Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, holding distinctly different advantages, have separated themselves from the crowded Democratic presidential field, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows.In the survey, conducted after the third in the Democratic Party's series of debate, the former vice president draws 31% compared to 25% for the Massachusetts senator. At 14%, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders trails Warren by a double-digit margin while 15 other candidates receive support of 7% or less.Biden builds his edge on dominance among three chunks of Democratic primary voters. He commands 49% among African-Americans, 46% among senior citizens, and 42% among moderate and conservative Democrats.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to secure a ruling majority in Israel's second election of 2019, exit polls released by Israeli television channels on Tuesday indicate.All exit polls show that Netanyahu's right-wing bloc will gain between 54 to 57 seats. The biggest party, according to two of the polls, is Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan. However, since neither Netanyahu nor Gantz appear to have gained a 61-seat majority, the two are likely to head to deliberations with President Reuven Rivlin who will determine which of them gets the mandate to try and form a governing coalition.Channel 12's exit polls shows Kahol Lavan leading with 34 Knesset seats, while Likud is projected to garner 33 seats. Channel 13 showed Kahol Lavan leading with 32 seats, while Likud is expected to gain 30 seats. Kan Public Broadcaster showed Kahol Lavan with 32 seats and Likud with 31.In all three polls, the Joint List of Arab parties is projected to have the third most seats: Channel 12 gives them 11 seats, Channel 13 gives them 15 and the Kan public broadcaster gives them 13.
As the threat of militant neo-Nazi groups expands and gains the attentions of federal authorities, their online propaganda tactics are taking a page out of an unlikely playbook: well-known jihadist groups.Two neo-Nazi terror groups in particular, both revealed to be under investigation by the FBI in a recent indictment of an alleged bomber who was a member of both organizations, have recently demonstrated that they're learning from online propaganda created by ISIS and al Qaeda.In a late May post, European neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division (FKD) published a propaganda image to its now-defunct Gab page. The image featured a stylized, yet unmistakable, screengrab from an infamous ISIS how-to video promoting homemade explosives with the caption, "It's easier than you think." [...]Similarly, Atomwaffen Division (AWD)--an American neo-Nazi group linked to five deaths in the last two years and the main inspiration for FKD--and its Canadian propagandist known under the alias "Dark Foreigner" have produced jihadist-inspired images. Recent propaganda features Osama Bin Laden, the leader and mastermind of al Qaeda and its 9/11 attack in New York City. One hyper-stylized image is a portrait of Bin Laden created by Dark Foreigner and posted with an infamous Bin Laden quote as a caption: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."The decision by racist extremists to promote images of jihadist terror groups is a conscious one. In a June 2019 post titled "The Islamic Example" on an affiliated website, AWD explains that the culture of martyrdom and insurgency within groups like the Taliban and ISIS is something to admire and reproduce in the neo-Nazi terror movement.
In discussing why the US stands ready to wage war on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the president literally said they "pay cash." https://t.co/stcn2EMdlX
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 17, 2019
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Some of Bernie Sanders' fiercest supporters are sounding the alarm that the campaign is bogged down by disorganization, personality clashes, and poor communication between state operations and national headquarters.After a pair of setbacks this week -- the acrimonious shakeup of his staff in New Hampshire on Sunday and loss of the Working Families Party's endorsement to Elizabeth Warren a day later -- Sanders' allies and former aides are worried that recent disappointments are not one-off stumbles but rather emblematic of larger problems in his bid for the White House. The concerns are particularly acute in New Hampshire.
The bizarre, only-in-D.C. twist centers on a congressional report penned by a bipartisan team of young attorneys that included Hillary before she was a Clinton and written in the throes of Watergate. Then, unlike now, not a single lawmaker had been alive the last time Congress impeached a president. They had little understanding of how to try and remove Richard Nixon from the White House. So they tapped Clinton and a team of ambitious staffers to dive into the history of impeachment, stretching back to the 14th century in England: How has impeachment been used? What were the justifications? Can we apply it to Nixon?The resulting document became a centerpiece of the congressional push to drive the Republican president from office. But then Nixon resigned. The memo was buried.That was just the report's first life.In an ironic twist, the document was resurrected in the late 1990s. Republicans gleefully used it to bolster their unsuccessful bid to oust Clinton's' now-husband, President Bill Clinton. Then it faded from public conscience -- again.Until now, that is. The 45-year-old report has become a handbook House Democratic lawmakers and aides say they are using to help determine whether they have the goods to mount a full-scale impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the same man who three years ago upended Hillary Clinton's bid for a return trip to the White House.Essentially, Clinton, albeit indirectly, might get one last shot at accomplishing what she couldn't in 2016 -- defeating Trump."I can only say that the impeachment Gods have a great sense of humor," Alan Baron, an expert on the topic who has staffed four congressional impeachments against federal judges, said of the recurring role Hillary Clinton keeps playing in this story.
The hidden message is an acrostic, meaning a missive spelled out by the first letters in each line of the poem. It reads "FFAALL" and "FALL" -- an appropriate triple-use of the word "fall," as the poem's subject is the Biblical story of the decline of Satan, as well as the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. [...]Acrostics aren't unusual in epic poetry. Milton -- who was blind when he authored most of the poem via dictation -- also spells out "SATAN" in Book 9, in a verse describing the serpent who approaches Eve in the Garden of Eden and tempts her to taste fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Milton pulled this technique from other epic poets such as Virgil, who used an acrostic to spell out "MARS" in a verse of "The Aeneid" in which the god of war is poised to act. His method was overlooked for many years, Milton's SATAN acrostic wasn't discovered until 1977.The new acrostic was found by Miranda Phaal, a Tufts University senior.
