James L. Paris's Blog, page 122

No Charges Will Be Filed In Keith Lamont Scott Shooting - Charlotte Riots Expected

By ChristianMoney.com Staff Writers

Charlotte police Officer Brentley Vinson's shooting of Keith Lamont Scott will result in no charges being filed. The announcement was made just moments ago by Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray. Murray said that the decision was unanimous among the fifteen prosecutors that made the determination.

Police were in a suburban Charlotte housing complex on September 20th to serve a warrant, but Scott was not the individual they intended to arrest. Police claim that Scott was armed during the incident, but Scott's family disputes this. According to Scott's family and neighbors, he suffered from a brain injury that made it difficult for him to communicate. It was later reported that a handgun was found at the scene with both Scott's fingerprints and DNA. The shooting sparked multiple protests in Charlotte.

 

Bizarre Pro-Trump Outburst on Delta Flight Gets Passenger Banned for Life

Oh, boy.

A passenger on Delta Air Lines Flight 248 from Atlanta to Allentown, Pa. has been banned for life from ever traveling again on the carrier after he was apparently overcome by the urge to profess his support for President-elect Donald Trump to his fellow travelers, and in a way that clearly had many of them on edge.

As the unidentified passenger stood in the aisle and clapped, he shouted various anti-Hillary Clinton and pro-Trump declarations. Here���s a sample:

���Donald Trump, baby! We got some Hillary b-----s on here? Come on, baby! Trump!���

And a little more:

���Donald Trump is your president, every God D--- one of you! If you don't like it, too bad!���

The passenger returned to his seat, and there were apparently no further disruptions during the flight.

Addressing the incident in a memo to employees, Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote, in part:

���This individual displayed behavior that was loud, rude and disrespectful to his fellow customers. After questioning the customer, our team members made the best decision they could given the information they had and allowed him to remain on the flight. However, if our colleagues had witnessed firsthand what was shown in the video, there is no question they would have removed him from the aircraft. He will never again be allowed on a Delta plane.���

In addition to banning the man in question from any future travel with Delta, the airline is giving every passenger on that flight a full refund on the price of their tickets.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

Sen. Marco Rubio Has Choice Words for Those World Leaders Praising Castro

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American whose parents emigrated from the island in the 1950���s, is none too pleased with the eulogizing of Fidel Castro in which some world leaders have engaged since the event of his passing, and says that the real reason they���re doing it is because many are simply in ideological agreement with the late communist dictator.

Rubio was asked by CBS News��� Reena Ninan what he thought might be behind the outpouring of condolences by various world leaders, including Pope Francis.

���You���ll have to ask each of these individual leaders. Some of these people you���re talking about are people that have never had to live... near him, or anywhere around him,��� said Rubio. ���Others, quite frankly have anti-American sentiments and have always viewed Fidel Castro as a person who stood up to America.���

Rubio continued, saying, ���And others quite frankly are left-leaning -- they just agree with his ideology. Each of these people have to account for their own level of hypocrisy and how they ignore the fact that he jailed and executed and murdered people.���

In addition to Pope Francis, who telegrammed to Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, his ���sense of grief to your excellency and family,��� other notables on the world stage seemed to express great regret at the passing of Cuba���s most notorious revolutionary. President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico tweeted that ���Fidel Castro was a friend of Mexico, promoting bilateral relations based on respect, dialogue and solidarity,��� while Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, also used Twitter to say that ���Fidel Castro was one of the most iconic personalities of the 20th century. India mourns the loss of a great friend.���

Responding to a CBS News question about whether Castro deserved to be ���forgiven��� for the things he did, Rubio tersely responded, ���Forgiven? Well first of all, to be forgiven, you have to ask for forgiveness...You don���t forgive someone who thinks they never did anything wrong.���

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

Is the Battle over the Next Secretary of State the First Real Rift in Trump Camp?

The head of the team advising Donald Trump as he transitions from President-elect to President of the United States, Kellyanne Conway, seemed to assume a bit of an at-odds position with her boss on Sunday when she raised an objection to the possibility of Mitt Romney being selected as the next secretary of state.

