Major Airlines, Car Rental Companies, Bank End Relationship With NRA

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By The Hill. First National Bank of Omaha said Thursday that it would end its business relationship with the National Rifle Association (NRA) after feedback from customers.

In a post on its official Twitter account Thursday, the bank announced it would no longer renews its contract with the NRA.

“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA,” the bank wrote. “As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.”

The bank, which is the largest privately held bank in the United States, previously issued NRA-branded credit cards as part of a its business issuing branded cards for multiple U.S. brands. (Read more from “Bank Ends Relationship With NRA” HERE)
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More Companies End Relationship With NRA

By David Caplan and Brendan Rand. A slew of other companies — including United Airlines, MetLife Inc., Hertz and Best Western — have followed suit, announcing plans to terminate special discounts and benefits for NRA members.

And as petitions circulate online urging companies to #BoycottNRA, the pressure to disassociate from the NRA is growing. #BoycottNRA has already trended on Twitter.

The NRA slammed companies who have been cutting ties with the group, calling it a “shameful” move. . .

Delta Air Lines: Delta announced on Twitter on Saturday morning that it will be ending its contract with the NRA for discounted rates for group travel. . .

Enterprise Holdings Inc.: The car rental company, which also owns Alamo and National, tweeted Friday, “All three of our brands have ended the discount for NRA members. This change will be effective March 26.” (Read more about companies that end relationship with NRA HERE)

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Trump’s Solution for Mass Shootings

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By Fox News. President Trump said Wednesday the administration is going to strengthen background checks for gun purchases and “put a strong emphasis on mental health,” as he promised students and families “we are going to get it done.”

The president, Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hosted students, teachers and families affected by the Parkland high school shooting for a “listening session” at the White House Wednesday, which lasted close to two hours.

Exactly one week ago, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, whom the president described as “a sick guy,” opened fire at the high school and now is charged with killing 17 teachers and students with an AR-15 rifle.

“We are going to be very strong on background checks, and put a very strong emphasis on the mental health of somebody,” Trump said at the beginning of the listening session. “We’re going to talk and get it done. It’s been going on too long, too many instances and we’re going to get it done.”

Students and parents from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, along with Parkland city Mayor Christine Hunschofsky, attended the White House session, along with members of Sandy Hook Promise, a national non-profit organization based in Newtown, Connecticut and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed in the tragic Dec. 14, 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Students from Friendship Public Charter School, Parkmont, and Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, D.C. also attended. (Read more from “Trump’s Solution for Mass Shootings” HERE)

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Parkland Victim’s Father Makes Emotional Plea at White House

By Fox News.

Woman Marries the Ghost of a Pirate

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Yes, in the enlightened 21st Century you can “marry” a pirate who died 300 years ago and have it legally recognized.

The pirate, Jack Teague, just became “husband” to Amanda Teague of Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Her love of pirates began with her work as a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator. Despite being married to a “physical being” for six years, which culminated in five children, Amanda eventually fell in love with the dead entity Jack Teague and became his “wife.”

According to The Sun, “like any normal couple, Amanda and Jack go on dates, have rows and even have sex. Amanda appeared on Loose Women on Valentines Day 2018 and revealed she buys her ghostly hubby a glass of rum when they go on date nights to her local pub.” . . .

Jack Teague apparently liked living dangerously as a thief on the high seas until he came to his death by execution in the 1700s. Don’t feel bad for him, though, because he found his soulmate in Amanda. Their love affair “began one night in 2014 when she was lying in bed and felt his energy appear beside her.”

Amanda eventually hired a registrar and journeyed to international waters where she could legally marry the pirate. She even employed a “spiritual medium at the wedding to allow him to say ‘I do’ during the ceremony.” (Read more from “Woman Marries the Ghost of a Pirate” HERE)

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Florida House Approves Bill to Post “In God We Trust” in All Public Schools

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With the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting still looming large, its students in the Capitol to lobby for gun controls, the Florida House overwhelmingly passed a measure Wednesday its sponsor said aimed at bringing “light” to the schools.

The bill (HB 839) would require all public schools to post the state motto, “In God We Trust,” in a “conspicuous place.”

Sponsor Rep. Kim Daniels, a Jacksonville Democrat who runs her own ministry, said Florida needed the legislation, given the goings on in the state.

“He is not a Republican or a Democrat. He is not black or white,” Daniels said. “He is the light, and our schools need light in them like never before.”

She spoke directly of the school shooting, and said it’s no secret that the state has “gun issues” that must be addressed. (Read more from “Florida House Approves Bill to Post “In God We Trust” in All Public Schools” HERE)

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Author Bombshell: Media Meddled in Election More Than Russia

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Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies have been indicted for trying to mess with the 2016 presidential election, but the media were the main culprits, according to one author.

