The influential Muslim cleric lives quietly on a gated 26-acre compound in the Pocono Mountains, where he prays, works, meets admirers and watches from afar as terrorism accusations that have landed him on Turkey’s most-wanted list unfold in court.
Rarely seen in public, Fethullah Gulen has long been one of Turkey’s most important scholars, with multitudes of followers in his native country and around the world. More recently, Turkey’s increasingly autocratic president, Recip Erdogan, has accused Gulen of plotting to overthrow the officially secular government from his Pennsylvania idyll some 5,000 miles away.
Gulen’s supporters call the charge baseless and, so far, the U.S. has shown little inclination to send him back to Turkey to face a trial that began without him Jan. 6 and is expected to last several months. A second trial, involving accusations that his movement took part in espionage, opened Monday . . .
“He said that the United States has a long tradition of democracy and rule of law,” said Y. Alp Aslandogan, who sees Gulen about once a week as president of the New York-based Alliance for Shared Values, a group that promotes Gulen’s ideas. “They will see that these are politically oriented charges, and they will not allow Erdogan to spread his ambition into the United States.” (Read more from “Mystery Surrounds Muslim Cleric in U.S. Mountain Compound” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/hqdefault-10.jpg360480kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-02-01 23:30:432016-04-11 10:53:11Mystery Surrounds Muslim Cleric in U.S. Mountain Compound
A prominent Seattle cancer advocate and fundraiser has been accused of lying about her breast cancer diagnoses while she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, KOMO News reported.
Tracy Dart, who has raised more than $400,000 over the past decade for the Komen Foundation, is under fire for reportedly lying about her three cancer spells.
A Washington state car dealer who helped Dart raise thousands to fight the disease said a member of Dart’s “Team Tracy” contacted him to reveal that Dart had never been ill.
“She doesn’t have cancer—she never had cancer,” the representative said, according to Auburn Volkswagen owner Matthew Welch. (Read more from “Seattle Woman Who Raised $400G as Cancer Survivor Reportedly Never Had the Disease” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Seattle-Woman-Lied-About-Being-a-Three-Time-Breast-Cancer-Survivor.jpg420630kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-02-01 23:30:002016-04-11 10:53:11Seattle Woman Who Raised $400G as Cancer Survivor Reportedly Never Had the Disease
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates used to memorize employees’ license plate numbers so that he could keep track of when they were arriving at work and leaving.
Gates, who is now co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, described his intense management style from Microsoft’s early days during an interview on the BBC Radio 4 program “Desert Island Discs.”
“I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard [others at the company] worked. I knew everybody’s licence plate so I could look out the parking lot and see, you know, when people come in,” he said. “Eventually I had to loosen up as the company got to a reasonable size” . . .
The philanthropist also described his relationship with Apple co-founder and tech icon Steve Jobs during the radio interview.
“Steve really is a singular person in the history of personal computing in terms of what he built at Apple,” he said. “For some periods, we were completely allies working together – I wrote software for the original Apple II. Sometimes he would be very tough on you, sometimes he’d be very encouraging. He got really great work out of people.” (Read more from “Bill Gates Monitored Microsoft Employees’ Work Hours by Memorizing Their License Plates” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/1280px-Bill_Gates_WEF_2009_Davos.jpg8531280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-01 23:29:282016-04-11 10:53:11Bill Gates Monitored Microsoft Employees’ Work Hours by Memorizing Their License Plates
While attending a church service in Iowa Sunday, Donald Trump momentarily mistook the silver communion plate for an offering plate and started to dig into his pockets for cash.
The candidate, who was attending the First Christian Church – Orchard Campus in Council Bluffs with his wife Melania, quickly realized his mistake and took the communion element instead . . .
Trump gave an offering to the church (which is part of the Four Square denomination) several minutes later, when the appropriate plates were passed, the Associated Press reported.
“As Trump was leaving, one of the church pastors put his hand on Trump’s shoulder and offered a prayer, ‘That Jesus would guide his decisions and that only Christ could guide his decisions,’ the pastor later said. Trump gladly accepted, bowing his head,” according to the AP . . .