Said Conway about the possibility of Mitt in the cabinet: ���I���m all for party unity but I���m not sure we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position.���

The issue revolves around Romney���s high-profile objections, evident throughout the campaign, to Trump becoming the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. Surely the apex of Romney���s anti-Trump stance was his now famous (infamous?) speech back on March 3, made from the University of Utah, in which he said, in part, ���Let me put it plainly, if we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.���

As it happens, that was one of the kinder things Romney said about Trump when he spoke that day. Indeed, the pointed way in which Romney went after Trump at that time took even some in the so-called ���Never Trump��� movement by surprise.
But in a case of ���that was then, this is now,��� Trump, at this writing, has decided to make Romney one of the top two candidates for the secretary of state position ��� the other is former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

While it is unclear as to why, precisely, Romney has come to earn Trump���s consideration for the position, speculation revolves around some combination of an effort by the President-elect to heal the party after such a contentious campaign season, as well as a genuine desire to see someone as statesman-like as Romney represent the U.S. in world affairs.

However, Conway, speaking for Trump loyalists on CNN���s State of the Union on Sunday, said, ���It's just breathtaking in scope and intensity the type of messages I've received from all over the country ... the number of people who feel betrayed to think that Gov. Romney would get the most prominent Cabinet post after he went so far out of his way to hurt Donald Trump.���

Stay tuned.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Veterans Protest Hampshire College���s Controversial Decision to Stop Flying American Flag

Hampshire College in western Massachusetts made headlines recently when it made a decision to no longer fly the American flag on campus. That did not sit well with many Americans, particularly veterans, and a crowd of them showed up to the campus on Sunday to protest.

The flag controversy at Hampshire started just after the election of Donald Trump. In apparent response to Trump���s victory over Hillary Clinton, someone burned the American flag that regularly flew at the center of the school���s campus. Hampshire���s first response was to replace the flag, but fly it only at half-staff in a symbolic effort ���to acknowledge the grief and pain experienced by so many and to enable the full complexity of voices and experiences to be heard.���

Well, that didn���t go over particularly well. There was an angry response to the school���s approach to how the flag would be replaced, so it decided to stop flying the flag altogether.

That really hasn���t gone over well.

CBS Boston reports that hundreds of veterans and supporters who want to see the flag fly again at Hampshire showed up to campus on Sunday and made their feelings known.

���I would die for this flag. I fought for it. I live for it. You all live for it,��� said one protesting vet.

The veterans were joined by Springfield, Mass. Mayor Domenic Sarno in a show of solidarity.

���I wanted to be here to stand with our cherished veterans and ���old glory.��� it���s because of our veterans and many who have given the ultimate sacrifice and their families that we���re able to lead the lives we lead, because of your efforts. The same goes for Hampshire College. No matter what way you think or not think. It is because of our veterans,��� said Mayor Sarno.

For the time being, however, the flag will remain out of sight at Hampshire, according to school president Jonathan Lash.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Trump COULD Be Right That Millions Of Votes Were Fraudulent

The media has spent its day publishing so called 'fact checking' stories to discredit President-Elect Trump's claim that there were likely millions of fraudulent votes in the recent presidential election. The simple truth is that Trump's claim can not be fact checked. There is no real way for anyone to know how many votes may have been cast illegally. Trump's comments are speculative in nature, but not unsupported by a large amount of anecdotal evidence. Since there are only 7 states that have a strict photo ID requirement, it is possible that there could have been widespread voter fraud, and there would be no way to definitively verify it. We also have the excellent work of James O'Keefe of Project Veritas, and his numerous videos showing how easy it is to fraudulently vote.

What is the height of hypocrisy is that the very people presently putting up millions of dollars for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, are the same people ridiculing Trump for raising his own questions about the election. We also know that when it comes to elections, it has been documented in every way imaginable, that liberals will cheat every chance they get. You need to look no further than how the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders to see that these people are cheaters. Here is an excellent article from the Washington Times, No, Voter Fraud Isn't A Myth. The article provides numerous examples of voter fraud, including illegals voting, dead people voting, people voting multiple times, and more. Any serious student of history knows the well established case of voter fraud in Chicago that delivered the presidency to John F. Kennedy in 1960 (the origin of the phrase 'vote early and vote often' and the notion of dead people voting).

A simple system could be implemented that could prevent virtually all voter fraud. We could use the same technology as is used with credit cards. A chip enabled voter ID card accompanied by a photo ID would do it. BUT, this will likely never happen. Even the most modest attempt to reform and secure our voting system with a photo ID is considered racist, and it challenged by the Democrats and their lawyers. You simply have to ask, why a photo ID is required in our society to cash a check, drive a car, and board a plane, but not to vote?