Trump at one point during his rally singled out Steve Cortes, an author and member of his Hispanic Advisory Council who has appeared on cable news in support of the president. He "happens to be Hispanic, but I've never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a WASP than I do," Trump said of Cortes.The president declared that there's "nobody that loves this country more or Hispanics more" than Cortes, who was at the rally and who Trump then directly asked, "Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?"
Postscript: The late William "Corn Pop" Morris's son, Leon Morris, 54, reached out to me today. He said he has no problem at all with Biden telling the story from the 60s, but he doesn't want people to think of his dad as a bad guy based on something in the distant past.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 17, 2019
Many of us don't give much thought to the air we breathe. But if you live in a city, near a major road, next to an industrial plant or even just have a wood burning stove, that air is often laced with miniscule pollutants. After we inhale, those particles can lodge in our lungs and travel throughout the body. For pregnant women, this may put their unborn children at risk.A new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, found that particles of the air pollutant black carbon can get inside the placenta, the organ that develops during pregnancy to provide the developing baby with oxygen and nutrients. The study also found that higher pollution exposure for mom was correlated with more black carbon in the placenta tissue.The findings could potentially illustrate how air pollution impacts the health of young children before they've taken their first breaths.
A chilling data leak on an unsecured server in Miami divulged sensitive personal and financial information of what appears to be the entire country of Ecuador. The discovery came from the internet security firm vpnMentor, which discovered the database containing more than 20 million individuals' data--including as many as seven million minors--on an exposed Florida-based server belonging to the Ecuadorian data and analytics company Novaestrat. Ironically, the personal data of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who had been given asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was included in the leak.
Formal annexation won't bring about any real change or extra benefits for the Israelis who live in the occupied areas. For all intents and purposes, the Israeli government already treats them as though they were living in Israel proper (extending Israeli law to them), and gives them perks (cheap mortgages and tax relief).That's one reason that many Palestinians I know have come to believe in a one-state solution: After all, with so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank by now, a two-state solution would be impossible to implement. That's not to say, however, that many Palestinians welcome Mr. Netanyahu's formal annexation plan as a step forward toward that goal.Israel has always wanted this land -- without its people. And the territory Mr. Netanyahu is promising to annex is sparsely populated with Palestinians. Most Palestinians living in the areas slated for annexation have already lost their land and they would not get it back. They would simply be condemned to remaining laborers in the service of Israeli usurpers.But Mr. Netanyahu's move would, at least, have the virtue of being clarifying: If implemented, it would confirm the demise of the 1993 Oslo Accords -- a development that many Palestinians would welcome because they have been disappointed by the agreement. Under the accords, the permanent status of the territories in the West Bank was to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization; outright annexation, as Mr. Netanyahu is now proposing, would be a clear violation.For a time, the agreement was expected to bring about a negotiated peace between the two sides and freedom for the Palestinians. Instead, over the years it has enabled Israel to keep exploiting Palestinians economically, control much of their resources and exercise total dominion over their borders.
Behind Buber's life's work, which at its core still seems aimed at young people, is a brokenhearted child. His parents separated when he was three, and his mother left him without saying goodbye. Paul Mendes-Flohr describes the child looking out from a second-floor window at the figure of his mother walking away, without a wave, to elope with a Russian military officer.Near the end of his life, Buber recalled feeling an "infinite sense of deprivation and loss" when an older neighbor girl told him bluntly that his mother was not coming back to him. He recalled the pain of hearing the girl's words, and he admitted that the shock of that experience never left him: "Whatever I have learned in the course of my life about the meaning of meeting and dialogue between people springs from that moment when I was four."Even when Buber was addressing the political and geopolitical forces of his age, the sadness of this event reappeared, especially when the topic intersected with existential concerns. For example, in a paper he wrote in 1933, Buber observed that Jews of the world were lost. Modern society had fragmented them so that they were no longer guided by "the heartbeat of a living Jewish community," and the norms and strictures of Rabbinic Judaism were not enough to guide and encourage them. Jewish community must be renewed. Buber wrote, "It is up to us to make the world reliable again for the children. It depends on us to say to them and ourselves: Don't worry. Mother is here."
Italian towns like Sutera and Riace took a different approach when they saw their populations decline. The two towns opened their doors to migrants who arrived in Italy in huge numbers a few years back. The hope was to provide a home for the newcomers while also reviving the town centers. Fiore, however, doesn't believe inviting migrants to move into San Piero Patti's empty houses is the solution for the town's dwindling population. He says the issue of immigration needs to be dealt with at the national government level."If we have forced or spontaneous migration to San Piero [Patti], it would not be beneficial either for the migrants or the locals. We need a more cohesive political solution from the government. It cannot come from one small village."Nepumaceno says she would welcome migrants to San Piero Patti. Her biggest worry is for her daughter, who is 1 years old. The hilltop town is undoubtedly a peaceful environment to raise a child, but for young mothers, like Nepumaceno, the issues revolve around schools and health care facilities."I don't know what my daughter will find in three years. I don't know if we'll still have a school or the doctors or pharmacies. In a very short period, we could lose it all."In 10 years, Nepumaceno says, so much has changfed in the little Sicilian town. A sense of fun and vitality has ebbed away. But in the next decade, she says, things could reverse -- starting with the sale of just one house for just 1 euro.
A top State Department official told Congress Monday evening that the Saudis view the massive attack on their oil infrastructure as their 9/11, according to two congressional sources. [...]Brian Hook, the Trump administration's special representative for Iran, made the 9/11 comparison during a telephone briefing on Capitol Hill about the administration's latest thinking on the attack.