Last summer, Trump spoke about partaking in Holy Communion. “When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said, according to CNN. “I think in terms of ‘Let’s go on and let’s make it right.’”
On Saturday, Trump released a new video with him holding up a Bible, which he said was given to him by his mother. “In fact, it’s her writing, right here,” he said opening to a page near the front of the Holy book. “She wrote the name and the address, and it’s just very special to me.” (Read more from “Trump Just Made an Embarrassing Mistake in Church That Has Many Shaking Their Heads” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/20547823830_c0b0686586_b.jpg1024683Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-01 23:28:432016-04-11 10:53:11Trump Just Made an Embarrassing Mistake in Church That Has Many Shaking Their Heads [+video]
Years of smoking pot may have an effect on a person’s verbal memory, which is the ability to remember certain words, a new study finds.
For every five years of marijuana use, researchers found that, on average, one out of two people remembered one word fewer from a list of 15 words, according to the study.
Long-term use was not, however, significantly associated with decreases in other measures of cognitive function, such as processing speed or executive function, the researchers wrote in the study, published today (Feb. 1) in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Executive function includes skills such as planning and focusing.
To examine the effects of long-term marijuana use, the researchers studied participants who were enrolled in the long-running Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. The CARDIA study included more than 5,000 adults who initially enrolled in the study between ages 18 and 30. During a series of follow-up visits, the participants reported if they had used marijuana in the previous month. At the 25-year follow-up, the participants were given a series of cognitive tests that looked at verbal memory, processing speed and executive function.
While long-term marijuana use was associated with worse performance in all three tests, after the researchers adjusted for other factors (such as use of other substances and depression), they found that only the association between long-term use and verbal memory was statistically significant (meaning the associations between marijuana use and both processing speed and executive function may have been due to chance). (Read more from “What’s That Word? Marijuana May Affect Verbal Memory” HERE)
By Paul Sperry. The State Department is lying when it says it didn’t know until it was too late that Hillary Clinton was improperly using personal e-mails and a private server to conduct official business — because it never set up an agency e-mail address for her in the first place, the department’s former top watchdog says.
“This was all planned in advance” to skirt rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency’s inspector general from 2005 to 2008.
The Harvard-educated lawyer points out that, from Day One, Clinton was never assigned and never used a state.gov e-mail address like previous secretaries.
“That’s a change in the standard. It tells me that this was premeditated. And this eliminates claims by the State Department that they were unaware of her private e-mail server until later,” Krongard said in an exclusive interview. “How else was she supposed to do business without e-mail?” (Read more from “‘This Was All Planned’: More Terrifying Revelations Made About Hillary, State Department” HERE)
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State Won’t Release 18 Emails Between Clinton and Obama That Were on Her Private Server—but Says They Are Not Classified
By CNSNews.com Staff. State Department Spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing on Friday afternoon that the State Department will not be releasing 18 emails exchanged between President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state that have been found on Clinton’s private email server.
Kirby, however, said that these emails between the president and secretary of state “have not been determined to be classified.”
The government emails that were on Clinton’s private server have been requested in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
In the same briefing, Kirby said that the State Department also would not be releasing seven email chains including 37 pages because these emails contain what he called “a category of top secret information.” (Read more from “State Won’t Release 18 Emails Between Clinton and Obama That Were on Her Private Server—but Says They Are Not Classified” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-01 01:14:172016-04-11 10:53:11‘This Was All Planned’: More Unbelievable Revelations Made About Hillary, State Department
By Ryan Lizza. Ted Cruz’s Presidential campaign prides itself on being data-centric and on integrating insights from political science into its tactics. In 2008, academics at Yale published an influential paper showing that one of the most effective ways to get voters to the polls was “social pressure.” Researchers found that registered voters in a 2006 primary election in Michigan voted at a higher rate if they received mailers indicating that their participation in the election would be publicized. The mailer that had the biggest impact included information about the two previous elections and whether the recipient and his or her neighbors participated or not. “We intend to mail an updated chart,” the mailer warned. “You and your neighbors will all know who voted and who did not” . . .