Democrats can't insist on keeping all of these holes in our voting system and then claim that it is not possible for there to be widespread fraud. Trump could very well be right, but we will never know. Having a voting system that allows for the possibility of fraud will always leave the door open for this kind of speculation. The Democrats know how to slam that door shut, but we all know why they want to leave it open.

Helping you make the most of God���s money!

James L. Paris
Editor-In-Chief ChristianMoney.com 
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How To Find Cheap Airfare In Under 1 Minute

By James L. Paris Editor In Chief

A neat trick that you can use to find super cheap airfare in less than 1 minute. Check out the video below (for best viewing, use the full screen option by clicking on the lower right corner of the video) - 

Calls Grow Inside of Democratic Party for Pelosi to Go

You know there���s truly a bit of a civil war brewing inside the Democratic Party if you can hear calls from leading liberals for its storied leadership to step aside.

Washington Post columnist and outspoken progressive Dana Milbank is by no means the only one sounding the alarm, but his recent case for why it should happen, made in one of his most recent columns, is one of the most direct challenges to the existing party leadership.

Milbank suggests that the advanced ages of the key Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives���Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn���are an element of the Democrats��� problem. His point there is that they���ve long ridden shotgun on a party happy to have fully immersed itself in cultural and identity politics, and that in order for the party to regroup, it is in need of new leadership that re-prioritizes economic populism.

On that note, Milbank, in his piece, expresses some appreciation for the challenge of Ohio���s Tim Ryan to Pelosi���s position as head of the House Democrats. While a law school grad, Ryan���s orientation is that of a classic, Midwest, blue-collar white guy���the very demographic that has long been on the outside, looking in on the Democratic Party.

Both Ryan and Milbank see economic populism as a message that was lost long ago by Democrats, and economic populism is the primary language spoken by the aforementioned blue-collar white guy.

Hillary Clinton essentially crowed that she was going to put coal workers on the unemployment lines. Ryan? He goes in exactly the opposite direction, saying that Dems need to ���get rid of the perception, that we���re tied to Wall Street, that we���re coastal elites and that we���re more concerned with the donor class than the working class.���

Will Democrats, at large, pay attention? Only time will tell.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

From a Remote Desert ���City,��� China Continues Its Effort to Become Number One in Space Travel

As space exploration becomes an increasingly-diminished priority in the United States, the Chinese are moving in quite the opposite direction, aggressively seeking to occupy the vacuum left by America���s virtual abandonment of outer space...and much of the activity is centered on a remote desert outpost in northwest China, approaching the Mongolian border.

It is at that place where China has created, as Bloomberg puts it, ���a gateway to the new final frontier:��� Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Jiuquan has seen six manned spaceflights depart from the facility, and it is believed that manned trips to both the moon and Mars are presently under discussion in China.

The Launch Center is also the location from which China���s most-important satellites are put into space. A dream of Mao���s, it was first built in 1958. Since then, according to Bloomberg, it has grown in area to twice the size of Los Angeles, and, as of 2011, per a state-run newspaper, it had roughly 35,000 people living in its residential area.

The nature and location of the facility speak to China���s dedication to pursuing a sustained, even dominant, presence in space. They show no signs of letting up, as last month���s launch of the Shenzhou 11 mission to China���s orbiting lab will attest.

It is said that Mao always wanted to establish China as a genuine competitor to the then-Soviet Union and United States in the realm of space exploration.

Is China there yet? While that is certainly debatable, one thing is not: the country is evidencing a determination that has not been a part of the U.S. space agenda for decades now, and so much of it is being energized by a busy, energetic launch site in what many see as the middle of nowhere.

Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

 

Even with Increased Online Black Friday Sales, Cyber Monday Remains a Great Deal for Consumers

 Is Cyber Monday still a thing?

That question has been asked more frequently in recent years, as retailers, in a breathless effort at corralling as many customers as they can, however they can, have been going further than ever in making in-store Black Friday deals available to online shoppers. According to early data, while Black Friday sales results this year are expected to be the biggest yet, much of that will be attributable to the enormous growth in online sales made during the day originally designed to bring foot traffic into retail locations.

