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Thursday 31 October 2019

Trump tweets photoshop of military dog being awarded the Medal of Honor, and the internet is in full meltdown mode

Critics of President Donald Trump went into full meltdown mode after he tweeted a photoshopped image of the heroic military dog from the ISIS raid being awarded the Medal of Honor.

"AMERICAN HERO!" the president tweeted enthusiastically in all capital letters.


Trump was celebrating the unnamed military dog who corned ISIS terror leader al-Baghdadi and forced him to detonate a suicide vest. The dog was slightly injured in the blast.
What was likely meant as a humorous photoshop was taken as a deathly serious matter by those less serious elements of social media.
"Trump's photoshopped image disrespects all brave Americans who have served in our military," tweeted liberal activist Scott Dworkin. 
The New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry responded, "omg trump pinned a tweet about the dog AGAIN." 
"Trump, bro, this is beyond gross. This is obviously photoshopped. It's not even a meme or something funny to laugh at because the subject material is plausible for many people who do not examine the picture carefully and don't notice the unnatural lines and silhouettes," responded Trump critic Eugene Gu.
Some mainstream media news outlets also took umbrage at the photoshop image. 

Supporters of the president and other critics of the news media took the opportunity to mock journalists and present the episode as the latest example of bias against Trump.

Here's more about the hero dog: 

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Twitter stock plummets after CEO Jack Dorsey announces ban on political advertising

Twitter's stock price plummeted after CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the popular microblogging platform would be banning political advertising.
Dorsey tweeted the announcement on Wednesday.
"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally," he tweeted. "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought." 
"Why? A few reasons," he continued in a sequence of tweets.
"A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money," he explained.
He continued on to head off the possible argument that the decision would undermine free speech.
"A final note. This isn't about free expression," Dorsey explained. "This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It's worth stepping back in order to address."
Dorsey was likely pushed towards the decision by Facebook's recent and very public controversy over their policy to allow political advertisements to push what could be documented as falsehoods.
CNBC noted, on Twitter, that the company's stock fell by more than 2 percent in after-hours trading after the announcement, and at one point was as much as 4 percent lower.

Here's a news video about the announcement: 

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Turning Point USA blasts white nationalist, homophobic 'trolls' who 'sabotaged' event Q&A

Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk and TPUSA contributor Rob Smith pushed back against white nationalist and anti-gay "trolls" who "sabotaged" the Q&A portion of a "Culture War LIVE" event at Ohio State University on Tuesday night.
Benny Johnson, the organization's chief creative officer, noted the following on Twitter:

Smith — a gay, black conservative who served in the Iraq War and notes in his Twitter bio that he's "proudly despised by leftists AND the alt-right!" — helped Kirk slap down a number of inappropriate questions.

Another questioner asked Kirk and Smith how America could maintain "white" values, and Kirk decried the premise, telling the individual, "I find that to be a racist question" and "I do not think that America should become a white ethno-state," adding he considers such a view a "fringe perspective."
Kirk also said he'd been getting that type of question over the last few weeks — and indeed Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy tweeted that "a bunch of Holocaust deniers and other assorted anti-Semites and Alt-Righters are targeting Turning Point USA events under the guise of 'free speech.' It's transparent bulls**t and should be rejected outright, no matter what you think of Charlie Kirk."
You can check out the full video of the event below.  
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Cuban democratic socialists: AOC-backed group is actually a communist ‘imposter’

A group of Cuban democratic socialists have a message for their American counterparts: You are either secret communists or you are profoundly ignorant.
 
In an open letter, nine democratic socialists on the island blasted the Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S. group that counts Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) among its members, for supporting the island's Communist government.

What are the details?

During their annual convention in August in Atlanta, the Democratic Socialists of America formally approved a resolution declaring itself "in solidarity with the Cuban socialist struggle" and "opposing acts of imperialist aggression" against the island.
However, as Cuban democratic socialists point out, the DSA is contradicting itself by supporting the kind of military dictatorship they claim to oppose:
The support for Castroism revealed in resolution 62 of the recent Convention of the Democratic Socialists of the United States, held in Atlanta, Georgia, can only be explained by two reasons: either the American Socialist Democrats do not know the Cuban reality or they are not socialist or democratic.
The nine Cubans added:
Whoever stands in solidarity with that regime doesn't know it, doesn't know what is happening in Cuba or is [an] imposter as Castroism. Several Cuban democratic socialists, who have been facing the anti-popular, totalitarian and anti-socialist policies of Castroism for decades, for which some of us have suffered repression and exile, reject any kind of solidarity with the Castro regime and we do not share the defense of it carried out in that convention for supposed or poorly informed US democratic socialists.