George Neumayr said in a special report for The American Spectator, the media tried to keep Americans from voting for then-candidate Donald Trump.

“The media’s torrentially biased coverage of the campaign amounted to a giant disinformation operation designed to dissuade people from voting for Trump,” the contributing editor wrote.

Although Robert Mueller’s office indicted Russian nationalists for meddling with the election, the U.S. government has also proved to be guilty and the media helped them.

“Journalists served as conduits for criminal leaks from Obama administration officials eager to defame Trump,” Neumayr said.

Like the Russians, the DNC and Clinton campaign paid a foreign agent, Christopher Steele, to influence the election by drafting an anti-Trump dossier.

“Imagine Trump paying a foreigner $168,000 to frame Hillary, who then holds press briefings on his ‘dossier’ before the election,” Neumayr wrote. “The press would have reported that immediately as a dirty trick of epic proportions.”

According to the contributing editor, the media who portray themselves as objective journalists do the most damage to the public opinion.

“The public went to the polls suspecting that Russians had meddled in the election,” he said. “What the people didn’t know — thanks to a press in Hillary’s pocket — is that the U.S. government had interfered too, and far more audaciously.”

The true 2016 scandal, according to Neumayr, was that government officials colluded with the Clinton campaign.

“The nabbed Russian trolls had Facebook ads; Hillary’s embeds had the front page of the New York Times.”

The indictment released Friday says that the defendants allegedly conducted “information warfare” against the U.S. in order to spread “distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“The Mueller indictments don’t reveal anything that Americans didn’t already know, unless they find it mind-blowing to learn that countries spy on and harass each other,” Neumayr said.

He concluded, “The media had run plenty of stories accusing Russians of ‘information warfare.’ But it didn’t run a single story telling Americans that the U.S. government was trafficking in it, spying on one campaign by using smears from the other.”

Although the Russians were indicted for “information warfare,” Rosenstein said, “there is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”

According to Neumayr, if any candidate lost votes from disinformation, it was Trump. (For more from the author of “Author Bombshell: Media Meddled in Election More Than Russia” please click HERE)

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San Francisco’s ‘Diseased Streets’ Are Being Compared to Some of Worst Slums in the World

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A combination of discarded needles and piles of feces on the streets of San Francisco has caused least one expert to say that the city’s slums are comparable to those in developing countries.

Reporters with KNTV investigated what they referred to as the “diseased streets” of the city, and found that each of the 153 downtown blocks they surveyed — an area that encompasses playgrounds, hotels and government buildings — is littered with garbage. Included in this trash were at least 100 drug needles and 300 piles of feces.

Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley, warned that not only do the needles cause viral diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis, but dried fecal matter can release airborne viruses like the rotavirus.

“If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” he said, leading to potentially fatal results.

Riley, who has researched and written about conditions in slums across the world, believes that some parts of San Francisco may be worse than the world’s dirtiest slums.

“The contamination is … much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India,” he said, while pointing out that in those countries, slums often serve as long-term housing, and thus, their residents work to maintain them.

But in San Francisco, he suggested that the homeless do not make an effort to keep the streets clean because they are forced to move around frequently.

The situation on the streets of San Francisco is particularly dangerous for children.

“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” said Adelita Orellana, a preschool teacher. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

A’Nylah Reed, a 3-year-old preschooler, explained that “the floor is dirty,” making her walk to school difficult.

“There is poop in there,” she said. “That makes me angry.” Reed’s mother, meanwhile, noted that she often has to physically intervene to ensure that her daughter doesn’t step on needles or human feces.

Some city officials are convinced that the solution is to provide short-term housing for the city’s homeless population.

“Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable,” said city Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “We’re losing tourists. We’re losing conventions in San Francisco. All of this is happening because we aren’t addressing the root cause, which is we need more temporary beds for street homelessness.”

The city currently has about 2,000 temporary beds, but Rosen believes about 1,000 more are needed, KNTV reported. This would likely cost roughly $25 million.

“We need to find a source of revenue,” she said. “Whether that’s putting something on the ballot to raise business taxes or taking a look at our general fund and re-allocating money towards that purpose and taking it away from something else in the city.”

Regardless, Ronen said the situation in San Francisco is a human “tragedy.”

“We’re not going to make a huge dent in this problem unless we deal with some underlying major social problems and issues,” she stated. “There’s a human tragedy happening in San Francisco.”

Until a permanent solution is decided upon, all the city can do is remove feces and needles from the streets, an effort that cost about $30 million in the 2016-2017 fiscal year, according to Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru.

Removing just one pile of human waste takes a half an hour, Nuru said.

