Donald Trump Blames This Political Figure for 9/11

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By David Martosko. Donald Trump took an unprovoked slap at George W. Bush in an interview broadcast Friday, blaming the former U.S. president for not preventing the 9/11 terror attacks.

Asked by Bloomberg Television anchor Stephanie Ruhle how Americans might trust him to keep them safe, the Republican presidential front-runner bristled at the mention of Bush’s role as comforter-in-chief after 9/11, and President Barack Obama’s similar position following the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

‘OK, I think I have a bigger heart than all of them,’ he said. ‘I think I’m much more competent than all of them.’

‘When you talk about George Bush – I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time’ . . .

‘Government has proven to be a disaster during the Obama administration,’ Trump pivoted. ‘What we need is a leader, we don’t have a leader.’ (Read more from “Donald Trump Blames This Political Figure for 9/11” HERE)

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Facing Backlash, Trump Dodges Questions on 9/11 Comments

By Tal Kopan, Eugene Scott and MJ Lee. Donald Trump, under fire for suggesting that George W. Bush shared in the blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks because they happened during his presidency, repeatedly declined to engage with reporters about the matter Friday night — opting instead to continue a long-running feud with Jeb Bush on Twitter afterwards.

Trump regularly speaks with reporters at campaign events and often takes multiple questions in an impromptu manner, making his silence Friday all the more noticeable.

When asked by CNN after a rally at a local high school here if he thought the attacks were George W. Bush’s fault, Trump, after pausing to listen to the question, walked away.

Minutes later, he again declined to say anything when asked to react to Bush’s response on Twitter, ignoring at least half a dozen questions on the matter before driving away in his motorcade. He did respond to questions about the crowd size at his campaign event Friday and why he was campaigning in Massachusetts.

The controversy began Friday morning when Trump implied that the former president could share some blame for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, as he was in office at the time. (Read more from “Facing Backlash, Trump Dodges Questions on 9/11 Comments” HERE)

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Bad Timing? Texas ‘Clock’-Maker’s Visit With Wanted Sudanese Leader Complicates WH Invite

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Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year old boy arrested after a homemade clock he brought to school was mistaken for a bomb, may be putting President Obama in an awkward situation after meeting with Sudanese president and alleged war criminal Omar al-Bashir just days before a White House event to which he was invited.

Despite the controversy, the White House has not yet announced any change of plans for the invitation or the event – an Astronomy Night scheduled for Monday that brings together NASA astronauts and government scientists with students and teachers . . .

The White House first reached out to Mohamed after he gained national attention for being pulled from class and handcuffed after showing a digital clock to teachers at his Dallas high school. The arrest stirred accusations of Islamaphobia, and Obama offered his support.

But as the boy has gone on a tour across the globe to speak out against racism — meeting with Turkish President Ahmet Davutoğlu in New York, and visiting a number of Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia — the visit to his father’s home country of Sudan is raising eyebrows . . .

The Sudanese leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, where he is accused of orchestrating genocide and crimes against humanity. Al-Bashir denies the accusations. (Read more from “Bad Timing? Texas ‘Clock’-Maker’s Visit With Wanted Sudanese Leader Complicates WH Invite” HERE)

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75-Year-Old Vet Saves 16 Children From Knife Attack

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Sixteen children and a handful of their mothers found the only door to their library room blocked by a man who held hunting knives in each hand as he screamed, “I’m going to kill some people!”

Dustin Brown, 19, specifically wanted to kill children Tuesday at Morton Public Library, he said after the would-be victims escaped safely.

Had he brought a firearm instead, “It would’ve been a different story,” James Vernon said Thursday . . .

Blood was shed, but mostly Vernon’s, because the retired chess club teacher kept his cool, gave his class an avenue of flight and remembered the knife-fight training the Army gave him five decades ago.

Vernon, 75, won his “90 seconds of combat” with Brown, “but I felt like I lost the war,” he chuckled. He cut two arteries and a tendon on Vernon’s left hand as Vernon blocked Brown’s knife swipe. (Read more from “75-Year-Old Vet Saves 16 Children From Knife Attack” HERE)

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ISIS Fighter Who Sought to Kill Christian Missionaries Surrenders Life to Christ After This Incredible Thing Happened

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By Leah Marieann Klett. In an amazing story of redemption and hope, an Islamic State militant who sought to kill Christian missionaries providing aid to those displaced by the terrorist group ended up surrendering his life to Christ after hearing the Gospel and witnessing the love of the believers.

According to a report from Christian Aid Mission, a humanitarian group that assists indigenous Christian workers in their native countries, the jihadist fighter traveled to Amman, Jordan after learning that relatives there were receiving aid from Christians, who he viewed as unclean “pigs”.

The Muslim, whose name is withheld for security reasons, went to a Christian meeting with the intention of killing the aid workers gathered there, the director of a ministry in the Middle East told the organization. However, something kept him from following through on his plan, and that night, Jesus revealed Himself in a dream.

“The next day he came back and said, ‘I came to kill you, but last night I saw Jesus, and I want to know what are you teaching – who is this One who held me up from killing you?'” the director said. The missionaries were able to share the Gospel with the militant, and, after witnessing the love and compassion of the believers, the fighter surrendered his life to Christ.

