and proceeded to smoke onboard, Southwest confirmed to Fox News. After she was caught, the woman created a “disturbance” which was captured on video by a fellow passenger.

“I have a destination for this, I have a destination for myself, and I need to go there,” the woman can be heard saying in footage provided to KOIN 6.

“I swear, if you … land, I will kill everybody on this [expletive deleted] plane,” she shouted. “I will kill everybody on this [expletive deleted] plane!” . . .

The woman, who was later identified as 24-year-old Valerie Curbelo of Sandy, Ore., was physically restrained for the remainder of the flight, according to KOVR, although Southwest has not confirmed those details. (Read more from “Airline Passenger Caught Smoking, Threatens to Kill” HERE)

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Surveillance Video of NY Terrorist Released Immediately, Still Not 1 Image From Vegas Months Later

On Monday morning, a 27-year-old alleged terrorist by the name of Akayed Ullah walked into the underground tunnel between Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal and detonated a crudely-made pipe bomb. Luckily no one but Ullah was seriously injured.

After the blast, which happened at 7:20 am during rush hour, the suspect was almost immediately identified and a profile of him released.

Ullah is from Bangladesh and had been living in Brooklyn. He arrived in the United States in February of 2011 and had a visa. He came in with his parents and 3-4 siblings and subsequently obtained a Green Card and became a permanent U.S. resident, according to CBS news.

“They’ve been bombing in my country and I wanted to do damage here,” law enforcement sources reportedly told the NY Post.

He told cops he was inspired by ISIS, but police don’t believe he had any direct contact with the group, sources said.

Currently, police are claiming Ullah is a lone wolf attacker and they are saying there is no reason to believe any other attacks are forthcoming.

“NYPD will be adjusting and adapting the way they always do. Right now, they don’t believe there’s any follow-up attack immediately planned, but there are still several weeks to go before Christmas, two weeks from today,” said Rep. Peter King.

During the press conference, New York’s governor took to the microphone to blame the internet for the attack.

“With the internet now, anyone can go on the internet and download garbage and vileness on how to put together an amateur-level explosive device,” said N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Clearly missing the point and hinting at a possible agenda of internet censorship, Cuomo conveniently ignored the fact that people can also securely and easily send those files to one another via cheap satellite antennas, cell phones, dark web, or any other number of ways—without the evil internet.

Within minutes of the attack, surveillance footage from the tunnel was released which shows Ullah detonate the bomb. The footage from a Port Authority surveillance camera monitor shows commuters walking through a narrow hall on the way to the A, C and E trains moments before the blast, according to the NY Post.

“It’s the guy in the hoodie,” one off-camera voice can be heard saying, referring to the suspect as he enters the frame and the bomb goes off.

It is amazing how fast an investigation can go when the attacker is called a terrorist. If we contrast the tragic massacre in Las Vegas last month with this tragic attack in New York, a telling picture begins to appear.

Within only hours, Ullah’s history both inside and outside the United States was made public. We were informed that Saipov lived in Brooklyn, was a licensed cab driver, and that he arrived in the United States in February of 2011 and had a visa. He came in with his parents and 3-4 siblings and subsequently obtained a Green Card and became a permanent U.S. resident.

All this information was immediately released to the public without anyone having to demand it. Contrast this with Vegas—as millions continue to demand answers to very simple questions about Stephen Paddock—and it is the exact opposite.

It took close to a week to learn that Stephen Paddock allegedly traveled outside of the United States. In fact, it hasn’t been ‘officially’ released at all. We were simply told by CNN, through a confidential law enforcement source that Paddock took several cruises that included stops at ports in Spain, Italy, Greece, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

As the investigation into the New York act of terror shows us, it is quite easy to find out where people travel to and from inside and outside of the US. Why haven’t we been told exactly where Paddock has traveled?

What’s more, as the video above illustrates, Ullah was caught surveillance cameras and this was all quickly published online. However, in spite of the tens of thousands of cameras throughout the Las Vegas area and inside the Mandalay Bay Casino—not a single video nor even a still image from a surveillance camera has been released.

Why haven’t authorities released a single image of Paddock carrying a bag into the hotel? Why haven’t authorities released a single image of Paddock sitting down at one of the many slot machines at which he was alleged to have used his girlfriend’s point card?

Indeed, there was surveillance footage released of Stephen Paddock immediately after the shooting. However, this video was obtained by NBC news—from a different hotel, six years ago.

How is it that NBC was able to get surveillance footage from six years ago, almost immediately after the shooting, and police can’t release a single image of Paddock at the Mandalay Bay Casino during his stay and before he shot himself in his hotel room?

It is ridiculous to consider the fact that most of the information the public has about Stephen Paddock and what went on inside Mandalay Bay has not come from police. Instead, it has come from citizens with access to certain information and leaked to the press. In fact, police seem to want the public to remain entirely in the dark about what happened as they continue to change their story and they actually publicly noted that they wanted to punish the person who leaked the photos of Paddock’s suite to the news.

Department Undersheriff Kevin McMahill noted in October:

There was a question about the validity of the crime scene photos that somebody had leaked. I can confirm those are, in fact, photos from inside of the room; they are in fact photos of our suspect, and as the sheriff mentioned previously, we have all opened up an internal investigation to determine the source of the leaks of those photos to the public.

Why is it that we already know more about an attack and attacker that happened this morning than we do about an attack and an attacker that happened over two months ago? If authorities want to dispel these so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ popping up online, they need to stop changing their stories and release what they know—now. (For more from the author of “Surveillance Video of NY Terrorist Released Immediately, Still Not 1 Image From Vegas Months Later” please click HERE)

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