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02/10/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

LMAO!! Goon Rosie O’Donnell Will Pose as Steve Bannon on SNL

Hey, ‘SNL’: Rosie O’Donnell Poses as Steve Bannon in Bid for New Gig

Yeah, we’re thinking Rosie O’Donnell is definitely gunning for that “Saturday Night Live” guest gig. And she might deserve it too, after updating her official Twitter profile picture Thursday night with a scary-accurate Photoshopped image of her as White House Advisor Steve Bannon.

Earlier this week, Politico reported that beleaguered White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer drew boss Donald Trump’s severe displeasure thanks to a Melissa McCarthy’s brutal, and highly celebrated portrayal of him on “SNL.”

Trump’s problem? Not that she made him look like a petulant buffoon, but that she was “she,” Politico reported.

The site said Spicer’s job is on shaky ground because Trump thinks being played by a woman made him “look weak.”

Wait, Spicer might actually get canned thanks to a gender-flipped casting decision? Maybe, maybe not, but unsurprisingly that possibility got the internet thinking: if Spicer, why not other members of Trump’s staff? Like Bannon.

Enter Rosie O’Donnell. Fans on Monday night noticed some eerie similarities between her and Bannon in several pictures, and thus was born a Twitter campaign to have her portray him on “SNL.”

To the participants’ delight, O’Donnell was down. “I am here to serve,” she said at the time. And indeed she is, judging by the image she posted tonight. See it below and marvel at the likeness.

Is Lorne Michaels paying attention? Would “SNL” try to capture lightning in a bottle twice with the same basic gag? Who knows, but in our opinion Rosie as Bannon is a much funnier take than the show’s current version, Bannon as the Grim Reaper.

If “SNL” declines, at least we’ll have this photo — and the knowledge that the O’Donnell-Trump feud can still be a lot of fun.

http://www.thewrap.com/hey-snl-rosie-odonnell-poses-steve-bannon-bid-new-gig/

02/10/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Judges Against Trump’s Travel Ban Need Security Because of Threats

Threats against judges in immigration ban cases leads to increased security

(CNN)Threats against more than one judge involved in legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration have prompted federal and local law enforcement agencies to temporarily increase security protection for some of them, according to law enforcement officials.

CNN did not learn how specific the threats were, but law enforcement agencies treated them seriously and out of an abundance of caution, the US Marshals Service and local police increased patrols and protective officers to provide security for some of the judges, the officials said.

A spokesperson from the US Marshals Service declined to comment directly on the threats but said that while “we do not discuss our specific security measures, we continuously review the security measures in place for all federal judges and take appropriate steps to provide additional protection when it is warranted.”

The threats come as Trump continues his verbal criticisms of judges — something that has drawn concern from former law enforcement officials and others who fear that public officials should not target a specific judge, and instead base their criticism more broadly on a court’s ruling.

Security experts say that while Trump’s comments were clearly not meant to put the judges’ safety at risk, in general, public officials should avoid comments against a specific judge so as not to spur an unhappy litigant.

“Federal judges are constantly under some kind of threat around the country, and the US Marshals investigate hundreds of threats every year on the federal judiciary,” said Arthur D. Roderick, who is a retired assistant director for investigations for the US Marshals.

“Anybody that has looked at what the US Marshals do has got to realize that an attack on any judge is an attack on the rule of law of the United States,” he said, noting that the President’s sister is a federal judge and the President should be familiar with threats against judges.

But Leonard Leo, an adviser to Trump on the Supreme Court, says it is a “huge stretch” to equate the criticisms that President Trump has made with a threat to judicial security.

“President Trump is not threatening a judge, and he’s not encouraging any form of lawlessness,” Leo said. “What he is doing is criticizing a judge for what he believes to be a failure to follow the law properly.”

“Judges are given life tenure so they can go wherever the law takes them knowing that they can resist being unduly influenced by criticism or by praise,” Leo said, adding that “all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, there has been criticisms by Presidents as well as (the) general public.”

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked whether Trump regrets his criticism.

“He has no regrets,” Spicer said. Trump’s criticism were based first on Judge James L. Robart, who halted the executive order pending appeal. Trump referred to him as a “so-called” judge.

Later he suggested that Robart’s ruling could put the country in peril.

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”

In a speech Wednesday to the National Association of Sheriffs, Trump reiterated that his executive order is meant to protect “the security of the country.”

But he took the unusual tack of criticizing the judges currently hearing the appeal.

“I don’t ever want to call a court biased and we haven’t had a decision yet. But courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right,” Trump said.