“He received Christ with tears, and today he’s actually helping in the church, helping out other people. We’re praying for lots of such Sauls to change to Pauls,” the ministry director recounted. (Read more from “ISIS Fighter Who Sought to Kill Christian Missionaries Surrenders Life to Christ After This Incredible Thing Happened” HERE)

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Evangelist in Eastern Uganda Tortured, Killed After Muslim-Christian Debate

By Morning Star News. slamists upset by a Christian-Muslim debate are suspected in the killing of a long-time evangelist in eastern Uganda who led many Muslims to Christ, sources said.

The mutilated body of Samson Nfunyeku was found close to his home in Kalampete village, Kibuku District early on Sept. 23, after the latest in a series of organized debates with Islamic scholars at Tirinyi Trading Center ended prematurely due to flaring tempers the previous night. He was 59.

At a previous debate, also sponsored by Nfunyeku’s Church of Uganda and other churches, Muslim leaders had threatened him and warned him to hold no more debates, a source said.

“Four months ago Samson and others had a very hot debate at Tirinyi Trading Center with the Muslim scholars that ended on a bad note, and they gave warning that such debates were not good for the Muslims,” said one of the participants, a former sheikh (Islamic teacher) who became a Christian.

Nevertheless, another debate was held on Sept. 22 with few in attendance, said the source, whose name is withheld for security purposes. The debate ended at about 5:30 p.m., and as the trading center is about seven kilometers (four miles) from Kalampete, colleagues estimated Nfunyeku was killed between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. (Read more from “Evangelist in Eastern Uganda Tortured, Killed After Muslim-Christian Debate” HERE)

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Wal-Mart Lost $21 Billion in One Day, Here’s How

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Wal-Mart (WMT), the world’s largest retailer, saw its shares get whacked 10% or more than 6 points Wednesday, the biggest drop ever. The mauling evaporated over $21 billion in market value. As a Dow member the drop shaved over 44 points off the average.

Investors revolted after Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley lowered the boom at its annual investor day at the New York Stock Exchange (ICE), disclosing that profits will decline between 6 and 12% in fiscal 2017. The consensus was for a drop of 4%. He also stated that 75% of the reduction was tied to higher wages.

You may recall, earlier this year, Wal-Mart led the charge in raising wages for about 500,000 workers. In April, workers started receiving $9 an hour and pay may get bumped to $10 next year. Over the next two years this will cost the company nearly $3 billion, according to Holley.

Boosting worker pay has been an initiative of CEO Doug McMillian, who said, “Our investments in our people, our stores and our digital capabilities and e-commerce business are the right ones.” Despite these optimistic remarks, just last month McMillian indicated that the company could be doing a better job of controlling costs, including wages, as covered by FOXBusiness.com.

That was a big clue. If you strip out higher wages, Wal-Mart has other issues. The stock is down 30% this year, which may be the worst performance since 1973 and a sign the investor community has lost confidence in the retailer. Comparable store-sales for Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club rose a modest 1.5% for the 13-week period ended July 31. Total net sales in fiscal 2016 are expected to fall flat. (Read more from “Wal-Mart Lost $21 Billion in One Day, Here’s How” HERE)

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How a Woman’s Ebola Relapse Tears up Everything Doctors Thought They Knew

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Since 1976, when the Ebola virus was first identified, doctors racing to remote villages in African forests have thought they had a reasonable idea of what those infected were facing. The disease was grim – a hemorrhagic fever which caused copious bleeding and often death – but some people could and did fully recover. Now that is in question.

When nurse Pauline Cafferkey was admitted back into the infectious diseases unit of the Royal Free hospital in London on 9 October, nine months after recovering from Ebola, and then became critically ill, all the previous assumptions about the long-term effects of this virus had to be torn up.

Doctors and scientists are amazed and appalled. It is horrible for Cafferkey and her family, but the implications of her new illness are much more wide-reaching. The UK has a world-class health service. Cafferkey’s family were angry that the possibility that her symptoms were linked to Ebola was not immediately picked up, but even though she did not have the usual fever and vomiting, within days the virus had been identified once more and she had been flown to specialised care.

But a resurgence of illness that did not look like classic Ebola in survivors in countries with fragile or collapsed health systems, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea or – for that matter – DRC or Uganda, which have had outbreaks in the past, would not have been recognised. It is entirely possible that people have died from Ebola complications unnoticed, months after their initial recovery, and more could still die.

Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at Nottingham University, is one of those who admits to real surprise. There are a lot of unknowns about Ebola, he said, “but I don’t think anybody would for one minute have expected complications quite as serious as they certainly appear. (Read more from “How a Woman’s Ebola Relapse Tears up Everything Doctors Thought They Knew” HERE)

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What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan

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“Killing Reagan,” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, is supposed to be a book of new scholarship on the Reagan presidency. Instead, it restates old claims and rumors, virtually all of which have been discredited by the historical record.