“The steamer has to come. He has to park the steamer. He’s got to come out with his steamer, disinfect, steam clean, roll up and go,” he explained.

The dirty streets in San Francisco haven’t stopped it from being ranked among the most beautiful in the world. But the city is also one of the most expensive in the U.S., with Fox News noting that this accentuates a large “gap between the haves and have-nots.” (For more from the author of “San Francisco’s ‘Diseased Streets’ Are Being Compared to Some of Worst Slums in the World” please click HERE)

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Student Threatens to ‘Shoot up’ His School – What Police Find at His Home Is Chilling

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California law enforcement authorities say they might have prevented a school shooting at El Camino High School after a student muttered that he was going to “shoot up” the campus . . .

Police were called immediately after a seventeen-year-old student said that he was planning to “shoot up” the school and was overheard by a safety officer. During an investigation, they discovered a cache of weapons at his home.

Robert Jacobsen, the general counsel for the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, said that the student made the comments after a disagreement with a teacher over headphones.

Marino Chavez, the safety officer, questioned the student about what he overheard him saying. After investigating the matter, the student said that he was simply joking.

“He did say that he was just kidding, he did not mean it. I said, ‘Well you can’t say those things on a school campus,’” Chavez said.

Chavez informed the police, who saw that an AR-15 was registered at the student’s address. When they investigated the home, they discovered several weapons, including two AR-15 rifles, two handguns and 90 high-capacity magazines. (Read more from “Student Threatens to ‘Shoot up’ His School – What Police Find at His Home Is Chilling” HERE)

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Maryland Police Officer Second to Be Murdered Within 12 Hours

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A Maryland police Medal of Valor winner was shot and killed Wednesday while intervening in a domestic violence dispute, officials said, making him the second police officer killed in the U.S. in just a 12-hour span.

Police named 14-year veteran Cpl. Mujahid A. Ramazziddin, 51, as the officer killed in the confrontation. He was off duty at the time of the incident. He was assigned to the Special Operations Division.

According to a news release from Prince George’s Police Department, Ramazziddin was assisting a female neighbor “who was being threatened by her estranged husband.” The armed suspect fatally shot the officer and left the area in a black SUV, police said.

NBC Washington reported the officer was a veteran of the Marine Corps and a father of four children. . .

The SUV was spotted shortly after by law enforcement and a pursuit began, the news release said. The suspect ditched his vehicle and reportedly engaged in “an exchange of gunfire.” Officers shot and killed the man as he attempted to flee in a wooded area, NBC Washington reported.

(Read more from “Maryland Police Officer Second to Be Murdered Within 12 Hours” HERE)

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Navy Sends Destroyers to ‘Desensitize’ Russia

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The Navy has deployed the guided-missile destroyer Carney to join the destroyer Ross in the Black Sea in a move that U.S. military officials told CNN is intended to “desensitize” Russia to the presence of American military assets in the strategically important region.

The deployment of the Carney marks the first time in four years that two American destroyers have operated in the Black Sea outside of scheduled exercises. The move comes as Russia continues to militarize Crimea, the peninsula it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In recent years, the U.S. and NATO have accused Russia of sending troops and military hardware to Crimea, and there are now reports that submarines have been added to the mix.

Nevertheless, U.S. and NATO officials have insisted that they are not playing tit-for-tat with the Russians.

“Our decision to have two ships simultaneously operate in the Black Sea is proactive, not reactive,” said Vice Adm. Christopher Grady, commander of 6th Fleet, which oversees U.S. naval operations in the region. “The continued presence of the U.S. Navy in the Black Sea demonstrates our enduring commitment to regional stability, maritime security of our Black Sea partners, and the collective defense of our NATO allies,” he added. (Read more from “Navy Sends Destroyers to ‘Desensitize’ Russia” HERE)

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California Claims It Can’t ‘Promote Abortion’ Without Pro-Life Centers

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California has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court complaining that it cannot adequately promote abortion services without the help of a tiny number of pro-life pregnancy centers that mostly offer pregnancy tests, diapers and counseling.

The argument comes in a lawsuit against a state law, similar to others that have been struck down elsewhere, that requires the pro-life centers to provide contact information for state-funded abortion services to every woman who walks through their doors.

The state of California argues its abortion promotion is “a brief, non-ideological notice that readers will quickly identify as simply one of many government-mandated notices in the healthcare context.”

The pregnancy centers, however, insist that forcing them to promote abortionists violates their their deeply held religious beliefs.

The state argues that it is requiring pro-life centers to publish telephone numbers for abortion-linked facilities so that women are given the “full spectrum of relevant healthcare.” (Read more from “California Claims It Can’t ‘Promote Abortion’ Without Pro-Life Centers” HERE)

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