According to Adobe Digital Insights, online Black Friday sales are expected to top $3 billion when the final numbers come available - that figure would represent an increase of 11.3% over 2015. Adobe���s predicted total figure is based on results from the first 8.5 hours of Black Friday shopping, which saw nearly $500 million spent during that period.

Indeed, the contribution of online purchases to total Black Friday sales is so great this year that analysts at Cowen & Co., a leading financial services and research firm, have informally renamed Black Friday as ���couch Friday��� because of the all the shopping now done from home that day.

As a result of the line between in-store and online savings continuing to disappear during Black Friday, many are now questioning whether there remains anything particularly special about Cyber Monday.

The answer is that while it���s true that great, ���bottom line��� online deals can now be had starting on Thanksgiving Day, Cyber Monday is still something to which you want to pay attention, especially if you���re in the market for some things that might not typically make your Christmas shopping list.

For example, Cyber Monday has evolved into a day for grabbing fantastic travel deals. According to Patrick Surry, the chief data scientist at Hopper, an airfare prediction app., anyone looking for flights to Europe and/or the Caribbean will likely see the biggest savings on Cyber Monday 2016. Also, says Surry, folks who will be happy traveling just about anywhere, and at any time, will be the ones who have the best chance of scoring a truly amazing travel bargain on Cyber Monday.

Still, for those more ���typical��� gifts you���re likely going to buy, Cyber Monday ��� which, at many retailers, becomes more like Cyber Week because of the duration of the sales - still presents a lot of opportunity. In fact, despite the great online deals that have already come available up to this point in the Christmas shopping season, it is said that this year���s Cyber Monday may be bigger than ever, and stores that will be making an especially big splash this year include Walmart, Target, and Macy���s.

Other retailers that principally do their regular business online have some very special sales planned. Computer giant Dell will begin its Cyber Monday extravaganza on Nov. 28 at 8 a.m. EST, and plans to announce hourly doorbuster deals throughout the day on laptops, televisions, gaming equipment, and assorted other ���stuff��� that appeals to techies.

Also, Overstock.com is touting that its Cyber Monday blowout will include ���some of the most amazing online shopping promotions and giveaways of the year.��� Overstock���s Cyber Monday sale is a two-day event, running Nov. 27 ��� Nov.28, and will see inventory prices cut by up to 75 percent, including on some of this year���s most sought-after consumer electronics items, like iPads and 4K TVs.

By the way, speaking of 4K TVs, although they���re expected to remain especially popular throughout the duration of the Christmas shopping season this year, a few words of caution if you���re thinking about grabbing one during your online Cyber Monday travels. While 4K televisions are among the hottest gifts right now, you might want to consider passing on buying one this season. For one thing, it is expected that the technology will vastly improve over the next couple of years. Also, even with the ���deals,��� prices are still a bit high right now precisely because the units are so new and popular. Additionally, and maybe this is the biggest reason for avoiding a 4K TV, presently���there are simply not many programs available in 4K just yet, which means that if your resolution stream is 1080, as it is for most, your new 4K TV will not get you anything in terms of an enhanced viewing experience.

All of that is expected to change in the coming years, but, for now, you might want to think about saving your 4K TV purchase money for use at that time.

Once Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fully in the rearview mirror, is that it for deals? Not at all. Retailers will continue to pursue customers by offering a wide variety of money-saving opportunities up until the time Santa is making his rounds on Christmas Eve. Amazon, for example, has announced that it will basically run Black Friday deals until December 22, saying that shoppers will be able to ���find new deals as often as every five minutes��� until that date.

In other words, don���t despair if you did not happen to take full advantage of Black Friday on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday on Cyber Monday; there will still be lots of chances to buy great stuff at deep discounts for the next several weeks.

Lastly, as you make your way through the stores during the rest of the shopping season, it���s a good idea to be aware of just what the online prices are for those items on your shopping list. While most retailers will not typically price match on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, once you get into December, those stores that do offer to match prices will resume doing so.

Black Friday is behind us, but Cyber Monday is upon us, and, with it, another array of opportunities to save big on this year���s most popular Christmas gifts. What���s more, there remain plenty of great deals to be had between now and Christmas, so if you find yourself with more to buy in the weeks to come, don���t despair - you should still expect to find deals galore right up until it���s time to start unwrapping presents.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large