He said, “I will not comment on the statements made by certainly one judge, but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court in terms of respect for the court, they’d do what they should be doing. It’s so sad.”

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday Trump’s travel ban will remain blocked. The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel means that citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries will continue to be able to travel to the US, despite Trump’s executive order last month.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/09/politics/judges-threatened-immigration-order/index.html

02/10/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Too Many Mooslims & Swiss Nationalist Party Cracks Down

Geneva (AFP) – The woman’s shadowed eyes stare out from a black niqab with the poster’s tagline urging Swiss voters to reject “uncontrolled naturalisation.”

But critics of the campaign image distributed across the country ahead of Sunday’s referendum say the poster is really just a brazen appeal to those worried about more Muslims becoming Swiss.

“That is exactly what they are trying to (do)”, said Pius Walker, who heads the Zurich-based advertising agency Walker AG.

“It is a very, very frightening thing that is going on here.”

The issue in Sunday’s vote, the latest in Switzerland’s direct democracy system, is whether the grandchildren of immigrants should be able to benefit from an expedited citizenship process.

The government as well a majority of lawmakers and political parties support the proposal.

They argue that children born in Switzerland, who have a grandparent who was also born in the country or had a residency card, should be able to skip a few steps in the arduous process of securing a Swiss passport.

According to a migration department study, an estimated 25,000 people currently qualify as third generation immigrants, nearly 60 percent of whom are Italian.

But in campaigning against the measure, the rightwing nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has made clear that Italians were not its primary concern.

“In one or two generations, who will these third generation foreigners be?” SVP lawmaker Jean-Luc Addor wrote in an opinion piece on the party’s website.

“They will be born of the Arab Spring, they will be from sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, Syria or Afghanistan,” he warned.

– ‘An attack on Muslims’ –

The SVP is not officially responsible for the niqab poster.

It was commissioned by the Committee Against Facilitated Citizenship, which is backed by many senior SVP members, including Addor, the committee’s co-chair.

And SVP members are no strangers to campaigns denounced as discriminatory, notably a successful 2009 initiative to outlaw the construction of new mosque minarets.

Campaigns demonising Muslims are expected from the SVP, but they are not “deemed acceptable” by the Swiss political mainstream, said Sophie Guignard of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern.

For most politicians and journalists, the niqab poster amounts to “a violent attack against Muslims,” Guignard told AFP.

But that does not mean it won’t work.

The latest polls from the gfs.bern institute show 66 percent of people support easier citizenship for third-generation immigrants, with 31 percent against and three percent undecided.

Polls from the news company Tamedia have it closer, with 55 percent in favour and 44 percent against.

The “No” side has however gained about 10 points since polling opened.

And an upset can’t be ruled out, especially with the touchstone issue of Swiss identity and Islam at the centre of the debate.

The niqab poster was created by the Zurich-based agency Goal AG, whose chief Alexander Segert was described by the Financial Times in December as “the advertising guru of Europe’s new right.”

Segert has worked extensively for SVP members as well as the far-right Freedom Party of Austria and is seeking to expand his business to include Germany’s political right, according to the FT.

Among Segert’s earlier Swiss work was the 2009 minaret ban campaign.

He produced a poster with a series of minarets sketched to look like spears protruding from a Swiss flag as a similar niqab-clad woman stared out in the foreground.

For Walker, whose agency has worked for leftwing causes and parties, Goal’s religiously and ethnically charged ads have “basically copied a style” that goes back to the “Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.”

“It’s a very simple trick,” where a nation’s problems are condensed into the image of a supposedly threatening outsider, he explained.

He also expressed regret over the fact that rightwing parties seemed better at using such simple methods than the left.

“Maybe fear is very simple to communicate and hope and pluralism is harder,” Walker told AFP. “But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-muslim-poster-clouds-swiss-citizenship-vote-100959897.html

02/09/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Chris Cuomo Says Nigger Is The Same As Calling CNN Fake News

Anchor Chris Cuomo said Thursday that when President Trump refers to his network as “fake news,” it’s the same thing for reporters as the N-word is for black people.

“I see being called ‘fake news’ as the equivalent of the N-word for journalists, the equivalent of calling an Italian any of the ugly words that people have for that ethnicity,” Cuomo said on SiriusXM. “That’s what fake news is to a journalist.”

“‘Fake news’ is the worst thing that you could call a journalist,” he said. “It’s like an ethnic disparagement. We all have these ugly words for people, and that’s the one for journalists.”

“Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam,” Trump’s tweet said. “FAKE NEWS!”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2614401