After looking at several mailers posted online, I was more curious about how the Cruz campaign came up with its scores. On all the mailers I saw, every voter listed had only one of three possible scores: fifty-five per cent, sixty-five per cent, or seventy-five per cent, which translate to F, D, and C grades, respectively. Iowans take voting pretty seriously. Why was it that nobody had a higher grade?
In Iowa, although voter-registration information is free and available to the public, voter history is not. That information is maintained by the secretary of state, who licenses it to campaigns, super PACs, polling firms, and any other entity that might want it. So was the Cruz campaign accurately portraying the voter histories of Iowans? Or did it simply make up the numbers?
It seems to have made them up. Dave Peterson, a political scientist at Iowa State University who is well-acquainted with the research on “social pressure” turnout techniques, received a mailer last week. The Cruz campaign pegged his voting percentage at fifty-five per cent, which seems to be the most common score that the campaign gives out. (All of the neighbors listed on Peterson’s mailer also received a score of fifty-five per cent.) (Read more from “Something Major Was Just Revealed About Ted Cruz’s Iowa Mailers” HERE)
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Donald Trump: ‘Ted Cruz Is a Total Liar’
By Jeremy Diamond. Donald Trump on Sunday repeatedly slammed his chief presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz as a “total liar” as the Texas senator and his allies have claimed in the final stretch to the Iowa caucuses that Trump favors government-run, universal health care.
Cruz, meanwhile, pressed forward Sunday with the line of attack, proclaiming: “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Obamacare.”
“Look, Ted Cruz is a total liar. I am so against Obamacare. I’ve been saying it for two years in my speeches, I’m going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Trump said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I don’t even know where he gets this.”
The back-and-forth comes as Trump has pulled ahead of Cruz in the final days of campaigning in Iowa, where Cruz had been surging until Trump began lobbing attacks at Cruz, most notably raising the issue of Cruz’s Canadian birthplace. (Read more from “Donald Trump: ‘Ted Cruz Is a Total Liar'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-01 00:02:022016-04-11 10:53:13Something Major Was Just Revealed About Ted Cruz’s Iowa Mailers
By Fox News. Leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz traded shots Sunday on the eve of the Iowa Caucus, hoping to persuade the remaining undecided voters in the first-in-the-nation voting.
Both candidates hammered on familiar points, with Trump again questioning Cruz’s citizenship and financial records. Cruz, meanwhile, asked whether Trump is indeed a conservative and suggested that his bluster covers his weakness on issues.
“He’s the height of chutzpah,” Cruz told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s astonishing. He’s not honest.”
The Texas senator trails the front-running Trump by 5 percentage points, 28-to-23, with the caucus on Monday, according to a Des Moines (Iowa) Register poll released Saturday . . .
With Cruz and Trump essentially battling for the social conservative vote to win Iowa, Cruz told Fox News that he’s “thrilled” to be in second place, despite having led Trump in Iowa just a few weeks earlier. (Read more from “Trump, Cruz Trade Shots on Eve of Iowa Caucus” HERE)
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Cruz: ‘A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Amnesty’
By Curt Mills. Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ratcheted up his rhetoric Sunday against Sen. Marco Rubio, claiming a vote for his primary rival is tantamount to support for amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
“A vote for Marco is a vote for amnesty,” Cruz said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Cruz in a tight race with the Florida senator and frontrunner Donald Trump for the conservative vote and ultimately the party nomination also said “This race is a simple choice. A vote for Marco Rubio is a vote for amnesty. And a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for ObamaCare.The reason conservatives are uniting behind our campaign is because I am the only candidate in the race who has been a consistent conservative.”
Cruz has hit Rubio for months on the issue, saying he sided with Senate Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
Rubio originally supported the bill, then essentially distanced himself from the measure when conservatives did not support it. (Read more from “Cruz: ‘A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Amnesty'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-01 00:00:152016-04-11 10:53:13Trump, Cruz Trade Shots on Eve of Iowa Caucus