No, it's not what they have in Europe

The letter by Cuba's democratic socialists may surprise Americans who have been misled into believing that "democratic socialism" is the kind of system commonly found in northern Europe. Contrary to what progressive groups and reporters such as MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle and Univision's Jorge Ramos have argued, U.S. democratic socialists are not the equivalent of Scandinavian social democrats.
As numerous economists and the former Danish prime minister have pointed out, the so-called Nordic model is fundamentally capitalist with higher taxes to fund a large welfare state. Conversely, groups like DSA are openly advocating for an end to free markets, which would mean a transition to an economy that more closely resembles that of countries like Cuba and Venezuela.

Will Americans listen?

Prominent democratic socialists are not exactly coy about their plans.
DSA member Meagan Day wrote last year, "I'm a staff writer at the socialist magazine Jacobin and a member of DSA, and here's the truth: In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism."
Meanwhile, during a 2018 radio interview, the group's executive director openly called for an elimination of private property and nationalizing (government ownership) of major industries. As the founding editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin and DSA's vice-chairman pointed out, American democratic socialists want "a militant labor movement and a mass socialist presence strengthened by accumulated victories, looking to not merely tame but overcome capitalism."
This is consistent with Ocasio-Cortez's recent call for "public ownership" of private property during a rally announcing her endorsement for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
American Democratic Socialists are clear about their goals — even socialists in Communist Cuba are calling them out as closet-communist phonies.
Will Democrats and the media listen and stop misleading the public?
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Bartender wins $50,000 after getting a lottery ticket for a tip

A bartender in Missouri got a massive tip when a customer left her a winning lottery ticket worth $50,000.
It would sound like an unusual item to receive as a tip, but winner and Bleacher's Bar staff member Taylor Russey told the Missouri Lottery that this was a normal occurrence for this particular customer.
"One of the regulars will buy the rest of the regulars in the bar lottery tickets every now and then, especially when it's high," Russey said. "And he did that on Saturday -- he bought all of us lottery tickets."
    The next day the staff found out that a winning lottery ticket was purchased at their bar. Russey said she even joked about it, not knowing it was her that held the ticket.
    "I was like, 'Guys, who won all this money and didn't tell anybody?'" Russey recalled.
      She then remembered the tip and scanned her ticket, only to find that she was the one who was now $50,000 richer.
      The ticket matched four of the five white-ball numbers drawn on Oct. 19, plus the Powerball, the lottery said. It was the 40th $50,000 winner sold in Missouri and only the second one this year.
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      Police blew up an innocent man’s house in search of an armed shoplifter. Too bad, court rules.

