Random Politics & Religion #00

Is it Canada where the warnings in cigarettes are like 3/4 of the package?

In Quebec, it's close to $20 CAD I believe.

He'll never win. He may be able to battle out a GOP nomination, but there are enough people in this country who know his track record when it comes to workers, unions, and the "little people" in general. Stack those on top of the people who simply won't vote GOP and the people that will vote for the democratic candidate just because of the race/gender/social issues and it will be an uphill battle for any GOP candidate, let alone one has hardline as Walker.

State police in Susquehanna County are investigating the discovery of what they believe to be a mobile meth lab.

Troopers tell Newswatch 16 it started around 9 p.m. Sunday night in the parking lot of a gas station and mini mart along Route 374, just off Interstate 81.

Three people were taken into custody, and a fourth was taken to a hospital after a backpack filled with materials for making methamphetamine turned up in a mini-mart parking lot near Clifford.

Police and a hazmat crew were called to the gas station mini-mart, along Route 374, in Lenox Township, just after 9 p.m. Sunday.

According to authorities, four men were apparently trying to get rid of something outside the Convenient Food Mart near Lenoxville. Police were called to the area to search a white Mazda. Inside the vehicle, authorities said they found what appeared to be meth-making materials.

Ray Gerichten was on duty inside and he tells Newswatch 16 it all started with a plea for help.

“Next thing I know, there’s a lady screaming out there at the pump. She’s screaming, ‘help me’ or something like that, so I opened the door and that’s what she was saying,” Gerichten recalled.

Gerichten says police came, looked at the car the woman and three others arrived in. They found a backpack with meth making materials inside, and the handcuffs went on.

“Got that guy’s backpack, turns out there cooking meth in there, I say what!”

The gas station and mini-mart is just off Interstate 81 with a lot of traffic coming through there.

Lenny Oliveri of Pittston drives a truck and stops there occasionally. He’s disappointed a drug manufacturing operation was found in this area.

“This is country, and people work hard around here. That’s all I can say,” said Oliveri.

Brian McDonald is also a frequent customer. He lives just down the road in Clifford. He’s Disappointed with what police found here last night.

“We heard of it going on, different areas of northeastern Pennsylvania, but I don’t really expect to be here.”

And as for Ray Gerichten, the guy who was here when it all started, he says he’s seen a lot of strange things working late at night and early in the morning but this is his first meth bust.

The store in Lenox Township remained open for business after the alleged mobile meth lab discovery in Susquehanna County.

In a frenzied last day of campaigning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state and vowed to keep building east Jerusalem settlements as he appealed to hard-line voters on the eve of Israel's closely contested general election.

The moderate opposition, meanwhile, announced a dramatic last-minute machination of its own, removing one of its two joint candidates for prime minister.

Netanyahu, who has governed for the past six years and has long been the most dominant personality in Israeli politics, has watched his standing plummet in recent weeks.

Recent opinion polls show his Likud Party lagging behind Isaac Herzog's Zionist Union. Herzog, who has vowed to revive peace efforts with the Palestinians, repair ties with the U.S. and reduce the growing gaps between rich and poor, confidently predicted an "upheaval" was imminent.

Late Monday night, it was announced that Herzog's main partner, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, had given up an agreement to rotate the prime minister post with him if their alliance wins. It was widely thought that the unusual arrangement was driving away voters.

Tuesday's election caps an acrimonious three-month campaign that is widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu.

While his comments Monday appeared to be election rhetoric, they nonetheless put him further at odds with the international community, boding poorly for already strained relations with the U.S. and other key allies if he wins a third consecutive term.

An annual security assessment presented to the U.S. Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, has excluded Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from its list of terror threats to U.S. interests, despite both being consistently included as threats in previous years.

The unclassified report, issued by Clapper on February 26 and entitled the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Communities, was published by the Times of Israel amid Israeli concerns that Iran was omitted simply because of Tehran’s efforts to combat ISIS.

In a previous report from January 2014, Clapper included Iran and Hezbollah in the ‘Terrorism’ section, writing that both “continue to directly threaten the interests of U.S. allies. Hizballah [sic] has increased its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level that we have not seen since the 1990s”. Iran was also given its own sub-heading in the ‘Terrorism’ section of such assessments in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Yet in the latest report, Clapper omits both Iran and Hezbollah from this section, only mentioning the Shiite Muslim militant group once in reference to the threat it faces from radical Sunni groups - such as ISIS and the al-Nusra Front - on Lebanon’s borders. In regard to Iran, the report names it as both a cyber and regional threat to the U.S. because of its support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

However, the report speaks of Tehran’s assistance in preventing “ISIL [another term for ISIS] from gaining large swaths of additional territory” in Iraq. It adds that the Islamic Republic has “intentions to dampen sectarianism, build responsive partners, and deescalate tensions with Saudi Arabia”.

The report fails to mention that Hezbollah is labelled as a terrorist organisation by both the U.S. and the European Union, while it receives the majority of its funding from Tehran. The omission comes as Washington and other world powers continue to negotiate with Iran to strike a deal over its nuclear program and capabilities.

Sounds like a political move more than a practical one.

Let's just hope this doesn't come around and bite us in the ***....

A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel's activities told FoxNews.com.

The fact that both Democratic and Republican sides of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have signed off on the probe could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who has had a well-documented adversarial relationship with the Israeli leader.

The development comes as Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel Two television station this week that there were “governments” that wanted to help with the “Just Not Bibi” campaigning -- Bibi being the Israeli leader’s nickname.

It also follows a FoxNews.com report on claims the Obama administration has been meddling in the Israeli election on behalf of groups hostile to Netanyahu. A spokesperson for Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican and chairman of the committee, declined comment, and aides to ranking Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, did not immediately return calls.

Unlike all of the other moves this administration has done?

Everyone's an [insert name here] Apologist.

You are a Canadian! You are an "everyone" apologist!

About a thousand people marched on Monday to pay tribute to Latvians who fought in German Waffen SS units against the Soviet Union during World War II, despite jeering from protesters who say the parade glorifies fascism.

Aging war veterans led the procession to Riga's Freedom Monument, where they laid flowers and sang traditional songs.

The annual march has become a public relations headache for Latvian leaders.