In this best-selling book, there are no endnotes, no bibliography, no long list of interviewees and only a smattering of footnotes. There is a section titled “Sources,” but it is only two-and-a-half pages long. It includes about two dozen sources, but that is not adequate for a subject, Ronald Reagan, who has been the focus of thousands of books and articles and who was one of the most consequential political figures of the 20th century. The works of three of us are not noted at all, and between the four of us, we have written 19 books on Reagan, not to mention countless articles. The sources section does, however, reference long-questionable works, including the sensational 1991 attack by Kitty Kelley — which is clearly incorporated throughout the book — and the 1999 biography by Edmund Morris, roundly criticized for its intermingling of fact and fiction.

To the authors’ credit, the sources section notes the use of excellent archives such as the Reagan Library, the Reagan Ranch Center and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. And yet, the acknowledgment of those archives is somewhat puzzling, given that the archives make clear that Reagan was a far more hands-on, engaged and all-around deeply involved president than many of the partisan accounts alleged in their unfair caricatures of him in the 1980s. Frankly, we had thought that demeaning, flawed caricature — Reagan as the doodling old fool who spent too much time sleeping at Cabinet meetings and watching old movies — had been permanently put to rest by recent scholarship. Unfortunately, “Killing Reagan” shows that the old misinformation (if not disinformation) still remains with us, like a demon that cannot be exorcised. It regurgitates and resurrects much material that we had thought (and hoped) was dead and done.

There are small and large mistakes throughout “Killing Reagan.” Repeatedly, Ronald Prescott Reagan is referred to as “Ron Jr,” a minor matter but a revealing one. The book states that Reagan’s radio broadcasts of the late 1970s were once a week, but they were delivered five times a week. There are dozens of Kelley-type references to horoscope readers, astrologers, an imperious Nancy running the country and generally a persistent, clueless and oblivious Ronald Reagan — addle-brained, out of touch, dangerously uninformed. The most common word used to describe Reagan is probably “confused.” (Read more from “What Bill O’Reilly’s New Book on Ronald Reagan Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan” HERE)

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Edward Snowden: Clinton Made ‘False Claim’ About Whistleblower Protection

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Edward Snowden has accused Hillary Clinton of “a lack of political courage” for her assertion during the Democratic presidential debate this week that the whistleblower had bypassed options for disclosing illegal government spying programs that would have protected him and not violated the law.

Speaking via satellite at a privacy conference at New York’s Bard College on Friday, Snowden said: “Hillary Clinton’s claims are false here.”

“This is important, right?” Snowden told an audience at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. “Truth should matter in politics, and courage should matter in politics, because we need change. Everyone knows we need change. And we have been aggrieved and in many ways misled by political leaders in the past.”

Before Snowden spoke, Clinton repeated the claim on Friday, at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire. After a voter said Snowden was “close to a patriot,” BuzzFeed reported, Clinton disagreed and said he could have received whistleblower protections but instead chose to break the law.

“He broke the laws of the United States,” Clinton said at the debate on Tuesday. “He could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that.” (Read more from “Edward Snowden: Clinton Made ‘False Claim’ About Whistleblower Protection” HERE)

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‘Convert or Die’: ISIS Graffiti Jihadis Declare First European ‘Caliphate’

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The terror group’s logo was daubed on the wall of a restaurant in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Chilling messages such as “convert or die” and “the caliphate is here” were also found covering the outside of Markus Samuelsson’s bakery . . .

The Arabic letter for “N” – which has been used to identify Christians and drive them out of their homes by ISIS fighters – was also painted on the restaurant.

Gothenburg is a hotbed for jihadist recruiting, terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp described it as “the Swedish Centre for Jihadists” . . .

It was reported by local media earlier this year that at least 150 future terrorists had left the city to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (Read more from “‘Convert or Die’: ISIS Graffiti Jihadis Declare First European ‘Caliphate'” HERE)

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Watch: American Airlines Passenger Thrown off Plane by Flight Attendant Speaks Out

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Tiania Fough was boarding her connecting flight home to Oregon when she was abruptly kicked off her American Airlines (AAL) flight. During an interview with FOX Business Network’s Sandra Smith, Fough shared her side of the story.

“I start to walk on like everybody else and I’m chatting with the lady in front of me. As her and kind of four other people in front of me make their seats, there [was] one flight attendant and me… we are probably about 5 seats away from each other and he just starts yelling at me… and at that point I was just like ‘oh my gosh, what’s going on?’ and I just looked over at this guy and the flight attendant says to me, ‘I asked you three times to stay right there’ and I looked over at the guy and he goes, ‘well obviously you didn’t hear him’… There was people in front of me I had no visual sight of the man until everybody had sat down.”

The scene, captured on a cell phone from another passenger, showed Fough being scolded and suddenly being removed from the plane while crying . . .

When asked why she thought the flight attendant took issue with her she said: “there could be a lot of stuff going on in his life maybe. There was another flight attendant I guess up in the first class that I never even made contact with — I never even talked to him… He is allegedly saying that I said some profanities to him and he is trying to cover up for his buddy’s mistake of blowing up in my face and kicking me off the plane.” (Read more from “Watch: American Airlines Passenger Thrown off Plane by Flight Attendant Speaks Out” HERE)

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