      When they were finished, it looked as though the Greenwood Village, Colo., police had blasted rockets through the house.
      Projectiles were still lodged in the walls. Glass and wooden paneling crumbled on the ground below the gaping holes, and inside, the family’s belongings and furniture appeared thrashed in a heap of insulation and drywall. Leo Lech, who rented the home to his son, thought it looked like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s compound after the raid that killed him.
      But now it was just a neighborhood crime scene, the suburban home where an armed Walmart shoplifting suspect randomly barricaded himself after fleeing the store on a June afternoon in 2015. For 19 hours, the suspect holed up in a bathroom as a SWAT team fired gas munition and 40-millimeter rounds through the windows, drove an armored vehicle through the doors, tossed flash-bang grenades inside and used explosives to blow out the walls.
      The suspect was captured alive, but the home was utterly destroyed, eventually condemned by the City of Greenwood Village.
      That left Leo Lech’s son, John Lech — who lived there with his girlfriend and her 9-year-old son — without a home. The city refused to compensate the Lech family for their losses but offered $5,000 in temporary rental assistance and for the insurance deductible.
      Now, after the Leches sued, a federal appeals court has decided what else the city owes the Lech family for destroying their house more than four years ago: nothing.
      On Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit unanimously ruled that the city is not required to compensate the Lech family for their lost home because it was destroyed by police while they were trying to enforce the law, rather than taken by eminent domain.
      The Lechs had sued under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which guarantees citizens compensation if their property is seized by the government for public use. But the court said that Greenwood Village was acting within its “police power” when it damaged the house, which the court said doesn’t qualify as a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment. The court acknowledged that this may seem “unfair,” but when police have to protect the public, they can’t be “burdened with the condition” that they compensate whomever is damaged by their actions along the way.
      “It just goes to show that they can blow up your house, throw you out on the streets and say, ‘See you later. Deal with it,’ ” Leo Lech said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday. “What happened to us should never happen in this country, ever.”
      Leo Lech said he is considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Police must be forced to draw the line at some point, he said — preferably before a house is gutted — and be held accountable if innocent bystanders lose everything as a result of the actions of law enforcement.
      In a statement to The Post, a spokeswoman for Greenwood Village said the city never refused to help the Lechs, saying the family was “very well insured” and refused the $5,000 assistance for out-of-pocket expenses before insurance kicked in. The spokeswoman, Melissa Gallegos, applauded the 10th Circuit’s ruling.
      “The house was being used as a barricade, and the damage done to it was to remove the barricade and get the gunman out without any loss of life," Gallegos said. "That is not a use of another’s property under eminent domain, but a use of another’s property during a police emergency.”
      In June 2015, the standoff at Lech’s suburban Denver home captivated and alarmed the public, as their house at the end of the street, one located by a baseball field complex and a park, suddenly turned into a quasi-war zone.
      The suspect, Robert Jonathan Seacat, had stolen a shirt and a couple of belts from a Walmart in neighboring Aurora, Colo., and then fled in a Lexus, according to a police affidavit. A police officer pursued him in a high-speed chase until Seacat parked his car near a light rail station, hopped a nearby fence leading to the interstate, and then crossed five lanes of traffic on foot. He climbed the fence on the other side — and then, shortly thereafter, came upon the Lech residence.
      A 9-year-old boy, John Lech’s girlfriend’s son, was home alone at the time, waiting for his mom to return from the grocery store, Lech said. He told police he was watching YouTube videos in his room when he heard the alarm trip, according to the affidavit. He emerged to find a man walking up the stairs, holding a gun. “He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to get away,' " Lech said. Minutes later, the boy walked out of the house unharmed.
      Seacat then began searching the house for car keys. But by the time he got in the car parked in Lech’s garage, police had pulled into the driveway. Seacat fired a shot at them through the garage, the affidavit says.
      Thus began the 19-hour standoff.
      “They proceed to destroy the house — room by room, by room, by room,” Lech said. “This is one guy with a handgun. This guy was sleeping. This guy was eating. This guy was just hanging out in this house. I mean, they proceeded to blow up the entire house.”
      SWAT officers attempted to enter the home on one occasion but retreated after believing they heard Seacat fire several rounds. After other tactics, including tear gas, robots and police negotiations, repeatedly failed, SWAT officers tried again to enter the home at 8:21 the next morning. They found him holed up in a bathroom with a stash of drugs, where he was disarmed and arrested.
      When the Lech family was allowed back on the property to retrieve their belongings, they were aghast at what they found.
      John Lech, his girlfriend and her son moved in with Leo Lech and his wife, who lived 30 miles away, requiring John to change jobs. The $5,000 offered by the city “was insulting,” Leo Lech said.
      His expenses to rebuild the house and replace all its contents cost him nearly $400,000, he said. While insurance did cover structural damage initially, his son did not have renter’s insurance and so insurance did not cover replacement of the home’s contents, and he says he is still in debt today from loans he took out.
      “This has ruined our lives,” he said.
      Gallegos stressed that any large expenses Lech incurred are because he chose to do more than necessary, and chose to “repour the foundation that wasn’t damaged, and [build] a bigger better house where the old one stood.” Lech insisted starting from scratch was necessary.
      Previously, police have defended their actions during the standoff.
      “My mission is to get that individual out unharmed and make sure my team and everyone else around including the community goes home unharmed,” Greenwood Village Police Commander Dustin Varney said in 2015, KUSA reported. “Sometimes that means property gets damaged, and I am sorry for that.”
      State and federal courts have ruled differently in cases involving innocent homeowners caught in deadly police raids, although the 10th Circuit was more persuaded by courts ruling in police’s favor.
      Lech’s lawyers pointed to a 1991 Minnesota case in which the state Supreme Court sided with a woman whose house was damaged by police with tear gas as they sought to apprehend a suspect. In a 1980 Houston case, the Texas Supreme Court sided with a couple whose home was badly damaged as police sought to apprehend three suspects who barricaded themselves inside.
      In that case, the Texas court turned up its nose at the principle the 10th Circuit stuck to so closely in its ruling: that unless a government’s action is clearly labeled “eminent domain,” citizens aren’t entitled to compensation if the police destroy their property as a matter of business.
      “This court has moved beyond the earlier notion that the government’s duty to pay for taking property rights is excused by labeling the taking as an exercise of police powers,” the Texas court wrote at the time.
      Today, the Leches’ Greenwood Village home has been rebuilt. Lech says he is dipping into his 401(k) to afford the legal battle but intends to continue as long as he is able. He says he thinks he has too much bad luck to make it to the Supreme Court but believes that someone else like him will get there.
      “This can’t go on in this country,” he said. “There has to be a limit. There has to be accountability.”
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      Sad dump that will make u laugh(45 Pics)














































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